"Once you'd resolved to go, there was nothing to it at all." ― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

I shifted my focus to the Redcrest village (as I'd already begun to think of it) to find a bit more activity than I'd expected. Apparently, Orentha had received communication somehow in the wee hours of the night that the main body of the tribe had made better time than expected (or perhaps had been pushed harder than expected by their enemies) and should be expected to arrive in the late afternoon, with the stragglers and rearguard turning up by the late evening. As such, the ones currently present were in a bit of a dither – anxious to make the space ready for their kin, but largely without substantive tasks available to take up their nervous energy.

It had, in fact, begun to devolve into anxiety-driven debates about what to do before Glynesha made some executive decisions about how best to keep her subordinate elders occupied in the meantime.

"Brendasz, take Ramosz, Janetha, and Maritsha up to the orchard area and gather whatever fruits and nuts are ripe. Tomasz, Luitza, and Sheytha, I'm going to task you with some local scouting for game and/or fish. Don't go far and don't go more than 100 feet above local ground level. I doubt there's anything that flies that's dangerous, other than the dragon, but you don't want to annoy her, I promise you. The rest of us will work in the village prepping meals, medicine and bandages, and sleeping places – it's a tiring trip for anybody, but it will be particularly hard for the oldsters and the children. I'm sure they rested up before this final push, but the vertical climb means they're all going to be exhausted when they get here. In fact, Maritsha and Benetha, I'm going to change my mind and ask that you find a lookout point lower on the sky island to watch for our kin and help any that are struggling to make the last leg."

A few of them looked like they wanted to argue, but in the end, none of them did, and the Redcrests split up to complete their assigned tasks. I wasn't entirely clear on the logic, but it wasn't a simple breakdown where the younger ones got the more physically demanding tasks. I suspected it had more to do with existing associations and preexisting specialties, frankly.

Once the group had split up, Glynesha and Orentha turned their attention to me, briefly.

"Good morning, Vay. I'm assuming you heard the news that we're expecting our tribe to arrive today?" Glynesha began.

**I did, indeed. I'll try to be on hand for that to help where needed, though that means I'll probably devote the morning to other tasks.**

"Fair enough. And again, we do appreciate the help. I'm concerned that they're here this soon, though. It likely means they were being pressured harder than expected, as they must have left our final aerie before the scouts were even back to them. Admittedly, moving in the direction of the sky island would be fairly simple, but that wasn't the original plan. Orentha only received a very brief contact from Kragosh, but I'm hoping that we didn't lose anyone else. It has us all on edge, as I expect you saw."

**Well, we should find out soon enough, one way or the other, and your main struggle will be over. It'll just be a matter of settling in and finding your equilibrium here.**

"Yes, that's true." Glynesha flared her crest in agitation, before it collapsed. "I just hope that I can convince the more militant sorts that a clean break is required; we don't need anyone sneaking off on revenge raids and leading them here..."

**That IS a concern. How likely do you think that might be? I doubt Mayphesselth would look kindly on you raiding from the island without her direct sanction.**

"I don't know really. A lot depends on what's happened since I left the tribe. IF the departure wasn't too traumatic, I'd expect the idea to be floated but easily squashed. If something truly upsetting happened, it will be harder to quell the more volatile sorts. It's been hard on everyone but some of us are basically traumatized at this point." She sighed heavily. "I really don't want to threaten people with the dragon on top of that, but it may need to be raised as at least a background concern."

From there, discussion turned briefly towards issues of local resource availability (focused mostly on game animals in my domain and ones spotted by the Hawk-Eagle in its explorations), before I turned my attention to Hakdrilda and her ongoing experiments.

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

Hakdrilda was pleased to feel my attention as she completed her own breakfast, which I had supplemented with some fresh fruit and black tea. That eager response was dialed back a notch, though, as I used the logbook to inform her that the Redcrests were arriving in the afternoon, a bit ahead of schedule and that I'd be busy with them – possibly for a day or two.

