We never did find those keys, but some time spent scrounging through the surrounding tunnels and chambers provided us a surprising workaround in the form of a stockpile of alchemy supplies. It had been thoroughly looted, of course—Jadrak’s people had taken all the valuable stuff, leaving behind mostly what was both cheap and stored in large enough containers that it would’ve been hard to bring along in a hasty evacuation.

“But that works in our favor!” Amell said with more excitement than I’d ever seen from her. “The kind of basic ingredients you tend to stock in large quantities are versatile for more mundane tasks—with this stuff I can mix up enough fast-hardening glue to seal all those doors!”

“Glue.” Rizz’s tone was openly skeptical. “And how long do you reckon that’ll hold?”

Amell deflated slightly. “Well…it’s glue. The doors will be un-openable, but… I mean, obviously somebody’s who’s determined and has access to tools or dissolving agents will be able to get through with a few hours of work.”

“It’s a shame these are such big, obviously important doors,” Aster said with a wince. “We could glue a broom cupboard shut and it might escape notice for a while. Sealing these is like painting a sign for looters.”

“I know, but it’s what we can do with what we’ve got,” Amell sighed.

“Obviously nothing we can whip up here’s gonna be a permanent solution, even if we could find the actual keys,” said Rizz. “It’d be ideal if we could do something that’d hold for a few days, not hours. By then I’ll have rallied the Judges and you lot might’ve finished off Jadrak. Right now, with the situation in Kzidnak, any goblins out looting will be either desperate or highly opportunistic—exactly the ones who should not be allowed to contact a devil.”

Amell nodded. “Yeah. It’s a shame they didn’t leave us some of the better reagents, at least. With these basic reagents, I could mix up enough liquid rock to seal those doors—well, the edges, not fully covering them, probably. But without the heating agent to harden them, that’s useless.”

“Liquid rock?” I asked, the idea tingling something in my mind. “Heating agent?”

“Yeah, it requires intense heat to solidify. Once that’s done it’s about as hard as normal bedrock, but without the heating agent it’s just…thick mud.”

“You just need heat, right?” Zui suggested. “Cos I bet there’s still an asauthec storage somewhere around here. That stuff’s difficult and dangerous to transport in a hurry…”

She trailed off, as Amell was already shaking her head negatively.

“That won’t work; if you apply something on fire directly to the mixture, it does harden, but does so as it’s boiling, so the final result is really porous and brittle. This is why you don’t see the stuff used very much in construction, it’s really tricky to work with. The heating mixture has to be applied on top, it’s made of uncommon reagents and it’s difficult to apply correctly. You can work around that with a physical heat source, but getting one to apply enough heat for long enough, steadily enough not to wreck the hardening process…well, any application method is its own engineering challenge and it burns through a lot of asauthec.”

I held up one hand.

“Heat Beam.”

It was tightly focused and high-intensity, causing Amell to squeak and skitter away even though I wasn’t aiming anywhere near her. I held the concentrated beam of light for a few seconds before letting it dissipate, leaving a scorched spot on the stone wall emitting wisps of acrid smoke.

“Will that work?”

“How long can you sustain that, Lord Seiji?” Amell asked, suddenly intent again. It was downright cute how she forgot she was shy and nervous whenever there was alchemy business afoot.

“As long as I can stay awake. Champions get basically bottomless spell power, isn’t that right, Yoshi?”

“I’ve never even heard of that spell,” Pashilyn said with a slight frown.

I smiled sweetly at her. “You aren’t the fuckin’ Dark Lord.”

So that’s how I began my third career: musician, Dark Lord, and now welder.

Four of the five doors we were able to seal on both sides for maximum security, so the first part of the work was spent—carefully—in the defiled Spirit’s chamber. I wasn’t the only one keeping a wary distance from the damn thing, though I maintain I had the most reason. Amell busied herself mixing weird-smelling chemicals in large batches, whereupon the rest of us went to work closing the big doors and painting over every crack between and around them with the resulting goop, using some goblin-sized brooms and mops we’d found as big brushes. Given that these ended up being not very long in human terms, we weren’t able to cover the topmost part of the taller doors, which for some reason were built to way more than goblin scale, but hopefully it would suffice. The results didn’t have to hold forever, just a few days.

After we sealed the first one from the inside, the others moved on to paint the other doors and I began the process of hardening the liquid rock with Heat Beam. At first Amell supervised me to make sure I could identify the change in texture indicating when the process was done. I experimented a bit with concentrations and patterns of the beam before settling on a configuration that gave me the best balance of heat and coverage to get this done most efficiently.

