Wales Alexander

This Used To Be About Dungeons

Dedication

For Alyssa

Chapter 1 — The Fig and Gristle

The Fig and Gristle was the smaller of the two taverns in Pucklechurch, a squat place braced by thick beams, but it had the better music by far. Alfric hadn’t come for the poached figs, though he was sure they were delicious. He hadn’t come for the music either, though it was a caliber of melody he had only heard before in Dondrian and not the kind of thing he would have ordinarily expected from a small town like this. No, he had come for the bard, who was hunched over a small stool, strumming her six-stringed lute with her eyes closed, her words barely audible over the sound of her instrument.

The effect of the music was subtle but complex, with more points of enhancement than were obvious at first glance. Alfric ordered the herbed chicken and garlic potatoes, with a cup of honeyed tea, and the flavors of each were heightened by the melody, the tea sweeter but not cloying, the chicken richer and more flavorful. All that was par for the course from a tavern bard, but the girl was weaving in other aspects, subtle enough that you could miss them, emotional components. Alfric wasn’t a naturally anxious person, but his worries had their edge taken from them, reduced down a fraction, and when he tried to focus on old sources of sadness, he found that those, too, were blunted. The inverse seemed true as well, the jokes he overheard were much funnier than they should have been, and the cozy warmth of the tavern much cozier.

Altogether, it made Alfric more confident in his choice to come to Pucklechurch. He had heard about her back in Dondrian, where she had trained in a conservatory and achieved a considerable level of fame, and hoped that he could pluck her from this tavern. There were other candidates in Pucklechurch, six others all told, but Verity was the one he felt was a necessity, and if she said no, he would do his best to persist. If she said yes, then he would get things going as quickly as possible.

She finished with her set just as he was finishing his poached fig, which he’d ordered after he was finished with the meal. It was as good as advertised, aided as it was by the music. He hurried to finish, scooping up the last bites of mushy fig, then got up from his seat and walked over to her as she was packing up her lute.

“Beautiful music,” he said once he’d swallowed the fig down. “Are you done for the night?”

“Yes,” replied Verity, glancing up only briefly. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

She was tall, for a girl, but had a hunched posture when performing that made her seem smaller. Now, with the playing done, she’d straightened to her considerable height, just a touch shorter than Alfric, if that. Her clothes were conservative, a long blue dress that went down to mid-calf and sleeves that she’d hitched up for playing but were down now, slightly wrinkled. Her hair was long and black, with a sheen to it, and it was tied back, leaving her face clearly visible. She had green eyes with long lashes and a slenderness to her features that made her look more delicate than she probably was. She had high cheekbones, a narrow nose, and thin lips, but when she smiled, as she sometimes did when she was singing, it made her face come alive. She was pale and fit in with most of the people in the tavern in that regard, in a way that Alfric did not.

“Have you ever been in a dungeon?” asked Alfric.

Verity stopped what she was doing and looked up at him again, this time paying more attention. “No,” she said, frowning. “Sorry, who are you?”

“My name is Alfric Overguard, adventurer,” he said, holding out his hand. That wasn’t the half of it, but it would do as an introduction.

She took his hand, raising an eyebrow, skeptical at first and then faintly amused. Alfric wasn’t wearing his full adventuring gear, just his boots, bandolier, and sword in its sheath, with his shirt and pants being nothing particularly special. The sword was unique, an heirloom, but it would be hard for her to tell that without him drawing it.

“Verity Parson,” said Verity. She finished with her lute and stood up. “Can I help you?”

“Well, would you like to go into a dungeon?” asked Alfric, giving her his most optimistic, hopeful look.

“Hrm,” said Verity. She slung her lute case over her shoulder. “I’ll think about it.”

“Can I walk you home?” asked Alfric. “And then maybe we can speak while we walk.”

Verity looked him over again. “You’re not from in town.”

“No,” he replied, wondering which part, exactly, had given him away. She wasn’t from in town either, though perhaps eight months had been long enough for her to consider herself a local.

“Then yes,” she said. “You can walk me home.” She began walking across the tavern, and Alfric followed after her, feeling a bit like a puppy dog.

“I’m putting together a party,” said Alfric. “You’re a quite skilled bard, and in terms of party composition—”

“We’re here,” said Verity. She was standing next to a set of stairs that led to the second floor of the tavern.

“You live here?” asked Alfric, looking up the stairs.

“I do,” replied Verity. “Thank you for speaking with me.” This was a very perfunctory thanks, of the kind that Alfric was still getting used to. People in the region seemed to feel the need to thank people for even the smallest of charities, though Verity, like him, came from Dondrian. “I’ll give it some consideration.”

“Can I tell the others that you’re in?” asked Alfric.

“If you’d like, I suppose,” replied Verity. She started up the stairs, then stopped and turned around. “You have other people lined up?”

“Three others,” Alfric replied. And two alternates. He had grown accustomed to people saying no. “We could probably do it with only four of us, but five is better. A sorcerer, a cleric, and a ranger. The pay is—”

“I’m done with people for the day, sorry,” said Verity. “We can talk tomorrow, if you’re still in town. I usually start playing at noon, so anytime before then.”

“Okay,” said Alfric, taking what he could get. “It was nice to meet you,” he added, as it seemed to be custom in this part of the world.

Verity nodded, then went on up the stairs without another word.

Alfric frowned to himself. As opening moves went, it could have been worse, but it could also have been a lot better. The choice was whether to go back to his room and wait until morning or strike now, given that he had enough time. As always, Alfric took action.

— ⁂ —

Alfric found Mizuki where he expected her to be, chasing will-o’-wisps in the forest. It was something she often did just after dark, once the will-o’-wisps were out, but while there was still some residual light. All this was according to some people around town. They had spoken highly of her, if they knew her, which most of them seemed to. It wasn’t particularly hard to find her: all he had to do was to wait until he saw a flash of light, then move toward it.

Mizuki wore culottes that stopped just above her knees, looking like a skirt when she was still, but short pants when she was in motion. Her upper garment wrapped around her, leaving her arms bare. As the will-o’-wisps favored the boggy areas of the forest, she was wearing clogs of her own design, with a heel high enough that her feet wouldn’t get wet where the grass and moss sank down. From what Alfric had been able to find out, she was local to the town, but her mother had been from far-off Kiromo, which showed on Mizuki’s face. She had a round face, darker skin, small eyes, a small nose, and a slight downward slant to her eyes. Her hair was cropped short, to just below her chin, and she had long bangs that threatened to block her vision.

“Gah!” she shouted after a particularly bright flash of light illuminated Alfric, who was approaching her.

“Sorry!” he called out to her. “Didn’t mean to sneak up.”

“What are you doing out in the woods at this time of night?” she asked, the will-o’-wisps forgotten and floating off as a small herd, motes of blue and white lights drifting in the dark.

“Have you ever been in a dungeon?” he asked her.

“That’s not an answer!” she replied, stomping with her clogs toward him through the squelching mud. “You answer, then you can ask questions.”

“I was looking for you,” said Alfric, once she was close enough that they didn’t have to raise their voices. “So, have you ever been in a dungeon?”

“No,” said Mizuki. “Did you bring a lantern? It’s hard to see.”

“I did,” said Alfric, pulling a disc from his pocket. He unlatched it, and light spilled out from its face. Mizuki looked him over, paying some special attention to the sword on his hip.

“Why do you want to know if I’ve been in a dungeon?” asked Mizuki, hands on her hips.

“If you had been to one, I wanted to ask you about it,” said Alfric. “To know which ones you’ve been in and what your general impression was. But if you hadn’t been in a dungeon, then I thought we could talk about dungeons, and I could see if you wanted to join a party to go to one.”

“With you?” asked Mizuki. Alfric nodded. “And who else?”

“We have a bard so far,” said Alfric. “Verity, she plays sets down at the Fig and Gristle. I have others in mind, but even if it’s just four, we should be able to do it.”

“Which two others?” asked Mizuki. “What kinds of casters?”

“Only one other caster,” said Alfric. “A cleric. The other I’m planning to ask is a ranger, of sorts, at least according to the censusmaster.” One of the alternates was a caster, if he understood the term from a sorcerer’s perspective, but he didn’t want to get her hopes up.

“A sorcerer needs magic to make magic,” said Mizuki. “With a priest and a bard I’m not going to be getting much in the way of interference patterns to work with.”

“You’ll have the dungeon too,” said Alfric. “That’s three. It should be more than enough.”

“And you don’t know any magic?” asked Mizuki.

“Nothing of note for invading a dungeon,” replied Alfric, which he tried to comfort himself as being not quite a lie. “I tried a few of them but was always better with a sword and shield.”

“No shield though,” replied Mizuki, looking down at the sword on his hip.

“It’s back in my room, with the rest of my armor,” said Alfric. “So, are you in? It’s a few hours’ work for easy money. Easier money than chasing around will-o’-wisps.”

“Hrmph,” said Mizuki. She looked out into the woods, where the will-o’-wisps were still floating away. “Well, I don’t particularly feel like following them just in the hopes that I can finagle something from their magic, so I guess I’ll go with you. Do you already have the party made? Or is this fresh?”

“Not yet,” said Alfric, brightening up considerably. “You, me, and Verity will make three, we can form the party in the morning.”

“Wait,” said Mizuki, and Alfric’s heart seemed to stop, not that he really expected a problem he couldn’t overcome. He’d had too many setbacks over the last year and had grown too sensitive to the kinds of problems that came with getting a group together. “Can you give me an escort back into town?” asked Mizuki. “My light is gone, and there’s barely enough ambient magic for me to make my own way.”

“Certainly,” replied Alfric. “And as we go, we can talk shop.”

“Here, let me grab my bag,” said Mizuki. She walked over to a tree, where a simple cloth bag hung from one branch. After she grabbed it and threw it over her shoulder, she came closer to Alfric and slipped her arm into his. “Lead the way,” she said.

“So,” said Alfric as they walked. “Your role would be ranged combat and support. For a novice sorcerer, it’s generally safe to figure one spell per room, and it would be best for you to go first, so there’s not so much a risk of friendly fire. I’ll be going in with sword and shield, taking the brunt of the punishment, and if you’re able to eke out another spell or two from the cross-magic going around, all the better.”

“Sounds fun,” said Mizuki. “And for rewards? We’re splitting evenly?”

“That’s the plan,” said Alfric. “Materials and henlings sold off and split five ways, but not everything can be split, so we’ll be doing a points auction before we leave the dungeon.”

“Seems like you’ve given this some thought,” said Mizuki. Alfric still had his small lantern out, pointing forward, giving them guiding light, and he could just barely see the frown on her face with the reflected light. “You’ll have to explain the concept of a points auction, but I can wait so you don’t have to repeat it and I don’t have to hear it twice.” She looked up at his face, illuminated by the light of the lantern that was bouncing off the trees ahead of them. “Is the dungeon thing safe?”

“Dungeons aren’t dangerous,” said Alfric. “At least, they’re not as dangerous as everyone thinks. Still, it’s better to go in with a clear plan and a balanced party.”

“How did you find me?” asked Mizuki.

“I spoke with the censusmaster of the hex,” said Alfric. “She was able to give me a list of people who weren’t in a party, and were below the age of thirty, and from there it was just a matter of asking around.”

“So you know my name then,” said Mizuki. “And you have me at quite the disadvantage.”

“Alfric Overguard,” said Alfric.

“Mizuki Yono,” replied Mizuki.

“Anyhow,” said Alfric. “When I was asking around, the woman who runs the general store—”

“Bethany. What an intolerable gossip,” said Mizuki. “And it feels weird to call her a woman. We’re the same age.”

“My apologies,” replied Alfric.

“No, it’s fine,” said Mizuki. “It’s probably fair. I just think of myself as a girl, still. I don’t feel like an adult.” According to the censusmaster, she was twenty-two. She shook her head. “Who was the other person you spoke with? The bard? I wasn’t paying the most attention.”

“Verity,” Alfric said. “She’s an extremely skilled bard, for being second elevation.”

“And we’re all going to be of second elevation?” asked Mizuki. “I’ve always thought elevation was kind of bunk.”

“Going in with mixed elevations is dangerous,” said Alfric, ignoring the latter part of what she’d said. It sounded like it might be a long digression. “If I get everyone I want, we’ll all be second elevation, and hopefully we can move up together.” He realized that was a misstep just after he said it.

“Together?” asked Mizuki. “So you’re not just planning one dungeon, you’re planning many of them. See, that’s a different question. I’d like to try a dungeon, sure, but if you’re asking for a commitment, one that’s going to mean travel outside the hex, that’s another thing entirely.”

“No commitment,” said Alfric, backpedaling as hard as he could. “You all live here, and the dungeon in this hex will be half a day’s work at the most, including the time to walk there. I’m not asking for anything else. Going to the six surrounding dungeons would mean a single day away from home each, if that. If we had to, we’d camp out or find a room at an inn. That’s not the kind of thing you would do right off the first swing, not before we know each other.”

“But you’re clearly thinking about it,” said Mizuki.

“Well,” said Alfric, not knowing how to respond. Disclosure had been a cornerstone of his education, and it felt wrong to lie about his further plans. He was already not being as forthcoming as he would have liked, on several fronts.

“That’s fine, no one is going to be forcing me to do something I don’t want to do,” replied Mizuki. “Oh, I think I can see the lights of the town.”

And indeed, through the trees, the warm glow of hanging lanterns was visible, though a number of them had been shuttered for the night, leaving only a soft glow coming from a few of the houses. It was fully dark now, with the last of the sun’s light faded away, and the temperature had begun to drop. Pucklechurch was nothing much to look at, a small town like most others, in the center of its hex, though the large temple was the obvious local landmark and quite grand. Mizuki reached into her bag and pulled out a hooded cloak, which she quickly wrapped around herself, covering her bare arms.

“Can I ask if you know any of the others?” asked Alfric. “I’m still working on recruitment, and any insights would be appreciated.”

“Names?” asked Mizuki.

“Hannah is the cleric, and Isra is the ranger,” said Alfric.

“Hannah’s not a local,” said Mizuki. “She patched me up once, just a minor burn. She seemed cheerful enough, but I don’t know her well. Church of Garos. Isra—is that a boy’s name or a girl’s name?”

“Girl’s,” replied Alfric.

“Then she’s probably not a local either, though I don’t know everyone in town.” She gave Alfric a skeptical look. “You sure picked a lot of people from outside the hex, since Verity’s not local either.”

“Ah,” said Alfric. “That’s not on purpose, I promise. The censusmaster didn’t say, and I haven’t been able to learn as much as I would have liked about everyone.” This, too, wasn’t quite a lie.

“Are you sure that Hannah is going to join?” asked Mizuki. They had reached the town and were walking down the street together, Mizuki still holding Alfric’s arm even though it wasn’t really necessary now that they were out of the woods and the ground was more even.

“The only one that I’m sure of is you, because you said you would,” replied Alfric. “Verity needs time to think, but she gave a soft commitment. Will you come with me to help pitch to the others? People seem to like you.” A little flattery never hurt, in Alfric’s opinion.

“I suppose,” said Mizuki, blushing somewhat. She came to a stop, and Alfric stopped next to her. “This is me.”

They were standing in front of a surprisingly large house, three stories tall, arranged in tiers of decreasing size, with eaves on each level. It was a beautiful building, but in a state of minor disrepair. Even in the dim light of the nighttime lanterns, Alfric could see moss growing on a few of the wooden beams and places where the tiled roof needed to have pine needles and fallen leaves swept from it. The door and windows were painted red, but the paint was faded and starting to chip. For all that, it was old and sturdy, a large house that had been built to last. It was completely dark, without a single light on.

“Do you live with your parents?” asked Alfric.

“No, just me,” said Mizuki. “You’re asking after the others tomorrow?”

“Yes,” replied Alfric. “I need to talk to Verity a bit more. She said that I could tell the others that she was in, but she didn’t actually say she’d go.”

“Well, then if this thing ends up working, I’ll be able to say that I was the first to say yes,” said Mizuki, smiling. “Have a good night. Come get me before you go see Verity. I might be able to help talk her into it.”

“Good,” said Alfric, feeling a surge of relief. Things were falling into place, just like he’d hoped they would. He needed the win. “You have a good night too. I look forward to working with you.”

Alfric couldn’t keep himself from smiling as he walked back to the room he was renting. He had done some basic research on the party members, but he hadn’t known that Mizuki was living in such a large house all on her own. He idly wondered whether and when it would be appropriate to ask for a room in her house, with payment, of course, or perhaps with a share of his dungeon loot. If they did the dungeon for the hex, then all six surrounding ones, that would be something like a fortnight of work. He’d need a home base.

On his way back, he stopped by the tavern and looked up at the second floor, where he could see a lantern still glowing, which he thought meant Verity was awake. He wanted to go up and speak with her, but she’d said to wait until the next day, and he would abide by that, as much as he wanted to get things moving. He didn’t really understand why she would have wanted to put it off. Bards were supposed to take joy in other people, never wanting a quiet moment to themselves, but it seemed that Verity hadn’t been cast from the same mold. Given what he knew of her history, this was little surprise.

The temple was quiet as well, with no lights on, which meant that there was no chance to speak with Hannah ahead of schedule, not that Alfric really wanted to. By his reckoning, clerics were one of the most useful professions you could have with you in a dungeon, depending on which god they followed, but they were also one of the hardest to convince to go in. Hannah was a devotee of Garos Orag, one of the best gods for healing, and also one whose clerics were typically the least inclined toward dungeons.

And as for the last potential member of the party, Isra, all Alfric knew aside from her vital statistics was that she came to the biweekly market in the mid-morning, carrying meat and skins from a day’s hunting, sometimes with the meat smoked or dried, sometimes with the skins tanned, and occasionally with other goods as well. She didn’t live in Pucklechurch, but she showed up on the censusmaster’s query, and she’d been seen around often enough that she must live somewhere in the hex, though the woman at the general store hadn’t had any clue where that might be.

All in all, Alfric had to call his first day in Pucklechurch a qualified success. If he could get a party together and head down into a dungeon within the next few days, everything would be back on track.

Chapter 2 — Big-City Energy

Alfric knocked on Mizuki’s door just after sunrise, having woken up to twilight filtering in through the curtains of his tavern room. She answered quite a while after he knocked, wearing a robe and looking disheveled, her hair out of place. She was squinting and frowning as she looked at him, trying to keep the light from fully entering her eyes.

“You,” she said.

“Alfric,” he supplied.

“Have you had breakfast?” she asked.

“I don’t eat breakfast,” said Alfric. “Lunch is my first meal of the day. It’s the custom, where I’m from.”

“Well, you can wait outside while I make breakfast, or you can come in and sit there awkwardly while I eat,” she said. “Your choice.”

“Sorry if I woke you,” said Alfric. Looking at her, there was really no need for the ‘if’.

Mizuki waved away his apology and staggered into her house, clutching her robe close to her and leaving the door open by way of invitation. She was barefoot, and Alfric hesitated slightly by the doorway, looking at the different shoes there, before deciding to take his boots off. He didn’t know the custom in Pucklechurch, nor did he know whether Mizuki would actually follow that custom, being as she was half Kiromon. He set his sword in a holder by the door as well, then trod into the house, following the sounds of someone banging around in the kitchen.

The house was too large for one person, that much was obvious from the outside, but it was fully furnished, and almost everything was slightly dusty. Ash filled the fireplace, and the fabric of the couches was faded. There were places on the walls where pictures had once hung, their removal leaving nails in place and bare spots beneath them. It gave the impression of having been effectively abandoned ages ago, but Mizuki clearly lived there. Alfric wondered, briefly, whether she was a squatter but dismissed the notion. Squatters weren’t common in small towns like this, he didn’t think, and besides, there was something strongly Kiromon about the architecture, though he still thought it strange even by those standards.

The kitchen was something different. Where the rest of the house was in need of cleaning, the kitchen was immaculate. A four-plate stove squatted in the center, along with a dual oven against one wall, all heavy cast iron. The tiled blue-and-white walls were obscured by hanging copper pots and pans, with a selection of knives against one wall, all polished until they gleamed. Two porcelain sinks, side by side, connected to a glass tank of clean water that hung from the ceiling and was likely fed into the house system. Braids of garlic and dried bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling, and when Alfric peeked into the open chiller, he saw a small selection of fresh ingredients. Mizuki had already grabbed a slab of pork and was pulling a few other things out, including glass bottles with dark liquids in them, a block of cheese, and a clump of thin mushrooms. He took a seat on a stool next to the island counter that the stove was set into.

Mizuki cut off a thick slice of the pork belly with an enormous and quite sharp knife, then looked at Alfric. “Last chance to get in on this.”

“All right,” he replied. “Sure.”

Mizuki gave him a satisfied smile, then cut off another slice of pork belly and put the rest back into the chiller. She opened up one of the heaters on the stove, setting the cooling element to one side and letting the warming element heat up, with a heavy cast-iron pan placed on top of it.

“So, where is it?” she asked.

“What?” asked Alfric.

“You said skipping breakfast was custom where you’re from,” replied Mizuki as she watched the pan. “Where is that?” She deemed the pan hot enough and slipped the pork belly onto it, where it sizzled. Once that was completed, she moved over a basket of eggs, then began mixing together a few of the brown liquids into a small bowl.

“The city of Dondrian,” said Alfric. “It’s a hundred hexes away, which is quite far even by leycraft or portal.” He’d spent a fair amount to travel the distance, first taking a leycraft, then going through a conveniently timed portal, which had still left a lot of walking.

“I know where it is,” said Mizuki, rolling her eyes. “That’s a long way though, to come to a place like Pucklechurch.”

“Not so far as Kiromo,” Alfric replied. “I’m sure that’s a story.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Mizuki. “But we’ve known each other for half a day.” She used her huge knife to quickly chop some garlic, pulled some dried herbs from where they were hanging, and put all of that in the bowl. So far as Alfric was concerned, cooking was a variety of magic, strange and arcane, with its own inscrutable laws. “So what brings you our way?” she asked as she went about cooking in her bathrobe, flipping the pork and seeming to revel in the sizzling sound.

“I wanted to put together a party,” said Alfric. “I suppose you’ve already figured out that I’d like for it to be more than a onetime affair.” Again, there was a bit of a lie there, something not said that should have been.

“So long as you understand that’s not what I agreed to,” said Mizuki. She stuck a finger in her sauce and tasted it, then made a face and began adding more things. “But why here? Why not closer to your great and mighty city?”

“What do you know about how the dungeons are made?” asked Alfric.

“Almost nothing,” Mizuki replied. “How many eggs for you? I’m having three.”

“Three is fine,” said Alfric, watching her take the eggs from the basket. “The dungeon portals are old magic, one of the anchoring techniques that keep rogue magic from building up.”

“Well, I knew that; I am a sorc,” said Mizuki. She pronounced it ‘sork’. With a spatula, she carefully moved the pork to the side, then began cracking the eggs right into the pan, one by one. The shells went into a wooden bucket lined with wax paper. “Mushrooms?” she asked. “Bread, cheese?”

“Sure,” he replied as he watched her add butter and button mushrooms to the crowded pan. “So, if left unchecked, magic builds up, and when magic builds up, bad things happen. The dungeon portals drain off that magic to keep it below a baseline within a hex, but part of the exchange is that the dungeons take on the flavoring of whatever magic they’re draining.” She hopefully knew all this. “In an enormous city like Dondrian, there’s heavy magic in use, some of it harvested from other hexes, some from all the magic users, some from the wide variety of magic items, some from the leylines, all swirling around with castoffs and residue. All that gets eaten up by the dungeon portals, which makes them exceptionally dangerous. The portals out here have a lot less magic to work with, which makes them safer. It’s a better place to start out, in relatively unsettled lands.”

“Hrm,” said Mizuki. She had taken two plates down from a cabinet and loaded them up with the pork, eggs, bread, mushrooms, and cheese. “This is a dipping sauce,” she said, pouring half of the sauce she’d made into a second bowl. A fork and knife came clattering down next to his plate. “Dig in.” Before she sat down, she remarried the warming element to the cooling one, carefully matching them to each other so that they would be inert.

Alfric wasted no time in eating, and though he was skeptical of the sauce at first, it turned out to be salty and herbaceous, going well with the fatty pork. It was an unconventional arrangement of foods, by Dondrian standards, and it was the first breakfast that Alfric could remember eating in a very long while, but it was good food, far better than he had expected and more than he had any right to. He found himself consumed with the eating, which went on in silence. When they were finished, at roughly the same time, Mizuki filled up one of the sinks with water and began doing the dishes.

“I’m not sure your explanation makes sense,” said Mizuki.

“Oh?” asked Alfric. “And… can I help with the dishes?”

“You’d just get in the way,” said Mizuki, her hands covered in suds. “I mean, it makes sense that a dungeon out here would be safer than a dungeon in the city, but what doesn’t make sense is why you’d come out alone. You were just hoping to find four people to rip up from their jobs and go adventuring with you?”

“No,” said Alfric. “You would all keep your jobs, whatever they might be. It was my understanding that you were in the business of odd jobs anyway?”

“Well, me I understand,” said Mizuki. “But you’re asking a healing cleric to first take a day off from the temple, then several days if things go your way. And I know for a fact that Verity plays at the Fig and Gristle almost every day. Seems like it would have been easier to gather up a bunch of people in the city, then have you all move out to Pucklechurch together.”

“Might have been,” nodded Alfric. He didn’t want to say too much and hoped that she wouldn’t take his silence the wrong way.

“Sorry if I’m pushing things,” said Mizuki. “It’s a bad habit.”

“No,” said Alfric. “They’re good questions. I just don’t have good answers.” Not at this stage, at least. Maybe later, once they all knew each other, once the party was together, after their second or third dungeon.

“Fair,” said Mizuki. She put the last of the dishes on a drying rack and wiped her hands on a towel that hung on the handle of the oven door. She briefly looked down at her robe and cinched it tighter with a sheepish look. “Well, I should probably change into something more acceptable before we leave. It shouldn’t take long. Make yourself at home, but don’t snoop.”

Alfric waited patiently in the kitchen, looking around, but trying to do it in a way that didn’t constitute snooping. There was a large dining room through one door, but it looked as disused as the rest of the house. The obvious question was why Mizuki was living in such a large house alone, but Alfric hadn’t asked because it seemed like the kind of question that might have a difficult and painful story attached to it. The house was far too big for one person, and Mizuki obviously hadn’t kept up with either repairs or cleaning. The kitchen was the only place that Alfric had seen that had obvious love and attention applied to it.

Mizuki came back into the kitchen not long after she’d left, wearing a similar outfit to the day before, a wrap on top that left her arms bare and wide-legged pants that ended at her calves, this time a dark blue. In addition, she had a small belt that provided an anchor for a dagger in a sheath, which she hadn’t had the day before. She had also spent some time fixing her hair, and she’d applied lipstick, making her look much more put together than she’d seemed while making breakfast or the night before. Her bag was her final addition.

“I thought it would help me look serious,” she said, gesturing to the dagger. “Like an adventurer.”

“Your job won’t be to stab things,” said Alfric, frowning.

“Durr,” said Mizuki, sticking out her tongue. “But it looks cool, right?”

“I guess,” said Alfric.

“Verity will think it looks cool, I bet,” said Mizuki.

“Well, let’s hope so,” said Alfric.

— ⁂ —

The Fig and Gristle didn’t open until noon, but the proprietor, a sturdy woman with a streak of gray hair, answered the door when they knocked and brought them up to Verity’s room when they explained that they had arranged to meet with her.

“You’re not planning to take her away from me, are you?” asked the woman, Cynthia.

“We were hoping to go into a dungeon with her,” said Alfric, who had always considered honesty to be the best policy.

“Well, you protect her,” said Cynthia with a nod. “I always thought she wouldn’t be here long. I’m paying her a pittance, compared with what she can do.” She came to the door and knocked on it twice, hard. “Verity! Visitors!” She turned to Alfric and Mizuki. “You might have to knock again,” she said. “Verity doesn’t like the mornings, but I’m not going to sit here all day waiting for her to get up.” She turned and went down the stairs, leaving Alfric and Mizuki standing there.

After a full minute had passed and Alfric was contemplating knocking again, there were sounds from the other side of the door, including a fair amount of banging. This continued on for some time, until finally Verity opened her door and poked her head out. Alfric was surprised by how similar she looked to Mizuki, with her hair messy, a frown on her face, and a squint. Unlike Mizuki, she had gotten into a dress instead of a robe, one that had a pattern of white flowers on top of lavender fabric. It was slightly wrinkled.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Just past second bell,” said Alfric.

“Oh,” she said, looking between the two of them. Her bleary eyes finally rested on Mizuki. “I don’t usually get up until at least fourth bell.” She stared at Mizuki. “There are two of you now?”

“Three makes a party,” said Mizuki, quite cheerfully. She held out her hand. “Mizuki.”

“Verity,” said Verity, slipping a limp hand through the door for just long enough to do a perfunctory shake. “Hang on.” She closed the door for a moment, and there were more sounds from inside her room. Alfric had only gotten a narrow glimpse into her room, but it was a complete mess, with clothes everywhere, books in haphazard piles, and remnants of old meals. It was, frankly, a frightening amount of detritus to be packed into a relatively small room.

“Okay,” said Verity when she returned, slipping out of the door without letting them see any more of the inside. “Let’s go downstairs and talk.”

The tavern was empty, save for the proprietor, who was cleaning out glasses and tidying up the place. The chairs were all upside down on top of their tables, and Verity quickly flipped a few of them, giving them a place to sit.

“So,” she said, steepling her fingers and trying to look more awake than she was. “You want to go into a dungeon.”

“All you would have to do is sing and play,” said Alfric. “If you felt like you were in any danger whatsoever, you could run back to the entrance and leave without me. I’ll be the point man, the one facing down anything dangerous, and I’ll try to keep myself between you and whatever we find in the dungeon. In exchange for maybe two hours of work, only an hour of which will actually be in the dungeon, you’ll get a fifth share of whatever we find.”

“Do we have a healer?” asked Verity. “I’d feel better with one.”

“We’ll be picking her up later today,” said Alfric. “It might be better to have everything else squared away and agreed on before we approach her though.”

“And what kind of songs would you like, if you’ve given it thought?” asked Verity.

“Strength and speed,” said Alfric. “I’ll be up front, sword in hand, and with your proficiency, you should be able to give me a boost of some thirty to forty percent. Enhanced vision and hearing would be great, if you can add that in, and endurance would be a bonus as well, but with a healer on board that’s less of a concern.”

“Just one dungeon?” asked Verity, after a long pause. Alfric was getting the feeling that this was perhaps too much information at once for her.

“He wants more,” said Mizuki. “He’s got plans for the one in this hex, and the six surrounding, and no doubt more beyond that.”

“Just one to start,” said Alfric, casting a glance at Mizuki. “I wouldn’t want to commit until we know we can work together as a team, and I know that a single day is much more manageable in terms of scheduling than seven days or more. We need to allow for the possibility that someone won’t be a good fit or that something unexpected crops up, so yes, just one.”

“With the option for more?” asked Verity, tapping her fingers on the table. There was something rhythmic in how she did it, like she was playing out a tune.

“Possibly,” said Alfric. “And for a bard, it’s good training, good exposure to party dynamics and custom songs. I know that you can make decent money with taverns and outdoor performances, but party- or guild-level performance is where the real money is for a bard, even if it’s outside the traditional adventuring structures.”

Verity glanced at Mizuki.

“I think he’s just like this,” said Mizuki. She looked at Alfric. “How long have you been in Pucklechurch?”

“I arrived early last morning,” Alfric replied.

“So, based on what I know about this guy,” said Mizuki, seeming quite pleased with herself, “he comes in yesterday, early in the morning, makes a beeline for the censusmaster and gets a list of people, then spends the rest of the day asking around to see what he can find out about us, our reputations, our skills, things like that, and then, having not been in town for more than twelve hours, he visits first you, then me, trying to pull together a party in record time.”

“Sorry,” said Alfric. He didn’t know quite what he was apologizing for. “I just think that there’s a good opportunity here. It’s an easy win for everyone involved. And if we do work well as a team, or even if we need to swap a member out, then the surrounding dungeons could be profitable too. And yes, ideally, we would do the dungeon today.”

“Hmm,” said Verity. She sat back in her chair for a moment, looking at Mizuki, who was smiling, and Alfric, who was trying to give the pitch the gravitas it deserved. “Okay,” she finally said. “I can do this once. Don’t expect a second time unless it goes swimmingly. I’ll have to see if Cynthia is all right with me ducking out.”

“Good, then we can make the party now,” said Mizuki. She turned to Alfric. “It’s better to have one made early, right?”

“It is,” said Alfric, but he paused, listening. “That’s third bell though, which means the market just opened, which means that we have very little time to waste in meeting up with our fourth member. I don’t know where she lives, so her daily trip to the market might be the only time to find her.”

“Ooo,” said Mizuki. “Exciting. We get to hunt for a member. The huntress becomes the hunted!”

“I still need to wake up—or sleep some more,” said Verity. “I’ll be around if you need me. Let me know when you’re planning to go to the dungeon.”

“I was hoping for sixth bell or sooner,” said Alfric.

Mizuki laughed. “Big-city energy,” she said, grinning. “It’s a change of pace, that’s for sure.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Verity.

“Do,” said Alfric. He stood up and gave her a bow. “It was a pleasure to meet you again. I hope we have something more firm in the near future.”

Chapter 3 — Venison and Honey

“So, what else do you know about our mystery girl?” asked Mizuki as they walked through Pucklechurch toward the town market. Alfric had a long stride, and Mizuki had to move quickly to keep up. Based on how things had gone with Verity, he wasn’t sure he wanted her with him. She seemed to find him a bit too amusing.

“Fairly little,” nodded Alfric. “What did you mean about big-city energy?”

“Oh,” replied Mizuki. “I didn’t mean to offend, it’s just that there are some stereotypes of the cities. People bustling to and fro, always in a rush, always working on step twenty-six of their ninety-step plan, things like that. I might not find it so funny if you didn’t seem completely oblivious to it.”

“Sorry,” said Alfric. “I don’t mean to be brusque.”

“I figure if we’re in this together, maybe I can help you,” said Mizuki. “I’m a local, I know the people and I know what kind of approaches work. You come on really strong. With Verity, we probably could have spent a half hour or so just chatting, getting to know her, talking about what her life is like, how long she’d been at the Fig and Gristle, things like that, and then gotten around to the adventuring thing.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Alfric. “But she’s from Dondrian too.”

“Yeah?” asked Mizuki. “I didn’t know that. She’s gone local in a hurry.”

“Do you know anything about this girl we’re hoping to see? Isra?” asked Alfric. It was possible he shouldn’t have said anything about Verity’s past. He wasn’t supposed to know.

“Nothing,” said Mizuki. “The name’s not familiar, aside from last night. Like, really not familiar. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone with that name. Foreign, maybe?”

“I don’t know,” said Alfric. They approached the market, where stalls had opened up, displaying all kinds of wares. Pucklechurch wasn’t large enough to have a daily market, which made it especially important that they find Isra today. Otherwise, they’d be reduced to waiting three days until the next market, or spending time trying to find someone who knew her well enough to know where she lived. Alfric wasn’t sure whether he would do that or try to track down one of the alternates. “She’s dark-skinned, like me, roughly our age, second elevation, and she should have some furs or meat with her, unless she’s already dropped them off.”

“Oooh, honey,” said Mizuki, splitting off almost immediately. She picked up a jar of warm golden honey and held it up to the light.

“Come find me if you see her,” said Alfric, still looking around. He moved away from Mizuki, who was apparently trying to pick out which of the containers of honey she wanted to buy, and went over to one of the other stalls, a cart displaying cuts of meat. The base of it was apparently lined with chilling elements, as it was quite cool. “Excuse me, do you know a girl named Isra?” he asked the elderly woman. “I’m told that she brings in meat to sell sometimes.”

“She does,” said the woman with a nod. She was looking Alfric over, seeming to be in no rush. “We’ve got flanks of venison, fresh today.”

“I apologize, but I’m not really here to buy,” said Alfric. “Do you know if Isra has been through here yet today? She usually comes with furs and meats.”

“And what’s this about?” asked the woman, staring Alfric down. “Is she in trouble?”

“We actually will take two venison loins,” said Mizuki as she came up behind Alfric. She was slipping a jar of honey into the large bag that she apparently carried with her everywhere. “I’m thinking a glaze of honey, butter, peppercorns, and juniper berries.”

“My, that sounds wonderful,” replied the shopkeeper, perking up. She smiled. “You’ll have to have me over sometime, Mizuki, you always make your meals sound so good.”

“I’d love to!” said Mizuki, who really seemed to mean it. “If you bring the meat, I’ll make the meal. I’m already near the end of the pork I got from you. It’s been wonderful fried up and dipped in a dark, salty sauce that I make for it. I fed Alfric some this morning. Did you know that in Dondrian they don’t eat breakfast?”

“He’s from Dondrian?” asked the woman, looking him over again. “What are you doing in Pucklechurch of all places?” she asked. “And if you’re with Mizuki, then I just know Isra is in trouble.” But she said it with a little laugh and a smile.

“I’m looking to put together a party to go into the dungeon,” he said.

“Oh, how lovely,” said the shopkeeper. She turned to Mizuki. “Did you want those venison loins now?”

“I’d prefer to pick them up later, near the end of the day,” said Mizuki. “We have our work cut out for us before I can get back to the chiller, first with finding this Isra character, and then with going to the temple. I can pay now, so you’ll hold them?”

Alfric shifted slightly, getting ready to interject and bring the subject back to finding Isra, and Mizuki put a hand on his wrist, gentle, subtle, but firm.

“Oh, I would hold them for you anyhow, Mizuki,” replied the shopkeeper.

“I insist, it’s one less thing to worry about,” said Mizuki. She reached into her bag and pulled out a thick string, which had dozens of rings on it. She undid the knot without even looking at it and began quickly counting out rings. “Two loins, two and a half pounds total, does sixteen sound good?”

“For you, fifteen,” replied the shopkeeper. “But I might just take you up on that dinner one of these days.”

“I’d welcome it, but it would mean that I’d have to clean,” replied Mizuki with a smile. Their transaction completed, Mizuki retied the string her rings were kept on, again without looking, and slipped it back into her bag. “What do you know of Isra?” Mizuki asked. “Is she nice?”

“A bit cold, actually,” the shopkeeper said. “Given what she brings to market, she must be a good hunter and trapper, because she has game even in the long winter months. I think the beastmaster had to speak with her once about taking too much, actually. Anyhow, a few months back I offered her a standing arrangement for her game, and she rebuffed me, which I thought was a bit rude, mostly in how she chose her words. It might be because she likes to shop her wares around every market day, but I don’t know if that’s it, because it’s hard to get any chatter out of her. She’s a bit late today, but I would expect her to arrive sooner than later, the better not to miss the midday rush of customers.”

“I appreciate it,” smiled Mizuki. “I’ll be back for those venison loins later.”

“Of course,” the shopkeeper said with a nod. “And it was nice to meet you, young man. Alfric, was it?”

“Yes,” said Alfric, bowing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t inquire as to your name.”

“Marta,” she replied. “Good luck with your dungeon run. You know, I used to do the dungeons myself, when I was much younger. When I quit, I had twenty-eight under my belt.”

“Did you?” asked Mizuki, leaning forward slightly and not seeming in the least like she was ready to leave. “I would never have guessed. Why did you stop?”

“Oh, we had to go further and further afield for the dungeons,” said Marta. “And toward the end of it, I was pregnant with my first child, which would likely have put a stop to adventuring anyhow.”

“But what did you do?” asked Mizuki. “Let me guess, ranger?”

“No,” laughed Marta. “I was, in fact, a wizard, though only middling at best, and I’m sure I could hardly get a spark engine going, it’s been so long. I sold most of my old equipment off a decade back.”

“Well,” said Mizuki, “if we ever do have that dinner, I’m happy to have my ear talked off about your adventures.”

“Ah,” said Marta, looking across the market. “There’s Isra now. Should I call her over for you?” She pointed to the opposite end of the market, where a teenaged girl with a loaded backpack was talking to one of the other shopkeepers. She was dark-skinned, as Alfric had already heard, and wore a headscarf that completely covered her hair. Attached to her stuffed backpack were over a dozen brown furs, all strung together, though Alfric knew virtually nothing about small game. As Alfric watched her, he noticed a glint of metal by her face, which he quickly realized came from piercings in her nose, lip, and one eyebrow.

“We can wait,” said Alfric. “I don’t want to spook her.”

“She doesn’t seem like she’d spook easy,” said Mizuki, who was likewise watching the girl. “But I doubt she’ll like you, no offense.”

“Big-city energy?” he asked.

Mizuki nodded. “Maybe let me handle her?”

“Sure,” Alfric replied. “Remember, it’s a fifth share, not much work or risk for any of you,” but before he could finish, Mizuki had already taken off.

“Mizuki’s a firecracker,” said Marta, from behind Alfric. “Nice girl, but not too responsible with her magic.”

“Hrm,” said Alfric. He watched as Mizuki approached Isra and tried his hardest to listen in on what they were saying, but it was too far away, and the market was too busy. All he could do was read the body language, Mizuki’s animated expressions and Isra’s folded arms. Mizuki pointed over at Alfric, and he gave a friendly wave, but Isra didn’t wave back. “Is she going to be a problem?” he asked Marta.

“Mizuki? Oh, I think she’ll do fine,” said Marta. “She reminds me a bit of one of my dungeoneering friends from back in the day. I won’t say all sorcs are of a type, but Mizuki certainly seems to be. If you find yourself in need of advice, I have some to spare. There are more old adventurers in Pucklechurch than you might think, most of whom would be happy to help.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Alfric, nodding. “It’s appreciated.”

After what seemed like far too short a time for it to be good news, Mizuki returned.

“She’s not interested,” said Mizuki with a shrug. “So cross that one off your list. Seems a shame, she was cute.”

“What did you say to her?” asked Alfric, frowning at Isra, who had moved over to the next stall, her backpack considerably less full.

“I gave her the pitch, like I said I would,” replied Mizuki. “She gave a pretty firm no.” She shrugged again. “Can’t force people into a dungeon, you know? I don’t know if that’s a rule in the city.”

“I’m going to speak with her,” said Alfric, walking away before Mizuki could add more commentary.

“Good luck!” Mizuki called after him.

Alfric approached Isra from the side and waited while she engaged in her negotiations over her furs. He tried to project polite patience, but patience had never been his strong suit. On closer inspection, he could see Isra’s many piercings, all of them apparently gold, which seemed unusual for a ranger. Her head covering wasn’t really a scarf, as he’d thought before, but a single piece that had been made for that purpose. Like Mizuki and Alfric himself, she was clearly not from the area, with skin the color of mahogany, a rich ocher, and beyond that, a wider nose and thicker lips. Alfric’s people had originally come to what was now Inter from Tarbin, to the east, but that had been five hundred years ago, and they had kept almost nothing of the culture. Isra seemed a much more recent arrival. Isra herself didn’t seem cute to Alfric at all—there was something too stern about her. She was pretty, certainly, but cute gave very much the wrong impression. She didn’t smile.

Once the transaction was completed, and her furs off-loaded, Isra turned to Alfric. “Yes?” she asked.

“We’re putting together a party for a dungeon run,” said Alfric. “It’s a half day’s work for better returns than you’re likely to get anywhere else, one-fifth share. No other obligation.”

“When?” asked Isra.

“Today is possible, but first light tomorrow is more likely,” said Alfric, though Verity apparently didn’t rise until fourth bell, so that might have been too optimistic.

“How much will we make?” she asked.

“It’s hard to say,” said Alfric. “As a reasonable bottom end, four hundred rings, divided five ways, but that’s after everything has been sold, which could take some time.”

“And the magic items we want to keep?” asked Isra, eyes narrowed.

“My plan was to have us bid with parts of our share,” said Alfric. “If you bid a third of your share and take the bid, then if we bring in four hundred rings after sales, you would get,” he paused, working it out, “fifty-four and everyone else would get eighty-six.”

“I want first pick,” said Isra.

“We’d be bidding,” said Alfric. “First bid?”

“I want to win equal bids,” she said.

“Deal,” said Alfric, though it was more than he’d wanted to give. If she had first bid, he could have just had her start and not mentioned it to the others. Having her win equal bids would be difficult to explain and wasn’t the best start to a working relationship, but sometimes these kinds of concessions were needed.

“I’ll be in town until sixth bell,” said Isra. “When sixth bell comes, I’ll wait by the warp point. If you’re not there, I’ll assume we’re doing it tomorrow and meet you there around first bell. If it’s not one of those two times, I’m not doing it.”

“Okay,” said Alfric. “Sounds good.” But it was really a lot of time pressure, and meant that he was going to have trouble getting everything together, especially since they still needed the cleric.

With their business concluded, Isra turned away from him and continued on to the next stall.

“How’d it go?” asked Mizuki, appearing next to him.

“She’s in,” said Alfric. “That means that we only need Hannah, the cleric, but she was the one I was most worried about.” And if they didn’t get Hannah, then it would be down to second choices, and Isra was apparently not going to go into the dungeon at all unless it was quite soon.

— ⁂ —

The temple at Pucklechurch was an old one, perhaps the oldest building in the town. It was four stories tall, though only in its center, which had a high, vaulted ceiling that took up almost all of what would have been the upper floors. It was divided into sixths, with each of the gods having their own statue and, behind the statue, a set of rooms for smaller services, for private talks, and for the clerics to live. Alfric was pretty sure it was too large a building for a town like Pucklechurch to warrant, and he’d already heard from the woman at the general store that it housed only six clerics.

Alfric took a moment to make the signs of the six gods, a quick motion for each, honoring them. In Dondrian, each of the gods had their own temple, one devoted wholly to each particular god, with a whole host of clerics and services that the devout attended weekly. His parents had done what many did, rotating temples each week, which allowed a deeper, fuller understanding of each god and their existence, for good and ill. He had always favored Xuphin, God of Infinity, whose doctrine seemed most sensible, but he had a healthy respect for all six gods.

Mizuki brushed past him as he was looking at the statues. “Are you taking point, or am I?” she asked.

“I will,” said Alfric. “First, can I ask why this temple is so big?”

“What do you mean?” asked Mizuki. “How big should it be?”

“It was my understanding that for a town the size of Pucklechurch, there should be shrines instead, with maybe a small room of worship for those with a cleric,” said Alfric. He was looking around. “Much of this space isn’t used.” With the seating brought down, the place could easily have sat five hundred.

“I’ve never really thought about it,” said Mizuki, shrugging. “Well, come on, chop chop.”

Alfric moved toward the statue of Garos, done here in his animal form, a mighty stag whose antlers had fractal prongs. The room behind the statue could be reached by going around it to the left or right, and when they were close enough, Alfric could see that the room was symmetrically arranged, not just with the chairs, table, and benches aligned with each other, but so that most of the floor was mirrored in the ceiling, both of them tile, and the trim on the walls was the same along the top and bottom. The plants within the foyer were all sculpted, their branches forking at regular intervals, styled so that their left and right halves were identical.

Three people stood within, one in simple clothes and the other two in clerical chasubles. The clerics were decidedly not symmetrical: one was an older man, his head shaved bald, while the other was a young woman with red hair in ringlets that went down to the small of her back. She had a serious expression on her face as she listened to the man in plain clothes speak, but when she caught sight of Alfric, she excused herself and walked over. The first thing he noticed about her, aside from the bright red hair, was that she had a much thicker build, not unpleasantly so, but more than Alfric had seen in anyone else around Pucklechurch.

“Garos’ blessin’. Might I help you?” she asked. There was a brightness to her eyes and a lilt to her voice, which Alfric found refreshing, maybe because Mizuki and Verity had been so slow to rise, and Isra had been, as the shopkeeper had warned, comparatively cold.

“Have you ever been in a dungeon?” he asked.

Hannah’s eyes widened slightly. “Ay,” she replied. “I mean no, I haven’t, not properly, but I’d like ta—are you askin’, ay?” Her accent was pronounced.

“I am,” said Alfric. “It’s a one-fifth share—”

But Hannah had already rushed away and interrupted the foyer conversation for a quick chat with the other cleric, and as soon as that was done, with a glance back at Alfric, she went through a door in the back wall, disappearing from sight for just a moment before returning with a packed bag. She’d thrown off her chasuble, revealing very functional trousers and a buttoned-down shirt that must have been beneath it. She rolled up the sleeves as she hustled back over to Alfric. “Ready to go,” she said, smiling. “You were sayin’ a fifth share?”

“I—yes,” said Alfric. “Don’t you need to make arrangements?”

“Arrangements made,” replied Hannah, waving a dismissive hand toward the other cleric. “When do we go, ay?” She had a thick accent with rounded vowels, which was all that marked her as not being a native of Pucklechurch. Alfric suspected that she hailed from far south.

“Er,” said Alfric. “Not earlier than sixth bell.”

“Can I help you prepare?” she asked. “And who are we with, ay? You, me, and who else?” She looked over at Mizuki, who was standing off to one side. “Her?” she asked, frowning slightly.

“Hi, Hannah,” said Mizuki.

“Had to run her out of the temple a few weeks back, she was doin’ her magic,” said Hannah with a scowl.

“There was built-up magic in here,” said Mizuki, gesturing around. “It could have gotten dangerous.”

“Your magic was the only thing dangerous,” said Hannah. “But still, if that’s who it’s to be, no arguments from me. You said the sixth bell?” She looked Alfric up and down. “And is that what you’ll be wearin’?”

“Sorry,” said Alfric, “it might be sixth bell, but I’ll have to check with our bard. We didn’t know whether you would be able or willing to join us.”

“’Course I am,” replied Hannah. “I heard from Bethany that you’d been askin’ around, and I thought for sure that you would want me, so I cleared everythin’ yesterday, not that there’s too much work to split between Lemmel and me in the first place. I’ve been waitin’ on tenterhooks for you to swing by, if you were goin’ to, because I went by your room at the Angry Plum this mornin’ at first light, the one Bethany said you were in, only you had gone out, and I didn’t know where to. And are you wearin’ that? Because you’ll be point man, ay?”

“Er, yes,” said Alfric. “I’ll be point man, but I have some armor that I’ll be wearing, a cuirass and greaves, plus a helm, though they’re back at my room.”

“And everyone is second elevation, ay?” asked Hannah. “I’ve heard you can do one up or one down, but it’s more dangerous that way, and by the time I got to the censusmaster last night she had closed down and seemed a bit cross with me, for no good reason other than it was so late.” She paused and knit her brow. “Sixth bell, are we eating before or after? I can see it both ways.”

“After,” said Alfric. “It’s better not to go into a dungeon with a full stomach. Sorry, but have you really taken care of everything?”

“Of course, who do you take me for?” asked Hannah. “I’m a cleric of Garos, we don’t like to leave danglin’ threads, for it is said, ‘Let those who shirk their endings be beset by the costs of continuance’, the Book of Garam Ashar, section eight, verse six.” She gave a small bow on finishing.

“All right,” said Alfric. “Then all we need is to go get our bard.”

“And add me to the party,” said Hannah with a nod.

“There’s not a party yet,” said Alfric. “We can do it now though, if you’d like.”

“Better soon than late, so it is said,” replied Hannah.

Alfric didn’t have a bag like the girls did, but he had folded up the instructions for the spell in his pocket, which he produced and smoothed out. “All right,” he said. “We just need to do this at the same time. There’s a phonic and a cheremic component. Have either of you been in a party before?”

“We had a family party,” said Mizuki. “Me, my mom and dad, and my two sisters. About a year after they left, my youngest sister was born, and the party channel was getting a lot of use for things that I didn’t care much about, so.” She shrugged. “Hard to get a toddler to do the spell, but not that hard.”

“I had two different family parties, one with Ma and Da, then another with some cousins, and then another few in the seminary,” said Hannah. “It was a lot of drama, if you ask me, people always wantin’ in or out of the parties, and the guilds weren’t much better, but there’s not much to be done about that. I tried to stick to the ones people made for studyin’, but there were always people usin’ the channel for other things, parties and such, flirtin’, and someone drunk on the channel tellin’ you their every thought isn’t too fun when you’re trying to sleep, let me tell you, ay? This’ll make seven for me, I think.”

“Just curious,” said Alfric, making a mental note that Hannah talked at length without much prompting or pause for breath. “Ready?” He got some nods. “Starting now.”

The finger positioning didn’t need to be terribly precise and neither did the words, which was good, because they were all slightly off from each other. Once it was finished, a glowing blue triangle appeared with each of them as one of the vertices. It faded quickly.

“Anything either of you need done before we get goin’?” asked Hannah. “Minor cuts and scrapes, bruisin’ that needs fixin’, cosmetics, things like that, ay?”

“No, I’m fine,” said Alfric.

“I’ve got a burn on my forearm,” said Mizuki, twisting her arm around. “Can you heal it?”

“Castin’ fireballs, were we?” asked Hannah, coming over to inspect the wound.

“Cooking,” replied Mizuki with a roll of her eyes.

Hannah touched Mizuki lightly, placing the burn in the span between her thumb and forefinger. She pressed against the skin and blew lightly on the wound. Within a second, it had faded away to nothing.

“Neat,” said Mizuki. “Thank you.”

“Just try not to break any bones,” said Hannah. “I can’t do much about that yet, not with regularity. And don’t lose too much blood either.”

“We’ll do our best,” said Alfric.

Chapter 4 — Three Raccoons

“This is all pretty fast, isn’t it?” asked Verity after she’d joined the party. Once the party was established, anyone else could join by doing the spell with someone who was a member, and Mizuki had volunteered to be the one to do it, because she felt the fingering technique of the others was ‘atrocious’. This time, the blue glow of lines formed a diamond among the four of them, briefly lighting up the Fig and Gristle.

“It is fast. Big-city energy,” said Mizuki, as though that explained anything.

“I’ve been waitin’ on a dungeon party for ages now,” said Hannah. “I’d heard that people always wanted healers, but until Alfric, no one had ever asked, which seemed a shame, ay. And I had a few rejections too, which stung. Thought they could just come into the temple an’ get their scratches and bites fixed, which they could, but still.”

“It is fast,” said Alfric. “But for a full party of second elevation, in a dungeon like the one the Pucklechurch portal will produce, there’s not much need for us to go in with more training or equipment than we have. Ten rooms, at the most.”

“For the second dungeon we do, I’ll have some armor,” said Hannah. “A breastplate at least, and maybe a helm, not that I’ll be on the front lines. You’ll mostly be in want of patchin’ after the fights are over, if you’re doin’ it in the normal way.”

“Second dungeon?” asked Verity, arching an eyebrow. “I’m not signed on for more than this one.”

“No one is,” said Alfric. “We’re a half mile away from the portal, and with how little magic there is in the area, it should be a breeze for us. A second dungeon would take more coordination, and maybe a little more preparation, but it would also be quite a bit further, since we’d be going to the next hex over.”

“Well, I’m up for a second if anyone else is,” said Hannah. “A second, and a third, and a fourth, ay?”

“Depends on what we get out of it,” said Mizuki.

“It depends on how dangerous it is,” said Verity.

“Can you sing us a song now?” asked Hannah. “I’ve heard you’re good with a lute, but never found cause to hear you play, and it’s good for a bard to test their strings with a new party.”

“Sure,” said Verity. She looked to Alfric as she undid her case and pulled out her lute. “You said strength and speed?”

“Whatever you’d like,” he said, trying to be diplomatic. He’d given her the specifics earlier, and her reaction hadn’t been what he’d imagined it would be. “That would be conventional though.”

Verity strummed her lute once, then began in on two verses and a chorus. It took a minute and a half, all told, as it was a short song about two children playing in the forest, but when it was over, Alfric felt a warm glow within himself. He unsheathed his sword, dampening the magical effect to err on the side of safety, and twirled it once, feeling the perfect balance of it, and spun again, practicing his forms. There was strength and speed, but something else laced in with it, and when he’d sheathed his sword, he dragged a nail across the flesh of his forearm.

“You added something?” he asked.

Verity shrugged. “Just testing the strings.”

“I can see better,” said Mizuki, using her fingers to spread her eyelids and look around. “That’s you?” She stared at Verity with her eyes held open by her fingers.

“Shush,” said Verity. She tapped her head. “I’m holding that tune.”

Mizuki let go of her eyes and frowned. “So she’s just out of commission for the rest of the day then?”

“No,” said Verity. “Just hard to talk.”

“We don’t need it now, if you’d rather drop it,” said Alfric.

“I can hear better too,” said Hannah. “That’s five effects?”

Verity shook her head, swishing her hair side to side, and held up her fingers, indicating six.

“I’d rather it be stable and weak than unstable and powerful,” said Alfric, looking at Verity. She was very clearly intensely concentrating on the task at hand, her musical magic weaving together their personal qualities and giving boosts to them.

“It’s fine,” said Verity. “Good practice. Easier when I’m playing. Saving that for later.”

“Oh,” said Mizuki. “Is the sixth magic? I think I can see it a bit better.” She looked down at Alfric’s boots. “Are those magical?”

“They are,” replied Alfric, looking down. “They increase my stride length.”

“It’s a real subtle effect,” said Mizuki, looking over at Verity. “Not the shoes,” she said to Alfric, before turning back. “The vision.”

“It works on what you have,” said Verity.

Mizuki narrowed her eyes at Verity. “I can’t tell if that was a slight or not.”

“Probably not,” said Alfric. “Bards exclusively work with what’s already there. If you’re blind, no bard is going to make you see. If you have no sense of taste, then they have nothing to work with, nothing to enhance. Even in a more mild case, a weak person is going to gain less strength than someone who’s already strong. It’s a compounding effect.”

“Multiplying,” said Verity. “Compounding would mean—ah, lost it.”

Alfric felt the effect slowly fade away, leaving him feeling weak, though he knew from experience that it was only a matter of his body needing to adapt back to baseline.

“Compounding would mean that it was building on itself,” said Verity. “Progressive melodies are a bit beyond me. I’ll start up a song again once we’re at the portal itself and probably continue playing and singing throughout, which will help to keep the tune going.”

“Good,” said Alfric, nodding.

“But is this what everyone is wearin’, ay?” asked Hannah, looking at the other girls. “Because a dungeon can be a terrible place. Better to have paddin’, if you don’t have armor, and better to cover up if you don’t have paddin’.” She was giving Mizuki a skeptical look. “Your arms are bare, ay?”

“I’ve got a cloak,” said Mizuki, pulling it from her bag to show Hannah. “Besides, Alfric has been very clear that he’ll protect us.”

“You’re wearin’ culottes and sandals,” said Hannah, looking down at Mizuki’s feet. “How’s Alfric to protect you from insects and mud, ay?”

“I’ll be fine,” said Mizuki, frowning. “Bugs don’t like me, and mud doesn’t bother me.”

“Well, we’ll see,” said Hannah, clearly not buying it. “I can heal anythin’ that’s no more’n skin deep, ay, but if it’s into the muscle, there are limits to how much and how often, so you be careful not to rely on me overmuch. And a puncture to the guts, we’d have to bring you back into town. Very little symmetry to be found in the guts.” Her gaze went to Verity.

“This is the best I have,” said Verity. She was wearing a dress with small white flowers printed on it, with boots her only concession to practicality. “I don’t actually own pants.”

“What do you do in winter then, ay?” asked Hannah.

“I sing a song so I don’t feel the cold,” replied Verity.

Hannah laughed until it became obvious that Verity wasn’t joking. “But you’re still cold!”

Verity shrugged. “I stay inside a lot. And I do have a jacket. Plus some warming elements to keep my room toasty.”

Hannah clucked her tongue. “Well then, I s’pose we’re ready as we’re going to be. Who is our last?” she asked Alfric.

“Isra,” he replied. “She’ll be our ranger.”

“Not typical, is it?” asked Hannah. “To have a ranger?”

“Not really, no,” replied Alfric. “But she’s a skilled huntress, second elevation, and—”

“Available?” asked Mizuki with a bright smile.

“Yes,” said Alfric. “Better than the other options the censusmaster gave me.” He had done his asking around.

“Well, I’m in need of supplies, things that I couldn’t get yesterday when I heard you sniffin’ around,” said Hannah. “Does anyone want to come with me? We’ve got a bit more than a bell, but if the meetin’ place is to be by the warp, then we can all just warp there, so time’s not so much a concern.”

“I’ll come,” said Mizuki, looking down at her sandals. “You might have a point.”

“Do you not own proper shoes?” asked Hannah.

“None that I’d want covered in ichor, which seems to be what you’re saying will happen,” replied Mizuki.

They split off, leaving Verity and Alfric alone.

“I hope those two do well by themselves,” said Alfric. “I should probably be going back to my room to put on my armor and get ready to go.”

“I’ll do better with the song later,” said Verity. “I was pushing it.”

“It’s fine,” said Alfric. “I don’t really care what happens when we’re outside the dungeon, so long as it goes smoothly once we’re in. You only get to do each dungeon once, so I’m hoping that we do a full clear every time.” It wasn’t technically true that you could only do each dungeon once, but he was hoping not to be called out on that technicality, because it wasn’t the kind of digression he wanted at the moment.

“Except that not everyone has agreed to a second?” asked Verity, raising an eyebrow.

“True,” said Alfric. “A full clear this time, then.”

“This has been put together fast,” said Verity. “I don’t know anything about dungeoneering, but I would think that we’d have trial runs and training.”

“It might be better that way, yes, but I really don’t think it’s necessary,” said Alfric.

“I’ve played with other musicians before,” said Verity. “My current conditions might not suggest it, but I was conservatory-trained. You can sit down, three or four of you together, totally unknown to each other, and make beautiful music in accordance with your sheet music, but you only ever do that if you have very little time. It’s better with people you’ve come to know and trust, people who you’ve practiced with extensively. The music comes out much better.”

“Well,” said Alfric, sniffing slightly. “There are differences of opinion when it comes to dungeoneering. Sometimes you put together what is, on paper, a perfect team, you prepare everything perfectly, you do trial runs and theorycrafting… and it just falls apart.”

“I suppose I can see that,” said Verity. “I’ll trust you to know your business, if you trust me to know mine.”

— ⁂ —

The warp point in Pucklechurch was an utterly simple affair by city standards, nothing more than a slightly raised area of stonework with a few columns and a dome for protection from the elements. In comparison with the temple, which was far too big for the town’s size, the warp point seemed too small and too simple, not even fully enclosed, with none of the guards or attendants that Alfric would have expected. With a very simple, universally available spell, you would warp from anywhere in the hex to the hex’s exact center. Even with how small Pucklechurch was, he would have thought it would be someone’s job to watch the warp point, but no, not even that. When he’d first warped in, he’d quickly stepped off, but then looked around expectantly, not knowing what he was supposed to do. It was weird.

“It makes sense,” said Hannah when he mentioned it. “Warp points are most used by those who live in the hex. If you’re travelin’ long-distance, you’re probably using portals or leylines, or you have enough cargo that the warp’ll fail, ay? People goin’ through-and-through, overland, poppin’ over the hex border so they can warp, how many is that a week?”

“I’ve got no idea,” said Alfric.

“Not many, I’d reckon,” said Hannah. “Traders from other towns, maybe on market days, but it’s six miles from the hex edge. You haven’t been out of the big city long, ay?”

“Only a few days, most of them in travel,” said Alfric. “I’ll admit that there are more differences in custom than I was expecting.” Pucklechurch wasn’t the emptiest hex he’d been through, but as final destinations went, it was minuscule. Some of the smaller hexes had no more than a hundred people in them, and he would see them only briefly when he warped in before hiking out to the next hex edge.

“Sixth bell was two minutes ago,” said Mizuki, staring at the warp point. “Where’s our girl?”

“There,” said Verity, pointing down the way.

Mizuki gave a friendly wave, and Isra faltered for a moment before continuing forward.

“Ready to join the party?” asked Alfric once she’d come close.

Isra nodded, slowly, as she looked at the others.

“That’s Verity, that’s Hannah, and you know me, Mizuki, and Alfric,” said Mizuki. “This is Isra, ranger extraordinaire.”

“Are we ready to go?” asked Isra. She looked at them. “Is this what everyone is wearing?”

“I put on some boots and gloves,” said Mizuki, extending her hands to display. “I don’t know what anyone else expects of me.” Other than those two additions, she was dressed the same as she’d been before, with her arms completely bare except for the gloves, which went up almost to her elbows. With the cloak she’d be better covered, but not by much.

“It’ll be fine,” said Alfric. He looked Isra over. She hadn’t changed, but her pack was now nearly empty and rolled up so that its excess folds were tucked and strapped in. She had a bow too, strapped across her back, and a quiver of arrows, along with a sheathed dirk at her hip. She looked different though, and he realized that she’d removed the piercings from her face, which gave her a much neater look.

He pulled the spell from his pocket and handed it over to her. “Just follow along, Mizuki will do it with you.”

The spell was completed in short order and this time formed a pentagon connecting the five of them. Not long after that, Isra frowned.

“I don’t have the channel,” she said.

“The channel doesn’t appear until after a week’s time,” said Alfric. “We’re just a basic party right now.”

“Oh,” said Isra. She looked relieved. “Are we ready?”

“We’re ready,” said Alfric, keeping his voice firm. “The dungeon portal is a half mile outside of town. If we leave now, we’ll be able to get back before dusk, though I have a lantern with me.” He turned and started off, hoping that the others would follow him and feeling relief when they did. From what he’d experienced of Pucklechurch, he half expected that going anywhere would be preceded by an hour’s worth of talking.

“So, is this everyone’s first time in a dungeon?” asked Mizuki as they walked.

“I went when I was in seminary,” said Hannah. “A long way from here, Plenarch, with a party full of clerics, mostly so we could see what there was to see, and we got almost nothin’ from it. Still, interestin’ enough, and I’ve wanted to go again. To go properly, I mean.”

“Never been, never wanted to,” said Verity.

“I’ve been curious,” said Mizuki. “And I almost did go, a bit ago, before some things came up. But it seems like there’s a lot of traveling involved in being an adventurer.”

“It’s not that much,” said Alfric. “If you use the warp points to cut distance in half, going from center to hex edge, that’s only six miles of walking between dungeons.”

“Six miles is a long way to walk,” said Mizuki with a frown.

“It feels less long if you’ve got sensible shoes,” said Hannah, smiling at Mizuki. “But to your point, Alfric, dungeons aren’t always close to the warp points, are they? So you’d have to go further, ay?”

“Sometimes,” Alfric admitted.

“And sometimes there’s no road to the hex edge, or no direct road, or not to the right hex edge, ay?” asked Hannah, who seemed to use an inflected ‘ay’ on a whim. Her accent was hard to place, but it might have been from Cairbre, Alfric thought. “So you’d want to map it out, is what I’m sayin’.”

“You would,” said Alfric.

“Did you?” asked Mizuki. “Because you’re Mister Planning, it seems like. Does one of those pockets contain a plan?”

“It’s complicated,” said Alfric.

“The matter of what’s in your pockets is complicated?” asked Hannah, raising an eyebrow.

“I have a map,” said Alfric. “But I don’t have a firm route because it depends on too many things, not least of which is whether I can keep a party together. If this goes well, and I can interest all of you in a second dungeon, then we’d obviously go to one of the six adjacent hexes, but from there it depends on whether Pucklechurch will be our home base.”

“I own a house,” said Mizuki. “I’m not leaving my house for long.”

“I suppose I’ll echo that, for different reasons,” said Verity. “Asking me to quit my job and take up work as an adventurer, well, that’s something that I would have to think long and hard about.”

“I would go,” said Isra, her words soft.

“I’d go too,” said Hannah. “There’s always work for a cleric on the move, though I’d want to save my best for the dungeons, as I’ve done today. If not, I’ve a room at the temple and can take the apprenticeship at my own speed, for the way of the righteous is often slow, so it is said.”

“We can talk about all that later,” said Alfric. “Personally, while I’m not pinning my hopes on it, I’m looking forward to seeing what we find down in the dungeon. Something to help us travel faster would make a lot of this discussion moot, or if not moot, then at least easier.”

“Like boots that make your stride longer?” asked Mizuki.

“Or something better,” said Alfric. “It’s hard to say what’s going to come out of a dungeon, but it’s not out of the question that we could cut six miles of travel down to none. If we did find something like that, then going to the next dungeons, if we all want to do that, would be a lot easier.”

“Well, I’m excited,” said Mizuki. “I’ve never owned a magic item.”

“Your house is full of them,” said Alfric.

“Well, you know what I mean,” said Mizuki. “A stove isn’t magic.”

“It is,” said Hannah. “You might as well say warp points aren’t magical, ay.”

“You know what I mean,” said Mizuki.

“The difference you’re looking for is entads and ectads,” said Verity. “Stuff that comes from the dungeons, they’re their own thing, separate and different, entads. Ectads are part of a system, like the warming elements, chilling elements, water makers, things like that.”

“They both come from dungeons though,” said Alfric. “The base materials for ectads, anyway. It’s one of the things that we’ll be on the lookout for.”

“But there will be entads in the dungeon?” asked Mizuki.

“There should be,” said Alfric. “I would expect between four and six, but only one or two that are actually worthwhile. We’ll sell some, keep others, depending on what we get. Some bind though, which would mean that we wouldn’t be able to sell them. Most of the profit in a dungeon is in the materials we can extract from it.” He looked at Mizuki. “We’ll need your eyes.”

“And what kind of monsters will we find?” asked Verity.

“That depends,” said Alfric. “The nature of a dungeon depends on too many things to say for certain. The geography of the hex is one element, as are the flora and fauna, but there’s also the time of day, the weather, the season, the positions of the stars, what magic has been used, on and on, and beyond all that, the people in the party going into the dungeon. It’s an art, not a science. We’re following best practices though. It’s said that your first dungeon is always best in the springtime, on a clear day.”

“It’s late spring,” said Verity. “Does that matter?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” replied Alfric.

“How dangerous will it actually be?” asked Verity.

“That’s hard to quantify,” said Alfric.

“Raccoons,” said Hannah, nodding sagely. “Or maybe another animal of the same size.”

“I’m sorry?” asked Verity.

“It’s what they said, in the seminary, ay?” asked Hannah. “The monsters you find in the dungeons are, oh, like bein’ attacked by two or three raccoons at once. Frightenin’, and a bit of a risk of being scratched or bit, but no one would expect you to die, ay?”

“Raccoons that I will be protecting you all from,” said Alfric.

“Raccoons are gentle creatures,” said Isra.

“Well, obviously,” nodded Hannah. “Another animal then? One that would attack?”

“No animal attacks humans,” said Isra. “Only if they need to defend their young.”

“A rabid raccoon then?” asked Hannah.

“Perhaps,” said Isra.

“I expect scratches and bites,” said Alfric. “I expect a few minor injuries that Hannah will be able to heal, and if it’s anything worse, then we can get other healing. I don’t expect anyone else to be hurt, not seriously.”

“I’ve heard, at second elevation, you can almost do a minor dungeon yourself,” said Hannah. “But you wouldn’t want to, naturally, since there’s such a risk of it goin’ bad.”

“Not even that bad,” said Alfric. “When we say ‘bad’, we mean leaving the dungeon with a mild injury that you’d need a cleric for.” He gave Hannah a pleading look, and she kept whatever clarification or elaboration she had in store to herself.

“I suppose,” said Verity. “I’m not sure all that has done much for my nerves.” She let out a breath. “Three raccoons.”

Alfric nodded. He had never liked the raccoon comparison, which he’d heard before, but it was helpful, if wrong. “Ah, this is the turn, we’re almost there.”

Chapter 5 — This One Is Actually About a Dungeon

They came to a clearing in the aspens, one with a fair bit of overgrowth, except where a dirt path led to the center. A built-up earthen mound filled the center, and as they went single-file down the path, they eventually saw the large wooden door set into the mound at an angle. It was in poor condition. The angle was the most obvious flaw, as portals were supposed to be completely upright. The door had been painted at one point, but the paint was faded and chipped. The stone that surrounded the door was stained and covered in moss, but the runes inscribed there pulsed with light as soon as they came close. If the runes didn’t pulse, there was a problem, but a dungeon entrance needed to be quite far gone for that to happen.

“The Adventurers’ League is supposed to keep these in good repair,” said Alfric, frowning at the door. The lock that kept the door shut seemed like it was in better shape than the door itself, with a small bit of protection from the elements, and Alfric knelt down to look it over, drawing a key from his pocket.

“What’s that?” asked Mizuki, peering over his shoulder.

“You can’t get in the dungeon without a key,” said Alfric. “This is the basic one; they give them out readily. There are probably a few thousand copies floating around in the world.” He inserted the key into the lock and twisted it. It was a simple mechanism, but it gave him a bit of trouble, perhaps because it was so crudely made. After some jiggling, the lock came undone, and Alfric pulled it off, then opened the door. The runes on the stonework gave another pulse of light.

“And we just go in?” asked Verity.

“Yes,” said Alfric. “Once we pass through the stone arch, that’s it, we’re in. If you leave the dungeon once you’ve entered, you can’t go back in. This is the one and only time any of us will ever do the Pucklechurch dungeon.” Again, he braced himself for some pedantry that didn’t come.

The dungeon mouth extended down into the built-up earth, and even from where they were standing, they could see that it was warping space, the tunnel an impossibility. The dungeon as it stood before them was its own splinter reality, one conjured by the portal just for them. Alfric stood for a moment, soaking in the gravity of the situation, the immutability of the dungeon visit.

“We can go in now, ay?” asked Hannah. “Or are we waiting for somethin’?”

“No, we can go now,” said Alfric. “Just… mentally preparing.” He had prepared for years to get to this moment. It would be a cakewalk. Still, some part of him worried. Variance was the harshest beast to be found in the dungeons.

“Should I be preparing?” asked Mizuki. “Because I thought my job was just to blast whatever we find in there.”

“It is,” said Alfric with a nod. “Verity, be ready to play your song; Hannah, be ready to heal any injuries I take; and Isra, take your shots if you see them.”

Mizuki cracked her knuckles and stretched, shaking herself out, while the others made their own preparations. Verity unstrapped her lute and tuned it. Isra undid the straps of her backpack, then strung her bow. The pack would be brought in with them, left just inside the dungeon entrance, so they could return to it if need be, as would anything else that wasn’t essential to the particulars of making their way through the dungeon.

When everyone was ready, Alfric went first, passing through the doorway.

— ⁂ —

Their two lanterns provided the light, one each around Verity’s and Alfric’s necks. The tunnel was rounded, its walls curved, packed earth with nothing supporting it. If it had been a tunnel they’d found in the wilderness, rather than a dungeon, Alfric might have feared collapse, but such things didn’t happen in dungeons, as structurally unsound as they might appear.

After a hundred feet, the tunnel ended in a small room, with thick wooden beams for supports, a large door that was tightly closed, and overhead, what looked like floorboards.

“We can leave our things here,” said Alfric, speaking in a whisper. “Packs, gear, things that we won’t want in the middle of a fight.” Isra had the largest pack, and she set it down gently on the floor, barely making a noise. Alfric was nervous and saying things that didn’t really need to be said. It was a bad habit.

“When do I start to play?” asked Verity, also whispering.

Alfric drew his sword, which produced arcs of electricity. He faced the door, got a grip on his shield, and steeled himself. “Now,” he said.

Verity began her song, a more focused one this time, with couplets about the springtime and the horrors that could lurk in dark places that the spring sun had not yet touched. It was a little morose, Alfric thought, but it made him stronger, and the actual words didn’t matter much, so long as they were helping Verity to focus on the rhythms and melodies.

Alfric waited at the closed door, sword drawn, hoping that nothing would hear the song and come through. In some dungeons, the first sound would send almost every creature running, all at once, to the source of the noise. It was rare, but he had heard of it happening, and if that happened in their first dungeon, well, that was a melee they would face down, but it was unlikely that he would be able to escape without serious injuries, even if the rest of the party acted as they should.

After a few minutes, he relaxed and lowered his sword slightly. There was no sound except the song.

“What does the sword do?” asked Mizuki. “I saw lightning.”

“It’s electric,” replied Alfric. “A fairly mild effect unless I use one of the charges and a good candidate for replacement. It was my father’s weapon when he went into the dungeons.” He went out of his fighting stance and turned back toward them, keeping one eye on the door. “You can touch it, if you’d like.” He held the sword out, and Isra tentatively stepped forward, pressing her finger against the blade for a moment, then giving a curt nod, her face expressionless, which Alfric found surprising. Mizuki frowned, looked at Isra, then stepped forward and touched the blade too, almost immediately leaping back and swearing.

“Tricks!” she cried.

Isra smirked, a playful, impish expression that was gone almost as soon as Alfric noticed it.

“We’ll be opening this door soon,” said Alfric. “When we do, there’s a good chance that something will come out. If it does, then I’ll cut it with my sword and try to draw it back so that Isra and Mizuki can get clear shots at it. If nothing comes out, we’ll be moving in slowly and cautiously, and I’ll be trying to bait out whatever lies beyond. Mizuki, you blast it the moment I’m free, but don’t be afraid to catch me as collateral damage if it comes to that. That’s what we have Hannah for.”

“I’ve got limits,” said Hannah. “Lots of limits, actually. Should have gone into it more on the way over, I s’pose.”

“Faster, please,” said Verity, who was still holding the song in her head.

Alfric nodded and pulled the door open with his off-hand, temporarily letting go of his shield’s handle.

The beast burst out almost at once, thrusting across the threshold and lunging straight for Alfric’s face. It was large, as thick around as a barrel, and long, like a snake, though it had a hundred small legs ending in cat’s claws and two enormous pincers on its front, which it was trying to close around Alfric’s skull. It was the same creamy color of a pale person’s flesh, with freckles no less, and when Alfric ducked beneath the pincers and stabbed it, its blood was very human too.

He backed up as he fought it, getting a grip on his shield and angling it more effectively. The rest of the party was behind him, and he whipped his head back toward them just once, to make sure that they were safe, as he’d said they would be. The beast opened its pincers wide and lunged at him once more, its sinuous body weaving back and forth to provide the propulsion. It got his shield and bore down on it, denting the metal, but while it was occupied with that, Alfric was thrusting his sword into its underbelly, which was exposed because of how it was lifting its forward section, and there wasn’t terribly much resistance. He quickly made a bloody mess.

There was a sudden and deafening blast, followed by an intense wave of heat, and the beast lurched to the side, losing its grip on the shield. Alfric moved forward and began stabbing it more, this time aiming for the head, but it wasn’t clear how much this was actually necessary, because the blast had torn out a sizable chunk of its midsection.

It took some time for the thing to finally die, and by the end of it, Alfric’s sword-arm was wet up to the elbow with its blood. He was breathing hard from exertion and took a moment to cool down. He looked down the hallway, tensed, then finally lowered his sword.

“Everyone okay?” he asked.

“What even is that?” asked Mizuki, looking down at the beast. Her hands were shaking.

“It’s a monster,” said Isra. She was outwardly calm, but she had a stillness to her that made her hard to read.

“You said we would be safe!” said Mizuki. “It could have killed us!”

“It didn’t,” said Alfric. “I didn’t even get hurt.”

“In what way was that like three raccoons!” shouted Mizuki.

“Your forehead is bleeding,” said Hannah. Alfric touched his scalp just below his hairline and looked at his fingers, which had come away bloody. “Here.” She approached him and laid two fingers on his temple, then muttered some words under her breath. The wound sizzled slightly, and the slight stinging pain evaporated completely.

“It probably looked worse than it was,” said Alfric, feeling sheepish. “Head wounds tend to bleed a lot.” He adjusted his helm, which had done less to protect him than he’d hoped it would. It was open in the face, the better to see, but that did mean that he had less protection. One of the pincers must have grazed him.

“We are not safe,” said Mizuki. “That wasn’t three raccoons.” Verity was still focusing on her song, but it was clear she agreed. For her part, Mizuki looked like she was in shock, but Verity had maintained her composure.

“Good job killing it though,” said Alfric, nodding at the hole in the monster. “My ears are still ringing.”

“I’ve never killed anything,” Mizuki said, staring down at the monster. “What if there had been two of them?” she asked. “This is nuts.”

“And lo they traveled the twisting ways,” sang Verity. “The monsters died to the righteous blaze, the songstress sang her burdensome song and lamented that talking should take so long.” She kept strumming her lute after that, keeping the song going, and humming as she did so.

“Are you seriously talking to us in rhyme?” asked Mizuki.

“She’s right, we should keep going,” said Alfric.

“Sorry, I didn’t have a shot,” said Isra, bowing her head slightly.

“It’s fine,” said Alfric. “I’m not sure how much arrows would have done against that. Archery is typically better against smaller things, so long as your aim is good.”

Isra nodded and said nothing more. The one Alfric was worried about was Mizuki, who seemed the most skittish about combat but was also the most necessary for being able to put down a bigger monster, maybe even more than him. Her powers were situational and limited, reliable for no more than one good spell a room, but that one spell was likely to be pretty powerful.

The monster had been worse than he’d been hoping for, though not outside expected variance, and Mizuki did have a point, which was that it was considerably more difficult to fight than three bloodlusted raccoons. That was why you came in with armor though, and a party of five, rather than trying to do everything yourself. The monster had been on the higher end of what might be found in a dungeon of second elevation. It was unfortunate that he wouldn’t be able to say the dungeon had been a breeze.

Alfric took a cloth from his pack, which was on the ground, and wiped his hand and grip clean of blood, so that his sword wouldn’t slip. He checked his shield over, grimacing at the dent that would have to be hammered out or possibly fixed by Hannah, then began dragging the corpse of the thing out of the way. Without a word, Isra moved to help, and between the two of them, they quickly got the hallway clear.

