So he began. First, he knew that any remote temple needed water, and he had a load more space to find that water. He found the ruins, and spent a moment sketching out the rough boundaries of the building complex. It was bigger than he`d first assumed, but big buildings didn`t really scare him.

　　Now he dug upslope, and also down into the mountain, looking for water, and it didn`t take long to find plenty. Then he went back to his boundaries, and erased the dirt and decay of the forest downward everywhere above the ruins. His intent was to uncover as much of the ruins as he could, and this time he trusted his magic, so he moved fast. In less than a minute, he`d uncovered every fallen stone and damaged wall of the place, and the large area looked like a years-long archeological dig site, cutting deep into the earth.

　　When he`d uncovered the teleport ring, he`d also found several skeletons, people who`d probably died fighting. In one of the ruined buildings, he found several more skeletons. That was it for human remains, though. He found no skeletons anywhere else. No artifacts of humans at all.

　　He uncovered many different stones that had once been parts of the building, and many of them had writing etched into them. He uncovered enough stone walls to get a much better understanding of how the whole thing was shaped, with a central courtyard (containing the teleport ring), surrounded by multi floor buildings. Finally he discovered a wall covered by (what he somehow knew was) a long fresco. Fred could easily clean the wall, and the bright sunlight illuminated it, but he couldn`t make heads or tails of it. It seemed a very abstract piece of art, with no faces, or people, or maps. Just lots of complex lines and blocky patterns. Fred shrugged, and moved on to the rebuild.

　　Now that he had the whole complex exposed, he wondered what to do about how deep it all was. The western-most part was over twelve spans below the ground level. Should he dig it all out? Or raise it up to ground level? After noticing how nice the sunlight was shining through the trees of the forest, he decided the temple, or academy, or whatever it was, wouldn`t be happy sunk deep in the earth. It wanted to breathe.

　　So Fred grabbed the whole huge area of land. And lifted it. Filling in the rock underneath it, he pulled up until the entire site was free of its pit, like the whole thing was being lifted by a team of angels. It was still uneven, but then it was still all ruins, and the ground was sloped anyway. So he just kept working.

　　First he moved and stacked the loose stone blocks, using them to help define the outlines of the old buildings. Then he leveled the whole area, getting it ready for further building. He took care not to destroy the frescoed wall, or to disrupt the structure of the teleport ring in the center. When that was done, he began work on the buildings, by sinking holes in the ground, just like he`d done with the towers and the forts. His intent was to increase the total living space within the buildings, by putting several floors underground. He also reasoned that, since the whole place was surrounded by tall forest, there wasn`t any sense in building tall lookout towers.

　　Because each building was five floors above ground, and another five below, and because he was following his preferred building methods, the work went fast. As with the towers he`d built, he felt no need to build something as thickly armored as the Glass Citadel, and that made things quicker, too. Soon all six buildings were roughly completed, with windows and stairs and peaked roofs. And a front and back door.

　　Each of the buildings had some of the old, etched stones integrated into them. And the fresco wall was part of a building, too, on the first floor. Fred made sure there were good windows around the wall, so people could see to appreciate it.

　　Now Fred focused on the water again. He plumbed the underground stream he`d found, so that water flowed to (and through) the basements of two of the buildings. He also built a covered well, like the one he`d made for the village, that could access the water.

　　Finally, Fred added latrines and cisterns into each building. "I hope the Brown Slimes come all the way up here. Or we`ll have to figure something else out," Fred thought to himself.

　　Now the complex was done. The temple complex? The university? The holy hideaway? Fred really had no idea what the buildings were for, or what the humans would use them for now. He got satisfaction from a good day`s building, and that was good enough for now.

　　He thought about building a road down to town, to make sure the humans knew about this complex. But then he thought that he`d show it to Martin and Kumbanaka and Jim first, and get their opinion. So he was done here.Stolen novel; please report.

　　Turning back to the center of his domain, he did an overview. It was still rather quiet, but there were some battles going on. He looked in on the lioness. She was still passed out sleeping, but she looked better, at least to Fred. None of the humans seem to have bothered her, anyway.

　　Martin was sulking, and Kumbanaka was reading and smoking. Everything looked okay. Oh, here came the tree-nappers. A group of ax-wielding men marched through the Front Zone, led by the same foreman Fred had seen before. As before, a couple of mages were tagging along to deal with the fairies (who were un-bothered by Martin`s recent tantrum, unlike everyone else). Fred shrugged. "Good thing the tree grows back."

　　As the group reached the bottom of the ramp, Fred noticed something else. There was a lone man, standing outside, on the lip of the tree shaft. As Fred watched, he heaved a very large and heavy sack down the shaft, and immediately started running away. Very suspicious. The large sack fell to the bottom, bounced a couple of times, and rolled to a stop near the tree. The ax-men looked at it with complete surprise, as did the fairies.

