The office of Councilwoman Milthorne was not what Sam had been expecting. From his interactions with her—all two of them—he’d imagined her closeted either in some shadowy witch’s lair, or an opulent chamber with tapestries on the wall and far too much wealth on display. Someone as unpleasant as her must surely show more outward signs of it in the decor she chose. Surely.

But no. When Sam pushed open the door at the top of the stairs, what greeted him was a spartan office with a simple desk and chair, a pair of file cabinets in the corner, and a rickety old sofa along the side wall, presumably for entertaining guests. No pictures on the walls, no flowers on the window sill, not even a framed iconograph of her family on the desk.

Milthorne looked up when he entered. The woman’s sharp features were dulled by obvious fatigue, bags under her eyes stood out like pits, and her mouth was pulled down in what looked like a permanent frown. It did not lessen when she saw him.

“Tolliver.” There was no greeting in that word, merely an acknowledgement—barely—of his existence. “I thought you’d stood me up.”

“Had some things to take care of,” Sam said, stepping into the room and letting Nat in behind him. “But I said I’d meet you. You didn’t mention you’d moved residences, though.”

That made the woman blink, and her eyebrows rose skyward. “Did I not—“ She cut herself off and massaged her temples with one hand. “No, of course I forgot. Shades, there’s just so much. Things are slipping through the cracks.”

The all-too familiar lament brought Sam up short, and made him take another look at the woman behind the desk. Gods, she looked tired.

“Not sleeping well?” The words slipped out before he could consider them.

“No,” she said bluntly, looking up again. “Too many demands on my time, and not enough manpower to satisfy them all. And I have you to thank for at least part of that. Perhaps even a large part.”

“Did you ask me here just to point fingers at me again?” Sam asked, more out of curiousity than anything else. He could always just turn around and leave. It wasn’t like she could stop him. Or her goon, either.

“No, of course not.” Milthorne gestured to a chair in front of her desk. “Please, be seated. Your friend can have the couch. Although,” she added with a smirk, “I wasn’t expecting your guard to be so… Young.”

“Nat’s an accomplished Seismage that has faced down undead monsters with nothing but his bare hands,” Sam said archly. “And my good friend. There’s no one I’d rather have by my side.” He caught Nat’s look of surprise and gratitude as the other man went to sit on the couch as instructed. Sam flopped into the chair a bit harder than he had intended—he could feel that crash coming on, and lord it was going to be a doozy. He’d best wrap this up quick. “So what did you want to see me about?”

Sam watched the councilwoman visibly take a moment to compose her thoughts. Her eyes half-lidded, and her hands pressed flat together and in front of her lips. Then her eyes came up and regarded him steadily, like a doctor gazing at some new and hideous type of wound they’d never encountered before. Clinical, detached, and desperately not wanting to engage in what had to come next.

“I know that Blaine has approached you about leading…” Her eyes closed and she sucked in air through her nose like it was the last breath she’d ever take. “About staging a revolution against King Araxesendenak. Or allowing them to join you in whatever fool’s errand you have embarked upon that earned you my liege’s enmity.”

Sam quirked an eyebrow. “I think half the town was with him when he came to me with that request. I’m supposed to be shocked you know about it?”

“No, of course not. I fully expect you to be aware that I would catch wind of it.” She sighed. “But I had hoped that so many of those within Melloram’s walls would not have followed Blaine’s example.”

“Can you blame them?” Nat said, glaring. “The lich just flew in here, blew up half the town, almost killed me and Sam and a bunch of others, and then left without so much as a backwards glance.”

“They’re scared,” Sam said quietly, before Milthorne could turn her ire on Nat. “And they want better than what Araxesendenak offers.”

“Better?” Milthorne arched both eyebrows. “You and your family came here not two months ago. Do you have any idea of the history of Melloram? Of where we began, where we walked, and where we now stand? Or do you, like so many others, only see that we are ruled by an undead egotist, which clearly makes him the oppressor and we the downtrodden?”

Both Sam and Nat blinked.

“Uh,” Sam opened his mouth to respond, but the sparks lit off in his brain again and killed whatever he might have been about to say. So he settled for a simple; “No, I don’t know the town’s history.”

“Or that of our country either, I’d wager,” Milthorne said, nodding to herself. “I suspected not.” She took another breath. “Samuel Tolliver, I cannot compel you to any course of action, but… But I request, from the bottom of my heard. Please, if you’ve any love for this town or the people in it, do not agree to Blaine’s request. It will be the death of us all.”

“Because Araxesendenak will come for you?” Sam sighed. “I know, he’s powerful, but we’ve got allies, and they’ve got power too. And there’s—“

“No.”

Sam blinked. “What?”

“No,” Milthorne said again, meeting his gaze. “I do not ask because I fear my lord’s reprisals—though those may certainly come if and when he learns of his subjects treasonous ways. No, Samuel Tolliver, I ask because I fear what will happen when the protective hand of Lich King Araxesendenak is removed from us.”

Sam and Nat exchanged surprised glances. Sam raised his eyebrows in a silent question, and Nat responded with an expressive shrug. They both turned back to the councilwoman.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Sam asked for them both.

