In the witch's hut at the underground shoreline there were two whole walls filled with books.

Two bookshelves, taking up all possible space, and not even having enough room store the various tomes and scriptures spilling over onto the desk and bed.

They were magical books. Catalogues of powerful spells and mystical lifeforms, maps of the celestial plane, and anatomical drawings of fairy creatures.

Among all this knowledge, there was only one work of fiction.

A pocket sized romance novel, would fill her with great shame to be known to possess.

Somehow, during her frenzied searching for the right tome, when she had upended her personal library, Scratch had managed to pick out just this pulp booklet.

He was now supine, rifling through it on one of the emptied out shelves. "Do you read a lot of stories, Lacrima?" He asked.

The witch snatched at the book with her wrinkled hands, but he moved it out of reach. "I don't have time for such things, dearie," she said in her faux-sweet tone, "I am too busy with the will of the goddess. Now, if you would come down from there..."

"I was just thinking... if you read a story, and it was about yourself, you wouldn't assume you were fictional yourself, would you? You'd think somebody heard your life's story, and wrote it down."

"Yes. And?" Her sweet demeanor quickly evaporated.

"Even if it included your most private moments, the most logical conclusion would be that you were being spied upon."

A monstrous bat climbed down from the shelf above and looked at the book he had in his hands. "I do not zhink zhis story of zhe elven princess is about you."

Now Lacrima was able to snatch it. "Enough of this tomfoolery, I have the eternal shapes right here, please do take a look at them."

-

Splayed out on the desk was a tome about the size of man's torso, it had been turned to a page somewhere in the middle, showing no text but a series of constellations and concentric circles.

It took Scratch a minute to even articulate his confusion. "Yo. What am I looking at?"

Noss assumed his human form once again. "Did you zhink transformation magic vorked purely by spell alone? If a spell could rearrange a man's flesh and skin, ve vould not use it to turn him into a frog, ve vould simply kill him by turning him inside out."

Scratch pinched the bridge of his nose. "Silly me?"

Lacrima tapped the page. "My petrification spell imposes the eternal shape of stone upon a form, so they become as stone. It is a spell given to humanity by the god of Earth, Geros, so it uses one of his shapes."

"Dark sorcerers take zhe spells of zhe gods, and alter zhem. Zhat's how ve can create new spells and curses zhat petrify. But ve can not arbitrarily access any shape ve like."

"As a witch," Lacrima explained, "it is my legal duty to prevent knowledge such as this from falling into the hand of dark sorcerers. But since the goddess of magic, Guth herself, has sanctioned this partnership..."

"Oh," Scratch had a sudden epiphany, "so these shapes are the elements of magic you were talking about earlier. You know, when you summon fire, or stone out of nowhere."

"No, dearie."

"Zhat has nozhing to do vith it."

"Hmm." He leaned back again.

"Now then," Lacrima turned back to the page, "using the power of a dungeon, we can keep someone in a shape we like forever."

"But zhey are still zhemselves, zheir inherent divinity can only go so far." Noss said, "so zhey can not more powerful zhan zhey had zhe potential to be in zhe first place."

"Nor can their potential be removed," she said, "if one were permanently petrified, they could eventually will themselves to be able to walk again.

And a prince turned into a frog could train to achieve immense power."

"I don't believe there is such a thing as power," Scratch said, "it's all situational."

"Zhat is a stupid zhing to believe."

"Nonetheless, we kill our prince quickly, and there won't be any frog lifting done. We'll just be done with it."

Lacrima nodded, "that is, if we can act that quickly. There is an armistice now, but we can't rely on the fairy queen having her guard down forever.

"Zhere." Noss pointed at the page. "Zhat one."

"I see... perfect."

"So they pretty much had it figured out without me. I don't know why they even invited me." Scratch relayed, while scraping off the dried out layer of an old scone with his teeth.

"Perhaps they mistook you for a leader." Barbara said.

"Hey shut up, so what are you doing about the liquidations in the in-land cities?"

They were inside Barbara's personal estate. A two story living apartment above the shop where she could keep an eye on the warehouses and storage lots.

It wasn't fancy per-se. But it had all the amenities of a well-off peasant home in Eston, including toiletry and multiple hearths, and some silky materials even the Harkness manor didn't have.

It was clear that he had made himself at home. He made a quiet note to schedule all future scheming arrangements at her place.

"About the Liege having potion dealers killed? Am I supposed to do something?"

"You wanted to be in charge of the Thieves' Guild, didn't you?"

"Yes, but..." she scratched her head, "what can I do? We don't have shadow bandits. We don't even really have the dealers themselves. They have no loyalty to us, we sell them the product."

"So you say," he put the confectionery away and licked the crumbs off his fingers before handling paperwork, "there's pros and cons to that."

He handed her a piece of paper and she looked at it. "What's this?"

