I woke up trying to scream, but I couldn't scream, because my body was immobile. I wasn't breathing. I was in my bed, and didn't remember getting there. There were two dwarves leaning over me, and they were both unmoving.

All of that was meaningless, because somewhere, far overhead, a flying forgotten beast had just crossed into my sphere of influence.

Simurgh has arrived. A gigantic humanoid with a multitude of wings. Fear her corrupting voice!

In my mind, I stared at the beast overhead and began gibbering. Simurgh! Aaaah! I ordered my noncombat dwarves away from the surface. I Activated the military and sent lever-operators into specially prepared rooms with food, drink, and beds.

I don't have any magma yet!

I looked to see where Iton and Brok were in their digging, and discovered they had finally finished the shaft and carefully broken through to magma. They were currently fleeing up the stairwell as the pressurized magma began to rise. Iton had some fairly severe burns from lava splatter, but nothing that would slow him down. Brok was uninjured.

Stunned a moment, I stared at the magma. Pressurized magma? Volcano. Iton and Brok just created a volcano, and it's going to erupt through the fortress. Fifty miles outside Brockton Bay. I'd love to see people's reaction to that, but I suspect I'll be too carbonized to appreciate it if I can't control it.

The magma had risen up the pump stack shaft by two miles while I slept. I quickly designated a storage cistern and floodgate system with pressure plates near the bottom of the completed pump stack, a mile or so below me, requiring all construction to be made with magma-proof materials.

I checked to make sure all legendary mechanics and masons were taken off other jobs, and put on the volcano cap job.

Volcano from below, and Simurgh from above. No pressure.

I tried to laugh when I realized I'd punned accidentally, but I was still in alert state, so I was immobile, only my mind active.

While I flailed mentally about, trying to make certain I had done everything possible to prevent the fortress from being cooked in a volcano while getting my dwarves all deep, deep underground, hoping against hope that the Simurgh would just fly overhead and be gone, I struggled to maintain enough control to think.

Thinking suddenly became much harder. Like everything else in my sphere of influence that I was aware of, I had a thin thread connecting me to The Simurgh, just barely enough to track it. I felt that connection growing stronger, in much the same way that Urist would do when he wanted a connection with me.

I fought it, trying to narrow the connection, sever it, make it go away. I tried to forget The Simurgh was above me, hoping that would make her connection vanish. None of it worked. Trying to forget that the most dangerous Endbringer was following a manifestation of your power into your head makes it very hard to pretend they don't exist.

As I did everything in my power to break the connection, the thread got stronger, rapidly. I started to hear a strange song in the background, through my connection and if I could have squealed and pissed my pants while in alert state, it would have happened.

The widening connection reached me with far more power than any of Urist's prior connections. When the wider tethering finished attaching itself to my gibbering mind like a leech, I felt a cold presence entering my mind, poking and prodding. The vastness behind that connection was examining my mind clinically but casually, like an indifferent but diligent high school student poking at the corpse of a dead frog in biology class. An image of Dr. Frankenstein flew through my mind, and I felt the massive intelligence examine that thought and discard it. There was a sense of curiosity and satisfaction in the mind that dwarfed mine, and I tried to make myself as small as possible. Being boring and small might make the immense mind lose interest and leave me alone, I hoped. After a very short time being aware of frighteningly attractive singing accompanied by a sense of my mind being paged through like a rolodex, there was a sense of impatience and even a touch of respect in the mind.

I knew what it wanted me to do, somehow, and I immediately did it, ending the alert state.

The connection between us snapped nearly shut, back to the bare minimum connection of inanimate objects and non-citizens. Three hundred kilometers overhead, The Simurgh slightly shifted its orbit.

The two dwarves standing over me started moving again, talking to one another.

"It's almost like she had a bad reaction to alcohol. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I've heard of humans having no constitution to speak of, but I never imagined our Overseer would be so..."

The listening dwarf had been looking down at me as I opened my eyes. He punched the speaker in the shoulder with a solid, meaty thump. "She's awake. Shut up."

The speaker looked down at me, a little frightened. I ignored them both as I concentrated all my attention on the being far, far overhead. Desperately hoping that it was going to do what I hoped it was going to do.

About five seconds later, it did, disappearing out of my sphere of influence.

