Good evening, Fred.

　　"Jim! I`m glad you`re here. Lemme tell you what happened. A priestess and her friends came and got into the temple room."

　　That`s exactly what you planned, Fred. Good work!

　　"Yeah, but she`s got some powerful magic. White magic. And she kinda went off like a bomb. I mean, white magic was everywhere. Martin said that the silver tree magic combined with it and made it even more powerful. And I don`t know what it did, or what god made it happen!"

　　Very exciting! Do you feel different? Was your magic affected?

　　"Well, uh, I think I feel fine. I haven`t really used my magic since then; I`ve just been watching all the wounded people get treated."

　　Well, let`s use it. You heard Virginia trying out her new drum yesterday, and Micheal sent you a weather report, and you haven`t replied. They`ve both asked after you. I think you could use your drum to let them know you`re thinking about them.

　　This set Fred back. He recognised that he`d not used his drum, and he felt he should have. "Okay, sure. Let`s try it."

　　He went down to his drum, and started his beats. Ten first, in a regular tempo, just to warn others he was starting to speak. He realized that he was still new at this; "beating" the drum still took a lot of effort and mental focus. His ten beats weren`t uniform, and he kept "feeling" the drum slip out of his grasp. But he kept at it.

　　Then he drummed his special 8-beat name. And then he realized he needed to say something. "I should have planned this better", he said to himself. He consulted Jim, and together they managed to send the message, "all fine." Then they sent the same message Fred had heard from Micheal. "Air slow, sky warm, no sky water."

　　"Should I say anything else?" Fred asked Jim.

　　You can say whatever you like. I`m glad this white magic didn`t seem to cause you any harm.

　　"Yeah, my magic seems to work fine. But I`m still kinda freaked out about this god, the one with the priestess. Do I have to do anything special, now that she`s around? I mean, what if this god doesn`t like me and wants to smite me? And what`s up with Aeru? Is she okay with other gods coming around?"

　　Well, let me explain. Because it`s quite complicated. First, Aeru isn`t a god, not in the same sense of whatever god the priestess represents. Aeru is this entire world, the planet itself, which is much more magical than a mere god, generally speaking. And I`ve said before, that Aeru isn`t really in the business of deciding who lives on her. That includes gods, includes whole pantheons.

　　But there`s no doubt that you are hers. She created you, and gives you your magic, and is a critical part of her plan. You`re very much under her protection, and gods all know that. So even if a god was unhappy with you, I very much doubt they`d cause you trouble.

　　But that`s not the whole story. You have to understand that the deities and pantheons wrap themselves in rules, complex, opaque sets of rules about what they can and cannot do. This means that you can safely assume that gods only want to work through their followers, never interfere directly. It seems that, the more powerful you become, the less freedom you wind up having.

　　And Aeru isn`t friends with any local gods. You see, this plan of ours needs all the help it can get, but when Aeru asked the gods for help, nearly all of them spurned her. None will help fight the demons. Many don`t want to "pick sides". Many others hide behind their rules.

　　So I don`t think you should worry about gods. They won`t trouble us, or help us. So they aren`t worth thinking about.

　　"Wow, okay." Fred felt a little better. "But that light show was something else. White magic flooded the whole domain. Everybody noticed."

　　Look again. Use your mana sight. Perhaps it was some sort of blessing?

　　"Oh, good idea!" Fred said the magic words and turned on his mana sight. He looked into the temple, and saw people doing what he expected. The whole room was covered in magic, and it seemed like the silver tree magic and the priestess magic were so complementary that he couldn`t tell which was which. He looked at the tree itself, which hadn`t changed, either physically or magically. He looked at the entrance, and still saw what seemed like the regular tree`s silver-gold magical aura.

　　"Huh. Yeah, I`m not seeing anything out of the normal. Maybe it was just a light show?"Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

　　Possibly the priestess was simply announcing herself?

　　"I guess so."

　　Anyway, it`s working out as you wanted. And hey, did I see new creatures in your maze?

　　"Yeah! A couple of minotaurs. Small ones. Aren`t they supposed to be big?"

　　Yes, but would big minotaurs fit inside your maze?

　　"No, the ceilings are too low, and there are some human sized doors."

　　There`s your answer. You build the lairs, and your magic attracts the sort of creature that the lair was made for. More or less.

　　"Okay. Makes sense."

　　"Are you talking to Jim right now, Fred?" Martin asked, startling Fred a bit.

　　"Yes, I am. We`ve been talking about the white magic, and the new minotaurs."

　　"And what does Jim say to you? That everything will be okay? That it`s all going to plan?", Martin sneered. Martin seemed to be extra-annoying right now, Fred thought.

　　He said to Jim, "Jim, Martin`s talking to me. Can you hear him?"

　　No, Fred. This communication& channel we have is exclusive to you and me.

　　"Grrr. He doesn`t think you exist, and you can`t hear how obnoxious he`s being. I wish you could talk to him and shut him up."

　　I wish I could too, Fred. I`m sorry he`s so annoying, but I`m sure you can handle him. And I have to go. Keep digging, Fred.

　　"Okay, bye." Fred said. He turned to Martin and said, "Jim only talks to me, Martin. And you don`t have to be a jerk about it. Lay off."

