The courier's dust hadn't finished settling when Aiden carried the sealed letter to the long table in the storehouse. He didn't touch it—couldn't—but he looked at it as if it might try something. The wax fox smiled with a coin mid-flip, amused at everyone.
Mara arrived with her arms folded like a gate. Calder drifted in with a kettle and the patient look of someone prepared to soothe bruised egos and actual wounds. Venn came armed with a ledger and a piece of charcoal honed to a razor. Elara took the spot at Aiden's right with that particular stillness she wore when blades might come out of words.
"Open it," Mara said. "But not with your fingers."
Venn produced a thin slat and nudged the letter's edge. The [System] understood. The seal broke with a soft tick, and blue text overlaid the actual ink so Aiden could read it without touching, as if the letter itself had decided to be polite.
To Lord Aiden of Novaterra,
We are neighbors, though the plains seem long. Where there is distance, there should be bridges.
I offer trade: our surplus grain for your iron and coal. I offer information: maps of raiders and neutral routes, in exchange for your own observations. I offer goodwill: a pledge that neither of us will shelter bandits.
A friendly caution: new lords sometimes mistake zeal for strength. Ambition builds; overextension breaks. I say this with a smile, not a knife. 🙂
If it pleases you, send reply with my courier. I propose a neutral market halfway between our borders in six days. Five escorts each, no more.
— Lucien Duvall, Lord of Duvall's Dominion(Stamped with a fox and a coin mid-flip.)
Mara snorted. "The bit about zeal is the knife."
"Friendly," Elara said dryly, tasting the word. "He counts our projects faster than we count his smiles."
Venn tapped numbers in the margins. "Grain is plentiful here for now. We have crates enough to feed ten thousand for ten years—waste aside. Iron and coal are early bottlenecks everywhere." He didn't need to add: he wants what we have more than we want what he offers.
Calder poured tea into cups that steamed like sanity. "A caution can be care. Or it can be grooming. He asks for a step toward your center so he can learn your stride."
Aiden read the letter again and ignored the way the fox felt like it was watching him. "We'll reply," he said. "Trade—maybe, but not iron for grain. Information—we'll share bandit sightings if it saves lives. Goodwill—we will not shelter bandits." He glanced at Elara. "Neutral market in six days?"
"Take guards who listen first and glare second," she said. "And pick a place with no easy ambushes and very boring bushes."
"Boring bushes," Mara echoed, approving like she'd invented the concept. "Put it in the letter."
Venn's charcoal scratched.
To Lord Duvall,
Bridges are good when they do not lead thieves to the pantry.
Novaterra will not harbor bandits. We'll share road-sightings; we invite you to do the same. We'll discuss trade, but iron and coal are dear here. We prefer exchanges that do not dull our tools—salt, cloth, herbs, skilled hands.
Six days at a neutral marker suits. Five escorts each. We will send a map pin.
— Aiden, Lord of Novaterra
Mara added, "And write no heroics in the margin so he knows we have a theme."
Aiden didn't write it. He let it live between the lines. 😌
Elara's eyes cut to the east, then back. "Be prepared to like him," she said. "And be more prepared not to."
Aiden folded the [System] view closed. The real letter lay flat, fox smiling like it knew jokes Aiden didn't. "We'll send the reply with his courier after noon mess. Until then—caltrops to the west, hinges to Ansel, and prepare the barracks for an oath."
"Oath?" Venn asked, perked.
"A place means something," Aiden said. "So do words."
The forge sang. Hadrik had found a rhythm that turned iron into arguments that the ground would lose. Caltrops stacked in tidy, wicked piles. Between batches, he and his apprentices cut and curled hinges that would keep doors honest. The older apprentice—furrow-browed, furious about imperfections—managed to produce a hinge so clean Hadrik had to pretend not to be delighted. "That'll hold a door and a secret," he grunted, which might have been a compliment.
Ansel received the hinges like relics. "Bless you and your hammer," he told Hadrik solemnly. "May your anvil never chip."
"It had better not," Hadrik said, fondly scandalized.
At the west line, Elara paced out the first caltrop field. Chalk ticked, boots pressed, iron kissed grass and vanished. Calder followed with bitter herbs and murmurs; the air took on the grounded feel of a room where someone had just opened a window. Rinna kept Thorn under a shade cloth and scolded Tam for petting the stock like it was going to fetch.
"Thorn doesn't fetch," she said. "Thorn punctuates."
Tam learned the punctuation marks: click (set), thrum (draw), thwack (statement), and the underrated safe (unstring). He practiced until he muttered them in his sleep. 😴
By late morning, the Barracks had a roof. Ansel thumped a beam and declared it "so square that if it were any squarer it would be a sermon." The floor smelled of fresh planks and oil. Elara walked the length of it with the look she saved for places where she meant to turn people into lines.
"Gather them," Aiden said. "We make it formal."
