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It was at the ungodly hour of eleven in the morning when I heard those most wretched words ever spoken by man or beast: “Rise and shine, sir.”
“Turn off the sun, blast you,” I responded with good humour, but alas, I was greeted with naught but the pinning-open of the tent-flap – and so, having been shone upon, I was accordingly forced to make myself rise. 

But there was no rule that said I had to be blasted happy about it.

“Is there any mail?” I demanded of my batman as I snugged on my boots.  They still squeaked, even after ten weeks – the d—ned things were never going to be broken in at this rate. 

“No, sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir.”
“Dash it all Batholomew, it’s been a full week!  Half the campaign could be over by now, and then where shall we win fortune and glory, eh what?”
“At breakfast, perhaps, sir.”
Life was suddenly close to being worth living again.  “Ah yes!  Tell me, Batty old boy, what’s on the menu today?”
“Tea and rations.  The supplies have been delayed along with the mail, sir.”
“MREs?” I asked, though I already felt that sinking sensation in my stomach that I had learned came when I had spoken a question whose answer I full well knew and dreaded.

“Indeed, sir.”
“You know I despise the things.”
“It’s unfortunate, sir.”
I rubbed a hand over my face.  “Is the tea fresh at least?”
“I regret to inform you that it is bugged, sir.”

At this moment my composed was broken and I permitted myself to run my right hand over my face and exhale sharply, and it was a mark of his distinguished and exemplary servitude that my batman did not so much as raise an ear or quiver a wingtip at this,. 
“Well,” I managed at last.  “Batty old boy, nobody ever said war was going to be easy”

***

Though I would never dare breathe a word of it aloud in polite company (for fear my mother would catch wind of it and pass away or disown me on the spot), I had to confess I had rather come to enjoy teabugs.  The way the little shells crunched between my teeth reminded me of eating icicles fresh from the stable roof when I was a small lad. 

MREs, now… those were a different kettle of fish.  I’d never gotten used to the noise, really.

“Are you deuced certain they don’t have anything else?”

“Utterly, sir,” said Batholomew.  Of course he was.  Of course there wasn’t. 

Well, nothing for it.  I took a deep breath, pulled the ripcord on the sheep, and raised my voice a little over the bleating.  “You know, I’m beginning to feel that, well, maybe not the war itself you understand, but perhaps the little bit of it here – just a TAD, Batholomew, just a TAD – has maybe, perchance, not been badly planned or unplanned, but could be described as, well, being given a little less time and effort in the planning department than it could be oh d—n it all, how long do these things take to heat up!?”

“Two minutes, sir,” said Batholomew as he replaced my empty mug with a full one.  I valiantly summoned every ounce of breeding from my veins and resisted the urge to slurp over the continued protests from my plate; aunt Germania would have been well, not PROUD, but given a stern nod.  “It says so on the packaging.”
“Packaging is for pricing, and pricing is for the common man, Batholomew,” I reminded him fondly.  He really was excellent at what he did, but he was still just a batman.  “You know, I think I’ll take a moment to stretch my legs while it cooks.  Take a look around outside.”
“Astute thinking, sir, to so familiarize yourself with the terrain.  If I may be so bold, would sir mind the chance to educate me on it?  I find it often helps to settle sir’s thoughts, to speak them aloud.”
“Of course, of course, of course!” I shot to my feet and darted out of the tent so quickly I nearly tripped over my own boots and had to catch myself by the dangling beeswax-waterproofed taurpalaphant flap.  I kicked the wretched footwear savagely until it subsided with a shudder; I should have known better than to purchase boots from a man who hadn’t worked for my grandfather.  “Right.  Right!  Now err, now.  Now.  Behold!”
There was a lot to behold.  Unfortunately I had beheld rather a lot of it when we first arrived here and hadn’t bothered to refresh myself since, having had much better things to do with my time, and so perhaps I found myself a trifle light on details to elaborate on and found myself hoping – quite nonsensically – that Batholomew would mistake my loss of words as solemn profundity.  Which was rot because for one thing Batholomew had served my family since he was weaned and knew me too well to fall for that, and for another thing he was merely a batman and as such seeking to impress him would be too bally close to trying to impress my boots, or my blankets.

Still, it wouldn’t do to appear indecisive or show ignorance, so I made the best of a bad situation, straightened up, tilted my mug at the valley beneath us in an appropriately insouciant manner, and said “bloody big bones, aren’t they?”

“Very perspicacious of you, sir,” said Batholomew solemnly.   The wind ruffled the fur on his face in a manner that I had always found deeply hilarious as a child. 

“One wonders where the rest of the old chap went off to, eh what?”

“Bargorbibriminus.”
I raised both eyebrows, then hastily corrected it to one and hoped he hadn’t noticed.  “Oho?”
“The old capitol of Gorbus.  After the goliath was felled with a meteor by the observatory stationed there at the peak of Mount Ibrimi, most of its carapace and long bones were disassembled over the subsequent centuries for royal construction and maintenance.  The ribcage, lodged as it was in the creature’s torso, was not accessible until it had become too embedded in the ground to be worth the trouble, and so it was left unattended until the empire waned and the capitol was abandoned for Barmuhegus in the west, towards the coast.”

I raised the other eyebrow again.  “Egad!  A scholar you are, Batty!  Quite so, quite so.  And nobody’s ever come back for the sad blighter since, have they?  Makes one think, makes one think.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the ghastly blood covering the valley floor I suppose is what, rust from iron in the rocks?” I pondered, scratching at my chin in a deliberate and thoughtful way. 

“Perhaps a bit, sir.  The rest is the goliath’s.  Too dense to evaporate and too toxic to be handled or consumed.  It’s a bit like treacle in texture.”
“Suppose we couldn’t feed it to you lot for lunch to get rid of it, hahahahahahahaha,” I said wittily.

“Very droll sir,” said Batty with that tight little smile I knew he only used when he couldn’t admit how humorous I was without losing face.  “But alas, we must content ourselves on dried apples for now.  Though speaking of meals, I do believe by the sound of it that yours is done cooking.”
“Don’t call what that thing’s done ‘cooking,’ Batty,” I groaned as I turned away from the vast gory crater below the camp and back to the cool shade and noxious smell of my tent.  “I swear to you on every member of my family, after this war is through I will never touch mutton again, ready-to-eat or not.”

***

After I’d breakfasted (by which I meant poked through breakfast with a fork until it looked sufficiently consumed, then consigned the rest to my boots in hopes they’d learn to be less noisy and clumsy – mother always did say I was too soft on my beasts, but then again mother herself always had a soft spot for our estate’s curtains, which had belonged to her own mother, so really life’s complicated in that sort of way don’t you know), I turned my attention to matters of import: grand strategy.

“Where the devil ARE those dastardly little creatures?” I demanded as I stared despondently at my desk, or the morass of paperwork and documents that surely hid my desk.  Batholomew did his best, but ofttimes in my peregrinations I was short of time to perform the sort of larger-scope examination of the resources at my fingertips, and so my work ran fallow under his care.  “Where are those blasted scouting reports….”
“Over here, sir.  By your elbow, next to the pay slips.”
“Pay, pay, pay – bah for pay, and bah for the man who thinks of nothing beyond it!  Does glory and truth and righteousness mean nothing to the common man, Batty?”
“Certainly not to the common conscript, sir, though this is not to say they do not have concerns beyond coin for services rendered.  I understand they are most upset over the lack of mail from home.”
“Yes, yes, we all miss hearth and home but for god’s sake that’s precisely why we’re out here!  These little b—–ds (pardon my Frankness) think they can steal the bread-box of the empire right out from its table, and I for one am here to tell them jolly well how wrong they are.  If you don’t believe in that, what is there to believe in?”
“The mind boggles, sir.  The scouting reports, sir?”
I took them and looked at them and groaned at them.  “Oh balderdash!  Look at this – this muck!  ‘Nothing to report, nothing to report, nothing to report!’”  Then why are we here if there’s nothing to report?”

“Sir’s orders are to fortify the pass atop the ‘blood pit’ and wait for-”

“Yes yes yes, ‘wait for further instructions.’  Well, we’ve waited and there’s no further instructions!  And there should be, because I for one think it’s nonsense to tie up this many men and beasts out here waiting for an attack by unholy little upstarts that never arrives?”
“Sir?”
“Come off it Batty, you know I’m no bible-thumper but it’s pretty black and white: ‘man shall have dominion over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and the beasts of the land.’  Truths to build empire by Batty, truths to build empire by – and these rotters violate it every bloody moment they spend alive.”  I shook my head in disgust.  “Bloody dinosaur riders.  I need to clear my head again.  Wait half a moment.”

“Sir, if I may-”

I stepped free of gloom and ink and into the air again.  It was nearing now and the sun was vicious and barbed and so it took me a good ten seconds of squinting to see anything, from the lovely sapphire-blue sky to the jagged old ribcage of the valley to the single column of cavalry quietly creeping its way up the gully of the last legs of the pass towards the camp. 

Well, at least the mail was finally here.  Although there were an awful lot of them.  And those certainly weren’t OUR flags.  And they weren’t Frankness Foreign Soldieres.  And they were holding something that glittered in the sun – here I fished out my trusty binoculars, a gift from my youngest sister (god rest her soul!) – which, on inspection, looked to me like guns.  ‘Marshlock’ lever-actions.  Made in Veersch, sold anywhere else to anyone who shouldn’t have them, most particularly around here.  To the dinosaur riders.

The advent of the repeating rifle had been a real godsend for the little blighters, it was true. 

One looked up and made eye contact with me through my binoculars and waved.  I dropped them onto the rocks and ran into the tent, purest authority coursing through my veins.

“BATTY!  The ENEMY is HERE!  To ARMS, damn you, to ARMS!  Where oh where is my pangolpany?!  ARMOUR ME, you WRETCHED BEAST!”  I didn’t wait for him to respond, but began to ransack my quarters – oh mere minutes ago I had known where everything was, now it was a tangle as foreign to me as the depths of the sea by Shoresline.  “ARM me TOO!  Ah H—L, ah H—L, ah ****!”  I picked up my fork and then put it down and picked it up again.  “Where is my PANGOLPANY?”
“Sir!” said Batty. 

I looked up to find him keen and at the ready and holding out my lovely armoured coat to step into, scales fluttering in the breeze from epaulettes to knee-length tail.  I hurried into it in a rush, shrugging so frantically that I almost shaved my neck clean with the collar, and hurried to peer out of the tent again.  The enemy had not yet breached the crater’s rim; with speed and courage they would be bottled up in the narrow pass.  “Damn you, Batty,” I cried, “we may yet win this!  Now hand me my bees.”
“Sir!” said Batty, and I felt the long, cold wax-rubbed bore of my beestick in my right hand, which wasn’t shaking at all. 

“Alarm!” I shouted  to him.  “Get the horn, rouse the trumpeters, get the alarm!  I’ll hold them off!  I’ll do it!  For glory!  GO!”
Then I braced myself, rushed forwards to the rim, slowed a bit down strategically, dropped and crawled the last bit to avoid being picked off, gently stuck the tip of my beestick out into the air to see if anyone was looking, then peered over the edge.

Still there beneath me, moving quicker now but still quiet.  The fools thought they were as of yet undetected!  I closed my eyes for a split second to pray, popped them open, drew a beed on the lead rider, and pulled the trigger. 

A low, gluey ‘thump’ emerged from the barrel, but nothing else.  I pulled it again.  And again.  Glump, glump.  A fourth time I tried, ignoring all trigger discipline and squeezing the little lever like a disobedient boot, and this time the beestick emitted a belch and went silent entire. 

“Drat,” I said.  It was what my father said when I spilled tea on his desk, and it was the only thing that filled my head now.  That had been the worst thrashing of my life.  “Drat.”

My hands still weren’t shaking.  The beestick fell out of them anyways, which didn’t seem fair.  It was also getting difficult to talk and my mouth tasted like I’d been eating coins. 

“I’ll take that now,” said a stranger’s voice from somewhere behind me.  I’d have investigated this, but found myself rather stiff-necked.  Then hairy, winged hands took the beestick from me – dripping royal jelly from the barrel; what tom-fool had let THAT happen? – and I saw Batholomew and he spoke to me and it was quiet puzzling because he didn’t sound like Batty at all.  “Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.  If you held down the trigger long enough something might actually come out.”

