What was that now? Had he already blown himself up somewhere? Then how come he hadn't disappeared like the faceless cleaners had? Did it mean he'd respawned?

"Lurch?" I called.

"Master," his voice broke. "Only yesterday I was a mixture of cold logic and a desire to serve. And now I take in the flowers and colors, I feel tickled when the Hounds dig their tunnels, and drool over the mosaic roof tiles in the designer catalogue. Also, there's a couple of starlings made their nest in the donjon's Southern gun slit. The way they sing, it's something..."

The mind boggles. Who were we, then—toddler Creators, playing with tin soldiers in some celestial nursery? Were we building worlds then destroying them without even realizing it? No. We were still a long way from becoming creators. We were, at best, some Godlike larvae, their gestation period stretching into hundreds and thousands of years. Only then, provided you hadn't lost your soul on the way, did you receive the chance to turn into a butterfly.

I turned back to the Hound. "Do you think it would be a good idea to give names to all the dogs in the pack?"

Spark paused, thinking. Then she shook her head, "No. I don't think it's a good idea to grant one a soul casually. Besides, your powers aren't boundless; on the contrary, they're infinitely limited. It's one thing to add one final stroke to the unique portrait of an already-extraordinary creature, finalizing its creation by breathing life into it. And it's quite another to create a unique personality from a faceless outline. I don't think you're strong enough to do it. You need to wait for a particular situation—an event, a deed of courage—when this member of the pack steps out of the ruck. Only then the precious seed of the name you give her can sprout into a fully developed soul."

That made sense. It felt—how would I put it—it felt right. I had this sense that this was how it was supposed to be. Well, all the more reason to accept this explanation as a working theory until proven otherwise.

"I see," I said. "Okay, back to our problems. Harlequin, I'm going to hire you twenty top class workers. As for the eggs, you shouldn't drop or drag them. You need to carry them with caution and on tiptoe."

I paused, comparing the goblins' frail arms and legs with the half-ton contraption. Well, well. What you really needed here was a troll trained in ballet dancing so he could carry stuff around for them. I had to check the hiring board, they had all sorts there. If push came to shove, I could always create my own staff using the manual generation option. True, it was more expensive and had its limitations: you couldn't, for instance, create a vampire hobbit as strong as an ogre. But it probably could build something like a super-cautious and balanced troll.

"Lurch, I've got a job for you. You need to clean all the stage scenery from the hill. You can add all the props later. Let the goblins do their job first."

"Both hills!" the foreman demanded.

I looked around. Which both? Were there two of them? Why didn't I know anything about it? Indeed, at the back of the court lurked another rather enormous heap partially concealed by the first one. Hadn't I told them to put all atypical junk aside? Wasn't that what I'd told the foreman?"

Greed got the better of me. "Clean it up!" I snapped.

As Lurch sighed, protesting, the cleaners began pulling apart its colored moss and fragile flowers. I noticed a few of the more intellectual plants that, scared by the prospect of total destruction, tucked up the skirts of their leaves and scurried off the hill all by themselves. So! I'd seen fly traps and I'd heard of cannibal vines, but I'd never come across anything like this.

In the meantime, the goblins acquired a taste for pulling things apart. "Easy!" I shouted. "We'll still have to restore it all. I've paid for every handful of humus with my own money!"

"Absolutely," Lurch agreed. "I had to buy everything here, even the earth worms, and these goblins gobble them down like there's no tomorrow! You can't just stick the Singing Bluebells in the ground! You need to provide them with a proper eco system."

"Very wise," I winced. "Listen, I just pray to God you don't buy any more worms or whatever without asking me first. Are you a responsible building or a market stall? I'll tear you down and build some outhouses instead! That's a promise!"

"Eh, I-" Lurch faltered. "Root worms, they don't propagate, you see. You need to buy new ones every month..."

"How many?" I groaned.

"Only a couple thousand. If no one starts eating them, of course."

"How much?"

"Peanuts! A hundred gold," Lurch pleaded.

I stared at the plants, their jingle anxious now. They were beautiful, nothing to say. Besides, it would be a shame if they died... "Very well, then. And not a penny more. Also, I'd like to ask you to move one bluebell to a pot. I need to make a gift."

Finally, the second heap bared its sides gleaming in the sun. I poked at it with my virtual cursor, selecting objects as targets to read their stats.

A ragged piece of metal, the side of a good serving dish, must have made up part of something seriously heavy caliber, judging by the remaining markings and the recognizable curve of its shape:

Mithril Ore. Metal content: 8%. Weight: 13.4 Lbs.

About a dozen neat rectangular plates like those used in bulletproof jackets:

Enriched Mithril Ore. Metal content: 64%. Weight: 0.7 Lbs.

Oh. It looked like the steel invaders used an octal number system: too many of their numbers were divisible by eight. The length of the gun handle, too, suggested a much wider hand—definitely not a five-digit one.

I walked over and stuffed the plates into my bag. That was a near-pure ingot of Moon silver that might come in handy anywhere—whether for crafting, selling or representation purposes.

I paused wondering which one of our technogenic metals it was equivalent to. Something light but robust that you could use to create heavy-duty alloys for making armor plate and things like that. Titanium? Could be.

I looked over the heap trying to second-guess its size, then shoved a couple more handfuls of frags into my bag. The whole lot probably wouldn't be enough to fill in the financial abyss but with any luck it might cover at least one third of it. The thing was to enter the market wisely, making sure I didn't bring the demand down by flooding it with offers. In that case, even my children might have to sell the strategic mithril reserves one piece at a time.

I turned to check on my team, still faltering in the courtyard, goofing around as they waited for my orders. That wasn't the deal. We had more work than we could manage and no initiative offered to get it done!

"Durin," I began spitting out orders, "make an inventory of everything. Then sort it by metal content and anything you find worth noting. Lock all the valuables in the vault and set all the weird objects aside. I'll check them myself later."

"I'll manage," the zombie grumbled. Rolling his sleeves, he headed for the precious hill.

"Spark! Check the area quick and find me a cave or a cellar, somewhere to keep all this explosive shit in. I'll give you a troll to move the stuff and a few guards. It should be at least..." I estimated the size of our arsenal, "no less than two-thirds of a mile from the external wall."

"I'll send someone in a minute," the pooch said, childlike. She was busy trying to shift the armor plates on her neck and scratch it with one hind leg—a very doglike gesture. Lena felt sorry for her. Coming over, she began scratching the dog nice and hard. The pooch groaned in ecstasy.