The real world became slightly more important, and I started to shudder violently, uncontrollably. All the fear I'd experienced and tried to repress with the Simurgh overhead, poking into my mind, doing who knows what. It all hit me then.

While my body reacted to mind-spasming terror, the two dwarven doctors restrained me. At the core of my mind, I could feel something panic and wonder how having the Simurgh paging through my mind with a direct connection through my power during Alert time counted against Simurgh exposure time. I had no way of knowing. I damn sure had no way of finding out, because there was no way in hell I was going to tell anyone that Simurgh and I had just had a little direct mind-to-mind connection. The rest of the world would probably cheer and buy peanuts while rooting for the S9 if anyone found out about it.

It was another reason to doubt myself. Exactly what I didn't need.

When my body allowed me control over it again, I demanded to be carried to a mist generator and left alone with a bar of soap. I cleaned my fouled self and my fouled clothing, only collapsing five or six times in abject terror as memories of the mental connection scorched through my mind, time after time.

I felt Urist's annoyance in my mind as he tried to chide me for fear and I opened a wide channel to him, forcing what I knew about the Simurgh into his mind, and the fact that it had just fucking noticed me, and connected to me. After I felt a little terror and a lot of apology from him, I reduced our connection back to a trickle.

I realized I'd just forced open a connection to Urist and actually transmitted knowledge directly. I cautiously tried it with other dwarves, and could not widen connections to them. How did I do that?

No amount of trying let me open a wider connection to other dwarves. I had probably only been able to do it with Urist because he was trying to widen it a bit from his end.

My mind provided a more terrifying possibility. Maybe The Simurgh did a little reprogramming while it was poking around, singing tunes in my head. After that thought ran screaming through my mind in mad panic, my body found something else in my bladder to soil myself with. Numbly, I started washing myself again after I picked myself off my ass a few seconds later.

When I finally finished washing, I had no idea how much time had passed, but the bar of soap was gone, and my fingers looked like raisins. I was cold and shivering violently on my knees, staring at my hands thoughtlessly. I could see at least ten dwarves watching me from a safe distance. I could feel their unhappiness, their worry.

I forced myself to my feet, and raised my mouth to the water overhead, gulping. I'd had nothing to drink but alcohol in I didn't remember how long. No more than a day, I knew, but I had no real sense of time without the sun. I hadn't figured out how dwarves measured time, or my mind simply couldn't emulate it like the ability to see in the dark. Or whatever. It didn't matter.

I put my clothes back on, and snapped out to the nearest dwarf. "Take me somewhere where there is a heat source that will allow me to dry off quickly without injuring myself, but not be in anyone's way. Have my armor brought to me at that location."

I mentally created a request for a clean well to be created directly off my quarters, and a soap depot. Despite my immensely heightened desire for alcohol, I needed water for drinking and washing. I was still human, mostly. I hoped. My body seemed to be, anyway.

I followed my guide to a nearby kitchen and sat next to a stove on a chair taken from a nearby furniture depot. I stared at the cook, and warned them. "Do not cook with any meat while I am here. After I leave, do what you wish."

The cook nodded carefully, and tiptoed off with a large cauldron towards another kitchen at the far side of the food processing area, stopping by the butcher shops on the way. I saw butchers carefully wrap meat in untanned leather and leave their shops.

The cook returned with vegetables of various sorts and began cooking, carefully not watching me.

"I'm sorry." I apologized to the cook, and passed the apology to all of my dwarves over the link. I could feel most of them accepting the apologetic offering with a little confusion. I could also feel some anger coming back to me from Urist and others of like mind to him. I stomped their anger flat, refusing to be intimidated, and tried to push a thought across the network, that apology isn't weakness, it's acknowledgement of wrongdoing or a mistake. I felt a reverberation of respect still mixed with a little suspicion coming back from my dwarves. That was good enough. I'd just subjected the whole fortress to my absolute terror after Simurgh, no doubt they had been shocked.

I really need to control myself better, I thought to myself. I need something to center myself.

An armorer arrived, with light under leathers, and my adamantite plate armor to wear over it. As promised, it fit perfectly. Too damn perfectly. I didn't have a mirror to check, but I was certain the pants fit snugly enough to show a cameltoe. Everything fit me like a second skin.

"Does it have to be this tight?" I asked the armorer.

She looked up at me, and said simply, "Yes."

