The group is spending 2 weeks focusing and regrouping. Alexis spends these two weeks mostly out of camp.

He finds the spot on the first morning. About a hundred yards up a slope from the group campsite there is a cut between two shoulders of rock, narrow enough that a man standing in it fills it, out of the wind and out of sight of anything below. He walks it end to end many times and does not come back down until midday.

He clears the floor of it to bare stone. He cuts a carving into the rock and lays ash into the cut, and chalks Raiden’s sigils around the outside of it, and holds the wooden focus Ethelred made him flat against the ground while he imbues the space with a subtle but pervasive power.

Alexis even finds a granite and quartz surface that he can grind coins against. He and Ethelred often talk about putting in the effort oneself to make a thing stronger. Alexis sweats to grind a couple coins at an awkward angle.

He gathers what will work for incense. Pine resin, a bark that smells of pepper once it dries, some mushrooms. He burns them in the mornings and chants over them a long while, not loudly. The smoke stays in the narrow place, sitting there and growing stronger.

He sits at the closed end of the cut, facing in, and keeps the watch himself. Incense burning and chanting the whole time.

Down at the camp the fortnight is unremarkable. The mornings are mild considering the season. There is a peace at camp.

Any of the rangers, if they walked up to look, find Alexis kneeling on cold rock with his sleeves shoved back, working and/or chanting. It is a great deal of labor in a very small space.

He comes down at midday and again at dinner. He eats more than he usually does and talks less than he usually does and is in his blanket early. Twice in the fortnight somebody lets him sleep through his watch, and in the morning he does not argue about it.