"Meaning no ill will towards them, but that is inconvenient." She crammed the rest of her breakfast into her mouth, chewing hastily while moving towards the test chamber. "Best we get as much done as we can, before then, if you're willing."

Heaving my own mental sigh as I conceded I wasn't getting back to the gnomish city until at least the wee hours of the night, I flashed her a green light, and I settled in to watch her fiddle with her instruments before assisting with her tasks. I had a suspicion she was hoping to do enough test runs that she could spend the rest of the day crunching some numbers, calibrating her sensors, and drawing some preliminary analyses of how dungeon creation functioned in terms of displacement, matter conversion, and mana flow.

"The preliminary data has already been exciting. We've at least conclusively disproved a couple of the wilder theories of how it works. You're fairly clearly NOT connecting to any sort of elemental plane, and the lack of air displacement rules out a couple of other possibilities – you aren't simply dragging things over as complete items from some alternate universe, for instance. Hmm. Unless that's being counterbalanced by something else being swapped into that universe? It's not happening at the point of appearance, at any rate."

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The rather one-sided discussion lapsed at that point into a series of rambling mutters, filled with questions and mild obscenities, as she grappled with some of the theoretical ramifications. From there, we went back to a series of tests, wherein I absorbed some simple items and recreated them as she took measurements of air movements, mana consumption, and even radiation.

She'd be crunching the numbers for some time and interpreting their meaning, but by the time I begged off a few hours later, she was ready to give some preliminary assessments.

"Well, good news, you're not irradiating me every time you convert matter to energy or vice versa. We dwarves have some resistance to elevated radiation levels; I suspect because those who didn't died long ago, but the background radiation level here is essentially zero. I suspect you're passively absorbing a variety of energies along with the ambient mana, because geologically speaking you ought to have a bit of radiation here and you don't.

I still don't understand HOW you're doing it, but if you're losing any energy in the conversion process, it's not leaking out locally unless it's in some form I can't measure. When you remove a stone, either it's going someplace else, which I know you have denied, or you are disassembling it with enviable efficiency, because absolutely nothing seems to be released as radiation or ambient mana, though some small amount might be converted into air, which would be one possible explanation for the lack of atmospheric movement.

When you create things, it also isn't displacing air. That makes sense if the air is being converted into whatever you are making, but you use more mana to create things from empty air than you do when converting from stone or other materials. The process is more mana-efficient the closer the two materials are to each other."

In one interesting experiment, she'd had me simply change the color of a painted wooden block, which had really required just minor changes to the compounds in the paint – in this instance, I'd simply removed some cinnabar from the paint, making it somewhat less toxic (though, as I left the lead that turned the paint white, I still wouldn't give it to babies). The block had become very slightly lighter, which I don't think she'd noticed, but the mana usage was just barely enough to register on her instruments. That left me realizing how easy it would be to poison people by simply converting particulates in the air they were breathing into toxic compounds, but that wasn't something I planned to follow up on. Realistically, that set a rather nasty precedent and one I suspected would be frowned upon by almost everyone. All I needed was to become known as a poisoner's dungeon; that would discourage almost any visitor I'd want to meet, if it didn't get me slated for destruction outright.

It was well into the afternoon hours by that point, and I was beginning to note activity in the Redcrest village. I left Hakdrilda reasonably pleased and with some data to start poring over, and shifted my attention back to the birdfolk, and specifically Orentha. She was a bit distracted, simultaneously finishing up a final set of linen bandages and receiving some sort of mana pulse from the elders set to keep watch. Apparently, the main body of the tribe had come within sighting distance and would presumably be here within the hour.

She fluffed her feathers, distractedly, in what I was coming to interpret as an indicator of nervous energy, and twitched slightly as I finally spoke to her directly.

