I was in the middle of a very excellent meal of beef roast stuffed with valley herbs and cave wheat when time stopped right as a forkful of the delicious meal touched my tongue.

My eyes crossed a little as I tried to look down towards my fork.

How irritating, I thought to myself, tasting the food on my tongue but unable to do anything about it. Apparently taste buds work in Alert Time.

I almost decided to start time again just to eat that bite, but decided to check first. The new clearing in the forest had apparently attracted deer and hawks, as they had constantly been moving in and out of my sphere of influence, driving me nuts all day. Or night. Or whatever time it was outside. The laptop battery had died long ago, and as tempted as I was to try the generator, I needed to be doing things more than I needed to be fiddling with computers and generators. Silicon and glass would be critically dangerous when Shatterbird arrived, so the two items had been moved to Human tech storage. The time for research was done.

I cast my senses out, looking for the newcomer, and the delicious meal on my tongue was immediately forgotten as I found the new arrival.

Crawler. Fear and excitement and anger all rose simultaneously in me, but I used a single word to beat down the fear and excitement. Danielle.

Frigid hatred cascaded through my mind, erasing all other emotions. All extraneous thoughts not related to ending the S9 and protecting the fortress children vanished. I had been pacing and fretting all day, clearly irritating my dwarves, but somehow not causing them much unhappiness. They understood anxiety in the face of imminent danger, and recognized that a good leader rarely ever believed they had thought of everything. At least that was what Urist told me in the meeting I had called, nearly twelve hours ago.

You could never perfect fortress defenses. There were always ways to improve them, but my dwarves had been working very hard. Urist and Arda, as well as a half dozen other highly experienced masons and mechanics, hammered out plans with me for hours after I had spoken with the children. For hours more, I had just done my best to simply stay out of the way and adjust permissions and active assignments of dwarves at the request of Arda and Urist. They told me who needed to do what job, and I made it happen.

Urist, after confirming his soldiers knew their mobilization and deployment plans had even started cutting stone blocks for construction at a rate clearly indicating he was at least a high master mason, despite there being no record of such a skill for him. The fact that so many blocks were coming out of a masonry shop dedicated to low skilled masons was not lost on the other masons. He lied and said he'd had a masonry mood when he was a child in another fortress he lived in before he emigrated to Axespeaker. At least I thought it was a lie. Nobody pressed him on it, certainly not me.

I assigned dwarves to burrows and verified again that food, drink, and beds had been moved around to various lever rooms and into each burrow. I checked the deep bunker that had been prepared for the children, nearly twelve miles below, and the obsidian mixers that would seal the long passage leading to them. No adults would accompany the children. There were three eleven-year-olds who would be fully adult within months, and enough food and drink stored to last them for two years, as well as a complete set of all workshops, books, and tools. If the rest of the fortress fell, they would be the future - if they survived my death, which was by no means certain. I hoped that not even the S9 would dig that deep for twenty children.

I spent nearly a subjective hour in alert time, checking every incomplete job and every dwarf's status. There were no must-finish incomplete jobs as far as I could tell.

A critical thought struck my mind like a hammer. Socks. Where are all the socks? And vermin corpses. Having a butterfly corpse keep a critical door from closing and allowing Crawler into the wrong place at the wrong time would be bad, worse than enraged elephants.

I verified that there were no socks or any other unclaimed items outside of depot storage. There was no refuse anywhere except a few dead vermin where cats had left presents for the ones they had adopted, and those were in non-critical places. Even the cooks and brewers had been pressed into duty assembling defenses in the fortress. Every dwarf had an innate sense for stone construction.

I went through my mental checklist one more time, and could think of nothing. I ended Alert Time. My dwarves exploded into action, finishing any job that was important to defense, and abandoning any job that wasn't. They ran like mad for their assigned posts as I continued eating the food in front of me without tasting it. I would need the energy. I couldn't leave my quarters anyway - the final solution lever was in the private lever room off my bedroom.

Shatterbird appeared at my border as I watched Crawler climb onto one of the watchtowers and kill the chicken inside. I could feel the nervousness of my dwarves as a strange scream began to build in intensity, we could hear it through the stone itself, through all the doors. It didn't echo, it was everywhere, not like real sound at all, but still painfully loud and shrill. The window glass of all the animal-powered watchtowers disappeared in an instant, followed closely by all of the glass in the glass storage areas. Damage to items in the human tech storage areas was severe and growing worse. I also felt the disappearance of all the bags in the sand storage area within seconds.

