Fred spent the last hours of the day addressing the windstorm in the tree room. He didn't know how, but he had a very good idea of how air moved. So he reasoned that the fix to the windstorm was a flue. At the top of the naga lair ceiling, he dug out a tunnel, about one span wide. It was slanted upward, so it intersected with the main shaft, well below ground level, but high on the wall of the central shaft. As soon as Fred finished the flue, the hot air started rushing up through it. Fred looked to the lair entrance. The hot air was no longer escaping there, so the colder air was much less disturbed as it flowed into the lair. The tree was much less agitated as well; Fred was pleased.

But as he listened, he could hear the hot air in the flue rushing through. It was whistling, almost moaning, in a deep, weird way. Fred decided to make the flue bigger, to let the air move more slowly. He widened it a great deal, and the whistling stopped. Fred could see the naga looking up at the new flue and the escaping hot air. It was yellow.

Fred got down to the lair, and did some imagining again. As far as he could tell, the naga was unhappy because it was no longer very hot in the room. "Crud, " thought Fred. "This naga lair has been a lot of work. Jim did warn me that some monsters were harder to please." Fred looked at the four circles under the sand that were generating the heat. They were still pumping out lots of heat. Fred worried that if he turned them up, no one would be able to walk on the sand. So he went back to his first try, and turned up the heat in several more of the stone stacks. They were turned up a great deal, but the naga was green again.

Fred kept an eye on the naga, and the nasty bird room, and the kid sleeping with Shelley, for the rest of the daylight. Night came, and the humans all left the dungeon. Jim said hello, and listened politely as Fred regaled him about the danger of the nasty bird, the woman in black, the mummy, the naga, and the windstorm.

No, I don't know anything more about your Nasty Bird. That's certainly a good name for it. I agree with your decision to move it down to a lower level. But it's also exciting. From what you described, the thing casts mind magic, and it's great that humans can learn to defend themselves against it in your domain. The demons are known for using mind magic. Eventually, your domain will save many lives. I'm proud of you.

Fred was pleased by the praise, but was still buzzing from all the day's events. He also knew it was time to relocate Nasty Bird. Jim said goodbye, and Fred got to work. He first removed all the blocks from the first floor lair of the bird. It turned yellow immediately, but didn't move. So Fred started filling in the back wall of the room, shrinking it bit by bit. The bird got the message, and shuffled out of its chosen room. It was close to the front entrance, so Fred was kinda expecting it would walk out and leave. He wasn't a fan of it, personally, so he wouldn't have been sad if it decided to.

But instead it moved deeper into Fred's Domain. It headed down the ramp, straight to the new room Fred had prepared for it, moving with a shuffling, unnatural gait. Once inside it turned green, but instead of settling down, it ran paws over the writing on the walls, and seemed to come alive with excitement. It cast a light spell so it could see better, and studied every word carefully. Then it poked its head out of its lair, and moved to look into the King's Tomb.

There it held up its paws, and seemed to gasp, or gurgle, or something. It proceeded to add another light spell, and examined every inch of the King's Tomb like Sherlock Holms with a magnifying glass. After watching for half an hour, Fred left the creature to its investigation. "Wonder what it knows about all this?" Fred mused.

Fred was immediately distracted by three figures who had just entered the front entrance of his domain. A quick glance convinced him that these people were from the same group as the weedy wizard he'd squashed. They each seemed fatter and older, but the robes (and the skulking) were the same. He felt like his heart was racing. He knew these guys were here to do him harm. It was him or them, and he was filled with righteous conviction.

One of them went to the first main intersection, and began chanting and waving the same feathered charm he'd seen before, while the other two walked further down the ramp. Fred didn't wait. He cut loose a big block of stone, and the chanter got squashed. The stone drop was tremendously loud, Fred thought. The other two wizards turned back, saw what had happened to their buddy, and scurried faster down the ramp. Fred didn't have any ready ceiling blocks on the ramp, so he waited to see what they'd do next.

One kept going down the ramp. The other ducked into the King's Tomb, perhaps drawn to the light. He slid to a stop right in front of Nasty Bird. They silently regarded each other for a moment. Then the lid of the coffin jumped off with a crash, and the mummy sat up straight, adding to the stare-down. The wizard turned to run out, and the Nasty Bird fried him with a lightning bolt, just like that. Then, as though it hadn't just zapped a guy to death, Nasty Bird went back to closely studying the writing on the walls of the tomb. Fred could hear it mutter/cackling to itself, but it said no words he could recognise.

The mummy stayed still for a few more seconds. Then it climbed out of its coffin, went and retrieved the lid it had thrown around, and got back in bed.

Fred still liked the wacky simplicity of the mummy, but re-focused on the final wizard, who had reached the silver tree. He stood near the wall, brought out his feathered charm, and began doing his hurtful performance. Fred could feel the burning and itching start, but there was only open sky over the final wizard, no way to drop a block on him. Fred thought about letting the naga eat the wizard, but Fred had no real way to tell the naga what to do, and no confidence that the naga would do what Fred said, anyway.

