The next morning, Sonya was restless for the first time in forever. She couldn't stay in bed. She just felt warm to the touch and Anthony made the executive decision to strongly request that she not take the guys out for another salvage run that day.

She tried to protest but he saw that she needed the time off. Ever since the goats appeared in force, she and Sophie had been working daily as a trying to make up for all the time they spent traveling where they had little going on. Anthony told her that it was her decision, but she needed to hear it from somebody else as well. She hated when she had to slow down, but hated it more when she had to hear it from herself.

That internal validation that perhaps it was time for them to take a little vacation was enough for her. Of course, this meant that she was free to hang around all day. This meant that she was finally helping out with the airship again.

As she got closer, the yelling intensified.

Bob wasn't in charge of the airship project but he was definitely one of the louder workers. Most of what they needed Sonya to do was to shore up the internals of the boat so that would actually not compartment when they picked it up and flew away with it. Her patron, Cara was the god of overland travel and thus made her uniquely suited for the task. Who else would know how to fix a wagon?

"You see Miss Sonya," Andrew said. "It's designed to float. It's not designed to be picked up and flown. This means that no one thought about placing supports for pulling it up into the air."

The foreman of the airship project who hadn't even heard of airships before he had been transported to this world was a dwarf named Andrew. Though they had spent all of their time inside of the land formally controlled by a Dwarven Kingdom, he was not a part of it.

Their adjutant, a female dwarf named Valerie was the only caravan member to have been from this Kingdom. She was Anthony's second in so many things because of her ability to analyze and synthesize many questions about the brutality of logistics and war.

Between the two dwarves, they had the ability to conjure up a blueprint of the thing that they were trying to make. Valerie had the imagery skills and Andrew had the technical knowledge from his artificer class. Together, they tweaked the designs daily based on their testing. At the moment, Andrew was trying to explain the need for what looked like a net that was going to go around the airship.

"Have you seen this? It's going to need to be reinforced with something strong. Like iron," he said.

"This look I believe what you're saying is true. It doesn't mean that I understand what you're doing. But also, even more iron? We can get more iron. I think I need to start bringing like a hand cart or something like that with us because we should be able to get some iron from those," Sonya said.

Sonya and the two dwarves looked over to the once bustling city. Part of her team's job was to start clearing out the rest of the city, but since things had reached in equilibrium recently, the entirety of the Caravan had asked them to hold off.

There were probably at least five to ten thousand zombies left in there, but they were contained on one side by a wall and on two other sides by a canal and the quiet sea itself. They were not smart enough on their own to figure out a way to cross the man-made canal.

And if they were? Then the Caravan would be having bigger problems.

Thus far, any intelligent zombies that they had encountered were part of a cohort of an Army of the dead. Those few super intelligent death knights were the opposite of each of the chosen warriors. At least that was what the locals had told them. There were so few of those left that there was no way to fact check it.

According to Valerie, in times of great need, the gods would summon chosen from other worlds who would then come in and take care of things on the planet for them.

Of course, what she also said was that they had never never summoned more than two at a time. At least according to the official histories.

Sonya's group had at least fourteen chosen.

Their enemies, who everyone had dubbed the death knights, were believed to be chosen that had turned and been absorbed into the undead.

Thus far they had killed two.

One of the only pressing things that got them moving on was the sheer number of enemies. That and the idiocy of just settling down in an area when they could just keep running away from the zombies and take pot shots kiting them the whole time.

The caravan had never lost a chosen.

"I'm so glad that the two of you are finally a team," Sonya said to the two dwarves. "I was hoping that there would be some dwarven solidarity there. Plus we have this whole existential crisis that we're fighting against right now."

The bearded dwarf slapped her on the back.

"Of course we're a team, lass," Andrew said. "We dwarves have teamwork in our bones. Now, these Irumian dwarves, we are very similar and I appreciate that."

"What my newest friend here is trying to say is that Dwarven culture seems to be very close between our two worlds. And did you know what? Only so many Dwarven girls are born for boys in his world? It's like two boys for every one girl is born which is crazy," Valerie said.

"You know what is actually crazy? Is girls being born of the same rate as boys and how that would create a society where girls are less valued," Andrew retorted.

Sonya held up both hands. They might work together well, but they fought like school buddies.

"You're saying that male dwarves are born at twice the rate of female drawer dwarves on your world? How does that what? What is even the mechanism of that? I think I need to call Anthony and have him tell me about what the heck's going on because that seems ridiculous."

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Andrew pulled on his short beard, clearly thinking that there was more there.

"No lass. This is my point. Boys and girls being born in equal measure. That's so-"

"Normal?" Asked Valerie.

"We're not going to find what what is normal by comparing our three worlds. We are here on Novaria. Valerie has an equal chance of having a boy dwarf or a girl dwarf if she ever decides to get pregnant. Which is her choice."

Sonya left out the part about how they were going to have to repopulate the dorm continent if they ever wanted to do something with it. But that wasn't her problem. Her problem was all the undead doors that were in between her self in a long rest in an idyllic fantasy town.

There was no other retirement plan for them. They couldn't die in this fight otherwise they would probably turn into other death knights, starting up even more the conflict that had become their normal.

"I'm way too young to have kids. That's ridiculous. I have my whole life ahead of me," Valerie looked at them quizzically.

"Yes but," Sonya said. "When we're all done with this- how many female dwarves are in the foreign legion that are coming back? Is the military male heavy? Ours were back on earth."

