Samuel Tolliver had no idea what to do next.

Persephone had stopped shrieking and had resumed her silent hovering, unresponsive to any and all attempts to get through to her. Sally had finally quieted down and stopped throwing things—mainly because Ma had walked over to her and threatened to stove in her side with a lugwrench if she didn’t pipe down. Ma had a way with people like that.

Araxes wasn’t responding, either. The messages he sent came back as ‘undeliverable’. Which meant that the lich was probably still alive—er… or whatever you called an undead who was still operational—but somewhere where the system wasn’t operating. Which, given the track record of recent days, meant he could be anywhere from a new coloured room to an Admin Room to an Anomaly… Or somewhere Sam didn’t even know about.

“Remember when things were simple?” he asked the room at large, and received a snort from his pop.

“Things are never simple, son,” the big man said from where he had hitched up against a workbench. “Complexity lurks under every stone and behind every tree.”

“Gee thanks Pop,” Sam grunted. “That’s really uplifting. No really. Exactly what I needed to hear right now.” He growled and stalked back over to the slowly pulsing portal over its workbench.

It had seemed like such a good idea in theory; make an Admin Room where he could explain to the others actually what was going on. But he’d run into setbacks and dead-ends and no end of struggles. And now he’d not only lost Araxes—which, okay, maybe not a huge loss, but dammit the guy had been making progress and turning into something actually decent—but Persephone was out of commission too.

It wasn’t shaping up to be just one of those days. No no. This whole situation had ‘weeks’ written all over it.

Which, of course, was when Pearl came in with bad news.

“Sam! Hey, Sam!” The little narrator fairy zipped into the room, strands of hair fluttering free of her severe bun.

Sam knew that tone of voice. He closed his eyes and groaned quietly before opening them again and saying; “What’s gone wrong now, Pearl?”

“Nooooothing,” she said in perhaps the most unconvincing lie Sam had ever heard. “Except there’s that politician guy from the town at the dungeon entrance, and he’s got a bunch of guards with him.”

“What?” That brought Ma to her feet. “That son of a bitch isn’t going to try and arrest my boy again, is he?”

“Technically it was the other one who tried to arrest him,” Pop said phlegmatically. “Try to keep up, dear heart.”

Mary Tolliver casually leaned over and smacked her husband on the back of the head. He didn’t even flinch.

“What does he want, Pearl?” Sam asked, ignoring his parents.

“He said he needs to ‘talk to you urgently about our mutual enemy’,” Pearl said, frowning. “Which I think means he’s gonna shout at you about the real lich. Want me to send him away? Ooh, or I could have the gnomes use the steam cannon.”

Sam blinked. “We have a steam cannon?”

“Yup! They built it while you were sleeping. Jack found a good place for it on the fourth floor.”

He blinked again. “We have a fourth floor?”

“Char and Sheshek and I had a little planning session,” Pop said by way of explanation. “And that construction thing you gave me was fixing to run out, so we decided to make as much use of it as we could. Char said you’d asked for their help, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt.”

Sam nodded. Yeah. Right. Of course. That was the whole reason he’d given the skills to Pop through the Tinkerer’s ability. Because he had—had—to stop trying to take everything on himself.

Although, there were still some things he couldn’t hand off to others.

“Ma, Pop, would you guys watch the portal, make sure no one tries to fiddle with it? I gotta go see a man about a lich. “

Pop made an assenting noise, eyeing Rashun and the gnome who were already edging closer to the portal controls but stopped upon hearing Sam’s words and feeling that baleful look on their backs. “Go take care of what you need to, Sam,” he said. “We’ll hold down the fort here.”

Sam nodded and left the room, hurrying down the dungeon corridors towards the front gate. All around him he saw new faces scurrying back and forth on some errand or another. Cora had been spawning lots of new mobs lately, and Pop must have put in a few new generators, because more and more races were showing up in the corridors. It was strange to Sam, to be walking the halls that had once only contained himself and Pearl and some kobolds, and now to see it full of other humans, gnomes, orcs and goblins, he even passed a couple halflings and a dwarf. The whole place seemed… alive.

And it wasn’t just the people. It was the sounds and smells too. Off in the distance were the heavy clanging of forges in full swing. Strange chemical scents wafted down from a side tunnel, and Sam recognized them belatedly as Gnomish experiment labs—Pop, being an old hand at this kind of thing, appeared to have put those at the far end of a long, long tunnel—and they mingled weirdly with the smell of lunch being prepared in one or more of the mess halls.

