Henrietta no longer felt as though she was losing control of everything.

No, these days she felt like she was on a tightrope.

On the one side lay stagnation, the five of them forever chasing increasingly-meaningless tasks that technically progressed their goal but nonetheless brought them nowhere. On the other lay madness, a headlong rush into things they weren't ready for and attempting to commit to them would simply result in everything they built to come crashing down around their heads.

Obviously, it was nowhere near that extreme. But ever since they'd lost Shelter to the wild magic storm, Henrietta had been unable to escape this perpetual miasma hanging around her thoughts, that no matter what they did, it would all simply meet ruin and they'd never accomplish anything.

Fortunately, the rest of her team had done a remarkable job in proving her doubts wrong, building First Tower into something easily exceeding Shelter. Alyssa... was still Alyssa, but Clark had taken the entire thing in perfect stride, Jacob had unrepentantly expressed his happiness at the vinebeast attacks stopping, and Oliver had proven that they really were making progress by restoring their prior level of development in mere days, instead of the weeks it had first taken.

He'd even gone above and beyond by cracking the secrets to making a mattress, no less! And while they only had one for the moment, it was getting almost a constant workout as they all tweaked their sleeping schedules to minimize the amount of time the most comfortable place in the entire world went unused. It was to the point that all five of them were concurrently awake for perhaps a single hour per day, between when Jacob woke up and Oliver went to sleep.

That particular state of affairs that was unlikely to last for too much longer, thankfully, as Oliver was working on a second one of the giant clay slabs required for the artifact to work properly, and once they had two, then they could arrange their sleep schedules such that every night was spent on one, rather than just half like it was now. It would be even better once they each had a personal one, but… that was still a ways away. And Oliver really did have other things that he should be spending time on, beyond just their sleep situation.

The tower, for instance. It really was the final key before their situation would be what Henrietta would call truly stable. The capability of leveling again was… immense. She did have to keep catching herself though, as she occasionally would think about changing classes once the Tower was made, despite Oliver explicitly stating that he wouldn't be able to enable that quite yet.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she still hoped that Oliver might be wrong, but that wasn't a realistic hope, and as their leader she had a duty to not be carried away upon fits of fancy.

Class changes would come in due time, and she would deal with helping Oliver through that particular challenge once that time came due. For now, she needed to balance the far less exciting needs they all had, which for now was… stable.

Which was, as she'd noted, both good and bad. Good, because Henrietta could see where they were all beginning to fray at the edges and another month or two of edge-of-their-seat survival just wasn't sustainable. Bad, because it was stable. It was comfortable. It was understandable. And they really couldn't afford to settle into ruts, to spend too much time refining what they had instead of moving forwards.

She felt it was a myth that people needed to be uncomfortable to do great things, and that the grandest feats were forged from the greatest hardship, but at the same time, if you were content with how things were, you didn't try nearly as hard to change them. It was a principle used by tyrants for millennia – make the populace apathetic and comfortable, and they wouldn't rebel.

Comfort was good. It was necessary for humans to rest, to recharge, and to stay sane. But conflict was also good. It was necessary for humans to strive, to improve, and to excel. The desire to improve and refine was similarly good. You couldn't build a skyscraper if the first floor was made out of cardboard.

It wasn't even a disparagement on her crew. All of them were dedicated, talented, and driven individuals. But nobody, no matter how talented, possessed the determination needed to single-mindedly pursue an abstract goal for years, decades even, without some kind of extrinsic motivator.

Nothing ever happened for a single reason, because doing things was hard. If something actually materialized, it was because multiple forces all worked in unison to push it to completion. Determination was insufficient, as was discomfort. You needed both, the determination to improve yourself coupled with the constant pressure of something pushing you to improve, to actually get somewhere.

If they'd gotten enough time before their Jump to really get to know one another, properly figure out their synergies, and come up with contingencies, everything would have been so much easier. She didn't really want to disparage her higher-ups, because she was experiencing firsthand just how difficult leadership could be, but she really didn't understand how their team was the most qualified to take the Jump they had.