**I don't mean to interrupt, Orentha, but am I correct that your lookouts have spotted the main body of your people?**

She responded to me silently, apparently feeling no need to loop in the other individual working with her in preparing medical supplies. **Ah, Vay. Yes. The message stone doesn't convey much information, but triggering it was the signal that they were in sight. Unfortunately, there's no more context than that, so we're left wondering how many have made it and what condition they're in. We're all hoping for the best and fearing the worst.**

**That would explain the welcoming committee, then, I suppose.**

The majority of the Redcrests had gathered at the entrance to the village and the dedicated lookout perches were all filled. I considered adding a couple of additional spires but decided that would be an unnecessary distraction for them.

We waited, mostly in silence, for another 15 minutes or so. I didn't bother to bring the Hawk-Eagle over to keep watch, instead relying on the commentary from the Redcrest elders. It was a somewhat painful process, as at first all they could make out were distant specks, and it was a solid 10-minute wait until they started to resolve enough detail to make out the lead individuals, and another 10 beyond that until the full grouping could be seen and the state of the first individuals determined. Frankly, it reminded me of visits to a hawk watch in my old world, watching birds slowly work their way along a ridge line and into effective viewing range. Of course, I didn't have the emotional investment of the elders, and there were brief, but heated, debates over first the exact count (eventually settling on 64) and then the identification of specific individuals as they slowly circled into range. There was very little flapping, and mostly they were flying in tight circles near the cliff face, apparently taking advantage of the updraft caused by the movement of the sky island. I could only guess that they'd used the thermals generated by the afternoon sun to rise up as far as the island in the first place.

It wasn't much longer before the lead individuals were recognizable to all who had gathered, and Lukasz and his compatriots were leading the others. Apparently, they looked exhausted but otherwise uninjured, which was hopeful, and were carrying somewhat larger packs than the elders felt appropriate. Most goods should have been packed into the tribe's few spatial artifacts, but obviously there weren't enough of those to really allow them to bring everything and most of them couldn't hold all that much anyways. One was even carrying what looked to be a small cage, and as they approached it was clear that the small rodents were entirely displeased to be transported in this manner as the high-pitched squealing was incessant.

A few of the smallest children were being carried in slings, and the tail end of the group was made up of a couple of healthy adults shepherding the weakest flyers to make sure none were lost. Those weaker flyers seemed to include a variety of individuals – some quite elderly, a couple of wounded or handicapped individuals, and some children that were too big to carry, but still on the smaller side. The exhaustion in those was even more pronounced, and it was only exhortations from the leaders that seemed to keep them moving. Promises of hot meals and warm beds carried over the decreasing distance, and the elders seemed pleased that they would be able to fulfill those promises immediately.

A couple of the younger elders, in fact, could wait no longer and dropped off the cliff face to rejoin their families and assist in carrying packs and encouraging the stragglers. The reunions were mostly very touching, though there were a few individuals still missing, and they were asked after with bated breath.

The planned retreat had been largely successful but had not come without cost. The rear guard should be arriving in a matter of hours, but it was already known that several of the remaining warriors had fallen in the fighting retreat. They didn't know who, exactly, had been lost, but some of the children had lost at least one parent, and the final battle to protect the departing tribe had been bloody and still ongoing before this group had made sufficient distance to break contact.

And so, it was with a sense of relief and the beginnings of survivor's guilt that the elders led their kin to the prepared food – focused around a spit-roasted elk – and explained to them the arrangements that had been made for them to rest and recover. They'd broken out skins of their own alcohol, and once the children had been settled into bedrolls, toasted the lost with small cups of some highly herbal spirit and larger cups of a fermented goat's milk, with enough spilling that I received the blueprints. It was a largely subdued affair, though, as the uncertainty over their remaining defenders hung heavily over the evening. They were already a bit later than expected.

Blueprint received: Gentian Schnapps

Blueprint received: Goat Milk Kumiss

I left them shortly thereafter, promising to visit in the morning, and shifting my focus back to the gnomish city and my explorations.

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