Ti Remaining: [N/A]
(Status: Active Construction. Substructure Phase.)
Location: The Silver River - North Bank Trenches.
The enemy was no longer the Guild, or the King, or the skepticism of the farrs.
The enemy was water.
At 6:00 AM, the trench for the North Abutnt was a neat, rectangular cut in the earth, twelve feet deep, shored up with timber planks.
At 6:15 AM, it was a swimming pool.
Arthur stood at the edge of the pit, looking down.
The bottom of the trench was bubbling. Little geysers of silty water were pushing up through the gravel bed, filling the hole faster than the two farrs at the bottom could bail it out with buckets.
"We hit the water table," Zack shouted from the bottom, knee-deep in brown sludge. "It’s coming up through the floor!"
"It’s hydrostatic pressure," Arthur said, doing a quick ntal calculation of the flow rate. "The river is pushing the groundwater sideways."
"Whatever it is," Garnas grunted, hoisting a dripping bucket up to the rim, "it’s winning. We can’t pour the stone into this. It’ll just wash away the li."
Arthur paced the edge.
He didn’t have a pump. He didn’t have electricity. He had fifteen n with shovels and a mage with a sore shoulder.
"Get out of the hole," Arthur ordered.
Zack and the other digger scrambled up the ladder, their boots squelching.
The water level rose visibly, swallowing the bottom rungs.
"Do we wait for the river to drop?" Vivian asked, watching the water climb.
"That could take weeks," Arthur said. "We don’t wait. We seal it."
He turned to the farrs.
"The clay layer we dug through at four feet. The sticky yellow stuff. Bring it back."
"Clay?" Garnas asked, wiping mud from his face.
"Puddle clay," Arthur explained. "It’s impervious. If we pack it tight enough, water can’t get through."
He jumped down into the pit, landing in thigh-deep water. The cold was shocking, biting through his trousers.
"Julian!" Arthur shouted up. "I need you to push the water back. Just for five minutes. Can you create a localized pressure field?"
Julian peered over the edge. He looked at the muddy water. He looked at his pristine velvet sleeves.
He sighed deeply.
"I am a graduate of the Royal Academy," Julian muttered. "I can summon lightning. I can weave illusions."
He climbed down the ladder.
"But apparently, my destiny is to be a glorified cork."
Julian stood on the bottom rung, keeping his boots dry. He extended his hand over the water.
He didn’t cast a spell. He just exerted his will.
The mana rippled.
The water in the trench flattened. Then, slowly, it began to depress, pushed down by an invisible weight. The bubbling stops were capped. The water level receded three inches, held back by pure force.
"It’s heavy," Julian strained, his voice tight. "The whole river is pushing back."
"Hold it," Arthur ordered. He grabbed a shovel. "Zack! Throw down the clay!"
Wet, heavy clumps of yellow clay rained down from the rim.
Arthur caught them with the shovel and slamd them into the corners of the trench.
Thwack. Thwack.
He packed the clay against the timber shoring. He stomped it into the floor, creating a thick, waterproof rim.
"More!" Arthur shouted.
For ten minutes, it was chaos. Clay flying. Arthur stomping. Julian sweating, his hand trembling as he held back the hydrostatic pressure of the Silver River.
It wasn’t elegant engineering. It was brute force.
"I’m losing it," Julian gasped. "Arthur!"
"Seal is set!" Arthur shouted, stomping the final corner. "Let it go!"
Julian dropped his hand.
The invisible lid vanished.
The groundwater surged up—and hit the clay wall.
It stopped.
A few leaks trickled through, but the aggressive geysers were gone. The floor was wet, but it wasn’t a pool.
Arthur exhaled. He was covered in yellow mud.
"Bail it out," Arthur ordered the crew. "Then we pour."
By 8:00 AM, the trench was damp but empty.
Arthur stood at the top, directing the next phase.
"The rods," Arthur called. "Bring the Imperial Steel."
Four farrs carried the heavy bundle of rebar—ribbed steel rods Arthur had brought from Ferro. They were expensive, high-tensile alloy, usually reserved for cannon barrels.
He lowered them into the pit.
Zack and Garnas caught them.
"Why the iron?" Garnas asked, wrestling the long rods into a grid pattern. "Thought the stone was strong enough."
"Stone is good at being squished," Arthur explained, using his hands to mimic compression. "That’s ’Compression Strength’. But if the ground shifts, the stone might want to bend or stretch. Stone is terrible at stretching. It cracks."
He pointed to the rods.
"Steel loves to stretch. That’s ’Tensile Strength’. We put the steel inside the stone. The stone takes the weight. The steel takes the movent. They cover each other’s weaknesses."
