Chapter 74: Fourth and Fifth
The Kobold mining village was called Cinderpit.
A hundred and twenty Kobolds living in terraced tunnels carved into a rocky hillside, mining copper and tin ore that they smelted into crude bronze tools and traded downriver for grain they couldn’t grow. They’d been godless for decades — the deity they’d originally followed had dissolved during a territorial dispute fifty years ago, and no one had claimed them since. Too small. Too remote. Too Kobold.
Nez led the caravan.
It was the kind of assignment she’d been built for — or rather, the kind of assignment that the Grand Ordinator’s system had revealed she’d been built for without knowing. Nez was a Goblin logistics coordinator, which meant she was a Goblin who liked counting things and had been given a job that rewarded counting. She counted everything: Iron Marks in the trade chest, grain bushels on the cart, kilometers of road between Ashenveil and the target settlement, the precise number of stonesteel tool samples packed for demonstration purposes.
Forty-seven items in the demonstration kit. She’d counted twice.
Cinderpit’s entrance was marked by a wooden sign painted with a pickaxe symbol — faded, weathered, leaning fifteen degrees to the left. No gate. No guards. No defensive perimeter. Just tunnels opening into a hillside and the smell of copper smoke drifting from smelting furnaces deeper inside.
The Cinderpit elder met them at the entrance. An old Kobold named Quicksilver — a nickname earned from his speed in the tunnels forty years ago, preserved ironically now that arthritis had slowed him to a shuffle. He looked at Nez’s caravan, at the Lizardman guards in stonesteel armor, at the cart loaded with trade goods, and at Nez herself — a Goblin dressed in clean cloth with a leather satchel and the bearing of someone who expected to be taken seriously.
"Another trader?" Quicksilver said.
"Not a trader," Nez said. "An offer."
She unpacked the demonstration kit. Forty-seven items: stonesteel pickaxes, ore hammers, smelting tongs, chisel sets, lanterns with forge-blessed wicks that burned three times longer than standard tallow, and — the centerpiece — a stonesteel ore drill that could cut through granite in situations where bronze tools bounced off.
Quicksilver picked up the drill. Turned it over. Tested the edge with his thumb. His eyes — the large, dark Kobold eyes that saw better underground than above — went wide.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"Your faith," Nez said. Not dramatically. Not with religious fervor. With the practical directness of a Goblin talking to a Kobold about a transaction. "These tools come from a god who builds things. His people eat well. Live in stone buildings. Have a currency." She showed an Iron Mark — the stamped coin catching light from the tunnel entrance. "You mine copper and tin. We need copper and tin. Your trade goes downriver to people who pay you less than the ore is worth. Our trade pays fair price, in standardized currency, with guaranteed routes."
"And the god?"
"The Grand Ordinator. A god of the forge. He answers prayer. Not eventually. Not when it’s convenient. He answers."
Quicksilver looked at the drill. Then at the Iron Mark. Then at the tunnels behind him, where a hundred and twenty Kobolds were mining copper with bronze tools because no god in fifty years had thought them worth claiming.
The conversion took three days. Not because Quicksilver resisted — he didn’t. It took three days because the Cinderpit Kobolds needed to see the tools in action, watch the forge-blessed lanterns burn through a full night cycle, and confirm that the Iron Marks were accepted at the river trading post downstream. They were practical people. Faith required evidence. Evidence required testing.
On the third day, Nez taught them the Iron Devotion.
A hundred and twenty Kobolds, kneeling in a semicircle at the hillside entrance, speaking words they’d never heard in accents shaped by decades of darkness and copper dust.
[FAITH CONVERSION — Settlement Event]
[Settlement: Cinderpit (Kobold mining village)]
[New believers: 120]
[Starting tier: Casual (all)]
[Conversion catalyst: Demonstrated tool superiority + trade access]
[Resources gained: Copper/tin mining output — integrated into supply network]
***
The hamlet was called Bridgewater.
Ninety people — mixed Human and Halfling community clustered around a timber bridge that crossed the Ashren River’s northern tributary. The bridge was Bridgewater’s reason for existing; the settlement had grown up around it the way moss grew around a stone, deriving identity and livelihood from managing the crossing for travelers and merchants.
