“Now that you know we’re going to be spending some more time out here, I want to make it feel like home. Especially if this is going to be one of our forward operating posts,” Sonya said.

The two of them were chattering by the mansion in question. She was shaping part of the over grazed lawn into a raised garden bed. This bed, one of many, had the potential to eventually grow food for the caravan and anyone who was unwise enough to sign up with them.

“The way that you say forward operating post makes me think we are professional organization and not a youth soccer league team,” Anthony said, planting another seedling. “Though this place feels like home. We’ve been here a lot. We’re pretty settled on that one mansion.”

Anthony indicated the mansion on the west side of the promontory.

They had spent a lot of quality time there. Their building had about twenty bedrooms, which meant that it would serve really well for sleeping quarters. It would also serve really well for people that wanted to disappear for an hour or two to get their kinks out.

Sonya eyed the man, wondering if she was going to get the promised back massage tonight.

“I mean, if you want to make it some more personal thing, we could do that. It would be great to hang our stuff up for the night. Think of it, Anthony... our own place,” she said.

“We’ll always have the mansions of the rich dwarves that didn’t make it through the zombie calamity,” He said. “Their loss, our gain.”

“Oh Anthony, you’re such a romantic,” she said sarcastically, completely meaning it.

Sonya regarded the mansion. It was sufficient. It had a kitchen. But she would make it so much better.

The only thing that didn’t have was the workshop of the mansion next to it. That workshop was key in their plans because it specifically had the anchor gate she used daily.

“So I’ve been thinking, and just between us, we need to figure out how to bring people on, so we make sure we’re not bringing on assholes,” he said.

“Why would you think we’re going to bring in assholes? Is that something that you think we’re going to do?” She said, stopping her plowing.

“I just think if you tell people they’re going to win the lottery then they join us, then we might not get the most moral characters to come on board. Especially as mercenaries. The legion doesn’t really have a choice. If they want to reclaim their homeland, they have to come with us.”

“There’s always going to be a few rotten apples. What do you want to do to combat that?” She said.

This is the first time that Anthony was picking this up to her, and she was wondering if he had already worked out a plan. It would make sense for him to have something ready to go before he presented it to her and then to the rest of the council.

“It’s about trust, isn’t it?” She said. “We can give people a trial run and put them next to other veterans. If they mess up, no harm, no foul. We send them home.”

It made sense to her. If you were going to get a therapist or a social worker who was going to spend their entire time in session ranting about something, you didn’t need that person. It would be much better to have no person than the wrong person. But this wasn’t residential services. They had to work from what they got because there were no alternatives to the mercenaries that they intended to hire.

“Now that we’ve reached civilization, we can spend some time connecting with the peoples of the other continents. If we can’t find help here, I don’t know,” she said. “I know you don’t want to be called the commander or a captain or something like that, but we need to have ranks. If we start new people at the lowest rank and have their peers recommend them for promotions, this will make you accountable to each other.”

So you looked over her work. Most of the plots were done. It looked strange having raised earth beds without wooden planks around them, but she had hardened the outer edges to make them more like stone. This would hold them. This also meant that around the raised beds that the ground was about as barren as it could be.

She used her hands to rub her head, fending off the headache that she thought would happen with all that mana expenditure. When it didn’t come, she smiled. She hasn’t done so much with mana before, raising large walls and creating mazes in the dirt. But this finesse work of creating small plaque gardens was doing her in. This was the fourth garden around one mansion.

The first three had given her a headache, so she had expected to have to take a rest and then do it again. The finesse and brute force work that she did to raise the dirt towers were like a different class in college. Something may have carried over, but she needed both power and control.

Later, Sophie and Finley would do their best to make the plants grow. It was the least they could do, being druids and all. Of course, they wouldn’t be around for a while.

“What do you think about raising chickens?” She said.

“Here? I mean, it makes sense. I don’t know the first thing about chickens.”

“I think it would be nice.”

“Going from war to raising chickens would be a wonderful change of pace. I think that Bob and Stella might have picked through all the easy targets by now,” Anthony said.

“Do you want to take a break and go see where they’re at?”

He nodded, placing the bag of seed on the ground. She put her arm inside of his as they moved to the edge of the bluffs to look for the pair.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Far below them, there were several dozen zombies milling around. The zombies were trapped between the high walls of the promontory, the tower defense maze, and the city’s outer walls. Of course, they could head straight south into the quiet sea, but that was unlikely.

From their vantage point, they could see Bob and Stella taking turns firing their crossbows and attracting zombies towards their position on an earthen wall.

“I’m so glad those walls have been holding up so well.”

“Were you worried about that? Trust in my work. Tell me I did good.”

“Okay. You did a good job.”

“Now, mean it,” she said, wrapping her arms around his torso.

He gulped.

---

Bob, Mork’s faithful marksman, shot another bolt. It felt good to have a very large supply of crossbow bolts. Previously they had the scrounge of a couple every time they stopped at a town. Now? He could get batches made by the Yellow Tail merchants. This was speeding up both his skill gains, and the kills needed to sanctify the city.

Sanctify.

That was the word that the quest had said. He needed to clear it out for some reward, but there were just so many targets. So he had asked Stella for the assist. Together with several back up goats and the orcs, they had been dispatching zombies by the dozen.

With his summon cutting out the cards, they had only one problem.

That problem was dwarf bodies.

They were clogging up the maze and several times they were getting close to overrunning the initial parts of the maze.