Shatterbird's screaming continued, and the human tech items rapidly disappeared. I imagined that all three of the special storage rooms were now filled with a vortex of sand and glass, rapidly beginning to wear the stone that surrounded it. After breaking her sand and glass out of the enclosures, Shatterbird would use her sand to map out the fortress, and as a weapon when needed. If they intended to capture me, she couldn't use the sand to simply kill everything that moved though.

The rage of my glassmakers as their master crafted windows and finished glass goods were destroyed in an instant rushed through me like an artic gale. I had done what I could for them. I had warned them, provided them with the best of everything. Every surface in all of their private quarters were engraved with masterworks. Statues to their gods, made of the materials of their choices, with gemstones to match their preferences were placed in their quarters. They even got personal mist generators in their quarters, before I had gotten a shower in mine. Still, I lost two of them to their rage as they entered a berserk state, their connection to me failing, diminishing, until they were no more connected to me than Crawler and Shatterbird were.

All of my glassmakers had willingly been confined, locked in cells deep under the fort. In a rage, the two berserking dwarves began smashing at the walls of their enclosures, but those walls had been reinforced to hold even berserking dwarves. I directed that appropriate levers be activated and three extraordinarily angry, but not berserk dwarven glassmakers left their confinement and rushed to a nearby armor and weapon depot to equip themselves with masterwork weapons and armor. I could feel their sanity stabilize as they admired the weapons and armor they hoped to use to kill intruders with while they moved to their assigned positions within the fort.

I closed my eyes and clenched my fists, shoulders shaking in fury as I watched Crawler and Shatterbird moving towards the fortress entrance. The two berserk dwarves were lost to me, they were lost to the fort, but I couldn't let them die now by releasing them and directing them through prepared passages to charge the S9 as they had asked. If I did, their deaths would damage the morale of their relatives and friends significantly, which the fortress could not afford.

I wasn't certain if I was being a complete idiot or not, but there were rumors that one might trigger a power twice, and gain additional strength or abilities. The S9 were professional killers, used to working as a team, capable of sieging entire cities and defeating entire groups of organized capes by themselves. I was a college age young woman, and my only combat experience outside of LARPing was being beaten up in seventh grade by a fifth grader. My dwarves would do what they could, but I still needed anything I could get. I needed more. The S9 had triggered me once. I was hoping to trigger myself again with the rage of my dwarves as they died or went insane, because I had little doubt that most of my dwarves would die with me today.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

My dwarves knew my plans, and they did not approve. The memory of being called insane by the dwarves in the planning meeting made my mouth twitch. Their expressions as I had started laughing uncontrollably had been a bright spot in the day. After I explained what was funny to the dwarves in the meeting with me, they had all laughed as well. Macabre humor was nothing strange to dwarves. They still didn't like the idea, but I pointed out to them that they could not stop me. The happiness level of the dwarves in that meeting had dropped a little, in unison, but they accepted my choice fatalistically.

As my glassmakers raged, I tried to widen my connection to them, attempting to mimic what I'd done with Urist after The Simurgh had mind-raped me. At first there were five trickles of rage feeding me, and I was trying with all my might to open those connections wider. Then, all of a sudden, the two unfortunate glassmaker dwarves had gone berserk. For a brief instant, while I was trying as hard as I could to pull their rage into me, the connections between us had widened. What had been two trickles of inhumanly cold rage had become a raging torrent of rage so raw that I had barely managed to maintain consciousness before the connections to the berserkers failed.

After being beaten against the rage of the berserking dwarves like a rug on the first day of spring, I felt the depth of my connections to everything in my sphere of influence widen slightly. Not enough to reconnect emotionally to the raging dwarves, but more detail. I could feel Crawler, spiked legs punching through soil as he advanced. I could feel the stone being worn away by Shatterbird's remotely-controlled glass and sand. I could hear the sounds of my dwarves whispering amongst themselves, and hear them voicing their worry for me. Then, I heard a familiar mellow voice commanding his team to move up and meet by the entrance of my fortress.

Frigid fury ripped through my mind as I watched more enemies enter my sphere of influence. The Siberian first, then Jack Slash, Bonesaw, Cherish, Burnscar, and finally Mannequin, who I had somehow forgotten about until the documents from Dragon warned me about him.

I reached out to my mug of watered strawberry wine, and threw back a swallow, wiping my mouth with a napkin. I ignored the headache and pretended that the red stain on the napkin was the color of wine.

Shatterbird reached the entrance of the fortress before the others. I could feel the glass and sand that she controlled in her immediate vicinity, the shape of it, the velocity, and the density. Not each individual grain and shard, but the shape. I felt when she sent the majority of it into the first chamber, clearly scouting ahead.