Four doors could be sealed from the inside; we had to leave one open, obviously, to get out, despite Flaethwyn’s sneering suggestion that I should take one for the team and entomb myself in there. I didn’t even have the chance to properly rebut before Pashilyn pointedly asked her if she really wanted the Dark Lord to lock himself away with nothing but a Void altar.

Phase two involved a lot of backtracking through the surrounding corridors to repeat the process on the outside of the doors, because as much as we were all anxious to get moving, this did not seem like something that could be half-assed. We were going to be forced to leave one of them rocked over on only one side, and that was enough of a risk. The process was made less complicated by the presence of familiars, who could sense the entire layout of the surrounding tunnels and navigate us through them.

So I ended up trailing well after everyone else, since the process of hardening the liquid rock was a lot slower than slapping it into place. I could hear their distant voices echoing through the corridors, and some of the others would periodically come through to check on me and patrol the area. For the most part, though, it was just me, Biribo, and Aster, who had insisted on watching my back. I knew better than to argue, even though her evolving role in the organization was less “bodyguard” and more “lieutenant” now; every time I let her hover around protecting me, I was building up points I could then spend when I actually needed to do something alone. Something told me I was going to need those soon.

“Having a nice rest, Aster?” sneered the last person I wanted to pay me a visit while I was sealing up the third door externally. I was all but certain she had only bothered to come by to say that specifically.

“I’m his bodyguard, Flaethwyn,” Aster replied in a bored tone. “This is the job.”

“That is Highlady Flaethwyn, lowborn,” the elf snapped.

“By Lord Seiji’s decree, there is no racial hierarchy in the Dark Crusade. I am the second in command to a head of state, which means I considerably outrank you. Now shut your smirking gob and go waste someone else’s time, you insufferable leaf-ear.”

I heard the distinctive hiss of a rapier being pulled from its sheath.

“Flaethwyn,” I said without pausing my work, “Aster is fighting with her words, like an adult. If I have to pause what I’m doing and turn around, I’m going to be far more immature about it.”

There was a momentary silence while she considered her options. I’d have really enjoyed seeing her face just then, but I remained on task, both because what I was doing was important and because I knew making a show of not caring about her was only deepening the insult. Anyway, Aster was close to indestructible in her artifact armor and Biribo was silently hovering just within my field of view, able to give warning if I needed to turn and deal with this.

It ended, though, with Flaethwyn’s feet stomping gracelessly away down the corridor.

“That girl isn’t right in the head,” Aster muttered as the elf departed. “I’ve known a lot of aggressive people, but she’s something else. It’s like she’s angry at the universe for no reason and determined to make it everyone else’s problem.”

“Well… I mean, that’s a lot of—”

“That’s different,” Aster said with a smile I could hear without turning around. “You’re funny, and at least capable of being polite when you want something, and generally goal directed. That’s my point: you can be one of the bigger assholes I’ve ever met when you’re in a mood, but you don’t go around causing pointless trouble just out of spite.”

“Aw, that’s sweet. Still don’t wanna bang you, though.”

“That’s fine, I can do so much better. I wonder if Maizo’s single?”

“That felt good, though, didn’t it? Mouthing off to a smug elf like that.”

“It really did,” she admitted.

“I’ll bet.”

I risked glancing away from my work for a moment at the new voice, belonging to someone I hadn’t heard approach. Biribo hadn’t said anything, though, so I wasn’t too alarmed, and anyway it was just Rizz.

Well, not alarmed about her being here, at this particular moment. The revelation that the heavily-armed goblin inquisitor who apparently operated without oversight could just sneak up on me was disturbing. Presumably, if we weren’t on good terms (for now), my familiar would give me ample warning of her approach.

“How’s it going, Rizz?” I asked, keeping my tone mild and my eyes on what I was doing.

“Looking pretty good. They’re slathering up the last door now.”

“All right, I get it, I’m behind. This takes longer than slapping mud on the walls, okay? I’ll try to—”

“No rush, boy. You got the most important part, and everybody knows it’s detail-heavy. I’d rather you do it right than fast.”

“Well, it’s nice to be understood.”

“Mm. Speakin’ of understanding people. You know Sneppit used to be an Arbiter?”

That almost made me pause in my magical welding.

“Really? Sneppit was a… I’m extrapolating from how I’ve seen you relate to Rhoka, but that’s an apprentice Judge, right?”

