So it went. I ended up constructing a lake to hold water overflow and then having to dig tunnels when I accidentally flooded that, but after a lot of trial and error - mostly error - I had a nice large chamber with a grass-banked lake and flowing water. Landscaping had not been a hobby of mine previously, but now that I was the landscape it was a little more interesting. Especially since, after almost a whole month, I was sure Shayma wasn’t coming back.

Unfortunately someone else did come.

Out of a clear and quiet day there was a sudden flare of raging flames. The trees and shrubs that shrouded my door crisped and charred, scouring away everything but the bare earth. Even the door complained at the heat, though fortunately my external eyes survived so I could see a man descending from the sky on a pillar of flame. He was hard-featured and hard-eyed, dressed in crimson leathers and crimson boots.

It also didn’t take him very long to find the door. He was consulting a crystal cube that looked very much like the hunter crystal I’d taken from the first set of four, and it seemed to point right at the camouflaged rock. The man didn’t take pains to verify that, simply lifting his hand and sending a lance of liquid flame at it. Which melted right through and hurt like hell as it did.

I was still reeling from that as he stepped through and the overlay informed me who it was.

Astair Gren. Level 22 Flame Knight.

Skills: Fire Control Level 10

Flame Lance level 8

Fireflight level 7

Flame knight. Check. And whether it was [Wisdom] or plain logic I knew exactly what he was looking for. The metal cube I had sitting on a shelf.

Now, it would be easy to just let him have it. This Astair would just take it and be on his way...probably. Stone didn’t burn all that easily, even though clearly he could burn it. But I didn’t want to. He seemed kind of a jerk, and I had promised to hold onto it, at least by implication.

So the first thing I did was pull it off the shelves and put it down in the furthest place away from the entrance I had. The metal clanged off the stone as I spat it out in the under-tunnels, but it was entirely unmarked.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I thought this was supposed to work, dammit!” Astair grumbled at his crystal as the arrow floating within it changed directions. He flicked his fingers and sparks of flame flew out into the tunnels ahead of him, illuminating, I knew, not much of anything. Long tunnels and large empty rooms. I’d kept the important stuff, the lake, the farms, and of course the crystal, all separated. If he knew exactly where things adjoined it wouldn’t be too hard to blast through into them, but if he followed the compass arrow he’d just have a long walk down.

Which was good, because it’d give me time to figure out what to do.

I had access to oversized, “large” stone traps now, but I doubted they’d do much against someone who was properly armored and could blast through five-inch-thick stone besides. He was also twitchily aware, most of his movement smooth and graceful but the occasional jerk of his head as he reacted to a faint noise of dripping water or something else was superhuman.

So I had to consider other options, and I had to do it quickly, since changing dungeon structure was a lot slower than setting off traps. Fortunately now that he was past the entryway, he wasn’t trying to burn through things so long as there was a passage in the direction of his compass. So I opened all the doors and rerouted a few hallways to keep him happy.

The answer seemed obvious as he went lower and lower. I changed out components as quickly as I could, since even if he could hear the process he wouldn’t know exactly what it was. At the very bottom of the tunnels, he spotted the metal cube and quickened his pace, stooping down to pick it up.

And that’s when I opened the doors to drain the lake.

Even though I had nothing to fear from it, it was still daunting watching however many thousands of gallons of water roar through hallways, and hear the hissing of air as it escaped through smaller ventilation shafts. Astair’s head snapped around and he started to run back along the hall, flames igniting at his feet to send him sailing through the air, but unfortunately he was headed directly at the incoming deluge.

I was actually a little astounded by how badly Astair was outmatched. His firepower was impressive, so I thought this had at best a fifty percent chance of working. But his attempts to stop the wall of water with fire didn’t even have time to generate steam before it smashed him out of the air. And into the wall, and another wall. I couldn’t even keep track after that, but it didn’t matter to the overlay.

Astair Gren killed. 37,450 Experience Gained.

It seemed physics was stronger than magic. Or his magic, anyway. Fire was generally weak to water, and if Astair had been aligned to a different element, I wouldn’t have been nearly so lucky. As it was, I had a hell of a mess to clean up and a warning that I had to be more ready for intruders in the future. Somehow.

It took some time to get things sorted. The lake refilled, Astair’s possessions removed and put on the shelves.

Flame-Touched Red Leather Tunic

Flame-Touched Red Leather Hose

Flame-Touched Red Leather Boots

Perfected Tracking Crystal (Relics of the Third Age)

Badge of the Flame Knights

The incineration of the surrounding brush had actually given me a bit of a view, too. The landscape continued to slope downward from the steep sides of the mountains, and far below I could see a winding ribbon of blue with the faint specks of boats moving along it. So I wasn’t actually terribly far from civilization. Well, for people who could ride or fly. For sedentary life forms such as myself it was an extraordinary distance.