Josie set her treasure in motion from the Bog Hound’s former spawning pool. The town watched it as it sailed out on the water. She grew a sign out of the boardwalk and pasted her map to it. Then she petrified the paper and wood into a permanent stone fixture.
She didn’t want to make the treasure hunt too easy by letting some enterprising adventurers just pull the map apart to take with them.
All she had to do now was let the Adventurer Hall people know there was a treasure for them to find. The greedy ones would flock to the town to catch the gold orb.
Josie finished the job by making two sets of walls around Kernly. It wouldn’t keep out anything determined, but it should buy plenty of time for the townspeople to get away from an attack. She made sure to put in walkways and ladders so the brave could use the top of the walls as a place to hold off an enemy.
She didn’t see any others with the makeover. It looked like the two she killed were the only people dealing with the Montrose. She was happy about that.
Josie found Mister Deen looking at the new stone walls and scratching his head. She wondered why they didn’t have real magicians doing things. It looked like the watch gave her a small amount of that, but only by giving her a wizard based on a fake wizard.
Magic worked. Why didn’t someone try to take advantage of it? Maybe they did, and maybe that was why Josie was there in the middle of a swamp dealing with a monster and its kids.
Maybe calling on an outside consultant was the only way to get things done.
“I’ll post the notice when I get back to town, Mister Deen,” said Josie. “If something looks bad and you have enough time to send a warning, I’m in Hawk Ridge. Just send a notice to the Adventurer Hall and I’ll come back and help you with your problem.”
“That’s a long way off from here,” said Deen. “Nobody here could cover that ground fast enough to stave off a disaster.”
“That’s why I made the new walls extra tall and extra thick,” said Josie. “If anything can get through them, you wouldn’t have a chance anyway. The hope is they will hold out long enough for me to get your message and come back and deal with your emergency.”
“All right,” said Deen. “I guess the bog hound felt safer to have around.”
“Eventually it would have got tired of having you near its eggs and done something you would have regretted,” said Josie. “It was better to have it somewhere else where it can do its thing without worrying about people.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Deen. “Now I have to sort out the Hans brothers, and figure out what to tell their da.”
“Tell him the truth,” said Josie. “Someone realized they had done something evil and put them down.”
“What did they do?,” asked Deen.
“They sold women and girls to be sent away,” said Josie. “Now everyone involved is marked. So if you see anyone with a large amount of tattoos on their body, it’s proof they engaged in slavery, and someone is looking for them.”
“They had a friend that hung out with them,” said Deen. “He has a boat he uses to get across the swamp. He comes to town when he has something to sell for supplies.”
“Let him know he could go the same way as the Hans brothers,” said Josie. “I have to go. If I were you, I wouldn’t go after the treasure. It’s nothing but bait.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” said Deen. He held up his hands. “I’ve never been an adventurer, and I never will be. Just talking to you is taking years off my life as it is.”
“Until the next time we meet,” said Josie. She called on Zatanna and wished to teleport as far as she could reach back to the city.
She landed at about what she considered the midpoint between Kernly and Hawk Ridge. She recognized some of the landmarks from her run up as Johnny Quick. She checked the watch. She still had enough for a run into the city from where she was standing.
Did she want to exchange personas, or try for one more jump from the watch?
She reached out and jumped to the edge of the wall. She checked the watch. Those two jumps had almost drained the watch out of power. She shook her head. She decided that real magic was more of a strain on the watch than the simple body enhancement it allowed.
It was something she had to be aware of in the future, and it explained the almost complete drain caused by Jack’s Angel. A lot of power must be going into that hero so it only lasted a few seconds.
Josie wondered if they were using the watches like they were intended. Maybe they shouldn’t be using them in the open. It was showing people there were things out there they had no control over.
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That wasn’t anything new, but it was the difference between knowing about traffic accidents and being in one.
She stood at the edge of the wall and waited for the watch to recharge. She needed to check in with the girls, and Elaine. Then she had to check on Jack.
She knew he was getting into trouble doing what he did. They really needed to come up with a phone system so she didn’t have to worry about him doing something stupid.
She was acting like her mother. She didn’t care. Where they were was a lot more dangerous than the Bay. She had already learned that first hand.
The watch dinged to pull her out of her thoughts. She still had to put up the notice before she could check on her ducklings. Hopefully some of the local adventurers would take up the challenge and protect Kernly from their monsters.
And she might have to go back out there and see if the brothers’ friend was really part of the Montrose at one point.
It bothered her that the Montrose organization was so vast that it could stretch across the region. How many women were being abducted and drugged? Why wasn’t anyone doing anything about it?
She supposed the Watch and people in authority were involved. When nobility talked, a lot of things could be overlooked.
