Overnight there'd been some skirmishes as the dungeon tried to get any advantage, but the Woven and the militia had been on guard. Now there were hundreds of troops standing by against a greatly reduced monster force... or at least that was the hope. Vonn and company hung around the camp as the main force began advancing in several feinting groups of various size, hoping that the dungeon would again focus on the largest unit and especially the largest non-Woven one.

Vonn frowned up at the three aircraft, none of them under his control today. "Feels wrong."

Selen said, "You know what they're doing, right? The Duke's men are going to take them. This is just practice." She saw Vonn and Tazo looking alarmed, and waved one wing. "It's good. More fame, and if the commander has any sense he'll pay well. You're getting paid to make better ones."

He wasn't thrilled about the prospect of a forced sale, but Selen was probably right.

Birb said, "The airboat is mine! I don't want anybody taking that away."

Selen wordlessly hugged her. Vonn touched her wing and said, "We know how you feel."

They stood ready at the battlefield's fringe. He busied himself with practicing magic, focusing an orb of fire or light or rippling sound and pushing for more intensity. Tazo and Selen started to join him in the exercise. He explained what Ralator had been saying about magic theory.

Tazo's ears drooped. "I was going to propose that the antigrav effect and plain force are another element pair, but of course he's thought of that already. And for whatever reason we can't tune a gem to those elements."

Selen shrugged. "It's a mystery for another day. He's an expert and we've given him new data to work with. In the meantime I've got my alchemy to work on."

"It doesn't seem right that magicite and spells are just a side note to the machinery. Crystals attached to engines, enchantments stuck on a wand for making better widgets."

"You use tools to make better tools. This little crisis is speeding up our research funding, and I bet we learn something useful from it that'll apply to magic."

Tazo nodded, but looked dissatisfied and thoughtful.

A few people got hustled back from the raids to the healers' area. Vonn shuddered at acid burns, gouged scales, a leg bent at a nasty angle. The scent of blood began to fill the clearing.

His basic magic was just an aid to more competent people. Mom and some other villagers were there with him, showing how to set broken bones and ease the pain of what spells couldn't instantly repair. His stomach churned at seeing bits of bone protruding from one Elf's leg. You had to be hurt bad to suffer that much in this world. Vonn's own worst-ever injury had been from an axe enchanted to be extra nasty and even that hadn't threatened his life.

As the little nightmare of a trauma ward began to calm down, Vonn saw that hardly anyone had died in this camp. In that sense it was like what Polestar had once told him about Earth wars: with good enough technology, surviving long enough to reach a doctor meant a very high chance of seeing your next birthday. Knowledge of infection was almost nil here, so that he wondered whether it was worth teaching people to splash alcohol on a wound. Two of the Necromancers were on the healer team, applying their own perversely destructive approach to the problem. Nobody else seemed to understand what they were doing.

Selen and Tazo were helping, too. Kotta was with Polestar, trying to aid in battle. Birb had been relegated again to provisioning, though at least that got her to work with her father.

Vonn conjured a ball of water and washed his hands in it, shivering. He looked over at Mom, who looked exhausted but gave him an encouraging smile he tried to return.

In the distance, wisps of colored smoke rose from alchemical smoke bombs, showing the ongoing effort to choke off every airway of the dungeon. At least every one connected directly from the core to this part of the surface.

A messenger ran to them from the main army. "Mages and Engineers, Ralator sends word that the sealing process is failing now. He says the enemy has adapted to resist stone-shaping. Do you have any tricks available?"

"Aha!" said Vonn. "Just as planned! Well, mostly."

Tazo explained for him. "We'll pump water up from the river. Freeze it in place."

"He thought of that but I saw the spellcasters struggling to make enough ice while defending themselves."

"We'll bring the water."

Vonn had planned to use the pumps to try flooding the dungeon, forcing it to drown or waste energy shunting the water somewhere, but this method was better.

#

Vonn, Tazo, Selen and with some confusion, Mom, came back to the Company offices. There they'd stashed Baron Bogstep's collection of crystal-powered pumps. Setting them up took some hauling but was conceptually simple. They ran a hose into the Little Star River, then pumped it uphill. Not surprisingly, the frostfire engine couldn't lift water very far, but they had a whole set that created an automated bucket brigade carrying river water all the way up to level ground and a ways inland. Now there was a steady trickle that filled buckets. Not nearly enough for a firehose but enough to save a lot of hauling.

The commander sent five Woven with buckets. They stared at the contraption, but quickly to work, several of them still needing to go to the river.

Selen said, "I've seen you guys fight fires. Good luck."

One Woven watched the chain of hoses at work. Its face was expressionless but there was some hesitation in how it worked, straining to run off and follow orders but clearly wanting to watch. It said, "There could be vines instead. Vines and machines and magicite." Then it ran off with a full bucket.

Selen said, "Next version, maybe." Vonn wasn't sure if she meant the pump system or the Woven themselves.

Vonn couldn't see what was going on from here, and still irrationally resented having the flying machines in the air completely without him. "I'm assuming this is helping."