Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3)

by E. William Brown

  That was a defense I was confident would hold against anything I could imagine attacking us. The original keep was still a weak spot, being of much lighter construction, but I couldn’t do anything about that while it was full of people. So I did a walkthrough of the new construction with Oskar and Captain Rain, explaining my ideas for what to do with the space. Then I left them to plan out how to get their men resettled, and sat down to create a little pocket paradise for my girls.

  What can I say? They made me want to spoil them.

  The site I selected for this first arcology block was a rectangular plot to the west of the original keep, bounded by the island’s wall on the north and the farming complex on the south. Almost four hundred feet long and about a hundred and fifty wide, it was an absurdly huge space to use for living quarters. But I had a lot of other things in mind for it as well.

  Drawing on my experience with the dryad habitats, I started by throwing up a massively overbuilt framework of nickel-iron beams to support the structure. It completely filled the gap between the two existing structures, turning that whole part of the island into a single giant mass of stone and iron. Where it didn’t abut existing construction I put in an outer wall of iron two feet thick, encased in ten feet of stone. The steeply sloped roof was also of thick iron, and matching the height of the dryad habitat put it a bit over two hundred feet up. The side of the upper floors that overlooked the island’s walls was mostly just blank iron faced with more black granite, but I left a few windows and some larger openings up near the top. The very top floor of the building contained large cisterns enchanted to keep themselves full of hot or cold water, as well as lots of empty space set aside for whatever other magical infrastructure I might come up with in the future.

  Not wanting to cut off foot traffic I ran a wide road right through the middle of the building’s ground floor, with magical lighting and heavy iron gates at each end that we could close if an enemy somehow got onto the island. Lining the road were empty spaces two stories tall that could be turned into shops or businesses, in various shapes and sizes. I figured there were a lot of craftsmen and merchants in Kozalin who’d jump at the chance to move their business someplace safer once we started advertising, especially if the city kept coming under attack.

  I was tempted to use marble for the street-level construction, just to make it look nice. But no, keeping it clean would probably be a nightmare. So simple gray stone for the street, and the walls between the empty shop spaces.

  At the back of one of the larger spaces was a door into the farming complex, so I designated that one as a future produce market and brought Hrodir down to consult on how to finish it out. We put in some storerooms and a small granary in addition to a roomy display area, and big glass windows at the front. Hrodir made plans to recruit extra men to run the store once they had something to sell, and I made sure he understood that keeping people from randomly wandering through the back door into the farming complex would be part of their job. I didn’t need random townspeople discovering the dryads, and spreading rumors that would get back to Prince Caspar.

  Then it was time for the upper floors. I wanted to be able to control who got access to those areas, just in case the street level started to see a lot of shoppers coming in from Kozalin at some point. I also had in mind that we might need to impress official visitors at some point without letting them get near anything sensitive. So I turned one shop space into a fairly fancy entrance area, with a wide marble staircase leading up to the third floor.

  There I roughed out a grand hall where we could hold formal events if we ever needed to, along with a complex of fancy meeting rooms for receiving official visitors. Another checkpoint with heavy iron doors separated this diplomatic area from the elevators that gave access to the upper floors. By this point I’d figured out how to enchant a proper system of call buttons, and I was able to set those up like the elevators in a modern office building in instead of the exposed platform design in the original keep. Much less scary for medieval townspeople to use, although I took a page from modern fire safety codes and build a set of stairs as well.

  Most of the rest of the building I left unfinished, since we didn’t have a use for the space yet. But the fifth through seventh floors I set aside as a private space for my coven.

  I’d thought about using the top floors at first, but in a world with flying monsters that wasn’t safe enough for my taste. The levels I’d picked instead were low enough to be behind the full thickness of the island’s outer wall, protected against any bombardment that might be aimed our way. An invader would have to fight their way up from the street level or down from the walls to get in, through multiple checkpoints and armored doors. No surprise attack would have a chance to get that far before we could respond.

  The floor and roof of the area were even more heavily armored than the rest, just to make sure no enemy would be able to break in by tunneling through them, and the elevator stop on the fifth floor was a killing field. To get into the living area you had to pass through two sets of heavy iron doors, and the passage between them had walls lined with arrow slits and murder holes in the ceiling. The barracks and guard posts surrounding that had room for a platoon of troops to live in full time, with their own mess area and rec room, although I doubted we’d actually have that kind of manpower available anytime soon.

  Inside this protected space I laid out a large garden area three floors high, with artificial sunlight and a sprinkler system just like the farming areas. The rooms of our living quarters would surround that, so they could have windows and balconies facing the garden to give them a pleasant outdoor feel. That filled about half the space, and I figured we could use the other half as our coven’s official workspace and a secure storage area for dangerous magical projects.

  But first I had to move Avilla’s kitchen. That was how I found myself standing on a narrow iron bridge entirely too many floors above the ground, trying to levitate a whole frickin’ room.