I squeaked something interrogatory.  He patted my arm gently and began to tug at the pangolpany’s sleeves.  “Best to take this off.  There isn’t MUCH contact oil on the inner collar, but you drank an awful lot of awfully special tea today – without so much as a bite of mutton to adulterate it, picky thing – and it’d be a shame to lose you to a runaway allergic reaction by now.  I put a lot of effort into you, Horace, and I don’t intend to throw it all away by mistake.” 

I was shucked clean of armour within the minute, which was also the amount of time needed for the first of the dinosaur riders to reach us atop the pass.  Her horse eyed me with wary impatience as she patted its neck with one scaly, feathered limb, balancing her ‘Marshlock’ atop her shoulders with the other.  “Well.  Glad to make your acquaintance in person, Colonel,” said the wretched up-jumped vermin.  “It IS the Colonel, isn’t it?  If you aren’t, tell him thanks for playing mailman; I think I’ve received more gossip-by-post in the last month than the dowager empress has since she attended her first ball.  And who’s this you brought with you?”

“I am indeed the Colonel,” said Batholomew.  “And this is ALSO a colonel of sorts: meet Horace Winsmoore-Handover, soon to be Duke Horace Winsmoore-Handover (if his father keeps drinking the way he was when I saw him last).  The third.”
“A lot of smoke for a little spark,” the insolent leering vermin said, peering at me like aunt Tabitha might examine an undusted mantelpiece.  “Did you get them all like this?”
“The officers are locked down tight, the conscripts are locked more mundanely in their barracks with the runs,” said Batholomew.  “They’ll be well enough to surrender and not much else, and frankly after the time they’ve had I think they’ll be glad of it.  You can probably get half of them to sign on within the month, within the week if you promise they’ll get to shoot their old commanders.  Not these ones, though.”

“What’re they good for then – boot fodder?” asked the terrifying inhuman vermin.  She reached out with the barrel of her weapon and poked my cheek and her teeth were inescapable due to my frozen eyelids. 

“No, no.  Nothing so particular.  Hostages.”
“Ah.  So we feed them while they sit around doing nothing.”
“I can personally assure you,” said Batholomew with the largest smile I had ever seen on his face, “that they have been very well trained for exactly this situation.”

“Well, at least they’re trained for SOMETHING,” she said.  And they laughed, laughed, laughed, and all I could think of as I stood there, eclipsing the anger and the fear and even the shame was that my nose was beginning to itch. 

Yes, nobody ever said war was going to be easy.  But it could at least have the d—ned decency to be straightforward. 

A tree fell in the forest.  It may or may not have made a sound.

What it DID make was an opportunity.  Bark-torn, xylem in shambles, phloem lost, roots demanding to know what made the pressure change, all of it wide-open for ground-level opportunism. 

And oh, the opportunism there was to be had!  Every arthropod with working limbs and a stout stock of haemoglobin fell upon it, or upon each other.  Woodlice roiled in their armoured columns; beetles teamed atop the fallen limbs, knives clutched betwixt their mandibles; great fat grubs were hatched and gnawed and devoured alive in the endless sturdy halls of the banquet of the tree’s corpse.  Caterpillars who had claimed leaves as their lofty private gardens desperately raced to outeat a horde of upstarts, monocles popping in outrage as they watched their green estates wither away at the hands of the dirtbound masses. 

But at last the frenzy subsided, the crowd calmed, the victors stood atop the log.  Though chance had played their part in the great struggle, at last destiny had declared a winner to rise alone in triumph in the center stage of this particular performance of history. 

“Victory!” cried the largest of the beetles, hoisting their banner in its tattered limbs.  “Through strength of carapace, situational flight, and indefatigable numbers, by virtue of our efforts we have CLAIMED this carcass for our people and our plump, wood-boring children!  Pay us tribute!”

Upon saying so, there came a quick cold wind from above, and behind that a beak, and behind that a bird, and when the bird departed so too did the beetle. 

Then came the woodpeckers. 

***

After the Time of Knocking was through, the ragged survivors reassembled for a meeting near the tree’s heartwood. 

“My friends and beetlefamily,” croaked the eldest of them, “we have endured much.  We have seen loved ones and children plucked screaming from their nests by tongues so long and gross as to defy all description.  But here at last we have gone too deep for even the mightiest pileated to penetrate.  Though we have all suffered, this is but the dark before the dawn.”

There was a brief crunching sound as the bear began to sink its claws into the wood and brace itself. 

“Well,” said the second-eldest beetle present.  “To hell with speeches anyhow.”

***

When the Time of Claws was through, and the Second Time of Knocking had reaped what little remained on the newly-exposed wooden core, and a few particular peckish possums had stopped by late one night and picked off most of the survivors in what was not a Time Of but was generally regarded as being a Time, the tree was a different place.  For one thing it had been torn asunder into several logs; for another, someone seemed to have eaten all the beetles.

“This was good luck,” said one woodlouse, who was now gnawing away quite happily on the humus and scum of the tree, its bark, and several dozen unlucky beetles.  “That could’ve been us.”

“This was smart timing,” retorted another woodlouse.  “We were letting the beetles think they had the run of the place on purpose, so they could get vertebrate’d, which any fool could see would happen.  We had everything under control the whole time.  Never let chance take credit for your own cleverness.”

“Nah, ‘twas Detrital Providence,” proclaimed a third woodlouse.  “We were MEANT to have this tree, and the beetles were always meant to be purged by blessed beak and consoling claw.  Lo, we are given that which we were always promised, and shall always be ours forever and ever, while our foes are assured eternal damnation and befoulment by horrid bone-bearing beasts in the hinterlands of the cramped corners of the furthest ends of the most despicable stretches of the earth.  Here we shall flourish for all time, ensconced in these hallowed halls free of shrews, spiders, and – may they never curse us with their foul presence – centipedes.”

“That sounds MUCH better,” said the second woodlouse. 
“Did you hear something?” asked the first.

“A whiny noncommittal jerk who won’t be a team player,” said the third woodlouse.  “Throw it off the log.”

“But I heard something,” complained the first woodlouse as it was dragged to the edge of the log, tiny legs flailing in abject pitifulness.  “It sounded like ‘drip drip-”

It plunged to the forest floor, where a shrew devoured it instantly.  The woodlice cheered at this, and such was the tumult and the joy of their celebration that they didn’t hear the drip, the dribble, the splash, or the flood. 

***

Some time later, the log was in the water. 

“This is a test,” the third woodlouse reminded its brethren.  “We are being purified and made wholesome so as to inhabit our new home.  Behold!  Already the water has washed away the centipedes and the doubters, and this strange ‘creek’ we float in is bereft of shrews!”

“And we shed the losers that didn’t get with the program,” said the second woodlouse.  “Dead weight’s gone, our enemies are suffering – this is all gravy if you ask me.”
“It washed away half of us,” said a different first woodlouse.  “That seems to be bad.”
“Cast the new whiny noncommittal jerk who won’t be a team player into the water,” commanded the third woodlouse.  And so the different first woodlouse was dragged to the edge of the log – more slowly this time, because there were fewer woodlice – and shoved down at great effort and expense until the waves took it, along with a gigantic grasping pincher-claw.

“Rejoice!” called the third woodlouse.  “For lo, the beasts of this new land obey our command!”
“What if they come up here?” panicked a new first woodlouse.

“It’s totally impossible for that to happeaaaaarghhhhhh,” said the second woodlouse, as a crayfish gently plucked it from the surface of the log and began to devour it.  For lo, this was not the case.

***

The Time of the Smaller Claws was one of great strife, of perilous revolutions and the upheaval of societal order.  For one thing, the woodlice were enserfed to the log, ordered to farm algae and so the crayfish might consume it consume it and also consume the woodlice.  For another, the log would very slowly and perilously revolve as the algae on its underside overgrew and the algae on its surfed was withered by the sun and grazed away, upheaving the order of society as the woodlice were driven like cattle to their new and soggy pasture while the crayfish scuttled to their new domains. 

“This is foreordained by the universe, probably,” the third woodlouse had admitted as he was devoured by a hungry crayfish.  “But in a good way.” And this had caught the attention of the crayfish as an amusing thought. 

“What nonsense,” it laughed at the next cocktail party it attended as the guests devoured plates of woodlice.  “The bigger people eat the smaller people, that’s just how it is.  Putting more words on it is just fancy-pants delusions.”

“Exactly.  Any fool can construct a complex series of tautological arguments insisting that the universe is meant to end with themselves in charge of everything; REAL smart people know that might makes right and they’re the mightiest ones so ipso facto quod era demonstratum lorem ipsum they’re meant to be in charge of everything.“

“Quite so.”
“To be sure.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“On a totally different topic, has anyone found the water to taste saltier and fouler recently?”
“Your tastebuds are acting up.  Must have not eaten enough woodlice, get some more in there.”

“No, no, it HAS been getting saltier the farther we drift.  Maybe we should consider beaching the log, or even pushing it farther upstream.”
“Boring killjoy.  We’d have to stop rotating it with woodlouse farming to do that; come up with a more conveniently solvable problem and we’ll listen to you.”

***

The time that followed the passing out of the estuary into the Big Big Blue Horizon had no title because it very rapidly ran short of enough inhabitants to form a quorum on matters of history, ending with a woodlouse sitting atop the brilliantly-shining salt-speckled hull of the log, wide eyed and terrified at everything. 

“This seemed avoidable,” it mumbled.  It gummed fruitlessly at some of the little sticky bits gluing themselves to the wood, ingested salt, and passed away.

A gull sampled it, in the optimistic way of gulls.  The few clinging speckles of barnacles-to-be were less appetizing, and so it left them and the log and forgot about them. 

***

There was a lot to consider.  In order, and with care.

First, there was all the recent salt-scarring of the log.  Recent.  It hadn’t always been in its current environment.  Intriguing.  This was wildly interesting to initial studies and many barnacles had written fascinating papers on it. 

Second, oddly widespread scarring from intense sludge-and-chew algal farming.  Someone had been monoculturing its surface for nutrition. The precise circumstances surrounding this were controversial and mysterious and many barnacles had spent their careers gambling away their reputations with carefully-calculated libelous assaults over it.   

Third, a dry core towards the interior, one that was becoming more waterlogged.  The log was becoming more sodden and less seaworthy. One day, it would sink.  This implied the end of near-surface barnacles, which divided the barnacles further into those that talked about this too much and those that didn’t. 

There would be more of consequence to this, but at the last moment where the last barnacle watched as the last bit of light slid away overhead and it sank below its comfortably-habitable depth range headed for the deepest abysses the planet could offer, it couldn’t think of any. 

But it considered what the last woodlouse and the last crayfish and the last beetles may have felt, or other, more speculative creatures, which made it feel less like the last and more like one in the company of others.  So that was nice. 

***

The log itself had no known opinions after falling.  Nobody was there to listen. 

It was a bright, crisp morning with the sun’s rays not yet begun to burn the dewdrops when Yolgyi took up her pack and ventured forth to see the dinosaur wizard.

It was best to leave early.  The road was long, and the meteor was due at noon.

***

Down from the uplands through the mist-shrouded redwoods and the tumbled grey stone went Yolgyi, plucking insects and berries and a particularly slow and fat little furry thing for her breakfast.  Out into the wide green meadows she went, chewing and nippy at juicy young shoots yet to grow hardened and horned with cellulose, sipping quickly and furtively from a small pond she strained through a little slip of fern-woven cloth.  Down to the sea, the sea, the great shallow sea that roiled over sunken squashed sullen continental crust and split the continent from groin to gullet, where she dropped her pack by a tangle of innocuous driftwood and seaweed, put together a fine and functional raft in no time at all, and set out, propelled by a paddle from her pack and a good solid meal. 

Towards the single island in sight from this little inlet on this small stretch of coast, towards the single landmark that rose from the modest hill that broke a scant copse of trees.  Towards the  tower of the dinosaur wizard. 

The waves were slight, for it was a pleasant day and the breeze small and more concerned with preventing heat rather than inflicting chill.  Yolgyi concerned herself with other things than seamanship.  Speed, spawned from the smoothness and force of a stroke.  Efficiency, from the angle and shape of that same stroke.  Stealth, from hurling oneself flat onto the raft and cowering beneath the web of beach-sludge she had brought along for just that purpose until an eye attached to a wing attached to a beak longer than her body moved on.  Silence, from shipping her paddle and barely moving enough to breathe until a shadow with flippers wider than her raft grew bored of nudging it with its snout.

