Matthias stared down into the crystal blue water, shivering as the freezing cold that came off the flowing liquid that made up the moat chilled him to the bone. At the bottom of the moat was a single golem standing perfectly still, as if frozen in time. He blinked, turning to Ora on one side of him, then to the Lizard-Kin on the other. Everyone seemed utterly fascinated at what was happening, and he couldn't bring himself to disagree.

“Well, that’s different. I’ve never seen a Golem just up and stop working before, not even in magma much less underwater,” he said at last with a sigh. “Say Ora, this isn’t exactly normal water. What the heck is it? It absolutely reeks of Mana.”

The Dryad shrugged in nonchalance. “I have no idea. The Grove Mother may know, but I don’t know a lot about these things. I am more of a ‘stick them with a spear’ type of person. A warrior. Vera is more scholarly and may have an answer, but even then I doubt it. All I do know for certain is that the river and its odd waters were here long before the Grove came. Some Naiads may know, if you can find them,” she said, explaining the last part with uncertainty.

Shaking his head Matthias stepped back from the crystal cold waters. “This will make building the road and bridge a lot harder,” he said aloud.

“Road and bridge?” Ora asked, curious as the Lizard-Kin also looked at him.

He nodded. “Well we need to get back and forth across the water somehow, and a road from the cave to our various work sites will make travel much easier. The Golems will do most of the heavy work, but if they can't work in or around the water I may need to have the Lizard-Kin build the bridge,” he said with a sigh as the smaller bi-pedal reptiles looked at him in alarm. “That or hire a contractor.”

“Do not let the Lizard-Kin near or in the water. Not even we can swim in there for long without perishing,” Ora said seriously. “That liquid is potent beyond your wildest belief, and you are not wrong. It contains a simply staggering amount of Mana within its confines.”

Matthias stared at Ora, who stared right back at him. “Well, that explains why the Golem stopped working,” he said slowly. “Golems operate by pulling ambient energy, of any kind, from the world around them. I bet the second that the construct touched the water it simply… fizzled out. For lack of a better term. Honestly, we are probably lucky that it didn’t explode.”

“These rock creatures, Golems you call them, they are not living?” asked Ora, as if suddenly realizing that the Golems weren’t sentient.

He shook his head, “Not at all. Well, actually, that’s not true,” he said, thinking about the Masterwork and its odd actions. “Any construct has the possibility of becoming sentient over very, very long spans of time or by meeting certain criteria. Most don’t have the capabilities, however, being designed to fulfill a limited set of functions. The Golems I employ here are exceedingly simply magical constructs that are based around the employment of ambient energy to operate, except for the Masterwork that is. I have a funny feeling it is already approaching sentience, if not already there in some aspects.”

“I didn’t understand half of what you just said,” Ora deadpanned.

“Golems aren’t sentient and most likely never will be without thousands of years to develop. The Masterwork Golem, the big guy shaped like a person, probably is on the cusp of sentience now,” Matthias simplified.

Ora rolled her eyes, “You should have just said that in the first place,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Shaking his head, Matthias pulled himself out of his deep thoughts and back into the present. He had much, much more work to do before he could afford to take the time for a deep philosophical dive into concepts that could take a lifetime to understand. Besides, he had more pertinent and immediate worries and concerns.

“So, did you discuss my offer with your Grove Mother? Is there something that I can give you in return for the work you have done?” he asked Ora, turning to face her fully. The Dryad’s eyes widened as she came to the realization that they hadn’t discussed that at all up to that point.

“Oh! Yes, yes she did! Mother had these odd memories of wearable bits of metal from a distant part of her past,” Ora began to explain excitedly, “She wanted to know if you could make her some. I think she called them galleries?”

Matthias scrunched up his face in thought for a moment before smiling, “Do you mean jewelry?”

“Yes! That’s it! Vera was supposed to be here but had to take care of a sick sapling. She has more details, but I believe Mother wanted something that she could wear around her neck, to begin with,” the Dryad explained. “Beyond that, I believe that she would be open for additional… trade? That is the correct term?”

