I opened the door from the hangar and started walking down the long, concrete hallway. As I approached the far end, a loud scuttling from behind me stopped me dead in my tracks. Shela was behind me.

Her limbs scuffed and whisked against the concrete walls, as the huge, hairy tarantula charged me at full speed. I tensed, my eyes wide, but the spider lifted its bulk onto the wall, and then ceiling as she ran past me into the room at the end of the hall.

Dro’erja was there, sitting down with his narrow back against the far wall. Shela huddled into the corner behind him,

“Welcome back, Tyson Dawes. I grew concerned in your absence,” the dark elf crooned.

“For me? Or for your own well-being?” I asked.

“For Shela, of course. She requires regular feeding, and immersion in water at least once per day,” he said, with a casual wave of his hand. “I would enjoy eating as well, but do not expect such indulgence yet.”

“Yet,” I repeated. “Funny qualifier. We have breakfast being prepared upstairs right now, I’ll be happy to get you some. You could likely even join in, it’s a hobb barbeque, if it’s anything like yesterday.”

Dro’erja blinked rapidly, looking between me and Shela. “We would be welcomed?”

“Perhaps not, but I’m in charge. If I tell BlueCleave not to hurt you, they won’t hurt you. The hobbs here are honorable.” I said.

His eyes raised at my last word. “Odd. That trait is thought of as a weakness in my people, yet you mention it as praise.”

“And I described a situation where their honor directly benefits you. If you don’t want to eat breakfast with the hobbs, I can bring you something. You like yarsp steaks? I’m betting we’re going to have a lot of yarsp steak to go around.”

I sighed at the end, leaning against the wall. I wasn’t quite comfortable enough around the giant spider to sit down, but I was getting more and more used to her presence.

Dro’erja shook his head slowly, lowering his eyes. “I apologize, I meant no offense. It is simply strange to be among new people. All I have known is the delves way of life, and the House of None. We do not affiliate with anyone.”

I scowled. “Wait, affiliate as in associate? Or officially, like in BuyMort?”

“Within BuyMort, of course. I am affiliating myself with you, as I affiliated myself with Lady Shireen, and her family,” he said. “I may simply not affiliate officially, by Great House ruling. No member of the House of None may be part of any BuyMort affiliation. The other houses will kill any who disobey this covenant.”

“Which means that anyone not directly affiliated with a great house becomes a slave for them,” I said.

“In all but name, yes,” Dro’erja said.

I stared at him for a long moment. When I shoved off the wall, Shela whimpered. Dro’erja reached a hand back to her and emitted a low whistle. The great spider scuttled closer to him, reaching a limb out to gently touch his own.

“Here’s the deal, Dro’erja. If you don’t do anything to hurt my affiliate, or my people, you can be part of our life here,” I raised a hand when he began to object, cutting him off. “Without officially affiliating with us. You can if you ever want to, but obviously I won’t force you to in order to simply live and work here.”

The dark elf nodded in understanding, lowering his hand. “I understand. I will produce Shela’s silk for your affiliate, the same I did for Lady Shireens.”

My eyes narrowed. “I don’t think you do, Dro.” The dark elf scowled at me from his position on the floor. “You’re free. If you make any morties because of my facility or affiliate, I would think it reasonable to provide me a slice, but I’m not going to control you the way Taytrinn did.”

“Free?” he instantly asked.

“Yeah, free. You can live here and take care of Shela here if you want to, without any expectations from me aside from basic civil conduct.” I said.

“But you said you needed a portion if I were to make any morties? I don’t understand.” Dro’erja said.

“Shela isn’t mine, she’s yours. If you make morties because I’m giving her a good, safe home, I have a legitimate claim to some of those morties. Say half? But I don’t own you. I won’t be limiting your water, or denying you food and clothing, the way she clearly did,” I said.

When I paused to take a breath, I saw him staring at me.

“You can live and work here if you don’t hurt anyone and make yourself useful in some way. That’s all.”

Dro’erja slowly rose and straightened his rail-thin back with a series of loud pops. He approached slowly and extended a slender hand to me. “I accept your terms with gratitude. Half of the morties from her silk is a fortune, from my perspective.”

“That’s good news. There’s a lot of new arrivals right now, but we should be able to get you a place to stay easily enough. How would you feel about sharing a spider ranch with one of our other affiliate members?”

“I am amenable, and this is your affiliate. I will fit in where you desire me.” The elf made one of his overly formal bows again.

I shook my head. “No, that’s not how it works here. What kind of living conditions do you need?”

