Peek: A Brick in the Wall

Hilloy tries not to fidget in his seat as the ship sails.  The young elf would have never expected to have to take a boat to a building, but that's exactly what he's doing!  In fact, he's been doing it for close to a month now, and each day is a new chance to learn from the masters.

It's even a chance for the masters themselves to learn.  Most have been eager to figure out how these new bricks work, and to see what strange things the dungeon has come up with.  The strangest by far was the choice of foreman: a large bat.  At around three feet tall, it's still hardly up to Hilloy's waist, but that's still gigantic for a bat!

It took some adjusting at first, even with Teemo around to help translate how to start.  The foundation was pretty simple, if intense, work.  Clearing and leveling the portion of the island was mostly on him and the other apprentices, letting the masters supervise and examine the plans for the entire building.

Hilloy had managed to get a look at the plans early on, and at first, they didn't seem too special.  Even he knows that arches are the best way to use stone.  But looking closer at the way the arches are used really set the design as something special in the apprentice's eyes.  Not all the masters agreed, though.

Some flat out refused to follow the designs, proclaiming loudly that the mason's guild should redesign the entire thing from the ground up.  He's pretty sure only those loudmouths missed the  hostile stances of the crabs and gulls after that.  Thankfully, the bat runs a tight crew, and had no problems ejecting troublemakers.  They tried to sneak back a few times, but after the seagull scion practically threw one to the mainland from the small island, they finally seemed to get the hint.

Once the building got underway, Hilloy even got to see the new bricks, and the new mortar.  The bricks were strange, far larger than usual, with great holes through them!  The reason for the holes became obvious once the mortar, the concrete, was shown.  Hilloy has seen ordinary mortar.  It does the job well enough, keeping bricks and stone in place, but it noting special on its own.  The strength of a mortared wall is in laying the bricks properly.  Poor mortar will make a poor wall, sure, but you can theoretically make a wall with just bricks.  A mortar wall will crumble even under the best conditions.

But this concrete... it's something else.  If he hadn't been able to run his own hands through it when liquid, he'd think the resulting floor was created by someone with a strong earth affinity.  It's like one large stone!  It's amazing!  And then the walls started going up, and the bat scion, Coda, showed new and strange concepts to make it even stronger.

Hilloy is still learning how to properly string the silk through the bricks, and he's not the only one to joke about getting the tailor's guild to help with this part.  Still, he's not going to suggest skipping that step.  Coda demonstrated the difference in strength between the normal concrete and some with webbing in it.  Even when hammered practically to gravel, the web kept stable, and even getting it to such a state was much harder than with the ordinary concrete.  It just doesn't break like it should, which should make for a much tougher structure!

He smiles as the worksite comes into view, looking forward to the day of work ahead of him.  Coda has been showing how to make the new style of archway, molding it before moving into position.  They're heavy like that, but it's a lot easier to make the arches laying down, rather than standing.  They should be getting the first set out of the molds today, and he'll even get to take a hammer to one to test and ensure everything went correctly.  It'll be tiring work, but destroying a test arch is just as important as setting one in its proper place.  After all, if he can break it easily, he'll have shown something went wrong.  While it'll probably sting the pride of those involved in making the arch, it's a lot better than the entire lighthouse collapsing.

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Partially inspired by Ch W, who wanted to see how the masons are doing with the lighthouse.