Shelley didn't come back until late into the night, but her whole family was with her, and they seemed as happy and hale as Fred hoped for. They were all green, immediately, and after exploring the new room Fred had made, they all settled down in a big pile and fell asleep. Fred sat watching them, feeling like they were sending him peace and contentment, not some vital life force. He watched them throughout the night, and into the morning, before Jim sent him more text.

Ready for a new day of making lairs for your future creatures?

"Yeah, I suppose so. What sorts of creatures live on this mountain?"

Get started building a big entrance hall, and I'll tell you.

So Fred started cutting a new tunnel, this time from the original room straight out to the slope of the mountain. When he was done, he had a long tunnel, two spans wide and tall, reasonably square, and opening out to a breezy meadow filled with trees. Meanwhile he was reading Jim's words.

There are lots of creatures we can find in these mountains, but not all of them like to live underground. We might see wolves, bears, big cats, and other hunters. Snakes. Spiders. We might see goats and deer, but they don't live underground, and we can't force them to, usually. Birds don't like to live underground either. But bats do. Plenty of cave bats where there are warm caves. There are also plenty of magical creatures you may not know about, like Lesser Wurms.

"Worms? Like the crawly one in the first room?"

Not worms. Wurms. A bit like dragons, only much smaller. Still mean and nasty, though. Great for dungeons like yourself. Oh, and cold mountains mean Yetis. Big apes that like snow. This is summer, in this part of the world. But expect big snow drifts and crazy cold during the winters.

"Exactly how high am I, on this mountain. Near the top?"

No, nowhere near the top. That's important, though. We don't want you to be inaccessible to humans, after all. They will recognise your value, and travel long distances to use your domain for training. In fact, it is reasonable to assume they'll build a town near you, just because you're a valuable resource to humans.

"Just so they can come kill my creatures over and over again?"

Don't forget, the humans who come to train won't be immune to death, unlike your creatures. They'll do it because they need the training and experience to protect their families and nations. Okay, now that you've got a nice access hallway, we need some individual lairs. Rooms. For now, make several fairly simple ones. Once creatures show up to move in, we can do what we did for your first creatures; customize each lair to what the creature needs.

"Like individual bedrooms?"

Yes, exactly like that. You'll find that your creatures don't really need to do anything except sleep and wait for humans to fight, so you won't really need to provide anything like a latrine or mess hall for them. You know what those are, right?

"Yes. Yes, I do. I'm building an army camp, then?"

No no, I should have said bathroom and kitchen. You're not building an army. You're making a training domain for humans.

Fred started making lair rooms, coming off each side of the main hallway. As he went, he couldn't help noticing that the dirt that covered the mountain gave way quickly to rock as he went deeper into the mountainside. He also came across a skeleton buried in the dirt, a large rat, it looked like. He thought it might be useful somehow, so he left the bones on the floor of the room he was creating.

Anyway, I need to mention something else. Your magic is attracting these creatures, sometimes from far away, which is why you can expect some unusual ones. Your magic isn't waiting for a random creature to wander by. It's already out there, subtly picking and leading good creatures back here, and that will only get stronger as your domain fills with creatures. So you won't have to worry about being filled with nothing but bears, for instance. Keep making lairs, and you'll have a menagerie before you know it.

Fred stopped after making six simple lair rooms. He felt that would be enough until more creatures showed up. And something was happening with the rat bones he'd found. As he watched, sparkles started floating off the bones, and they multiplied, until the bones seemed to evaporate all at once.

Okay, let me explain what just happened.

"Please."

Part of your magic keeps your domain clean. Humans and creatures will die bloody deaths in here. It would be pretty nasty if those bodies and things lay around and rotted over days and weeks. So, when a corpse is left within your domain for a while, it gets… cleaned up.

"Huh. I suppose that's convenient."

Okay, but back to building. Can I recommend an addition?

"Sure."

Make a couple of towers, pylons, columns, one on each side of your main entrance. You don't want the humans to think you are a simple set of natural caves. They need to know what they're getting into. Do something fun and artistic.

"Okay." So Fred did. First he made the two columns, on either side of the entrance. Simple cylinders of stone, pushed up out of the earth, six spans high. Strangely, the rubber-sheet effect that kept him from going outside didn't seem to affect these towers. He felt like he could make them much higher if he wanted, so he increased them to ten spans high. Then he "climbed" them, moving his attention to their tops. It didn't increase the range of his vision, though. He felt the wind a bit more, but the experience was underwhelming.

He thought about other things he could do, artistically. He could make more columns, like the teeth of a big skull. But that was trite, he knew. He could make an arch, and write something witty on it. But he just didn't feel motivated. These two columns were fine for now.

He went to go back inside. So weird. He still knew he was incorporeal. No body to move. No space to take up. No real point of view. But he still felt like he was walking, standing, sitting down, going from place to place. Maybe it was his mind's way of dealing with the new situation. "That's enough existential dread for now", he thought, and went to lay down next to his family of groundhogs. They were still sleeping, as expected. He still found them relaxing and peaceful.

