(Day 180) Aprilis 24th, 12th year of the Dragon, Age of Enlightenment

I chewed my breakfast as I stared into Adaline's eyes. With a smile on my face, I asked, “What are your plans for today?”

“Well, I had thought to check the location of the tower and also thought about moving my hoard into the Vault, if that is okay with you. I would ask for a simple agreement that my treasure remains mine.”

I looked at her with false hurt in my eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that. Logically I know that you could replace everything in the hoard if you wished, it’s a dragon thing. We get a bit testy when creatures touch our stuff.”

I laughed, “Fine, what’s yours is yours and yes you can store your hoard in the vault, it won’t take up the entire 18 square miles will it.?”

“No,” she said indignantly. It shouldn’t take up more than 1,000 square feet.”

“Sound’s good. If you’d like I could scan the area and make an exact duplicate of the area in the vault. Wouldn’t be hard at all and would make it seem a little more like home?”

“That sounds good. Let’s finish breakfast then go. You can ride me while I fly from your towers area to my cave.”

“You can ride me,” I started then grinned as I said, “Well if you insist.”

She threw a biscuit in my general direction, purposely aiming to the side of me then said, “I will have you know that as soon as this vow is over I am a very aggressive person. I will explore the extent of your physical endurance to biscuits when you get sassy.”

“I look forward to it,” I responded as we both laughed.

We finished breakfast and headed to the entryway. “When Thor was checking out his ability to open portals, the portal I opened into the library, the first location I entered your universe at, opened into the sky. I’m going to open our portal about 70 miles west of the tower's location so we can fly up and get the lay of the land and check on everything. From there you’ll be able to switch into your dragon form and we can ride over there together. I’ll have the nanites make us headsets so that we can talk to each other without screaming to be heard.”

“I can’t wait. The toys you can make with your nanites are interesting.”

“Truly, you haven’t seen anything yet. If you can stay in your high elf form in a nonmagical environment, we might have to go back to my planet and I’ll show you all the technology you’re missing. Of course, it would be interesting to see if you could fly in your Dragon form there as well. Course most people would be scared to death. Eventually, I’m going to have to let the people of my world know that magic exists and mythical creatures are real.

I opened a portal and we stepped out onto the campsite where I’d met the hill giants Dob and Zar. Scanning the area I noticed no predators or dangers of any kind. Jumping into the air Adaline transformed into her new Umbral Dragon form. She wasn’t quite a black dragon anymore. Her coloring highlighted the tips of her wings and the ridges on her head which appeared to be constantly lit as if in the moonlight. In this early morning light, she was stunning. in twilight or the light of the night sky, she would be gorgeous. As I admired her new dragon form she circled around and leveled off. I jumped to the middle of her back just ahead of her wings and had my nanites create a form-fitting harness that would allow me to stand like the stuntmen did on the biplanes of old back home. As we headed west toward the tower's previous location, she rose higher and higher into the early morning until we were just under the few clouds. It took a minute or two as I utilized my full capacity to create an earpiece and microphone that would fit her and work. Eventually, though I was successful as I asked, “Can you hear me now?”

“I’ve been able to hear you for the last two minutes. It was your mi-crow-fa-own that wasn’t working” she said.

“Cool, it works,” I said. “Very good Adaline, seen anything interesting while I’ve been working on communication gear?”

“Nope though if you look down to your left you can see where trees have blown over. It looks like something happened to push the trees towards the village you stayed at.”

Alarmed, I created some binoculars and surveyed the area. Adaline was right it looked like the trees and had been bent towards the village from the general direction of my tower to the northwest of the village. As we flew west the damage became more pronounced until we were five miles out. Then the landscape of the mountains to the north was either flattened or scoured clear of snow as if something had hit them with a sandblaster. Also, the forest was gone. Even the grass and bushes were gone. Only bare dirt and rock could be seen.

“Stay this far away from the tower's location and fly in a giant circle around the tower,” I said.

“Okay.”

As we flew around the tower at a distance of five miles to a point just south and east of the cliff face we noticed that a sphere, not unlike the geography of my pocket dimension, seemed to have removed the tower, and the mountain. The area looked to be smaller than my one-mile radius though. As we continued our circular trip at five miles out from the center of catastrophe, I had my nanites look for radiation of any kind. The readings remained normal.

When we made it all the way back to the southernmost point of the damage I said, “I’m going to go take a closer look. If something happens to me Thor will open a portal back to the Tower on the ground below us. Well, get your hoard transfer set up as soon as I’m up and about again. ”

“What’ do you think will happen,” Adaline asked

“I have no idea,” I said truthfully. “Just stay in this area and keep an eye on me. I shouldn’t be gone too long.” With that, the nanites released me and I flew towards where my tower used to be. As I came closer to the tower's location I started paying attention to the triangulating of the blast patterns I saw. very soon I noticed that the center looked to be the roof of the tower, which meant that some external force was at play. Staying at least 100’ away from the center point of the explosion I had my nanites survey the whole area. A couple of the nanites found something that was subatomic that I’d never encountered before. They were reporting that it seemed to be a hole of some sort. It was too small for air molecules to pass through yet it was an opening to somewhere. I sent one nanite through the hole and recorded all the sensory data that it sent back. The data it sent back made no sense. As far as the nanite was concerned it had been flung into a hyper viscous fluid of some sort where atoms of all types I knew and types I didn’t recognize were adjacent to it and then gone between picoseconds. It was constantly shifting and wouldn’t stabilize. The quantum entanglement to the nanite remained but the nanite was useless as a point of reference for a portal. I had my Thor aspect take over monitoring the environment of that nanite and put my attention back to my current location. As far as I could tell a non-nuclear explosion had occurred on my place of power that had devastated the local surrounding.