Zombies were bad.

Zombies on top of the maze that was meant to contain them? That was really bad.

In response, they had gotten Sonya to cut out relief points along the sides of the maze and set up wooden planks next to those spots to act as bridges.

They had used the same formation before to great effect.

Now, with a hefty chunk of life and battle experience combined with an industrial base that was hungry to make crossbow bolts, he was ready to get the port city under control.

“Bob, they’re slowing again,” Stella said.

“The lure isn’t working. I can sense a mass of them in the center. Stella, do you think we can steal another ship and then use it from the fire from the canal that splits the city?”

“I thought Anthony had told you that wasn’t a good idea?”

“Well, if we are going to make a fleet of airships, then where else are we going to get the materials? Reduce reuse and recycle, I say!”

“Did you ask Finley about this? You know his plan for, after all this is over, involves some sort of air shipping business?”

Bob finally stopped unloading bolts to look at her.

“They have teleportation and he wants to start an airship business?”

“I mean, it’s a bit romantic, isn’t it? And we had airplanes, but we also still had ships and shipping businesses. It would be a good way to move drugs across borders.”

“Teleportation would be a good way to move drugs across borders. Not that I’m trying to start an intercontinental smuggling ring, of course.”

“Of course, of course,” Stella said. “But if you did, I would be right there with you.”

“That whole thing about the business front. That was real, wasn’t it?”

Stella just smiled.

“Alright, when we rotate back, I’ll ask Anthony about getting a second airship ready. I’m itchy to be back here for good,” he said.

“Ah, don’t you want to spend some time on the beach? I had Brianna get me one of those skimpy numbers and...”

“I can see myself taking some more time off,” he said, his aim wavering. “We should probably call it a day now, anyway.”

---

If one had the time and inclination, one could simply move a house. Simply being the operative word carried a lot of weight in this instance. It certainly wasn’t easy by any means.

Starting with one beam at a time, Sonya and Zan meticulously moved the wooden frame of a building across hundreds of span to begin construction of their Yellow Tail area. Andrew had worked out all the details to make everything just right, and was on hand to direct the movement to the site. They had chosen a spot next to the city, but close enough to walk back and forth easily.

This would give them the autonomy that they needed. Once they could make a stand here, they would be in business. They had worked out a system of transferring goods to the ship and then moving them onto the docks and into their new diplomatic mission. The only thing that was missing in this puzzle was their talk with the chief, whose monster willing expedition had taken an extra two days at least.

“What do you think is holding up the chief?” Sonya said, passing the beam up to Zan.

“Honestly, I think it’s Murphy. I think he followed us all the way here,” Zan said.

“Fucking Murphy again. He always shows up at the worst time.”

“What do you think she is hunting that she had been out for so long?”

“If I said big game, would you believe me?” Sonya said. “Valerie said that they were pretty cagey. Something about not talking about the hunt.”

“Schrodinger’s Hunt, eh?”

A loud trumpeting sound rang out, echoing three times from far off. Then the from somewhere in the city, there was a corresponding ring.

“We’ll see pretty soon, I gather.”

---

Tumble and Fen ran through the jungle. Their only recourse was to get her. They ran as if their legs were on fire. The regular hunting grounds weren’t that far away from the tribe proper. But it wasn’t like they would just come back and sleep inside of the drive. Not when the chief was hunting. Such a big game. They would follow the game around and try to find the best time to take it down. It was The Honorable way.

Having to tell the chief about their dishonorable activities, having nothing to show for it, stung. Almost as much as being held by the Guard. The guard couldn’t hold them. Or they wouldn’t. Their crimes did not rise to that level. And they had a powerful Backer that would be home soon. But they needed to get to her first before things got a lot worse.

Bad news. Never got better with time. And they were sure that the humans were going to complain about what they had done.

Once they found out that someone had played a terrible prank on them and that the guard knew, they didn’t really have a decision to make. The guard had already decided for them. They had to get it out ahead of the narrative, and that meant getting out to the hunting grounds.

They skipped around, running in between the trees.

By the end of the first day, they were within the distance that they needed to be. That was the first time that they slowed down. By the dawn of the second day, they had made contact.

Both legit vocally prostrate before her as they attempted to explain the situation to her amused face. Fen went a little off of board in his description of the monster that they found, but it was all good. Tumble didn’t particularly need to explain himself. But someone compelled him to.

“So, what you’re telling me is that you both decided on your own to swim out to a brand new boat, and that boat just so happened to be part of a diplomatic mission?” She said.

“Yes, chief,” they said.

“And you realize that this foot’s been a mind here and that I’m going to have to speak with these people, correct?”

“Yes, chief!” They said.

The large female lizard in front of them shuddered. She held her heads in our hands.

“I know that you’re both smart. But this was just a very low reward, high-risk situation. I expect better from both of you.”

Both lives at folk lay prostate on the ground as the weathering comments slowly would let them down. They might have been on the path being molded now, but this was surely an enormous step off the path, if not a leap.

“I have worked so hard to keep this tribe afloat in these troubled times. And you come here telling me about table things happening in the north? This is rubbish. You can’t come out here half cocked. If you’re going to come all the way out here, bring more information.”

“Okay,” Fen said.

“Okay, mother,” Tumble said.

“Thank you both for coming out here. It’s telling. I believe it’s time for both of my sons to learn how to hunt, as I do,” she said.