The new home had everything we needed. Ares and I spent the day going out, making conversation with the town folks and helping where help was welcome. I visited the local blacksmith on a regular basis and asked to watch more often than not. Why did I? Well for one it's nice to see someone else do the work sometimes and on the other hand the father-son duo would later become relevant to us. After all, the son was one of the main characters though the story was mostly based around a boy named Falco. And just as it happens the two boys were friends. So within a few weeks I had not only met the protagonists but had also made friends with them. It's important to note that Ares and I were physically the same age as those two. At night, though it was mostly me, Ares and I trained more advanced magic in the safety of our cellar. It was nothing major but still problematic if found out. Normally mages wouldn't be able to shock freeze an entire room with nothing but a gesture. This was something the both of us learned by exerting our magic on the molecules in the air around us and anchoring them in place. The immediate stop of movement created a powerful chain reaction that would lead to a slight gust of biting wind and a glittering room that might just blink one day and say: "Bella. This is the skin of a killer, Bella."
Ah that look of constipation is one no one could ever forget once they saw it. Sorry I am getting of course.
The days that I was alone I trained and specialised my none human magic. The creation of Items and other things from captured souls, mostly. You see, one day while we were exploring the forests and mountains outside and around Caer Dour, we found a bandit camp, after subduing them we found a wooden cage hidden deep in their camp, one filled with both children and woman of every age. Several were visibly pregnant while others had a look of absence in their eyes. We didn't really know what to do with them at first but soon had to make a decision. Both of us didn't want to just kill them. We were in no position to make that call, not really at least. Nor did we "terminate" their unwanted pregnancy either, that was something they had to decide on their own. But seeing as there was nothing we could do right there in that forest, we used magic to instead bring them back to our home.
That same night I gained the first souls to experiment on. And of course they were the bandits souls. We didn't waste the bodies either. That is why there were now several rather large hounds walking around the house and the created underground dorms (Where the women are currently placed and cared for.).
The two of us take turns to care for them but even then we are already overworked. There were a lot of them. About 7 grown women, 2 more with streaks of grey, and 5 girls, three more that haven't even had their period yet. In total our underground dormitories held 17 Women of different ages with 5 pregnancies. Most of them were unresponsive, though the younger ones were already showing more activity than the others. Sadly 2 of them were pregnant.
After that happend, Ares and I began to research more advanced applications of our already exceptional magical methods. I began to deep dive into mental, intelligence and enchantment magics while Ares researched healing and potion magics. We shared our findings with each other and gave feedback every two weeks. That lead to me learning more about mind and dream magics such as the dream I had previously even being able to manifest some elements of them into reality, even if only temporary. Becoming able to "invade" other people's dreams and manipulating them. Gaining access to mind reading and even their memories as if they were just books. And then came the crown of my early research. The spatial expansion and simulation magic.
How did I learn that? One day, I was looking into the way to make portal based magics, essentially folding space in a frame like form. So I instinctively anchored the very space around the indicated frame which resulted in an extremely strong shield spell. And I in my idiotic mind decided I wanted to know what happend if I broke that shield, destabilised the space within the anchor. And boom. There it was. The first window into a world behind the real world. From there on out, I tested, manipulated and moulded the Fake space to my wishes.
But only after I spoke with Ares a week later and even showed it to him did I realize that and only because of Ares exasperated comment, that I was doing the first steps of real space reality warping.
After another week of testing, pushing the boundaries and even stress testing the Fake Space I had created, did we begin to expand the house with it. The dormitories were moved to the first floor, the same we had our bedrooms on. But seeing as the sudden expansion of our home would raise more questions to the people that they already had about the two strange children living alone, we did use the spacial expansion to do so.
Right now there was a door at the end of a corridor, the same one our bedroom doors were. The same door would usually lead directly to the outside but seeing as it was fixed to the wall on the inside but not visible from the outside, no one would expect the door to lead somewhere specific. Yes they would suspect something, but as long as they weren't keyed to the doors magic, they would only see a simple wall should they ever open it.
For those living in the dormitories however, things were different. The door lead right to a pathway. Not a corridor but a pathway outside. That pathway would change depending on who walked it, how they felt and what they wanted to see. At the end of it there would always be a door that lead to the room of the person walking it. And of course I made sure to allow a way of travel from one dormitory room to another should they desire to visit each other.
Inside the rooms were a lot more than just rooms. Each had a small personal world with natural climate. They got a house, food and more, basically a small personal paradise for them.
Ares meanwhile was making more and more progress in his own studies, he may not be able to regrow limbs, but if one was severed and able to be found and used, the would be able to reattache them. Small wounds and diseases were now easily cured though we kept our magical knowledge close to our chest.
Though sometimes people in Caer Dour would wake up and find injuries and small blemishes on their skin gone. But that was neither here nor there.
The souls I captured were used to power a new ward-scheme I had created and merged with the house and it's expanded spaces. For example one of them was in preparation for the eventual evacuation of the city. Once that would happen, the house would rapidly collapse turning into the definition of a ruin though only in appearance. If the Women or Ares and I were to visit, we would still be able to live there without needing to worry about holes in the ceiling. In essence if after we have left, an army or demons were to go through the city and find our home, they would only find a ruin even if we stayed and lived there. But Percy, how will you take care of the traumatized women if you all leave?
Well that one is even easier. You see during my experiments with portal magic, I learned how to anchors different expanded spaces together. So the only thing necessary for me is to carry pocket or in the classic Harry Potter style, a suitcase, with me.
That was our progress in the first two months. Just ten left.