Nexxa and I flew to the narrow point for building the dam. The rocky canyon was roaring, loud enough we couldn’t hear each other, the water was rushing through so fast.

And I needed to be kinda close to Sculpt Stone properly.

Which made raising the dam tricky. If the stone was too thin, it would just get torn away. I ended having to lean over the edge, held up with one hand while weaving nodules in the wall. Then Nexxa took me to the other side, where I did it again. Then I created more, overlapping them to reduce the flow instead of cutting it off completely.

Then, once the roaring river had been reduced to a tumultuous creek, I got her to lower me down over its surface. The next fifteen minutes were spent drawing the stone further in, my motions messy due to my complete lack of stability, but eventually, the water was stopped entirely.

"This is just temporary, isn't it?" Nexxa asked, staring at the freshly sealed dam.

"Yeah, you'll probably want to install something to control the flow, if not actually capture the energy," I replied, adding steps so I could ascend the dam even as I pushed it higher. Probably should’ve started at the top and slid a slab into place, I realized.

"I don't mean the Fronting dam," Nexxa said with a laugh from where she was floating behind me. "I mean… holding the line here. If what you said about the Pillars is true… it would explain a lot."

"I mean… maybe someone's fixed them. There are a lot of dragon-souled out there. They know its coming, someone's probably…" I trailed off at her shaking head.

"Someone might care. But I'm pretty sure they're all worried about each other more than the Pillars. After all, the Pillars have always been there," Nexxa said, chuckling. "How could they fail?"

I raised a finger, about to correct her on that point. But I realized she was being… what was the word? Not sarcastic, it started with an ‘F’ in English, but I couldn’t remember the Elinder at all. Shaking my head, I asked, "So, what're you going to do?"

"First, I'm going to go take a look for myself. The storm should be right up against the rift by now. And won't that be a sight," Nexxa said with a heavy sigh. "Then… well, we'll see."

"That's… not close," I said, trying to do the math in my head. If it was a couple thousand miles from my territory to hers, then the Front, and by extension, the rift, was about the same. Her territory was pretty much smack dab in the middle of the Frigid Peaks, after all.

"No. It'd take me probably a day to get there and back. Don't suppose I can ask you for another favor?"

I blinked at her timeframe, feeling a twinge of envy. Still, the glider meant I was only a little slower. Considering I wasn’t even Pegasus soul, I was already much faster than most at my tier.

"I can spare an extra day, sure. Not that I'll be able to wipe out the horde like you can," I reminded her, even as I turned my attention back to fortifying the dam.

"Yeah. I'll deal with them in the morning, then be on the way. Everyone would probably be fine anyway, but I’d like you to stay and watch over them. Just in case, you know?"

"Right. Just in case," I said, nodding even as I frowned at a creaking sound lower down the dam. "I can do just in case."

"Thanks Per Per," Nexxa said, nudging my shoulder even as I was descending to deal with the crack. "Let's go grab some dinner, and then I'm going to pick your brain about these beacons."

“Need to shore up this first,” I said, waving at the dam, my eyes climbing as the cracking sound suddenly got worse. A dash down and sudden reinforcement meant only a trickle got through.

“You got it?” Nexxa asked from where she was floating above me.

“Yeah, I got it,” I called up, “You said something about dinner?”

“Yep. Last one there’s a dragon’s dinner,” she called back.

I chuckled, as I started climbing the new set of stairs I was crafting, unable to keep a smile off my face. Right until I was almost at the top and she disappeared in a bolt of lightning.

"Cheater," I mumbled, rolling my eyes as I jogged back to Soaring Wolf and strapped myself in.

…

I watched Nexxa leave early the next morning and felt a little lost. After my proposal about having her join us, I couldn't bring myself to keep improving her little outpost. Especially since Nexxa had been getting everyone to make preparations to leave.

‘Just in case,’ she'd kept saying.

‘Just in case the pillars had fallen’ went unsaid. Still, the others were smart enough to cast glances in my direction. It wasn't hard to guess my arrival had something to do with Nexxa's sudden change in attitude.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Hash ended up recruiting me to help in the greenhouses, where I used Bloom to help them rebuild their supply of everything good and green. And golden and red and blue too.

To my surprise, Nexxa was back before the sun set. And she looked pissed.

"They're pushing them away," Nexxa ground out as she stomped around her beacon, her hand crackling with sparks. "A couple of our fellow Magus Domini are sending out hunting parties but most of them have just thrown up walls along their borders and are letting the monsters stream by."

"Did you make it to the Pillars?" I asked, not really having anything to add to the subject. Putting up walls made sense and I didn't feel it was appropriate to point out that most Pegasus-souled didn't pack the sort of punch Nexxa did. They could've at least set up traps or artillery, so she had the right to be angry.

"Yeah. They're still there, but it seems they're only effective against the big guys these days. The little stuff just walks right through," Nexxa said with a huff, stopping to lean against her beacon. "I bet they don't even notice back home. They never let the little ones get near the barrier in the first place."

"Maybe they've been doing that on purpose," I said, squatting down beside her. "Might be someone figured that keeping the weak ones dead would help the Pillars last longer."

