"Mountain Keepers have a Minimum Viable Population of only two of you?" I asked.

The two Mountain Keepers looked at each other.

"Primary?" The one on the left asked.

"Primary." The other said, nodding.

They turned back to face me.

"Viable population, minimal." The one on the right, Primary, said. "So long as we are we and not I we can make more, the mountain heart assists."

"From two we can make more, more, and more again." The left one, Secondary, said.

Interesting, it seemed as though they could duplicate themselves, if I was understanding it correctly. So long as there were two of them they could make more any time they wished.

"What do you require in a living space?" I asked. "Food, water, temperature, environmental features?"

"We can form a Mountain Seed, which will provide most of what we require." Primary said. "We only require an area of stone, and perhaps access to water. We can form ore seeds that will grow through stone to form veins of different metals, which is what we eat. Cold is preferable, but we dig down into the Mountain and so are used to more moderate temperatures as well."

I pulled out my larger pocket portal and formed it into a doorway, placing the exit along the wall of the portal room that connected the Forest Keeper floor and their city.

I led the two Mountain Keepers through the doorway and to the Forest Keeper floor. There were Forest Keepers moving back and forth from their city, carrying chests with them. I had already started on the stairs down from the Forest Keeper floor and I took the Mountain Keepers down them.

At the first landing I removed the wall that was made of my fortress stone and excavated a small alcove into the grey stone beyond it. I had to bring a spare thread portal I had made through my remaining small pocket portal to speed up the process.

After I was done I brought through a presence and set the thread portal doorway against one of the walls.

"This will be your floor, then." I said. "It can be defined as a cylinder one kilometer wide and one hundred and fifty meters down from the ceiling here. There is a lot of weight resting on your floor, I will be back later to put in reinforcement columns."

I would put the Plains Keepers on the floor below this one.

"We are accustomed to working with the weight of mountains to consider." Primary said. "We will not allow our tunnels to collapse."

"You received the quest for raw materials?" I asked, and got a nod in return. "You can open up the Fortress Shop by saying or thinking 'Fortress Shop' when near a Fortress Presence. As you can form different metals you should be able to receive Fortress Coins and exchange them for any other raw materials, like water, that you need."

While I was talking with Primary, Secondary had started scooping out handfuls of stone from the wall and rolling them into balls as though it was snow. He had already created a large stack and had barely moved two meters deep into the wall.

"You need somewhere to throw away stone?" I asked.

"Yes, that would be appreciated." Primary said.

I designated a new area in my Pocket Dimension as stone storage and then assigned an ongoing quest for the Mountain Keeper floor that requested stone. The reward for the quest was the removal of the stone and one Fortress Coin per tonne removed.

"Once you have five Fortress Coins I would suggest getting a Bag of Holding for the inventory space." I said. "That should help you greatly in removing stone, as you can submit quest materials directly from there. You should be able to set which quest you are submitting to when you submit it, be sure to try submitting to the raw materials quest first."

"Thank you my lord." Primary said. He even bowed.

It was always interesting when my people switched over their term of address. Though now that I think about it that was the first time Primary had addressed me directly. I nodded to him and left through the portal for their floor into their portal room. A few moments of shuffling portals around and I was back in the mountains and my larger thread pocket dimension was back in my pocket.

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It was a quick trip back down to the road, which now had a constant stream of wagons going in both directions. The wagons stuck to the center of the road except every two minutes where they moved to their right to allow the wagon coming the other way to pass them.

I started running down the road to the east, every so often having to dodge between two wagons as they passed each other. The wagoners occasionally shouted at me as I went past them but I ignored them and continued on. After half an hour I came to another large wagon rest zone, half of the wagons that were coming in were moving to a parking space rather than continuing on.

The first several wagons I passed travelling east after I had left the resting zone were much more spaced apart, closer to five hundred meters between them than the two hundred that was usual. The wagons coming the other way were still spaced the usual distance. It finally bugged me enough to ask, so I slowed my pace to a quick walk to match the pace of the next wagon I passed as I came next to the driver.

"Hello." I said. "Mind if I ask you some questions?"

She raised an eyebrow at me. "Might do." She said. "Depends on the questions."

