If any of you noticed the constant bolding in the first two chapters, it was not intended or something that I could even fix, but rather a possible error. It should be gone now, but if it is not then let me know, as I found that I could only see this error when reading the actual page from my laptop, and that it did not appear on the preview.

Now, I feel I should congratulate Cretha Loesing for finding a reference that I did not even know about. It saved my entire day when he did so.

The process of building a home

Extract of Mercury's journal, date: Tuesday of the 13th week of 76 ADG
My habits from the war have yet to cease, in fact I believe that they are getting worse. I keep seeing figures in the shadows here in Tronjheim, but when I look closer, there is nothing. Furthermore, I find that whenever I walk into any room, building or basically anywhere, I immediately start to look for exits, places where assassins could hide, and I have even begun to make quick survey of everyone in the room, to determine whether they carry weapons, have ill intentions, and how I could most easily take them out.

Even my own chambers have not been spared from my paranoia, as I almost daily must check and recheck everything in the room, to see if anything is out of place or something has been tampered with. I have furthermore begun to dream of what happened in the war, but nothing that keeps me from sleeping. The dreams should stop of their own accord when I simply ignore them and continue sleeping as if nothing happened.

I have yet to mention any of this to anyone, as the only one that I would trust with this is Orik, and he already has an ailing health. I fear that he has less than a few years left, but I have not mentioned this to him, as I want him to keep up the spirit, which is why I have not mentioned my other habits either.

Mercury POV
It had been 25 years since Mercury had first arrived at Eregion, and during that time, he had not been idle. After completing his own dwelling, he and Kilgharrah had begun to sketch out how they wanted the place to look, what features, buildings and services needed to be there, and eventually begin estimating how large different sections and areas needed to be.

Only after doing all of this, did they actually start making building plans for the individual segments. The blueprints had been so numerous, that when they were gathered together into a single portfolio, it had been enough to fill two fairly large books.

The first project after clearing out a huge area of trees and roots, which had taken a little more than an entire year to do, had been to build Kilgharrah's personal space along with the rest of the dragon hold, which they had originally planned to be able to house three dragons besides Kilgharrah.

The decision to do this first had been an effort on Mercury's part to give Kilgharrah some sort of appreciation for his help and the fact that he was willing to spend so much time with only Mercury for company.

To provide the rock for the hold, Mercury had begun to excavate the foundation for the main building and then use magic to shape the rocks into the appropriate shapes. Needless to say that this had been an extremely tiring and long process to do, and even with Kilgharrah's help in the quarrying and his steady donations of energy, it had still taken quite a few years to do, but in both Mercury's and Kilgharrah's mind, it had been worth it.

The dragon hold had been simple in its design, with only the space for the dragons to sleep, a few stone benches, chairs and tables, but with barely any decorations on the inside. Mercury had originally wanted to carve some pictures into the walls and add a few stone statues, but Kilgharrah had reasoned that it would be unnecessary, since it would be more of a temporary resting place for any rider's dragon than a permanent home.

However with Kilgharrah's place, the story had been totally different, as Mercury had quite adamantly insisted that his place was special and needed to be built as such, and Kilgharrah had hardly objected to this.

With Kilgharrah's dwelling, Mercury had used the marble from the mountaintop as material for the walls, ceiling and floor. Intricate and beautiful carvings of dragons in flight, fight, peacefully but majestically asleep, and a few of hatching dragons, adorned the walls. The general structure of the place resembled the temples in ancient Greece, with the triangular shaped roof, the columns at the entrance, but unlike those, this one had two small marble statues of dragons on the front of the roof.

The dragons both turned so that their waving tails' tips were meeting at the tip of the roof, while their snouts were pointing towards the sides of the roof. Mercury had opted to sculpture the dragons based on the Asian version of the dragons, which were much longer, slender and more snakelike creatures than the dragons of Alagaësia.

Mercury had during these years set up several different personas to travel through Norigo, which made him able to order different sorts of supplies and items for his construction, but since the logistics of moving heavy items through the dense underforest and up the mountain were hell, he had to get his own lumber and stonework.

It had taken quite a few tries to turn the trees, which Mercury had fell during the cleaning of the area, into usable timber, and in the end, Mercury had given up on finding out on his own and had set up a carpenter apprentice persona to pass through Norigo and learn how it was done at the sawmill there.

A side project, during the years of building the dragon hold, had been to become at least partially self-sustained in regards to food, so Mercury had used one of his already present personas, a rich merchant and entrepreneur, who had been recommended to use this route for his supply route rather than the heavily bandit infested Gilead route, by a nephew who had been recommended the route by a trapper by the name of Goren son of Lorst, to have an entire shipment of fruit tree saplings shipped to Norigo, where he then picked them up and presumably headed back north with them, although he actually only went a little north and then swung around towards the west.

