AN:We are now fully caught up, it should be about 2 days before another chapter is made available

You return to the ruins drained after the events of Zathrien's tribe. Merrill collapses by the fire as you store what supplies you had managed to secure during the week. As you do so you realise that you have an opportunity on your hands. These ruins are largely abandoned, and the Dalish do not claim ownership of them. Afterall, if they had would they not have tried to stop you from accessing them, or at least sent an escort. Now that the werewolves are one, you are the master of the ruins. Why not make a base here. The more you think about it the more you like the idea, at first you had shrunk away from the idea of making a permanent home in this new land. You did not want to feel as though you were planning to live here forever, but there is more to it than that. You never believed that departing this world would be a simple affair, but the revelation of the barrier between the physical and the unseen has revealed that there may be forces that are actively hostile to your attempts to depart Thedas. You are also snaking tendrils of influence throughout all who live within this forest, and you cannot help but envision these ruins as a new capital for what could very easily be a burgeoning kingdom. More than all of this there is a part of you that wonders if you are going to come to a point where what you need is guarded behind castle walls, you would need an army and such a force will need a base. These considerations are what motivate your decision to make these ruins into a base of operations for yourself.

You walk through the halls of the ruins considering what you will do, you are only one person after all. Construction will be difficult for you alone, and you do not think the people you have met will have the necessary stonemasonry skill. Your wandering planning session is stopped by a magical rune carved into the floor. As you use your newly acquired understanding of fade energy to remove it from existence you realise that you have a solution at your fingertips. You turn on your heel and run back to where Merrill is.

Merrill was lying on her bedroll, not asleep but still resting. You would have left her to it, but the sound of your approach caught her attention, and she had stood up expecting some dire news or an enemy attack. So you immediately launch into your questions.
"Do you remember your lesson about conceptual nature?" At her nod you continue. "And you agree that reinforcing reality in a spell construct should, in theory, make it real?" Another nod. "So we should be able to make something permanent out of magic right?" A third, more hesitant nod. "We are going to rebuild this place in its entirety."
Merrill is understandably confused by your revelation since she is missing a lot of your logic, so you explain in more detail. The essence of your idea is that you can call upon your talent with making fade energy conform to reality to make something in the fade, then make it real enough to pass through the veil, which should allow it if it is a 'physical object'. Once it is in the real world you should be able to wield a song of power to anchor the construct to the real world conceptually and create your base that way. Merrill is very lost, not experienced enough in the concepts behind you magic to understand. Telling her your idea aloud does make you realise that you have not accounted for the ruins, so you adjust the plan to integrate them into the building, providing the physical material to stabilise the construction so it does not

While you were exploring the ruins a few weeks ago you had come across a large room with a mosaic in the centre of the room. You recognised the mosaic from another room, one with a locked door. You had not had a chance to examine either room in much detail as you had wanted to find the library, and once you had found it you had no further wish to explore. Now you decide to investigate them. You pick the one you had not yet entered first due primarily to curiosity. Though you recall the room being filled with skeletons, which is another reason to investigate.

Immediately after you entered you were faced with a ghostly white image of a Dalish child crying for their mother. You drew your sword reflexively, extending your sense for fear of a houseless. Your senses find nothing though, only the ever pervasive taint of dark magic. Still the ghostly image cries for its mother, desperately searching for her. Before you can decide what to do about it the image flees, as though from some force and the taint of dark magic swells. The skeletons that lie on the floor surge to their feet, rusted weapons you would swear were not there before being swung at you. Even as you reflexively defend yourself you cannot help but notice that the armour and weapons are very similar to the one you saw in your vision from shortly after you arrived.

You bat the rusted blades aside with ease. These corpses have no skill to their movements, only numbers and tireless magic in place of muscle. It is nothing you have not faced before and nothing cannot overcome. Your blade, a masterpiece of Eldar craftsmanship, easily cleaves bone apart and puts an end to this attempt on your life. Once the last of the skeletons fall you follow the direction the ghostly image fled. You find nothing, no evidence of the boy or any revelations in the dead end room he had fled to. You focus on wondering what this room was used for, you could easily figure out the boy's fate, but you are uninterested in doing so.