"What is with the spacing of the wagons on the road?" I asked.

"You're out here on the road without knowing about the dangers?" She asked. "There are lesser dragons that hunt deeper in the mountains. The wagons are spread out because they aren't drawn to a single target during the day. There are fools who travel at night, though, which is asking to be eaten."

Not anything I was likely to need to deal with. I thanked her and sped back up. After another hour of running the stone of the mountains turned into the dirt and soil of hill country.

The edge of where the mountains turned into hills would be where I would expect a winter army to assemble for an attack on the plains. And Gerry did say that his people would have scouts out, so they should know if there was an army in the area. It would be useful to see the army for myself before talking with the Plains Keepers, so I could show it as a threat to them. And I would have a chance to convince the leprechaun town to emigrate at the same time.

Surprisingly, to me at least, as I left the road and headed north there wasn't much snow in the hills. There were large trees growing occasionally, but not much else to break up the rolling landscape. I headed more to the east as I went north, towards more grassed and less stony and barren ground.

Two hours later I was passing by a tree at the top of a hill when I heard a combination of sounds that made me pause. The first was a bird call, which was fairly common, but it coincided with a light clicking and the sound of a branch creaking. Together it was enough to make me stop and approach the trunk of the tree.

"Hello." I said, walking up to the trunk of the tree.

I wasn't sure there was someone in the tree, but being fifty kilometers north of the road, which was where Gerry said the town would be, along with the suspicious sounds made me want to check for sure. Except I wasn't getting a response. I gripped the trunk of the tree, digging my nails into it slightly, and had just started climbing when someone shouted from further up the tree and behind me.

I recognised the language as the one the leprechauns used, and there was a response from further along followed by a soft thump and then running footsteps away to the north. I paused for a few moments and then reached further up the trunk to continue climbing.

There was a thwack sound and I moved my hand back down just before an arrow buried itself into the trunk above where my hand would have been. I followed the angle of the arrow back and could just make out a leprechaun in dark greens blended into the leaves of the tree, standing on a darkened wooden beam between two of the tree's branches. There was another arrow knocked on the bow, and it was aimed at my chest.

I dropped the short distance back to the ground and raised my hands, trying to show that I didn't mean any harm. I was looking right into the leprechaun's eyes, and he loosened the draw on his bow, saying something to me in his language.

"I can't understand you." I said.

I went to move to the side and he spoke a sharp command and redrew his bow. Okay, that was a pretty clear command not to move. I nodded and leaned back against the tree trunk, sliding down into a seated position. We seemed to be waiting for something, or someone, and I was willing to be diplomatic about it.

I formed a bowl from stone and dipped it into my Bag of Holding, sending an inventory request for a mix of berries, taking advantage of my Inventory's link to Fortress Storage. When I removed the bowl I got a dozen different berries, and about five of each kind. I selected a large red berry and placed the entire thing into my mouth. Biting down on it filled my mouth with a sharp tart taste and a second later a flood of sweetness.

I took the letter that Gerry had given me out of my inventory and held it up to show the leprechaun. It had a large red wax seal on it, and also a set of sharp edged characters across the middle.

The leprechaun dropped the three meters to the ground easily and cautiously approached me after slinging his bow over his shoulder. He was at my eye height while I was sitting, so I held the letter up for him to see and he examined it closely before relaxing and giving a single nod. I gestured to the bowl of berries, taking another one myself. I brought out two bottles of water and handed him one as he selected a berry.

Ten minutes later we had almost finished all of the berries when I heard running from the north, from a lot of sets of feet. I stood and turned to face that direction, my leprechaun companion looked at me questioningly before rising to his feet from where he was sitting opposite me.

A minute after that ten leprechauns crested the next hill over, bows drawn and ready for a fight. The leprechaun next to me gave a shout and waved, and the other leprechauns jogged towards us, their bows and arrows put away.

There was a short conversation between my companion and the leader before he turned to me.

"Greetings and welcome." The leader said. "You have a letter for our Matriarch?"

I pulled it out and showed it to him.

"Excellent." The leader said. "If you will follow me, please."

He set off to the north and I followed him, after several steps I was stopped by a message from the System. A red message.