There was something grim about it, certainly, something disgusting and unpleasant. Alfric could acknowledge that. That he had won without too much damage to himself, that the team hadn’t fallen apart during the first frantic moment of battle, was heartening. The work itself, the killing of monsters, was something he’d done his best to adapt his mind to, and it was clear now that there was still quite a long way to go until he had his mother’s or father’s iron stomach.

When he finished, he saw Hannah speaking to Mizuki in a soft voice, with a hand on her shoulder, and as Hannah went on, some of the nerves seemed to leave the sorcerer.

Somehow, like a miracle, no one called it quits.

— ⁂ —

His light shone on two doors, one to the left and one to the right, and the base of some stairs that led up to the next level at the end of the corridor. The door on the left was open, while the one on the right was closed. Alfric glanced back at the party, checking that they were safe and following him, then moved forward to the open door. He didn’t like putting his back against the closed door, but there was no helping it. The open door led into a room filled with books, both stacked along a wall of shelves and in piles around the room, on top of the table, and on the chairs. Most of them were bound in leather, with a wide variety of different colors and sizes, some of them larger than others. Alfric glanced up at the ceiling, then down at the floor. He crouched so that he could see under the table. Still, he saw no monsters. This might have been where the hairless centipede creature had been living, but there were no signs of it.

Alfric stepped in slowly, keeping his footing steady, and bathed the room in light.

The books stirred gently, then leapt from the shelves and their places on the room’s furniture. It wasn’t all of them, only a dozen, but they flapped through the air toward Alfric, and before he knew it, he was being battered by them, knocking his helm askew and then off. His sword stabbed through one, but they were fast and not the ideal enemy, especially when his quick slashes seemed to knock them aside rather than actually cutting into them.

“No magic!” Alfric called back to the party, though he really only meant Mizuki.

Thankfully, the books weren’t able to do much damage to him through the armor, and after not too much time had passed with them trying to knock him down, arrows started flying in through the open door. Alfric felt his magically enhanced strength fading, and hoped that was because it was going to Isra instead of because Verity’s song had failed. The books were taken out one by one, each with an arrow through them, the book creatures bleeding black ink, while Alfric took the beatings of book spines and more than a few paper cuts to his hands and face.

When there were only a handful left, Alfric moved deeper into the room, giving Isra more space to line up her shots. He dropped his shield to the ground and went after the books with his hand, grabbing onto them and slamming them to the floor so he could line up a sword thrust that would run them straight through. When the last of them was dropped by one of Isra’s arrows, Alfric took a moment to breathe. He was sweating, bloodied, and bruised, having taken quite a bit of a beating in the course of fighting the book-things.

On closer inspection, they were only booklike things, the ‘pages’ like gills with razor-sharp edges, and small eyes set into the spines. Their black blood was the consistency and color of ink though.

“Clear,” called Alfric, when there was no more rustling of pages. He replaced his helm on top of his sweat-damp hair and picked up his shield from the ground, then turned toward the closed door on the other side of the hallway as the party filed in. “Good work, Isra. Verity, you can drop the song if you’d like.”

“The maid played on, her singular song, its beat so true and sweet,” replied Verity, weaving her words into the melody without any seeming trouble. “She thought she’d continue, as sword cut through sinew, thumping a steady beat.”

“All right, up to you,” said Alfric. Thankfully, he didn’t have to call on Hannah for more healing. She did it on her own, touching first his right hand, then his left, and finally touching his face again. Her fingers were soft and warm. Alfric had always liked a healer’s touch, even from the old man who occasionally came over to supervise Alfric’s sparring matches.

“Gloves next time, I would think,” she said. She turned over his hand and pointed to a little cross-shaped wound, which was present on the other hand as well. “Intersecting wounds,” she said. “I can’t do much about ’em, ay? Unless you think now’s the time for more thorough healin’, but I don’t know what this dungeon’s got left.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Alfric. “It just stings.” The wounds were barely even bleeding. Hannah gave him a nod, then bent down to prod at one of the book-things.

“Why no magic?” asked Mizuki. She was breathing harder than she should have been, and her eyes were slightly wide, but she hadn’t bowed out, and she was asking sensible questions, which Alfric took to be a good sign. Before you did a dungeon, you didn’t know how people would be, and he’d been playing fast and loose with proper protocol, which involved reading off all kinds of horror stories. Mizuki seemed like the weak link, but at least there seemed to be only one weak link. He glanced at Verity, who was remaining stoic. She was from the city though, where the dungeons were almost certainly fatal, so her expectations would naturally be different.

“This is probably the most valuable room in this dungeon,” said Alfric. “Check it for magic. Verity, if you could enhance her sight, that would make this go faster.”

“There and there,” said Mizuki after a moment looking around the room.

Alfric moved over and picked up both of the books she’d pointed out. One of them was big and thick, nearly a foot and a half tall, containing what had to be more than a thousand pages. The other was much smaller and took some consulting with Mizuki before he finally plucked the right one from the shelf.

“These are valuable?” asked Mizuki when he’d set them on the table. She was keeping her composure, if only barely.

“I don’t know,” replied Alfric. “They might be, they might not. We won’t test them until we leave the dungeon. It can take some time to find out what an entad does.” His blood was still pumping hard, loud enough that he could hear it. Focus on the here and now. “No, the value in this room is in the other books. You can just look at the spines and see they’re in no language you’ll have heard of. There are translation entads, or a wortier, who could translate them though, usually. Depending on what we have here, we might be looking at maybe fifty rings apiece.”

“You’re serious?” asked Mizuki, looking at the wall of books with wide eyes. “There have to be a thousand books here. That’s fifty thousand rings!” Her amazement at that seemed to wash away a bit of the fear.

“Libraries like this are rare,” said Alfric. He wondered whether there was a corresponding library in Pucklechurch that he’d missed or whether it was just variance. “It will take some time to sell off all the books, especially if we want that kind of price, and I don’t know how many we’ll actually be able to get out given we only have one exit apiece, but finds like this are one of the reasons that people go into dungeons in the first place. Sometimes you find trash, sometimes you find enough to fund you for a whole season or two.” It was more than he’d expected to find and potentially put a kink in his plans. If they made out too well on this first expedition, then there would be no pressure to go on a second. “We’ll leave this stuff here for now. There are at least two more rooms to clear.”

— ⁂ —

Through this whole time, Verity had been strumming her lute, playing the same melody, with an apparent focus on the senses rather than anything related to combat. Alfric heard a chittering sound, but wasn’t quite sure where it was coming from. He was just hoping that it wasn’t an insect swarm, as he’d heard plenty of stories of dungeon runs cut short by them. There was equipment that you could bring to help handle them, but they certainly didn’t have it, and it would mean a retreat. He had confidence in his ability to protect them from most things, but not a swarm.

Luckily, when Alfric opened the door across the hallway from the library room, it was only a furry creature with scaly legs, which hissed and launched itself at him, before being promptly and violently exploded out of the air by a fizz-crackling electric jolt from Mizuki. Alfric waited for more, but when none came, he moved into the room, eyes scanning everything that his light illuminated, turning every half step to make sure that nothing was creeping up on him. The room was half filled with metal pipes, almost all of them running vertically from the floor to the ceiling, with only a few junctions leading off into the walls or into other pipes.

“Clear, I think,” said Alfric, though it was hard to tell given the bad sight lines and many hiding places. “The pipes would be worth taking. They’re almost certainly water-aligned elemetal. I’m not sure how easy they’ll be to get out of here though.”

“We’re stealing pipes?” asked Mizuki.

“It’s not stealin’,” said Hannah. “Doesn’t belong to anyone, ay?”

“Elemetal is a good find,” said Alfric, looking over the pipes. “Water is evergreen. We’ll come back to this room though, I don’t see any obvious entads. Mizuki, can you take a quick look?”

“I’m starting to think that you only like me for my eyes,” she muttered, but after half a minute of looking around, she shook her head. “How’d you know the pipes were magic?”

“A good guess,” said Alfric. “We can talk about it more later, it’s not really something that you need to know if you can just look at things and see them.” He looked up at the floorboards. “Time to head upstairs.” He tried not to look at the others to see whether they were thinking of bowing out. He wouldn’t have blamed them, given what they’d come across so far.

Verity was still holding strong with the song, strumming her lute and sometimes singing under her breath. Some bards liked to take breaks; others liked to keep going through thick and thin. It seemed like Verity was the latter. Alfric was trying to be conscious of that and keep things moving, which was the best policy anyway. Verity was holding up well under pressure, as he thought she would. She had a pedigree.

The stairs were made of wood, thick beams that ran across into the wall of the library, and Alfric took them cautiously, worried that one of them might buckle under him. Dungeons were, as a rule, structurally sound, but that soundness mostly applied to the roofs and walls. This dungeon didn’t actually appear to have a roof, which was apparent when he looked up the stairs and saw an overcast sky with swirling green clouds. He made it to the top of the stairs safely though—and then stared into the eyes of a giant reptile.

It closed its eyes after a moment, curled up a bit tighter, and went back to sleep, which was apparently what it had been doing prior to Alfric coming up the stairs. The room it was in was large, but it was a large creature, with its body and tail wrapped around a fountain that seemed like it was probably connected to some of the pipes downstairs. The creature had iridescent scales of green, blue, and red, with its claws and teeth a creamy white, and two curly horns that were jet black. On its back were feathers, the same colors as its scales, and its belly was rounded, making it look particularly fat.

Alfric felt a moment of weakness. The creature was just sleeping there, not doing anything else. Unlike the others, it wasn’t attacking on sight. There was nothing to say that you had to kill every creature you found in a dungeon, but they had a strong tendency to be misbegotten creatures, formed to fill this halfway world and full of rage. There were plenty of stories adventurers told about times they’d tried to live and let live, which only rarely worked out well. They had none of the equipment necessary to take this thing out of the dungeon, not given its size, and without a breeding pair, it would be mostly pointless, able to be sold to a zoo but having no other practical use. Looking at the claws, Alfric thought there was no chance to subdue it. And behind the creature, there were cabinets of riches.

The thing opened one eye, much faster this time, and focused right on Alfric. One nostril went wide, taking in the scent, and it curled its lip, displaying a fang in full.

There was nothing for it. Alfric charged, shield held in front of him, yelling at the top of his lungs, not just to drive out the last traces of fear, but to let the others know that he was engaged in combat. He tried to stab the creature in the eye, but it reared back and roared, out of reach of his sword.

Mizuki’s contribution to the fight came early, with a sharp crack of green magic that seared off feathers from the creature’s back and caused it to writhe in pain. Alfric moved in while it was distracted and slashed at its exposed chest, but the sword left only a shallow gash, with a trickle of shimmering blood to show for the effort. The not-dragon’s claws came down, and Alfric heard the squeal of those claws meeting the metal of his shield. He thrust his sword forward, a bit wild, but the tip of his sword fared little better against the beast’s chest.

Verity’s song grew louder, almost matching the volume of the fight, and Alfric felt a surge of strength. He went at the monster harder, this time trying to get at its weak points, its eyes or mouth. If its claws could cut into metal, then it was wise to stay away from them or let the shield take the brunt of the damage.

One of his thrusts finally got the creature in its eye, which burst like a ripe grape and sent the creature reeling, but it bounced back almost instantly, hurtling itself at Alfric and swiping wildly. Two of the hits bounced off the shield with a screech of torn metal, but the final one went just over the upper lip of the shield, hitting Alfric in the helm and tearing through some of the flesh on his face in a shock of pain.

Alfric gave a roar of his own. They were both injured and began to circle each other, Alfric trying to keep himself in the not-dragon’s blind spot. The room was a large one, with the central fountain dominating, but there were other things in it, a seating area to one side and a handful of cabinets, some of them with glass display cases. The tail whipped to the side and destroyed one of the cases, and some instinctive part of Alfric winced, because that might have been valuable. He licked the blood from his lips, then tried to blink away the blood that had gotten in his right eye and lunged forward once more, trying to pierce the creature in the mouth.

They moved back and forth, neither accomplishing much, with more of the room destroyed with every passing moment. Alfric was starting to fatigue, even with the aid of Verity’s loud song, and his shield had taken plenty of abuse, enough that there were visible shears in it even from the back side. As he was starting to wonder whether he would actually manage to kill the creature, he felt a pressure on his back, and a moment later, his wounds were closed, his strength returned.

The time it took for that to take effect might have given the monster an opening, but another spell came crashing into existence, this time right in the creature’s face, an explosive green mist that washed over it and caused it to screech in pain.

Alfric moved forward again with renewed vigor, knowing that he had the advantage over the creature now. He attacked more fiercely, aiming at its head again and letting it claw at his shield, but couldn’t manage to sink his blade anywhere that did more than surface damage.

It was at about this time that he saw Isra slinking around the side to flank the creature, out of its field of view. She had dropped her bow and instead unsheathed her long dagger. Alfric wanted to call to her, to tell her not to do anything foolish, that he would handle it, but while there was little doubt that the creature was unintelligent, it might still be able to read his body language and eye line. You had to trust the members of your party. That was a fundamental rule of dungeoneering and one that he’d ignored until now.

Alfric was still trying to end the injured not-dragon when Isra launched herself forward onto the back of the creature. She slammed her dagger down into its other eye in a single swift motion. It screeched and howled in pain, but now it was blind, and Isra slipped off its back and away, leaving the dagger in place. Alfric stepped back and watched it, making sure that Isra got out of its way, then waiting until it had begun to tire itself out in its blind panic. When it was panting and heaving for breath, Alfric stepped in, lining up a perfect thrust with all his might behind it, driving his sword straight through the creature’s thick skin and into its internals. It thrashed around again, but this time when it stopped, it stopped for good.

Alfric looked around. There were no new doors. The dungeon had been cleared.

Chapter 6 — Henlings

“Everyone okay?” asked Alfric, throwing his sword and shield to the ground. He was shaking from the rush of battle.

“I think you were the only one hurt,” said Hannah.

“I’m not going further,” said Mizuki. She was standing far back, by the stairs, ready to bolt. “No way. That thing could have killed you. Was that a dragon?”

“Not a dragon,” said Alfric. “Not even close.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Mizuki. “I’ve never seen a dragon, and there were all sorts of other crazy stuff.”

“A dragon wouldn’t fit in the room,” said Verity, finally stopping her song. “Plus we would all be dead. I’ll second Mizuki, I’m done.” Again, she was composed in a way that Alfric found both admirable and unexpected. She’d kept up her song throughout, which must have taken a fair amount of courage and concentration.

“It’s just a fight,” huffed Hannah. “No one hurt, and I can fix the shield, mostly.”

“It’s fine,” said Alfric, breathing a sigh of relief. “We’re done. That was the whole dungeon.” He pointed around at the walls. “No more doors, no more hallways, just three and a half rooms this time.”

Mizuki looked up at the dark sky and its green clouds, which provided only faint illumination. She very cautiously took a few steps away from the stairs to get a better look. “But what’s up there?”

“Nothing,” said Alfric. “People try to go beyond the dungeons sometimes, and there’s never anything there. It’s a little false, half-created world. All a small one like this needs is four rooms and a handful of monsters. This is the Pucklechurch dungeon, not a city megadungeon or an infinidungeon that you’d find at a place of power. Fewer monsters than I’d expected, and fewer rooms, but much tougher, which is the trade-off sometimes. All that’s left is to loot as much as we can.”

“Wait, it’s over?” asked Mizuki, sagging. “That was it?”

“Yep,” replied Alfric, giving her a smile.

“Well, I guess that wasn’t so bad then,” Mizuki said, frowning a bit. The tension started to wind out of her. She crossed her arms. “I was prepared to go through another few rooms.”

“You were?” asked Alfric.

“Well, I wanted to be talked into it, assured that things would be fine,” said Mizuki. She ran shaky fingers through her hair. They were going to have to get her a helm, if there was any way she’d agree to another dungeon. She looked around the room, as though confirming that there really weren’t more doors. “Huh. We did it.”

“I would have needed ten minutes or so, maybe twenty,” said Verity, slinging her lute behind her back. “I was pushing it with that melody.”

“I noticed,” said Alfric. “It was appreciated. We can wait on it, but it’ll probably be necessary for you to weave another song for Mizuki to see any entads we’re missing.” He looked at the broken cabinets and crushed furniture. “I wish it weren’t such a mess. Hopefully we didn’t break anything important.”

“I brought gloves,” said Hannah, pulling them from her pant pocket and slipping them on. “I can move some glass away. We’re lookin’ for valuables, ay?”

“Entads are the first priority,” said Alfric. “There’s not really a limit to how valuable they can be, but I would be surprised if we found anything astounding. What I’m really hoping for is travel, which is most associated with brooms, carpets, boots, watches, rings, and drinks, but it could be anything.”

“You memorized all that?” asked Verity.

“Sure,” replied Alfric. He went over to the crushed display cases and began moving things aside, being as careful as he could. “Not on purpose, I didn’t sit down to do it, but I read enough that I picked it up. Different effects have different associations. It’s not completely random.”

“But we find what we find, right?” asked Mizuki. She had moved fully away from the stairs now, cautiously creeping her way into the room.

“We do,” nodded Alfric. He had opened up the smashed remains of a cabinet, only to find equally smashed vials that had once contained liquids. “Never eat or drink anything you find in a dungeon,” said Alfric. “I don’t think anyone would, but I thought I would say it.”

“Is it all poisonous or something?” asked Mizuki.

“Not at all,” said Hannah. “But it takes a lot of work to say for sure what’s good and what’s not. Some can kill you, that’s for sure, but others are just disgustin’.”

Isra raised an eyebrow. “It’s a shame to waste the meat,” she said, looking over the body of the not-dragon.

“Good work, by the way,” Alfric said to her. “I wasn’t sure that I would be able to get it. I was considering a retreat.”

“Arrows weren’t working,” replied Isra with a shrug.

“I hadn’t even noticed,” Alfric confessed.

In one of the cabinets, Alfric found a set of seven keys, each of them with a different head. Each had a different decorative animal, and Alfric assumed that they were native to the Pucklechurch hex. It was possible that they were magic, but also entirely possible that they were just a bit of set dressing. There was a name for such things: henlings. Bits of frippery and tatt that could sometimes be sold, but more often just served as mementos. Taverns that catered to adventurers were commonly decorated with the stuff, sometimes with a full wall of bric-a-brac. In the city, at least, there had been stores that sold the stuff, usually for fairly cheap. You could get plates and silverware pulled from a dungeon for cheaper than handcrafted, if you were willing to accept odd designs and mismatched pieces.

“Ready,” said Verity. She unslung her lute and strummed it once, looking up slightly as she searched for the words. “My eyes were bright, as I watched through the keyhole, oh so late in the night, the old man read him a very long scroll, a tale of magic and horrible blight, and I watched as he cast him a most fearsome spell, and I waited and whimpered, as his portal did swell.”

Mizuki was moving fast, stepping over the wreckage and looking at things, including pulling back cabinets with wild abandon, not seeming to fear getting cut by the broken glass scattered everywhere. She set the things she found on a small table that had been next to the seating and was miraculously unhurt. When she was finished, she stepped back and looked around.

“These?” asked Alfric, holding out the set of keys. Mizuki shook her head, and Alfric slipped the keys back into his pocket.

“All done,” Mizuki called to Verity, but Verity continued on with the end of the song anyhow, bringing it to a proper conclusion. “You use the weirdest lyrics. What was all that about a portal?”

“I was just making it up as I went,” said Verity. “If a song is going to have a tight focus, it’s better to have it revolve around the subject that’s being focused on. In this case, sight.”

“I guess,” replied Mizuki. “I’m not sure I’ll ever understand bards.” Not even ten minutes after the battle, and she was already returning to her old self. Alfric couldn’t help but smile at that. Midway through, he’d wondered whether he was going to have to replace her. She gestured at the things she’d set onto the table. “This is what we have, so far as I could sniff out.”

Sitting on the table were four entads, which, with the two books below, made for six in total. That was on the high side, but then, the monsters they’d encountered had been much tougher than expected as well. Unfortunately, none of them looked likely to be travel entads. There was a flute with what seemed like far too many holes, a small silver spoon, a dark red handkerchief, and a wooden longbow the color of bone that had been hiding in one of the cabinets.

“Dibs on the spoon,” said Mizuki. She was still slightly shaky but seemed to have it under control. If she had recriminations, she was saving them for later.

“We don’t know what it does, and that’s not the arrangement we have,” said Alfric. “Also, as I mentioned earlier, I promised Isra that she would have first bidding rights for entads and break any tied bids. Because we’re not allowing outside money, that means she could potentially take any of these entads by bidding her entire share of the loot.”

“I continue to object, except I feel like she did a lot more than me, so whatever,” said Mizuki. That wasn’t Alfric’s read of what happened, but he kept his mouth shut.

“It was needed to bait her, sure,” said Hannah, giving Isra a smile. “Alfric, you reckon to wait until after we’re out to find out what they do?”

“Usually, yes,” said Alfric. “You don’t want to stay in the dungeon longer than you have to. But in our case, because we got lucky and there’s so much we want to carry out, I think it’s better that we find out now, just in case one of these things allows for extradimensional space.” Aside from travel, extradimensional space was one of the cornerstone abilities needed in the trade, because it could greatly multiply what you could bring out of a dungeon.

Mizuki picked up the spoon and looked it over.

“Be very, very careful,” said Alfric, holding up a hand. “You don’t know what they do. Treat it like it might kill you or anyone you point it at. Assume that it’s deadly.”

Mizuki looked down at the spoon in her hand, then back up at Alfric. “It’s a spoon,” she said.

“One of the most powerful combat entads in existence is a flowerpot,” said Alfric. “If you tap on the bottom of it twice, it lets out a beam of concentrated light that can blast halfway through a city.”

“The first time it was fired, nigh on a hundred people died, though it did get undone,” said Hannah. “Rare, that, though, ay?”

“It’s good to keep in mind,” said Alfric, nodding to Hannah. He was going to have to talk to her in private, he decided, to see what she knew and how she knew it. He hadn’t expected a cleric so eager to venture into a dungeon, and he certainly hadn’t expected her to be so knowledgeable.

“Oh, it changes size,” said Mizuki, twirling around a spoon that was much bigger than it had been before. “That’s… neat.” It warped and shifted in her hand, and from the way that she was concentrating, this was taking quite a bit of effort. It wasn’t just changing size, it was changing shape as well, becoming deep or shallow, changing its angle, but never straying too far from being a normal spoon. “I want it,” said Mizuki.

“That’s not really how we’re doing things,” said Alfric.

“Then I’ll bid on it,” said Mizuki. “One-twentieth of my share.”

“That’s stupid,” said Verity. “No offense. With the books, we might get as much as fifty thousand rings, by Alfric’s evaluation, which… I’m skeptical of. Your share would be ten thousand. A twentieth of that is five hundred rings. You think a spoon that changes size is worth that?”

Mizuki turned the spoon into a ladle and frowned at it. “I suppose not.”

“You shouldn’t tell her that,” said Isra. “More for the rest of us.”

“I don’t particularly need the money,” said Verity. “I live a nice enough life right now, even without this windfall.”

“Then for my sake,” said Isra.

“We’ll do all the negotiations at the end, once we’ve taken out everything we can carry,” said Alfric. “No point in talking about it now.”

“And we can touch these?” asked Verity, looking down at the objects on the table, then up at Alfric for confirmation.

“You can,” said Alfric. “The flowerpot was an aberration. Just be careful what you try.”

Verity picked up the flute and looked it over, while Isra went for the bow. Alfric watched them carefully, then went to grab the handkerchief, only to find that Hannah had already picked it up.

“I’ll go get the two books from downstairs,” said Alfric, closing his hand. “If we’re entad testing, best to do it all at once.”

The bigger of the two books was nearly fifty pounds, and while that wasn’t a problem for Alfric, it did make him wonder what it could do that would possibly be worth lugging that weight around. Naturally, entads didn’t have to be worthwhile, and many of them (like the shape-changing spoon) were little more than curiosities, but he was hopeful that the book would prove its worth. Perhaps when he opened it he would find a multitude of maps, and touching them would take him and the book to somewhere else, the exact kind of travel entad that he’d been hoping for. More likely, it would be something just barely useful enough to justify taking it out. It was useless to guess at what an entad did before testing it, but impossible to stop yourself.

“I figured out the handkerchief,” said Hannah when Alfric came back up. She was smiling. “It heals wounds.”

“It does?” asked Alfric.

“Well, ‘heals’ is strong language for what it does,” she said, looking a bit sheepish. She held out her arm, where she’d rolled up her sleeve. The handkerchief was wrapped around her forearm. “See?” she asked. “Covered, it looks and feels fine. But take it off?” She took off the handkerchief, revealing an inch-long cut that was bleeding freely. “Huh,” she said, looking down at the wound. “I thought it just stopped the hurt and the blood, but I think it’s a bit more.” She replaced the handkerchief and held it there.

“How’d you get hurt?” asked Alfric.

“Did it myself,” replied Hannah, still looking cheerful. “Red is the color of blood, ay?”

“That’s,” Alfric began, then thought better of it. “I suppose if it works, it works. Guessing things on the basis of their looks is a crapshoot though, maybe a bit better than chance, but not so much that you should be cutting yourself.”

“This flute has too many holes,” said Verity, turning it over. “And there would be no way for your fingers to effectively cover them.”

“Do you play the flute?” asked Mizuki, moving over to stand next to the bard.

“No,” replied Verity.

“And how many fingers do you have?” asked Mizuki.

“The usual amount,” replied Verity with a sigh of exasperation.

“I’m counting six on each hand, for what it’s worth,” said Mizuki.

Alfric looked and saw that this was true, at nearly the same moment that Verity seemed to notice. She shrieked and dropped the flute, which clattered on the ground, at which point her hands went back to having five fingers. She stared at her hands, keeping them in front of her, as though they were going to mutate at any moment.

“Entad effects usually aren’t permanent, for bodily effects,” said Alfric. “If there were one that gave you an extra finger on your hand for the rest of your life, it would be one of the really rare ones.”

“Neat,” said Mizuki, picking up the flute and giving it a twirl, the spoon she’d taken stuffed into a pant pocket. She held the flute in one hand and stared at her free hand, which had six fingers. She waved them back and forth, then clenched and unclenched them. “This is so weird. You can’t even feel it. It’s like I always had six fingers.” She squinted for a moment, and then she had seven fingers instead of six. “All right, time to see how many we can get out of this.” More and more fingers were added to her hands, until eventually she had ten fingers on each. It was altogether too many fingers, very noticeable when Alfric looked at her.

There was, of course, another point to entad testing in the dungeon, which was that it allowed them to have a bit of a ‘cooldown’. Alfric’s father had always said that when people went through something awful, it was best to give them something fun or interesting, some kind of distraction that would rip their mind from the awfulness. Entad testing was one of those things, and that it could be done in the dungeon would mean that perhaps the associations with blood and injury wouldn’t stick as much.

“I don’t like that one,” said Hannah, who was still holding the handkerchief to her cut arm but had come over to watch.

“Seems kind of useless,” said Mizuki, tossing the flute up into the air with her ten-fingered hand and then catching it with a hand that had gone back to normal.

“It’s gross,” said Verity. “But it might actually be useful for playing music.”

“You think with the extra fingers this flute makes some nice noises?” asked Mizuki, seeming skeptical.

“I wasn’t actually thinking about that,” replied Verity. “I was thinking that if you had the flute touching your skin, you could play the lute a bit easier. Here, let me test.”

He wanted the party to be happy, and from what he’d heard, a lot of people really enjoyed testing out new entads. Back in the big city, Alfric’s friends had taken a lot of joy in going into entad shops to look around at what was there, from the mundane to the exotic. Whatever entads weren’t bound to the party or to party members would probably be sent back to the city to be sold there, where they could fetch a better price, though Alfric would almost certainly be dealing with middlemen in Tarchwood or Liberfell.

While Verity played her lute using extra fingers, Alfric watched Isra. She was taking a more cautious approach to entad testing than the others, and despite the fact that she was holding the bone-white longbow and had plenty of arrows, she hadn’t actually fired it. The flowerpot entad was quite famous, particularly because it served as an object lesson in how things could unexpectedly go wrong, but he didn’t have a handle on how much Isra knew about the wider world, and perhaps saying outright that entad testing could hypothetically kill them all was a bit much. She was instead testing the string, feeling the parts of it, twisting and bending, looking it over… but not actually firing it.

Alfric decided that he would go over and talk to her if she’d still done nothing with it when they were getting ready to gather up the rest of the loot.

The bigger of the two books he’d brought up was completely blank, its thousand-odd pages containing not so much as a scrap of information. It didn’t have a title on the cover or on the spine, not that Alfric had really expected it would. Staring at the blank pages, Alfric thought about them as representations of something else, which was sometimes true for entads with multiple parts. A suit of entad armor with three jewels on the chest almost certainly had some ability that could be used three times in a day, or in a week, or could affect three objects, though of course that rule wasn’t a firm one, because almost no rules about entads were. He looked at the thousand pages, thinking about what they might mean or represent.

Alfric proceeded to touch various parts of the book, running his fingers all along it. His approach wasn’t all that different from Isra’s, when he thought about it. The obvious thing to do with a blank book was to write inside it, but he was going to hold off on that until he’d tried other things.

The answer finally came when he pressed firmly against one of the open pages. His fingers sank in, and as he kept up the pressure, his entire hand disappeared into the book, until finally he was in it down to the arm. As no more of him would go in, and because he was mildly worried, he extracted his arm back out of the book, leaving a blank page. Trying a different approach, Alfric pressed something else against the open page, this time a small rock picked up from the floor, and when it sank down into the book with light pressure, it stayed there, visible as a picture of itself with ink. After a few seconds, the picture of the rock was surrounded by a frame of black ink, and below it a small description was written, a simple paragraph that described the rock.

Alfric stared at it for a moment, then flipped the page and pushed in another rock, which had the same effect. Finally, he tried his best to get the rock back out, which he eventually found was possible just by pushing his hand in and grabbing it.

It was a storage entad, and a fairly good one, though it didn’t take anything that was larger than two feet on its longest side, and getting things in and out of it took some time. Still, with a thousand pages of storage, it meant that they would be able to take the entirety of the book collection downstairs with ease.

If it was unbound, which they wouldn’t know until later, then it was probably worth quite a bit, since storage entads were always in demand. If it bound to one of them, which could happen but was fairly rare, then it would make for a particularly good item, one that he would try to get for himself: you had a better chance of personal binding if the entad was physically on you as you left. But the best-case scenario, at least for Alfric, was that it was partybound, because that would mean that they would have much more incentive to keep the party together. He prayed to the six gods, a short, simple prayer for each, appealing to their better natures.

It was while he was thinking about the party dynamics that Isra loosed an arrow. One moment she had it pointed across the room with the arrow nocked, the next she was standing against the far wall and plucking her arrow from where it was stuck in a wooden beam. She looked the arrow over once, then looked at the others.

“It’s a good one,” she said.

“Moves you to the arrow’s destination?” asked Alfric, when no explanation seemed to be forthcoming.

“No,” replied Isra. “The world slowed down, and I walked with the arrow.”

“Time manipulation?” asked Alfric, raising an eyebrow. “That is good, even if it just lets you take a breather.”

Isra began experimenting with it more, and for a time, they simply watched her. The arrow would be let loose, and then Isra would be standing somewhere else in the room, usually directly along the route it had taken. She wasn’t the most articulate at describing its effects, but when Alfric took a turn, he could see the notions she’d been pointing at.

Shooting an arrow created an invisible sphere, maybe ten feet across, that followed the arrow. So long as you stayed within that invisible sphere, time was slowed to a crawl, the arrow’s flight easy to keep up with even if you were walking at a leisurely pace. It was hard to affect things in this slowed-down time, but as Isra had found, you could still fire arrows, and while those didn’t create little time bubbles of their own, they did seem to interact with the world in the normal way, which meant that you could fire that first arrow, then walk along beside it firing other arrows, and end up spitting out five arrows in the time that it took a normal archer to fire only once.

“It’s very powerful,” said Alfric. “We’ll need to see how it binds, if it does, but… it’s world class.”

“Meaning best in the world?” asked Mizuki.

“Yes,” replied Alfric.

“It doesn’t seem that good,” said Mizuki, giving the white longbow a skeptical look.

“Entads compound,” said Alfric. “If you have a good one, then mixing it with a second good one can make for a much more powerful result. Take a bow like that one, add in a quiver that lets you shoot faster or with more arrows, or that generates arrows, mix in an amulet that gives you constant low-grade healing, a dagger that takes time to charge… Not only is it powerful by itself, there are a lot of common effects that it makes more powerful, to say nothing of the rare effects.”

“So you’re saying we’re rich?” asked Mizuki.

“It depends on whether it binds,” replied Hannah. “Bound, we’re not rich, no.”

“Then how do we get it not to bind?” asked Mizuki.

“We don’t have control of that,” said Alfric. “The most you can do is have specific people carry out the entads, because they’re very slightly more likely to bind to whoever carries them when they cross the threshold, but that’s about it.”

“I want the bow,” said Isra. It had found its way back into her grip.

“It would be best for you to carry it out, yes,” said Alfric. “But splitting the pot isn’t usually done until everyone is outside. It’s hard to put value on things if you don’t know how or whether they’re bound.” There were some parties, he knew, where there was extensive discussion on who carried what, which usually meant testing done in the dungeon, but that wasn’t how he’d envisioned his ideal party.

“So I can take the spoon out with me?” asked Mizuki.

“We’ll divide them up equally for the trip out,” said Alfric. “Personal binding is uncommon, but if it happens, then we’ll deal with it.”

“But I could wager a portion of my share, couldn’t I?” asked Mizuki.

Alfric sighed. “The more complicated arrangements get, the more trouble they are. You don’t want people to gamble, and you don’t want people to leave with hard feelings. That’s not what keeps a party together.”

“There’s no need for us to be a party anymore, is there?” asked Verity. “Because we all agreed on a single dungeon, and that was it.”

“We did,” said Alfric. He’d known this moment was coming and had hoped that it wouldn’t be so soon, or with such casual disregard for their clear value as a team. “Even if we’re not doing anything together, it makes sense to stay as a party for as long as possible. In a week we’ll have a party channel to talk together, and that might be necessary, because it’s going to take quite a bit of time and effort to move everything that we’re going to take out of here. This bigger book is a storage entad, and if it’s partybound, then we’ll at least have to keep a party of three in order to use it. Breaking the party before then would likely mean that everything put into it was stuck. We won’t know until we get out of here though.”

“What does the little one do?” asked Mizuki, joining Alfric and picking the book up.

“I haven’t looked at it yet,” said Alfric. “Hopefully something good, but I doubt it.”

Mizuki leafed through the small book, then stopped on a page and read for a bit. “It’s everything that we’ve said.”

“Huh,” said Alfric. “Can I see?”

“No,” replied Mizuki. “Still looking. No names, seems like it’s doing some marks for dialect… Can this thing read?” She directed that question at the group, but Alfric assumed that the question was for him.

“Read… in what sense?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Mizuki. “I mean… it’s writing all this in Inter, or something close to it, so how’s that work?”

“Oh,” said Alfric. “If there’s language involved, then it’s probably drawing from us.”

“Huh,” said Mizuki. She slid the book over to him. “Yeah, it’s worthless.”

“Not necessarily,” said Alfric. “It depends on how it works. You could use it for eavesdropping. But we’ll need to test it, see how it actually functions.”

“Are we ready to leave?” asked Verity.

“Not hardly,” said Hannah. “We have things to loot, ay?”

“Can we start with that, then?” asked Verity. “I don’t like being under this sky or in this place. It’s sending a chill down my spine.”

They were overdue for a conversation on how dangerous the dungeon had actually been, and Alfric was grateful that it seemed like they could put it off for a bit.

Chapter 7 — Songbird

Isra bound to the bow.

“It’s not unexpected,” said Hannah. “Happens more when there’s somethin’ going on between the wielder and the weapon, at least if my schoolin’ was right. It’s a windfall for her and a shame for the rest of us, since it would have fetched a hefty price on the market, but that’s the nature of dungeoneerin’.”

“And the book is partybound,” said Alfric, sighing slightly. “Which means that it won’t be fetching a good price either, and if the party breaks, it stops functioning entirely. More bad news on that front.” Though it was the kind of bad news that was also good news, when it came to keeping the party together. It was a weak incentive though, since a party could still function when down to just three members. It was also possible to sell the book even if it was partybound, but the way to do that was by cycling members in and out, and there were heaps of problems with that, all of which revolved around party minimums and maximums.

“How can you tell?” asked Verity, who had been combing her hair during the testing outside the dungeon.

“I can see potential,” said Mizuki. “Comes from being a sorc. As soon as he sets the book down, it goes mostly inert, but when he picks it up, it’s got some magical life to it. Same goes for if any of us pick it up, which means it’s partybound. The bow only responds to Isra though.” She took her spoon out of her pocket. “Spoon seems like it’ll work for anyone though. Alfric, you think that this is worthless?”

“Yes,” he said. “Who would need a magical spoon like that? At best it replaces several mundane spoons. So what’s the market?”

“Dunno,” she said. “I mean, if you have it, then you don’t need to switch between spoons all the time, always fumbling with your big spoons, small spoons, slotted spoons, you know, making a mess of things because there are just too many of them to keep track of them all?”

“Uh-huh,” he said, thinking to himself that the market of people who were improbably bad with their spoon collections was quite small. “Well, if you want to bid on it, I won’t stop you.”

“Do we really need to do the points bidding?” asked Hannah, folding her arms. “Seems complicated for what’s just among five people, ay?”

“It’s to make sure things are fair,” said Alfric. He looked at the others. “If we aren’t going to be a long-term party, then we want everyone to come away with something they think was fair and worth their time. We have a windfall, not a major one, but one that will keep us comfortable for a bit.”

“I want the bow,” said Isra.

“Well,” said Alfric, “I mean, you have the bow, there’s nothing that anyone can do about that now. Anyone who takes the bow wouldn’t be able to do anything special with it. How the points system handles that is taking the expected value of the bow at market and reducing it by a set margin, which gets converted into—”

“Can we all just agree on a fifth of the unbound proceeds for each?” asked Hannah. “Faffin’ about with points and conversions is going to give me a headache.”

“Hey,” said Mizuki, “can’t you do the Church of Symmetry thing? Like, divide everything up exactly equally?”

“That’s not how it works,” replied Hannah. “I can do the math, if you’d like, but there’s no special power involved there. Anywho, vote on whether we ignore the points and just do a fair split?” she asked, raising her hand.

To Alfric’s dismay, the other three raised their hands too. Eventually, he did as well, just so that it would be unanimous. He wanted them happy more than he wanted things fair.

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “Do I get the spoon?”

“Fine by me,” said Hannah.

“I’d like the flute,” said Verity. “I don’t think it’s very good, but we’ll see if I can get a hang of six-fingered playing.”

“This is throwing everything into disarray,” said Alfric. “There’s no way that the flute, spoon, and bow are worth the same amount to each of us.”

“Well, you’re outvoted,” said Hannah, nodding as though the matter was settled. Unfortunately for Alfric, it seemed like she was right, because no one wanted to go through the time and effort to make sure things were actually fair.

“Then we sell the rag, the small book, and all the materials?” asked Alfric. “And hang on to the storage book, because we don’t really have any other option.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Verity. “Can we get moving though? I’d like to get back in time for dinner, and we spent longer there than I’d planned. I eat almost all my meals at the Fig and Gristle, and Cynthia closes down the kitchen earlier than I would like.”

The light was already fading, and they hadn’t left the entry into the dungeon. Alfric quickly replaced the lock and locked it tight, then gave it a tug to test it. The lock was a simple thing, really just meant to ensure that kids wouldn’t wander into a dungeon, but there was also some ceremony and importance to it, especially when locking it up.

They began moving down the path back to Pucklechurch. Alfric was feeling good about how the dungeon had gone, overall. Hannah was an ally, in a sense, and it seemed as though Isra could be counted on to do some traveling and dungeoneering, especially because she seemed less tied to Pucklechurch. That she’d lucked out with the bow was unfortunate, in some respects, but helped prove the value of a dungeon. Verity, on the other hand, seemed a bit put off by the violence, though perhaps less than Alfric had thought. With Mizuki, it was hard to tell.

Not too long into their trip back, Verity began to sing a victory song, keeping her lute stored and using just her voice. There was no trace of magic. The song was long and involved, and recounted a story of animals fighting a dread menace. She was halfway through when Alfric realized that they were the five animals, at least if he understood right.

“A bear is not a healing animal,” said Hannah once Verity was finished and the brief applause had concluded.

“Which animal is a healing animal?” asked Verity. She looked around at them. “Sorry if the choices were offensive.”

“Well, there’s no proper healing animal,” said Hannah. “But a lizard can regrow its arms.”

“Legs, right?” asked Mizuki.

“They have arms and legs,” said Hannah.

“And a tail,” said Isra. “Which is what they most commonly regrow.”

“You’d prefer a lizard over a bear?” asked Mizuki. “Blegh. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be compared to a bear at all, too hairy.”

“Well, I’ve got hair to spare, as my ma always said,” laughed Hannah. This wasn’t at all in dispute; Hannah’s hair went down to the small of her back when unfurled, but it was also very voluminous, making her head appear larger than it really was. “And a bear’s a fine creature, but they’re not healers by any stretch.”

“Why was I a cat?” asked Isra, who had been fairly quiet. She now carried two bows on her back. Her pack was full, mostly with whatever pipes were too long to fit within the book.

“I was thinking you were a silent, slinking creature,” said Verity. “A diamond-eyed stalker in the night waiting to pounce at exactly the right moment.”

Isra nodded. She looked lost in thought. Alfric had been pleased that she’d joined the applause.

“What was I?” asked Mizuki. “A dog, a cat, a rabbit, a bear, and a songbird? And I was… the songbird?”

Verity gave a high, delighted giggle, and Mizuki grinned at her.

“Wait,” said Alfric. “I think I actually have matching keys.” He went into a pocket, where he’d put the keys, and pulled them out, handing them to Verity.

She looked through them one by one. “The bird isn’t a songbird, the dog is a wolf, and there’s no bear.”

“What are these?” asked Hannah, coming over to look at the keys. “These were in the dungeon?”

“Henlings,” said Alfric, though he assumed Hannah already knew the term. “There would have been more, but a lot of it was destroyed in the battle, which is a shame. Technically, a henling is anything that’s distinctive enough that it seems like it’s got a story behind it, though of course it doesn’t. Sometimes people use the term broadly, to mean anything mundane you pull out, even something like rope.” He felt a bit of ire toward people who used the broad definition, as they were ruining a perfectly good word.

“I could be a raccoon instead of a bear,” said Hannah, taking one of the keys for herself and passing the rest off to Mizuki.

“Raccoons are noted healers, are they?” asked Verity. “Also, I’d have to completely rework the song.”

“I know nothing about raccoons,” said Hannah. “But if no one tells me otherwise, I’m going to assume they’re masters of the healin’ arts.”

“A raccoon is a clever beast,” said Isra. “More clever than a fox. They’re adaptable and fastidiously clean.”

“Weren’t we just comparing those monsters to raccoons?” asked Mizuki. “And also, they were very much not raccoons.”

“I’d prefer to keep my mind off it, frankly,” said Verity.

“Better not to dwell on the battle,” added Alfric, though it was going to be hard to avoid, especially if he wanted to interest them in a second dungeon.

“Well,” said Hannah. “I suppose that’ll do.” She took her own key and distributed the rest to the others. “Makes me feel bad about the raccoon comparison.”

“What are these keys to, then?” asked Mizuki, looking over her key, which was a rabbit, just as in the song.

“They’re not ‘to’ anything, they’re just… pulled from the aether,” said Alfric. “That was how it was always described to me, at least. Some people have a fascination with henlings and with things pulled from the dungeons. The books we have might be translated with enough time, attention, and magic, and sometimes there’s readable stuff in them. But they’re not ‘from’ anywhere, they’re just a product of the hex, the conditions, the magic, and the people entering the dungeon, along with other stuff we know nothing about.”

“Kind of creepy, when you think about it,” said Mizuki.

Alfric tightened. “I suppose we don’t need to think about it, then,” he said.

“What do we do with the other two?” asked Hannah, holding the two spare keys, one of a snake, the other of a bee.

“I wasn’t going to do anything with them,” said Alfric. “They’re not really valuable.”

“Well they are now, right?” asked Hannah. “They’re mementos. I say we hold on to the keys, and if we ever have a sixth, or someone who’s a support member, we can give them one.”

“Parties only go to five,” said Verity, frowning. Alfric was watching her the most closely, because she was the most on the fence, aside from Mizuki. She was also the entire reason he’d come to Pucklechurch.

“Well, I didn’t mean to put a damper on things, but accidents happen, ay?” asked Hannah, being a little too flippant for Alfric’s tastes. “We went through that nicely, if I do say so myself, quick and clean with not too much to patch up after, but it could have been different, ay? We could have lost one. That’s something to keep in mind, when you’re doin’ a thing like this.”

That killed the conversation for a moment and brought silence down on the group. Alfric focused his eyes on his steps while he tried to think about how to change the course of the conversation. There were things he could tell them that would help assure them that they were in safe hands, but revealing too much at this stage, especially with Verity on the fence, seemed like the wrong move.

“I’ll spend the night in Pucklechurch, then go off to Tarchwood to try to sell what I can,” said Alfric. Talking business was usually safe, and more than that, it needed to be done. “The books are the biggest thing we’ll get paid for, and the pipes will be the second biggest. Once that’s all done, I’ll come back to Pucklechurch and distribute the money, at which point we’ll be able to talk about what the next step for the party is, if anything. In six days, we’ll have a party channel, but I should have the money before then.”

“How do we know that you won’t just take the money?” asked Isra.

Alfric faltered. “I would never do that,” he said. “To do that to your party members—even to strangers, I would never—”

“Personally, I trust him,” said Mizuki.

“I don’t trust him enough to allow him full responsibility with fifty thousand rings,” said Isra.

“Well, then,” said Alfric, feeling helpless. “I don’t know. I’m true to my word, I’m honest.” Though perhaps less so of late, if mostly lies of omission. “Would it help if you came with me?”

“We could do that,” said Isra. “We’d walk together.”

Alfric felt a knot of tension unwind. Normally when his honor was questioned, it wasn’t so easy to find a solution.

“Well, I’m not doing that,” said Verity. “If you choose to run off with the money, then so be it.”

“Same,” said Hannah. “Though my sense of Alfric is that he’s far more concerned with the next dungeon than with the spoils of this one. Going to Tarchwood might also serve another function, which is scoping out another dungeon for us. Otherwise it would be Liberfell, right?”

“I don’t think I’ll do the next,” said Verity. Her voice was soft. “I didn’t particularly think that it suited me.”

“Ah, well, let it settle then before you make your choice,” said Hannah. “And if we can’t have you, we’ll go searchin’ out another, with no worries.”

Alfric definitely didn’t like that, but they had arrived back at Pucklechurch and soon thereafter said their goodbyes. He watched as Verity left with Mizuki toward the Fig and Gristle, then went to the other tavern, where his room was, to make his plans for the next day. Of all the party members that could have acted as a sticking point, having it be Verity was the worst. She was special, in more ways than the others knew. He had come all this way for her.

Isra came with him. That was natural, given that she wanted to make sure he didn’t run off with the loot, but it still rankled. Trust, his father had often said, had to be earned, and Alfric could see that the only thing he’d done to earn trust so far was to take hits and keep the other members of his party safe. That felt like something, but apparently for Isra, it wasn’t enough that she could be sure he wouldn’t rob her, and for Verity, it wasn’t enough that she was willing to do another dungeon. Hannah, at least, seemed a stalwart dungeoneer, even if she had some rough edges and different ideas about how to handle things. It wasn’t clear where Mizuki stood, but he was hopeful that she was more of a risk taker than she seemed. Sorcerers were notorious for that, but people didn’t always play to type.

Hours later, once he’d had a meal and a quick wash and made somewhat annoying arrangements with Isra, Alfric lay in his rented bed, staring up at the ceiling, going over the dungeon in his head, not just the fights, which were admittedly the main thing, but the dynamics of the group.

There were two alternates, the blacksmith and the wizard, but neither of them was a proper replacement. If he hadn’t had Hannah, then every injury would have accumulated through the dungeon, and he’d have been fighting that last monster with a bloodied face and scratches all over his hands. If he hadn’t had Verity… well, it was possible that someone else could have picked up the slack, in a totally different way. And if he’d been missing Mizuki, he would have needed the wizard, just in order to have the offensive power necessary. The wizard would have taken more time though, if he didn’t already have offensive engines built.

He’d have been tempted to call Isra the weak link, but she was an exceptional archer and possessed of a bravery that brought a smile to his lips when he thought back on it. She could have stayed back, firing arrows, but she’d leapt onto the creature to attack it with a dagger. Whatever else she was, however much she might not trust him, she had a ferocious tenacity that he thought would be hard to match. She reminded him of his mother, in that respect.

He liked the party. It was a good party. They needed time and training, that was true, but they hadn’t collapsed during their first bout of combat, and however much he wished that the dungeon had been easier, morale still seemed to be high.

One of the things he hadn’t been sharing with his party was that he was still in the family guild. They’d have expected it, perhaps, if they knew his pedigree, but it didn’t seem like the name Overguard had rung any bells, not even for Verity, who had surely heard it at least once or twice while living in Dondrian. Mizuki was, curiously, one of the only ones in a guild; he’d have thought Hannah, at least, would be. None of them had yet gone to the censusmaster about him, he didn’t think.

There were fifty people in the family guild, and so he crafted his message with care, knowing that cousins, aunts, and uncles would all be reading it in the morning. A single dungeon run wasn’t normally something that needed to be reported on, but this was nominally Alfric’s first, and the first he’d done with a true, proper party. The family had more than its fair share of traditions, and a first dungeon run, even if it was coming late, was something that demanded a report.

He left out details, but that was only natural. He tried his best to ape the style of his father’s reports, which he’d enjoyed reading since the age of five, when he’d first joined the guild. Those were, of course, on larger, more dangerous dungeons, ones that took days or even weeks to clear, and typically only the highlights were given, either in terms of monsters or loot.

The report wove a somewhat different story than what happened. It was a dungeon at the high end of normal variance, possibly owing to some unknown aspect of Pucklechurch or the particulars of their party. In the report, he didn’t mention anything of the reticence of his party members, only of the monsters they fought, and the two particularly good bits of luck: the books and Isra’s bow. He looked over the wording three times, changing things here and there. If this didn’t work out, if he couldn’t make his own way in the world, he would have to fall back on the family, and that, of course, would go against the central tenet of self-reliance. A sword from his father and boots from his mother, two small tokens from the vast family hoard.

For Alfric, it wasn’t simply a matter of wanting to please his parents or his family, because he truly did believe in making his own way, hunting down his own leads, and assembling his own party. It was what he wanted in life.

But he did also want his parents to be proud that he was following in their footsteps, despite the rocky start and the wasted months, so he checked the message over again before sending it off. They would get it in the morning, which meant that he wouldn’t get a response back until the morning after that, which was always an uncomfortable feeling.

And Lola would find out, if she cared to. She had too many friends among his family. There was nothing for it though; that part of his life was firmly over, and he tried to put her out of his mind.

With the message sent, there was nothing left to do but sleep. He stared at the ceiling, waiting for his mind to stop racing.

They were only just at the beginning. There was so much more to come.

Chapter 8 — Late Meals in a Quiet Kitchen

“Cynthia, please, it’s not even that late,” said Verity.

She was giving the puppy-dog eyes. Mizuki could respect that.

“Rules are rules, as much as I like you,” the tavern owner replied. “And it’s not just a matter of the rules, the kitchen gets shut down at ninth bell, and the boy has already started in on dishes and cleaning up.”

“Who’s the boy?” asked Mizuki, who had tagged along without asking if that was okay. If she had asked, Verity might have said no, and Mizuki wasn’t quite ready to be done. Doing the dungeon had filled her with a nervous energy that hadn’t yet dissipated, and sitting with that energy, alone in her house, with only her cat Tabbins for company, seemed a bit too lonely.

“Edmund Clarke,” said Verity, not so much as turning to look at Mizuki. “Cynthia, please, I went into a dungeon. I’ve had a long day.”

“There’s bread, meat, and cheese, all cold,” replied Cynthia. “I know you like your meals piping hot, but the kitchen is closed for the night. I can offer you drinks, but that’s about it.”

“I know Edmund a bit,” said Mizuki. “He was the year below me in school.”

Verity turned to her. “And you think you can convince him to open the kitchen back up?”

“We didn’t leave on terribly good terms,” said Mizuki. “I was just making conversation. But if you want some food, you can swing by Marta’s with me, and I can cook you up some venison. It’s no trouble really, since I was going to make something for myself.”

The assurance that it was no trouble didn’t seem to be needed, because as soon as food was mentioned, Verity’s eyes had lit up like a lighthouse in a dark fog.

“You know how to cook?” she asked, in an almost predatory way.

“It’s a hobby of mine,” Mizuki replied. “Come on, better to get started early.”

They walked through town together to Marta’s, where Mizuki kept the conversation short, taking her linen-wrapped venison loins. As they walked to her house, Mizuki was trying to think about what she was going to make, going through her mental catalog of recipes and the inventory of vegetables, herbs, and sauces available in the house. A soup would be best, to test her new magical spoon, but she had no stock or broth, and as this was her first time feeding Verity, she needed to make a good impression.

“Here’s me,” said Mizuki as they came down the path to the house. “Shoes off, please.”

She slipped out of her boots in the entryway, enjoying the feeling of her toes finally being free, then cast off her gloves as well, leaving her much more comfortable. From there, she went into the kitchen, flipped up the lighting discs, and went through to double-check that she really did have everything she thought she did. Venison went well with something a bit sweet, a role that Mizuki thought would be played by carrots, and it was hearty, which would be complemented with mashed potatoes that would soak up some of the gravy.

“All right,” Mizuki said, looking over at her guest. “How hungry are you?”

“Famished,” Verity replied. “Music takes it out of me, especially with so many layers. I should have eaten before we left. I didn’t think we’d be out so long.” It had been the pipes that had dragged out the proceedings.

“I’ll try to make it fast,” said Mizuki as she flipped open the stove. She held a hand over the heating element and waited until it came up to the right temperature, then moved a pan into place. It was possible to do everything with a single pan, but reluctantly, thinking about the extra dish she’d have to wash, she filled a pot with water from the tank and put that on the stove as well. “Do you like mushrooms?”

“I don’t know,” said Verity. “There are lots of kinds, aren’t there?”

“Oh, of course,” replied Mizuki as she melted some butter into the first pan, then moved over to start chopping up the carrots. “But if you don’t like mushrooms, then you just say that and I leave them out, and if you’re picky about your mushrooms, we can start a negotiation.” She held up some mushrooms for Verity to see. They were white, with long, thin stems and a cap that wasn’t much thicker around than the stalk. “Lily mushrooms?”

“At this point, I’m hungry enough that I’ll eat anything you serve me with a smile on my face,” said Verity, whose eyes were roaming over the ingredients.

Mizuki nodded and tossed the mushrooms and carrots in, got some diced onions from the chiller and added them, then added herbs mostly by instinct, including garlic, rosemary, and sage. When that was done, she turned her attention to the meat, but not before she gave the pot another skeptical look. The timing, she decided, was going to be off. The carrots, mushrooms, and venison would be done before the potatoes were boiled through, even if she cut them thin. She decided to do her best.

“So,” said Mizuki while she cut into the loin. “You’re not from around here? You mentioned a conservatory, I think.”

“Like Alfric, I’m from Dondrian,” said Verity. “At first I thought it was odd to meet another Donder so far out from the city, but there are enormous numbers of people there, so I suppose it’s not that unusual.”

“Mmm,” said Mizuki. She wiped her blade and began cutting the potatoes, throwing them in as soon as she had them in thin slices. “And why are you in Pucklechurch? It’s a very out-of-the-way place.”

“It’s a long story,” said Verity. “And I’m hoping that we don’t have too much time until we’re eating?” She was watching the proceedings with interest, though it was the interest of a hungry animal rather than a curious onlooker.

“We’ve got a bit,” said Mizuki. The meal was almost at her favorite part, which was when things were cooking along on their own and being tended to, without all that much interaction on her part.

“Well,” said Verity, seeming dejected that food was going to take a little longer to touch her lips, “like I said, I was conservatory-trained. I was four years old when I first started playing an instrument, and I was something of a prodigy at it, to the delight of my parents. Money wasn’t really a concern to them, so they spent enormous sums on getting me the best tutors, both for my ability to play and my magical talent. When I entered the conservatory, I started questioning why I was doing any of it. The training regimes were brutal, the demands to practice were merciless, the competition was fierce, and… I just dropped out, if I’m being honest. I was doing well, as far as the performances went, but everything else, my relationship to the music, my disposition, was going horribly. There was too much weight on my shoulders.” She paused for a moment. “From many quarters.” She paused again. “So I left.”

“To come here,” said Mizuki. She’d taken most of what was in the pan out and placed the rounds of venison there to sear. It was better to cook venison as little as possible to keep it from getting tough. Really, it would have been better to soak them in buttermilk overnight to get rid of some of the gamy flavor, and she resolved to do that with the remainder of the meat. “So Pucklechurch was picked out of a hat?”

“I’d heard about it in one of my classes,” said Verity. “One of the ones that wasn’t focused entirely on music or bardic arts, that is. The church was built because when the town was founded, ages ago, a leyline used to run through the hex. When the leyline shifted, the church wasn’t needed, but they finished it anyway given how much they’d sunk into the construction. I thought it sounded quite charming, even if the lesson was meant to be about how leylines can occasionally be fickle. There was something about a town that was meant to be something greater that seemed poetic to me. Not the most sensible reason to move to a place, I’ll admit.”

Mizuki emptied the water from the pot of potatoes and set about mashing them while they were still hot, opening the chiller for just a moment so she could add a splash of milk and a lump of butter. Herbs went in too, though not as many of them, because there’d be gravy as well. It was all a balancing act, trying to weigh one thing against the other, and time management wasn’t particularly a strong suit for Mizuki, but she did manage to get the venison out of the pan before everything overcooked, and as soon as the potatoes were mashed, she was starting in on the gravy.

“And you?” asked Verity. “Do you live in this house all by yourself?”

“Ah,” said Mizuki. “Well, that’s not a terribly interesting story, but it’s also not terribly long, so. My grandfather was the one who built this house, nearly fifty years ago. He’d been planning to create a whole community of people from Kiromo, but the point of him coming here and setting up was because of Emperor Haga, who then died early, making the whole thing kind of moot. Emperor Goya is supposed to be a much gentler man, and the community never really ended up happening. Grandpa was always proud of this place though.” She plated the food, and Verity began digging in almost immediately, eating quick bites of everything. It seemed a curious way to eat, at least to Mizuki, hundreds of tiny pieces rather than simple mouthfuls. It probably came down to culture, she expected.

“This is amazing,” said Verity, once she’d eaten half the plate without slowing down. “This is really amazing.”

“I learned from my mom,” said Mizuki. “In Kiromo, cooking is the first and most important of all skills. Mom thought it was vital, but I also took to it, and if you’ve got to eat anyway, better to make sure you’re eating well. Besides, it’s a hobby that saves money, not that we’ll need to worry too much about that now.”

“Right,” said Verity, slowing for the first time since getting her food. “The money.”

“You don’t like money?” asked Mizuki.

“I do,” said Verity. “Who doesn’t? But I grew up with money, and—out here, I’ve been discovering a love of music again. I play at the tavern and try new things, get messy, make up songs for the fun of it, and now… Alfric is a reminder of what I don’t like about Dondrian.” She looked down at her plate, seeming a bit glum, then began moving more food into her mouth in that same strange way, tiny pieces one after the other.

“Big-city energy,” said Mizuki, nodding. She was eating much slower than Verity, though that wasn’t saying much. “But in this case, it did help us get things done. He was right, it was a half day’s work, not all that difficult, and we got rich from it.”

“Not really that rich,” said Verity.

“Ten thousand rings for the books alone,” said Mizuki. “Maybe you have a warped sense of what being rich is, but ten thousand rings is a lot. Not life-changing, but a lot.”

“I think it’s going to end up less than that,” said Verity. “The books would fetch a better price in Dondrian, where there are more buyers for that kind of thing. It’s likely that they’ll get sent to Dondrian anyhow, which means that a few people will be taking their cut along the way.”

“Well, even if it was less,” said Mizuki. “This meal was, altogether, maybe… ten for the both of us? That means, uh, some math, which I’ve never been too good at. But surely the sum takes care of my food for a year, maybe more. And that’s for a half day’s work! I don’t think you or I were ever in much danger, to be honest.”

“Yes,” said Verity. “I suppose. It was scary, but I didn’t get so much as a scratch.” She pushed her plate forward, which had been completely cleared down to the smallest bit of diced onion. Mizuki was pleased to note that included the mushrooms. “There was almost something familiar to it, as though it were just another high-pressure performance.”

“So you might do a second one with us?” asked Mizuki. She tried to keep her tone casual.

“I might,” said Verity. “I’ll see how I feel in the morning, whether I have shaky nerves.” She sat in quiet contemplation for a moment. “I ate too much.”

“My fault,” said Mizuki. “I made too much.” She looked down at the plate. “I think this will probably be my breakfast tomorrow morning.” She looked at Verity. “Alfric said that in Dondrian they don’t eat breakfast?”

Verity nodded. “Technically we break our fast for lunch. Before then, it’s usually some kind of hot drink, though of late there’s been a surge in hot drinks that are basically soup, which, at the time I left, was causing a bit of a hubbub.” She sighed. “I do miss it, sometimes, but I also enjoy the simple life that I’ve built here. Playing at the Fig and Gristle, hiking out into the woods to practice, enjoying the peace and solitude, reading through whatever I can get from the library… It’s a very pleasant life, and I don’t know that I want it interrupted.”

“Well, you can go back to the quiet life, can’t you?” asked Mizuki. “Alfric will want to go through dungeons as quickly as we can, he seems like the sort, but if we did, say, one every two weeks, that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

“I suppose not,” said Verity. She smiled a bit. “I’m going to need to practice some of the group things. There are special elements only available to parties.”

“I think we all have some work and training to do,” said Mizuki, nodding. “There’s something in the interference pattern between you and Hannah that I know I can do more with.”

“For bards, there’s a progression technique,” said Verity. “Where you can strengthen someone with every minute that you can hold the song. But of course it gets harder and harder to keep going.” She grinned and leaned back slightly. “I could make you stronger than Alfric, even.” She looked a bit sheepish. “Assuming that I can actually manage to pull it off, that is.”

“Our party composition is really good,” said Mizuki, though this was an informed guess on her part. “I’m surprised and impressed that Alfric was able to put it together, though I imagine some of it was just dumb luck.” She got up from her seat and took her plate with her, sliding it into the chiller, then grabbed Verity’s plate and started on doing dishes. “Would you be a pal and go down into the wine cellar? It’s that door to the left. Something fruity.” She pointed using her shoulder.

Mizuki was almost finished with the dishes by the time Verity came back up. “Did you have trouble?” she asked.

“There were just so many,” said Verity. “I’m not very good at making choices.”

“Peach wine,” said Mizuki, taking the bottle and looking at the label. “Do you drink? Or is that not a thing people do in Dondrian? Otherwise, this bottle is for me. Sorry, I should have brought it up for dinner.”

Verity nodded. “I drink.” She watched as Mizuki filled up a glass. “You’re being very hospitable to someone you’ve only just met.”

“We’re party members,” said Mizuki with a shrug. “It’s been two years since I’ve been in a party with someone, and I think being in a new one is cause for celebration.” She realized this wasn’t quite what she’d said before. She hadn’t mentioned a brief party she’d done with the Pedder boys, before that whole thing had ended in disaster. Perhaps she should have, but it was the kind of thing that seemed like it would break the flow of conversation.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Verity after she’d taken a sip. “I’m being a terrible conversationalist. I completely dropped the thread from earlier. You were explaining about the house and your grandfather. How’d you end up… alone?” She hesitated on the word, like she was trying to think of some better way to say it.

“My mother was born here, fully Kiromon, but not actually a part of Kiromo, if that makes sense,” said Mizuki. “My father was actually a quarter Kiromon himself, though the other way around, someone from the area who visited Kiromo and brought back a baby and a wife, that baby being my other grandfather. There are a fair number of them—us—in the area. Anyway, my Kiromon grandfather eventually moved back to Kiromo and encouraged my mom and dad to do the same, because the situation there had changed, and Pucklechurch was a small town in more or less the middle of nowhere. I was seventeen when they were making plans to move, and… we couldn’t take the house with us, obviously, and most of the stuff was going to be sold off, because there are limits to what you can fit on a leycraft, and I barely spoke Kiro, and had a lot of friends.” She shrugged. “I do sometimes wonder what it would have been like if I had gone with them.”

“So you own this whole house?” asked Verity, raising an eyebrow.

“No, it’s still my grandfather’s, but I’m free to stay in it as long as I like,” said Mizuki. “But if I move out, I’m going to have to sell it, and that money goes to my grandfather, which is just the kind of sneaky thing he does to put pressure on the family. I’m tied to the house, sort of. There are much worse things to be tied to though. Oh, and also a bunch of the land around it, that’s his too, which technically makes it mine, in a sense.”

Verity took a long drink from her glass of wine. For a moment, Mizuki was worried that she would drink wine as fast as she ate dinner, but the bard stopped short, smacking her lips. “This is amazing. How do you have such good wine?”

“My grandfather ran a winery in Liberfell,” Mizuki replied. “He was always experimenting with new things. He called himself a radical in both winemaking and politics.” Mizuki smiled, then took a sip of her own. It was much less fruity than she’d expected. “Did you want to spend the night?”

“Oh,” said Verity, pausing. The wine was coloring her cheeks. “I wouldn’t want to impose.” She looked past the windows, where it was now fully dark.

“It wouldn’t make a huge difference to me one way or another,” said Mizuki. “And the Fig and Gristle is halfway across town. There are lots of bedrooms in this place, and the guest room is already done up. I take overflow from the taverns sometimes, though that usually only happens when there’s something important going on.”

“And that doesn’t frighten you?” asked Verity. “Letting some stranger into your home?”

“I can blast people with fireballs, remember?” asked Mizuki, grinning. “If someone tried to lay a hand on me, or on my valuables, not that I have valuables, they would lose that hand. Besides, the last time, having a stranger in my home was rather the point.”

Verity raised an eyebrow.

“Tall, handsome, muscular,” said Mizuki with a fond sigh. “Sadly, my flirtation wasn’t up to snuff. He was a priest, but it’s not like the Order of Qymmos requires a vow of celibacy.”

Verity blushed. “Well,” she said.

“Speaking of, what are your thoughts on Alfric?” asked Mizuki. She took a drink from her glass of wine and gave Verity her best innocent look.

“Um,” said Verity. She was clearly already feeling the warmth of the wine. “As a, ah, romantic partner?”

Mizuki nodded, still hiding behind her glass of wine.

“He’s got a handsome way about him,” said Verity. She seemed hesitant. “A kind of… toughness, I suppose, a solidity. But he seems like the sort of man who goes about everything with a rigid plan, and I can’t see myself working with someone like that. Certainly not romantically, but perhaps not in any other way either.”

“Like dating someone who thinks of kissing as eighteen steps,” laughed Mizuki. “I can see that.”

“Nothing against him,” said Verity.

“No, of course not,” said Mizuki. “He’s just… a brick. The world needs bricks. Bricks are great. We use them to build houses. But a brick is never going to court anyone, and you don’t dream of kissing a brick.” Mizuki had considered it, with Alfric, until it became clear that he only wanted her for her fireballs. Their shared breakfast had convinced her that romance and flirtation were the furthest things from his mind, which was no great shame.

“Again, no offense to him,” said Verity.

“No,” said Mizuki. “Unless he takes offense to being called a brick.”

Verity giggled. “And I might do another dungeon. We’ll see. If he knew me, he’d have tried to tempt me with magic items. If I could get a lute that was like the bow Isra got today, well, there’s a lot I would brave to make that happen. An entad, something that was mine rather than on loan or bought by my parents, something that didn’t have a weight of obligation.” She took a second long swallow of wine, draining the glass, and Mizuki filled it up again, though only halfway. They were large glasses, and she wasn’t sure Verity realized that. “You?”

“What kind of magic would I want?” asked Mizuki. She thought for a moment. “Well, I already got the spoon, so I think I’m good to go.” She had used it to stir the gravy, then again to eat her meal, playing with it.

Verity laughed, but it was a bit forced, and the two of them were silent for a bit. When the conversation returned, it was missing some of the life it’d had before. Mizuki felt bad. She had joked instead of giving an honest answer.

“Well,” said Verity, after she’d finished her second glass of wine. “Do you want to show me to my room?”

“Of course,” said Mizuki. She stuck the bottle in the chiller, then quickly rinsed the glasses before showing Verity the way. “After I’d been by myself for a year, I switched to using my parents’ bed, which means that you’ll have my old room.”

There was something crushingly vulnerable about letting Verity into the room. Verity didn’t pass comment on the paintings on the wall, all Mizuki’s amateur work, only flopped onto the bed and let out a deep sigh of satisfaction.

“The bathroom is just down the hall,” said Mizuki. “If you need to take a shower, there are towels there too, and I can loan you clothes, if you’d like, but I doubt I have much that would fit you.” Verity was quite tall, and Mizuki was… ‘short’ wasn’t the word she preferred, but ‘small’ sounded too childish. “Don’t worry about using up the water, the tanks were meant for a pretty large household.”

“A shower sounds like a lot of work,” said Verity, staring at the ceiling. “I ate too much and drank too much.”

“It was only two glasses,” said Mizuki. She was standing in the doorway, looking over Verity, who wasn’t moving from her spread-out position on the bed.

“I have a bad head for drinks,” said Verity. She sat up, propping herself up with her elbows. “Thank you for all this. You really didn’t have to.”

“Oh, I know,” said Mizuki. “But a spinster likes some company every once in a while.”

She almost, almost made a bigger offer, to say that Verity could move in, but Verity flopped back down, and Mizuki came to her senses.

Mizuki went to her own room, which had belonged to her parents until four years ago. She no longer felt self-conscious about sleeping there, but it was a large room and felt somewhat cold with just her in it. She made kissing noises, which sometimes got Tabbins to come, but she wasn’t sure her fat oaf of a cat was even in the house.

“The truth,” Mizuki said to herself as she undressed for the night, “the truth is that magic can’t get me the things that I want and dungeons can’t either. Being alone was fun, but at some point, it stopped being fun. I want a family again.” She said the words at barely more than a whisper, so that Verity wouldn’t be able to hear from next door, but saying it out loud made her feel better, like she was at least being honest with herself.

Chapter 9 — An Unwanted Civics Lesson

Isra ended up renting a room at the Angry Plum, the larger of Pucklechurch’s two taverns, taking a room across from Alfric. She insisted that the materials from the book be taken out and distributed between their two rooms, which took a fair amount of time given how slow the storage book was and how many ordinary books were contained within it. Alfric got to glumly watch, once again, as the book provided descriptions of the books that said nothing about what information they contained. He tried to keep up his well-practiced stoicism, but his eyes went to Isra every once in a while.

On a base level, Alfric understood it. If she didn’t trust him, then she didn’t trust him, and trust had to be earned. But emotionally, it felt like a second punch to the gut to follow up the first. Not only was she going to escort him for what was really just a job for a single person, but she was insisting on making sure he didn’t run off in the night. Obviously if he wasn’t trustworthy, he would just leave, and obviously she had to prevent that, but it still stung, and he wasn’t sure that he’d handled himself as well as possible.

Once the guild message had been completed, he’d stayed up later than he would have liked to admit staring at the ceiling and rehearsing conversations to himself, both things that had already been said and things that he would say the next day.

When he woke up and got dressed, he was surprised to see her outside his door, ready to go. She was wearing different clothes than the day before, brown, but with a crimson head scarf. Her gold piercings had been returned to their places on her face. She moved into his room without a word and began loading the storage book once more. When she finished, she moved to put it in her pack.

“Let me take it,” he said. She raised an eyebrow. “I’m almost certainly stronger than you,” he said, hoping that wasn’t cause for offense. “No sense in you taking the burden.”

“Fine,” she said. Alfric loaded the book up, making sure that it was secure. There was still plenty to carry, mostly those pipes, and they split the load, with him taking more.

“Are we ready to go?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Alfric. “No, I need to fill my waterskin, but yes, after that.” He’d decided on taking his sword but leaving behind most of his armor, including his shield, which Hannah had mostly repaired the day before. The load would be heavy enough without adding more.

They set off down the road together. It was six miles east to the hex border, which would be marked with white pillars, and then once they had warped, there were another six miles to go to the next hex border, and finally, they would arrive in Tarchwood with a second warp. It would have gone faster if Alfric had been traveling by himself, thanks to his stride-lengthening boots, but he wasn’t terribly concerned about the time, and he hoped that he could make an impact on Isra, who seemed to be the second-most-capable warrior of the group. Besides, there was a lot to carry.

“I apologize for my reaction yesterday,” he said once they were past the last of the houses. “I understand that it’s hard to trust people, especially people you’ve just met, and I may have overreacted a bit. I think once we get to know each other, you’ll understand where I’m coming from and how much honor and truth mean to me.”

Isra took a long time to respond. Her face was impassive. “I’ve been stolen from before.”

“So have I,” he said with a nod. “It’s a horrible feeling, knowing that something that was yours is gone.”

Sometimes a conversation was like an akshi match, topics lobbed back and forth as quick as could be, but Isra seemed to take things like they were one of those western games played on boards with long pauses between any movement of the pieces.

“What was stolen from you?” she asked, after some more time had passed.

“Oh,” said Alfric. He hadn’t quite been ready for that question, only trying to sympathize with her. “I had been planning on being a dungeoneer since I was old enough to know what a dungeon was. I studied, endlessly, joined the Junior League, got training from experts… It was my life’s goal. I mapped out a path through dungeons as best I could, a route that would take the optimal party to heights that hadn’t been seen in decades. I made connections with other people in the Junior League, trained with them, planned with them, shared my knowledge and designs. And then, at the last minute, someone moved in to take my place on the team that I’d put together. They had all my work, all my planning, and I was left in the lurch.” He felt that familiar sour feeling in his gut. “It’s been a year since that happened. I was seventeen then, ready to be authorized to go out, only waiting on our wizard to be old enough. For a while I scrambled to find someone who would take me, but everyone in the Junior League had partied up ages ago.” And there were rumors swirling, which surely must have been part of it. “I tried going younger, to find a workable party two or three years below me, but it was awkward, and there were false starts.” Failures, though he didn’t like the word. “Everyone thought there must be something wrong with me, that there was a reason that I hadn’t been able to find anyone.” He shook his head. “All that work was taken from me. They copied my journal and used it for their own. And it worked. They’re all far ahead of me, not as far as they’d have been if I had been the one to lead the charge, but far enough that they’re getting plaudits.”

He snuck a look at Isra, who had been silent through all this. Her face was impassive.

“If I’ve been trying to rush things, this is why,” said Alfric. “I’m trying to make up for lost time.” Again, there were what might later be seen as lies of omission. He wondered whether she would ask what had taken so long, why an entire year had passed without him being able to gain traction, and he would have to admit to failed parties or perhaps use the excuse of the target on his back or his personal politics. All that, he was willing to speak freely about.

Isra was still silent, and he gave her some time to process or think while they walked. It was a story that he would share with the others, when the time was right, but it was entirely possible that he should share the other piece of it, the thing lurking in the background that he didn’t want to mention. He would have to, eventually, but he was hoping that it could wait until after their second dungeon.

“My father died when I was thirteen,” said Isra. “A friend of his stole almost everything of value from our cabin.”

“Oh,” said Alfric. “Oh, I’m so sorry, that must have been horrible.” He had the familiar feeling of shame because his problems were so much smaller and more pathetic. He had a good life, he knew that. He had good parents, his health, access to money, all kinds of advantages. “And your mother—”

“Died in childbirth,” said Isra. “It was just me and my father. I’ve been alone since his death.”

“Sorry,” Alfric said again, as if an apology would do anything. “All alone? At thirteen?”

Isra nodded.

“How did you,” he started. “How did you survive?”

“My father taught me,” she said. “Trapping, hunting, making fires, getting through the winters. How to make and string a bow. How to preserve food. How to hide.”

“And you’ve just been doing that for the last five years?” he asked.

Isra looked at him, almost glaring. “How did you know how old I was?” she asked.

“The censusmaster,” he said, feeling slightly surprised. “That was how I knew about you in the first place.”

“Oh,” she replied, frowning. “What else do you know?”

“Nothing much,” he replied. “Name, age, gender, occupation, residency status, elevation, eye color, skin color, and hair color are the main things. The censusmaster can give weight and height, but I didn’t ask about those. Guild status, which I did ask about.”

“Occupation?” she asked, still frowning. He was tempted to ask how she didn’t know any of this, but if she’d been living in the woods by herself for the last five years with both her parents dead, it was small wonder. He wondered whether she’d attended the small schools they had in a hex like Pucklechurch and decided she probably hadn’t.

“A lot of what the censusmaster knows is an approximation,” said Alfric. “The Editors—do you know about the Editors?”

Isra frowned. “Vaguely.”

“Well, the Editors are a council of people who are, basically, in charge of the shape of the world,” he said. “They’re not the ones who make the changes, but they’re the ones who decide what changes need to be made. A lot of what the Editors have focused on in the past three hundred years is legibility and information.” He tried to organize his thoughts. “The censusmasters have only been around for the last two hundred years, and some of the information structures put into place from earlier are, uh.” He stopped. “Is this too much for you?”

“I just want to know what he says about me,” she said.

“He?” asked Alfric. “Oh, the censusmaster. She’s a woman. Well, it’s not really what she says, because the information comes to her from a construct that was created by the Editors about a thousand years ago. The construct thinks, though that’s not the right word, that you’re a ranger.”

“A ranger,” she said, as if tasting the word. “I suppose.”

“It’s not a very good system,” said Alfric. “The categorization system predates the censusmasters and hasn’t been updated in a thousand years, so you get weird things like ectad engineers being labeled as cobblers. Unfortunately, the category system is kind of broken and apparently hard to fix, so everyone just kind of lives with it.” There were many things that were broken and hard to fix, which greatly informed the policy of the modern Editors, which largely involved getting it right the first time and future-proofing as much as possible.

“How do you know so much?” asked Isra.

“Oh,” said Alfric. “Well, no offense to Pucklechurch, but I was raised in Dondrian, which has a good education system, even if your family can’t send you to a private school or hire tutors. My parents could afford both of those. All of this kind of thing was covered in our civics class, because the census stuff is a basic part of governance.” He hesitated. “If you want, I can give you a quick lesson. It’s good stuff to know.”

Isra nodded. “They don’t know where I live, though.”

“Er,” said Alfric. “Well, there are seven positions of civic power within a hex, and the censusmaster only knows who lives in or is visiting the hex, not where they are. The structuralist knows where all the buildings are, so if you live in a building, and the censusmaster and the structuralist talk to each other, they might be able to figure out by process of elimination where you are. I don’t know if they’ve done that.” He stopped himself before saying that they should do that.

“Censusmaster, beastmaster, structuralist, cloudmaster, plantmaster,” said Isra. “What are the others?”

“Hexmaster and collector,” said Alfric. “Arguably the two most important.” He hesitated again, unsure of how much to add. “The hexmaster is elected by everyone who has occupancy, and the collector is in charge of information related to aether, mostly as an early-warning role.”

They walked in silence for a bit after that, and Alfric resisted the urge to speak more. He had a bad habit of explaining things to people that they didn’t care to know, and he’d been working hard to curb it. If Isra was ignorant of even the basics of governance and civics, possibly everything, then that might be a problem, but not all that much of one. It was a mark of failure on the part of Pucklechurch that a child had been left out in the woods to raise herself, but that was neither here nor there.

“The beastmaster spoke to me,” said Isra. “She said I was taking too much. She can track the animals through magic?”

“Yes,” said Alfric. “Animals are categorized and tracked. In the city, it’s mostly used to make sure that people aren’t bringing in the wrong sorts of animals, fighting them, things like that. I’m not too sure about in more rural areas.”

“The world is so… ordered,” said Isra. That, Alfric could agree on and had said many times. He was just about to enthusiastically share her unease when she asked a question. “It’s the same in every hex?”

“There are a few that are unsettled,” said Alfric. “It takes, I think, about twenty people to get a vote going, and once that happens, the positions are filled by the hexmaster, who’s usually also a mayor, by tradition.” He wondered whether she had ever gone through a vote before. “But in those cases, it’s just a matter of knowing things. They don’t really have any power to do anything, and a different group could move in pretty quickly to take the position, if they wanted to.” He shrugged. “We’ll be passing through one of those small hexes soon. Not small in size, they’re all the same size.” He had no idea whether that needed to be said. “But probably not more than a hundred people there.”

Alfric had come in from the west, and they were now going east, down a path he hadn’t seen before. He was enjoying the change in scenery, which was largely woodlands instead of farms. The land wasn’t particularly suited to agriculture, the rough terrain broken up by large slabs of rock sticking up from the ground. The path was in good repair though, which he couldn’t say about all of the hexes he’d passed through on his way to Pucklechurch from the fortuitously timed portal. It was pretty common for a hex to have six roads going directly to the hex borders, though it took a fair bit of labor, and local geography sometimes stymied these efforts.