I double-checked for radiation fallout. Finding none I went back to Adaline and had her fly us to the village. As we flew over, I dropped off her back and floated to the ground. The guards had noticed the dragon and saw me drop off. As I came into range a single arrow was shot at me which I caught and held in my hand. After which I hear Raz yell, “Hold your fire, it’s Adam.”

I adjusted my course and landed next to Raz, “I’m glad to see you are okay my friend. What happened?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing. The Elders tried to contact you two days ago when Elder Jasilla was warned of calamity by her Goddess. Even with her shielding the village still took some damage. When you didn’t answer the elder communed with her goddess and learned that you were no longer in the Universe. We all thought the worst.”

“I’m touched Raz, truly I am, but you know that I am from another Universe and I can come and go there as I please now. A recent change, in fact, it happened right about the time this explosion did.” I paused for a moment then asked, “By the way, does anyone know what happened.”

“No. Although, some of the scouts that made it back right before the explosion reporting seeing a red dragon off to the west flying near your tower the day before. Any that might have witnessed what happened that were in that area of the woods have not been heard from,” Raz told me.

I surveyed the damage, if they were near enough to the blast that could affect the village over 60 miles away, you probably won't be hearing from them anytime soon, if ever again,” I said regrettably.

Raz nodded before I said, “We best be getting you to see the elders, is your dragon friend going to land?”

“Yes, to meeting with the elders. No, to Adaline landing. I’m only going to be here for a few minutes then we must be off again.”

“Okay, this way,” Raz said as he led me to where the elders were helping others rebuild a structure that had been damaged. I noticed that everyone was working on rebuilding the town. Searching my memory I recalled every little detail of the building they were working on as well as the layout of the village. As we approached, Elder Jasilla stood and turned.

“Peace be unto Adam. It is good to see that you survived whatever happened to your Place of Power.” Elder Jasilla said.

“Peace be unto you as well. Our Goddess had not informed me that you might need assistance. Of course, I may have been beyond her reach for a bit.”

“Doubtful Adam, Knowledge and the ability to learn is Universal.”

I thought about that for a moment then considered what I’d been doing for the last two days. If my nanites had not detected and compensated for the blood rushing to my face I would have blushed a crimson red. “It would seem that our Goddess is most generous,” I said as a warmth embraced me and a whisper entered my mind, “When you get back to your Place of Power contact me, we have much to discuss.”

“It would seem our Goddess is indeed generous.” I looked thoughtful for a moment then said, “Elder Jasilla, would you like me to help repair the village. I could perhaps save some days of work for the village. I can do nothing for the plant life but I can help rebuild and repair the structures already here?” I asked.

“If you can, that would be wonderful. We need places to sleep and we must still replant all the crops that were lost.”

“Then I’ll get to work.” Raising my voice I called out. “Everyone, step away from the buildings for a moment this won’t take long.”

I expanded my nanite field to its maximum range and walked slowly from one end of the village to the other. Using my memory I had the nanites rebuild or repair any structure to the way I’d seen them before. I couldn’t replace things I hadn’t seen but I was able to repair and replace every single building. I had to make three passes to finish the whole village. ten minutes later I was done.

As I made my way over to Elder Jasilla I recalled my nanites as she called, “Truly amazing Adam. Thank you. Are you sure you must be going?”

“As I’m sure you’ve noticed there is an Umbral Dragon above us. She’s been circling patiently for the last ten minutes but I’m sure if I don’t attend to her needs soon I’m never going to hear the end of it.”

“Perhaps, when you are not busy you will introduce us?” she asked.

“Perhaps, but for now I must bid you a good day,” I said as I used my gravity ability to rise into the air to Adaline’s level. Once I was there I used cloud running to run back to her back and reformed our earpieces and mics and the harness to hold me in place as she turned to the North and flew towards the mountain.

“That was nice of you Adam?”

“Well, Jasilla is a fellow cleric of Serena. Helping her truly does help me. Also, she said she’d like to meet you.”

