It wasn't hard to find the dungeons. The tallest building in the whole city was a tower belonging to Travis—that was also the entrance. Eliza walked toward it, trying to ignore the second dungeon entrance nearby as she focused on the dungeon that should hold only death to someone lacking extensive combat skills.

She advanced on the doors, which stood open, only to see someone walking out with a bowl of stew and a spoon in it. They weren't an adventurer, nor even a merchant or guard. "Is this the dungeon?" Eliza asked them.

"Huh? Oh, you must be new in town. Yeah, this is Travis. Head on in and have some breakfast. The stew's good!"

The glowing recommendation aside, Eliza was still nervous—having never been in a dungeon before. She walked to the doorway and stepped inside. A shiver ran down her back. An old part of her, pure instinct passed down by generations, told her this was a bad place to be. She almost ran—almost turned and left and kept going until she found her contact in Far Reach and told them to stick their job where it would fit.

"Excuse me. Travis told me to invite you to come and talk. You're one of the new merchants in town?"

The asker, just like Steph had been, was a kobold. The top of their head was about waist height to her, and they wore a skirt and a shirt.

"Y-Yes. I— The dungeon invites me in?"

"Travis did, yes. Please, come to our tavern, and we can discuss things. My name is Celeste, but please, just call me Cele." Celeste headed to the right, and led the way into what was unmistakably a tavern.

Taking careful note of the directions required to escape, Eliza had followed and was surprised by how cozy the tavern looked. There was still the slight feeling of being in a dungeon, but the atmosphere in the tavern was that of warmth and coziness. There were city guards sitting at one table, shooting dice with a dryad who seemed excited about losing. At another table was a young man and a woman, both with a bowl of food before them, actively discussing metallurgy.

Led to a table, she sat down opposite the kobold. "Two councilors suggested I come and talk about a bounty. You require a cannon?"

It took a moment for Celeste's face to visibly change from curiosity to excitement, or so it seemed to Eliza. She felt she was starting to pick up on the facial features of kobolds—which was a skill she had never thought would be a requirement of her profession.

"Travis asks, in this order, 'Do you have a cannon? How much will you take for it?' Between us girls, I think he wants bigger toys, is all. Given the recent neighbors, though, it's understandable." Celeste gave Eliza a wink.

"I don't make a habit of hauling around artillery pieces, no. I can provide you a time-frame and a cost, however. If I can send word out to Far Reach, I can have one of my associates there order a cannon and, when I go to pick up my next round of goods there, I could bring it back with me." And here Eliza thought she'd have trouble finding what a dungeon would want that would ingratiate herself with it.

Celeste tilted her head to the side and nodded. "Travis says he wants to know how long it will take and how much it will cost you?"

"I don't normally trade in cannons, sorry. If you're willing to compensate me for my time, effort, and the cost, that will be all I require." Of course it wouldn't. Eliza was perfectly happy to spend some funds on a no-profit deal if the reward was a favor.

Laughing, Celeste replied, "Travis said that if he didn't reward you above what is the bare minimum, it would make him look like a miser and upset several women whose opinion of him he values. Bring him a cannon, he says, and he will make you rich. Before we go further, would you like something to eat or drink?"

"I'll take some porridge, if you don't mind?" Eliza was not above taking advantage of a new mark if they were willing to pay for her food.

It said something about how person-like the dungeon's residents were that Eliza had become so comfortable in such a short amount of time. It was easy to ignore the rows of sharp teeth, claws, and talons when they could joke and converse so glibly. When Celeste returned a moment later with a bowl of stew and a large mug of small beer, Eliza took them gratefully. "Thank you."

"You're welcome! It's a relief, you know, to be able to work my old job again. After all these years, I thought bustling around and sharing stories with travelers was in my past. Travis warned us all that this might be something we can never escape, but as alternatives go, I welcome it." Celeste paused for a moment, laughed, and nodded. "Travis thinks I'm being silly. Having more of us around means he isn't lonely, either. Brave young men shouldn't be allowed to get lonely."

Pausing in spooning up the delicious meat porridge, Eliza couldn't stop herself from asking, "Isn't Travis a young dungeon, though?"

"Oh, he's a young dungeon, but I'm no spring chicken. I'd come out to Northridge on the power of a lifetime spent scraping and saving coins. It was odd, but I had this desire to be among a young city when the time came for me. I didn't expect a dungeon to offer me more time." When Eliza had frozen, Celeste seemed to notice. "Guess no one told you about that, huh? All the kobolds here are former people. Pen too, when you see her."

One thing after another seemed to shatter Eliza's worldview when it came to this dungeon. "You were—?"

"Human. I was sitting around, counting my days left, when word spread around Northridge that Travis was offering an alternative to slowly sputtering out. We didn't know it was for sure a forever thing, back then, but he suspected it was. And, if it is"—Celeste smirked and even giggled—"I won't be complaining."

With a fragile voice, Eliza asked, "How old are you?"

"Sixty-four years young. Yesterday I spent an hour digging with a pickaxe. A year ago, I could barely walk without a pain in my left hip. If I spend my days now laughing happily in a body that doesn't age—I can hardly begrudge a little work for this fine young man now, can I?"