"It's a cost estimation. Us versus them, I'm teaching the kids math, y'see. It's a practicing exercise."

The crude handwriting showed sums and multiplications, not lined out neatly in a row but scratched harshly at various sizes and directions. At the bottom, a few numbers were outlined.

"Were are you basing this on?"

Scratch put the smoking bluegrass cigar into his mouth. "I have my sources."

But where-"

"Barb. I have my sources. Now tell me what you see- No, never mind, I'll just say it. The Liege is bleeding gold on this gang war. We're losing some on equity, but still, we're in the plus."

Barbara frowned trying to make sense of the shoddy homework. "Their side does not generate income while fighting, and he is paying them directly. While our dealers work for themselves... so we can keep this up forever."

"Ah-" Scratch took out his cigar, "not quite. This culture of fear is hurting our market, and the enemy might decide to take some radical action against us as well. I need some ideas to stabilize the situation."

"...What are these?"

"Those are the names and addresses of several commanding officers for the Liege's crime empire." Scratch said, Cyclophan was uniquely qualified for discovering the double life of an enemy faction, they would lie about it constantly. "We could leak these to our friends in law enforcement..."

Barbara shook her head and threw the stack back on the coffee table. "If we use the knights to remove another business, nobody in the entire underworld will ever work with us again."

"I was afraid of that. You'd think a crime syndicate would be free of irrational sentiment, but they never seem to."

She looked up in surprise. "Irrational? It's not just principles you know, if the thieves' guild started involving knights into its squabbles, the whole thing would be over in a month. There'd be nobody standing but the last snitch and his last few coins of snitch money... and they'd arrest him too."

"Uh-huh. Well we can't put a hit on them either, too high profile, too much... firepower."

"You're saying they're more powerful."

"They certainly have the violence advantage."

She pouted. "A deal then?"

"Well," he showed her the note that had come with the ominous dagger, "I don't get the idea that this guy would be content with anything less than the whole dungeon itself."

-

"The Liege has claimed this one's heart. Submit to the shadows, or die. Such is the fate of all things in the dark."

-

"The stooge guildmaster that tried to sing us to sleep had mentioned something like this before," Scratch said as she read the note. "His master wants a monopoly on powerful magic. So it's not just about having a dungeon core, it's about nobody else having any."

"I take it he doesn't know about all the other fragments of the second segment littered around the place then." She said.

"Common wisdom severely understates the number of dungeon cores, it seems."

"Oh! I've got it!" Barbara snapped her fingers. "He wants the dungeon core? Well it's under protection of the Ravenous Lich. Ritter will defend it for you."

"No no no!" Scratch held out his arms and vehemently shook his head. "Our whole relationship with the lich is making sure he uses his power on our behalf as little as possible. We can't fly below the radar anymore if death spires keep appearing. I promised him I'd take in the vampire boy and that I- that you could deal with the thieves' guild if he wouldn't turn this place into zombie Chernobyl. Besides..." he leaned over the table conspiratorially, "between Ritter and Kato Ken, I'm not sure if the bone-yard would win."

Although there was nobody there to listen in on the conversation, Barbara leaned in to whisper just like he had. "What do you mean? That's the Liege's name?"

"You know the blonde that came by to knight me? She knows him. He's an old soul like her."

"An old soul? Is that a race of people?"

Scratch shook his head. "Kato Ken currently has the body of a vampiric dark elf. He has not payed us special attention as his operations are spread over the entire continent."

"But he can't be that powerful, can he?"

Scratch leaned back. "Can he? Beatrice seems to believe he has it in him to destroy the world."

Barbara tapped the top of the coffee table with her fingers, not really willing to believe it. "If the entire world is at stake... even the likes of us have to try to stop him."

"Yeah," Scratch grabbed another scone, "so you better think of something soon."

The underground cavern was opposite to everything faerie.

The steel filled up all space, a right-angled web of girders, platforms, and various contraptions, with no greenery.

There was no sunlight to nourish any, as the only light came from orange sparks of heated metal, casting crooked shadow upon the web.

There was a constant cacophony of industry. Forges blazed, machines whirled, and the bounty from the earth was beaten into submission with a rhythmic clankity-clang-clang.

The fairy queen was overwhelmed and disoriented by the surroundings. She despised them.

Yet it took more than an hour to rush through the goblin factory, flying as she did.

The web had grown into a disorderly labyrinth, a dense mesh of assorted contraptions leading into all sorts of dead ends.

Though she usually took care not to show mortals signs of vulnerability, the queen breathed a sigh of relief having reached the cavern floor. This place was the source of the noxious fumes that threatened her kind.

At the edges of the chaos, in the silent dark, there were other things still. Things that had lived there before the darkness, and that knew of no light of the sun or forge. But she banished them from her presence, and continued on to the lair of her rival.