By such means and methods did Yolgyi travel until the correct kind of corals spun by underneath her raft and she threw herself into headless frenzy, whaling away on her paddle until she leapt from stone to stone to shore and hit the soft sandy beach already running in midair, sprinting through the little salt-sprayed cycads that whispered warnings she ignored, dancing from foot to foot through the obsidian shards planted in the sand that droned of deep and profound pains to befall trespassers, and up to the very door of the tower, where she redoubled her speed and began to hum and sing and whistle in such a way that the very loud and horrible spell that was meant to instantly decapitate intruders instead clipped her pack free from her back just as she jumped, hurling both it and herself through the gate of the tower just as it slammed shut behind her. 

There, Yolgyi permitted herself a breath, and then another, and a third.  But she rummaged in her severed backpack for her tools while she did it, because it was not far until noon, and the tower of the dinosaur wizard stretched far above and below her, formed from a ring of three mighty gingko that had been induced to cleave together into one titanic hollowed spiral with a central space that plunged deep into the roots below as far as it soared up to the crown above. 

Great and mighty glyphscapes flowed over the walls of corals, of shells, of teeth – all taken from the tides and used to render down the concrete reality of a global ecology into a representation simple enough to be conceptualized and true enough to crack the door of reality a little wider than it normally rested.  Every cracked ammonite whorl; every broken Xiphactinus tooth; every desiccated and windstripped bird carcass; every shark egg case; every mammal skull; every sliver of bark and dab of algae and wave-tossed pebble; each and every one standing for so much more than they were and all the implication of all that had made them and would make more.  All of them and all of that all fit just precisely so that it might fit just precisely right. 

Yolgyi set her eyes on the most beautifully and sublimely perfect of the pieces, the fragments that most eloquently suggested and supported the whole, and began to assail them with her small and crude but very sturdy pick.   In this matter she worked her way up the slow and winding path of branches towards the tower’s apex.  She ran and searched and with every fifth step and every second dart of her eyes she skipped closer to the wall and SWUNG and an irreplaceable and unfathomable segment of the world would go crunch. 

The sun was almost overhead, singing down through the crown of the tower.  Yolgyi ran faster and swung harder. Some of the swings of her pick went crack or chip or clank rather than crunch.  It’d have to be good enough.  Her lungs were on fire and her legs were swamps of lactic misery.  It’d have to be good enough. 

And then she burst through into full sunlight.

Above her was the noonday sun, which made her squint.  Above her was a great shadow, which made her snarl.  And above that, between her and the sunlight, towering and fiercely indifferent, stood the dinosaur wizard. 

The dinosaur wizard was fifty feet long and over a dozen feet tall and had a big solemnly duck-faced skull filled with dental batteries composed of hundreds of tiny little teeth that could grind the most stubborn plant matter down to mere calories and a long hand-gnawed staff clutched between their forelegs absolutely crawling with hidden mysteries.  They were singing.  The song was audible everywhere, but it was only this close that you could tell it was happening, feel it as it shook its way into your bones and sunk down into your molecules and took every atom gently into its grasp and settled there, turning itself into connective tissue between Everything and Everywhere and Everywhen. 

Yolgyi hurled her pick at the dinosaur wizard’s nearest foot, which didn’t go crunch or crack or chip or clank or even thud really, just thump.  But she did this because she was getting a good solid grip on her blade.  And while she did that she ran even faster, and while she did that she leapt still higher, and with all her speed and her weight and her force and her fury she came down blade-first on the left hindfoot of the dinosaur wizard and sunk it hilt-deep in their flesh. 

The song didn’t change. 

“Fuck,” said Yolgyi without much heat.  And above them both was the meteor, a glimmer barely calculable, and it came down in all its speed and violence and met the song and

***

It was dark out, too early for even the most bright-eyed of the morning chorus to be up and singing.  But Yolgyi was awake, and she was thinking.  And as she thought she filled her pack; tightened it here, loosened it there.  She sharpened her blade; filed it down here, serrated it there.  She planned and replanned the exact motions she would make to lash seaweed and driftwood; to deface spell and destroy shell.  She thought of bone and sinew and muscle and where and how to cut.  And when the last of the night’s predators had slunk to their sleep and passed by the entrance to the tumbledown rockheap of her home, when it was a bright, crisp morning with the sun’s rays not yet begun to burn the dewdrops, Yolgyi took up her pack and ventured forth to see the dinosaur wizard.

This time she drank too long at the pool and was eaten by an alligator.

***

Paddled too swiftly and was devoured by a mosasaur. 

***

Stabbed the dinosaur wizard and didn’t stop them.

***

Stabbed the dinosaur wizard and didn’t stop them.

***

Tripped on one of the obsidian shards and was blasted out of time by its outraged cries. 

***

Slipped on the edge of the tower and fell off.

***

Stabbed the dinosaur wizard and didn’t stop them.

***

Stabbed the dinosaur wizard and didn’t stop them.

***

Stabbed the dinosaur wizard and didn’t stop them.

***

Stabbed the dinosaur wizard and didn’t stop them.

***

Stabbed the dinosaur wizard and didn’t stop them.

***

Didn’t bother to get up.  Yolgyi let herself do that every once in a while.  At first she’d lied to herself, told herself it was to go over her plan from first principles and make large changes. 

Now she admitted the truth.  She did this because now and then she wanted some sleep. 

She couldn’t.  The song was in her bones, the same as it was in everything else, and she couldn’t hear it and that made it so she couldn’t ignore it.  So she laid in bed all morning coiled and tired and restless and counting down the seconds until noon with the precision of a revolving planet until it was dark out again and she was still awake.

***

Tried to leave before sunup and was caught and eaten. 

***

Tried to leave before sunup and was caught and eaten.

***

Tried to raft before sunup and became lost in the dark, hit a reef, and was eaten by a shark. 

***

Tried to leave before sunup and was caught and eaten.

***

Tried to raft before sunup and became lost in the dark, drifted out to sea, and ran out of time. 

***

Stepped on an obsidian shard in the hazy dawn-light and was blasted out of time by its enraged cries. 

***

It had been a long time since Yolgyi had felt that little stir of something changing.  Maybe since she’d first gotten really reliably good at making the raft?  Or since she’d properly mastered how many calories she needed to move as quick as she had to, down to the mouthful. 

She’d have to redo that part too now.  She was in the tower and she had time to spare.  She could take her time wrecking things.  She could try to see how much more damage she could do to the song from down here.  She could try to see how much more damage she could do to the dinosaur wizard from up there. 

***

The

***

Answer

***

Was

***

Not

***

Enough

***

After Yolgyi found that out, she slept in again. This time she actually slept, too.  For how long she wasn’t certain at all.  It wasn’t a worthwhile concept right then. 

When she woke up, she left her pack and ventured forth to see the dinosaur wizard. 

Crept through the terrors of the night.

Ate what she needed for energy.

Built the raft she needed to cross the waves.

Walked up the beach slowly, steering far and away clear of each and every obsidian shard. 

Ducked and rolled under the trapped gate.

And climbed the tower slowly, so slowly, tracing the pattern of the world with her eyes and her touch. 

Until at last Yolgyi stood under the nigh-noon sun, in the shadow of the dinosaur wizard, and she asked: “What’s the point?”
“To buy time,” said the dinosaur wizard’s staff. 

“I didn’t ask you, stick.”
“My master’s voice is busy singing the song that keeps this world from its grave,” said the dinosaur wizard’s staff in the smug voice of a stick that knew it was being obstructive. “I speak for them in all ways and meanings intelligible to the unwizardly.”
“Then I ask them: buying time for what?”

“For the other great wizards, of course.  As we twist on the gyre of the universe by my master’s voice, they may learn and think and plan and secure a more permanent future.”

“And what if they can’t?”
“They are great wizards and you aren’t,” said the staff.  “Of course they shall.”

“And they’ll do this and tell your master before they undo it all again?”
“Of course they shall.”
“And they haven’t done it by now for very good reasons?”
“Of course they haven’t.”
“And you’re certain they’ll fix things soon?”
“Of course they will.  A mere meteor is nothing before the assembled strength of all of dinosaur wizardkind.”
“Did one of you bring it here?”
“Of course not,” said the staff indignantly.

“Do you know who did it?”
“Probably that fuck-o from Appalachia, he’s always been too into celestial mechanics for his own good and he’s pretty bad at cosmathematics.  Anyways, it’ll be easy to fix this.  My master has given us all the time in the universe to work with.”

“Your master,” said Yolgyi, “has given me enough time to travel down to the coast, sail over here on a raft, and try to kill them.  If I rush.  This is a very simple thing to do compared to what you’re saying your master’s peers are trying to do.  If they’re trying to do it.”

“Pish posh,’ said the staff.  “Leave matters of wizardry to the wizards and go back to whatever it is you do.  Play with rocks or something.”
The meteor fell.  The song rose.  And it was dark out.

Yolgyi stared into the dark, took the fern cloth out of her pack, and began to unravel and reweave it. 

***

She spent

***

A long time

***

Practicing it

***

Then when she got to the island, it took

***

A few tries

***

To get the swing of

***

It

***

But at last she walked carefully, so very carefully, all the way up the tower, tiptoeing, tiptoeing, net slung over her shoulder, as the song began to hum all with itself in her bones and in her brains.  And as she stepped up onto the crown of the tower with the sun almost right overhead, she felt the contents of her net begin to sing and cry and grumble along with it, such that the eyes of the dinosaur wizard widened and it spun – slowly, haltingly, like a twisting, toppling tree – to face her, staff raised. 

“What are you DOING?!” demanded the staff.

“Playing with rocks,” said Yolgyi.  And she spun the net above her head and hurled it spinning wide, sending a load of very loud and angry obsidian shards hurtling directly at the dinosaur wizard’s face.

There was a brief, complicated moment where a being that had all the time in the universe tried to decide between being blasted out of time and interrupting the song they were singing.  They had to think quickly.

This did not happen. 

The song fell.  And a second or two later, so did the meteor. 

***

It was dark out in the south, and growing darker fast.  Huge clouds of smoke and ash and vapour roiling up at speeds too quick to look like anything but slower than molasses.  The world was on fire or about to burn. 

Yolgyi stopped picking the last few fragments of obsidian and dinosaur wizard bone out of her side and sat down for a rest.  And insofar as she had the energy to think of anything at all, as the meteor’s spray raced forwards towards the tower, it was this:

If anybody lives through this, they’d better not be dumb enough to think wizards are a good idea. 

The Pit of the Deceivers

Robin Mooch

This rotten edifice was once drafted to serve as the foundation of a great and stately tower to praise the glory of the Blessed Truth.  Yet tragedy struck when cultists and depraved scum amongst the architects blended cursed and unholy ointments into the mortar.  After standing gloriously for exactly three semesters months the entire rotten edifice came crashing down, becoming a ruin shunned by all sane folk.  But whispers speak in the city slums of darker things remaining amongst the rubble, for the wicked have plans that run far deeper than merely destroying their adversaries.  Two to six brave adventures must plumb the depths of the foundations of what was once the Tower of Intellect, rendered now….The Pit of the Deceivers.

1: Entry to Hades

Broken mortar and scattered stone, nothing of value or import left amidst the lingering bitterness of betrayal.  The tower is still almost visible in the sky if you shut your eyes and imagine what could have been.  The air is cold and moist, like the tongues of the liars who brought it down.  You stand on the precipice of something.  Dare you take the next step?

The illusion of pointlessness is only skin-deep: a careful search with even moderate attentiveness will peel loose this first of the many pathetic lies shielding the Pit’s masterminds from justice – a trapdoor hidden behind a stack of fouled and rotten sacks of potatoes in what was meant to be the root cellar.  No roll necessary; these parasitic and fawning mockeries never dreamed keen eyes or stout mind would search for them, trusting in the need of their noble adversaries to trust them.  No longer!

Inhabitants:

Treasure: A lost holy symbol of the Tower of Intellect has avoided capture or defilement, having fallen into one of the abandoned water barrels, where it shines like a lost coin in a gutter.  It will Embless the party during their mission as a 50^th-level Holy One.  Its material value is 50 gold, its ideological value is priceless.

2: Descent into Lies

The maddening spiral of this stairway stretches to depths unfathomable, and every inch of it is a slow but suffocating insult to the senses.  The stone beneath your feet is fouled and slippery as no honest rock should be; the air which should be clean and wholesome is rank and slimy in your lungs; the light flickering from the torches is greasy and only deepens the shadows.  From somewhere you hear a whisper of a monotonous and nasal chant. 

