It was a crisp summer day. The Highwind Mountains were a natural wonder on a day like this, having risen over the course of a thousand year the mountains would hold rich amounts of metals and precious gems. Leading to a large migration of dwarves who instantly began building fortifications and started mining the materials present within the mountain.

The dwarves may have been known to be drunk incessantly and constantly preaching about honor, but they weren’t idiots. The lands outside the mountains would be home to fertile soil which could be used for farming, adding more value to the real estate that they had just claimed. Dungeons tended to show up semi-regularly on the Mountain. Offering rare and prized materials with each expedition mounted.

The dwarves knew it would only be a matter of time before someone would try and take their home, so they prepared. Immediately, hundreds of stone fortifications were built. After they secured a consistent supply of steel, the fortifications were overhauled with large and unwieldy cannons, heavily armed dwarven soldiers, and Golem to make life hell for any invader. Miles upon miles of the only traversable way up the mountain were booby-trapped. Fortified, and hidden.

As masters of underground tunneling, they had built robust waste systems that traveled all the way down the mountain as well. With the large tunnels meant to house weapons and supplies splitting off to lead to the entrances of sewers and waste pits.

It was here, at one of these waste pits, that Aln was sitting at and casting spells. Well, it was less a waste pit and more a large waste pile, the dwarves were masters of many things but healthy city planning was not one of them, their tunnels tended to fuse and split at random intervals. Their supply houses and coin vaults often right next to sewer tunnels and rat infested waste pits.

Even hundreds of years later after the last dwarf on the mountain had died, their rampant tunneling still screwed over city planners. Take today for example, the mayor had ordered the demolition of an old magical academy that had gone out of business several decades ago to make space for a new city park. It would’ve went well had they not uncovered a vast waste pit underneath the area with casual search spells.

Now, that wouldn’t have been the end of the world, just do a few renovations and the waste would be turned into some decent fertilizer. But it seemed like the school had been using it to conveniently dump dangerous alchemical waste and the byproduct of failed spells throughout its time. With the amount of waste being dumped increasing drastically as the school experimented to find anything that could save its hide, and the hides of the investors.

Thanks to that mess, the entire waste pit had to be burned and then purified with extreme prejudice. Which was where Aln came in, a slightly talented Illusionist who had managed to breach the skill level required to affect a person’s smell.

He had taken the job to substitute the horrific god awful smells that were coming from the pit into something far more tasteful.

The mages responsible for making sure any lethal poisons didn’t affect the workers were too busy actually making sure everyone was healthy to pay attention to smell. As such, the task had been handed to the cheap to hire Aln.

While he would normally have been perfectly fine with the job, the sheer stench of the pile meant that any slip of focus would lead to dozens of workers suddenly finding out what a half melted and very infected goblin weasel smelled like.

Worst part was that the thing was still alive, and very ominously squelching away from the waste pit. Aln hadn’t had it in him to kill the creature, something which he wondered was probably the wrong thing to do. The weasel did look like it was in some serious pain.

Aln refocused on the task at hand, he had to make sure the spell was kept perfect. Even the slightest mistake could’ve easily sent half the team hurling what they had eaten two nights ago on the ground. Making the smell so much worse.

And prolonging the time it would take to clean everything. The city was paying by the hour and any unnecessary delays would only bleed coin, small amounts of coin but coin nonetheless. They would probably dock most of his pay should any mistakes happen.

“Seriously, I can't believe you can put up with the smell, Aln.”

He almost lost control of the spell then and there, thankfully he didn’t by sheer luck. But it would’ve been a disaster if he had. The work crew had just found where all those troll leaves had gone, and it was nearly as worse watching them clean it up as it was smelling it.

“I’ve had to watch and smell my dad dissecting corpses before Ruby. This doesn’t even smell half as bad when he-”

“When he brought back that alchemically reanimated bridge troll back, yes I’ve heard, seen, and smelt your recreations of that fateful day where you ‘became a man’. Most people would equate that to their first time drinking or having fun in bed but you-”

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“Were dissecting fermented undead troll corpses.”

“Were dissecting fermented undead troll corpses.”

Ruby said with a shudder, even having experienced it multiple times she could never quite get over his graphic illusions on the subject. Something which he took great pleasure and stride in. His skills had shot up ever since he started going into the academy.

A loud scream filled the air as several workers were dragged into a rather disgusting pile of alcoholic slop, it seemed like the taverns would be having several dozen less customers the following week.