  It had seemed like such a clever idea three days ago. The old keep was a single huge mass of stone, with thick floors and fairly solid interior walls. So why not just cut Avilla’s kitchen free of the surrounding stonework, and move it? It was probably solid enough to survive being picked up and moved around, but I could wrap some iron bands around it to make sure. Shaping a hole in the side of the keep big enough to get it out would be a pain, but I could do it.

  I’d neglected to consider how heavy the damned thing would be. Not to mention that it was a long way off the ground, and so was the spot I was trying to move it to. I’d turned my earth talisman into an iron bridge between the two points, but it was a long way down.

  The worst of it was that Avilla had insisted that she needed to be inside her kitchen when it was moved, to stabilize the enchantments. So there she was inside the giant stone box that was floating along next to me, leaning over the breakfast bar to watch me with wide eyes.

  “I still can’t believe you can lift my whole kitchen,” she said excitedly. “It must weigh a ton.”

  “Closer to… ten,” I replied through clenched teeth. I took another step, and the bridge creaked ominously beneath me. Was it thick enough to handle this much weight? A foot of solid iron supported by narrowly-spaced pillars had seemed like plenty when I was planning this, especially since my force magic spread the weight out quite a bit. But I wasn’t a civil engineer. I checked the structural reinforcement spell, to make sure it wasn’t drawing mana. Crap, it was. Not much, but apparently I’d been a little too optimistic with the bridge design. I’d better get this done quick, then.

  “Ten tons? Oh, my! I knew you were strong, Daniel, but I didn’t know you were that strong.”

  I took a few more steps. The wind caught the big, flat side of the stone box and tried to push it off the bridge, but fortunately it was too heavy to move very fast. It tilted and swayed sideways a few inches, before I shifted my force magic’s grip and got it back under control.

  “Careful!” Avilla
said. “I’m trying to hold everything in place in here, but I’m not sure how much this spell can handle.”

  I took another careful step, and frowned. “You have a spell to keep things from spilling off of shelves if the room tilts?”

  “It’s for earthquakes,” she explained with a smile. “It tries to hold everything in place, and keep the roof from falling in. But I’ve never used it before, so I’m not sure what the limits are.”

  I took a few more steps. The strain on the bridge rose slightly, but it stabilized at a level the reinforcement spell could handle. Good. As long as the wind didn’t get worse this should work.

  “Is that why you wanted to be in there?” I asked as I carefully moved my burden along the bridge. “I’d feel a lot better about this if you were someplace safe.”

  “You aren’t going to drop me, Daniel,” she said confidently.

  “That’s easy for you to say. I’m the one trying to balance a giant block of stone on a windy bridge,” I grumbled.

  “You’ve never failed when it counts, my love. I know you can do this.”

  Well, I couldn’t very well screw it up after a line like that.

  The whole trip was only a few hundred feet, but it felt like miles. The wind at this height was like a wall of icy knives, shifting unpredictably as it eddied around the towers I’d built. The bridge I walked on was uncomfortably narrow, and flexed unsettlingly as I moved my heavy load down its length.

  But eventually I reached the opening I’d left in the side of the new building, and the wind died as I maneuvered my burden inside. I crossed the garden and set it carefully into place, then spent a few minutes reconnecting the plumbing lines. At least I’d gotten the measurements right on that, so there weren’t any problems.

  When I finished I found Avilla standing in the empty dining room next to where her kitchen now sat. I’d put in a pair of big glass doors there, which she’d thrown open so she could look around at the bare field surrounded by incomplete construction.

  “It’s very big,” she said contemplatively. “I have to admit, I’m going to feel very safe here once you close that hole. I don’t think even a dragon could break into this place.”

  “That’s the idea,” I confirmed. “I’m going to have some areas on the upper floors with balconies and windows that actually lead outside, in case you get claustrophobic. But I want the place where we live and sleep to be safe from anything that could happen.”

  She smiled gently. “Thank you for taking such good care of us, Daniel. It’s going to feel good to put down some roots again. Can I use part of this field for an herb garden?”

  I chuckled. “Avilla, everything you’re looking at now is our coven’s private residence. You can use the whole thing for whatever you want.”

  “W-what?” She looked around again, her eyes going wide. “All of this?”

  “Yup. Welcome home, Avilla.”

  Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment.

  “My home is a palace? I’m going to be the strongest hearth witch ever!” She exclaimed.

  I laughed. “That’s the idea, sweetie.”

  “Thank you thank you thank you!”

  She threw her arms around me, and kissed me soundly. She might not have stopped there, except that we were interrupted.

  “Hey, Daniel! Where are our new bedrooms?” Cerise called.

  I looked up to find her leading a party of pale-faced laborers carrying various items of furniture, with Tina and Elin trailing along curiously behind them.

  “You know, I wasn’t planning to use the bridge for that,” I said mildly.

  She waved off my concern. “If it can handle the weight of a kitchen then beds and wardrobes are nothing, right? If we’re moving we might as well get it all done at once, and this is a lot easier than messing with elevators.”

