By morning, the area outside the dungeon was a soggy mess. Fortunately, there had been no deaths and few injuries. The Romans evacuated the workers with some of their smaller flying ships, and the waters didn't reach their encampment. Meanwhile, Stew hadn't been able to do anything. He had no flying minions or platforms; even if he did, he wouldn't have had time to react.

The first rays of dawn revealed a wreck. Even the consulate had collapsed, only underlining how misplaced his confidence in the trolls had been. Worse than that, he believed he had been on the verge of an agreement with Caesar. Now, it was hard to see how the Romans could trust him.

At least the trolls slinking back with the Roman architect Quintus had helped with some of the clean-up, though it had been little and late. All of them had taken shelter back in the dungeon before sunrise, leaving Stew with the question of what to do next.

The first thing he knew he needed to do was find a better ambassador than Femur. It should be someone the Romans would take seriously, preferably someone with some of their own insight into how to negotiate with the Romans. Out of his choices, he would prefer to offer the job to Ba'Rush, who seemed to be a pretty stand-up guy, and he had the experience of having already been a part of the legion, from what Stew had overheard. Then again, that could be a disadvantage. It was obvious that he was proud of having served and may still have some allegiance to Caesar. Likewise, Garrick was a Roman through and through and definitely had connections to Caesar. Theus was an unknown. Stew still didn't even have a contract with him. Not a current one, anyway.

That left Raek. Raek obviously had his own agenda. From the things Garrick had said, he was probably even a spy for the Carthaginians, but he was really the only option Stew had at the moment, and Raek had a vested interest in the dungeon's success—or so he claimed.

What a convenient coincidence that Raek was standing at the entrance to Stew's dungeon right now, waiting patiently, looking at one of the empty vendor stalls. Since he did have a current contract, Stew decided to speak to him directly.

"Did you know the trolls were going to do this?" was the first thing Stew asked. "The timing couldn't have been worse, or better, depending."

"I might ask you the same thing." Raek didn't seem fazed at all by the new voice in his mind. "No. I didn't know they were going to do this exactly, but you had to expect something like this. The trolls are as famous for their disasters as they are for their brilliance. Surely you knew that when you chose to have them build the very building where you met with Caesar and set them to work on an aqueduct with no oversight? I thought this was all part of your negotiation, a message for Rome."

"If it was, how would you have interpreted that message?" Stew decided to answer the question with a question rather than admit his ignorance.

"If I were Caesar. I would be retaining two possibilities equally in mind. The first is that you may be powerful yet capricious and should not be trifled with. That this proves you are merely toying with us mortals. Second, that you might be inexperienced, confused by mortal concerns, and potentially incompetent." Raek shrugged.

"Neither of those sound very productive or likely to inspire trust. Never mind Caesar, what do you think?"

Raek grinned. "I think you didn't know very much about trolls." His expression became more serious. "I think you are just learning. I think that, rather than being an ancient dungeon, you are relatively new to this world. This isn't your first world, though. You're an incarnate."

Well, that didn't take him long. "So that's three different interpretations of last night's events. Out of the three, which one doesn't end with an army laying siege to my entrance?"

"Oh, Caesar's not well known for sieges. He prefers a direct attack." Raek scratched his chin in thought. "It might be slightly better if he believed you to be an Incarnate. It would explain some of your lapses without implying malice or incompetence, but it would also clearly signal some of your weaknesses and ignorance of this world being one. You would be revealing those weaknesses among people, very likely to find ways to exploit them."

"Like yourself, for instance."

"Exactly!" Raek smiled. "This is why I was sure you are not some barely sapient young dungeon merely imitating awareness. Yes, I have already exploited your ignorance of the value of your goods to make enough profit to pay for all of this." He waved at the soggy construction site. "If I can keep you alive and favorably inclined, I plan to continue to expand on that agreement to build wealth to make Midas blush."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I believe you just called me the Golden Goose?"

"This is the mystery with you. You know your Aesop, but you have no familiarity with trolls, or goblins for that matter. How can you be both from another world and seem to know such selective things about our own?"

"About goblins. I've used Femur to negotiate more out of habit than deliberate choice. He's done a reasonably good job than some of my other minions might have, or at least it seems like he's been less shocking to the humans. That's not good enough now." Stew decided to get right to the point. "I would like to offer you a position as my ambassador, someone to speak for me with the Romans and others."

"Ambassador." From Raek's face and churning mind, he was finally shocked. "Are you sure? You do realize the Romans, Greeks, Gauls, well anyone really have reason to distrust me already?"

"Because you're a spy for Carthage?"

"Spy?" Raek laughed. "You've been listening to young Garrik. A spy wouldn't wear the colors of a second fleet commander in the Eastern Trade Flotilla."

Stew had noticed that Raek's clothes were more colorful than anyone else he had seen in this world, but they didn't look anything like a uniform, not that he would know what a Carthaginian Merchant Marine uniform would look like. "What are you doing leading a band of bandits out here in a forest so far from the sea, then?"

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Raek stretched his arms out to the sides, and his voice took on a showman's tone. "Scouting for lucrative trade opportunities! Expanding the goodwill and influence of Carthage in these barbarous lands." He lowered his arms and his voice. "And generally looking for information and ways to limit Roman expansion in the north."

"That sounds like spying."

"Yes, but it's just a sideline, hardly a fraction of my day, nothing like a real spy. And most importantly," Raek gestured back in the direction of the Roman camp, "no secret at all."