“Melloram is on the very tip of the southern border of Xeladare,” the councilwoman said, standing up and retrieving a map from inside her desk. She unfolded it and gestured to a colored outline showing the totality of the lich king’s domain. “We are cut off from the major trade routes, have little in the way of natural defenses—though that has changed some since the earthquake, and indeed are pushed deep into the territory of the kingdom directly south of us. Two hundred years ago, Callae and Xeladare had a war, which our liege won, and Melloram was a part of the land carved from our enemy’s nation.”

Sam saw the spike of land jutting into the southern kingdom—Callae—on the map, and even through the sparks and fizz in his brain he made the connection.

“You think if you break away from Araxesendenak, Callae will try and annex you.”

“I think if you allow Blaine to join his cause to yours, it will cause a war between not only you and my lord, but us and Callae. And if you lose either of those wars, we will all die. And if you win those wars, those nations surrounding Xeladare will see weakness in what they term an undead despot and his reign of terror, and will launch an attack to remove both the lich and this country from the face of the earth.”

“What would you have me do, then?” Sam asked, spreading his hands. “Araxesendenak has declared war on me and my friends and family. He has already attacked us, with no regard for Melloram or her citizens. He will come back, and wage war, and I have to meet him if I want the people in my life to survive.”

“Leave,” Milthorne said at once. “Take your dungeon, your family, your friends, and leave here. Araxesendenak will be angry, yes. And he may even be violently so. But I believe I can calm him. Or at the very least, I can whisper into the ear of he who I am certain can calm him. If you are not here for him to vent his anger upon, then I believe I can keep Melloram safe.”

Sam closed his eyes. Damn. It wasn’t a bad idea. And she was probably right about being able to placate the lich. He’d seen his father deftly handle the undead monarch back before the earthquake and Cora’s awakening. There was only one problem with the whole plan.

“I can’t leave,” he said quietly. “Cora, the metal woman you saw at the funeral I’m sure, is bound to a place inside God’s Thumb. It’s the center of the territory she controls, and eventually she’ll be recalled to it. And if it gets taken… I don’t know what happens to her. I’ll ask, but I’m confident it won’t be anything good. I can’t retreat, I can’t change positions, all I can do is prepare and meet whatever he sends us. And that means, no matter what, Melloram gets caught in the middle between me and whatever I’m fighting.”

Milthorne hung her head. “Then we are truly lost. You may defend us for a time, but if you prevail then we will lose my lord’s protection. And if you lose, my lord will likely be beyond calming down even by those closes to him, and will raze my home to the ground.” She looked up at him then, and her eyes were like a punch to Sam’s soul. “You are saying there is nothing you can do?”

“Nothing I can think of,” Sam answered truthfully.

“You’re joking.” Disbelief dripped from every syllable. “I saw you teleporting—Teleporting!—on the battlefield the day you took Melloram back from the revenant. I saw you pull boulders the size of houses up from the earth itself. I saw you rip the entire floor of the town hall away and vanish in a blaze of light. You’re telling me the man who can do those things can’t also find a way to move his dungeon?”

“That’s what I’m—“ Sam started, then froze.

Move the dungeon.

His brain tried to shift into high gear, but two things happened almost at once. The sparks increased suddenly, and this time brought swirls of color and blackness with them that also flowed into his actual vision. The room around him tilted, and he felt himself losing balance while sitting perfectly still.

The crash. It was happening sooner than he had expected—or had he just been sitting in this room longer than he thought?

The other thing that happened was the proximity alarms he’d had his workers set up earlier in the week, around Melloram and around the Dungeon, started going off, filling his messages with alerts.

Nat was getting them too. The elf lurched to his feet, eyes wide.

“Sam, what’s going on?”

Sam tried to stand, but his knees buckled halfway through the motion and dumped him backwards. He landed awkwardly on the chair and spun to the floor. The sparks increased. The colors shifted and whirled in front of his eyes.

And in the top right corner of his glasses, he saw bright red dots lumber into view on his minimap. Enemies. Lots of them.

The dungeon—and the town—was under attack.

“Oh hell,” he tried to say, but his words slurred so bad even he couldn’t understand them.

He was crashing. His friends needed him, the town needed him, the dungeon needed him, and he was about to lose consciousness.

Damn.

I wanted to give them more warning than this.

His head felt like it was filling from the bottom up with cotton marinated in wine as he brought up his inventory. Quick as he could, he selected three items he’d crafted the night before, through the Tinkerer’s skill menu. He pulled them out of inventory and into his hands, and three bronze medallions suddenly clinked against his palms.

“Nat,” He mumbled, holding them up to his friend. “C’mere.”

“Sam, what are you doing? We need to get—“

“Shurrup,” Sam grumbled, fighting against the blackness with every ounce of his strength. “An’ ben’ down.”

The elf knelt down next to him, his head hovering anxiously close. Good enough.

“I’m dep’tizing you,” Sam said, trying to force the words the Tinkerer had told him needed to be said. “Th’s badge’s your office. You take care’f Cora.” He slipped the first medallion’s chain over his friend’s head. Nat hadn’t been his first choice, but right now he was the only choice.

“Dep’ty Gurd’n. Nex’ few hours. Got pow’rs. Give Ma an’ Pop t’others.”

He felt power flow out of him and into his friend. Just like the Tinkerer said it would.

Best he could do.

Darkness closed in on him, and the last thing he saw with his conscious mind was the wide blue eyes of his friend, and the angry red dots swarming towards the town.

And then he passed out.