“I am suddenly reminded of the stories of the Pharaohs and the hundreds of thousands of slaves erecting their monuments to their own glory,” the Mick spoke up into the silence. “What... would a two hundred-step Pyramid do?” he asked rather numbly.

“If we could get the necessary energy, it could sustain a hundred-mile radius. It would be like the minimum size of an Emperor’s personal Demesne.”

“An extradimensional space a hundred miles in radius under our control.” Sama’s voice held no awe, only calculation. “HOT DAMN. That’s basically the size of a whole nation, or a small moon, all by itself!”

“Any chance you could Dysonize the gravity here, Fae?” Briggs asked, his arms crossed and thinking as he looked beyond the illusion in front of him.

“Dysonize... huh.” I looked up at the interface to a distant sky on the Beast Realm. “Sure, if you don’t want to look at a sky, that could totally be done?...”

“And probably sustain a whole lot more Archways, right?”

I flicked up a Holo of a sphere, ran through the dimensional mechanics of it, and allocated new Portals along the stress lines.

“We could probably do a full eighteen,” I agreed, “although we’d lose the convenient equatorial circle, and we’d literally be dropping into and out of the Archways?”

Everyone turned back to look at the Arch behind us, embedded into the side of the Dome. “Can’t stand it up?” Briggs sighed.

“More dimensional stress. You want me to do that, it goes down to twelve.” The allocation of points on the sphere in front of me adjusted quickly. “You’d need to keep eight of them completely elective and subject to closure at any moment, depending on dimensional stresses, too. More openings means more weaknesses, great math and balancing harmonics aside, and the magic would have to compensate for it.

“Start throwing wonky allocations of mass for living terrain in, and things will get even more unreliable.

“It’s probably possible to do an occasional ninth and/or tenth Portal here and there once we have enough mass in this place, but we’re better off sticking with a hemisphere design for living areas for ourselves.

“Now, if you’re talking nesting areas for some Avians or something, or create levitating areas or mobile landscapes, that’s all still on the table.”

“Cloud islands?!” Sama’s eyes danced even more.

“Gravity is subject to the presence of mass here.” I tapped my foot on the stone plates on the ground. “Materialize these a mile up in the air, and they’ll float there, and you could walk on them.”

Eyes were glazing over. “I want a floating island...” Big John said forlornly.

“A Fire/Earth Archmage wants a floating island. Yeah, that makes total sense,” Burt quipped immediately, and Big John reddened.

He was going to shoot something back when the Mick interrupted, “If we get a cloud island, we’d all get it, don’t fool yourselves. And it won’t happen until you’re married and have kids on the way so we’ve a place to raise them, so tuck it away as something we can work on together once Lady Fae shows us how.”

KIA guys and SAR gals hanging on one another met one another’s eyes, made silent promises that such a thing was definitely going to happen in the future, and dropped the topic.

“Any ideas on fast mass accrual, for the Pyramid and otherwise, Fae?” Briggs asked me.

“I can probably ask Flowing Silver or Thunderbird Emperors to drop some unwanted mountainsides in here. We’d have to break them down and reallocate the stone ourselves, however.”

“That would definitely save a lot of train traffic!” Sama quipped. “I gather introducing water would not be anywhere near as much of a problem.”

“No. Open a Portal in the Mississippi, and nobody would even notice a few cubic miles of water going missing.”

“And the eventual size of it is only limited by how big we make that Pyramid.” Sama’s eyes gleamed. “I think we have a new Ultimate Goal for all Earth Mages of the Allegiance: Get good enough at Shaping Stone to help Fae with making Pyramids!”

Earth Magic was the most common Element in the Allegiance, and ten of the sixteen SAR and KIA mages had it. We got incredible amounts of mileage out of it. The Coralost Communities basically existed because of Earth Magic!

“Fae, is there a way you could design something that would allow Sama or I to Shape Stone enough to contribute to such a thing?” Briggs asked thoughtfully.

I lifted an eyebrow. Briggs and Sama could definitely get the Ranks to do the job, and were born Craftsmen and Artificers. “Wow. Huh. A Scepter with a constant Shape Stone effect and the necessary volume would be Valence IX. You’d have to UMD it to make it work, and it would probably have to operate off some sort of Earth Mana Node from a Formation or something...

“It would look something like this.” I flipped up a new Holo of a Scepter, blew it up to thirty feet long, and added all the corollary Runescript about and through it.

“FUZZZZZEEEEE!” Sama promptly complained. “You’re taking up all of our downtime again!”

“Hundred-mile radius extradimensional Flowing Silver High Emperor’s Broom Closet!” Briggs replied without batting an eye.

“How long before I can get one?” Sama promptly flipflopped, grinning with maximum cheese.

“I still have to finish up the Obelisks ringing the Sahara,” I sighed. “Honestly, you two should be able to Forge a Scepter much faster than me making it and using Infusing.”

They both examined the display, Tremble and Endure reaching out to take over the Holo and start shifting things around to comply with using Crafting instead of Spellcraft on the designs, Runes swimming around and redeploying as different styles adjusted what needed to be done.