-

A fairy queen's senses are her spawn.

The humanoid body contains weak, human-level, eyes and ears, but mostly serves just to contain the organs of her magic.

Sight. Sound. Smell. Even Touch. These were things relayed to her through the countless tiny interactions of pixies with the environment.

Below her, in the underworld, she could see a pleasant field of grass in the shade. She could hear a buzzing of small detritus feeders and gentle breeze. She could smell the fertilizer nourishing the plants, and touch their vibrant leaves.

Although it was simple nature, it much more seemed like the home of another fairy queen than the caverns above it.

The pixies fretted around the field, swirling around the trolls, as the queen glided down onto the ground.

The other spoke to her.

It was the speech only fairies know. Not of sight or sound, but through the ethereal medium of invisible light.

Although she was close now, it was a weak signal. A paltry challenge by a lesser queen.

The greater queen released a 'scream' of invisible light, and the pixies spun around their cores at the erratic signal, she then rushed forward to meet her opponent.

There would be no negotiation. The enemy was weaker, and disgustingly tolerant of pollution. She would simply kill her and reclaim her nature.

-

There was a stretch of scorching hot light between the field and the origin of the signal, but the greater queen could tolerate it in her violent mood.

The pixies were left behind and she relied on her eyes now. They stung from the light, but she could see just fine.

And what she saw was a pit in the sand. Much wider than it was deep, but noticeably deep.

On the sandy floor, a shivering and weak lesser queen sat.

What sparse fairy spawn she controlled was quickly taken out by the greater queen's greater signal.

She hissed.

The enemy hissed back.

The fight was on.

It was the first time Liorin had felt a breeze in her hair while at home.

The sheer power of the fairies agitated and swirled the air in the underworld. At her perch on top of the house she could just about make out the floating green ribbons around the fairy queen way into the desert.

Not so long ago, the goblin patriarch had presented them with the hole in the desert. It's where they had buried the mysterious magical treasure that the cable cart had been invented to transport.

It was a few man-heights deep, and now with a protective castle-like wall around it. The metal supports of the wall extended past the stone and arched over top into an ominous birdcage design. Dark sorcery was surely involved.

Now a bona-fide fairy queen was floating through the blasted heat, agitating the air, towards that very spot.

On the other side of her, the trolls in the field were in a frenzy, driven mad by the pestering pixies and the unfamiliar situation. They had grown used to a peaceful existence within the pleasant greenery, and were mostly tame. The elves had even gone among them on quiet days and not sustained any injury. Not any physical injury at least. Some would say the monsters' mere presence could be perceived as traumatic.

But now, they were raging berserkers.

"Liorin! Get back inside!" Farith yelled at her through the roaring winds.

She ignored her, the hobgoblins were here.

Will waved at her, and she waved back. She then quickly descended from her house and ran up to the group.

"What doth be this spectacle!?" She asked.

"Fairy queen!" Will shouted over the storm. "We're going to defeat her!"

"Let me follow thee." She asked.

"No, it's dangerous. Like a whole battle!"

"We're already late, let's go!" Ada demanded.

But Will took the time to rebuff Liorin.

"I have brought protection from the sunstone!" She showed the constructs of wood and cloth she had been clutching in her hand.

"What's that?"

"Wouldst thee take me along, thou wouldst find out."

-

They were parasols. Handcrafted and not much smaller than an umbrella.

Liorin had carved the wood of one of their decorative garden trees into smooth grips and spanned the cloth of an old curtain over a similar wooden framework, so that they could hold portable shade over their head.

One parasol provided shade for two, so Liorin shared hers with Will.

But the closer to the pit they got, the more wind the things caught.

When they were close enough to hear the hissing of the fairy goddesses, Will's hand could keep its grip anymore and it flew away into a new life as airborne kite.

"Oh! Sorry!" He yelled, having lost her gift to him.

"Be at ease, it were a trivial thing. Tell me, who art these women?"

Will saw his brothers and sister already running up to the spires that caged the arena. "I can't talk. Stay here!" He ran off to join them.

-

The pit was a trap.

Before the hobgoblins had rushed on stage, the patriarch and his helpers had already kept busy hoisting a spiked net over the bird cage structure. To prevent flight out of the arena.

Liorin had no intention of staying put.

She climbed after Will, following his movements just behind on the thick metal stem.

It was an unnatural way of climbing, that could only come about on unnatural structures.

The steel pillar had no handholds, so they found their grip by pressing their hands against either side using all their strength. And they launched themselves forward using their feet, letting go of the vice grip and throwing their arms forward to press against the next spot. And so they bounded upwards like tiny trolls.

It was the most strenuous activity Liorin had ever performed, and she quickly let go once she could put her feet on the stone wall.

Peeking downwards, through the spiked net as she did, she was surprised.

