"Fred. It still stinks." Martin intruded. This annoyed Fred, but part of him was glad for the change of subject.

　　"What should I do? What part of the domain stinks now?"

　　"The ghast is still pretty& ghastly. Heh heh. Your vent doesn`t seem to be removing the stench like it should."

　　Fred checked it. The air was still exiting the chimney he`d made in the ghast lair`s ceiling. The air flow was still positive.

　　"It`s working right. The chimney`s moving air, I mean. Are you sure that`s what you smell?"

　　"Positive. Perhaps the stench is being moved around, but not eliminated."

　　"Well, you asked me to move air, so I did. How do you expect me to control smell? I`m not a Smell Spirit."

　　"No, you are an annoying& No, I apologize. The smell is getting to me, when all I want is to be helpful. And I know of something we can try." Grumbled Martin.

　　"What? What can we try?"

　　"Carbon. Carbon filtration. It should be easy for you."

　　"Okay, if it`s easy, how does it work?" Fred asked testily.

　　"Instead of moving the smelly air out of the chimney, you first pass it through a filter. A filter made of carbon granules. Carbon, being among the sluttiest of elements in the universe, tends to bind and trap all manner of stench."

　　Fred thought about it, and realized that he could form and transform earth into carbon as easily as gold. "Okay, I suppose I can make carbon. But how would I make a filter?"

　　"The humans just put charcoal in a porous sack, and shove it up their chimneys. When they bother with odor control at all. I`m sure you can do better than the humans. Just make the air and the carbon mix somehow."

　　Without replying, Fred looked back at the Ghast chimney. He experimented by changing the lining of the chimney to carbon granules. That seemed to work; the air was now flowing past carbon. But the stuff wouldn`t stay. It was brittle and powdery and quickly blew away in the airflow.

　　So Fred rebuilt a section of the chimney. In the section, about two spans long, he changed the one big tube for dozens of smaller tubes, all lined up and pointed in the same direction. He made these tubes out of sticky clay, which he knew would bake into hardness after just a few hours. He then coated the small clay tubes with carbon granules. This seemed to work much better. The air rushed through the clay tubes, but the sticky clay wouldn`t release the carbon granules. The air didn`t seem to whistle or make other sounds, which Fred would have had to fix.

　　"Okay, Martin. I made the filter. Let me know how it works for you."

　　"Good. Thank you, Fred." Martin said. It was the most polite he`d been all day.

　　Noon had come. The rain had stopped, and it was now a hot, muggy day. The mud hung around to grab the feet of the humans for the rest of the day. Despite that, Fred saw the humans working normally, industriously, loudly. In the heat of the day, his new towers really stood out. He saw that the black, red,and white roofs on the three buildings were as distinctive as he`d hoped. He also saw that the humans had begun hanging colorful flags from the mid-tower wallways. "My town is getting more and more colorful!" He mused.The author`s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

　　That led him to think about the newcomers to town. He thought again about how suddenly the two large groups had appeared, and that made him think again about expanding downslope. So he did so.

　　From the lowest tower, he did his normal thing of digging lots of small tunnels just under the ground, spreading in a radial pattern, branching them as they got farther apart. He kept at it, though he really didn`t find much of interest. It seemed that below him (eastward) was a wide plain of trees and bushes and not much else. No river, no real road, no cities, just wilderness. "Well, most cities are built near rivers. Didn`t somebody just tell me that? Anyway, no big rivers around here."

　　There was a track, a rut really, that led towards his town. Fred assumed the track had been made recently, by all of his new human inhabitants. He wanted to replace this with a nice wide road, but he felt it was a job he could leave for later.

　　He`d finally dug tunnels for a few thousand spans. Now that he thought carefully about it, his innate knowledge of the earth and his own domain told him he`d dug as far as 1.9 thousand spans from his town, which (he thought) was quite a ways. "Forest above me, plains below me. At least I know more than I did two days ago."

　　Then he thought about keeping watch over all that new space. He didn`t like that thought. He knew he could easily get distracted and not pay attention. But if he didn`t watch the border, who would? "Of course, the humans!" Fred cackled at his sudden good idea.

