Waterwheels were a wonderful invention.

  Hans didn’t need to be an expert farmer to appreciate the efficiency of a water-powered millstone or wheat chaffer. The amount of labor falling water could replace was humbling, even for someone like him who didn’t really know how much work went into separating grain and grinding it into flour.

  Two grates, each roughly the size of a wagon, worked back and forth to separate the chaff from the grain, and then those grains were poured into a circular track carved from stone. Another stone, rounded like a wheel, forever circled the track to make flour. The immense power of gravity replaced the efforts of four or five people for the grinding alone.

  Beneath the mills was an assortment of pulleys and belts that transformed the downward force of a waterfall into the various motions and movements that made the mills useful. One of the dwarf tunnelers attempted to explain how it all worked, but Hans soon found himself nodding along even though he only understood the first thirty seconds of the small lecture.

  The sawmill was a work in progress, but Hans could imagine the long blade moving swiftly through timber. Haynu B. Dumas would have turned that into a wizard’s secret weapon if he had witnessed the same saw blade as Hans. Then the wizard would spend half the book telling Haynu and his party to play fair and hold still because the contraption was so unwieldy.

  “We’re testing the carts,” the same dwarf tunneler said as he walked with Hans along the coast of the lake and by a series of broken drawbridges to return to Leebel’s Rest.

  Like most things in the dungeon, the drawbridges to nowhere made reality feel like a strange dream world. Even stranger, Hans sort of built those drawbridges.

  …Because he asked a crystal to please put them there. Maybe it was best to not think too hard about these things.

  “Getting the speed right with the variations in weight we’re going to see has been a headscratcher. We’re getting close, though.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Hans said. “Galad said something about a dwarf catapult. Wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “Like I said. Getting all the timing and torque right hasn’t been easy. You forget to turn the power down because there’s only one fella sitting on it instead of a load of iron, and you get some momentum. Can’t be helped.”

  The dwarf found as many excuses as he could to turn his back to Hans, but he still failed to hide his grin.

  “I do want to talk to you about what’s next, sooner rather than later if you didn’t mind the trouble,” the dwarf added when he composed himself.

  “What do you mean?” Hans asked.

  “The next dig project.”

  “I uhh… don’t have one. Didn’t know I was supposed to.”

  “That’s no good at all,” the dwarf huffed. “The sedis got to eat, and I think we’ve proven ourselves capable.”

  By sedis, the dwarf meant sedimanders, the rock-eating monster lizards Honronk tamed to accelerate the tunnel project.

  “I know you’re capable,” Hans replied. “I’m just not much of a builder. Galad and Luther are the experts there.”

  “I can make some suggestions,” the dwarf said. “You’re deep under a mountain, and you’ve got a team of tunneling experts asking for work. That’s a dream come true for some people.”

  Hans gestured for the dwarf to proceed. They had most of the walk back to Leebel’s Rest ahead of them yet to chat.

  “Obviously you need a tunnel to the dungeon entrance.”

  “Obviously.”

  “After that, we could dig our way to the other side of the Dead End Mountains if we wanted.”

  “Nope,” Hans said. “I’m not being funny. Scratch that idea permanently.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “We’ve got something of a treaty with the Mountains. There’s no good to be had digging in that direction, or even talking about it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “An easier walk to the Forgebornes would be nice, though.” Hans looked up at the dungeon ceiling and tried to picture a route from Leebel’s to the dungeon entrance that worked around the various pieces of dungeon in the way. “How do you plan a project like that?”

  The dwarf smiled. “Wouldn’t be fun if it wasn’t a challenge.”

  “I can’t give you the approval to start, but I think that project has merit. We’ve got harvesters living up the mountain, and it’s quite the production to get them down here if they want to visit. For how hard they work, would be nice to make something easier for them. As for other projects, I’ll think more about it.”

  “Appreciate it. We’re not in a rush yet, and that was the whole point of talking to you today instead of putting it off until some unknown tomorrow. We’ve got plenty to do, and Luther could be needing the sedis for a while anyway.”

  That was Hans’ next stop, actually. Luther had been coordinating the demolition and cleanup of the Leebel fairgrounds. When he wasn’t on shift there, he helped Galad with renovating the inn. They had a few rooms set up already, just in case the melt came early, but they were far from the final product Galad envisioned.