Dro’erja stared at his own feet for a long moment before answering. “This room would suffice if you had nothing else. Shela has more room than she is used to and has found a bolt hole she seems to enjoy, near the door at the far end.”

That explained why she had been behind me when I approached. The elevated tunnel I never bothered to explore. A thought occurred to me, and I pulled up my Fumble-Bee operating system.

The bees were all long dead, of course. We’d lost the charge to the hive when Quadrum had arrived and hadn’t repaired it since. There was just so much to do every day. So many fires to put out.

Thankfully, the mapping footage was accessible. I moved the map with my fingers, until it clearly showed the tunnel. It extended in the distance a decent amount and raised to the surface somewhere under the campground.

Next I pulled up video footage. The Fumble-Bees went at their own pace while mapping, so I had to pause the video and scroll back to see certain details, but I became convinced it was a hidden back-up escape tunnel. There were even old, rusted ladder rungs at the far end of the tunnel.

The hatch must have been buried, and then forgotten about. I played with the map to see where the hidden tunnel emerged and smiled when I saw the new walled-in spider ranch directly above it.

I saved the map footage to show Axle and turned back to Dro’erja.

“Good news. Shela’s new bolt hole leads directly to our spider ranch. We’ll have to do some minor construction before it’s something you can use, but that won’t take long.” I looked around the emptied room, replete with its ancient blood-stains.

“I think you should use this room, as well as something we’ll build above ground for you. I’ll coordinate with my head of security and my operations manager to be sure, but I dislike the idea of keeping Shela out in the open, if she’s as endangered as you suggest,” I said.

He immediately bowed again, flourishing with one hand. “My deepest thanks. This change in her life will bring great profit to your affiliate.”

“Right, I hope so. Let me go talk to my people, we’ll get you comfortable,” I said, before turning to leave.

Dro’erja simply nodded and sat back down against the wall, as I walked out to the hangar.

When I arrived, Axle was happily at work, getting each new freezer’s disassembled parts into position. He had found chalk from somewhere, possibly his own kit, and scrawled markers on the concrete for each new refrigeration unit, as well as planned accessories.

On the other side of the hangar sat a massive coil of something, wrapped in super thin, stretchy flesh-wrap. As I gazed at it, the company's ad entered my space, giving me some insight into what it might be.

You have THE POWER - Now think of the POSSIBILITIES! Introducing Coria, the revolutionary biological light production organism. Flexible and self-charging, Coria can even produce mobile light fluid for expeditions and travel! 25000 morties, 4.1 stars.

It was filled with something bulbous on thick cabling, but the flesh-wrap prevented me from seeing specifics. So this was his much talked about lighting.

“Axle!” I said, stepping out of the secret door.

The Knowle looked up from his current project, a small smile on his features. His ears perked.

“I’ve got another spider rancher in this tunnel, the only survivor of the delves. Could you get him set up with Drusk, if Drusk’s okay with that? I’ve also gotta talk to you about the construction on the spider ranch.” He nodded as I approached, and I got to work helping him with the refrigerators.

As we worked, we discussed what to do with the entire affiliate. Specifically, more upgrades to the campground.

Axle assured me it would be no trouble at all to upgrade things further, using goblin construction again. He told me we likely needed to hire them to upgrade the housing situation already anyway, so bundling in another project would save us some morties.

With the rate we were gathering affiliate members and interdimensional refugees, we were going to need even more housing. He assured me it would be easier to get the plumbing, sewage, and electricity fully installed at the same time as some capacity upgrades.

The underground residential area needed very little work aside from cleanup. We expected the hobbs to renovate and make the place their own upon moving in, so Axle focused on getting the elevator up and running again.

For the immediate future, he told me his plans were extremely simple. We would dig out the top of it, which Axle said rose out of the ground toward the rear of the campground’s top-side residential area.

Once that was done, we would be installing a hand crank elevator platform that could be operated from below or above. The elevator would consist of a metal floor, with secure wiring from each corner to meet the main elevator cable. With a few simple pulleys and cranks, we could have a working elevator by the end of the day.

Without warning, an ad screamed into my ear. What a hunk of junk! It blared, the words typing themselves across my vision. A picture of the most dangerous and janky-looking elevator to ever exist appeared dead center. Are you really going to do-it-yourself . . . and let your people die?

I growled. This was getting super fucking insulting. It would not look like that.

Why not visit Elevators Plus? The Multiversal One-Stop number one is elevator design and safety!