　　Fred turned back to the outside, where the man was running downslope as fast as he could. He then noticed two other men were running in a similar way. He saw that one was leaving the Front Zone, where he`d left another of the large sacks. The third man had left another large sack just inside the door to the Maze.

　　Fred looked closer at one of the sacks. Then he used Mage Sight. The thing was pulsing and swirling with angry red and yellow hues. As he watched, the swirl got a little brighter and faster. "Crap, I think it`s a bomb!" Shouted Fred. "Kumba, Martin, help me. There`s a bombs here!" He was so rattled he couldn`t even speak right. Part of him was cool and calm, and reached out to one of the running men. He made a deep hole in the ground under the man, who pitched in to it face first.

　　The rest of Fred was frantic. "Bomb! A bomb! Wadda we do?!??!"

　　Kumbanaka came out of his lair, staring at the sack, the tree, the fairies, and the party of ax-men. "Yes, that does appear to be a magical bomb. How unusual. Can you not bury it, Fred?"

　　In one instant, that sounded like a fine idea to Fred. It was what he was good at, after all. But in the next, he realized that these bombs were probably pretty powerful, and there was no way that he could bury them deep enough, fast enough. "Making them go off deep will still be bad!" He shouted.

　　Martin shrugged off his gold and his pout, to step through his lair, and poke his head out into the tree shaft. "Yes, that seems to be a bomb. Magical, of course. Quite powerful. Some of the magic is clearly demonic. You`re in real trouble, Fred."

　　"Martin! You can fly! Martin. Take these bombs and throw them away, as far as you can!" Fred cried. He grabbed the two bombs near the front, and drug them through the ground to the tree, so Martin could pick up all three. This was rather hard, probably because of the demon magic involved, but Fred was very motivated anyway.

　　The Ax-men saw the rakshasa, the dragon, and the strange package they regarded. That was enough for them. They all turned around and ran quickly up the ramp, to exit Fred`s domain.

　　"No. I`m not your bomb-thrower. I refuse." Martin grumped.

　　"Martin, if these things go off here, we`re all gonna be hurting! You`re the only one who can do this. Please!"

　　"Oh, I`m sure you can dig yourself, and us, out of the rubble. I`ll just go hide under my gold."

　　"Dragon," Kumbanaka growled. "Don`t be a bitch. Protect your domain. As Fred said, you`re the only one mighty enough to do it."

　　"Yes, you`re great and strong and you can fly! Please please take the bombs away, please!" Fred begged. The other two bombs popped out of the ground next to the first.

　　First Martin breathed out the longest, most theatrical cloud of poisonous green smoke he could, complete with exaggerated facial expressions. The fairies all choked and gagged and swore at Martin. Kumbanaka coughed quietly, but seemed to be unaffected.

　　Then Martin heaved his body out to the tree, picked up the three bombs in one paw, and started to scramble up the rocky shaft. He got to the top quickly, but Fred saw that the three bombs were continuing to glow more brightly. In fact, now he could see their glow even without mage sight. "Hurry!" Fred said.

　　Martin launched himself into the air, and his powerful wings quickly beat him higher. "Now, where should I&" He started to say.

　　Then the bombs went off.

　　In Fred`s previous lives, he might have known about the idea (and existence of) nuclear bombs, and how powerful they were. Such information had mercifully been completely erased from Fred`s mind, though, so he had no point of reference to understand what was happening.

　　The whole world turned white, and it felt to Fred like a god`s fist, bigger than his whole domain, had punched him. Sound wasn`t even a factor; the pressure and shock were much more than just sound. Nobody could process the next few seconds, but if they could, they`d have seen Martin`s tough dragon body come apart into a hundred pieces, a bit like a colorful firework. As the whole earth stopped ringing like a bell, the dragon parts started to rain down all over.

　　A couple of parts smacked into the Glass Citadel, which took no damage, only smears of dragon blood. The black-roofed tower wasn`t so lucky. A big chunk of Martin flew in through an open window and squished two humans inside. It was afternoon, and while a lot of the humans had taken a day off to hide from the dragon, many others were caught outside. Every human and creature in Fred`s domain was instantly rendered deaf, but the people outside were thrown around like ragdolls in a hurricane.

　　Martin`s pieces had been propelled in every direction, some of them very high, so it seemed like the rain of dragon bits would go on forever. But they finally stopped, and that`s when Fred snapped out of it. He fell back on his standard check of all his zones. He saw a dozen places that had been seriously weakened and compromised by the shock. But the biggest damage was to the tree shaft. Most of the upper part, from the top lip down halfway, had broken off and filled the bottom with rock chunks.