"Fine young… Travis, the dungeon?"

"Of course. He gets a little worked up from time to time, but that's to be expected. He's young, I'd judge in his early twenties— Travis, you stop butting in." Celeste paused for a moment, then laughed. "You'll never order me to stop, and I won't tell her anything that isn't common knowledge anyway. Relax. Now, where was I? Oh, early twenties, caring, and if I'd found him when he wasn't a dungeon, I'd have gotten him to a temple so fast your eyes would spin in their sockets. And, before you stop sputtering in my head, I wouldn't overstep that nice young dragon's claim."

The information absurdity and density was becoming a problem that Eliza needed time to deal with. She compartmentalized aside the mental process of understanding the conversation and, in the front of her mind, focused on taking it all as accepted and moving forward. "That sounds perfectly reasonable. I regret nothing so much as not having found myself a man who is as willing to spend weeks of travel in dangerous lands as much as myself."

"Go and get him his new toy, and he'll uproot himself to wander around in a wagon beside you if you're not careful!" The idea of it, and whatever Celeste heard from Travis made the woman break out into laughter while Eliza focused on eating her food. "Mark my words, though, he'll reward you for your time spent getting it."

Pausing, almost done with the bowl, Eliza took a swig from the small beer. "I'll send word right away, then. I'll allow a week to move the rest of my goods, and by the time I reach Far Reach, they should have a cannon there waiting for me. Were there any other small goods I could transport? Outgoing or incoming?"

Nodding her head, Celeste sighed. "Apparently we have an exclusive weapon contract with a merchant already—for selling—but he wasn't interested in armor. Travis says he could have our blacksmith work on some—though it wouldn't be fitted."

Movement from the corner of Eliza's eye caught her attention as the young man who'd been talking with a woman approached. "Hey, uh, Travis said you wanted stuff to sell?"

"Uh, yes. Do you make goods?" What confused Eliza was how the young man knew to come over. She pondered hand signals from Celeste, or even some kind of magic spell.

"I'm the metalsmith for Travis. I can make swords, shields, and armor, as well as more common things. Oh, Travis is telling me I can't make weapons for you."

"Yes, I heard that." Eliza's mind raced while she spoke, trying to come up with something she could sell that the young man could make. "My name's Liz. What metals do you have to work with here?"

"Iron, steel, mithril, and adamantine. Hey, there's an idea. Do you think you could turn a profit on adamantine tools? Forge hammers, files, leather knives—that kind of thing?" Turning, the man looked back at the woman he'd been talking with. "What do you think? Adamantine tools so they never wear out?"

"You're crazy, Axel. No one would pay for that!" the woman replied, shaking her head.

"She's right," Eliza said, "no one would pay for adamantine tools. But I am always interested in trading good steel."

"Funny story about that," the young man Eliza now knew as Axel said, "steel is about to become in high demand. Not as high as adamantine, but there will be some smiths that will soon wish they had an adamantine hammer."

Information was something Eliza was always prepared to get for free, if she could. "Oh?"

"Travis wants to make Northridge grow faster, and he says that the key to doing that is trade. He wants to build a railway." Axel sat down at the table. "So we're going to be using a lot of steel for tracks."

It was an auspicious example of how fast Northridge was growing. Eliza knew that her work here was more important than ever, now. "Why don't you just pay for someone else to make it all? You seem to have plenty of gold."

"Travis says it's because he wants it done faster. We have the city council organizing the construction of stations and the train, but it will be up to us to provide steel for the rails. We're going to need more smiths to make them, and that's where the gold will be going." Celeste shook her head and looked down, vaguely. "Travis, if you're going to talk all technical like this, why not have the lad do it?"

Axel laughed. "Drop off a list of what you want made and how much you're willing to pay for it. We'll figure something out. Oh, Travis says you can buy things using the cannon's bounty as a mark, or something. I don't understand that sort of— Oh. So we take the cost of anything she gets now out of the bounty? What happens if she just runs off?"

"I wouldn't get to trade here ever again, and listening to how high you're aiming with this city, I think that would be the stupidest thing I could ever do." Standing up, Eliza needed to get out of the dungeon and think. There was so much she'd locked away so she could keep functioning that she wondered if she would be able to get any work done for the rest of the day. "You'll excuse me, I'll have to go think of what I could sell down south. I also need to empty my wagon."

"No sweat. I've mostly been working on projects here and there. We need a lot more adamantine armor made, and even when I'm done with that, I am sure there will be more work for me. It's almost like a dungeon never gets quiet." Axel nodded to Eliza and Celeste and headed back to the table where the other woman had been waiting for him.

"He's a good boy, our Axel. He has a good eye for girls, too." Celeste laughed and then paused. "Oh, here's your payment."

Catching a flicker of gold out of the air, Eliza looked at it. It was a gold coin, of the type the dungeon traded. "Payment? What for?"

"For breakfast." Winking, Celeste scooped up the bowl, spoon, and empty mug. "Fair trails, merchant."

"Fair trails." The words were automatic and practiced. Eliza said them so many times to other merchants that it didn't strike her as odd that Celeste had said them until she was halfway back to her temporary lodgings.

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This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.