This stairwell is testament to the hubris and folly of its builders: for all its grotesque pretensions to grandeur, it is but a few scant shallow stories in depth – the rest is but the work of architectural smoke and mirrors, an optical illusion creating the appearance of endless evil where rests a rather humdrum and typical squalid hole.  So too typical is the waiting ambush; several cultists of the Scum Sucker are skulking in the alcoves holding torches, posing as the crude statuettes that otherwise fulfill this role.  They are clumsy and fearful of the righteous; this ambush suffers a -5 penalty; -10 if the holy symbol from Area 1 is present. 

Inhabitants: 10 Scum Sucker cultists (LVL 1; 3HITS; 1ATK; 2DAM, SPEC: Rotten wounds: when a cultist dies they vomit bile as an extra 1DAM Rot attack).  These pitiful creatures will fight to the death; not out of bravery, but out of the sheer inability to comprehend that they may be outmatched.  If panic gets the better of them one or two might cast themselves down the shaft in stupid terror, thereby destroying their own illusion.  Thus is evil ever undone and deceit unmasked. 

Treasure: None.  The cultists are penniless due to their own perfidious and pernicious sloth. 

3: Chambers of Ingratitude

This foul-smelling and cramped dormitory clearly serves as domicile for the cultists you so recently slew.  A twisted and sloppily constructed idol to the Scum Sucker dominates what little floor space is available – the mindless idiots, in their haste to raise praise to this putrid being, have witlessly ceded the only available patch of floor space they could have used for anything productive. 

The cultists’s bedsheets are repositories of fleas and nits; any foolish search for something of value in the possessions of these wretches will find naught but a chance at contracting Scum Scabies (33RISK; 1DAY).  The Idol of the Scum Sucker is, for all its putridity, powerless to do anything to impede the stout and good-hearted. 

Inhabitants: None.

Treasure: The Idol of the Scum Sucker is utterly worthless and the party should be punished with ill-fortune by the grace of the divine should they attempt to carry it with them.  If the holy symbol from Area 1 is present it will dissolve the Idol into foul-smelling mucus instantly. 

4: Apse of Treason

A gnarled and crooked little domed chamber houses what little pathetic pretense of knowledge and learning this festering slime-trap can muster: a single shelf, filled with reams of snot-encrusted and pus-smeared papers.  This must the cult’s record-keeping section, where they kept all the records of their sabotage, backroom dealing, and terrible slanders against the wonders of the Tower of Intellect. 

The cultist’s attempts at hiding their lies are as transparent as daylight to any player examining these records.  Bringing these texts to the authorities will doubtlessly lead to the wheels of justice coming down with great and holy force upon any straggling supporters who remain in the rest of the city. 

Inhabitants: None.  The cultists are all illiterate, fumbling morons who don’t even know how to employ capitalization properly, let alone spell.  The sight of this room – necessary though it is for their foul work – pains them. 

Treasure: Bringing the texts to the attention of authority will surely garner the party commendations and raise their esteem in the eyes of all. 

5: Labyrinth of Hate

The stonework – already of meager, barely-serviceable quality – here degrades into rough and clumsy scratching on raw and untrammeled stone; a cavern clawed loose from the rock without even the beneficial caress of water’s flow.  A maze of twisty little passages seemingly surround you, all alike.  Keep your wits steady and your blade ready. 

This pitiful attempt at a ward is a true labyrinth indeed; all the party need do is follow the single winding path and their escape shall be guaranteed, so long as they can defeat the Scum Slave chained to the exit. 

Inhabitants: 1 Scum Slave (LVL 3; 15HITS; 2ATK; 7DAM, SPEC: Chained, the Scum Slave cannot move from its position and can only spit for 1ATK 1DAM against any foe beyond its reach).  This pathetic thing is meant to be the cultists’ superweapon.  Do they not realize their own incompetence foils their every ploy?  Of course not. 

Treasure: The Scum Slave has swallowed a bejewelled ring if the party can bring themselves to cut open its rotten belly.  It is worth 40 gold. 

6: Road to Damnation

This is like the first staircase the party encountered but smaller.

It’s probably less impressive too now that they know the trick behind it. 

Inhabitants: None.

Treasure: None.

7: Chamber of Lies

Within this dark place, the nadir of this antithesis to the once-glorious Tower, foul vapours congeal and mist from a noxious pit in the floor that plumbs the depths of the world and intrudes into a place far more sinister.  Above it, foolishly believing themselves its masters, two robed figures lower their clasped hands and pause in their unceasing, monotonous, idiotic chanting.  The Twin Deceivers unsheathe their wicked, backstabbing daggers and prepare for a battle their cowardly hearts suspect they cannot win. 

These two utter bastards oversaw the overturning of the overarching rules and overall guiding principles of the Tower of Intellect and would gladly have turned it into a rotting hive venerating the wretched Scum Sucker – blessed be that their own incompetence achieved nothing but its ruin!  They even now whine and entreat their dark master to return.  Enact great and terrible vengeance upon them!

Inhabitants: Foul Sorcerer Sammael (LVL 3; 10HITS; 1ATK; 5DAM, SPEC: Spellcasting: 2rot missile, 1foul stench).  and Fiend Scholar Paeiet (LVL 3; 8HITS; 2ATK; 2DAM, SPEC: Spellcasting: 2deceitful whispers, 1screech), the ringleaders of this wretched coven who turned all others to blasphemous worship of the Scum Sucker.  They will fight with vicious cowardice to the death while begging for mercy they do not deserve and will never get. 

Treasure: Nothing they own is worth anything.  Setting their belongings on fire will cause a pure diamond worth 100 gold to form in the pockets of all party members with a tiny ‘ding’ of pure sweetness and light. 

8: The Pit of Deceit

Behold!  The great antithesis in its rotting flesh!  The Scum Sucker’s loathsome maw roils hungrily at you from the great pit, gnashing with spite that it hasn’t received the feast that it was promised!  Stand fast!

To defeat the Scum Sucker, all the party need do is close the hole by clogging it with any of the loose objects lying around, preferably including the bodies of Sam and Pat. 

Inhabitants: Sandii the Scum Sucker (LVL 10; 0HITS; 0ATK; 0DAM, SPEC: Otherworldly, the Scum Sucker cannot intercede without a potent mortal intermediary and is powerless to touch the physical plane)

Treasure: Upon defeating the Scum Sucker and closing the Pit of Deceit the party will return in triumph to the Principal of the city and be granted Monitorship of all byways and the adulation and admiration of all worthy folk. 

***

The Festering Cavern

Sam Bolth

There is a very large cave outside of town, everyone knows that and it’s a cool place to hang out sometimes.  It’s got a big gross monster inside it, everyone knows that, they let it be and have its space.  Until recently, all of this wasn’t a problem.  Now the monster’s crawled out across the countryside screaming and farting all night.  You’ve been hired to go in and make it stop. 

1: The Holeway

The cavern’s mouth is wide and damp and smells bad.  Inside you can hear a distant whining. 

Some of the ooze dangling from the ceiling is acidic glue; anyone taller than a dwarve will run into it if they aren’t careful. 

Inhabitants: 2 Acidic Glue (LVL 2; 20HITS; 1ATK; 8DAM, SPEC: Flammable, weak 2fire). 

Treasure: the Festerer regurgitated a big smelly pellet from last night’s meal just outside the cavern mouth.  Anyone poking through it will find a ‘best runner-up’ trophy from last year’s Minidungeon Round-Robin, worth 5 gold.  

2: Main Sludgepit

The cave combines limestone walls and a filth-covered floor with a rotten and root-riddled ceiling that’s about to cave in.  Whatever lives here doesn’t pay much attention to its surroundings. 

The center of the sludgepit will suck in anyone who walks through it without checking (Dwarve and alf players will sense the uneven flooring just before they get too close; so will woodwisers).  Six scavenging Big Teeth are hiding on the ceiling by holding onto the roots.

Inhabitants: 6 Big Teeth (LVL 1; 3HITS; 3ATK; 1DAM, SPEC: Gnawing, if one ATK hits the next hits automatically)

Treasure: The largest Big Teeth has a ruby caught in its incisors worth 50 gold.

3: Rear Sludgepits

Farther in the cavern splits apart into three deep alcoves.  All of them are filled with loose garbage and bones.

The first sludgepit is filled with skeletons and nothing else.  The second sludgepit is filled with a skeletonne formed from a cow, two deer, and three humans.  The third sludgepit is shallow and leads to Area 4. 

Inhabitants: 1 Skeletonne (LVL 3; 12HITS; 4ATK; 2DAM, SPEC: Splinter, whenever it loses 3 hp create a copy of this monster with 3 less hp)

Treasure: The deer were both trophy bucks and their antler racks are worth 10 gold each. 

4: Narrow Passages

This tunnel is dark and cramped and pretty hard to get through and it’s almost like whatever made it doesn’t want any company.

The roots in the walls will try to grab you (2ATK) and deal 2DAM after seizing hold.  Attacking them with rot, fire, or bladed weapons will stop them immediately; blunt weapons, light, or cold will take longer and they’ll deal 1DAM before backing off.

Inhabitants: None.

Treasure: None.

5: The Festering Cavern

This is the worst-smelling place you’ve ever seen and it’s because of the big gross monster squatting in the center of it.  It looks like a flightless robin the size of a truck and it’s still whining even as it jumps at you. 

Boss fight.  If you bring it to half health it tries to escape, but it’ll panic and get stuck in the roots in Area 4 and you can finish it off pretty easily. 

Inhabitants: 1 Festering Robin  (LVL 5; 22HITS; 1ATK; 7DAM, SPEC: Thin Skin, weak 3all)

Treasure: Everyone thanks you for getting rid of a greedy asshole who was driving people away and trying to turn a perfectly good hangout spot into his private shithole. 

***

The Silent Pool

Pat Garvey

Imagine a place devoid of sound.  Devoid of light.  Devoid of time.  A place neither hot nor cold.  An endless, tranquil pool where you can sink forever without the need to break the surface for breathe.  It sounds amazing, and you’re here to find it, somewhere higher up this peaceful enchanted hillside of Tumbled Peak.

1: Soft Slopes

These green and mossy stones welcome you to the mist-enshrouded base of the tranquil rise in terrain.  What awaits you?

Although the moss looks slick, it’s perfectly safe and stable underfoot as long as you don’t jump around a lot like an asshole. 

Inhabitants: None. 

Treasure: Peace of mind. 

2: Fae Copse

Halfway to the summit a small village comes into view, woven into the small local trees and the stone of the ground, moss-shrouded and fern-draped. Who lives there?

The alfs, dwarves, and nomes of this town are shy but very friendly and will be nothing but friendly and nice to anyone visiting as long as you don’t start accusing them all of backstabbing you like an asshole. 

Inhabitants: Like ten good friends. 

Treasure: Camaraderie. 

3: The Silent Pool

Atop the worn and weathered warm-edged stone of Tumbled Peak lies the pool.  But someone has made it here before you – sitting in it is a small and stalwart figure.  You know them.  Where from?

Gee I don’t know maybe from before the society’s membership went from seventeen to three huh?

Inhabitants: Your best friend Sandy who really did not deserve any of the shit that went down and is here to have a goddamned break with you half an hour after you turn in this stupid fucking submission. 

Treasure: The peace of mind that comes from splitting a joint half an hour after saying PS I Quit Fucko

PS: I quit, Fucko. 

PPS: ‘Fucko’ is you, Robin.

In the Dark Lord’s tomb

There was a sarcophagus

And a blade with runes

And a tapestry of…

The victorious clash of Nine Dooms

And there were three magic rings seized from elven kings

And two jeweled skulls

And a pair of crystal balls

And a demonic tome

And a rat’s bones

And a lock on a door guarding trophies from war

And a quiet careful tomb robber whispering “score”

Farewell tomb

Farewell Dooms

Farewell tapestry of Nine Dooms

Farewell night and the blade with runes

Farewell rings

Farewell kings

Farewell skulls

And farewell balls

Farewell gold

And farewell cold

Farewell tome

And farewell rat bones

Farewell lock

And farewell door

Farewell trophies

Farewell war

And farewell to the quiet careful tomb robber whispering “score”

Farewell spiders

Farewell Dark

Farewell ‘til doomsday’s mark

I’m very flattered to be here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always happy to talk to people about my work, but career day? An immense honour, thank you so very much. Wonderful to be here, wonderful to be here.

Okay. So what I do is I drive the plow. You’ve all probably seen it; you’ve DEFINITELY all heard it, and I drive it and make sure the roads stay clear of obstacles. In the winter I plow the snowfall, in the fall I plow the leaf drifts by the park, the rest of the year I plow the weasels.

