Urist took another bite out of her plump helmet biscuits and stared out of the fortress exit. She understood that sentry duty was an important job, but Armok was it boring.

Nothing happened. It continued to happen for the rest of the day. As night fell, she grew tired and headed to the barracks for a nap.

Morning arrived uneventfully and she returned to her post. She scratched the guard dog behind his ears. "Who's a good boy?"

A cloud of dust appeared on the horizon. Urist readied her weapon, but lowered it as she recognized the telltale shape of merchant caravans. "Oi! Merchants have arrived! Get the crafts into the depot!" She didn't understand why, but merchants loved the stone mugs her uncle spent all his time slapping together. They would gladly solve the wood shortage she had heard whispers about in exchange for a couple dozen of the useless things.

She took a swig from her electrum flask, which the overlord had granted her for her contributions to the routing of an elven siege last Granite. Metal flasks, now those were proper drinking vessels. The humans could have their stone mugs.

She nodded politely to the caravan drivers as they passed her station. A quick glance at their cart showed that, along with the requested berries, leather, and meat, the merchants had again brought a few dozen bins of pig tail cloth. They didn't seem to get that the fortress had its own thriving cloth industry... though cave spider silk was still hard enough to get that they'd take some. If they had brought any. Which they hadn't.

The trading went off without a hitch. Urist resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the sight of a merchant cart loaded with mugs and mugs and mugs. Ridiculous.

As the carts faded into the distance, the drawbridge started to rise. Clank. Clank. Clank.

"Is it garbage day already?" she asked of the haulers that she couldn't see, but knew were heading to the dump locations just above the now-raised drawbridge.

"Yep. The butchers have been extra busy of late, and we don't want to deal with the miasma."

She couldn't see past the raised drawbridge, but she imagined a veritable rain of hair, nervous tissue, and various other garbage. A strange idea, the overlord had had, to dispose of trash in this way, but she couldn't fault its effectiveness.

"All right, the trash is out! Lower the bridge!"

WHAM! The drawbridge fell to the ground, utterly obliterating the trash underneath. There was no need to check, but if they had, they would have found no trace of it remained.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and swiftly turned to see- "Lokum!" she exclaimed, embracing her husband. "Coming to relieve me already?"

"Check your calendar. The month's over," he responded, returning the embrace. "Hey, big news! The miners struck adamantine!"

"Wha... That's a real thing?"

"Yeah, it looks to be a great tall pillar of it, running down the mountain as far as we can determine. It looks to go through the magma sea, even. The overlord is thinking to divert the river and obsidianize that so we can get every last stone safely..."