  “I suppose you have a point,” I admitted. The bridge had guard rails, so I wasn’t really worried about someone falling off it. It was just a scary trip for anyone who wasn’t used to heights.

  “This way, then,” I said, and led them up the broad marble staircase that led to the second floor of the residence. I’d copied the arrangement Avilla had come up with in the keep, only on a larger scale. There was a large room that was intended as a lounge area at the entrance to our private wing, and then a long hall with doors along one side. Four of those led to private suites for the girls, each of which had a balcony overlooking the garden along with a bathroom and about a thousand square feet of floor space. The big glass windows and sliding glass doors on the balconies seemed to impress them, as did the sheer roominess.

  “What am I going to do with all this space?” Elin exclaimed.

  “Whatever you want,” I told her. “Fill it with books, set up a private workshop, whatever catches your fancy.”

  “A workshop?” She gave the space another look. “I suppose that could work.”

  “If you want. I’ve got another huge space set aside for a ritual chamber and whatever other magical facilities we need, mind you. There’s room there for each of us to have several spacious workrooms.”

  There were a couple of extra suites, just in case we ever added more members to our coven. Then came the private bathing chamber. The girls had fallen in love with the concept of hot baths, so I’d gone all out on that. At the entrance was a changing area with a mirror and some shelves for towels and clothes. A sliding door of frosted glass led from there into a spacious shower, with enough high-volume shower heads that using it was almost like stepping into a heated waterfall. Then came the inner room, dominated by a hot tub big enough to hold all of us and more. The whole thing was done in fancy white marble, with mirrors and a glass block window on one wall to give the room an airy feel. I’d even put in an enchantment to keep the temperature warm enough for lounging around naked.

  At the end of the hall another door led into my own suite, which was laid out like the others but slightly larger. Not that I had any need for more space, but I figured Avilla had her reasons for setting things up that way in the keep. She was the one with the magical household management powers, so I wasn’t going to second-guess her.

  Besides, I could guess at some of it. Medieval societies put a huge emphasis on status distinctions, to the point where a man who didn’t claim as many of them as he could would generally be looked down on as some kind of spineless weakling. Cerise was independent enough not to pay much attention to that kind of social conditioning, but if I tried to dispense with these little signs of deference it would probably make the rest of the girls worry that I was losing my nerve or something. Considering how dangerous our world was the last thing I wanted to do was give them another reason to feel insecure.

  The girls quickly settled on their room selections, and Avilla stepped in to help Cerise direct the workmen on where to put the furniture they were carrying. We hadn’t accumulated all that much of it yet, and with a dozen men on the job I could see the move wasn’t going to take very long.

  Tina emerged from the bathing chamber, and enveloped me in an enthusiastic hug.

  “I’m the luckiest girl in the world,” she declared. “When Avilla gave me a chance to be your maid, I never dreamed I’d end up living in a palace.”

  “It’s quite extravagant,” Elin observed. “Not that I don’t appreciate being pampered, but don’t you think it’s a bit much? I can’t imagine what we’re going to do with so much space. You could have made it a fourth as big and it would still be far more than we can use.”

  “I want to make sure we never need to move again,” I explained. “That’s really important for Avilla. I thought about being more restrained so we could use the space for other things, but when I got going I realized that my ability to build more living space is never going to be a constraint on our projects anyway. I built this arcology block in a couple of days, and it’s going to take us weeks to recruit enough people to fill it. Maybe months, and when we do fill it up there’s room on the island for another half-dozen blocks the
same size.”

  “I suppose you have a point,” she conceded. “But still, three huge wings around that giant garden space? There are only five of us, plus however many maids Avilla eventually acquires.”

  “Ah, but you’re forgetting Tina and Avilla’s ambitions.” I gestured to the empty wing across the field. “That, my dear, is enough space for a couple dozen rebellious teenagers and all their personal hobbies. I have to admit I’m afraid those two are going to get into a contest over who can have the most children, but if they do we’ll be ready for it.”

  Tina beamed up at me. “Thank you, Daniel. That’s perfect.”

  Elin’s expression turned wistful “I see. Yes, that probably is a wise decision on your part. Even Cerise has expressed a certain eagerness in that regard, despite the fact that it would mean an absence from the battlefield. If they have the longevity I expect, the three of them could eventually produce quite a large family.”

  Tina’s brow furrowed in concern. “Just the three of us? What about you, Elin?”

  “There are already enough monsters in this world, Tina,” Elin said, sounded a bit dejected. “I see no reason why I should add to their numbers.”

  Tina blinked at her uncertainly for a moment, obviously struggling to figure out what she meant. Then she got it, and frowned.

  “Oh, stop it,” she said crossly. “Elin, you’re smarter than that. Cerise is more of a monster than you’ll ever be, and you don’t hear her moping around feeling sorry for herself.”

  “Cerise doesn’t get hungry when she looks at children,” Elin objected.

  Tina was completely unfazed. “No, she just hungers for souls. Is that supposed to be better? What have you done that’s so terrible?”