“Exactly. She’s famous for her skill at contract drafting. She’s got the aptitude for it, but a lot of Sneppit’s success stems from her early training and the opportunity to study in the Judges’ library of precedents, which not a lot of goblins get. She never made the cut to Judge, though. A Judge has to not only arbitrate disputes and issue rulings, but enforce them. Sneppit has little to no aptitude for physical combat and generally ain’t inclined to dirty her own hands with anything when she can just pay someone else to do it. That’s how you end up running the most famous engineering company in Kzidnak without knowing which end of a wrench to hammer with.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Fascinating,” I murmured, still welding. It was interesting, yes, but I had a strong feeling this was leading up to something more.

“Sneppit,” Rizz continued after a moment in a deliberately casual tone that didn’t fool me for an instant, “is my favorite company boss to work with. Better than any of ‘em, she knows where the line is and how Judges think. Between that and the fact she’s defensive-minded and conflict-averse, she straight doesn’t do shit that requires a Judge’s intervention most of the time. But I can’t ever forget she got that way by disingenuously exploiting the only system of spiritual and economic enforcement we have, to gain a free specialist education she wasn’t entitled to, knowing full well she couldn’t fulfill the role and never planning to. The only thing keeping that woman in check is her own pragmatism, and the fact she lives in an enclosed system where gettin’ too big for her pink britches would result in a swift and decisive smackdown.”

“Ahh, now we come to it,” I whispered.

“Power is a drug, boy. There’s no other way to think of it that makes sense. It messes up a person’s ability to think straight, and makes ‘em perpetually crave more of it.”

“I’ve noticed that.”

“It’s good that you have. Impressive, too. Most people don’t see it creepin’ up on ‘em, and that makes it orders of magnitude worse. Sneppit’s too pragmatic to cause too much trouble—but that used to be true of Jadrak, too. Like any drug, people have different tolerances for power. We’ve all seen what happens on the wrong side of Jadrak’s. The whole world is eventually gonna find out what it looks like when you get more’n you can handle, like it or not. Sneppit is a good boss because there’s a hard ceiling on her ambitions, and it happens to be lower than what it would take to drive her properly crazy. In the end, though, she’s still a boss. And bosses want more. Always more; there is never any concept of ‘enough’ when you’re a boss. You take that woman out of Kzidnak, put her somewhere there’s no upper limit on what she can do or become, and you will find out exactly how much power it takes to turn Sneppit into a monster like Jadrak, or worse.”

I mulled for a moment, the only sound in the tunnel being the soft hissing sizzle of my Heat Beam catalyzing the liquid rock into its final form.

“Y’know, Rizz,” I mused at last, “I’m actually kind of sad you’ll be splitting off from us after this. I’ve got a feeling there’s a lot I could learn from you, if we had the opportunity to have more conversations.”

“Me, too,” she said. “It’s a real saving grace that you’re interested in listening. ‘Specially since you’ve made it clear I can’t stop you doing whatever you like. I might take you up on that once all this hollering is settled, if you’re serious.”

“There’s a tunnel from Maugro’s old offices right to my base. I’ll make sure my people know what a Judge looks like, and that they’re welcome to visit.”

She grunted a noncommittal acknowledgment. “I’ll let ‘em know you’re about done here. Next spots’re just waiting for your magic touch.”

Rizz strode off up the tunnel in the same direction Flaethwyn had gone. Quietly, but not silently now that she wasn’t actively trying to conceal her presence. In her absence, Biribo and Aster both held their peace, giving me space to think on what we’d just heard.

The next visit came when I was halfway through with the next door—again after making sure nobody else was near enough to overhear.

“Zui seems to have taken Maizo under her wing,” Gizmit reported, sauntering up to me from out of the shadows.

“Zui’s got a soft spot for people in distress, doesn’t she?”

“Heh, you have no idea. It’s a good thing we live underground where there are no loose animals, or she’d be bringing home stray goslings every week. You know, that loud chick you brought down here has probably done more to wreck Zui’s comfortable view of the world than your whole Dark Crusade. She’s not used to the idea of humans as traumatized people who need hugs, rather than the cause of everyone else’s trauma.”

“Yeah, well. People are people, and people mostly suck. Tall or short, green or brown, there’s a lot less difference than most of us would like to think. She’d better get used to it.”

“Mm. I mentioned her adopting Maizo specifically, because… You may wanna do something about that.”

I blinked, glancing down at her for the one second I could do so without interrupting my work. “Why? Poor guy’s been through absolute hell. If anybody could use a little pampering, it’s Maizo. Let her work.”