The problem was bandits.
Three camps in the surrounding forest, each comprising fifteen to twenty armed men — deserters, refugees from the god war, opportunists who’d discovered that robbing travelers at a river crossing was more profitable than farming. Bridgewater’s militia — eleven adults with hunting bows and farming tools — had been insufficient for two years. The bridge traffic had dropped by half. Trade revenue had collapsed. The hamlet was dying, and everyone knew it.
Krug arrived with twenty soldiers.
He didn’t announce himself as a priest. He walked into Bridgewater carrying a stonesteel blade on his hip and the bearing of a man who’d cleared harder problems than forest bandits. The Lizardman guards behind him — veterans of Ironhold, armored in forge-blessed plate — spread out with the quiet efficiency of a unit that didn’t need orders for standard deployment.
The hamlet elder — a Halfling woman named Pella, who stood at chest height to Krug and compensated for the size difference with a spine made of compressed pragmatism — met him at the bridge.
"You’re from the north," she said. Not a question.
"Ashenveil."
"The forge god’s people."
"Yes."
"The bandits hit us again three days ago. Took the grain shipment and broke Torr’s arm." She pointed at a Human man sitting against a wall with a splinted forearm. "You can help?"
"I can."
"What do you want in return?"
"Your attention. After the bandits are gone, I’ll explain what we offer. If you’re not interested, we leave."
Pella studied him. The Halfling’s eyes were sharp — the eyes of a woman who’d been negotiating bridge tolls for twenty years and had developed an instinct for offers that were too good and offers that were just good.
"Clear the bandits first," she said.
***
Krug took the nearest camp before dawn.
The intelligence was straightforward — Gorthan’s hawk Ember had mapped the camp from altitude two days earlier, identifying seventeen occupants, three watch positions, one escape route through the eastern ravine. Krug’s twenty soldiers moved in a formation they’d drilled for months: pincer approach, silent advance, simultaneous contact from three directions.
The fight lasted four minutes. Eleven bandits surrendered. Six fought and were put down. None of Krug’s soldiers took a significant wound. The stonesteel blades cut through the bandits’ scavenged iron armor like cloth.
The second camp scattered when they heard the noise. Krug’s Gnoll scouts tracked them for two kilometers before they abandoned their supplies and fled south. The third camp was empty by the time the patrol arrived — word traveled fast among people whose survival depended on information.
Three camps cleared in a single morning. Two years of Bridgewater’s suffering resolved between breakfast and lunch.
Krug returned to the bridge. The hamlet had gathered — ninety faces lining the road, watching the Lizardman priest walk back with twenty soldiers who hadn’t lost a man. They’d heard the fighting. Some had climbed the ridge to watch. What they’d seen was not a battle. It was a demonstration. A statement written in efficiency and stonesteel: This is what we can do. This is what protection looks like.
Pella met him at the bridge again. Her expression had changed — the pragmatist’s calculation replaced by something more complex. Not gratitude, exactly. Recognition. The look of a woman who’d been running cost-benefit analyses her entire life and had just identified an option that broke the curve.
"Explain," she said.
Krug explained. The Grand Ordinator. The god of the forge. The Iron Devotion. Trade access, currency standardization, military protection, and the simple premise that underpinned all of it: a god who invested in his people because invested people generated returns.
Bridgewater converted before sunset. Full prayer ceremony on the bridge — ninety people kneeling on timber planks above running water, the words of the Iron Devotion mixing with the river current below.
[FAITH CONVERSION — Settlement Event]
[Settlement: Bridgewater (Human-Halfling hamlet)]
[New believers: 90]
[Starting tier: Casual (83) / Devout (7 — militia members)]
[Conversion catalyst: Military intervention + demonstrated protection]
[Resources gained: Bridge crossing — trade route integration]
[TERRITORY UPDATE]
[Total Believers: 3,500]
[FP Generation: 4,600/day]
[FP Reserves: 58,000 / 80,000]
[Rank 4 Progress: 72.5%]
[Estimated Time to Rank 4: ~6 weeks]
The numbers pulsed in Zephyr’s perception.
A kingdom. Soon. The structures are outgrowing their names.