"In November, some birds move away and some birds stay. The air is full of good-byes and well-wishes. The birds who are leaving look very serious. No silly spring chirping now. They have long journeys and must watch where they are going. The staying birds are serious, too, for cold times lie ahead. Hard times. All berries will be treasures." ― Cynthia Rylant, In November

Returning to the task of finishing up the second floor, there wasn't a whole lot that remained to be done, though, I'm hopeful that I'll be adjusting things as time goes on to better fit my historical theme. Obviously, it would help if I had a greater range of resources as well as some basic historical knowledge of the Aubesan Empire. There were passing references in some of the books I'd been provided, but they mostly focused on clashes between Zaipruniel and Aubesan, and offered little insight into the actual material culture and economic structure of the Empire. There were some interesting comments about the reliance of the Empire on cavalry units, and some mention of conflicts over the cutting of trees to expand pastureland, but nothing I could really use directly.

Dismissing thoughts of strict historical accuracy, I went back to the basic patterns I'd been establishing - focusing this floor on skeletons in crafting areas with a smattering of non-lethal traps. In the potter's shop, I'd included three lesser skeletons as a potter and two assistants or apprentices; I was having a hard time figuring out an appropriate set of weapons for them, though, as potters didn't traditionally have much in the way of tools that doubled as weapons. They each had a small belt knife, just as a matter of course, and I set out a small container of fine grit temper that could be thrown into the faces of attackers – the powdered glass frit was potentially a nasty surprise. The skeletons each wore a lightweight leather apron as protective wear. Otherwise, an array of heavy earthenware pottery could be used as projectiles, but this should be a comparatively easy fight.

That was fine, though, as the rewards were also fairly modest. There were a few nice majolica vessels, but in terms of readily portable wealth, there were a few copper coins each for the apprentice skeletons and a very thin gold chain and a couple silver coins on the head potter. I'd also tucked away a small statuette of Shyraya in an alcove on the wall; the Aubesan goddess of the hearth seemed appropriate near the kiln and she was finely detailed and brightly glazed with a benevolent expression. I wasn't sure if that would count as loot, but I thought someone might appreciate the craftsmanship. I considered adding a trap involving smashing pottery, but given the hot wax trap elsewhere, I didn't want to be dropping things on adventurers' heads here too. Instead, I indulged in a cheesy pun, polishing a section of the granite flagstones to an impressively smooth finish and arranging for a variety of brightly colored, viscous slips to coat them when triggered by the head potter skeleton.

Blueprint Received: Manually Triggered "Slip and Fall" Trap

Once again, it shouldn't be fatal unless they fell exactly wrong, but during a clash with the skeletons it could be a significant hazard – as well as amusing to watch. I'm not sure how much the adventurers would appreciate my sense of humor, but it was more for my entertainment than their own.

The carpentry and stonecutters' shops were fairly similar, with three skeletons each – in this case armed with hammers of one sort or another – wooden mallets for the carpenters and iron sledges for the masons. They each had a little more money than the potters, but only marginally. I tried to diversify the traps, at least. The carpenters had a trap door built into the floor – it wasn't that deep, dropping them into a small cellar lined with curing wood, but it did automatically swing shut leaving the victim alone in the dark until they could locate the trigger to reopen the door and potentially dividing the party. I made it to be a somewhat faulty spring-loaded latch that would trigger if the weight on the door topped 60 kg (which the skeletons didn't normally reach).

Blueprint Received: Simple Trapdoor

I felt as though I might be overdoing it on the theme traps, and I decided not to include one in the stonecutters' shop. That said, there wasn't any reason to let the adventurers relax, and I spent some time adding some stone spikes to the ceiling and walls flanking the doorway from the carpenters' shop, as well as adding suspicious looking holes in the ceiling and along the far wall. I figured that would give them pause and slow up whatever advances they were making, buying time for me to decide on a response.

Blueprint Received: Dummy Spike Trap

Getting that far took me well into the evening, and I decided to break from my construction tasks to digest a bit more in the way of the books I'd been provided and see if anything gave me inspiration as to my divine function. I didn't have much luck with that, though I did learn a good bit and advanced my lore at all three levels by a small amount. Neither the Gods of the Aubesan Empire or the Survey of Divinities included any dwarven deities with an appropriate affinity. Similarly, none of the books I was given included much information about mana gathering arrays; if anyone had found them on some of the other sky islands, it hadn't been reported to the authors of any of the books I had available. That tended to suggest that they weren't going to be visible on the surface. Either they were subterranean or they were unobtrusive in some fashion, or both. For all I knew, they could be invisible or just small enough to be the work of gnomish mages. I'd assumed finding them wasn't going to be easy, but this research had only generated negative evidence to suggest it might be harder than I was hoping. There were passing references to mana gathering arrays in some of the books Hakdrilda had brought, but few details were provided and I wasn't sure how similar those would be to the ones I was now going to have to find.

