Josh returned to the town broken, bleeding, and royally pissed off.

  “Where the hell you been?” Mary demanded when he walked through the gate. Most of his friends and allies were standing there in full gear, clearly ready to leave. “We were just about to send out a search party!”

  That actually got him to crack a smile. “Wot? I thought you might need the exercise. A little bit of excitement is good for the heart.” He winked at her.

  Ruth punched him in the shoulder. “We thought something happened to you!” Then she looked him up and down. “Uh, actually, what did happen to you? Where's your ax?” She sniffed the air. “Did someone set you on fire?”

  “Other way around. And yeah, I'm going to need another ax.” He rubbed his forehead. He was a little dizzy. Did he have a concussion? He didn't remember hitting his head. “Uh, also, it's possible that we have incoming.”

  An older man cast a regenerative spell on Josh. His head immediately cleared, and he gave a grateful nod in the Healer's direction.

  “Where were you?” Mary demanded. “Bloody hell, man, you look like you went three rounds barehanded with the Knight herself!”

  Darius pushed his way forward. “That's not important right now. What do you mean, we have incoming?”

  Josh let out a breath. “So, turns out Hawkins has a couple Slaver's Collars stashed away.”

  He gave them a quick summary of what happened with Hou Zheng at the dungeon. He glossed over the explanation of the dungeon-manipulation bracer and the contract, as he felt those were less important right now.

  “He's definitely coming with as many troops as he can,” Josh finished. “I just don't know if he already found the broken dungeon he's looking for.” He was beginning to regret not closing that rift. What if that was the dungeon Hou Zheng needed?

  He pushed that thought away. He could spiral into insanity if he kept going over what-ifs and could-have-beens. He certainly had enough regrets to feel guilty over already.

  Darius started ordering around the guards and scavengers that had gathered around. Anna sent out orders to withdraw most of her people, but she said she'd keep a few out in the Jungle as scouts. Terah, who represented the delving crews, promised to get the news out to them. They'd help defend the walls, or at least know to stay out of the way.

  Josh didn't take part in most of the preparations. He'd spent the night marching through the Jungle, been interrogated, and then run through the Jungle in an adrenaline-fueled sprint that he had barely survived. He was crashing, hard. He wanted nothing so much as to sleep for a week. Healing magic could only help so much.

  He settled for stumbling into the mayor's office and sitting on a couch. Baara was around somewhere, filling out paperwork and overall making sure the town was functional. Through his haze of exhaustion, Josh was thankful that he had finally given her full permissions for the citystone. The last thing he wanted was to die and leave the place confused in a time of crisis.

  “All right,” Darius said, as he put a mug of coffee in front of Josh. “What haven't you told us?”

  Josh looked down at the steaming mug.

  “Did you know I fought a coffee plant once?” he said idly. “It was called a Coffea Arabica Blood Drinker. I think it was level sixty? I was level seventy at the time, and I still had trouble with it. The damn thing had drunk four towns dry before word got out and they sent adventurers after it...”

  Darius snapped his fingers in front of Josh's face. “Focus. What didn't you tell us?”

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  Josh blinked, then nodded. “Magic contracts,” he said. “Hou Zheng wanted to bind me, and was willing to agree to quite a bit for it. He offered to remove Hawkins from the area, but couldn't promise to keep the dragon away.”

  Mary scoffed. “If he can't keep the dragon away, what's the damn point?”

  Josh shrugged. “He insisted that the dragon wouldn't care about us so long as we agreed not to interfere.” He took a long sip of coffee before continuing. God, it was terrible. Sugar cane was hard to cultivate these days. Sugar monsters were dangerous. “He also offered bloodstones.”

  Mary, Ruth, and Darius all looked at him sharply. Everyone else was outside, preparing for another attack.

  “What stones?” Darius asked. “Did you get any?”

  “Scavenger, Bookworm, and Mechanist.” Josh let out a long breath. “And Runner.”

  Mary flinched at that last one. Darius and Ruth didn't notice.

  Ruth leaned forward eagerly. “Did you get any?”

  Josh shook his head. “He had a storage ring.”

  “DIBS!” Ruth cried.

  Mary shot her an angry look. “You can't just call dibs on a storage ring!”

  “Yes I can, because I just did!”

  Josh snorted. “You're just mad you didn't call it first.”

  “Shut it, you.” Mary thought for a moment, then grinned. “Fine. You get the ring, but I get the contents.”

  Ruth didn't even have to think about it. She held out her hand, a big grin on her face, and they shook on it.

  “I don't suppose I get any say in this?” Darius asked wryly.

  “Nope!” they both answered.

  Darius sighed, then spoke quietly to Josh. “If there is anything particularly valuable in that ring, we are agreed that Mary should share, correct?”

  Josh waved him off. “Yeah, yeah, she's just messing around. She's not going to hoard the bloodstones, at least.”

  Darius nodded.

  “Okay,” Ruth said, clapping her hands. “Preparation time! I finally perfected an actual grenade, made out of, you know, metal, so I've been making as many of those as possible. Thanks for the materials for that, Josh. What else do we need?”

  “I do need a new ax,” Josh said. He smiled weakly at Ruth. “Sorry, they took my last one. If I'd known, I would have put it away in my storage ring.”

  She blinked, then got up. “One sec.” She ran off, only to return a moment later with another ax. It was the same basic woodchopping ax he'd had before, but this one had more rune-chains inscribed all over it. There were two different ones on either side of the head, then a few smaller ones linked together down the shaft. Josh didn't know what linking the circles together did, but it certainly seemed more complex.

  He took it with appreciation. “Nice. It do more than the weight changing trick?”

  “Yeah. I wanted to do a thing where you can throw it then summon it back to your hand, too, but I couldn't get that to work.” She pointed at one of the rune-chains. “I did get it so that you can throw it super hard, though!”

  Josh couldn't think of how that would be useful. “Thanks!” he said. He quickly searched for something else to say. “Yeah, uh, yeah, that's—what are these other rune-chains?”

  As she excitedly went over all the improvements to the weapon, Josh noticed Mary and Darius step away out of the corner of his eye. They seemed to be arguing about something. On its own, that wasn't much of a surprise. Both of them were the type to like arguing in general, and putting them together was a quick recipe for an explosion.

  This was different, though. They were arguing for a lot longer than usual, with Mary waving her hands angrily. Instead of a quick pop and flare, he was worried that this was building up to something nuclear.

  Ruth, of course, hadn't even noticed. “And I couldn't get a sharpness enchantment working, but I think this rune-chain will enhance the durability, so at the very least you won't have to sharpen it as much, so if you could give me some feedback—”

  “Can you hold that thought just a mo?” Josh interrupted. She looked a little hurt, so he was quick to reassure her. He jutted his chin at Mary and Darius. “You think those two are all right?”