The mountain build took six days.
Fourteen segments through metamorphic rock under compressive geological load. The compressed substrate needed longer to accept each segment than anything the previous builds had required—two and a half hours per segment rather than two, the ancient grammar crystallising slowly through stone that had been under pressure for geological time and didn't release anything quickly. The pool cost per segment was higher than the highland drainage build. Higher than the corridor build before it. Each descent cost more than the western sequence's first two stages had prepared him for, and the work was quiet in the way that expensive work was always quiet: no margin for anything except the build.
The ancient network activated on day two.
