Morning came. And with it, the invaders resumed. Groups would come in, kill the creatures in the main hall, gather their loot and their wounded, and leave. Different groups would come in thirty minutes later. The humans had set up a well organized system.

The second group of the day included the Four Tropes. Fred recognized them immediately. He laughed and waved, before realizing he had nothing to wave. This kind of thing no longer bothered him so much. But he wondered why he had such a friendly reaction to them. The best he could say was that they didn't do him any harm, and left a cool sword behind.

The Tropes decided to challenge the Gortragg (though Fred had gotten used to thinking of it as the Metal Beast). The mage started by using her lightning to try to cut down the tall grass in the room. This sort of worked, but the grass wasn't very dry, so it made a lot of obscuring smoke. The Gortragg didn't wait; it immediately rushed out into the smoke to attack the Tropes. It was hidden by the smoke and burning grass, but the Tropes were experts, and were ready for it nonetheless. Unlike that previous expert with a sword and shield, the fighter of the group had a brand new glowy longsword, but no shield. As the Gortragg rushed to him, he expertly parried with it, but the Gortragg was fast and vicious, striking again and again. Fred saw that the cleric was providing a magical shield that glowed and kept the fighter from being chopped up. Meanwhile the mage was casting more (outrageously loud) lightning bolts, and each one seemed to hurt the beast. It tried to get past the fighter to attack the mage, but the fighter moved like a dancer, keeping himself in front of it. In frustration, the beast slammed into the fighter and grappled it. The fighter crouched, and managed to grab and lift the front of the beast into the air. It was a carefully planned moment. The thief rushed into the small space between the beast and the fighter, and jammed his two short blades up into some unarmored parts of the beast. It howled and struggled, but the fighter had dropped his sword and grabbed it around its chest, and wasn't letting go. The cleric kept up a continuous flow of magic to the fighter; Fred assumed it was the only way the fighter could match the beast's strength.

The thief's blades kept plunging, the beast kept screaming and thrashing, the cleric kept sweating and mumbling, and finally the beast fell down and died. The Tropes team all crawled away from the beast and sat down too. Though tired, the thief and fighter only rested for a few moments, before they approached the beast, and started cutting it with their knives. Fred was kinda grossed out; there was a huge amount of bright red blood covering everything. But he could see that the Tropes were cutting carefully to get the metal armor of the beast off the body. "It's very shiny and tough. I suppose the humans WOULD want it.", Fred thought. "So long as the poor metal beast gets it back when he regenerates, I guess."

Fred kinda hoped the fighter would leave his sword behind again, but no such luck. The Tropes exited in good order, dragging the metal armor they'd harvested, and several items the Treasure Sprites had "dropped". They were covered in blood. Fred assumed the mage would hose them off with that water spell, but something else had grabbed his attention. Another group of humans had decided to bother the man-bat, and it was apparently enjoying itself by grabbing a man and flinging him into the spikes on the bottom of the man-bat's lair. Two men were already dead this way. Fred could hear the man-bat's hissy giggle. It was clearly enjoying the malicious fun.

"Shit! Jim's gonna be so angry! We talked about this!" Fred had meant to remove most of those vicious spikes, but he'd never gotten around to it. As he watched, the man-bat was brought down by several archers firing from the entrance. The humans had won, but not without cost.

The men moved down into the room carefully. Fred saw them picking up the loot, and the bodies of their friends. He waited until they'd finished and left, then quickly removed most of the spikes on the floor of the bat-room. He left a few, lined up along the wall, on each side of the door. This seemed to Fred to be the best way to make sure the man-bat didn't easily drop people onto them.

The battles continued throughout the morning, and then the humans seemed to all break for lunch. He couldn't smell anything, but he could see several humans had set up food stalls and were doing a brisk business in sticks of meat and various sandwich-type things. In fact, the whole area began to resemble a faire, with laughter and even some music. Fred remembered fairs he'd been to. The memories were very jumbled and broken, but he did remember smells and tastes, and his lack of these things now made him feel a bit melancholic.

The party went on until a couple of the older humans seemed to take charge and call out to the others. The humans, as a whole, seemed eager to get back to work, and it didn't take long before they were back inside, fighting the creatures again.

This time, Fred could see that a large group of men had come to challenge the ogre. Fed could see that the Four Tropes were part of the large group. In fact, they seemed to be in the vanguard. Only logical, Fred supposed. The thing was, the ogre was able to hold everyone at bay simply by flinging stones out of its lair. This seemed to be great fun for the ogre, in fact. It was shouting and giggling as it whipped the huge stones into the hallway. At least, Fred assumed the bizarre sounds were giggling, since they came with a big smile and a whole lot of snot and slobber dripping off the ogre's face. The thrown stones didn't really imbed themselves in the wall at the end of the hallway. They just made large dents in the wall, and fragments of the wall went blasting everywhere. The humans worked hard to dodge it or shield themselves, but they weren't any closer to the ogre they wanted to fight.