They soon reached one of those places where the geography was definitely not ideal, a steep hill where the road became a series of switchbacks that carefully navigated the outcroppings of rock. In a few places there were short wooden bridges and embankments holding back trees and dirt. The whole thing was in good repair, but it had a rustic quality to it that Alfric still found somewhat unsettling. Something like this in any of the city hexes would be solid stonework, and if it was a road that was going to the hex boundary, it was much more likely that the city would just make a tunnel straight through the rock.

By the time they reached the summit, Alfric was slightly out of breath, though to his surprise, Isra didn’t seem to be affected all that much by the climb. She was sweating slightly but doing much better than he was. Granted, she had less weighing her down, but he was still impressed. He stood for a moment, letting the cool air from the top of the hill wash over him. Looking back, Pucklechurch was just barely visible, mostly in the form of a swatch of farmland and the temple as the only building that stood out from the mess of white rectangles and gray slate roofs.

When Alfric turned back toward the path, he realized that the white pillars that marked the hex boundary were right there, on top of the hill. He groaned in disappointment.

“Problem?” asked Isra, furrowing her brow and trying to see what he’d seen.

“We’re at the hex boundary,” he said, gesturing at the pillars. “That means that when we come back, we’re going to have to make that long hike again from the opposite direction. If the boundary were further away, then we could warp before we came near the big hill.”

“Ah,” she said. “That’s a problem for tomorrow though.” She went ahead, walking quickly, and passed through the pillars. She was just about to start on the spell when Alfric called to her.

“Wait!” he said. She stopped, giving him a raised eyebrow. “You need to go further.”

“Further?” she asked, looking at the white pillars. She was past them, but only by about five feet.

“Thirty feet,” he said. “That’s protocol. The pillars aren’t always perfect, and I doubt you want to walk those six miles over again. I’ve had it happen to me once, and once was enough.”

Isra nodded and then moved, and Alfric walked toward her, reaching her just as she vanished. He shook his head and performed the spell himself, using familiar motions that he’d used dozens of times through the past few weeks on his way to Pucklechurch.

The transition was instant, and the design of the warp point was quite similar to that of Pucklechurch, with pillars supporting a roof above an open area. He stepped to the side right away, over to where Isra was standing.

“I was worried that you would leave me,” she said.

“Leave you?” asked Alfric.

“You could have gone back to Pucklechurch,” she said. “All you needed to do was to go back to the other side of the boundary.”

“Oh, that’s devious,” said Alfric. “The thought didn’t even cross my mind.” He paused. “Was that a test?”

“No,” said Isra. “I didn’t think about it until I was through.”

“Well, we’re here,” said Alfric, looking around.

The town was much smaller than Pucklechurch, barely more than a collection of houses. From the records Alfric had looked at, it had barely more than a hundred people. There were only three stores, though a few of the houses had workshops attached that might serve as a place of business. There was farmland, but largely just for self-sufficiency. It was somewhat safe to say that without hexilization and the warp, there might not have been a town at all, and in the days before waterstones, they’d have built much closer to the local water source. It was the kind of thing that had fascinated him as a child, wondering how it was that people lived in rural places like this, so far from all the goods and services he was used to.

“Let’s keep going,” said Isra after she’d taken her own look around.

“Of course,” Alfric said, nodding.

They got a few looks as they went through the small town, but no one spoke to them. It was obvious they were just passing through, and Alfric supposed that this was at least a daily occurrence, especially because this was the easiest path between Tarchwood and Pucklechurch.

“I’ve only left the hex twice before,” said Isra. She was looking around more, now that they were somewhere new. The roads were in much worse condition, more trails than proper roads, the kind that a wagon could get through with some difficulty, risking getting stuck in the mud if it rained. From the town, Alfric hadn’t even been sure that there were roads in all six directions.

“I rarely left Dondrian,” said Alfric. “Why twice?”

“Both times by accident,” said Isra. “I crossed the border without knowing it.”

“And the warp sent you to the center of some other hex,” said Alfric. “That’s always a painful experience, especially if you don’t know quite where you’ve ended up. Adding an extra six miles, at least, when you’ve had a long day or thought you were getting an early start on things, can be awful.”

Isra nodded. “I used to go into Pucklechurch with my father. The first time, I hadn’t known that the spell could send you anywhere else.”

“Ouch,” said Alfric. “But you made your way back?”

Isra nodded. “Obviously.”

“But I mean,” said Alfric, “being in a strange place, not knowing what had happened, that must have been scary.”

“It was,” said Isra.

They said nothing more for the next two miles. At various points, Alfric thought of something to say, and then he would look at Isra, and the thought would die on his lips. He had, in his time in the Junior League, met a number of people who were tightly wound and cold as ice, but Isra seemed to be in a league of her own so far as that was concerned. He needed to talk to her, to convince her that being in the party was in her best interests, but he had no idea how to do that. She was an orphan. Shouldn’t she want friends? Wasn’t that, in part, what a party was? Alfric had heard of parties where everyone was only cordial with each other, and of course he’d had many stories about interpersonal drama within a party, but it seemed to him that your party would, inevitably, become your friends. Or at least, he’d thought that before he’d been abandoned and never really reflected on it afterward.

“Tarchwood is larger,” said Alfric. “I’ve never been, but it has a number of shops that we’ll want to bring what we have to. We’ll see if we can sell the books as they are, but if not, then they can be bleached or have the ink removed, and we can sell them blank. Aside from that, we’ll also need to find an entad shop, which there are two of. I don’t think we’ll get much from what we have, but it’s part of due diligence.”

“Okay,” said Isra.

They went another five minutes. The silence was agonizing. He was starting to think that perhaps Isra just didn’t know how conversations were supposed to go, or at least not the kind of frippery that you were meant to fill the air with when you were walking with someone.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Know what?” asked Alfric.

“What’s in Tarchwood,” replied Isra.

“Oh,” replied Alfric. “Um, more civics stuff. A hex under the command of a hexmaster can pledge information to a province, which is a collection of hexes, and provinces have their own people and rules and stuff.” He hesitated, feeling foolish for what he felt compelled to say next. “There are also collections of provinces, which is a nation. We’re in the nation of Interim.”

“That, I knew,” replied Isra.

“All right,” said Alfric. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, hexmasters can pledge information to a province, and the province pledges to the nation. The nation, through the mechanism of the prime minister, can appoint someone to administer, usually sent from the seat of power, in this case Dondrian, and then they send information back along the national backbone to be cataloged.”

“But how do you know?” asked Isra.

“There are detailed maps available for the public to view,” said Alfric.

“And you viewed them,” said Isra. “And you remembered everything about them.”

“Well, yes,” said Alfric. “Not entirely, because Interim is one of the largest nations in the world, almost thirty thousand hexes not including all the oceanic territory, but I tried my best to remember everything about this general area.”

“Mmm,” said Isra.

“Did you want another civics lesson?” asked Alfric.

“No,” said Isra. “One a day is fine.”

Alfric couldn’t tell whether that was a joke or not.

Their long silence resumed.

“Say,” said Alfric. “Where are you from?”

“Not far from Pucklechurch,” replied Isra.

“I mean, where were you born?” he asked.

“Not far from Pucklechurch,” Isra replied a second time.

“Oh,” said Alfric. “I just meant… you have a light accent. And we don’t get many people with our color of skin in these parts.” His own skin was a shade darker than hers.

“My mother and father were from Tarbin,” said Isra. “They moved before I was born.”

“Tarbin,” said Alfric, nodding. “My own family is from North Tarbin, though we crossed the sea five hundred years ago.” There were relatively few nations left in the world, but North Tarbin had been holding on for a long time, and it was Tarbin they were holding off against.

“My father taught me about Tarbin, but that was years ago,” said Isra. “I haven’t spoken the language since he passed.”

Alfric didn’t speak any of the languages of North Tarbin. It was a point of pride among his family that they were as Inter as they came.

The silence descended again, this time like a thick and suffocating cloud, but as a small mercy, it wasn’t too long until they saw the hex boundary, and then Alfric could pretend that they weren’t talking because they were focused on getting there. If it were anyone else, Alfric would have filled the air with unimportant thoughts about Tarchwood.

The warp point at Tarchwood was larger than the one at Pucklechurch. It was fully enclosed, and it had an attendant, though she was sitting slumped in a chair when they entered and only reluctantly got up from her seat to usher them to the side. Alfric nonetheless thanked her and offered her a tip, but she didn’t seem to understand, and he sheepishly stuck the ring back in his pocket.

Tarchwood was built on the edge of one of the huge Proten Lakes, and the hex had ended up so that it was a short walk to the city proper, which had mostly clumped up by the lakeshore. There were a few taller buildings, though of course nothing like the enormous city of Dondrian or even a more residential area of Dondrian. Here, finally, there were people, lots of them, and though they didn’t have quite the numbers or variety that Alfric was used to, it was something that came close to home.

Isra moved at the same pace she’d used on the roads, but there was something wary and tentative in her movements, to say nothing of her face. Alfric thought she had the look of someone trying very hard to fit in and not show fear.

“I’ll take point,” he said. “I know the names of the shops and how to navigate a city.”

Isra nodded and seemed somewhat reassured that the only thing that would be asked of her would be to make sure he didn’t steal anything. He would have to be a fool to do that though, given what he knew her bow was capable of.

Tarchwood had more wooden structures than Alfric was used to and more than had been used in Pucklechurch. Dondrian had a fire some five hundred years prior, and wooden structures had been outlawed. Looking at the buildings, he couldn’t help but think about that and see the three- or four-story buildings as tinderboxes. Putting out fires had become a lot easier since that time, thanks to advances in both magic and coordination, but Alfric had always been more afraid of fire than other people seemed to be. Fires could also, of course, be undone, but Alfric found little comfort in that.

Not that there seemed to be much risk. It was a somewhat wet day, and the air was damp against his skin, as though it had just finished raining moments ago.

“Here, I think this is a likely place,” said Alfric when they came to a small shop. The sign professed that the store had many things, among them novelties and henlings. “We’ll see what we can get for what we have.”

The owner of the shop was a tall man with large ears who eyed them as they came in, particularly Alfric. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

“We’re dungeoneers looking to make a sale,” said Alfric. “We have a large number of books and hope to sell them as a lot.”

“And the contents?” asked the big-eared man. He was looking back and forth between the two of them.

Alfric shrugged. “We don’t know. From what I saw, it seems to be a mix, but I’m not sure.”

The big-eared man sighed. “Then you’re just starting out?”

“Yes,” said Alfric, frowning. “Sorry if there’s something I’m missing here.”

“How many do you have?” he asked.

“Six hundred,” Alfric replied.

“All right,” nodded the shopkeeper. He held out a hand. “Mergan,” he said. Alfric might have guessed that: the sign outside had said ‘Mergan’s Emporium’.

“Alfric,” Alfric replied. He nodded to Isra. “This is Isra.”

“Where is your party stationed out of?” asked Mergan.

“Pucklechurch, for now,” said Alfric.

Mergan nodded. “So there’s a good chance that you’ll be dealing with me on a somewhat regular basis, unless you end up more west. Well, the thing you need to know about books is that their worth depends largely on what’s inside them. There are entads for translation, and I have one, but the market is pretty small, mostly made up of specialists and hobbyists. Six hundred books might make you a fortune, if they’re the right ones, or they might only be good for washing the pages clean and writing something else there. With six hundred, that would still make you a good amount, but there’s no one in Tarchwood who does that work, which means that if I bought them, I would have to ship them off to somewhere else. Beyond that, I’d be the one taking a risk, so your price would be quite a bit lower. Now, I’m always looking for up-and-comers, and I hope we can have a relationship of some kind. I’m also hoping that if I do right by you, you do right by me. If we don’t get along, there’s another shop in Tarchwood that deals with dungeon things, though they’re more on the entad side, or you could go the other way, to Liberfell, which has its own buyers. All right?”

Alfric nodded. He appreciated the forthright information. “I’m more used to how things are done in Dondrian,” he said. “So any guidance you can give would be more than welcome.” From experience, he knew that some people would sit through a talk like that trying to keep themselves from sighing with boredom, but he had always been an eager sponge, appreciative of others sharing what they knew.

“Dondrian,” said Mergan, shaking his head. “I’d thought you might, given your manner and the darkness of your skin.” It was common there, a third of the population, almost all of them originally from North Tarbin a long time ago. Mergan glanced at Isra. “The both of you? Siblings?”

Alfric looked at Isra. His skin was darker than hers and their features quite distinct, but he could see how someone might think that. Most of the people in this particular province of Interim were light-skinned, with a somewhat sizable contingent from Kiromo, and to them, he and Isra might have seemed similar.

“No,” said Isra. She almost seemed like she would leave it at that. “My parents immigrated from Tarbin, and I was born near Pucklechurch.”

“Ah,” replied Mergan. “Well, I’ll welcome you all the same. Good to have a local, to keep the city folk in line. You can feel free to look around while we talk about business. It’s mostly henlings and some dungeon art.” Isra stayed where she was while Mergan turned back to Alfric. “The books, then?”

Alfric pulled out the storage book and began removing the mundane books from it, stacking them up on the counter one by one. At first, Mergan just watched, but as it became clear just how long this process was going to take, he began looking through the books. He checked the spines first, then leafed through, though Alfric had no idea what he might be looking for. Once a hundred books had been removed, set into stacks of ten, Mergan used a key to open a small box on the counter and pulled out a monocle with a green lens, which he used to look at the books, largely focusing on their spines.

“About half of these are recipe books,” said Mergan. “Those are only worth the paper and the binding, raw material for some kind of magic or another. The recipes have measurements no one’s ever heard of, ingredients that might mean anything, all kinds of problems that make them a curiosity and nothing more. I think I’ve sold two over twenty years running this place.”

“That’s a shame,” said Alfric, who was continuing to pull out more books. He was going to be happy to see the end of this particular transaction. If the books turned out not to be worth much, there was little he could do about it.

“It’s the same for instruction books, manuals, all kinds of things,” said Mergan. “Gardening books for fruits and flowers that don’t exist, using tools that you’d have to make special, from someone who’s got different ideas about what soil is like, that kind of thing. Not all entirely worthless, but close to it, and hard to find a buyer.”

“What about the rest?” asked Alfric.

“Well, I can tell you what I’m looking for,” said Mergan as he flipped through more of them. “I’m looking for stories, I’m looking for books with illustrations, I’m looking for sciences, I’m looking for magic. The two biggest markets for dungeon books are, broadly, entertainment and education.” He stopped in the middle of flipping through one particular book and gave it a closer look, then set it over to one side. “The problem here is that I’m both the appraiser and the buyer, which isn’t a good situation for you, and I don’t want to put you at a disadvantage, because as I’ve said, I like up-and-comers bringing their finds to me. Now, you’ve got two options. The first is that you just trust that I’m a good guy, which I don’t think I’d do, if I were you. You’d appraise them yourselves, obviously, but respectfully, you have no idea. The second option is that you bring someone in to take a look.” He had been looking through the books as he talked and setting aside perhaps one in every twenty of them. “Now, options are limited in Tarchwood, and so far as I know, there are only two or three people who’d be qualified to check my estimations. The entad shop, that’s run by a husband-and-wife couple, but they trade in henlings and such too. The wife, that’s Eddel, she’s got a head for numbers, and I’m sure she’d be willing to take a look and maybe give you a counteroffer, if you want to fetch her.”

Alfric nodded. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll go get her,” he said.

“Of course,” said Mergan.

“I’ll stay with the books,” said Isra. There was distrust in her voice, and Alfric didn’t like that, not when it was so obvious. They had just met this man, Mergan, but from what he knew of small towns, the proprietors had too much to risk if they tried to swindle or cheat someone.

He took off, hoping that she would be okay on her own.

Chapter 10 — Second Breakfast

After finishing the dungeon, Hannah was left feeling a bit rootless. She hadn’t quit the temple, because she’d said that she would still help out from time to time when the dungeons weren’t calling, and Lemmel, the older cleric of the Church of Symmetry, had graciously allowed her to keep her room until she found some other lodging. So after an exciting time in a dungeon with a promising party, she found herself right back where she’d started the day before. There was nothing to show for the adventure, because she was waiting on Alfric to sell it all, and she hadn’t gotten an entad out of the dungeon, which was a bit of a disappointment. It would be another six days before the party channel opened up, so she couldn’t even talk to the others, not without physically tracking them down, and both Alfric and Isra would be gone for at least a day, maybe two. The one thing she had, the sole proof that she’d been in that dungeon, was the key with a raccoon on it, but that could hold her attention for only so long.

“Alfric seems a good sort,” she said to Lemmel. “Hardheaded, but that’s what you need sometimes, and a bit of a goof when it comes to people, or at least these people, ay? Too rigid, is my thinkin’, where what he should be is generous and friendly. My opinion, for what it’s worth, is if you treat people like friends, then friends is what they’ll end up bein’. What he shoulda done, when we finished, was to take us to the tavern and buy a round of drinks, and I know you’re thinkin’ that if I thought that was somethin’ that needed doin’, it’s somethin’ I shoulda done myself, but a party can’t have two leaders, ay, the math doesn’t work, and I never fancied leadin’ anyway. I just wish that he were better at it.”

“I hope that it works out for you,” said Lemmel, which was the kind of empty-headed nothing he was always saying. It was kind and polite, but it wasn’t helpful, if it was meant to be. Words always seemed to come out of his head like mud from a pipe, which wasn’t to say that he was a bad sort, just that he was quite dull.

“There was a sermon I was plannin’, which I guess I won’t do now, about reflection, ay?” asked Hannah. “There’s a line in the Book of Garam Ashar, ‘We find ourselves reflected in others, and reflect them into ourselves’, section two, verse seven. My thinkin’ is that how we should look at people, the best way of it, is to stick ourselves in their shoes to see how things would look from their perspective, and then stick them in our shoes to see how they’d do things different, ay? So I was thinkin’ on Alfric and what it might be like if we reflected into each other’s shoes, and I think I’d do a better job than he’s done so far, no offense to him, because I have a better handle on what the others want, what helps keep a party together, ay?”

“Perhaps,” nodded Lemmel.

“I think most people don’t really like being solitary,” said Hannah. “From the Book of Garam Ashar, ‘A person has only one symmetry of his own, the left reflecting the right, which leaves asymmetry of the front and back that can only be rectified by the addition of others’, section one, verse three. Alfric selected solitary people, picked those not in a party and young enough that we might be without connections, so my thinkin’ is that the best thing to bind us together as a party is the fact that mostly we don’t want to be alone. Bein’ without a party can be rough in a lot of ways, not havin’ someone to talk to whenever you want, bein’ cut out of conversations, things like that. So if I were him, I’d be tryin’ to knit us together without even talkin’ about the dungeons at all, tryin’ to make sure that we all knew we could rely on each other, that we would be friends and support each other more than just in the dungeons. Now, I can’t speak for them, and can barely speak about them, but Verity seems like she came here runnin’ from somethin’, same as Alfric. Mizuki and Isra, if I had to say, were both abandoned, which is altogether a different sort of thing, and that’s just me sayin’ that, but it’s probably close to the truth. I’ve seen Isra a few times, healed her leg once, and when she comes into market, she’s always alone. The leg injury? My guess is if she had someone, they’d have come with her, though I might be wrong. And Mizuki’s not so much abandoned, I s’pose, since she chose to stay behind, but I have to imagine it gets lonely in that big house. She’s friendly, but I don’t know that she has many friends.”

“You should learn more about them before judging,” said Lemmel.

“Oh, ay,” said Hannah. “I mean, of course, I’m just talkin’ first impressions and that, or what I know from what I’ve heard. Might be I’m wrong about the lot of them, or more likely, it’s one or two I’m a little off on. I have half a mind to go bother the censusmaster and see what I can find about the four of them, just to have some background, but some people take it the wrong way, even if it’s all just freely there.” She clucked her tongue. “But if I don’t go see the censusmaster, then that means I’m just sittin’ here on my hands, doin’ as much as a bear in winter.” She huffed a sigh and looked at Lemmel expectantly. “So what is there for me to be doin’?”

“Nothing,” he replied. “Same as when you asked an hour ago. If you want my advice, we have an hour until bed. Take the time to get yourself cleaned up and ready to rest. Were you planning to follow Alfric and Isra?”

“I was, hopin’ to mediate in case he puts his foot in his mouth or she decides she’s better off without us, but the more I think about it, the more I figure I need to trust him,” said Hannah. “If they can’t spend a day or two together without blowin’ up, then the whole thing is doomed, and maybe they’ll get to know each other on their own terms, for in the book of Garam Ashar it is said, ‘The simplest reflection is the one that is made by nature, not through the hands of man’, section one, verse eight.” Lemmel knew the book backward and forward, same as Hannah, but it was habit for both of them to give section and verse, especially when in the church. “So I was thinkin’ that tomorrow mornin’ I would stop by to see Mizuki and her house and maybe help her with cleanin’ it up, because it looked like it was in poor shape last time I passed by, and of course it would all be just to get us talkin’. She’s a sorc, so she can use some of what I put off, and maybe we can have a chat about that. At some point I’ll ask her if I can bed down in her house, but I don’t need to be told it’s a bit soon for that.”

“I would temper your expectations,” said Lemmel. “You have a way of coming on strong.”

“People like it,” said Hannah. “And anyway, I said I would wait, didn’t I?” Lemmel nodded. “I’m off to take a bath. Thank you again for lettin’ me stay, you have my word I’ll help when it’s needed, but in my time here so far it’s felt slow as sap.”

“I’ve told you before that it’s more about the community than the healing,” said Lemmel.

“And I listened, truly, but the point about slowness stands, I think you’ll agree,” she replied. She got up from her seat and went into the back room of the temple, which had the bathroom the two of them shared, a living space that they sometimes brought people into, their small bedrooms, and a kitchenette. It was somewhat cramped, but much more than a cleric normally got in a place like Pucklechurch.

Perhaps it was because she’d grown up in a big family, but the bathroom had always been her favorite place in almost any house. The old place, back in Cairbre, had a small tank, and they had to ration water, either sharing baths when she was little or sticking to short showers when she was older.

Sharing a bathroom with just one other person was, in comparison, a delight. The temple had two large tanks, one for hot water and the other for cold, put in place before it became clear that the temple was never going to have the twelve full-time clerics as originally planned. Even two clerics in the Church of Symmetry was one and a half clerics too many, but they’d been hoping that Hannah would replace Lemmel. She was the fourth in six years, and there would be a fifth, which she knew was a disappointment to the church, but one she was comfortable with.

Hannah ran the water through both pipes, mixing the hot and cold, and undressed as she allowed the bathtub to fill up to a line she’d marked out early on in her time at Pucklechurch. It was just the right point so that once she was in, the bathtub would be as full as it could be without running the risk of overflowing. She added in a sachet, one of several she kept in a small tin, this one rosemary and lavender. She’d often joked that she liked baths because she was making a tea of herself.

While bath time was Hannah’s most treasured of times, on this particular occasion, it wasn’t doing much to stop her mind from racing. Some of it was undeniably the excitement of the dungeon, not just the battles, but the newness and mystery of it, the entads, the henlings, the things to see and touch. The key was a good memento, but Hannah found herself wishing that she had taken more. Mostly, she wished that the not-dragon hadn’t destroyed so much of the room in the battle, because there were things of glass and wood that had been completely smashed as it spun and thrashed.

Her mind went to her new party members and what she knew about them, which admittedly wasn’t much. She found herself daydreaming about what the future might be like, how they would all fit with each other in six months’ time, all living together in Mizuki’s large house, eating meals together, and every so often, maybe two or three times a week, going down into the depths of a new dungeon together.

The daydreaming helped to calm her down and get her thoughts in order, and after an hour-long bath, which required several injections of hot water and a bit of draining to compensate, Hannah got out of the tub, brushed her teeth, and went to bed, falling asleep before her brain could perk back up again.

She woke early in the morning, as she usually did, and got dressed in a hurry, trying her best to pick something sensible for a day around the town. It was hard to know when or if they were going to another dungeon, but it certainly wasn’t going to be right away. She picked one of her heavier dresses, dark blue with white embroidery around the bust. She tended to like trousers, most of the time, but she’d found that trousers on a woman sometimes sent the wrong message, especially if you were a cleric of Garos.

Breakfast was a hard-boiled egg from the chiller and a fruit pastry that she kept in a small bag. Hannah’s mother had always made breakfast into a production, but Hannah had never seen the point. Breakfast was a meal to be enjoyed quick and cold.

She walked by Mizuki’s house twice, looking inside to see whether there were signs of life, which required going down the little path to it in a way that felt conspicuous. She didn’t want to knock on the door unless Mizuki was awake, but it was hard to tell, and someone like Mizuki, who didn’t have gainful employment, might wait until the third bell to rise. That left Hannah wandering back and forth, pretending to have business somewhere, which very quickly made her feel foolish. This was a prime example of what made a party channel so valuable, but it would be a while before they had it available to them.

Finally, after hemming and hawing about it, Hannah knocked sharply on the door not too long after first bell. She resolved to not knock too hard, or more than once, just in case Mizuki was sleeping, and if there was no response, she’d go back to the temple to twiddle her thumbs, and that would be that.

Mizuki did come to the door though, eventually. She was looking disheveled and had a robe clutched around her, and when she looked at Hannah, it was as though for the first time.

“Hannah?” she asked as she opened the door. “What is it?”

“Oh, sorry to bother,” said Hannah. “I’d only thought… well, that we’re party members now, and—with how things are, I’m not obliged to work at the temple anymore, so I have my day free, and was wonderin’ if you needed anythin’.”

“No,” said Mizuki, frowning. “But come in, come in, it’s cold out.”

“Well, I don’t particularly think so,” said Hannah. “But my family is from far to the south, ay? It’s the summers here that I can’t handle, those two weeks when it’s so hot that you feel like sittin’ in front of the chiller.”

“Shoes off,” said Mizuki as she disappeared into the house.

Hannah took her boots off, which was a bit of a process, then followed, looking around as she did. She’d seen the house a few times, including the extended morning inspection she’d just done, and it was one of the nicer ones in Pucklechurch, though it was definitely in need of some care. The kitchen was resplendent though, a place of copper pots and thick wooden cutting boards, with a heavy iron stove.

“Do you eat breakfast?” asked Mizuki.

“Already did,” said Hannah. “Egg and a pastry.”

“Pastry?” asked Mizuki, perking up slightly.

“Apricot jam in the middle, egg wash on top,” said Hannah. “I baked them myself, and I can deliver some for you tomorrow, if you’d like.”

“That sounds amazing,” said Mizuki. “My mouth is already watering.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Well, I’m going to make myself breakfast, and it’s about as easy to cook for two as for one, so if you’d like something, now’s the time.”

“What’s on the menu?” asked Hannah.

“Thin-sliced venison, mushrooms, eggs,” said Mizuki. “Maybe some potatoes, if you can handle eating leftovers. Oh, and how do you feel about, um, sobyu? It’s a Kiromo thing. Fermented vegetables?”

“I’ve never heard of it,” said Hannah. “But we have the same thing, fermented vegetables, back in Cairbre, and from the Book of Garam Ashar, section seven, verse six, ‘There are reflections across every society of righteous behavior and cunning intellect’.”

Mizuki blinked. “Do you have the whole book of Garam Ashar memorized?” she asked.

“I’m a cleric,” said Hannah. “And none of the books are very long, a hundred pages at most, ay.” The books discussing and dissecting those hundred pages, however, filled an entire library.

“And did you want food?” asked Mizuki.

“I s’pose I could see fit,” replied Hannah. “I’ll need less than you make for yourself.”

Mizuki unlatched the burners on her stove, then began getting things out before pausing. “Do you think Verity will want some?”

“The bard?” asked Hannah, momentarily bewildered. “Didn’t she say she rises quite late?”

“I suppose,” said Mizuki. “But sleeping in an unfamiliar place, I’d thought maybe she wouldn’t want to.” She had gotten everything ready, it seemed, including a small crock of something that smelled quite intriguing, perhaps the sobyu.

“She slept here last night?” asked Hannah, raising an eyebrow.

Mizuki nodded. “She was just going to come over for a bit, to eat, and then we got to talking. She should be upstairs now, but I guess she might have slipped out in the night.”

“Well,” said Hannah. “It’s very kind of you to offer a bed.” A liaison between the two of them wouldn’t be the strangest thing, though it would be a poor start to the party.

“No kindness at all,” said Mizuki as she added the first things to the pan. “Or not more than I’d hope anyone else would offer. I’ve got beds, people need to sleep.” She looked up. “Do you?”

“Do I?” asked Hannah. “Need a place to sleep?”

Mizuki nodded. “If you’re done at the temple, which you said you were.”

“Well,” said Hannah. “I do need a place to sleep, but we’ve only just met, and I wouldn’t want to—”

“It’s just an offer,” said Mizuki, shrugging. “What do you like to drink? I have all kinds of things that can be steeped in boiling water.”

“There’s a tuber tea I’m fond of, but I’d be surprised if you had it,” said Hannah. “Mint?”

“I’ve got mint,” said Mizuki. Almost everything had been put into the pan, and it was starting to smell good. A kettle joined the pan on another burner. “Now then, you came by to see if I wanted help?”

“But really just to see you,” said Hannah, thankful to feel like she could drop the pretense. “We’re in a party now, and that doesn’t mean too much at the moment, but as time goes on, we’ll be in each other’s lives one way or another, and if we end up travelin’ together, that’s more time to talk to each other. ‘Symmetry is found through close inspection, with precision coming in the examination of details’, so it is said in the Book of Garam Ashar, and I thought that I wanted to get to know you better, and you to know me, so we can find those symmetries, places where we match, or reflect, and have things be a little easier for it. The same goes for the opposite, naturally, the places where we don’t match up well, which you need to know so you can skirt some things that shouldn’t be talked of.”

“Like what?” asked Mizuki. She set a plate in front of Hannah, then sat down with her own.

It seemed to Hannah like it was too much food, but it all looked and smelled delicious. There was more food sitting in the pan, which had been put off to one side, but she didn’t think much of it.

“Well,” said Hannah. “If we’re talkin’ of things that perhaps shouldn’t be talked of—do you have a favorite of the gods?”

“Qymmos or,” Mizuki faltered, “Oeyr, I guess. I know he’s the nemesis of Garos though, so.” She ate a bite of food.

“Oh, it’s not like that,” said Hannah, her own mouth half full of food. “Garos and Oeyr are opposites in many ways, but I think there’s hardly a cleric of Garos that would want Oeyr dead. Oeyr’s necessary, they all are, it’s just a matter of where we put our focus. I think symmetry and order are beautiful, but in the church there’s somethin’ called the Meditation on Dichotomy, and it starts with the first and biggest of them, the separation of man and woman, largely Oeyr’s domain.”

“Huh,” said Mizuki. “I’d kind of thought… Garos has a reputation for…” She waved a hand. “I don’t want to be crude, but I don’t know how to say it.”

“Men laying with men and women with women,” said Hannah, nodding. “It’s one of the old sacred rites, not so common anymore, at least as rites, but the Church of Garos has always been a place for that kind of thing.” She raised an eyebrow. “And did you and Verity…?” Best to be direct about it.

“Did we what?” asked Mizuki. It was still early, and it took her a moment. “Oh, no. No. No no no, it wasn’t…” She paused. “Not that she isn’t pretty, she is, I just… no.”

Hannah was a bit thankful for that, because it was a source of tension the party didn’t need. “And is talkin’ about such things, women with women, somethin’ I should avoid with you? Because if so, that’s fine, I’d just want to know. You’re half Kiromon, and I don’t know what the thinkin’ is there.” No one would bat an eye in Interim, though it was a quite large country.

“I don’t really know,” said Mizuki with a shrug. “I’ve never been, so all I have are stories. I think… there was something my father said, offhand, when he was drunk once, that it was fine for a man to be with a man, but not a woman with a woman? He was drunk though. Personally, I don’t, um—it’s not relevant to my life.”

Hannah nodded, and she was thankful that Mizuki seemed befuddled. Some people cared and thought that it was the ‘business of Garos’, to be confined within the church in one way or another, but it was a minority opinion throughout Inter, typically held by those more skeptical of religion. She’d met a few in the seminary that had come because their families thought that it was a matter of religion, but it was like tall people becoming clerics of Xuphin, or short ones clerics of Kesbin: a poor reason to become a cleric, and likely to result in a poor cleric if they had no real godly fire in them.

“And you care about the things close to you?” she asked.

“Isn’t that how everyone is?” asked Mizuki.

“Oh, not at all,” said Hannah. “Some people care the most about things far away from them.” She took another bite of the fermented vegetables, then the perfect example occurred to her. “Henlings!” she said around the mouth of food. “Some people obsess over them, collect them, things like that, spend their time and effort lookin’ at them, tryin’ to figure them out. Some of these people never stepped foot inside a dungeon. But it’s the same for everythin’ else, isn’t it, kittens and bobbins and what have you, they bring all this into their lives, make it their focus, but it’s not close to them, necessarily. So of course I wouldn’t be surprised if what you care about was far away from you, some distant thing that didn’t touch you personally, ay?” She returned to quickly eating her food. She had a bad habit of talking too much at mealtimes and lagging behind. Mizuki had very little left on her plate.

“Like you with Garos?” asked Mizuki. “Because he’s something you bring into your life, isn’t he?”

“Well,” said Hannah, swallowing a mouthful of venison. “This is amazin’, by the way.”

“Thanks!” said Mizuki, beaming. “The sobyu, yes or no?”

“Yes, I think,” replied Hannah. The taste wasn’t quite reminiscent of a pickled cucumber or the pickled cabbage she was used to, but there was a similarity there.

“In Kiromo they eat it with every meal,” said Mizuki. “I only do that in the winter, when there’s less that’s fresh.”

“Mmm,” said Hannah, gulping down an egg. She took up a cloth napkin and wiped her mouth, trying to remember decorum, which she’d never been too good at. “Well, as I was sayin’, with Garos, it’s not quite the same, is it? Because the nature of symmetry is all around us, isn’t it, and even if you don’t think much about Garos, you can’t escape him, just like you can’t escape Oeyr. All the more in Pucklechurch, where there’s this grand temple that looms over the town.”

“Is that for me?” asked a voice from the doorway into the kitchen. Verity was looking much worse for the wear, with rumpled clothes and disheveled hair. Her eyes were bleary and she blinked slowly, but her attention was fixed on the pan, which had a serving of food still in it, though Mizuki had closed the burner.

“Of course,” said Mizuki. “I didn’t know when you’d be up, but it should still be warm. Hope we didn’t wake you.”

“Mmm,” said Verity. She sat down at the counter, which was slightly crowded with three people. Hannah looked at the straightness of her back and the poise with which she picked up a fork and began eating tiny little bird bites of venison and egg. “Thank you, it’s very gracious of you.”

“Common courtesy,” replied Mizuki with a shrug. “How’d you sleep?”

“Like the dead,” said Verity. “I cannot say enough how much music takes it out of me.”

“Well,” said Hannah, “no cause to be singin’ today, I’d think, or for a few more days after, since it’ll take some time for Alfric and Isra to come back. There’s a question of what we’re doin’ with ourselves until then, I s’pose.”

“I was still planning to go to the Fig and Gristle,” said Verity. “I have a standing offer from Cynthia, and I’d like to keep from paying room and board for as long as possible.”

“Mmm,” said Mizuki. Hannah looked at her. The offer of a room had been made quickly, and Hannah was still mulling it over. She was wondering whether that same offer was going to be tossed to Verity and how many bedrooms this place had.

Verity dabbed at her mouth after another small bite. “And as I’ve said, I’m not entirely sold on dungeoneering.”

Hannah and Mizuki were both silent, but just for a moment, and then they began talking at the same time.

“I don’t think—” began Hannah.

“In terms of—” started Mizuki.

They looked at each other.

“Go ahead,” said Hannah.

“It’s not actually that dangerous,” said Mizuki. She looked at Hannah. “We talked about this last night some, but I think drink affects Verity more than me.”

“I remember,” nodded Verity. “And I said maybe, I recall.”

“There are all sorts of reasons to do it,” said Hannah. “You could get a higher elevation.”

“Frankly, elevation has always been a bit murky to me,” said Verity.

“It’s bunk,” said Mizuki. “Magic items—now, there’s something valuable and hard to get any other way unless you’re willing to shell out a lot of money, which you would also probably have to get by going into dungeons, unless you can score yourself a sweet gig playing music.”

“I probably could,” said Verity. “Though my skill has been rotting away here, and the people I was up against in the conservatory have probably blown past me. Not that my relationship to the profession hasn’t markedly improved.”

“You think elevation isn’t… true?” asked Hannah, looking at Mizuki. She wasn’t sure she could let that pass. “I don’t see how that could be.”

“I mean, it was all made up by the Editors long ago, right?” asked Mizuki. “At some point, hundreds of years ago or whatever, they decided they needed a number for every man, woman, and child on the planet, and they figured out a bunch of complicated rules that no one gets to see.”

“Is that all it is?” asked Verity. “I mean, I knew we had an elevation, but it was never really relevant to my life.”

“It’s a measure of power,” said Hannah. “And the exact metrics are secret, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work.”

“They go up the more dungeons you do,” said Mizuki, frowning at Hannah. “How can you explain that?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Hannah. “Perhaps the people who go into the dungeon grow more powerful more quickly?” She wrinkled her nose. That didn’t seem quite right. The other obvious option was that dungeons changed a person, in either natural or unnatural ways. “Well, they never put too much effort into explainin’ it in the seminary.”

“Because no one knows,” said Mizuki. “But people use it for things anyway. It’s nuts.”

“Anyway,” said Verity, who clearly had no enthusiasm for the conversation.

“Right,” said Mizuki. “Anyway, at least one more dungeon?”

Verity nodded as she chewed, then cleared her mouth before answering. “At least one more. Probably.”

“Wonderful,” said Hannah, with real enthusiasm. “Let’s hope that Alfric is doin’ well with Isra, but I wouldn’t count on it, so we might have to find one of the others. Wouldn’t be bad to know who they were anyway, ay? If Verity’s out, we’d need to bring them in, and better to get them on board before we need them.”

“Others?” asked Verity. She had paused with a forkful of food in mid-air.

“He went to the censusmaster,” said Mizuki. “Found everyone of the right age and elevation and not in a party, and then I’d guess he weeded out people who weren’t going to be suitable. I can’t make any good guesses about who the alternates would be.” She shrugged. “Maybe one of the Pedder boys?” She didn’t seem pleased with that thought.

“Well, either way, better to know who Alfric was thinkin’ of,” said Hannah. “Isra got the bow and seems a bit skittish, not like a rabbit, all afraid of things, but like a cat ready to scratch anyone the least bit threatenin’.”

“She’s got skills,” said Mizuki. “Though I don’t know how much hunting translates into going into dungeons. She certainly seemed to handle herself well.”

“We’ll see if Alfric drives her off,” said Hannah. “And if Verity is out for the third dungeon, then better to have someone lined up anyhow.”

“I didn’t say I was out for the third dungeon,” said Verity. “Just that I wouldn’t be signing up for it right away.”

“Wasn’t that what I said?” asked Hannah. She was feeling some glee at this plan working as well as it had. Alfric probably would have been upfront about things and made a nice and logical case that wouldn’t have moved Verity at all. Hannah was touching something deeper, the fear of missing out, just not being so crude as to say it outright.

“Well, we’ll see when the time comes,” said Verity, setting her fork down. She’d eaten almost everything, even if she’d done it a tiny bit at a time. “For the second dungeon—I had said to Alfric that it was better to practice. Do you think we’ll be doing any of that? I ask because I want to be able to let Cynthia know.”

“We could do some now, if you’d like,” said Hannah. “We’re the three most important, in terms of teamwork, ay?”

“Why?” asked Verity, looking between the two of them.

“Magic,” said Mizuki. “Or, not magic, but the aether. The more I see your spells, the more I know what I can do with them, the better we’ll fare in the dungeons. Or, not spells, but… affections.”

“I don’t mind if you call the works of Garos spells,” said Hannah.

“Okay, good, thanks, because I was definitely going to keep forgetting,” said Mizuki. “To me, anything that affects the aether is a spell.”

“Songs aren’t spells,” said Verity, frowning.

“Well,” said Hannah. “True.”

“Not spells,” said Mizuki. “But they’re constructs that affect the aether, so… from my perspective, spells, yes.”

“Meaning that you can knock them down to make fireballs?” asked Verity.

“That is extraordinarily wrong,” said Mizuki, folding her arms across her chest. “A sorcerer doesn’t knock things down, she uses ambient patterns to create and fuel her own magic, and someone who goes about just willy-nilly knocking down the magic of others doesn’t deserve the name.”

“Sorry,” shrugged Verity. “In the conservatory I was mostly around other bards.”

“Sorcs are the most hated of all magic casters,” said Mizuki. “And it’s entirely because people think that we’re some kind of anti-magic gang that breaks things other people have spent time on.”

“But you can, can’t you?” asked Hannah.

“We can, sure,” said Mizuki.

“I’d have thought people hated warlocks or alienists more,” said Verity, frowning. “Or chrononauts. Maybe you see more people who don’t like sorcerers because…” She trailed off.

“You hear about it more,” said Hannah. “And it happens to you more, and you care about it more. How many times does someone talk down the alienists and it just passes you by?”

“Well,” grumbled Mizuki. “All right, fair, but I don’t want either of you to think of me as a leech or a spell-wrecker, because that’s not what it is.”

“Should we go outside and practice then?” asked Hannah. “If Verity’s not familiar, it might be a good chance for her to see and you to explain.”

“I need a change of clothes,” said Verity, looking down at her rumpled dress.

“Well, go back to the tavern, then come back here?” asked Mizuki. “I own five acres or so behind the house; it’s a good place to spread out.” It was, Hannah knew, her grandfather who owned the land, but the old man had been gone for quite some time, and Mizuki had a loose way of speaking.

“I suppose,” said Verity. She sighed. “All right, but I’m putting limits on how long I go on for. I’d still like to have the energy left to play at the tavern tonight, at least for one set.”

“Of course,” replied Hannah.

Hannah was looking forward to it. Hopefully, they were going to produce something neat. And if things went well, perhaps one or both of them would consent to symmetricalization.

Chapter 11 — Agates Among the Stones

Alfric left and went down the street, finding ‘Sharpe & Eddel’ without too much trouble, and explained the situation to the woman behind the desk. Her shop was much more clean and organized than Mergan’s, with most of the wares inside glass cases. There were three mannequins, two of them with armor and the last wearing miscellaneous items. If they were all entads, Alfric could imagine himself spending his share of whatever he got from the books there.

“‘Counteroffer’,” scoffed Eddel as they walked. She was well dressed, with all kinds of embellishments built into both her vest and dress. Her hair was dark, almost black, but with streaks of gray. “Mergan is too damned scrupulous for his own good, and I wouldn’t mind him making sure things were squared away, but this is the fifth time this month he’s brought me in.”

“And did you counteroffer?” asked Alfric.

“Not once,” Eddel replied. “But I gave my own assessment of what things were worth. Mostly Mergan does it to make himself feel better, especially with the young ones.”

“And you’re still coming with me,” said Alfric.

Eddel waved a hand. “Well, of course, he’s right, you’re juniors, and if we’re lucky, we’ll be seeing a bit of you, if you come here instead of Liberfell. Liberfell is bigger, no doubt, but we’re next to the water, with shipping across the lake and a shorter trip to a major leyline. Without dungeoneers, I’d have no stock, and nothing kills an entad shop faster. Of course, a lot of young dungeoneers flame out early on.” She gave Alfric a look as she hustled along. “You seem like the kind who will stick it out though.”

There was a tightness in Alfric’s chest as he went through into Mergan’s Emporium, worried that somehow things would have deteriorated in his absence, but when he got inside, Isra was laughing. The laughter faltered when Alfric came in, but she made no attempt to hide her smile.

“Are we interrupting something?” asked Eddel. She immediately went to the books and started flipping through them.

“Just a joke,” Mergan said with a smile. “I know a scant amount of Tarbin and three or four jokes. Jokes are the most useful thing you can learn in a language.”

Isra smiled. “It was quite rude.” When she saw Alfric looking at her, she turned away from him and toward some of the cluttered shop’s other goods.

“All the best jokes are,” Mergan replied.

“These are the worthwhile ones?” asked Eddel, pointing at the small stack of books that sat next to the much larger one.

“In my opinion, anyway,” said Mergan. He turned to Alfric. “You’ll have to understand that I don’t have the time or inclination to go through everything with a fine-toothed comb. If that’s a requirement for you, you’re best off going somewhere else. Or, you could look through the books on your own, separate them out, and I could use that to inform my price.”

“We’re looking to sell quickly,” said Alfric. “Besides, I can’t read any of what’s written in the books.”

“You can still tell by looking,” replied Eddel, who was leafing through the small stack. “Sometimes there are one or two pictures, sometimes you can tell from the headings, sometimes just looking at the shape of the paragraphs.” She pointed to one open page. “Punctuation is usually done with small marks, different from the glyphs they use for letters or words, so if you see marks that seem to be annotating something, they can be pretty obvious. Here, you can see that these are probably quotation marks, though I’d be hard-pressed to bet on it.”

“They are,” said Mergan, who had slipped the monocle into his front pocket.

“It lets you make a good guess, anyhow,” said Eddel. She looked at the large stack of books that had been put off to the side. “And all those are dross?”

“Not dross,” said Mergan. “But I’d sell them as henlings or ship them off to someone who’s willing to do the work of bleaching or a wortier.” He clucked his tongue and looked at Alfric. “All right, I’m thinking for these,” gesturing to the small pile, “three hundred apiece.” He pointed at the other pile. “For the stinkers, five each.”

“Five?” asked Alfric, folding his arms. “That’s nearly robbery. It’s high-quality parchment and good binding, and beyond that, they’re nearly standardized.”

“Five is a fair offer,” said Eddel. “It’s good parchment, but it’s got ink on it, hasn’t it?”

Alfric deflated somewhat. “But that’s what, thirteen thousand for the lot?”

“When you say it like that, it seems like a worse deal for Mergan,” said Eddel. “Personally, I’d offer less.” She turned to Mergan. “You think you can recoup three hundred apiece for those? Or did you see something I didn’t?”

“I think it’s a fair price,” said Mergan. “And I think they’re worth more considering how many of them there are, all from the same place. They could be sold as a set.” He shrugged. “You’d get a better price taking them back to Dondrian, but that’s quite a journey to make, and travel comes with costs of its own.”

Alfric had been prepared to get less than the fifty thousand he’d dreamed of, but so much less was a real blow. The money didn’t matter that much, and a low price might help keep the party hungry, which was important in the short term, though he tried his best not to listen to that intrusive thought. Still, he had been certain there were things to be had over at Sharpe and Eddel’s, and he was equally sure that they would be expensive. Perhaps there was something to going further afield, but without fortuitous timing on a portal, he’d have a wait ahead of him, and then another wait coming back, all while risking leaving the party stillborn.

“If you don’t like it, you don’t like it, but I’m not buying the books,” said Eddel. “And I know if you’re hot off a dungeon run, you’re probably coming my way soon, so I’ve got every incentive to get you to milk this poor bugger.”

Alfric looked at Isra, who was standing impassively. “Thoughts?” he asked.

“The opening offer is never the limit,” said Isra.

“It is with me,” said Mergan. He was standing still, as solid as a rock.

“Fourteen for the lot,” said Alfric. “I don’t think you’re trying to squeeze us, but I think there’s some give, and this is getting split five ways.”

“How it’s getting split isn’t my problem,” said Mergan. He looked at the small stack of books again, which wasn’t actually all that small. Alfric tried to see where his gaze landed but failed to pinpoint which of those books was the moneymaker. “Fine,” Mergan finally said, holding out his hand.

Alfric shook, feeling mixed emotions. Barter was a crucial aspect of being a dungeoneer, but it had always been a weak spot for him. In an ideal world, it would have been the responsibility of someone else on the team, but the party wasn’t a team yet.

“Well,” said Eddel, “should I expect you over shortly, flush with rings?”

“Of course,” nodded Alfric. “And thank you for your input.”

“Oh, it’s no problem,” said Eddel. “We’re competitors, of a sort, but we also have to watch each other’s backs. I suppose I’ll wait for the transaction.”

It took some time to settle up with Mergan, in part because while he had fourteen thousand rings on hand, they were locked away in an entad that took some time and effort to open. It was a large sum of money, and Alfric was mildly surprised to see so many high-value rings in one place. In Dondrian, most purchases like this would go through banks, with nothing actually changing hands except a signature or seal. Here in Tarchwood, it was done differently, perhaps owing to the lack of banks, or possibly the fact that people were a bit less trusting of each other or had fewer methods of enforcing trust.

The three of them, Alfric, Isra, and Eddel, went over to her store together.

“Now then, looking for anything specific?” asked Eddel. “You’ve got the funds.”

“Unfortunately, there are only two of the five of us,” said Alfric. “So most of the money has to be reserved.” Along with what he had on hand, he’d gotten a hundred rings to spend, and he was hoping that she would have something good for that price. Looking more closely, he could see that none of the entads on display had their prices listed, only descriptions.

“If I can offer a bit of advice,” said Eddel. “And this is only because I want you to succeed for my own selfish reasons—it’s best to hold off on buying some of the more common stuff. You’re a new party, aren’t you?”

Alfric nodded. “How’d you know?”

“You were talking to each other rather than using the channel,” said Eddel. “And you’re not as dripping in entads as I’d expect. Anyhow, if you’re a fresh, new party, you’ll be finding stuff in the dungeons, and it’s a shame to spend rings on something basic only to come across it in the very next dungeon.”

“We could sell the extra to you though, couldn’t we?” asked Alfric.

“You could,” she replied. “But I take my cut, and my cut can be pretty big, because I’ve got floor space and presentation to worry about. Besides that, there’s always the problem of binding.”

“How much for this set of arrows?” asked Isra, who had been looking at the displays.

“Two thousand,” said Eddel.

Alfric winced. Eddel had been with them when the deal was struck and now knew exactly how much each of them could afford. Her going over there had definitely not been altruism.

“They’re indestructible?” asked Isra. “The price seems high if they’re not.”

“If you manage to destroy one without magic, I’ll refund half your rings,” said Eddel. “They passed the scratch tests with flying colors, and I had the cleric of Oeyr look at them last time he was in.”

“Wait, the book might help,” said Alfric. He took the book from his pack, again ruing how heavy it was, and laid it on the floor. He took one of the arrows from Isra and fed it into the book, then waited for the description to appear. From their tests, it hadn’t been able to identify entads or their functions, but it could give an indication of their material composition, which was nearly as valuable. “Described as being like corum,” said Alfric. “Which is a rare metal, virtually indestructible.”

Isra nodded and took another one of the arrows from the case they were in. She looked it over, examining the flight and the head, then tried to snap it over her knee. She winced in pain, but the arrow was unbroken.

“Don’t try that with anything else in the shop,” said Eddel, frowning. “Not without my say-so.”

“Range?” asked Isra. Alfric had no idea what she was talking about, but she had read the description on the case, and he hadn’t. He extracted the arrow from the book and handed it to Isra.

“It’s time, not range,” said Eddel. “One second of motionlessness and they snap back to where they were.”

Isra nodded, then looked down at the description again. “But you can only fire four,” she said.

“If you want to have them return, yes,” said Eddel. She smiled. “Can you shoot more than four arrows in six seconds?”

“The bow slows down time,” said Isra, gesturing to the bone-white bow on her back.

“Ah,” said Eddel. The smug expression fell away. “Well, perhaps it’s a sub-par entad for you then, but it’s the best I’ve got when it comes to archery, if you’ve already got the bow covered. I do have a few other arrows, since they’re common enough, but nothing so indestructible. Novelties, really.” She waited, looking at Isra, then turned to Alfric. “And you?”

“The book is going to be our storage,” he said, hefting it back up. “But I was looking for something that would help with travel. I know travel is common enough, but the party is still forming, and I don’t think there’s much confidence that we should all uproot our lives. Being able to bring them directly to the next dungeon would be helpful.”

“You made fourteen thousand off just the books,” said Eddel with a frown. “I’m not sure how it is in Dondrian, but that’s a windfall for any new party in these parts.” She must have seen something in his face. “But not everyone is fully on board, are they?” She looked over at Isra.

“I am,” said Isra, still inspecting the arrows. She took one of them and nocked it in her bowstring, drawing back to get a feel for it.

“No shooting in the store,” said Eddel.

“Some of the others though, no,” said Alfric. “Not fully on board.”

“And then you’re the one who has to take up the coordination and everything else,” said Eddel, looking Alfric up and down. “That was what I did, in my adventuring days. Not only are you filling your role in the group, but you’re checking times with everyone, making travel arrangements, scoping out the dungeons, gathering information, all that work, and everyone profits off it unless you try to make sure you get a larger cut, which no one likes because they don’t see it as work.”

“I don’t mind the work,” said Alfric. “I’ve been dreaming of going into dungeons all my life. I’d have taken the world by storm a year ago if plans hadn’t fallen through.” As soon as he’d said it, he realized it sounded like arrogance and puffery. It was the kind of thing you weren’t supposed to say out loud, even if you thought it was true. And if he tried to justify it with his lineage, or his extensive knowledge and practice, it would sound even more like arrogance.

Eddel nodded and said, “Better to be an older adventurer, I’d say.” She went over to one of the cabinets, which was packed with stuff, and began looking through it until she found what she was looking for. “Here,” she said, handing a dagger to Alfric. It was a small one, slightly dull, with a handle of jade. “It’s a part of what you need, and the best I can part with for what I know you have. Once a day, you can go to where the dagger is. It works for the last person the dagger cut, but the weight limit is high, and it’s only weight. You could take another with you, if she were light enough and standing on your feet. Any more than that, you’d need floatstones.”

Alfric nodded, feeling the dagger. “How’d it do on the scratch test?” he asked.

“Somewhat poor,” she said. “You could probably get away with stabbing someone with it or using it for cooking, but I wouldn’t go into battle with it or use it against armor. Seventeen hundred for it. I should note it’s private testing only, but pretty extensive. It hadn’t seen a cleric of Qymmos, but that’s factored into the price.”

“So all I would need to have a good setup is a second one of these, then some way to take people along,” said Alfric. “One-third of what I need, let’s say.” It seemed like a high price to pay, but equipment or services that allowed rapid traversal of the world always were. Floatstones would be a fairly significant expense, but they were probably better than trying to find an entad.

“It’s only a piece, but it’s what I have as far as travel goes,” said Eddel. “I’ve got three more entads that I don’t think you’d have much use for, all with some travel applications: a staff that lets you walk through trees about a mile at a time but in a random direction, a sail that can harness unseen winds, and a pair of boots that allow for long jumps.”

“How long of jumps?” asked Alfric.

“Fifty feet, or thereabouts, but you can do as many in a row as you’d like,” said Eddel. “The man who brought it in twisted his ankle using it and, I suppose, lost his taste for it.”

Alfric hefted the dagger. “You said, when we came in, that it was better not to buy something we were likely to get more of.”

“And I stand by that. But travel is vital, and one of the big things that stops dungeoneering teams. You might want shelter too, but that’s not vital in the same way travel is. You might want food, but again, it’s not the hardest thing to get on your own.”

“I was told that I should never get an entad that replaced something I already had in my backpack,” said Alfric, nodding.

“Well, whoever said that was a fool or someone wise who was trying to be too pithy,” said Eddel. “Replacing something that weighs ten pounds with something that weighs one? That’s almost always worth it, unless someone’s trying to charge you an arm and a leg.”

“Speaking of overcharging,” said Isra, stepping forward. “I’ll take the arrows for a thousand.”

Eddel shook her head. “That’s half their asking price. You should think about it in terms of what you save by never having to visit a fletcher again.”

“I have thought about it,” said Isra. “The arrows pay for themselves, but that will take time. They’re blunt, and there’s no way to sharpen them. And they’ve been sitting in that display case so long there’s discoloration on the wood.”

Eddel shifted in place. “I need something more than a thousand.”

“We’ll come here first when we come to Tarchwood,” said Isra. “You’ll have first pick of whatever we pull out of the dungeons. But then you’d have to knock another hundred off the dagger.”

Eddel sighed. “Fine, I can already tell you’re not going to be my favorite dungeoneers.”

“If you wanted the dagger?” asked Isra.

“I think I do,” said Alfric. “If I could hire a cartier, I’d be able to travel around quite a bit faster.”

“A deal to both then,” said Eddel. She went behind the counter and pulled out a sack of rings, different denominations on separate loops. “Have you gone to see Wilch yet? He’s the ectad man in Tarchwood, though he doesn’t have full facilities.”

“He’s our next stop,” said Alfric. “And then we were hoping to head back to Pucklechurch and get there before nightfall. That should be doable, right?”

“Depends on if you can find Wilch,” said Eddel as she took the rings Alfric was offering. “He runs odd hours. If you want a recommendation on an inn, I’d say the Hare’s Rump would suit you.”

“If we don’t spend the night, that’s nearly twenty-four miles of walking for the day,” said Alfric. “I’m already feeling it in my shins.” The book was almost fifty pounds, which was most of the issue.

“This will be my second time staying at an inn,” said Isra as she put her arrows into her quiver.

“Really?” asked Eddel. “So you’re all very new at this.”

“We are,” said Alfric. “But we’ve got good plans in place and a good party.”

Eddel didn’t quite roll her eyes at that, but Alfric could feel her skepticism. “Well, you feel free to look around and spend the rest of your rings or square away what you don’t have funds for. I can put a hold on things for up to a few weeks, if you’re serious about coming back with the money.”

Alfric did end up selling her one of the entads they didn’t want, the red cloth, but she didn’t seem terribly interested in the book that recorded conversations, so he held on to it. It was the kind of thing that you’d get more for in a larger city, they both agreed on that, and Alfric hoped he wasn’t being derelict in the mission that the party had entrusted him with. Once that was finished, Alfric and Isra browsed the store together and spoke about what they’d want in the future.

“Food is easy to find,” said Isra. “An hour or two in the woods can get you what you want.”

“But it’s an hour or two you’re spending,” said Alfric. “There are better things to do with your time.”

Isra shrugged. “I like hunting.” She looked over the entads. He was relieved that she seemed perfectly capable of reading, which had been in question given some of the peculiarity that clearly accompanied her upbringing. “Storage would be good. Something to help carry a deer.”

“Strength could do that too,” said Alfric. “But they’re more rare. Might help you get more draw from the bow though.”

“Mmm,” said Isra. “And you want something that can take the others to a dungeon while you spare them the travel.”

“I’d like that, yes,” said Alfric. He did have the dagger now, but they would have to properly test its limits. It was best to assume entad sellers had already done a good job of that, but you never knew. “We have a good party, I can feel that, but we need to stick together, and we need to be hitting the dungeons as quickly as we can. With the right travel entads, we could be doing two a day.”

Isra nodded, though Alfric didn’t think she was nodding because she thought that was a good idea.

“The dagger is good,” said Alfric, who had carefully stored it in a cloth. “It’s also possible that we could use it as a shortcut.”

“It can be used to collect whoever wants to be there least,” said Isra.

“Yeah,” said Alfric. He wanted to ask whether she was committed but held back because it seemed like perhaps he was gaining ground with her. From a pure utility perspective, he could afford to lose her more than he could afford to lose the others, even if she’d gotten an amazing bow from their first dungeon and seemed to have more of a head for combat than the others.

They found nothing else they wanted and followed Eddel’s directions down to Tarchwood Ectads. It was on the shore of the enormous Proten Lake that Tarchwood nestled against, and had a dock sticking out the back.

“The sea is enormous,” said Isra when they were halfway down the hill.

“It’s not a sea, it’s a lake,” said Alfric. “The Gornorian Lake. Fresh water, not salt.”

“Ah,” said Isra, but she still had a look of confusion on her face.

“I’m guessing geography isn’t a strong suit?” asked Alfric.

“No,” Isra replied, lips tight.

“I always took to it,” said Alfric. “Let me know if you have any questions.”

“Mmm,” Isra replied. She gave no signs that any brewing questions would be bubbling up to her lips.

Tarchwood Ectads was closed, a sign on the front informed them, and there was no additional information on when they would be open again.

“Well that’s unpleasant,” said Alfric.

“The stones,” said Isra.

“Huh?” asked Alfric. He looked where she was looking, to a stretch of shore without any houses or businesses on it. It was a rocky beach, one covered in smooth stones with barely any sand to speak of. The stones were black, gray, green, and blue, mostly subdued tones but with a few standouts. “The stones?” asked Alfric.

Isra went forward, hopping over a barrier, then stooped to look at the stones up close.

“I’ve never seen such stones,” said Isra. Her breath caught slightly as she picked up a particularly green one.

“Oh?” asked Alfric. He stood next to her, feeling awkward.

“Do you think I can take them?” asked Isra, looking up at him.

“The stones?” asked Alfric. “But… why?”

Isra didn’t reply and instead began putting the rocks into her pockets, moving quickly, as though someone was going to come along and stop her. Alfric, having nothing better to do, stood by. She seemed to be pulling up the ones with the brightest colors, but every so often something dark and shiny would catch her eye instead. He half wondered whether he should be helping her, but he still didn’t quite understand what she was doing or why. Eventually, she slowed down, then finally stopped. By Alfric’s estimation, she’d added almost thirty pounds of rocks to her pack.

“Are you going to tell me what that was about?” asked Alfric. He glanced back toward Tarchwood Ectads, whose errant owner still hadn’t returned.

“Why dungeoneering?” asked Isra. “You said it was what you’ve wanted to do since you were a child.”

“Oh,” said Alfric. “Well… my mother and father were both dungeoneers, along with cousins, aunts, and uncles. It was a family thing.” This wasn’t the half of it. “But for me, it was the idea that there were these other worlds out there, that there were riches and power to be had through them, things that were impossible to get any other way. It fired up my imagination, I think, and it was the first thing I can remember wanting to know absolutely everything about. And then, with everything that I learned, I wanted to learn more. Learning led to training, and training led to planning, and I loved all of it.” He shrugged.

“Mmm,” said Isra.

“Why do you ask?” asked Alfric. “And what was with the rocks?”

“I thought it might be the same for us,” said Isra. “It’s not.”

“You… like rocks?” asked Alfric.

“No,” replied Isra. “I’m a collector.”

“Of what?” asked Alfric.

Isra shrugged. “Everything. Small treasures. Special stones, odd sticks, plants.” She frowned at him. “It’s not so strange.”

“No,” said Alfric. “No, of course not, I didn’t mean to judge, I just… I never really would have expected it of you.”

“You don’t know me,” said Isra.

“I’d like to,” said Alfric. “If we’re going to be a party, we’ll be spending time together, working together, and a solid relationship is the foundation of a strong team.”

Isra seemed as though she had some choice words to reply with, but she looked past him instead. “The ectad shop is open,” she said.

And whatever else they might have learned about each other, it would have to wait.

Chapter 12 — Overgrowth

Verity got going, leaving Hannah and Mizuki alone. Mizuki did the dishes for a bit, finishing up fairly quickly, and dried her hands on a towel hanging on the stove handle.

“Odd girl,” said Mizuki, after checking to make sure that Verity was actually gone.

“How so?” asked Hannah, quirking an eyebrow.

“She’s upper crust, I’m pretty sure,” said Mizuki. “And upper crust in Dondrian is very upper crust, so that’s saying something. But her room was a total mess when Alfric and I went to go visit her, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what she’s doing in Pucklechurch. We talked about it some last night, but… I don’t know. You ever have that feeling like someone is saying a bunch of words that you’re sure make sense, but they just don’t go together right in your head?”

“Can’t say I have,” replied Hannah. “Sometimes there’ll be a thing that takes me some time to get, but it never lasts, ay? And there are deep unknowable mysteries, questions without any answers to them, but those’re different.”

“I don’t know,” said Mizuki. “She’s just a mystery to me, that’s all. I like her, I think, but don’t get her.”

“They’re all odd ones, if you ask me,” said Hannah. “Nothin’ wrong with that.”

“Even Alfric?” asked Mizuki. “I think he’s stupidly straightforward.”

“Oh, he’s got depths to him, and bends in the road,” sighed Hannah. “Loads of plans and he ends up out here?”

“Then how’d you end up out here?” asked Mizuki.

“Church of Garos,” said Hannah, shrugging. “I’m not too popular with the superiors. My guess, and only a guess, is that they wanted to get rid of me and didn’t care too much if I left. Maybe they were hopin’ I would, which is why Pucklechurch. But there was also a need for a cleric here, someone to take over for Lemmel, so it suited them either way.”

“And what did you do to upset the apple cart?” asked Mizuki. “If anything?”

“I’m a true believer,” said Hannah, standing up straight. “The thing you gotta understand about the Church of Garos, and all the others, is that none of the gods actually care about the church itself, they care about the clerics. The churches are more like… Well, let’s say you’ve got a guild of cobblers, ay? Just a whole bunch of people who cobble shoes or whatnot. They’re a guild because they all do the same thing and want to work together, and so they can talk to each other over the guild channel, and have apprenticeships and everythin’. But there’s nothin’ to say that you can’t learn to cobble without the guild. It would just be harder, especially because if all the cobblers are in the guild, they control the apprenticeships, don’t they? So it’s a bit like that, I s’pose, but different, because it’s like… Well, imagine that some people are cobblers because they’re mercenaries, they don’t really care about cobblin’, they just want the money, it’s a trade to them, and then there are others, people who are devotees, true believers.”

“In cobbling?” asked Mizuki.

“Well, I’m just tryin’ to make sense of it for you,” said Hannah. “You can imagine someone who was a good, devoted cobbler, who’d have learned cobblin’ even without bein’ taught, and you can imagine her bein’ a part of the guild because they wanted to keep a thumb on her and make sure she was stickin’ to what they wanted from cobblers.”

“And are you a part of the guild?” asked Mizuki. “I mean, there is a guild, right?”

“There are loads of guilds,” said Hannah. “There are enough clerics of Garos that if we were all in a single guild together, nothin’ would ever get done. Every mornin’ you’d wake up to a novel’s worth of discussion, I’d wager.”

“Are you not in a guild then?” asked Mizuki.

“Are you?” asked Hannah.

“I am,” said Mizuki. “Greater Plenarch Sorcerers’ Association. Nothing to write home about, really, it’s just some local mages. I mostly ignore the guild, but they help with getting some odd jobs in the area or giving early warning if there’s going to be some magical crisis or something, not that it’s been an issue so far. We’re all technically in competition with each other, so I can’t say that I get too much from it. Mostly it keeps us out of each other’s hair.”

“Ah,” said Hannah. “I was in the proper local guild for a bit, but there were some tensions with a few of the others, some disagreements, let’s say, about the nature of Garos and the best way to worship him and live by his symmetry. Some of it was on my end, naturally, but I don’t take all the blame. Easier for me to leave than them, since it was a few of the higher-ups in the guild that were talkin’ with me in the first place.”

“Huh,” said Mizuki. “So you argued with the guild leaders and were forced out?”

“I wouldn’t put it like that,” Hannah said with a sigh. “It was more the feelin’ of comin’ into a room and realizin’ that there’s no one that wants you there.” She frowned. “I’d reply to the mornin’ messages, and when I got replies back it was like… well, either like bein’ ignored, or like they were rollin’ their eyes when they’d reply to me.”

“Ouch,” winced Mizuki.

“It hurt, sure,” said Hannah, though the pain wasn’t as sharp as it had once been. “All these people who’re supposed to be as devout as I was, who’re supposed to be scholars and fanatics of the same god we all worship and devote our lives to, and it felt like I was the only one who really believed it. I don’t believe that’s true, but it’s how it felt.” She sighed again. It had been months since she’d left the guild, but she still sometimes felt down about it. She’d enjoyed waking up to read messages in the morning but not when it felt like she’d be berated for trying to join in the discussion or make her points. Someday, she would probably join a guild again, and she’d resolved to talk a bit less and not feel the need to chime in so much.

“How about we go outside,” said Mizuki. “We can practice some while we wait for Verity.”

“Of course,” Hannah said, nodding, grateful for something else to think about.

— ⁂ —

The backyard was a huge, overgrown space, and it seemed that Mizuki, or at least her grandfather, owned a lot of land around it. A few flowers grew wild, but the flora consisted largely of tall, leafy weeds, even in the raised beds at the back. Grass grew between all the cracks in the stone path, and a fountain held an unpleasant-smelling muck.

“Sorry,” said Mizuki, shrinking back slightly as she looked at what must have once been a garden. “I just really don’t have the time to deal with a garden, or know what I’m doing when it comes to plants, so. I should probably just fireball the whole place.”

“Nah, trees and nature,” said Hannah. “Reminds me of the prairies, which are kind of like home.”

“All right,” said Mizuki, turning away from the overgrown backyard and toward Hannah. “Show me what you’ve got.”

“You’ve already seen most of it, haven’t you?” asked Hannah. “In the dungeon?”

“Well,” said Mizuki. “I guess, but not under controlled conditions.”

“Sure,” said Hannah. “You should just know that I can’t do ‘magic’ all day, not like you can. Simple healin’, usually I don’t run out of that, but anythin’ more, there are some limits.” Hannah hated the feeling of Garos leaving her, but it came with the territory if you were pushing things. Broken bones could only be fixed a limited number of times, and that depended on how bad the break was.

“Start simple then,” said Mizuki. She was bouncing from foot to foot, limbering up and getting ready, as though her magic was something that needed flexibility.

“Basic symmetry repair,” said Hannah. She held up her hands. “My hands are perfectly identical, aren’t they, just flipped versions of each other?”

“Sure,” said Mizuki. “Hey, wait.” She moved closer and peered at Hannah’s hands. “The freckles are mirror images.”

“My whole body is like that,” nodded Hannah, grinning. “It’s called symmetricalization, it’s somethin’ loads of clerics of Garos go through. I can do it for you too, if you want, but it takes about a day, and it’s a bit,” she paused, “intimate.”

Mizuki squirmed slightly. “So you mean your whole body.”

“I’m a healer, first and foremost,” said Hannah. “I’ve got familiarity with bodies. But I can also limit it, if you’d like, to just your face, your arms, your legs. It would make healin’ easier.”

“It would?” asked Mizuki. She was looking at Hannah’s face a little closer, scanning its features, and Hannah stood there, letting her look. It was a perfectly symmetrical face, which allowed easy removal of blemishes and things like that. Clerics of Garos were known for their beauty, and in the larger cities, it was a rare member of the upper class that didn’t have some kind of symmetricalization done to them. A symmetrical face was beautiful, as a general rule, but symmetricalization had to be done carefully, and sometimes the results could be odd or represent so fundamental a change that the person wouldn’t be recognized by their friends and family. Verity was upper crust, as Mizuki had said, but didn’t seem to have had symmetricalization done. That might have been because she was pretty enough without it.

“Basic symmetry repair needs the two halves to be very close to the same,” said Hannah. “So, somethin’ like an oak shield, the grain of the wood means it’s harder, ay, because the two halves of the shield are so different from one another. That’d be mixed symmetry repair. Unless, of course, you have a shield made from the same piece of wood, butterflied apart.” She made a motion with her hands.

“Okay,” said Mizuki slowly. “Hey, why do you think that Alfric was trying to rush us in without training and stuff?”

“No idea,” said Hannah. It felt a bit like Mizuki wasn’t paying attention, which Hannah had found somewhat the norm when she talked about religion with the laypeople.

“I was thinking it was just big-city energy, but the more I think about it, the less it feels right,” said Mizuki. “Feels… fishy.”

“Are you ready?” asked Hannah. She took a penknife from her pocket, then held it above the back of her hand.

“Blegh,” said Mizuki. “Blood.”

Hannah hesitated. “Well, I could symmetricalize somethin’, I suppose, but this is faster, ay.”

“Fine,” said Mizuki as she took in a breath.

Hannah cut herself, a long stinging cut across the back of her hand, then lined everything up in her mind and connected to the wonder and majesty of Garos, God of Symmetry and Order. People described the feeling differently, but for Hannah it always came with a tingling at her extremities as a mark of success. She let the heightened sense of her own symmetry fade away once the cut was healed.

“See?” asked Hannah. The wound had vanished and the pain with it. Her hands were once again perfectly symmetrical.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” asked Mizuki.

“A bit, ay,” said Hannah. She shrugged. In the course of her time at seminary, she’d hurt herself so many times that she was used to the pain. “Did you see it though? The… magic?” The word she’d grown up with was ‘miracle’, but in the seminary they used ‘manifestation’, which had never quite sat right for Hannah.

Mizuki nodded. “It’s still there. It’s got a kind of… energetic flavor to it.”

“Flavor?” asked Hannah.

Mizuki waved a hand. “You know sorcs don’t go to school, right?” she asked. “Or at least not most of them. It’s a very personal magic. We end up making up our own words for things a lot of the time.”

Mizuki raised one hand into a fist, then opened it with force while thrusting out. There was a single licking arc of electricity, barely visible in the sunlight.

“Disappointing,” said Mizuki. “But… stronger than I’d thought it would be?”

“We’re in a party, ay?” asked Hannah.

“Does that… help?” asked Mizuki, blinking.

Hannah nodded. “I suppose maybe there are things a school for sorcs woulda taught you, ay?”

“But why would it help?” asked Mizuki. “The aether is the aether. I’m using your castoff. It shouldn’t matter that we’re in a party together.”

“Parties help anyone,” replied Hannah. “All my spells work better on party members and a bit less so on guild members. It’s a matter of connection.”

“The aether is the aether,” Mizuki muttered, as though she was willing to match her ignorance against Hannah’s knowledge. Her confidence crumpled quickly though. “I just don’t get why it would work, since being a sorc isn’t about connection, it’s about the aether. Your castoffs are, I guess, connected to you, and being a party member means they’re connected to me, but it shouldn’t matter, that’s all I’m confused about.”

“You didn’t feel it when we were in the dungeon?” asked Hannah.

“Maybe,” said Mizuki, frowning. “To be honest, my heart was in my throat most of the time, and I was just trying to fight down the panic. I thought I was just doing a good job.”

“And you did!” said Hannah. “But also probably bein’ in a party helped you out.”

Before they could move on to the next biggest piece of Hannah’s healing arsenal, Verity returned. She’d tied back her hair and put on a different dress, this one white with lavender highlights, and she was carrying her lute, which she carefully set down.

“What happened here?” asked Verity, looking around at the overgrown garden. She seemed taken aback.

“It used to be a garden,” said Mizuki with a shrug. “Grandpa was really into gardening, it was how he relaxed. I never really took to it though.”

“This is horrible,” said Verity, still looking at the plants. She didn’t see the sour look on Mizuki’s face. Verity drifted over to one of them, a bushy plant with broad leaves and a single drooping flower. She reached down and stuck a finger in the soil, then looked at the base of the plant. “You poor thing.”

“I said I never really took to it,” said Mizuki. “Can we leave it at that?”

“Oh,” said Verity, standing up. “Oh, I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean it like that. I just—in Dondrian it’s one of the womanly arts, and it was my favorite.”

“Gardening is… womanly?” asked Mizuki.

“I don’t know what it’s like in Kiromo, or even in Pucklechurch,” said Verity, “but there are five womanly arts in Dondrian. Gardening, needlework, reading, music, and languages. I was always terrible at languages.”

“Well, I do know how to read,” said Mizuki. “So one out of five isn’t bad.”

“You don’t speak Kiro?” asked Hannah.

“Two out of five isn’t bad,” said Mizuki, nodding.

“Well, reading is more, ah,” said Verity, measuring her words. “There are quite a few books you’re expected to have read, along with keeping up with more current works, and being a proper woman means being able to allude to all these books you’ve read when in conversation with others and to understand the references that everyone else makes.” She shrugged.

“That sounds horrible,” said Mizuki.

“Ah, I think I have a better understandin’,” said Hannah. “It’s not ‘womanly arts’, it’s stuff for rich women to do.”

“Well,” said Verity, frowning, “I’m not sure I would say that.”

“Did you have maids, growin’ up?” asked Hannah.

“A few,” said Verity, folding her arms. “But the success of my family isn’t—I mean, it’s not like those things are—needlework is a plainly useful skill, and gardening is too.”

“Hey,” said Mizuki, “why isn’t cooking a womanly art?”

“Well I have no idea,” said Verity. “It’s not like I made them up.” She shrugged again, then looked at Mizuki. “I’m sorry if I insulted your garden, I just,” she looked around again, “I like gardening.”

“Well,” said Mizuki. “Like I said, it’s my grandfather’s garden. He wasn’t able to take it to Kiromo with him.”

Hannah looked at the two of them. “I think it’s always better, when you get an apology, to make it clear you accept it.”

Mizuki rolled her eyes, then looked at Verity. “Verity, I fully and earnestly accept your apology.” She looked back at Hannah. “Better?”

“Much better,” replied Hannah, beaming at her. They both looked a bit happier too.

“If I do end up coming around,” said Verity.

“Coming around?” asked Mizuki.

“Well, this is the obvious place for us to meet, if we’re in a party,” said Verity. She shifted. “I didn’t mean to presume.”

“I kind of thought that you’d end up staying here more than just the one night,” said Mizuki, shrugging. “If you wanted to.”

“Oh,” said Verity, eyes widening slightly. “Well, that’s kind.”

“You can think on it,” said Mizuki. “No rush.”

“Well, if I did end up coming around here, would you mind if I,” she looked around the garden, “did something with this? Rescued a few plants, watered a few others, pruned out the worst of the weeds and the dead stems, things like that?”

“No, not at all,” said Mizuki. She looked at the garden. “If I had known how and had the time, I might not have let it get like this. But it’s pretty clear that I haven’t put in any effort here.” She clapped her hands. “We were supposed to be doing some magic, weren’t we?”

Verity burst into song almost immediately, picking up her lute from where she’d laid it and strumming a melody about a beautiful garden that she must have made up on the spot. The effects seemed largely emotional to Hannah, lightening whatever scraps of bad mood remained, but Mizuki was looking all around, so perhaps it was layered.

“Okay,” said Mizuki as Verity played on. “Now, this is the stuff. If I just gather it up and hold it…” She picked up a stick from the ground and threw it as hard as she could, and Hannah was mildly surprised to see it zip off into the woods. “Bam.”

“Some kind of… force?” asked Hannah.

Mizuki nodded. “It’s always opposite from what the base magic was, and there are different axes to work from, but mental or emotional stuff has physical as its opposite. Telekinesis is the most obvious application.”

“But you were holding it?” asked Hannah.

“Yeah, because it’s easier that way,” said Mizuki. “But if we’re in a dungeon, I’m not going to be tossing things at the monsters, and I think it will take some time and effort to build up the concentration in the aether, so… I don’t know how useful it is in practice, especially since most fights are short.”

“Ready for the interference?” asked Hannah. Verity was still singing, and while she could go on for quite some time, as demonstrated in the dungeon and during her regular sets at the Fig and Gristle, Hannah didn’t want to tax her too much.

“Ready,” said Mizuki.

Again, Hannah cut her hand and healed it, quick and simple work that Mizuki turned away from. Once it was done though, Mizuki was looking into the air and trying to make something of what she saw there.

Hannah had been taught a bit about sorcs in the seminary. The analogy had been a pond, which seemed to be a common view of it. The sorc, at her base, dealt in the ripples in the pond, the stuff left in the aether by other casters, or magical phenomena, or what have you. If there were two sources of magic, powerful enough to make ripples, those ripples would hit each other, and the sorc could do something more. It was probably one of those helpful but horrible analogies that Mizuki would explain was dead wrong, but Hannah found it enlightening.

Mizuki had two fingers extended with her right hand, and with her left, she leaned down to pick up a rock. She was muttering under her breath, and with a slight grunt, she tossed the rock into the air. She took the two fingers, which had been drawing a circle in the air, and pointed them at the rock. With a terrifying thunderclap, the rock exploded, sending bits of sharp debris crashing to the ground and leaving an afterimage of a bolt of lightning in Hannah’s eyes.

Verity’s song stopped at once. “Ouch,” she said, voice mild.

“Sorry!” yelped Mizuki. “I thought it would be, I don’t know.”

“Here,” said Hannah, stepping toward Verity. “You’ve got a small cut.” She healed Verity before Verity even noticed. It was probably from a bit of rock tumbling in just the wrong way so that it got her in the cheek.

“Seems good though,” said Verity.

“I’m so sorry. We’re lucky Hannah is here,” said Mizuki. She’d come forward to look at Verity’s cheek, and there was a nervous motion to her. “I have a new rule, which is that I don’t practice without Hannah.” She picked a bit of rock from Verity’s hair.

“Is that what you were trying to do?” asked Verity.

“It was supposed to be explosive lightning,” said Mizuki.

“Well it was, in a way,” nodded Hannah. “Just needs to be a bit more… directed.”

“Less splashback,” said Verity. She touched her cheek where the healing had been done.

“I’ll be more careful,” said Mizuki. “I’m so, so sorry, I really didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Verity smiled. “I fully and earnestly accept your apology. Besides, if Alfric is going to take so much punishment for us, then I should be able to take a little scratch.”

“You’re really okay?” asked Mizuki.

“Fine,” said Verity. She looked at Hannah. “Like new. Thank you, by the way.”

