“What will you do with us, schei?hund?” Jurgen grumbled as I released the humans back to their eternal rest.

  “Stop eating that!” I called at the horde that had turned on their former allies. “Jurgen, I know enough German to know that you just called me something mean.”

  “Dwarvish,” he muttered.

  “Whatever. So here’s the deal. You guys can dig, I’ve got mines that need workers. You don’t eat, do you sleep?”

  “We do eat. The flesh of the living fuels us; without it, we’ll rot.”

  “That could be a problem. I’ll ask Tim. He probably knows the best way to keep a modest force of undead ticking over. Sleep?”

  “No, we don’t need sleep.”

  “Outstanding! I see a serious jump in productivity in my future!” Productivity meant profit. I liked profit. “Who on your side arranged for the battle to take place here?”

  “Lord Gigglesworth,” replied the surly zombie.

  “He couldn’t have dictated it by himself.”

  “Him and Flamingwhooper were the primary negotiators. I was just the King of the local clan. You’re lucky.” He spat to one side. “We didn’t have time to bring in The Other. We’d have kicked your–”

  “Punch yourself in the nose.”

  Smack.

  “I’m guessing The Other is the nameless terror from ancient times you idiots made friends with rather than fight like decent dwarves.”

  “You can’t fight something you can’t see, or feel or smell. The Other just-”

  “I don’t care.” I opened a portal back to the mana crystal floor. “You, with me. The rest of you, wait.” Jurgen and I stepped through. An axe appeared in his forehead, and he fell to the ground.

  “What the hell?” I snarled.

  “Gunther!” Kat snapped from her desk. The foreman of my dwarven miners lowered a hand that had recently held an axe to his side sheepishly.

  “I saw a toter zwerg. I killed it,” he said, a hint of defiance in his voice.

  “He was one of mine,” I grumbled, nudging Jurgen with a foot. It seemed that the trope of brain damage being fatal to zombies held up on Helstat.

  “Sorry, mein–”

  “I guess you guys won’t work nicely alongside undead Dankest Dwarves?”

  “Nein.”

  “Kat, I’ve got some minions who don’t need proper food, don’t need sleep, and are expert miners. Any chance you can find a way to put them to work without my other workers attacking them on sight? Also, again, what the hell?”

  Kat was no longer dressed like an extra from Baywatch. She was a sexy Pikachu.

  “You picked that bloody evolution,” she complained. “Gunther, if they’re Bob’s minions, then you are hands off.” Her lightning-flash tail wiggled behind her chair, which I noticed had been modified to accommodate the new addition.

  “Mistress Kat, regretfully, we cannot work with the Dank ones, or their resurrected corpses.”

  “They aren’t resurrected. That means bringing them back to life, and they’re still very much dead,” I pointed out helpfully. Kat held up a yellow paw to stop me from making things worse. Electricity crackled around her.

  “Exactly how much crap have you got yourself into this time, Bob?”

  “Not much? I won a battle, made friends with some terrifying nobles, accidentally reanimated, which means they can move again, by the way, Gunther, not that they’re alive, a bunch of devilish dwarves. Oh, I’ve got a handful of teenage dragons and one pissed off grandma dragon as well. And they are a handful. Sheltered childhoods.”

  “The TOTS?” Kat’s gaze was laser-focused on me, the red circles on her yellow cheeks sparking with blue light.

  “Yeah. It’s some kind of draconic daycare slash nursery. Not really what I'd been hoping for if I'm honest. They’re bloody terrifying in a fight, but mostly they’re just irritating little shits.”

  She looked me up and down. “Want a pickle?”

  “If I ever see another pickle, I will burn down a city,” I said flatly. It would only be a small city.

  “So you’ve dropped your egg. I’m sure you’ll be a wonderful father,” she sighed. “Good, it was messing with your head. Assuming Gunther can keep his axes to himself from now on, I think we can find some work for your new friends.”

  I stuck my head out to the other side of the portal. “Hey, Jurgen kind of died. Again. Permanently this time, I think. You lot should come on through and do what you’re told. The pixie in the Pokémon costume is your new boss. You do what she says, and don’t try and eat any of my other minions.” Gunther coughed pointedly. “Or contracted labour. No eating unless specifically told to.”

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The zom-dwarves filed through, and Kat directed them to a portal that led to a mine complex way down the mountain that had hit a rich seam of silver recently. I really would be lost without the tiny sociopath. Was that some kind of determiner of success? A total disregard for the feelings of others must leave you feeling so damn free, able to pursue your goals unhindered by moral constraints. I carefully ignored how my view of mammals in general might be having a similar effect on me.

  “Lord Bob, I do not like this,” Gunther grumbled.

  “You hate the Dank Dwarves?”

  “They are cowards. Turning against the world to save their own stinking hides.”

  “And now these ones are working for the forces of light.” I clapped my hands, causing a shower of sparkles. “So it’s a win-win.”

  “They’ve unleashed an abomination and refuse to fight it,” he complained.

  “How many of these clans are there?”

  “Dozens, maybe more.”

  “What would happen if you stopped fighting the elder thing or whatever you called it?”

  “The Deep One. It would eventually break out onto the surface, consuming all living things to fuel its expansion and war against everything that wasn’t it.”

  “Oh. So why isn’t The Other that Jurgen’s clan awakened crawling all over the surface world?”

  “I-I don’t know.”

  “Bob, maybe we should let Mr Grimmigergriff get back to work?” Kat waggled her eyebrows at me.

  “But we’re just–”

  “Bob!”

