NOVEL NEXT Chapter 18: To Build a Fortress
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Mau_dev: Gaming has been a cause for concern, and suspicion, for as long as people have had the free time to indulge in them. Dice, cards, tabletop roleplay, handheld consoles, computers, augmented reality. VIrtual reality is simply the next step. Can it be addictive? Can you misuse it to harm, swindle, or deceive? Absolutely—but you can do the same with three shells and a pea. You can get addicted to the taste of your own urine. Nearly anything has the potential to be harmful if your approach to its use is wrong.
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Sol 489 FY 26, 15:35 Mars Time, Ghostlands, World's End Server, Sharcliffe (12,031 viewing)
Marie was fully aware that most games used a simplified construction process. Typically, there were no intermediate steps—either nothing was built, half of it appeared completed, or the entire structure was suddenly finished. Construction in games often relied on preloaded assets, much like time skips in books. These skips only provided the audience with necessary information, skipping over details about how things were actually done. This approach saved developers the effort of fleshing out unnecessary steps.
However, Ghostlands wasn't quite like that. The game featured a modular building system, where construction could be broken down into incredibly small components. Players crafted everything from nails, screws, and planks to individual pebbles. Once something was completed, Marie suspected the game might discard those details in the background. But during the building process for the fortress, for example, Marie was able to shake open the tent flap, look outside, and see every worker and their tasks in real time. Oh, and occasionally, a new group of laborers would arrive by boat, bringing fresh tools. It was all a bit tedious. And uncomfortable: the weather had turned colder, a biting wind sweeping across the half-finished fortress. The view was spectacular, but the chill was real. Marie pulled her hood-mantle tighter.
Jillian blew on her gloved fingers, her eyes fixed on Marie. "So… why him?"
Marie blinked, her thoughts pulled from the bustling construction below. "Hmm?"
"Him," Jillian clarified. "Gordon. He's like a high-functioning perfectionist corporate power user, right?"
"Not exactly," Marie said, her words carried on a cloud of condensed breath. "That's kind of his public-facing… yes, kind of."
"So… why him?" Jillian repeated. "Sounds stressful."
"I didn't set out to headhunt him, you know."
"I know," Jillian said gently. "Jaz showed me your profile."
"I got notifications every time you two visited," Marie admitted with a small smile. "I noticed."
"So what's he like underneath it all?" Jillian pressed. "What reeled the First Martian in on the line?"
Marie paused, watching a worker haul a ribbon of steel into place. "He's just funny, okay? And honest with himself when he doesn't know something—which is rare. He was just… so humble I didn't think he could be a public figure at all, except for having met him on that site—"
"—dead giveaway," Jillian murmured.
"—sure," Marie conceded. "But not a pushover. Like a very assertive person who keeps having their short-term flag their most recent speech for errors, and then he fixes them or apologizes."
Jillian considered this, shivering slightly. "I don't think I'd be into that."
"That's okay. We have different tastes."
"It's just… you're always the one who sets the pace," Jillian said, her brow furrowed. "I guess I didn't think you'd end up on the receptive side of the relationship."
"Jill. That's the worst way to put it," Marie sighed. "And… I have a feeling we're just differently assertive. I'm not chasing an alpha Dom." She hesitated, searching for the right analogy. "It's like… it's like I'm juggling a hundred thousand things every day. Life systems, the kids, Adya… everything. And I finally found someone with the bandwidth to take all of it in—and instead of acting like I'm too much, he just… follows along. He gets it. He actually empathizes."
"He got a lot on his plate?" Jillian asked, her voice softening. "He putting extra on yours?"
"He… yeah. He has his own baggage. His family ties are in rough shape, he's on-call, and he's perpetually overworked." She gave a small shrug. "Are you shocked?"
Jillian shook her head. "No. That, I understand." She leaned back against the cold stone, a teasing glint in her eyes. "Well, he's easy on the eyes. So I guess… go climb that tree."