“Maizo’s a good find,” Gizmit said, leaning with her back to the wall just next to the door, right where I could see her peripherally without having to move my eyes. She folded her arms and gazed absently at the far wall, continuing to speak in a casual tone. “He’s a real solid intel guy. Not in Maugro’s league, or mine, but he’s got the potential to be. Guy’s very good for his age, is what I’m saying, and Sneppit is very good at snapping up valuable talent on terms that benefit her more than them. If you were interested in snapping him up instead, you’ve got a very short window left to do so.”

I deliberately did not look at her this time. “Why, Gizmit. I’ve gotta say, the last thing I expected is you undercutting Miss Sneppit.”

“Let me be explicitly clear,” she said with an edge to her tone. “In my professional opinion, delivered under no duress or expectation, Miss Sneppit is the best boss in Kzidnak and I consider myself extremely fortunate to have the position I do in her company. There is no circumstance in which I would even consider violating the terms of my contract of employment. I do, however, know very well what is and is not covered by said contract. I realize you humans have a more abstract notion of loyalty, so let me just remind you that this is the mindset Sneppit and any goblin would expect. I am not obligated to recruit new talent for her, nor prohibited from giving free professional advice to any party who is not in conflict with Miss Sneppit or her interests.”

“And what brought this on?”

Her head tilted just enough for her to fix one red eye on me. “Tell me, Lord Seiji: what is it you’re looking for in a Goblin Queen? Aside from talent, leadership ability, and looks.”

I inhaled and then exhaled slowly through my nose. “Uh huh. Well, it’s not like I didn’t know you were eavesdropping on that conversation. That’s your whole job, isn’t it?”

“Very far from the whole job. Just one of my numerous skills.”

“And let me guess: that contract of yours requires you to divulge such valuable information to Miss Sneppit herself.”

“Of course it does. She knows, and will act accordingly. You are everything she has ever wanted. In a business partner, or a mate, or just a job opportunity; basically anything you choose to offer her—within reason—she’ll probably spring for. And here’s another piece of free advice which I mean in absolute sincerity: you should spring for her with just as much enthusiasm. Sneppit is not only a source of immense talent which any ruler should be glad to have on his side, she is what you need in particular. That brothel madam you have organizing your operations may be a capable enough administrator, up to a point—I’m certain she excels at people skills. But Miss Minifrit was a small business owner. She is not up to the task of playing steward to the entire Dark Crusade. Sneppit is. You need to get her on your team.”

Gizmit paused, and though my mouth was brimming with rejoinders to that, I kept my teeth firmly shut. I recognized this kind of pause. It was a loaded pause, a dramatic one. The kind of pause which served as prequel to a wham line.

“Just not necessarily as Goblin Queen.”

There it was.

“I’m real curious as to why you of all people would say that, Gizmit.”

“Considering what that spell of yours does, granting double Blessings and the collected powers of every magically gifted race you can add to it… You’re building a core of devastatingly powerful agents. The kind of people you’ll want watching your back and leading the charge as necessary. That isn’t Sneppit. She’s an administrator, a negotiator, and gifted beyond all reason at both those things—a real once in a generation talent. But that doesn’t come without drawbacks. She’s terrible at personal combat, and absolutely hates doing it. Really, anything that puts her on the assembly line or the front lines or any kind of line where she’ll mess up her manicure is gonna make her wilt. I’m just saying, Lord Seiji, it would be a waste of absolutely tragic proportions to take a talent like hers and put her in a position where she’d just be incompetent and miserable.”

She hesitated again, and I waited. This time, I was pretty sure I knew what was coming next.

“Especially when you have other options for that role.”

I glanced down at her again. Gizmit was still not looking at me—but now I could detect the subtleties of her posture. The way she’d carefully thrust her chest out and adjusted the position of her crossed arm to frame her bust, the very precise angle at which she’d tilted her head to accentuate her features for maximum effect from the precise directly of my eyeline. She might’ve gotten away with it, too, if I hadn’t come from a world where I knew how people posed on Instagram, and then worked and lived among a bunch of former sex workers, and also collected a set of bullshit personal traumas which forced me to immediately divert my attention from the visceral reminder that this goblin was, in fact, beddably cute before I had a full-body twitch that messed up my welding.

“You are full of surprises, Gizmit,” I said, pleased with the evenness of my delivery.

“That is correct,” she said with a vague little smile, then levered herself off the wall. “Seems you’ve got this under control. I’ll go check in with the others. They’re done putting up the liquid rock and the Hero’s out patrolling with his familiar in case we get more company.”

She strolled away down the tunnel. I continued working in silence until her footsteps had disappeared.

“That’s the second goblin in ten minutes to warn us that Miss Sneppit’s not entirely the prize catch she wants you to think she is,” Aster commented quietly once there was quiet again.