*********************************

I was back at work on the second floor early the next day. By this point, mostly all that was left for the second floor was to decide exactly where I wanted to move my core and how I wanted to defend it. The rules laid down by the God of All Dungeons mandated that it had to be accessible to normal adventurers, though not necessarily easily or directly. That meant that I couldn't just shut myself in my little secret library and circulate mana from the current vents – I'd need an actual door (though a hidden one was fine).

I did still want it to be fairly central, but at the same time, I didn't want it to be accessible directly from the entrance to the first floor. That left me with somewhat limited options. Either I needed some rearranging of my rooms, which was something I didn't have the time or mana for, or I needed to make some compromises. Probably the simplest way to leave it central but not connected to the carpenters' shop was to connect it with the farrier's shop instead. If I made the secret door effectively, it would probably work, since there wasn't anything about the farrier's shop to suggest it held any particular importance – it was, frankly, a bit peripheral in terms of the natural flow of the floor and could potentially be skipped entirely. Of course, adventurers with the correct skills would likely be able to find me, but I could make it tricky. I assumed skills existed to enable them to find secret rooms (among rogues, at least) or to track mana densities (among mages) and it was entirely possible other skills could perform similar functions (divination, for instance), so a layered defense still seemed called for.

I started by simply building out the library a bit farther, expanding the space until it filled most of the available room between the carpenters' shop and the farrier's. I filled that space with floor to ceiling bookshelves that were, sadly, still mostly empty with a bare oak table, and four chairs in the center. I connected the room, at that point, with the farrier's shop, with the entrance directly across from the forge with the narrow door disguised as one of several panels of sheet stone. That particular panel was capable of dropping smoothly into the floor but triggering that effect required the location of three separate pressure plates – one just on the inside of the forge's chimney, one on the ground between the anvil and the wall, and a third behind a hanging set of tongs one panel over. They didn't have to be pressed all at once, or in any particular order, but would each reset in the space of a minute or so to provide a time limit.

Blueprint Received: Vertically Sliding Panel Door

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Back within the newly expanded library, I spent some time hollowing out a space for my core in the floor below the table covered by a simple yet sturdy false flagstone. I spent some time building up a decoy core out of cobalt glass around a mana light – then I hid that too.

Here I leaned into some classic tropes for secrets in libraries by building triggers into some specific books – in this case, the two books of rules offered by the adventurers' guild and the one on divine dungeons to drive home the message that messing with the core was a bad idea. The removal of those three books would open a secret compartment in the base of a currently empty bookcase near the entrance to the room where the decoy was placed. Removal or destruction of the fake core would cause the room to reseal itself and, rather flashily, drop a large block of granite into the space before the entrance where the offender would likely be standing. Arcane boltcasters would fire down each of the lanes between shelves next.

As a final, more subtle defense, once the room resealed it would be quietly flooded with Argon gas through dozens of small vents in the ceiling, floor, and walls, which would, hopefully, smother any adventurer in the room while they were otherwise distracted. I was hoping it worked the same way in this world, where the gasping reaction to smothering actually came from high CO2 concentrations, rather than the lack of oxygen. The vents also helped to disguise some additional vents which connected to my concealed space and that would help in the circulation of mana. Hopefully, mana density in the core room in general would help conceal my specific location. I sort of assumed that anyone who found their way to this room had some way of detecting the manual triggers, so I left the core space itself untrapped, just hidden.

That all seemed like overkill, really, but my dungeon instincts screamed that there was no such thing. Otherwise, I'd just kind of gotten into the challenge and was enjoying the ridiculousness of the whole thing. As an afterthought, I'd also thickened the wall between the new core/library and the carpenter's shop; now if they wanted a direct approach from the second-floor entrance, they'd need to both detect me and be ready to carve through over a meter of reinforced granite.

Blueprint Received: Decoy Core

Blueprint Received: Arcane Boltcaster Trap

Blueprint Received: Ig-Noble Gas Trap

Quest Complete: Complete 10 Rooms on Level 2; Reward: Flying Fish Blueprint, Explosive Bladder Wort Blueprint, Ring of Featherfall Blueprint

Quest Reissued: Complete 12 Rooms on Level 3; Reward: T3 Creature Blueprint, T2 Fungi Blueprint, Magic Item Blueprint

Frankly, I wasn't sure why that quest hadn't completed sooner. My best guess is that I hadn't necessarily considered the rooms completed until just now, but that was just a guess.

In any event, I held off on actually making the move for the moment. I wasn't sure how long it would take or whether it would be disruptive to the other tasks I had coming, but I figured I could try it in the dark of night when likely it would go unnoticed by Hakdrilda. I had no particular reason to let her know I was making that switch, after all, though I assume it would throw off her readings of the mana flow. For that matter, it might set off some sort of alarm, if she was paranoid enough to plan for that sort of thing.

All that had taken me the better part of the morning and the afternoon, and while Hakdrilda had tried to get my attention for more experiments briefly after lunch, I had put her off with a semi-apologetic note in the logbook.