> xX_snakes_Xx: How come she can say it, but I can't say it?
Marie squinted at the chat window. "Snakes has a point, Jill."
"We're neighbors," Jillian shot back. "You can't ban me."
"Sorry, Snakes," Marie said into the wind. "We do what we must with what we have."
> xX_snakes_Xx: Talk about pretty people self-segregation. You all went to Mars.
>Randoon_the_Wizard: That explains SO MUCH.
Jillian stuck out her tongue at the camera—just as Mars walked up behind her, having emerged from the command tent.
"Better put that away," he said mildly. "It's cold out. Might freeze like that."
He turned to Marie, his expression serious. "Artemis is calling for senior staff again."
The moment of intimacy passed. Marie gave a final nod to her friends and followed Mars toward the tent, the cold somehow feeling more pronounced now that she was heading back inside.
Artemis had produced a dark red earthenware tea set, likely from his pavilion supplies. The set included far more cups than necessary, all of which he was filling with steaming hot chocolate. Outside, the weather had turned colder, and between the chilly air and the mind-numbing spectacle of a hyper-realistic fortress being constructed, Marie found herself staying inside Artemis's textured fabric walls. Despite having the option to wander off, she reflected that in this one instance, Ghostlands could have gotten away with skipping a few steps.
"Good company and hot drinks," Artemis said, smiling as he poured another cup of steaming chocolate, "Are the only way to survive the winters around here. The inverting wind," he explained to one of the nearby Ghostlanders, who looked confused, "is a sign of foul weather to come. But for now, we may enjoy clear skies. Water will freeze outside soon enough, so it's best to enjoy the finer things while we still may."
For the three Martians, this was a moment of profound significance. Chocolate on Mars was a pale imitation, a synthetic approximation reprocessed from instant coffee, lactose, cane sugar, and almond milk. It was sweet and brown, but it wasn't chocolate. This was. The haptic simulation was good enough to do justice to the real thing, and the first sip was a revelation—velvety, deep, and instinctually right on a profound, nearly spiritual, level. Jaz seemed most taken, closing her eyes after her first sip and slumping back against her cushioned seat—but even Marie found herself quite taken by the flavor. Chocolate. No wonder Vera was always going on about it.
Even the Crown representative, Rhea, seemed to agree with this sentiment. She sat bundled in a chair closest to the door, wrapped in the furs of some small creature, shivering while sipping delicately—and with great decorum—from a large mug of hot chocolate. "I can understand why peasants find this pig feed acceptable," she said between sips. Artemis explained, sotto voce and definitely not in the woman's hearing, that she had been out inspecting construction across the fortress and might have caught a chill.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Marie looked at the shivering noblewoman with a mix of exasperation at the commitment to realism and pity for the discomfort it caused. "I've been there," she admitted. "Where I live, it's like being in a galley on a ship. If one person catches a cold, it spreads to twenty others in no time. Then, the whole crew is sick until we all fight it off. In the meantime, yes, I've been where you are."
The noblewoman didn't appear particularly moved by Marie's comments, though neither did she seem offended. However, Mars, who had been sitting nearby, nodded to Marie with a faint smile of acknowledgment. "It could be you've built up a resistance," he suggested. "What say you and I go do a little reconnaissance? I mislike the heat, myself."
Rhea's comment wasn't particularly cutting—just dismissive. Still, Marie felt an unfamiliar twinge of frustration. Players tended to bulldoze through dialogue trees or ignore NPCs outright, but she preferred to meet them halfway. Rhea, however, was a tough nut to crack.
Rhea sneezed, and Marie fought the conditioned instinct to panic: This wasn't Mars, and wasn't real sickness anyway.
Illness on Mars was never just your problem. It wasn't like on Earth, where you could take a few sick days, drink some orange juice, and binge whatever awful show had ten seasons too many. No, on Mars, if you so much as sniffled, the whole colony would swing into action like a bee hive to a wasp.
