AN: This chapter marks us catching up to the quest on Spacebattles. Updates will not be every day now. They will still be frequent but there will be days without one.

Your efforts over the week have paid off. Once you have removed the leather from the barrel and smoked it, you have two rolls of a quality you deem acceptable. You have not decided what you are going to do with it. You currently have nothing that you want to craft, and you have far too much to do this week to go on a long trading mission. As you roll the leather and tie it to your saddlebag, you decide that you will simply do nothing for now. There is no pressing need to take action after all, leather will keep for years.

After you have finished working with your leather you have a hard time deciding what to do. You could explore the ruins some more; you saw a room with a large mosaic on the floor that seems important. You could also join Ranger for another training session. In the end the same thing prevents you from doing both of those things. You have to leave tomorrow for your town, to see how it is going. It is not likely that anything will go wrong if you spend your time training or exploring, but if it does you will be spending most of the rest of the week dealing with it. With that established there is only one thing left to do. You turn you focus inward and consider your current condition.

You know your own body well. It is a function of being a master swordsman. Since you have arrived there has been an almost imperceptible delay between your decision to move and the motion itself. This is the key to discovering the nature of your condition. Your reflexes are still fine, you know that for a fact, so your nerves are fine. Which means the delay is not between your mind and your hand, it is between your soul and your mind. If you close your eyes and focus, you quickly find yourself back in the Beyond. This means that your mind is still connected to your soul. You open your eyes and consider your symptoms at length. The discovery of what they most likely mean is buried deep in your memory, in a report you read once. A human had been found trying to break into your fortress, possessed by a Sindar houseless. The houseless had been driven out and the human had described the sensation of possession. It is not the same, but it is very similar. He had mentioned a feeling of being disconnected from his body and feeling as though everything was a dream.

You yourself are not possessed, obviously. Your actions are still you own. However, that does not mean that you are not possessing something. You died, technically speaking your spirit was cast from your body. You had assumed that you had integrated into your body, but that is clearly not the case. It should be simple though; mages enter and leave the fade so you should be able to as well. You close your eyes and focus on the other world. Once there, you spend time stretching out with your sense of the unseen for the boundary between the worlds. Since your mind is currently IN the unseen, you actually get to 'see', though only in metaphor, how your sense works. Thin lines of the same bright light that makes up your soul snake throughout the world. Along the 'floor' and the 'sky'; you see them wrapping around important things to highlight their shape. Eventually the lines suddenly turn ninety degrees and run up and down to meet each other. The resulting cage highlights a 'wall', if one that is largely metaphorical, that marks the boundary of the physical world. You try to pass through it but are violently thrown back. This must be what prevented your soul from reaching your body in the first place. A few minutes exploration reveals some kind of curtain? Veil? That covers the 'wall' which repels any attempt to enter it. Your one comfort is that you get the sense that it 'bends' whenever you try to pass through.

You are so tempted to just throw yourself against the barrier, trusting in your power to sunder it and carry you through to your body. It is the same impatience that has long cursed your line. It is an impatience that you mastered long ago. You do not know what might happen, and while you might not die you do not know what damage you might do. To say nothing of how long it might take. No, you are going to study this 'veil' and see what it does. Then you will break it. You focus your senses on the barrier before you. The lines retracting from the surrounding 'floor' and 'ceiling' and creating a glowing outline of a wall that stretches into the sky and across the horizon. You focus your mind on the sensations you are getting from them, rather than the 'sight' of the lines themselves.

You examine the barrier before you and come to a number of revelations. The first one is the most obvious. Whatever this barrier is on a more fundamental level it is primarily designed to keep spirits away from the physical world. You would think that you were an unfortunate collateral case, were it not for one fact. Whenever you try to push against the barrier, you find the barrier responding actively. It prioritises you significantly above other such attempts that your senses make you vaguely aware of. Whatever this is, it is designed to keep souls in the Beyond and spirits are the collateral. Beyond that first revelation you also discover many things of the nature of its construction. For one, it was constructed, the barrier is not natural. It relies primarily on an interesting combination of psychological impediment and conceptual reinforcement. First it establishes a division between the 'real' and the 'beyond' that does not in truth exist. Then it subtly reinforces this distinction in the minds of everyone who passes through it. This creates a feedback loop where the barrier is first made, and then made more and more real by every person who passes through it. You are reminded of the saying 'your focus determines your reality' only applied metaphysically and simultaneously by a single creator and the entire population of Thedas.