“Perhaps, today though, I need to move my hoard,” she said as we flew over the cliff and then headed towards one of the peaks to the northeast of where the tower had been. I realized that the peak she was heading towards was behind a higher peak which would have made obscured it from my vision unless I’d gone exploring in that direction. It looked to be only 10 miles away from the tower’s original location in a straight line. If someone had to travel to it by land though that would have taken a day at least. Halfway up the mountain, there was a cliff face that had a tunnel hidden from view behind a sheet of ice. It looked like her lair had been shielded from the full brunt of the blast though cracked ice lay here and there all around the entranceway. Adaline landed as I hopped down to the ground expanding my nanites to their maximum range again. As I entered the lair I made sure to have the nanites leave the treasure alone. As I analyzed the cave and the mountain I opened portals into the vault and provide the mass the nanites there would need to recreate the mountain and her lair exactly. I accessed my interface and adjusted the vaults setting to mirror the location of the mountain. Once that was done I had the nanites build her mountain along the edge and then made an impassible cliff a half-mile out from the mountain. The only way to get to her lair would be to fly over the half-mile-high smooth rockface.

As I was walking around the lair I had the nanites analyze and record the structure of the mountain and Adaline’s lair. While I walked around Adaline switched to her High Elf form and watched me. When I was done I came back over to her, “All done, we need to wait about another 30 seconds then we can head to the vault.”

“Why do we need to wait, I thought we were going to move it into the vault then make the lair after?” she asked.

“Adaline, you’ve seen how fast my nanites can construct something right? Well, now that Thor and I can communicate instantaneously I can pull on nanites from my home universe. Back there I have a lot of nanites. As an example. Right now I have enough nanites to remake this entire planet if I wanted to. So things will happen a lot faster now in the Tower,” I explained.

“Oh,” she said.

Once the nanites were done in the vault I opened a portal to me with an exit to another portal that opened into the center of the vault aimed at the cliff and mountain behind it 9 miles away. As Adaline peered through the portal I said, “Go on, fly on over and check out your new lair. I’ll keep track of you. When you’re inside, I’ll shift the exit point so all you’ll need to do is carry your treasure from this cave to the cave in that mountain over there with a couple of steps. You’ll be able to set it up just how you like.”

Adaline ran through the portal and jumped up as she changed into her dragon form and flew to the mountain. I watched as she flew around the circumference of the cliff that her mountain was resting on and then landed at the entrance to her cave. Watching her through the nanites I noticed how she looked around in wonder as she sniffed the air. She even went over to one area that looked like it had worn down a bit and provided her a place to rest in her dragon form. Once she was satisfied she transformed into her high elf form and walked over to where her hoard should be. I shifted the portal and stepped through as I asked, “What do you think?”

Adaline jumped forward and gave me a long lingering kiss. As she pulled back and stepped away, “I really like it.”

“I can tell. Maybe we can continue that thought later but for now, I need to head back to the entryway to the tower and commune with my Goddess. She contacted me earlier. It seems we have a bit to discuss. I might even learn what happened to the mountain. Will you be okay moving your hoard on your own?” I asked.

“I will be fine, how will I let you know when I’m done?” she asked

“Well, you see, in here, in this room I have flooded the area with nanites. I haven’t flooded you with them yet, because I do not know if it's even possible, plus I never asked. Anyway, while you’re here both Thor in the other Universe and I can keep track of you. This portal will stay open until you’re done then just ask to be portal to the tower. I will automatically know when you’re done. As long as you’re in the vault or tower Thor can contact like this.” Immediately Thor spoke from the air. “Hello, Adaline, it is nice to see you again.”

“He can talk to me from anywhere inside the tower?”

“No, only in the vault. Remember I can see and hear you also”

“No much for privacy is he?” she asked.

“It’s not like that, but I can see how you could see it that way. Tell you what, Once you’re done moving your hoard into your new lair the nanites will not enter this area. If you need to reach me or Thor you’ll need to come out to the cliff. The Nanites will be in the vault.

“The Tower wasn’t like this before?” Adaline asked tentatively.

“No, and I haven’t flooded it with the nanites yet either. One of the new abilities I was awarded states that I can use the nanites anywhere in this pocket dimension but I only released them into the vault. I haven’t tried mixing magic and technology so wanted to keep that to a minimum,” then a thought crossed my mind, “Damn.” I said.

“Damn?”

“I just realized, we are in our own pocket universe. The larder may not be resupplied if the portal from Venoran isn’t powerful enough. I’ll have to check with the supply store when I get back to Venoran. In the meantime, I’m going to release nanites into the dining area for now. they will be analyzing anything that enters the room beside us. That way if the larder runs out the nanites can supply us with an endless supply of food.”

“Will it be real food?” she asked.

“Oh yes, it will be an exact copy of whatever it scanned. If we had a Juicy steak, it’ll be a juicy steak. Don’t you worry, we won’t go hungry. I’m going to head back into the Entryway, release the nanites into the dining room, and contact my Goddess. You’ll be able to contact Thor from inside the Vault and inside the Dining area. Also, you can ask Thor to play the music that you’d like to listen to. He knows everything that I know, so already knows what you like, just ask”

“See you in a bit. There is a lot of treasure, I’ll be here for a while.”

“If you’re still moving treasure when I finish communing with Serena I think I might start heading towards the Kingdom of Crimson Blood. I think the Council’s reprieve is just about over.” As I opened another portal and stepped back into the entryway of the tower I heard Adaline call after me, “Have fun!”