First, you'd get quarantined—usually shoved into one of the spare dorm habs with nothing but your VR rig and a pile of work you were supposed to catch up on while recovering. If quarantine came too late to stop the spread, it got worse: you didn't get to choose what you ate or drank anymore. Everyone, from your neighbor to the colony's head doctor, would push water and bland nutrient packs on you with the enthusiasm of someone terrified of catching the next wave of germs.
And the doctors—masked and goggled like they were working on something far deadlier than a head cold—would pull you aside every day to poke, prod, and frown. "Are you hydrating?" they'd ask sternly, and if your answer wasn't convincing enough, you'd find an extra water ration waiting in your inbox, no doubt "helpfully" delivered by one of your concerned neighbors.
It wasn't just annoying; it was personal. Because in the colony, your illness was literally everybody's problem. Shared air, shared water, shared space—it wasn't paranoia; it was survival. That's why no one hesitated to be pushy, nosy, and generally overbearing. You learned pretty fast not to take it personally.
'Some fresh air sounds like a lovely idea,' she told him.
Mars didn't bother putting down what he was holding, curling his wrist through hers with easy confidence. His grip was strong and sure, and with a quick heave, he had her on her feet before she'd even fully prepared to stand. She'd seen engineers do that same gesture—no point in dropping what you were doing just to end up searching through two dozen drill bits again when you could just give someone an arm up instead.
The brightness outside struck her immediately, a sharp contrast to the dim, chocolate-scented confines of the tent. She blinked, taking in the fresh sea breeze and the bustling fortress. The conjured walls caught the sunlight in shades of blue-violet that seemed almost too vivid to be real, though the sea birds had done their best to tone it down with streaks of white and yellow.
A cold breeze swept past, cutting right through her robes for readily apparent reasons. Most of her exploration thus far had been on the sunward side of World's End -- she was beginning to come to the conclusion that she needed to buy a proper cloak. Reaching back, she pulled up her hood, pulling it up around her head to at least protect her ears.
The wind gusted, light creamy fabric fluttering across her face and obscuring her field of view, her liripipe fluttering across her chest like a snake, the hood's taper once again proving itself to be absolutely ridiculous. But ... it was funny. She was chuckling by the time she had the hood on straight. It had been inflating like a wind sock. Medieval fashions had been really cool—but impractical.
"That's not how you wear that," Mars said—amused, not unkind. "Here."
He took the flailing tail from her fingers. "Size it to your head," he murmured, drawing the face opening snug and sliding a quick stopper‑knot up behind her crown. "Then you fly th' tail back, not out." He flattened the hood with one big hand, wrapped the long liripipe once around her brow as a binding band, fed the tip through the knot, and tugged.
The transformation was instant: no flapping, no face‑slap—just a close, warm cap. Her ringlets escaped at her forehead; everything else lay sleek to her skull.
"Brilliant," she breathed. Mars bowed to her, then beckoned her to follow him.
Tarps in muted greys and browns fluttered between makeshift walls, separating rooms still waiting to be finalized into proper storage spaces or sleeping quarters. Somewhere nearby, a tone-deaf seaman hummed a shanty, his off-key tune oddly grounding amidst the bustle of workers hauling tools and securing ropes.
Marie glanced toward the tallest of the spires, its solid frame looming over the rest of the fortress like a self-declared throne. Of course the nobles had claimed it.
The geomancers, scattered in a loose arc around the spire, glanced up as she passed. Most waved or nodded, their acknowledgment warming her despite the growing chill in the air. Even the one with the hooked nose, who'd been outright hostile when they'd first met, gave her a grudging nod.
Marie didn't linger on it, enjoying the progress she was making with the community without pausing to soak it in—there was more work to be done.
"The hermit guy was really angry, last I saw him," she said. "I wasn't feeling well—I think my blood sugar was falling or something, and I couldn't hear what he had to say, but I remember he was upset."