I dismissed it. Maybe later, with a different affiliate. Not these assholes. I regained my train of thought.

When we finished getting the refrigeration units in place, we moved on to the giant coil. Axle cut the flesh-wrap with a claw, and it slapped to the floor in a disgusting heap.

The coil turned out to store a form of organic lighting. Even though the product name was Coria, Axle insisted on calling it ‘cave-kelp,’ and sung its praises while we worked. Wrapped around a central core of thick, gummy flesh in the shape of a thread bobbin, were several strands of blue lichen. Bulbs along the strands of lichen emitted a faint glow in the gloom of the hangar.

The light was nowhere near enough to see with, but Axle assured me the system would work once all in place. As we unwound massive amounts of kelp together, he explained that the kelp was a form of specialized moss that grew underground in specific environments. The moss required both sunlight, and geothermal heat from deep below the ground.

So the lichen grew great lengths of itself, to stretch as far as it needed to acquire both sunlight and the heat from deep below ground. The plant started out in sunlight, spending its primary growth cycle reaching the required depths. Once it had heat, it could grow bulbs that slowly filled with a light producing liquid over time.

Axle told me we could easily mimic the heat required with a simple device that converts electricity from Cube into heat. It would wrap around the end of the kelp thick root strands, tricking the plant into producing light. The affiliate could even regularly sell the bioluminescent fluid, once enough of it had been grown.

We would also need a place to put the primary sunlight patch, Axle informed me that the lichen formed into a thick, low mat of tightly woven plant fibers to gather sunlight and needed open space to thrive. It was stored in the hollow core of the giant flesh-thimble and looked eerily similar to artificial turf.

Before we began working with the lights more directly, we took a break and called Rayna. She was busy with the cleanup and breakfast prep, directing troops of hobbs and human volunteers to gather yarsp bodies. I could see a few of the new pickup trucks in the background, leaving with full beds already, trailing dripping ichor.

“Hey Rayna, I’m glad to see more humans helping out,” I started.

She shrugged. “Everybody useful in some way. I remind them of that, they help more. One who not helping though, got to talk to you about her.”

“Right now?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not important. What you need?”

I grimaced, not that she could see it. “Sorry to ask, but we could use a hobb work crew in the basement. The Sleem farm needs expansion, and Axle needs help getting it all in place.”

“Yeah, that no problem,” she said. Tollya leaned in and waved with a smile, and I immediately waved back. She grinned and walked away, happily chewing on a piece of raw yarsp meat.

“Tyson, we need talk,” Rayna said.

I nodded. “It sounds important, what’s up?”

The hobb hesitated. “Well. BlueCleave signed on for cut of spider ranch profits.”

I nodded again, cutting her off with a raised hand. “And there haven’t been any since Mr. Sada crushed the place. Did you guys get your cut from that, at least?”

Rayna nodded once, a simple lift and lower of her chin. “Yeah, boss. That part of what I mean. I could use some of that for ammo, even with prices this bad. Can afford. But wanted to talk about it first.”

“Don’t waste the morties. We need more hobbs and you’re going to need to recruit them,” I said. I turned to Axle and included him in the frame of the call.

“I want to meet with everyone soon, we need to renegotiate the affiliate funding. BlueCleave deserves a cut of everything we do, since they run security for us entirely.”

Axle nodded. “Wise. These hobbs are numerous and competent. Hobb forces can be very powerful if enough of them unite under one affiliate banner.”

I turned to him. “I wanted to include you and Jada in that negotiation if you guys are now considering this a permanent situation. Percentages would be more appropriate for your affiliate, based on your position and importance.”

“I’m ready for a full merger, being straightforward with you. I’ll need to talk to Jada about that, though an offer of percentage is likely to be appealing. Thank you, Tyson. I look forward to our partnership.” Axle beamed, offering me his paw as he finished.

I grasped it and nodded, then turned back to Rayna. “Oh, can you have your hobbs bring us some breakfast, please? It’s a crazy work day already.”

Axles eyes lit up at that, and Rayna nodded. “Yeah boss, no problem.” She hung up.

A short while later, while Axle and I were still moving the great lengths of lichen upstairs to the central hub, our hobb work crew arrived with breakfast.

The Knowle and I happily took a break, and I removed my helmet to eat in the faint glow of the cave-kelp bulbs. It was unsettling, to be in a darkened room full of aliens, eating hash browns and bok choy, while a giant hyena-man across from me tore into his wasp meat with fervor.

Unsettling. But in a lot of ways, it all finally was starting to feel like home.