They did.
Cadre Alpha stood in two ranks: sweat-salted tunics, splinters in palms, eyes too bright and too tired at once. The ten bought Soldiers took the back wall like posts that had chosen to stay. Priest Calder held a bowl of clean water with herbs floating like small boats. Mara stood near the door because she refused not to.
Aiden faced them with his hands at his sides where everyone could see that they weren't shaking. "This," he said, voice steady, "is a room where fear learns to behave."
A chuckle moved the ranks like wind moving wheat. The sound wasn't loud; it was together.
"You aren't soldiers yet," he went on, "but you're willing. That matters more than you know." He glanced to Elara. "Captain?"
Elara stepped forward. She had traded her battered cape for a clean band at her arm; it made her look both more and less like a legend. "An oath is not a chain," she said. "It is a weight you choose to carry. The weight is your neighbor." She let that settle. "Repeat."
She spoke the oath in phrases, giving them time to breathe.
"I stand in the line—Not for glory,But for the one beside me.
I hold when fear says run.I push when safety says stop.
I do not waste strength;I do not spend lives cheaply;I do not break when watchedOr when no one is.
I am Novaterra's wall,And Novaterra is mine."
They said it back, voices rough, voices high, voices that tried to be deep and failed adorably. Aiden bit the inside of his cheek so he didn't smile too much at the last part. 😌
Calder stepped along the front row and brushed each forehead with water. "Cool heads," he murmured. "Warm hands." He touched the bowl to the barracks threshold. "Strong door."
The [System] purred.
[New Tradition: The Founders' Oath] • Barracks established as Oath Site. • First-time oath: Morale +10 (Recruits) • Trait (Local): "Hold the Line" — Formation break chance –10% in Novaterra territory.
A round of applause snapped and faded. Elara rolled her shoulders like a sword loosening before a second bout. "Now—spears. Your oath will not hold a gap."
"Spears," they chorused, and the room turned into wood and footwork and laughter that didn't apologize for itself.
Aiden stood in the doorway and let it fill him. A bell from the mine marked noon. The scorpion crew wheeled Thorn into her shed and covered her like a beloved horse. The forester runners returned with sap and news: no new charms, only birds irritated by the song of hammers. Good. 🙂
He carried the reply to Duvall back to the storehouse. The courier waited with the patience of someone paid by distance, not time. "My lord?" he asked, gaze carefully uncurious.
"We accept the meet," Aiden said. "Five escorts each. Here's the pin." The [System] painted a neutral knoll halfway to the moon, bald of trees, ringed by boring bushes Mara would approve. "Tell your lord we prefer to trade for salt, cloth, herbs, and hands—for now. We'll share road-sightings."
The courier bowed in that precise not-grovel. "He'll be pleased." A flick of personal candor: "Also—your fish smelled better than rumors. That is rare."
"Elara will ensure Jory doesn't die of pride today," Aiden said. Jory, who had materialized, tried to stand normally and failed, standing heroically instead. 😏
The fox-sealed man left. The dust he left behind was studiously ordinary. Aiden took that as a minor blessing.
Afternoon slid by like a well-greased hinge. Hinges, in fact, went onto four doors. Ansel swore the way poets write, with fervor and a sense of occasion. Hadrik delivered the next batch of caltrops and a bundle of spearheads that made the recruits look like children on the morning of a holiday.
The Wall—Corner I trench deepened. Stone arrived in carts, dumped with a chorus of thuds. Elara set the first outer blocks herself—well, oversaw the setting with the eye of a general and the comments of a foreman. "Bottom course matters," she said. "A wall remembers how it began."
Aiden paced the line, correcting nothing, changing nothing, simply being there. People worked differently when leadership looked back and didn't flinch.
Riversong's afternoon runner came with a child's drawing on the back of the supply list: a boat, a fish, a person falling in with no underlined three times. Aiden laughed until he bent, then sent back a coil of rope and a note: Tie this around anyone named "Definitely Not Falling In." 🥲
Toward dusk, Dace's first report arrived by runner—short, efficient, stamped in the [System] with her matter-of-fact signature:
[Field Report — Silverbrook Road] • Arrived at dawn. Bandits (8–12) harassing market path. • No uniform. Weapons: clubs, two bows, one rusted sword. Leader: "Red Hal" (scar, missing ear). • Tactics: Hit stalls, fade into brush. Use fear at bottlenecks. • Action: Broom method. Formed line, drove them off road twice. No pursuit. No casualties. • Observation: Two bandits wore charms (triangle sinew + blue bead). Same style as West Hollow totems. Burning scattered them. • Request: 2 additional shields; horn-calls primer (Jory's notes?) for Lia's sentries. • Morale (ours): High. Morale (Silverbrook): Lifting. — Dace
Aiden read it twice. "Charms," he said. It tasted wrong in his mouth.
