The move to the "Caves of Old Death" was a grueling climb. By the time the 500 exiles reached the mouth of the cavern, the mist had turned a bruised purple, signaling the coming of the island's eternal twilight.
The cave mouth was a jagged maw in the side of the cliff, exhaling a cold, metallic draft.
"I won't go in!" Elian cried, his hands over his ears. "I can hear them! The scratching! There are hundreds of them in there!"
"General," Alaric said, ignoring the Mage. He held out two objects.
One was a long wooden pole tipped with a bundle of oil-soaked rags and crushed charcoal. The other was a small, sealed clay jar he had spent the last hour meticulously preparing. He had mixed the ship's lamp oil with rendered animal fat and the ground-up, reactive tips of the Mist-Stalker's claws.
"What is this?" Kaelen asked, looking at the jar.
"It's called 'The Dragon's Breath'," Alaric explained! "The fat makes the oil sticky, like a thick gel. The ground claws act as an oxidizer. When this jar breaks and hits a spark, it won't just burn. It will cling to everything it touches and roar like a furnace! It's a napalm-based incendiary!"
Kaelen looked at the jar with skepticism. "A jar of grease? Against those monsters?"
"Trust the chemistry, General!" Alaric commanded! "I've also prepared these for the men."
He pointed to a row of sharpened wooden stakes. The tips hadn't been carved to a point; they had been charred in the fire to harden the wood cells, then dipped in a caustic lye solution he'd extracted from the wood ashes and boiled water.
"Let's clear our new home," Alaric said.
They entered the cave. The darkness was absolute until Alaric struck a flint. The orange light illuminated the cavern—and the nightmare within.
Dozens of Mist-Stalkers were clinging to the ceiling and walls, their yellow pits glowing like malevolent stars. They hissed in unison, a sound that made the convicts scream in terror.
"Hold the line!" Kaelen roared, raising his shield.
The Stalkers dropped from the ceiling like heavy fruit!
"Now, General!" Alaric shouted!
Kaelen smashed the first clay jar against the cave floor as the pack lunged. Alaric tossed a burning torch into the puddle.
BOOM!
A wall of brilliant, roaring orange flame erupted! It wasn't a flicker; it was a violent, expanding wave of heat that filled the tunnel. The sticky oil splashed onto the leading Stalkers. They didn't just burn; they became living torches. Because the fat made the oil cling, the creatures couldn't shake it off. They shrieked as the intense heat cracked their high-density hides.
"Thrust!" Alaric ordered the convicts!
The terrified men, seeing the monsters in agony, found their courage. They thrust the charred, lye-dipped stakes into the flaming beasts. The lye acted as a chemical burn agent, sizzling against the Stalkers' moist skin and blinding their heat-pits.
"It's... it's working!" Sarah cried, as she drove a stake into a fallen beast. "They're dying! Look at them! They're dying without a single spell!"
The battle was short and brutal. In ten minutes, the cave floor was littered with the charred remains of the pack. The air was thick with the smell of burnt hair and chemicals, but the "Caves of Old Death" were now silent.
The convicts stood in the flickering light of the residual fires. They looked at the dead monsters, then at the smoking jars in Alaric's hands.
Elian the Mage sank to his knees, his face pale. "No mana... no chants... you just burned a whole pack with a jar of kitchen grease and some dirt..."
Kaelen turned to Alaric. The General's chest plate was scorched, and his face was covered in soot. He slowly raised his sword—not in a threat, but in a salute.
"I was told I was guarding a prince who was broken," Kaelen said, his voice echoing through the cavern. "But I see now that the Hegemony was wrong. They didn't send a broken boy to this island. They sent a man who brought the sun with him in a bottle!"
The convicts began to cheer. This time, it wasn't just relief. It was respect. They slammed their wooden stakes against the stone floor, a rhythmic thumping that sounded like the heartbeat of a new nation.
[Mission Complete: "The First Foundation".]
[Status: Secure Habitat Established.]
[New Objective: Industry Phase 1 — The Bloomery Furnace. Requirement: High-Grade Iron.]
The "Caves of Old Death" were silent, save for the crackling of the pitch-soaked torches and the ragged breathing of five hundred souls. The stench of charred Mist-Stalker flesh hung heavy in the damp air, a grim reminder of the violence that had secured their new home.
Alaric sat on a flat slab of obsidian, his back against the cold cave wall. His hands were a mess of raw blisters and soot, but his mind was racing through the architectural schematics of the Library of Modernity.