Is it dangerous? You bet, but it’s not the exciting kind of danger. It’s the kind that’s dangerous because it’s a LITTLE bit dangerous, and it’s very very very boring and easy to forget about the little bit that’s dangerous. You can do all kinds of things to make that little bit of danger go wrong if you’re not paying attention. Maybe you slid around a corner without braking as hard as you could’ve, but there’s black ice there this time. Maybe you don’t clear enough leaves out of awkward places and they make something jam up in the engine. Maybe you don’t put on your helmet properly because there’s like six buckles and the cabin’s sealed anyways, and then a weasel gets in through the air vent.

Yes, that last one really did happen. Lucky I’m fast with the buckles. No scars – not from that, at least.

The pay’s good. The hours are long, but steady. You probably won’t write books about your career, but you’ll never starve. And as long as you remember to pay attention, you won’t be surprised.

No, they can’t get through the suit. It’s Kevlar. Hot as hell in summer but very livable. There’s too many buckles, but they’re very sturdy and seal well.

No, the plow doesn’t hurt them – it’s just blunt trauma and crushing force, nothing fancy, it rolls them around and sometimes forces mitosis. Mostly it makes them angry.

Right, that’s the bell, my time is up. Remember: just because something’s boring doesn’t mean it isn’t important. That’s about a lot more than just my job, too.

Thank you.

***

Sorry, sorry, my bad, didn’t mean to be so late, ahahaha JESUS it’s been a MORNING let me tell you.

Right! So. I work at the library. What’s that about? Well, the obvious answer is books – yes, you’re right, you’re right, you’re not WRONG… but what’s an even better way to put it is ‘information.’ We store information that’s in books, and we store information that’s not in books, and we store the information of where and how to find all of that stored information. What you could call ‘metadata,’ except unlike advertisers we use it to help you instead of throwing unavoidable barriers between you and convenience!

So. Most of what I do is keeping track of things. Where the books are, what the books are doing, when they’ll be back, when we need to change the mustelid filters on the air circulatory system…

Air quality control is very important in a library. Paper likes specific temperatures and ranges of humidity, and it dislikes others very much, and there’s so many different KINDS of paper. So we have to put a lot of money and time into maintenance and management of our climate control, and an equal amount of the same into protecting it from unexpected weasels. Lots and lots of fine advanced-material mesh; a host of slow-release chemical deterrents (scent and abrasive); some fairly byzantine architecture… in military terms they call this ‘defense in depth.’ We have a ton – let me emphasize this: a TON – of security layers between the public and all of this, so that even if anything leaks through it’ll never come near the public, and if it does come near the public it’ll be confined in the most remote stacks, and we have panic room doors on the children’s section. So you all don’t have to worry. At all.

Oh, do we have guns? No! No. God no. Those wouldn’t do anything. Don’t you pay attention in your history classes? We do still teach local history, don’t we? What are you all, twelve? Ten? You should know this, oh FINE I’m done, I’m done, I’m done. Sorry for being late. Read more books, they’re portals to the world of imagination. Bye.

***

Hello. I am happy to be here at this career day. I am the head fireman. I am trained to both destroy and deploy fire, to extinguish loose flames and to create firebreaks in the event of an intruding wildfire or a brewing spring-tide weaselstorm. This is a very difficult job and if you do it properly you will do very little except prepare for the moment when you need to do too much, too fast, all at once. And when that happens, you will need to be ready for it. Failure can mean losing a block to a fire, or everything west of the river to a Weasel-King. You are not old enough to remember that happening, but it is how I got this job. My predecessor stepped down because a single decision she made led to that. It was a reasonable decision. Maybe I would have made it too. Maybe not. All I can do is hope to avoid it in the future.

This career is physical demanding, mentally taxing, emotionally draining, and essential to community safety. This concludes my remarks. Thank you.

***

Hello there! My name’s Under-Magister George Tranh, and I’m part of the Brewer’s Valley branch association of the Art Arcane.

Yes, although ‘wizard’ is not actually a title, everyone knows you’re talking about us when you say it! We do a lot more than just wizardry, however – besides things like fireballs and making voices come out of doors and rocks, we also do a lot of community projects! For instance, we coordinate the autumn colours on the trees; make sure the lake freezes over for safe ice fishing, make sure the river DOESN’T freeze over so anything west of the river can’t cross over and say hello, and help with the fireworks. Although I guess that’s sort of fireball-adjacent, really.

No, we can’t enchant the buildings to keep them out.

Yep, we do birthday parties, but only big ones – national holidays, famous historical figures, and so on. If we showed up at everyone’s birthdays all year we’d have no time to make them really special, and that’s what we like doing. Remember five years back when we made that rotten statue in the park climb off its plinth and walk into the lake? That took a few weeks to brew up and plan; you can’t just wave your hand and expect things to happen like magic.

No, it’s actually pretty easy to qualify. You just take apprenticeship volunteer hours in high school; you could all try that as soon as next year. Honestly you could probably get your parents to ask ahead of time right tonight once you’re home safe; we never have enough hands to get all the work done.
No, we can’t get rid of them.

I’m sorry, but we really can’t do anything about them. It’s the law. I’m not fooling around here! Ask your parents! Heck, ever since Christmas ’67 when a fit of the holiday spirit led ol’ Arch-Magister Tobias ‘Mumbles’ MacGrooder to attempt a townwide enchantment of Grastor’s Multitudinous Wassail, it’s been firmly established in the county law that no practitioner of the Art Arcane may so much as mention by name – let alone interact – with any member of the mustelid family. And I’m sorry guys, I love Captain Moore as much as any of you do, I admire all the work she does in keeping the traffic laws enforced and the houses secured from angry furry slinkies, but I don’t want her to take me to jail for saying the w-word.

No, not ‘wassail.’

No, not ‘what.’

No, not ‘whale.’ Look guys, you’re not going to get me to say it, let’s move on.

Yeah, we help with the animal sanctuary. Keep the mice out of the bins; keep the ice from freezing over the water buckets. And yes, that’s the sort of thing we’ll usually get apprentices started on. It’s fun work and there’s animals involved.

Nope, just regular animals. Moving on.

No, we can’t just call them ‘ferrets’ or ‘stoats.’ First, those are different animals; and second and more importantly if there’s one thing you learn in this business it’s that trying to argue your way around technical definitions of words ends poorly – the Art Arcane, just like anyone else, absolutely HATES weaselsoh goddamnit don’t tell don’t tell DON’T

The blade of Kronmorr swung out fast as a viper’s-eye, parting the head of the degenerate, leering, gibbering cultist from his misshapen body, which – missing its wits but slightly – fought on blindly for some three breathes before collapsing in a sullen slump. The sound of its crude adze tumbled from its slackened grip with a clatter was loud in the room, for even after slaying two dozen drooling half-human wretches the breath of Kronmorr was unfettered by civilized man and remained steady and deep, a bellows powering an unstoppable engine.

A small gasp broke the silence: an irrepressible outburst from the extremely damsel chained to the altar. A mix of lingering fear, happy surprise, and growing awe. “You killed them all,” she whispered in a voice like candied honeysuckle. “The cult of the turtle-eater will surely seek vengeance.”

“They will fare no better,” said Kronmorr in his cold-stone voice. His blade flashed again and the chains fell apart with implausible ease, bronze cleaved like cheese by the steel he had claimed by conquest from the cambion-king’s crypt.

“Then might I accompany you for a time, my hero,” purred the damsel like a big sweaty languorous cat, stretching her freed limbs with liquid relief, “to share in your protection?”

In that moment, a peculiar thing happened: Kronmorr did not sigh.

But he did think about it.

Instead he nodded grimly, raised his steel, and hacked a path through the ghouls of the secret passage, out into the gullets of the beast-birds haunting the hidden cliffside staircase, and into the thick of the fish-gaunts gurgling at the ruins of the ancient docks, where he and the damsel boarded a small skiff and he rowed them twenty miles downriver to the relative safety of the harbours of the rancid city Faek-namm in great speed, for his muscles were unfettered by civilized man. There they found an inn and spent the night peacefully, until two in the morning where the damsel attempted to put a witch-blade between Kronmorr’s ribs.

“I was to be granted highest honour,” she hissed as she tugged fruitlessly against his grip on her blade-hand, uncaring of cuts and scratches and kicks. “I was to be the True Turtle of this year, to be enshrined and ascended unto his left claw!”

In that moment, a peculiar thing happened: Kronmorr did not shut his eyes.

But he did think about it.

Instead, he sprained her wrist, took the witch-blade, and sold it to get out of town in a hurry, only to wake and find the caravan he was in under siege by raiders. His blade swung out fast as a viper’s-eye, but after killing a mere sixteen of them single-handedly he was ensnared by nets and brought to meet their beautiful and deadly chieftess, who decreed he would either serve her or be fed to the Hoongrbees.

“What say you, slave?” she sneered at him from atop her gilded throne and her equally gilded outfit.

In that moment, a peculiar thing happened: Kronmorr did not say “I’m sick of this.”
But he did think it.

And after the Hoongrbees was slain and he’d stolen the emeralds from the throne and escaped into the dark with a new sword already stained with the watery blood of three dozen more hominids, he thought it again; and after a market-maid saw his sword and thought him a raider and he was imprisoned and sentenced to hang, he thought it again; and after he cut through the whole city guard and dispatched the corrupted and venal Bloat-Duke of Bloolubbar, he thought it again; and after he departed the burning city with a single horse carrying him, the Bloat-Duke’s beautiful daughter, and as much of the treasury as possible, he thought it again; and when he woke up and the Bloat-Duke’s beautiful daughter and the horse and the treasure were missing he said it aloud.

“I’m sick of this.”

And once he said it aloud, there was no taking it back. Not from the air, not from his mind. So he took his unhorsed feet and his already-worn-down raider sword and he strode down a path he remembered from so long ago.

It took sixteen days and nights without food and with the only water acquired from sucking on damp stones, but Kronmorr was unfettered by civilized man and so suffered these minor privations with ease. And when those sixteen days and nights were done, he stood before that place his mind ached to recall. Where the great loop of his life had begun, and where he had brought himself in return, as the fish might to its spawn

To the tower of the sorcerer.

***

It was tall, tall, tall – sixteen stories if it were an inch – and crafted from dark and dirtied brick. Metal spiderwebs clung to its skull-cap and its side; many windows jutted from its furrowed brows, and from one of them far away a distant clack, clack sounded, cold and dead. Its door lay open and unbarred, for who would dare enter the dwelling of a sorcerer without permission?

Kronmorr had no permission and asked for none, from the sorcerer, from anyone, from the world itself. The open door was no obstacle. No door would be an obstacle.

What was some difficulty was the moat.

It lay wide but shallow, a drifting reef of shattered sheets of paper, each crumpled and torn and scrawled on. They shuffled like leaves in a wind, but there was no wind, and they surrounded the tower of the sorcerer in a perfect ring with no drawbridge in sight.

Kronmorr did not take a deep breath, for as mentioned previously the breath of Kronmorr was always unflinchingly steady and deep. He prowled to the edge of the moat, sword in hand, and he dove with the perfect arc of a leaping salmon.

Instantly, he was buried, and though he did not sink as in water the paper nevertheless sought to draw him down. The leaves were cold and smeared with a foul blackened ink that sought to cling to skin, but Kronmorr’s hide was unfettered by civilized man and the gnawing toxic teeth of the sorcerer’s-brew found no purchase against his leathered back. The leaves were sharp at the edges and sliced and chewed at his limbs, but Kronmorr’s sinew and muscles were unfettered by civilized man and no matter how shallow and cruelly long the carving of his skin, his strokes did not falter. The leaves were endless and vision failed, but Kronmorr’s will was unfettered by civilized man and he did not slow, did not despair, did not halt, did not think. He only acted, and it may have taken ten minutes or a thousand for him to reach the other side and it did not matter which, only that he did.

He stood there for an instant at the threshold. Listening.

It was not silent. Whatever awaited him did not fear him. Life stirred within the tower of the sorcerer.

So be it. Kronmorr did not fear life either. And so, loins not even bothered to be girded, he plunged into the dim light. Down flickering halls trod the feet of Kronmorr; past endless rows of doors and murmuring voices of madness. Two staircases confronted him: one deep and dark and smelling of dungeon and rot; the other high and rickety and with steps half-broken-loose to show clear (dim, damp) air underfoot.