Her first Expedition had been the culmination of five years of dedicated training and intensive team-building activities, such that all five of them were moving in perfect sync from the very moment they touched down. This one... she didn't really know what all had happened. Well, that wasn't entirely true. She had theories, but she preferred to think of her superiors as competent and good exemplars of their duties under the Blasphemous Emperor of Mankind. Naive assumptions of high average levels being sufficient to overcome a lack of team-building, or perhaps simple nepotism in the desire to cater to Clark's goals of heroism.

Either way, she was stuck with a team that really wasn't a team. But so long as she could keep them all on-task and not sniping at one another too much, they had a chance.

And so, they were on a narrow tightrope. Snatching comfort away from her crew would be cruel and counterproductive, removing the glimmers of reward they'd scrounged for themselves simply to 'toughen them up.' But letting them dive into that comfort would rob them of all the momentum they'd gathered, the sense of progress building out First Tower had provided for them.

She even included herself in that assessment. Her other Expedition had been nearly as textbook as they came. Their arrival had been celebrated by herald and bard alike, they'd been instantly thrust into a fantastic new world filled with interesting people who had all been counting on them for their salvation, with fascinating and wondrous new powers to explore and master.

Being thrown in a forest with no reprieve, direction, or magical abilities was about as far from the standard as it got. And now she had to keep them all directed and motivated to fulfill their goal.

It was weird missing the vinebeasts, but they had at least provided a constant external force, albeit one which had locked them into place rather than forcing them to adapt…

And they were certainly unprepared for another attack, Henrietta realized.

Their current 'settlement' was an absolute mess, insofar as defensibility went. A huge portion of their tamed area was dedicated to brick production, with the 'kitchen' area randomly shoved in next to the kiln, all of which was on wide open ground. The bridge across the river was just sitting out in the open, and their latrine was completely unprotected. Not that the rest of it was any better. Their hut was elevated, yes, which was better than nothing, but at almost any given time one or both of Alyssa and Jacob would be away from the camp, and for all that Henrietta was just as capable a warrior as them, she didn't trust that she could be fast enough to intervene if Oliver or Clark were attacked by a scalewolf while she was occupied with her projects.

The top of the rock spire was defensible enough, she felt. Any marauding animal attempting to climb it, even on the sloped sides, would be substantially slowed down by more than enough for even Oliver to escape to somewhere slightly safer. It was vulnerable from the air, something they needed to generally be aware of, but they hadn't had to deal with any airborne predators trying to snatch one of them for a quick snack.

That wasn't reliable, but it was a trend.

No, the far more concerning place was their main living area. The stones they used for seating around their campfire, the rope-weaving contraption, the inklings processing clay into bricks, all of that was what needed protecting, and they didn't have anything to that effect.

A fence or wall would probably be sufficient. If they drove more reeds into the ground, like what they had done with the river, they could prevent anything too large from coming through. Whether it would be tight, or loose enough to allow some air to pass through would depend on what Jacob thought was the most prudent. She could imagine a case to be made for either situation.

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Constructing fortifications wasn't going to be a permanent solution by any means. In fact, it stood a distinct chance of making the comfort worse in the long-term. But it would let them take a few steps further down the tightrope, and right now, that's what Henrietta cared about most of all.

It was never terribly difficult to find anyone at First Tower. It simply wasn't large enough to take more than a few minutes to check everywhere someone could be. But it was particularly easy to find Alyssa and Oliver when the two of them were together, because all you needed to do was listen.

"No, that is most certainly not about to work. But if you really insist then I could shave your head and scratch it into your skull just to prove it to you."

"Hey! I never once suggested that, but if you're going to insist on taking this long then yeah, I wouldn't mind a skill-powered helmet."

"The only thing I- Oh. Hi, Commander," Oliver quickly quieted down as she dropped in. Alyssa was lying flat on her back next to a person-sized slab of unfired clay, while Oliver had a stylus in one hand, a wand in the other, and a bank of runes carefully scratched into the object.