Elara's jaw ticked once. "Not coincidence."
"Then someone's selling fear," Mara said, eyes narrow. "Or giving it away on layaway."
Calder reached for the kettle as if there was a tea for that. "Perhaps we buy it back with discipline," he said. "And caltrops." The smile flickered dry as tinder. 😐
"Send shields," Aiden said. "And Jory's horn notes, written big." He pulled the [System] pen and scrawled a postscript: Proud of you. Brooms beat knives when neighbors sweep together. Sera would approve the metaphor. He hoped Lia slept behind men and women who were learning to like the sound of their own courage.
The [System] chimed softly:
[Regional Note] • Silverbrook road risk: High → Moderate (temporary) • Known Bandit Leader: Red Hal (Flagged) • Cross-Sign: Goblin Charms (Investigate)
Evening pulled the light thin. West Hollow kept sulking; caltrops waited like rude prayers in the grass. The watch rotated. Jory took his place with the horn and a new, serious crease between his brows that looked suspiciously like responsibility.
"Same pattern," Aiden told Elara. "Perimeter. No heroics. If they push, we push back to the line."
"Understood," she said. "Try not to think of going farther."
"I will try," he said, and meant it.
They didn't have to wait long for the night to test them. The first skirmish came like last night's shadow with fewer friends. Goblins hit the caltrops and learned a new word (ow), shrieked, tried to pull them out, learned the second word (two). Thorn spoke once to remind the cave that accuracy breeds humility. The drum attempted a rally and coughed into silence as if embarrassed. Calder did three small blessings and one large glare that startled a recruit into better footwork. Casualties: none. Injuries: two punctures, one sprain, one bruised pride. Morale: the precise sound of people realizing they could do this again. 🙂
Aiden slept in snatches, waking to the soft clack of hinges somewhere, the sigh of the pump, the crrr of whetstone on spearhead. When the world brightened, he felt older by a useful year.
The [System] yawned a Morning Brief at him:
[Morning Brief — Novaterra] • Barracks: Operational (Oath site established) • Training: 150 Recruits — 46 promoted → Militia (Lv.3) • Wall Corner I: 3% → 7% (Base layer set) • West Hollow: Dormant (pressure decreased). Totem density reduced. • Caltrops: Field #1 holding; Field #2 queued (west). • Riversong: Boats (2) afloat; market stall built; fish morale high 🐟 • Silverbrook: Detachment reports road swept; shields + horn primer sent. • Trade Meet: Confirmed for Day 6 (Neutral Knoll). Escorts planning. • Morale: Steady → Resolute 🙂
He closed it and let the morning settle. He needed to find words that would hold in the face of bandits and foxes and holes that wanted to be dungeons. He needed to decide how to greet Lucien Duvall—with open hands or hands that looked open because they were holding something behind his back.
He found Elara at the wall trench, watching stones learn patience. "Dace's report," he said, handing her the [System] overlay. She read in three blinks, the way she read everything—fast, with the understanding that the world didn't pause for your eyes.
"Charms," she said again. "Someone is teaching men to buy courage on credit."
"Goblins trading to bandits?" Aiden asked. "Or someone else selling both the problem and the solution?"
"Elara's law," she said. "If it feels like a scheme, it's probably a scheme."
He huffed. "I hate schemes."
"You love plans," she said, almost-smiling. "Hate the former by making the latter better."
He nodded once. "We'll meet Duvall. We'll trade what doesn't dull our tools. We'll write a road pact—no shelter for bandits, no buying charms. We'll see if foxes keep promises when the bushes are boring."
"And if they don't?"
"Then we build higher," he said. "And teach the road to like us more than it likes them."
Elara's mouth tilted in that small, infuriatingly proud way. "Permission to terrorize the recruits kindly until the meet?"
"Granted," he said. "No heroics."
She bowed, mock-serious. "Never."
He turned toward Founders' Way and saw Novaterra becoming itself: hinges that turned, doors that stayed shut when you wanted them shut and swung when you needed them open; a barracks with an oath in its bones; a forge that made sentences out of iron; a wall that had learned the letter C and wanted the alphabet; a scorpion named Thorn who did not fetch; a boy who didn't squeak (much) with a horn; a priest who could make tea taste like courage; a woman who had turned a latrine schedule into a religion. 🙂
A runner came from the west with a grin and a limp and a scrap of cloth Sera had blessed. Red Hal pushed twice. We swept twice. He learned to count to two. Aiden laughed out loud. Somewhere, a drum tried a beat and decided it didn't like math today.
He lifted his face to the not-quite-sun. "Novaterra," he said softly, "we hold our edge, we write our letters, we keep our oaths. Let the fox flip his coin. We'll bring a broom."
The wind liked that. Or maybe it just enjoyed the way the anvil rang when Hadrik hammered a door latch into obedience.
Either way, the day began like a promise.