  “Fine. See you later, Gunther.”

  The dwarf headed towards the portal leading to the accommodation floor, shooting me suspicious looks from under his bushy eyebrows as he went.

  “Don’t let them know. If they ever figure it out, we actually would be in trouble.”

  “I seem to be saying this a lot today, but what the hell? In this case, what the hell are you on about, Kat?”

  “They don’t need to fight the nameless horrors from before the dawn of time. It’s a… trick.”

  “Come again, said the bishop to the housewife.”

  “The dwarves are assholes.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “And they need to be kept busy. Otherwise, they start paying attention to the surface and getting all pissy about the humans, elves, orlics, pixies, hanglefillers, etc, running about sneering at them.”

  “You’re saying the nameless wossnames of the deep dark are… distractions?”

  “Dwarves are always tunnelling, mining. Say what you like about them, they’ve got the whole work ethic thing down. What happens when people like that, rich from their mines, well armed with their mechs and magic, start looking outward?”

  “Trade?”

  “It would shift the power.”

  “So? I am an appreciator of Powah, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t care about dealing with dwarves, humans, or orlics. I don’t care, obviously. I’m trading and working with all three, right now.”

  “You’re very enlightened, Bob. Gold star for you. Most humans, especially the native ones born on Helstat, are the product of a society that views all other species as enemies.”

  “So humans did this to the dwarves? Some kind of curse or something that spawns an inevitable endgame boss in their mines to keep them busy?”

  “It was a pixie. Spanglebottom was an apocalyptically powerful mage, and the only reason I know her name is my briefing from the WOO. No one else remembers her. She’s the reason pixies are so hated, even though she’s been lost to history.”

  “All the pixies I’ve met, present company partially excluded, have been total douchebags. I don’t want to generalise, but they kind of deserve their rep.”

  She shook her head, her tail swinging back and forth in time with the motion. “They know they’re hated, but they don’t know why. It’s all they’ve known. How do you think that affects them?”

  “You’re saying Glitterbuns and Tricksylicks and whatnot would have been nice, well-adjusted members of society if they hadn’t been picked on as kids? Is that why you’re a pixie?”

  “I’m a pixie because the WOO think they’re funny. They’re not.”

  “But you still want to join them.”

  “I’m lovely, I’d improve the tone.” She cracked her knuckles menacingly, and I made a mental note to get one of those magic cricket boxes from Tim.

  “Pixies are dicks because a long time ago, one of them did some nasty shit to the dwarves and people kind of memed the hatred into reality. That’s the gist of your argument?”

  “Not just the Dwarves, Bob.”

  I sighed and looked around for a chair. Fortunately, my ass had an armour rating of over nine thousand, so I just sat on the bare stone. “Who else?”

  She glanced around furtively. Minions passed by, carefully ignoring us, but a few people I didn’t recognise moved from one portal to another. She leaned forward, Pokeboobs knocking the paperwork on her table towards me, and waved me to lean in close. I obliged, stopping less than a foot away from her face.

  “All of them,” she hissed. “They’re all warped by Spanglebottom’s legacy, and you can’t let them know. It was back at the end of the Primal Empire. It’s what brought that empire to an end. Humans have their stupid system of nobility to keep them at each other's throats, the elves have their arboreal fetish, and the dwarves have their monsters in the deep. The Orlics only breed when they’re dying, the hanglefillers constantly hangle and fill.”

  “When you say arboreal fetish… what precisely do you mean?”

  “Never, and I mean never ever, agree to attend their fertilising the sapling ritual, ok? You won’t sleep for weeks.”

  “Jesus. What’s a hanglefiller?”

  “They’re on the southern continent. Weird bastards. Constantly filling.”

  “So we can’t let the dwarves know that their endless subterranean war is a lie. But… surely the Dank dwarves know? They’ve made peace with their fake monsters.”

  “The monsters aren’t fake. They aren’t natural. It’s like… like the way you grew up as the spoiled brat of a rich and uncaring father. You weren’t destined to be an asshole, but if you’d had a normal upbringing… this metaphor doesn’t work. You’d still have been an asshole.”

  I began speculating about how an undead pixie major domo might be an interesting choice.

  “Point is, if the dwarves figure it out, the humans will, then the elves, etc, etc. And that way lies madness,” she concluded.

  “They all have to labour under Spanglebottom’s curse because otherwise they might be dicks with each other? They aren’t exactly xenophiles anyway.”

  “You wouldn’t have liked the Primal Empire, Bob. It was all hippy-dippy bullshit. Flowers and love and peace.”

  “I’m not a big fan of the hippy aesthetic, or the way they smell, but it wouldn’t be that bad?”

  She leaned back and crossed her arms across her chest. Her left eyebrow rose for a second, and sparks flickered from her cheeks.

  “What are your primary sources of income?” she demanded.

  “Well, there’s the bunnyborgs going to the dwarves, taxes, Tex’s trades, but that’s chump change now. The pubs as well. I’ve lost my buyer for the Arkendrite. I’m going to eat his ass next time I see him. I didn’t mean that to sound like that. He’s dead, is what I meant. I’m going to auction all the weapons I, um, requisitioned from Bulb next time in the city. I made a lot of gold from all the kills in the battles… Oh.”

  “You’re a dragon, Bob. You thrive on conflict. You’re on your way to being this world's version of Raytheon, if they also operated a chain of gastropubs.”

  “So if peace were to break out all of a sudden, I’d be broke. Kat, I think I need to kill Harald.”