How long did they have before one of the local nobles tried to interfere with what they were doing? And what would they have to do about it?
She supposed throwing the local off the top of Hawk Ridge’s outer wall was out of the question unless they wanted to fight the whole nation.
She thought even Jack would balk at those kinds of odds.
Josie called on Zatanna momentarily to get to the Adventurers’ Hall. She walked in, but the counter lady was not the one she was used to dealing with. Maybe this one would be better without a practical demonstration of what could be done.
“Can I help you?,” asked the counter lady.
“I just returned from a little town on the edge of a swamp in the east called Kernly,” said Josie. “I need to put up a notice that word of a treasure has reached the town, and they need adventurers to look for it.”
“What kind of treasure?,” asked the counter lady. She pulled a sheet of paper and bottle of ink closer.
“I heard it’s a great big egg made of gold,” said Josie. She indicated the size of her creation with her hands. “It’s guarded by monsters.”
“Reward?,” asked the counter lady.
“You get to keep the egg if you can get it from the monsters,” said Josie.
“Adventurers will need more than that as motivation,” said the counter lady.
Josie thought about that. This was on the verge of inspiring greed instead of sending people into the swamp to clear out the local monsters.
“If they need more than that, then they’re not adventurers,” said Josie. “They’re weak gobs of snot that can’t do the primary function of their job and their licenses to operate should be pulled and they should go back to their farms.”
The lady looked taken aback.
Josie took a moment to breathe. She needed to think about other ways of doing things than setting someone on fire because they didn’t do things the way you wanted.
“Hold on,” said Josie. “I have something for those who need motivation.”
She dialed up Zatanna. She created a fake gold egg the size of her fist and a display for it. She put everything next to the job board with a sign that said the real treasure was ten times bigger than this one.
“If they can get the egg, it will be the size of a baby,” said Josie. She started toward the door. “That will be enough for an adventurer to retire on if he can bring it in.”
“You said there were monsters,” said the counter lady.
“Any good group of adventurers should be able to handle anything in the swamp,” said Josie. She didn’t know if that was true, or not. She needed to move people with swords to the town to keep it safe after removing its chief protector. “Make sure it’s groups. I don’t think one person will be able to get through the swamp, get the treasure, and get back to town, and then keep the treasure.”
“I can see why that could be a problem,” said the counter lady. She seemed unfazed by the sudden construction in the hall. Maybe she thought it was all a trick. “I’ll put a notice up for the daytime lady to make sure that the quest has unknown dangers involved listed.”
“Thank you for your help,” Josie said. She handed over a handful of silver before leaving the hall.
Josie changed to Hawkgirl and headed home. She still had to check on the girls and get something to eat before she checked on Jack. What kind of trouble was he getting into without her?
She landed outside the hole in the wall and transformed back. She let herself in, checking to see if the girls and Elaine were home. She smiled at the noise coming to her.
“Mistress Josie is back,” shouted Matilda. “We’re cooking dinner.”
“How did the second half of the lesson go?,” said Josie. She looked at the girls gathering to meet her in the foyer. Elaine stood in the door to the kitchen.
“It was great,” said Matilda. “I think I have it down.”
“It hurts a little,” said Angelica.
“That’s because you keep whacking yourself,” said Beatrice. “It was good enough that Master Harp said Alicia is better than all of us at the moment.”
Josie looked at the middle girl. She shrugged slightly.
“Let’s get dinner on the table, then I have to check on Jack,” said Josie. “Then you girls have to do chores and work on your reading.”
“How did the thing with the bog hound go?,” asked Beatrice.
“I moved it to a quiet spot where it can watch over its eggs and have tiny bog hounds as much as it wants,” said Josie. “I also put up a notice for adventurers to go out and defend the town for some treasure in the swamp so the town would be defended from the local monsters now that the bog hound isn’t roaming outside of its walls.”
“Will you have to go back?,” asked Melanie.
“I don’t know,” said Josie. “It depends on how successful the adventurers are in clearing out the local monsters and getting the treasure.”
“There’s something odd about the treasure, isn’t it?,” said Matilda.
“No,” said Josie. “I put it on a boat so it could move around on its own. Otherwise, it is a normal egg.”
“A normal egg,” said Melanie. “Why would adventurers chase after that?”
“Because I told them it was made out of gold,” said Josie. “I think we should eat and then work on what’s ahead before we have to get some sleep before tomorrow.”
“What will the adventurers do when they find out there is no treasure?,” asked
Beatrice.
“I’m more worried that they might displace the swamp monsters on other areas if they are successful,” said Josie. “The adventurers I have seen here in town don’t seem that much of what I think an adventurer should be so maybe they will give up before they get hurt.”