Fred thought that the silver tree was sharp. Could it do anything to the wizard? Maybe if the wizard could be convinced to get closer to the tree, but even then Fred didn't have any direct control of the tree, any more than it had control of the naga. Fred could dig. Maybe he could make the tree fall over on the wizard. "That's it!"

Fred started feeling a little dizzy, and knew the wizard's spell was building up. He cut a tall rectangle of wall, above the wizard. He cut out a space behind it, so that the rectangle detached from the rock around it. Now Fred just had to get the rock rectangle to tilt and fall out of the wall, like a tree falling. Fred kept removing rock from the base until it happened. However, the grinding and shifting of the large rock slab was loud and noticeable, and as the rock rectangle finally leaned away from the wall and crashed down onto the floor, the wizard had run out of the way.

At least this had made the wizard pause his spell. Fred felt better, as he and the wizard contemplated their next steps. Fred now knew he could make the walls of the central shaft fall on the wizard, so long as he stood still. If the wizard tried to hide under the tree, Fred would still crush him. The tree could be repaired. This wizard was trying to kill him, so Fred wasn't going to show mercy. Fred knew that if he could get the wizard under a ceiling, he could drop rock on him. And the wizard knew that too.

The wizard decided to run, scurrying back up the ramp. "I guess he can't fly, then," Fred thought, "or he would have just escaped up the central shaft". He watched the final wizard run past the King's Tomb, and back onto the first floor. He passed his buddy, crushed under stone. He ran out of the front entrance, and smacked into the Four Tropes. Well, the fighter guy of the Four Tropes. Who was big and strong, so the wizard kinda bounced off him, and sprawled on the ground. The other Tropes gathered around, and other humans came up too. There was much shouting and talking.

The wizard got up, brushed himself off, and began speaking in loud, authoritative tones. He waved his hands back at Fred's domain, and was clearly cajoling and browbeating the humans who'd gathered around him. "Working hard to sell his hate, and save his own neck," thought Fred contemptuously. The Tropes fighter guy listened politely for a while, but then took his sword and stuck the wizard through the heart. The wizard fell over dead. More shouting and talking happened.

Fred was just relieved that it was over. Jim had warned him that those wizard guys wouldn't stop. For the first time, Fred really thought about what he should do to protect himself, from weedy wizards, but also from everything else that could harm him, including demons. He also found himself even more fond of the Four Tropes."They can't be bad if they kill evil wizards for me," Fred thought.

The rest of the night was quiet, except for the new food room. The kids were in there constantly, filling their little sacks with onions and potatoes. When Fred checked on Shelley, he found five little kids were in Shelley's den, either sleeping snuggled with the groundhogs, or playing with them. Fred still felt a little jealous and possessive, but couldn't be mad about happy children.

Morning came, but Jim wasn't responding. Fred "called out" to him several times, but he didn't answer. This made Fred a bit anxious, but not as much as it did the first time Jim was unavailable. Besides, it was a beautiful sunrise outside. Perhaps it was the season, but the morning sun shone in through the main entrance to Fred's domain, and Fred was cheered by it.

The sunrise also meant that the humans resumed their delving and battling. Ol' nasty bird had gone back to its own lair. The woman in black came through again, checking in on the mummy and the nasty bird, before slipping down to the second floor to check that. Her trip was uneventful, and Fred was happy about that. He didn't want to surprise anyone (except maybe weedy wizards). If she was accurately reporting back, he figured the humans would be more prepared when they came down the ramp in numbers.

Which they did, in the afternoon. A large group of humans, of all types, went past the ogre's room (who couldn't be bothered to throw more than two boulders at them), down to the King's Tomb. Their plan was clearly to challenge the mummy. As the group gathered outside the room, one fighter moved inside. The coffin lid came flying off. The mummy jerked upright. The man backed out the door. The mummy jumped from the coffin and advanced quickly, arms outstretched. And the battle began.

Swords and spells were flying everywhere. It was chaos. Men were pushed both up and down the ramp, as the mummy used its unearthly speed and strength to smash the men who dared to challenge it. Swords pierced it. Hammers smashed it. Nothing seemed to stop it. Then some guy had the bright idea of stoving a lit torch at it. It hissed and batted the torch away.

Then a mage sent a fiery blast at it, and in an instant it was completely ablaze, head to toe. It didn't stop, at least right away. But the humans were careful and cautious, defending and waiting for the fire to be effective. Some fighters were hit by the mummy's thrashing, and caught on fire themselves, but others rushed to help them pat it out.

Eventually, the mummy just collapsed into a burning pile of bones and wrapping. Vile black smoke filled the ramp. Everyone was coughing and hacking. "I think we've all learned things today," Fred thought. The treasure sprites popped, and a few humans cheered and scrambled to pick up the loot. Others went into the King's Tomb, in search of more treasure. When they didn't find any, one of them cursed and hit the ornate wall writings with his big mace. The stone spalled and cracked. Other humans confronted and rebuked the man for his vandalism, but he just grumbled and walked out.

No humans challenged the mummy for the rest of the day, or even came down the ramp. Fred took some time to look at the damage done to the wall of the King's Tomb, but it was fully repaired. Fred didn't really think that that was an automatic thing in his domain, but then he'd never had anything as fancy as the King's Tomb in a domain of his before. He decided to ask Jim about it.