The stones themselves were unbroken. Undamaged, Fred saw. He wondered why. He knew what sort of stone they were made of, instinctively, but that shouldn't have made them shatter-proof. Oh well, something else to ask Jim about.

Then the humans tried smoke. Black billowing smoke poured out of the mages' hands, and the hallway was filled with it in seconds. As soon as the ogre stopped throwing stones, looking confused, the humans rushed at him, as a group. When they got to the ogre, they spread out to encircle him, and the battle really began. The ogre grabbed its club, and began swinging wildly. Fred could see that even the strongest fighters wouldn't be able to block it. They started dancing and dodging, avoiding that huge club. Then, when they got the chance to attack from behind, they ran up to stab the ogre in the back.

The ranged fighters were nearer the wall, peppering the ogre with arrows. The mages kept shooting sparks and flames at the ogre's face, and it flinched and shouted at the distraction. Fred thought it seemed like a good plan, well-executed by professionals. But that pile of marked stones (the ones the ogre had been using as a bed) was a problem by themselves. Several fighters had stumbled while trying to step on or over them. One even fell on his face while balancing on a stone, and the ogre backed up, stepped on him, and crushed him instantly. It was gross.

But still the ogre was finally overcome and died too. The group of humans cheered, and then went about the business of collecting the loot and the dead, and helping the wounded get out safely. The Four Tropes looked tired, but received lots of back pats and high fives from the other humans.

The battles continued throughout the day. Fred's initial excitement waned, and he went back to pushing the main shaft upwards. He paid attention, in case he stumbled onto another tomb or cave or something, but that didn't happen. By the time evening came, he was mostly done, and knew a little more work would finally finish the vertical tunnel he was making.

Checking in, Fred. Everything okay?

"Yes," said Fred. "How about you?"

Fine, fine. I see your entrance shaft is almost done.

"I think so. Hey, remember the pile of stones I found? In the ogre room?"

Yes.

"Well, they're weird. The ogre kept throwing them around, but they don't break. Can you understand the markings on them? Are they magic?"

Sorry, I can't. That's not my specialty. And as I've said, Aeru is filled with old magic, stuff I was never informed about.

"Well, what am I supposed to do with them? Are they dangerous?"

I wouldn't expect so. This is your domain. You can do whatever you like with them. Right now they're ogre pillows, so you can probably find something better for them. I'm not worried.

"Okay. Oh, and hey, I remember what else. I'm seeing more and more Treasure Sprites. Can any of the humans see them? Can they, ya know, mess with them? Somehow?"

Not that I know of, but humans are very clever. That wizard you squashed was doing some sort of magic I don't know about. Aeru's mysteries are infinite. Besides, it's not in the humans' interest to steal your Treasure Sprites.

"Okay."

I'm busy again, Fred. I'll talk to you later.

"Okay. Bye."

It was full dark now, and the humans had all retreated from Fred's domain. All was quiet. Fred decided to check in on Shelley, and was startled to see that, in the middle of the Shelley family sleeping pile, was a human. A little kid. He instantly was indignant. That was HIS cuddle puddle, dammit! Then he thought, how did the kid even get inside? He realized that the very small, skinny child could have easily crawled down the largest of the chimneys he'd dug from Shelley's nest.

Looking closer, Fred could see that the kid was one of the original villagers, and didn't look in great shape, with skinned knees and visible ribs. He started to get a bad feeling. What if all these professional human fighters had run off the original villagers? What if they'd been cruel, or even violent to the villagers? Did the kid have anywhere to go? Any family left? He decided to keep an eye on the little kid, and wondered how he could help.

But now it was time to finish the big vertical shaft he'd been working on. He got down there, and began digging upward again. In less than an hour, He started breaking through. He gave one more big push, erasing earth and sod, finally opening the tunnel to the night sky.

There was a big tree there. Exactly above the tunnel. And since Fred had erased the ground underneath it, it began to fall into the vertical shaft. This startled Fred, but not as much as the shriek that came from it. As it fell, Fred realized that there was a man hanging onto the tree limbs, clinging for dear life and yelling in fear and surprise. The tree crashed down to the bottom of the shaft, far too quickly for Fred to react in any way. He looked, and saw that the man had fallen out of the tree onto the floor of the shaft, and was rolling around and groaning.