"So, if I offer you the job of ambassador, it's going to look like I've formed an alliance with Carthage?"

"It will mean you've formed an alliance with Carthage. I couldn't begin to do something like that without formal permission from the Eastern Fleet Accountancy or even the Trade Practices Board itself."

"Well, then, I guess that's–"

"Fortunately, since this is such a good opportunity, I've already reported it and received approval just this morning to expand negotiations. I've been given considerable latitude to make a deal."

"That's good to know, but I don't see how that helps here. I need a representative, and It wouldn't make sense to ask you to negotiate with yourself."

"No more than it would make sense for me to negotiate for you with the Romans. What you need is someone neutral or aligned with your interests, someone the Romans and Carthage, for that matter, would respect but who would not necessarily be inclined to favor Rome or Carthage."

"That sounds great, but where would I find someone like that?"

Raek looked around as if worried about eavesdroppers, even though this entire conversation was taking place mind-to-mind. Sensing Stew's question, he said, "Some things I don't dare even think this close to Caesar's Mage Auxiliaries. Can we finish this conversation deeper in your dungeon?"

"Step through the door at the back of the vendor's hall and go down the stairs to Level 2. We can talk there." The last time Raek had been in the dungeon, he had gone skulking around using his rogue stealth skills. He hadn't tried anything, but Stew had left some pretty strict instructions on Level 2 about what to do if he showed up again. Still, it was probably the best place to meet besides Femur's cave, and from Raek's passing comment about goblins, the cave might not be a great idea.

Besides, it would give the panthers some practice stalking.

They each kept their thoughts to themselves as Raek descended the stairs to the swamp level, and Stew gave him directions to the alchemist's shack.

He reached out to Lorelei and the Panthers as soon as Raek stepped off the stairs. "I've asked Raek back for a chat. Keep an eye on him, but don't let him know you're watching."

He could feel the panthers already converging before he said anything, jumping from shadow to shadow beneath the damp and gnarled trees. He found he couldn't pinpoint Lorelei's position at all, which concerned him at first until she responded.

"There are advantages to being a ghost. He won't know I'm here unless I let him, but shouldn't I just sing him a nice lullaby and be done with it? Why give him another chance? He's even a sailor, tasty, tasty!"

"He has some information he wants to share, and he's under a dungeon contract, so no harming him unless I say so specifically, and I won't unless he breaks that contract. Understood?"

"Aye." He could hear the pout in her voice but no defiance.

Meanwhile, Raek entered the shack and began looking over the shelves and cubbies, obviously appraising the contents. "Who's the alchemist?"

"You wouldn't want to meet her," Stew replied. "Be careful not to touch any of her things."

He could feel Lorelei's implicit "Harumph" in his mind, but she said nothing.

The Panthers were all around the cabin, only revealed, even to each other, by an occasional eye peering through a tiny shadow as if they were peek-holes to their individual lairs, which, in effect, they were.

If Raek noticed the increased security, he didn't mention it, but that didn't mean anything. "As I said, you will need someone special to represent you properly, and I think I have just the. Well. Person, I suppose. It's not a simple matter describing the Avatar's existence, especially now."

"Avatar?" He was imagining either a bald kid in robes or a glow-in-the-dark elf, but he was pretty sure that had nothing to do with what Raek was thinking.

"How much do you know about the history of this area? What happened here in the years and centuries before you arrived?"

"Well, not a lot. As you might have guessed, this world is similar to my earlier world, but not the same. We even had the same mountains and oceans and the same names for cities, but enough things are different for me not to be sure where the history is the same and where it's different." He wasn't about to tell him Carthage was utterly destroyed by the Romans in his world. He had no idea how Raek would take that, and it would reveal how little he could possibly know about them since.

"Are you aware of the city nearby and the history of these hills in particular?"

"There was another dungeon here. Hannibal destroyed it, then Scipio killed Hannibal."

"Histories of great battles are lies told by the survivors to bandage their wounds or fill their pockets. Don't believe all, well most, of that story." Raek leaned down to look closely at a small vial full of tiny, drill-shaped grubs that glowed faintly with the same blue as the mana cubes, [stone weevils] Lorelei had managed to gather from somewhere.

Stew made a mental note to ask Lorelei about that later, he may need some exterminator slimes on this floor too.

Reak shrugged at the odd creatures and continued. "Hannibal didn't kill the dungeon, and Scipio didn't kill Hannibal. Someone like Caesar might have been a challenge for Hannibal Barca, maybe. Scipio, however, was an uninspired general, and he didn't have that kind of luck. It is true, though, that you are not the first dungeon to spawn in this area."

"The Altar Of The Hungry Flame," Stew remembered Bossy describing the ancient dungeon dead rubble and bones were supposed to be somewhere in these hills. He had tried to pretend to be a remnant of it when the first delvers came, but it hadn't worked very well. He hadn't thought about it much since.

Raek straightened and snapped the fingers of his left hand. "Yes! The Altar Of The Hungry Flame was a powerful dungeon, more powerful than the Palatine dungeon has become even now. In fact, I suspect your soul has implanted in a secret seed left behind by your predecessor, your parent, in a sense."

"That's…" Stew tried to wrap his mind around what Raek was telling him. It made sense, in a way, that a dungeon core wasn't just lying around for him to, what, steal? Possess? Lease with an option to own? It was mind-blowing on the one hand. On the other hand, it just raised more questions. "What does that have to do with negotiating with Caesar?"

"You have a sister." Raek beamed. "I would like to introduce you."