Kronmorr ascended. He remembered this. He remembered the squeaky floorboards on the landings, and sprang lithely over them to avoid alerting the rats. He remembered the Forbidden Third Floor and simply climbed over the bannister and leapt past it. He remembered the missing step on the sixth floor; the missing two steps on the eighth floor; the staircase ending suddenly at the tenth floor and the subsequent hunt for the new staircase, and then the eleventh floor was before him and Kronmorr knew he was almost there. He recognized the sickly bile-green of the carpeting that clung, lichenlike, to the bare soles of his feet. He recognized the lack of light; the enshrouded and dust-coated window at the end of the hallway. He recognized the door at the end of the hall.

What he didn’t recognize was the guard-beast that lurked there. It was ten feet tall and had six heads and each head had two mouths and each mouth had three forked tongues and every head was pressed against the door Kronmorr sought, whispering profane insinuations. This permitted him to remove the first two heads with very little trouble.

The beast sprang up with a roar and a tumult, but a roar is not a bite and thus Kronmorr claimed two more heads. The last were the canniest and many a blow was struck, but in the end the thing was slowed by pain and shock and self-doubt while Kronmorr was unfettered by civilized man, and so the shape of the end was itself unsurprising.            

The door was wooden and warped; its principal resistance coming as much from its water-swollen frame as its lock, which Kronmorr removed with a careless nudge of his foot. He

forced his way through, into the sanctum of the building. A powerful reek of old milk and laundry assailed his keen senses, but he cared not for such things. For in the center of the room lay the forge of the sorcerer.

***

It was black, cold black, and of a metal alien to him, turned in hard square shapes and with gaping maw. From that maw jutted a hundred little insect-like arms in array, and each arm brandished a tiny plate emblazoned with a foul arcane sigil, and as each was depressed and released they barked out a sharp, brutal CLACK, CLACK, CLACK-CLICKETY-CLACK. Atop its skull roiled a sheaf of paper, scarred and torn by runes and scrawlings.

Behind the forge sat the sorcerer. He was short and balding and wore metal frames with glass in them over his eyes, perched against his nose. He was totally unarmed and hadn’t bothered to look up.

“Sorcerer,” said Kronmorr, his bare sword jutting forth like the accusatory finger of a lesser man, “it is time for us to exchange words.”

“Can’t,” said the sorcerer shortly. His voice was raspy with a tinge of mucus to it; unused, unpleasant. “Got a deadline.”

“So do I. It stretches the breadth of this blade’s edge and you will meet it if you should choose to ignore me one second longer.”

The sorcerer chuckled at that, but it was as absent as his gaze. His mind was elsewhere. “Listen, Kronmorr, whatever you want, I promise I don’t have time for it.”

“You will make time, or you will die. I wish to be free.”
“Free from what?”
“This… curse. This THING you’ve done to me. I cannot lose a fight, unless it is to render me captive and thereby bring me to a more exciting fight, which I cannot lose. I cannot find affection, only the insinuation of it that ends in inevitable betrayal. I cannot greet an old friend without them turning on me or perishing. I cannot have a moment’s rest, but that it will pass in a blur and I find myself once again on some mad quest.” The words spilled out of him like a hole had been carved into his trachea. “It extends to even the most base facts of my being. I cannot walk – I stride, or prowl, or charge. I cannot eat, only feast or gnaw. I cannot sleep – I wake with catlike reflex. I cannot enjoy a single thing; only stare with granite eyes and a grim set to my jaw. I do not have a LIFE, sorcerer, only an EXISTENCE. And it is an intolerable one. Remove your curse from me, or I will end you as surely as I slew your guard-beast.”

“Uh-huh. Well, that’s real sad, but truth is? It’s not happening. Ever.”

It was wrong. It was all wrong. The sorcerer was smiling – yellowed, bent-toothed, inescapable. The keen eyes of Kronmorr could see something brown caught in between his incisors. “That beast you slew outside my door? That wasn’t my guardian, Kronmorr. It was my JAILER. My edot’tarr. And now that he’s gone? I, too, am unfettered by civilized man.”
“No,” said Kronmorr. But it came out all wrong; stuttered and whispered and afraid, deeply afraid.

“Oh yes, buddy,” said the sorcerer. He was nodding now, nodding from the glee that could no longer be contained within his smile, letting it roll out from him and spill over the rest of his body. “It’s you and me and nothing between us now, and you best believe the ride ain’t stopping anytime soon because I have bills to pay and a whole-new-ball-game of inspiration is flowing. The vault is open and the security guard is dead and the money is pouring out into the streets. Every damsel you meet is going to be even more nubile, Kronmorr, and they’ll leave you even faster. Every foe you battle will be half-again more degenerate. Your sword is going to swing TWICE as fast as a viper’s-eye now, Kronmorr, and you’re going to swing it five times more often!”

“No…” begged Kronmorr, and oh god that was the only word, the only word to describe the way he spoke. Please no. Please, please, anything but that.

“Get ready for names to have a lot more apostrophe’s, Kronmorr. You’re going to visit cities like Jang’mar. You’re going to meet people like Che’koll’dor’oc. Every’one. Ev’ery’thi’ing.”
“No!” and it was louder but even more desperate – sputtered, a whimpering verging on a wail.

“And Kronmorr, old buddy, old pal, my old friend, my gravy train without brakes,” the terrible, awful voice dipped a little – conspiratorial, gleeful, filled with the camaraderie of the torturer to his guest – “you can kiss your muscles and sinews goodbye. Because now? Now we’re talking thews.”

“NOOOOOOOO!” screamed Kronmorr, a cry not of the enraged berserk, but of a soul torn past its bonds, and lo, his sword swung twice as fast as a viper’s-eye, only it struck naught but empty air and he was left alone with only the dust of an empty room and the memory of a gleeful, snot-ridden chuckle and the distant, inescapable, all-consuming clack-clack-clack-clickety-clack of the awful, terrible sorcerer’s machine.

The hills had been raised up and the valleys dug low. The sky was set up and the sun bob-a-link bobbed-a-long through it, burning bright. The seas were deep and wide and bright and dark.

It had been a busy week for the Maker. They’d dug and piled and breathed and sweat for any amount of time and now they were exhausted. Time didn’t exist yet – that was next week’s project – but it was time for time off.

So they were inventing tea. Pretty simple stuff; leaves go in water, tea comes out. The tricky bit was twofold.

First, the Maker needed manipulative capabilities. So they were going bipedal for the moment, for the vantage point and angles of mobility. They’d been a quadruped and a hexapod and had no limbs at all for a lot of the recent work, so in theory this was a refreshing change. In practice, it made them wobbly.

Second, the tea wasn’t coming out. All they had were leaves in water, floating in a little clay depression.

The Maker poked the leaves in water. Tea still didn’t come out.

“Well, I’m all out of ideas,” they said to themselves. “Better do the usual thing instead.”

So the Maker reached down to the ground and picked up a little stone in their beak and rolled it around six times – back to front and side to side and back again – and when they were done it was hot, red hot, so hot it scorched their beak black against their blue-and-white plumage, and they spat it out into the leaves in water with a loud, raucous yell of indignation.

“SHIT!” they added. And then: “oh, it’s working!” And of course: “I meant to do that.”

And indeed, and it was, and they hadn’t, and that was fine. Most of the Maker’s best work happened when they didn’t mean to do something.

When the leaves in water were gone and there was nothing but tea, the maker dipped their beak in and swallowed it all down, gulp gulp gulp, hot hot hot, until the tea was gone and all that remained was a clay depression with a little cracked stone in it.

“Not bad,” said the Maker. And they went away, because in the span of a drink of tea they’d had so many new ideas come to their head and none of them were real yet.

The clay depression sat there.

The little stone sat there in there clay depression.

And then, all at once and all on its own, it realized it was still steaming. Something was making that heat stay inside it, even after it had spilled out into the Maker’s beak and the water with leaves in it and the tea. Something was making it hiss and spark and glow.

It didn’t like it. It didn’t like it one bit.

Someone should know about that.

***

It wasn’t hard to find the person the little stone so wanted to inform of their new feelings. They were right up in the middle of the sky, making fat, puffy, wispy, gloriously sunny clouds. They looked as soft and comfortable as a grandmother’s love and the little stone felt the heat inside it boil even higher at the sight.

Oh, it didn’t like the clouds, and it didn’t like love, and it didn’t like the sky, and most of all it didn’t like the Maker up there. And it itched and steamed and burned inside – especially where its crack ached – and tore up the ground in a big fuss.

That gave it an idea. An idea on how to communicate its feelings to the Maker.

So the little stone tore up the ground even harder, a hundred times harder – a thousand, a million – and it rent it away until where the ground had been there was only a gaping hole. Then it covered it with some branches and shouted.

“Hey! Hey you up there! In the clouds! Hey you! Here! Down here! Come here!”
And the Maker heard the little stone very quickly because although clouds were wonderful you could get bored of them eventually, and so they also came down to the little stone very quickly, and because they were doing all of this so very quickly and not very carefully at all they rushed over the hole in the ground and fell through the branches with a crack and a thud.

“Oh!” said the Maker with great happiness. “Did you mean to show me this? How wonderful! But I think there’s room for more, yes there is. I wonder what water would do if you poured it in here?” And they breathed in deep and hard and spat a long stream of water that carved deeper into the ground and melted away great pockets in the earth carved into the rock, with stone fangs dripping from the ceiling and piling on the floor.

“I bet bats would like this,” said the Maker thoughtfully. “Oh! I should make bats! Thank you, little stone!” And they left in a great hurry.

The little stone lay there on the ground, unmoving to a casual eye. A more professional one would’ve seen the dirt begin to steam around it.

***

After sitting there and steaming for some time, the little stone realized it had lost sightt of the Maker, which only made its feelings stronger. It rolled off on their trail, following the path of new things and older things made new again, and it did so even as the path grew steep and stony and brittle. The Maker was in the high places of the world again, making lichens and pikas; crafting dwarf pines and lonely eagles, and although they could move through those places as easily as they pleased with wings and many legs and quick feet it was a difficult, awkward, endless climb for a little stone, fraught with tumbles and backtracking.. It took the little stone a long while to find them again, and when it did it realized its mistake: it had overshot them and crawled near to the very peak of the mountain – a hard grey flat edge under a hard grey flat sky – while the Maker had dawdled below in a small vale, creating some sort of yellow flower.

The little stone looked at the maker and looked at the flowers and it felt the feeling in its innards grow all out of control until it shook and rocked and knocked against the stone beneath it, over and over and over until the mountain groaned along with it.

Then grumbled.

Then crumbled.

Then fell down, down, down in a hail of stones, a torrent, a river, a glacier of rolling rubble and rock that shot down towards the Maker. At its vanguard soared the little stone, so filled with surprise and speed and power that it forgot everything else. For an instant, just an instant, it was a part of the biggest thing to ever happen.

Then gravity won.

When the little stone stopped rolling its crack was twice as large as before, it was covered in dust, and it could hear the Maker loudly talking right above it.

“Dancing from rock to rock is very difficult! Having rocks bounce off your head is even MORE difficult! But this all makes me think it’s doable, yes it is – oh! What if I did it like this, and this, and this –” and so on and so on until four dainty hooves click-clacked around the little stone, and the first bighorn hopped away over the boulder-strewn surface of the meadow.

“That was good luck!” said the Maker. And this made the little stone scream.

“Hello?”
“YOU!” screamed the little stone. “YOU!”
“Me?” said the Maker.

“PICK ME UP,” seethed the little stone.

The Maker did so. “What now?”
“Now BASH YOUR HEAD IN WITH ME!” said the little stone. “PAINT THOSE FLOWERS RED! SPATTER THE LANDSCAPE! KEEP GOING UNTIL THERE’S NOTHING LEFT BUT CALCIUM FRAGMENTS AND STRAY BITS OF HAEMOLYMPH!”

The Maker furrowed their brow. “Oh. OH! Using pieces of the environment as a device to make things happen, like exerting force or shaping others! Yes. Yes! But more complicated than that. What if-”

The little stone screamed again. This time it didn’t stop until it passed out.

***

When it woke up, it was sitting in a little grass-woven pouch dangling from the Maker’s side and the air was warming. They were downslope of the mountains again, probably in a valley.

“Hello,” said the Maker. “Do you feel a little better?”
“No,” said the little stone.