"Something interesting going on?" she asked.

"Oliver isn't doing his job!" Alyssa immediately provided.

"Is that so? It looks to me like he's working on a mattress, which is what all of us, even you, asked for."

"But that was based on the theory that we'd have pillows."

"You do have a pillow," Henrietta pointed out, somewhat resigned, "Did it break?"

"No," Oliver stated, exasperated, "She just doesn't like the feel of Force on her skin. Not that there's any physical difference in the spell just because of her tactile arcanoception, but she says it feels like sandpaper against her skin, and now she wants a [Leafstep]-based pillow, despite the fact that won't work."

"Of course it'll work. I bet it would work better than what you made, because my skills are the best."

"No, because it's instantaneous. It's not designed for prolonged, multi-hour usage. Also, I tried using Air mana as a major ingredient in the pillows, it didn't work."

"But you needed it for the mattress, which you made after you finished the pillows, so clearly it does have use."

"Yes, it has a use. A singular use, in a vastly more complicated and powerful effect, it's not just substituting a core structural position of the enchantment, it's a supplemental support, and if you don't want to be bouncing on your mattress like a trampoline, it would be just as useless if I expanded it beyond that singular function!"

"As fascinating as this may be, I require Ride for some time. Is there anything you need her assistance for at this time, Smith? Or might in the very near future?"

He cocked his head, "Eh. I could use her, but she's not that important right now."

"Hey!"

"Yes?" He cocked his head as though waiting for a question. When one didn't arrive, Oliver shrugged, " Oh, and before you go, keep in mind that Jacob is fine with hearing the magic all night. So I diagnose skill issue, return to sender, first shadow's darkness."

"Was I supposed to understand that last one?"

"I don't think so," Henrietta did her best to separate the bickering duo before Oliver could explain the exact nature of the Magespeech insult he'd used. She couldn't really blame him, even. She was finding that when Alyssa was bored, it didn't tend to go well. Fortunately, she had a solution to that."Now, on your feet, and walk with me."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming, I'm coming." Alyssa hopped to her feet, retrieved her hatchet from where it had fallen, and quick-stepped to catch up to Henrietta. "'Sup, boss? Er. What do you need me for, Commander?"

Part of Henrietta wanted to tell Alyssa to dispense with the formalities. Henrietta scarcely felt like a commander most days, after all. But she resisted the urge, because structure and hierarchies were important, and she needed to retain the innate authority that accompanied her title. Without it, it would be that much more difficult to persuade her team to follow her commands, and she really didn't need further complicating factors. Keeping them all inline was hard enough already.

"If a scalewolf were to attack us right now, what would you wish was different?"

"The giant dragon-predators, right? Easy, that Jacob was awake," she immediately responded. "Or I had more levels to work with. But that's probably not what you were going for."

She looked around, "I'd wish that I had a good spear, probably. Also that my hatchet was better-quality. I'd wish I was higher level, that I could have a bit more space without worrying about tripping over something, um."

"What about walls?"

"Oh! Right. Walls. Those would also be good. I definitely thought about them," Alyssa lied, "I just thought that… if we had them, then we wouldn't have been attacked to begin with. Wait, that's not a suboptimal outcome. You're right, walls would be great. So you want to make some?"

"How big do you think they'd need to be? You've got the most experience with the creatures around here out of all of us."

"Hmmm. Well, most of the creatures around here don't seem too aggressive. And there's no way we could make a wall capable of keeping everything out - did I mention I saw another one of those moving mountains out in the ocean again the other day? But... six to ten feet, maybe? That's probably big enough to keep the person-sized predators out."

Henrietta nodded. She hadn't even been referring to height, vaguely thinking about arbitrarily-tall reeds jammed into the ground and stretching however far into the air they were wont to do. "And area-wise? Where would you want to build them?"

