Sealing up the tower was an utter triviality. The entire thing was formed with my power, and even now, months after the fact, enough of it lingered within the structure to allow me to easily manipulate it. Even without that, I could use some of my magic to shift stone around and seal the various openings, turning the entire tower into one smooth monolith of rock, at least from the outside. I didn’t touch the insides too much, and the shrine at the bottom remained completely untouched. There, the power of Lady Hecate had a strong presence, reminding me that She had Her own interest in the construction, something I shouldn’t touch without some serious need.

  However, the presence of Her power added another layer to the already fairly impressive protections of my tower, making it about as secure a place to retreat to as possible in these troubled times. Sure, a completely obscure position, carved into the roots of a random mountain somewhere, with sealed access tunnels and everything closed off to the outside, only accessible to beings who could teleport, would be even better. However, it would also be a whole lot of work for something we might never need and of overall limited utility.

  Maybe I would get back to that once the entire ‘travelling’ thing calmed down a little, giving me a fixed location to get to work. Having the emergency shelter at the other end of the continent, only available if I was rested and concentrated enough to make a jump that far, would be counterproductive. At the same time, having it right next to the primary base, which I still planned to build on or around the Nexus, just like Neyto was built next to a Nexus, wouldn’t be all that useful because somebody capable of attacking the fortress I was planning to create as my home would be able to sniff such a fallback position out and neutralise it beforehand, especially if it was too close to home. Overall, it was a bit of a dilemma, with no real answers to be had, only a wide spectrum of possibilities to guard against and prepare for.

  “I think I’ve got everything,” Lia said, sounding a little out of breath as if she had hurried. Looking at her, I could see her lightly flushed face and couldn’t help but notice a slight glow of excitement. It made her look much better and healthier, which I attributed to the knowledge that she would rejoin Luna, Silva and me. While I had sealed the tower, her task had been to gather the things she wanted to take, which she had now completed to her satisfaction.

  “Show me,” I asked her, just to make sure my dear daughter hadn’t forgotten anything in her obvious haste. Together, we went through the various items she had packed, making me chuckle just a little when I noticed her focus had been on the various alchemical apparatus she had made, collected or invented during her time here. That collection had grown quite a bit, making me wonder if we should even take them or if it would be best to store them somewhere until we had a place to set that much equipment up again. But, thanks to our magical bags, especially the newest version of them, taking the stuff with us wasn’t all that difficult, so it didn’t really matter.

  “Where are your clothes?” I had to ask, noticing that Lia seemed to have neglected those quite a bit, something I couldn’t help but chuckle about. She was almost like a child, trying to take all her stuffed animals with her on vacation but neglecting those all-important basics needed to make sure one had enough clothes to regularly change them.

  “Um, a few have ripped, some didn’t fit any longer, and a few are just gone,” she admitted, looking surprisingly sheepish. That, in turn, made me wonder just what happened to her stuff, so I made a mental note to get back to that. For now, I didn’t mind lending her some of mine; our shapes weren’t all that different, so some of the loosely fitting things I had would fit her just fine.

  Still, we’d have to find something new and fitting for her at some point.

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  “I guess that’s it then?” she asked, looking around for yet another time after we both had gone through the tower to make sure we had everything we wanted to take.

  “Almost,” I replied, realising that we might want to leave some form of message to those who might, eventually, check up on Lia. Partially to assuage their, hopefully, guilty conscience but also to drive home that Jade Morgana was seriously angry with them, especially with Samantha and Alex, each for different reasons. Now, I only needed to figure out the best way to send that message, but I already had a fairly good idea, at least for Samantha.

  Namely, if she, and her group by association, didn’t want to be around my dear daughter to the point that said daughter fell into depression, they didn’t deserve the nice home I made for them here. So, the message telling them they fucked up would be fairly simple, nothing but an empty area, maybe with a few words from me written in stone; I had yet to decide that.

  The first step, obviously, was to open the cottage I had made for the foursome up, allowing me to quickly check if they had left anything behind. Upon discovery that they, as almost inevitable, had left stuff behind, I decided that I wouldn’t be so mean as to leave that stuff sitting outside, especially not the useful-looking things they had left behind. The skinned pelts, some goods from before the change and even a fairly nice knife were amongst those things I didn’t want to see wasted, even if I didn’t like the people these things belonged to any longer.

  So, I quickly morphed part of the stone the cottage was made of into a chest, or maybe calling it a sarcophagus would be better, and placed the various items inside before setting a tight, water-proof lid on top of it, making sure the things wouldn’t get wet. Stolen, either by animal or human, but the things I had taken from the cottage would be safe from the elements. While I might have been able to do more, possibly by using something similar to the enchantment used for my Magical Bags keyed to the enchantment I had placed on Murray or something like that, I didn’t feel like going too far out of my way to help then.

  The chest was also a useful canvas for me to leave them a message, conveying my… disappointment in Samantha and her callous disregard for my daughter. No threats, no ranting, just a simple message telling Samantha, Daniel and their friends that they were no longer welcome in my tower, that I was disappointed in them and that I had taken my daughter with me. Anything further would require me to investigate their intentions deeper, possibly even asking whether they had been forced into the current situation, something I honestly had no interest in. Lia was my priority at the moment, not why Lia’s situation had turned into the mess I had found her in.

  Once the cottage was gone, leaving nothing but bare earth and the chest with their stuff, I returned to Lia, sealing the passages I had passed through behind me.

  “We’re done here,” I told her, pulling her into my arms for yet another hug. Poor dear had been starved, not just of the blood she needed but also of physical comfort and contact, something she, evidently, needed just as much, maybe more.

  “Okay,” she nodded in my embrace, “How do we do this?”

  “Relax, feel my magic,” I told her, drawing upon my Astral Power to envelop the pair of us before pulling both of us into the Shadows. There, I had to work fairly hard as I usually only had to worry about my body; now, I had to worry about a cocoon of spun shadows containing my daughter and me. Around us, the unknowable void of the deepest shadows felt almost as if it beckoned me to slip and fall, making us tumble into the infinite abyss.

  Together, I pulled us into the manifold of power that was the Astral River. Inside, reality narrowed into a single string, linking Jademoon Tower, our origin, and the Astral Fountain, our destination. Seconds felt like hours as I dragged the cocoon of magic along that string. Finally, we reached our destination, and I pulled us back into the shadows and, from there, into the dimly lit main chamber of the Temple of the First Dragon. Now that we were back in reality, I could sense Lia’s body shivering just a little, her discomfort obvious.

  “We’re here,” I told Lia, causing her to let out another shudder once again.

  “That wasn’t fun,” she admitted, “But I guess it beats walking for months on end,” she added with a grin, looking around the massive domed hall we were in. “And this looks impressive.”