You sit down and contemplate the trouble before you. You cannot spend too long in this realm, lest another of those abominations of nature called demons finds you. You are frustrated to discover that completely destroying the barrier is beyond your capabilities, at least all at once. Much like a castle wall, it can be damaged in places, perhaps even destroyed. Doing so will not compromise the integrity of the whole, though it will create an exit for you. Fundamentally the how of getting your soul through is the real problem, mages manage by having their souls shielded by their bodies. Merrill's potion clearly did not reunite your body and soul properly or you would have come out whole after her experiment. You have two options, three if you are willing to be reckless, before you. You can figure out a way to pass your soul through the barrier, either by concealing it or by subtly editing the barrier to let you pass. The second option is to expand on Merrill's work, try to bring your body to your soul and reunite them here. The weakness of this approach is you have no idea how a soul and a body are connected; it sounds like the business of Mandos to you. The final option, the most reckless, is to simply create a breach and leave. You could do that now if you prepare carefully. You will need to focus on rejecting the reality the 'veil' presents and enforcing your view of reality on the Beyond.

You consider the barrier between you and the physical world with great care. You discard the option of simply forcing your way through without a second's hesitation. You know the things that live on this side, and you have no intention of aiding them in escaping their well-deserved prison. The real question whether it is better to slip your soul through the 'veil' or if reuniting your body and soul in the Beyond is the better choice. Reuniting soul and body seems easier at first glance, it uses what you already know about the barrier to bypass it rather than having to study it in great detail. There are two major concerns that sway you from this course. Firstly, uniting soul and body is the work of the Valar, and you are not sure how to do it. You had assumed they would reunite automatically, but your body had come here, and doing so had not reunited with the soul. Secondly, you would need Merrill's help to reach the Beyond, and you have no intention of being in anyone's debt for this. So, you will attempt to pass your soul through to the real world. In order to do so you sit down and really examine the construction of the barrier to see what you need to do in order to pass.

Whoever built this veil is a wielder of arts that far surpass you. You honestly cannot tell everything that you need to know from a simple examination. You dare not linger too long, lest you attract more of the demons to you. You resolve that the next time you attempt this you will take the time to set it up such that you have all the time you need to examine the barrier in detail. You already have a few ideas of how you could use your newfound talent to secure the Beyond around you. You reprimand yourself for not doing so before you began your examination, for rushing towards answers without thinking ahead. For now, you will have to content yourself with your initial impressions.

Those impressions are promising. The nature of the barrier looks for certain markers in the beings that pass through it. When those markers are detected, it pulls in power from its source and concentrates it there, turning what is a permeable barrier into a solid wall. The markers it looks for seem to be the problem you are facing; your soul has every single one. You are not entirely sure what they mean, you are still not a native of the unseen and perceive much of what you discover through metaphor. Metaphor or not, it is something you can work with. If you find a way to conceal those markers you should be able to pass through the barrier in theory. You know for a fact that it will not be sufficient alone, the barrier has internal defences designed to strip such disguises from those whose passage it seeks to bar.

You want to examine the barrier in more detail, the demons do not seem to be coming after you, despite your concerns. You are however running out of time in the real world. You have been at this task for hours and you still need to lead a trading expedition for your village tomorrow. Before you go you take some time to experiment with securing the area according to your plans. You are pleased to find that you can in fact enforce a certain sense of reality in the Beyond. When you open your eyes to finish your preparations to leave for the town you are building, you leave behind you a perfect replica of your childhood home in the Beyond.

You have taken it upon yourself to aid the bandits you met in their transition to respectable villagers. You failed to aid them last week, providing nothing more than direction. You had however managed to assess what was needed and realised that you needed tools more than anything. Thus, when the week is slightly more than half done, you set off to begin the creation of a stable trade route by which you can secure tools on a regular basis. You are going to need to take inventory of what could be exchanged for said tools while you are there.

After you arrive at the burgeoning village you immediately take note of the uncured animal hide being put to a number of uses. Curtains, blankets and other such things have been achieved by the simple method of an animal hide. You are going to need to teach them how to cure those or they will quickly become a problem for the long term health of the camp. You mention this when you gather the former bandits together to discuss tool acquisition. They point out that tanning takes months, and they need it now. You are pleased to inform them that you can use a particular animal product, specifically the animal's brain, to tan its hide in far less time.

There is some pushback on the idea of establishing a semi-permanent trade route. You point out that they are going to need to repair and replace tools in the future. Further, you feel that establishing some kind of road would be beneficial to the town, but you cannot do that without tools or a good idea of where people will be going in the future. Your arguments convince most, if not all, of your apprentice townsfolk and they start to discuss who they might trade with. You raise the possibility of trading with one of the two Dalish clans in the area. It is met with suspicion initially, but you point out that the Dalish are in dire need of certain things that this town could provide in future. You do accept the argument that they struggle to make tools themselves, so they are a suboptimal choice. The other big concern is whether to trade with the nearby villages or the ones on the other side of the forest. On the one hand the closer villages are more likely to be stripped bare by soldiers, on the other the far villages are three days journey away through hostile country. After nearly an hour of arguing, you all decided to trade with the human villages on this side of the forest.