Valerie looked at her for a long time. Sonya got the sense that their issues before were fully coming back up in that moment.

The young dwarf was skeptical of her talk therapy. Sonya had led a talk therapy group for the caravan that was nearly a mandatory attendance thing at the beginning. They had talked through the trauma of almost dying several times, picking the thoughts up and examining them as they tried to adjust to this new life.

"I never really thought about that. A dwarf is a dwarf," Valerie said. "Except that the men have the beards and the women birth the children what else...?"

"On earth, and I know this is going to sound ridiculous here, women are slightly weaker than men."

"You're telling me that the same species views one gender as weaker? Why?"

Sonya shrugged. It hadn't made sense to her before, and it made even less sense where they were. When everyone had magical card powers, these things were far more muted. No one would think any less of her because she was a woman. In fact they respected her for all of the things that she did for the caravan.

"You know what it is? It's just generations of propaganda designed to quote unquote keep women in their place really. I should hope that that kind of thing doesn't take root here. Everyone from my group seems pretty nice at least."

Valerie changed the image of the airship rotating it around in three dimensions.

"That is new," Sonya said. "Damn."

"One of the humans- I think it was Anthony- told me about it. He was hoping that I could use it to look inside of people? Is that something that you did without the aid of magic?"

"I mean-we have imaging technology," Sonya said. "It's just something that you get used to. Like if I was pregnant they could tell approximately how big the child was inside of me. Then they could determine when it was due to arrive. Anthony really knows his stuff on that. You can even determine the gender of the baby in advance."

She sighed heavily.

"Uh, what is it?"

"I just realized that I'm probably never going to see a gender reveal part here," she said. "I'm not a fan of them anyway but... it's the little things."

"A gender reveal party? What like at the birth?" Valerie gagged.

"Well if you can see the fetus, then you can determine if it is a boy or a girl."

"That just seems unnecessary," Valerie said.

"Yeah and they also kill lots of people," Sonya said, leaving a bewildered Valerie behind as she went to inspect more of Andrews work.

She knew that the girl was going to follow her, she was just waiting for the outburst.

"Gender reveal parties kill people?" Valerie whispered. "Tell me that is just a human thing please because that sounds so ridiculous."

"Ask Anthony and see what his face does when you tell him."

The dwarf looked up to her, the light in her eyes a shade of uncertainty. Then she turned and ran off to where Anthony and Andrew were talking about something.

Valerie didn't have the rizz to support this entire enterprise but true to form she was asking Anthony something. From the gestures it looked like he was getting the joke and it was about to play along. It was the best thing that she could hope for. At the very least, if there were any friends then they would have to have some inside jokes at this was a good time for them to start.

Then all three of them try to stare here. It was not her preferred way to get noticed. She bowed to say thank you.

Hopefully the dynamic would now be a more friendly one because she'd heard a lot about the female dwarfs proclivities towards reading romance novels and she hadn't found a good one in forever, either. The dwarves were hiding them really well or they just decided that they weren't going to pass them over to the humans.

Sonya wanted her bodice riffing smut books. Even if they were very bearded. She was wheeling and dealing to get them into her good graces. It was all in the name of establishing a good rapport with the dwarves.

Of course that all hinged on them being able to take a joke. It's only the realized with a shock that she could have committed a social faux pas. She was resolved to buy them both expensive dinner she could get. Or rather, she might acquire the most expensive dinner.

Unfortunately for her most of the food that the the door was kept in stock was locked up or inaccessible. With the addition of the winter now in full effect, this meant that it was more than a little difficult to find what she wanted.

They had traveled so far south that the winter was mild where they were, but her quick shots through the gate back and forth clearly showed the difference. Just the temperature change between the two places was enough to make her stitch together an extra cloak or two for her scouting expeditions.

Valerie returned.

"Anthony said that there was some sort of wildfire that followed a gender reveal party that killed lots of people. And yeah humans are ridiculous. You killed people just to announce the gender of a baby that hasn't been born yet? Do you realize how insane that sounds?" She said, crossing her arms together.

"I am on your side here," She said. "I never had kids and I cringed whenever someone had one of these parties. It's just needless."

They sat there for a long minute in companionable silence. Sonya was so happy that they finally got on the spot where Valerie didn't feel like she needed to fill all of the available air with talking. They could just exist there and be two people in a shitty situation. And Valerie was just a little girl who was just doing her best and Sonya just wanted to help her do the best she could.

"Valerie, can I ask you a question?"

"You're asking me one right now," The literal-minded dwarf applied.

"Look I just want to know if you were the one that has squirreled away all over my style's that I had in my secret stash. Because they're all missing and I only had two or three of them. So no judgment if you did take them. But if you did I would like some of them back and if that is also true then I would love to discuss some of these themes with you."

Valerie, usually a pale white turn bright red at that pronouncement. She looked like she would rather be anywhere else in the world, even inside of a city infested with zombies at the exact moment. So when she realized that she might actually be considering moving to the nearby city with a large zombie problem.

"Look, I understand this is a very personal and I don't want to read your spot. I mean I do. But I would just like to have some of my smut back because this I don't know if you know this but there's not a lot of reading material around here. So it's either listening to the orcs at night while they play some tunes or playing games with you guys. Reading isn't always possible. I'm just looking to read a book or two."

She lives at the part about the libraries of the rich dwarves that had lived in the promontory being raided already. All the women in the Caravan knew what was going on. But they had brought it to Sonya to try and get satisfaction.

"I will consider your offer," Valerie said, quietly.

"See that you do."