Makers loitered on the beach, giant nightmare crustaceans with wild parade-float shells. The Art Deco individual was positioned in a way that seemed significant: out front, waiting for me, while his four associates were lined up behind him like a team of hype men. None of them moved.

"Radio, what's this?"

"With tremendous shock, Owen suddenly realized that his incredible friend the Green Radio had no inkling as to why the Makers were present. Owen had great difficulty believing the amazing Radio had any limitations at all! He was stunned! Flabbergasted! No matter how minor––"

"All right, thank you." I sat down in front of the lead Maker with the Art Deco rivets and little building on top. The one with the shell that had a message from another Owen Walsh, written in Comic Sans for the current version of Owen Walsh.

"Good morning," I said. "Radio, I know you fetched these guys and they saved me from a mean talking fish. Can you convey my gratitude?"

"The Steward thanks you."

"That's high-larious. Do more jokes."

"The Makers had only rudimentary comprehension of verbal communication. The Green Radio, while an extremely versatile and knowledgeable agent of the Observatory, had no real capacity to speak with them directly beyond those of the sarcastic, rather cruel Owen Walsh."

"Sorry. What do we do, then?"

"The Maker was forming a glyph: 'Requisition: All salvageable bauxite, fifty percent gibbsite, fifty to fifty-five percent aluminum oxide exceeding 250 grams per cubic meter, under three percent silicon dioxide."

I frowned. It was a lot, but the words requisition and salvage stuck out. "They want that Conclave wreck. We aren't really doing anything with it at the moment. It's kind of dangerous having it here; what do you think, Radio? Schmendrick?"

"Makers peligro," Scmendrick said. I stroked her head, scratched her ears. She leaned into it. "Peligro, danger. But not bad."

The Radio translated again: "Proposal: Five-member team offers Observatory restoration. Services: micro-fissure repair, bond reinforcement, enhancement and repair of inorganic superstructure. Estimated completion: 94 hours. In exchange: salvage rights to crashed craft. Salvage duration: 5 days max. You retain five percent for analysis."

I looked at the Observatory dome. It was still a mess. "They have a deal," I said. "Can you convey that to them, please?"

"You have a deal."

"Very helpful, dumbass–"

"Acknowledgment: Offer acceptance noted. Gratitude expressed.." And as one, the Makers rotated in place and charged into the surf, off in the direction of the Conclave wreck.

"Radio, I thought of something. Do you have evidence that these people will use this stuff to hurt anyone?"

"Owen knew that the Makers were, in fact, muy peligroso. Exceedingly dangerous."

"So they definitely will hurt people, correct?"

"The likelihood was strong."

I thought about that for a while. I needed allies. Mostly I needed muscle. I needed people who were smarter than me, that was for sure. "Will they hurt anyone I like?"

"Maker culture revolves around creation. Owen knew he'd given them more exotic raw materials than they'd be able to harvest on their own over a very long span of time. It could be argued that Owen had made not just allies today, but cultists."

As Schmendrick and I watched the Makers reduce the ship out there to fragments, clouds rolled in. A light drizzle became a lightning-filled downpour.

It was bad. The sky was dark in the middle of the afternoon. The rain stung, and the wind came hissing in from the west. I looked longingly up at the windows of the Observatory, still the only real shelter, still locking me out.

A Gardener loomed over the trees, clutching the branches as the wind rose. "The wretched Human has had hours to prepare, and there are no flood mitigation structures!"

"Not a mind reader, Gary."

"EXCUSES!" shouted Gary. "There is no excuse for lack of preparation! AGAIN you fail us!"

"When did I fail you the first time? Never mind, man, let's do this."

I followed Gary to what looked like really nice rice paddies, still in progress. The Gardeners were good at their stuff, no doubt about it. But the current storm was overwhelming the delicate stepped ponds that marched up the hillside. I could see why Gary was panicking. This had been a lot of work, and it looked like the rain might send it all sliding into the ocean.

I grabbed my shovel and started digging. I also spent time talking him out of his alien panic attacks.

"The world-of-trees is nothing like this," Gary snarled. "The Good People have never experienced this horror. Now they hide in the forest, waiting for death and doom to take them, betraying with COWARDICE. They also fear this Human, as if he were the other Human who brought them here."

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Sure enough, I spotted the rest of Gary's people clumped under a dense patch of jungle. The lightning flashed and thunder boomed, and they squashed closer together. They made no move to help Gary.

"They're scared, dude. Not everyone is a square-jawed adventurer like you."

"Your words are meaningless and your odor is the foulest of insults." But he cut down on the verbal abuse for a while.

Schmendrick supervised. I was digging, she would point to where I should dig next. Occasionally she was correct.

The Radio was quiet. No music, no commercials, nothing.

As the storm got worse, stronger, scarier, I started singing work songs. Schmendrick joined in, yapping and howling. Her pack howled back at us from under the trees.

But I didn't know any actual work songs. I knew Call me Maybe and Gangnam Style from when I was little, but those didn't fit.

