"Progress consists in knowing how to distinguish the nature of different difficulties, and in selecting the best means for overcoming them. But this cannot be achieved without effort and hard work. For just as a house cannot stand without a foundation, so too, success cannot be achieved without a strong and steady base. Let us, therefore, not be afraid to toil in laying the groundwork for our future success, for it is through hard work and diligence that we shall reap the rewards of our labors."

  - Waltheoff Odinsgode, Grand Priest of the Old Way

  The days that followed were a period of preparation for Taliesin. He spent much of it working on adding a defensive ward to his Empyreal Staff and planning the first chapter of his book on spellforms. His evenings were spent talking with Viggo about the future. He hammered out a rough plan for the spring - they would move on and find a city where an itinerant archmage and his band of refugees could build. Jarl Gunther was a good man but Taliesin had no interest in getting caught up in the politics of the small town for long. He’d fulfill his part of the bargain, and provide magics to the Jarl that would aid him, but the long-term struggle for the title was minor in the grand scheme of things.

  Yet the struggle would come here sooner or later. The Borean army of gnolls and yeti would beset the town, hoping to press their advantages in winter combat. He would have to do more to protect his people. Probably should do more for the town, too, he thought. They were feeding his refugees after all.

  So after his work on the staff was done - or at least the current enchantment complete, as the work would never truly end - Taliesin emerged from his workroom to find a strange energy in the air. He couldn’t put a finger on it - it felt like the onset of darkness and a sense of ancientness seeping into the corners. By contrast, the thralls and servants he passed by were buzzing with excitement, bordering on glee.

  He exited the Manor to head to the barn, the still dark sky overhead alit with the greens and blues of the aurora borealis and humming with eldritch energies that awed all who witnessed it. Taliesin, for his part, had seen far more great and terrible things. He marched under it unaffected.

  Upon entering the barn, he was met by a surprised cluster of families as they gathered around the main hearth for warmth and a touch of breakfast. The building had changed dramatically in the past week, with the old horse stalls converted fully into small one-room apartments with thick curtains or layers of blankets for doors. Atop the tiny cubes of private spaces had become communal storage - trunks and crates, canvas grain bags and barrels of apples. Intermixed with the piled goods were random bedrolls and piles of personal belongings - the lone wolves of the group who had no immediate family or were old enough to move out of the cramped spaces their families occupied to make room. A larger double-stall at the end had several young, marriageable girls wandering in and out, under the watchful eyes of an older matron.

  Viggo spotted Taliesin amidst the murmurings and came up to him as he headed towards the hearth.

  “Good morning, milord. What brings you out here today?”

  “I fear we’ve not seen the end of the gnoll armies, and I’ll not leave us unprepared again. I’ve come to see about raising some defensive wards around the barn, for emergencies. A basic ward against fire, another against bombardment, and then an emergency shield that will barricade the doors and walls against all intruders that can be triggered here at the hearth.”

  “Excellent, milord, the people will be much relieved to learn your magics protect them,” Viggo replied. “What do you need to accomplish this?”

  Taliesin turned and took a long look around the open space. He looked past the minutiae of daily life - the pot full of potato and onion peels that would soon become a soup, the dirty laundry in the corner to be washed, the children wrestling near the doors out of reach of any swats aimed their way from nearby mothers. Instead, he looked at how the refugees had decorated the space - the most colorful curtains and best embroidered blankets were used to separate the rooms from the central corridor, while ribbons were tied to saddle hooks on the walls. Several of the posts that went all the way into the rafters had been crudely carved with religious symbols, and a crude altar had been put on a shelf between jars of flour and a box of dried beans. But what struck him most was that sprigs of holly tied to every post.

  “What is the symbolism of the holly?” asked Taliesin. The peasants looked confused, so he clarified. “Why did you tie holly to the posts?”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Its… to honor Hel, milord Stormlord,” offered one of the older women at the hearth. “Winter is the death of all seasons, so we honor her so that she draws back her power in the Spring. We hope her blessing will protect us from her cold.”

