If there was one thing I had seen from the outside but never truly experienced myself, it was project creep. Back when I learned how to audit finances and trace funds, it was one of the biggest issues, trying to understand when the expansion of a project came from true and legitimate need and when it was used to pad the pockets of somebody down the line, possibly with kickbacks involved. Oftentimes, it was nearly impossible to appreciate the difference unless experts were involved and even with them, complete agreement between the experts was rare to the point that one of my teachers referred to it as an indication of fraud. Now, turning the somewhat small shrine Luna and I had made into the grand design imagined by Lady Hecate, I could fully appreciate how a project could suddenly expand in scope to the point that it didn’t resemble the original at all.

  Here, we had started with our usual simple shrine design, something resembling a modern house with an additional large room, this one designed to hold the altar, a collection of stone tablets and some writing to guide future visitors. What Lady Hecate had shown me, well, it had all that, all the amenities of a modern house, a large meeting room, tablets, and everything else, but it was all on a scale beyond everything we had built before. It almost matched Jademoon Tower in height, but where Jademoon Tower was, well, a tower with a comparatively small floor area, the temple was a lot larger than that.

  One-half of the building Lady Hecate had in mind was scaled for humans, maybe for giants, too, but with enough space to house a small village. I had no real idea why Lady Hecate had used such a scale for Her grand vision, but given that Her divine quest was contingent on building it, I could only go along with this. Or abort the quest, but given that I wanted the EXP and to see this thing in reality, I could only soldier on. And I truly wanted to see it, as it was incredibly well designed and breathtakingly beautiful, reminding me that Lady Hecate obviously had talents far beyond magic, as amusing as I found that realisation. The Goddess of Magic was, quite obviously, a highly talented architect. Or maybe She simply had one in her employ on another world and outsourced this design; I wasn’t about to ask.

  Either way, while one wing of the temple was designed on a human scale, the other wing most definitely was not. It was made on a scale for dragons, with wide spaces to allow plenty of room for wings, reinforced floors to prevent damage from the weight and claws of dragons walking across it and, amusingly, quite a few spaces only accessible to those able to fly, as well as some that would later be fitted with elemental enchantments providing comfort for any kind of dragon imaginable. This side of the temple was also designed to allow for easy expansion downwards so more space could be created without disrupting the overall design, which, from the air, was quite the thing to behold.

  The two wings, one on a human scale, the other on a draconic scale, were designed to give the appearance of, well, a pair of wings stretching around an inner courtyard before meeting at the spacious hall designed for meetings, coming from both sides with a roughly one-hundred and twenty-degree angle between them. This meeting hall was the largest individual space I had ever created, and keeping the dome from breaking under its own weight, or the fairly sizable weight of snow we had to expect in the future, was no easy feat. Reinforcement magic, some of it of my own design, some of it provided by Lady Hecate working through Luna, was the only thing making it possible, but by the end of it, I could only stare in marvel at what we had wrought. The entire dome was lined with crystals on the inside, creating the appearance of a starry sky, something only reinforced when Lady Hecate provided her last, and possibly greatest, direct intervention, showing me, once again, that I had a long way to go before I could claim mastery over magic or anything arrogant like that.

  With a single, though fairly long and involved, ritual, Luna shifted parts of the local Astral River, creating a node right in the centre of the domed space, allowing untamed Astral Power to spill forth in a fountain of ethereal light. Not only did that fountain look incredible, it also supplied the wide variety of enchantments we had woven throughout the structure, so it would stand here, ready and waiting for the dragons and their cultist to make an appearance.

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  The final touch I had to put on the temple was, maybe, the most interesting one. Contrary to the usual design of Lady Hecate’s idols, there wouldn’t be three idols here. Instead, She would only have one here, standing on the narrower side of the dome between the two wings. Curiously, this statue had yet another massive departure from our usual shrines. Sure, it still displayed the usual Daughter, Mother and Crone images, but, for once, it didn’t use Luna’s, the Grandmother’s or my face for it. Instead, the daughter was a different child; the image still radiated curiosity and symbolised untapped potential, but it wasn’t Luna. The mother and Crone were the same; they maintained their symbolism but not their personal identities. Instead, the statue used the identity Lady Hecate used whenever I visited Her in Her realm, and She wasn’t using our own faces. It was just a little weird, and I couldn’t help but feel that there was a lot more to it in this case.

  However, the biggest source of internal conflict regarding the temple wasn’t with this statue; it was with the one in the place of highest honour, right on the other side of the dome. Part of that internal conflict came from the simple fact that this other statue wasn’t an image in Lady Hecate’s design but an idea. Another part came from the realisation that this statue was ultimately the patron of this temple, the image every entrant into this sanctum would see immediately when they entered. And, given that the image Lady Hecate felt this statue should hold was my own draconic form, I couldn’t help but wonder what this would ultimately mean for me.

  Plus, there was the simple fact that I had no idea how my draconic form would end up looking; I only had a few vague images seen during my dreams and visions, but during those, I rarely had the leisure to inspect myself, nor did the dreams usually provide mirrors as needed. So, I could only be truly confident about the way my wings would look, largely because I had already created those. But the rest of me? I just didn’t know, which was why that area would remain empty for now.

  Finally, when the temple, other than the missing statue, was finished, Luna and I called upon Lady Hecate once more, with Luna performing a ritual to let the Lady inspect our work. It was quite strange; somehow, the creation of this temple was a little different than the previous shrines. Here, I could feel Lady Hecate’s strengthened presence in the air, though it was a sensation, unlike the one I had after we built the shrine near the Charland. I couldn’t quite figure out where the difference came from or even what the difference was, but I was confident that it was there.

  But, regardless of that difference, Lady Hecate approved of the final result, and I could hear her laughter echo through the temple when she noticed the missing statue, despite the fact that she wasn’t physically there. With that, the quest was completed, giving us all a very nice chunk of EXP, pushing me to level one hundred and nineteen. That level-up also prodded me to look at my notifications, something I usually ignored, and I saw a bunch of notifications that some of my magic skills had increased by a point or two, courtesy of the various experiments we had performed during our journey.

  Sadly, no matter the size and scale of construction, building things didn’t increase my skill in Earth Magic any further, at least not when using the same methods I had been using this entire time. Regardless, I was quite proud of my current accomplishments, especially when the system gave me another notification, telling me that the temple I had created was now officially named Temple of the First Dragon. That alone gave me some strangely warm and fuzzy feelings, especially as the notification gave me some confidence this place would last for a long time.

  Lastly, the Astral Fountain made me realise something else. Thanks to it, I could find this place easily within the Astral River, meaning I could come back here whenever I wanted. That, in turn, made me realise I could travel from here to Jademoon Tower with a single step, without any risk of getting lost as I could find both places easily. Without that risk, I was confident I could leave Luna and Silva here for a bit and visit my dear daughter at Jademoon Tower. Which was where my next step took me.