The Human apprentice said, "Our group's been trying to not say a lot about Kolm's Fell publicly. Those printer kids made people think we somehow caused this."

Vonn approved of the proposed dungeon name. "Yeah, I warned them that the Duke himself was not happy. Did you hear my sister was able to stun one with a geomantic pulse spell? A monster, not a printer."

The necromancer fox opened up. "Really? How did that work?" Vonn explained what he understood of the spell, and the man looked thoughtful. "Normally a dungeon uses a neutral kind of magic. Not life or death based, though the monsters obviously need one or the other to be animate. So what she did was counter the energy propping the thing up."

Vonn said, "I was in that dungeon before it was evil, and --"

The Human told him, "Death energy isn't evil. It's what protects us from diseases."

Vonn blinked. "What?"

"Really. There's low-level death Mana continually killing things all around us. They're invisible, but some kinds can resist the energy, get into you and make you sick. Others make things decay."

Vonn stared at him. He had been wondering at this world's relative lack of widespread plagues and filth and medieval awfulness. There was no germ theory of disease, due to the lack of microscopes. Or so he'd thought. It seemed that necromancers, of all people, had come at the idea from a different direction.

He said, "Wow. So there's some worldwide killing force constantly slaying these invisible things?"

The Human folded his arms. "Don't believe it, if you want."

"Now that you mention it, it actually makes a lot of sense! I had been thinking about using a modified spyglass to try seeing tiny things. Maybe there's a way to prove you're right, from an Engineer perspective. Anyway, in that dungeon I saw simple bird-like things that seemed only part real."

"I don't know much about that, but it could be a neutral-aspect creation. New dungeons do odd things."

The Vulin partner said, "Here's something else about that death-Mana field. When you're sensing living things or casting a healing spell, you're not working against complete neutrality, but against that background level. Up from below zero, kind of."

Vonn said, "I'm told that we're having trouble establishing ward spells because only life energy can set something off. Is that true?"

"Unfortunately, yes. They're not quite direct opposites."

"How do you handle this death energy stuff, anyway? Do you have to heal afterward?"

The fox-man held out his hands and demonstrated a variant on the standard energy-gathering technique. "A small amount like this is harmless. You only need special protection for the big spells. Watch what I'm doing."

Vonn watched as a swirl of energy appeared, coalescing into a flat blob rather than the more open, airy look of a healing spell. The instructor said, "And then a lot of what we low-level people do is steer creatures around like puppets. We don't have fine control but it's a way of converting Mana to muscle."

"Is that more efficient than a raw force spell?"

"What do you mean?" asked the Human apprentice.

"Say we have the same skill levels. I pull a plow by force spells, you pull with a zombie. Whose plow goes farther before we're out of Mana?"

"Mine, of course. The zombie is using physical muscle power and I'm just controlling it."

Vonn nodded. "That makes sense."

"We really ought to get back to practice; sorry."

They let him watch a bit longer. Undead things seemed to be more inert, and this basic zombie barely held itself upright without direction. A dungeon's creations seemed to have basic, feral intelligence that might be powered by the central dungeon mind, or not. So, how stupid were they?

Vonn left brimming with new questions, but that was the price of learning. It didn't seem like necromancy was outright unholy in this world.

#

He was busy with repairing people's tools and making what small things their metal supply could provide, but took time to write a letter to the wizard Ralator. "I'm grateful for your deigning to teach me and my friends, and for tolerating my bit of rudeness during that last visit. And for warning us about certain trouble!" The expert Elementalist had correctly guessed people would want those golden magicite shards badly. Vonn's tail still ached at the memory. He wrote, "It would be nice to train with you again. I've been studying based on your techniques, and trying to share them with a younger friend. Am I right in thinking that it's not just the eight elements but all forms of magic that are fundamentally connected?"

He rambled about theory and his new Mage level, then wrote about the dungeon people were now calling Kolm's Fell. "I'm not authorized to tell you exactly what happened, but I'm now working on a mix of magic and engineering ideas in case we can't just destroy the thing. Do you have any advice?"

He would've liked to tell the man everything, including all that he knew about the golden magicite, but the mail would likely go through Selen's company and maybe get inspected by nosy birds.

He had just gotten back to helping out around the forge when Spikes, the adventurer leader, walked in. "Looks a little empty in here."

"We're just getting started. Can I help you? How did the second trip go?"

"It's brutal down there. My team's been cautious."

"Which is why you're alive to try again."

"Heh. We got into the first underground level, but it's harder to keep everything at a good range when you're in a tunnel. We're using the techniques you and your sister tried, though."

"Every dungeon is a little different, huh?"

"There's always something new. Speaking of..." Spikes reached into his backpack and set down two heavy sets of chain shackles. "What the hell are these doing here as regularly spawning items?"

"I can't tell you, sir, but you know better than me that dungeons copy things they've seen."

Spikes swore. Vonn just nodded and said, "So I've been studying a bit of necromancy to understand how it all works."

The man shook his head. "I was right to think I should stop by. Can you tell me about that flying air-bag contraption?"