The hulk in armor proved my instinct correct when he reached for my bicep to help guide me around the chair. I froze as he made contact, and the beholder twitched, all of its eyeballs fixated on him.

The armored elf turned and went to one knee. “Yes, my lord!” he shouted. “At once!” He arose swiftly, gestured politely with one hand toward the nearby staircase, and held a small bow. “I apologize for laying hands on you, in violation of my master’s agreement with your affiliate.”

I nodded slowly. “Right. Uh . . . accepted. Don’t do it again and we’re good.”

Taytrinn arose and stepped with a click of her high heels around the armchair. Her compatriot in the dark clothing had vanished, though several other elves milled about. Some were on devices, and some were already beginning to set up what looked like a massive work table near the elevator shaft.

The dark elf in overalls slowly guided the spider away to a corner, where he encouraged it to begin building itself a web. The beast mewled again and moved carefully up the wall, with powerful, gripping steps. Dark elves in suits moved in to take our place at the meeting lounge, setting up devices and more lights.

I followed Taytrinn, and the armored elf fell into step behind me. He clanked ever so slightly as he walked. We rose the stairs to see Rayna and the hobbs waiting in a semi-circle. The staircase and elevator shaft behind them was blocked by flickering bars of lightning.

As Taytrinn arose the final step and splayed her arms to the gathered hobbs, the lighting blinked out. Tollya racked her shotgun and moved to step between Taytrinn and Rayna. The dark elf bared her teeth in sudden fury.

“Out of my way, hobb.” She spat the final word. “You dare to raise weapons against me?”

Rayna put a gentle hand on Tollya’s shoulder, and the other woman backed down at once. She sighed and turned away, ejecting the shell into her hand, before reloading it into the magazine.

“Don’t yell, we work. We good hobbs.” Rayna kept her eyes downcast, and I narrowed my own. I carried the helmet under my arm but decided to slip it back on. It was better if my expression was covered for what was unfolding between the two aliens.

“Yes. Good hobbs work.” Taytrinn hissed. “Right now your work is to vanish from my sight. This floor is ours, we certainly won’t welcome the stench of hobbs.”

“Taytrinn,” I started. I couldn’t stand by but needed to choose my words carefully. “Please refrain from yelling at my staff. We’re handling some morale problems currently, and it’s inconvenient timing, is all. You understand.”

The hulking elf at my back clenched his fist on something. I turned my helmet to see, and when I saw his hand clutching his sword’s hilt, I tilted my helmet between his face and the sword. Taytrinn saved us from any further unpleasantry with one of her high laughs.

She smiled disarmingly at me, then shot a glare at her companion in armor. His hand left the sword hilt. “Oh, Tyson. There is something about you that I find simply. . . delicious.” She walked in a circle around me, trailing her finger across my spine before slipping her arm into the crook of mine. “It must be your innocence. You’re much too soft on your servants though, we’ll need to work on that. Come. Show me to your ‘guy.”

I laughed politely and nodded, my helmet bobbing. “Of course, of course. Right this way.” Keeping my breath low enough to not be heard outside of the helmet, I whispered, “Shit, shit, shit!”

We walked up to the lower floor of the residential area, and she hung lightly from my arm. When I stopped to show her the first hallway of apartments, I realized we had walked well outside the range of any ambient light, but she seemed to be having no problems.

I swept an arm to indicate an apartment. “Not much, as I said.”

She detached from my arm and entered one of the empty units, stepping cautiously to avoid a puddle of Sleem juice.

“It will serve.” Her voice echoed back to me, and I could see her red eyes glowing in the dark as she perused the area.

“Silver linings, lots of room for customization,” I quipped. Taytrinn exited the building and gave me a cursory smile, before reattaching herself to my arm.

“Show me more,” she demanded.

I showed her the entire floor, silently reliving the night before when I had run for my life through the facility. At the end of the hallway, she pointed up the stairs. “I’m afraid a single floor of this size simply will not do. You mentioned another up above?”

When I hesitated, she pulled on my arm and grinned at my shining helmet. I nodded, and we performed another tour of the second residential level. There was nowhere near enough of them to require that much space, but none of it felt optional, and keeping these new tenants happy was my primary objective.

When we arrived at the barbershop, she stopped me and stared at the chair. “What is that?”

“An oversight,” I responded. “I’ll take care of it immediately.” After carefully drawing Falcor, I noticed the elf in dark cloth appear in my peripheral vision. The helmet highlighted his movement as he approached me from the side with a knife in hand.

I ignored him and stepped to the chair, clipping it at the base with a single, low, sweeping blow. When I turned to glance behind me at Taytrinn, the other elf had vanished again. I carefully sheathed Falcor before grabbing my plasma falchion from the other thigh. It roared into life, and I held out the tip to sweep over the remaining metal of the post. It melted and flowed into the floor, and I deactivated the falchion, returning it to its dock to charge. When the metal cooled, it would perfectly cap the mechanism in the floor.