  Hans tried to find excuses to stop in as often as he could. He envied the tusks’ skills with a hammer and saw, and working on his own home only made that jealousy worse. But Hans learned a lot every time he happened to be walking by and popped in.

  By chance. Pure coincidence. Just found himself in the area.

  Hans and the dwarf exchanged handshakes before parting ways. The next ferry across the lake left soon, and the Guild Master had appointments to keep as well.

  “Did you know that Terry was anti-armorback?” Luther asked when he saw Hans approach.

  “I kind of agree with him,” Hans said.

  “See!” Terry proclaimed. “I told you it’s weird having a monster following you around.”

  Luther and Terry stood in front of a table at the edge of a flat open area still dotted with hunks of brick, stone, and mortar, the only remnants of the structures that used to stand there. Workers, with the assistance of two sedimanders eating anything made of stone, diligently expanded that clearing.

  A little ways off, Hans spotted Kane and Gunther filling wheelbarrows with rubble. He recognized Kane easily enough, but at this distance, he mistook Gunther for an adult tusk.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Shit, he was going to end up taller than Kane. Where did the goofball with worms in his pockets go? He was still a little lanky, likely a side effect of his growth spurt, but he wouldn’t be that way for long. And he was only fifteen.

  And the first Blue Berserker in history.

  Hans didn’t miss Berserker training. Devon had stepped in as Gunther-wrangler when it became clear that someone was bound to get injured in the dogpile necessary to restrain a Berserked tusk. With Hans’ track record, that someone would be him. What took four or five adventurers took Devon a single bear hug. Sometimes Gunny recovered himself in a few seconds, but they had waited over two minutes on one occasion.

  Which might sound like a brief period of time, but one hundred twenty seconds of a young man thrashing with full force is an eternity. Nobody said it, but shifting eyes betrayed that everyone in the training room wondered if Berserk could somehow become permanent. Hans had never heard of that happening, but whether or not he had heard of something happening wasn’t a useful metric at this point in his life.

  “The sedimanders have been incredible,” Luther said. “Tamed monsters are good by me. If I never had to haul a bunch of rocks ever again? That sounds like a good life. Just let one of these guys at it instead of breaking your own back.”

  The tusk motioned toward a sedimander currently gnawing on a stone wall that once held up a house.

  “Isn’t that the most beautiful thing you ever saw?”

  “I was telling Luther-” Terry let a grin crack through at the sight of the tusk’s childlike admiration for a monster but forced it back down. He coughed. “I was telling Luther that I’m playing catch-up on spring planning. If you think of something we should be minding that we’re not, let me know.”

  At least I’m not the only one.

  “What have you done so far?”

  “I’ve got a few folks who are moving out to New Gomi permanently. That corner of the dungeon is a wild drunk’s wet dream. Pet some griffons and then take a peek in the dungeon? I mean, it’s what I would do too.”

  “I like the idea of more security out there.”

  “Figured you would,” Terry said. “With businesses opening up around here, a few extra eyes around town wouldn’t hurt. Then its eyes on the docks, the ferry, and the tunnels.”

  Hans thought. “If hazards for drunks are the benchmark, we should think about the drawbridges.”

  Terry pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and scribbled the suggestion down. He didn’t need convincing that someone stumbling their way into a bottomless pit was a possibility.

  “What’s to keep a boat from going over one of the falls?” Luther asked.

  “There’s only one boat on the lake,” Terry replied.

  “Drunk Terry wouldn’t take a rowboat out there?”

  Terry sighed and wrote that down too.

  “I’ll keep thinking,” Hans said. “I’m sure there’s more.”

  “Should we put a shift at Mazo’s to keep folks out of her hut?”

  Mazo insisted that no one mention her copy of Bunri’s Tower hiding beneath the surface ever again. From now until the end of time, she worked out of a small hut with meaningless baubles and idols staked into the ground outside. Everything else was to be part of the mystery she aimed to establish.

  “I’d say no,” Hans answered. “Wouldn’t be fair to put any of your people through that.”

  “Music to my ears.” Terry folded up his paper. “That’s all I needed. I should get back to it.”