“We all have our roles,” said Hannah. “Before the day is through, if it’s all right with both of you, I’ll have a bit of a look at your bodies, though with the power of Garos, not anything to do with my eyes.” That was the kind of assurance that Mizuki seemed to need, and Verity very much didn’t. “Mostly so that if I need to heal either of you, if Alfric doesn’t do enough, I won’t have to be figurin’ things out while we’re in the thick of it.”

Mizuki looked down at her hands. “I’m already pretty symmetrical,” she said.

“Well,” said Hannah, “you are, in the broad strokes, but things don’t always lie the same on both sides. Blood vessels are one of them, and important, because we’d like to keep your blood in you.”

“Hmm,” said Mizuki, tapping her lip. “I am a fan of my own blood.”

“And there are asymmetries of the guts, the liver, and the heart, and a cleric of Garos is forbidden from touching the brain except in dire circumstances where it’s that or death,” said Hannah. Mizuki blanched. “Just so you know,” she said, holding up a hand. “As a matter of, well, precaution.”

“Seems reasonable,” said Verity. “I would hate to be blindsided by some strangeness of Garos—no offense—while we’re in the middle of the next dungeon, if it turns out that one is also more difficult than fighting three raccoons.”

“We’ll have helms for it,” said Hannah. “Less to worry about, especially when it comes to the head.”

“Well,” said Mizuki, stretching her fingers out. “Does anyone want to go again and see what magic we can make together?”

“Of course,” said Verity. “I’m going to have to learn to hold through the blasts. There’s no use for a bard who drops a song at the crucial moments.”

“I’ll call them out, so you can prepare yourself,” said Mizuki.

Verity nodded. “Very well, shall we go again? With some actual targets this time, please, and some warning about what kind of calamity you’re going to cause.”

“You better be saying ‘calamity’ in an affectionate way,” said Mizuki, pointing a finger at Verity.

“Obviously.” Verity smiled. “You’re the one bringing calamity down on our enemies.”

Hannah beamed. Whatever else was true about her, it seemed that Verity had a good work ethic, and she already seemed to be orienting it toward the dungeons. For a moment, Hannah listened to Verity’s song, a jaunty tune about a mighty sorcerer throwing thunderbolts around, and then she went for a more advanced miracle, something that would give Mizuki as much to play with as possible.

Chapter 13 — The Nature of Travel

When Isra woke up, it took her a moment to realize where she was. It was her second time staying at an inn, her second time in any house that wasn’t her own, really, and it was strange just how disorienting it was. Isra had camped out in the woods plenty of times, and she had never felt the sheer sense of dislocation that she experienced that morning in their small room in the Hare’s Rump. Gradually though, she came to herself and listened to the birds chirping outside the window. They were tame creatures, scavengers of the town, but pleasant all the same, in the way of birds.

Alfric was still sleeping at first light, but he stirred as soon as Isra began moving. They had decided to share a room, which had taken a little negotiation, in part because they were so unsure of each other. Isra had worried, briefly, about sharing a room with a man, but Alfric hadn’t had so much as a brief moment of physical contact with her. She had wondered, as she was about to drift off to sleep, whether she needed to be worried.

In the morning light, things were more clear. Isra had woken in the middle of the night and seen Alfric sitting up straight, but she’d fallen back asleep and wondered whether she had dreamed it. He hadn’t crossed to her side of the room. The dagger she’d kept beneath her pillow hadn’t needed to be drawn.

“All right,” said Alfric as he stretched out. He went to look out the window and judge the time of day. “Early start then?”

“Yes,” replied Isra. “Breakfast on the road.”

Alfric frowned at that, but said nothing, and Isra decided not to inquire. She wondered whether he hadn’t brought his own food, but if he hadn’t, then he was in luck, because she’d brought plenty to share. It was better not to inquire, given that there were so many mistakes she might inadvertently make. Even offering him food was a risk, since it might mark her as weird in some unexpected way. Her father hadn’t had enough time to teach her all the ways to avoid missteps. Silence was the easiest path, she’d found.

“I think the others will be happy with the results of the sale,” said Alfric as they took their first steps away from Tarchwood. “Even if it’s quite a bit less than I thought. Still a windfall.” He glanced at the bow on her back but said nothing about it. She looked at his pack, which had the large book, now with many of its pages filled with rocks. He’d found that odd, but she didn’t care. “It’ll make it easier to convince the holdouts that it makes sense to do more dungeons.”

“Mmm,” said Isra. She now knew Alfric better than the others, if only by virtue of the scant conversation she’d had with him during the twelve miles of walking they’d done thus far. “It’s easy money.”

“There’s some risk,” Alfric admitted. “It’s easy money until it isn’t. One bad dungeon and everyone winds up dead.”

“Does that happen?” asked Isra. She kept her voice level, but the thought of it made her heart beat a bit faster. There could be anything in the dungeons, that was part of the allure, as she understood it, and if you found something that you couldn’t fight, or worse, that you couldn’t run from… well, she could understand how a person could die. The creatures there were so wrong, so disordered.

“Every now and then,” said Alfric. “You hear stories. Usually it’s younger groups that go places that are too tough for them. Sometimes there’s an uproar, and people try to put a stop to it. The League does help stop the worst of it, but they’re a bit of a trivial roadblock. Between the entads and the ectads, there’s too much profit to be had. We made out well in terms of rings, but the things we sold will almost immediately turn into profit for the people we sold them to, to the tune of twenty to thirty percent. They’d no more shut down the dungeons than they would shut down the mines or stop the foresters from chopping trees or—well, I hope you get the point.”

“There’s nothing from the dungeons that people need to live,” said Isra. She was thinking of her own trade, hunting. If she was forced to stop, it would mean less meat in the village, and people did need meat to live.

“Well, yes and no,” said Alfric. “Strictly speaking, I suppose you’re right, but those pipes we took from the dungeon will be used to make waterstones, and without those, people would be reduced to drinking well water or river water.”

“I drink water from the stream,” said Isra.

“Oh, well,” said Alfric. “Is that… safe?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” asked Isra. She was getting that tight feeling, like she’d once again said something wrong.

“Disease, I thought,” said Alfric.

“In the cities, maybe,” Isra replied. “So long as people follow the rituals, there should be no problem.”

“The rituals?” asked Alfric.

“For waste,” Isra replied.

“Oh,” said Alfric, in a way that suggested he didn’t know the rituals for waste, or thought her odd for mentioning it.

They walked in silence for a bit. That was how it went with Alfric, and seemed to be how he preferred to spend their time together, silence punctuated by verbalizations. They were silences that she didn’t particularly like, because it seemed as though he was carrying on the conversation in his head, looking for ways to keep it going, which made her feel uneasy.

The silence was interrupted though, as a rustling of grass came from the grazing field beside them. By the time a ball of black fur leapt up over the stone wall, Alfric had his sword drawn and Isra’s dagger was in her hand.

It had to turn a bit to find them, but when it did, the dog started barking its head off.

“Back!” shouted Alfric, brandishing his sword. He lowered the point of it, aiming it at the dog, which was barking ferociously and showing teeth.

Isra slipped her dagger back into its sheath and stepped forward. “That’s not how you handle a dog,” she said. She moved to step in front of Alfric, between him and the dog, while the dog continued his barking. “Stop,” she said, using her best commanding voice.

The dog stopped immediately, closing his mouth and straightening up somewhat to look at her.

“Sit,” she said.

The dog sat on his haunches, now fully at attention. Isra got closer and stooped down, patting him softly on the head, then feeling around his neck for a collar, finding none. She frowned slightly, then stood back.

“You’re not a wild dog,” she said to the dog. “Someone should have put a collar on you. Go back to your owner.”

Without another sound, the dog hopped back over the stone wall and could be heard rustling through the grass, away from them. Isra turned to Alfric with a smile, but he was staring at her, and her smile fell.

“What?” she asked.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

“Have you never had a dog?” she asked. “They must be less common in the city.”

“That is not how you handle a dog,” said Alfric. “How did you—how did he know what you were saying?”

“They’re very intelligent creatures,” Isra replied. “More than birds or cats.”

“Yes, but,” Alfric said, “you can’t just get a dog to stop by telling him to stop.”

“You can,” said Isra, feeling confused. “I did. If you haven’t been around dogs before—you just tell them and they listen. Say it like a command.” She started walking again. Seeing the dog had made her feel good, though she’d have been happier if she’d been able to return him to his owner. They were new, strange people walking by his pasture, he hadn’t meant anything by coming at them. Alfric’s questions, and further, his insistence that she’d done something wrong, rankled. People talked to dogs, she knew they did, it was something she’d seen a dozen times before. There was nothing that should have been confusing or strange about it. She found herself walking a little bit faster than strictly necessary, and the way that Alfric lengthened his stride to catch up made her feel even worse, like he was chasing her.

“Sorry,” he said, once they were walking side by side, still at an unsustainably fast pace.

Isra slowed. “It’s how you deal with dogs,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll have to trust you on that. I had a dog growing up, but I guess he was a bit special.”

There was more of the slightly uncomfortable silence between them, but it gave Isra a chance to think. She had grown up in the woods with her father and never spent very much time with other children. She had always felt that her father had taught her well, but when it came to other people, she was on uneven ground. Her father had friends, especially later in her life, but they were perhaps not the best to learn social matters from. It had never been clear to Isra just what her father had done back east, but clearly he’d been educated, and he’d raised her to know much about the world. And still, she felt like there were simple things she knew nothing about. Over the past year, she had discovered the Pucklechurch library, where books could be borrowed freely, and she’d been making full use of them, enjoying the strange people and their strange customs. It gave her some insight into the people of Pucklechurch, she thought.

She had also learned, through experience, which things were safe to talk about and which needed to be avoided. Animals were a sticking point, and the merchants were stingy, always ready to argue about whether her meat was good or what kind of furs she had, even when it was perfectly obvious. There was an herbalist that sold various tinctures and dried roots, and Isra steered clear of her after they’d had a rather heated altercation. The tinctures and roots did next to nothing, and Isra couldn’t understand why people were convinced by words when their own senses should have told them otherwise. She had learned that people had their rituals and their mysterious ways, and you weren’t supposed to question them. She hadn’t figured out why the herbalist sold these things, or why everyone seemed to accept it, but she’d come to accept it as one of those subjects that would make things awkward if it was brought up, even in the most gentle of ways.

“Are all animals like that?” asked Alfric.

“Like what?” asked Isra.

“You said that dogs were smart,” he said. “But do they all… listen to you?”

Isra thought about that. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. She didn’t know what he meant, but it was also a safe answer, one that wouldn’t invite ridicule.

“If you,” began Alfric, hesitating. “If you told the birds to get off your roof, would they listen to you?”

“Why would I ask them to do that?” asked Isra.

“I don’t know,” said Alfric. “It was just an example.”

“Part of the reason I get along with the birds is that I don’t tell them what to do,” said Isra.

Alfric fell silent again, and Isra wondered whether it was him that wasn’t making sense or her. He came from some enormous city to the north, and from what she knew of enormous cities, they had far less in the way of both plants and animals. Tame plants and tame animals. As of the day before, the largest city that Isra had been to was Tarchwood, which was nearly ten times the size of Pucklechurch but still a small place in comparison with Dondrian. Isra’s father had come from a city to the east but hadn’t spoken of it all that much, especially not as Isra got older. She got the sense it was a place that he wanted to forget, even as he still celebrated some elements of its culture. Few birds in the city though, few animals. She wondered how they got along.

“When a woman goes off into the wilderness and has a child alone,” said Alfric. He was speaking slowly and deliberately. “If the child is then kept from other people for several years, it gains a connection to nature.”

“My mother didn’t have a child alone,” said Isra.

“Well, yes,” said Alfric. “I was listening when you said that yesterday. But… do you think that you might be a druid?”

“No,” said Isra. She paused, wondering whether the question would get her one of those pitying or befuddled looks that people occasionally gave her. “What’s a druid?”

“I’m not sure I should say anything, because I would probably just embarrass myself,” said Alfric. “But from what I know, they have command of plants and animals, along with some sense of the natural landscape.”

Isra frowned. That didn’t sound like her. “And you think I’m one of those because of the dog?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Alfric. “But if you are a druid, or you have that power, then… well, that would be surprising, but also important.”

“Would it?” asked Isra. “Why?” So far, Alfric had not laughed at her for her ignorance or strangeness. He hadn’t scoffed or narrowed his eyes in frustration. That was a strong point in his favor.

“You would be able to use it,” said Alfric. “Some of the things in the dungeons, surely they count as plants or animals, don’t they? If it’s a skill you have, it’s a fairly rare one. You could meet other druids, learn from them—”

“And if I like my life as it is?” asked Isra.

Alfric faltered. “And… do you?”

“I do,” replied Isra, with more conviction than she felt. There were rather a lot of rings stored away that formed the basis of an unexamined plan. She hadn’t quite decided what the plan was, only that it needed money. East, to Tarbin, where her family presumably was, or perhaps somewhere else, where she could start fresh. A place where she wouldn’t feel compelled to hide from people who came near her house.

“Then I don’t want to dissuade you. But why are you going into the dungeons with us?” asked Alfric.

Isra hesitated. “It’s good pay for not much work,” she said. “Like you said.”

The entire year following her father’s death had been a blur. She wasn’t entirely sure how, at thirteen, she had survived it. Her father had friends, and they checked on her from time to time, but none of them had tried to take her in, and she hadn’t made the request. Instead, she hunted as she’d been taught to, foraged the verdant forests, and narrowly made it through the winter with the foodstuffs she had put up with her father. Her father had died in late summer, before they could harvest the autumnal bounty, but the work they’d done in spring and summer had been with the anticipation of feeding two mouths rather than one. It had been enough. That had been the time of the horrendous theft, but the thief had left the food, at least, alone.

In the four years after that, Isra found a rhythm to her days and to the seasons. She went hunting and foraging, did skinning and tanning, made repairs to the house, went into the market every three days like clockwork, and stored away the rings she made. There were always things to do. When she was fifteen, she made a stone fishing weir across one of the local rivers and, for that entire summer, smoked and sold whatever she couldn’t eat. When she was sixteen, she took a bounty on a black bear that had been rooting around Pucklechurch and brought it across the hex boundary, admonishing it to be good. At seventeen, she’d taken up collecting in a more serious manner, spending much of her free time looking for specific stones and plants, putting the former up on the shelves and pressing the latter in her books.

Seventeen had also been the year that Isra had finally bought a freezer, which had changed things more than she’d expected it to. Being able to keep large quantities of meat in her house meant that she was able to make more on market days and also meant that she was able to do more with larger game. She had always found hunting to be fairly easy, at least in comparison with how much puffery there was about it from other people, and in no time, the freezer was full, and then she was bringing so much meat to market that she couldn’t sell it all.

And through the rhythms of the days and the longer rhythms of the seasons, Isra was mostly happy. When she turned eighteen and celebrated her birthday alone, she didn’t feel sad that the celebration was happening without anyone to share it. What she felt instead was a sense that her life might continue on forever like this, each year the same as the last, and that brought a definite dissatisfaction. Something was missing, but she hadn’t been able to put her finger on what. She had started saving up the money after that, without knowing where it would eventually go.

“A party tends to be more than just a moneymaking venture,” said Alfric. “It’s inevitable, with the channel, with how much time you spend together… there’s more than just the individual abilities of those involved and their ability to clear a dungeon, or whatever they’ve come together to do.”

“Friends,” said Isra.

“Well, possibly,” said Alfric. “But if not friends, then at least something like family to each other. The channel is a part of it. Being able to speak to each other at will, even when you’re some distance from each other, means that the people you speak to most often are the ones in your party.”

“You can’t leave family,” said Isra.

“Of course you can,” said Alfric. “But I agree, the bonds of a party, especially a short-term one like we have now, are far easier to break.”

“And this is what you want?” asked Isra. “This is what you came to Pucklechurch to create?”

“No,” said Alfric. “I came to find a team, and it seems that I’ll be more lucky than I thought I’d be, especially if you really are, somehow, a druid. But a stable party inevitably becomes something more. Dungeoneering runs in my blood, as I think I’ve mentioned, and growing up, the members of my parents’ parties were like aunts and uncles to me.”

“They didn’t adventure together, your parents?” asked Isra.

“No,” said Alfric. “With their skills, they would have been doubling up on a role. It was better for them to each have their own party.”

Isra wondered what that role was, but Alfric didn’t offer it, and she had some sense that his thoughts had escaped him.

Isra hadn’t known her mother, and her father never spoke much of the old days. They had both been from Tarbin though, had escaped, in her father’s words, and back there, they had been people of some means and education, which Isra had been slow to understand as she got older. Isra’s father had trained her and taught her, and sometimes it felt like that was the only way for them to relate to each other. Her father had been somewhat short on affection, at least in comparison with what she saw from some of the children in Pucklechurch.

Yet even as she got older, Isra hadn’t felt a longing for other children or a keen loneliness that she sometimes read of people having in stories. A party was, in some sense, unwelcome, as was the channel, having people able to speak into her head at their whim. She enjoyed being solitary, and whatever it was she found disagreeable about living her life as she had over the last five years, she was fairly sure that joining a party was not the cure. That was especially so when the party had these particular four other people in it. Hannah spoke too much, and Mizuki had the wrong kind of energy, and while Verity had a grace and poise that Isra could appreciate, there was something alien about her, perhaps because she, like Alfric, was from the city.

Isra did like Alfric though, or at least had come to appreciate the way he operated. He was very direct and straightforward. He hadn’t made any comments on her appearance nor asked about her headscarf, and he exuded a competence and professionalism that the others did not. With Alfric, there was little in the way of frippery or filler. He hadn’t lied to her about obvious things, in the way that people sometimes did.

There was wildlife all around them as they walked, especially as the farmland became less prominent. Alfric, like most people, pretended not to see or feel it. A family of long-legged skinks hid beneath a hedge, a stub-necked squirrel raced up a tree, and a flock of night birds sat motionless on a tree, waiting for the sun to fall. Isra looked at the plants too, trying to see if there was anything they didn’t have in Pucklechurch. Most of the trees were the usual mix of ash, larch, birch, and aspen, but there were a small handful of the migrant trees that moved a foot a day, and some of the wild puckleberries and burstberries were of different varieties. Isra thought about what Alfric had said, about druids being able to see the world. But if she were a druid, then what did he see when he looked around him?

“Do you want to talk about the fact that you might be a druid?” asked Alfric, several miles later.

“You said that it happened only when a woman birthed a child alone in the woods,” said Isra. “My father was with us.”

“Yes, I was thinking about that,” said Alfric. “But I don’t know enough to know whether that’s only the typical case, or if there might not be some other ways for it to happen. We’d have to find someone knowledgeable to discuss it with. Perhaps if there’s only a single parent, that’s enough.”

“Perhaps,” said Isra. The exact methods to produce a druid did not interest her at all. “You think I should find another druid.”

“I do,” said Alfric. “They’re the subject-matter experts. They would be able to tell if you really were a druid, or if you might be something else, and they could give you some insights into how to increase your power. Though…”

“Yes?” asked Isra.

“Druids aren’t usually,” he paused, “hunters.”

“No?” asked Isra.

“They’re typically vegetarians, I think,” said Alfric. “I’m not sure why. Of all the people with some kind of aetheric talent, druids are probably the ones I know the least about. For obvious reasons, they’re rare within the city. I don’t know how far you’d have to be from Dondrian to be able to be a mile away from another person, which I think I read was the minimum.”

It sounded horrible to Isra. She often spent some time in Pucklechurch on market days once she was done selling what she had, visiting either the temple to make her prayers, or the library for a fresh book, or the stores to pick up things she couldn’t make herself, especially anything metal. Even that small amount of people sometimes felt suffocating by the time the day was through. Once, Isra had come into town during one of the large regional celebrations and been immediately overwhelmed by the crowds of people from who-knew-where. She’d lasted thirty minutes before stalking back off into the woods.

That was what she imagined Dondrian being, all of the time, only bigger, more crowded, noisier, and with buildings that towered above her like large cliffs.

“Did you enjoy living in the city?” asked Isra, after another of their periodic bouts of silence. They had started up the hill at the hex border, having to go through a long, winding path to get to the inconvenient edge.

“It’s faster there,” said Alfric. “More… ordered. There are aspects of it I miss already, and others that I wouldn’t be sad to never see again. Sometimes in the city it feels like everything is constantly calling for your attention, and at the same time, it feels like everyone is also ignoring you.” They crossed another few paces. “But I can see already that there’s less of the rich variety you get in the city. Even Tarchwood had only three stores of note for adventurers. In Dondrian, there are entad emporiums and a whole quarter of the city devoted to ectads. There are stores that specialize in not just henlings, but specific kinds of henlings, with enormous amounts of selection and choice. I’d always known how spoiled for choice we were, but I’m not sure that it really set in until yesterday.”

“Yesterday you said that Dondrian had dangerous dungeons,” said Isra. “Too dangerous for people to go into.”

“Yes, of course,” said Alfric, nodding. “Too much magic floating around means the dungeons are supercharged.”

“Then where do these things come from?” asked Isra. “How are these warehouses filled?”

“Oh,” said Alfric. “Well, from people like us, or if not quite like us, then close. Teams go out into the world and engage in dungeoneering, clearing as many as they can before injuries or apathy catch up with them, and the entads, ectads, henlings, and other things eventually flow back toward Dondrian, where the people are, or a smaller city, like Plenarch. Some of what we sold yesterday will be kept as stock in those stores, but quite a bit of it will flow through portals and down leylines until it makes its way to one of those cities.”

Isra thought that was an interesting view of the world but had no idea whether or not it actually made sense. She simply didn’t know enough about the wider world. She didn’t think she particularly liked the viewpoint though, not if it meant that places like Pucklechurch existed partly to funnel things to a big city somewhere very far away. Perhaps that was what it looked like to the citizens of Dondrian, but Isra brought meat and furs to the people of Pucklechurch, and none of that was sold on to someone far away. Was it? Isra supposed that she didn’t actually know.

“Anyhow,” said Alfric, “one of the big benefits of going into the dungeons is that we get the best pick of what’s there, and all it costs is our labor and the risk we’re taking, which isn’t actually all that high. The bow you have would probably have fetched more than all the rest combined at auction. If we can convince the others that it’s worth it to do more, we’ll be practically dripping in entads by the end of it.”

“The end of it?” asked Isra.

“Well, you know,” said Alfric. “People slow down, get old, want to start families.” He shrugged. “I don’t expect we’ll stay together forever, especially not as things are now, but five or ten years is realistic if we can make it through the next month or two. And if it crumbles, I’ll have bona fides and equipment that will help me find a more… professional party.”

“Your parents still do this though,” said Isra.

“Yes, they do,” he said. “But they don’t have the same hunger for it that I do, almost no one their age does. Mom does ten dungeons a year, if that, though they’re longer, more dangerous ones. Dad aims for fifteen and always ends up doing fewer.” He shrugged. “But I expect when I’m their age, I’ll be doing the same. They say once you hit fifty, your career as a dungeoneer can be considered over, and both my parents are approaching that.”

“Eventually you run out of dungeons,” said Isra.

“Well, yes, that too,” said Alfric. “Right now, we’re looking at the low-hanging fruit, the simple ones like the Pucklechurch dungeon that shouldn’t cause problems. But the more we do, the more we’ll end up ranging, and there’s travel times to consider until you get a travel entad or can purchase one. Even then, it’s pretty rare to be able to cut out travel times completely. Ideally you’re able to chart a path that allows a dungeon a day, or sometimes two, but that can only last for a limited amount of time, because there aren’t that many hexes in the world, and a lot of them are either impossible to get to or too dangerous to attempt.”

That Alfric seemed to like talking about dungeons seemed like an understatement, but Isra found herself not minding too much. Her least favorite part of talking with others was the pleasantries that they felt the need to lob back and forth at every opportunity. It had never been like that with her father: if there was nothing to say, they would stay silent. When things needed to be communicated, especially from someone who knew a lot to someone who didn’t, conversation felt a lot more pleasant, at least to Isra.

“Your parents were both dungeoneers,” said Isra. “Why aren’t you better equipped?”

“Ah,” said Alfric. He faltered. “Two reasons. The first is that my parents didn’t want me to depend too heavily on their support. The boots and the sword were a gift, as was the shield and my armor, but they didn’t offer more than that, and I think that if I’d tried to press them on it, they’d have given me a lecture far before they’d given me any of their more valuable entads. I was given money, but only just enough to settle myself. I do sorely need something for travel though, especially so that the team can be called in. The second reason is that the feeling of going into a dungeon and gathering new gear for yourself is, to them, something that makes you appreciate what you’ve earned. Once I get a good suit of armor for myself, something that resizes to me, at the very least, I’ll know that it was gained through the sweat of my brow. The same goes for a travel entad, and a storage entad if we find something better than the book, and entads that work with our own particular talents.”

“You think your parents were right,” said Isra.

“Yes,” said Alfric. “Absolutely. They were good parents, with many valuable lessons. Our family has a fair amount of prominence in Dondrian, and there’s a good reason for that. Honesty, disclosure, hard work, self-reliance, duty to others… I do my best to live by those values. Part of that means making my own way and not strolling into my first dungeon dressed in half the family armory.”

They saved their breath as they went up the hill, taking the path as it came. At a certain point they had to climb a set of stone steps. The path would have been impossible for a cart and the lizard that would pull it, and Isra wondered how much time a pass in the hills somewhere would add on the journey to and from Tarchwood.

They took a break at the top of the hills, by the markers for the hex boundary. Isra drank from her waterskin, and Alfric from his. Their packs were lighter, but the hill had been higher and quite a bit steeper. Alfric still had the storage book, and Isra felt bad that he was having to carry it, but he did so without complaint.

“Sorry for not showing trust,” she said.

“No, it’s fine,” Alfric replied. “I understand. We don’t know each other, and it’s a lot of rings. I can’t say I’d have done the same, but I don’t fault you for it. Sorry if it was a waste of your time.”

Isra shrugged. “It’s further than I’ve ever been from home.” She had gathered quite a few rocks from that beach as well and, in the course of their wandering, had seen many more things that she would like to bring home with her. She had never quite realized how different it could be such a short way from Pucklechurch.

“I’m sorry if I offended you, speaking about druids like that,” said Alfric. “I do think you have a gift, but… I could have phrased it better.”

Isra shrugged. “I don’t know if you’re right.”

“I don’t either,” said Alfric. “But if you need help or want me to find a druid for you to speak to, I’ll do what I can. Part of being members of a party together means you support each other.”

Isra felt a bit of warmth at hearing those words. From Alfric, she felt like she could trust them. “And you?” she asked. “Do you need support?”

“I need for us to do more dungeons,” said Alfric. “Anything that helps make that happen, I’ll consider support.”

“Deal,” said Isra, nodding. She packed her water away and went to the gate, continuing on home.

Chapter 14 — Cracked Tiles

Five was an annoying number, in Hannah’s opinion. There was very little symmetry to be had from it. Five could have rotational symmetry, but the same could be said of any number, since a circle could be defined by infinitely many points. Five also allowed a flanking approach, with one of the five in the center and two sides of two each, but this didn’t have manifold symmetry, not in the way that four could, not unless you put the fifth point in the center. But that was just pretending that five was actually four, and Hannah didn’t hold with that.

For people, trying to do that was trying to pretend that the fifth person wasn’t there, and if you were looking at symmetries, that wouldn’t do. Five was, no matter how she looked at it, a bad number. Still, five was the most you could have in a party, and five was what they did have, so it was up to Hannah to divine what might be done with what she had. It was, for a cleric of Garos, a form of meditation and prayer that might bring her closer to her god.

The first step was arranging the party in a pentagon, which Hannah did in her mind, though perhaps if she had time later, she would make little symbols for each of them. A pentagon had rotational symmetry, but it also had flanking symmetry when a line was drawn intersecting one of the points. The obvious point to go through was Alfric, for two reasons. The first was that he was the leader of their group, something Hannah didn’t dispute even if she did think of herself as his deputy. The point around which the flanking should happen needed to be the most important of the points. The second reason was that he was male: both ‘halves’ of the pentagon would then contain half a male and two females, preserving gender symmetry and overall reflection.

This left the question of where each of the girls should go. There were three configurations, and Hannah ran through all of them in her mind, trying to find which one was best. Unfortunately, there were too many methods of division, and they kept giving different answers. Mizuki and Hannah were both clearly more outgoing, while Verity and Isra were less so. Verity and Hannah had more experience with the wider world and had come from larger cities, in a fashion, while Mizuki and Isra were (approximately) natives of Pucklechurch. There were two who used magic and one who was a cleric, with a fourth who had only a bow, which was no good at all. They couldn’t be easily divided by the darkness of their skin, or their hair, or their different sense of fashion. For the most part, Hannah didn’t know them well enough to make good judgments about their personalities or how they saw the world.

Eventually, because she didn’t want her morning prayer to be a waste, Hannah decided that it should be her and Verity on one side with Mizuki and Isra on the other, but she wasn’t sure about which spots each of them should take, and the whole thing felt like an exercise in frustration, because none of it sang to her sense of symmetry. Garos would look at the arrangement and not be pleased. She would pray again, perhaps picking a different person to be the center, and as she talked to them, she would try to tease out the ways in which they reflected each other. Unfortunately, she had yet to find a firm grasp.

Hannah therefore started the morning feeling a bit out of sorts. It happened from time to time, and while her ability to call on Garos was unaffected, she didn’t feel quite right with the world. The last time it had been when she focused too much on the wrong parts of her own body. While she was perfectly symmetricalized, there were limits to symmetricalization. The lungs could be symmetrical with each other, which required moving the heart to the center, but the heart was an awkward, asymmetric shape, and the guts snaked and twisted back and forth in a person’s belly, with various organs sitting in awkward spots without respect to symmetry. If she put herself in the wrong mindset, all she could focus on was the hideous imperfection. Worse than those failures of bilateral symmetry were the other symmetry failures of the body, the way that the legs and arms seemed to almost mirror each other, the way the hands and feet were clearly made from a similar map but far too different from each other. In the seminary, there had been classes on human anatomy, and Hannah had always cringed at seeing all these issues, something that she felt alone in because no one else seemed to mind. One day in the seminary, while looking through books in the library, she’d found a thick tome that went on about theoretical changes to the body that would bring it to greater levels of symmetry, which she had loved, mostly because it made her feel seen. But of course the first verse of the first section was, ‘Man is not of Garos alone’, a refrain that each of the six holy books had in common, a plea to unity that hadn’t always been heard.

As she walked from the Pucklechurch temple to Mizuki’s house, she tried to turn her thoughts away from imperfections, but there were times when that was difficult. On seeing Mizuki’s house though, Hannah’s mind lightened, because it was a house of immense and deliberate symmetry.

Each of the three levels was a square, and of all the basic geometric shapes, the square was Hannah’s favorite. There was four-point rotational symmetry and four lines of bisecting symmetry. All of the windows of the house were identical on every side, and the doors were centered in the middle of the square. There weren’t, unfortunately, doors on each of the sides, but on the two sides that didn’t have doors, there were large windows that hung within a frame that was identical to the doorframes. The rooms, at least on the first level, almost perfectly divided the main floor into four smaller perfect squares, with the exception of the foyer that surrounded the front door and the symmetrical area that enclosed the back door. There were two sets of stairs going up to the next floor, on opposite sides of the house, going different directions to preserve rotational symmetry, and there were likewise two sets of stairs leading to the basement. There were choices made in the house that were clearly impractical, and to Hannah it was obvious that there had been some religious worship of Garos in its construction. It was something that she would broach with Mizuki at some point, but the fact that Mizuki hadn’t mentioned it to a cleric of Garos seemed to be an indication that Mizuki didn’t know. The general state of the house and the garden behind it, and the fact that it belonged to her grandfather… well, Hannah was anticipating that they wouldn’t have much to discuss.

She came to the house with a loaf of berry bread, this one with cut-up bits of strawberries, which had already passed their seasonal peak. The excess harvest was being made into jams and preserves that would supply them through the winter, and some of them would be frozen in large chillers, though Hannah had always felt that frozen berries were a pale imitation of fresh. There were other berries coming into bloom that were good for baking, and there would be sellers sweeping into Pucklechurch through the summer and into the autumn, trying to get the most they could for their harvests, whether foraged or cultivated. They were a bit far south for farkleberries and had the wrong type of soil, but Hannah had taken a liking to the sour berries, and was going to do her best to find some, especially if she was going to be baking for more than just herself, Lemmel, and those to whom they gave healing and advice. Baking was just fine with a bit of flour, salt, sugar, yeast, and water, but she always liked it better with fruits and spices.

Hannah had puttered around the temple while baking and made sure that this time she wouldn’t be waking Mizuki up. To her surprise, as she came to the door of the house, she saw Verity approaching, still looking bleary-eyed and with a sack over her shoulder and her lute case held in one hand.

“Hannah?” she asked.

“I brought bread,” said Hannah. She looked at the sack over Verity’s shoulder. “Are you… movin’ in?”

“Yeah,” said Verity. “I played my set at the Fig and Gristle last night and talked to Cynthia. I have a standing offer to play there, but she thinks she’ll be able to get someone in to replace me relatively soon. She seemed more happy that I was moving on to something else than she was sad to lose me.”

“Well, good,” said Hannah. “Nothin’ to stand in the way of dungeon delvin’, I suppose, ay?”

“I suppose not,” said Verity. She looked like she was ready for a nap. “I still need to go back and pick up a few things from my room, and Cynthia is making me clean up, but I’ll wait until I play my set tonight.”

“Well, consider this a housewarmin’ gift,” said Hannah, raising the bread.

“Thanks,” said Verity. “Could you get the door?”

Hannah followed Verity in, and while Verity went upstairs to put things away, Hannah went to the kitchen, where Mizuki seemed to spend most of her time. The smell of eggs and toast still hung in the air, and Mizuki was eating over the counter, sitting on one of the stools.

“Mmf,” she said around a mouthful of food. “Bread.”

Hannah set the loaf of bread down on the counter. “Bread,” she agreed. “Verity came about the same time I did, said she was movin’ in.”

“Sure is,” Mizuki said with a nod. “Hopefully we don’t drive each other insane.” She eyed the loaf. “That’s for me, right?”

“To share.” Hannah shrugged. “But I made two, and left one with Lemmel, so if you eat it all, no worries.”

“I doubt I’m going to sit and eat a whole loaf,” said Mizuki. “But, thank you! People don’t usually get me anything.”

“No problem,” said Hannah. “Alfric and Isra should be back today, around noon if they got an early start on things and don’t have trouble along the way. We’ll get our share of the money then and my guess is start talkin’ about the what and when of the next dungeon, if I have the measure of Alfric.”

Mizuki sighed. “Can’t say I’m looking forward to it,” she said. “The talking, not the dungeon. The dungeon is probably fine. But I think I’ve got a better understanding of the magic, given the practice we did yesterday.” She looked at Hannah. “If we’re waiting until noon or so, do you have plans until then?”

“Well,” said Hannah. “Ay. I was thinkin’ that if you didn’t mind, I might take a look at the house a bit and see if there’s mendin’ to do.”

“Mending?” asked Mizuki as she took the last bite of eggs on her plate.

“There’s a lot a cleric of Garos can do,” said Hannah as Mizuki took her plate to the sink for a quick wash. “Healin’ is what we’re most known for, but we can do more than just that. I fixed up Alfric’s shield as best I could, and I was goin’ to take a look around and see if there’s anythin’ I can do, as a favor of one friend to another. The house uses square beams all over the place, but the grain might make it a bit difficult. If I can see repairs that aren’t too hard, I’ll make ’em.”

“Ah,” said Mizuki, as she dried the plate.

“Unless you take offense,” said Hannah.

“No,” said Mizuki. She turned to look back at Hannah. “I mean… you’re saying that there are some problems with the house, and I know there are, things that I never knew how to do or repairs I couldn’t afford, and like with the garden, it’s stupid to get offended about, but a part of me hates that people look at this place and instantly know how out of my depth I am.”

“Sure,” said Hannah. “Well, if it helps, when I’m done, they’ll think about nothin’ but how nice it looks, though I can’t say that I’ll clean off your roof.”

“Do you need to clean roofs?” asked Mizuki, raising an eyebrow as she wiped her hands dry.

“You have some small trees threatenin’ to grow through the tiles,” said Hannah, as gentle as she could be.

“But I kind of like the moss up there,” said Mizuki.

“There’s somethin’ nice about the look, true,” said Hannah. She rubbed the back of her neck. She hadn’t quite realized how out of her depth Mizuki was. She desperately hoped that the septic was getting some regular attention. “But… you know a house can rot, ay?”

“From moss?” asked Mizuki. Her nose crinkled, as though she’d smelled something bad. “I thought that was from leaks.”

“The moss and dirt and leaves and things mean that it doesn’t dry as well,” said Hannah. “Anyway, as I said, I was goin’ to check the beams, the stones, the skeleton of the place, and see if I could do anythin’ for you. It’s somethin’ we do as clerics of Garos, though of course I won’t charge.”

“Two gifts,” said Mizuki. “Seems a bit generous to me, and I don’t know how I could pay you back.”

“One is payback for breakfast yesterday,” said Hannah. “And as for the other… Lemmel will let me use the room at the temple for as long as I please, but I was thinkin’, if you had the space, and if you and Verity are both goin’ to be here, well…” She hesitated. “If it wouldn’t be an imposition.”

Mizuki considered this. “And you’d do baking?”

“And home repairs, where I can,” said Hannah. “And other things, surely, like healin’, ay, and if you need someone to talk to about symmetry-related matters.”

“Then yes, of course, you’re welcome to stay,” said Mizuki with a little laugh, like it had been an entirely foregone conclusion. “I actually have space for all five of us, just barely, though two of us will have to share a room.”

“You’ve come around to dungeons then?” asked Hannah. “Goin’ through and clearin’ all the ones in the area?”

“Yes, probably,” said Mizuki, shifting slightly. “It would be fun to have a full house again. Alfric would probably be interested, if just to save a few rings, but I don’t know about Isra. She’s got a place in the woods somewhere, I’d think.”

“Well, we won’t press her on it, and hopefully when she comes back with Alfric she won’t have been driven off forever,” said Hannah. “I’m goin’ to go look at the bones of the house while Verity unpacks.”

Hannah wandered out of the house again, looking for any damage. Mending was, as she’d said, a specialty of clerics of Garos, and she had more than a bit of knowledge about structures and what could go wrong with them. Sometimes houses were built with the clerics of Garos in mind, but that was a rarity, because having a perfectly symmetrical house meant that, in some respects, you had to give up a bit of practicality, more was the pity. For a large enough house, no cleric but one of the Ashar would have the reach necessary to make repairs, and Mizuki’s house would likely stretch the limits of Hannah’s ability if it was necessary to make the front symmetrical with the back.

Wood was actually harder to work with than most people naively thought. Trees usually had some nice rotational symmetry in the trunk, with the exception of the limbs coming off them, but when the trees got taken to the sawmills, or when they were cut by hand, it was very rare that any of that symmetry would be preserved, leaving wood grain that was asymmetrical. Worse, when wood warped or split, there was even less to work with, and nails got put in seemingly at random, and there were all kinds of other issues.

Of course, the miracles that Hannah had available to her were strong, and nothing was impossible, but it was the kind of work that she couldn’t do too much of in a day. Symmetricalizing the house would be the work of months, maybe even a whole year, if she was using her power for almost nothing else. Spot fixes were more doable, but she would have to prioritize heavily, at least when it came to wood.

The foundation of the house was stone, but it had been made with overlapping stone bricks, and would be difficult to symmetricalize too, if not quite as difficult as the wood. Thankfully there was nothing there that needed repair, just perhaps a reapplication of mortar. A single one of the stones had a hairline crack, but it didn’t go through the strongest point of bilateral symmetry and so was the work of simply laying hands on it and doing a basic reflection. The stones had been cut with precision, and while they weren’t cubes, which would have been ideal, they were regular in ways that were both helpful and pleasing to Hannah.

In a storage shed in the backyard, Hannah found a stack of tiles that seemed like they had come from the same batch used on the roof. Half of the tiles had suffered some kind of damage and cracked down the center, nearly forty of them damaged in the same way, but the others were in good shape, and that meant that there was work Hannah could do. She laid the good tiles out in a pattern on the flat ground, using three concentric rings of eight tiles, with the exception of a single space in the inner ring, where she placed a cracked one. With so many symmetries there, it was simple to make the repair, and she went through the stack, repeating the process and turning the bad tiles into good with a fair bit of time but very little effort. Just looking at the roof, she could see some damage that had never been fixed, and Hannah thought it likely that she was going to be repeating this process at some point in the summer when she got to the work of cleaning off the roof and making necessary repairs. Hopefully there hadn’t been any water damage from where broken tiles didn’t provide protection. Ideally, someone else would clean off the roof, but she had the feeling that it was going to fall to her or it would simply not get done.

Hannah was in the middle of this work when Alfric and Isra came walking down the road, ahead of schedule. Hannah stood up, dusted off, and was just in time to meet them inside, where Mizuki had already gotten started on making a ‘quick’ lunch, which involved a bubbling pot of something brown.

“We’re back,” Alfric smiled, once the five of them were assembled in the kitchen. “Still four days away from the channel, or we’d have announced we were coming.”

“And we’re rich, right?” asked Mizuki.

“I guess we need to get the bad news out of the way first. We earned less than I’d hoped.” Alfric had a sheepish smile. “There’s a chance we could have gotten more by going further afield, possibly to Liberfell, but that was five hexes away in the opposite direction, which is a considerable hike and probably would have meant three or four days’ travel in total, depending on the conditions. I also didn’t know if I had that kind of mandate, and we can talk about that later. Still, we managed to sell everything, and I think we got a good price. There are still some entads we haven’t off-loaded, but those come later. I made contact with three stores there and have standing offers for materials, if we decide to go forward with dungeons in the future.” He didn’t look directly at Verity or Mizuki as he said that.

“All right,” said Mizuki. “But we have a payout?”

Alfric nodded and set a bag on the counter, which clinked with the weight of metal. “Fifteen thousand,” he said. “That’s among the books, the ectad materials, and the entads I could sell. Three thousand apiece. Isra’s already got her cut.”

“I don’t want to sound like an ungrateful jerk, but only three thousand?” asked Mizuki. “I thought you said it was going to be like… ten each?”

“Overestimation on my part,” said Alfric. He winced. “My first mistake was saying anything at all. I should have said they were valuable without saying how valuable. I might have been more on the mark with how Dondrian prices things, but I’m not sure.”

“Ay. Better to be surprised and delighted with three than disappointed with ten,” nodded Hannah. It did sting, though she wasn’t particularly depending on the money. “Still, three thousand will last us for a good long while, I’d expect.”

“Probably a full year, if I did nothing else,” Mizuki nodded. “Though now that I have the money, I’m probably going to spend it on something lavish.” She looked around the kitchen. “More stuff for here, maybe an order of ingredients from one of the bigger cities, something like that.”

“You’re going to buy food?” asked Alfric. “Just… food?”

“Not just food,” Mizuki said, shrugging. “But yes, food. Food is great. We need it for living, I’ve heard.”

“That’s true,” said Hannah. “Myself, I was going to have some armor commissioned. It would do to have some adventurin’ gear for the lot of us. The blacksmith likes me.”

“I already bought arrows,” said Isra.

“We’re thinking of putting money right back into going into dungeons?” asked Verity. “Doesn’t that seem a bit backward?”

“Not all the money,” said Mizuki. “But a bit of it, yeah. You said that you don’t even own pants.”

“Fine,” said Verity. “I’ll spend some money on pants.”

“If you’re not interested in further dungeons, we’ll use one of the alternates,” said Hannah. “There are two that Alfric had marked as being suitable.” Alfric didn’t seem to like that tactic, or to see it as a tactic, because he wore a frown.

“I’m interested,” said Verity. “But I don’t want what Alfric wants, which is to hit two dungeons a day for the rest of our lives.”

“That’s not quite what I want,” said Alfric. “Besides, with six miles of walking to go between hexes and the amount of labor involved, and time to rest, we’d be quite lucky to be able to sustain one a day. Maybe with mounts or some other form of transport, but—”

“One every few days,” said Hannah. “For the first six, one day on, two days off, to give us time to recover from what I can’t heal, to not feel like our lives are on the line.”

“But that would mean we’d do the next one tomorrow?” Verity asked. She had her arms folded. “Six miles seems a lot to walk, and it’s not six miles, it’s twelve if we want to go there and back.”

“Not tomorrow, no,” said Alfric. “We had more of a hike than I was expecting with a fair amount on our backs. It was twelve miles each day, carrying more than fifty pounds of weight, with elevation changes. I’m aching. If I have to go another six miles, then go down into a dungeon tomorrow… well, I won’t say that I couldn’t, but I’d prefer at least a day of rest, and possibly some time to train or at least give you all a better picture of what it’s going to look like going forward. And if we’re waiting that long, better to wait until we have whatever gear we’re going to get and the party channel.”

“I don’t want to be the roadblock,” said Verity. “So I’ll do another few, but if it’s travel all the time and there’s considerable danger later on… maybe you should start speaking to the alternates you had in mind.” She seemed to regret saying that as soon as she said it.

“I bought a dagger in Tarchwood,” said Alfric. “With my own money. It can teleport one of us to it, which means we can cut out six miles of travel for someone, and if it’s a condition of you coming with, then I’d be fine using it like that. We can also probably augment it to take all of us, which cuts travel time in half.”

“Hmm,” said Verity. “It seems generous to use it for me.”

“Yes,” said Alfric. “But I think you’re well worth it.” He shifted in place for a moment, keeping his eyes on her. “Verity, can I speak with you privately?”

Verity’s eyes were on him, boring holes into him. Something had changed between them, and Hannah wished she knew what. “You knew me by reputation.”

“Yes,” he said. He looked to the doorway leading out of the kitchen. Verity wasn’t moving though. After a moment of hesitation, Alfric continued. “Your parents were worried about you. They were making some discreet inquiries as to whether they could get someone to, first, find you and, second, go check up on you.”

“My parents sent you here,” said Verity. Her arms remained folded across her chest, but her stern posture gave way to confusion. “But surely not to have me go into a dungeon.”

“No,” said Alfric. “No, decidedly not. I had never really had any intention of spying on you for them, but I knew enough about you to know that you were quite skilled, and… I had been trying to put together parties. I watched them fail in one way or another.”

That, for Hannah, helped a few things fall into place about Alfric. Why the rush? Well, perhaps because he’d seen parties fail before, either through scheduling or personal issues, or collapsing when it came time to actually fight monsters. Hannah wondered just how many failed parties he’d had. Now that they’d been through one dungeon, and proven that they could do it, Alfric was willing to slow down and invest some time.

“And if I had said no?” asked Verity.

“I would have tried a few other approaches with you. If it had still been a firm no, I would have confirmed for them that it was really you,” said Alfric. “Then I’d have done my best to scrape together a party without you, using the funds they’d given me.”

Verity nodded. “And if you know all that, you know… certain other salient information about me.”

Alfric nodded slowly.

“Which is?” asked Mizuki.

“I haven’t said it out loud because I assumed that Verity would prefer it to be private,” said Alfric.

Hannah felt the pull of curiosity, and immediately her mind went to work thinking of all the possible options that it could be. A disgrace of some kind seemed the most likely, but there were many options for the specific variety. A child out of wedlock, a failed engagement, a social embarrassment, a crime of passion… None of them fit. None immediately made sense of Verity. That said, Hannah was aware that she didn’t know Verity all that well.

“I think I need a moment to myself,” she said. “I’ll be upstairs.”

She left the kitchen, moving with the same grace as before, not teary-eyed, but certainly not looking like she was pleased.

“She’s only second elevation though,” said Mizuki. “She can’t be that good, right?”

“You’re the one that said elevation was bunk,” said Alfric. “And yes, there are reasons to believe that Verity is far more proficient than being a bard of second elevation would imply.”

“Seems crazy to come out all this way when the answer might have been no,” said Hannah.

“There was payment either way,” said Alfric. “And a place like this is the ideal starting location. I still need to send a message to her parents, but I’m hoping to get her input on that, once she’s had some time to process. If she’d have said no, I’d have sent them a message anyway and taken the money for it, not that I would have been proud about it.”

“Cold,” said Mizuki with a whistle.

“A parent has a right to know,” said Hannah. She looked at the stairs. “I hadn’t realized she’d run off like that.”

“She deserves her privacy,” said Isra. She was leaning up against the chiller with her arms folded.

“About the other issue,” said Alfric. “The one that I haven’t spoken about. I’d prefer if the three of you didn’t snoop or pry. She’ll tell you when she’s ready, if she’s ever ready and if this doesn’t make her want nothing to do with me.”

“You know, she just moved in today,” said Mizuki. “You could have waited.”

“Waiting this long was already a violation of disclosure,” said Alfric. “I couldn’t wait until we’d done another dungeon run. It wouldn’t be ethical. Arguably, it wasn’t ethical to wait as long as I did. Besides, her parents will make other arrangements if I never report back to them through a guild messenger like we’d planned. It’s better for Verity to know now, so she can do something about that. I’m open to some deception though.”

“You know this raises all kinds of questions,” said Hannah. “Like why she ran away from home, and what her parents are like, and all those kinds of things.”

“She came to Pucklechurch to get away,” said Alfric. “My guess is that people not knowing much more than that she came from Dondrian was part of the point. I probably should have spoken with her separately, insisted on it, but I wanted my own deception to be out in the open, and if she wanted to leave because of it, I didn’t want it to be on her to explain things.”

He looked somewhat deflated. Hannah could imagine him rehearsing what he’d said and preparing to tell Verity. She wondered if it had gone better or worse than he’d expected, but her prior experience with telling people things you didn’t want to was that he probably just felt a bit hollow and unsure. She’d have to ask him, later, perhaps much later.

“I’ll go up to her,” said Hannah.

“No,” said Mizuki, who was looking out of sorts. “She said she wants to be alone, leave her alone.”

“I’m a cleric,” said Hannah. “Part of that is talkin’ to people about their problems. When people say they want to be alone, sometimes that means they think other people won’t understand. Even if she doesn’t want to share, we can talk around it. Talkin’ is what I’m trained for, it’s what I spent some years in seminary learnin’.”

“I guess,” said Mizuki, but she seemed doubtful.

Hannah left the others to go upstairs and briefly overheard something about druids, but then she was out of earshot and up on the second level. She didn’t actually know where Verity’s room was, but the layout was as pleasing to her as on the ground floor, with two staircases up and rooms of equal size, one being the blue-tiled bathroom with a huge claw-foot tub, the other three being bedrooms. Hannah found it by process of elimination, as two of the bedrooms were open, one of them with a large four-poster bed that must have been Mizuki’s, the other with stripped-bare bunk beds that must have belonged to her sisters.

Hannah tapped lightly on the final door.

“Come in,” replied Verity’s soft voice.

“Hullo,” said Hannah as she entered. She closed the door behind her and sat on the bed next to Verity. Already, Verity’s things had been strewn about the room, with a pile of poetry books slumped on one shelf and clothes in a loose pile on the floor. “How’re you doin’?”

“Fine,” said Verity. “Fine, I just… if my parents hired him, even if he’s not going to do the work, that means they’ll hire someone else when he doesn’t report, or if he reports and says he’s not going to do it. I was doing fine, I had a room and a job, it wasn’t like I was dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“Were they just worried, or was it somethin’ more?” asked Hannah. “When someone runs away, it can be hard on the parents.”

“I didn’t run away,” said Verity, but there was no confidence in the statement. “I talked to them and explained that I was an adult capable of making my own decisions and finding my own way in the world. They disagreed and shut down any further discussion, like I was going to change my mind if they just refused to entertain the idea.” She shook her head. “I’m not even that upset with Alfric, though maybe I should be. I’m more upset that I wasn’t trusted to be my own person. I’m upset with them.”

“Ah, I hear ya,” said Hannah. “My own parents didn’t fancy havin’ a cleric for a daughter.”

“They didn’t?” asked Verity. She hadn’t been looking at Hannah, but at this she turned, frowning.

Hannah nodded. “They tried to talk me out of it. My da thought that I was goin’ for the wrong reasons, and my ma just didn’t like the idea of me not gettin’ to see them so much, which I suppose she had a point about, but it wasn’t goin’ to stop me.”

“What are the wrong reasons to become a cleric?” asked Verity.

“Oh,” said Hannah, waving her hand. “My da had some ideas about why I had such a strong interest in Garos, mostly havin’ to do with him thinkin’ I was interested in women, given a certain reputation of the church, not that it’s not warranted. He said to me that I didn’t have to go, that we could find me a woman at home if that was what I wanted.”

“And… it wasn’t?” asked Verity. She had one eyebrow slightly arched.

Hannah laughed. “Oh, no, not at all. Da wasn’t wrong, there was a lot of that goin’ on in the seminary, and I did end up havin’ a few girlfriends. It’s a bit… well, I wouldn’t say encouraged, but—” She shook her head. “It’s not important right now. The point I was tryin’ to make was that parents can be a bit difficult, and if you didn’t want to be a bard, or not a bard like they wanted you to be, that’s somethin’ for them to deal with on their own, with no spyin’ on you. I don’t blame Alfric for seekin’ you out, if he thinks you’re the best bard he could get, but I wouldn’t blame you either if you decide you don’t want to deal with him. Now, to my mind, he gets some credit for ’fessin’ up when he did, but that’s me, not you.”

“I suppose,” said Verity. “You know, all I really wanted to do was to make music.”

“And were you not allowed to, in the conservatory?” asked Hannah. “Or the life you were to have beyond there?”

“There was too much focus on the magic,” said Verity. “And if it wasn’t the magic, then it was dealing with other people, scheduling time with a group, arranging gigs, learning new songs that needed to be played with demanding technical precision… There was so much pressure, so much demand, so much that wasn’t even remotely about the music itself.”

“And goin’ into dungeons doesn’t really help that, does it?” asked Hannah. “Alfric doesn’t want you because you can improvise a nice melody, or because he appreciates what you do with lyrics, it’s ’cause he wants to be forty-six percent stronger or some such.”

“Yes,” said Verity. “Yes, exactly, and I understand it, the value that I have, but it feels like that’s the only thing that anyone cares about. It’s maddening.”

“Is it better at the tavern?” asked Hannah.

Verity thought for a moment. “People feel the effects, and that’s why I was hired, but I do get complimented on my songs. People notice, I think. They appreciate more than just having flavorful food. And I am good at the effects, better than most, I just… I didn’t want to be that lute player who gets hired into a guild so she can sit in a room somewhere and play away with no one hearing her.”

Hannah nodded. “Well, if you stick with us, know that you’re here for more than that. Everyone’s got a role in the party, and that role is important, but it’s not the sum of what it means to be a party member. For my own part, the song you sang on the way back from the dungeon was what made me think we could really be a party in the long term. That I wanted to, with you specific people, above and beyond any interest in dungeons.”

Verity blushed and nodded. “Thank you.”

“Now,” said Hannah, placing her hands on her knees. “I’m goin’ to give you a bit of time to yourself, to collect your thoughts and such, but Mizuki has some lunch bubblin’ away, and I doubt you’d want to miss it. There’s some strawberry bread to go with it, fresh baked this mornin’.”

As Hannah left, Verity was going for her lute, ready to sing a song to herself.

Chapter 15 — Good Next Steps, I Suppose

“How is she?” asked Alfric once Hannah came back downstairs.

“Never mind that,” said Mizuki. “Look at this cat.”

Sitting on the kitchen counter like a proper gentleman was Tabbins, an enormous black cat with a white belly and white paws that looked a little like mittens. He was nominally Mizuki’s cat, though he spent most of his time outside, and Mizuki only ended up feeding him once a day. He caught his other meals, usually mice, but occasionally a rat or a bunny, and he sometimes left pieces of them outside the door for Mizuki to find. On balance, this felt like it was better than having mice in the house, but Mizuki wasn’t always so sanguine about their relationship.

“Look at him!” said Mizuki.

“Yes?” asked Hannah. “You have a cat?”

“Kind of,” said Mizuki. “I would say it’s more like there’s a cat who uses the home from time to time. More in the winter than the summer, and sometimes I don’t see him for days.” She stroked his head, and he tilted it back, closing his eyes. “Look at him though! Isra is a woods witch, she told him to jump up, and he did it, just like magic.”

“It is literally magic,” said Alfric.

“This cat has not listened to a single solitary thing that anyone has ever said,” Mizuki beamed, as though she was proud of that fact. “But he listened to Isra.”

“Isra might be a druid,” said Alfric.

“Woods witch,” said Mizuki. That was the term she’d grown up with. ‘Druid’ didn’t sound right to her ears. It was like something having to deal with ‘dru’, whatever that was. “Which is neat, but not really something that needed to be kept from us, I wouldn’t think.”

“It came up on our walk,” said Isra, who was looking at the cat. “I’m not certain. Most cats don’t listen to me though.”

“Most cats don’t listen to anyone,” said Mizuki. “But if you can get a cat to listen to you ten percent of the time, then you’re a woods witch for sure.”

“You’re all saying that what I can do is… not the same sort of thing you can do,” said Isra. “You’re saying that it’s not… natural?”

“Well, if it’s what you are,” said Hannah. “And I won’t say that it is what you are, not until I’ve seen some better evidence. Some might say it’s the most natural thing you can be. It’s a power, certainly, but bein’ a druid is almost like bein’ a cleric, though not quite so much and without the power of a miracle.” She didn’t seem entirely sure about that.

“I’m not sure that I am a druid,” said Isra. The frown hadn’t left her face since Verity had gone upstairs. “I don’t feel like a druid.”

Hannah nodded. “You just feel like yourself. It’s common for druids, or so I’ve heard, since most of ’em get raised in the woods, away from others, and all the talkin’ to animals and finding forage without lookin’ is no more an extra power to them than havin’ a second arm is to me.” She paused. “Can you find forage?”

“I forage,” said Isra, crossing her arms. “When you say that I find it without looking—” She shook her head. “I don’t think I understand what being a druid is. Alfric didn’t explain it well.”

If that was a slight, Alfric didn’t react to it.

“So,” said Hannah, always happy to be an authority. “As part of the seminary, we did some comparative studies, lookin’ into other gods and other things that are like gods. Other clerics, but also alienists and druids. Formally, a druid is someone who, first off, is born some five miles away from anyone else aside from their mother and doesn’t come within five miles of anyone else for the first three years of their life.”

“Which isn’t the case for Isra,” said Alfric. “She’s insistent—and I believe her—that her mother died in childbirth, and her father raised her alone. Also, I heard one mile instead of five.”

“Well,” said Hannah, “either way, that’s a mystery for later, but it might just be a corner case. Anyhow, a druid becomes attuned to nature, far more than you or I, and has a sixth sense for all kinds of things, which eventually blossoms into bein’ able to influence the natural world.” She snapped her fingers. “Isra, what’s the weather going to be like tomorrow?”

Isra stared at her. “Cloudy in the morning, then clear around lunch, and some light rain in the evening. You’re saying that you don’t know any of that?”

“Nope!” said Hannah, beaming. “You probably know all kinds of things that someone like myself or Alfric or even Mizuki doesn’t know, and you know them just by knowin’ them, without havin’ the faintest clue how you know. More likely than not, you never even thought about it, it just felt natural.”

“According to the census, she’s a ranger,” said Alfric.

“Och, yes, the all-knowin’ census,” said Hannah with a sigh.

“I was just offering it,” said Alfric. “And I had said that I would help to track down a druid for Isra to speak with, so we could get some confirmation one way or another, and she could work on her abilities.”

“Good next steps, I suppose,” said Hannah. “And it’ll be vital in the dungeons.”

“It will?” asked Isra.

“Oh certainly,” said Hannah. “The dungeons have all kinds of beasts and plants in them, and if you can hone your skills a bit more, you’ll be able to tell which of them are any good. All that talk of unique books in the dungeons? Well, what about unique plants? Tomatoes are famously a dungeon plant.”

“They are?” asked Mizuki.

“They’re thought to be,” said Alfric. He sounded skeptical. “And it’s illegal to bring anything that can replicate out of a dungeon unless it’s very securely contained. Illegal, and also a bad idea.”

“We’ve got the book, don’t we?” asked Hannah. “Shouldn’t be too hard to set up a grow box, should it? Not that we’ll get the next tomato, but it’s somethin’ to keep an eye out for.” She turned to Isra. “Meat and skins are the other big things. Normally you’d have no idea what any of the beast parts could be used for, but that’s somethin’ a druid might know, if the skill is honed.”

Isra looked between Alfric and Hannah. “The skill is… about money?”

“No,” said Mizuki. “A woods witch is about helping people. That’s her main job, or, I guess, role, since usually she gets paid in goodwill or being loved. Pucklechurch had a woods witch back when my grandpa moved into town, and she helped him get settled and clear this land.”

“How?” asked Isra. She was frowning. “I wouldn’t be able to do that.”

“She told the trees to move,” said Mizuki.

“And they listened?” asked Isra.

“It took a long time, but yes,” said Mizuki. “You’ve got to be pretty patient with trees, he said. Over a couple of months though, they started ambling out of the way.”

“But why wouldn’t he just cut them down?” asked Hannah. “There’s lots of wood used in this house.”

“Grandpa had a cart,” said Mizuki. “It was a magical one. He had filled it with timbers, stones, and tiles from Kiromo, and this place was meant to be a piece of his homeland, which I guess it did end up being, until he moved back. As for why he wouldn’t cut the trees, that’s an old Kiromo superstition. If you start your foundation with the death of trees, they’ll haunt your house.”

They were all looking at her.

“It’s true,” she said. “Or, it’s not true that you’ll get ghost trees, but it’s true that it’s a superstition.”

“But what would a ghost tree even be?” asked Hannah.

“Well, ghosts live in the elsewhere and then appear for brief moments, right?” asked Mizuki. “So I guess you’d be walking through your house in the middle of the night, and the ghost tree would be real and solid for half a second, just long enough that you run smack into it.”

“You’ve got some peculiar notions on ghosts,” said Hannah. “If you ever have a real ghost, I have some trainin’ in the matter, though I imagine we’d get Lemmel before lettin’ me have a go at it myself.”

“Anyway,” said Mizuki. “The woods witch died some three decades back, and Pucklechurch hasn’t had another since. We’ve been borrowing one from Liberfell, when we have need, I think.”

“Which is where?” asked Isra.

“Two hexes southwest,” said Alfric. “It’s the size of Tarchwood, maybe a touch larger.”

“We can send a letter out, if you’d like,” said Mizuki. “We have a cartier servicing Pucklechurch, and you’d get a response back in, oh, two or three days? Or I could talk with some guildmates I have there.”

Isra nodded. “And she would help me understand?”

“Better than we can, that’s for sure,” said Mizuki. “Though I’m sure that Alfric and Hannah both consider themselves to be experts.”

“I don’t,” said Alfric, holding up a hand. “And I already said as much.”

“I did have a class on druids in seminary,” said Hannah. She turned to Isra. “Though no, I wouldn’t call myself an expert, even if I probably know as much as anyone here.”

“You’re saying I’ll be able to speak with trees,” said Isra, looking at Mizuki.

“Oh, woods witches are quite useful,” said Mizuki. “Especially the most powerful ones. When the woods witch comes to town, she tells all the weeds in the fields to die, she tells the birds to stop poaching seeds, she tells the insects to bugger off, all kinds of things, then goes on her way. They naturally stop listening to her instructions after a bit, but it’s always a more pleasant week or two.”

“She tells the weeds… to die?” asked Isra, frowning.

“Pretty sure she does, yeah,” said Mizuki. “Oh, and druids have some weather control, so it’s always a nice balmy set of days when she’s in town and then usually rain afterward to make sure the crops get their water.”

Isra looked at the three of them. “You’re saying that you have no control over what the weather does?”

Mizuki laughed. “No, none at all. Wow. I wonder what else you thought was completely normal?”

“Mmm,” said Isra. She stopped leaning against the counter and straightened out. “I think I’ll be going.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” said Mizuki, sitting up a bit. “I just—it’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“It’s not because of what you said,” Isra replied. “I’ve been on the road and need some rest. I need time to myself to think.”

“There’s a room upstairs if you want it,” said Mizuki.

“No, thank you,” replied Isra.

“We should talk about the timeline for the next dungeon first,” said Alfric. “I’d like to do it before we have the channel, but obviously coordination after we have the channel will be easier.”

“I can move at your schedule,” said Isra. She moved toward the door. “I’ll be in town again tomorrow. I’ll come here around noon.” She looked to Alfric. “I’ll get the rocks then.”

She slipped out without saying more, and Mizuki just stared at the door. “Huh,” she said. “Hope we didn’t scare her off.”

“It’s probably just a shock,” said Hannah.

“So when are we going to the next dungeon, if that’s what we’re doing?” asked Mizuki.

Verity chose that moment to come into the kitchen, though it was anyone’s guess how long she’d been listening in. In Mizuki’s experience, sound carried fairly well up the stairs, though not into the bedrooms.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hello,” said Alfric.

“How do you feel about lying to my parents?” asked Verity.

“I do my best not to lie to people,” said Alfric. “Though a lie by omission… that, I would think, would be acceptable, if there wasn’t some compelling interest in disclosure.” He seemed to use that word a lot, ‘disclosure’.

“Then I want you to send mail back to them, as you said,” said Verity. “Tell them the truth, but paint it as best you can. Don’t tell them that I’m running off to become part of a low-level dungeoneering team. And… let me read it, before it’s sent.”

“I can do that,” nodded Alfric. His sense of relief was controlled but still visible.

“I need a few days of rest and practice,” said Verity. “I think we were risking too much going into a dungeon without proper preparation. And yes, I’ll buy some pants somewhere, if I have to, I guess.”

“Practice would be good,” Alfric said with a nod. “And Isra already took her share of the rings, so we can divvy up what we have now. I’ve already gotten what I was after in Tarchwood, to help round out my gear, but most of what I need are entads, which I’m not willing to pay the markup on.”

Hannah went to the bag of rings and began dividing them up, which didn’t take all that much time since the denominations were fairly large. It was more money than Mizuki had ever seen in one place, but she did her best to swallow her shock at it. Mizuki had never really wanted for money growing up, but after her parents had left, there had been some lean years as she got used to living by herself and the expenses associated with that. Cooking all her own meals had definitely helped, as well as scavenging what she could from what remained of the slowly deteriorating gardens, but most of her money came from random bits of sorcery, whether that was chasing down odd jobs or trying to make something of value from converting castoffs. Every now and then, someone needed a tree cut down or a stump removed, and big, splashy magic was what that called for. Really, dungeoneering had been the obvious choice, but it required a party, and short of doing what Alfric had done and getting a candidate list from the censusmaster… Well, that was decidedly not her kind of thing. Even approaching people about odd jobs wasn’t her kind of thing. It felt unfriendly.

When Mizuki slipped the rings onto her string, she felt awkward about the weight, and it really wasn’t the kind of money that she wanted to be carrying around with her. She was going to have to find a place in the house to keep it, but with another person living with her—well, she didn’t think that Verity was the type to steal, but it did pay to be a little bit worried about security. It was a lot of money, especially for Mizuki, who had almost nothing in the way of expenses.

“So what’s it going to be for the next dungeon?” asked Hannah. “Six options, ay?”

“I’ll ask around a bit,” said Alfric. “They seem equivalent to me though, all with towns so small they almost don’t deserve the name… If there is a distinction between them, it will be in terms of how far the dungeon is from the hex center, since the differences in terms of dungeon difficulty should be pretty small.”

“No,” said Hannah. “Southeast is a mana mine, northeast is a magical forest, those should be more difficult affairs.”

“They weren’t marked on my map,” said Alfric, frowning.

“They’re both small operations.” Hannah shrugged. “How many mage trees do there need to be to show up on one of your maps?”

Alfric pondered that for a moment. “I suppose I don’t know.”

“I’d think it would be a mild difference,” said Hannah. “But the Pucklechurch dungeon was harder than expected, and I doubt anyone wants a surprise like that.”

“Definitely not,” said Verity.

“I didn’t realize there was a mana mine so close,” said Mizuki. “You’d think we’d get more wizards in the region.”

“Nah,” said Hannah. “Wizards need the mana stones, but bein’ close to a mine does nothin’ for them. Besides, none of the processin’ is close by.”

“And the woods?” asked Alfric. “What variety are they?”

“Nothin’ major,” said Hannah. “Thought to be a dungeon escape, but they’re slow growin’. Fractalwoods, I think they’re called, both the forest and the trees. So far as I know, there’s an outpost of scientist types there tryin’ to figure out somethin’ useful to do with them, but the town is so small that it’s mostly scientists.”

“Either of those might be valuable dungeons then,” said Alfric, rubbing his chin. “But best saved for later.”

“Fractalwoods are neat,” said Mizuki. “I went up there a few years back to see whether I could make anything of them and came back with a souvenir, which is probably still around here somewhere.”

“But there was nothin’ to be made of them?” asked Hannah. “No aether manipulation or what have you to be done?”

“Oh, I was a time god there, which was neat,” said Mizuki. “But nothing that anyone would pay me for.”

“It’s not polite to compare yourself to a god,” said Hannah, scowling. “Least of all in front of a cleric.”

“Sorry,” said Mizuki, though she couldn’t tell whether that was honest offense or good-natured ribbing. Either way, the scowl left Hannah’s face quickly, replaced by a smile. “For a while I had a standing offer out to any artisans who wanted things rapidly aged or wanted things cast forward in time or for people who wanted themselves cast forward in time, but I never had any takers. If we went into a dungeon, would it have some of that flavor to it? Or some kind of space manipulation aspect?”

“Hard to say,” said Alfric. “It would be best if we could speak with another team who had gone in. There’s supposed to be a tradition of leaving notes for other dungeoneers, but there was nothing at the Pucklechurch dungeon, and I’m actually not sure where the local Adventurers’ League branch is, but especially out in an area like this, they’re essentially useless.”

“They’re in Liberfell too, same as the druid,” said Hannah.

“Well, that suggests a course of action,” said Alfric with a sigh. “We go southwest, tackle the dungeon there, then Isra and I, or whoever likes, can take a trip further to the southwest, and find an inn for the night there. I think we could have come back from Tarchwood the same day, but there’s an unfortunate hill at the hex boundary, and I didn’t want to push it. Better to get things done quickly, so I think we’ll push for that dungeon in short order.”

“Another, so soon though?” asked Verity.

“You said a few days,” said Alfric, frowning. “Best to make plans for it now.”

“When I said a few days, I was thinking… well, that it sounded like more time than I think it actually is. Why not wait for the week to finish on the party so we can have the channel?”

“We don’t need the channel,” said Alfric. “The channel doesn’t do anything for us when we’re all in a dungeon together. It’s only marginally better than just talking and then mostly for clarity and because it’s quiet.”

“I think it might be more the idea that this is somethin’ we’re gettin’ ready for,” said Hannah. “So maybe we’ll plan on two days, but play it by ear, and see where we stand as far as trainin’ and equipment go. We got in some practice together yesterday, and we’ll do some more tomorrow, then have a day of true rest where we do nothin’ at all but eat and shop.”

“Sure,” said Alfric.

“Sounds good to me,” said Mizuki. “But obviously we’ll need Isra, especially if it’s going to mean another long trip for her.”

“Even with the stride boots I felt like I was at risk of falling behind her,” said Alfric.

“I’ll accept three days from now,” said Verity. “But we do need to spend some time practicing. Alfric, do you have time tomorrow? I’d like to see what pushing the limits on strength does.”

“I’ll need some time with Isra too,” said Mizuki. “I don’t know what kind of impact druids have on the aether, but hopefully there’ll be something to squeeze from it.” She reached over and stroked Tabbins, who was still up on the counter. “Maybe we can take Tabbins with us so she has someone to talk to.” She scratched his head. “Wouldn’t you like that, Tabbins?”

“Maybe,” said Alfric, who seemed like he was seriously starting to consider it. “At any rate, I’m quite hungry.” He looked at the stove, where the pot was bubbling. “Is the stew done?”

“Stew is a funny thing,” said Mizuki as she got a stack of bowls down from the counter. “It can be done, but the longer it has to meld, the better it tends to be. A stew is never truly done, in my opinion, because part of the process of stew is letting it sit for an hour or two so the herbs and the flavors can work themselves together and the sauce can develop a proper richness.” She smiled. “But yes, to answer the question, the stew is done.”

“Excellent,” said Alfric. He was first in line and used the ladle to fill his bowl, then grabbed a spoon from the pile that Mizuki had set out and started eating without waiting for anyone.

“Did you not have breakfast this morning?” asked Mizuki. “Are you really crazy enough to walk twelve miles on an empty stomach?”

Alfric nodded and continued to wolf down the stew, which was hot enough to make curls of steam in the cool air.

“What is this?” asked Verity as she ladled a bowl.

“Chunks of venison, sage, rosemary, onion, potato, sweet potato, tomato, parsnips, garlic, ginger, um, salt, white pepper, um…” Mizuki tapped her foot, trying to remember. “Rutabaga, turnip. I think that’s it. Maybe some spices I’m forgetting, possibly another root vegetable—carrot! There’s carrot too.”

“It’s great,” said Alfric. He was still eating, but had slowed down halfway into the bowl. Mizuki was gratified to see him going through it quickly. “Do you have training?”

“From my mom, with the more practical stuff, and dad, for mixing flavors and creating new things,” said Mizuki. “But ‘training’ is probably giving Dad too much credit. He had a lot of ideas about what made for good food and tried to get me involved from a young age.” As was tradition in her house, not that she’d told the others, she took her own bowl last and gently blew on it to make sure that it wouldn’t burn her. By the time she’d taken the first bite, Alfric was already finished.

“Is there enough for me to have another bowl?” he asked, looking somewhat guilty.

“Of course,” said Mizuki. “I made enough for all of us, Isra, and one other.”

“Who was the one more meant to be?” asked Alfric as he ladled up more for himself.

“It’s just good manners and good sense, if you have the ingredients,” said Mizuki. “Either it’s something to eat for dinner, or you can host someone unexpected.”

“This is good stuff, ay?” asked Hannah, having finished her bowl. She ate quickly too, Mizuki noticed. Once she was finished, she reached for the bread. “Do you have butter?” she asked.

“Of course,” nodded Mizuki, slipping off her chair and going to get the butter dish.

“Sorry that the strawberry bread doesn’t go better with the stew,” Hannah said. “Next time, we can work together to plan it out.”

“I think it’ll be fine,” said Mizuki. “What would go better with this stew?”

“Oh, just something in the same palate, ay?” asked Hannah. “Rosemary and ginger or sage and garlic, that sort of thing. Something to sop up the sauce.”

“Well when you put it that way, I feel like I’m missing out,” said Mizuki. “And shoot, I’m going to need to make dinner for tonight, but there’s almost nothing in the chiller.” She frowned. “Do you think that when Isra hunts, she just tells the animals to lay down and die?”

“Don’t make fun,” said Alfric.

“I’m curious!” said Mizuki. “And then maybe that’s just what she thinks hunting is like for everyone.”

“I doubt she’d be so handy with a bow if it were that easy for her,” said Verity. “And Alfric is right, you shouldn’t make fun.”

“She’s a weird one though, right?” asked Mizuki. “I mean, we can all agree on that, can’t we? Just blithely wandering through the world, especially at our age, thinking that everyone can control the weather and talk to cats and whatever else?”

“‘Our age’?” asked Alfric. “Aren’t you twenty-two?”

“You know what I mean,” said Mizuki. “And four years doesn’t make that much difference, does it?”

“I think we’re all weird in our own ways,” said Alfric.

“A bunch of misfits, you mean?” asked Mizuki.

“Well, when I said ‘we’ I meant everyone,” he replied. “I don’t think that the five of us are all that different from, um, normal people.”

“Certainly more mages though,” said Hannah. “Not that I’m a mage, or Verity really is either, or Isra, for that matter, but you take my meaning.”

“I’m a sorc, not a mage,” said Mizuki. “You know, ‘mage’ is probably one of the least helpful words anyone has ever invented. It covers everything from alienists to chrononauts.”

“Chrononauts aren’t mages,” said Alfric.

“Well, yeah, that’s what I’m saying,” said Mizuki. “With the sole exception of wizards, you can make an argument for any practitioner not being a mage, even sorcs.”

“Why are chrononauts not mages?” asked Verity, turning to him.

“It has nothing to do with the aether,” he said, shrugging.

“Everything extranormal is mediated by the aether,” said Hannah, as though she’d read that in a book somewhere or possibly was regurgitating something from a lesson at her seminary.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not true for chrononauts,” said Alfric.

“Well, either way,” said Verity. “They have a magical ability to go back in time. Isn’t that where the term ‘mage’ comes from? From magical ability?”

“Not sure if it does,” said Hannah. “Seems circular to me.”

“I’ve always found chrononauts a bit creepy,” said Mizuki. On seeing that no one was taking more stew, she had put the rest of it into a bowl, which was then put in the chiller. The pot was then promptly put into the sink, where she started washing it. “Can you imagine someone knowing your future? Or remembering a conversation that you had no knowledge of?”

“They’ve saved cities from disasters countless times,” said Alfric.

“Probably no one would be allowed in the dungeons if the chrononauts weren’t there to prevent the worst of the worst from comin’ out,” said Hannah.

“Aren’t they limited to, like, a day?” asked Mizuki as she washed the pot. “Wouldn’t that prevent them from getting here if something went seriously wrong?”

“Nah, they have travel entads,” said Hannah. “And besides, part of the role of the province censusmaster is to make sure, at the end of the day, that the population hasn’t dropped by a thousand. It’s an early-warnin’ system. Then, if they need to, they call in the chronos, and they’ll call in some of the heavy hitters, the Pyros or the Knives.”

“Blegh,” said Verity.

“Blegh?” asked Mizuki.

“I just wish that when these kinds of things happened, we had something better,” said Verity. “The two main solutions are to burn something to death or to stab it to death. It seems so primitive, and not in a good way.”

“That’s a real oversimplification of what the Pyros and the Knives actually do,” said Alfric.

“Well, if you’re going to talk Inter politics, I’m out,” said Mizuki, holding up a hand. She’d finished with the dishes, including all the spoons and bowls.

“It’s not politics, it’s high-level civics,” said Alfric. “It’s stuff you should know, in case the worst happens. That goes double if you’re a dungeoneer.”

“I know it, I just don’t like talking about it,” said Mizuki. This wasn’t quite true, and she hoped that no one would actually test her on her knowledge. She knew things, in the sense that she had a general idea. If someone told her about the structure of Interim, she was sure everything would sound very familiar. But it also didn’t seem very important, and it was trending in the direction of those kinds of conversations that people got heated about.

“But the worst doesn’t happen, does it?” asked Hannah. “When was the last time the Pyros or the Knives had to be deployed, ay?”

“Three years ago,” said Alfric. He seemed to have the answer at the ready. “Now, granted, that wasn’t a full burn, but they were deployed to contain some kind of rapidly spreading vine.”

“When people talk about deployment, they’re talkin’ about miles of forest turned to ash or a desert made into glass,” said Hannah with a sigh. “They don’t mean the Pyros comin’ in and dealin’ with somethin’ that at most destroys a farm.”

“It was two farms,” said Alfric.

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “Two farms got destroyed three years ago and that’s the worst the Pyros have done?”

“Historically, no,” said Alfric. “But you have to go back a hundred years to find anything substantially worse.”

“Lesser things, though?” asked Verity. “Slow escapes?”

“The fractalwoods are maybe seventy years old,” said Mizuki. “So, relatively recent.”

“But they’re not a risk,” said Alfric. “And I thought you weren’t going to stomach politics?”

“Well,” said Mizuki. “I’m just saying. Things do escape, and the Pyros don’t see fit to burn it all, do they?” She was betraying her ignorance, she knew, and she kind of hated it.

“It’s about impact,” said Hannah. “Half the creatures in the woods are ‘escapes’, deliberate or otherwise, and half of the plants too.”

“Because some of the things that ‘escape’ are tomatoes,” said Alfric. “There are all kinds of fruits and vegetables that have come from the dungeons and, beyond that, all kinds of new and better varieties of fruits we already eat. Inter wants that. They want mounts and pack animals. And while breedable animals are incredibly rare, there are a few notable examples of those too, things that can actually propagate.”

“Those being?” asked Mizuki. Here, at least, it seemed like the conversation had moved on from Inter politics, which she was grateful for.

“Cats and chickens, for one,” said Alfric.

“Bull,” said Mizuki, folding her arms. “I can accept that tomatoes originated in dungeons, but you can’t possibly be saying that fat ol’ Tabbins was, at some point, a dungeon monster.” She picked up Tabbins, who was on the floor, to make her point, and didn’t set him down until she’d made sure that everyone had looked at him.

“Not a monster, maybe,” said Alfric. “Occasionally a dungeon will have something that doesn’t show any interest in attacking you. Dungeon madness isn’t universal.”

“And you think cats are an example of that?” asked Mizuki, turning Tabbins around to peer into his eyes. “He’s not even magical.”

“A lot of monsters aren’t magical,” said Alfric. “Most of them, in fact. You can imagine a cat as a henling, right?”

“Crazy,” said Mizuki. She’d stooped down to pet Tabbins. “I could buy it though, I suppose.”

“There’s actually a theory that everythin’ originally came from a dungeon,” said Hannah. “That humans are from dungeons, released by those who came before, or having come up from the dungeons without needin’ to be opened.”

“Nah,” said Mizuki. “It would’ve had to have happened an incredibly long time ago. Humans have been around for ages. Sounds like feili propaganda to me.”

“Well,” said Hannah. “The feil are long-lived, so if it happened ages ago, maybe they would know.”