Leather working is the obvious trade for the former bandits here. It is much more reliable than any other option, since there will be many hides and animal brains around from hunting and creating leather is easier than vellum. You are also unwilling to part with the secrets of paper creation so easily. You find yourself not needing it as much as you had feared, so it remains the most valuable knowledge you have to trade. You put the matter to a vote and the tanning idea is met with no opposition from the dozen townsfolk. Fortunately, they have not bothered to dispose of the heads of the animals they have killed so you have a significant amount of material to work with. You set about the task of instructing these former bandits in a more respectable trade

They do not take to the task with ease, it is clear that none of them have ever done something of this nature. But with demonstration and patient explanation they get the gist. You consult with them as to who will be in charge of trading. You will naturally be going along on the first expedition but after that they will need to handle themselves. They pick someone named Jake, who proves to be a passable student as you explain some of the basics of trading. You reassure him that you intend to set up a long term deal when he seems on the verge of panic. Your words calm him enough to get him to listen to the various factors that might cause price fluctuations and how to avoid being taken advantage of.

The journey to the local villages is an hour or two longer than it would be from the ruins. You make good time and arrive at the village of Lannerch, which you had already noted as a good place for selling leather. You search for a proper leatherworker who will be willing to buy your goods. You also make a note to try and find a way to teach the villagers leatherworking, it will be much more profitable than selling the raw materials.

You end up selling them to a travelling dwarf named Jezza. You are, for once, not the only one who finds the name strange, but they pay good coin and intend to be in the area for the foreseeable future. You make an agreement for a weekly delivery of leather which will net you a stable income base. You then travel to the blacksmiths and examine their tools. You are unsurprised by the lack of martial options; in truth you are also somewhat glad of it. The last thing you want is to make this town into a haven of well-armed and fed bandits. You would like to be able to buy raw materials and make your own tools, but you lack the skill or followers to do so. You look over the racks of tools and realise that you cannot afford everything the village will need. You will have to choose what to prioritise.

There is really no debate on what you should get. You know for a fact that logging and construction tools, axes, saws, adzes and the like, are the primary restriction on the further expansion of the soon to be town. The rest of the trading party knows it too. You spend the money you made from selling leather gathering up a dozen tools of that nature. You would have like to have a dozen of each so that the work could go faster, but creative scheduling should ensure that no work is wasted and everything still gets done. You and the rest of the trade caravan carry the tools back with no small amount of pride on their part. They had managed to create and sell something without resorting to banditry and that is a heartening thing. You on the other hand are simply relieved that no one recognised them, that would have made for an awkward interaction. Another reason you had chosen to avoid the suspicious village of Brynwich.

You return towards the end of the third day, the sun is sinking beyond the horizon and the hunters who had been left behind have managed to secure some food. You note the carefully removed hide and decapitated head with pride as you join them for dinner. A short discussion about how much money was made and how much the tools cost ensues. During said conversation, you mention that you think that some proper tanning equipment might be useful in the immediate future. You are met with a number of people who argue that hunting equipment is much more important for the village. The disagreement centres on what the focus of leather production should be, you are in favour of quality others in favour of quantity. It is an engaging conversation, that you win; obviously.

During the conversation you excitedly start to talk about your plans for the town. How you envision it growing. You are worried that you get ahead of yourself by starting to ask about where you could find more people. You are particularly concerned with carpentry and blacksmithing, they are vital skills that no one here has. You are also interested in how the under-tree farming project is going, though it is still far too early to tell. Despite your concerns that you are thinking too far ahead, counting your eagles before they hatch or however that saying goes, you get a positive response from the villagers. They join you in your excitement, discussing the possibility of bringing family members or finally marrying that girl once they get established. Most importantly you notice that as the conversation progresses, they stop calling the area a camp and start to refer to it as a village. Best of all, they start to call it their village. When you realise that you will have to return to the heart of the forest in darkness, they offer to let you stay the night with them. You worry that Merrill might be distressed that you do not return, but a few days delay is to be expected on trading trips, so in the end you agree. They worry about fitting you into the, far too small, framed tent but you volunteer to sleep by the fire in your cloak. The rest of the night passes with storytelling and singing. Having learned your lesson from spending time with Ranger, you do not propose dancing this time. When the others go to bed, you wrap yourself in your mother's gift and fall asleep. That night you dream of a village beneath the trees filled with smiling after-comers, elves, dwarves and quendi.