Leaving the room before you can no longer avoid the obvious conclusion you notice another room directly opposite it. This room contains what might have once been a sarcophagus but now lies shatter open. In the ruins there are no remains, but there is a stone tablet depicting some kind of ritual involving a jug of water and an altar that you think you saw in the other room with a mosaic. You idly consider investigating the tablet but quickly dismiss the idea, the vision and the skeletons are a far greater concern.

You do not want dark magic in your base. None at all, and the connections these skeletons have with the vision you had intrigues you. You have noticed that dark magic clings to this entire forest and you wonder what it could possibly be. Given that this world does not use the magic you are used to you are unsure why there is dark magic here in the first place. Fortunately, this skeleton ambush has given you exactly what you need to find out. There was no sensation of dark magic until they arrived, and they did so with a surge of it. Dark magic is also associated, in your vision, with the bringing of what you have since learned are demons from the Beyond. If you compare what you know of the beyond, as well as the barrier between it and the real world, with what you know of dark magic you should come to an answer as to what must be done.

The answer is obvious with only the smallest amount of thought, dark magic is any use of power that perverts or distorts the natural order, the Beyond is filled with creatures that are themselves a horrific distortion of a natural being. You know for a fact that your vision contained an example of mass summoning of those beings. You suspect that two things have happened, the summoning has tainted the land and weakened the barrier between the worlds. The dark creatures in the forest, the spiders in particular, are likely normal creatures that have simply been warped but that does not apply to skeletons that are both dead and inside. Merrill has mentioned in the past that spirits will possess bodies to escape the Beyond. This is likely what happened, the boy might have been a ghost or he might have been an echo in the Beyond, but whatever he was he drew attention to you. Spirits then possessed the corpses in the room and attacked you due to the corruption caused by dwelling in this realm. You would like to investigate the ghostly vision in more detail, but it has not repeated itself and the presence of dark magic is more pressing. Fortunately, what you have discovered thus far is mostly good news, as the problem seems to stem from outside the base rather than something inherent to it.

You start by travelling through the ruins, accompanied by Merrill and Ranger, collecting as many bodies as you can. These bodies are given a joint funeral by the two of you, using a combination of Noldor, Dalish and Human rites. It is a sorrowful moment, for though you knew not who these people were, you felt that no one deserved the fates that many of the corpses had suffered as you had collected them. Being raised to fight on behalf of monsters from the unseen is not a kind fate. When you ask about what else could be possessed you quickly discovered that anything living will serve. Since you cannot remove all life from the area around you, it is clear you will need to find a way to purify the area, or at least drive off the spirits. Merrill mentions that some people have captured demons in a device, and that such captured demons usually scare others away.

Merrill's suggestion intrigues you, but you also want to try the tried and true method of channelling the light of Valinor to cleanse an area. The idea of capturing a demon opens the possibility of interrogation, you could learn so much of the Beyond and the boundary that keeps you from uniting body and soul. You are also cautious about attempting to channel the power of the Valar, it is not a thing done lightly even more so than calling on the light of the Eldar. But if you were to capture demon, you would need tools you currently do not have, you also have no skill in the forging of such. It is a tough decision but ultimately what decides you is the taint in the land itself. Nothing you have learned of the magic of this land has the ability to address it, and it is far more concerning than the weakening of the barrier to you. You have no desire to find the basement of your base infested with giant spiders. With your decision made you climb to the very top of the ruins, leaving Merrill on the ground. There, with the forest easily seen for miles around, you call the light of the Eldar forth in preparation for the far more complex weaving you will be creating.

You do not know what others see when you call upon the power that is yours by blood. You have seen others use it, and the experience is always slightly different for each person. Merrill seems impressed by it, though not to the same extent as Marethari was. That is not relevant to you now, you focus on the sensation you are getting from your soul. The barrier resists the passage of your power but not sufficiently to prevent you from calling it to you. You could try to brute force this using nothing else, but you are no fool. You want to change the land around you permanently and there is only one way to do so. You breathe in deeply and chant a song of wizardry.