“I wonder if Isra knows about feils,” said Mizuki. “How long has she been on her own?”

“Five years,” said Alfric. “She knows a lot, but there are considerable gaps. On top of that, her parents were from Tarbin, so I expect that some of the gaps are cultural, rather than things she just never learned. And being a druid too… from what I gathered, her father was at least somewhat educated, but whatever he was able to transfer to her between woodland lessons stopped at the age of thirteen.” He tapped his foot. “Hmm. I think she needs our help, frankly, or at least someone’s help.”

“Well, we’ll go find that druid,” said Verity. “And hopefully we won’t all die in our second dungeon. I’m going to get some practice in, alone, please. I’ll be outside.” She slipped out of the kitchen and headed upstairs to grab her lute.

“I need to go spend some money,” said Mizuki, hefting her sack. “Hannah? Were you going to come? I could always use the company.”

“Of course,” Hannah said. “I was goin’ to speak with the blacksmith about a commission, now that we’ve got some rings. Alfric is right that it makes the most sense for us to let the dungeons equip us, but I’d still like a helmet and a breastplate, just to prevent the worst of the injuries that would keep me from healin’ us.”

“Alfric?” asked Mizuki. “Are you going or staying?”

“I don’t think I’ll stay in your house alone,” said Alfric. “I need to wash the dust and sweat of the road off me and talk to some people in town about next steps.”

“Then we’ll meet back up tomorrow,” said Mizuki. Her hand went to her bag and the money there. “Thanks for making the trip, by the by.”

“Of course. We’re a proper party now. We all have to do our part.”

Chapter 16 — Notions from Elsewhere

Verity sat in the backyard, surrounded by the wild plants and the struggling ones that had once upon a time been cultivated. There was work to be done, an enormous amount of work, but that would have to wait for later. She was hoping there was plenty of equipment, like a sun hat, gloves, a trowel, a hand rake, and a water can that would hopefully connect up to a water tank inside the house… But for the moment, what she needed was not to work, but to be alone. The best way she knew of doing that was immersing herself in music. She began idly playing her lute, hoping that a song would find her.

“A merry lass with hair of red / she mends the sick and bakes her bread,” Verity murmured. It was too straightforward though, the kind of direct song that always felt a bit cloying to her. It was always better to approach a subject from the side, in layers of metaphor and simile, not that Verity thought she was any great lyricist.

“The wolf he stood so tall and proud, trying to find a pack / but when he found the other four,” the rhyme failed to come, as it sometimes did. “Their bonds had too much slack,” she tried, but it didn’t sound quite right. If Alfric was the wolf in this metaphor, a strong, noble creature, then he was a wolf who had found a pack that didn’t quite fit him, and he was struggling to turn them into wolves when that was clearly not what they were best suited for. Verity was never going to be a metaphorical wolf.

“The wolf, he knew the secret / of the frightened widow’s heart,” Verity continued. “He stilled his tongue and kept his word / as he watched her make her art.” Again, this wasn’t quite right, the kind of thing that would need to be massaged in a hundred different ways before she’d feel like it was worthwhile to sing for anyone. “For if the wolf spoke freely / he knew the widow would depart.”

She thought about that for a moment. It was clear that Alfric did know, but it wasn’t clear to Verity what she would do if he told the others. She knew how she would feel, angry, depressed, anxious, and betrayed. She could already feel those emotions welling up inside her in anticipation of it happening, even though there was nothing to indicate that it ever actually would. It was a storm that felt largely contained within her gut, as bad as any pre-performance jitters. But as for what she would do, that remained a mystery to her. She could leave Pucklechurch, but it was clear that her nine months of playing in the tavern had been nothing but a reprieve from the clawing grasp of home.

Verity had been an exceptional musician from a young age, in part because her parents had pushed her into it. She’d tried three other instruments before settling on the lute, though she had a particular affection for singing to accompany herself, something that her instructors had reluctantly indulged. She was perhaps twelve years old when she first realized that she was being groomed for something. Her musical instructors began talking to her about parties and guilds and the ways in which bardic magic was used to boost the powers of everyone involved.

It was clear to Verity that for her parents, this wasn’t simply about wealth, though a bard of her predicted caliber would make a fair amount of money with the right placement. It also wasn’t simply a matter of public service, though there was some element of that, as though she had some obligation to do the thing she was good at, above and beyond the ability of others to pay her for it. But no, the overriding concern seemed to be that of status, the nebulous quality that her mother had a keen eye for. Some of this was with designs toward finding a good match for her, but some of it was simply to make sure she reflected well on ‘the family’ in terms of whom she was playing with, what she was playing, and what awards or accolades she’d achieved.

All that had been miserable enough, as though it was an attempt to deliberately destroy her love of music, but everything had changed when she was fifteen.

She had been Chosen.

Six was a magical number. It was the number of sides of a hexagon, the number of strings on her lute, and the number of gods. Each of the six gods had a Holy City, and each of them had six sets of six sets of six Chosen. Two hundred and sixteen for each god sometimes seemed like an enormous amount and other times seemed like barely any at all.

Verity had been waiting on a market street for her mother, who was looking for more decorations for their house, this time with an eye toward coating the Dungeon Room with all kinds of nicely evocative henlings. The store promised ‘Notions from Elsewhere’, and Verity had stepped out, in part to get some air and in part to have a break from her mother’s verbalizations about what might look good in which location, which the shopkeeper seemed happy to listen to and offer opinions on.

Verity had been humming a tune to herself when she felt her hands suddenly clasped by a man in fine clothes. She pulled back at once, but his eyes were glowing, and she found herself transfixed. Besides, he was much stronger than she was. He pulled her close and spoke in a language that Verity didn’t understand, his warm breath on her face as the words spilled out of him. Then, almost as soon as it began, it was over, and the man had released her. He was blinking, his eyes no longer glowing, and he seemed a bit taken aback that there was a young girl in front of him looking at him with wide eyes. He mumbled an apology, then took off down the street, moving at a jog and occasionally looking back at her before disappearing around a corner.

She hadn’t said anything when her mother had come out of the store with a paper bag filled with curiosities. By that time, her hands had stopped shaking, and while the image of the glowing eyes had remained, the encounter was starting to fade.

The second time it happened, Verity had been in one of the conservatory’s practice rooms. A small woman had burst in, interrupting the music, and again said something in that same alien language. This time though, as Verity watched the glowing eyes, she heard a phrase she recognized, or rather, a name: Xuphin, one of the six gods, the God of Infinity. Again, the glowing eyes faded, and the woman seemed confused about where she was and why, but unlike the man, she didn’t seem frightened and afraid. Instead, she was angry, and having nothing else to do with that anger, she directed it toward Verity. The matter escalated up the conservatory, until eventually it was brought to the attention of a cleric, who recognized it for what it was.

This, the Choosing, happened four more times. Two of them had been public, one of them at a conservatory, the other at a temple of Qymmos, and word had spread, to the delight of Verity’s parents. Chosen were rare. Chosen were special. Sometimes, anyway.

The Church of Xuphin sent clerics over to confirm, and it was formally announced that Verity was joining the exclusive ranks of the Chosen. This position, if you could call it that, came with no formal training or duties. It held no powers. Instead, it came with status and the weight of expectation. The Chosen sometimes had divine revelations, or at least unique insights, and sometimes they contributed to the world a Great Work. If you were Chosen, it was because one of the gods had a plan for you, of a specific nature, or perhaps they knew something about you, something they liked. Given that Verity was a promising young bard, it was supposed by the clerics that she would contribute a song at some point, either a song of infinity or something of that nature. But sometimes, Chosen became nothing special. Whatever purpose their Choosing had been for passed by, unseen and unknown. The gods never offered clarification.

Verity had read up on the other Chosen of Xuphin, trying to understand what it meant. One of the most important Chosen of Xuphin was an ectad engineer who was responsible for discovering a stabilizing agent that could be used to nearly triple the lifetime of ectads. Another had worked on advancements in land reclamation, expanding territory out into the seas. A third had been the architect on the largest building in Dondrian. That was Xuphin: big, splashy, expansive, always more, driving toward the impossibility of infinity. Yet some of his Chosen seemed to be nothing more than tradesmen or teachers, simple, unchallenging roles. Still, there was an expectation that came with being Chosen—and a prestige.

Whatever doors had been closed to Verity before, they were now opened. She had offers to play with all sorts of people, and for all sorts of people, enough that at sixteen she had her own wealth separate from her parents. She was given special attention at the conservatory from all kinds of people who wanted to have the distinction of having helped her, or at least being able to say that they had. A few times, she played enormous concert halls.

And through it all, Verity felt that she wasn’t making her best music. She would play and people would preen, but her magic was weaker than most adult bards, and the praise of the bardic masters toward her musical ability seemed tainted by the fact that she was Chosen, destined for greatness in some capacity, if she didn’t end up becoming nothing instead.

She had done some work to set her affairs in order before leaving. She’d talked to the Church of Xuphin, which had tried to convince her to stay, and she’d talked to her parents, who had demanded that she stay, but she was seventeen, the age of majority, and no one had the authority to stop her. She left in the dead of the night, leaving a note behind but not saying where she was going.

Alfric surely knew all of this. Her status as a prodigy and god-favored was surely why he had sought her out. It wasn’t clear what Alfric thought she would do for Xuphin or Infinity, but presumably he thought she would do something. There were infinidungeons, she knew, not places with four or five rooms like the one in Pucklechurch, but the kind that were so deep you would never get to the bottom of them, if they had a bottom at all. There were dungeons in the heart of Dondrian that had fortifications built around them and which you couldn’t attempt without all manner of mages standing guard outside and a chrononaut to undo it in case something somehow got out. Perhaps that was Alfric’s ultimate goal. Well, if it was, Verity would simply refuse. She had been doing perfectly well pretending that she wasn’t Chosen, and it wasn’t like Xuphin or his church had any particular mandate or expectation for her.

“Strawberry hair / strawberry fair,” Verity tried, strumming her lute. “Strawberry wares, and strawberry prayers.” The lyrics were getting worse as her thoughts drifted away from the music. Sometimes the songs came easily and freely, as it had when leaving that first dungeon, and other times it was like she was stuck in the mud.

“I live in a garden, abandoned so long, I sit on the ground, and I sing my sad song, but with time, the garden, shall rise up anew, and at least, in my sadness, I’ll have a nice view.” Verity sighed and set the lute back into its case.

“All right, garden,” she said to the plants. “It’s time to start getting you into shape.”

With some time to take it all in, the garden wasn’t quite as bad as Verity had thought. There were almost certain to have been casualties of neglect, but they had likely died early on, and what was left were cultivated plants hardy enough to survive and a number of weeds that had put deep roots into the rich, loamy soil.

Different areas of the garden had clearly been kept for different purposes. Close to the house, there was a large, wide pot in a place of prominence, where purple-headed chives were fighting with a thick, dark mint. If it had ever been home to other herbs, they had been consumed in the war between those two plants, which now seemed to be in a stalemate.

Further from the house, but still in a part of the garden where stone tiles dominated, there were a number of raised beds that Verity imagined had been for flowers, or perhaps decoration of some other kind, though it was hard to tell what was weed and what wasn’t. There were benches on the stone tile and an area with what appeared to be a firepit, though there was no wood anywhere nearby. Most likely, Verity would have to find a guide to local plants and pull everything that could be positively identified as a weed, but given what Mizuki had said about the history of the house, it seemed possible that some of these plants originated in Kiromo, and she didn’t want to pull anything that couldn’t be replaced.

Beyond the patio area of the garden, where most of the decorative elements were, she found a fairly large patch of ground that had clearly once been a fruit and vegetable garden. The most obvious survivors were tomatoes and possibly some potatoes, along with onions that looked like they had gone feral and, aside from those, a strawberry patch that surely had killed some other plants in the course of its expansion, with runners going outside the stone edging. It was a quite large plot, large enough that Verity thought that during times of harvest it would have overflowed the house with food. She found it interesting, in a way, to look at a garden like this, one that had sat untouched for perhaps five years. To know what to do with the space, Verity had to determine what someone else had planned. There was archaeology, of a sort, to be done. It would take some careful work to see what could be salvaged and what needed to be tossed out.

Finally, beyond the garden plot, other plants surrounded the house, though these seemed in better condition, if in need of pruning and care. There were also a number of trees, some of them clearly foreign, or at least nothing like Verity had seen during her long trip to Pucklechurch or even in Dondrian.

Gardening was different in Dondrian, and not just because of the warmer climate. Verity’s home was in the city, rather than being a country estate, and they had to make do with a greenroom that jutted out from the third floor. Verity had loved the greenroom, especially in winter, when the sun came in through the glass ceiling and walls to heat the place up, and it took on a bit of swampiness without the normal airflow from outside. It was one of the only places you could get properly humid in the winter, and the smell of leaves and soil on top of that was all the better. Of course, Dondrian winters were mild, graced with snow once in a blue moon, so the texture of it was different. In Dondrian, you could garden almost year-round, though their grounds had been quite small.

This kind of garden, in the backyard of Mizuki’s large house, was altogether different. The plants weren’t in neat little pots like back in the greenroom. There were weeds everywhere, which Verity had only occasionally had to deal with in her greenroom, usually from a batch of soil that hadn’t been properly cleaned. The plants here were subject to the winds and the rains, their water not carefully administered by a small, weak waterstone. There was, perhaps, something to like in the wildness on display, but there were so many complications that came with the true outdoors that Verity couldn’t say that it was what she would have chosen.

As with most things, a huge and daunting project could be made a lot simpler by taking it in pieces. Verity focused on the large pot next to the house that held the herbs, which was the smallest element of the rambling, overgrown garden and the most like what she had known back in Dondrian. She was searching around to see if there was, perhaps, a survivor of the war between the chives and mint that could be nursed back to health when Mizuki came back from town.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

“Poorly,” said Verity, giving her most cheerful smile. It felt false. “I don’t know what half these plants even are since some are surely local to Pucklechurch and some were presumably brought from Kiromo. I have no idea which is which, and I somewhat doubt that you do either.” She pointed at the big pot. “The mint and chives have taken over, and I’ll need to trim them back, but I’m not sure what you would want to go in their place.”

“Huh,” said Mizuki. “You know, I kind of forgot that this was here.”

“You don’t use herbs in your cooking?” asked Verity.

“Oh, I do, of course,” said Mizuki. “But mostly I buy them. I guess it just didn’t occur to me that they’d kept growing.”

“But you must walk by them almost every day, right?” asked Verity, feeling a bit helpless.

Mizuki shrugged. “I don’t go out the back that much. My mom used to bake a braided chive bread in the spring. I should go ask Hannah if she could make something like that.”

“Well, what do you use, then?” asked Verity. “I’m willing to spend a few rings replacing things that have died, though late spring is probably a worse time for it than early spring.” She was used to buying seeds with her mother from one of the heritage shops, then sprouting them herself. This late into the spring, that wouldn’t do, and she would have to buy the actual plants, which would come with its own risks, given how much the roots would be moved around.

“Um, garlic?” asked Mizuki. “Or ginger.”

“Those are both roots,” said Verity, wondering if this was a thing she needed to explain.

“Yes, but you could plant them, right?” asked Mizuki.

“Garlic you plant at the start of winter, a week or two after the first killing frost,” said Verity. In Dondrian, killing frost was later, but from her time in Pucklechurch, she knew that it must come early. “Ginger… I’m less sure about. But it would take some time to grow, and it’s not an herb like chives or mint are.”

“Well, you figure out an herb, I’ll figure out how to use it,” said Mizuki. “An herb’s job is to bring a fresh, light, green flavor to a dish, so… anything that can do that. Sorrel, flat-leaf parsley, rosemary, sage? Any of those would be good. I guess there are also a bunch of things native to Kiromo, but,” she rubbed the back of her neck, “first, me saying their names probably wouldn’t help you because you’d have no idea what geshi is, and second, you’d have no way to actually get any of them if they’re not right here in this garden. There were four other, big Kiromo families, but they all moved back with Grandpa, and I doubt their gardens, if they had any, survived.”

“We could still probably get seeds somehow,” said Verity. “I wouldn’t trust them to do nicely with these two killers, but if we had seeds, we could get something growing in a pot indoors, then transplant it next year.” She faltered as she said that though, because next year was quite far away, and there was no guarantee that their party was going to survive into next week, let alone through the winter. The thought made Verity anxious and a bit sad.

“I could send a letter to my parents,” said Mizuki. “It takes a long time for the post to go that distance, if it makes it there at all, but they might be able to send seeds that way.”

“I think that would be nice,” said Verity. “Is there anything else you’d like?”

Mizuki frowned, then reached out and plucked a piece of mint and put it in her mouth, chewing it and thinking. “There was a sauce that my mom made using these,” said Mizuki. “Some kind of sweet thing that I’d have to go to some trouble to re-create, and I’m not even sure this is the right mint. Sogri? Sogi? Something like that.”

“And for the rest of it?” asked Verity. She looked out at the wide garden. “If you know the names of any of the trees, or what plants were supposed to be here, I think it would be helpful.”

“Come,” said Mizuki, holding out an arm, which Verity took. “Let me take you on a tour of this horrible jungle of a backyard.”

The tour took quite some time, and Verity was introduced to so many Kiro words for plants that she felt she’d be lucky if she remembered one in ten. For someone who didn’t know much about the garden or gardening, Mizuki seemed to have quite a bit of knowledge about what grew there. She had been letting the place grow wild, harvesting less and less with every passing year until eventually she just didn’t go there anymore. It filled Verity with something that wasn’t quite sadness. Loneliness, maybe. It felt like there was a song in there somewhere.

“I know there’s lots of work to do,” said Mizuki. “And I don’t blame you if you don’t want to do it. I’m willing to budget some rings for either tools and things, or seeds, or whatever else you need, but if you don’t want to do it, just say so. This was your idea.”

“It will be a good project,” said Verity, looking at the overgrown garden. The worst of the dead plants had been removed, and it was a bit easier to see the shape of things, especially with the tour having been concluded. What Verity really needed to make was a garden map, which she’d have to do with Mizuki’s help, in part to know what was what.

There was something poetic about it, Verity decided. It was a glorious garden, fallen from grace, and she was going to rehabilitate it. Perhaps it would be something grand and ornate, especially if she had Isra’s help, but perhaps it would simply be a garden. The parallels to her own life were, perhaps, a stretch, but she felt there was a song there, one that deserved a little bit more time than one simply made up on the spot. A garden of Kiromon delights, left to slowly deteriorate, but with new life breathed into it… Verity smiled and thought about the lyrics, her two great passions melding in her mind.

Chapter 17 — The Blacksmith’s Apprentice

When they were leaving to go shop, Mizuki debated how much money to take. She had a small crock that she kept some spare rings in, but this was three thousand rings, high denominations that would only be used for larger purchases.

“I don’t like having this much money,” said Mizuki. “I feel like there’s a target on my back.”

“You’re a sorc,” said Hannah. “Seems to me the money is safer with you.”

Mizuki gave an uncomfortable shrug, meant as a ‘yes, but all the same’, and Hannah didn’t press her on it.

They walked together, and Mizuki was happy to have someone to talk to, even if the conversation dipped toward religion a bit too often for her tastes.

“It’s maybe one in ten who feel some attraction to their own gender,” said Hannah. “Half that again who think of it as somethin’ core to them, a fact about themselves rather than just a thing they do. And half that again if it’s only their own gender.”

“Those numbers come from… the census?” asked Mizuki.

Hannah laughed. “No, just some guesses by the church,” she said. “That sort of thing, the numbers, aren’t available at any level of governance, as the Editors didn’t see fit to include it. But you can see, of course, how there’d be problems bein’ in the minority like that, and part of what the Church of Garos does is to help with that. We’ve got a role in the community more than most of the clerics of other gods, ways that we help a specific sort of person. Especially in a place like this, you grow up havin’ these feelin’s that your parents never had, that your friends likely don’t have, and the Church of Garos is there to help you make sense of them and, on occasion, to play matchmaker, if that’s what’s needed.”

“Huh,” said Mizuki. Religion was really not her particular cup of tea. She went to the temple for a sermon every now and then but largely paid more attention to the people around her than to the clerics going on about… whatever. The temple was good for getting some community. She’d never known that Garos, or his church, played matchmaker, but then, why should she?

“And there are sermons and the like, when it’s one of the Garos months or our time in the weekly rotation,” said Hannah. “I’d prefer we focused a bit more on the bits that were more core to Garos, but it’s for the community, to let them know about the struggles of others, to let people know they have a home if it’s needed, and all that. But the church does have a reputation, and it overshadows Garos a bit, again, in my opinion. And it’s interestin’ that men lovin’ men and women lovin’ women isn’t mentioned in the Garam Ashar at all, aside from a few lines that you might interpret that way, if your head was already there. The gods, as a whole, don’t seem like they give a fig about gender. So far as we know, they don’t have gender, though of course you have been ascribin’ it.”

“I’ve never really gone to talk to the clerics,” said Mizuki. “So I guess I don’t know.”

“Gender is a human thing,” said Hannah. “Not godly at all. Now, people find their own meanin’ in what the gods say, what comes to us from revelations to the Chosen and the like, and I’d never begrudge them that, but still.”

Mizuki felt like Hannah did begrudge it, at least a little, but was worried that if she said something, Hannah would continue on with what felt, to Mizuki, like Hannah was toeing a line that wasn’t all that important to toe.

“It’s only been boys, for me,” said Mizuki.

“Ay, I appreciate a good man,” said Hannah.

“I meant romantically,” said Mizuki.

“Ay, me too,” said Hannah.

“Huh,” said Mizuki.

“Well, it’s caused problems for me, as you can understand,” said Hannah. “I like a more manly style of dress, and I’m a cleric of Garos, so of course people make their assumptions. And I know I don’t have a build like you or Verity do, slim and delicate, but that limits my options too.”

Mizuki didn’t think that she and Verity had the same build at all, namely because of the difference in height, but it was true that neither of them could be described as stocky. Verity had cheekbones.

“And the sorts of girls that go for me aren’t the sort of girls that I go for, more’s the shame,” Hannah continued.

“There’s a sort?” asked Mizuki.

“Oh, ay,” said Hannah. “Soft, gentle girls who want someone strong and burly, those are the sorts I seem to attract. But I like strong and burly myself, even, or especially, in a woman.”

“Sounds complicated,” said Mizuki. “And kind of exhausting.”

“Do you not have a type?” asked Hannah.

“Boys?” asked Mizuki.

“But what sort of boy, is what I’m askin’,” said Hannah. “Tall? Short? Quiet? Gruff?”

“I’ve dated them all,” said Mizuki, shrugging. “Usually I kind of… find something to appreciate? Someone shows me attention, and my mind highlights every good thing about them. I fall in love easily, I guess.”

“And out of love just as fast?” asked Hannah, arching an eyebrow.

“I don’t know,” said Mizuki. “Mostly it just seems to go wrong.”

They arrived in the proper main street of Pucklechurch, and Mizuki was thankful there was cause to change the topic.

They went into the blacksmith’s and were greeted by a giant of man. He had to have been at least six and a half feet tall. His arms were like big hairy hams. He was hairy all over, in fact, red hair that covered his forearms, long hair tied back in a knot, and a surprisingly young face hidden behind a short but thick beard. He had eyebrows like two fuzzy caterpillars, and when he saw the two girls, the eyebrows shot up like they had been startled and wanted to escape.

“Hannah,” he said, and it was like his breath caught in his lungs for the last part of her name.

“Micah,” said Hannah with a nod. It wasn’t frosty, exactly, but it was missing some of the warmth that Hannah normally exuded. “You know Mizuki?”

“Ay,” he said, glancing at Mizuki only briefly before fixing his gaze on Hannah again. Saying they knew each other was putting it a bit strong, in Mizuki’s opinion, though they did know each other well enough to know each other’s name. Micah was hard to miss, the second tallest person in Pucklechurch beside the cleric of Xuphin. Mizuki had never paid him all that much attention, in part because he hadn’t grown up in Pucklechurch. Like Hannah, he wasn’t local, and the accent placed him as being from Cairbre or around those parts, same as her. His hair was a darker shade of red though.

“We’re lookin’ for armor,” said Hannah. “We’ve got a dungeon party put together and need protection. I’d like a helm and chest piece for myself, and for Mizuki, a helm as well, maybe more. We’re hopin’ that you have somethin’ that can be fitted to us, because we’ll be goin’ out soon enough.”

“Ay,” he said slowly. “The master is out today, but I can find somethin’ for ye. Can ye give me a mo’ to go in back? And… I’d need to take measurements.” His accent wasn’t quite the same as Hannah’s, both thicker and with something different to it, and while they probably were both from Cairbre, maybe they were from different parts.

“Measurements are fine,” said Hannah. Again, it wasn’t as though she was being chilly with him, but there wasn’t any warmth, not like she usually had, and more than that, some of the boisterousness that Mizuki had come to expect was gone too.

Micah disappeared into the back of the shop. Mizuki got closer to Hannah. “Some history I should know about?”

“He’s sweet on me,” said Hannah with a wave of her hand.

“And… not your type?” asked Mizuki. She frowned a bit, because he seemed like exactly what Hannah had described as her type, big, burly, and strong enough to rip either of them in half.

“He wants to get married and put some babies in me,” said Hannah, sighing slightly.

“Oh,” said Mizuki. “That’s a gross thing for a guy to say to you.”

Hannah rolled her eyes. “He didn’t say it, not in so many words, but—” She closed her mouth as Micah came back, and Mizuki hoped that he hadn’t heard any of that.

Micah laid two breastplates on the counter, front and back pieces held together by leather straps. One of them was almost certainly a henling, or at least Mizuki hoped that it was, since it had filigree on the front. Dungeon stuff sometimes ended up in local shops. Something like armor or weapons, which were basically only used by dungeoneers, could sit there for ages.

“I’ll need to measure ye,” said Micah, holding up a marked tape measure. “Sorry.”

“No need to be sorry for it,” said Hannah. “It’s your job. Just tell me how to stand.”

Mizuki watched, not saying anything, while this went on. He started at the side, measuring from the top of her hip to her armpit, then around her neck, then her arms, which were quite thick, and finally, with large, timid hands, began to measure around her stomach and her bust.

“Micah,” said Hannah with a sigh. “Touchin’ people is a part of my job too, and if I were timid about it, there’d be problems. Now, what I don’t want is ill-fittin’ armor, not when I’ll be fightin’ monsters in it and travelin’ while wearin’ it.”

“Sorry,” said Micah. He went back to it, blushing but much more firm, and Mizuki kept her comments to herself.

When he was finished, he went over to the breastplates and picked up the one with the filigree. The metal was in pieces, allowing for some movement. “I think I could make this fit on ye, though I’d have to do some work, curve it out a bit. Four days, if ye’re in a rush.”

“We are,” said Hannah with a nod. “I know you do quality work.”

Micah nodded. His eyes were fixed on Hannah’s for a moment, and he finally turned to Mizuki, seeming reluctant. “And a helm for ye?” he asked.

“Yes, please,” said Mizuki. “My head is where I do my thinking. I would like it protected.”

“Try this one,” said Micah, reaching for one he’d brought from the back.

Mizuki slowly lowered it onto her head, and to her surprise, it felt like a perfect fit. A piece of metal came down right where her nose was, protecting it, but it didn’t obstruct her vision too much.

“Will ye be wantin’ full armor too?” he asked.

“Um,” said Mizuki, looking at Hannah. “Not if I can help it. I’m a sorc, so in theory I’ll be at the back. Hannah’s the one that will be rushing up.”

Micah blanched and looked at Hannah, but he kept whatever comments he had on that behind thin lips. “Well, ay,” he said.

“In due time, we’ll get her more,” said Hannah. “But it’s early days, and as she said, she’ll be the last one that’s likely to get hit, aside from the bard. Full plate would be a waste of money for her. I can heal nearly anythin’ that doesn’t pierce through, and most things that do.” She frowned a bit. “A plackart, to protect the guts, perhaps?” She gestured to her stomach, showing where it would go.

“Hard to do, without a breastplate,” said Micah. “And expensive, to have both.”

“I’ll see how the next dungeon goes,” said Mizuki. “I’m not convinced that I want to be pouring money into armor that I’d be selling right back to you, no offense.”

Micah shook his head. “Most go into the dungeons with less, ay.” He looked at Hannah. “Some of them don’t come back though.”

“Don’t fret about me,” said Hannah. “Monsters in the dungeons we’re goin’ to, at least of our elevation, are no more dangerous than fightin’ three raccoons.”

Mizuki bit her lip at that but said nothing. The obvious history between the two of them was making her a bit uncomfortable. Mostly it was an uncomfortable curiosity.

With the measurements taken and everything arranged, they handed their funds over to Micah, who made notes in a ledger and a promise to Hannah that her breastplate would be ready in four days’ time. Mizuki put the newly purchased helm into her bag, where it just barely fit. It had cost a shocking amount of money, though Mizuki hadn’t been under any delusion that armor was cheap.

“Seems like he still holds a candle for you,” said Mizuki once they were out of the shop.

“Ay,” said Hannah with a sigh. “I try not to be so nice to him, to lead him on and such, but it’s hard with such a man, who sees every kindness as a spark of attraction.”

“But you are attracted?” asked Mizuki. “At least a bit?”

“Ay,” said Hannah, shrugging. “But I’m only twenty, and to have children so soon, I’d feel like I hadn’t lived my life to my fullest.”

“And… you’re sure that’s what he wanted?” asked Mizuki.

“Oh, ay,” said Hannah. She shook her head. “But I’d rather not speak on it more, if that’s fine with you.”

This was the first time Mizuki could recall that Hannah had asked to drop a topic, and she didn’t know what to make of that. Clearly she wasn’t getting the full story. Mizuki felt bad for Micah, and inevitably, she got to thinking about what it might be like to date him. It was hard not to help herself, but she did try.

Pucklechurch didn’t have all that much in the way of shops, but they went to what there was, and it felt to Mizuki like they were spending rings with abandon. Mizuki bought some pants and had them tailored, then a thick shirt with long sleeves that would help against superficial injuries and environmental concerns. Hannah gave some advice and seemed to be a font of knowledge about dungeons. Almost everything that Hannah said about dungeons made them sound more dangerous rather than less, but Hannah was quick with assurances that this was all about planning for bad variance.

At the general store, they stopped to speak with Bethany for a bit. It was her father’s store, but Bethany had been running it for almost four years, and in Mizuki’s opinion, that was mostly because Bethany loved gossip.

“Your party is the talk of the town,” said Bethany with a smile. She had a mousy look and a bubbly personality, and within the last year she’d started dressing in shirts that left her shoulders bare, which Mizuki took as a sign that she was looking for someone to partner with. She had long brown hair she usually wore in a plait and kind green eyes. Mizuki thought she’d find a match pretty easily if she wanted to, but the girl was already twenty-one.

“In a good way or a bad way?” asked Mizuki, wrinkling her nose. Bethany had been in the year below, and they knew each other fairly well, especially from their combined classes. They had never been close in school but had slowly grown closer, in part because neither of them had settled down with a partner or children.

“Good,” said Bethany. “That Alfric—he’s made an impression.”

Mizuki nodded. “Big-city energy.”

“Not so often you see so many mages in a party,” said Bethany. “No offense,” she added to Hannah.

“None taken,” said Hannah. “It’s a matter of luck, though a sorc would be worth a lot less without aether manipulation. The real luck, from my point of view, is not in the findin’ of people, but findin’ them without needin’ to break up a party. My guess, knowin’ Alfric a bit now, is that if we’d said no, or we’d already done all the dungeons around the area, he’d have gone to his alternates, and if they hadn’t worked out, he’d have gone down a list until he’d found someone that would agree to it. Easy enough to follow a man like that into the dungeon. If things had been different, he might well have come in here, askin’ you whether you’d ever been in a dungeon before, and if you hadn’t, whether you’d like to fill out the team.”

“I actually have been in the local dungeon,” said Bethany. She smiled. “And after that, I decided that one dungeon was all I ever needed to do.”

“Who’d you go with?” asked Mizuki, frowning. “And when?” She had imagined that if Bethany had gone in the dungeon, it would have been hard to avoid news of it.

“Two years ago,” said Bethany. “With the Pedder boys and Neil. It was after you’d stopped hanging around with them.”

That did explain it. Things had gone wrong, and Mizuki had made herself scarce for a bit, especially around Bethany, whenever possible. Mizuki had been the token girl of their group, until all three of the Pedder boys had feelings of one kind or another for her, and it became an absolute mess. She accepted at least some of the blame for it.

“And how’d you make out on your one dungeon?” asked Hannah.

“Horribly,” Bethany said with a laugh. “We cleared it, but we were pretty bloodied up, or at least the boys were. We stumbled our way back to Pucklechurch.” She reached up and touched her earrings, which were jet black in the center with silver swirls around the outside. “I got thirty rings and these, along with a scar on my leg.”

“Entad earrings,” said Mizuki. They had a very faint trace of magic about them, a minor disruption to the aether. “What do they do?”

“They let me hear better,” said Bethany, shrugging. “Only a little bit. It’s like… well, like I’ve got ears all over my head, I guess. I can pick up soft noises a bit better and don’t need to be turned toward people. Not worth risking my life over.”

“I could remove the scar for you, if you’d like,” said Hannah. “I’d imagine it was left there through Oeyr’s rapid healin’?”

“Oh, the scar is—well,” said Bethany, “I was going to have it removed, but I liked the look of it, and no one can say it wasn’t hard won.”

Mizuki might have said that it wasn’t hard won, but she really had no idea. Her own three thousand rings and awesome spoon hadn’t felt hard won. It had been scary, but she hadn’t really done all that much. Alfric had taken the brunt of the punishment and done virtually all of the planning and getting the party together, on top of dealing with selling everything. She felt like she owed him and wondered whether she should have offered him some of her share, but no one else had done that, so maybe it was a stupid idea.

“How many are you going to do?” asked Bethany. “Alfric made it seem like this was a serious venture, not just a few local dungeons.”

“I think we’ll end up doin’ quite a few,” said Hannah. “At the rate we’re plannin’ to go, a year of dungeons would be fifty, all told, and if luck is on our side, or I s’pose even if it’s not, we’d get a great many entads from it. There’s lots you can do, if you’ve got fifty good entads to your name.”

“Unless they’re like this?” asked Bethany, gesturing to her earrings.

“Well, ay,” said Hannah. “But if you do enough dungeons, eventually you strike some valuable ore, ay? And by the numbers, we’d be likely to run into somethin’ that we could live off, whether that’s somethin’ productive or somethin’ we could use for labor.”

“Alfric wants to do thousands, I’m sure,” said Mizuki. “Big-city energy. But hearing about how things went for you… I’m starting to think that he’s pretty competent.”

“Well, our little adventure wasn’t all bad,” said Bethany. “I did get the earrings. And the Pedder boys went off to do another two dungeons, but lost the will to do more, even though they were sure they’d get rich off it. Fern nearly died, and then their mother put her foot down.”

“Nearly died?” asked Mizuki. Fernard was the youngest of the three. “Was he okay?”

“You should talk to them,” said Bethany. “It’s been some time. But yes, he was fine, nothing that a cleric couldn’t heal, but it was a near thing, mostly in terms of getting to the cleric. Now, they’d gone in with only four, and it was the Liberfell dungeon, which they shouldn’t have been able to go into in the first place. They were trying to get a better payout, I think. It was definitely something a lot of people were talking about. I’m surprised you didn’t hear.”

“Well, I don’t have magical earrings, not yet,” said Mizuki. She laughed, but it felt weak. The falling-out with the Pedder boys had hit her hard, and learning that they’d risked their lives without her… Well, it was certainly in keeping with their nature, but there was a familiar sour feeling.

“We’ll be careful,” said Hannah. “Alfric is about as good of a dungeoneer as you can get for someone just startin’ out, and he comes from a long line of them, it seems. Most people who go into dungeons pass a simple test from the League, then go off like they know a thing or two, and it’s no wonder they come out injured. We went in and came out with not a scratch on us, and I don’t just attribute that to luck. It was a hard dungeon, come to that.”

“I got a neat spoon out of it,” said Mizuki. “It can change shape to almost anything that’s still a spoon.”

Bethany laughed at that, and Mizuki pulled the spoon out of her bag to show it off.

They bought quite a bit, including some frozen chicken and a fair number of vegetables for dinner, then said their goodbyes to Bethany. It was even more rings gone, enough that there could be a meal for four, plus more food for the days ahead, and Mizuki reminded herself that she was flush with money, and that this wasn’t a thing to worry about.

“Sorry if I was boastin’ in there,” said Hannah. “I didn’t mean to, but I’ve some pride in our party and Alfric in particular. People do die in dungeons.”

“You said it was safe,” said Mizuki.

“Oh, ay,” said Hannah. “Mostly people die in the bigger dungeons, in places with more magic floatin’ around. Some of it’s variance, worse than what we’ve seen so far. That you can’t blame someone for. But more than it should be, it’s people who have no business bein’ in the place they’re in. The Pedder boys are friends of yours, or were, I gather, but a dungeon needs a bit of respect. People forget that.”

She sounded almost angry about it, and Mizuki had no idea why that might be, except that perhaps it was a cleric thing, or the fact that Hannah seemed to take strong stances on most things. Some people just had Opinions. For her own part, Mizuki didn’t feel like she had respected the dungeons nearly enough, not for that first one.

If she was going to be a dungeoneer, she wasn’t going to make that same mistake twice.

Chapter 18 — The Next Day’s Weather

Isra moved through the woods, following a path the deer normally took. The world was looking different to her, and she didn’t know how much of that was in her head. Did normal people follow deer paths? Could they even find them? She would have to ask, and there was a chance that they would give her odd looks and ask her what a deer path was, as though that wasn’t completely obvious. Of course, most people were oblivious, but she was having to reckon with the fact that they weren’t just oblivious. They didn’t have the same experience of the world as she did.

Other people couldn’t talk to animals, or if they did, the animals didn’t listen very well. She had seen them talk to animals though, like the old woman who yelled at the crows to stop pooping on her roof, or the way that someone like Mizuki talked to her pet cat. Isra had thought that some of this was simply performance, a way to do the same pretending that they did for so many other things, but it was clear now that it was something else. A handful of confusing conversations about talking to animals had been cleared up.

Other people couldn’t predict the next day’s weather. What else did other people not know? What else couldn’t they do? There were so many things about her life that Isra was now realizing she took for granted. Could normal people identify a bird by its song? It seemed equally plausible that they could or they could not. Could they see through a bird’s eyes? The more she thought about it, the more she thought that perhaps they couldn’t. She thought back to all the times her father had seemed oblivious or unaware, and in retrospect perhaps that was simply because he couldn’t see the woods like she did. She was always better at setting traps, always faster to find the deer, always more capable of tending to their garden or finding forage.

Could normal people coax a plant to grow? Isra thought that perhaps they couldn’t. She wondered what would happen if they tried. Other people had gardens though, so why was that? Were they just planting seeds and hoping for the best? Weeding and watering and that was it?

She stopped for a moment as another thought occurred to her, one that was frightening. Did normal people know which plants were good to eat? She relaxed slightly as she thought about it because of course they must know. They ate plants. How could they eat the right plants without knowing which ones were good to eat? She tried to imagine it, and her imagination failed because the only thing she could think was that perhaps they got sick and learned that way. It was how most animals did it, after all, if they weren’t born with the right instincts about which to go after. But if it were true for people, then that meant everyone in Pucklechurch had gotten sick from plants at some point, or… they told each other which plants were safe to eat and which weren’t. Isra contemplated that as she moved past the birch trees that marked the start of her territory.

“How do you know which plants are good to eat?” Isra imagined herself asking Mizuki, who seemed to cook.

“My parents taught me,” Mizuki might answer.

“How did they know?” Isra might ask.

“Their parents taught them,” Mizuki might reply, and Isra could imagine a confused or possibly troubled look on the other girl’s face. Or worse, an embarrassed ‘why are you saying that, what is wrong with you’ smile.

“Someone must have firsthand knowledge, at some point,” Isra would have said.

It was difficult to imagine what the answer would be. Perhaps Mizuki wouldn’t know or had never thought about it, or perhaps she would say, “Oh, we pray to the gods about it,” or “Every year we have someone test all of the plants in the area by eating them,” or “We eat what the pigs like,” or something like that.

Isra was within sight of her house when she stumbled upon the obvious: people could just have a woods witch tell them.

Of course, it was entirely possible that Isra was wrong, and people knew which plants were good in the same way that she knew. There were a few conversations with her father that would make more sense if it was a skill unique to her though, times when she had been little and eating berries, only to be stopped by her father. Her father had been, perhaps, confused about whether the berries were good to eat, rather than worried she would spoil her appetite. She had thought that he was just playing at the game of lies, telling her the berries were bad because it was easier than explaining the real reason he didn’t want her to eat them. She had simply accepted that: people told obvious lies sometimes because that was just how things were done.

Isra’s home was relatively small, with a low-slung roof covered with sod. Whoever had originally owned it had dug into the ground quite a bit, leaving the narrow windows sitting just a few inches above the forest floor. When she was little, Isra’s father had complained that this let mice and bugs have an easy way in, so Isra had politely requested that they stay away, and that had done the trick. Bugs were barely thinking things, always ready to obey a plainly stated request, though it did need some repetition, and mice were intelligent and had a skittish courteousness. It was clear now that Isra’s father had complained because he had no recourse against the bugs.

There were three birds perched on the roof above the door. She had asked them to guard her house while she was gone, and though it would have been fine for them to spend their time in the trees, inconspicuous, they were ravens and liked to make a show of things. She hadn’t, as Alfric put it, ‘told them to’. Birds needed negotiation and requests, not instructions. Perhaps, thinking about it, he hadn’t meant to make such a distinction.

“Thank you,” she said, giving a bow. “I’ll bring out some food in just a bit.” The ravens didn’t do it for the food, they did it because they knew each other, but they had given up a fair amount of forage to keep watch over her house, and getting food for them was just basic manners. She went into the house for just long enough to take out three hard-boiled eggs, which she kept in the smaller chiller for just such a purpose, and placed them on the ground, where the ravens began picking them apart.

With that matter settled, Isra returned to the house and put her pack down, then began shrugging out of her clothes. Twenty-four miles over two days hadn’t been particularly easy, and it had left her worse for the wear. Her skin had built up oils and dried sweat, and there was a smell she didn’t particularly like. The clothes would have to be washed, that much was clear, but for the first things first, she would have to wash herself.

The same tank fed both the kitchen and the bathroom and was filled with a single waterstone. Because she’d been gone for two days, the tank was filled up, and she was thankful that the waterstone had stopped itself from flooding her house. They were designed so that they would stop creating water from just the pressure of water in the tank, but Isra didn’t fully trust it. It was odd to think that the pipes they had sold off to the ectad merchant would be used to make something as vital as a waterstone.

Showers were a bit of a process, and when possible, Isra would make a trek out to the nearby river and wash herself there. The thought of walking another mile really didn’t appeal to her though, and so the process needed to be followed. The first step was to take the married heating and chilling elements from the stove and bring them to the tank of water, then unmarry them and put the heating element into the tank. It would take some time to heat, and Isra busied herself with a quick lunch while she waited.

There was quite a bit in the way of food, even though she’d been gone for two days and done no hunting in that time. She quickly ate one of the hard-boiled eggs from the chiller, then opened a jar of pickled carrots that she’d bartered for a few market days prior. Isra loved pickles, perhaps more than any other food. After that, it was a piece of hard, crusty bread, the kind that kept for a fair amount of time, a piece of smoked venison, and a hunk of sharp cheddar, which, like the pickles, had been bought from the market.

She wished she had stayed for stew at Mizuki’s, but there had been too much on her mind, and she did her best thinking away from people. Isra was a barely passable cook, though she was good at smoking and salting meat and could do enough to get by. She made pickles and jams, and other ferments, but hadn’t been able to get the marriage of flavors right, not like the pickle woman at the market.

With her quick, cold meal concluded, Isra pressed a hand against the side of the tank to feel the temperature. Finding it adequate, she began her shower.

The amount of money she’d made from the dungeon was astonishing. There were certain things she’d been saving up for, aside from the nebulous plans for a trip, and now it seemed possible that she would be able to buy them all in a single fell swoop. A second water tank for the house would be ideal, though she had no idea where she would put it. Many houses had two tanks, one with hot water and the other with cold, and Isra had always thought that was an extravagance. Now it was something she could rather easily afford, and without feeling as though the money needed to be saved for other purposes.

There were all kinds of things to replace, as well. She had no practical knowledge of woodworking and needed a new chair for the table. Of the pair she had, one had a wobble, and the other had broken in the spring. The simple stove had only a single element pair, and it had degraded slightly, making it cool to the touch even when the elements were married. The loss of power to the heating element meant that it took longer to get hot water as well. Her savings had bought her a large chiller for meat, which was sitting outside and had taken quite some time and effort to lug toward the house, but it was already full, and she had been thinking about getting another. Beyond that, she had three outfits she wore, and might like another, and there were certainly implements she didn’t have. What she wanted most of all, now that she’d seen the inside of an entad shop, was more entads. Each one was magical and unique, and there was something of a collector in her, as attested to by the shelves that were filled with rocks, branches, feathers, and all other manner of natural materials. The plants she collected had a home in a little side garden, one of each of the major and minor species, but she had begun to run out of room for them even there, especially since she liked to let them expand and grow where they pleased. When she picked up the colored rocks from Alfric, she would have to figure out a proper place of display.

The house was in need of repairs as well. Pieces of wood had begun to rot, and there was a leak into the bathroom, which was not the worst place for it, but still inconvenient. One of the windowpanes had been broken, and Isra had tried her best to replace it with a piece of glass she’d bought in town, but she’d gotten frustrated after spending what felt like half a day on it and eventually just patched it with a thick piece of birch bark and some sap. Her father had taught her many valuable things, and valuable skills, but home repair had never been his forte, and some of the damage that time and the elements had done, Isra had no way to undo. She had asked the water not to leak into her bathroom, and it had replied that it was incapable of doing otherwise, which was typical for water. That, too, she had patched, but it was a poor patch, not in fitting with the rest of the house, and it was clear that she would need someone’s help.

The house was a secret, which was a bit of a problem. People from the hex had come on three separate occasions, all when she was younger, but she had known they were coming from quite some distance away and left with as much as she could handle, obscuring her tracks. From what Alfric had said, they probably knew that she lived there, and given it had been two years, they had probably given up trying to catch her. One of her father’s friends had taken her in on a temporary basis after her father had passed and had told her that a girl of thirteen wouldn’t be allowed to live out in the woods on her own. She had already dodged the local school, with her father’s help, but if the hexmaster found out about her, then it was likely she would, at best, be forced to live with some well-meaning couple in Pucklechurch. The hex beastmaster had found Isra once, but only by going to her hunting grounds, and she had told her to take less from the woods, then inquired as to where she lived. Isra had lied and thought that it was probably an obvious lie. She’d avoided the town for a month after that, living off the land instead of trading things in, and when she returned, it was with great caution. She was worried that someone would spring out of an alley and arrest her. That hadn’t happened. From what Alfric had said, they knew who she was and where she was living but had given up on her, which was a bit of a relief.

Now she was eighteen but not quite willing to give up the secret of the house. There were a few that knew, her father’s old friends, but she spoke with them little, and they never came to visit. If she needed work done on the house, which she did, she supposed that she could see if one of them was interested, but her father had been secretive and mistrustful. They were friends in a weak sense, people who could be leaned on from time to time, but with whom no great secrets had been shared. And Isra had never forgotten the theft, which had been by one of those same friends. It had made it hard to trust. And if the house was no secret to the powers of the hex, if she was known and tracked, perhaps she could simply hire someone she would watch carefully.

Isra’s father had loved Tarbin and often mourned it. He hadn’t said why they couldn’t go back, only that it was impossible. Tarbin was quite some way away to the east, and Isra had only seen it through some of the books her father had brought over. It was a place of tall towers and baking sun, lush jungles that hugged the banks of rivers and deserts beyond them. Pucklechurch was far different, in very many ways, which perhaps accounted for some of the alienation that Isra felt when she went into town. The other part of it, apparently, was that she was a woods witch and the others were not.

The water from the tank drained through a grate and into the basin below, where an evaporator was sitting and working at removing the water. As the basin filled, dried-out muck was rehydrated, and the smell of it was strong enough that Isra decided it was time to once again remove the grate and scrape the basin clean of the accumulated oil, hair, and general gunk. It would have to be the next day though, once the dehydrator had plugged away at the moisture and dried everything. It was one of Isra’s least favorite jobs in the entire house, but it was at least one that she knew how to do, and once it was done, it wouldn’t need to be done again for half a year at least, more if she was diligent about bathing in the stream as often as she could. She had often contemplated cutting her hair, to make the mucking out easier, since the Tarbin headscarf meant that no one saw it anyway, but she liked having long hair.

When the shower concluded, the water was getting overly hot. She had drained the tank too much, and the heating element was having too easy a time of it. She used tongs to fish it out, and remarried it to the cooling element, then toweled herself off and lay in her bed for a moment, resting and thinking, before getting dressed.

A party. She had never been in a party before. It had always been her and her father, until it was just her. She wasn’t sure what to think of these people. Already, she felt that they fit together in a way that excluded her. But even if that were the case, the money and entads were too enticing. Before Alfric had come along, she hadn’t even really known that was what she wanted. Before the dungeon, she’d still had reservations. A dungeon was like hunting, she thought, but without any of the regret of having to kill an innocent animal who only wanted to survive.

With the water still quite hot, she decided to make herself a cup of spiced tea, one made from various herbs that she’d foraged in the weeks prior. Dried herbs weren’t nearly as good as fresh ones, but she kept long braids of them as a matter of habit so that she could get through the winter months and still have something warm to drink. The kettle took only a moment on the stove to get hot, and she used a combination of dandelion and chicory root, which together had a nicely earthly, burnt flavor to them.

She was excited for the second dungeon and hoped that they would go soon.

— ⁂ —

The next day, Isra had a cup of morning tea, this time using actual tea leaves from a bush that sat outside her house, and got properly dressed to warp to the center of the hex. She checked herself over twice, making sure that she had everything. She’d had a constant fear, with the warp, that she would somehow go through naked and end up in the center of town with no clothes on. It had been a nightmare of hers for quite some time, sometimes in lesser versions, like going in without her headscarf or her pack. She had gone into town without her headscarf before, but that had been on purpose. She’d felt too naked without it and also like she was disrespecting her father, who had seemed to place great importance on it, especially once she came of age.

When Isra arrived at Mizuki’s house, it was bustling with activity. All four members of the team were there, with Mizuki preparing lunch for them.

“Isra!” called Mizuki. “You made it!”

“I did,” said Isra.

“And have you thought about it?” asked Mizuki. “Do you think you’re a woods witch?”

“I do,” said Isra. “It will be important to go find the other. I have questions.”

“We can probably answer some questions too,” said Alfric, who had come in from the living room. The couch and chairs there had been covered the day before, but now the covers had been removed, revealing soft cushions of rich leather. Hannah and Verity stayed there, in low conversation with one another.

“I was reading a book last night,” said Isra. “A book from Tarbin. It was about a boy who discovered he had magical powers.”

“Oh?” asked Alfric. “And… you think it’s like that?”

“It’s a book my father read to me,” said Isra. “I don’t think it’s like that though. I think it’s like discovering that everyone else doesn’t have magical powers.”

“Well, technically, everyone but Alfric has magical powers,” said Mizuki.

“We understand what you mean though,” said Alfric. “And we’ll help you in any way that we can. Having a druid in the dungeon might be a powerful thing, it’s just not something that I had planned for. If I had, I’d have read more books on druids in Dondrian. From what I know, the animals and plants in the dungeons are unlikely to respond well to you, but you’ll still have diagnostic powers that will be virtually invaluable.”

“Diagnostic?” asked Isra. “The word is unfamiliar.”

“It means figuring things out,” said Mizuki. She was making a type of lunch that Isra had had once before, with thinly sliced cold meats between two slices of bread, called a sandwich. The way that Mizuki was doing it seemed alien though, because she was using far more ingredients than seemed reasonable, two types of meat, a layer of greens, slices of tomato, cheese, two sauces… it seemed extravagant, for a lunchtime meal.

“You want me to tell you about the animals after we’ve killed them?” asked Isra.

“That’s one of the applications, I think,” said Alfric. “Dungeon eggs or newborns can also be fairly profitable, though you have to keep them sealed, and… I’m not so sure about where we would sell them. There are markets, in Dondrian. I suppose I don’t know how they get the dungeon animals in the first place.”

“Are they really dungeon animals if you take them out of the dungeon?” asked Mizuki.

Alfric nodded. “They are. They’re considered a bastle until the first viable breeding generation. After that, the terms for them are different, but it’s not very important for us, since we won’t be the ones breeding them.”

“We won’t?” asked Isra.

“Well,” said Alfric. “We could raise bastles, or clandes if we find plants, but we’ll be away from any potential farm for most of our time, so we would need someone involved in plant and animal husbandry, and we would need to be able to pay them.”

“Why are those sandwiches so big?” asked Verity, looking at what Mizuki was preparing. The sandwiches had grown in complexity and height as Isra watched and were now in the final stages of assembly.

“Are they too big?” asked Mizuki, lowering herself until the sandwiches were at eye level. “I don’t think they’re too big.”

“How are we meant to fit them in our mouths?” asked Verity.

“We’ll cut them in half,” said Mizuki, making a chopping motion with her hand, then taking down one of the knives from the wall.

“Is that actually going to help anything?” asked Verity.

“Personally, I like a sandwich that you need a strategy to eat,” said Alfric.

“Can you add some egg to mine, or is it too late?” asked Hannah.

“I’m not making you a fried egg,” said Mizuki as she cut the sandwiches.

“Och,” said Hannah. “Not fried, a hard-boiled one, sliced thin.”

Mizuki stopped cutting and blinked at her. “Are you serious?”

“It’s traditional,” said Hannah. “Don’t look at me as though I have a second head, ay.”

“Traditional to Cairbre?” asked Alfric.

“Where else?” asked Hannah.

“I don’t know,” said Alfric. “The seminary?”

“They don’t eat eggs there,” said Hannah, rolling her eyes. “Too oblong.”

“What?” asked Verity. “You’re making that up.”

“’Strue,” nodded Hannah. “In the seminary, there are many pains taken to eat only that which brings us closer to Garos. It’s silly, of course, but the thought is that it might help with a better awareness of what it means to be a cleric, for it is said in the Book of Garam Ashar, ‘The studious man spends his life in devotion to his subject of study, lest he split from his path’. The only real way to be an expert is to devote yourself, mind, body, and soul, to live, breathe, eat, and dream the object of your obsession.”

Isra was watching Hannah as she spoke. It wasn’t the first time she’d quoted the Book of Garam Ashar. When she did, her voice changed somewhat, her accent becoming less thick, as though she was mimicking a teacher. Isra’s bookshelf was quite short, but she had all six of the holy books. She had read them all at least once. She’d hated the Qymr Mos, but the Book of Garam Ashar was inoffensive, if a bit strange.

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “Was it just hard-boiled eggs, or were fried eggs fine?”

“Just hard-boiled, ay,” said Hannah. “Take a form with asymmetry and give some symmetry to it, and that would be no problem.”

“Are we ready to eat?” asked Alfric. He’d been eyeing the sandwiches.

“I don’t keep hard-boiled eggs in the house, so we’re good to go,” said Mizuki. “Keep in mind the dining room hasn’t been used in a few years, and I didn’t have time to dust.”

“I dusted,” said Hannah.

“Oh,” said Mizuki as she scooped up the plates. “Well, thank you.”

The dining room was just off the kitchen and was dominated by a large wooden table. It was, curiously, square and set in the middle of a square room. It held seating for eight, and Hannah shared a side with Mizuki.

“Whoever built this place liked symmetry,” said Hannah. “It’s refreshin’. Reminds me of the seminary.”

“The worship of the gods is a little different in Kiromo,” said Mizuki. “They have a philosophy of ‘living by the gods’, and one of Garos’ domains there is buildings. So buildings, according to Kiromon philosophy, have to be really in line with Garos, if they’re going to be places of importance. When my grandfather came to Pucklechurch, he was a powerful, important guy, and he wanted a place that would serve as a kind of… well, temple, which is why the house is the way it is. The timbers of the house are actually all from a single tree, and the stones are all from a single block.”

Hannah had been eating her sandwich but stopped as Mizuki talked. “They are?”

Mizuki nodded. “All imported from Kiromo by my grandfather when he came. The tree was, ah, a giant cherrywood, I think, a huge tree almost as thick as this entire house. They don’t cut them down often, but he had a thick part of it or something.”

“Well, then I can’t work on the house now, can I?” asked Hannah.

“You can’t?” asked Mizuki.

“It’s a religious rite,” said Hannah. “A split tree or stone like that is probably testament to Kesbin.”

“God of Nothing?” asked Alfric. His sandwich was halfway gone, and Isra had hardly touched hers. “Why?”

“Division and subtraction are aspects of Kesbin’s will,” said Verity. “A divided tree or divided stone is a powerful invocation.”

“I should have thought of it,” said Hannah. “I saw the testimony to Garos in the design of this place but failed to see the others.” She clucked her tongue. “This will need some thinkin’ on.”

“Can’t you just do it anyway?” asked Mizuki. “You’re not a cleric of Kesbin, right?”

“Already I’ve done too much,” said Hannah. “An invocation like this, strong as it is, is nothing to be trifled with.”

“But what happens if you do?” asked Mizuki. “Like, how would it be bad?”

“Oh, probably nothin’ much,” nodded Hannah. “Most likely we’d get a visit from a cleric of Kesbin, if it was noticed. They can levy fines through the hexmaster, same as any church.”

Mizuki relaxed. “And that’s it? We wouldn’t be,” she hesitated, “hexed?”

Hannah laughed. “Imagine that!” she said. “Imagine thinkin’ in this day and age that you’d be hexed of all things for makin’ changes to a house!”

Mizuki scowled. “Well, I don’t know, do I?” she asked. “I’ve never run afoul of the churches.”

“Yes, you have!” said Hannah, still laughing. “You have loads of times.”

“Yeah,” said Mizuki. “But not like… sacrilege.”

“Well,” said Hannah, “it’s fine.”

“What’s a hex?” asked Isra. These were decidedly not in the holy books.

“It means six,” said Alfric. Isra had known this. “But in this context, a ‘hex’ is a godly curse of some kind, administered by a cleric of the six gods.”

“What does it do?” asked Isra. She had been eating away at her sandwich as the others talked and was now almost finished.

“Varies by the gods,” said Hannah. “They’re not really used anymore, except in dungeons, and Garos has the weakest of the lot, aside from Qymmos. Might be better to think of a hex as the opposite of a miracle, or blessin’, or whatever you want to call the things that a cleric like me can do.”

“A spell,” said Mizuki, nodding. Hannah gave her a look that suggested disagreement but said nothing.

“You deal in healing though,” said Isra, feeling confused. “What harm could you do?”

“Oh, well, not much as yet, but I’m still just a journeyman,” said Hannah. “And there’s not much ability to practice the sorts of things I’d need to call on. But if a cleric of Garos wants to hurt a person, she’ll lay hands on him. There are two general methods, one easy and clean, the other hard and brutal. The first one, the easy one—” She hesitated. “Does anyone mind me sharin’ this over lunch?”

“I think I’m done anyway,” said Verity, pushing her plate forward. She’d eaten only half of what Mizuki had prepared. “It was delicious, but there was simply way too much of it.”

“I’m done too,” said Alfric. He looked at Verity’s plate. “Unless you mind me taking that other half?”

“Be my guest,” Verity replied. Alfric reached over and plucked the half sandwich up.

“I don’t mind,” said Mizuki. “Unless it involves guts.”

“And if it does involve guts?” asked Hannah.

Mizuki had taken a bite of her sandwich and took a moment to chew and swallow it before answering. “I don’t like guts.”

“Well,” said Hannah. “The first method of attack, for a cleric of Garos—and again, I can’t say that I’d fare too well if I tried, not in combat, but I s’pose it’s somethin’ that’ll get tested sooner than later—the first method is easy and clean. It’s just the reverse of symmetrical healin’, isn’t it? You find a wound on their body and mirror it on the other side. One slash across their skin becomes two, a puncture gets doubled, and they bleed out twice as fast. Now, obviously it’s not great, because you have to be touchin’ them, and they have to already be hurt, but I could manage it, if I had to.”

“And the second?” asked Isra.

Hannah eyed Mizuki, who was wolfing down her sandwich like she was worried someone was about to say something that would make her lose her appetite. When she’d swallowed the last bite, she gave a thumbs-up to Hannah.

“Well, the body isn’t all symmetrical, as a sad matter of fact,” said Hannah. “Even leavin’ aside the ways that arms, legs, skin, and so on are different if you’re not symmetricalized, there are places where we’re just plain squiggly.” She patted her stomach. “And yes, that includes the guts. The guts weave back and forth inside the body like a drunkard on his way home. And since the body is so otherwise symmetrical, a cleric like me could lay hands on someone and make the guts suddenly mirror themselves.” She shook her head. “Nasty way to die, because it’s not fast. Usually with symmetrical guts you bleed out before you can starve. And there’s no way to fix it, because that kind of thing is beyond even the highest cleric of Oeyr.”

“Welp,” said Mizuki, “definitely glad I finished before you said that.”

“The heart isn’t symmetrical either,” said Isra.

“No, it’s not,” said Hannah. “And you could kill someone that way too, it would just be a smaller target, harder to do, and a killin’ hex from Garos, well, the point isn’t just in the killin’, if you catch me.”

“You’re talking about traditionally though,” said Alfric. “It’s not something that clerics do now, because they’re not in the business of hexing.” This was directed at Isra, and she appreciated it.

“Oh, ay,” said Hannah. “And shame on me if I made anyone feel different.” She looked around the table at the other four. “It’s part of the old ways, the very old ways. You’d get in a lot of trouble if you did any of that on a person.”

“What are the other hexes?” asked Isra, mostly out of morbid curiosity.

“Ay,” said Hannah, “let me think for a moment and remember.” She drummed her fingers on the table, then looked around. “Is this too much?”

“I’m done eating, so I’m going to take a walk,” said Mizuki. “I’d rather not get into the gruesomeness of it.”

“I’ll accompany you, if that’s all right,” said Alfric, getting up from his seat and taking his plate. “Can I clear anyone else’s plates?”

“I should actually probably do dishes first,” said Mizuki.

The plates were cleared away, and then it was just Hannah, Isra, and Verity.

“You want to hear, ay?” asked Hannah.

“Yes,” said Verity. “I’m interested.”

“Well,” said Hannah. “The hex of Oeyr, God of Emergence, is usually through breakin’ somethin’. Sometimes bones, sometimes makin’ rips in your muscles, especially your heart.” Hannah tapped her chest. There were two full sections of the Oeya Ashar devoted to ‘defects’, but in Isra’s opinion, it was a relatively small area of what the holy text focused on. Oeyr was not the God of Disorder or God of Asymmetry, but the God of Emergence, how things followed rules with sometimes surprising consequences. And yes, chaos and defects were often a result.

“The hex of Bixzotl, God of Copies,” said Hannah, “is in copyin’ somethin’ internal to you, like growin’ you a new heart, which kills you before the copy can fade. The worse one is copyin’ all your blood, which also kills you.” She rubbed her chin. “I don’t think that Qymmos, God of Sets, has a hex, but to tell you the truth, I may be wrong and shouldn’t have spoken with such authority earlier. Handy people, but not so good at the physical. Then there’s Kesbin, God of Nothing, and Xuphin, God of Infinity. Kesbin is easy, you just get somethin’ removed, and at its worst, from an archbishop or the like, the whole of you just vanishes. For Xuphin, it’s usually cancer.”

Isra frowned. “You gave their titles.”

“Well,” said Hannah. “I did. I… wasn’t sure you knew your gods, ay? Meant no offense by it.”

Isra kept frowning. She didn’t know what to say in response.

“Thank you for going through that,” said Verity. “It was informative. I don’t believe my tutors ever covered it, though I do recognize a few of those from plays or stories.”

“Like I said,” Hannah said with a shrug, “hexes aren’t really used against people anymore, and shame that they ever were.” She looked at Verity. “Kept your lunch?”

“Why wouldn’t I have?” asked Verity. “The dead things we saw in the dungeon were far worse than any description you could have given.”

“Good,” Hannah said, nodding.

“We have the gods in Tarbin,” said Isra. “I have the six holy books in my home. I’ve read them.”

Hannah nodded. “I meant no offense,” she said again. “I only thought there were things you didn’t know, and it might be a way to say for you so you didn’t have to sit and wonder or feel like a dunce by askin’ about it.”

“Not that you’d be a dunce just because you didn’t know something,” said Verity, rushing to follow Hannah.

“It was a kind gesture,” said Isra, making an effort to relax. Sometimes with the animals, they realized that they had made a mistake and took some time to calm down. She endeavored to be better than them. “Thank you for the thought.”

“No problem,” said Hannah. “Now, since you’re here and all, can we finally see what you can do?”

Chapter 19 — I Suppose You’re Wondering Why I Gathered You Here

Alfric and Mizuki walked together. He was following behind her as she went down a trail behind her house, one that had clearly been put into place quite some time ago. It wasn’t in need of much care though, and Mizuki happily walked along.

“I’m not squeamish,” she said, looking back at him.

“No?” asked Alfric. “No one said you were?”

“I don’t know why Hannah likes to talk about gross things, that’s all,” said Mizuki.

“She’s a cleric,” said Alfric. “She’s trained as a healer, among other things. She’s learned how to deal with injuries and disease.”

“Well, fine, but she doesn’t have to talk about it,” said Mizuki. “Especially not at the dinner table. She doesn’t have to delight in,” she waved her hand, “hexes and things.”

“I’ll talk to her,” said Alfric.

“I can talk to her myself,” said Mizuki, swatting away a branch that was in her way. “I’m just complaining to you because you get it, right?”

“I do,” said Alfric. He had already wished a few times that Hannah was more circumspect in what she said.

“I feel bad, because I know she had some hurtful business with her guild or something, but I kind of get why that would be,” said Mizuki.

“Yeah,” said Alfric. This was the first he’d heard about something going wrong with Hannah’s guild, but it seemed like the kind of thing he’d want to ask Hannah about later, rather than getting Mizuki’s version of it. “But we’ve just gotten over the bump with Verity, so I’m hoping that we can keep things nice and level going into the next dungeon. Intra-party strife can kill a party quickly.” It was also quite difficult to predict, in his experience.

“So I should just shut up?” asked Mizuki, swatting aside another branch.

“You should understand that we’re all in this together,” said Alfric. “We don’t have to like each other, but it does help things. Try to find common ground. Try to build bridges. Talk to each other.” These were his father’s words coming out of his mouth. He hoped that his father was right.

“Well, okay,” said Mizuki. She stopped, and Alfric stopped behind her. “We’re here.”

Alfric looked ahead and saw that they were in a circular clearing, which had clearly been made that way by human hands. Saplings lined the edges, attempting to reclaim the space, and the grass was tall. A giant rock occupied the center, twice as tall as Alfric, as thick around as a wagon, and covered with lichen, but there were carved runes visible on it.

“What is this?” asked Alfric.

“Magic stone,” said Mizuki. She walked forward, brushing past the tall grass as she moved along the thin trail until she was standing next to it.

“What does it do?” asked Alfric.

“Oh, I have no idea,” said Mizuki. “It’s ancient stuff, at least two thousand years old, maybe even more. Same with the portal, right? A bunch of runes telling you stuff, and no one knows how to read them.”

“There are people in Dondrian who know,” said Alfric.

“Well, sure, I didn’t mean that it was lost,” said Mizuki. “But you go off the color or whether they light up, right?”

“We do,” said Alfric. He frowned as he looked over the stone. When the Editors had made the change that had given every hex a dungeon, it had been an enormous benefit for the world, even if it hadn’t happened exactly how they wanted it. The stone collars around most dungeons post-dated that change, obviously, since the dungeons were ancient, before recorded history, even among the feil and dwodo. Things like that were still quite old though, and Alfric treated them with a certain respect because of that. This seemed to be of the same class of thing, and Alfric felt a reverence toward it.

It was a respect that Mizuki clearly didn’t share, because she had begun to climb it.

“What are you doing?” asked Alfric.

“There’s a thing at the top,” said Mizuki, who was using the runes carved into the rock as handholds and footholds. From the way the lichen and moss on the stone had been disturbed, it didn’t seem like it was her first time. “I don’t know if they have these in the city or not.”

“We don’t,” said Alfric as he watched her hoist herself up onto the top of the stone. “What does it do? Should you be messing with it?”

Mizuki was catching her breath from the climb and now standing high above Alfric, looking down at him. “I’ve done this dozens of times before,” she said. “It makes me happy.” She knelt down and pressed something on the top of the stone. It immediately lit up, with the runes all glowing blue for a moment, then pulsing slightly at a slow pace.

“What does that mean?” asked Alfric.

“No idea,” said Mizuki cheerfully. “But from the color and the pulse, I think it’s an all-clear of some kind. Blue means there’s nothing to be worried about or maybe the job is done.”

“Who put this here?” asked Alfric. He guessed that it had been moved in the last hundred years. “Why?”

“Dunno!” Mizuki called down to him. “Watch this!”

She crouched down until her butt was nearly touching the rock, then launched herself into the air. It wasn’t a jump, or not just a jump, because she continued on up for what had to have been a hundred feet. That high up, a fall would have killed her, but she fell slowly, spreading her arms and then gliding in a gentle circle around the stone. Alfric watched her carefully, worried that she would suddenly plummet to her death, until she was low enough that a fall would only injure her, nothing a cleric couldn’t fix. She kept on gliding in circles for as long as she could, then stopped in place and dropped the last two feet to the ground.

“Impressed?” she asked, grinning at Alfric.

“I am.” It was spectacular. Alfric had always liked seeing displays of magic. “You used the magic of this thing, whatever it was doing?”

Mizuki nodded, still grinning. “Countermagic, but yeah. It’s just about the only thing that gives me enough power to fly, and then only once a day. I think my record is half a mile, and I could have gone further if I hadn’t gotten stuck up in a tree.”

“It’s impressive,” said Alfric. “I just wish I understood what you’d actually done.” He looked at the stone behind her, which was once again inert.

“There’s a balance to magic,” said Mizuki. “You do something magical, you shift the balance of the aether, and when it’s out of balance, that’s where someone like me can come in. Whatever the stone is doing, it’s very global, so it leaves an imbalance toward the personal. But it’s also very heavy on information, which means that it leaves an imbalance toward the physical. My best guess is that this is some kind of information-gathering doodad.”

“And you do this a lot?” asked Alfric. “You activate it?”

“Sure,” said Mizuki, shrugging. “It’s not a big deal.”

This possibly explained why the Pucklechurch dungeon had been a bit harder than it should have been, but he decided not to mention it, on the off chance that she would feel that she was to blame. “And could you do other things?” Alfric asked. “Other than flying?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Mizuki replied. “So long as it’s in the realm of personal and physical, anyway. Why, did you want to spar me when I have super-strength?” She dropped into a fighting stance with truly atrocious form, holding up her hands but shaping them like blades, not fists.

“I think not,” said Alfric, looking up into the sky, to the height she’d reached. “If you can fling yourself that high, you could probably punch through steel.”

“Are you calling me fat?” asked Mizuki, her hands on her hips.

“No,” said Alfric, blinking. “Of course not, you’re—”

“Lighten up, city boy,” said Mizuki, rolling her eyes. “When I make a joke, you make a joke back, did no one teach you that?”

“Um,” said Alfric. “I was taught not to make jokes at the expense of others.” He frowned. “You’re saying that I should have called you fat?”

“In a joking way, sure,” said Mizuki. “I know that I’m skinny. I know that I’m skinny. You’d say ‘Well, I’m not calling you fat, but that outfit isn’t doing you any favors’, and that’s not even that funny, but I’d understand that you were just being, I don’t know, not a stick in the mud. I’d laugh. There’s nothing wrong with a pity laugh, I always say, you have to take what you can get.”

“Sorry if I’ve been a stick in the mud,” said Alfric. “But I want to get this party going. It might not feel like it, but we’re at a critical point.”

“I get the distinct feeling that everything feels like a critical point to you,” said Mizuki. “Ready to go back?”

Alfric looked around the clearing at the collections of yellow and purple flowers that were blooming. “Was this it?” he asked. “Was this what we came here to do?”

“Well, yeah,” said Mizuki. “It was neat, wasn’t it? I don’t normally show people.”

Alfric looked at her. She was smiling. “It was neat,” he said. That seemed like the diplomatic thing to say. The undiplomatic thing was that it seemed dangerous on several levels, which was what his mind immediately went to. But it was neat.

“It’s just about the coolest thing I can do,” said Mizuki. “And I guess I handle blood and guts worst out of the whole team, but I do have skills of my own.”

“I don’t think anyone thinks less of you for not liking blood,” said Alfric. “I don’t like blood. I just conditioned myself to have less of a problem with it.”

Mizuki waded through the weeds and started down the path. “Oh yeah?” she asked. “How’d you do that?”

“I took up work in a slaughterhouse when I was fifteen,” said Alfric. “I knew that if I wanted to be a dungeoneer, I would need to be able to handle that kind of thing. I also tried to get an apprenticeship with one of the churches so that I could see injuries up close, but I think they knew what I was up to and didn’t want a tourist.”

“Wow,” said Mizuki. “That’s nuts.”

“It worked,” said Alfric. “So it’s not that nuts.”

“You’ve really been training for this your entire life?” asked Mizuki.

“Not my entire life,” said Alfric. “But most of it, yes. And since my parents were both dungeoneers, I kind of grew into the family business. It’s expected that everyone in the family will go take a tour of some dungeons. I’d have gone even if that wasn’t the case though.” People tended to assume there’d been some pressure from his parents, but if anything, they’d both been fairly circumspect about it.

“And you think this is the team for you?” asked Mizuki. “Because I have to say, I’m not looking forward to doing it again, even if I will do it again, and I’m pretty sure that your original plan was to go through them fast. I mean, I was the first one to say yes, right? So in a sense, you and I are the core of the team. And we should be on the same page.”

“I was hoping for more,” said Alfric. “But there aren’t many people like me who want to make a career out of going in the dungeons. It’s too dangerous, too laborious, and too much travel.”

“Hannah would do it,” said Mizuki. “So there’s one.”

“Getting a team together is hard,” said Alfric. “It’s so much harder than it sounds at first. The second time I tried to put together a team, I put out an open call, and I got lots of responses, but half of them weren’t remotely qualified, and nothing seemed to gel together. We got all ready to go, then two of them flaked out on me, and because of that, the others left.” He had elected to lower his standards a bit after that.

“So which is this?” asked Mizuki. “Your third time trying to make a team? Fourth?”

“Fifth,” said Alfric. “I tried recruiting younger, in Junior Adventurers’ League, and that fell apart too. I tried recruiting older, and got a few people, but not what I considered enough, not to justify the money we’d need to get to a good starting place in terms of geography, training, and equipment. It was me and two others for a bit, and we talked about taking the dungeons as a team of three, but a team of three trying to rise up through the ranks… Well, it was a lot of risk without a healer, and three is more dangerous than I wanted to deal with.” And there had been other complications, which he was still hoping he could hold off mentioning.

“So what was the first time?” asked Mizuki.

“Ah,” said Alfric, swallowing. “Probably a story for another day.”

“You got them all killed, didn’t you?” asked Mizuki. It sounded like a joke, but it was far too serious for that.

“What?” asked Alfric. “No, they’re all very much alive.”

He was saved further questions by the end of their trip, which brought them into the back of the house. There, Hannah and Verity were standing around Isra, who was speaking to an assembled group of woodland animals.

“What the gates is this?” asked Mizuki, who was moving slowly.

There was a lot of variety among the animals, though Alfric didn’t know all their names, since many of them were likely native to the region. Squirrels he recognized, though they were larger than he was used to, and there was something like a squirrel, with a much smaller tail. There were mice, rats, and something similar to a rat with different, elongated paws. There were a huge number of birds, and Alfric noticed more in the trees, sitting on every branch. And beyond that, there were lizards, snakes, turtles, and frogs. A few of them were probably dungeon varieties, released into the world long ago, but it was hard to say which ones. The long-legged skinks and three-eyed birds were likely candidates, and Alfric had always felt that there was something suspect about turtles.

“Hannah said there wasn’t much wildlife about,” said Isra. “I had only wanted to prove her wrong.” To the animals assembled before her, she spoke. “You may go. Sorry if I wasted your time.”

Almost all at once, the animals dispersed back into the woods, going their separate ways. The birds were the loudest of them, with the flapping of their wings, but it wasn’t long before it was just people standing around again. Alfric approached cautiously.

“They just kept coming,” said Verity, who seemed stunned. “How were there so many of them?”

“They avoid people,” said Isra. “They hide away.”

“Very impressive, it was,” said Hannah, nodding. “And I’ll readily admit to bein’ wrong. Makes you think, I suppose, about the woods and what’s in them.”

“We were unlucky not to get a bear,” said Isra. “They come near here.”

“What?” asked Mizuki. “Can you tell them not to?”

“I will pass it along,” said Isra, nodding.

“You actually will?” asked Mizuki.

“I will mention it to a bird and hope that it tells the local bears,” said Isra, shrugging. “Birds enjoy any favor that involves song, but bears can be stubborn, lazy creatures.”

“Okay, but how did you not realize you were a woods witch until yesterday?” asked Mizuki. “How!?”

Isra frowned. “I knew that the animals stayed away from the town,” she said. “And when I came into the town, I saw that no one seemed to care. There are certain animals who live domestic lives, and these were allowed in town, but I never saw anyone calling other types of animals in, so I thought… I thought everyone could do that, but didn’t, because it was impolite.” She seemed flustered. “I saw no one speak to the birds in the trees, and I thought it was because… because they had some taboo I didn’t understand. And some people did speak with the birds, but in a different way, and I thought that was just… a part of it.”

“What’s a taboo?” asked Mizuki.

“A thing you’re not supposed to do,” said Hannah.

“But why?” asked Mizuki. “I mean, for what reason?”

“Och, it varies, ay?” asked Hannah. “Usually, for a taboo, you don’t know why, you just know it’s not to be done.”

Mizuki frowned. “Sounds made up to me.”

“Really?” asked Alfric. “There’s nothing you don’t do without knowing quite why you don’t do it?”

Mizuki thought about that for a moment. “I guess there are some things we don’t talk about. But mostly that’s because there are some weird feelings about them.”

“What kind of things?” asked Verity.

“Well I’m not going to talk about them, obviously,” said Mizuki.

Verity rolled her eyes. “‘They all, somehow, knew of the unspeakable’,” she said.

“What’s that from?” asked Mizuki.

“A poem, The Contradictions of Man, it’s,” Verity hesitated, “a classic.” She seemed to think that saying that might be cause for offense, and Mizuki seemed like she was going to take offense.

“Moving on,” said Alfric. “Isra, do you think you would be able to use your abilities in a dungeon? Most commonly, from what I know, a druid would bring in a single well-trained animal. Something large, like a cougar or a bear.”

“I don’t think a bear would want to go into a dungeon,” said Isra.

“A bird then, to start with?” asked Alfric. “Something that would help us to scout?”

“It seems dangerous for the bird,” said Isra.

“And you wouldn’t put a bird in danger?” asked Alfric. “Not to potentially save our lives?”

“Wait,” said Mizuki, “is now the time to talk about how doing that dungeon was completely unlike fighting three raccoons?”

“Och, not what I said, was it?” asked Hannah. “What I said was that each monster was like fightin’ three raccoons. Obviously there’ll be more than one monster in the dungeon, ay?”

“Well,” said Mizuki, “it was also unlike fighting a couple of sets of raccoons in a row.”

“Have you fought many raccoons?” asked Isra.

“What?” asked Mizuki. “No, not at all.”

“So you’re only guessing?” asked Isra.

“I’m not even the one who started in with all this three raccoons business!” Mizuki exclaimed.

“Well, if you’re askin’, no, I don’t think whoever came up with the three raccoons comparison had ever actually fought three of ’em,” said Hannah. “But stranger things, ay?”

“The primary risk with dungeoneering is that you’ll run into something atypical,” said Alfric. “There’s a principle called variance, and much of what you do when planning for a dungeon is to minimize variance as much as possible and plan for it as best you can. The Pucklechurch dungeon was on the upper side of normal, maybe even the high upper side of normal. It might have been the specific conditions, or it might have been us, or it might have been random chance. Either way, we’ll go into the next dungeon planning for it to be just as difficult, if not more so, and then when it’s easier, we can be happy about it. I do want to point out that I was the only one who got hurt, and that I’m shouldering most of the risk.”

“But to be clear,” said Verity. “You could have died in that first dungeon.”

“Yes,” said Alfric, not wanting to weasel about. “I could have died. We all could have died, though it would have taken a spectacular bit of bad luck for that to happen. At the end, when we were fighting that final creature, I wasn’t sure that we would win, and before Isra stepped in, I was debating calling a retreat. Something like that, where we’re forced to back our way out of the dungeon and leave everything of value behind, is a much more likely bad outcome.”