After getting the saplings back to the constructions site, Mercury had dug trenches in the area, which they had set off for their orchard, and had planted the saplings and then let nature continue at its natural pace, as neither of them had any wish nor the spare energy needed to speed up the process.

Another section of the food area had been planted with potatoes, as they were quite hardy and relatively autonomous, which was something that Mercury put great value in in his food supply, as he did not want to waste many an hour on maintaining it.

After finally finishing with the dragon hold, Mercury had begun on making the ring wall, which was supposed to encompass the entire area that he had cleared of trees, except that a five metre gap was put between the outer edge of the wall and the treeline.

The main building was supposed to be the front part of the ring wall, towards where Mercury intended for the road down the mountain to be, so that the ring wall would not have a gate as such. The wall was not meant to be for defending the place, but rather to be a sort of large fence.

The wall's materials had been the regular stone, which Mercury had also used to construct most of the dragon hold, and had not been decorated at all. It had taken a while to make it, but still quite shorter than constructing the dragon hold.

The next project had been to create the artificial lake, which Mercury also intended to serve as a reservoir. The lake had ended up being a quite extensive one, and had been located on the mountainside above the clearing, as Mercury intended to use gravity to create enough pressure on the water to be able to let it flow through the water pipes and into the sinks and showers, which he intended the main building to have in each of the personal quarters.

The water, which was supposed to supply the main building with water, went from the lake and into a large water pipe, which was more than a metre in diameter, where it then went through several filters comprised of boiled sand, charcoal, more boiled sand and then more charcoal, so that the water would at all times be clean enough to drink.

The pipe itself ran underground and also collected its water from the bottom part of the lake, as Mercury did not want to mar the landscape with it and in general did not trust that it would hold for more than a short number of years above ground.

During all of these years, Mercury's different personas had visited Norigo quite often, as he needed a lot of special supplies, and had now almost become half members of the not so little town. To keep up his different backstories of the personas, Mercury had had to let both them and their backstories evolve, as it would have been suspicious if they stayed the same through all of those years.

This meant that he now apparently had three children in a small city near Ilirea as Goren son of Lorst, two daughters as the rich entrepreneur Socomb, along with a number of other different changes in the rest of his personas.

Keeping track of all of these different personas' traits, stories and oddities had become quite taxing, and more than once, Mercury forgot to step out of the character when it was no longer needed to be present. Even when Mercury was alone, he would sometimes catch himself in some oddity or trait, which he knew did not belong to him, but rather one of his personas.

After the completion of the water system, Mercury had finally begun to actually build what would be the main building of his new home. The building's façade had been created from the marble at the top of Eregion, and above the three metres high and two metres wide holly doorway, there was a message written in both the Liduen Kvaedhí and the runes of the dwarves, which in both the Ancient language, the human language and the dwarven language said: Thy passage is clear if thou contributes precious pieces of art, knowledge and rare objects, so that others may see and enjoy.

In short, it meant that if you wanted to enter, you had to contribute something to the library, which was Mercury's way of making sure that it would grow and prosper without needing him to collect every single scrap for it.

The rest of the main building had been given the general architecture of a rather large castle, with spires and so on, although one of those spires contained a giant spring powered analogue clock, which Mercury had constructed to be similar to Big Ben of his old world. The building itself towered nearly 10 metres into the air, and was divided into four different stories, although the primary part of the building was dedicated to the massive library, which reached all the way through those four stories and was covered in an enormous number of aisles with empty shelves.

Next to the massive library was where Mercury intended for the museum to be, but unfortunately he had yet to acquire any significant contributions to it. Mercury did have objects and oddities in his possession that could possibly give even the most hardened collector a heart attack, but most if not all of those were in Mercury's mind either not suited for the public of Alagaësia to ever learn about, or they would either directly or indirectly incriminate Mercury in certain events, which would surely give his identity away, so he kept all of those hidden in his private collection, which was not only off-limits from anyone, but also hidden so that no one would stumble upon it or gain access just like that.

Well, neither those shelves nor those pedestals in the museum would stay empty for too long, because Mercury intended that as soon as he was done with his current project, he would finally be ready to actually start filling the library. Then after he had acquired a significant base amount, he would begin the construction of the road towards Norigo, so that people could actually discover and come to the library, bringing with them new additions to it.

His current project was to transport a herd of feldûnost from the Beor-mountains, where he had bought them from the dwarven clan of Dûrgrimst Feldûnost, which had taken quite a massive amount of convincing and had in the end required Mercury to quickly flash the dwarven ring of friendship, which was something that he did not want to generally do, as, although it was not the only ring in circulation, it could possibly still help to identify him as Mercury Iridium.