Garnas wired the rods together. "Like bones in a leg."
"Exactly," Arthur said. "Now, get out of the hole. It’s ti to cook."
The mixing trough was churning.
Fifteen farrs had found a rhythm. One shoveled gravel. One shovelled sand. One dusted the li. One added the ash.
It was a grey, gritty assembly line.
"Bucket!" Vivian shouted.
She wasn’t standing around. She was running the line.
She grabbed a heavy wooden bucket filled with the wet mix, swung it to the next man, and grabbed an empty one.
"Keep it moving! Don’t let it set in the bucket!"
The line snaked from the trough to the edge of the pit.
Scrape. Lift. Pass. Pass. Pass. Dump.
SPLAT.
The first load of concrete hit the bottom of the trench, burying the steel rods.
SPLAT.
The second load.
Arthur stood at the edge, watching the fill level.
"Pack it!" he yelled to Zack, who was using a long tamper to drive the air bubbles out of the wet mix. "If there’s air, there’s weakness!"
It was grueling work. The mix was heavy—150 pounds per cubic foot. The sun beat down. The li dust coated their throats.
But nobody stopped.
They could see the hole filling up. They could see the foundation rising.
Halfway through the pour, the heat started.
It wasn’t the sun. It was the pit.
The massive volu of li and ash reacting with the water was generating a significant exothermic reaction. Steam began to curl off the surface of the wet grey slab.
"It’s cooking fast," Julian noted, standing by Arthur. He looked exhausted, his face pale from the earlier exertion with the water. "Do you need the pulse?"
"Not yet," Arthur said, watching the steam. "The mass is generating its own heat. If we add mana now, it might flash-set and crack. We wait until it’s full."
The trench was six feet full. Then eight.
The farrs were slowing down. Their arms were burning.
"Last push!" Vivian yelled, her voice cutting through the fatigue. "Ten more batches! Fill it to the brim!"
The farrs grunted and dug deeper. They weren’t doing it for the wages anymore. They were doing it because the Princess was carrying buckets and they weren’t going to be outworked by royalty.
SPLAT.
The final bucket hit the top.
Zack smoothed the surface with a flat trowel.
The pit was full. A solid, twelve-foot deep block of wet, grey potential.
"Clear the edge," Arthur ordered.
The workers stumbled back, collapsing on the grass, chest heaving.
Arthur turned to Julian.
"Now."
Julian stepped up to the steaming block.
He didn’t need to hold back a river this ti. He just needed to be a catalyst.
He raised his hand.
The low-frequency mana pulse humd.
To the workers, it looked like the air above the concrete shimred, like heat haze on a road.
To Arthur, it looked like chemistry speeding up.
The steam intensified. A white plu rose into the clear morning air.
The surface of the concrete darkened as the moisture was consud by the crystal lattice forming inside.
"Steady," Arthur murmured. "Even distribution."
Julian held it for two minutes. Then three.
"It’s... solid," Julian whispered. "The resistance is absolute."
He dropped his hand.
Arthur stepped forward.
He didn’t use a hamr this ti. He stepped onto the wet concrete.
His boot didn’t sink.
It left a faint print, maybe a milliter deep, but the surface held his weight.
"It’s green," Arthur announced. "It needs a week to reach full strength. But the reaction is locked. Water can’t hurt it now."
It was noon.
The workers sat in the shade of the willows, eating bread and cheese provided by the estate kitchen. They were covered in grey dust and yellow mud.
But they weren’t looking at their food.
They were looking at the Block.
It sat in the ground, the top level flush with the grass. It was ugly. Grey. Flat.
But it was the most solid thing in the valley.
Garnas limped over to Arthur, who was cleaning his trowel.
"We do the other side tomorrow?" Garnas asked.
"Tomorrow we do the South Abutnt," Arthur confird. "Sa drill. Clay dike. Steel bones. Li and ash."
Garnas looked at the river. Then he looked at the Block.
"River tried to fill the hole," Garnas muttered. "We told it no."
"We negotiated," Arthur corrected, smiling.
Vivian walked up, wiping a smudge of li from her cheek. She handed Arthur a waterskin.
"You have concrete in your hair," she noted.
"Structural reinforcent," Arthur joked, taking a drink. The water tasted like victory.
He looked across the river.
One pier down. One to go.
Then ca the steel.
"We need more li," Arthur said, his mind already moving to the logistics of the truss assembly. "And we need a crane. I’m not lifting the girders by hand."
"I’ll talk to the smith," Vivian said. "He has a pulley system."
Arthur looked at the grey slab one last ti.
It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t a miracle.
It was a rock that would not move when the river tried. That ant deliveries would arrive on ti.
End of Chapter 86
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