The day passed like that. Fred found it easy to let time slip by. Noon came and went, then afternoon. Fred could feel the sun's shadows getting longer.

Then the wolf showed up.

Fred noticed it immediately, as it slipped through the front entrance quietly. It seemed to be heading straight for the first of the new lairs. It was mangy, lean to the point of starved, wreathed in old scars, with notches in both ears and one milky eye. It looked fierce and scary to Fred. It looked like it had been born to fight, so it had. As it stepped through the entrance, it turned red, and Fred immediately thought about figuring out what it wanted from a lair. He was a bit torn. It really was scary, the opposite of his family of cute groundhogs. On the other hand, it was exactly the sort of warrior Jim said was needed to build the training grounds the humans wanted. Giving it an eternal life of fighting and dying seemed like the Valhalla such a beast was surely searching for. So Fred needed to make a suitable lair, he supposed.

As he had with the groundhogs, Fred moved to an empty lair room, and began to envision it with the wolf in residence. It didn't change much. It just needed a smaller round nook at the end, something the wolf could squeeze into. Fred made that, setting it a bit higher to keep it dry. He could see the wolf turn and move towards the lair he was modifying. The wolf stepped carefully into its new lair, crawled into its nook, laid down with a huff, and immediately turned green. "Well. That was easy", Fred thought.

The bear showed up just an hour after the wolf did.

It was a big, no-nonsense, dangerous creature (like the wolf), but it wasn't so abused by life. It was simply big and strong and tough. Like the wolf, it needed little more than the basic dirt lair Fred had prepared for it, and it turned green and went to sleep immediately.

This is great, Fred! You've really made an excellent start here.

"Thanks, but I'm not sure I did much. None of these creatures seemed very picky about where they stay."

These ones were easy to please, but every creature is different, and you'll have to really work for others.

"How?"

Well, for starters, lots of creatures like plants inside their lairs.

"How do I do that?"

You're an Earth Spirit. You have control over everything in your domain, so if you want to transplant a bush from the outside, or grow seeds, you can.

"Won't they die without sunlight?"

Not so long as they are in your domain. Your magic will sustain them. They do what you tell them, including grow and be healthy. Try planting something in your main hall.

Fred looked around, studying the plants he saw above him and outside his main entrance. There was a surprising variety, and he was also surprised that he could so easily see the difference between different plants and understand what they were. He could see a mildly poisonous bush near the first tree he encountered, and a berry bush to the right of his entrance. He saw what he knew were (very weakly) medicinal herbs on the ground just above the bear lair. "The more I do things here, the more I realise I've been programmed. I didn't know any of this in my last life."

Of course. You weren't set up to fail. Aeru and I very much want you to be the best Earth Spirit you can be. I'm sure you're realising just how much you know about plants. Anything that sets roots in the earth is yours to command.

Fred tried pulling the berry bush to the entrance. He quickly realised that the best way was to "grasp" the bush by its roots, and "drag" it through the soil. That shouldn't have worked, it

seemed ridiculous, but he was getting used to the whole magic thing. "Fine. Now they can have a tasty berry before they go in to fight a wolf and a bear." He then tried pulling the herbs down into the tunnel. That worked great. The plants moved straight through the earth like it was heavy cream. When he was done, the herbs were planted in the floor of the tunnel like they'd always been there. There weren't actually very many, though. He wondered if he could split or copy the plants, and just like that it was so. A few more splits, and the medicinal herbs lined the sides of the tunnel for its entire length.

"Just how much power did you give me, Jim? This plant control is scary." You have the power you need to do your job.

"Can I grow a whole forest instantly? Can I make a tree that's so tall it goes into space? Can I make a root that goes to the center of the earth? Can I dig so deep I make a volcano??"

No, there are practical limits to those things. You aren't in danger of breaking the world or otherwise harming Aeru. Don't worry.

"Nothing about this seems practical to me. Except that magic seems practically limitless right now. Is it? Hey, aren't I supposed to have magic points, or something? And levels? Am I a level five Earth Spirit yet?"

Wow. I don't know where these ideas of yours come from, but they didn't come from me. Or Aeru. Your magic DOES come from Aeru, but the world has more magic that you could ever use up, so it's no use keeping track of it with points or levels.

"Okay. It's just… I'm so… I still have a lot to learn, I guess."

You got some residents now, and you'll have more soon. I suggest you make more space for them.

"Sure, why not." Fred decided to make a new tunnel, crossing the main tunnel. He planned to add lairs to it, and extend it, as needed. As he dug it out, the new tunnel intersected (and completely erased) the original room he had begun in, leaving the connection he'd made to the groundhog lair. Remembering the groundhogs, he stopped to look in on them. Still sleeping. Not much change.

"Don't they need to go out and find food?"

They are part of your magic now. These simple creatures don't want or need to do anything but wait for humans to come fight them. That's the life of a simple "dungeon monster". Bigger, more complex creatures won't be so easy to care for. Dragons, for instance, need their own entrance, so they can go fly around. And some creatures won't be happy without lots of other life around them, so you'll need to create complex ecosystems inside huge lairs.

"Okay. So long as these little guys are happy, I guess."