"We cannot live in a cave forever, Alaric," Kaelen said, walking over to him. The General had removed his scorched breastplate, revealing a torso crisscrossed with scars from decades of magical warfare. He looked at the convicts who were huddled in small, shivering groups. "The humidity in here will rot their lungs. The stone is cold, and the ground is uneven. If we don't build proper shelter, the 'Lung-Rot' will kill more of them than the monsters ever did."
"I know," Alaric replied, his voice raspy. "A cave is a fortification, not a home. We need a village. But we don't have timber, and we don't have mages to stone-shape the cliffs into houses."
"Then we are stuck," Elian the Mage interjected, hobbling toward them. He looked diminished, his once-grand robes now little more than rags. "Without an 'Architect's Chant' or a 'Stone-Binding' spell, it takes years to build a settlement of stone. We will die of the damp before the first wall is laid!"
Alaric looked up at Elian, a sharp, predatory glint in his eyes. "You think stone can only be shaped by whispers and light, Elian? You think the earth is stagnant unless a Mage pokes it with a wand?"
"It is the way of the world!" Elian shouted, his voice echoing! "Stone is eternal! Only magic can command it to flow and set!"
"Then watch me rewrite your world," Alaric said, standing up with a groan of effort. "Sarah! Gather twenty men. We're heading back to the beach. I need every seashell you can find. Every piece of white limestone rock near the tide pools. And bring the charcoal ash from the big fire!"
The convicts looked at him as if he had finally lost his mind. Sarah, however, didn't hesitate. She had seen him turn mud into water and oil into a dragon's breath. If the Prince wanted shells, she would find him the finest shells on the archipelago.
For hours, the small group worked under the oppressive gray sky. They hauled baskets of white, calcified sea-life and chunks of porous limestone back to the cave entrance.
Alaric didn't just pile the rocks. He instructed the men to build a "Kiln"—a tall, chimney-like structure made of thick basalt rocks lined with damp clay.
"What is this for?" Kaelen asked, watching Alaric layer the charcoal and the limestone. "Are you cooking the rocks for dinner?"
"I am performing Calcination, General!" Alaric explained, his eyes fixed on the kiln. "Limestone is Calcium Carbonate. When we subject it to extreme heat—over nine hundred degrees Celsius—it undergoes a chemical divorce! The Carbon Dioxide is driven off as a gas, leaving behind Calcium Oxide. Quicklime!"
"Quicklime?" Sarah whispered the word like a spell.
"It is a hungry stone, Sarah," Alaric said, his voice dropping to a low, intense tone. "It is a stone that has had its soul ripped out by fire. It wants to be whole again. And when we give it water and volcanic ash, it doesn't just get wet. It undergoes a molecular transformation called a pozzolanic reaction!"
He lit the kiln. The heat was immense. For a full day and night, the exiles watched the kiln glow like a malevolent eye in the mist. Alaric didn't sleep. He monitored the color of the flame, adjusting the air intake at the bottom to ensure the temperature remained steady.
Finally, he signaled for them to douse the fire. From the bottom of the kiln, they pulled out chunks of white, crumbly stone.
"Now, the miracle," Alaric said.
He instructed Sarah to grind the quicklime into a fine powder. They mixed it with the gray volcanic ash found in abundance near the vents and added a measure of sand and water. The mixture began to steam, emitting a low, hissing sound.
"It's alive!" a convict screamed, backing away! "The mud is screaming!"
"It's not screaming, it's reacting!" Alaric shouted!
He grabbed a wooden trowel he had carved. There was a pile of loose basalt rocks nearby. He began to lay them in a line, spreading the thick, gray paste between them.
"Watch," Alaric commanded.
The mages, the convicts, and the General gathered around. They watched as the "screaming mud" settled between the rocks. Within an hour, the paste had grown warm to the touch. Within three hours, it had turned into a hard, gray stone that bound the basalt rocks together with a grip so fierce that Kaelen couldn't even budge them with his boot.
"This is... stone-binding," Elian whispered, his face pale with shock. "But... you didn't say a word! There was no mana! I felt nothing!"
"I don't need to feel it, Elian! I just need to know the chemistry!" Alaric stood tall, his silhouette framed by the glowing kiln. "This is Concrete! The Roman Empire on my world used this to build monuments that lasted two thousand years! And we are going to use it to build our first village!"
The convicts erupted in a roar of awe! They rushed forward, touching the hardened gray mortar, their eyes wide with the realization that they no longer needed mages to have a home.