The slop was a brownish purple, several splotches of disgusting white slop bubbled forth at the top of its… head? He wanted to call it a face or mushroom, but it was too ugly for the former and not structured enough in the latter.

Several large tentacled hands reached out of its massive body, the size of seven cows Aln noted disturbingly. Ruby reacted with a flash of crimson fire magic blasting out of her hand. The large fat firebolt she had cast struck the large creature with squelch. Its thick bulbous mass smothering the magically created flame before it could do any real damage.

However, it had distracted the monster from doing anything heinous to the captured workers. The bad news was that it was now on a completely still Illusionist and a rapidly backing away Ruby.

Wait wha-what the heck!?

Aln watched in horror as Ruby made the motions for a mobility spell before dashing far away from him, he couldn’t even dodge. His short span of distraction had given the creature confidence to leap at him with all the power its body could muster.

Which was a lot considering how fast it was coming down, though that maybe could’ve just been gravity and his own perceptions.

With a quick thwomp an invisible spear of pure force shot straight through the monster, the power of the spell causing it to explode in a vast wave of pure smelly gunk, the material making up its insides spilled out in a vast wave before the force spear blew it up as well. Aln was hit by a remarkable amount of less filth on the sacrifice that everyone else, including the traitor Ruby. Something which filled him with some amount of happiness. Which quickly fell through when his nose was finally assaulted by the stench.

His stomach quickly attempted a drunk recreation of the elven maple dance before falling down three stories worth of stairs. Or that was how Aln felt as the wave of nausea took him over the edge, he felt his entire morning breakfast leave him in an instant. Splattering like discolored goo and half dissolved chunks of meat all over his shirt and shoes.

There was something different about smelling something incredibly disgusting from nearly twenty feet away than it was to smell it right on top of you. It was shattering to the mind, and apparently his magic thought so too. Cause it wasn’t even a second later that he was graced with the sound of dozens of men and women hurling themselves into unconsciousness right then and there.

Misery loves company, but Aln knew he would be the most miserable at the end of the day.

A soft groan escaped from Ruby as she slowly made her way back to Aln, now just witnessing the sight of carnage and utter bedlam smell that dominated the area. She also happened to see the rapidly pissed off project manager quickly walking towards them with a steely and grim expression.

Something that Aln never saw, what with the gunk of the tentacle having covered his eyes, had he mentioned that absolutely fantastic part as well?

Thankfully, the manager was more than helpful in clearing away his rapid confusion at the stuttering and half made excuses with her own torrent of half swearing and screaming.

Today was such a fun day.

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That. Was. Brutal.

Was what Ruby meant to say, had she not been utterly cowed by the manager. She was likely still shocked by the turn of events. It was still early afternoon, work had quickly closed up now that actually dangerous monsters had made their way out. The project manager would be calling in a group of adventurer’s to take care of the creatures inside the waste pit.

Ruby was still reeling from the fact that the manager hadn’t screamed at them for running away or dropping the illusion. Even a sharp rebuttal wouldn’t have been out of line from the small disaster that had partially been their fault.

But it had been the project's fault for hiring students willing to work for copper or less. Those prices often told of inexperience or lack of confidence. Something which both of them had. Aln hadn’t even been able to speak with the manager, half because he didn’t want to know what the monster gunk tasted like. And half because his pillar of social confidence was completely silent, like she had been ready to die.

Still, all in all, the project manager didn’t blame them. They were young kids signing up for work that was supposed to just be burning the stuff that needed to be burned or making the waste pit bearable.

The monster attack had come from nowhere, and the academy could’ve very easily used the incident to get additional funding. One of the reasons they even let students go off and take odd jobs from the city. So after making sure they were okay, the project manager had quickly made them sign some form of contract after they had cleaned up. And gave them some extra pay as recompense.

Easier expenses than a magic academy coming down on you. It was agreed. Still, even with heavier pockets than before. Ruby and Aln had quickly decided to splurge half of it on some good romance novels and tons of sweets.

Aln still didn’t get what was so good about dark elven berry extravaganza blast ice cream. But the super high human dwarf sunday combo was an excellent treat. He had even shaved some for his dinner.

His arms full with the latest novels of adorable teenage romance that were just too wholesome to ever exist in the real world. He didn’t even notice his slightly ajar door.

What he did notice was two people who were very much not supposed to be there. Both rifling through his book collection.

And maybe the forbidden evil artifacts. But mostly his book collection!