“Adamantine?” Sama asked crisply, squinting at the changing display.

“Looks like the best,” Briggs agreed, also staring at it. “We should be able to do thirty, forty goldweight of work straight off on it, before dumping in anything. Three hundred and twenty-goldweight raw...”

I clapped my temple theatrically. “Hark! I sense a need for high-end Earth Diamonds calling from beyond...”

All the mages present nodded understanding with that. Energizing raw materials could eat up all the downtime and Mana they had, all the time. Archmage Obai had almost cried when he first learned the spell, understanding just what it meant to not be so reliant on rare ores and minerals discovered and owned by others. Small amounts Energized every day by numbers of wizards and artificers added up to large amounts over time, enough to take care of many of their minor needs.

Typeless magic owned! For Elemental Mages, it was a way to directly support the cultivation of their juniors!

Learning modern Alchemy expanded what they could make use of and how they could use it tremendously, of course, although the Gabonese mages tended more towards the organic side of the art. Making Energized materials to help fertilize their fields was a given, however, and was soon going to turn the area about Franceville into a breadbasket and Herb Garden of great vitality.

I still Energized stuff every single damn day. I had a couple weeks’ worth of stuff to treat in my Pocket all the time, and if I had spare Mana, I’d go on a binge and make more of any stuff that we needed. While revenue streams were not much of an issue at this point, a huge factor in Coralost’s independence from other factions was not having to pay/compete with them for a lot of natural resources, instead leveraging their waste products and non-Isotopic raw materials at vastly reduced costs.

“And I have to make a Pyramid for White Death Wolf and Leviathan Emperors. They’ve claimed the North Pole in tandem,” I sighed.

“No, no, you don’t have much to do,” Sama shook her head. “And you’re not fighting against Death Zones and littoral invasions, either.”

“Nopers, not me. All the time in the world, I have.”

“Well, we’re going to get you some help. All you Earth mages have ten Ranks in Sculpting Stone, right? And maxed-out Control Earth?” Briggs asked those present sternly.

There were affirmations from everyone who had the Element. Being able to build things swiftly, precisely, and over large areas was a huge cornerstone of Coralost’s power. That it made them great at mining and extracting valuable ores was something not so readily apparent or advertised.

“Fae, what do they need to get up to the level where they can make Pyramid Blocks?” Briggs rumbled calmly.

“Max out Sculpt Stone Ranks, max out Gemcutting Ranks. Max out Control Earth. Full Mastery of Sculpt Stone. Skill Focus: Sculpt Stone. Skill Affinity: Stoneshaper, which does Gemcutting and Sculpting Stone. Skill Knowledge: Carver, which affects Sculpt Stone, Scrimshaw, Blacksmithing, Finesmithing, Gemcutting, Woodcarving, and Mining/Tunneling.

“That should get you to a +40 modifier. Combined with Arcane Focus, you’ll be able to hit a 55 Crafting check, so a little bit of leeway.”

“Gemcutter Ranks!” Briggs murmured in surprise. “Wasn’t expecting that...”

“A moment.” I reached into my Pocket and hauled out a chunk of platinum ore, studded with odd crystals here and there, along with the vein of metal running through it. “Assay this, everyone, highest level you can. Briggs, Sama.” I held it out with TK to them, and they obligingly reached out to heft it as everyone else stared at it.

“A hunk of rock with normal platinum in it,” Brigg judged, tapping it with his finger, his Tremblesense ringing through it. “Minor crystals, mostly stone and metal.”

I nodded, held out my hand, and he passed it back.

I focused on it, and the chunk flowed like water, the mages cursing as they looked away and clutched at their eyes. It hardened into a perfectly symmetrical square, crystals and rough facings and metal gone, merged into an almost eye-cutting perfection of form and function that floated there as I let go of it.

The Earth Element mages were trying to look at it, flinching as they did so. Sama and Briggs glanced at one another, watching the cube just floating there, apparently without any magic, and reached out to touch it together.

“Oh,” they said together, blinking. “Damn!” they also said in tandem, taking their hands away. It was pretty cute to see, master crafters responding the same way.

“Gemcutting Ranks,” I repeated. “If you want to carve at a 55, you have to first make the stone a jewel, and then you have to Shape it like one.”

Everyone’s eyes turned to the Pyramid rising four hundred feet in the distance, only a twenty-stepper.

“Every twenty-foot Block on that thing is made like this?” Briggs asked, definitely impressed.

“Wouldn’t work if it wasn’t.”

“And you can pump out a twenty-foot cube of something like this, with all the proper Runic forms emblazoned upon it, in one minute,” Sama went on.

“Yes.”

Sama’s smile was all teeth, eight canines a-gleam. “I am so looking forward to being able to do that!”

The assorted Earth mages flinched again at the perfection of the stone in front of them, swearing as they tried to feel it without their Earth magic seeming to go rigid about it.

They wanted to be able to do that, too!...

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Author’s Note: UMD is Use Magical Device, basically taking control of a magical device using force of will/personality, fooling it into thinking you are actually qualified to wield it. All non-Powered have to use it to control true magical items, and it’s the core skill of an Artificer.