Listening in on Debbie chat with Earth reminds me of watching someone on a telephone call….

“Your eminence, we need to abort.”

…

“Well, I’m sure you know this, but our army is gone, and while your gifts are the best, razing a city like this, by myself….”

…

“I can't make that work, your eminence. Maybe if the Stormbringer's….”

…

“Winifred's out of play? How?”

…

“I see. Maybe…”

…

“Roger too? So I'm the last, then. And frankly, I can barely touch her, and she heals like…”

…

“I have, yes, she dodges like Roger.”

…

“I did get a lucky hit in once, so I can be confident she's not just Fredrick in disguise, yes.”

…

“No sir.”

…

“Yes sir.”

…

“Yes sir.”

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“Sir, respectfully, I think we win BY losing.”

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“She told me how she plans to treat the soldiers…”

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“Yes sir.”

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“And she has shown me what she's…”

…

“Ah, sir, from what I can tell, she can take care of it faster than we can.”

…

“Seriously, sir.”

…

“Thank you sir.”

…

“Yes sir. I'll tell her, sir, and… why, sir?”

…

“Sir yes sir!”

Debbie never actually took her eyes off me, but I can tell she's addressing me now, mostly by the change in tone; a moment ago, she was a soldier talking to her commander. Now? Not so much. “You win this one, then. And… I'm supposed to ask you for a ride back to Chesterwark?” That last bit has her confused.

Ah, good. My brother is not going to suicide over this. And yes, a full commitment against me would be suicide in his case, at least the way he was running it. I pull enough data for the teleport out of Fredrick's stored memories, and rush over to Debbie to cast the Greater Teleport spell, taking as little time as I can manage.

It's a decent city, at least for the faux medieval setting. I land us just outside one of the main city gates… this one is a walled town, nice stone masonry. There's a short line of carts awaiting inspection; most drawn by horses (one by four dogs the size of horses), and all loaded down with … something, they all have canvas tarps covering everything… because it's raining. One Wandering Weather spell takes care of that… although it'll be ten minutes before the weather actually changes. But it will follow me, continually changing the area's weather to whatever I want… within range for the season. So really, it's a permanent solution to bad weather in my case.

Debbie frowns at me, “OK, care to clue me in on why my lord was in such a hurry to get me here, and why you knew there was a rush without being told?”

I consider a moment… yep, it's against the rules... and I can somewhat see why: Killing Earth this way was a real risk, “I can't say. But… please try to avoid getting hit for a while.”

That deepens Debbie’s frown, “That’s… the Earthshaker phrased it as a command, not a request. And he also was unwilling to answer why, saying it’s not my place to question his rule.”

I don't really have a good reason to share that secret, “Best to obey your master, then. Ah… enjoy your vacation? If he wants you to avoid fighting, he's probably not going to give you any assignments, and you'll need to stay away from dungeons and things.”

Debbie just glares at me.

I feel the need to fill the silence, “Yes, well,” she's giving me a very uncomfortable glare, “My job here is done, so… goodbye.” I Greater Teleport back to Brasilia. I need to start the dungeon ritual anyway.

First up: I need a spot. Putting it in town is bad, as monsters will sometimes come out of there... but I can't have it too far from town, either, or it will be a while before Brasilia is covered. I settle on an area about a mile outside the city wall.

Next in line: I need a nice, deep tunnel, going at least a hundred feet deep… which, in this rocky ground, is a simple matter of casting Disintegrate repeatedly, destroying the ground directly beneath my feet each time. Each casting destroys a cube of matter ten feet on a side, so ten castings gives me a nice hundred foot drop shaft… but I go with fifteen castings for a hundred and fifty foot shaft to be safe. With my action economy abuse, it's a fun little eighteen seconds.

Then I need to draw the sigils in the ground. I carve them in the stone floor with my claws. I picked up “godripper” at ninth level, and that lets me ignore hardness, so the rock is about as hard as unbaked clay as far as I'm concerned. Not hard at all.

Finally, there's the ritual itself. It's an hour of chanting, slowly feeding magical power into the sigils as I trace my hands along them, over and over. And if I were doing this the “traditional” way, I would be using something like a turkey baster, filling it with the blood of the sacrifices, and squirting that into the sigils. Can we say ‘eww’? I'm glad I don't need to do that. Really, really glad.

And once I've kept that up long enough that I can perceive power flowing back out from my rocky runes… I'm done. With this depth, it'll be about a week before the magic reaches the surface, bit it'll take care of itself. It should end up Fey themed according to the books from Dad, which will mostly be better for leakage - they tend more towards mischievous than murderous (harder to clean up spills, but the spills are mostly less of a problem) - so all I need at this point is to go register the dungeon with the guildhall.

One Greater Teleport later, and I'm looking at the blond guildmaster here, a woman starting to go gray. She's again at the desk, and has her hand on her slightly wrinkled temples, as she pages through a tome in front of her face, light provided by an oil lamp.

She is REALLY surprised by sudden appearance, and reflexively tries to Fireball me.

Which of course does nothing, as the baby dungeon hasn't grown to cover this area yet.

“HOW?!” She shouts at me, he jaw hanging open as she stands at her desk, her chair knocked aside in her haste to get moving.

I give an answer that's technically true, “I'm the Prophet of The Blessed Mother. I can do some things that shouldn't be possible.”

She mutters, “cheating Prophets,” under her breath as she picks up her chair and sits down, then looks at me angrily as she speaks, “What do you want? Make it snappy, I need to figure out if we have a suitable condemned criminal for reseeding the dungeon.”

I smile, “You've got time, then. I already reseeded the dungeon, and am here to let you know where it is for when it needs maintenance.”

She drops her head to her desk, “Ugh. Do I want to know who you killed to set that up?”

Again, I use a true statement to mislead, “Turns out it doesn't actually require a murder. The original ritual used a dozen ‘he lambs of the first year’ - but almost any living creatures will serve in the right quantities. I didn't kill anyone: There was no need.”

She pauses at that, “All this time… and we could just have used cattle? That's…” she takes a breath, “Can you demonstrate and document this? Because if true….”

I chuckle, “I can, yes,” I have access to the full documentation of the original ritual. I can read it in my office while I dictate here. Not killing people is right in line with what Dad wants, so anything that leads to less killing is fair game if it's not against the rules otherwise… and this one's not forbidden. “And I’d be happy to do so, even, presuming that will result in the knowledge being spread far and wide. I wouldn’t want information that can save lives suppressed when it is quite simple and easy to spread. This shouldn’t be just a dry academic paper that ends up in some noble’s library collecting dust.” I look her in the eye. Yes, she knows what I mean.

And she nods, “This will change things. No, I’m not going to let it languish on a shelf. I’m absolutely going to take a byline in the publishing, but I’ll put your name on it, and forward to all the dungeon maintenance crews. Most will be happy to cut down on the killings.”

That gives me pause, “‘Most’?”

The guildmaster sighs, “Yes, most. There’s a rare few that come to enjoy the killing aspect; the power over the sacrifice, the blood flowing, the screams of the dying fading into a whimper as the light fades from their eyes...”

Umm… well, worst-case scenario I can just repeat this with another guildmaster elsewhere, “I see. Well, let’s get to work…”

I spend some time reading off the details that Fredrick didn’t have on file in his memories, about the requirements for the sacrifices, how to do it efficiently, and a few other gory details. Talking about butchering cattle isn’t fun, but it beats going over how to “properly” bleed out a person.  An hour later when we’re done, she thanks me, and we part ways.

And while I’ve been putting it off, it’s time to level up. I focus on the me in my office….