It had been cleaned up and build over, the structure now descending into the pit to keep out the walls of sand, and the tiled with cut boulders around the small hole in the center.

Fighting inside this arena were not one, but two fairy queens.

They were exchanging flashes of green light, such as only fairies fight.

They were both massive beings, semi-devine in an earthly way. But they could be told apart by their clothing.

One was clad in the fabrics of humanity, while the other was draped in the wispy green linens she had seen floating before.

It made the former seem like a weak imitation. A mimicry of the true queen.

And it seemed only natural that the goblins were supporting the imitation in the battle.

Crossbow bolts and rope projectiles were flung at the true queen, distracting her if nothing else.

And yet, this ganging up did not sway the fight into one direction.

Liorin's hands grasped the rope of the net as she followed the circling flight of the queens. She found herself rooting for the true queen, who had everything against her, but who had a grace and dignity to her, and a wistful connection to the forests she had left behind.

She looked up.

The hobgoblins, having reached the top of the cage, were securing the net, and fiddling with the top.

If that really were enough to hold her in, the fight would be immaterial, just another distraction.

Having just stricken her enemy to the floor, the true queen became aware of her surroundings and screamed like a banshee.

Now free from the interfering commands of the false queen, the pixies rushed in.

There weren't many that had crossed the blasting heat in such a short time. But those that had were a right menace to the hobgoblins perched precariously on the cupola's peak.

Rather than preserve their balance, it was the hobgoblins' first nature to swat and fight back.

But the advantage of flight was not so easily overcome, and they they were toppled one by one.

It was then that Liorin saw will fall not just onto the steel, but off it, grasping just at the stinging rope to avoid falling to his death.

Gone was the notion of rooting for anybody. She kicked off her shoes and put her sole onto the rough metal, her skin finding foothold on friction alone.

She climbed like she had in her time in the forest, running up the bark of a tree with nothing but grip and momentum.

As she gained speed and the girder bended inwards she could let go with her hands and run upwards with just her feet.

She then let herself fall flat onto the metal to extend her arm towards the hobgoblin in the nets.

Their eyes met.

Instead of mortal terror, he displayed a puppy-like glee at seeing her and grabbed her arm.

Then his expression dropped.

From underneath, the arm of the true fairy queen gripped around his leg as she pulled at him while launching herself into the sharp of the net.

Will's grip slipped, and Liorin's tightened in response, for a minute imagining that her strength could outweigh that of a fairy queen, if she wanted it hard enough.

The queen's visage contorted into a hateful grimace, and kept contorting, further and further.

A sound like she had never made before erupted from her throat, bestial and confused.

While they had wrestled over the floundering hobgoblin, the other hobgoblins had wrestled the spell crystal in place.

The same power that had made a fairy queen out of the witch, was now focused on making something completely different out of the fairy queen.

Her skin changed colour, and her neck stretched out, her head stretched out into a crested dragon maw, and her hand lost its gripping shape.

Will was able to wrestle himself loose from the paw and pulled himself up the girder. "We did it! We-"

Liorin interrupted him with a kiss on the lips.

Meanwhile, the former fairy began to sank, and then to fall, towards the stone.

She had already grown much beyond her former size, but her fairy wings had atrophied.

The pixies had stopped following her command now, and were drifting aimlessly.

Their transformed queen blared a metallic roar through her long neck, but no human emotion could be read on her draconic face.

A massive dinosaur of a creature got up, balancing on four feet instead of two and with no wings.

It bashed against the sides of the pit, but it had all the weight of the desert's sand to contest with.

She was trapped.

"A dragon to protect the dungeon core." Liorin said. "That's what it is, isn't it?"

The hobgoblins looked at each other hesitantly, but Will pulled her closer to him protectively. "Yeah."

Earth Dragon

Family: Dragon

Threat Level: B

Reward: 2000 gold

An adult earth dragon is 80 meters tall, and 200 meters long, surpassed in size among its family only by the storm dragon. It can be recognized by its yellow and orange scales and distinctive roar. It does not have any wings whatsoever.

Habitats of earth dragons on the overworld are clearly marked on the world map, and must be avoided in order to prevent agitating them, as earth dragons are fiercely territorial. Adventurers that agitate an earth dragon, without being able to defeat it, are fined for a portion of the slaying reward.

Earth dragons remain earthbound at all times, as they do not have the ability to fly. They fight using physical attacks and sonic breath. However, one cannot simply defeat an earth dragon by using flight to stay out of its range, as most of its body is protected by impenetrable shell.

Only the the belly of the earth dragon is vulnerable to damage, and adventurers must approach the deadliest part of its range in order to damage it.

Earth dragons contain many useful ingredients, all of which are restricted goods and may only be sold to guild shopkeepers.

An earth dragon throat is a highly prized rare item, and earth dragon scales are used to create the most powerful armor known to man.