A Little Bit of City-Building

"I really feel like this is turning into a fashion show…"

"A fashion show?" Coletto asked.

"What’s that?" Merite inquired.

"Nothing," I replied with a weary sigh.

I was leading a group through the largest, densest forest on the island inside the sphere, or Orb, as we had named this world.

At my back walked Merite and Coletto, and further behind them came a procession of thirty Stella, all women, clad in their distinctive fitted armor and uniforms.

It wasn’t that only female Stellas existed. It was more that Lirilien seemed to enjoy assigning me nymphs, who, incidentally, reported directly to her. (By the way, dryads are a kind of nymph. I had no idea… I think…)

Most spirits here had adopted humanlike forms, so it was hard to tell what kind they were. Though, to be precise, in Ameritia (and now in Orb) people didn’t call it "human form," since humans weren’t the first beings in this world to look like that.

"Honestly, I don’t think I need this much protection…" I muttered, trying not to sound too resigned.

"It’s true you’re far stronger than we are, master, not to mention the Stella," Coletto replied. "But that isn’t the reason."

"Then what is the reason?" Merite asked. "Although, yeah, if we really meant to protect Zendal, we should’ve brought the Comet Stella, or at least included some greater spirits in the guard."

"Dignity!" Coletto exclaimed, raising her index finger in front of Merite as if explaining something obvious to a child. "We can’t have my master walking around like one of the crowd. That would also lower the respect owed to the Veilke— to Lady Lirilien."

"I get your point, Coletto," I said, turning to look at her. "But I don’t plan to go everywhere with an entourage trailing behind me."

"But, master..."

"Having you two with me is enough."

"!!"

For some reason, my words made both Coletto and Merite blush. At least they stopped insisting… though now the Stella looked rather downcast.

In the end, we agreed it would depend on the place and the situation.

***

After some time surveying (which I was really just using as an excuse to explore the island), we returned to the depths of the forest. There, two rivers converged beneath a gigantic tree of an unknown species that looked more like a building than anything else.

The strangest thing about the tree was that I had actually planted it myself a few days earlier at Lirilien’s request, to commemorate the founding of the city. She had given me the seed, so I wasn’t taking questions about why it had grown so fast or reached that size.

It was a seed her mother, the previous queen of the Spirit Realm, had left to her. Still, Lirilien believed it had more to do with the fact that I was the one who planted it and with the fact that we were in Orb.

In any case, all we could do was theorize. The only certainty was that Lirilien had made the tree the center of the city and had already begun turning it into her personal palace.

I nearly asked if she was truly sure about living inside something no one even understood, but then I remembered that this entire world was inside a magical sphere that had emerged from my dream.

The other spirits had also started preparing their new homes. Some were building houses atop or wrapped around trees, while others, like Lirilien, made theirs within the trees themselves.

It depended mostly on the type of spirit they were.

Coletto, who unbeknownst to me had gained a certain status thanks to being my direct servant, had managed to claim an entire lagoon in the heart of the forest and was planning to build a mansion at its center.

Merite, on the other hand, had chosen for herself a wall of bare rock exposed on a vast cliff face. Her plan was to carve the stone (or melt it, to phrase her words more precisely) and create her mansion inside it.

There were quite a few spirits even more radical than she was, who had decided to live beneath the ground itself. No doubt an underground district similar to Deeproot Sanctum would eventually form.

But truly, magic worked miracles. The city was growing at a pace far beyond anything any construction company could ever achieve.

The division of land was handled by Lirilien. And although the castes, status, and other intricate hierarchies of spirit society were far more complex than I could ever have imagined, the princess resolved everything without a hitch, with the same effectiveness and efficiency I had already grown accustomed to.

Fortunately, I didn’t get tangled up in that mess. According to Lirilien, since I had entrusted her with the jurisdiction of the forest, it was her duty to administer and subsidize those lands.

What she did ask me about was the name of the city. The only thing that came to mind at first was Yggdrasil, since the tree had left far too strong an impression on me… But unless everyone were to live inside it, that didn’t quite feel like the right name for the entire city.

Now that I think about it, if I had to guess the species of that colossal tree, I definitely would have bet on “Yggdrasil species.”

Later I thought about giving it a name similar to Endalor, something like Thalendor, “the city of the whispering forest.” But in the end, after quite a bit of deliberation, I decided the name that fit best was Myrthalas, which means “the land of the spirits” (that’s right, just what it is, I won’t take criticism).

Endalor also means "city of the beginning"… If it really was the first city I ever founded, that would confirm that my lack of originality goes way back.

Once the city was underway, the only thing left to decide was where I would live. I had no idea what my practical skills were, or whether I could create some magic to build something without knowing a thing about architecture (don’t ask me how the spirits do it, they’ve lived for hundreds or thousands of years).

But I didn’t have to dwell on that problem for long. According to Lirilien, the palaces of an emperor’s wives and concubines are also the emperor’s palaces, so there was no need to build a separate residence in the same territory…

I don’t recall having married Lirilien yet, but after that night I felt I had lost the right to push back against her advances… and something tells me it was all calculated.