Mars pursed his lips, then blew out a long, thoughtful snort. "He was talking to Artemis, then got sent off in a huff. I didn't get any more of it than you did, and I'd straight-up forgotten about it. Might be worth stoppin' in."
Outside, the workmen were stacking conjured stone upon conjured stone, each block sinking slightly as though soft clay pressing into the meandering ribbons of steel frame. The steel itself wasn't shaped like Earth's I-beams; instead, it had been conjured as broad ribbons, wrapping around the structure like streamers of molten metal. Edge-on, the steel looked sharp enough to cut, if not embedded in conjured stone.
The conjured stone was temporary—everyone knew that. The geomancers' magic was enough to give the fortress form, but the stone wouldn't last. Conjured materials tended to degrade quickly, and Artemis had already mentioned the need to replace it with proper wooden floors and walls.
What bothered Marie was that nobody seemed to have any particular /timeline/ in mind.
"What happens when the conjured stone gives out?" she asked. "Shouldn't we be reinforcing this with something better now instead of scrambling to fix it later?"
Mars scratched the back of his neck, his brow furrowed. "Far as I know, the plan is to scavenge wood from the old farm buildings. Either that, or take apart the barges."
Marie blinked. "You're kidding. Disassemble the farms to protect the farms? Or wreck the barges, which we still need to transport everything? That's… that's actually terrible."
Mars smirked faintly. "Nobody asked us for an opinion, did they?"
Marie sighed and added find a supply of wood to her mental list of priorities. The idea of tearing down their transport or farmland to save their fragile fortress felt like a bad joke—one that no one was laughing at. Reclaiming the farms was supposed to be their great goal, but if they dismantled everything in the process, what would even be left to protect?
The hermit had been put up in a small but cozy tent. Thick, rough felt blankets had been provided for him, and he was wrapped tightly in them, the muted gray wool contrasting starkly with his sun-bleached leather skin.
When Marie and Mars approached, the old man squinted at them from under his tangle of white hair. His voice was sharp as he muttered, ""I told 'em plain enough. Told 'em they'd wake it up. Nobody listens to old men anymore."
Marie crouched slightly to meet his gaze. "I'm here to listen now. What do you mean by 'wake it up'?"
"There's a kraken," the old man said flatly. "Krakens don't bother people on the shore, and people don't go bothering krakens. Most of the time. When they molt, all sorts of other tentacled things come sniffing around. It's the blood in the water that does it. And when they're vulnerable, they're mean. Ornery, looking for a fight. Your mages made so much noise it's bound to come looking."
Jaz's eyes lit up. "A kraken? Awesome."
Marie nodded slowly, ignoring her friend. Commit to the bit. "You think the magic was too loud?"
"It was too loud," the hermit snapped. "They could've pulled up the spires one by one. Carefully. Quietly. But no—they had to do it all at once, with enough racket to wake the dead. And now you're talking about pulling up a bridge. A bridge! That's gonna need supports, and I'll just bet no one's thought about moderating the noise level for those either."
He glanced between them, as if daring them to argue. Marie didn't, though her stomach sank at his words. "We're going to die," the hermit declared, "unless you can get someone to see sense."
"Did you already speak to Artemis?" Marie asked carefully.
The hermit spat onto the ground. "Boy thinks nothing's changed since he was a lad. Doesn't see why there'd be a kraken in these waters now when there weren't before. Doesn't understand that his father's fishing probably kept the area less attractive. But now? There's blood in the water and magic in the air. Boy got a little bit of learning and a heap of foolishness to go with it."
Mars raised an eyebrow, his tone skeptical. "Have you actually seen the kraken? They're hard to miss, from what I hear."
The hermit scowled but nodded. "It's in the deeps, off the ocean cliff. But it rises to rub against the rockface sometimes. You'll know it's there when the waves don't look right. It'll be back," he said, his voice foreboding.