"Why?" I asked, curiously.

"Otherwise the metal armor you wear over it would chafe you." Was the response.

I shrugged and accepted the expert opinion of the armorer. The light blue armor that was being fitted to me certainly wouldn't offend my sense of modesty. The under leathers were basically armor underwear, like spandex pants, but made of leather.

A couple minutes later, I was fully armored, with gauntlets hanging from my left hip, a kite shield over my back, and a helm handing from my right hip. The leathers and the armor put together did not weigh much more than my old clothes. The adamantite plate was almost as thin as tinfoil, but I couldn't even make it flex with all my strength. Every piece was masterwork class; the jointing was so excellently done that I could move in it almost like I wasn't even wearing it.

As the armorer was finishing up her final inspections of the fit, and explaining to me how to release the shield and remove and put the armor back on myself, I noticed a small child behind her, peering up at me.

I knew already, of course, but I asked anyway. "Hello young one, what is your name?"

The little dwarf, not much more than three feet tall and no more than twice my weight, ducked back behind her mother, hiding herself shyly. She had both arms around her mother's trunklike left leg. After a couple moments, she stuck her head back out and looked up at me. "Kylar, Overseer."

I smiled. "Hello, Kylar. How are you today?"

"I'm well, Overseer, thank you for asking."

"What would you say if I told you that I was thinking about creating a school and letting you learn all kinds of math and science that dwarves didn't know about before?"

The little female dwarf looked back up at me, clearly confused. "But, Overseer, we already have a school?" Her confusion rapidly left her face, replaced by pure joy. "I went two hours ago and helped! Basic geometry is fun!"

I stared back down at her, then quickly put a smile on my face. "When did this start?"

The little girl shrugged. "I don't know, Overseer. Probably today, since there weren't books before."

"I see. Thank you, Kylar. You be good and mind your mother, you hear me?"

"I will, Overseer, I will!"

Kylar's mother, Doko was her name, reached behind herself with a hand the size of a snowshovel and rubbed the youngster's head. "I'll hold you to that, Kylar." Doko grinned up at me and winked, then slapped my arm very carefully and said. "Done. If you can survive a battle at all, you will survive it wearing that."

"Thank you, Doko. I appreciate this." I smiled in real thanks and slapped her on the upper arm, as hard as I could without hurting myself or with exaggerated motions, and she smiled up at me.

I cast my thoughts out, seeking dwarven children. Normally they would be following their mothers, mostly, until they matured at twelve, but I found that every child over four was in a single small room that had been cut directly off the book storage depot. I had not requested that the room be built, and I certainly had not designated is as a 'school.'

I was briefly worried that I might have done it without knowing I had, maybe when I had been blind stinking drunk, before I passed out. I quickly scanned the fortress for other anomalies, and found a large number of them. When I examined them, they seemed logical.

They are learning. Adapting. As Urist said, they are innovating and filling gaps in their knowledge. Am I becoming redundant here?

It dawned on me that if I was becoming redundant here, that it was a good thing, not a bad thing.

A few minutes and a wild ride in a mine cart later, I walked into the classroom with the children and saw that every child in the fortress had their own learning station, a personal workshop for every child.

Every workstation was laden with books. Every student present was copying a book open next to them into a blank book at bewildering speeds. Not as fast as a modern office laser printer, but at least a page or two per minute. As I watched, open-mouthed, three students approached Tikon at the front of the class. As they spoke to him, he made notes on an open book in front of him, and spoke back to them. They then put their newly-copied books on a pile to one side of Tikon's desk, and picked up another book from the other side of his desk.

Tikon coughed. "Class, we have a visitor."

All the children turned to me, and I could feel their childish joy. They were ecstatic to be in this room, copying books. Looking at them individually, I could see their happiness levels were the highest in the fortress, maximum possible happiness.

Basking in the warmth of their bliss, I could feel my mind shifting, finding a firmer grip on my new reality. I nodded to the front of the room. "Carry on, Tikon."

I looked over the rest of the room. "Don't let me interrupt you, children." I projected a fierce pride in them, and felt them smugly accept it as their just due.

I chuckled at their cheekiness as I walked back to my quarters, and my thoughts hardened. I wanted to spend more time with the children. To do that, I would need to survive. The fortress would need to survive.

Losing was no longer fun.