You do not so much as choose the tune as it comes from within, a distant echo of the great song of creation. Your song tells of the trees, rivers, of growing. Sunlight, healing and the banishing on night. You recall in your words the first dawn, the rising of Ëarandil above the horizon and the shining promise of hope they had brought. You sing of Aman, and the two great trees. You feel the shadows rage, the dark taint in the land digging its claws in, desperately holding on despite the might of your song. The gloom of the forest lightens as light filters through the leaves, Merrill whirls her head around, as though seeking some distant sound. You focus on your weaving, singing now of creation, of the Allfather and his children. Beads of sweat run down your face, but you do not let up. The shadows gather and attempt to lunge out at you, but they are halted by your song. As you sing of brotherhood, unity and the simple kindness of a stranger the last of the taint slips away, burned up by the sunlight.

You collapse onto the ground as your song ends. Your legs feel as though they were made of gelatine, your hair is soaked through with sweat. Merrill is looking up at you in a strange combination of wonder and fear. You are wondering why she has such a look when she scales the building.
"Are you ok?" She cries as she reaches the roof.
You nod, your voice hoarse. "I am fine." You cough. "I am just exhausted; this was no simple working."
Merrill seems to take your admission that you are fine as permission to launch into her questions. She seems amazed by the power of your song and is eager to learn them herself. You rest your head against the ground and wait for feeling to return to your limbs.

Merrill had not seen what Marethari had heard her teacher describe as 'the light of the Eldar' before. Her keeper had described it to her before, but it was nothing like seeing it in person. When one is told to describe nobility or authority, they will describe the signs of such, crowns or shining armour. No such thing appeared when Nelyafinwë called forth the might of his very soul, it was impossible to completely describe what it looked like, only that he looked like more than mere flesh. None of that was unexpected though it was interesting, no what took her aback was the song of power he sung. She had heard him discuss them briefly, speaking of their power and the cost of using them. She was not ready for what she experienced. It began when the first note rang out, the sun seemed brighter and shadows she had never noticed before began to lift. Then the music swelled, and she heard the distant sounds of bright horns and the roaring of the sea. She whirled around, trying to see where the sounds were coming from and saw nothing. When she turned her eyes to her teacher once more, she was taken struck by the sheer might that seemed to roll off him in waves. Not to her eyes, but to her slowly developing sense of how different parts of the world connected. For the first time she really processed the fact that her teacher was not human, was not an elf but something else. Then the song ended, and he collapsed. Fear leant her strength she would never have imagined she possessed. She scrambled up to the roof, his words about collapsing from exhaustion and dying ringing in her ears. He was fine, tired but fine. It was an enormous relief. Yet as she stared at her fallen teacher, she couldn't help but wonder if maybe, just maybe she could wield such power. When she helped him down from where they had climbed to she resolved to learn all that she could of these 'songs of power' and maybe, just maybe she could do what Zathrien had falsely claimed to have done.

You had spent most of yesterday exploring, clearing out the contents of the ruins while deciding what to build. Now that is done, and you 'enter' the Beyond by closing your eyes. You have placed yourself in the centre of the first floor of the ruins. Moving your construct into the real world and binding it there is going to be a challenge that you are looking forward to, but it is not one you want accidentally misaligned. So, you will be building using yourself as the centre to better map the design to the ruins that will form its conceptual base. You had struggled on what to design, you did not want to intrude unnecessarily on the culture of this land. Replacing the ruins seems rude. In the end it is this concern that decides you. You need this to be more than a mere mausoleum or temple, which is what the ruins were. You will respect the original owners by incorporating as much of their style into the new building as possible. You doubt you will be able to resist altering it somewhat of course, the elves build far too square for your tastes. Both styles use arches to great effect though, and the domed rooves of your people will compliment that choice much better than the flat ceilings and round domes of the natives.