She'd timed this well, if she could say so herself. They'd just gotten to the place where she estimated the wall would be best to start at, where a particularly steep section of the rocky spire plunged directly into fairly soft and flat soil. There were a couple of rocks here that they'd need to work around, but it was large enough to contain everything they were doing. Even with the increasingly-sprawling area used for the finished bricks, to say nothing of the absolute behemoth of a pile that was the still-drying ones.

To her surprise, Alyssa didn't seem to agree with her assessment, or at least hadn't reached the same conclusion. "Where would we want the entrances to be?" she mused, seemingly mostly to herself. "For that matter, how would we do gates?"

Henrietta indicated for Alyssa to continue. She hadn't considered that particular wrinkle, focused as she was on the construction details, though it was obvious in retrospect. Walls were only useful if the things you did want to get through still could.

"I suppose we could just make regular doors. Making sure the wall above it is still as high as we want might be a bit tricky, but entirely doable. Oh, we could also do ladders. Will any of the things we want to keep out be able to climb a ladder?"

"Are we worried about predators that could climb trees? Are there any panthers out there?"

"Not that I've seen," Alyssa muttered, "But I wouldn't call that a particularly safe assumption. Also, when we're bringing stuff back, having a door would be far better than a ladder. So perhaps one main door? With other ingress-egress points being less convenient to cross."

Alyssa turned around, pacing along the edge of the stone, "This works as one wall. The river is already defended… maybe we could use the bridge for something? It's not like we're actually in hostile territory, a simple gap in the walls will still do most of what we want. If we made another bridge a bit upriver, then that could work?"

Alyssa turned to Henrietta, looking for approval.

"The logic seems sound to me. Once Jacob is awake, I'll be talking to him as well for his opinion."

"Okay, so then ten foot walls around the perimeter," Alyssa seemed to realize she was walking towards the river to no particular gain and turned around again, with Henrietta following her lead.

"We should start there," Alyssa pointed to a place that wasn't where Henrietta had expected, past the steep cliff she'd identified and to where a half-buried boulder lay askew against the cliff face.

"There?"

"Yeah. It can serve as an alternate entrance, while still keeping out the creatures we want to exclude. There's a bit of a gap between the rock and the spire, which we can easily block up if we don't want anything at ground level, but the rock will simply buffer the flow in and out."

"You aren't worried about anything else getting through there?"

"We're not dealing with humans, we're dealing with animals, and animals won't want anything to do with a human construction. Not the kind we're making, anyway."

"This isn't home," Henrietta reminded her, "Animals here don't have the same fear response."

Alyssa clicked her tongue, "Right. Okay. Push the wall a couple feet past the boulder, then we can use the boulder as a stepping-off point for the wall. Maybe make a bridge there, we can easily drop down on the other side to leave if we want to."

"Not all of us have [Leafstep]," Henrietta pointed out, "A ten-foot drop isn't nothing."

"Then we can have a ladder," Alyssa pushed on, "From there, we can follow a curved arc past… hmm."

Alyssa had her arm outstretched, pointing the outline of her idea, in a way that swept through an area that included more than a few trees. "Well, I guess we do have tools, we can take down the trees. The ones on the edge we can trim their branches and use them as part of the wall, or as lookout points, or something. We can exclude that boulder over there, maybe have that be one of the ingoing ladders, and then include the full stone platform Oliver has his brick-making set up on, and… yeah. That's good. I like that."

"Good to hear. That's what you'll be working on, so why don't you get started by harvesting some reeds?"

Alyssa froze, "I… thought you said you were going to talk to Jacob?"

"I am. But we're making a wall one way or another, and for that we're going to need lots of reeds." Henrietta exaggerated her motions as she looked at the area Alyssa had outlined. "Lots and lots of reeds."

"And there's no chance we can make Oliver do this instead? He's the Artificer, it's his job to do the big building projects."

"I'm sure if you ask him nicely, he'd be willing to not make you your mattress and instead build a wall for you."

"….I'll start getting the reeds."

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