"Sorry, babe. It's just that I don't know how to address you. I'm fed up with calling you hound. What if I call you... eh..."
I rummaged through my memory, trying to think of something nice as I hurriedly discarded various Ladies and Lassies. Inferno creatures were fast and deadly. Lightning sounded about perfect, but for me it was more associated with the cute Disney car than a dog, and in this world of wishes coming true you had to be careful about any subconscious slips. I didn't think the Hound would grow two pairs of wheels but nor would she appreciate a postbox-red lick of paint. Oh well, if not Lightning, what then? Spark? More modest but also fast, it too could hurt or even lead to a fire or an explosion.
"Spark! How d'you like that?"
The Hound started. Her nostrils flared, her claws crumbling the path's precious mosaic as she retracted them. She tilted her head to one side, apparently listening to herself, appraising her new status. Her eyes glistened with intellect, acquiring a new unusual depth.
Finally, her heavy armored head lowered in a bow. "Thank you, Priest, for your priceless gift..."
Aha. There seemed to be a pattern here. Apparently, for all monsters a name was something much more important than just a sequence of sound waves. "It's my pleasure, Spark. I'd really appreciate it if you told me what makes this gift so valuable."
At the sound of her name, the Hound rolled her eyes and, forgetting herself, grunted with pleasure. "By distinguishing me from amongst thousands of others and rewarding me with this unique mark, you use your power of creation to enter me into this world, giving me a soul and a chance to be reborn. The name is what shields us from oblivion and its ocean of shapeless biomass that forms thousands of creatures every second only to be destroyed in a matter of hours by the death-hungry Undead Ones."
Oh well. These monsters seemed to have pretty grim afterlife ideas. Now I could understand their unwillingness to die. Wonder if the developers had introduced this behavioral algorithm on purpose in order to improve their combat qualities, or was it some secret knowledge that had surfaced on its own?
I turned to the foreman faltering nearby, "Harlequin? What do you think?"
He silently pointed at the gaping holes in his clothes, reached into his pocket and produced a handful of purple fragments. He lowered his head.
What was that now? Had he already blown himself up somewhere? Then how come he hadn't disappeared like the faceless cleaners had? Did it mean he'd respawned?
"Lurch?" I called.
"Master," his voice broke. "Only yesterday I was a mixture of cold logic and a desire to serve. And now I take in the flowers and colors, I feel tickled when the Hounds dig their tunnels, and drool over the mosaic roof tiles in the designer catalogue. Also, there's a couple of starlings made their nest in the donjon's Southern gun slit. The way they sing, it's something..."
The mind boggles. Who were we, then—toddler Creators, playing with tin soldiers in some celestial nursery? Were we building worlds then destroying them without even realizing it? No. We were still a long way from becoming creators. We were, at best, some Godlike larvae, their gestation period stretching into hundreds and thousands of years. Only then, provided you hadn't lost your soul on the way, did you receive the chance to turn into a butterfly.
I turned back to the Hound. "Do you think it would be a good idea to give names to all the dogs in the pack?"
Spark paused, thinking. Then she shook her head, "No. I don't think it's a good idea to grant one a soul casually. Besides, your powers aren't boundless; on the contrary, they're infinitely limited. It's one thing to add one final stroke to the unique portrait of an already-extraordinary creature, finalizing its creation by breathing life into it. And it's quite another to create a unique personality from a faceless outline. I don't think you're strong enough to do it. You need to wait for a particular situation—an event, a deed of courage—when this member of the pack steps out of the ruck. Only then the precious seed of the name you give her can sprout into a fully developed soul."
That made sense. It felt—how would I put it—it felt right. I had this sense that this was how it was supposed to be. Well, all the more reason to accept this explanation as a working theory until proven otherwise.
"I see," I said. "Okay, back to our problems. Harlequin, I'm going to hire you twenty top class workers. As for the eggs, you shouldn't drop or drag them. You need to carry them with caution and on tiptoe."
I paused, comparing the goblins' frail arms and legs with the half-ton contraption. Well, well. What you really needed here was a troll trained in ballet dancing so he could carry stuff around for them. I had to check the hiring board, they had all sorts there. If push came to shove, I could always create my own staff using the manual generation option. True, it was more expensive and had its limitations: you couldn't, for instance, create a vampire hobbit as strong as an ogre. But it probably could build something like a super-cautious and balanced troll.
"Lurch, I've got a job for you. You need to clean all the stage scenery from the hill. You can add all the props later. Let the goblins do their job first."
"Both hills!" the foreman demanded.
I looked around. Which both? Were there two of them? Why didn't I know anything about it? Indeed, at the back of the court lurked another rather enormous heap partially concealed by the first one. Hadn't I told them to put all atypical junk aside? Wasn't that what I'd told the foreman?"
Greed got the better of me. "Clean it up!" I snapped.
As Lurch sighed, protesting, the cleaners began pulling apart its colored moss and fragile flowers. I noticed a few of the more intellectual plants that, scared by the prospect of total destruction, tucked up the skirts of their leaves and scurried off the hill all by themselves. So! I'd seen fly traps and I'd heard of cannibal vines, but I'd never come across anything like this.
In the meantime, the goblins acquired a taste for pulling things apart. "Easy!" I shouted. "We'll still have to restore it all. I've paid for every handful of humus with my own money!"
"Absolutely," Lurch agreed. "I had to buy everything here, even the earth worms, and these goblins gobble them down like there's no tomorrow! You can't just stick the Singing Bluebells in the ground! You need to provide them with a proper eco system."
"Very wise," I winced. "Listen, I just pray to God you don't buy any more worms or whatever without asking me first. Are you a responsible building or a market stall? I'll tear you down and build some outhouses instead! That's a promise!"
"Eh, I-" Lurch faltered. "Root worms, they don't propagate, you see. You need to buy new ones every month..."
"How many?" I groaned.
"Only a couple thousand. If no one starts eating them, of course."
"How much?"
"Peanuts! A hundred gold," Lurch pleaded.
I stared at the plants, their jingle anxious now. They were beautiful, nothing to say. Besides, it would be a shame if they died... "Very well, then. And not a penny more. Also, I'd like to ask you to move one bluebell to a pot. I need to make a gift."
Finally, the second heap bared its sides gleaming in the sun. I poked at it with my virtual cursor, selecting objects as targets to read their stats.
A ragged piece of metal, the side of a good serving dish, must have made up part of something seriously heavy caliber, judging by the remaining markings and the recognizable curve of its shape:
Mithril Ore. Metal content: 8%. Weight: 13.4 Lbs.
About a dozen neat rectangular plates like those used in bulletproof jackets:
Enriched Mithril Ore. Metal content: 64%. Weight: 0.7 Lbs.
Oh. It looked like the steel invaders used an octal number system: too many of their numbers were divisible by eight. The length of the gun handle, too, suggested a much wider hand—definitely not a five-digit one.