“BuyMort, I’d like to sell that,” I said, while pointing at the remains of the barbershop chair. Selling the broken and corrupted Sleem bodies from the dungeon before had netted a cool million morties, most of them bad quality. But, surprisingly, this broken and crumpled thing netted almost the same. I stared at the prompt.

Purchase: Chair, Barber. Utilitarian furnishing. Rarity, common. Quality, bad. 5 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Golden Currency, US, dated 1860 - 1874. Rarity, very rare. Quality, excellent. 1,145,980 morties dispensed.

I was shocked. A little pissed off too. The golden coins wouldn’t really have been worth holding onto but I would have liked to have seen them first before parting ways. Not that I could have checked the chair for hidden compartments.

When I turned back to Taytrinn, she was smiling with her arms crossed. I noticed she had undone a button on her top, and a hint of her lacy bra was showing. All thoughts of golden coins dropped away immediately. “I apologize. We were unprepared for your arrival.”

“Few are,” she answered immediately. “And yet, such is the turn of life, no? Best to embrace pleasure while one can. Nothing in life is assured but the moment.”

I peered at her through the helmet, glad she could not see my face. “Wise. I’ll have to think on that some. Seems like a big concept.”

The tour progressed through the entire wing, with Taytrinn grinning and taking each floor for her delves as we arrived on it. Each one an important and necessary use, she assured me.

Once we arrived at the top floor, she was no longer smiling. The hobbs were there, hefting the Fumble-Bee hive back up to the crossroads. “I think I’ll wait here. This wing of your facility should be fine for our needs. Summon your ‘guy’ here so we can have our conversation. I tire and would like to return below to establish comfortable quarters.” She stopped and traced a finger across my arm, at the crease of the starfish suit’s covering, lightly biting her lower lip. “Perhaps you will visit them later.”

I yanked my psychic phone out of my pocket and nodded vigorously. “Perhaps!”

Her eyes flared at me, and she smiled deeper.

The face in the phone looked concerned for an instant, and then fixated on my face. “Beholders. Interesting,” he muttered. I blinked and shook my head.

“Axle please.” The deity raised his eyebrows at me and shrugged, turning aside, and becoming the tunnel of fog. Axle was on the other side, and I could see green skinned gobbs scampering around behind him on a mud-crete construction of some kind.

“Axle, can you come to Mr. Sada’s mansion please and have a hobb escort you to the basement?” I asked quickly, before he could speak.

“Uh, yeah. Sure thing. Let me just find Jada to hold this project down, and I’ll be right there,” he finished and hung up.

Thankfully, he arrived quickly, as promised. The dark elf woman in the hallway flirted with me constantly, and at one point openly undid another button on her top, ensuring her bra was not only visible, but that it commanded the attention anytime I looked at her.

Axle stared as he approached, and she turned away to redo the buttons. His ears went back hard when he sniffed the air, and his claws sparked against the concrete as they extended from his feet.

“Delves,” he said. Taytrinn whipped around and glared at him. Axle merely sniffed the air again. “Many delves.”

“Click your teeth, cur!” The dark elf reached in her jacket and produced a whip, uncoiling it with a crack. I stepped between her and Axle, but I noticed his jaws shut with a click sound behind me.

“Taytrinn. We have an agreement, do we not?” I stood close enough to grab the whip but made no motion toward her or her weapon. Her red eyes flicked between me and the Knowle behind me.

She hissed over my shoulder before turning to face me. Her expression softened and she smiled with tight lips. “I think I shall refrain from interacting with your staff, Tyson, until you can manage them to the point they show proper respect to their betters.” With that, she turned on her heels and stormed off down the nearby stairs. My helmet showed me her dark clothed assassin hunkered in the elevator shaft, on a ledge of concrete near the front. Unaware I had seen him, he silently dropped a level as I stared directly at him.

Axle’s ears were flat back as he stared at me in the hallway. I saw hobbs moving behind him, and light flooded from the crossroads room. With a quick hiss of air, I removed my helmet and pointed behind him with wide eyes. As we moved, I pulled out my phone again and prepared a text to Taytrinn about needing to schedule a meeting to introduce my logistics foreman to Quadrum.

By the time I hit send on my phone, we were back in Mr. Sada’s basement. Rayna, Tollya, and Axle were all staring at me. I looked between each of them and shook my head. “Well everyone, things just got significantly more complicated, and before you ask, no I have no fucking idea how this happened.”

Rayna grunted.

“Hey, stop it. I had no clue that beholders were even a thing, let alone what a giant pain in the ass would come with one. Not like I put a big sign out saying ‘welcome freaky space monsters,’ but they keep showing up anyway!” I took a breath after my rant and Rayna nodded.

“Not your fault. But bad news. Most of my people will want to leave now no matter what I say to keep them here.” She crossed her arms, and Tollya gave her a sharp look.

“We can handle delves,” the taller woman grunted.