  When Terry had gone, Luther pointed at the collapsed structures ringing the job site. “We’ve got to clear another half block or so. There won’t be a lot for visitors to see with how close we are to spring, but there should be some green by then at least. Speaking of, Becky got pretty ornery when I shared how much grass I wanted to plant.”

  “Why?”

  “She said grass is for rich folk with no sense of taste. She wants us to plant wildflowers and clover. Any space where we expect our people to walk or play, that would get clover. The rest would be flowers and bronzewoods. She says it would be better for my bees and look nicer too.”

  Landscaping was another skill Hans knew little about. “Won’t they get trampled to death?”

  Luther shrugged. “Becky says she’d give us the right seeds, and the bronzewoods would take care of the rest.”

  “Flowers sound nice,” Hans said, trying to picture what that would look like. “Gomi’s going to look like the fae realm soon.”

  “I like that.”

  Hans forced a smile and nodded. He didn’t like thinking about being in the fae realm or about the fae in general. But that wasn’t a problem for anyone else in Gomi but him, so he kept those thoughts private.

  A wave of excitement washed through the workforce around Hans. They looked to the sky and shaded their eyes against Gomi’s artificial sun.

  A griffon flew in the distance, crisscrossing back and forth across the farmlands, making daring dives before climbing back toward the ceiling again. The monster and its rider were no bigger than a button at this distance, but seeing the acrobatics was enough for Hans to know Devon was in the saddle. Honronk was far more conservative and utilitarian about his griffon rides.

  The monster cut a sharp turn mid-dive, and the workers gasped. The silhouette of a person fell out of the sky.

  When Hans ran toward the front gate, one of the guards on the wall spotted him and quickly surmised where the Guild Master was going.

  “He isn’t dead!” the guard yelled down.

  Hans had hoped Devon’s unnatural durability would negate, or at least partially negate, the consequences of such a long fall. He did his best not to assume Devon was invulnerable, though. He knew firsthand, by a swing of his own Gruwalda sword, that the Paladin could be killed. Testing those limits was foolish and unnecessarily risky.

  But Devon was also Devon.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine!” Devon assured a small group of farmers circled around the Platinum adventurers’ impact crater. “The dirt made it more dramatic than it was.”

  Several people had the idea to rush out and find where Devon landed, it seemed. But Hans was relieved to see that they were genuinely concerned for Devon’s health. He had worried they would be gawkers.

  “Anyone see where the bird went?” Devon asked.

  One of the farmers pointed across the field, vaguely in the direction of Mazo’s hut. The others with him nodded that they saw the same.

  When Devon saw Hans, he said, “You didn’t need to come all the way out here.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Going to be a little sore, but I’m fine.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about.”

  “Dev.”

  The Paladin sighed like a child caught in the act. “I was trying some new ideas.”

  “...like?”

  “I thought I could stay in the saddle without the straps. That would give me more flexibility to mount and dismount as needed instead of fiddling with buckles for ten minutes.”

  Hans shook his head.

  “The experiment was a failure,” Devon chuckled. “The physics were worse than I expected.”

  “It looked impressive up until that point.”

  “Right? I’m loving it up there. I’m going to start riding on the surface in the next few days. Honk wanted me to wait until it was a little warmer.”

  “That makes sense,” Hans said.

  Devon started with his pants and worked his way up, trying to brush or beat out the dirt that coated his clothing. “Terry’s got a few people who want to learn. Guards, not adventurers.”

  “Those might make more sense for griffon riders anyway.”

  “My thought too.” The Paladin looked around at the farmers who still stared at him. “Sorry for the scare, everyone. Thank you for coming to check on me.”

  As the crowd dispersed, Devon scanned the horizon.

  “Are you busy at the moment?” Devon asked Hans.

  “Why?”

  The Paladin grinned. “Feel like helping me find a griffon?”

  Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

  Monitor for independently grown sections of dungeon.

  Complete the next volume (Bronze to Silver) for “The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers.”

  Establish a Hoseki-grade library in Gomi.

  Prepare the first collection of job debriefs for publication.

  Learn to help your advanced students as much as you help beginners.

  Adapt.

  Enjoy it.

  Prepare the Association for spring.

  Decide how to manage breeding requests for monsters like mimics and shadow scorpions.