"Anything else out there?" someone thought to ask, watching the western sky. Meanwhile several healers were tending to the bitten, wailing kid.

There was more commotion from the villagers. "Get your weapons. Where's the lookout balloon?"

"Down for the night," said Vonn.

"I sure am glad monsters keep to a strict schedule."

The Reeve hobbled closer and shouted for attention. "Everyone, shut up. Militia, get armed." He turned to the town Geomancer. "Ian, your wards don't work on flying things, right?"

"No, sir. At least at that thing's approach height. We'd never seen a flying monster from the dungeon."

"Work on that."

A drunken man said, "Hey, wait. Dungeons copy stuff, right? And we have these weird flying machines."

The Reeve ignored him. "You, Birb. Get your boat back in the air and keep watch. Get an archer or something."

"Yes, sir!"

That gave Vonn something to do, too. Birb had gotten the good habit of putting things away, so the boat was now deflated and in the hangar. He and the others retreated to the workshop.

Polestar arrived just after, with his gun. "Have we got any anti-air magic or machines?"

Vonn said, "Grandbridge has big crossbows on swivel mounts. I could copy that but guidance systems are beyond me."

Tazo nodded. "There are some aiming-related spells. Those are our best bet, or your eyes with that gun. What's going on, that we have a new monster type now?"

Vonn's ears drooped. "Oh shoot, there's the other adventurer group visiting, isn't there? Not Spikes and company, that one from yesterday with the Centaurs."

Birb said, "You'd think they'd take a break for the festival. If they came back from delving. So... maybe they went in, died, and gave the dungeon enough power to improve itself beyond some threshold."

Vonn's own experience with the living dungeons told him that was possible. "Shouldn't the miners' efforts out west have tamed the thing by now, pumping it full of good karma?"

"Good what?"

"Er, life energy."

"I have no idea."

Ashfall shrugged, too. She was already dragging the boat out along the wooden rails in the hangar. "So maybe it's improving over there. But this tainted zone covers a big area. Suppose it expanded again? Well, doesn't matter; we have a job to do."

While Birb focused on the gas bag, Vonn worked with Tazo and the apprentices to quickly rig a basic swivel mount for the jet device. "It only weighs a few pounds. We'll put this on the bow... no, that'd risk burning the ropes. Stern but only give it a 45 degree swing each way."

Polestar said, "While you're busy inventing your way out of this, I'm gonna meet with the militia. Can't ride your boat anyway."

"All right." The comment stung. This was the most useful thing Vonn could do right now, to follow the Reeve's order and improve Birb's safety. "Maybe I should ride with my gun."

Tazo said, "We'll check for volunteers. Big picture: if it's going to start spawning these fliers routinely, the dungeon's now a real threat. We can't keep mostly ignoring it."

Vonn nodded grimly. The whole town had been keeping lookouts and sort of trusting that one or two sentries in a balloon would warn them of any real trouble. Besides, the monsters rarely reached even the outlying farms. "We need to tell the Baron right after some basic scouting. Here's another time when it would've been good to have signal towers."

The wind picked up, cold and with traces of snow. The village was still lit by torchlight but now the mood was no longer a festival, but an alert. Vonn scowled at the breeze. "Birb, make sure you're ready to leap out. Our safety is always more important than the machines."

The boat rose, turning and swaying. Birb shared it with a Vulin archer whose light build still strained the boat's capacity. He borrowed one of the emergency fall rings and still bristled with cold and fear. Vonn shepherded the ropes that dangled beneath it but sent Tazo off to fetch stronger men to hold them.

A swift Centaur who'd run to have a closer look came back toward the village. Word spread quickly. A woman stopped by the workshop to say, "The dungeon has grown! He says the warped ground is closer. Might even be visible from up in that contraption."

Vonn, gradually walking west to supervise the balloon above him, said, "I'm not surprised. Did anyone send word east?"

"I saw the Reeve send someone."

The Aves couldn't stay up all night, literally. She had maneuvered north of the Little Star and west, scanning the dark western horizon and struggling to maintain position even with the bored, chilly folk holding the ropes. "Do we really need to hang onto these?" one of them asked.

Tazo said, "This boat's so new we don't trust it in this wind." She yawned. "Nothing else is attacking and we shouldn't be making her and you do this."

"I can take a watch as a guard," Vonn said with zero enthusiasm.

The messenger woman offered to go beg the Reeve's permission for them all to go to bed. Everybody approved. Soon word came that they could, which told Vonn that their village headman didn't really understand the technology's limits and hadn't thought to limit the flight. That called for a briefing tomorrow.

So Vonn helped put everything away and went to bed in the workshop. But now the lingering threat loomed in the back of his mind, and he had no guarantee it wouldn't devour the whole town.

#

Vonn hadn't yet sent his dispatches and letters due to the festival. So in the morning, he added an update and sent them along with the flurry of other outgoing mail. The Duke would be hearing from others about the dungeon problem, so Vonn focused on mentioning the airboat's initial performance and the need for further testing. And yet more cloth, if he wanted more like it. (How badly was he straining the region's cloth industry with his strange new demand for the stuff? He didn't know.) Selen got an English note revealing a bit more information: Birb's first test of the jet was promising. Not enough force to replace an airplane's propeller but potentially a good supplement. For the boat it was awkward, applying force from underneath the gas-bag and trying to drag the balloon along with it. He wrote, "In a way these jets could effectively lighten a vehicle if we had enough." Which, as Selen would know, meant less need for the antigravity effect.