“I’d have healed him back from far, far worse than he got,” said Hannah. “I won’t go into it,” she nodded to Mizuki, “but so long as it doesn’t cross the midline,” she pointed to her sternum, “there’s a fair bit I can deal with. Even across the midline, there’s all kinds of help I can be, and if Garos can’t provide, there’s other healin’ to be had, for the extent of the universe is not symmetrical, so it is said. Things I couldn’t handle, I could handle well enough that you wouldn’t die then and there. Mostly major muscles, the guts, or broken bones if they’re broken badly.”

“I don’t think that I’ll bring an animal into the dungeons,” said Isra, who seemed to have been stewing on the question. “It doesn’t feel fair to me.”

“It’s not necessary,” said Alfric. “With your bow being as good as it is, I’m hoping that we’re well on our way to outpacing the dungeons.”

“Meaning?” asked Verity with a frown.

“Elevation makes the dungeons harder,” said Hannah. “Goin’ by what Alfric said, we were all second elevation, ay? But after the dungeon, perhaps not.”

“We should all still be second,” said Alfric. “Unless someone was right at the cusp and got taken over it. Checking with the censusmaster is on my agenda.”

“His agenda,” said Mizuki, who wasn’t quite able to hold in her smile.

Alfric looked at her. She seemed to take some joy in teasing him, which he didn’t think was right to begrudge her. It was nice to see someone smile, at least, even if it was at his expense.

“Housing for myself,” he said, holding up a finger. “Working out travel and dungeoneering expenses, commissioning a local to make or adapt more pieces of armor, getting a better lay of the town, making contacts with the other clerics, sending off a letter to the arm of the local League office to notify them we have a party… There are probably some others, but I have a list.”

“A list!” giggled Mizuki.

“It goes next to my other lists,” said Alfric. “Like the list I use in the morning to figure out which sock goes on first.”

“Hey!” she said. “That was pretty good. Solid effort.”

Alfric gave her a grin.

“Well, I’ll come with you to see the clerics,” said Hannah. “And maybe look over the letter you’re sendin’, if you don’t mind.”

Alfric did mind, but he suppressed the urge to act on it. It was better to have someone look over what you’d written before you sent it, especially if you wanted to make a good impression. The local arm of the Adventurers’ League was important, because they could give him access to bigger, better keys depending on how their progress through the dungeons went. Furthermore, there would be a record on file of his accomplishments, which meant that if or when this party fell apart, he would have something to point to when he went looking to join up with other parties, though his sterling record in the Junior League didn’t seem to have counted for much.

“All right,” said Mizuki, clapping her hands. “Enough business. I am formally opening an invitation for all of you to live here for as long as this lasts, take it or leave it.”

“I already live here,” said Verity, raising a hand.

“Ay, I’ll take you up on it,” replied Hannah. “Though I may still go to the temple for a bath every now and then, so long as Lemmel keeps lettin’ me.”

“I have my own place,” said Isra.

“Well, yeah, just offering,” said Mizuki. “If you wanted to be with the party or anything, no big deal.”

“Does the offer extend to me?” asked Alfric.

Mizuki looked him up and down. “Why wouldn’t it?”

“Because he’s male,” said Verity, her voice quite flat.

“Well,” said Mizuki, “it doesn’t matter to me, so long as you’re not going to be, I don’t know. Doing stuff.” She gestured vaguely. “Male stuff.”

“If we need to make some ground rules,” Alfric began.

Mizuki sighed. “Just don’t be weird about it,” she said. “And if you’re not weird about it, I won’t be weird about it.”

Alfric nodded. “Verity, Hannah, is that acceptable to you?”

“Fine by me,” said Verity.

“So long as you aren’t weird, ay,” said Hannah with a grin.

Alfric rubbed his face for a moment. “I believe in being forthright, so I’ll say, now, that I have absolutely no intentions of ruining what is, on paper, a great dungeoneering party. No flirtation or romance of any kind, and to the extent we can avoid interpersonal problems, I want to do that. If we can do that with rules, great, we’ll make rules, but if it’s better to just have some mutual understanding, then great, we can do that instead. I care about the dungeons. The goal of this party is dungeons.”

“We hear you,” said Mizuki. “You can calm down.”

“I’m calm, I just—I don’t want to be preemptively accused of anything,” said Alfric. Familiar feelings were welling up, and he did his best to tamp them down.

“Didn’t mean to besmirch your honor,” said Hannah.

“It’s not the Red Ages,” said Verity. “We’re not going to treat you like a fox in the henhouse.”

“Wait,” said Mizuki, “do we just have a total ban on romance within the group?”

“It worries me that you’re asking that,” said Alfric.

She pointed a finger at him. “You’re the one who wanted to make sure that everything was clear. And Hannah is,” Hannah raised an eyebrow, “she’s a cleric of Garos, right?”

Hannah rolled her eyes. “Such a reputation we clerics have,” she said. “And I told you it was both, though none of you are my type, thank you very much.”

“Romance is inadvisable,” said Alfric. “I think we can leave it at that.”

But his mother hadn’t been quite so staunch about that. She had said, when the conversation came up at the dinner table, that you shouldn’t go into a dungeoneering party with the notion that there would be anything like a romance, but that with time, being close to the same group of people, it was natural for attraction to develop, and if it was mutual, and it wasn’t going away, then it could be a beautiful thing that would grow and flourish.

There was absolutely no way he was going to say that out loud.

Chapter 20 — Temple Politics

They got the party channel exactly seven days after the party had formed. Hannah was pleased, but she’d been in a number of parties before, and party chat always came with some problems.

It was an open question why the Editors had done as they’d done. The actual thought that went into the Editing was enormously complex, beyond the ken of a young cleric, but some of the effects that Editors of ages past had placed upon the world certainly had to be the result of whatever unknown limitations they were working under. The hexes were certainly one of those places where limitations seemed most obvious, because the positions of the warp points were, most of the time, somewhat inconvenient. Hannah knew, of course, that hexagons could be used to tile a plane, that was fundamental knowledge for any cleric of Garos, but the world wasn’t a plane, it was a globe, and the hexagons were imperfect (and there were, in theory, pentagons somewhere). Given that they couldn’t have perfection, it seemed to Hannah that they should have gone in the direction of Oeyr, and simply made the hexes around cities. The math of it was a bit beyond her, but it seemed like it would have been better. But no, the answer was probably that the Editors were working under some unknown constraints that explained why they’d done things as they did. Or, possibly, they’d made a mistake: that was true of the dungeons, probably, given how dangerous they were.

The party chat was a different thing altogether. It was, obviously, good to be able to have parties, which came with many benefits, and it was good to be able to talk to one another without needing to worry about how far apart you were. But the question that had literally kept Hannah up at night on multiple occasions was why there was no way to turn the thing off.

<Testing,> said Alfric. His voice reverberated in her head, and Hannah got a distinctly unpleasant sensation while watching his lips, which weren’t making any real sound. People always sounded different in the channel, which had something to do with the way it stole the words from your lips and made them available to others. From what Hannah had read, people sounded more like they sounded to themselves. Alfric’s voice was rich and mellow and still fairly deep.

<I hear you,> replied Hannah.

<Hello?> asked Isra, who was the only one who wasn’t in the house with them.

<Hi!> said Mizuki.

<We should establish some ground rules,> said Alfric. <I think the first is that we don’t use the channel for anything that can be said out loud.>

<Agreed,> replied Hannah. <Second rule is no talking while anyone is asleep.>

<Does that mean we can’t use it when someone is napping?> asked Mizuki. <What if we don’t know that they’re napping?>

<You can use the channel to say that you’ll want some peace and quiet,> said Alfric. <Unless there’s business, we’ll respect that. But I don’t think any of us take naps.>

Mizuki guiltily raised her hand.

<Isra can’t hear that,> said Alfric. <Isra, Mizuki just raised her hand.>

<Thank you,> came Isra’s disembodied voice.

<Naps are traditional in Kiromo,> said Mizuki. <I don’t actually know why, but that’s what Grandpa said. I like to take catnaps.>

<That’s fine,> said Alfric. <If you think someone might be asleep, a soft whisper to check is good. Additionally, I think it would be good for us to have a daily check-in, if we’re not all together in person, just so we all know each other’s plans.>

<Ugh,> said Mizuki.

<I agree,> said Hannah. <Ugh.>

<Fine, fine,> said Alfric. <But maybe if we’re all in different hexes.>

<Will we be?> asked Mizuki. <Ever?>

<Scattering to the six winds seems unlikely,> said Verity. <But if it happens, yes, we can do check-ins.>

<I think that’s all I have for now,> said Alfric.

<Just try not to be annoyin’,> said Hannah. Some people had trouble with that. Mizuki was the obvious contender, but she had sweet kind of annoyingness to her, a little-sister quality. It seemed more likely that someone else would get on their collective nerves without even realizing it.

<Goodbye,> said Isra, and that, at least, had a note of finality.

“I kind of wanted to play with it more,” said Mizuki. Besides Isra, they were all sitting in the dining room together, with the remains of their lunch in front of them. “It’s been a bit.”

“Well, it’s not for playin’ with,” said Hannah. “Though I suppose it might have been good to set aside some time for it, to get it out of your system. That’s what they do for the fresh little acolytes.”

“You know I’m the oldest one here, right?” asked Mizuki. “And I have been in a party before, it’s just been a few years.”

“So long as we’re not using the channel to do music,” said Verity with a sigh. “I have nightmares of playing with a quintet and having the people sitting next to me talking into my ear while I’m trying to play.”

“Actual nightmares?” asked Mizuki.

Verity nodded. “There was a lot of pressure. It’s part of why I live here now. There’s no one at the Fig and Gristle that pushes me to do more, or do better, or sing differently, or add more effects. Everything is on my own terms.”

“I can see why you didn’t want to do dungeons,” said Mizuki. “I mean, also the risk of being killed.”

“There wasn’t any pressure in the dungeon,” said Verity. “Or… the pressure was for something, it wasn’t just someone trying to squeeze me because they thought I needed squeezing, it was me trying my best to give you all what you needed. And in that sense, it was rewarding, I suppose.”

“Part of a party is trust,” said Alfric. “We trust you to do your part, and to have a good understanding of what’s best in any circumstance. The plan right now is to head southwest as soon as we have armor and the channel, do the dungeon in Traeg’s Knob, then continue on to Liberfell, which I’ll do with Isra, and whoever else wants to come with. It would make sense to do the Liberfell dungeon, but it’s a larger city, and that means more rogue mana, and I’d like another five or so easy ones before we make an attempt at Liberfell or Tarchwood or someplace bigger.”

“While we’re in Liberfell, we’ll want to get somethin’ to capture beasts,” said Hannah. “Or at least some pots to put live plants in. Isra may not be able to soothe the monsters, but she can help with anythin’ else, to see whether it’s worth it to take out, or safe.” She nodded to herself. “We’ll take the storage book in, naturally, which can probably help. Have we tested whether things can live in it?”

“I put in a grasshopper,” said Alfric. “When I pulled it out an hour later, it was dead. I tried again by putting a grasshopper in a bottle with a cork in it, and it was fine. I think it continues to live in there, so if we put an animal in, it’s just a question of whether it has enough food and air.”

“A ventstone then?” asked Hannah. “Those are pricey.”

“Do I need to be here for this?” asked Verity. “I was going to go practice my music for a bit and get ready for my session at the Fig and Gristle tonight.”

“You’re still going there?” asked Alfric.

“Yes,” said Verity. “It’s where I went off to last night.”

“You don’t need the money,” said Alfric.

“That’s right,” Verity said. “But I feel some obligation to Cynthia, and I enjoy playing for a crowd, knowing that I’m making their lives a little better for as long as the tune stays in the air.” She shrugged. “I’m not going to give it up just because I have more money than I need. It was never really about the money, it was just a comfortable place to play some songs.”

“Do you mind if I come by?” asked Alfric.

“Of course not,” said Verity. “But… why?”

“I enjoy your music,” said Alfric. “And that way I can take a break from relying on Mizuki for food.”

“I really don’t mind,” said Mizuki. “Except for chopping veggies, cooking for more people isn’t actually all that much more work.” She looked at Verity. “Do you prefer to eat before or after?”

“After,” said Verity. “I play better when I’m a bit hungry.”

“Then I’ll have something for you in the chiller,” said Mizuki with a nod.

“I have a standing offer from Cynthia for food,” said Verity. “There’s usually something left at the end of the dining hours anyway.” She paused. “Thank you for the offer, though.”

“Why don’t we all go?” asked Hannah. “Make a night of us, the three of us together, listenin’ to Verity? I don’t think I’ve heard many of her tavern songs.”

“I suppose,” said Mizuki. “You would all tell me if you didn’t like my cooking, right?”

Alfric laughed. “Mizuki, the food you cook is on par with actual professional cooking in Dondrian. If you wanted to stop being a sorcerer, you could legitimately make it as a professional chef.”

Mizuki blushed. “Well, I guess. But I think I would end up hating it, if I was forced to do it every day. Instead, I choose to do it every day.”

“It was the same with me and music,” said Verity. “I love music, plucking the strings, finding melodies, and even the magical aspects of it, but when it was an obligation, I felt like hanging myself from the rafters.” She paused. “Sorry if that was too morose.”

“You let us know if you ever need some time,” said Hannah. “Alfric has a notion to push us through the dungeons, and I think there might be somethin’ to that, but we don’t want you hatin’ the party. We want you to be happy you’re goin’ on trips with us.”

“Personally,” said Mizuki, “I think it would be great to go into a dungeon if we didn’t have to worry about the monsters. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just waltz in, pick up some new entads, then waltz out?”

“But then everyone would do it,” said Alfric.

“Och,” said Hannah. “You’re not one of those that thinks the Editors made the dungeons full of monsters on purpose, are you?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Alfric. “But I do think that the way things are has a certain, I don’t know. Niceness to it?”

“The monsters are nice to you?” asked Mizuki. “The ones that tried to rip you up and claw your face?”

“Well, yes,” said Alfric. “The dungeons are wild. They’re one of the only wild places left in the entire world. Everything has been mapped and tamed, except for the north. The beastmasters will track and find anything that’s all that dangerous, we have programs for keeping things contained and safe, it’s been a century since we’ve had a war… but the dungeons are the one place none of that is true. And if you could just go in and grab what was there without a fight, without risk, then I don’t know. I don’t think I would be so enamored.”

“You wish there were still wars?” asked Mizuki.

“No, it’s not that,” said Alfric. “It’s… I don’t know. I don’t know how to say it without sounding like I wish that the world were a violent and wild place again, because that’s not what I want.”

“It’s common,” said Hannah, nodding. “For a particular kind of person, the peace and prosperity of the modern age feels like bein’ in a pen.”

“Huh,” said Mizuki. “Well, I don’t understand it. All I ever wanted was to be safe and comfortable. Which I mostly am.”

“I said I was going to go, so I should do that,” said Verity, getting up from her spot. She turned to go, then remembered her plate and took it to the kitchen before going upstairs.

“Well, we have some time until dinner,” said Hannah. “I was about to go into town and see if Lemmel needed some help, and Alfric, you’d said you wanted introductions to the local clerics, was that right?”

“It was,” Alfric nodded. “And now is as good a time as any.”

“Then what am I doing?” asked Mizuki, pouting somewhat. “I’m just going to be left to my own devices?”

“Try not to cause trouble,” Hannah suggested. “Read a book.”

“I’ve read all the books,” said Mizuki.

“I brought some from my room,” said Hannah. “Though they’re mostly romances, I should warn, ay?”

“I could go for a romance,” said Mizuki, perking up. “You’re fine if I go in there and pick one out?”

“I’ve no secrets,” Hannah replied.

She and Alfric put their shoes on, sitting side by side as they did so, then took off down the path that led away from the house. Mizuki’s grandfather, it was increasingly clear, had been quite well-off, given the extensive plot of land and how nice the house was. That wealth didn’t seem to have transferred down to Mizuki though, and the girl seemed to live hand-to-mouth most of the time, perhaps because she seemed possessed of a certain indolence. Hannah wasn’t one to judge though, if it kept her happy—though it wasn’t clear whether that was the case.

“The team is goin’ well,” said Hannah as they walked.

“So far,” said Alfric. “I was worried that we would have a rocky start.”

“Talked to the censusmaster, ay?” asked Hannah.

“Yesterday,” said Alfric, wincing. “Isra and Verity are both third now. I should have brought it up while we were all on the channel. I don’t think that substantially changes things, but common wisdom is that it increases the risk. They both must have been on the verge.”

“Or Isra knowin’ she’s a druid and not a ranger has changed things,” said Hannah, nodding. “Happens, though rarely.” Elevation wasn’t one of the more considered aspects of the world, in Hannah’s opinion. Sometimes all you could do was look at the Editors’ work and cluck your tongue.

“Very rarely, in the case of someone being a druid without knowing it,” said Alfric.

“Ay,” nodded Hannah. “Still some mystery with that, isn’t there?”

“Some,” said Alfric. “And her circumstances are unusual even if we discount the druid stuff.”

“More so than your own?” asked Hannah. “Or Verity’s? You certainly grabbed a complicated set of people.”

“Complicated people are more likely to be available,” said Alfric. He said that like it was self-evident.

“Well, I s’pose,” said Hannah. “Who were the alternates, by the by? You said there were two of them, I was wonderin’ whether it’s anyone whose names I know.”

“Kell Westling, a wizard who mostly works with farmers, though he’s on the younger side and only first elevation,” said Alfric. “The second alternate was Micah Skybloom, an apprentice blacksmith, but he’s third elevation and in his mid-twenties. He seemed strong, but I was hoping to have that role covered.”

“Ay, Micah,” said Hannah with a sigh. She had already talked to him with Mizuki and had been thinking about him in her off time, turning the idea of him over in her head. “He propositioned me.”

“Propositioned?” asked Alfric.

“For marriage, when I first came to town,” she said.

“Without knowing you?” asked Alfric, who seemed alarmed.

“We’d met a few times,” said Hannah. “It’s a custom, down south, to make such a proposition if you’ve a good feelin’ about things or if you’re properly smitten. The idea, then, is to have a long engagement, a year or more, to see if you’re truly a match to be wed.”

“And,” said Alfric, working through that, “you turned him down?”

“There are times I wish I hadn’t,” said Hannah. “But it was tradition he was anglin’ on, and tradition didn’t appeal to me much, so it was clear he had the wrong of me. Micah is the sort to like a muscular woman wearin’ pants, I think, and there’s some appeal in the tall and burly, for my own tastes, but… well, to do it in that way, to have a love that grows and blooms over time rather than startin’ with a spark…” She shook her head. Micah had felt a spark, that was clear enough, but Hannah had only seen the appeal of him in the abstract. “I don’t think it was wrong of me to say no, mind you, but there’s a part that wished I’d said yes. I still see him ’round, of course, in a town as small as Pucklechurch, and he’s been quite decent about it, no hard feelin’s. Perhaps in five years, once I’ve had my fill of the dungeons, I might see if he’s still available or kick myself because he’s sure to have found someone. To settle down now, though, have children…”

It was easier to say to Alfric, knowing that he wasn’t likely one to gossip. Talking to Mizuki meant trying to think carefully about her words. Something said to Mizuki, who had friends in town and an open mouth, could easily end up in the ears of someone else, and it was too early to know whether Mizuki could be bound to secrecy or trusted with private feelings. Not that these were secrets, just things that were a bit delicate.

“And do you think about that?” asked Alfric. “Marriage?”

“Worried I’m not goin’ to be patchin’ you up if I have a husband or a wife?” asked Hannah, smiling at him.

“Just curious,” said Alfric. “But yes, it would also be unfortunate to lose you because you wanted to start a family.”

“Ay,” nodded Hannah. “But no, I s’pose down the line I might be through with bein’ wild and free, and if Micah is still available, he seems like a good sort to settle down with, but I’ve got dungeoneerin’ I want to do, travels through the hexes of the world, all that sort, and to take a husband or a wife and then leave them seems a bit cruel, to my mind, or at least unreasonable.”

“And it would be?” asked Alfric. “A husband or a wife?”

“Ay, well,” said Hannah. “I am a cleric of Garos. I had a few girlfriends in the seminary, and it was nice enough. My mind goes to men more often though, so she would have to be, well, somethin’ special, which is what we all hope for, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” said Alfric.

“And you?” asked Hannah. “Any romance, prior to this part of your life?”

“There was a girl,” said Alfric. There was an obvious and immediate hesitance, not just in his words, but in his whole character. “She was… someone special. I’d known her since we were small. And then things didn’t go as they should have gone.” He shook his head, maybe because he knew he was being too circumspect, though Hannah thought it more likely that he was just thinking on it. “My parents are both dungeoneers. Their advice was that I’d be traveling so much early on that it would mostly be about brief encounters, and that I should take what I could from them. Then, when I was older, I could have longer, more stable relationships. The dungeons at my parents’ level, they take three or four days to clear, and they don’t do more than one a month, if that.”

“Seems like too much risk of death,” said Hannah. He’d changed the subject from the girl and hadn’t been terribly deft about it, but Hannah let it be. No need to get everyone’s history right off the bat, in her opinion.

“Maybe,” said Alfric.

“I warn you now, there’s a point where I might bow out,” said Hannah. “I can take punishment better than most, I can handle wounds, but if you’re lookin’ for someone to go with you all the way, someone who’d want to go down into the infinidungeons of Dondrian, I don’t think that’s me. Or any of the others, for that matter.”

“I know,” said Alfric. “I don’t expect that. What I expect is to raise my elevation and get some experience under my belt.”

They had been talking for some time, and when they’d reached the temple, they’d stayed outside, in the shade of the building, continuing their talk. Hannah found Alfric nice to talk to, at least when he wasn’t going on about dungeons, and even a little bit when he was. It was clear that he had his own story to him, but one of the things she’d learned in seminary was that everyone had their own story, and it was just a matter of listening to it. More than that, you could find reflections in their stories and places where two stories would line up with one another. Alfric’s experience of wanting a wild world to tame wasn’t unique in the slightest, but that was part of what made it interesting. It was common, especially for young people, and that was where some of the lure of the dungeon came from.

For Hannah, the lure of the dungeon was distinctly different. Alfric liked that there were things to fight, at least in some sense. He liked that it was unknown. But for Hannah, it was the glimpse into the raw elements of reality. Dungeons were created, constructed, pulled from the raw mana and aetheric disturbances, all by some force that the Editors (in her opinion) clearly didn’t quite have a handle on. The dungeons reflected, in some way, the will of the gods and the shape of reality. Going into a dungeon and finding what was there was, for Hannah, a religious experience, a way to become closer to Garos and interpret his philosophical approach. It was hard, as in the real world, to separate out Garos from the others, but there was something there, she was sure of it, even if it had been a source of disagreement in both the seminary and the guilds. Dungeons reflected the real world in some ways, but they also reflected something else, and that something else was what captivated Hannah. She expected to make no major discoveries about the nature of Garos, but she did think that it would bring her closer to him. Already, her meditations felt like they’d borne fruit.

They went first to the section of the temple devoted to Xuphin, who was represented by the twisted ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail, looped to make the symbol for infinity.

“Pann Wellings,” said Hannah, bowing slightly to the tall cleric. “This is my party member, Alfric Overguard, we’ll be doin’ dungeons together, and he thought it best to meet people, especially if we need to come here for healin’, I suppose.”

“A pleasure,” said Pann, holding out her hand. Alfric took it and gave her a firm handshake. He was staring though, just a bit, impressed or perhaps intimidated by her height. She was seven feet tall, and rather than being lanky, as some tall people were, she had a statuesque quality to her. Xuphin was the God of Infinity, sometimes labeled as the God of Increase, seeing as infinity was rarely achievable in the real world. Enlarging themselves was something many of her clerics did. The gods did not have genders, as such, but many people referred to them as though they did, often with some disagreement. For Hannah, it largely depended upon her mood.

“The pleasure is mine,” said Alfric, who was at least keeping his composure. “I apologize for any awkwardness on my part; it’s been some time since I’ve seen a cleric of Xuphin this close up.”

“And what do you think?” asked Pann, gesturing to her body. “Some find it grotesque, especially on a woman.”

“That was the furthest thing from my mind,” said Alfric.

Pann gave a delighted laugh. “And where are you from?”

“Dondrian,” said Alfric.

“Ah,” said Pann, clucking her tongue. “But they come much bigger than me there, don’t they?”

“They do,” said Alfric. “But they’re mostly men, and from the pews in the back of the temple, some of the, um, effect is lost.” He was still looking up at her.

“Too large does start to create some problems,” said Pann. “‘Increase is not always without limits’, from the Book of Xu Phinnas, volume nine, verse thirteen. There are obviously the practical considerations, like the length of your bed or how much you want to keep bumping into doorways, and there are physical considerations, like whether your heart can pump the blood it needs to or your muscles can support your bones.” She said this with the practiced tones of someone who had said it all before. It was common, among clerics, to explain their particulars over and over again to the laity. “At any rate, if you’re concerned about healing, I can go over what you need to know before coming to me.”

“I know it all,” said Alfric. “I’m well prepared. I thought it would be better to have an introduction now than when I come to you blinded and needing new eyes.”

“Oeyr is often better with that sort of thing,” Pann said with a nod. “But I take your meaning.” She turned to Hannah. “And you? Leaving Lemmel all alone?”

“Is he broken up about it?” asked Hannah. “Cryin’ his eyes out every day I’m gone?”

Pann laughed. “Not in the least, but I did think he liked your bread. I miss the smell of it in the mornings.”

“Och, all you had to do was ask. I’ll bring some by tomorrow, and praise be to Xuphin,” said Hannah. She gave another bow, then ushered Alfric out.

“Got a thing for tall women?” she asked, keeping her voice low as they crossed the temple.

“There’s something striking about her,” said Alfric. “Not just the size though.”

“Pretty, I agree,” said Hannah. “Married, unfortunately for you, though I suppose Xuphin herself was thought to take many partners, in keeping with her nature.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” said Alfric.

“Well, I wouldn’t judge, of course,” said Hannah. “Though it’s the first time I’ve seen the light of interest in your eyes.” They made it to the other side of the temple, devoted to Bixzotl, God of Copies. The statue was of twin wolves.

Obbrech was, unfortunately, in the middle of a meeting with a young woman, so Hannah only gave him a wave, and he gave her a brief nod before returning his attention to the woman. Obbrech wasn’t too much older than Hannah, a handsome man with a clean-shaven face and fastidious appearance. He was often occupied with young women, which seemed to irk him, perhaps since it was the same young women in a steady rotation, always asking for more of his time.

“Well, Obbrech is busy, and I know that Lin is out, so I suppose this trip will be a bit of a waste,” said Hannah. “Lin is the cleric of Oeyr, and we’ve got no cleric of Kesbin, at least at the moment. So that leaves only Filera, who’s our cleric of Qymmos, and she’s a cranky one.”

“She can help with entad identification,” said Alfric.

“Ay, but you’ll find a cleric of Qymmos in any larger town too,” said Hannah. “Certainly in Tarchwood or Liberfell.”

“You don’t like her?” asked Alfric.

“We had a discussion a few months back,” said Hannah. “Lasted most of the night, and neither of us left happy. Religious matters, mostly my opinion on her god and hers on mine.”

“So you’re saying that if I introduce myself, I should just not have you with me?” asked Alfric.

“Och, no, I don’t want to make a big thing of it, I suppose,” said Hannah. “Let’s go.”

The statue of Qymmos, God of Sets, was a many-armed man, with each hand holding a different implement. Traditionally, Qymmos was supposed to be represented by an octopus, and it was the only one of the six statues in the large central room that wasn’t an animal, which irked Hannah to no end. They should have been either all people, or all animals, but not this awkward mix. Of course, she’d talked to the head of the temple, which was Filera, and she’d laid out the costs involved in commissioning a new one, and that had been the end of that conversation, because there was nowhere for the money to come from, and Hannah seemed to be the only one bothered.

“Filera Bosc,” said Hannah as she entered the room. Filera was sitting with her plants, as usual, and reading a book, also as usual. “This is Alfric Overguard. He’s a member of my dungeoneering party, here to make some introductions, because there’s a good chance we’ll want your services.”

Filera got up from her chair, rising slowly and setting her book to the side. She was a shorter woman, with blond hair that she wore tied back. Her dress went down to her ankles and covered her arms to her wrists, and there was something incredibly and deliberately severe about her.

“I charge for entad identifications,” said Filera as she took Alfric’s hand. That’s what she said, by way of greeting, and immediately Hannah felt herself irked.

Alfric nodded. “Most do. It’s expected.”

“I’m letting you know now so that there’s no confusion later,” she said. “Overguard, she said?”

Alfric stiffened slightly. “Yes.”

Filera was looking at him as though she was reading his life story, which given her profession wasn’t too far off the truth. “Qymmos is sometimes called the God of Information,” she said. “But I’ve always thought, if she needed to be called the god of something other than Sets, she should have been called the God of Categories.”

“Yes,” said Alfric, standing there.

“Which god do you follow most closely?” asked Filera.

“Xuphin’s philosophy has always appealed to me,” said Alfric. “Though… I can see the appeal of Qymmos as well, so long as I look at it from a certain angle.”

“She’ll try to draw you into theological talk, if you let her,” said Hannah.

Filera gave Hannah a grin, then turned back to Alfric. “And what is that angle?”

“I don’t particularly like to organize things into sets or categories,” said Alfric. “But it is useful. Where I think I’m on the same page as Qymmos is in seeking new things. The philosophies of the others don’t have as much of the same appeal toward seeking. But I can’t say that I would have made a good acolyte of Qymmos, because once everything is pinned in place, I start to lose interest.”

Filera nodded. “Seekers are often of Qymmos, but a seeker, once they’ve found what they sought, can become something different altogether.” She tapped her lips. “Alfric Overguard,” she said, tasting the name. “I’ve changed my mind. I’ll do your entad identifications for no fee, so long as you come speak to me about the dungeons you’ve been in.”

“Of course,” said Alfric, relaxing.

“To a fruitful relationship,” said Filera. She smiled at him, and he gave a nervous smile back.

When they left, Hannah was frowning, but she saved her words until they were out of the temple.

“She’s an odd one,” said Hannah. “And I take it from the way that conversation went, she saw somethin’ in you?”

“Maybe,” said Alfric. “Though… I can’t be sure what, obviously.”

“Does she have blackmail against you?” asked Hannah. It was hard to see how a cleric of Qymmos would get that, since there were limits to how deep they could go in such a short time, especially without touch, and it wasn’t like they could just extract your deepest darkest secrets.

“No,” said Alfric. “If it’s the thing I think she knows, then no, it’s something I expect to tell you and the others once we’re better friends. I doubt you’d think less of me.”

“But it’s not somethin’ you want to say now, is the impression I get,” said Hannah. “And you know somethin’ about Verity that you’re keepin’ back too.”

“Like you said, we all have our—I don’t even want to call them secrets, because it’s not as important as all that,” he said. “But you don’t need to know my life story, and I don’t need to know yours, not for us to be going into dungeons together. I swear on my life it’s nothing that puts anyone in danger. And I swear that if it becomes relevant, I’ll tell everything. But I want to wait a bit, and I think that’s my right.”

“Ay,” said Hannah, slowly. “And here I thought I was the one with a rich inner life.”

Chapter 21 — Sitting in a Song

It was Mizuki who thought to invite Isra to the Fig and Gristle, for which she was grateful. There was a part of Isra that felt she should be living in the same house with them, especially because it was so much better of a house than the one in the woods she’d inherited from her father, but there was also a comfortability to that old house, and the memories it contained.

Isra had never been to the Fig and Gristle before. It was a handsome place, if slightly sagging, with a warmth that came from the lights on inside. She could hear Verity’s music even before she stepped inside, but once she’d crossed the threshold, a lightness washed over her, as though someone had removed a burden from her shoulders. She looked around and found Alfric, Mizuki, and Hannah easily enough. They had a place for her, and by the looks of things, had yet to order. As soon as Mizuki saw her, a slender arm shot up and frantically waved her over.

“You made it,” said Mizuki as Isra sat down. “You didn’t say whether you would.”

“I wasn’t sure,” said Isra.

“I can pay for your meal,” said Mizuki. “If that’s it.”

“It’s not,” said Isra.

“She’s actually very good,” said Hannah, leaning over toward Isra. Hannah’s eyes were on Verity, who was strumming away with her lute, playing a song the lyrics of which were barely audible. Something about a goose and a gander. “She’s weaving quite a few effects.”

“It might be part of why she gets so tired,” said Alfric. “Every time she plays, it feels like she’s pushing herself to her limit.”

“Nah,” said Mizuki. “I think if you actually pushed her to her limit, people wouldn’t be able to move. They’d just sit there, enraptured. I get why you crossed the continent for her.”

“It’s beautiful music,” said Isra. Her eyes were on Verity and the way she cradled her lute, intently playing it, eyes partly closed. Sometimes Verity would smile as she sang the lyrics, usually at a softer, sweeter part, and there was something intensely beautiful about her then, as though being a conduit for the song had cast a spell on her.

“All right,” said an older woman, who came up to their table. “You’ve four now, are you ready to order? Two options for meat, four for sides, and two for dessert, which I’ll ask about later on. It was up on the board, but I can repeat it now for you, if you’d like.”

“Herbed chicken thighs, sweet potatoes, and the other one, something about vegetables?” asked Hannah.

“Sure,” said the woman. She looked expectantly at Isra, who hadn’t seen the menu.

“The same for me,” Isra said.

“I’ll have the fish,” said Mizuki. “And the veggies and the cheese bread.”

“Cheese bread is good,” the woman said, nodding. “And you?”

“Chicken,” said Alfric. “And two servings of vegetables, please. I’ll take a poached pear after all that. And to drink, a round of ale, on me.”

“I’ll get our second round then,” said Mizuki.

“You just feel like spendin’ money, ay?” asked Hannah.

Mizuki shrugged. “I’m a very generous person by nature. But we’re rich, right? So why not enjoy it? Give me the chance, and I’ll spend money on people.” She looked at the three of them. “That’s not rude, right?”

“In Dondrian, it would be greeted with suspicion,” said Alfric. “It’s not rude, but it would ease everyone’s feelings if you said that you wanted to be paid back at some point. So if I offered to buy a round, then you offered to buy a round, you’re not being rude, and because you followed suit, I’m not being rude.”

This sounded like insanity to Isra, but it was the familiar insanity of social situations. She wondered whether Alfric had laid it bare for her, and decided that he probably hadn’t. He simply wasn’t that deft. There was something nice about being with people from different cultures, with differences in expectations. She wasn’t the only one on uneven ground.

“So we have to do four rounds of ale?” asked Hannah. “Three is my limit, especially if we’re going for a long walk tomorrow.”

Isra had never had ale before but didn’t want to say this out loud because it would once more mark her as different from the others. Knowing she was a druid had helped to put some of her life into context, but it was only a part of it. She had been raised by a man from Tarbin, one who kept to himself out in the woods. Her customs were different, and Alfric, who should have been an ally, seemed to be so much a member of his big city that his ancestry seemed irrelevant.

The ales came, and not long after them, the food, served on heavy ceramic plates. Isra picked at hers with a fork for a moment before taking a bite, and she was surprised to find how good it was. She was familiar with all of the ingredients in principle, as all of it was local, but she had never had cause to eat chicken before, and the combination of them was, to her unsophisticated tongue, masterful. She had no idea how it could have been accomplished. Isra didn’t do much in the way of cooking, other than preserving, which she’d done less of since getting the chiller. How did someone turn chicken, salt, butter, and herbs into something like this? It seemed impossible.

“I think she saw us eating,” said Mizuki, whose mouth was half full. “She turned up the effect.”

“The effect?” asked Isra.

“Making things taste better,” said Alfric. “It’s one of the things bards are used for, sensory enhancement or dampening. There’s a bit of an emotional effect in what she’s doing too, making everyone feel a bit happier, more at ease.”

“I don’t feel at ease,” said Isra.

“Works with what you have,” said Hannah. “But she’s probably goin’ the other way with it, not deadenin’ the stress, but enhancin’ the,” she waved her hand, “the other one. A sense of—” She stopped and took another bite of her chicken. “Even without the effect, this would be good.” Whatever word she’d been searching for, it seemed as though it was going to be left unfound.

Isra ate some more, and there was a general silence. “There are bards at every tavern?” she asked, once she’d finished with the chicken. She liked to eat her meals taking each item in turn, and as she looked, she saw that the same was true for Alfric but not for Mizuki or Hannah, who were alternating their bites between each of the things on their plates.

“Almost every tavern,” said Alfric. “It’s part of the point of a tavern. Verity is something special, obviously, but I’d wager you can find at least one half-ring bard in every hex this size.” He took another bite of his vegetables, a slice of potato, and Isra watched the way he held his fork. He pointed it down, like an extension of a grabbing motion, and the method he used reminded Isra of a raccoon’s fastidiousness. That of course brought to mind the comparison of dungeon monsters to three raccoons, which had been ridiculous.

“But not many druids,” said Isra.

“No,” said Alfric. “Not many.”

“Easy enough to make them,” said Hannah. “But it’s hard to get volunteers, ay. The number of women who want to go through childbirth alone and raise a child for three years is precious slim. And of course a druid can be a bit of a troublesome child, if you don’t mind me sayin’.”

“Troublesome how?” asked Isra.

“Oh, with notions of plants and animals, that’s all I mean,” said Hannah. “There are a few stories I’ve heard, about a boy who took in rats as friends or those who wouldn’t eat their dinner because it had once been an animal. That’s all.”

“What’s wrong with being a friend to a rat?” asked Isra.

“They’re vermin,” said Alfric. “They eat our food and spread disease. I don’t mean to say it so harshly, but I know there are things that you’re only learning now, and I think it’s best to help you learn them. Take no shame in it.” Isra liked hearing that, and she did like the way Alfric spoke. He was direct and to the point in a way that other people only rarely were, and he had both an understanding of the unwritten rules as well as a willingness to put them into language.

“But if a rat were your friend, you could ask it not to do those things,” said Isra. “I understand the point, but surely they could see the boy’s view when they talked to him?”

“To be honest,” said Hannah. “I’m not so sure such a boy ever existed. Might just be a funny story.”

It hadn’t even crossed Isra’s mind that someone would find humor in such a story. A boy who had made friends with a rat, a boy who couldn’t understand why that wasn’t allowed, a boy who was right in what he did, ridiculed? Perhaps she was misunderstanding the story, or perhaps there was more to it that would make the humor clear, but Isra found herself not wishing to hear more.

Instead, her eyes returned to Verity, who had ended one song and immediately started the next. There was a way she blended the songs together, so they seemed to be part of the same overall structure, and Isra had no clue how this had been accomplished. She knew a few traditional Tarbin songs that her father had taught her, but most of her time was spent listening to the birds, if she had a need for music. And while it was true that there was beauty in the birdsong and the clarity of their notes, there was no possible way they could compare to what Verity was producing, all by herself, in this small tavern.

Isra had thought so in the dungeon as well, and when Verity had woven speech into the lyrics of her song, Isra had felt a giddy joy that she hadn’t let cross her face because no one else seemed to be feeling it. And then after they’d cleared the dungeon, Isra had listened in pure amazement to the song Verity wove on the way home. That one, she was fairly sure, had no magic to accompany it, but it felt just as lifting and sweet.

They were close enough that Isra could see Verity’s forearms tense up at particular points and watch her slender fingers play across the strings of the lute’s neck.

“She’s using the flute,” said Isra.

“It’s actually called a lute,” said Alfric, sounding apologetic.

“No,” said Isra, rolling her eyes. “The flute we pulled from the dungeon.” She gestured to Verity. “She’s got extra fingers on each hand.”

“Huh,” said Alfric. “That was fast.”

“Nah,” said Mizuki. “We were testing it the other night. The extra fingers come with something else, a kind of,” she tapped her head, “thing.”

“Enhancement?” asked Alfric.

“Ay, but anythin’ could be an enhancement, couldn’t it?” asked Hannah. “Not a very useful term.”

“It changes how you think,” said Mizuki. “For me, it was like I’d been handling a knife using extra fingers my entire life. For her, all the training translates. It’s actually a pretty good piece of kit.”

“I wonder if anyone else has noticed,” said Alfric, looking around.

“I don’t think they’d make a thing of it. Entads are more common here, in some ways,” said Hannah. “Not uncommon for people to have one or two. Different in a big city like Dondrian, right?”

“In some sense,” said Alfric, furrowing his brow. “The general rule is that entads flow toward the population centers, but… my guess is that you’d point out that dungeoneering is easier out in rural areas like this, so people run dungeons as a rite of passage, and any that aren’t immediately sold off end up in private hands, especially those that are bound and can’t move.”

“Ay,” answered Hannah, taking a drink of her ale. “Small stuff, mostly, but there’s quite a bit of it around, and every now and then, someone lucks out.”

“Like Isra,” said Alfric, nodding. “That bow,” he sighed.

“It’s a very nice bow,” Isra agreed. She looked at Verity, who was still softly playing away, her eyes half closed, gentle words on her lips to accompany the strumming of her lute. “I’m surprised she doesn’t have a magical instrument.”

“She did, in Dondrian,” said Alfric. “But like most of its kind, it was probably borrowed from one of the larger guilds at great expense, rather than owned by her outright. If she’d taken it with her to Pucklechurch, she would have been tracked down to retrieve it. From what her parents said, it allowed for an entire orchestral score to be produced from a single instrument.” He shrugged. “Perhaps she wouldn’t want me talking about it. She didn’t seem to have liked her life in the city.”

“She seems happy without all that,” said Isra. She looked down at her food, which was only half eaten. She’d been eating slower than the others and hadn’t yet touched her ale. She took a tentative sip of it and wrinkled her nose. It was fermented grain, mildly poisonous, but in a way that people seemed to enjoy. Grimacing and trying to get used to it, she drank more, then went back to the food to get the taste from her mouth.

“I don’t know that ‘happy’ is the right word for Verity,” said Hannah. “Not yet, anyhow. Some people take some time to find themselves, especially if they’ve been told their whole life that they were somethin’ they weren’t.”

“Ah, I do love that clerical wisdom,” said Mizuki, grinning. She’d drained her ale and had been trying to get the attention of the woman who ran the tavern so she could have another. Her cheeks were slightly flushed. The glasses of ale were quite tall.

“Oh, shove off,” laughed Hannah. “I spent years of my life becomin’ wise, you’d best believe I’m going to share that wisdom anytime I can.”

“Entads,” said Mizuki, returning to the previous topic. “I’m hoping for something great. Something to serve as some fuel for the casting. They usually don’t disturb much.” She waved her hand, gesturing, presumably, at the aether.

“Travel is the big one,” said Alfric. “With it, we won’t have to make a production of going to the dungeons, or at least less of one. There are lots of different possibilities as far as travel entads go—”

“And you’ve got them separated into categories and tiers,” said Mizuki. “Yes, yes.”

“You’re not interested?” asked Alfric. “Because I was just going to share because I find it interesting.”

“Ay, go ahead,” said Hannah. “The little one is just a bit flushed with the ale.”

“The little one?” asked Mizuki. She looked at the others, then down at herself. “Am I the little one? I am.” She nodded. “But I’m also the old one. Respect your elders, Hannah.”

“Two years does not make you my elder,” said Hannah.

“There are three categories,” said Alfric, plowing on in a way that Isra found somewhat admirable.

“None of this matters though, right?” asked Mizuki. “Because it’s just a roll of the dice what we find.”

“Are you drunk off a single glass of ale?” asked Hannah.

“Nah,” said Mizuki. “I’m loose and leaning into the looseness.”

“What’s the first category?” asked Isra.

“Conveyance,” said Alfric, happy to have a listener. “My boots are an example. They help move you along faster than you could otherwise go, or with less effort. The flying rug is a prototypical example, but technically mounts also belong in that category. The second category is point transfer, which includes both portals and teleportation, along with some others that are close enough. Those are usually the best, though entads often come with limits or restrictions. There’s a rod that allows whoever holds it to teleport anywhere they can think of as often as they please, and if we found something like that, well, we’d be rich beyond our wildest dreams. And then the third category is point travel, those things that let you go to a specific place or type of place. My mother has a statue that she can teleport to from anywhere in the world, but another example would be something that lets you hop from one fountain to another. The distinction between the second and third is the restriction on where you can go with it.” He seemed satisfied with having gotten that out, and Isra was pleased that she had prompted him.

“And leylines,” said Hannah. “That would make four.”

“Leylines are for leycraft and cartiers,” said Alfric. “It’s pretty rare for an entad to interact with them. And the natural portals are the fifth, if we’re counting extras, but then we should also include ships and things.”

“But entads can interact with leylines, ay?” asked Hannah.

“It would be a combination of the first and third categories,” said Alfric, seeming to think about it. “And if we got something like that, something that could simulate a leycraft… it would change our entire approach, I think. The map would look different for us.”

“There’s a cartier who’s based out of Pucklechurch,” said Hannah. “Though I think that’s because she’s got a family here. There’s actually an interestin’ history of leylines in Pucklechurch.”

“There is?” asked Alfric.

“Ay,” said Hannah. “You didn’t know? I was sayin’ for Isra’s benefit. You never wondered why the great big church was here?”

“I did,” said Alfric. “It has to do with a leyline? But there’s no leyline that runs through here, not for a dozen hexes. I know, because I had to plot a route.”

“Ay, there not being a leyline is somewhat the point,” said Hannah. “Some five hundred years ago, there was a nice thick leyline goin’ right through the mid-point of the hex, and this was durin’ expansion and all that. So they saw this place, and they thought to themselves that it would be a good place for a city, so they put some money toward it, includin’ a great big church, though it’s a pittance compared with the temples of Dondrian, I’m sure.”

“But then what happened?” asked Alfric.

“The church was almost done, the roads finished, a few people moved in, and then the leyline shifted,” said Hannah. “And all those plans went right down the drain.”

“Ouch,” said Alfric, wincing.

“It was a big deal, because there was so much money in developin’ the line for use,” said Hannah. “And there was some hope that it would shift back, but alas, as rare as a leyline shift is, it’s even more rare for it to unshift.” She clucked her tongue. “But we’ve a nice big church here, and though there’s some grumblin’ about maintenance, it’s what the town’s known for. There was a terminal too, hundreds of years back, but they took that down and recovered what they could.”

“I never knew that until Verity told me,” said Mizuki.

“Really?” asked Hannah. “I suppose if you grew up here, maybe you’d never question it.”

“Kind of makes sense though,” said Mizuki. “Why they’d build such a thing in the middle of nowhere. Because it wasn’t the middle of nowhere.” She turned to Alfric. “Do you think this has something to do with the big ol’ stone in my backyard? Like it was there for a reason?”

“It could be,” Alfric said, shrugging. “But you said that it was information gathering, and I don’t know what that has to do with a leyline. Besides, that stone is older than the church by probably a thousand years, if not more.”

“What stone?” asked Hannah.

“There’s a stone in the backyard,” said Mizuki. “I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”

“We’re leaving tomorrow morning,” said Alfric.

“Dessert?” asked the woman who ran the Fig and Gristle.

“Poached pear for me,” said Alfric.

“Same,” said Isra.

“The pie’s a crumble?” asked Hannah. The woman nodded. “Then that, I s’pose.”

“Ooh, a crumble for me too,” said Mizuki. “And ales for everyone, but double for me, two glasses right next to each other.” She pointed out a spot on the table where the two glasses should sit.

The woman frowned. “Not sure I want a drunk sorc in my tavern.”

“Three isn’t enough to get me drunk,” said Mizuki, tipping her empty mug back to look into it.

The woman nodded, collected their plates and mugs, and left.

“We’re walking at least twelve miles tomorrow,” Alfric said. “Even a mild hangover is going to be torture.” He looked to Hannah. “Can you do anything about that?”

Hannah laughed. “Not in our domain, I’m afraid. You’d need Kesbin, and we’ve got no cleric of Kesbin, as I believe I said when I was makin’ introductions.”

“I will be completely fine,” said Mizuki. “Besides, we’re celebrating, right? I felt like we didn’t have a proper celebration after the first dungeon.”

“So we’d celebrate before and after?” asked Hannah.

“Seems reasonable to me,” Mizuki said with a shrug.

Isra was feeling what she probably thought were the effects of the ale, a kind of warmth and, yes, looseness that pervaded her body. Everything felt more fluid somehow, as though she had better control of her body or was living more in the moment. It was a nice feeling, and she had a better understanding of why people imbibed this poison. Her eyes kept going back to Verity and this music they were all here to enjoy, though the others seemed content to talk over it.

The desserts arrived not too long after that, and there was a general silence as they ate. Between the chicken and the pear, it was more than Isra normally had in one sitting, but it was too good for her to stop, especially with the music backing it. There were complex flavors to the poached pear, spices and herbs, honey and butter, and Isra wondered whether she could learn to make such a thing if she put her mind to it.

“Could you teach me how to cook?” Isra asked Mizuki. The question came out without her willing it, and in hindsight, that seemed to be the work of the glass and a half of ale.

“Oh,” said Mizuki. “Um, of course! But I don’t have any idea how to teach someone to cook, I just kind of… do it, I guess.”

“So it’s not teachable?” asked Isra, thinking that perhaps it was like sorcery, where you had to be born into it, at least a little bit. This didn’t seem likely, but you never knew.

“No, it is,” said Mizuki. “But—we’ll try, I just don’t know how I’m going to start. I don’t remember how my parents taught me. And my whole life, I’ve never taught anyone anything, so.”

“So I will learn to cook, and you will learn to teach,” said Isra, nodding.

“Yes!” laughed Mizuki. “Great. And we’ll burn things along the way.”

“We will?” asked Isra.

“Oh, sure,” smiled Mizuki. “You can’t learn to do anything without breaking things, or burning things, or cutting things that weren’t meant to be cut.”

“A very common outlook, for a sorc,” said Hannah. She set her spoon down, having eaten the last bit of her pie. “This was a good idea, and I’m glad we got to hear Verity play without the threat of monsters.”

“She’s said that after a set she’s usually done with people,” said Alfric. “So I’d be cautious about pushing her to engage too much when she’s finished, which probably won’t be for another quarter bell or so.”

“Are we sticking around?” asked Mizuki, looking at her one empty mug and one full one. “Because if we’re not, I’m going to have to down this one in a hurry.”

“Best not to get sick before a day of travel,” said Alfric, who had nonetheless finished his ale.

“I was thinkin’ that we’d wait for her to be done and accompany her home,” said Hannah.

Alfric nodded. “Then a game, to pass the time?”

“You play games?” asked Mizuki, giving him a suspicious look. “Seems inefficient.”

“I play games very efficiently,” said Alfric, giving her a smile. He rapped his knuckles against the table. “Seems flat, which means we can set up for ring-knock.”

“Never played,” said Mizuki. “It’s with rings?”

Alfric nodded. “We won’t play for keeps though. You set up rings, on their end, then take turns rolling toward the other person’s rings, trying to knock them down.”

“Not sure the table is flat enough for that,” said Hannah, wiggling the edge.

“Well, we’ll try,” said Alfric. “Not for keeps.”

Once the plates were once again cleared away and their bills were settled, they set up the game according to Alfric’s instructions. He seemed to be the only one to have played it before, but it was simple enough. When someone was going, everyone set their hands on the table so that they could stop the rolling ring from going off the table. It was fun enough, Isra supposed, but mostly because of the exclamations of the others rather than the actual game itself. She found herself smiling at Alfric’s groan of defeat as she sent one of her rings careening into two of his.

After a few rounds of this, the music stopped, and Isra felt the warmth and openness slowly fade from her. Her eyes went to Verity, who had rolled her sleeves back down. She wore a calm, impassive expression as she packed up the lute, but there was a hint of a satisfied smile there.

“Ready to go?” asked Verity once she’d come over. “I asked Cynthia to pack me up my dinner, so you don’t have to wait.”

“Ay, the music was lovely,” said Hannah.

“Thank you,” said Verity with a modest bow. “I felt nervous, having the four of you there.”

“I’m glad we came,” said Alfric. “It was a good time.”

“Well, we should get going,” said Verity. “I get hungry after a set. Normally I had Cynthia leave my food up in my room, but we still have to walk across town.”

“Let’s go then,” Alfric said with a nod, standing up.

They left once Verity had taken a small covered dish from the kitchen. Again, Isra found herself watching the bard, but this time there wasn’t the excuse of watching a performer at work.

“Can I carry that for you?” Isra asked as they walked.

“Oh, thank you,” said Verity, handing it over. “You enjoyed the music?”

“Very much. I do wish I could have heard it without the other noise.”

“Tavern music is meant to fade into the background,” said Verity. “And at certain moments, it’s meant to catch your attention and let you get lost in it. It’s meant to fill in gaps in conversation. I can’t say that I’m all that good at it.”

“You were spectacular,” said Isra. “Beautiful.”

“Well,” said Verity, blushing. “Thank you. But I just play what I want to play without thinking too much about what I’m doing or why. It’s a very relaxed way of doing it and probably not what’s best suited to a busy tavern, but Cynthia has never told me to do anything different, and if I don’t have any pressure on me.” She shrugged. “I would rather play something that’s beautiful to me.”

“You’d make the songbirds jealous,” said Isra.

Verity smiled. The other three were walking slightly ahead, engaged in their own conversation. “I suppose you’re going back to your home soon? It’s getting late. I have a lantern you can borrow, if you need.”

“I can make my way in the dark,” said Isra. “It’s one of those things I had thought everyone could do.” She was silent for a moment, feeling the warm dish in her hands. “If there’s a bed, I may ask Mizuki if I could stay the night. I already packed my bag and left it there.”

“There’s a bed,” said Verity. “You’d be in the room with me, where Mizuki’s sisters used to sleep.”

“If that’s not a problem,” said Isra, feeling flushed. The ale hadn’t quite left her, it seemed.

“I have to warn you,” said Verity. “I do have a tendency to sing in my sleep.”

Isra smiled. She was quite looking forward to it.

Chapter 22 — The Journey More Than the Destination

Mizuki was finding that she didn’t actually like traveling that much. Six miles was a long way to walk, especially if you were going to do a dungeon at the end of it. The dungeon was also a mile and a half off the warp point, so that was seven and a half miles. Then after the dungeon, there would be another six miles of walking, either to Liberfell for the night or all the way back to Pucklechurch. She liked walking, but she didn’t like it that much. The one big bonus was that she was with people she found herself somewhat comfortable with.

She was also very slightly hungover, though it had helped that they’d set off later in the day, after a light breakfast. She drank lots of water and chewed an herb Isra had given her, which helped.

“We should have gotten a cart,” said Mizuki. “Or a mount. We have the money.”

“And you know how to ride, ay?” asked Hannah.

“No,” said Mizuki. “But it can’t be that hard.”

“The birds are hard,” said Alfric. “And there are limits on how much weight they can carry, though you might be able to manage it, actually. The lizzo are finicky and slow. A good mount is one of the most sought after of the beasts you could find in a dungeon.” He glanced over at Isra. “With your abilities, I’m hoping that if we come across the opportunity, we might be able to capitalize on it.”

“You’re not s’posed to take animals out,” said Hannah. “Not unless you have the equipment for it to make sure it won’t get loose. And anything a person could possibly ride, we wouldn’t be able to fit in the book.”

“I know, I was thinking down the road,” said Alfric. “I’ve heard that in Kiromo they’ve been trying to breed bigger sheep, strong enough to pull a cart, but I don’t think they’ve had much luck. And in Tarbin they have cats, but they’re mostly for show. Most likely we’ll have a travel entad before any of that becomes relevant for us. Maybe we’ll even have one later today.”

“I hope so,” said Mizuki. “I am not looking forward to the walk back.”

“I think I’ll go to Liberfell after we’re done in Traeg’s Knob,” said Verity. “I have the money to spend the night there, and I told Cynthia that I wasn’t coming back. Besides, it would be nice to see a bit of a bigger city.”

“It’s nothing in comparison with Dondrian,” said Alfric.

“Nothing is anything in comparison with that monster of a city,” said Hannah.

“Well, are we all going to Liberfell?” asked Mizuki.

“Those of us that are still alive at the end of the dungeon,” said Hannah with a little laugh.

“Hannah,” said Alfric.

“Oh, just a joke,” she said. “This one is in the middle of nowhere, should be easier than Pucklechurch was. Obviously I don’t expect anyone to be hurt, and if they are, I expect me to be able to patch them.”

“From what I’ve heard, the warp point is at the top of a hill,” said Alfric. “So at least on the way to Liberfell, we’ll have a downhill stretch.”

“It’s a popular place for sleddin’,” said Hannah, “if you can stomach the walk in the winter.”

“Yeah, I used to do that when I was little,” said Mizuki. “Not many people live in the hex, and the warp point is in a nice place. You just sled down, then warp back to the top. Kind of terrifying though. And obviously it’s late spring.”

“Sorry,” said Verity. “What’s sledding?”

“You don’t have that in Dondrian?” asked Mizuki. “You just, uh, slide down a hill, usually on a—do you know what a sled is? It’s like some wooden boards with metal runners.”

“And people do this for fun?” asked Verity.

“It’s loads of fun,” said Mizuki. “The biggest hill near Pucklechurch isn’t really good for it though. You need a bigger one, like at Traeg’s Knob, which is all the better because you can just warp up instead of having a hike.”

“There’s a handful of houses near the warp point,” said Hannah. “Not so much of a town though, just a waystation. Some of it’s public, a place to warm yourself on a trip, or if you’ve come for the sleddin’.”

“We don’t get much snow up north,” said Verity. “A dusting in the middle of winter, usually, but nothing more than that. My first winter here, I was shocked by how much it built up.”

“And yet you didn’t wear pants,” said Hannah, shaking her head.

“I’m wearing pants now,” said Verity, lifting up her dress to show that indeed, she had pants on beneath it. It was not, in Mizuki’s opinion, the most flattering outfit. Mizuki had pants too, but she hadn’t wanted to walk in them, not when it was going to be a mildly warm day. She had bought a pack and put the pants and a few other things into it, along with her gloves, boots, and a thicker shirt. She also had the helmet she’d gotten from the blacksmith, which she’d almost left at home because of how stupid she looked in it, but better to look stupid than to be stupid.

There were similar changes all around. Perhaps it was Alfric, or perhaps it was Hannah, but they were all treating it like they were an actual dungeoneering party. The helm had been more expensive than Mizuki would have liked, but she was very easily getting into the habit of thinking that money wasn’t a real concern.

“Traeg’s Knob is hilly, verging on mountainous,” said Alfric. “That should mean tougher monsters with thicker skin, if a bit slower. And because it’s less inhabited, we’ll expect less in the way of finished goods or worked rooms.”

“Bit of a surprise there was so much in Pucklechurch,” said Hannah.

“Variance,” Alfric said. “Knowing that a leyline used to run through there… it might have been that.”

“Or the big stone in my backyard?” asked Mizuki. She hadn’t had a chance to show Hannah, in part because of the mild hangover.

“Possible,” said Alfric. “If the Pucklechurch hex was a part of the leyline, then there’s a good chance that there are older ruins there, even if they’re buried deep. Many of the oldest cities were built along leylines.”

“Seems an argument for local knowledge,” said Hannah. “If you’re wantin’ to go through all the local hexes, maybe best to ask around first, to see if there’s somethin’ you don’t know about the place.”

“It didn’t end up mattering,” said Alfric. “We made it through.”

“Still,” said Hannah, “the dungeon we find in Traeg’s Knob, it pulls from a hundred twenty square miles or so, doesn’t it? Hard to know what might be buried there.”

“Well, yes,” said Alfric. “But firstly, I’m not terribly worried about it, and secondly, part of why we’re going to Liberfell is that we’re going to seek out the Adventurers’ League office, which will hopefully have details on each of the dungeons, just in case there’s something for us to know. Now, we could go there first and hit the Traeg’s Knob dungeon on the way back, but then we wouldn’t be able to sell what we get from there. Sometimes they also have rooms, but they’re usually pretty shoddy.”

“Ay,” said Hannah. “I’m not sayin’ that we should do different or that I wanted you to take a day to go to Liberfell on your own just to get some information that probably doesn’t help us.”

“You were just saying,” said Alfric, nodding.

“So, we’re unbalanced now,” said Mizuki. “In terms of elevation? But we’re also more prepared, a lot more prepared, and Isra’s got her bow. Is this more or less dangerous?”

“It’s very hard to say,” said Alfric.

“Probably more,” said Hannah, shrugging. “But not so much more that I’d worry. And who really knows, with variance.”

“Ideally,” said Alfric, “you accelerate in terms of gear. There are some graphs for expected difficulty, but it’s a lot of math and depends on a few too many things. Twenty dungeons down the line,” he held up a hand in Verity’s direction, “not that we’re committed to that. But if we ever got there, or if I got there with another group, I would hope that I was at least keeping pace, going into a dungeon with a much better entad weapon, ideally a spear, full plate armor, and a few other things.”

“A spear?” asked Isra. “Not a sword?”

“The sword was my father’s,” said Alfric. “It’s a family heirloom and a good weapon, but there are too many advantages to a spear, so long as it’s sturdy and light. A spear gives you reach, and reach means that you’re staying away from claws and fangs. They’re more nimble, they give better leverage, they can pierce through thick hide better… But the dungeons don’t always give you what you want, and I don’t want to spend funds on something like that, not at the kinds of prices a properly good entad can have.”

“Personally, I’ve been loving my spoon,” said Mizuki. “It’s properly handy.” She had brought it along, just in case.

“I know, I know,” said Alfric. “There’s no point thinking about it or making a wishlist, but it’s something that every dungeoneer does.”

“So you’re saying if I want to do this, I need a wishlist?” asked Mizuki.

“Do you want to be a proper dungeoneer?” asked Alfric.

“I don’t know,” said Mizuki. “I wouldn’t say that I liked the first one too much. But there were a lot of rings for the trouble, a neat spoon, and some stories to tell.”

“Well, as for my list, if everyone is supposed to have one,” said Hannah, “healin’ is through my hands, so longer hands might be nice.”

“Longer… hands?” asked Verity.

“Arms or hands,” said Hannah. “And of course somethin’ symmetrical would be nice, some armor, a weapon perhaps… Hard to say, but there’s a lot I might like.”

“I’d like something for the garden,” said Verity.

“That’s not really the kind of thing we’re talking about,” said Alfric.

“Why?” asked Verity.

Alfric hesitated. “It doesn’t help… with the dungeons.”

Verity laughed. “Oh, how dare I want something that won’t help with the dungeons. Why, that’s against the rules!”

“I knew that it sounded stupid even before it was out of my mouth,” said Alfric, giving her a sheepish grin.

“For me,” Mizuki considered, “something for cooking, I think.”

“Something that would make meals?” asked Hannah.

Mizuki frowned. “No, nothing like that. I like cooking, I don’t want something that takes the fun out of it. But something like, say, a knife that chops things for me, or a bottle that never runs out of oil, or something like that.”

“A magical instrument might be nice,” said Verity. “Though nothing too stressful.”

“I told them about the lute you used in Dondrian last night,” said Alfric. “I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t think that you might like to keep it private until it was out of my mouth. I apologize.”

“Oh,” said Verity. “No, I don’t care. Thank you for considering it, even if it was after the fact.”

“He said it made you sound like an orchestra,” said Hannah.

“It did,” said Verity. “The sound could fill a concert hall and did, on a few occasions. But it was taxing to play and made my head feel too full of melodies. I was thinking, if I could have another entad lute, that I might like something softer.”

“You’re unlikely to get a lute,” said Alfric. “We’re all unlikely to get exactly the thing we want. There’s too much variety.”

“Well, it’s a wishlist, anyway,” said Verity with a sigh. “Oh! Something to keep my hair from needing to be washed or combed.”

Mizuki looked at her. She did have the longest hair of any of them, though with Isra wearing a headscarf, it was hard to say whether she might have had Verity beat. Hannah had more hair, or at least it seemed like that with all the curls, but Verity’s was longer.

“Clothing might be nice,” said Hannah. “Something that protects against the elements?”

“A dress that would stay warm in winter,” said Verity.

“A dress I would look good in,” said Mizuki, frowning a bit. “I don’t know why, but every time I put on a dress, I look like a goon.”

“Ay,” said Hannah. “And it’d take magic to make that not happen, you think?” There was something very innocent in her expression that made the insult all the more funny, and Mizuki cackled.

“I would like an animal, I think,” said Isra.

“A dungeon animal?” asked Hannah. “They’re dangerous, ay.”

“You’ve said,” replied Isra.

“Well, just so you know,” said Hannah.

“Anything from an egg is much less likely to be dangerous,” said Alfric. “And given you’re a druid, you’ll know better than we do what kinds of things might have a good disposition.”

“I’d like flight,” said Mizuki. “To fly into the sky, like a bird.” She spread her arms.

“I think I’d enjoy being a fish,” said Verity.

“Bein’ a fish?” asked Hannah. “Not just swimmin’ and breathin’ water like one?”

“I suppose either would be fine,” said Verity.

“Alfric,” said Mizuki, looking at him. “Are you thinking that’s not practical?”

“Oh,” he said. “No, it’s very practical, but I’m not dense enough to think that’s why Verity wants it. There are underwater dungeons. Every hex has a dungeon, or at least very nearly, and a great many of them are underwater, given how much area the oceans cover. But for us to tackle one of those, we’d have to all be able to breathe underwater, and honestly, underwater dungeon clearing has always sounded hellish to me.”

“People do that?” asked Verity.

“It’s my uncle’s specialty,” said Alfric. “He’s got an entad that gave him gills, and the rest of his party has similar.”

“But no sky dungeons, huh?” asked Mizuki.

“There are,” said Alfric. “But only in the sense that there are places where a dungeon entrance rests on a floating island.”

“Floating islands?” asked Isra.

“Far to the west,” said Alfric. “A long way away. I’ve also heard there are some far to the east, beyond Tarbin, but it might just be the same set once you’ve wrapped around the world. There’s some disagreement on that score, I can’t remember why. And possibly more, I suppose, if you could go north past the Barrier Storms. I always wanted to, when I was a child.”

“You didn’t always want to be in the dungeoneering business?” asked Mizuki.

“Oh, I wanted to be lots of things,” said Alfric. “But when I was old enough to read, I read stories about the people who’d died trying to explore past the Barrier Storms, and I learned that all the pirates had been captured or put down three hundred years ago, and that the whole of the planet that could be explored had been explored, and that left the dungeons as the one thing I wanted to do.”

“I wanted to be a musician,” said Verity.

“And… now you are?” asked Mizuki.

“I’ve gone back and forth on whether it’s what I want to do with my life,” said Verity. “I like being a musician, but I’m not thrilled with being a bard. In the long run, I don’t have any idea what I want to be. Perhaps just this.”

“Well,” said Hannah, “I got into bein’ a healer from a sideways angle. I had thoughts of bein’ somethin’ else, part of somethin’ more, and alienist seemed right to me until I learned more of the gods. Then there was just somethin’ about Garos that set my thoughts aflame, and if you’ve got the mindset for it, then the best thing to do, for your role in society, as it were, becomes healin’.”

“I wanted to be a mother,” said Isra.

There was silence for just a bit.

“A mother?” asked Mizuki. “Just that?”

Isra nodded. “When I was five years old, I saw a woman taking a herd of her children to drink from a well. It seemed very nice.”

“I don’t think ‘herd’ is the right word,” said Alfric.

“What is the word?” asked Isra. “There were many of them.”

“There isn’t a word, funny enough,” said Hannah. “Is there?”

They all pondered this for a bit.

“Maybe it’s the way you said ‘herd’,” said Mizuki. “Like you were talking about animals, goats or sheep.”

“Mmm,” said Isra, frowning.

“And you, Mizuki?” asked Alfric. “What did you want to be?”

“Oh, I don’t think I wanted to do or be anything,” said Mizuki. “I think I was disappointed when I found out that you needed to do something. Seemed to me like it would be better to sit around all day, play with cats, go catch frogs, swish sticks through the air, read a book, take a nap… I guess I’ve always liked cooking, but when I was ten, we found out I was a sorc, and it was pretty clear that was the job that would let me do what I wanted, so long as I helped people out with things from time to time.” She shrugged. It felt like a lame answer, after what they’d said. Or if not lame, then at least immature. She was very aware that she wasn’t a hard worker, and maybe that accounted for some of the difference.

The conversation shifted after that, to talk of food and, later, clothing, which featured Alfric giving a characteristically in-depth talk on what was best for both traveling and going into a dungeon. Then, after that, they talked about the winter months, and Hannah seemed to think it very important to tell everyone that unless they’d been far to the south, they’d never experienced a true winter.

And then they were at the markers for the hex border, where Mizuki asked for a brief rest before they went through.

“Doesn’t it make more sense to rest after we’re through?” asked Verity as she sat down on a nearby rock.

“Nah,” said Mizuki. “Here, at least, it’s a nice day. Once we’re past the markers and we do the warp, who knows? Six miles away, and at least a little bit up, it might be cold and damp, right?”

“I suppose,” Verity said with a shrug. She had her own pack, which, like Mizuki’s, was slung over one shoulder. From this, she pulled out a waterskin and took a long drink. “Another mile and a half to go?”

“Just about,” said Alfric. “From what I’ve heard, the way should be pretty easy to find. And once we’re there, it’s the second dungeon. We’ll take a bit of a break before we go in. Is everyone feeling up to it?”

“I guess,” said Mizuki.

“Oh, I’m eager,” said Hannah. “Too long between, in my opinion.”

“I’m prepared,” said Verity. “Not eager though.”

“I’ve practiced with the bow and arrows,” said Isra.

“And?” asked Alfric.

“It depends on what we run into,” Isra replied with a shrug. “To draw and aim while walking alongside an arrow is more difficult than I had thought.”

“I’m sure you’ll do well,” said Alfric. He turned to Mizuki. “You think it’ll be easier on you?”

“Casting?” asked Mizuki.

“Mentally,” said Alfric, tapping his head.

“Should be easier the second time,” said Mizuki. “Right?”

“Not always,” said Alfric. “For some, they build it up in their head. The first time they go in, they underestimate, and then the second time, they overestimate. I just want to help you any way that I can.”

“But not the others?” asked Mizuki.

“The others too,” he nodded, and he sounded so earnest that it was hard to take offense at the implication that she was the weak link. Her hackles, which had begun to rise, went back down.

“Thank you,” said Mizuki. “But I think I’ll be fine.”

Alfric nodded and took a drink from his own waterskin. It was a warm spring day, with a nice breeze, but they had all worked up a bit of a sweat from walking. For a moment, they just sat there, stretching their legs, and Mizuki wished that it could just be this, sitting around with—well, ‘friends’ was probably pushing it, but they were party members, and that was something. If the whole of the business could be walking places with friends, she’d have no qualms about being a dungeoneer, not if it was with these people.

Then the break was over, and they went through the pillars that marked the hex boundary, far enough that there’d be absolutely no risk of winding up back in Pucklechurch, though Hannah thought that was a rather silly concern.

Mizuki’s ears popped from the pressure difference when she arrived at the warp point with the others, and she stepped out of the small, covered landing to take in the view. It had been quite some time since she’d been to Traeg’s Knob, probably at least five years, with her parents, come to think of it, though she’d been a bit old for sledding. For all she could remember, it was her first time in Traeg’s Knob when it wasn’t winter, if she didn’t count just passing through.

The view was gorgeous, with the woodlands unmarred by farms and a large lake that stretched out away from the bottom of the hill in one direction. No one picked where the warp points were, they were just at the center of every hex, and it was the sort of thing that people complained about, from time to time, though not about the one in Pucklechurch, which was almost exactly in the center of town. Traeg’s Knob was a large hill though, which seemed perfect to Mizuki, better placement than other warp points, at least from her knowledge of the local area. The air was crisp up on the hill, and the skies were clear, with the breeze that they’d felt six miles away more of a proper wind. Mizuki could tell that the heat was bleeding from her skin, and in another five minutes, she would probably be cold, but she had a pack with her change of clothes in it, along with her cloak, so that didn’t matter so much.

“So untamed,” said Alfric. “Hardly any houses.”

There were a few, but he was right, there weren’t many. The public places were up on top of the hill, and there were houses there too, but no more than five. A few more were down at the edge of the lake, each of them with its own small dock, but those numbered no more than five either.

“How many people in the whole of this hex?” asked Mizuki.

“Not many,” said Hannah, nodding. “A hundred, all told. A square mile of land each, I would think.”

“The five of us together could almost swing a vote for hexmaster,” said Verity. “Do they even vote, when it’s this size?”

“You’d better believe they do,” replied Hannah. “And they’re properly fierce about it, most of the time. The fewer people in a hex, the more power each of the masters has, comparatively. And of course, most of them know each other, save perhaps those at the hex edge, which can make it more bitter.”

“The system of masters wasn’t designed for a hex with a population this small,” said Alfric.

“They have more wilderness than Pucklechurch,” said Isra.

“Ay,” said Hannah. “But Pucklechurch itself is fairly wild. Not too much of it is farmed.”

“A quarter,” said Isra.

“A quarter,” agreed Alfric, though Mizuki had no idea how he’d know that. “But that’s not much, by the standards of a truly civilized place.”

“I don’t think I would like civilized places,” said Isra.

“No, perhaps not,” said Alfric. He took a deep breath. “Shall we?”

“We shall,” said Hannah. “Lead the way.”

They walked down the dirt path, which was well maintained, and in a few places where it got steep, there were stone steps placed into the earth. Mizuki wished that she had a walking stick and was on the lookout for one, but the trees were mostly pine trees, which seemed less likely to give up a proper walking stick than a maple. She wondered, idly, whether she should buy a staff in Liberfell. A staff seemed like a proper sorcerer’s implement, though she was afraid some wizard would come by and accuse her of pretending at wizarding. Wizards used their staffs—staves?—for something, though Mizuki had no idea what, and it probably depended upon the wizard. There were only a handful of wizards in Pucklechurch, and she’d given them all a wide berth. There were historical disagreements between their two professions.

The shade over the path was a welcome change of pace from the fields they’d been walking beside in the Pucklechurch hex, and Mizuki found herself enjoying the damp, earthy scent and the cool air on her skin so much that she was surprised when they reached the portal to the Traeg’s Knob dungeon. She had, momentarily, forgotten that they had come all this way with a goal in mind.

“I need to change,” said Mizuki. She gestured to Alfric that he should turn around, and he did promptly and without questioning it. “I won’t be long.”

“Do you want me to turn around too?” asked Hannah.

“What?” asked Mizuki, who was halfway through removing her top. “Why?”

“Well,” said Hannah, “I don’t know, because you don’t want me looking?”

“Uh,” said Mizuki, still frozen in place.

“I just thought,” said Hannah. “Seein’ as you want him to turn around because it wouldn’t be proper, and it wouldn’t be proper because of his assumed interest, that you might want me to turn too.”

“I was told this wouldn’t be long, though I am enjoying the view of the woods,” said Alfric, who apparently could crack a joke, when he set his mind to it.

“I’ll turn,” said Hannah, turning her back to Mizuki. “Not that I have an interest, mind, but it’s the assumed interest, I s’pose.” She kept her back turned. “Though I’d think it would be enough for you to trust that I wouldn’t leer, even if I did have interest in your body, which I don’t, same as Alfric.”

Verity and Isra had both turned too, without saying anything about it, and Mizuki was left to hurry putting on her dungeoneering outfit as quickly as she could. She hadn’t meant anything by asking Alfric to turn, it had just been, well—he probably would have turned without being asked, or at least looked away as though she wasn’t in a state of undress, and Mizuki felt foolish for having made even a minor thing of it and a bit peeved that Hannah had called attention to it. And now, with all of them turned away, Mizuki was feeling a deep embarrassment about the whole thing.

“Done,” said Mizuki as she put on her helm.

Hannah turned back around and burst out laughing. “You look so cute!” she said.

“You were the one who helped me pick this out,” said Mizuki, crossing her arms.

“You look like a little boy playing soldier,” said Verity, who was looking Mizuki up and down.

“It’s for safety,” said Mizuki. “Sorry I didn’t pick up some sexy dungeon clothes.”

“I think having Hannah pick might have been a mistake,” said Isra, who was furrowing her brow.

“Well, it is functional,” said Hannah. “Not my fault that Mizuki looks odd in that kind of thing.” That Hannah was wearing almost exactly the same outfit, with a button-down shirt, long pants, and heavy boots, seemed to not be an issue to anyone, even Mizuki. It was, Mizuki reflected, because that kind of look suited Hannah, who was more heavyset and had a look of cheerful, if serious business about her. Mizuki was, comparatively, a wimp.

“You know, I have the most raw destructive potential of anyone here,” said Mizuki. “By a wide margin.”

“I can’t take a threat seriously when you’re wearing that,” said Verity. “I’m sorry, I just can’t. It makes you look tiny.” She stifled a giggle and bit her lip to keep from smiling, and Mizuki didn’t think she should look that amused.

“Well, I personally think that she looks adorable,” said Alfric, grinning at Mizuki.

“Like a newborn fawn,” said Isra, nodding.

“Does no one take my threats seriously?” asked Mizuki. “I have fireballs.”

“Like a puppy barking at you,” said Verity. “I’m sorry, it’s probably the fit of those clothes. We’ll get you something better when we’re in Liberfell, something that’s not so silly. This isn’t working.” When she said ‘this’ she gestured vaguely in Mizuki’s direction.

“Kill you all,” said Mizuki, pointing at them. “I mean it.” She knew, of course, that this would only make her look more ridiculous, but that was part of the fun.

“There there,” said Alfric, patting her on the helm. She grinned up at him.

“Well, let’s not play a game of who could kill whom,” said Hannah with a laugh. She turned to the dungeon. “We’ve got a dungeon to explore.”

Chapter 23 — This One Is Actually About Dungeons Too

The entrance to the dungeon was the same as it had been before, a tube of packed earth, but when it opened out into the first room, there was nothing like a house or building. Instead, it was a little grotto, with stalactites hanging from the ceiling and a trickle of water coming down. The only path forward was through the stalactites, where the light from the lanterns could barely reach.

<Party chat only,> said Alfric. <No sense alerting anything to our presence.>

<Let me know when I should play my song,> said Verity.

<Packs down first,> said Alfric as he slipped his off and onto the ground. He drew his sword and shield, getting comfortable with the grip of them and changing his stance. He was always rather serious, Verity thought, but here, it seemed to suit him more.

Verity slipped her own bag off and placed it on top of a rock, where she hoped it would stay relatively dry. There was practically nothing in her pack aside from her waterskin, some eggy bread Hannah had baked that morning, and some nuts Isra had brought. Her lute was already in her hands, with the finger flute tied tight against the calf of her left leg, giving her as many fingers as she pleased. The lute itself was tuned and ready to go, with a few tests of it before they went in.

Verity was wearing a helm, the same as Mizuki, and had practiced singing with it on. She didn’t look nearly so ridiculous though. In the mirror, she’d thought that she could pull off the look of a battle bard.

<Plan for a longer engagement this time,> said Alfric. He turned to the others and made sure that they were ready. <Song now, please.>

Verity had prepared a few songs and chose one of strength in the face of the foreboding, whose lyrics fit with the dark, cavernous dungeon better than the other songs she had on hand. It was a song of mythology, harking back to a very old story of the first person to ever delve a dungeon, Helgi of Amanth, though told in a somewhat more whimsical way than was orthodox. Helgi was almost certainly apocryphal, so Verity felt no shame in making changes.

They heard the first monster before they saw it, as Alfric was making his way beside the small trickle of water that went along the tunnel. It was a sound like a thousand crickets in the night, a buzzing that was so loud it was almost painful. The light affixed to Alfric’s chest illuminated only a larger cave with a pool of water and two more tunnels coming off it, and he crouched low, shield forward, until he was at the edge of the pool. Moving carefully, as though not to disturb the ground, he touched the tip of his sword into the pool and sent electricity arcing over the surface of it.

Almost at once, a creature rose up, breaching the water and roaring with the same buzzing sound, now even louder and higher-pitched. It looked almost like a man but covered in tiny black mussels, which vibrated to generate the sound, which changed in timbre as it surfaced. The room of the cave they were in was fifteen feet tall, and he stood nearly ten, even with his legs down in the water.

<Fireball,> said Mizuki, and Verity screwed her eyes shut. Even with them closed as tight as they would go, she saw the flash of it, and when she opened them back up, there was a faint afterimage. The monster had lost one of its arms, which continued to flop around in the water. With the other arm, it was going for Alfric, who was yelling at it and trying to hold its attention. It was all happening frighteningly fast, so fast that if Verity had stopped to think, her mind would have ground to a halt. She focused on the song and held its magic, boosting Alfric.

Three arrows zipped through the air, all one after the other, and Isra had moved across the room, right at the edge of the pool. She fired again, and the arrow struck the thing in its chest, cracking a few of the mussels there, but it seemed unperturbed by the damage, even as the arrows vanished back into Isra’s quiver.

<Tough armor,> said Alfric as he swiped at the monster’s other arm. <He’s strong.> As if to punctuate it, the monster brought its arm down, and while Alfric lifted his shield to meet it, the force of the blow brought him to his knees. He rolled out of the way of the follow-up attack, wincing, and got back to his feet.

<Hexin’,> said Hannah, barreling her way forward toward the pool.

<Too dangerous,> said Alfric, whose eyes went wide as he saw her moving in.

<Distract it?> asked Hannah, hesitating at the edge of the pool.

<Go, now,> said Alfric. He rushed forward, screaming at the top of his lungs and waving his sword wildly in the air. It arced with electricity, more threat than anything else.

Hannah moved forward, and Isra shot again, three more arrows in quick succession, this time with two of them flying wide. She’d been aiming for the head rather than the chest and, facing a smaller target, landed only one.

