A coughy, snarly screech caught Fred`s ear. Not really a loud sound, but certainly one he couldn`t ignore. He looked down into his domain, focusing on the Lined Hallway Zone. The lioness was awake. She sat in the middle of her lair, tail swishing with impatience. Fred saw right away that she was much healthier than she`d been. Her tail was unbroken, all of her fur was back, and her ribs no longer stood out.

　　He looked with his lair vision, and saw that she wasn`t fully green, because she didn`t have a tree. Fred knew he still had no way to make a fig tree, but he could make a nice elm tree for her. So he looked again, with his lair magic, and saw that the tree she wanted was bent and angled, so she could climb it and sit on it easily.

　　He had several elm trees to choose from (to copy), but they were all very tall and straight. Even the ones from Martin`s lair were short, but not bent. Just to experiment, he copied an elm into the center of the lioness`s lair, and tried to bend it into shape.

　　At first, it didn`t want to go. "I`m not a Tree Spirit. This is dumb." But then, as he kept trying, he found the tree WOULD bend for him, as long as he was gentle, and coaxing. He felt like he was saying "pretty please", and the tree would respond to his politeness. It was probably just his powerful magic, working automatically, as usual. But to Fred, it did feel like he was cajoling the tree, not directing it.

　　The cajoling worked, and the tree bent over, spreading its branches, turning into the shape the lioness wanted. When it seemed right, Fred stepped back, to give the lioness a chance to pass judgment. She did, jumping easily into the tree. She stepped out to the limit of each big branch, before choosing one, and laying down on the biggest branch. Her tail dropped below the branch, and began swinging slowly back and forth.

　　But Fred could see that she was still not green. He used his magic sight again, and saw that she expected the tree to change. Not taller, but bigger, thicker, stronger than it was. Once again, Fred coaxed the tree to fill itself out, and the tree agreed to buff up. Now the lioness turned green. She sort of turned away, as though dismissing Fred. At least, that`s how it felt to Fred.

　　"Good," Fred thought to himself. I`ve got other things to pay attention to, like a wall. He looked out at the prisoner in the hole. The man was still in the hole, and more humans had gathered around it, to speak with the man and each other. Kumbanaka was among the humans, talking excitedly with several.

　　Fred zoomed out a bit, trying to understand where he would put an innermost wall. If he closed up the back tunnels the kids had used, then his exposure to the outside was 1) the front entrance, with its huge covered stone plaza/steps, 2) the door to the maze, and 3) the huge tree shaft behind the other two.

　　He decided to start there, with a wall that enclosed all three entrances. He made the wall without hard angles, but it naturally came in a curved, vaguely triangular shape. Like the walls of the three forts, he made this Inner Wall two spans thick and eight spans high. He extended the hard stone of the wall another eight spans deep into the ground, though doing so required some adjustments to it, around the man-bat`s lair.

　　He made the wall with only one entrance, right before the front entrance of his domain. Fred had gotten pretty good at making nice stone doors (at least, he thought so), and he made very nice big ones for this wall. Just for fun, he copied some of the designs from the Tomb of the King onto the left door. He looked at some writing from the teleport circle, and copied that onto the right door. He hoped it would look magical and mysterious. He made the doors swing only outward, and used his magic to ensure they would close smoothly and easily.

　　He went back and put stairs on the back side of the wall, and crenelations on the top, so humans could stand on it and defend it. There, done. He had let Kumbanaka convince him that the humans would use the wall to protect him from crazy bombers and other demonic schemes, so now he felt a bit better.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

　　But he knew that the humans probably wanted to feel safe behind a wall, too, so it was time to build a second, much longer wall around the town.

　　Again he zoomed out, looking at the bigger picture. The town had started just downslope of his front entrance, on the other side of a thin line of trees. Then Fred had created the Glass Citadel near the other town buildings, and followed that up with the three towers. The humans had responded by forgoing large, permanent buildings themselves, but the area around the town was still filling out with tents, latrines, horse barns, and other ramshackle structures. Fred imagined that, if a big human army were to show up, it would cover the downward slope with tents, probably all the way to the three forts.