For a few minutes, Fred just watched the man, aghast at what had happened. Fred didn't mean to hurt the guy; he didn't even know the man was there. He didn't think a tree might be waiting to fall down. He certainly didn't think a man might be in the tree at the time. What WAS the man doing in the tree, anyway? Fred saw that the man was another of the original villagers. Perhaps he was spying on the professionals? Was he hiding in the tree?

The man kept groaning, but also seemed determined to get up. Fred could see that the guy was hurt. The way he moved once he stood up, Fred was pretty sure the guy's leg was broken. But the man held on to the tree limbs next to him, and looked around, getting his bearings. Fred knew the shaft was lit only by starlight, and every other part of his domain was in complete darkness. How was the man supposed to find his way safely out?

Then Fred realized that he'd never once thought of light, or darkness, or what the humans could or couldn't see. How were they supposed to plumb the depths of his domain if they couldn't see? They normally had torches, but what if they dropped them? Could Fred make light bulbs?

Perhaps it was time to trust in his magic again. Fred thought carefully about lighting up the spiral tunnel leading up from the second floor. And just like that, the walls of the tunnel started glowing. Fred giggled at the very natural absurdity of it, and started playing with the color and intensity of the light. He made it blue and moody. That just looked creepy, so he made it yellow and brighter. That looked better, but harsh. He kept playing with the light until it was warm, but not too bright. Humans could find their way, but not be blinded or otherwise distressed.

Fred saw that the man from the tree had seen the light from the tunnel, and was slowly limping towards it. Good, he thought. Now the guy has a chance to escape. Fred also saw that the sparkles were starting to appear on the tree that had fallen down. He had an idea. No, stop, Fred thought. He instead grabbed the tree (with what, he still didn't understand), and planted it in the center of the floor of the shaft. This required quite a bit of careful work; the tree had to be modified to fit well into the space. Fred had to push the tree roots through the floor, and convert the rock back into dirt, so the tree would be well planted. Then he thought, "Dragons and stuff will come down this shaft. I don't want them crushing the poor tree every time they have to go out for a pee."

He made the tree smaller and tougher, and that was fine, but it suddenly looked sparse and lonely in the middle like that. He thought about moving the tree to the side, but then had a sudden inspiration. He looked up, towards the ogres den. The runed stones were scattered inside and outside of the den; the ogre wasn't big on organization or order. Fred figured it wouldn't miss them, and he could use them around the tree. So he started dragging the runed stones down through the rock, and laid them in a ring around the tree. He still counted 108; none had been broken or stolen, apparently. Once he'd made the ring from every stone, he spent a few minutes adjusting and aligning them into a perfect ring. Then he sank them all into the rock floor, leaving them sticking up a bit, but fixing them permanently into the ring shape, with the tree in the center.

And something happened.

The stones all started glowing. "Hey, Jim, are you seeing this?" Fred said, but Jim didn't answer. The tree started glowing too. Really, it started shining. A silvery light. It's branches reached a bit higher, and its leaves grew longer, and started to shine like steel spear tips. Fred could see that the tree and the stones had created something magical. "Who the hell knows what sort of magic," thought Fred. "This Aeru place has long lost magic just laying around, waiting to be tripped over. And Jim won't be much help. He'll probably say not to sweat it. So I guess I won't."

Then Fred glanced over at the man, who was watching all this from the bottom of the curving tunnel. The man turned carefully and started limping up the ramp. Fred hoped the guy could make it home safe. He didn't think any of his beasts would eat the guy. Would they?

Fred checked on the beasts, and found them all resting comfortably. Except the ogre. It was yellow, and looked angry/sad. "Crap. I guess it misses its stones after all." Fred did the thing of imagining the room with the ogre inside, and what seemed to be missing was boulders and more rocks in general. "I can give the ogre that stuff, sure." And he did, making big and small boulders appear in the ogre room. The ogre saw these things appear out of thin air, and screeched and roared. This sounded extra angry, but Fred suspected that the ogre was actually excited. It started raging, grabbing the new boulders and slamming them into the walls and each other, as though it was trying to play a game of billiards without a cue or a clue. After much smashing and crashing, the ogre turned green, and fell face down in a pile of sharp rock fragments. Then it started snoring. And then came the gigantic fart.

The wounded tree guy heard all of this, and was creeping up the sloped tunnel as carefully and quietly as he could. Clearly he was in a lot of pain, but also clearly determined to keep going. Fred watched, rooting for him, as he sidled past the ogres lair, the other lairs, and then finally exited the front entrance into the night. He didn't go down the slope, but continued to slink as he left up the slope. Fred wished him the best, but knew there wasn't anything more he could do than wish.