She spoke, and I had to concentrate to understand her words. "There is a long tunnel with a large room at the end. The room has a substantial structure in the middle of it. There is a very heavy metal door, with an incredibly tight seal. I cannot pass sand or glass beyond it."

I wanted to let them enter the trade depot room so I could treat them like filthy elves, but I didn't want to warn them that I was watching them, able to hear what they were saying. They would almost certainly expect some sort of big trap in the first room, outside such a sturdy door. The Siberian would certainly be ready to protect them. It would be better for them to think I was scared and blind.

I directed that a lever be activated, and a dwarf ran to that lever and pulled it. Three floodgates opened, and a section of ceiling attached to that lever activated. Magma filled the three storage areas where Shatterbird was trying to use the sand and glass to bore her way through stone. The glass and sand was absorbed into the mass of magma almost instantly. In the space of a half second, all the glass and sand deep in the fortress was stripped away from Shatterbird's control. I heard her gasp of surprise, and smiled coldly.

Another half of a second passed, and the false ceiling above the entrance tunnel and the trade depot began to withdraw, allowing a solid sheet of magma to fall from the ceiling. The falling sheet of magma started twenty feet into the tunnel, and then followed the retracting ceiling towards the trade depot and the artifact door guarding the entrance of the facility. All of the sand and glass shards in the chamber became part of the magma immediately, stripping almost all of Shatterbird's remaining sand and glass away from her control.

I directed that another lever be thrown, and two hatches opened at the base of the tunnel, one to either side of the door. Magma drained rapidly. I did not reset the traps. That would come later, when they were inside. Let them think the traps were sprung.

I heard a voice I didn't recognize, female. Speaking softly. "Jack, you said this was that college-aged girl who collapsed in fear in the video? That she created a dozen constructs that looked like dwarves from fantasy?"

The mellow voice responded "Yes, and she's apparently been very, very busy. She even created some very nice coffins for her friends and her sister. I wouldn't mind having a coffin like that someday." He sounded rather pleased. When he mentioned Danielle, a wave of fury passed over me so strongly that black spots danced in front of my eyes. I crushed the worry of my dwarves before it could weaken me.

Cherish identified herself as the new female speaker by explaining what she was sensing with her power. "She, ah, doesn't feel like she's afraid Jack. There aren't just a dozen constructs either, I'm sensing around two hundred emotion sources. Every one of them is just this side of insane rage, except two, which are in a mindless rage. I've, ah, not seen anything quite like it." She paused. "I mean, I can make people that mad, but she's duplicated across her constructs, I can't tell which is her."

"How far away from us is she?" Jack asked.

There was another pause before Cherish spoke again. "Scattered. From a few hundred feet underground to far enough underground that I can't really pinpoint exactly where she is - at least ten miles. Not far from us horizontally, no more than a few hundred feet."

After a moment Jack spoke again. "Ten miles, you say? And more than a hundred of her?"

"Closer to two hundred. Around twenty of them are more than ten miles away. The rest are within a mile underground" Cherish corrected him.

There was laughter from Jack, a gleeful laughter. "And here I was thinking that she might have just holed up and hoped we'd forgotten her. Boys and girls, she's challenging us. She wants this fight." He paused. "And I forgot my Indiana Jones hat and whip."

Crawler chuckled, and several other voices groaned good-naturedly.

Jack spoke again a few seconds later. "OK, Crawler you're on point. Everyone else circle up the wagons on Siberian until we get past this lava trap and see what's inside the bunker."

I heard two loud taps and then a loud scraping on rock, followed by two more taps. I tried to feel out what had just been scraped into the stone, but Jack read it faster than I could decipher it, sounding a little irritated. "Magma then. Thank you for the correction, Mannequin."

I saw Crawler start moving quickly into the facility, and the others gathering together into a double line behind Siberian.

Jack spoke again, sounding like he was about to get into an amusement park ride. "This will be more fun than I thought." He paused. "Still, ten miles." Another pause. "Cherish, feed her anger. Let's see if we can draw her to us in a rage. I'd rather not chase her around in some underground maze for hours."

Cherish sounded a little unsure of herself. "OK, Jack, I'm going to have to spread it to all those targets though, it's not going to be much."

"I understand. Do what you can. As we find them, there will be fewer to spread your concentration. Just keep fanning that rage."

"I'll do what I can, Jack." Cherish replied.

Oh, please do, I silently thought as I allowed a thin-lipped, arctic cold smile to form. I reached forward to my mug of watered strawberry wine again, taking another drink. As I felt my rage begin to spike, I carefully set the mug down, daubing my mouth afterwards with the napkin to remove the dark red liquid from my upper lip.