Joe Buckley was feeling upbeat, everything was going swimmingly, he had a job, Nurse at this prestigious New York hospital. He was on his way to the terminal ward after having to sit in on Dr Hanson’s talk, explaining how the stresses of modern life had caused the current series of hallucinations and now that the truth had been revealed they would soon be able to return to normal.

Joe collected his trolley and headed to look after the inhabitants of his ward.

Meanwhile in the terminal ward the twelve terminal cancer patients heard – albeit most understood nothing due to their heavily drugged state:

ting: congratulations you are about to regain your health and live a further ten to thirty years as Goblins

Twelve goblins clambered out of their too small beds discarding IVs and other medical equipment, they were to a goblin hungry, nay ravenous, and due to the fact that their human selves were still submerged due to the after effects of pain and drugs their goblin instincts were in charge.

It was at this point that Joe Buckley barged into the ward and became the focus of twelve instinct driven goblins – it was carnage – it was the worst – and last – day in Joe Buckley’s short life.

On the other hand his sacrifice did save Dr White and Nurses O’Riley and Garcia’s lives as they were able to slam shut and barricade the ward’s doors before the goblins lost interest in Joe’s remains.

* * *

Navi Patel and his wife Indra were reduced to a four room flat and no servants, their nephew Ranjid, a junior minister in the government, had managed to ruin them in revenge for their defiance. Navi was still defiant, his daughter was not going to be forced to wed that fat pig, he was glad he’d sent her to England and even happier he’d given her that fat bank account containing the majority of his illicit foreign assets.

ting: congratulations you have been selected to become Naga, do not be worried your daughter has of course also become one

ting: you have been selected to run and own the System’s call centre here in Bombay. You will have a free hand in how to set it up and run it. Your instructions are to ensure the maximum level of frustration and anger. The System wants people to figure out things by themselves. You will be paid in gold. A chest containing five hundred krugerrands is in your kitchen.

* * *

Antonio watched the fish swim by as he went through the backlog of messages he had missed hue to all the rolling and tumbling his new body the emerald had just been through. For some reason he was feeling the need to get underground, not something he’d ever experienced before in his sixty odd years of life.

Starting species, nah none of the above, they’d all drown, what do I suggest, mmm marine molluscs, too diverse, ok cephalopod molluscs. Nice now I assume fish is out, yep, ok Muraenidae i.e. Moray eels. Nice so that’s sorted.

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Now lady Bast, thanks for adding Felidae including catkin, thanks too for the discount for Lions, Viva Sporting. Yes I will accept your offer so that I can recreate Felicia’s home and the half hour internet access is also very welcome. As soon as I can raise this pile of rocks into a decent sized island I will create your temple. Absorbing my car and fishing tackle, don’t know what good that will do but yes thank you.

Antonio then made use of his boon and transferred the bulk of his lottery cash into his recently opened Swiss numbered account, researched Ancient Egyptian temples with particular attention to Bast and Bastet, absorbed the contents of his flat including his storage room in the basement, lost connection with the flat stopped on the beach just long enough to absorb his car and fishing gear before snapping back to his new body.

First, a guard, I’ll summon a blue-ringed octopus, cheap enough, add manna for size – intelligence – enhanced poison. Nice hello Otavio.

What happened, I seem to have passed out – lets see, oh I see naming a monster costs manna, lots of manna. Wow look at you Otavio, three meters from tentacle tip to tentacle tip and such lovely colours.

« Yes master, thank you for creating me. »

« You’re welcome, your job is to hunt and keep me safe. »

During the next fortnight Antonio extended his domain to include a small arc of the nearby beach to just above the high tide mark where he raised a small cluster of rocks. Then he recreated his flat under the rocks he was resting against whilst also growing an underwater cave to help hide his core and for Otavio to have somewhere to lurk. The last thing he did was link Felicia’s home to the rocks he’d raised on the beach with a tunnel half a metre high by a meter wide.

* * *

Lilly was stunned anew, a Dungeon! “Shaleen, can you get a gate to somewhere near the new dungeon?”

“What new dungeon, where is it?” inquired Shal.

“Somewhere far to the west, in this direction,” Elorinal pointed, “On the shore of an Ocean.”

Shal blinked, then communed with Loki. “Yes such a favour could be granted, but you’ll need papers to be able to live here, all nations on Midgard are horrifyingly bureaucratic and all citizens need reams of paper and electronic records to prosper.” She grinned, “Sigyn has sorted mine,” Shal said as she stuffed a red booklet into a secure inside pocket of the cloth jacket she was wearing over a white blouse. “You could get your documentation here in Russia or In Portugal where your dungeon awaits, both are splendidly corrupt countries after all where most things are for sale.”

“How about in both?” asked Elorinal.

“Is that even possible?” queried Lilly.

After a short pause Shal answered, “Yes, it’s not even that rare, illegal naturally, just don’t let anyone see both sets of identification. You’ll owe three favours.”

“Right follow me.” Shal strode towards a gate that had just appeared and stepped through closely followed by the other two.

Once through all three had a brief attack of dizziness as they learned Portuguese. They were standing about sixty meters from the ocean with nobody in sight bar a small catkin woman with wildly curly black and brown hair.

“Here,” said Shal handing over a medium sized suitcase, “more suitable clothing, ID card and passport. The Russian documents will arrive in due course, I can’t wait, I’ll leave you to the tender mercies of the dungeon’s Voice.” She nodded to the catgirl and stepped back through the gate.

Lilly opened her senses and was able to locate the dungeon, it already covered a respectable area centred about half a kilometre offshore. “Damn, an underwater dungeon, we’ll have to get a sea elf or some other aquatic guildmember.”

“Shall we talk with the voice,” asked Elorinal.

“We’ll have to, she’ll be our best source of information.”