At eight o’clock on the dot, I was sitting comfortably in my workshop with a pot of fresh, hot tea before me as my cloud of mechanical messengers answered our neighbor’s invitation with a rapid-fire barrage of hard pebbles against every narrow window in the black castle’s upper walls. Every single piece of visible glass was hit at once with a pebble from my garden designed to leave a scratch exactly like the one left on my window earlier that day.

The answering howls of the castle’s denizens were so loud, they filtered all the way down the road, through the window-less walls of my workshop.

I smiled as I poured myself a cup of tea and settled back into work. Message received and acknowledged.

My perfect satisfaction lasted all the way until the next morning, when I looked out through the kitchen window.

“Unbelievable!”

There wasn’t one undead minion lying in sad pieces on the grass outside today. There were seven…and they were the most mismatched group imaginable, an appalling jumble of horrifically misassembled limbs.

That first one had obviously stumbled into my wards by accident. But for this many to arrive today? My neighbor must have sent them all against my wards on purpose, trying to overwhelm me with sheer numbers in punishment for rejecting his almighty summons.

The arrogance of it was breathtaking. Clearly, he had no idea of how strong my wards really were…but all the same, I couldn’t let these poor creatures pay the price. They’d already suffered enough.

Taking a deep, calming breath through my teeth, I turned towards my workshop to gather up my tools.

“You’d better bring your tea along with you,” said Dad, without bothering to look up from his puzzle book. “It’ll take you a bit longer this time—and it’ll do you good to work out in the sunshine for once.”

It took quite a bit longer, actually…and the next morning, there were even more.

As I looked around on that third morning at the dozens of twitching body parts scattered across our grass, all waiting to be evened out and reassembled, I told myself that I should feel real satisfaction in this visible triumph of my careful wards. Better yet, my infuriating neighbor had to feel the sting of humiliation each time I not only failed to cower at his fury but actually sent his minions back to him in better shape than before. That had to prove my lack of fear without a doubt.

And yet…

It wasn’t only the lost hours that nagged at me as I spent my third day in a row on painstaking repairs. It was the sense that I was missing something vital in my challenge. For an inventor, there could be no greater frustration.