　　Along his new downslope border, he made three stout fortress towers. Each one had a high, thick, rectangular wall, topped with walkways and crenelations (these were the blocky teeth that humans could hide behind; Fred didn`t even bother wondering where this knowledge came from). Inside each fortress he dug out several levels of floors, giving the humans loads of storage and living space. In the center of each fort, he raised a tower, a very high tower, with a spiral staircase in the center, and a big covered lookout platform.

　　Back at ground level, he made a huge double door through the wall, facing back towards the town. He remembered how he`d made the door to the Maze, so he scaled that up, and when he was done, the huge stone gates weighed many tons, but could be closed with the lightest of pressure. Just for completeness, he made a latrine, with cistern underneath, just like the ones in town.

　　"Shit," Fred said to himself. "Literally. I guess I gotta do what I said, and muck out some crap-tanks, while I`m thinking about it." So he did, going to each latrine, looking at the collected pool of waste underneath, and pushing it down to get rid of it. This wasn`t hard, and it wasn`t so very gross, as long as he didn`t think about it.

　　But something was different about the first latrine he`d made in town. It was empty and clean already. And something was moving around inside it. Fred looked closer. It was a big blob of something, much like the Acidic Black Jelly that had moved in recently. But this was brown. And also not green. So it wasn`t really one of "his creatures". Nonetheless, it seemed to be happy eating up all the waste.

　　"Guys? You have a second?"

　　Kumbanaka and Martin both replied that they were listening.

　　"In my latrine pit, there`s another slime thing. Jelly thing. And it`s eating all the& poop."

　　Martin replied authoritatively, "That must be a simple Brown Slime. Rejoice. Your latrine cleaning days are over."

　　"That`s what they do? They aren`t dangerous or weird?"

　　"No, they just infest sewers in big cities. I have no idea how one might have come to your little backwater." Martin said. "Unless your magic called it here."

　　"It`s not green. I mean, it`s not like it`s one of my creatures, with a lair and all. It`s just& here. In the pit."

　　Kumbanaka said, "Now, if only you could have one in every toilet in your town."

　　"Oh, that`s probably guaranteed." Martin replied. "Brown Slimes will split and replicate to eat whatever they can. I`m certain you`ll have a Brown Slime in every latrine within just a few days."

　　"Wow, I guess this IS my lucky day," said Fred. "Thanks for the info, guys. It`s really helpful. Oh, hey, Martin. A couple things."

　　"What things, Oh Spirit of Convenient Brown Slimes?"

　　"Har har. First thing. All these new knights have come to town. I`m sure you`ve smelled them. I just wanted to say, they look like trouble for you."

　　"I`m aware of them." Martin replied with a frown.

　　"But also. I`ve expanded. Up and down the slope, quite a ways. So if you want, you can do some flying tonight. Just no landing in town, okay?"

　　"How far is quite a ways?"

　　"Well, I dug downslope nearly two thousand spans. And at least that much upslope. I`m sure that`s not very much for a huge flying dragon, but it`s much larger than I ever was before."

　　"All right. I`ll see for myself, tonight."

　　Fred turned back to the road, well, the track he was about to turn into a road. He started at the furthest edge of his domain, and built something he could be happy with. His new road was raised almost a span, as flat and as hard as he could make it, and it shifted to the side, so it could pass reasonably close to the northernmost fortress tower. From there, Fred built his new road straight into town, only stopping when he got to the first residential tower, the one with the black roof. The busy humans stopped and exclaimed about the new road, but Fred didn`t pay much attention. He went back to the north tower fort, and made another road that connected all three tower forts.

　　Now that that was done, Fred was curious about something else. "Martin. How`s the smell now?"

　　"Actually, much better, Fred. You listened to me, and your carbon filter works. Imagine that."

　　"I`m always listening to your good ideas, Martin. After all, I need all the help I can get to train these humans," Fred replied. He knew it was a dig, but it was a gentle one.