“No one can handle beholders,” Axle replied. “And delves only ever aspire to serve beholders, so I would assume we have one in the basement now, even if you hadn’t just confirmed it.” His ears were still flat against his head, and I noticed his tail was tucked between his legs. He stared at nothing, a point on the wall as he shook his head.

“Still, it doesn’t seem real. I need a minute. This morning I was on the run from Dearth, and now I’m enslaved to a beholder.” The Knowle shook his head again and moved to the stairs to sit down. “Just give me a minute.”

I turned to Rayna. “Can your people leave? I’ll help if I can.”

The grey woman blinked a few times and shook her head. “Not many, I fear. Coming out of Storage means losing your place. Have to find new place when you go back.”

Tollya touched her arm, lightly. “Rayna. We cannot tell them about the beholder.”

The other hobb sighed deeply. “We are trapped. Delves kill hobbs for pleasure, or out of anger. BlueCleave will find out soon enough that I brought them to their deaths. Dashed against a beholder for sport!” Rayna’s fist clenched and she stared at me.

I nodded. “You’re right. You never should have followed me, and I’m genuinely sorry I got all of you into this.” I took a deep breath and looked each of them in the eye. “I’ll do whatever I can to keep you safe. Including taking up their attention so they don’t notice you.” My phone got hot and started jumping around in my pocket, and I pulled it out to see a text from Taytrinn.

She had responded with a syrupy apology for her outburst, and a picture of her new copper tub filled with creamy, steaming liquid and flower petals. Her suit was hung from a rack in the background. Nothing from her was visible, but the implication was clear. The dark elf assured me she was pampering herself to improve her mood and would be thrilled to see me again soon.

I sighed. “And I think I might have a way to do that.” I looked up at Rayna. “At great personal sacrifice, I might add.”

Axle shook his head. “Bedding a delf is not a sacrifice, though they do often delight in playing a black widow, especially with new inclusions or dangerous species, of which you are both.”

“Awesome.” I said. “We have bigger problems. They took the entire residential wing, including the office floors. How the fuck are we supposed to run a Sleem farm now?”

The Knowle tapped a claw against his tooth, resting his elbows on his knees. “I don’t mean to be rude, Tyson, but shut up for a moment. I’m experiencing something important.”

Tollya pushed Rayna’s shoulder. “We live up above, avoid them. No conflict rules for all hobbs, we be fine.” She pointed at me. “Tyson will help us.” The tall hobb turned to me and did that chest thump salute they liked to do. “I trust you, Sleem-slayer.”

I winced. That hurt. “I’m not entirely sure you should. And we need to be careful, they have a sneaky shit on their little team. He’s probably going to be spying on us pretty regularly soon.”

Rayna shook her head. “We’re responsible for their lives, Tollya. Anywhere beholders go with delves, delves kill hobbs. All I can think is who will die first, and for what imagined insult?”

“I’ll stop that from happening, Rayna. However I can.” I pulled up the picture of the dark elf in her tub and winced again as I raised my fingers to respond. The text felt lopsided, but I hit send anyway. I mentioned that it would upset me greatly if any of my hobbs were killed in any misunderstandings between our affiliates.

Again I gave a small thought to my impending phone bill.

I received a quick thumbs up in return.

“Her attention is on me, and I think I got her to agree to warn her people not to hurt any hobbs.” I looked into Rayna's large eyes.

She took a deep breath and blinked. “Okay.” The hobb turned to walk up the stairs past Axle, and he reached out to put a huge paw on her shoulder.

“Take solace in the fact that none of us ever had any choice in the matter.” The Knowle stood, slowly. “No feeling in the multiverse like fate . . . if it truly exists. Indulge me a moment, Tyson, if you would.”

Tollya clapped me on the shoulder before following Rayna up the stairs. Axle stood his full height and towered over me.

“I need to tell you something about Knowles,” he said. “We named our planet Knowledge. Well, Knowledge in your language. In our own, I doubt you would understand it.” When I raised an eyebrow, he growled something unintelligible.

I blinked at him and shook my head. “We named ours after the dirt under our feet.”

“Of course you did. It’s what you value, land. Property, ownership. My people valued knowledge, as a concept, so intensely that we named our world of origination after it. We are called to further and spread knowledge because of this, but in a very general sense. Most of us focus on living our own lives now that we are all part of BuyMort’s descent. But an opportunity to study the movements and machinations of a beholder, while not something most who attempt it survive, is something I simply cannot pass by. Knowledge of them is so limited, and opportunities to study them so rare.”

Axle reached out to clasp my hand. “I will stay here and help you, now. No matter what comes. I wouldn’t be a Knowle at all if I did anything else. Jada will do the same, but she will be angry about it.”

I nodded and grasped his hand back. “Thank you. I’ll do my best to share whatever interactions I have with you.”

“Excellent.” The large hyena-man produced a notepad and pen. “Let’s start now.”