Designing what you need is a challenge you are ready to undertake. You have experience in doing so from your fortress at Himring and the lessons you learned there inform many of your decisions in this project. The principles behind its construction are much more artistically driven than Himring was, but the experience in underlying engineering prevents you from making any novice mistakes that will fall apart once exposed to the rigours of physical existence. You also have an extensive list of the various rooms and amenities that such a building will need; bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, storerooms and still more necessities are planned and placed in your mental map of the space. You plan walkways and redundant rooms so that one person can live as comfortably as a thousand. Then you begin to consider defensive options, planning out how you will prevent the local creatures of darkness from overrunning the base you are building in your mind. Finally, the part you had feared would be impossible, the enchantments. You have to carefully weave the concepts of the mystical defences into the very concept of the building as it will be constructed wholly by the magic of this land. It takes some incredibly difficult mental gymnastics but you manage to conceive of a wall that has the arts of the Eldar as much a part of its nature as the stone it is made of.

With the concept firmly constructed in your mind you reach out for the energy of potentiality around you and being to press the image in your head into it. Slowly, nerve rackingly slowly, the green tinged mad parody of a tomb around you begins to shift. You watch as the image you had created takes shape around you, noting with pleasure that nothing you had envisioned looks wrong when it becomes reality rather than an idea. Eventually you are staring at the image in your head made real and you are filled with pride. The energy twists and writhes beneath your will, trying to shift and change the image into something more reflective of its nature. But you press your concept of reality into the image, overwhelming the natural chaos and making the structure real, or as real as anything else in this realm.

You look at your accomplishment and see a large complex of green tile and sandstone. A central building surrounds a courtyard with a widely open plan. Around the central building is a number of smaller structures serving various purposes. The whole complex is surrounded by a wall studded with towers.

You have created a complex of buildings similar in design to some of the more complex temples you have seen. It is not a temple itself, but you cannot deny that you took some inspiration for the architecture from one. You have created a circular central building around a large internal courtyard. The courtyard is filled with trees and flowers, looking like one of Yavana's gardens save for the inclusion of the fountain you have seen in the ruins. The circular building has a number of open air viewing areas on the boundary of the courtyard. The roof is tiled in green, the domes sloping up to a point rather than the semi spherical domes of the ruins. The walls are a wonderful pale sandstone, one that will look pale in the light and orange in the sunset. Inside it is furnished to be the envy of any of the houses of the Noldor, the banner of your house hanging in many different places. The full banner, with its many different colours and complex central device, rather than the simplified eight pointed star you use day to day.

You cannot waste too long marvelling at your own creation, you have to move it into the real world before the effort of sustaining this image overcomes you. The trick to passing it into the real world is actually very simple, it requires a great deal of fade energy. Fortunately, you are surrounded by an endless amount of that and you yourself do not need to accompany it, so it should be simple.

It is exactly as you had predicted, passing the building into the real world is the same as any other spell used by mages. No mage could have managed to bring a whole building into the real world, but you exist in the Beyond and the physical world simultaneously so you can rely on the fade energy present there rather than an internal store. You open your eyes in the real world to see the building you had constructed in the fade, but it is an image only for the moment. Slowly over the course of the next several hours you weave the threads of fade energy present in the real world together with the ones that make up the image you created in the fade. As you do so you are constantly using your abilities to press the concept of reality into the fade energy of the image. You wish you could say that you simply blink and the image becomes reality, but it is a much slower process. Wall by wall, section by section, the reality of the ruin and the image of the new building merge. When you are done you have been sitting in the courtyard for half an hour.

Cautiously you relax your will, half expecting the new construction to cease existing and the ruins to suddenly reassert themselves. When they do not you smile to yourself, then you test them. You know you can put an end to magic by pressing the concept of reality into the energy around you, so you do so. The construction holds up to your test and you leap to your feat shouting for joy. Merrill reaches you as you do so, having started making her way to you when the rock she was sitting on became a chair.
She runs up to you and embraces you, "You did it! It really worked! Do you know what this means?"
You extricate herself from her grip, grinning. "That I am as brilliant as I am handsome?"
Her glare would normally bother you, but you are riding a high of success right now and nothing will change that. "No. It means that our magic is compatible! We must celebrate!"
Merrill's idea of a celebration is walking around looking at everything you did and having you explain how in detail. You are more than happy to do so, proud of your creation and the methods you used in it. A tiny part of you resolves to bring Kurvo here to show him, father too if you can find him.