Mercury had wanted for quite some time to get a different meat source than the deer on Eregion and the occasional dried meat from Norigo, as one could really tire of the poor taste of the deer after 25 years of eating it, but as the herd would need to be able to survive on the mountainside of Eregion, sheep, cattle, pigs and other such regular creatures had been ruled out as an option, which in Mercury's mind had left feldûnost as the best suited for the job, as they were native to the mountainous Beors and already had proven by the dwarves to be able to be used as such.

However moving a herd, large enough to sustain itself, without needing Mercury to occasionally go and buy new ones, by only himself and Kilgharrah had proven to be quite the challenge, as individual animals would occasionally try to go in a different direction or flee entirely from the rest of the herd.

So far, the only reason that the herd had not been successful in dispersing had been because Kilgharrah would fly above it and when some of the feldûnost tried to go in a wrong direction or flee, he would swoop down and create a wall of fire in front of them, which would automatically steer them back into the right direction.

We really need to find some sort of way to control these feldûnost when we get back, Mercury thought to Kilgharrah, after he had once again prevented a part of the herd from escaping, I originally planned to let them go relatively free in a limited part inside the walls, so that they could go up to the lake to drink when they were thirsty and so on, but I fear that they will spread out over the entire area, which I certainly does not them to.

How about just creating a fence?, Kilgharrah asked, it would keep them inside the area, where we want them and away from where we do not.

They are feldûnost, Mercury stated, they naturally live in the mountains. The fence would need to be a completely solid wall more than three metres high to prevent them from simply scaling it. This reminds me that I would also need to do something about the ring wall in such a case.

So what do you propose then?, Kilgharrah asked, I certainly will not keep preventing them from escaping once we are home. I do have other interests, and I will not always stay there, as we have already discussed.

I know, Mercury grumbled, I will just have to think of some sort of other method to keep them there.

That night, when Mercury and Kilgharrah made camp in the most western parts of the Beor-mountains, Mercury took out his contact lenses, as he had done every night they had been with the herd. This was done for several reasons, the major being that this allowed him to much more effectively see in the night, and thereby notice when the feldûnost tried to flee or if a predator tried to snatch some.

Later into the night, Mercury spotted a silvery grey shrrg trying to take a feldûnost away from the herd. Mercury had been amazed that despite its size, which was close to a horse's, the shrrg had managed to sneak up unto the herd and kill a feldûnost without either Mercury or Kilgharrah noticing it. They had only noticed it when it had had to drag the carcass away.

Strangely fascinated by the creature, Mercury decided to abandon his half-attempt at going back to sleep and instead follow it to wherever it would go. He would not kill the animal for the theft of one of his feldûnost. After all, the damage had already been done and nothing Mercury did to the shrrg would repair it, and in a way, Mercury felt…amazed? No, it was not that simple, but still…Mercury could not help but feel slightly proud for the shrrg.

Are you sure that is wise?, Kilgharrah said in Mercury's mind.

Following a predator the size of a horse through trees and into its den? No probably not, Mercury jested back, while he continued on his path to stalk the mighty creature.

Good, that means that I can go back to sleep, Kilgharrah lazily said, before he cut off the connection.

Mercury suppressed a chuckle, which would surely have given him away to the shrrg, as Kilgharrah's answer reached him. Yes, Kilgharrah may act unconcerned or even blatantly rebellious at times, but after more than 30 years of companionship, they both knew when the other was being serious or needed to be taken seriously, and tonight was not such a night, as even if the shrrg discovered and attacked him, Mercury would still be capable of cutting its central nerve system with but a single concentrated thought.

As the night wore on, the shrrg seemed to keep dragging the dead feldûnost without the slightest indication of pause or wanting to eat it. Mercury had been surprised after the first hour had gone, as it was his understanding that predators usually just dragged the prey away for a small while, so that they could devour it in peace, but this one had been dragging it for close to an hour and a half.

Mercury had not contacted Kilgharrah since then, with the pace they had went, he doubted that he would have the mental strength to do so. Kilgharrah would no doubt have been able to do so, which was why it had more often than not been him that had contacted Mercury if they were far from each other.

It was one of the things that Mercury had often tried to improve upon himself, but had always been unable to. Kilgharrah had said something about Mercury not doing it right, which he apparently had learned from the dragon riders themselves how to do, but so far, Kilgharrah had been unable to teach Mercury how exactly he was doing it wrong.

It had something to do with focus, Mercury had had that drilled into him, but it was also something about watching one and knowing all. Whatever that meant. Not that Mercury and Kilgharrah had devoted much time to the issue, after all between the enormous workload of building their place, the trips to Norigo to get supplies, while simultaneously having to avoid all suspicion and keep his different personas, both old and new alive and thriving; Mercury had hardly had enough free time to seriously go into the subject.

