“I’ve started making fishing lures out of wolfram, had a few processed chunks in the bag. Significantly less likely to poison things should the fishermen and anglers lose them. Not pure wolfram mind you, but still. Last item of business this visit, have you been keeping up with the Inspect magic? Any developments you care to report?”

Sighing again, Hellspring places the metal back on the table and motions the Other to follow him. Given his walking pace, the Other casually places the metals and canvas back in his bag and catches up to Hellspring once he makes it to the stairs.

Several steps down the posh, black and white with red trim hallway, Hellspring steps into his ancient office. Books upon books of old budgets and personal readings line the shelves in an office large enough to comfortably accommodate two couches, a table, and a well polished Kingswood desk. Or two trolls and the desk, comfortably, depending on how one were to look at things.

Walking over to the right upon entering, Hellspring looks through the shelves until he finds a small tome, no thicker than his pinky finger. He uses said finger to pull the top out slightly and motions to it before heading towards one of the couches.

“I paid attention for a couple of decades,” Hellspring begins, “and once about 90% of things could be identified with that magic you gave me on that scroll, I started working on modifying it. That’s the results. Made it easier to use for one, but that’s mostly due to stripping away parts of information. Even modified one so that it would show the health of beasts but not humanoids.”

“Fascinating,” the Other says while looking through a few pages. “Do you mind if I keep this?”

With a notably angry snort, Hellspring replies, “Go ahead, I couldn’t figure out a way it wouldn’t be abused so I never told anyone, not even my grandson. I’m sure I probably used it a few times to my advantage, making a few people suspicious, but I’ve never shared it.”

“One cannot completely rule out the possibilities of a curious child finding the book though,” the Other says, gently closing the book and placing it into his bag. “I shall be back in a year or two with a gift of sorts then, which should override things if they have. The development of magic-skill scrolls is complete, and I plan on using a loophole in my labor force to accomplish a few things. Should someone learn how to cast a ball of fire on their own, then learn the scroll, they will find it difficult to the edge of impossible to use the spell how they used to.”

“Oh?” Hellspring responds, happy enough for a pleasant distraction from the existential terror of natural catastrophes. “So soon?”

“The humans across the sea have experience with them and have become fairly common in the twenty years since their introduction. It will take that long for a few of my… agents, shall we say, to set up the company over here. Though, with your help on this magic, certain things will need to be adjusted, I expect, with how the business works.”

“They’ve had it for that long? Basic spells I take it? I can’t imagine the destruction that could cause.”

“Construction spells mostly, attack and defense magic are more rare, mostly found in ruins and dungeons or whatnot for the first ten years. Scrolls disintegrate after they ‘learn’ it, simply passing mana into the seal. Amazing how much construction sped up, as well as how modular buildings have become, since half of them use the same spells. Druids are kicking up a fuss with all the trees, claiming it isn’t natural to grow and chop a forest down all within a week with just a few twigs.”

Hellspring shakes his head slightly, thinking back to his youth and being glad he has learned to keep his opinions guarded around the Other lest the conversation completely leaves the well beaten paths to follow game trails.

“I’ll have a talk with my son and grandson and let them know you will be coming by. I’ll gather the whole family if you would like, there’s fifteen of us.”

“Much appreciated. I isolated our talk, but I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention the downsides of the scrolls. They will figure them out soon enough. I’ll bring a variety just in case, but I’ll have enough of the modified spells for everyone.”

After catching up with major news from the last century and a half, then listening to Hellspring wax poetic about his son and grandson as well as their wives, the Other bids the elderly devil farewell. Walking to the door, he passes his hand over the handle, opening the hallway door into a cold, dark chamber, and shuts it behind him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Other, after closing the door, keeps his hand on the knob and places his head softly against the door, sighing. After a few moments, his hand moves to a nondescript spot on the stone walls to activate an enchantment.

“Honey, I’m home,” he says with weak vigor. The room begins to descend, and he moves towards the center of the room next to the altar. Once the floor stops, the Other is surrounded by thirty golems who take in the worn out being in front of them. The silence and faceless heads making this a frankly eery scene to anyone besides those present.

“A welcoming party I see,” he says with a faint, tired smile. “Gather anyone that wants to hear in the amphitheater, I’m hungry. Honey, would you mind putting something together for me?”