He nodded in confirmation, “Yeah. That’s the right term. Jewelry can be complicated; do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“Not at all. If it is for Mother I have all the time needed,” she replied enthusiastically.

Mathias didn’t know a lot about jewelry, but he knew that there was a significant cultural and personal history behind the request for such items that differed significantly from person to person. From religious ceremonies such as sacrifices to something as mundane as looking better in society's eyes, the glittering objects fascinated many different species and beings for various reasons. With that in mind, he launched into a detailed question-and-answer session with Ora about everything he could think of.

It was a short conversation. He knew next to nothing about jewelry.

Color, shape, and location of wear were all he could really cobble together. Once he had that he planned on purchasing something through the {BAZAAR}. It was the easiest, surest way to get a quality item for the Grove Mother that would fit her specifications.

Once he was done speaking Ora stood quickly, “I must go. I have other tasks to complete this day.” She paused, eyeing Matthias, “This has not been the most unpleasant thing I have done in some time.”

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

With that comment she strode away, leaping the moat easily and landing lithely on the other side of the arctic magical waters. The entire end to their interaction left Matthias shaking his head. Thinking about what to do next, he went over his mental list quickly. As he thought things over he watched Lizard-Kin and Golems work around the area. Building the bridge was going to become a primary task as soon as he got back inside. That, along with figuring out a way to preserve unhatched eggs for sale, would be his goals for the immediate future.

That and raptor mounts for his Liard-Kin. He really, really wanted that to happen. That would make the little guys far more versatile, not to mention faster, and give them a higher combat capability. They already had innate elements to work with. Lizard-Kin riding raptors throwing fireballs? There was only one word that came to mind with such a fanciful imagination of his creations.

Yes.

Heading inside the cavern, he moved down to the Assembler. As he arrived he watched the last batch of Golems come out of the room in a single file line with Alyssa in the lead. She nodded to him as she gave a set of orders before turning them over to the Patiently waiting Masterwork. It had been so still that Matthias hadn’t event noticed it standing there. Blinking momentarily, he nodded at the advanced construct. He wasn’t surprised when it nodded back before leading the line of new Golems to the surface.

“Hey, Boss! How was your meeting with the Dryads?” his Fairy asked, zipping up to him. “Aren’t they amazing? Wonderful? Fantastic!”

He just smiled, “Yeah, they are pretty nice. Glad we didn’t have to fight them or anything. I have a funny feeling that Ora would have smashed us apart just by herself.” Rubbing a kink out of his neck, he headed into the Assembler room with the Fairy right behind him. “I want to see about making some raptors that the Lizard-Kin can ride. I think that could be an excellent choice for a shock troop or light cavalry.”

Alyssa had a frown on her face as he turned towards her. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Boss the Lizard-Kin are a good idea, but I really don’t think they have a lot of potential for combat like that,” she said honestly. “And not to mention the raptors are much larger. You would have to shrink them which basically turns them into angry little reptilian ankle-biters. You should keep the Lizard-Kin as is and maybe scale up a second species. Something large enough to ride a raptor and actually fight?”

That froze Matthias in place. It was true. Alyssa had a series of excellent points. The Lizard-Kin were more attenuated to scouting, farming, labor, and living in a wide variety of environments that most couldn’t survive in. They were, in essence, a servant class. Smart, and fairly strong, but not meant for a lot more than working and living out their lives. If he wanted something that could fight, truly fight, then he needed to create a larger kind of creature that he could use and sell. A bigger mob. He couldn’t do that, however, until he stabilized his hemorrhaging finances.

“That’s fair. Excellent point,” he said to Alyssa. The Fairy had taken his silence as anger and was drooping mid-air. His praise immediately brought her back up to her normal perky self. “I think I am going to work on a catalog of creatures to begin creating. We will also need some dedicated Assemblers for the task as well. Okay. New plan.”