So I made them up: a song called Schmendrick Is a Good Girl, as if she were a pet, which she wasn't. But she was small and furry and liked to be petted. Plus she liked the song. Then another song: Schmendrick Bites You With Her Face. Gary scolded us, so I sang louder.

Then, finally, I started singing that song the Radio had blared at me for days, the one where the scream went ee-yagh, the one that was lodged firmly into my brain whether I wanted it there or not.

Schmendrick knew the song as well by now. When the part came up involving EEE-YAAGH, we both screamed it at at the same time.

And shit got real. Because that song was the password to the Observatory.

An honest-to-God gong went off somewhere in the dome. It was a low, rumbling note that shook my teeth. Schmendrick and her pack yowled along with it. Gary kept working, but he did pause for a moment, so you know things were pretty serious.

A heavy, grinding metal groan filled the night. Blazing blue light flickered in the Observatory windows, and then the round top of the entire structure cracked open in triangular segments. It opened, blooming like one of the flowers that surrounded the Radio, but huge.

Speaking of the Radio. Its voice boomed, shaking the world: "The Observatorium Sapientiae welcomed its Steward."

"Thanks, Radio, you're a pal–OW!" Because the blue glow from within the dome had reached out into flickering sapphire flame, and it was barbecuing me.

It HURT. I was surrounded by blue fire. I rolled on the ground like one is told to do, but the flame wrapped itself around me, singeing the trees and grass, burning my clothing. Now I was emitting smoke. I was treated to the aroma of my own skin cooking, and the wounds hissed and fried like bacon in a pan. I yelled and tried to crawl away but the fire stayed on me, burning, stinging…

Schmendrick yipped in alarm and charged toward me. I held up a hand, stopping her. "No, stay away sweetie!" She skidded to a halt, ears down, fangs out.

It stopped, finally, leaving me in a crater of torched jungle plants and blackened grass. Embers quickly died in the rain. I still smoked.

Gary had stopped to watch. The blue fire was gone. He went back to work.

Schmendrick, seeing that I was no longer ablaze, crashed into my face, pressing her small skull to my forehead, whining. "Not dead again," she said. "Not fire again."

I stroked her neck. "I'm okay. Stay away, I might burn you, don't get hurt."

Umf umf, she made her distressed noise, and didn't back off until I shakily stood.

I was still smoking, fresh from the flame broiler. I wasn't wounded, exactly. I'd been marked. Tattooed? My skin hissed where rain struck it, which was everywhere. In fact, my cheap shirt, bargain cargo shorts and truly ghastly underwear fell to ashes. The shoes too, breaking into chunks with glowing, smoking edges.

I heard a high-pitched scream on the edge of perception. It was Gary. He'd stopped working and vibrated in midair. "Behold these fleshy protrusions that offend the very laws of structural harmony! What crudity of form and function dares profane the sublime design of the universe?"

"Don't overreact or anything, Gary." The rain was helping cool the burns. I was one entire burn, I think, even the aforementioned ghastly protrusions.

"No tail," Schmendrick said. "Bad."

"Funnier that way." I examined the backs of my hands, my belly, legs. There were intricate marks all over me now, geometric patterns and circles. They glowed faintly blue-green.

And they moved. "You guys see this?"

"Unspeakable!" wailed Gary, and fled to the trees.

Schmendrick inspected my hands as I knelt for her. "New," she said. Then she said a string of things in her language, and I didn't understand, so she said: "Marcas mágicas."

The markings crawled over my skin, forming new designs, breaking apart into circles and spirals, intricate triangles and fractal paisleys. Constantly zipping and swirling, constantly glowing. I'd been marked with moving badges of office.

"Huh," I said. "Radio, why did I get tattooed by animated gifs?"

"The Steward knew he would need to interface with the mechanisms of the Observatory."

Then the Radio had started playing a song, high, sweet feminine voices:

You're outta the woods, you're outta the dark, you're outta the night

Step into the sun, step into the light…

The Observatory now had an open door, through which golden light flowed, and a new stone ramp that had risen from the jungle floor.

"I'm not ready for that," I said. I still stung and burned. The rain was still cooling me and it helped. I grabbed the shovel. "Gary, come back here, we ain't done. Tell your dudes to take cover in there. Schmendrick–

But Schmendrick was already herding her pack up the stairs. "Safe?" She called.

"Yeah. Please find me a pair of pants if you can, Schmendrick. Radio, I don't know what's in there, but make sure none of it hurts the guys, please."

"The Steward, in his wisdom, has declared that none shall lay hand or harm upon those whom he has welcomed into the embrace of this hallowed place."

"What word 'pants'?" Schemdrick called.

"Don't worry about it, just get in there and take care of your crew. Gary, I'm getting tired, let's finish up."

The rest of the Gardeners were trooping into the Observatory. They bumped the archway and ceiling, because they were so wide, but they made it through. Good, one less thing.

Gary was still out here, though, floating over in the trees. "You disgust me," he said.

"So we're done?"

"No!" He got back to work, and so did I. The rain eventually stopped, and my burns finally stopped stinging. I went into the Observatory.

It was full of interesting things. Useful things.

I had useful things. I had friends.

Doctor Harrigan would hear from us.

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