A few of the golems start moving off, while one is trembling somewhat with fists clenched. Finally, the golem throws its hands in the air and turns around storming off. It continues to wave its hands around to impress upon the Other that it isn’t happy with his naming sense. After all, the Other deactivated their voices in this area, and the late emperor’s favorite confectioner and beekeeper is named Iris. And Iris is intimately familiar with the part of the continent that the Other was visiting.

A half hour later, the Other is sitting at the bottom of the amphitheater eating a light meal and exquisite dessert. Another half hour after that, the 4000 seat amphitheater is nearly full and no more golems are seen streaming through the doors.

The dull roar of conversation is focused on the events they were told were happening, and the fact the Other seems to be much more haggard than they have ever seen him. The Other decides to start, and brings up a dial in front of him to slowly mute the room. After about half-way to quiet, the room starts to notice and near silence ensues. Letting the room self-regulate from there, the Other begins.

It seems that most everyone awake is here, even those of you who are on vacation. I appreciate your time, as I have two updates rather than one. We will start with the smaller one, as I hope to use it to help with the problem the world will be dealing with. There is a new spell we need scrolls for, or spells more properly. An old spellmaster I know has modified the “Identify” magic and has given me his notes.”

The room began to get noisy hearing about the scrolls, but quieted back down after hearing it would be the notorious, at least among themselves, Identify skill.

“Now, the main topic, the recent supervolcano eruption. Most of you will not recognize these places so I’ll try and give you some perspective. And again, I do have to thank R&D for coming up with the canvas solution for Mindscape Printing. These will all be in a new wing of the Archives so those interested can view them later. Bear with me a moment longer, as I would like to show a few things for perspective. I hope most of you recognize the moon.”

The Other spends the next fifteen minutes showing a dozen canvases of one of the moons and aerial views of the kingdoms the golems are familiar with. Finishing with that demonstration, he sets those canvases into a complex, lazy orbit around the amphitheater before pulling out an enormous canvas, twice the length of Luck from nose to tail. While spreading this open with magic, some of the golems can be heard expressing amazement at its size.

“And this,” the Other continues, “is the area around where the volcano is located, from ten years ago. Those among you who are familiar with the continent assembled this overlay on thin March Spider netting to give you a rough idea of the geopolitical boundaries and cities.”

Yet another fifteen minutes go by with the Other attempting to impress upon them the scale of the maps on canvas, which would be considered national treasures with the level of detail of the landscape even in this age. This canvas he floats directly up so that the top edge is about two-thirds the height of the amphitheater. The overlay floats up so that the top edge matches up with the bottom border, followed shortly by the second canvas behind it.

Exclamations can be heard around the room from the one hundred or so former inhabitants of that area. Waiting a moment, the Other takes out a dozen, dozen pairs of canvas and adds them to the orbit. Each pair moves along at a decent clip, showing scenes of the mountains, cities within the path of ash streaming to the north and east, out to the ocean, the height and magnitude of the ash cloud as it developed. A numeric code on the back of each image indicates the location and height they were taken from.

Walking through another quarter hour of explanations, including evacuations, the effect of the ‘oracles’ released to the populations, evacuations, expected impact on wildlife, and finally the global impact of the ash.

“As I’m sure most of you are aware, our initial projections were expecting a global cooling period of approximately a decade. Large particulate matter has been seen near this peninsula here, but none is expected to make it to the continent most of you are familiar with. There’s a lot we don’t know, despite how long I’ve lived. As we have come to find out in the R&D department, purely physical events tend to end fairly quickly.”

Extensive grumbling can be heard throughout the assembled golems.

“As such, I will be relocating Satansheep to the area beginning next year, assuming it is safe enough for them. Miasma has already begun accumulating, so I plan on putting on my construction cap for a while at that point. In six months regardless of the state of things, I will begin forming a dungeon to make a miasma sink, and I anticipate we will make it into the largest one we will likely ever see. I know very few of you have ever participated in something like this. I need a generic floor plan by then, we can fill in the details over the next century. Questions? Department heads, take notes on what you feel like as we go.”

With that, the Other settles back into his chair with his feet on the plate filled desk, expecting to have a long night ahead of him.