Vex Tallwhisper pressed both hands into the cliff and felt nothing give. Fourteen feet of purple skin and narrow bone, and still the rock refused to yield. Clay obeyed Vex. Clay softened under a touch and rose into shapes. But this cliff was where the shrine had to stand, tall enough for the short races to look up and call Vex's people gods. Stone did not care what Vex wanted. Vex opened the mouth on their stomach and let out a low sound of frustration. The shrine lived clear in Vex's mind. A figure taller than any building, arms spread over the bay. But a mind full of stone means nothing without tools to carve it. Vex's fingers left no mark. They only ached. "You're doing it wrong." The voice came from below Vex's knees. A calico cat person stood in the grass, no taller than Vex's shin, a spear held loose in one paw. Her green eyes moved over the blank cliff, then up Vex's long body to the smooth, faceless head. She did not flinch the way most did. She only looked, and judged. "Patches Quickwhisker," she said. "Scout. I crossed the wall to see what was on this side. Found a giant punching a rock." She had slipped past her own patrol to be here. Her captain had told her not to cross alone. She had crossed anyway. "I have no tools," Vex said. The words came from the stomach mouth. Patches watched it move without surprise. "No. But he might." She pointed her spear down the slope, toward a rounded grey building with bent walls and purple trim. A ten-foot concierge stood at its door in a dark suit, hands folded, two black eyes fixed on the hillside. He had been watching them for a while. Vex walked down. Patches trotted alongside. The concierge did not step back from Vex's height, though a toothy mouth sat plain in the middle of his torso, like Vex's own. "Thornwell Gastron," he said. "Concierge. You need iron." "I need to carve stone," Vex said. "Same thing." Thornwell went inside and returned with a long bundle wrapped in cloth. He unrolled it on the ground. Chisels. A heavy iron mallet. Points and rasps, all cold and sharp. "Guest left these. Six years back. Never came for them." He looked at Vex's stomach mouth, then at his own. "You'll use them." Vex knelt, took up a chisel and the mallet, and set the point against the cliff. One strike. A chip of rock broke free and fell. Then another. The stone gave. "There," Patches said. "Now you can build." Vex struck again, harder. The chisel slipped and gouged the wrong line, deep and wrong across the face of the stone. The shrine's first cut was already a scar. Vex stared at the ruined mark and understood the truth. Tools could break rock. Skill was another problem entirely.