　　"Good," Martin replied. "I`m glad you see the difference between an enabling made up voice that only you can hear, and an actual dragon. Embrace what`s real, Fred."

　　"I said lay off!" Fred nearly shouted. Martin huffed, and knocked his coins around, but didn`t say anything else.

　　Fred stewed, and looked about. In Shelley`s den, the kids seemed no different, and were playing and splashing in the pool. None of them seemed to be soaping up, but on the other hand, the bars of soap that Fred had left were all gone. "Perhaps they took them home," Fred mused. He took a moment to make another big pile of the bars. It startled the kids, but they weren`t as alarmed as last time.

　　He looked into the temple, and saw peace. Nobody was being operated on, and all was quiet. In fact, nobody was even crying or screaming, and Fred had seen pretty horrible wounds on the patients earlier. But as he watched, one patient was being shown out the door, apparently all healed. There was much bowing and shaking of hands and hugging. "Seems like a nice crew," Fred thought.

　　He wondered how much comfort was from the temple and the tree magic, and how much was due to the "staff". Probably lots of both, he mused, and recognised that the combination of human care and magical radiance was doing a tremendous amount of good. That made Fred feel good.

　　He looked at the new tower, and found it rapidly filling with people. "I`m gonna need more towers!" he said to himself. He had an idea that he could just copy the first one. He liked the design, and it wasn`t that hard to make.

　　"Fred? Have you a moment?", Kumbanaka asked him.

　　"Sure."

　　"I`m out on the town again. I still need furniture for my& lair. But I`ve passed a great many humans. And a few of them smell like demons."

　　"What?!" Fred ejected. "They`re demons? Here?"

　　"I didn`t say they were demons. I said they smelled like demons. Which& probably they are. But all I have to report is a smell." Kumbanaka told him.

　　"But not too many?"

　　"I smelled the demon scent on two occasions over the last thirty minutes I`ve been out here. So I don`t know for sure. Don`t you have the Mana Sight? Perhaps you could look around, and try to spot one."

　　"Oh. Well, that`s a great idea!" Fred pushed into his mana sight, and began looking around at all the humans. They were as he had seen them before. Very few were magical, but many carried magical items of a bewildering variety. He remembered that he`d done this before, and when he did so he saw a couple of people with very strange shimmering magic. He looked around further, and came upon a shop keeper running a meat-on-a-stick stand in the large bazaar that had taken over the front steps every evening.

　　The man had that weird shimmer, all right. "Hey Kumbanaka, I think I found one. He`s selling meat sticks on the big entrance area."

　　"I`m not far from there, Fred. Give me a moment, and I`ll get close and smell him." Kumbanaka sounded excited.

　　Fred was kinda excited too. He wanted to protect everyone from demons, and now, for the first time, he might have a chance. He wasn`t unaware that Kumbanaka`s excitement was that of the predator. "Kumbanaka is pretty tough. But how dangerous is this demon guy?"

　　The guy seemed like a regular human merchant, though, who kept selling his food to other humans, counting coins and making change. Fred still had his mana sight active, which is why he could see when Kumbanaka sidled up to the man.

　　"Yes, that`s the smell. This human is a demon in disguise. Or he`s got a demon inside him." Kumbanaka wasn`t speaking, but thinking towards Fred.

　　"Yuck. Inside him?" Fred asked.

　　The man had noticed how close Kumbanaka was, and decided to give him the hard sell. Fred didn`t know what he was saying, but he turned angry, jabbering and poking his finger into Kumbanaka`s chest. This bothered Kumbanaka not at all. "What should we do with him, Fred? I can question him, somewhere private, if you like."

　　"Are we sure he`s a demon? I mean, besides the smell?"

　　"I`ll wager you the finest red rug that he is. And I know just how to find out."

　　With that, Kumbanaka grabbed the guy in a headlock, and started to drag him up the stairs and into the dungeon. There were a great many people around, and they all turned to gawk. The man shouted and begged and raged for help, but Kumbanaka easily overpowered him.

　　It took only a few moments for Kumbanaka and his prey to reach the actual front entrance to the domain, but before they took a step inside, the meat peddler`s head suddenly popped off. The head bounced into the hallway, while the body slumped down next to Kumbanaka. Kumbanaka looked mystified, and disappointed at all the blood that had sprayed across him. The spectators gasped for a moment, then they started shouting abuse at Kumbanaka. Clearly they thought Kumbanaka had pulled the man`s head off.

　　But then the body began to move. Everyone (including Kumbanaka) took a quick step back, and then another. The body flopped and shook in a bizarre way. Fred took a look with his mana sight. The flopping body was much less shimmery and more blood-red now. Fred thought about warning Kumbanaka, but saw that he was already very aware of the situation, and was sidling backward, starting to blend into the crowd.

　　The body gave a big jerk, and split open straight down the middle, with a spray of blood. The people gathered around ducked back, screamed, and looked away. Fred didn`t. He saw what looked like a small red man with black horns and a forked tail stand up, pushing flesh off of himself, like he was climbing out of a human suit. Which was exactly what was happening, Fred realized. The little red man ignored everyone around him, while scraping gunk off his body. The crowd was astonished, and dis-believing.

　　Then the demon started throwing fireballs around.