“Mhm. Makes me think…either she’s got issues that we need to explore carefully before committing to anything with her, or the people we’ve been talking to have their own agendas that don’t include Sneppit gaining more power.”

“No reason it can’t be both.”

“Oh, it is definitely both.”

So. Gizmit wanted to be the Goblin Queen. That was…an idea. I’d all but decided on Sneppit for that role, but if what she and Rizz had just told me was even mostly true, Sneppit might not be a good fit for it after all, even as impressive as her talents were. Gizmit, though? Whether or not she was a good fit, she’d forced me to consider exactly what I did need from whoever occupied that position. And she was right: it was a combatant, not an administrator.

Of course, there was always the approach of collecting every reasonably useful, attractive, and plausibly loyal woman I came across like trading cards. Unless…

“Hey, Biribo.”

“Boss?”

“That thing Aster mentioned before, about curses. Is that something we actually have to worry about?”

“Uh… Well, curses are really rare, Boss. You’re not likely to find a sorcerer who can cast a curse in a place like Dount.”

“And how likely am I to find somebody on Dount who can cast—oh, just off the top of my head—Heal? Or Null?”

“All right, point taken.”

“And when I start having to fight the likes of the Lancor Empire?”

“…yeah, they will definitely have people who can inflict curses.”

“Which are…?”

“Magical effects that are permanent or have a difficult removal condition, applied against the subject’s wishes. Actually, Enamor can be considered a curse, though most of the others are tricky and only likely to be in the repertoire of powerful, veteran Blessed. Enamor itself isn’t a common spell by any means, and it’s the most basic one by that description you’re likely to find. But what you want to know is whether they’ll propagate across Spirit Bond.”

“Yes, obviously. And?”

“It, uh, it depends on the specific spell. Enamor won’t; some others won’t. But…there are a lot that will.”

“Which means,” I sighed, “Aster’s original concern stands. The more people we add to the Spirit Bond, the more vulnerable we all are. And the longer we’re out there fighting, the more likely it is that someone will figure out that weakness.”

“Yeah… Sorry, boss. Enjoin is an absolutely game-changing asset; you can’t expect something like that not to come with a pretty serious downside.”

“Well, this is all food for thought.” I finished the last line and stepped back from the faintly smoking door, now with its seams buried in a layer of artificial but fully solidified rock, slathered on just thick and wide enough to really lock it in place without being too brittle. “All right, let’s finish this up and get the hell out of here already. I hate being the last one at work.”

----------------------------------------

The last door was inevitably going to be the weak point: it was the one through which we’d initially entered the Spirit’s chamber, and then left it, meaning we hadn’t been able to seal up the inside with liquid stone. Amell had whipped up a batch of that glue she’d first mentioned and applied it to the inner surfaces right before we pulled it shut behind us, where it should be hardened by the time the liquid stone started going on. They had also, apparently, taken the trouble of finding something to stand on—probably just the displaced barricade that was still standing right there next to the door—and slathered the stone mixture all the way up to the top. After I finished heating it, we moved the barricades back into place and then glued together the chains for good measure.

It was the best we could do. Hopefully it would deter the curious and acquisitive long enough for us to settle Jadrak and make a more permanent arrangement.

Most of the group was present to put on these last touches, and our last members returned with excellent timing just as we were finishing up. Yoshi, Nazralind, and Rhoka came trotting up in a hurry—not the trio I would’ve expected to be hanging out together, but that detail was immediately pushed out of my mind by the news they brought.

“We have trouble,” Yoshi said seriously.

“So, there’s good news and bad news,” Naz added, “and both are that we know which goblin is the Void witch, since it’ll be the one tipped off by his devil friend to come see who’s fucking around with his altar.”

“Hoy is entering the complex,” Rhoka said tersely, “with about fifty armed goblins.”

“Should’ve known touching that thing would bite us,” Flaethwyn muttered.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but I got bitten first and harder than any of you. But still, yes, point taken. I guess we did sort of draw attention to ourselves.”

Yoshi nodded grimly. “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.”

“You know,” I mused, drawing my rapier, “I think I prefer the American version of that proverb.”

“Oh?”

I gave him my most wolfish grin. “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

Man, that would’ve been such a perfect line on which to end the conversation, but as usual nobody could let me have any fun.

“I, uh…” Yoshi squinted at me. “Are you sure that’s the American version? Because that sounds like a completely different proverb that happens to use a similar metaphor.”

“Yeah, well, you’re probably right,” I agreed, already striding past him in the direction from which they’d come. “It’s not like I’m an expert on proverbs, after all. I’m just a guy with a big bag of hammers.”