Day One: Stirring Ashes   The air outside the bastion was still, the early summer heat warping the horizon between Frandlyn and the distant hills. Inside the study—part laboratory, part library—Fip Goldscale laid out his tools. Scroll parchments, sapphire-tipped quills, arcane chalk, and a line of blank diamonds awaited use.   Flap, his simulacrum, stood near the window facing east, his expression unreadable.   “Let’s get to work,” Fip said, summoning a flash of violet sigils into the scroll he’d started the day prior. “Misty Step first. Then the diamond.”   Flap replied with a nod and turned to begin crafting the diamond, channeling pure magic into a flawless crystalline structure that shimmered faintly with golden light.   That night, music from a distant tavern drifted across the breeze—the Ballad of the Backwards Delvers. Fip heard his name in the chorus. He closed the shutters.   ---   Day Two: Tension Beneath the Stone   Word came from a merchant’s rider around midday—Plumefall had sent out patrols to investigate strange burrowings near the lake. Some said it was a dragon. Others whispered the phrase “world-ender.”   Fip didn’t break stride. He completed a second scroll of Misty Step with precise etchings, while Flap added another perfectly cut diamond to their growing reserve.   Severus passed by the study once, headed toward the training yard.   “Still making rocks, old man?” he quipped with a grin.   “Still pretending you’ll outlive me?” Fip replied.   They exchanged a nod. It was enough.   ---   Day Three: Rumblings and Reverence   The ground trembled that morning. Only slightly. Just enough to unsettle the shelves in the lower archives.   Flap made his third diamond by the window, pausing to watch the faint clouds gather over the northern ridge.   Fip paused his Silvery Barbs scroll. “How much time would we have… if it comes this way?”   “Assuming it follows the pattern of its first emergence? We would have four, maybe five locations before it returns to hibernation.”   “That’s not a lot of scrolls.”   “No,” Flap agreed.   That evening, two Crimson Chain gladiators passed by on horseback. One was reciting the ballad’s fourth verse—the one about the gnome and “Fip the Bright.” Fip sighed.   ---   Day Four: Friction in the Walls   A hunter from Brackenrest arrived at the bastion gates by late afternoon, face pale, boots stained with mud and something darker.   “It walked through the trees like they were nothing,” she said. “Didn’t roar. Didn’t slow down. Just kept going.” Apparently, she had a vision of red scaled beast.   “We’re running out of time,” Fip said.   ---   Day Five: Preparing the Fall   Flap, methodical as ever, conjured the fifth diamond.   In the courtyard, Severus sparred with a newer recruit—his laughter booming, a sharp contrast to the grim air surrounding the bastion.   Fip watched from the study window and then whispered, “May your joy last longer than mine.”   ---   Day Six: Warning Bells   A bell rang in Frandlyn’s temple square—the kind reserved for distant dangers. Not imminent invasion, but something worse: unknown terror.   Fip adjusted the carrying case for the diamonds and tucked the sixth inside.   “We’ll meet with Erik in Isondale in a couple days to get the Spelljammer,” he told Flap.   “You believe it’s that soon?”   “I do.”   They worked through the heat of the day, wrapping scrolls and preparing casting components. The world outside was quiet. Too quiet.   ---   Day Seven: Departure   With the final scroll of Silvery Barbs complete and the last diamond polished to a blinding gleam, Fip placed the items into his leather casting belt.   “Seven diamonds. Several scrolls. If it’s not enough…”   Flap finished the sentence for him. “Then we weren’t meant to survive.”   Fip looked once more at the fields surrounding their bastion—green and gold in the sun, stretching toward Frandlyn.   “When this ends,” he said, “let this place still stand.”