As soon as Hannah was in the water, Verity changed the magic, putting almost everything onto the cleric and doing her best to enhance the clerical power. It was a difficult thing to do, given that Verity had no clerical power of her own and only a vague sense of what the godly connection was like. It was so much easier to enhance those things she had some personal familiarity with, when the song could be drawn from her own life in some way. In their practice, it had gone poorly, but Verity did it all the same, as they’d planned.

The monster’s other arm fell off as though severed by a giant invisible blade, and Hannah splashed back away from the leg she was touching, soaked to the bone and moving as quickly as she could.

The monster, disarmed, roared with the vibrations of a thousand small mussels, loud enough that Verity almost lost the thread of the song. The creature staggered once, moving toward Alfric as though it meant to slam its head into him, but Alfric easily stepped to the side, and the monster fell to the ground.

<Strength,> he said, though Verity had already been shifting her magic in that direction. He brought his sword down with multiplied strength, severing straight through the monster’s neck, then without hesitation stepped up onto its back and plunged the blade into its center. The monster, or what was left of it given that it had neither head nor arms, shuddered once and then was still. The small mussels all slowly opened, like a hand releasing a blade in death.

Alfric was breathing hard, and Hannah was soaking wet, but everyone seemed to be okay. Alfric moved his head from side to side, then released his grip on his shield and flexed his hand a few times.

<Good fight,> he said.

<Not three raccoons,> Mizuki said.

<Higher elevation,> said Alfric. He turned to Hannah. <Good work.>

<Ay,> she said.

<You stopped when I told you to,> he said.

<Ay,> she said again, removing her helm and shaking her voluminous red hair to get it free of water. Verity hadn’t seen it, but Hannah must have been fully submerged in the pool at some point, perhaps when scrambling back. <You’re the one with the most trainin’, and I’m no fool.>

<Thank you,> said Alfric. There was relief in his voice. <I was worried you’d charge ahead.>

<I’m no fool,> Hannah repeated. <Just a brave girl who knew what needed doin’.>

<I held back,> said Mizuki. Despite the fact that she’d contributed just the single fireball, she was breathing heavily, and her eyes were wide. Verity shifted the song again, dampening a bit of the fear and anxiety, and she saw gratitude in Mizuki’s eyes. Fear was one of those funny emotions that could increase themselves if left to fester. <Should I have held back?> asked Mizuki. <You were just so close to it that I thought I might accidentally kill you.>

<No, you shouldn’t have killed me,> said Alfric, shaking his shield arm a bit. <He hit pretty hard. Hannah, can you look at my arm?>

Hannah came over to him, still dripping wet, and laid her hand on his biceps. <Minor fracture,> she said after a bit. <Not a full break. Easy to repair if it’s a hairline. I’ll fix it.> That took a moment of concentration on her part, and when she stepped back from him, Alfric rotated his arm around, testing the range of motion and feeling for any pain.

<Very good, thank you,> he said.

<Tell me if you break your arm in the middle of a fight,> said Hannah.

<I didn’t know it was broken, only that it was hurt,> Alfric replied. He looked at Verity, who was keeping up her song. <Come on, let’s get moving, left side first.> He moved around the pool, looking into it for a moment but continuing on. Verity was torn between finding his perseverance admirable and finding it foolish. <Good shooting, Isra,> he said, turning back to look at her.

<The arrows didn’t seem to do much,> she said.

<No, they won’t work against everything we face,> said Alfric. He had shifted his stance as he got to the entryway. <You did what you could with impeccable aim. Get ready.> This last bit was addressed to the group as his light began to illuminate the tunnel.

The next room of the cave was even taller, and it was less natural, a fat cone going up thirty feet, with vines creeping through the dark along one edge. At the top of the cone, the sky was exposed, letting down a shaft of light that illuminated a crumpled pile of skeletons on the ground, which Verity noticed just as she was thinking she was happy for the light.

Alfric charged forward and brought his sword down on the skeletons, shattering bones, but after the first strike, when nothing had moved, he held back, staring at them with suspicion for a long moment before relaxing.

<Sorry,> he said. <Monsters sometimes disguise themselves.>

<Vines,> said Mizuki, then right after that, <Fireburst.>

Verity had been strumming her lute and murmuring her song, the better to keep it going, but when she heard the word ‘burst’ she immediately released the instrument, letting it swing around her neck by its strap, and clamped her hands onto her ears.

It was no surprise that Mizuki was using fire: the grotto they found themselves in was a wet place, and that would naturally color the ambient aether, at least as Mizuki had explained it. She had gone on in brief about how her spells worked over dinner one night, and the basics of it were that it was largely a thing of coloring and castoffs and opposites.

She had also explained the difference between a fireball and a fireburst. The first was a gob of fiery hotness, while the second was a fiery explosion. She had demonstrated once, in the backyard, and then Verity had asked her to never demonstrate again and to give ample warning, because a deaf bard would have a much harder time doing her job.

Verity could feel the blast wave from the fireburst strike her in the chest, and it felt, for a moment, like her heart had stopped. It was incredibly loud, even with ten-fingered hands clamped down hard on her ears, and she was only thankful that she’d been given a warning, because if not, she’d have been doing the whole rest of the dungeon with ringing ears or, more likely, just gone home.

Bits of flaming vine as thick as Verity’s wrist fell to the ground around them, and she yelped when one of them hit her on the shoulder, which Isra pulled away almost the moment it had touched her. Through this all, Verity had been trying to keep the song going, but it was like a top spinning out of control, wobbling all over the place with the sharpness of the fireburst having practically shaken her head loose. At the last moment, she was able to save it, pulling it back into place, but it was a close thing.

<They were moving,> said Mizuki. <Now they are not.> She seemed quite pleased with herself.

<Good eyes,> said Alfric. <I didn’t quite get my hands up in time.> He held up his shield and sword, showing how hard it would have been. <Very loud. Chat is coming through fine though.>

<Earmuffs for next time,> said Hannah.

<Sorry,> said Mizuki.

<It’s fine,> said Alfric. <Let me know if you hear anything.>

<Take a break, ay?> asked Hannah.

Alfric looked at Verity, who was still holding the song. <Keep going,> he said.

There was another tunnel leading away from the room, and as they moved, Verity gave the skeletons a wide berth, just in case they had been saving a surprise for later. She was always at the back of the group, and with the party formed, she could have stayed at the entrance and given them nearly the same effect, but then they’d have had to rely on party chat for her to know who needed what at any given moment, and one of the benefits of a bard was being able to adapt to conditions, boosting whoever needed it when they needed it.

The song Verity had planned was quite the long one, but she’d been through all the prepared verses, so began freewheeling through new lyrics, all of them almost under her breath. The best bards could be completely silent, without need for audible music or vocals, but whenever Verity had tried, it had felt especially draining, too disconnected from the actual song for her to keep it up for very long.

The next trial the cave had for them was quite different and came at Alfric with a sound like whispers. It took some time for Verity to recognize them as a swarm of something resembling a moth, and she shifted her magic to Alfric’s constitution, hardening his skin as best she could and backing up so the swarm wouldn’t get to her. Alfric’s sword was particularly useless against a swarm of insects, so he simply covered his face and curled into a ball.

<Fry them, Zuki,> he called through the chat.

<Need some energy,> she said. <Not enough in the air.>

<Charging,> said Hannah as she placed her hand on her own chest, and at the same time, Verity did her best to shift the song for Mizuki’s needs, providing strength to Alfric in the hopes that the castoffs from the song would translate into something their sorcerer could use.

A moment later, lightning sprang forth from Mizuki’s hands, lighting up the room and the tunnels beyond it, which illuminated an overturned boat. The power Mizuki was using lacked direction or care, and Verity felt some of it hit her too, but it was a mild shock, nothing more. It was, however, quite fatal to the swarm of moths and arced between them, lighting them on fire as it did. Mizuki stopped as soon as most of them had dropped, and Alfric, bloodied about his face, stood up to swat at the last of them, using the electricity from his own sword to try to fry more. It took quite some time to get the rest of the stragglers, but once they had, Hannah rushed forward and laid hands on Alfric again, closing up the wounds on his face.

<Can’t get them all, I don’t think,> said Hannah. <You’ll have wounds on the cheeks.>

<It’s fine,> said Alfric, touching his bloodied face for a moment, then taking a handkerchief offered by Hannah. <I think that’s the best we could have done against bugs. They’re notoriously difficult.>

<Sorry if I zapped anyone,> said Mizuki.

<You zapped everyone,> said Isra.

<Sorry!> Mizuki said again, her voice slightly higher-pitched. <I was trying to get it to spread.>

<Let’s keep on,> said Alfric.

The pace felt relentless, and Verity felt a moment of unpleasant guilt as she reflected that this was largely for her benefit, so she wouldn’t have to spin up a second song until they were at least halfway through.

The path split again, this time giving them a choice between a corridor of ancient stonework and a narrow tunnel of damp rock that Alfric would have had to squeeze through. He took the one to the left, the stonework one, and Verity followed behind, keeping the song steady and giving the party as much in the way of additional reflexes and defenses as she could. She was most worried about surprise attacks, especially after how the last two rooms had gone. A sudden attack from the shadows could kill before anyone could do anything about it, and while Alfric had his shield, the shield was only good if he could move it to block whatever was coming at him.

The brickwork continued on even as the corridor ended, this time opening up into a place that looked like it once had human habitation. Alfric’s lantern illuminated a rotting bed in one corner and a bookshelf that unfortunately seemed to hold the rotted-out remains of books. It was larger than a normal bedroom, though, and larger than the study that might have been suggested by the broken desk. Everything was covered in either slime or moss, even though it was completely dark with no source of light. The dampness seemed more pronounced than in other rooms. Humidity wasn’t great for her instrument, and Verity was going to tune it again and hope for the best when they had a chance to rest.

<Animal,> said Isra. <Beneath the bed.>

Alfric tensed and crouched low, his sword ready for a thrust. Verity shifted the magic once again, giving him strength, the better to run something through.

<Hostile?> asked Alfric.

<Yes,> said Isra. <Very.>

There was a growl of warning, then a ball of fur came from beneath the bed. Only once it tried to bite at Alfric did Verity see its form, like a wolf with patches of missing skin and horns of jagged rock. Alfric thrust his sword at it, and the wolf dodged to the side, then in a blur of motion, there were two of it instead, the other ball of fur hurtling toward Mizuki. It didn’t have time to regret that mistake, because it was almost instantly incinerated by a concentrated jet of white-hot flame from her hands that continued on past it and started the floor and wall on fire. Mizuki retreated, scrambling backward while trying to keep her hands out in front of her.

When Verity looked back at Alfric, the wolf had multiplied again, and there were three of it, all trying to bite at him, stopped by a combination of his greaves, his sword, and his shield. When Verity noticed blood coming down his leg, she realized they’d been more successful in their attacks than she’d thought.

Isra appeared beside Alfric in a flash, holding her bow taut, and almost right away, she shifted position again, which was accompanied by the thwipping sound of arrows and the whimpering of wolves. The wolves multiplied again with a blur of fur, but this time the copies seemed to be wounded as well and collapsed after taking a few steps. When Isra’s quiver had refilled, she took more shots, carefully this time, with each shot going straight through a skull. She had a look of grim determination on her face as she took each shot, and because of the way the bow warped time, she seemed to go from releasing an arrow directly to holding a new arrow at full draw.

By the time she was finished, Hannah had already finished healing Alfric.

<Bixzotl,> said Hannah. God of Copies. <That could have gone wrong quickly.>

<It didn’t,> said Alfric, though the floor was stained with his blood and he was breathing hard. He turned to Isra. <Thank you.>

<We should be about half done,> said Hannah. <A break would do.>

Alfric turned to Verity. <Stop, or keep going?> he asked. For whatever else you might say about him, Alfric knew his business, and he was letting her weigh the cost of starting up a new song with the benefits of a break. Verity was grateful that he’d put it in her hands rather than deciding for himself.

<A break,> she said. <Please.>

<Thank the gods,> said Mizuki.

<Ten minutes,> said Alfric. <Then we’re back to it.>

Verity could have let the song unwind itself at once, but she brought it to a proper conclusion, finishing out a verse of the increasingly nonsensical and ahistorical song.

Chapter 24 — 10% Dungeons by Volume

Isra drank from her waterskin and tried her best to rest her arm. There were limits to how many times she could draw her bow in a day before the arm simply gave out and refused to pull, and she feared that she was hitting that point far too early. They had said five to ten rooms in the dungeon, and she didn’t know whether that counted the first one or not, but if they were halfway done, she didn’t think she would be able to fire the bow by the end of it.

<Hannah, can you do something for my arm?> asked Isra. She was rubbing her shoulder, trying to make it feel better.

<I can try,> said Hannah. She went over and gripped Isra by the left biceps, then frowned a bit. <Your right is bigger than your left.>

<I use the right to shoot,> said Isra, not quite understanding.

<You’re not symmetrical,> said Hannah. <If I had symmetricalized you before the dungeon, it wouldn’t be a problem, I’d just do a simple mirror left to right and you’d be nearly as good as new. But if I copy left to right now, then you’d lose muscle mass and tone and not have half the power you do now. If I mirror right to left, you’ll have two sore arms, which does no one any good. A partial mirroring is beyond me.>

<Okay,> said Isra, rubbing her arm. <Thank you.>

<Ay, sorry I can’t do more. If you want to be symmetricalized, we’ll set aside a day for it, but it’s not somethin’ that can be undone,> said Hannah with a nod.

Isra nodded back and dipped her fingers into the small pouch she had with her to pull out some turmeric root, which she chewed on for a moment before washing it down with water from her waterskin. The herb wouldn’t work instantly or completely, but it was good for sore muscles, which she was sure to have once the day was done, at least at the rate they were going. The bow was both a blessing and a curse, powerful, but also demanding.

Isra thought back to what Verity had said about the magical lute she’d once used, a whole concert in the form of a single instrument. She wondered whether entads had a tendency to do that in general, to push people to their limits simply by virtue of what they allowed a person to be capable of. Isra looked at Verity, who was taking a long drink from her own waterskin. Her helm was off, revealing sweat-damp stuck to her face.

Verity had said, during a long conversation the night before, as they lay in beds on the opposite sides of the room, that she felt a bit silly being a bard, singing to people who were throwing fireballs or swinging a sword, but Isra hadn’t thought that was true at all. She hadn’t, at the time, found a way to say any words of encouragement. It was noble and bright to give strength to others, to sing in the face of danger.

<Is everyone ready?> asked Alfric as he put his helm back on.

<Ready as I’ll ever be,> said Mizuki, slowly getting to her feet. She’d spent quite some time finding the driest spot on the floor she could, as far from the dead wolves as she could be. They were unsettling, though they’d been the closest to a normal animal that Isra had yet sensed. She’d been slower than Mizuki when it came to the vines, and in retrospect, it should have been obvious. The dungeons were different though, dulling her senses. The creatures in them were possessed by something.

<Ready,> said Hannah, as she put on her helm too.

It occurred to Isra that she was the only one without a helm. She simply hadn’t thought about it. A helm wasn’t something you wore out in the woods, even when tracking dangerous game, which she had done only twice before, both times to collect a bounty from the local beastmaster. In some sense, going into a dungeon was like those hunts had been, but with less uncertainty over when and where the danger might be.

They left the room with Alfric, as always, in the lead, and Hannah and Mizuki close behind him. Verity began her song, and Isra listened closely to the half-spoken lyrics, which seemed to be about a long sea voyage. Isra knew only vaguely of the sea: the closest she had ever been to it was the open water Tarchwood sat on the edge of, and that was, according to Alfric, a large lake rather than a sea. Still, the song was nice and sweet, with a bit of melancholy that Verity seemed drawn to. Isra liked it and reflected that she hadn’t heard Verity sing a bad song yet.

Isra had her magical bow drawn and an arrow nocked, so when the fighting started, she was ready to pull. The creature was shaped almost like a human, but as it unfolded from behind its rock, it became obvious that it was much taller, twice Alfric’s height at least. It had a single bloodshot eyeball that dominated its face, and teeth sticking out from the skin beneath it, without any seeming mouth to accompany them. The hands were four-fingered and disproportionately huge compared with the body. By the time it had picked up a rock to hurl at them or bash them with, Isra had loosed her first arrow.

She walked after the arrow as it continued on its leisurely flight through the cavern. She nocked another arrow and brought it to full draw, then released it, aiming squarely for the eye of the cyclops.

What Isra was used to was bow hunting, where the first shot was the most important, because it was the one made against a stationary, unaware target. That was where she was best. In a dungeon, there was so much less range, and the demand, especially with the entad, seemed to be to place as many arrows into the target as quickly as possible. Isra had been practicing every day since leaving the dungeon, getting used to the new bow, which seemed to have a much higher draw, and the new arrows, which had a different weight and flight. She’d been working her arm to build up the kind of endurance a dungeon seemed to require. Not enough time had passed for any of that training to take effect though.

She managed to loose three arrows as she walked, all aiming for that central eye, hoping to blind the creature or at least injure it seriously enough that Alfric wouldn’t risk getting crushed. The arrow she walked beside flew low, aimed at its belly or groin, because if she’d aimed high, she wouldn’t have been able to follow along with the bubble of warped time.

As the slowed arrow was about to strike, Isra turned herself around and quickly nocked another arrow, firing it away from the monster as soon as time started moving forward at its normal pace. This allowed a second bubble of slowed time, which she followed back away from the creature, resting her arm as she walked. She glanced back as she moved, trying to see whether and where she’d hit. All four arrows had struck it, but only one had hit the eye, and its head was snapping backward from the force of the impacts. She didn’t think that it would be seriously hurt, given the durability of the last big one, and she took her place beside Verity, turning back around to face the monster and preparing to let loose another volley, if it seemed to be doing anything helpful.

The monster crashed to the ground with three arrows in its head, and the flame Mizuki had been halfway to conjuring in her hands died away. They waited for a moment, but the monster didn’t move.

<Was that all Isra?> asked Mizuki.

<Yes,> said Alfric.

<I didn’t think that would kill it,> said Isra.

<You didn’t think that three arrows fired directly into its eye would kill it?> asked Mizuki.

Isra frowned at her. <Most of these things are tougher. I hit the other in the head, and it didn’t seem to notice.>

<Good work,> said Alfric. <Let’s move on and preserve Verity’s song.>

He continued without waiting for the others, and they fell in behind him, down yet another tunnel, one of two in the room. The tunnels seemed to branch, each room revealing two more, and Isra rubbed her arm again. She wasn’t sure how many arrows she could fire in a day, but she put no more than five in her quiver when hunting, and when she practiced, it was no more than perhaps twenty in a day, or forty if she was practicing in the morning and evening. With the magical arrows, which had yet to break, there was no worry about having to spend more money at the fletcher’s or more time fletching her own arrows, but it was still a concern. She was going to have to work up to the stamina the dungeons required or hope that Hannah could help.

The next room had a small pool, with tiny glowing fish that swam around in it, but no monsters to speak of. A wooden staff rested against one wall, so natural that it might have been possible to mistake for a branch. There were stalactites and stalagmites, and it gave the feeling of being deep in a cave, which in a sense, they were.

Alfric knelt down next to the pool and looked into the clear water at the fish there.

<Mizuki,> he said. <Can you see an entad down there?>

Isra felt the magic of the song shifting, likely to aid Mizuki, and once again, she looked over at Verity, who was strumming away. The bard looked calm, but she was holding magic in place, and Isra knew that took some effort for her and couldn’t be continued indefinitely.

<Some kind of long thing, maybe a sword, yes,> she said.

Alfric nodded, then slowly lowered his hand into the pool. The fish rushed to it at once, concentrating their glow, and Alfric pulled his hand back, shaking it with a grimace until two of the fish whose teeth had sunk into were dislodged.

<Hannah, be ready to heal,> he said.

<Ready,> said Hannah, moving to his side.

Alfric plunged his hand into the shallow pool, all the way to the bottom, and pulled something rusted up from the bottom. He used his spare hand to pull off the glowing fish and toss them back in the pool. The blood from his arm turned the water cloudy by the time he was finished. The wounds were healed almost at once as Hannah laid hands on him.

The sword itself seemed to be in terrible condition. It was covered in seaweed, rust, and barnacles, with the metal chipped and cracked.

<Save that for later, with the staff,> said Alfric, setting it next to the piece of wood. He looked into the pool. <No point in killing those.>

The room after that had black, long-legged things, like deer on stilts with horrible grimaces on their faces, and Isra let loose, taking more care to aim than to be quick about it. She got one of the five and injured two more, then barely got her hands up in time when Mizuki announced a fireburst to kill two of them outright. Alfric moved in quickly, sword flashing, and Isra aimed at the melee, trying to get a shot. Her efforts proved unnecessary as Alfric dispatched one then the other with only minor wounds. The whole thing was over in a blur, an encounter that almost immediately jumbled itself up, the details becoming indistinct under the relentless pace of their dungeon crawling.

They worked their way back, past the dead giant and into the room where a mussel-covered corpse was still sitting beside a pool of water. The mussels had fallen off, leaving pocked white skin below.

The next room was different from what came before, open at the top to let in moonlight that didn’t match the daylight of the other room and trees that seemed to grow straight up from the shiny black stone, their roots weaving in and out of it as though it were dirt. Isra could feel the trees, thick pines that shared something in common with those on the outside, but with a warp to them, an internal wobbling rather than a solid cylinder of the trunk.

In the center of the clearing was a bear, and Alfric stayed well back from it because it was as big as a house. It was resting but not quite sleeping, its back turned toward them. From time to time, it would huff and sigh.

<I don’t know that we can kill this thing,> said Alfric. <We’re not equipped to punch through its vitals.>

<It’s too large to get through the door,> said Mizuki.

<Which is why we’re staying back,> replied Alfric. <We can skip this room. I don’t think fighting that thing is worth an entad, if there’s one in there.>

<Trees are magic,> said Mizuki. <Ectad material.>

<Which we have no way of chopping or carting,> said Alfric. <Not worth it.>

<You’re the one that said a full clear was best,> said Hannah. <And there might be a room beyond still, or two. Otherwise we’re done.>

<I don’t want a level of risk we’re not going to find acceptable,> said Alfric, his voice firm. <Mizuki can hit it once, maybe twice, but Isra’s arm is close to giving out, Verity has been holding songs, and we’re already getting at least six entads from this dungeon.> This was a mild surprise to Isra, who hadn’t been tracking the things left behind. <There might be no upside to this fight, not when it’s incapable of getting through the entrance. We don’t kill for sport.>

<Vote?> asked Hannah.

<On what?> asked Alfric. <If we try this, it’ll be with Mizuki lobbing shots, us trying to get the creature stuck in the doorway, hitting its face, and maybe trying to wedge my sword in its mouth.>

<Sounds like a vote,> said Hannah, nodding. <Aye.>

<Aye,> said Alfric, sounding reluctant.

<Aye,> said Mizuki, squaring her shoulders.

Isra looked at Verity, who was still playing, and saw the bard give a slow, circumspect nod of her head.

<Aye,> said Isra.

Mizuki came to the front, at the mouth of the cave. She breathed a shaky breath.

<Is it too late to change to a nay?> she asked.

<I’m going to yell for it,> said Alfric. <Aim for the head with everything you’ve got. We’re trying to get a killing blow.>

<Okay,> replied Mizuki. There was a disturbance in the air, around her fingers, and Isra felt the song shift. Something changed in Mizuki, and the air began to crackle around her. Isra could feel it in her skin, and the air warmed around them.

“Aaaah!” Alfric screamed at the bear. “Aaahah!”

<Get ready to cover your ears,> said Mizuki.

The house-size bear rose, slowly, and turned to face them. ‘Face’ was likely the wrong word, because it was simply a collection of eyes that seemed to have been placed on the head at random, along with black things like leeches that hung from where its mouth should have been, each of them as large as a human arm. It warbled at them, and as it began to move, Mizuki struck. For a moment, it was like the air had been sucked out of the room, but it wasn’t just air, it was something else as well, a void in the aether that Isra could feel, even without being a mage.

The spell had been directed, focused, and still the blowback from it hit them all hard enough that they staggered. Mizuki hadn’t used a fireball, or a fireburst, or the one with lightning; it had been different, almost a beam, energy in a more pure form, cleanly directed.

Half of the bear’s face was missing, and there was a hole of charred flesh in it so large that Isra thought she probably could have crawled inside.

Still, it lumbered forward, as though not aware that it should be dead.

Isra fired her bow, aiming for the eyes, hoping to blind, and stepped after her arrow, firing more. She was feeling it in her arm, too many firings too close together, but she pressed on. Looking at the ruins of its face, trying to remain calm, she aimed arrows not just at the remaining eight eyes, but at the side of its head as well. There was a spot where its head had been which was now charred meat, and on the other side of that was something, which wasn’t protected by the same thick hide.

<Hannah, go,> said Alfric, but it was said while Isra was in the bubble of warped time, so the sounds were stretched out.

When the first arrow she’d shot hit home, Isra backed up. A glance behind her showed something unsettling though: Verity and Mizuki were both on the ground, with Mizuki trying to rouse Verity. The song had ended.

When Isra looked back to the bear, she saw Hannah and Alfric there. Hannah was on the thing’s ruined right side, and Alfric was on its left. That Hannah was going to touch the creature was both obvious and insane because it had sharp shovel-claws that were each the size of a person’s head. Isra fired another arrow, her arm stinging, and watched the creature’s paw go toward Hannah in slow motion as the arrow crept forward. Isra had thoughts of attempting to move Hannah, but it was too hard to affect the world when time was slowed, and she had too little time to do anything about it. She watched in horror as Hannah was hit, lifted up off her feet and sent careening into one of the trees. She struggled to her feet, but the creature had turned its attention to Alfric, and he was without backup.

The bear hit him with its claw, a slow, lumbering hit, and his shield was ripped from his hand, leaving only his sword, which he gripped with two hands as he backed up. Isra fired another arrow, this time at the leech-like appendage dangling from its face, which was swinging up to Alfric. She struck it, twice in quick succession, but the beast still had its claws. Slowed-down time was giving Isra time to think, and that was giving rise to fear, which Verity wasn’t there to tamp down.

“Stop!” shouted Isra at the top of her lungs, as the bear raised a paw to bring down on Alfric.

To her surprise, the bear stopped what it was doing and looked at Isra. It had arrows sticking into its face and a giant cavity on the right side of its body, but there was still, somehow, a dull curiosity, all of it directed at her. It wasn’t going to listen, that was clear, but it had felt the words. She, in return, had felt a wave of sickness.

The left half of its head vanished, replaced by a mirror of the same charred damage. For a moment, Isra thought even that might not be enough, but the monster collapsed to the ground after a moment of swaying.

<Retreat,> commanded Alfric. <To the tunnel.>

They all moved back, with Alfric and Hannah both limping, until they got to where Mizuki had, somehow, dragged Verity out of harm’s way.

“She sucked the magic out of me,” said Verity, lolling her head. “I didn’t know a sorc could do that.”

“Well I didn’t either!” said Mizuki. “One minute it felt like I was the most powerful sorcerer in the world, the next you were collapsing and somehow that stupid bear wasn’t dead.”

<It’s dead now,> said Alfric, looking at the giant corpse. There was enough meat there to feed a village for an entire winter, a body so big that it would take a week just to dress it, if not more. It was good meat too, Isra could tell. She’d eaten bear only once before, hunted by someone else, and it had taken some effort to get rid of the gamy taste, but it had been fatty and delicious. <Are you okay, Verity? Do we need to get you out of here?>

“I’m fine,” said Verity, getting to her feet with a groan. Her lute had been left on the ground, and she went to go pick it up. “I’ve never experienced something like that, to have the song snuffed out like that.”

“More than snuffed out,” said Mizuki. “I used it. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, you just expanded what I was capable of, and I wanted to take that thing out with a single hit, and I didn’t realize how much I was taking from all over.”

“We share blame,” said Verity, stretching out and then looking her lute over for damage.

“You share credit, more like,” said Hannah, gesturing in the direction of the beast. “Not our best decision, to take on a thing like that, but we did it, together.”

Isra opened her mouth to protest that she’d done nothing, that her arrows had been useless, but the beast had stopped when she’d told it to, and that had probably saved Alfric’s life.

“We’ll take a break,” said Alfric. He had stopped using party chat, perhaps because everyone else had too. “But we still have half the work ahead of us because we need to collect our winnings and then get to Liberfell. The storage book is nearly empty, and we’re going to fill it up with as much as we possibly can.”

“Less in this one than the one before,” said Hannah. “Fewer worked goods to take, and unless we’re choppin’ those trees, less in the way of ectad things.”

“Which means less work,” Alfric said with a nod. He looked past the corpse of the bear. “And it’s possible there are more rooms left.”

“I’ll need a longer break, if you want me to sing,” said Verity.

“I’m really, really sorry,” said Mizuki. “If I’d realized what I was doing—”

“It’s okay, little boy,” said Verity with a sigh. She reached a hand up to touch Mizuki’s face. “You did your best.”

Mizuki smiled, then made to bite Verity’s hand, and they laughed together for a moment before finding a place to sit together.

“Isra, can you scout ahead?” asked Alfric. “Just to see whether there’s a door or not. An arrow there, an arrow back. I’ll come in an instant if there’s trouble, but I think we’re done with at least this room.”

Isra nodded. “Of course.”

“I cracked a rib,” said Hannah, as Isra prepared. “Fixed now. Let me look at you, Alfric, you took a bit of a hit. Present your profile to them, ay? Better for the healin’ that way.”

Isra loosed the arrow and followed, walking slowly and keeping her eyes peeled for anything moving, though it was difficult, with time slowed so much. She passed close to the corpse of the bear, following the arrow’s flight as it slowly dropped due to gravity, and prepared her second arrow as the first was about to hit the ground. There seemed to be no other doors though, no corridors or tunnels, just trees that were rooted in obsidian and a piece of large oak furniture with a curious dial set into its front. Isra was keen to investigate, but she had told Alfric she’d be back, and she fired off another arrow back the way she’d come, ready to deliver the news that they’d finished the dungeon.

Alfric was right though. Their work had only just begun, because with the fighting over and the dungeon apparently fully cleared, it was time to go through all the work of taking everything of value.

Chapter 25 — A Post-Dungeon Pickle

“I want to get this out of the way now,” said Alfric as they sat and recovered. “We shouldn’t have fought the bear. Things were going well, but we got overconfident, and I should have put my foot down. When you’re dungeoneering, you shouldn’t get that close to dying. So I apologize for not being a better leader and allowing that level of risk.”

“We did fine,” said Hannah. “We were barely hurt.”

“We were lucky,” said Alfric. “I don’t want to rely on being lucky. The room was potentially valuable but optional.”

“I really thought that I could kill it straight off,” said Mizuki.

“You can’t rely on conventional biology,” said Alfric. “But the real problem was that we didn’t make an immediate retreat, and we didn’t follow the plan. I saw Verity go down and my instinct was to get in the way and protect her. I should have grabbed her and run as fast as I could. I should have been shouting commands.”

“Don’t be hard on yourself,” said Hannah. It was, in her opinion, an overreaction. Perhaps she had simply been inured to the prospect of injuries by seeing how close a person could come to death and still be pulled back by a cleric of even moderate skill, let alone a team of clerics devoted to different gods. Alfric had the dagger, and all he’d have to do was make it to the dungeon entrance before getting whisked to the temple. She did feel a bit of guilt though, because she was the one who’d been pushing for it, and it very well could have gone wrong.

“I’m fine,” said Verity, waving off Mizuki. “Sorry for falling, I just… lost the song more than I’ve lost any song before.”

Hannah could feel many things, but whatever had happened to Verity, it was beyond her. The bard seemed like she’d be all right though. She was just a bit dazed and had even offered some music to help with the looting, if they needed strength to carry things. Alfric hadn’t thought that it was necessary though, not with him and Hannah being as strong as they were, and make no mistake about it, Hannah was strong. Alfric had also thought that Verity had too much of a tendency to push herself, but he seemed somewhat reluctant to share that with Verity, and either she hadn’t picked up on the hints, or she’d been ignoring them.

Once they’d finished their rest, they moved as a group through the dungeon, clearing the branches they’d gone through backward, bringing things they couldn’t stuff inside the book back to the entrance. Alfric had been excited by the wooden wardrobe, though they’d no idea what it actually did, and it was going to be a right pain to carry all the way to Liberfell, if they could even manage it. Alfric could just barely lift it on his own and needed Hannah’s help to actually move it anywhere, but six miles across uneven terrain, especially with the crags and roots that were on the paths through Traeg’s Knob… well, that was a fool’s game. Alfric thought that it could be warped, so long as it was resting on his foot, but Hannah was extremely skeptical of that, given how heavy it was. If the warp failed, then he wouldn’t just have six miles, he’d have twelve, and anyway, they’d been planning to go for Liberfell, not back to Pucklechurch. The whole thing was a logistical nightmare, but Alfric seemed enthused by it, as though this was one of the parts of dungeoneering that he most enjoyed. Hannah didn’t quite understand it, but that was fine.

They put as much of their personal equipment into the book as they could, now that the dungeon was assumed safe. To hear Alfric tell it, you couldn’t ever really assume that a dungeon was safe. He had said it like it was a rule written down somewhere, which was probably the case. “You do not know what is in the dungeon,” he’d said. “Even if you’ve cleared the dungeon, even if you have entads that can tell you what’s in there, even if you have personally checked, you do not know what is in the dungeon, and because of that, the dungeon is never safe.”

But they had done a lot and had a long way to go before they’d be back to proper civilization, so there was no sense in wearing their helms or lugging around their armor, no sense getting sweaty because of the layers.

They had eight entads in all, a good haul, and Alfric was quite hopeful that the wardrobe was the prize of the lot, not just because it had been guarded by the bear, and not just because if it was worthless they’d have to leave it, but because he seemed to take some joy in the large, uncomfortable entad.

“My dad used to tell me stories about entads like this,” he said. He was smiling. “You only really have a problem with them early in your career, when you can’t shrink things down or stuff them away, or just deal with them somehow. For him there was always some fun in it. There was one, a table, nearly four feet across, six feet long, which he navigated down the roads with his friends.”

“What did it do?” asked Mizuki.

“It was a map,” said Alfric. “A big map that went almost to the edges of the table, with bumps where the hills or mountains were, and little square bits where there were houses. I think he sold it to one of the Dondrian hexmasters, but I don’t really remember that part of the story.”

“There’s no reason that it’ll be good just because it’s big, ay,” said Hannah. “Just as likely it’ll clean the laundry you put in it.”

“That would be pretty good,” said Mizuki. “I hate laundry day.”

“The dial,” said Alfric, pointing to the front of the wardrobe. “It’s got six notches; that’s certainly suggestive. Six cardinal directions?”

“Six gods,” said Hannah, folding her arms.

“Six fingers,” said Verity, smiling as she held up a modified hand. She was still somewhat out of it, not her usual self, and Hannah was slightly worried.

“Six Spirit Gates,” said Mizuki.

“Those are just an extension of the gods,” said Hannah.

“No?” asked Mizuki.

“Well, there’s some argument on that score,” said Hannah. “The point is, there’s lots of things that six might mean, and since it’s an entad, it’s just as possible that it’s six outfits it can store, or something like that.”

“I have a good feeling,” said Alfric. After the fretting and postmortem, he seemed to be in a good mood, perhaps because they had managed to win against the bear. Hannah hadn’t expected him to suggest a retreat, not when he seemed to put so much emphasis on how you could only do a dungeon once. It made her like him a bit better, knowing that he’d argue for safety like that, even if she thought he’d been a bit overcautious. It made all his talk about being the first line of defense and running away if it got to be too much seem less like the shallow words of someone who just wanted a party.

After a full bell had passed, they’d assembled a pile of things in addition to the entads. Isra had insisted on taking some of the bear meat, which she also insisted was good to eat, and that had been stuffed away in the book, nearly a hundred pounds of the stuff, wrapped up in butcher’s paper that Alfric had thought to bring along. The trees were ectad material, and a fairly valuable one, which could be refined into growthstone, but they had only a handaxe, and Alfric didn’t think they were worth the effort. There were also, according to Isra, eggs up in one of the trees, though so high up and with so many branches that it was hard to see how they’d get them.

“We should do entad testing,” said Mizuki, who’d changed clothes now that the dungeon was more or less finished. Hannah had to admit that she did look a lot better in her normal clothes. “What if there’s something that helps us take a tree out? That would be worth it, wouldn’t it?”

“It might,” said Alfric with a sigh. “We have the staff, the sword, the wardrobe, the coin, the rope, the goggles, the rock, and the dagger. None of those are likely to be of any assistance, except for the wardrobe. I think you just want to do entad testing.”

“To be fair,” said Mizuki. “Entad testing is, like, the best thing about being a dungeoneer, right?”

“It’s seeing new things,” said Alfric.

“Money,” said Isra.

“Well, I enjoy seein’ these worlds, even if there is a lot tryin’ to kill us,” said Hannah. “But I agree with Mizuki, it makes more sense to test first, just in case we can take a tree.”

Dividing up the entads for testing was a bit of a mess, and Hannah grew to understand why Alfric preferred to have it done once they were out of the dungeon, though he seemed to place more emphasis on the idea that dungeons were never safe. If they bound to the entads, then there was no point in having people test too much, and to test them before, well, people got attached to things, then hoped for a bind. She could see how it might be messy.

Hannah ended up with the rusted sword, which was damp to the touch even after having been out of the water for a half hour. The barnacles and seaweed seemed to be a part of it, rather than having grown on it, and after trying for some time, she couldn’t pick them off. Given the appearance, Hannah expected it to have something to do with water, but it took her quite some time to figure it out, mostly because she was reluctant to go into either of the dungeon’s two pools. Eventually, she decided on filling her mouth with water from a waterskin, and that was enough to confirm that yes, it had the obvious effect of allowing a person to breathe underwater. Hannah was hopeful that there was more to the sword, since it didn’t seem like it would cut that well, and breathing underwater wasn’t all that good unless you were a pearl diver or some such.

No one else was done with theirs, so Hannah went and picked up the coin, which had been hidden under the bed in the stonework room. It was big, almost as big across as her hand, and it was a bit funny to see a coin, given that the world had switched over to rings ages ago. She flipped it in the air, felt something change, but she wasn’t able to figure out what it was before the coin came back down and she caught it in her hand.

She tried again, this time more focused, and she could feel it a little better in her senses, though it was hard to identify exactly what she was feeling. It was a sense of rightness, she supposed, like she was more sure of herself.

She was still flipping the coin, trying to figure it out, when Alfric came over.

“There are a number of duds,” he said. “I’m somewhat convinced that the wardrobe is what I think it is, but if it is, it’s not going to work until we’re out of the dungeon, and… well, the obvious limitation is that it might not take itself with it, if it can help us to travel.”

“Bad business, tryin’ to predict entads,” said Hannah, shaking her head as she flipped the coin again. Whatever it was doing, it felt good. Perhaps that was the extent of it.

“The dagger lets you know how aware of you someone is,” said Verity. “It seems like the kind of thing we shouldn’t sell.”

“Do we need it?” asked Alfric, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” said Verity, frowning. “I meant because I wouldn’t want it to end up in the wrong hands. It’s the kind of weapon a thief would love. Or an assassin.”

“Is that why you were behind me?” asked Mizuki, who was standing upright on top of the staff, which had grown to twice its size. “You were trying to stab me?”

“I was trying to discover what it did,” said Verity. “But yes, I was quite certain that you weren’t aware I was creeping up.” She shrugged. “If it doesn’t bond, we sell it, I guess. I don’t think assassins are actually all that common anymore.”

“I want this staff,” said Mizuki. “It’s neat.”

“Better balance?” asked Alfric, looking up at her.

“And it extends,” said Mizuki. She kicked out a foot, which caused the staff to go the opposite direction, but somehow she was able to stop it, balancing with the staff going one direction and her body going the other. “I always wanted to be an acrobat.”

“We shouldn’t keep entads unless they help with dungeoneering,” said Alfric. “Better to sell them at Liberfell and try to get something we actually need instead.”

“The goggles let me see… something,” said Isra, who had them on. She was looking at them, one by one. “Changes in people.” She pointed at Hannah. “I can see the symmetricalization, I think.”

“Ooo,” said Hannah. “Interestin’, that. Can I try?”

Isra took the goggles off and handed them to Hannah, who slipped them on. It was quite a production, given the volume of her hair.

“Well now,” said Hannah, looking at them one by one in turn. Her eyes went to Alfric, and she peered at him through the thick glass. His armor and clothes seemed to strip away from him, and she could see his dark skin beneath it. Beneath that she could see his muscles and bones, all of it laid out in vivid color, hard to make out except for the places that were highlighted, those being certain areas of the bones. “How many bones have you broken in your life, Alfric?” asked Hannah. “Seems a fair few.”

“Injuries while sparring, mostly,” said Alfric. He pointed to his left arm. “Can you see the place where you healed the hairline fracture?”

Hannah nodded, then took the goggles off. “Seems a bit pointless, at least for me,” said Hannah. “It shows the body, which is good, but I can know all that just from touchin’ a person, and what I care about is what’s hurt, not what’s been changed by another cleric.”

“We’ll mark it as a dud,” said Alfric, nodding. “But it’s probably of use to someone, somewhere.”

“Can we smuggle entads out in the book?” asked Mizuki. “To get them not to bind?”

“If you could get around binding, we would do it,” said Alfric. “It’s always better to have something unbound.”

“Unless you think someone is going to try to steal it,” said Verity.

“Yes, right,” said Alfric. “It’s almost always better. I can go over the scenarios for what happens if you try various workarounds, but I fear you’d make fun of me.”

“Me?” asked Mizuki, as she improbably climbed down from the staff. “You besmirch my honor.”

“If you don’t care, you don’t care,” said Alfric. “And it doesn’t matter; we’re following protocol for entads. The most you can do is send someone out with an entad you want them to bind to, and even that doesn’t work the vast majority of the time, because it can bind across the party link.”

“And if you break the party while you’re in the dungeon?” asked Verity, whose head was cocked to the side.

“The dungeon created itself for the party, in a manner of speaking,” said Alfric. “Even if we broke the party, so long as we’re here, we’re all linked to it.”

“Well, I’d like to take the staff out,” said Mizuki. “If no one minds. I was thinking on the way in that I wanted a walking stick, and the universe has provided for me.”

“I’ll be carrying the wardrobe,” said Alfric. “But mostly because I’m the only one that can lift it. I don’t think we should spend too much time on picking out who carries what entad, not when most of them don’t seem like they have personal interest for us.”

Hannah nodded, then looked at the rope. “What does that one do?”

“Shifts itself,” said Alfric. “It’s hard to explain. When you’re holding it, there’s a feeling of it sliding under your finger, but the ends don’t move when it does that. I feel like it might be good for climbing, but I think it would complicate knotwork, so I’m unsure.”

“And the rock?” asked Alfric.

“Oh, I did that one,” said Verity. “It lets you go to a garden.” The rock was one they almost certainly would have missed if it weren’t for Mizuki.

“A garden?” asked Alfric.

“Like an imaginary garden?” Verity went on. “I asked Isra, and she didn’t see me move. It was like a mental thing. An imaginary garden.” She shrugged.

“Mental effects are very rare,” said Alfric, frowning. He moved over to the rock, which was pale, with lots of holes, and weighed so much Hannah felt fortunate that it would probably fit inside the book. Alfric touched the rock, and then looked around not seeming to see them. Then he pulled away from it. “Odd.”

“It was an imaginary garden, right?” asked Verity. “Interesting, but not useful.”

“Wait,” said Alfric. He reached down and touched the rock again, and this time he moved while he was touching it, using his other hand to pluck something from just above the ground. When he released the stone, a yellow flower appeared between his fingertips. “Not imaginary,” he said, looking at the flower. “Still not useful, but far more interesting. We’ll test the limits before we sell it.” He paused, then looked over at the wardrobe. “Wait.”

“Test it first,” said Hannah. “See if you can bring a stone in, then see if you can bring it back out.”

“I will, I will,” said Alfric. “But if we can use the garden as an extradimensional space, that’s a substantial upgrade from the book.”

A round of somewhat disappointing testing followed. Rocks could be dropped into the garden, and so could flowers, but not entads and not anything metal. The garden was the same every time, a sunny space with lots of flowers and plants in a little meadow that seemed to recede into the distance faster than it should have. It was Isra who had the best ideas for poking at the edges of the entad’s ability, and while they couldn’t get any other entad ‘inside’ of it, they did have some luck with other organic things, even those that hadn’t come from the garden in the first place.

“We could put one of the trees in there,” said Alfric. He seemed quite excited by the prospect. “Right?”

“I don’t think so,” said Isra. “It would be too big.” They’d all had their chance with the stone, and Isra had spent considerable time with it.

“A person is organic,” said Mizuki. “Do you think you could put a person in it?”

“Do you want to try?” asked Alfric.

“Obviously we would try an animal first,” said Hannah.

“Right, of course,” he said with a nod. “But if we can fit a person, especially if we can keep them in their clothes—”

“I’m not going naked, thank you very much,” said Mizuki.

“I wasn’t,” said Alfric, before stopping himself. He looked at Mizuki. “Will you ever stop giving me guff?”

“I suppose someday we’ll retire from the adventuring life,” said Mizuki. “And then we won’t have cause to see each other.” She rubbed her chin. “But not until then.”

“Sorry, Alfric,” said Hannah, “but do you really want to try to bring a tree into that garden? That would mean cuttin’ down a tree, which as you’ve said, we’re not much equipped for.”

“Mizuki?” asked Alfric.

“I said I wasn’t going naked,” she replied, putting her hands on her hips.

“I want you to chop down a tree for me,” he said. “Do you think you can do that?”

Mizuki rubbed the back of her neck with her hand. “I… guess? When Verity charged me up, I sucked the aether flat, so I’m not sure there’s much left or how fast it will flow back.” She looked over at Hannah. “How are you doing for juice?”

“I’m a cleric,” said Hannah, rolling her eyes. “My connection to godliness is not about ‘juice’. It’s about whether and how much I comport with the will of my god, and how much I try to stretch things out of sorts. And in that respect, it may take some time for Garos to see my devotion to him in the proper light.”

“You’re out of juice,” said Mizuki, nodding.

Hannah sighed. “To do somethin’ like I did with that bear, a hex of that nature, marks me as a bad cleric, at least in the short term,” said Hannah. This was a contentious position within the clergy, but the good thing about talking to laity was that they weren’t in a position to argue, not that Hannah had ever backed down from argument. “Minor wounds, scratches and the like, I can still manage, and maybe I could do a broken bone or two, if they were very minor, like the break Alfric had to his arm, but if you need me to fuel somethin’ for you, then no, I probably can’t.”

Alfric and Mizuki set off to the room with the trees, with Alfric carrying the rock using both hands, while Hannah stayed back, ostensibly to get things ready but mostly because she wanted a rest. Isra and Verity were in quiet conversation with each other, and Hannah didn’t want to disturb them, especially since they were the two quiet ones and seemed to be getting along.

Her part in attacking the bear had put a strain on her relationship to Garos. She had felt it when she laid hands on the bear, that it wasn’t quite right, and she’d done it anyway. The problem was that Garos was about patterns, and trying to reflect a wound of that size and irregularity, especially on a creature of such scale, and one that wasn’t terribly symmetrical to begin with, just didn’t have the feeling of completing a pattern, not to Garos.

What Garos liked was nudging something into symmetry, and saying that he ‘liked’ it was probably an understatement. Nudges were so easy that they happened without needing all that much effort or will. If you had a grid of sixty-four pebbles and just one of them was a bit out of alignment, well, that was simplicity itself to get it to conform. Acolytes did that as a training exercise. But those same sixty-four pebbles, all in a cluster together, couldn’t be put into that same grid without serious pulling on the godly connection, and if you pulled too much, Garos might let go of the rope.

Hannah wasn’t worried about her clerical connection. She knew Garos, understood Garos, better than most of his clerics, and while she’d made a big ask, any weakness of the bond was just temporary. She still had her lesser powers, though she’d use them sparingly for the rest of the day. Taking the arm from the monster covered with clams hadn’t been so much of a strain, because the asymmetry was more clear. Who liked a monster with only one arm? The trick, the way to model it in her head, was not to think of it as a missing arm, but only a line of damage, and that had made things smoother. But with the bear, it had been such irregular damage over such a wide area.

Hannah clucked her tongue. The party was more or less safe, so she’d done her part. Whatever trauma Verity had suffered, it was magical in nature and seemed to be temporary, with their bard now returned to high spirits. And though she and Alfric had been banged around, and too much of that wasn’t good for you, they both still seemed to have their wits about them. A cleric of Qymmos could check them over easily enough, just to be sure, ideally one in Liberfell, but she wasn’t terribly worried. It was the people who refused treatment you had to worry about, and Alfric seemed more sensible than that. He was a good lad, if a bit too focused on the dungeons.

Hannah went to go sit beside Verity and Isra, who had been chattering away about, if Hannah understood correctly, pickles.

“So, girls,” said Hannah. “Another dungeon done.”

“Or mostly done,” said Verity, nodding. She stretched out her legs. “I’m quite hungry, but nothing we packed seems like it suits me.”

“Trail food isn’t the best,” said Hannah, nodding. “Perhaps once we’re in Liberfell, we can look at gettin’ somethin’ like a magical spoon that’ll make whatever meal you want.” That was wishful thinking, because it was likely to be far too expensive. “I suppose if I’ve got a list of what I’m after, it’s for somethin’ that would make food.”

“I want a hot meal,” said Verity with a sigh. “If you could just lift a cloche up and find something waiting for you.”

“Food replacement is rare, ay,” said Hannah. “And a good thing too, or what would the farmers end up doing?”

“My family had two of them,” said Verity. “Mostly for emergencies, though. Entads, not farmers.”

Hannah whistled. “Must have cost them a fair few rings.”

“I suppose I don’t know,” said Verity.

“You were sayin’ about pickles?” asked Hannah, looking over at Isra.

“I packed some,” she said with a shrug. “In the book.”

“I do love a pickle, if you don’t mind?” asked Hannah. She got up and went over to where the book was sitting. “They’re a traditional food.”

“I brought them to share,” said Isra. “They’re traditional for my people too.”

“I think they’re traditional for all people, aren’t they?” asked Verity. “Anywhere you need to preserve things.”

“Oh, I’ve no idea,” said Hannah as she leafed through the pages. The book was quite a good entad, but it did take some time to find what you were searching for, and more time to extract it. Alfric had already talked about replacing it, but he seemed to know there was no sense in that, not at this point. “We’ll have to ask Mizuki what they do in Kiromo. I know sobyu, but I don’t know if they do anythin’ with a cucumber, which is, to my mind, the pickle people mean when they talk about pickles.”

But at that moment, as Hannah was extracting a pickle from the crock, Mizuki returned, looking quite pleased with herself. Alfric trailed behind her, lugging the rock.

“We felled not one but two trees,” said Mizuki. “It took some time, but they’re stored in the garden, and we might even be able to get them out of there.”

“I’m skeptical,” said Alfric. “It might be that they’re just stuck in there. I didn’t want to try getting them out in case they got stuck, and we’re going to have to find a nice, flat field or a large yard.”

“And also,” said Mizuki, holding out her hands. “Eggs.” She held three eggs, one of them a speckled blue, one brown, and one white.

“She worked hard to get them,” Alfric said. “But we don’t have a way to safely remove them.”

“Just put them in the book,” said Mizuki, nodding in Hannah’s direction. Hannah got the sense this was a conversation they’d already had together. “Ooo, are those pickles for everyone?”

“They are,” said Isra. “It won’t work to put the eggs in the book. Eggs need air.”

“What?” asked Mizuki. “That’s not—they’re eggs. Self-contained.”

“No,” said Isra.

“What do you mean no?” asked Mizuki. “You’re telling me that eggs breathe somehow, despite not having a mouth?”

“They do,” said Isra.

“Well that’s…” said Mizuki. “How do you know?”

“I’m a woods witch, apparently,” said Isra, her voice level.

“I think she’s right,” said Hannah. “For what it’s worth. And if we had a ventstone, we could put that in with the eggs to keep them breathing, but—”

“I don’t think that would work,” said Alfric. “Pressure would build up until equilibrium, but then the air would be fouled from the breathing, and the ventstone would be doing nothing.”

Hannah frowned. “So you’re sayin’ a ventstone and a voidstone?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Alfric. “And yes, it would be quite expensive.” He looked to Isra. “Can you tell what these eggs would need to hatch?”

“Yes,” said Isra. She didn’t elaborate further. “I don’t think they’re dangerous or hatching soon.”

“They were in a nest up in one of the trees,” said Mizuki. “That means that it’s a bird of some kind, I think, but there was no sign of any actual animal.” Looking now, Hannah could see the scratches from Mizuki’s climb. “But if we don’t know what they need, or if Isra thinks that they’ll hatch into something bad, then at least we can have an omelet.”

Alfric sighed. “We’re really just not equipped for dungeon eggs.”

“You really think that eggs breathe somehow?” asked Mizuki, holding one of the eggs up. She was holding the other two in one hand, and Hannah thought that of the whole party, Mizuki was perhaps the one she trusted least with eggs.

“When you smoke an egg, the smoke goes through the shell,” said Isra. “They do need to breathe.”

“Sorry,” said Hannah, “when you smoke an egg?”

“A hard-boiled egg,” said Isra. She had her arms crossed and dropped them a bit. “Smoked, for flavor.”

“That sounds delicious,” said Hannah. “Absolutely delicious.”

“I will make one for you sometime,” said Isra, nodding. She walked over to Mizuki and touched each of the eggs in turn. “It’s hard to tell what creature these are. All the same sort, I think. Not particularly dangerous though. None have the same,” she shook her head, “the same anger of the dungeon monsters.”

“Eggs, and very young animals, tend to work out better that way,” said Alfric. “We can transport these eggs to Liberfell, if they’re not going to hatch in the next day or so, and we can get an incubator there, but then we’ll have to bring it all back to Pucklechurch with us, unless we can sell the eggs. We’ll want to get it all handled today though.”

“And we’ve this wardrobe,” said Hannah, giving it a skeptical eye. “I suppose, Alfric, that you and I are to be the ones to carry it six miles through uneven woodland trails?”

“Of course, if you’re up for it,” he said with a smile. He seemed to have a deep affection for that wardrobe. “But there’s a chance that we can use it to skip straight to Liberfell. Six notches on the dial, and I’m hopeful that means six cardinal directions. A wardrobe is big enough to step into.”

He kept up his good cheer as they all ate some of Isra’s pickles. They were a touch sour and a touch salty for Hannah’s taste, but there were so many herbs and other things packed in with them that the flavor was hard to beat.

And once their break was done, and Isra was cradling the three eggs, they left the dungeon, off to Liberfell.

Chapter 26 — Liberfell

There was a language to entads, though Alfric spoke it only poorly. They were unique, always, but there were commonalities to them, some of that just because they drew from the hexes, which had commonalities of their own. There were effects you’d expect to find on boots rather than knives, or chairs rather than towels. Chairs were for sitting and knives were for stabbing, and function typically followed form. But beyond all that, there was commonality of definitions, a shared understanding the entads had of what was what.

The example that Alfric had been taught involved rabbits. Let’s say that there was an entad wand that made rabbits explode when you pointed the wand at them and said a word. Well, rabbit was just a word that people attached to a concept, and there were loads of different breeds of rabbit, along with strange creatures that were only a bit like a rabbit. The dungeons could produce all kinds of things, and they pulled on what was in a hex, so given the prevalence of rabbits, it wasn’t uncommon for dungeons to spawn something similar to them or a monster that might take the same general shape. What, then, counted as a rabbit? Well, it didn’t really matter, since nothing in the world hinged on rabbits in any way, but the point was that entads would always give you the same answer, even if they’d been pulled from dungeons on opposite sides of the world. A wand that exploded rabbits would affect all the same things as a wand that made rabbits double in size. There were thick tomes, which Alfric had never read in full, which went into the minutiae of all these ‘entad definitions’, the most important of which weren’t about what entads considered to be a snake or a rabbit. No, the truly important bits were underlying principles like what a portal was, what an extradimensional space was, what a memory was, what an emotion was. There were hundreds of concepts like that, and Alfric knew most of it, through lessons from his parents, from tutors, or simply from reading. There was, still, an enormous variance between entads, what they could do, and how they could do it, but the commonalities were invaluable to any adventurer or merchant looking for a quick identification without having to pay a cleric of Qymmos.

Hexes were a concept that entads ‘understood’ quite well, which made sense, because early Editors had plastered the concept over the known world to lay the groundwork for warp points and dungeons and all manner of other things.

He was not, therefore, particularly surprised when the wardrobe, once carried outside the dungeon, began to work as he’d predicted. Six was an auspicious number, after all, and travel entads never worked inside the dungeons unless they were like his boots, local in nature. Still, he was particularly pleased that it allowed travel of any kind and, beyond that, that it hadn’t immediately bonded to any of them. When the door was closed, the dial could be turned, and once it was, the door would open up to elsewhere. It didn’t take particularly much tinkering with it to figure out the orientation of the dial, not with Isra looking through and making judgments about the hexes that could be seen beyond. Not fifteen minutes after Alfric had removed it from the dungeon, he could look through the wardrobe to either the Liberfell or Pucklechurch hexes, though every time the dial moved, it seemed to show a different (and possibly random) part of the hex it was pointed at.

“Very, very, very good,” said Alfric, nodding.

“Can you get back if you go through?” asked Mizuki, peering through the wardrobe’s open doors at the grassland beyond. Isra seemed to know, just from looking, what direction that was from them, even though she’d never been in most of those hexes.

“We’ll have to test,” said Alfric.

“But we could get stranded, yes?” asked Mizuki.

“If you go through, you can just use the warp,” said Alfric, shrugging. “So you’d be stranded in the sense that you’d be in Liberfell without having to walk six or seven miles, yes.”

“But we’ve no reason to think the wardrobe itself can make the trip, ay?” asked Hannah.

“This is true,” said Alfric. He looked the wardrobe over. “My guess is that it’s one-way travel to the hex of your choice. We don’t know how repeatable it is, whether it might have daily limits on use or weight or some other parameter… This will almost certainly have to be looked over by a cleric of Qymmos, because each test sends us a minimum of six miles away.”

“Less than that, I’d think,” said Hannah. “Take it to the hex border, fiddle with the dial, and try to end up with the portal in view, ay? In theory, you have a hundred feet to walk from wardrobe to portal.”

“Right,” said Alfric, feeling slightly embarrassed at the correction. “So, I think what we’ll do, if we are all planning to end up in Liberfell, is to have Isra and Mizuki go through, talk with us over party chat about what it was like, then warp into town. Then Hannah and I can carry the wardrobe to the hex edge with Verity’s help, and hopefully we can warp it in.” He was somewhat unsure of this part, but it seemed like the only way to deal with it.

“It’s over the weight limit, ay?” asked Hannah. “Even if you stripped down to nothing.”

Alfric thought about this for a moment. He hated to admit it, but she was right, and by a fair margin. “Okay,” he said. “Well, there are public rooms back near the warp at Traeg’s Knob, and houses. We can…” He trailed off. “Well, we don’t have a way to lock it up, which is a problem.”

“Lock it up?” asked Hannah. “Who’s going to steal it, ay, when it’s so much a pain to move?”

“I’m in favor of the plan where I leave right now,” said Verity. “I need a proper meal, something hot. Could I possibly go do that while the two of you figure out logistics, or would that be horribly rude?”

Alfric bit his lip. “If we’re carrying it uphill to the top of Traeg’s Knob, would you think you had it in you to give us a song of strength? I’ll leave it to your discretion, because you know your own needs.”

Verity grimaced. “I suppose, but that means that I have to sing and walk.”

“Well, I’m out of here,” said Mizuki. “Isra? You too? Because I don’t want to walk back up a hill that I’ve already walked down, and someone needs to get us some rooms at Liberfell.”

Isra hesitated. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve never been.”

“You’ll love it,” said Mizuki. “I’ll make sure they don’t hurt you.”

“Hurt me?” asked Isra.

“It’s a joke,” said Mizuki. “No one is going to hurt you in Liberfell, and if they do, I will personally set fire to every single house.”

“And that’s another joke,” said Isra.

“See?” asked Mizuki. “This is going to be fun. Portal boy, one portal please.”

“Portal man,” said Alfric, giving her a smile. “Coming right up.” He spun the dial, then opened the door again.

It wasn’t the city of Liberfell, but rather, a field that must have been somewhere near it. Mizuki stepped through, then immediately tried to go back, just for the sake of testing, and her hands went through an invisible plane, exposing red meat and bone. Alfric knew enough to know this was just visual, seeing into her body, but it was still horrifying. Her mouth moved, but there was no sound.

<Use party chat,> said Alfric. <We can’t hear you.>

<I can see the doorway but can’t come back,> said Mizuki. <Hands go straight through.>

<Coming,> said Isra, who stepped in as Mizuki stood off to the side.

<Let us know your plans. We’ll be getting some rooms,> said Mizuki. <And figuring out what to do with the eggs.>

<The local League office might have rooms, but they’re usually in poor condition. You can check there or just go to a hotel. Let us know over chat if you have problems,> said Alfric. <We can be in the center of Liberfell in an instant.>

<No need to worry,> said Mizuki. And with that, she cast the warp, disappearing to the center of her hex, where Liberfell was. Isra quickly followed, and Alfric shut the wardrobe after them.

“This is a really good entad,” said Alfric. “It’ll save us an enormous amount of travel time. Even if it’s hard to move, if we center it in whatever hex we’re basing out of, that’s thirty-six miles we don’t have to walk. And if we can get it to work with something else, we could cut out travel time altogether.”

“You’re excited about this,” said Hannah.

“And getting ahead of yourself,” said Verity.

“Well, sure,” said Alfric, shrugging. “But it’s one of the vitals, or at least a good piece of the puzzle.”

“And an absolute pain to move,” said Hannah, sighing.

“Let me see if it’s really over the weight limit,” said Alfric. He grabbed the wardrobe and tipped it so that it was resting its weight on him, then quickly made the sign for the warp. The worst-case scenario would be if he’d misjudged where the weight was, and ended up at the top of Traeg’s Knob without the wardrobe, which would mean a bit of a trek back, but no, the warp simply failed.

He tried again with most of his armor removed and his sword on the ground, hoping that he could squeak under the limit, but it didn’t work, and he stepped back from the wardrobe, sighing. Hannah had been right. He’d known that she’d been right.

“Ready?” asked Alfric. “It probably makes more sense for you to be at the front rather than the back, so I can take the bulk of the weight. It’s heavy, but shouldn’t be too bad for us. A hundred pounds, maybe?”

“A hundred pounds, uphill nearly a mile and a half,” said Hannah with a sigh. “And it’s more than a hundred. Plus another fifty for the book. Well, let’s get to it, ay.”

Verity elected not to use her lute, perhaps because they were moving uphill or because she was tired, but that left only her voice, which turned out to be quite sufficient for something as simple as granting Alfric and Hannah strength. The song she chose was one about a pair of squirrels attempting to bring a large apple home, wrestling it between themselves to get it to their tree. It was a jaunty little tune but also slightly mocking in a way that reminded Alfric of Mizuki’s preferred mode of humor.

The climb was a tough one, even with the help, and what had been a nice ramble down the hill was a slog going up. It was all made far worse by the fact that they’d done a dungeon in between. Alfric was sure that his muscles would be killing him the next day, and the prospect of simply leaving the wardrobe behind in Traeg’s Knob became more attractive with every step he took.

They took frequent breaks and, halfway up, a longer one.

“Not sure I appreciate the lyrics of these songs you’ve been singin’,” said Hannah. “Two squirrels trying to wrestle an apple up to their tree? A man who can’t get his hand from a jar because he’s grabbed ahold of too many pickles?”

“All in good fun,” said Verity. “If it really bothers you, I can find something else to sing. It’s a pleasant day, and my work, as I see it, is done. A warm meal, a hot bath, and a soft bed, those are the three things left today.” She took a long drink from her waterskin. Almost everything she was able to put into the book had been put in there, save for her bag. Alfric was carrying the book but wishing that he’d sent it with Isra.

“Nah,” said Hannah. “Silly songs for a silly trip. I’ll let you know if it rankles. I’m not shy.”

“The silliness is a part of it,” said Alfric. “It’ll make a good story someday, even if my legs have turned to jelly by the end of it.”

“And that’s what you’re in it for?” asked Verity. “The stories?”

“Some,” Alfric said. “The stories, the glory, the money, the adventure, the way we’ve got a chance to play our role in the history of the world. Something new and interesting around every corner, things that no one has ever before set eyes on, items that are absolutely unique. Camaraderie and the close-knit relationship of a dungeoneering party, like brothers.” He hesitated, then looked at the two of them. “Or sisters, I suppose.”

“It does sound nice, when you put it like that,” said Verity. “But it’s a very rosy view of something that, as we experienced not too long ago, can be very dangerous and scary, not to mention, well… brutal. Gory.”

“Ay, but I’d prefer Alfric’s view,” said Hannah. “Seems a better way to look at it. And there’s a feelin’ of accomplishment, ay.”

“There is that,” Verity said with a nod. “I felt awful after Mizuki stole the song from me, not that she meant to, but seeing what we could accomplish together, there was a part of me that considered doing this for a longer time might not be such a bad thing. It was the first time I ever felt… I don’t know. Powerful.”

“Really?” asked Hannah. “You’re a first-class bard, so far as I know such things.”

“Well, thank you,” said Verity. “But being a bard… it’s always about others.”

“You know you’re speaking to a healing cleric, ay?” asked Hannah.

“Yes, but you ripped the arm off that one monster and killed the bear outright,” said Verity.

“There’s nothing wrong with a life lived for others,” said Hannah. “That’s what a cleric does, more or less, between the healin’ and the fixin’ and the talkin’ to people about their problems and how the perspective of the gods can help them.”

“I suppose,” said Verity. “For me, it was always about the different ways the music could make people feel. I wanted to create and have others revel in that creation. But being a bard means that the effects come first, over and above the melodies and the lyrics. The term we use is dissonance.” She shrugged. “That’s why I ran away, if I’m allowed such melodramatic framing. There was a horrible tension that I couldn’t figure out how to deal with.”

Alfric wondered whether she really did believe that. She had said nothing about being a Chosen of Xuphin and how that was a struggle in and of itself, or how the terrible weight of expectation had pressed down on her. It was hard, hearing her talk, to know how much was left unsaid because of Hannah and how much was left unsaid because the godly imprint on her was something she refused to think about. It was hard for Alfric to know, and harder still to know how he could ever broach that subject with Verity.

“All right,” said Hannah, slapping her thighs. “Time to get a move on, if we’ve gotten our rest in. I’d like to hit Liberfell by nightfall.”

They continued on up the hill, carrying the heavy wardrobe, while Verity followed behind them, singing. This time the songs were a bit less jovial, and Alfric, having nothing better to think about besides where his next step was going to be, thought about what she might be trying to say with it. That first song was one of a king going into battle against his enemies, which was either a very old song, from the time of kings, or something of Verity’s own invention. By the second song, it was obvious she was speaking of power and how it felt to use it. Verity sang about wizards who brought down lightning bolts and knights who slew dragons, and there was something very old but also very strong about it. It was also rousing in a way, something about the melody that brought forth the feeling of battle, and Alfric found himself moving faster because of it.

They reached the top of Traeg’s Knob, then rested for a bit more, before finally moving it into one of the public rooms, which was thankfully unlocked.

“Do you think we could get someone to lock this place up?” asked Alfric, looking around.

“Why?” asked Hannah. “No one is going to steal a wardrobe. We’ll have trouble enough getting’ it out of here on our own. Besides, this isn’t like Dondrian, where people don’t know each other. There are, as we said when we got here, probably not more than a hundred people in the whole hex.”

“I suppose,” said Alfric. “But it’s valuable.”

“I do have to say,” said Hannah, “that I don’t fancy the thought of luggin’ this thing another twelve miles back home. It’s closer to two hundred pounds than it is to one hundred. I don’t know that I could get it delivered before my arms gave out.”

“Well, I’m going through, if that’s all right with you,” said Verity. “Hot meal, hot bath, warm bed. Also, I need to pee.”

“Ay, should have gone in the dungeon,” said Hannah. “That’s what I did.”

“Gross,” said Verity.

“You’re the one who mentioned it,” said Alfric, though it was common practice to evacuate in the dungeon, which would essentially vanish as soon as everyone had left. It was a part of the overall checklist for a dungeon exit, along with double-checking that you had everything you needed and making sure that you weren’t carrying out anything that you didn’t mean to.

“Well, through we go,” said Hannah, once Alfric made a note. She looked over as he wrote it and saw that it both explained the entad and welcomed people to use it while it was sitting there, which was more than she thought she would have put in. <Through we go,> she said for the benefit of Isra and Mizuki. <How are you finding the city of Liberfell?>

<Very interesting,> Mizuki replied. <And a bit intimidating.>

<We’ll be there soon enough,> said Alfric. <Can you warp so we can meet up? Or give us a location?>

<We’re in the middle of business,> said Mizuki. <We’ve got rooms at the Dragon’s Arm Hotel. I told them to expect you if we were out.>

<Thank you,> said Alfric. <We should meet soon though. We’re leaving the wardrobe in Traeg’s Knob with a note and hoping that no one does anything with it. The rest of today can be for selling what we have. I’m hoping that I can find a floatstone so we have less trouble bringing it back to Pucklechurch. Talk to you later.>

“Somethin’ odd about that, wasn’t there?” asked Hannah. “The way she spoke.”

“It’s Mizuki,” said Alfric. “But we’ll see her in a bit, and if it was odd, then she’ll get a chance to explain very soon.”

“Hot food, hot bath, warm bed,” said Verity, repeating it like a mantra. “There are entads that get a person clean in a hurry, aren’t there? Add that to my wishlist.”

The three of them went through together, and Alfric was thankful that he’d had the foresight to do some testing on whether the wardrobe’s orientation with respect to what direction it faced mattered (it did not) and had the further foresight to etch into his mind which of the notches would take them to Pucklechurch and which would take them to Liberfell.

They came out in farmland, then immediately used the warp to go to the warp point. Alfric went last after making sure that neither of them had any problems. This, at least, was a proper warp point, one that had a building around it, though there was no attendant to make sure the area was clear nor any security of any kind. There was a chair for an attendant though, which was something. Alfric stepped off quickly, his legs aching from carrying the wardrobe, and moved to the door once he’d made sure that Verity and Hannah were both safe and sound.

The Dragon’s Arm Hotel was one of the larger buildings in Liberfell and easy to find given that it had a sculpted dragon sticking out from the side of the building.

“Hot food, hot bath, warm bed,” said Alfric. He had almost all his money with him and kept his hand at his side, something he hadn’t felt compelled to do in Pucklechurch. Liberfell was perhaps half again as large as Tarchwood, but it had much more than twice the feeling of being in an actual city. There had been other reasons to go to Tarchwood, mostly to scope it out as a location for a future dungeon run and its location on the huge lake, but Liberfell was the bigger of the two, and Alfric wondered whether he’d find better or worse prices on both the entads and ectads. It was a city built on a hill, with a river winding its way in the valley below. A portion of the city was nestled against the water, a hub for river shipping. Grains and textiles were loaded onto rafts and flat-bottomed boats to be sent elsewhere, eventually ending up in another city on the coast of the ocean, more than two hundred miles away. The streets were brickwork, mostly flat and easy to walk on when compared with the roots and ruts of Traeg’s Knob, and the air had a different smell to it, that of industries and cooking fires. It was still nothing like Dondrian, but it was closer than Alfric had been in quite a while.

Once they’d gotten into the hotel, it was easy enough to identify themselves and get their keys from the man behind the front desk. Verity requested food be brought up and paid immediately. They were on the fourth floor, as Mizuki had apparently sprung for a suite, one that the five of them were going to share for the night. It seemed a bit extravagant to Alfric, and he hoped that he wouldn’t have to pay out too much, even if they weren’t terribly worried about money at the moment. The stairs were murder on his aching legs, and he collapsed into one of the beds before reluctantly removing his equipment and the pieces of armor he’d still been wearing. Verity was running a bath in one of the suite’s two bathrooms, and Hannah was busy in the other, taking a quick shower.

It had been a good day, if a long one and not quite done. The team was coming together. There was a good chance they’d at least stay together for the next five dungeons, the ones surrounding Pucklechurch, and they just needed to be a bit lucky in what they found for it to be easy to make the case for what came next. Travel time was the biggest barrier, but the wardrobe would help with that, especially if Alfric could find something that would let them transport it.

There was a bit of party chat over the course of all this, reporting of locations and things like that, and Alfric mostly ignored it. You couldn’t turn party chat off, but you could sleep through it, if you trained yourself in it, and Alfric nearly napped while he waited for his turn in one of the bathrooms.

But then Isra and Mizuki returned to the hotel, with their own things to report, and Mizuki had news about what they’d been up to.

Chapter 27 — Too Much Talking

“You’re not in a guild, are you?” asked Mizuki as they walked away from the warp point. “I guess I assumed you weren’t, but I don’t actually know.”

“I am not,” said Isra.

“Well, I am,” said Mizuki. “Sorcerers are notoriously territorial, given there’s a limited amount of magic floating around and limited jobs for us to do, so we tend to guild up in order to make sure we’re not stepping on each other’s toes. It also helps with finding work, if there’s something that needs more than one of us, or a job the other is passing on, or something like that. It’s a small guild, very local, only about twenty, but I’m in it.”

“I see,” said Isra, but Mizuki wasn’t sure she did.

“Anyway, there’s a pair of sisters who are sorcerers out of Liberfell, and we’re in their territory. I sent out a message to the guild, just to let them know I was on my way, and got back an invite for breakfast with them tomorrow,” said Mizuki. “I’d also sent a different message asking about a woods witch, and they said they’d be in touch with her. I didn’t say anything about your situation, since I didn’t know, you know? But if you wanted to come to the breakfast, which’ll be tomorrow morning, maybe you could get some answers, or at least have an introduction made.”

“That would be good,” said Isra. “Thank you.”

“I think there might be a guild for woods witches,” said Mizuki. “And if there is, you could get in that way.”

“I don’t know anything about guilds,” said Isra.

“Yeah, I hear you,” said Mizuki, nodding. “They’re tough, and each one is its own thing.”

Mizuki was taking in Liberfell, which she hadn’t visited in quite some time. The streets of Pucklechurch were mostly packed earth, save for a strip down the main section of town that was cobbled, but in Liberfell, it was proper stonework all the way around, going from storefront to storefront, and only little gaps for patches of grass or shade trees at regular intervals. The number of stores and the height of the buildings was probably the other main thing, along with the small streams of smoke and vapor that came up from various buildings. There was a mage collective in Liberfell, with their own little section of the city, and they had engines running in a number of the shops. The whole place thrummed with aether, and Mizuki could feel the possibilities taking shape in her mind, not that she was actually going to do anything. Mages didn’t like when people messed with their things. There was a valley below Liberfell, which part of the city hugged, but they weren’t close enough to see it.

“So many smells,” said Isra.

Mizuki sniffed the air. Isra was right, there were a lot of smells of the city, from the bakeries, the restaurants, the crafts districts, all layered on top of each other, so that it was hard to pick out any individual one. Did a woods witch have a better nose? Or was that just Isra? Mizuki didn’t know, and when she thought about it, she decided that Isra probably didn’t know either.

“We’ll deal with the eggs first,” said Mizuki. “Which means probably going to the edge of the city, but,” she scanned the shop signs, looking down the street, “we’ll ask in an entad shop.”

She set off, and Isra followed after. Isra carried Mizuki’s bag, which held the three eggs, tucked safely into some bedding at the top. Her hand stayed near them, making sure that they were safe and wouldn’t break. It was possible, especially with three, that they were valuable, something that in twenty years’ time might be the next chicken, but it was equally possible that they were worthless or wouldn’t hatch.

The entad shop was a nice place, filled with all kinds of things, but as Mizuki’s eyes looked across them, she saw that fully a quarter of them weren’t magical at all, either there to make the place look more important than it was or, more generously, henlings. She’d been in the shop once before, hoping to find something that gave off enough magic that she could get some use out of it, but the kinds of effects that were best for a sorcerer didn’t come cheap. Most entads did their work without making many ripples in the aether.

She chatted with the shopkeeper for a bit, a young man with a winsome smile, who, in the course of talking bastles—creatures that came from dungeons—had revealed that it was his father’s shop, which he and his sister planned to take over someday. Mizuki was a bit envious of someone with a family business, especially one as interesting as entad sales, because all she had was a family house and sorcerer’s blood, which had done its irregular skipping of generations. The boy seemed a bit nervous at the mention of sorcery, which wasn’t an uncommon reaction, but she did her best to put him at ease and to talk about what entads she might buy or possibly sell. She told him they were dungeoneers, which was more or less true, and that seemed to interest him, which in turn led to her showing him the three entads they had with them, starting with Isra’s bow and Mizuki’s staff—though it wasn’t technically hers yet, because the dust hadn’t settled on their second dungeon run. She saved the spoon for last, and he seemed suitably impressed by it.

Eventually Isra reminded Mizuki about the eggs and their quest for a bastlekeeper, and the shopkeeper, Rolaj, was happy enough to give them directions and then draw out a map when Mizuki felt a bit confused. Mizuki promised that they would be by with Alfric when he got into town, and with that, they were on their way.

“That seemed to take a long time,” said Isra as they left.

“Did it?” asked Mizuki. “It’s not like we’re in any rush.”

“All we needed were directions,” said Isra.

“I’d say Alfric had rubbed off on you, if I didn’t think you were just like this,” said Mizuki with a sigh. “What do you get from being direct and to the point? Besides, it was nice to meet Rolaj. Don’t you like meeting people?”

“He looked at me too much,” said Isra.

“Did he?” asked Mizuki. “Maybe he was interested.”

“Interested?” asked Isra.

“You know,” said Mizuki. She looked at Isra. “Okay, maybe you don’t know. Interested in courting. I don’t know how that’s done in Tarbin or what your father taught you. I’d thought Rolaj might be interested in a date.”

“Or interested in the headscarf,” said Isra. “Or my darker skin.”

“Are people usually interested in that kind of thing?” asked Mizuki. “I suppose people ask me about Kiromo, not that I have all that much to tell.” She shrugged. “I think he was either trying to be polite and include you, or he was just more interested in the mystery. If you’re quiet, people will want to know what it is you’re hiding. In your case, it’s that you’re a woods witch, plus probably some other things.”

“Other things?” asked Isra.

“Well, I’ve got no idea why your parents would come all this way from Tarbin just to settle outside of Pucklechurch and not really talk to anyone,” said Mizuki. “For my grandfather, he wanted to establish a community away from the Kiromon emperor, and Pucklechurch had some kind of spiritual significance. So I figure there’s probably some kind of story about your parents, even if you might not know it.”

“Maybe,” said Isra.

“Oh,” said Mizuki. “There’s a hotel. We should get rooms before we go wandering off to the bastlekeeper.”

This, too, took some time, but there was nothing in the party chat from Alfric and the others, and Mizuki imagined that they were still lugging that stupid wardrobe up a hill. She didn’t envy them, especially Verity, who seemed like she would rather have been done with songs for a bit. Mizuki settled on a large suite for the five of them, and though there were only four beds, one of them was a large bed for two, which seemed acceptable. The price made her eyes pop a bit, but divided five ways it wasn’t actually that bad, so long as they only stayed a day.

“Okay,” said Mizuki as they stepped out of the hotel, having dropped off most of their things in their room. “To the bastlekeeper.”

“Do you need to talk to everyone so much?” asked Isra.

“Huh?” asked Mizuki. “The clerk? I was only being polite.”

“He didn’t need an explanation of why we were in Liberfell,” said Isra.

“So what should I have said then?” asked Mizuki. “That I needed a room for five people?”

“Yes,” said Isra.

“But don’t you see how that’s rude?” asked Mizuki.

Isra frowned. “Do you speak this much with everyone?”

“I don’t know. I like being friendly and polite,” said Mizuki. “It’s just chatter.”

“I would like to be the one to speak with the bastlekeeper,” said Isra.

“Sure, fine,” said Mizuki. “Just… don’t be rude. Not that I think you would be.”

The directions took them across the city, to the outskirts. Liberfell was on a bit of a hill, and at certain spots, Mizuki wished they could stop and take in a nice view of the valley, but Isra seemed to be the wrong walking partner for that. The river that ran through the valley was thick and slow, and most of the streams in the Pucklechurch hex fed into it. She’d heard that if you had a good enough raft and were willing to put in the work of navigation, then after a big rain you could go all the way from Pucklechurch to Liberfell, floating along. Mizuki had nearly done that with some friends, but there had been a bit of drama between them after she’d kissed one of the brothers, and the rafting plans had fallen through.

Mizuki kept these thoughts to herself, worried that she would annoy Isra. She wondered whether Isra had ever kissed someone but kept that question to herself because it seemed too intimate a thing to ask someone who was basically a stranger, and more of a stranger than anyone else in the party. It was the kind of thing you talked about with a friend, not a workmate.

Eventually, if they kept doing dungeons, they might come to understand each other.