Not that he actually needed or could benefit from it. After all, he was supposed to remain as inconspicuous as a mere mortal without such skills, and it was not like he supposed that he would ever get back to active duty again, was it?

No, this was his to be his new life! He had already proven once that he could not handle the consequences of such a life, and besides, the dragon riders had everything under control. They did not actively NEED him. His reoccurrence would only create more trouble than it could ever possibly solve, so he would resign to this, this life of merely trying to find a reason to get up every morning only to know that nothing of greater importance would be in store.

Yes, ordinary mortal people might call the immortal elves blessed, but in Mercury's mind, it was just as much of a curse. You would not know it before you actually tried it, but being mortal was…exhilarating. Knowing that you only had a very limited number of years to do everything, which you ever wanted to do, was motivation unlike any other.

Now that he no longer had that motivation, Mercury felt less productive every year that passed, because after all, he could easily postpone this for a year, a decade, a century even, and it would not change a thing. In the end it would not matter whether he unveiled his library now or in a decade. In fact, the only reason that Mercury had kept himself so busy with it was to avoid the sheer boredom of not having anything to do.

Mercury hardly noticed as the first stars began to vanish, as the night began to give way for the day, until finally his impromptu stalking trip ended, when the shrrg finally arrived at a cave. It was not a big cave, but it was enough to house the cubs and the shrrg, who Mercury now realized was female.

Mercury studied fascinatedly as the cubs, which were barely more than a month old, hungrily tore into the feldûnost, which their mother had brought to them, while he simultaneously keeping out of the wind and out of sight.

As he watched the cubs finish their meal, along with their mandatory cleaning from their mother afterwards, his sense of time became lost to him. That was until Kilgharrah rudely barraged himself into Mercury's mind without as much of a warning first.

Have you been spending the entire night watching those shrrg cubs?, Kilgharrah amusedly asked.

No, we only arrived here a little while ago, Mercury answered back in a displeased tone, before he curiously asked, why? How far are we from the camp?

Not far, I would say that you might have been able to make the trip in a small hour or so, Kilgharrah answered.

Interesting. These shrrg are clever enough to try and shake any pursuers that might be following them after they steal from their herds. It certainly shows great signs of intellect to be able to plan ahead as such, Mercury mused more to himself more than to Kilgharrah, despite Kilgharrah still being in his head and hearing every word of it.

Yes, they make good effective hunters. Why the sudden interest?, Kilgharrah asked in a tone, which Mercury knew meant that he had already guessed that Mercury had an idea.

If they are smart enough to figure this out, there is no telling what else they might be trained for, Mercury answered back, already decided in his mind about what he needed to do, they could solve the problem with the feldûnost running away, and who knows…perhaps more in the future.

You want to use predators to guard prey?, Kilgharrah asked in disbelief, and how would you stop them from simply spreading around to the rest of the Spine? I do not think that the local farmers would be happy if groups of shrrgs suddenly began to snatch their cattle from them.

With the right training and discipline, they would know what to do. All I have to do is establish the library as their new den and make sure that they recognize us as the packleaders, Mercury answered coolly, I would just need to limit the pack's size to something where the feldûnost herd would not dwindle, and if I could get them to understand that they were only to take the older ones, which served no further purpose, then it would be even easier.

You believe that you can train that massive shrrg in front of you to not only do as you wish, but let her touch her cubs even, Kilgharrah asked back in disbelief, which was grounded, as it would be extremely foolhardy to even consider such a task.

No, of course not, Mercury answered back, she is way too old to be tamed, but her cubs are not.

Yes, this was what Mercury had known he needed to do since the idea had first sprung itself in his head. Adults were tedious and difficult to break and train, but younglings, younglings he could shape into every shape he wanted.

You are going to kill her for that?, Kilgharrah asked in what Mercury knew to be disdain.

Not kill her, no, Mercury answered back to appease his most valued partner, probably just put her to sleep and then remove the cubs. It will be better for them even. Think about it, if I leave them here, chances are that less than one or two will end up surviving, while I could guarantee all of theirs survival of we brought them along. Plus, the mother would not even grieve for them, but simply mate next season to produce a new batch. It is nature's way after all.

Fine, Kilgharrah relented, but you know that this sort of thinking is why nobody, not even the dragon riders, trusts you, right?

I know, Mercury chuckled, while he prepared himself for his wordless spell to put the cubs and their mother to sleep. He had never gotten around to properly learning the Ancient language, or maybe he had but just could not remember it, but he supposed he would have all the time in the world to eventually do it.

With the Ancient language, it was easy to do a whole lot of things, but without it, Mercury needed to concentrate on the exact ramifications and repercussions of what he tried to do, and more importantly, what he tried not to do.