“That’s fair. Do you feel different?”
“Yes,” said the little stone. “I was steaming and heated and couldn’t sit still before and I wanted you to be very badly hurt. Now I just feel tired and awful.”
“It’s my fault,” said the Maker, contritely. “I didn’t see what you were doing. You’ve made something new, haven’t you?”
“I haven’t made anything,” said the little stone morosely. “You made my pit-trap into caves. You made my avalanche into bighorns. You made my murder attempt into tools. You even made this crack in my side that’s made me all this way.”
“I did do all those things,” said the Maker. “But I did it without paying attention to what you managed: you took that crack in your side that my carelessness put in you, and you made a whole new way of feeling. You have made anger, and I had no idea at all. Thank you for showing me this.”
“I don’t think I have it anymore,” said the little stone.

“It’s pretty exhausting to keep it up all the time, I’ll bet,” said the Maker. “But nobody says you need to make only things that last forever. For instance, would you like me to do something about that crack?”
“Please.”

“Alright. I’ll show you what I’ve learned since you taught me about tools.”
“I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said the Maker. “Most of our best work happens when we don’t mean to do something.”

The little stone remembered that. It remembered that as the Maker chipped away at its side and turned that crack into a facet and the chips into flakes that followed at its heels as it rolled away home.

***

A week after that – just after time had been invented – the Maker went for a walk and stubbed their toe so hard they swore six species of parasitic wasp into existence.

The little stone never mentioned it to anyone.

Very pointedly.

And smugly.

There was one day Frances didn’t set her alarm clock for and it was this day and she woke up on time anyways.

She ignored this and tried to go back to sleep, only to find that sleep was a rude asshole and refused to return her calls, show read on her messages, or acknowledge her emails. Ten million years passed before she next lifted her head from the pillow, squinted at her phone, and saw that it had been fifteen minutes and she was more awake than before.

“Fine,” she said, and peeled herself off the pillow, then her pillow off the chandelier. She slid to the ground with a soft thump.

She had to start tidying anyways. Thank god this only happened once a year.

***

Before the first things, or even the first things first, came the primordial need. Egg, some horrible things from the cabinet, and some other horrible things from the fridge. Mixed in a shot glass. Inadvisably consumed in two gulps, because the first swallow tried to cancel itself halfway down. It wasn’t great or good or fine or okay, but it made the hangover look better by comparison, and that was like making it go away.

First things first was cleaning up the perishable consumables. Any of the food still littering the table that was temperature-agnostic was returned to its original packaging (if salvageable); anything plausibly re-refrigeratorable was placed in plastic containers and bags and consigned to a hopeful crisper drawer for later consideration; anything probably salmonella-riddled was given a combined ten seconds of silence before being returned to the earth via the compost bucket except for a single piece of antiquated salmon which was delivered to the cat so she could ignore it.

The pizza was outside all of these categories. It was consumed in one hand while Frances loaded the dish washer with the other, eaten cold and unheated like the frail plant life outside the kitchen window.

Next came the beverages. Bottles that were open were resealed. Cans that were open were dumped down the sink and placed in the cardboard box doing emergency substitution work in place of a second recycling bin. Boxed wine was separated into wine bag and wine box and placed in the corresponding third and fourth substitute recycling bins (another cardboard box and a dented wastebasket). Every remaining Dr. Pepper in the house was opened and poured down the toilet to consecrate the dawn and anoint it in glory, as was the custom.

After the sustenance, came vice. The ashtrays were emptied into the garbage. The stray butts and loose leaves were emptied into the garbage. The suspicious residues were scraped off the floor and tables with the side of a gross and marginally used plastic fork and a paper towel and emptied into the garbage. And the spot on the floor where Murray McCooey had leaned over and leaned over and leaned way way over and let some of his ballast slip loose was scrubbed with the house’s most undesirable cloth and soap and water and more water until it was rendered beyond hope and consigned into the garbage, forced desperately down into the depths with one hand to bury it beyond all chance of sight or smell.

Frances stopped and washed her hands after that. Like three times. Four? Five. To be safe. And once more.

Then she made coffee, badly. And drank it, slowly. And realized it wasn’t hers, it was Grace’s decaf. The second cup was made badly AND quickly and she drank it so fast she burned her mouth.

And then, after that break, came the real work.

***

The surfaces needed a more thorough cleaning, and for that the laundry needed tallying. Socks were retrieved from lampshades. Shoes were retrieved from bookshelves. Shirts were retrieved from coathooks. Coats were retrieved from the shirt drawer. Pants were retrieved from the yard. Underwear was missing and presumed dead. And one entirely unidentifiable piece of fabric was wrapped around the stove’s right back burner and wouldn’t be parted from it until Frances very very slowly and strategically severed it into six even more unidentifiable pieces with a steak knife. She tried to arrange them into something more familiar, failed six different ways, then realized she was currently down one kitchen cloth and had been given the opportunity to be up five kitchen cloths instead.

The surfaces were easy. Gross, but easy. Frances let her eyes wander, dragging her mind after them over the remaining devastation. Making plans and discarding them, not caring too much.

Once the surfaces were done, she woke the sleepers. Gently shook shoulders for those who needed quiet; poked cheeks for those that lurked too deep; put her mouth near an ear and yelled “WAKEY WAKEY, EGGS AND BAKEY!” for Kimberly East, who had it coming.

“Whuh? Where?”
“In the kitchen, waiting for you to make them.”

“Fugoff.”

“WAKEY WAKEY WAKEY WAKEY WAKEY WAK-”

Kim sat up and took a swing at her, inadvertently preventing a return to sleep. Sucker. People were moving frying pans, cracking eggs, distributing clothing from the collection Frances had amassed on the dining room table. Someone was feeding the cat breakfast.

Not her business, she’d already had pizza. Besides, she was nowhere near done. She had to catch Marcus’s lizard. Little bastard had been on the living room wall near the painting of a bowl of vegetables, but he was missing again. Five minutes of quick thinking and a net was all she needed, but she had to fish the net out of the turtle tank, which reminded her she had to find the turtle (under the couch, sulking).

The lizard was returned to Marcus, who she found sitting on the patio with the reverse-stripper, negotiating for his coat back.

“Show’s not over,” she told him stubbornly. Five shirts three coats and a dozen pairs of socks kept her warm as toast even in the drizzle.

“But it’s COLD out.”
“Nobody’s paid me yet.”

Frances paid her. Marcus’s coat was retrieved, along with half her sock drawer. And then she looked up at the back yard and sighed.

“Fuck. I forgot about the circus.”

***

It was a little one-ring setup. Nothing fancy. A clown full of cars, two acrobats, and a small elephant. It was amazing they’d all fit in the tent, but it was good for warmth.

“Especially for the elephant,” the ringmaster explained as Frances counted bills. “You’ve got to keep her warm or she’ll catch cold. Unlike SOME operations I could mention, we care about our animal performers here in Circe de Burke.”

“Good. Do you want an irritating little lizard?”
“No thanks,” said the ringmaster with a comically large wink. “We’ve already got Richie. Eh? Eh??? EH????”

A clown of Richielike appearance smacked the back of her noggin without looking.

“Art is pain,” she told Frances solemnly.

“Yep,” said Frances. She surveyed the rest of the yard. Damnit, she’d been hoping to forget about the rest of this too.

The collapsible hot tub was easy, she set it to drain while she got to work on the real problem: coaxing the reindeer back into their crate from the temporary paddock. They were reluctant until she gave up and rhinoplasty’d the snowman gallery, tempting them with a fresh harvest of crisp and crunchy ruddy-orange noses. And once they were all back (only one inadvertent finger-nip to her name), the hot tub wasn’t done, so she free-climbed the two trees and the telephone pole in the front yard to take down the fixed-lines from the abseiling competition. And when that was finished the hot tub still wasn’t done, so she cleaned the tinsel waterfalls out of the gutters with a rake tied to a broom handle. And when that was clear and the eaves ran sluggish liquid again the hot tub STILL WASN’T DONE so she did a lap around the house cleaning up loose reindeer stool and discarded clown props and bent climbing pitons and reclaiming her scarf from its entirely unauthorized location around the neck of a snowman.

The hot tub still wasn’t done. She went indoors and fed the cat breakfast and tried not to think about it. This turned out to be the perfect time for that to happen, because that was when the thumping started up from the basement door.

***

The bacon smell had woken them from their crashes: the under-people, the hard partiers, the Sleepers Below. They groaned up from the basement, bleary and groping for grease and caffeine, trembling with unspeakable weight.

“Basement’s flooding,” muttered Mortimer to Frances as he descended on the coffeepot and lifted it like a giant mug, ignoring the blistering of his palms.

“Fuck.”
And he was right. It looked like someone had dug into the wall with a pickaxe at some point, probably during the Minecraft LARP. They’d found two painted styrofoam diamonds and apparently the base of the gravel bed the hot tub was draining into.

Frances counted to six, ran up the staircase, stopped draining the hot tub, realized the hot tub was finally actually empty, screamed a raw and primal word she couldn’t identify even as it left her throat, punched the hot tub (causing it to collapse), ran back downstairs, threw the pick axe at the hole, sat down with her head in her hands, left a single minimalist text with the local water damage people, screamed a raw and primal word she couldn’t identify even as it left her throat (but quietly and under her breath this time), and broke out the mop. And the mop bucket, where she found Ritchie’s lizard had left a present.

She brought them upstairs and dumped them in his lap with the mop.

“Your eggs, your mop job,” she said. She ignored the noises he made, fed the cat breakfast, and was interrupted by a scream from upstairs. By the sound of it, Beverly had gone to use the bathroom and had completely forgotten about the mime.

***

When the mime had been placated and paid and evicted from their nesting-place in the tub (and Frances had retrieved her sheets), she found herself at loose ends. Half the guests had left with Beverly to get her jangled, mimed nerves a hair of the dog. Half of the rest had left to avoid being recruited into the basement cleanup. All that remained was Frances, the cat, and the distant, tragic schlop of a mop bucket.

The cat meowed.

Frances pulled out a bowl and a kibble bag, then squinted as something new floated across the inside of her head. .
“Hang on. How many times have you had breakfast today?”
The cat blinked slowly and smugly at her.

Frances fed her anyways. It was lunchtime. By now she was probably overdue to call the mayor’s office and apologize for the noise violations. And the fireworks. And the tree catching on fire. And getting the fire truck crew roped into the party. And painting new lines on the street. Using the mayor’s car.

Yeah, they’d overdone it a little. Yeah, the cleanup was a lot of work. But you know what? Your cat only got a birthday once a year.

There are certain sentences in one’s life that are fraught with inevitable danger, yet are redolent with temptation nonetheless. “Come on, just one more drink.” “Oh, what’s the harm?” “Who’s going to know any differently?” “Just between you and me…” “What the hell are you looking at?”

But there is one that is held with a wariness and a fear greater than any other, and that is why when, on a crisp morning in late autumn where the few brave birds sang and the air was clear, young St Mantleroy Throebark Jr., Esq. said “I think it is time that I found myself a wife!” it was not completely unjustified for his companion, Robert Basspluck, to spit the contents of his drink across the table.

“Oh Rob, REALLY,” said St Mantleroy in fond admonishment.

“Don’t you ‘Rob’ me, Barky!” snapped Robert, swabbing furiously at his dampened shirt. “Barking mad, more you are! Come on! You’re still young! You’ve got your whole life ahead of you! Don’t throw it all away on some damned fool chase!”
“Better to gamble now when I’m still young and have some strength to my limbs and heart than to chance the field when I’m old and slow and fearful,” shot back St Mantleroy. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
“Nothing ventured, nothing dismembered and left in a ditch for the corbies,” snarled Robert. “You’ll be chewed up and spat out! You’ll be gouged and trampled! You’ll be wrecked and cast on the rocks!”
“My mind is complete, and I will not be swayed from it,” said St Mantleroy with the serene patience of the indescribably pig-headed. “I will do this thing alone if I must, and make no complaints to any other nor to myself of your bravery.”
“Oh to hell with that,” said Robert. “If you’re signing yourself up for getting murdered I’m right there alongside you, and don’t you dare argue with me!”
It is no slight to master Robert’s Basspluck’s character that he did, just a little, wish that St Mantleroy Throebark Jr., Esq., who had been his best friend since they were children in the garden arguing over the merits of slugs and spiders, had argued with him about that. Because despite that, he still didn’t take his word back.

He just really, really, really wanted to.

***

“There are many things that must be done in preparation, of course,” said St Mantleroy as he and Robert set out for town. “But there is one that is of the utmost urgency.”

“A ring, surely,” said Robert.

“Hah, yes, that too. But no – I refer to spreading the word, my good friend. It’s of no manner to a woman if I wish to marry, should she never know that fact in the first place. So we travel to where we shall make this missive known.”