"How much good do you think that does when a quarter of the Front isn't even guarded? I didn't see anyone there! It's like they've already given up," Nexxa huffed out.

"Maybe… maybe they have. Or maybe they're busy dealing with internal conflict. I know Terra Vista's a mess right now," I said, sitting down next to her beacon.

"Fronting Bladesingers," Nexxa said, choosing to slump down beside me. "I'm going to talk to my people, see what they want to do. But if you can really get this thing moving… I might just send them east."

"Them? What about you?"

"I… I'm not like them, Perry. I can't just let the horde continue. There are too many people out there, people who've never even heard of the Front, who're relying on us to keep the nightmares away."

"Nexxa…"

"It's not that I don't want to come with you. But if I don't have to watch over everyone, how many more could I kill? And it's not like I'm getting weaker. Every day I spend slaughtering monsters brings me closer to Hydra soul. I can feel it. It's no wonder so few people make it. I must've killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions Perry. I've only been here for a couple months."

"That's… wow," I said, leaning my head back against the cold stone of the beacon. "That's… rough."

"If I were hydra soul, how much more could I do?" Nexxa asked, pushing to her feet, lightning crackling up all around her as she held her hand on the beacon, bringing up the map which only had two red lines on it.

"There's… I never got a chance to tell you about the Diagnostics yet," I said, staring at the map.

"Diagnostics?" she asked, only for her eyes to go distant a second later. "The Front is this? Perry, what in the Front is this?" Before I could respond, Nexxa was scrabbling to her feet. "Yes, of course you stupid machine, I want to-"

It turned out that the brilliant cascade of light wasn't as omni-directional as I'd thought. Back on the peak of Mount Aeternia when I'd run my own scan, Tamrie hadn’t commented on it at all. I watched the light shoot out to trace an outline of Nexxa's form before it retreated back inside the beacon.

"Huh," Nexxa said, her eyes flicking back and forth. Then she blinked, looking over at me. "So… other types of making ourselves stronger?"

"Looks like. Pretty sure Hydra is Body and Djinn will be Mind," I said, motioning roughly where I figured they were. “Though I’ve come across a couple other methods already.”

"What's Lightning-forged mean?" Nexxa asked, squinting at her display.

"Uh… I didn't have that, but if you focus or touch it, it should expand," I said, waving my hand in front of me like I could see her interface.

"Got it," she said. "Well… okay, that makes sense."

"What's it say?"

"It says nosy brothers get their fingers zapped," Nexxa replied, though she was smiling. "Actually, it says that I'm the master of Lightning within my aura. Which means it literally can't hurt me. I knew that, I just… its interesting that it was able to tell how I'd done that."

"Oh?"

Nexxa waved her hand. "Remember that soul ritual I told you about? The one I was forced to do? Well, I hunted down a Kirin, killed it, then consumed it. All of it. Every last bite."

"Eww," I said, unable to stop the grimace. “Aren’t Kirin basically lightning bugs?”

"More like lightning horses. It was actually pretty good, for the most part," Nexxa said with a chuckle. "Though some parts were pretty crunchy."

"Ewwww," I repeated, this time with more emphasis. Then I chuckled. Nexxa joined me a moment later. We fell into silence for a while. "So, you're gonna go off to war, and you want me to look after your people?"

"I… I'm not sure," Nexxa said, letting out a long breath. "Apparently I'm almost ready to ascend to Hydra soul. Don't even have to rebuild my soul this time. Another hundred thousand or so and I'll be ready for the next stage, according to this thing."

"Oh, so just a couple days. Easy peasy.”

"Brat," she replied, swatting my arm. "But I think… I think we'll be able to hold long enough for that. And once I'm at Hydra…"

"You'll be able to hold your home even easier," I said, letting out a long sigh.

"Sorry Perry. If the others were at least thinning the horde properly…"

"Wonder what Althon's doing? You think he's ignoring this?"

"Honestly? I've no clue. I remember all those plays of his, about him coming out in the final hour to save the day… but that didn't really feel like who he was when we met him, did it?" Nexxa asked, her gaze shifting down river.

"No. No it didn't," I agreed.

"So, I don't know. I don't think he's ignoring it, but… there must be more going on that we can't see, that's the…" Nexxa trailed off, then let out a long sigh. "He didn't expect us to survive our first five years."

"Ah. Yeah, I forgot about that," I said, scrunching up my brow. “Kinda feels like he should’ve warned us a bit more clearly, don’t you think?”

"Front. I…” Nexxa trailed off, and we both stood there silently for a minute. I watched as Nexxa’s face went from scrunched up, to really scrunched up, to an out and out scowl, before finally turning back to look at her camp, letting out a long sigh.

“Nexxa, you okay?”

“I need to tell Books,” she said, her hand clenching, sparks shooting into the air around her.

"Tell him what?" I asked, a little worried for our old tutor’s health.

"That he's not going to have a neighbor anymore. Front take them all, Perry," her eyes moved to the overlook, her eyes tracing down a list of names I hadn't noticed carved into the stone just beneath the beacon. "I'm not betraying my people. We're leaving."