He headed out of the Assembler room, his previous task forgotten as he approached the wall by his desk with the empty charts. Once he arrived, he immediately picked up what he called a writing rock and began drawing diagrams across the face of the wall.

“First we need income. That is being solved, in part, by the sale of Lizard-Kin eggs. They will be our flagship creature, and the only one born naturally from a queen,” he said quickly. “Once that stabilizes we need to complete the build-out of the farms and buildings on the surface, including the defensive wall. Once that’s done we can explore the minerals and resources of the island. I know you have a lot mapped out, but we don’t really know what they are yet. Just general locations. Once we know I can create a basic Assembler from the materials and dedicate them to the fulfillment of mob orders. One Assembler per mob species should be enough for now.”

He drew out everything on the wall like a giant grocery list, then he started adding charts. “Right now We have a flagship product, the Lizard-Kin, and a trademark species. We need to stay in that line of thinking, at least for now. Lizard-Kin for workers leaves us a need for fighters, crafters, beasts of burden, and transport. I can think of dozens of designs off the top of my head we can alter to fit those needs. We just need to make them unique enough to not have anyone come after us.”

“Come after us Boss?” Alyssa asked with uncertainty. “That sounds like you expect someone to be hunting us at some point.”

Matthias snorted, “Of course, I do. Bumping off upcoming competition is practically a right of passage. You either survive and are given a pass by larger corporations to keep growing until you become a threat,” he explained. “Until that point, you usually get challenged once or twice by a peer-level corporate entity and enter into a war. If you survive you get that pass I mentioned until you become a big enough threat for the larger corps to fight directly, then the rules change a bit. If you lose, you lose. All your work, your creations, and your corporation gets absorbed into the victors. Kind of one sided really, but that’s what we have to work with. The biggest asset we have going into this is that I know the rules, but any of our competition won’t know that I know the rules.”

“That’s a bit bloodthirsty Boss,” Alyssa said worriedly.

“Yeah, but that’s life. You can’t just make coffee in the break room. Oh no. you have to incite war between countries to get the best coffee beans you can at the lowest import markup possible,” he replied, confusing the Fairy completely. Rolling his eyes he clarified, “Nothing is simple, and this is just us proving that we have enough smarts and staying power to be healthy for the market. It weeds out the poison that could drag the whole system down.”

A System message popped up in front of Matthias telling him that Mab had reviewed the contract and sent it back his way. Opening it up he reviewed it in depth. The Fairy Queen had made significant changes to his significant changes. It was, honestly, a bit annoying. But it fit right into the theme of what he would expect from a royal version of your standard trickster fairy.

Looking through it quickly, he jumped back to re-read some sections of the contract. Mab outright declined the COO position, opting instead to be his personal secretary. That could go wrong in so many ways it made his head spin, but he had no reason to deny the request. He put in a short clause that she could be moved into a new role if it didn’t work out.

The other major change, other than the pervasive change into an archaic form of a standard that enveloped the entire document, was that the initial count of incoming Fairies was set to a standard ten per wave. While smaller than he had initially wanted, Mab had included a sub-clause to discuss each wave and its numbers based on the development and progress that the Headquarters has made. He found that to be a much more fluid system than the one he proposed.

Seeing no major issues with the document, he flipped to the last page and saw that she had already signed it. Shaking his head in amusement he signed as well. And with that, Matthias had just gotten himself several hundred new employees. Each of them at least decently powerful tricksters in their own right with an ex-Fae Queen to lead them all under his burgeoning corporation.

This was going to make company parties absolutely crazy.

Sighing, Matthias sat back in his chair and winced. Stone. Sucks. For. Furniture. Before the first wave of new employees arrived he had to get them equipment, supplies, and housing. He could get the basics of everything from the {BAZAAR} quickly and cheaply, which is exactly what he did. Diving in the large quantity of suppliers and equipment providers, he quickly lost himself in the flow of work.

And in doing so, he completely forgot about the Golem they had left in the highly magical waters above.