  “Hmm, so it’s the cycle of seasons. The decay of Winter leads to the fertile promises of Spring and the growth of Summer and bounty of Autumn. To each season, their own domain, and with it their own deities. So if we want our wards to be at their strongest in the winter, we can forgo the more expensive, permanent solution and instead opt for a stronger, temporary one. “

  “Does that mean the wards will fail when the weather warms?” asked Viggo.

  “That is correct, they will likely fade over the course of a week or two once the last frost happens. But the threat of gnoll armies is imminent, while the concerns of spring can be addressed in a few months. Besides, we will be moving on from Buverik before then.”

  “Ah, that reminds me, milord, I’ve something to show you in town when you’re done here, if you have the time.”

  “That’s fine,” said Taliesin, magic already swirling around him as he reached out to the first holly branch. Much like his work on his Empyreal Staff, this was less spellcasting and more of using spellforms to craft an enchantment. Wards were unique, however, as they were empowered magics that were tied to a physical anchor until their aether was used up. This allowed for flexible, powerful effects, at the expense of the time and power required to constantly renew the wards.

  With deft fingers manipulating aether in ways that only he could see, there was nevertheless an ethereal green glow building around the sprig of holly that caused whispers to erupt amongst the peasants. Then the glow seemed to harden into a crystal glass shape around the sprig, before shrinking and vanishing into the dark green leaves.

  “Is… is that it?” asked Viggo, more than a little intrigued by the display.

  “Hardly,” said Taliesin as he moved to the next pole. “I’ll do the same with each sprig, then tie it all together with a final ward on the branch above the hearth. Then I’ll need to renew the wards every few days at each anchor point. If it was a more permanent enchantment, I could make a central key anchor that would empower all of the ward anchors. For our purposes, this will see us through the winter.”

  Two hours later, Taliesin completed his final anchor. All of the sprigs of holly glowed green again, and lines of light arced up and out to create a crystal bubble that meshed tightly against the walls of the barn. The new wards flashed brightly for a moment, before fading to invisibility. The peasants murmured in excitement as Taliesin gave them a lopsided smile. Several children gathered and giggled at the shiny holly sprigs, and more gathered behind him as he walked out. Taliesin had no doubt that they’d invent new games to play centered around the holly within the next few minutes, and they would be forgotten in the next few hours. A bittersweet memory came to mind of playing with his son when he was barely able to walk, and how much he and his wife had laughed at their silliness. The barn door closed swiftly behind him, cutting off both the laughter of the children inside and his thoughts of the past.

  “That’s a nice display,” called Jarl Gunther, who ambled his way over to Taliesin. “Reminds me of the old wards we used to have on the Manor. My grandfather used them when I was little, but then he stopped. Something religious, I believe. He got more devout as he got older.”

  “That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” mumbled Taliesin to himself. He waved it away mentally, and said, “I was actually considering offering to create wards for your town walls. If you had wards in your home once, you may have a key anchor that would be ideal for protecting your town.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to look,” confessed the young Jarl. “Could you reactivate the manor wards?”

  “Perhaps, although if I tie the wards for the walls to the same key anchor, then if the city walls go down, so would the wards on your home. On the other side of the coin, it would make the wards on your home far stronger than normal.”

  “If you ward both my home and my town, then I will consider your end of our bargain held up in full,” said Gunther thoughtfully. “And if the walls do come down, whether or not my home is defended becomes immaterial. We’ll be dead in the fight long before they make it to the manor.”

  Taliesin could only grin as the sentiment warmed his heart. He’d witnessed all manner of men through his divinations while he awaited the end back in Londinium. He’d watched defenses crumble and men run. He’d seen villages and towns that had held together to the last, with men and women shoulder to shoulder fighting it out. He’d seen rare victories and all too many defeats, cowards and heroes, and far too many last stands to give innocents time to flee. It was those last, desperate types that he had grown the fondest of, for they were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their people.

  They were his kind of fool.

  “Alright, Gunther, I’ll make your wards. Do I have your permission to use divination magic and wander your home?”

  “Go right ahead, although I would ask that you knock before entering private quarters. I’d prefer to avoid embarrassments, yes?”

  Taliesin laughed and headed towards the manor, already weaving a spell as he went.

  “In times long past, this home lay defended against all troubles, foes both hidden and emboldened. Show me where wild magics were once tamed, when aether flowed into a heart now lost. [Divination].”

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