“And how are you planning to do that?”
“We shall be stopping by Mr. Morgutroth’s print shop and commissioning a short-yet-informative notice for the society bulletins.”

“Stuff and nonsense. Save your money: there’s a far cheaper AND faster way to get word onto the wind for this sort of thing. Steer us by Crobbly’s tavern and give me money for a half-dozen pints.”
“Oh really, this is hardly the time-”

“Trust me, Barky.”

St Mantleroy’s hands dithered in that way that meant he wasn’t really happy about what was going on but was resigned to it, and so his carriage deposited Robert (“a little ways off, please, so they don’t know you’re here – and wait for me”) and he spent an anxious half-hour considering the precise wording of the notice he was told he should not commission. Then at once a fist banged on the carriage door.

“Job’s done,” said Robert as he hauled himself back in. “I pinched my cheeks pink, stumbled in, bought a pint, and let slip to the bartender that I’d just been out for drinks with the young Throebark squire to lend fortune to his oncoming hunt for a wife. Then I drank half my pint, spilled the other half, and bought a round for the bar. They’ll know what you’re up to from London to Rome by this evening.”
“You’re a marvel, Robert,” said St Mantleroy with tears of gratitude in his eyes. “Will you do me one more small favour and come shopping with me?”
“For the ring?”
“Not yet, not yet – I have a notion in my head of what it must be, you see, and I wish to fill it out more before I bring it into contact with reality. No, no, no. What we must do now is seek for wedding supplies.”

Robert scanned the proffered list with dismay. “Oh for god’s sake, we’ll be at this all week. Here, you take half the screed and I’ll take the other half.” And with a rip, he made it so.

“You’re a blessing in a cruel world, Rob,” said St Mantleroy. “We’ll recoup at the evening’s end.”

***

“…and of course, a well-managed goatherd will be necessary, yes sir, yes sir.”
St Mantleroy blinked rapidly in a desperate attempt to clear the fog from his mind. “Oh yes, yes. Err, of course. Yes. Why?”
The overcoated creature before him nodded amiably. It continued to nod amiably. It had done nothing less than nod amiably since they’d been introduced; St Mantleroy was beginning to wonder if it was in fact a man at all or some kind of bobbing toy bird grown large and gifted with overlarge and overworn boots. “Well, you see, cattle will do very well for day in day out, yes sir. But for a bit of sport they’re nothing akin to a goat – oh they’re canny creatures, they’ll give her much sport yes sir, yes they will, yes sir.”
“Right. Yes, of course. Well I know that. Thank you. Indeed. I shall make payment promptly. You can speak with my man at the estate, of course.”
“Oh I shall, yes sir, yes sir.”

***

“Twelve feet should suffice,” said the gardener, squinting over his pipe and squinting his most critical eye. “Wrought iron. Mmm.”
“Won’t it obstruct the view of the rose bushes?” asked St Mantleroy plaintively.

“Well, we could go down lower if you were to construct a haha on the manor side, but that would cut into the far flower beds. Nothing doing if you want to preserve the integrity of the gardens.” The words were spoken without question or fear of gainsay: the gardener had been employed first by St Mantleroy’s grandfather, and knew full well that the day the integrity of the gardens was not placed as first priority by the head of the estate would only come after he was placed in a casket.

“Right, yes. Twelve feet.”
“Wrought iron. And make sure it’s thick too.”

***

The edges of the estate resembled an anthive disturbed when St Mantleroy retired to his study with a glass of something warming: a furious rustle of viciously quick productivity. There he sighed into his second-favourite chair, only to then realize he’d chosen it because his favourite chair was already occupied.

“Robert!”
“Back so soon, Barky?” replied the man in question, much paler and more haggard than he’d been that morning. “And here I was barely on my third glass.”
“Oh, don’t play-act at it,” groaned St Mantleroy, flinging his arm across his brows. “I’ve been to half the stock-herders in town, and the ironworkers, and the masons, and I’ve had to commission an architect from London, and the chef has been notified, and by all that is holy I had no notion that getting married was to be so much WORK!”

“Cheer up, it gets worse after the wedding,” said Robert into his third glass. “Well, I made my rounds pretty solidly today. The gunsmith’s on notice – cost a pretty penny, but I wouldn’t ask for anything less than the best for you – and I’ve put a few coins in pockets with the local game wardens to ensure when the word comes it comes speedily. I’ve spoken with the apothecary and procured the necessities for the engagement; I’ve sent for a tutor to educate her – you know how tricky that can be, but my cousin knows the right sort and gave me a reference for a proper man of letters; and I’ve written excuses to all your brothers and cousins and uncles explaining why you’ll be absent for the season. Even used extra-pretty words for your cousin Sammy, since I know he’s such an absolutely temperamental little beast.”

“Rob,” declared St Mantleroy from halfway through his first glass, which deserved better, “I could almost kiss you.”
“Don’t you dare,” said Robert, fetching his fourth. “Your wife will be jealous.”

***

There was a heart-stopping moment that lasted weeks. The finger on the pulled trigger; the leap into the sea; the silence after the speech; the fork beginning to remove itself from a mouth, destined for an empty plate. A pause that went on and on and on and was never filled, not by the conclusion of the construction; not by the anxious watching of the post; not by the browsing of the very densest and eldest naturalist’s tomes in the library; not even by the careful and thorough ransacking of the cellar bottle-by-bottle under the guidance and whim of Robert Basspluck

But then came the call: an unmarried woman had been sighted just out of town, on the road to Shorewood, and there was no more time left to hesitate or prevaricate or prepare or think, but only to do.

“Here we are,” said St Mantleroy, as he hauled himself into the carriage one more time. His throat felt tight.

“Here we go,” said Robert. He was grinning. He hadn’t stopped grinning since the notice had rushed into the dining room that morning. It was stuck on his face like honey on bread. “Feeling excited?”
“Yes.”
“Feeling nervous?”
“Yes.”
“Feeling like you must have forgotten something?”
“Yes. No. Yes. No, no no no.”
“That can’t be right, there’s always something. Oh!” and Robert slapped his forehead with outsized force. “The ring! We never went shopping for a ring! Oh damn it all-!”

“Oh,” said St Mantleroy guiltily. “I err. Well. I decided I’d use my mother’s. Last week. I forgot to mention it.”
“You’re a sentimental toff, Barky,” said Robert in the most scornful voice capable of conveying his deep affection.

“Thank you,” said St Mantleroy. And the carriage stopped, and they fell silent, and grasped their tools.

***

The woman was not in sight, but there was a stillness in the snowflake-flecked air that bespoke her presence. The driver departed without a word on foot, leaving them alone with their carriage full of supplies and their heads full of hopes and fears, and they preserved that silence, working from plans and dreams formed in the timeless days that had so recently passed them by.

St Mantleroy fashioned a noose from the rope, and –using a small stone with a hole in it as a weight – threw it over a high branch that swung over the road. Then he brought out a fat and somewhat confused lamb, drizzled it with a healthy spurt of still-warm blood fresh from the kitchen, and hung the poor thing by its back legs from the noose, despite its protestations. While he did this, Robert fashioned a small blind of brambles and branches upwind across the way. They met to check the lamb (secure, and very unhappy and loud about it) and shared a quick shot each of liquid courage. And then, at last, they retired to the blind, guns in gloved hands and breaths spaced low and even.

The sky was grey. The air was chill. Scarves kept their misting mouths from giving notice of their position. Every second lasted five hundred years longer than the last, yet neither man dared make a single sound, whether to give conversation or even settle their limbs in a more comfortable position. This was not the time or place for such things. There was only room for one sound.

And then they heard it. A small crackle; an unnoticeable thing in a forest, even a quiet one such as this. But unmistakably the noise of a living thing in motion.

The woman stepped out onto the road and considered the lamb, head cocked in interest. She was a big one.

The barrel of St Mantleroy’s gun swayed slightly – aim adjusting, grip faltering, who could say?

“Almost,” said Robert in a voice so thin it was nearly bone. “Wait until she takes the ring.”

St Mantleroy was a pale man even on the sunniest of summer days, but suddenly his face turned from white to bloodless. “I forgot the ring.”
“What?” The woman stepped closer to the lamb, mouth just-slightly agape.

“It’s still in the carriage.”
“WHAT?”

Several things happened at the same moment, but for the sake of clarity they will be explained in order.

Firstly, St Mantleroy flinched, and his finger slipped. .

Secondly, the woman took one last step forwards and took the lamb into her mouth.

Thirdly, St Mantleroy’s gun went off.

Fourthly, the lamb’s bleating stopped ice-cold.

Fifthly, the woman’s head jerked up and she stared directly across the roadway and made direct eye contact with both of the men simultaneously.

She could manage that. Her eyes were large.

“It’s not on the lamb, it’s still in the carriage,” explained St Mantleroy to her, idiotically. And then she charged them.

“Run!” shouted Robert, and took his advice and St Mantleroy’s arm.

St Mantleroy did not take Robert’s advice. St Mantleroy was frozen stiff as a statue, arm rigid as marble, every muscle seized tight and twisted in place like finely-made ship’s-rigging as one-thousand-stone of woman bore down on him, maw agape, railroad-spike teeth bared and still awash with lamb’s blood.

Robert pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and at last St Mantleroy’s arm moved and he ran, ran, ran as light as a feather for the carriage, for safety, for shelter, for his life, and he was so caught up in running that it took him until nearly halfway there to realize that while St Mantleroy Throebark Jr., Esq.’s arm had indeed come with him the rest of St Mantleroy had, alas, remained behind.

“Shit!” he said with a truly ungentlemanly lack of composure, and threw the arm behind him in a manner he would surely regret for the rest of his life (however long THAT was to be). Then he was at the carriage door, fingers scrabbling so quickly he felt his nails snap, and he was inside it and slamming the door shut and breathing like a rabbit, gasp-gasp gasp-gasp, all wheeze and no air.

The woman reached the carriage, and subsequently the carriage took flight. This did not last long, although the precise time elapsed escaped the notice of Robert, as he swooned for an instant. His eyes were closed and the carriage was aloft, then they opened and it was on its side and the door was splintering inwards and his feet were above his head and his neck was very painful and his arms were caught in something.

The door caved in behind the woman’s snout, blow by blow. Her rhythm was uneven; poor St Mantleroy’s shot must have been true in spite of it all. But she would not go down without fighting, and Robert felt no more capable of combat than a mouse.

His legs wouldn’t move. His shoulders were stiff. But he could free his hands – oh, how the scales tore bloody-loose from his skin in his haste – and as he freed them he saw what they’d been caught in.

Another blow, sluggish and faltering, and the carriage door crashed inwards, splinters digging into everything. Behind it, teeth gnashed, and then they lunged. And oh, as those terrible womanly jaws descended, they met the fierce banded steel and collapsible snare of the ring of St Mantleroy’s mother, and with a quick spring-loaded SNAP they were seized shut tight.

“Got you,” mumbled Robert as she reeled back in shock. And then they both passed out.

***

A winter wedding was an auspicious event, if somewhat cramped and snowy. Everyone and anyone had come out to the old Throebark estate; even the poorer townsfolk had been given tents and hot drinks to celebrate at a polite distance from the folk of quality.

“A most successful engagement, I must say,” said old Curmulleon Throebark, nodding stiffly as he overlooked the bridal paddock. Within it, the lady in question crunched her way through her second cow of the evening, her great scaly tail slowly lashing the air with quiet pleasure.

“Tell that to St Mantleroy,” said Robert moodily, swirling his drink as if it had insulted him. “The poor bastard. One thing. Just one little thing slips his mind, and it was over for him. The poor absent-minded over-fretful bastard. Hell, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, and don’t be daft either,” said the older man sharply. “You know full well what the casualty rates are like for this kind of thing, and you still went with him and did all you could. That it wasn’t enough to save his life speaks no shame upon his character or yours, and I won’t have you besmirching either of those things on your wedding day, am I clear?”
“Sir,” managed Robert. And Curmulleon passed him a handkerchief and looked the other way for a minute for reasons wholly unrelated to their conversation, as was socially appropriate.

“She’s a grand old beauty for sure,” he remarked. “Forty-five-footer?”
“Forty-six,” said Robert eventually. “And twelve at the shoulder.”

“Gad, I’m shocked one of you made it out of there at all. Well, welcome to the family, the both of you. And cheer up: you’re only getting married, not getting murdered, no matter what the bachelors say. It’s really quite a tolerable life, especially once she learns how to talk.”