　　He didn`t want to build a wall that long, at least not yet. And he recognized that the humans hadn`t even tried to occupy the areas to the north, west, and south of his front entrance. He also didn`t want to make his walls too close together. So he drew a kind-of-circular line around the town and his Inner Wall. The circle enclosed all of the permanent town, but not all the structures around it. In particular, one of the five permanent latrines that Fred had built lay outside the wall circle.

　　The circle expanded out to the north and south of his domain, and wrapped around behind (upslope of) his Inner Wall. It was at this part the two walls would be closest, but they were still separated by a hundred spans. He thought of this as his Town Wall, and got started turning the circle into a real wall.

　　It was much longer than the Inner Wall, but was otherwise the same design. Fred`s power had grown so much that it was hardly any work (at least, it didn`t feel like a lot of work). He just stood up section after section, until he`d worked his way completely round the circle. Like the Inner Wall, he added crenellations and inner-side stairs. He also made three huge double-doors, on the east, north, and south sides of the wall. He didn`t bother making fancy designs on them, though.

　　As he built the eastern part of the wall, the part closest to the humans` structures, he had to move some to make way. This was trivial; horse barns and small tents simply slid to a new location, leaving occupants startled.

　　As Fred finished the walls, he noticed a sound, a shout. He realized that the whole town was cheering for the new walls. The humans were standing, watching. Some were dancing. Many were running up the stairs to stand on the new wall. Watching them, he got the sense that the humans really appreciated the wall. "Good. It would suck if they hated it," he thought.

　　"The humans are, well, they`re ecstatic, Fred." Kumbanaka told him. ``The bombing had knocked the wind out of everyone, and many were worried about your health. Now, this wall you`ve built, seemingly out of nowhere& The humans` hearts are soaring."

　　"Good," Fred replied. "Walls are for protection, right? It wouldn`t be right if the walls didn`t make them feel safer."

　　"Walls are used for many things, Spirit. Not all of them protective. But your walls are& the humans are really appreciating them right now."

　　Fred didn`t answer, because he felt a couple of new creatures, and wanted to focus on them. One was big, a big bear, but with white feathers and a huge beak, like a bird`s. It was waiting patiently at the upslope side of the Town Wall. Fred hadn`t thought about if the new walls would block new creatures from joining his domain. But now it was happening.

　　Still, the answer was easy and obvious. Fred opened holes in both his Town Wall and his Inner Wall, to let the big creature inside. The word "sallyport" came unbidden to his mind, but this sort of mental thing wasn`t surprising for him anymore. Once the big bear thing was inside the walls, Fred simply closed them up again, like the openings had never happened.

　　Now that the bear thing was inside, it lumbered quickly toward the Front Entrance. It moved back into the Lined Hallway Zone, picked the last unoccupied lair, and sat down inside, turning yellow. Fred took a glance at the room with his magic sight, and saw that the bear-owl-thing wanted a dark forest, very much like what Martin had. That made it very easy for Fred, and it was done in a second. The bear-thing turned green, and went to lay down with its back to a tree.

　　Meanwhile, the other creature was getting closer to the same spot on the wall. When Fred went to focus on it, his heart almost stopped. It was a demon. A very big demon. Red skin. Black horns and hoofs. Covered in flames. It had a glowing-hot chain wrapped around its shoulder, and it carried a scarred, dull (but gigantic) metal cleaver. It marched closer and closer to Fred`s wall.

　　"Holy shit, guys! Help! I need help with this!" Fred shouted at Martin and Kumbanaka.

　　Kumbanaka replied, "I`m busy learning from these humans, Fred."

　　Martin followed with, "And I`m busy not dying. Go away."

　　"No, seriously, there`s a demon out here! A big one! Whadda I do?"

　　"How big?" Martin bothered to ask.

　　"Big!! Like, what, four, five spans tall. He`s on fire!"

　　"That does sound like a big demon," Martin sighed. "Tell it to go away or you`ll pop it like a puss-filled boil."