“Pop got all this done in just a few hours?” Sam asked Pearl as they went. “That’s… A lot.”

“Come on Sam,” Pearl said cheerfully. “You know Jack’s been doing construction since before you were born! He saw all kinds of neat ideas, and the kobolds helped him get it all finished too. And the worker mobs that Cora was spawning. Those goblins wield a mean shovel, did you know? And a couple of the new gnomes have woken up and are talking about getting some steamshovels working, because they think not only should we build up into the mountain, we should build down, and maybe see if we can find some lava vents for… ‘gee-oh termite generators’, whatever those are. Hey Sam, are you listening to me?”

“Yeah Pearl,” Sam said, his eyes wide and staring off into the distance, past the walls and stone. Lord above. In the space of twelve hours, Pop had taken his little dungeon and practically turned it into a thriving city.

Why hadn’t he done that himself? It wouldn’t have taken very much effort to dive into the menus and bring up new rooms and mob generators. And looking around, he could see the benefits. The dungeon was expanding, and with it came new allies and new bonuses. If he’d focused more on building the dungeon out, maybe they wouldn’t have been hit as hard when Araxesendenak showed up for the first time, or he wouldn’t have been as worried about protecting the town, or…

Okay, admittedly, I may have been a bit busy at the time, but still.

“Uh, Sam? You’ve walked past the entrance tunnel like five times now. Are you okay?”

Pearl’s voice brought him up out of his thoughts, and he discovered that he was just walking in circles around the central chamber. He’d just started following the walls and… Apparently never stopped.

“Yeah, sorry Pearl,” he said a bit sheepishly. “Was just—“

“Thinking. I know. I recognize the sound of your teeth grinding together. That’s really bad for them, you know. You should wear a mouthguard when you think, otherwise you’re gonna be old and toothless and—“

“Pearl,” Sam laughed, “I’m not going to wear protective equipment when I think.”

“The gnomes do, some of them!”

“Yeah, but their thinking typically involves a lot more explosions than mine does.”

“I dunno… Remember that time you tried to make a fast-brew coffee machine?”

“Hey,” Sam held up a finger. “Technically that was when I was inventing. I wasn’t technically thinking at that point.”

“Yeah, Annie said the same thing.”

“Exactly—wait…”

Pearl giggled and fluttered up out of Sam’s reach. “Come on Sam, put your mouthguard in and let’s go talk to the politician guy.”

“Right.”

The kobold guard on the entrance gate opened the smaller door and let them through the large steel barricade and out into the sunlight. For a moment Sam just closed his eyes and luxuriated in the feeling of warmth spreading across his skin. Then he opened them again, and there was Councilman Blain, still short, still fat, although now his bushy beard had been trimmed down to a neat goatee. He was flanked by a half-dozen guards—none of them, Sam noted, was Ard Shi or any of the guards who he had seen before.

“Councilman,” Sam said with a nod. “I understand you need to speak with me?”

“Yes,” the man’s voice was heavy and dark with portent. “It is a matter most urgent.”

“What’s gone wrong now?”

“The entire kingdom received a message from King Araxesendenak not twenty minutes ago. Telling us to prepare for war.”

Sam closed his eyes and felt the weight of the world pressing down on him again.

“He’s coming,” he said quietly.

“Worse,” Blain said gravely. “He is coming with allies. The kingdom has been told to not attack nor do anything to impede any monstrous races or mobs they see on the roads. They are, apparently, allies of his majesty and coming to the aid of his legions to destroy a rising threat to himself. I did not receive this message, nor did any who reside within Melloram. It is only by chance that a friend from another township heard the message and relayed it to me.”

Sam blinked. “Allies… Oh hell.”

“Indeed,” Blain nodded once. “If I were to guess, I would say that whoever threw those monstroush mobs at the town has decided it would be easier to destroy us with official sanction. King Araxesendenak has joined forces with them, and will march on us within the hour.”

Sam felt the weight on his shoulders press down on him. He looked over at Pearl, and saw her wide round eyes staring back at him.

“Remember when things used to be simple?” he asked, not really expecting an answer.

Jackson: Sam, get back to the portal room. We've just heard from Araxes, and we need you here.

Sam: Is it bad?

Jackson: I... Don't know.

Sam: Right. I'm on my way.

And of course, it never rains, but lord does it pour.