I was just putting the finishing touches on the core room when the Hawk-Eagle sent word that a party of birdfolk was rapidly approaching my domain from below. It wasn't the full tribe, by any means, but looked more like a vanguard part of a dozen or so mixed adults and older individuals, judging by variations in size, movement patterns, and brightness of plumage. Lukash did appear to be heading the flight, even if he was apparently deferring to a couple of older individuals in the center of the group (flock?).

As they approached to within a kilometer or so, I lit up a ring of larger mana lights around the entrance to their intended living space. I wasn't sure how good their vision was, but I assumed the lights would draw their attention as they approached, and there didn't seem to be any particular reason to have them report into the main dungeon or land on the surface first.

It wasn't long before the lights were noticed, and that sparked a brief but agitated discussion amongst the Redcrests, who nonetheless shifted course slightly in response to the cue. Lukash aside, I didn't think the other members of the tribe were particularly confident in my trustworthiness, but they had been briefed on the negotiations and were resigned to the necessity. Within a few minutes, the flock was pulling up onto the external watchposts and catching their breath. It was clearly a somewhat strenuous flight, and harder for some of the older individuals, even if they'd been able to draft along behind their younger compatriots. Even so, it was only a minute or two later when Lukash and two of the older Redcrests descended to the floor of the main space, standing composedly a few meters to the left of where the pool sent a slow trail of water spraying out off the side of the sky island.

Lukash stepped forward, and in the somewhat portentous mode of young people aware that a big step is being taken, called out. "Dungeon Sylvanus! As promised, the first party of my people, the Redcrest Avians, have arrived to help establish a living space and to negotiate with yourself and the dragon, Mayphesselth. With me are the Matriarch of my people, Glynesha Firmclaw, and our Shaman, Orentha."

He gestured broadly at the two females standing to either side of him, heads cocked in a manner that suggested vague irritation at his oratory style. The shaman, in particular, looked to be older, with vaguely faded plumage and a stiffness to her movements that often comes with age. She sighed and stepped forward, **I'm currently the only member of the tribe with telepathy, so I'll be handling most of our communications with you. Glynesha is the one with the ability to make decisions on behalf of the whole tribe – along with her partner, Kragosh, once he arrives. Lukash is a good lad, but not really needed for this conversation.**

**I understand. You all look rather tired, so why don't you have everyone come in for the quick tour, and then we'll deal with any immediate concerns. If you want, feel free to have a couple of your people keep watch from their current positions, but it should be safe enough. My creatures won't bother you, and if the dragon decides to make trouble for you, a couple minutes notice isn't going to make a difference.**

Orentha nodded ruefully and passed my words along. "I'll be mostly speaking aloud, so Glynesha can be an active part of the conversation, and I'll pass along your words to her as needed – but if we could find a place to settle, that would be ideal. We are all tired, and us old folk, even more so. Lukash – the dungeon says you should bring everyone in and help them set up. The place is much more prepared for us than we had any reason to hope. Thank you for that," she said, glancing around as Lukash retreated to the larger group with the news.

**Ah, my core is a good distance from here, if that's what you're looking for. But you can speak anywhere in this space and I'll hear you. I won't always be paying attention, but if you call my name I'll try to focus on you. I tried to anticipate your likely needs from what Lukash was telling me, but we didn't have long to chat, and – forgive me – he didn't seem all that prepared to discuss your domestic requirements.**

Orentha snorted, saying aloud for Glynesha's benefit. "He says he won't always be listening but if we call his name anywhere in this space he'll try to focus on us. He also says that Lukash didn't really give him the best sense of our 'domestic requirements'. Young warriors can be a bit oblivious to that sort of thing, as you know."

Glynesha chuckled tiredly. "Well, it looks like he did well enough by us. These buildings aren't exactly what we'd have built for ourselves, but they're not too far off, and they're much better than we were expecting to find. So, thank you for that too."

**I'm afraid they're mostly unfurnished as yet, as I wasn't sure what you'd want or need in terms of chairs and beds, and such. But if you can give me a sense of your needs, I can work on those next. We'll need to contact the dragon tomorrow, but I'm hopeful she'll wait until the morning – or at least contact me telepathically before speaking with you. I suppose the critical thing is to know when the rest of your tribe is to be expected.**

Orentha nodded, and after a brief exchange, Glynesha responded, "I could use a night's sleep before negotiating with a dragon, of all things, but we're at her disposal – in an unfortunately literal sense. I expect the children and most of the remaining adults in about six days, with some of us heading back tomorrow morning to lead and help carry, and if all goes to plan, Skyfather willing, Kragosh and our last few warriors will appear a day or two after that."

The next couple of hours involved further introductions, a tour of the space provided, and some simple addition of raised platforms for their bedding to most of the residential structures, and a restrained meal from ingredients they had brought themselves unpacked from a half dozen or so minor magical storage items – nothing that held much, but apparently all that the tribe had available and intended to be sent back with the guides for more.

Most of them fell into their beds shortly thereafter, exhausted, though Glynesha and Orentha chatted with me for another hour or so about ideas for additions before I sent them to bed as their energy flagged.

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