The bastlekeeper had a large building, but only the front of it was open to the public. There were numerous animals in cages or glass tanks, with handwritten signs giving descriptions of what was inside. Some of them weren’t proper bastles; Mizuki saw what looked like a perfectly ordinary bunny and a common stilt-legged skink, which she’d caught a few of in her childhood just while walking in the woods. Still, some of them were unknown, birds with iridescent feathers and mice that walked on the ceiling of their tank, and it was certainly interesting. True to her word, Mizuki allowed Isra to take the lead in talking to the bastlekeeper, an elderly man with wild gray hair.

“We have three eggs,” said Isra, opening up Mizuki’s bag and showing them to the bastlekeeper. “We’d like to incubate and raise them ourselves.”

“Ay?” asked the old man, bringing some glasses up from around his neck so he could take a closer look. “How long out of the dungeon, or are these bred?”

“No more than two bells since they were taken,” said Isra.

“Ay, well,” said the old man, nodding. “You’re dungeoneers then?” He had a bit of Hannah’s accent, though different in the particulars.

“We are,” said Isra, nodding. “They’ll require heat and good airflow. They’re still living.”

The old man frowned. “Well, before we get to all that, I’m Perrin Carthaigh, only licensed bastlekeeper for three hexes out, and the best for six out.” He held out a hand, and Isra reluctantly shook it. “You’re looking to incubate them on your own, ay? And how do you know what they’ll need, if they’re not bred?”

“I’m a woods witch,” said Isra.

“Oh, ay?” Perrin asked. “And you know Dom then?”

“No,” said Isra. “She’s the local woods witch?”

“Ay, or close enough to local,” nodded Perrin. “She comes by from time to time, just to help. She knows better than any cleric how to care for these creatures, even a cleric of Qymmos.”

“The incubator,” said Isra. “We need the heat of a summer’s day and a gentle wind.”

“All business, you young ones,” said Perrin, shaking his head. “Well, the problem with an incubator is you’d need me to sign off, and I don’t know what kind of animal will come from those eggs, if it’s an animal at all, which it very well might not be.”

“It’s the domain of the hex beastmaster, right?” asked Mizuki. “So we could go talk to them?”

Perrin pointed to himself. “I’ve been the beastmaster for nigh forty years.”

“Ah,” said Mizuki.

“So you won’t sell us an incubator?” asked Isra.

“Well, I didn’t say that,” he replied. “If it were just a single egg, I might think that’s fine, but three means that there’s a risk you have a breeding pair of whatever this is, and that runs its own risks. There are horror stories I could regale you with, ay, though I don’t get the sense you want me to. Cases of a thing being born that lays a clutch of a hundred eggs in the woods.”

Isra nodded. “You offer services. You would raise them for us.” There was such prickliness to Isra that Mizuki felt herself cringing at the exchange and wanting to step in to smooth things over, but she’d promised to let Isra take the lead. It was a promise she was quickly regretting.

“Ay,” he said.

“And if we say no, you have the authority to take the eggs from us by force,” said Isra, folding her arms. It wasn’t quite an accusation, if only by technicality, and Mizuki winced.

Perrin laughed. “By force?” he asked. “Might have escaped your attention, young one, but I’m going on seventy, and while I’m fit for my age, my age isn’t a fit one. You think I’d chase you out of the hex for wanting to keep an egg? That might be how they do it in Tarbin, but in Inter, it takes more than that to get in the bad graces of the authorities. Do you know why I’m the beastmaster, ay?”

“No,” said Isra, arms still folded.

“Because I care,” he replied. “And because I have the skills. I’ve gone out into the woods and the valleys more times than I can count hunting down things that dungeoneers have accidentally let loose. Now, you’re new to the game, that’s clear enough, and you’ve got some problems with authority, that’s clear enough too, but you and I, we work together, not against each other. Clear?”

Isra relaxed a little. “Clear,” she said.

“You raise beasts for people,” said Mizuki. “You’d sell us an incubator, then raise two for us, with a fee or something, with us raising the third?” She was just saying something, anything to let the rudeness fade away into the distance.

“Ah,” said Perrin, nodding. “You people always do have a head for business.” She wondered whether he meant ‘people from Kiromo’, but if he did, he was wrong, because she had a horrible head for business. “A fine offer, and one I might have made myself, given the chance.” He raised an eyebrow in Isra’s direction. “No hard feelings, ay?”

“I meant no offense,” she said.

“It’s suspect, my position and profession,” he said, nodding. “A conflict of interest. Many have pointed it out, over the years, and I’ve had arguments against me having both—the business and the role. But I’ve kept Liberfell safe, and for most, that’s argument enough.” He cleared his throat. “Now, in terms of payment. Is it the two of you, or a party?”

“A full party,” said Isra. “Based out of Pucklechurch for the time being.”

‘For the time being’? The notion set Mizuki on edge, just a bit, because it was her home, but she supposed that she would reluctantly agree that, yes, ‘for the time being’ was correct. She had no idea what she would do once the time came to make a decision on whether to keep pursuing this crazy career.

“And you have a way to carry something back there?” he asked.

“We do,” said Isra. “So long as it’s no more than a foot and a half to the side. We’re also looking for a good way to take plants and animals out of future dungeons.”

“As the beastmaster, I like to hear that,” he nodded. “Taking out eggs like this,” he gestured at the eggs, sitting in the bag, “is questionable, but you’ve done well with them, if you haven’t left one out in the wild somewhere. So, as I’m hearing you, I’d raise two of these, hand over some manner of containment, and sell you an incubator. And when I say all that, I’m hoping that you have the rings to pay upfront, but if you’re new to the game, I doubt you do.”

“We do, actually,” said Mizuki. “We made out well on our first dungeon.”

“But we’ll be looking for a good deal,” said Isra. She gave Mizuki a frown, and Mizuki shut her mouth tight.

“Well, it’s about risk,” said Perrin, rubbing his stubble-covered chin. “Risk for me, or risk for you. If I take the two eggs and try to hatch them, I can take a gamble, or let you take the gamble. I’m in the mood to gamble, if it gets a disgruntled woods witch on my side. Let’s say I’d do the care and feeding part, in exchange for the first clutch of eggs from a breeding pair?”

“If it is a breeding pair,” said Mizuki.

“It is,” said Isra.

“It is,” agreed Perrin, tapping the side of his head.

“Wait, do you know what kind of thing it is?” asked Mizuki. “From being beastmaster?”

“Nothing like that, but I do get sex, if it’s there,” he said. “And I’ve already seen these three listed, which are the same kind of creature, if you didn’t already know that.”

“We did,” said Isra, with a casual air.

“But it remains to see what they’re like, and whether they’ll grow,” he said. “So what I’ll propose is I take the male and the female, and you take the spare female, and we’ll call the first part of their life square, the labor and such paid for by that first clutch of eggs, if we get one. And that just leaves the incubator you want and the containment, which will depend on the particulars.”

“Let me see what you have,” said Isra. She turned to Mizuki. “I’d like to do this without you.”

“O-kay,” said Mizuki, frowning. She turned to Perrin. “She’s new to people. Don’t mind the offense.”

“I’ve been dealing with dungeoneers my whole life,” he said. “They’re usually a brash bunch, especially if they’re in the creature game, and they come into our community not having the slightest clue about who we are or how we do things. You can trust me to have a thick hide.” He gave Isra a quite unexpected fond look.

They went into the back area, leaving Mizuki alone. She was trying not to feel offended and somewhat failing. It was probably true that she shouldn’t have said that they had a lot of money to spare, but that was the kind of thing that just came out. It was friendly to say, wasn’t it? And if the old man saw something to like in Isra, then Mizuki decided that it was her job to keep her mouth closed and let the two of them get along. Maybe he was used to dealing with creatures that snipped and snapped.

She was waiting in the room with more of the common things when a girl came in through the door. She was obviously the adventuring sort, wearing a formfitting breastplate and greaves and with some kind of weapon at her hip, like a spear the length of her forearm. Aside from the metal, she wore black, including leather boots that showed a fair bit of wear and dirt from the road. Her hair was short, cut to just below her chin, and the tips of it were purple. Mizuki’s eyes were looking at her face when she spoke.

“Perrin’s in the back, is he?” the girl asked.

“Eyes,” said Mizuki, because the girl had brilliant purple eyes, brighter than eyes should be, almost like they were reflecting light that wasn’t there. She wore makeup, far more than seemed sensible for an adventurer, with a dark shade of lipstick and some smoky eyeshadow. She had darker skin, like Alfric.

“The name’s Lola, actually,” she said, holding out a hand.

“Mizuki,” said Mizuki, taking her hand. “Sorry, I’ve never met someone with purple eyes before.”

“That you know of,” said Lola with an impish smile.

“I… suppose,” said Mizuki, wondering whether there was a possibility that she’d met someone with purple eyes and simply not known about it. It seemed unlikely. She looked the other girl up and down. “You’re a dungeoneer?”

The other girl gave an energetic nod. “We’re only recently to Liberfell though, planning to station out of here for a month or so, maybe more, and hit up everything in a three-hex radius. You?”

“Uh,” said Mizuki. “I’m a dungeoneer too.”

“Well I knew that, silly,” said Lola, rolling her eyes. “The only other option was that you were here to buy some spotted toads, but you definitely don’t seem like the type. I was just wondering how long you were planning to be in the area.”

“Just a day in Liberfell,” said Mizuki. “We’re… out of Pucklechurch, I guess.”

Lola nodded. “I haven’t been, but I’ve heard it’s such a sweet little town. Any tips for when we do the dungeon?”

“We had, um, bad variance,” said Mizuki. She had known a fair number of people who had been in dungeons in some capacity or the other, but ‘dungeoneer’ as a title seemed to imply something else entirely, not just doing a small handful of close dungeons with some friends, which occasionally happened in Pucklechurch, but someone who was going to devote their life to it for as long as they could. “Good loot.”

“Ooo, what did you get?” asked Lola. “Something good?”

“My f-friend Isra,” said Mizuki, “she got a bow that slows down time. We got a book too, for storage, and it can tell you a bit about items.”

“Entad identification?” asked Lola, raising an eyebrow.

“No, it doesn’t seem to,” said Mizuki.

“Well, there are other solutions,” said Lola, nodding. “Tell me about your team, who’ve you got? You’re… some kind of mage, I’m guessing. Hopefully your friend can use a bow?”

Mizuki was feeling… well, not dizzy, exactly, but off balance. There were too many pointed questions coming in too fast, and the girl, Lola, had an intensity that matched her brilliantly purple eyes.

“I’m a sorc,” said Mizuki. “Isra is a ranger. Alfric is a… I don’t know what you’d call him, a fighter?” She wasn’t sure whether she should be saying any of this. Surely there was no harm in it, right? Someone knowing their party composition, or which dungeons they’d hit, that didn’t matter, the dungeons were different for everyone, and if a dungeoneering team went in to do a dungeon right after you, it didn’t change all that much. There wasn’t any point to being coy.

“Alfric,” said Lola, tapping her lips. “Interesting name. Last name?”

“Overguard,” said Mizuki.

“Of the Dondrian Overguards?” asked Lola, stopping and looking at Mizuki with wide eyes. There was something like playacting in how she said it, a theatricality that lowered her opinion of the girl.

“Um,” said Mizuki. “Yes?”

“They’re a very big deal,” she said, nodding. “A dungeoneering family, one of the best.”

“I knew his parents were dungeoneers,” said Mizuki.

“But you’re local, right?” asked Lola. “I mean, I know a bunch of Kiromon settled here.”

“Uh, I guess,” said Mizuki. “There’s a Kiromo neighborhood in Liberfell. I’m from Pucklechurch.”

“But that’s weird, isn’t it?” asked Lola. “That he would come out all this way to recruit people?”

<Through we go,> said Hannah over party chat. <How are you findin’ the city of Liberfell?>

“One sec,” said Mizuki, “party chat I need to answer.” She turned to the side.

<Very interesting,> Mizuki replied. <And a bit intimidating.>

<We’ll be there soon enough,> said Alfric. <Can you warp so we can meet up? Or give us a location?>

<We’re in the middle of business,> said Mizuki. <We’ve got rooms at the Dragon’s Arm Hotel. I told them to expect you if we were out.>

<Thank you,> said Alfric. <We should meet soon though. We’re leaving the wardrobe in Traeg’s Knob and hoping that no one does anything with it. The rest of today can be for selling what we have. I’m hoping that I can find a floatstone so we have less trouble bringing it back to Pucklechurch. Talk to you later.>

Mizuki turned back to Lola, who was giving her an expectant look. “Problems?”

“No,” said Mizuki. “I don’t think so.” She looked to the door that Isra had gone through, wondering what had taken so long, then back to the strange girl with too many questions. “Sorry if you’re waiting on Perrin, my friend will be done in a bit.”

“Oh, not at all,” said Lola, waving a hand. “I was just going to check in on some bastles we left with him, I’ll come back another time.” She turned to the door, then back to look at Mizuki. “It was nice to meet you, Mizuki. Hopefully our teams run into each other. Tell Alfric he still has my love.”

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “You know him?”

“I’m sure he’ll fill you in,” said Lola, giving Mizuki a wink as she backed out the door. “See you!”

Mizuki stared after her. Alfric was going to have some questions coming his way, that was for certain.

Chapter 28 — It Takes Two

Verity had finished her bath by the time Mizuki and Isra came back from whatever they were doing. The bath had been a proper bath, one with scented soaps that Mizuki apparently didn’t keep stocked at her house. Verity was going to have to spend some time in Liberfell buying a few things. She had gotten used to rather rough living at the Fig and Gristle, necessitated by wanting to stretch her funds, but with all the rings from their first dungeon and a more permanent home with Mizuki, it made sense to stock up on all the little things she’d been missing, like lotions and scents. Perhaps she would buy another dress or two.

When she came out of the shower in her bathrobe, a meal from downstairs was waiting for her, and she didn’t feel the need to stand on ceremony, instead digging in right away. The suite had a nice little seating area, with a table for four off to one side. Mizuki was talking about how their time had gone, as presumably Alfric’s recounting of the trip up the hill carrying the wardrobe hadn’t taken much time to tell.

“Alfric, do you know someone named Lola?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said slowly. He was instantly on guard. “Why?”

“Purple eyes?” asked Mizuki.

“No,” said Alfric. “But I don’t doubt she might have acquired them in one way or another since I last saw her. Mizuki, are you saying that Lola is in the city? In Liberfell?”

“She said—well, she said a lot of things, but one of the main ones was that she was a dungeoneer, and she was going to be based out of Liberfell,” said Mizuki. “We talked for a bit, until I got the sense that maybe I was saying more than I should, and then she just left. But she said, um, that you still have her love.”

Alfric groaned and laid back on the couch, closing his eyes.

“Should I not have talked to her?” asked Mizuki. “Because if I wasn’t supposed to say anything about the party, it’s kind of on you for not giving me a heads-up.”

“It’s fine,” said Alfric, still sitting with his head back.

“Is it?” asked Hannah. “Because you don’t have the face of a man who’s fine.”

“There’s a very long story I have to tell and really don’t want to,” said Alfric, sighing. He sat up. “I’ve known Lola since we were little. Our parents intended us to marry, or not ‘marry’, it’s complicated, but we’re pacted. Technically, we’re still intended to be, but the only reason anyone thinks that is still going to happen is that we haven’t told our parents how much things have deteriorated between us.”

“Okay,” said Mizuki. “So she’s your ex?”

“It goes far, far deeper than that,” said Alfric. He screwed his eyes shut. “I have a confession to make.”

“Another?” asked Verity, who had been eating a pressed sandwich that rivaled the one Mizuki had made. Like that one, it was hard to eat in a dignified way.

“Lola is a chrononaut,” said Alfric. It seemed like saying the words pained him. “And… I am too.” This he said with actual anguish, as though the words were being extracted from him at great expense by circumstances beyond his control.

There was silence in the room.

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “How many times did—how many times did you try to recruit us?”

“You can go back in time?” asked Isra.

“I can live a given day two times, sometimes three,” said Alfric. “Yes. And to answer the question, Mizuki, anything that I’ve done with this party, I’ve done only once. My family has very strict rules about disclosure, and I’ve followed them to the letter. More than to the letter.”

“We didn’t do the Pucklechurch dungeon twice?” asked Hannah. She wrinkled her nose. “It was only once?”

Alfric let out a sigh. “Yes,” he said. “Everything was only once, Pucklechurch, Traeg’s Knob, any personal time we’ve spent or conversations we’ve had. This is my first time living today. The only way I would have chosen to do it over would be if something horrible happened.”

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “Why didn’t you tell us that? I would have been way more relaxed about the whole thing if I’d known you could just undo it all.”

“How do we know you’re not lying?” asked Verity, setting her food down.

“That,” said Alfric, gesturing at her. “And that,” he said, gesturing at Mizuki. “Those are both very good reasons not to breathe a word of it to anyone.” He shook his head. “Lola.”

“If she hadn’t come along, when would you have told us?” asked Verity.

“I was planning to,” said Alfric. “I just needed to build up trust, to build up the team, to get us working together. Maybe it would have been tonight, if things were going well, or at least after the next dungeon.”

“You understand why it’s hard to trust you,” said Verity. “Why we might think that you’re hiding things? More things, that is?”

“I never lied,” said Alfric. “Just… lies of omission.” He seemed to really believe this and to see it as a defense. Verity found herself enormously frustrated with that line of thinking.

“That’s the magic you know,” said Mizuki. “You’re a chrononaut.”

“Yes,” said Alfric. “But—” He turned to Verity. “If people know that you can do the day over, they’ll worry that you’ve done the day over, and there’s no proof you can offer them. Some people get it into their head that you’re just… I don’t know, an evil person or someone who’s casually playing with their life.”

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “This Lola person too?”

“Yes,” sighed Alfric. “And if you’re wondering whether she’s had a conversation with you before, whether this is her second time through the day, then the answer is probably yes.”

“Seems a good power for a dungeoneer to have,” said Hannah. “But you’re the one who gets to decide whether or not to use it, ay?”

“I would use it if anything happened to any of you,” said Alfric. “And then you’d have no memory that anything bad had even happened, and I would have to disclose whatever did happen that required the power to be used.”

“Or you would just lie,” said Verity. It felt bad to say it, once the words were out, but the possibility needed to be put out there by someone, and she seemed like the only one to do it. Her emotions were getting the best of her.

“I wouldn’t,” said Alfric. “And if I had told you right from the start that I had this power, you would have had the same thought, that perhaps I was lying, or you would think that you were safe and didn’t need to worry, and—it’s a gift of my bloodline, it is, but the way people deal with it is… why I wanted to wait to tell you. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry, but you don’t disagree with the general approach you took,” said Verity, gripping her fork. She had mostly forgiven him for agreeing to spy on her for her parents, but it was still there in the background of their relationship. If she hadn’t hit her limits, she might have started in on a tune to keep her frustration and suspicion down.

“What can I do to make it up to you?” asked Alfric.

“I think I need to take a break from all this for a moment. It’s been a long day,” said Verity, standing from her chair. “No one use the party chat for a bit, please, I’ll be in my room.” She took her plate with her, because she wasn’t done eating, and retreated to her room, closing the door behind her.

There was a temptation to eavesdrop on the conversation in the other room, but Verity resisted. She had been a proficient eavesdropper in her childhood, but it was mostly by way of listening in when people thought she was absorbed in something, rather than putting an ear where it wasn’t wanted.

Instead, she thought about Alfric and what was to be done about him. Did she like him? Well… probably the least of all of them. He was everything that she didn’t like about Dondrian, pushing too much, focused too much, wanting too much from everyone else. He had been giving them all time to adjust to what he wanted from them, but he was doing it in a way that made it clear that was what he was doing. Verity could see what someone might like in Alfric, without particularly liking it herself. Did she want to keep going down this path of dungeoneering with him? Well, the answer was both yes and no. She liked almost every aspect of it aside from the dungeons. To be a part of a team, to train together, to live together, to travel and see new things, to have interesting magic, and to sing songs for people who were quickly becoming friends? It was nice. The monsters were much less nice, but her role in the dungeons was in some ways a pleasing challenge, a test of her skills as a bard.

She wondered how much more Alfric was keeping from them, but her guess was that it wasn’t all that much. The name Overguard did ring a bell, but only vaguely. Dungeoneers weren’t usually high society, even if they had quite a bit of money. If they were a family of chrononauts, that explained some of their success.

Verity had her own secrets, of course, and she wondered whether she’d be better viewing Alfric’s status as a chrononaut as something similar to her own Choosing as Xuphin’s own. She hadn’t told anyone, and it didn’t matter to her, it was only a pressure that came along on top of everything else. If people knew, they might treat her differently, and it wasn’t as though they had a right to know, not when it wasn’t impacting them in the slightest. And if Alfric was telling the truth, then there was the same lack of impact, save for there being a large safety net beneath them. No repeated days, no conversations she didn’t remember, no second or third attempts at dungeons. He’d intended to tell them but was holding off because the mere knowledge would cause problems. It wasn’t so different, and Verity had no plans to tell any of them that she was Chosen. Through that lens, she could understand Alfric a bit better, and she felt a bit of shame at how she’d handled things.

Verity ate her sandwich while hunched over on her bed, trying not to get crumbs on the linens. It was a nice bedroom with a far larger bed than she needed, and she wondered who was paying the cost of it.

With her food finished, she laid back in bed. She was tired down to her bones, not just from the long hikes, but from the magic she’d used. Bardic stamina was something built up over time, and Verity already had more capacity to go the distance than most people ever had, but with whatever Mizuki had done, and with the sheer length of the dungeon, she was about as drained as she’d ever been. It was clouding her thoughts. She should have refused to give them a song for moving the wardrobe and simply gone with Isra and Mizuki, but she’d wanted to do her part for the team. Beyond that, she was socially drained, as there’d been too much talking and time with people, with not too much of a break. She lay down, trying to ignore the dim murmurs from beyond the door. Whatever Alfric’s problems were, she would learn about them later, when her mind was in a better place for it.

She napped, very briefly, going in and out of sleep. She dreamed, a nightmare in which she was the one carrying the wardrobe up a steep hill, being encouraged on by her mother.

Two hours later, the murmuring beyond the bedroom door had long finished, and there was a brief, soft knock.

“Come in,” said Verity with a sigh. She hadn’t been fully asleep and didn’t feel even slightly rested.

To her surprise, it was Isra, dressed in a fresh set of clothes and looking slightly damp from a bath of her own. “There are only four beds,” she said. “Mizuki had wanted this one for herself to share with one of us.”

“Ah,” said Verity. “I can move.” She had already moved her things in earlier, before Mizuki had returned.

“Mizuki said that it was fine,” said Isra. “But it would mean that you need to share.”

“With you?” asked Verity.

Isra nodded.

“That’s fine by me,” said Verity, sighing. “How did it go out there?”

“We heard more about Alfric’s life,” said Isra. She moved over to the bed, and Verity scooted over. She was still dressed in the hotel’s bathrobe. “He blames Lola for much of his misfortunes.”

“I’m sure he does,” said Verity. “Sorry,” she said. “That wasn’t very kind of me. Maybe she’s truly awful. He’s a good man in very many ways, but very Dondrian.”

Isra shrugged. “He should have told us he could swim through time, but I understand why he didn’t.”

“Do you think he would have said, if he’d had to redo a day?” asked Verity.

“I don’t think he’s lying,” said Isra. “But I’m not the best judge of character.”

“If only he were a wolf, right?” asked Verity, smiling.

“It would simplify things,” nodded Isra, returning the smile. There was often something shy about her smiles, like she was embarrassed to show her teeth.

“I guess I wasn’t thinking about whether he had lied,” said Verity. “More about… well, if he would lie, if it came to that. If we went into a dungeon and one of us died, and he had to redo it, do you think he would say or just try it again without telling us?”

“I think he would tell us,” said Isra.

“I suppose I do too,” said Verity, nodding. “Probably in a blunt way.”

“Mmm,” said Isra. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to talk to you. I was going to sleep.”

“I don’t mind the company, if it’s you,” said Verity. “But don’t let me keep you from sleep.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep,” said Isra. “My arm is sore, but there are too many thoughts. The day was long.”

“I think being a dungeoneer probably means that you end up with a collection of very long days,” said Verity. She paused, wondering whether to offer. “I can sing you to sleep, if you’d like.”

“You can?” asked Isra.

Verity nodded. “Lullabies,” she said. “They were never a specialty of mine, but you work with the sleepiness a person has and amplify it. It has its uses.”

“I find your singing beautiful,” said Isra. “I would take any chance to hear it.”

Verity found herself blushing. It was too high a compliment. “Would you mind if we talked, just for a bit, first? To get me settled.”

“Of course,” said Isra with a yawn. She hesitated. “Do you mind if I undress?”

Verity shook her head. She was planning to change out of the bathrobe and into her underthings, as she’d already taken everything she needed out of the book.

Still, it was somewhat of a surprise when Isra removed her headscarf. They’d slept in the same room at Mizuki’s the night before, but Isra had left it on. Here though, she revealed curly brown hair that had been pinned back in several places. It was a bit odd, never seeing a person’s hair, and it was strange how weird it felt to finally see it after so long of having it hidden. It wasn’t clear to Verity why it was done, only that it was Tarbin custom.

Verity decided to go ahead and get changed too, which was accomplished fairly quickly. There was something vaguely anxiety-inducing about getting naked with someone else in the room, but it was only Isra, who had given no sign of that sort of interest, and Verity’s chemise was quickly on. There was a small part of Verity that wondered whether Isra staying with her was motivated, but Verity had misread signals before, and the reason they were sharing a room at all was because of Mizuki, who had definitely not had that on her mind. By the time Verity was finished, Isra had gotten under the covers. It was early for sleep, but Verity had the feeling that once her head was against the pillow, it wouldn’t take long for her to be out.

“What did you want to talk about?” asked Isra once they were lying side by side beneath the covers. It was hard not to read it as intimate. Verity wasn’t sure that she’d shared a bed with anyone since she was little.

“I don’t know,” said Verity. “How is being a druid?”

Isra chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment. “There’s so much other people don’t know.”

“I imagine so,” said Verity. They were looking into each other’s eyes. Verity found herself looking for rhymes for ‘brown’ (drown, crown, gown), then thinking of more poetical synonyms (mahogany, umber, chestnut). There was a particular shade, russet, made from madder and woad, and Verity was on the verge of a good lyric when Isra turned away. Verity turned away as well, slightly embarrassed. She’d been staring without saying anything.

“I spoke with the beastmaster, who was also the bastlekeeper,” said Isra, speaking up to the ceiling. “I looked at his animals. He had a lifetime of experience and as much power as a hex can grant. He had entads to tell him things. Still he was fumbling and blind.”

“Did he manage though?” asked Verity. “Mizuki said he had a large shop.”

“He managed to make money,” said Isra. “But many of his bastles died along the way, for as much as he tried to help them. Where they live, what they eat, the things they want to do… he was ignorant.”

“You felt bad for the animals,” said Verity. With her head against the pillow, she was feeling sleepy.

“I felt bad for the man,” said Isra.

“Felt bad that you were better?” asked Verity.

“No,” said Isra, glancing over for a moment. It was a bit of an awkward conversation, with the both of them staring at the ceiling and both clearly fairly tired. “To devote yourself and have nothing come of it is sad.”

“He’s probably raised hundreds of bastles,” said Verity. “Thousands, even. He’s helped people with new pets and farmers with new animals. I don’t think it’s right to judge ourselves against perfection, and I certainly don’t think it’s right to judge others against perfection.” That was how Verity had been judged for what seemed to be most of her life. “Did he seem happy?”

“He did,” said Isra. “He responded to a slight with kindness.”

“A slight?” asked Verity, glancing over. “From you or Mizuki?”

“From me,” said Isra. “An unkind assumption. Unintended. Still, he was warm to me.”

Verity wondered whether Isra had issued an apology and decided that she probably hadn’t. “Mmm,” she said, for lack of anything better to add.

“What’s it like to be a bard?” asked Isra, some time later.

Verity had already started to drift off to sleep, and her eyes fluttered open, the promised lullaby forgotten. She turned to the side and found that Isra was turned too. They looked at each other for a moment. Isra had her piercings out, and up close, the small holes in her skin were clearly visible. Again, Verity found herself constructing lyrics, and it took her a moment to remember what the question had been.

“There’s a song to a person,” she said. “There are notes that resonate with them. Perhaps it’s less like a sound and more like… acoustics, knowing how the notes sound in a particular room, then trying your best to weave them together.” She made a little tune to demonstrate the point, something to pull on the sweetness of Isra, but with her overworked mind and sleepiness, it didn’t last more than a few bars. Still, she could see the change in Isra’s face, a smile on her lips that reached up to her eyes, like they were sharing a joke together. There was nothing shy about it.

“Can you do that again?” asked Isra, almost as soon as the song petered off.

“Tired,” said Verity. Really, she shouldn’t have pushed it, but it was always tempting when things felt that they could readily flow. Even the song she’d sung up the hill, a simple song of strength, had been pushing it. A song for Isra, tugging on and enhancing her sweetness, was beyond even that and risked her losing her ‘voice’ for a few days, which had happened twice before.

“I wish I could feel like that all the time,” said Isra.

“You can,” murmured Verity. The world kept slipping away as her thoughts descended into dreams. The last thing she was fully conscious of was feeling the heat of Isra’s body through the blankets.

Chapter 29 — Historical Revisionism

That Alfric was a chrononaut was, in some sense, a surprise, but in another sense, made certain things fall into place. That was almost certainly what Filera had seen in him during their encounter at the temple, and it explained some of his rush to get things moving when they’d all started out. He’d wanted to do as much in a day as possible, because that way, if things had gone poorly, he could have started the entire thing over. Perhaps he hadn’t even been thinking like that, it was just something that had been ingrained in him by a whole family who had that ability. Hannah wasn’t entirely sure.

“Is Verity going to be okay?” asked Mizuki, looking at the closed door. “Also, that was going to be my room.”

“She’ll be fine,” said Hannah. “Alfric had a safety net he didn’t tell us about, and he wasn’t keen to use it.” She hoped Verity would be fine. She furrowed her brow and looked at Alfric. “But why didn’t you want to go after the bear then?”

“We had done well enough,” said Alfric. “I didn’t want to put anyone in danger.”

“But if one of us had died,” said Mizuki. “You’d just… redo the day? Make different choices?”

“If I’d been on the second day through, I’d have postponed the dungeon and not risked it without the ability to undo it,” said Alfric. “And, obviously, I would have told you all what had happened.”

“Obviously, ay?” asked Hannah. She pursed her lips. “The temptation wouldn’t have been there to make some excuse?”

“I don’t want to pretend to have a purity that I don’t have,” said Alfric. “I would have lamented the fact that it had to be that way. I might even have thought hard about whether it was possible to not follow through on the commitment to disclosure. But I want this party to last, and I was always going to tell you eventually, it was just a question of whether it would be on my own time or whether it would be necessitated by a reset.”

“But you told us now because you were worried that this ‘Lola’ was going to say something?” asked Mizuki. “Or that she already had?”

Alfric hesitated. “Yes,” he admitted. “Not ideal.”

Hannah frowned. “But as I said, it’s a safety net he didn’t tell us about, and there’s good reasons not to.” Something else slipped into place, which was the way Alfric had reacted when there was some question about his honor. He was protective of it, because a chrononaut depended upon trust. Otherwise people might think he was lying about days that had been redone and whether days had been redone. Or, possibly, he was defensive because people had questioned his honor before on this very issue. He seemed to be handling it well. “Decent reasons, anyhow, since I’m not sure about ‘good’.”

“Wait,” said Mizuki, looking at Alfric. “You’re worried that I’ll do something risky if I know you could just undo it?”

“You did something risky without knowing that I could undo it,” said Alfric.

“Well,” said Mizuki. “I mean, yeah, people do risky things all the time. You have to take risks in life.”

“Chrononauts call it risk hazard,” said Alfric. “If people know there’s something that can protect them, they’ll take more risks, which makes things more difficult for us when we’re trying to undo things and get a good day in place.”

“I guess,” said Mizuki. “But shouldn’t we take more risks? To get more from the dungeons?”

“If you died—you understand that seeing a party member die isn’t something that I want to have to go through?” he asked. There was something about the way he was handling the conversation that was… well, like he’d had it before. Hannah didn’t think he was lying, just that he’d probably had these kinds of conversations many times before and been mentally preparing himself to have this talk with them. “That not only would we have to delay a day for safety’s sake, but that I’d have to go through more brutal fights and injuries in a newly created dungeon whose layout and contents I wouldn’t know? Going through the dungeon that first failed time would be for nothing aside from the experience of it.”

“But you like dungeons,” said Mizuki.

“I’d lay off him,” said Hannah. “He’s the one taking beatin’s for us. Makes sense not to want more.”

Mizuki shrugged. “Just trying to understand. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I’m not sure I understand the scope of your powers,” said Isra.

“I can undo a day,” said Alfric, turning to her. This, too, seemed like it was something he was well prepared for, but there were obvious, mundane reasons for that. “Not a full day, just back to the witching hour, in the dead of the night, before the sun is up. That’s the common point for all chrononauts, varying a bit by how far east or west they are.” He had a particular way of talking to Isra, which she seemed to take to, and Hannah resolved to mimic it as much as possible the next time there was something that Isra didn’t know. The girl did seem to know quite a bit about religion though, more than expected. “It’s the same for all chrononauts, only a single day back in time, with the only thing that varies being how many times we can do a day. My second time through a day I’m fine, but a third time through, I feel somewhat ill, and I can’t do a fourth. My parents can both do six, and I’ve heard of people being able to do as many as twelve. It takes some conscious effort, so I can’t do it if I’m knocked out, and it happens automatically if I die. There’s a complicated system of priority, but for now I think all you really need to know is that Lola takes her days before I take mine, meaning that either this is what she’s settled on for today, or the events of today that were impacted by her will be undone, and we’ll have no memory or experience of this conversation.”

“You said that you had an arranged marriage,” said Isra. “With this girl.”

“With Lola, yes,” said Alfric. “And not a marriage, necessarily, just a pact that we would propagate the power, and if we didn’t, we would find replacements for each other. Chrononauts have chrononaut children, but only if they breed with other chrononauts.”

“Seems the wrong word there, ‘breed’,” said Hannah. “You’re sayin’ it’s recessive.”

“No,” said Alfric. “Or not quite. It doesn’t skip generations like some recessive traits do. If you have any non-chrononauts in your family tree, you don’t have the power.”

“How’d the first chrononaut get born then?” asked Mizuki.

“Unclear,” said Alfric. “Legend goes that seven hundred years ago in Tarbin, three large families either chanced into it or somehow earned it from one of the gods, and careful marriages saved the line from going out. Those careful marriages aren’t as necessary today, because there are so many of us, but they’re still practiced to make sure there’s another generation.”

“But you didn’t want to marry her,” said Isra. “Or have her children.”

“It’s complicated,” said Alfric. “But no.”

“She seemed a little intense,” said Mizuki. “A little frightening.”

“She was always like that,” said Alfric. “And she was always cavalier about using her power, much more than we’re supposed to be.” He hesitated. “She’s an alienist.”

“A potent combination,” said Hannah. “If things go wrong with how she tries to bind, she undoes and tries again, ay?” Alienists were scary, mostly because the binding needed to be done with utmost care, and if it wasn’t, then people could die. Flaws in the binding could also crop up later on, resulting in self-immolation, or decapitation, or worse. It was something people didn’t go into unless they had both the natural aptitude and tolerance for risk, but for a chrononaut, at least some of the problems could be swept to the side.

“The extent of the risks she’s taken,” said Alfric, “the things she’s done and then undone… there’s no way of knowing. Entads don’t work with our power. The most you could do is comb through her memories, but if there’s a method of involuntary memory combing, I haven’t heard of it. There were suspicions though. Things she knew that she shouldn’t have known. Metaphors she’d drop that… weren’t the kind of metaphors someone would make unless there were certain things they’d done and seen. She admitted a few things to me, mostly petty crimes and social transgressions, but there was often the hint of something more. She said that she’d stabbed someone once, but she never revealed who because we got in a fight about it.”

“Is there a chance she killed me?” asked Mizuki, eyes wide.

Alfric’s lips went thin. “It’s not clear if she’s ever killed anyone. I don’t want to slander her. It’s all rumors, and I know how rumors that you can’t possibly refute can be. I… would think it likely that she’d spoken with you before but unlikely that she tried to hurt you.” If it had come to that, an alienist against a sorcerer… well, Hannah didn’t know enough to say, but her money was on Mizuki unless it was a surprise attack. The problem was that it very probably would be a surprise attack.

“She sounds horrible,” said Isra. She had her arms folded and was watching carefully.

“She wasn’t,” said Alfric. “I mean… you have to understand how it is for us. We live through days that we know aren’t going to matter. She came into her ability early, around ten, and I think at that age, she felt more of a need to push the boundaries. And then after that, when we were older, she knew exactly how far the boundaries could be pushed, how easy it could be to steal things, how people would react if she said something obscene, and—all of that would have been fine, maybe, bad things that got undone, but I never played those games with her, and she didn’t like that.”

“You never did any of that stuff?” asked Mizuki. “You never once insulted someone who you knew wouldn’t have any memory of it?”

“When I was younger I wasn’t perfect.” He took a breath. “I went into dungeons,” said Alfric. “Alone.”

Mizuki gaped at him. “City dungeons?” she asked.

“Ones on the city outskirts,” said Alfric. “Using a key that I stole from my parents. I just… wanted to see what they were like. I never made it out alive. Six times total. It was something Lola and I bonded over, though we probably shouldn’t have.”

“And then later on you had a fight and went your separate paths, ay?” asked Hannah.

“Not quite. I had plans,” said Alfric. “I was a part of the Junior Adventurers’ League, training, getting ready, recruiting a team, training with a team. I had maps and plans,” he turned to Mizuki, “and yes, I know, that’s very funny.”

She frowned. “Not in this context, no.”

“We were a week, a week away from heading out,” said Alfric. “We were just waiting for our last member to turn seventeen. Then, very suddenly, I was out of the party, and it was her party instead. I don’t know how long she had been working on it, but she pulled the rug out from under me.”

“And that’s why you have us,” said Isra.

“No,” said Alfric. “No, she was going to undo it, if I bowed to her will. If I was going to be her… partner in crime, I suppose, on those undone days. There were arguments that nearly swayed me. I wouldn’t have any memories of the transgressions. But I said no, and that was that. I undid the day, trying to get to them, to talk to them, but she’d laid all the groundwork. It was like a trap that had been waiting there, hidden, and the only way to get her not to use it would be to convince her, which I failed at. I don’t even think she wants to be a dungeoneer. So the reason that I’m here, with this party, is because I didn’t want to bend for her. I didn’t want to be that kind of person, even if I wasn’t going to remember it.”

“And her turnin’ up here is no coincidence,” said Hannah, nodding. “Seems a thorny situation we find ourselves in.” She was very careful to include that ‘we’. Alfric needed help, that was clear enough, and it was better to reinforce that they were a team. It would probably also do to say it out loud.

“No coincidence?” asked Mizuki, looking at Hannah. “Meaning that she followed Alfric here?”

“It seems likely,” said Alfric. He let out a groan and slumped against the couch. “All I want is to be left alone.”

“Like Verity does,” said Isra. She still had her arms folded and a cool expression on her face.

“Point taken,” said Alfric. “I’m hoping she’s more upset about keeping the secret than she is about the ability, because if it’s about the ability, there’s nothing much that I can do.” He sighed, then stood up. “Are there any other questions that I need to answer before I take a bath and then sleep the sleep of the dead?”

“Are we in danger here?” asked Mizuki.

“No,” said Alfric. “Absolutely not. Lola isn’t what I would consider a good person, but she’s not going to assault anyone, even in an undone day.” In Hannah’s opinion, his conviction was just slightly lacking. “And if anything happens to any of you, from Lola or anyone or anything else, I’ll undo it and protect you.”

“Well,” said Mizuki, who seemed somewhat warmed by that. She looked at the door to the room. “Is Verity just going to sleep in my room?” asked Mizuki. “Because that’s the one with the big bed, and I was going to share it with someone, but I don’t just want to go in and say that’s what we’re doing. I should have arranged it over the channel, sorry.”

“I’ll see if she wants me to sleep next to her,” said Isra. “We shared a room last night.”

Hannah felt like she was the only one who noticed that offer from the usually quiet Isra. It was good that they were finding friends in one another, and she wondered whether it was something more, though neither of them was giving any of the usual signals.

“So no other questions, especially about the chrononaut stuff?” asked Alfric. “We can talk about this more in the morning, and on the way back, but I’ve done too much today, and my body is aching.”

“You’ll tell us, if you ever reset the day?” asked Hannah.

Alfric hesitated. “I’ll tell you if I saw you that day. I do, from time to time, take a day off and go out to train on my own. I’ve done that, since we’ve known each other. I leave a note, when I do.”

“So if there’s a day when we see a note, we’ll know you’re going to undo the day?” asked Mizuki. “What do we do then?”

“Act normal,” said Alfric. “There’s no good protocol. Keep your head down, do your work, don’t take risks, don’t try to find me. We can talk about some of the ethical questions later, so I can have your opinions, if you still want to be in a party with me.”

“Why wouldn’t we?” asked Mizuki. “You can literally undo it if I get a scratch. Seems good.”

“People have complicated opinions,” said Alfric. “I’ve been dealing with those opinions for years. I won’t take for granted that you don’t feel awkward about it or that you don’t hate me for it. It’s one of the reasons I was putting it off.”

“Go take your bath,” said Hannah. “You stink of dungeon. And we’re a team, ay? If she needs it, I’ll help you smooth things over with Verity, but I don’t think she’ll need it, she’s just tired.”

Alfric nodded, then trudged off to the bathroom.

“Wild,” said Mizuki once he was gone. “So we were never in danger this entire time?”

“Seems like,” said Hannah. “Puts him in a bit of a different light.”

“Does it?” asked Isra.

“The ’nauts are tricky ones,” said Hannah. “They’ve a reputation for both takin’ risks and bein’ conservative, but I’d guess they’re more than their power, and I confess I’ve never met one.”

“More than their power?” asked Isra.

“Most people are, more than their power, more than their profession,” said Hannah, nodding. “You’re more than a druid, Zuki is more than a sorc, and I’m more than a cleric of Garos, though I hew close to the mold.”

“Zuki?” asked Mizuki.

“I don’t know what people say about druids,” said Isra.

“We should probably go over that,” said Mizuki. She rubbed the back of her head. “The other woods witch, Dom, is part of the whole reason that we’ve come to Liberfell. I’ve got no idea whether she comes from the same ‘mold’ as a typical druid, but you should at least know what to expect.”

“Distant, a bit haughty, comfortable in their own skin but not around others,” said Hannah. “Save that you eat meat and bein’ from Tarbin, I think you’re close enough.”

“They don’t have druids in Tarbin?” asked Isra.

“They do,” said Mizuki. “Probably. At least, I haven’t heard otherwise. But coming from Tarbin means that you’ll be different from a normal woods witch anyway, right?”

“I suppose,” said Isra.

“Territorial,” said Hannah, snapping her fingers. “At least, so I’ve heard.”

“But they also congregate, right?” asked Mizuki.

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Hannah. “It’s more like… well, like a family reunion, ay?”

“Never had one,” said Mizuki, shaking her head.

“Aunts and uncles come from all over, and you see them like you were old friends,” said Hannah. “And then you go back to your respective corners of the world, not expectin’ to see them again for another year or two.”

“Oh yeah, that does make sense,” said Mizuki. She turned to Isra. “Druids are definitely like that. And I’m seeing from your face that it’s not helpful to you.”

Isra shook her head. “I’ll talk to Dom. She might understand me better.”

“Can I see the incubator and the containment?” asked Hannah, moving across the room to where they had been stashed. When they’d gotten back to the room, Isra had been carrying them, and Mizuki had been much more interested in talking about the mysterious girl, which in fairness was the more interesting thing to talk about. Then after that, there had been the whole business with Alfric being a chrononaut.

“I need to eat,” said Isra. “Are we all on our own tonight?”

“For food, I think so,” said Hannah. “We’ve made no plans, and Verity’s already wolfed somethin’ down.”

“Are you up for finding something with me?” asked Mizuki. “Liberfell has some great food.”

“Ay,” said Hannah. “Isra?”

But Isra only shook her head and slipped out the door.

Hannah looked down at the incubator. “Expensive, was it?”

“The old bastlekeeper seemed keen on her,” said Mizuki, nodding in the direction of the door. “After I talked to the crazy girl, Lola, I went into the back to see what was taking them so long, and Isra was just going through the animals, one by one, telling him what they each needed. ‘This one needs a small rock in its gullet,’ or ‘This one needs more fresh air,’ or ‘This one needs natural moonlight.’ She was amazing. She was just tossing it all off, like it should have been obvious to him, and he was hurrying to keep notes and ask her questions. I’m not sure that she even saw what she was doing as labor, but by the end of it, she’d probably saved him hundreds of rings, and he gave us what we needed and insisted that we don’t pay him. It does make me wonder how much the other druid might have been charging and whether Isra inadvertently undercut her. Probably something to talk about. Usually she’s got more of a head for business.”

The egg was in a heavy glass jar, sitting on a bed of linen fibers, and affixed in place with wires, which led down to a wooden base at the bottom of the jar. Also affixed with wires were two stones.

“Ventstone, to give it air,” said Mizuki. “And a warming element, to give it the ‘heat of a summer day’. You should have seen her going through what he had for stock, touching them. She had no idea what temperature she wanted in terms of degrees, but she could rest a finger on the element for, like, two seconds and say that it wasn’t warm enough or was too warm. She was smelling the ventstones.”

“Does that work?” asked Hannah. She didn’t know enough about ectads. “Do they… smell different?”

“I’ve got no idea,” said Mizuki. “If you’d asked me before today, I’d have said not, but…” She shrugged.

“We’ll have to get a voidstone to make it work with the book. And this,” said Hannah, moving over to the second acquisition, which was a stack of cages made out of a thick wire mesh which could apparently be folded. They were folded up, so they could pack flat. “Not somethin’ we could put into the book.”

“No,” said Mizuki, frowning. “But if you want it entirely sealed, that’s way more expensive.”

“Ay,” said Hannah, giving the folded-up cages a dubious eye. “Not sure that we’ll be able to pull out much, using these.”

“Small things,” said Mizuki. “We could have taken some of those flying books out.”

“Ay,” said Hannah, sighing. “Well, Isra will be the expert on the bastles, I expect.” She stood up. “Now, to find somethin’ to eat?” She wondered whether Mizuki was going to want to talk more about the chrononaut business, but it seemed like the girl needed more time.

“I’m starving,” said Mizuki. “And I know a few good places around here.”

Maybe it would take her quite a bit of time.

Chapter 30 — Noodles

They went down from the hotel room and out onto the streets of Liberfell, walking without much direction for a bit.

“Do you like Kiromon cooking?” asked Mizuki.

“I can’t say I’ve had it much,” said Hannah.

“Noodle shop,” said Mizuki, pointing. “I’ve been there before, it’s very good, but very traditional. Or Plenarch traditional, meaning they use local ingredients, but, you know what I mean.”

Hannah wasn’t sure she did. “Well, we can give it a try,” she nodded. “I’ve liked what you’ve made, so far.”

They went into the shop together and quickly found a table. It was off hours, and the place was quiet. There were little glass bottles with long necks sitting on the table, one of them clear and the other a dark brown. The menu, such as it was, was written up on a board on one wall, in chalks of three different colors, though there were only six things they seemed to make, most of which were the same noodle soup with some variants. Before too long, a woman came over to them.

“Your order?” she asked, without a trace of pleasantries.

“Spring noodles,” said Mizuki, giving her a smile.

“For me too, ay,” said Hannah.

“Oh, and a bottle of wine to share,” said Mizuki. “And a plate of sobyu.”

The woman nodded, then went into the kitchen, which was visible from their table over a short wall. As Hannah watched, a girl about their age climbed up a small ladder and stood on a long wooden arm of some sort, which slowly lowered as she stood on it. She was gripping a pole bolted to the wall and had clearly done this many times before.

“What’s that?” asked Hannah, pointing.

“Noodles,” said Mizuki. “The dough gets pressed through a little thing with holes in it and drops right down into boiling water. I’ve tried for years to make it on my own, and I have no idea what keeps going wrong. Apparently there are a lot of bad ways to make noodles.”

“How do you make them at home?” asked Hannah. “I don’t recall seein’ such a thing.”

Once the girl had lowered to near the floor, she hopped off and picked up a giant wire mesh net, which she used to do something that was just barely out of Hannah’s sight, but the sound of water splashing around could soon be heard.

“I have the equipment to make it for a small batch,” said Mizuki. “This is just the kind of thing you need for a big kitchen. But yes, part of it is getting the dough through the holes. I’ve always been terrible with dough and baking in general.”

“Seems like the sort of thing I can help with,” said Hannah with a nod. “I love to bake, far more than I enjoy puttin’ together a meal, though I can do that too if you ever need a day off cookin’. I can’t say that I’ve much experience with noodles, but I have quite a bit with doughs, and it can’t be that difficult.”

“Please don’t let them hear you say that,” said Mizuki. “These people are masters of their craft.”

Hannah hadn’t meant it like that, only that to get a basic proficiency, for most things, took very little time, and to become a master took quite a bit of dedicated effort and sometimes years of doing only that thing. She’d meant that getting it to the point where they were decent noodles didn’t seem too hard.

It took a surprisingly short time for the noodle dishes to come out. The noodles were thin and brown, twisted up into a ball, with a number of things finely sliced and placed on top, along with an upside-down half of a soft-boiled egg. There were more colors than Hannah had expected, especially the broth, which was a purple-pink.

“It’s a beetroot sobyu broth,” said the woman as she laid the noodles down. “Topped with pear, pork slices, cucumber, and egg.” She lay a small pot down next to them. “Mustard, to stir in.” She pointed at the two bottles. “Vinegar halfway through, to change the taste.” She didn’t say which of the two bottles, but she likely meant the clear one. The sobyu plate was set down next to them without comment. It had nine small piles of various colors, each something pickled, with a focus on color.

Hannah dug in with the long two-tined fork she’d been given, twisting up noodles and trying to get as much as she could from each bite.

“The sobyu is for both of us,” said Mizuki, gesturing at the plate she’d ordered. “Best in little bites, with some noodles. Different from the kind I make, but still, you know, sobyu.” She filled her wineglass and drank it down, a little faster than Hannah thought appropriate, but then again, it had been a long day.

They ate together, with nothing from the two of them but murmurings about how good everything was. There was something to the sobyu that took a bit of getting used to, but everything in the bowl of noodles was quite fresh, and she enjoyed the contrast with the salty, sour sobyu, which was apparently a catchall term for something pickled. The meal was very light, by Hannah’s standards, the thin strips of pork not leaving much of an impression on her stomach, but the noodles were nice and chewy, and in no time at all, she was drinking from the bowl to get the last of the broth. She finished far before Mizuki, who seemed to be a bit of a slow eater.

While they’d been eating, two boys around their age sat down at a table near them. They seemed oblivious to their surroundings, but Hannah wasn’t oblivious to them, in part because they were wearing adventuring gear. Mizuki and Hannah had both cleaned up and dressed themselves in their usual outfits, which for Mizuki was culottes and a loose blouse, and for Hannah was trousers and a button-down shirt. The boys, by contrast, were wearing heavy clothes and clearly had a few entads between them, along with weapons kept at their sides: a hammer for the taller one with lighter skin, and a dagger for the shorter one with heavier armor. What drew Hannah’s eye the most was the sigil on the taller one’s chest, which was that of Oeyr, God of Emergence, and that either was a feature of entad armor or, more likely, marked him as a cleric.

She’d been listening in on their conversation as she ate.

“Well, it’s been going a bit slowly, that’s all I’m saying,” said the taller one.

“Josen lost an arm,” said the shorter one.

“Yeah, and obviously that’s not ideal,” said the taller one. “And I’m sorry that I couldn’t do much more for him, but it’s not like he had to go through his whole life without an arm, is it? He was out for barely a day.”

“I don’t think it was like that for him,” said the shorter one. Hannah was trying to peg him, and thought that maybe he was something. He had an air of magic about him. She couldn’t see magic like Mizuki, but there was a way that certain people carried themselves. “I think for him, it was probably the worst day of his entire life, and that’s saying something, this far in.”

“He got it back though,” said the cleric. He seemed like a stubborn sort. “And yes, I wish that I’d been able to reconnect it, but—”

“No one blames you for that,” said the other. He took a breath. “But he’s been talking about bowing out.”

The cleric let out a low groan. “Where are we going to find a fifth?”

“A wizard fifth, at that,” said the short one. “Or some other kind of offensive. But I think the better question is what she’s going to do when she finds out.”

“She’s harmless,” said the cleric. This had the feeling of a well-worn conversation between the two.

“She is absolutely not harmless,” said the small one. Hannah had, by this point, pegged them as both belonging to the party of this ‘Lola’ creature, and if she were an alienist, and the tall one was a cleric of Oeyr, and they had a wizard somewhere with an arm missing or reattached, then that really narrowed down what role the shorter boy could fill. Hannah was guessing that he was a bard. “Do you understand that she lies through her teeth about everything and does every day at least twice? She knows us, what makes us tick.”

“She’s really not that violent though,” said the cleric. “I mean, you’ve seen her, she doesn’t sink into it in the dungeons. It’s all the same stuff that he always argued about, rumors, things that, sure, maybe happened in undone days, but you have no way of actually knowing. And in my opinion, she just doesn’t have it in her.”

“Other stuff though,” said the probable-bard. “Manipulation? Digging for secrets? Flirtation?”

“That, yes,” admitted the cleric. “And maybe more than flirtation. Those rumors I take more seriously.”

“Would you ever?” asked the bard. “If she came to you?”

“Not something I want to talk about,” said the cleric.

“Because if you would, then there’s a chance she did,” said the bard.

“Oh, that was great!” said Mizuki, pushing forward her bowl, which was empty. She didn’t seem to be aware of the other conversation, which was going on not too far away, loud enough that the eavesdropping hadn’t presented any difficulties. Loud enough that Hannah didn’t feel too bad about violating the expectation of privacy, more to the point. “Were you serious about learning to make noodles? Because we’re not going to be in Liberfell all that long, and it would be best for you to learn what you can from these people, if they’re willing to teach us. We could get a few tips.”

“Those two boys over there,” said Hannah, speaking low and nodding her head in their direction. “Dungeoneers. Part of Lola’s party.”

Mizuki looked over at them, conspicuously staring, then gave a wave, and at that point, Hannah had no choice but to turn and look at them, putting on a smile and giving them a nod.

“Hey!” Mizuki called, louder than she needed to be. “We’re Alfric’s new party.”

Hannah sighed as Mizuki got up from her seat and went over to them, then she followed after. There was an entire conversation that they really should have had, and Mizuki had elected to be impulsive, which was to be expected from a sorc. She was also on her second glass of wine, which probably didn’t help matters.

“Alfric’s new party?” asked the cleric. “Sorry, you mean Alfric, Alfric Overguard, is here, in Liberfell?”

“Mizuki Yono,” said Mizuki, placing a hand on her chest. “Team sorc. This is Hannah… Carthaigh, cleric of Garos.” She stumbled over the last name but got it eventually.

The cleric turned to the bard. “Why is Alfric in Liberfell?”

“The better question is why are we in Liberfell,” replied the bard. “But we’re being rude.” He turned to Mizuki. “Grig Tinsmith, bard, Mardin Longshore, cleric of Oeyr. Vertex.” The last word hung there like it was supposed to hold some meaning.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Mizuki. “Now, what horrible secrets is Alfric hiding, if any?”

“Mizuki,” said Hannah.

“What?” she asked.

“I don’t think this is the way to go about whatever you think you’re goin’ about,” said Hannah.

“If he’s got horrible secrets, we want to know, don’t we?” asked Mizuki.

“Ay,” said Hannah. “But I’d be worried about rumors and bad feelin’s.”

“Well I’m not going to take anything they say without a grain of salt,” said Mizuki. “But Alfric didn’t say not to talk to them, and they’re here, to be talked to, so what am I, involuntarily bound to silence?” She was a bit worked up, it seemed, and Hannah backed off.

“I don’t think he had any horrible secrets,” said Grig. “He was just a stick in the mud with a bit too much of his parents’ doting.” He shrugged. “And maybe a little bit full of himself, though I guess we never saw him in action to see if he could back it up. I think he could have, personally.”

“He can,” said Hannah.

Grig nodded. “But horrible secrets… well, there were rumors, as you say, but it was the same kind of thing you always hear about chrononauts. The ‘world without consequence’ stuff.”

“Which I never bought into,” said Mardin.

“But you still broke a party you’d formed with him?” asked Mizuki.

Mardin shifted. “Well, Lola—how much do you know?”

“Most things,” said Mizuki, which to Hannah did not feel at all true. “Lola came along and wanted to sink things for him by taking away what he’d built up. But what’s not clear is why you’d agree.”

“It was his self-reliance thing,” said Grig. He crossed his arms and looked mildly defensive. “The Overguards, in the adventuring world, are pretty famous. There’s a trophy in the League called the Overguard Trophy. There’s a maneuver called the Overguard maneuver. There’s a place where the Junior League does training called Overguard Hall. It’s… kind of a lot. A lot to live up to, but Alfric always seemed like he had absolutely zero problems with that. The problem for us is that we were getting pretty much nothing out of it. His family has a huge communal vault, and he was allowed to pull two low-tier items from it. They could have outfitted everyone in the party five times over.”

“Ten times,” said Mardin.

“Ah, so it was about money,” said Mizuki. She looked satisfied with that explanation.

“Not money,” said Mardin, shaking his head. He seemed less defensive, even though what Mizuki had said felt like a base accusation of greed to Hannah. “It was about entads, which were going to have a pretty significant impact on our ability to actually do the dungeons. Alfric, basically from the start, years ago when we all met in the Junior League, was talking about how it was important to find storage and transport and kit up as quickly as possible. But there was a whole vault full of it!”

“It might have been one thing if his parents hadn’t allowed it,” said Grig. “But he’d always get sanctimonious about it and lecture us on the virtue of self-reliance and the adventure of cobbling things together, making do, stuff like that. I don’t know if he ever asked them or not, but to us it was always the same thing, like he was telling us we should be happy about starting from virtually nothing.”

“It’s what he likes,” said Hannah. She folded her arms and frowned. “You should have seen him goin’ on about a heavy piece of kit we got. He was happy as a clam about luggin’ the thing around.”

“Right,” said Grig. “But just for myself, my parents weren’t poor, exactly, but between the Junior League and my tutoring and my sisters, they struggled a bit. They were never on the dole or anything, but… Alfric’s family had this gift, this amazing gift that allows them to fit into all kinds of useful roles, all of which have a pretty high pay, plus the Interrium gives them some kind of pay just for existing and benefits if they have kids. And that’s on top of being able to live each day a few times, which gives them more time to gain skills and knowledge, and their ability to try things and fail horribly without consequence.”

“It’s easy to preach self-reliance when you’ve got an easy life,” said Mardin. “I mean, he was always aware of how much easier things were for him, it wasn’t like he was actually preaching. Most of the time, anyway. But we were still getting the raw end of the deal, it felt like. We weren’t going into it for the glory, we were going because we could make a lot of money if we did enough dungeons, or even relatively few of them. It was money that we could use to pay for a better house for our parents or take vacations.”

“We’ve been at it for pretty much a year,” said Grig. “We’ve got fifty-four dungeons under our belts. Not to sound like I’m bragging, but we’ve already got enough to retire.”

“Not enough to retire,” said Mardin, rolling his eyes. “But we do have enough in the way of bound entads that if we keep the party together, we can set up shop in Dondrian and start a business that will let us coast forward.”

“And you got there because of what Lola could provide,” nodded Hannah.

“We might have gotten there with Alfric,” Grig said. “It would have taken longer, but the end point would be the same. And,” he looked at Mardin, “Alfric wasn’t like Lola, he wouldn’t have come here on a whim. A whim that, clearly, wasn’t a whim, because it was all in service of getting to Alfric.”

“Maybe,” said Mardin. “Not the kind of thing we should be saying without at least talking to her first.”

“She actually came and spoke with me,” said Mizuki. “I met her. She seemed like she was definitely here for him.”

“Not that you know for certain,” said Hannah with a sigh. “Grig, Mardin, it was nice to meet you, but we worry your noodles are gonna get cold.”

Mizuki turned to her. “I don’t think that I know enough,” she said. “About who Alfric really is, and whether we’re under threat from Lola. She was intense. Maybe I didn’t get that across as much as I should have.”

“She’s harmless,” said Mardin.

“Yeah, that’s a point of disagreement,” said Grig. “But if it’s the version of the day she’s going to keep, then yeah, she hasn’t ever done anything that would rise to the level of an actual crime.”

“See, that’s the kind of phrasing that really doesn’t help me,” said Mizuki. “Alfric was the same.” She pulled a chair from one of the other tables and sat down to join them without asking. “I need to know specifically what she did.”

When they didn’t seem to mind, or at least didn’t push her away, Hannah reluctantly grabbed a different chair and joined. Mizuki seemed intent on pushing things, and her friendliness was being turned into a bit of a weapon. Hannah wondered whether she even knew she was doing it.

“Well,” said Grig. He seemed, at last, to be thinking about how much to share.

“No one knows,” said Mardin. “It’s all rumors.”

The woman who was serving came over with their noodle bowls, and Hannah asked whether she could have a second. There was a brief pause as there was some rearrangement, with another table being brought over and seats being swapped. Hannah and Mizuki ended up sitting crosswise from each other, which felt a bit unusual once they were there but didn’t warrant correcting.

“Okay,” said Grig. “I’ll hold off on my noodles until Hannah gets hers, and then I can tell you about the rumors.”

“Appreciated,” nodded Hannah. “I’d rather get them more in-depth from Alfric, but if Mizuki is going to insist,” she said with a shrug.

“There were rumors about both of them,” said Grig as Mardin slurped his noodles. “But early on, it was mostly about her, saying… well, saying that she’d been off doing some social exploration in those undone days. The chronos have a reputation for being a bit fast, since they can live each day twice or more, and some of the rumors around Lola were about as bad as they came. Some of it was violence, some of it was relationships, and she got treated like—well, like an adult, by a lot of people, starting early on. That made it a bit hard for people to hang out with her.”

“Happened before our teens,” said Mardin between bites of noodles.

“Well, right,” said Grig. “Maybe when she was eleven or twelve. We didn’t know her then, and didn’t really know her until she was in the Junior League, and then only by reputation. I think she went to a nice school early on, then switched over to mostly having tutors.”

“And the rumors,” said Mizuki. “They were… that she’d killed people?”

Grig nodded. “In the undone days, yeah,” he said. He shrugged. “Like with a lot of rumors, it’s hard to know where they came from, and given they were undone days, it seems like Lola would have been the only one to know. Or maybe she levied threats against someone, telling them what she’d done to them, but those could easily have been lies. Hard to say. The other side of it was a bunch of rumors about her being with all kinds of guys, which—it’s even harder to know where those rumors came from, but I have an easier time believing it.”

“What does she say?” asked Hannah.

“Nothing,” said Grig. “She rolls her eyes and moves on. We don’t… really talk though.”

“Fifty dungeons and you don’t talk?” asked Hannah. Her order of noodles came, and she began to dig in.

“We talk business,” said Grig. “We don’t talk about how she felt about the rumors and whether they might be true. She, um, doesn’t really have compunctions about lying, and we’ve caught her doing that before. Not in that she was trying to screw us over, just… stuff that she’s said that wasn’t actually what happened. Her response was with all the undoing, she has a bit of trouble remembering what actually happened, but, eh. It’s a weak response.” He paused. “And she knows that’s what I’d say about her, but if you could refrain from just repeating it outright. We are going to want some information in exchange for this, you know that, right?”

“Fifty dungeons in a year?” asked Mizuki, ignoring the question. “That seems low, compared with what Alfric wanted.”

“It is,” said Grig. “We’ve had some setbacks. Lola is kind of in charge of the whole thing, which makes sense, given how much more information she has, and how she’s basically been bankrolling us, or was at the start, but… well, when Lola says that we tried a dungeon and failed at it, so we need to take a day off, it’s hard to know whether or not she’s telling the truth or just wants to spend the day doing other stuff. We can’t contradict her, and if we don’t have a reset in our pocket, we don’t want to risk actual death, so we’re kind of at her mercy.” He paused. “Again, she knows all that, and with her, I’m sure she’d have gotten that from me in one of the undone days, but—”

“He’s painting a bad picture of it,” said Mardin. “There are limits to what Oeyr can provide and reasons not to hit a bunch of dungeons in a single day, even though we do have a small team of porters and agents.”

Grig, at least, had the classic manner of a man who had all kinds of issues that were piling up and a deep need to spill them out to someone. It was something that Hannah had seen at the temple quite a few times, and her guess was that the issues he was raising were ones that he went over in his head on a near-daily basis. Mardin was more reserved.

“Porters?” asked Mizuki.

“People they pay to handle things for them,” said Hannah. “We’re sellin’ entads and ectads on our own, but at a certain point, you pay people to do that for you, a counterparty. You get someone who specializes in bastles, in the entad markets, and at the higher levels, you have your own ectad refinery. The biggest dungeoneerin’ teams have twenty or thirty people in their employ.”

“More than that, depending on how much they want to keep in-house,” said Mardin. He seemed to be taking over talking as Grig ate. “And unfortunately for us, all that is under Lola’s control, and she’s… well, got her own things going on, as evidenced by us being in Liberfell as a way to be close to Alfric.”

“And him?” asked Mizuki. “What are the rumors about him?”

“The same, mostly,” said Mardin. “Though a lot of those rumors we got straight from Lola, and the ones we didn’t might have originated from her after their falling-out. I knew through the guilds that he was having a lot of problems finding a party, and some of that might have been from her poisoning people against him. I didn’t really take it that seriously, because it’s what happens when people have a bad breakup, but if we’re here because of him, that means that it’s suddenly party business.”

“Which isn’t great,” said Grig. “There’s a good chance we’ll be seeing more of you, and not just because dungeoneers working in the same area often cross paths.”

“Not that we’re not looking forward to it,” said Mardin, giving Hannah a smile. Hannah had dated a cleric of Oeyr, for a few short weeks, and while she’d been a lovely partner right up until the end, it wasn’t something that Hannah had any interest in repeating. There were too many philosophical differences.

“In the sense that you seem like fine people,” said Grig. “But in the sense that there’s probably some coming clash between Alfric and Lola, no, it’s been nice meeting you, but we don’t actually want to see you again.”

“Shame,” said Mizuki. “I’ve never met a dungeoneer before.”

“Absolute nonsense,” sighed Hannah. “You’ve met loads.”

“Retired dungeoneers,” said Mizuki. “They’re a different breed.”

“All the same,” said Hannah.

“And not career dungeoneers,” said Mizuki. “Not people who do it day in and day out for two or three decades.”

“Take an axe to my neck if I’m still doing this in a decade,” said Grig.

“It’s not that bad,” said Mizuki. She frowned at him. “Is it?”

“How many have you done?” asked Mardin. It was the first time they’d asked for more than surface information.

“We finished our second today,” said Mizuki. She rolled her eyes. “But it wasn’t bad, it was frantic and punishing, but not bad.”

“So you’re a very fresh party,” said Grig. He seemed like he was opening the way for them to say more, but Mizuki’s attention was still on Mardin, and Hannah wasn’t going to say much.

“And you think that’s how you’ll feel fifty-four dungeons in?” asked Mardin. “After you’ve been beaten and bruised more times than you can count, after you’ve seen horrible things happen to your friends, after you’ve been through the selden dungeons, where you have horrible monsters and almost nothing in the way of loot?”

“A chrononaut should help with that, ay?” asked Hannah.

Grig and Mardin looked at each other. “It’s been a point of discussion,” said Grig.

“She’s said she doesn’t like undoing things just because the payout is bad,” said Mardin. “Which I understand.”

“And it’s better than normal dungeoneers get,” Grig said with a nod. “But it’s still the kind of thing that makes you think that maybe you can just settle for a modest existence in the city with what you’ve got.”

“Look,” said Mardin. “Alfric is a good guy, even if he’s a bit tightly wound. You don’t need to worry about him. We wish him well, even. There’s no bad blood on our end. He’ll probably be with you for long enough that he can get his elevation up and have a bunch of dungeon runs under his belt, then get into one of the more serious dungeoneering parties that needs a fifth, or fall back on his family, or… something. But if it’s just a few dungeons he’s got you together for, he’ll probably be a stand-up guy.”

“You think he’d just leave us?” Mizuki frowned.

“Nah,” said Grig. “Alfric will sit you down and go over things in detail, giving you a firm timeline and trying to make it a smooth process. He’s a stickler like that. Which, like we said, means any claims about him having done and then undone some unsavory things kind of ring hollow.”

“I trust him,” said Mizuki, nodding. “I just wanted to know.”

Grig shrugged. “Now you know.”

And it was apparent that this was the other reason they had been so forthcoming: guilt.

“We’re going to have to talk with the others,” said Mardin. “We’re going to have to have a group meeting without Lola to talk about the fact that we went quite some distance over to Liberfell on short notice in order to be around Alfric.”

“Seems likely,” said Grig, sighing. He looked at Mizuki. “We have some solidarity through this, if the Alfric-and-Lola situation comes to a head? We’ll look out for each other, as the uninvolved?”

“Of course,” nodded Mizuki. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you both.”

There were murmurs of assent, and Mizuki and Hannah paid and then left. Hannah was surprised that they hadn’t been pressed further on what they knew of what Alfric had been up to, but she was grateful that she hadn’t had to stonewall them and, worse, make Mizuki do the same. Guilt, again, seemed like it might have saved them from having to be evasive or lie. ‘That guy we suddenly abandoned for a better payout with someone we don’t really like, how’s he been doing?’ It would have taken some brass ones to ask, but in their position, Hannah would have done it.

“Do you ever feel like you’re really, really on someone’s side?” asked Mizuki. “And you don’t know why, exactly, and you’re trying to work it out?”

“Can’t say I’m too familiar,” said Hannah.

“Well, that’s where I am,” said Mizuki. “I’m feeling like I want to defend him against the world. It… probably doesn’t make that much sense. I wanted to sit with them to get more from them, so I could be sure that he wasn’t, I don’t know.”

“The whole point is that you can’t know,” said Hannah.

“Yeah,” said Mizuki. “But I know. I feel it in my bones.”

“You care about him,” said Hannah, nodding. She could feel herself slipping into her clerical mindset, the one used for helping people with their problems. “Not that you shouldn’t, or not that I think there’s a real risk of you gettin’ hurt, but you’re seein’ him as a victim.”

“I am,” nodded Mizuki. “He is.”

“Ay,” said Hannah. “I didn’t say otherwise.”

They were silent as they walked to their hotel, perhaps because both of them were thinking, or perhaps because Mizuki had worked herself into a bit of a state. When they went into the hotel room, Mizuki went looking for Alfric, but as it turned out, he was already asleep, even though the sun was still not quite set. For her own part, Hannah was eager for rest, but she worried about Mizuki and whether their sorcerer would still feel the same iron loyalty in the morning.

Chapter 31 — Delicate Arrangements

When Isra woke, she found that she and Verity had moved together at some point in the night, close enough that their legs were pressed against each other, and one of Verity’s hands was touching the bottom of Isra’s rib cage. Extraction from this situation took a fair bit of time, mostly because Isra was trying her hardest not to wake Verity up, but some of that time was also spent with a tracker’s eyes, seeing how they had come to be touching. They had both moved toward the center of the bed, but it had been Isra’s leg that invaded Verity’s space, and Verity’s arm that had invaded Isra’s.

Isra had vague memories of sleeping next to her father as a little girl, snuggled together under the covers in the winter, but when she was old enough, her father made a bed for her, and they had bunks, away from each other but in the same room, so she could hear her father’s snoring. Her only other experience with sleeping next to someone was with a pack of wolves she’d kept in the house for a week during a particularly bad winter storm.

She had the urge to do that with Verity, to curl up next to her like they were two wolves with a storm howling outside. She wondered whether that was a normal thing to feel, but given that the rest of them had different rooms, she suspected that it was not.

She was the first to rise and spent some time in the common room of their suite, reading from a book that Mizuki had left there the night before, originally borrowed from Hannah. It was a romance novel, of the sort that Isra had only read a few of before, focused on a naive young milliner and a much older wizard who lived in a local castle. There were ten books in Isra’s home, plus the six holy books, and Isra had read all of them from cover to cover many times. It had only been in the past year that she’d discovered there was a small library in Pucklechurch, and then after that, discovered that at a library you were allowed to take whatever books you wanted if you promised to bring them back in good condition. Isra came into town on market days and always stopped at the library to return what she’d read and get something new. There was something that felt both social and intimate about reading, even if she wasn’t sharing what she read with anyone else.

Hannah and Alfric were next to wake up, and they exited their rooms at virtually the same time. Alfric was dressed casually, without any of his armor, just a button-down white shirt that was slightly open at the neck, and a pair of well-tailored trousers secured with a leather belt. Hannah was wearing nearly the same outfit, though her clothes fit her far less well, and they were far different from each other in almost every other way. If they noticed the similarity of their outfits, it went uncommented on by either.

“So,” said Hannah. “I s’pose we’ll do breakfast?”

“Mizuki and I were supposed to go see friends of hers,” said Isra.

“How was Verity?” asked Alfric.

“Good,” nodded Isra.

Alfric shifted. “I’ll try to spend some time with her today, if she’s amenable. We have things we need to do, primarily selling some of what we got from the dungeon. It would give us a good opportunity to talk.”

“Or give her space,” said Isra.

“Perhaps give her space by not talkin’ about the things she doesn’t want talked about,” said Hannah. “But still be there with her, in case she wants to.”

“I suppose,” said Isra. She looked over at the doors and pursed her lips. “It will be some time until they wake up.”

“Schedules are off though,” said Hannah. “Verity went to bed earlier than she normally does.”

“We spent some time talking,” said Isra.

“Oh,” said Hannah, leaning over and looking at the book. “And how’re you findin’ that one?”

“It’s not to my tastes,” said Isra, frowning at the book.

“Ay?” asked Hannah.

“They’re… men,” said Isra. The young milliner and the older wizard both.

“Ay,” Hannah said again, this time not as a question, but rather, with a hint of aggression, like she was getting ready for a fight.

Isra shrugged. She didn’t know what she was supposed to be feeling, or why Hannah might be upset. “It doesn’t matter,” said Isra, setting the book down with no intention of ever picking it back up. She had nothing against romances, but there was something in how the book was written, in how it portrayed the characters, that she hadn’t liked. To try to put it in words would assuredly embarrass her in front of people who seemed to respect her prowess in hunting and fighting.

“Ay,” said Hannah, softening somewhat. She picked up the book and looked at the bookmark that Mizuki had placed in it. “I’ll have to speak with Mizuki when she wakes and see what she has to say about it. I suppose I only told her it was a romance, and it might not be to her tastes either.” Isra was confused by what that might mean, and let it pass.

It took Mizuki quite some time to rise, and Isra wondered what arrangements had been made with these sorcerers that meant they could be so relaxed about their schedule. Plants and animals had rhythms and patterns, responses to the natural conditions, but humans were different, responding to the bells and scheduling things around them. The bells, at least, depended upon the rising and setting of the sun, but there was still something off in people, who would wait for the right bell to open a store, even if they were already there and behind the counter. If you knocked on the door just a few minutes before the right bell, you were rude.

So Isra wondered, as Hannah and Alfric talked about dungeons, whether these sorcerers they were planning to meet were a different sort of people. It made sense for breakfast to be at a certain time, because breakfast involved a certain amount of labor, and unlike animals who could eat what they wanted, with humans, food was best eaten when it was hot. Isra wondered if that, cooking, was what separated humans from animals. Perhaps it led to all the other things.

Mizuki came out of her bedroom, still stretching, with a smile on her face. “These beds are great.”

“Good sleep?” asked Hannah.

“Absolutely great,” said Mizuki. She looked at Alfric. “How are you?”

“Fine,” he said. “Sore.”

“Next time only use one of your legs when haulin’ the wardrobe,” said Hannah. “That way I’ll be able to take out some of the soreness.”

Alfric laughed. “I’ll be sure to, thanks for the tip.” He’d looked quite grim when he’d gone to bed but seemed better with a long sleep. Isra wondered whether this was his first or second time doing the day.

“Ready for breakfast?” asked Mizuki, looking Isra up and down.

“I suppose,” said Isra. “You’ve heard from the guild?”

“From the twins, yes,” said Mizuki. “They’re ready to go, but I think we’ll have a bit to wait while the breakfast is being made. More of a brunch than a breakfast, I think, but it should be fun. And Dom will be there to answer your questions and mine, which is good, right?”

“Good,” said Isra, though she could feel a tightness in her stomach. When she had said yes to Alfric’s proposition, she hadn’t thought that it would lead to anything beyond a momentary adventure. Now she was on the verge of an understanding of herself and her place in the world. It had been unasked for.

After some brief goodbyes, with Verity still sleeping in, the two of them left.

Did Isra like Mizuki? It was a question she turned over in her head, as she often did with questions she asked herself.

Speaking with Alfric was nice. He was good at explaining things, and he seemed to feel a great deal of empathy and understanding for her. With Verity, there were comfortable silences and what felt like an agreement that they could both be quiet. But speaking with Mizuki, while it had a buzzing constancy to it, demanded little of Isra, and in that respect, was pleasant. Waiting around while Mizuki spoke to others at great length was less nice.

Mizuki knew how to cook and was generous with that talent, as well as generous overall, offering her rooms and attempting to be a good host. That uninhibited warmth was a point in her favor.

But did Isra like Mizuki? Did she instinctively want to spend more time with her? It was hard to say. There was something nice about Mizuki, perhaps the way that she seemed to place no particular expectations on other people. She was an easygoing girl. But Mizuki knew the rules of the world in a way that Isra did not, and it was clear to Isra that as much as Mizuki was free-spirited and rules-breaking, Isra’s own breaking of the rules was somewhat looked down upon.

The conversation shifted from topic to topic with only minimal input from Isra. Mizuki talked about chrononauts, and Alfric, and how rumors could be spun from the aether as surely as a wizard making magic, which wasn’t actually how wizards did it, and then she talked about someone named Bethany, who apparently had slighted Mizuki in the distant past, which was now forgiven, but not so forgiven that it wasn’t worthy of comment.

The house was a stately one in a neighborhood that seemed to be filled with stately houses, though the yard was somewhat small in comparison with what people had in Pucklechurch. It was wrapped with a brick wall that had become overgrown with vines, and the vines continued on over the wooden siding of the house too, though they were somewhat more managed there. The gardening was, to Isra’s eye, conspicuous, with plants that didn’t like each other terribly much crowded in together. No doubt someone thought that it looked nice, but it was distinctly lacking in beauty, and given that edible plants were packed in with poisonous ones, she doubted that it served any possible function.

“The flowers are nice,” said Mizuki, leaning down to sniff one.

“Yes,” said Isra, hoping to be blandly inoffensive. It took her mind a moment to catch up. The revelation that she was a druid and saw the world in a way that was distinctly different from others changed the texture of this exchange. Isra had assumed that this was some kind of social nicety of the sort she had trouble with, because that’s what those sorts of things usually were. But with her newfound knowledge, she could see that Mizuki simply saw the world in a different way, a dull and blind way, and to Mizuki, the statement was true, rather than a social lie. “No,” said Isra. “The flowers shouldn’t be there. They’re watered and coddled, clipped.” It might have been fine if it was like the battlefield of the forest, plants fighting each other for nutrients, water, and sunlight, but it wasn’t even that.

“Ah,” said Mizuki, straightening. “Well, I think they look nice.”

“They’re like a caged animal,” said Isra. “A cat with his claws cut off or a dog with its tail docked.”

“You, um, don’t like gardening?” asked Mizuki.

“Gardening for food respects the nature of the plant,” said Isra. “This sort of gardening is offensive. I think I understand it better now though.” It was a painting done by a blind man. Perhaps if you could only feel the paint, rather than see it, you might think it was nice.

Mizuki gave her a thoughtful nod, and Isra felt relief that she wasn’t pressed for more.

After a sharp knock on the door, they were let in by someone wearing a strange outfit that Isra only belatedly realized was a uniform. She had read of uniforms in books but never seen one in person, aside from what the clerics wore. Or perhaps she had seen uniforms, and simply failed to recognize them as such.

They were led into a room where two women were already waiting at a table, though no food was yet in sight. The two women wore almost identical dark blue dresses whose exaggerated shapes, especially in the shoulders, helped to obscure their bodies underneath. Based on their hands and faces though, they were both skinny in a way that Isra had only rarely seen before. They were identical, down to the smallest wrinkles. They were in their fifties, or perhaps even older, possessed of a certain weariness and disaffection. They did not smile or stand to greet Mizuki, though they did exchange brief pleasantries.

“This is the woods witch I told you about,” said Mizuki as they sat down at the broad oak table. “Isra, this is Floren and Doreda Brangle, the local sorcerers in Liberfell. Floren, Doreda, this is Isra Jamin, from Pucklechurch.”

“We extended an invitation to Dom,” said the one on the left, Floren. “We’ll get this breakfast started without her and hope she comes later.”

“She’s a solitary one,” added Doreda. She said this while looking at Isra, and the obvious question seemed to float in the air. Isra didn’t deign to answer it.

“Well, we appreciate it all the same,” said Mizuki. “I feel like it’s been years since I’ve been over here.”

“Too long,” Floren said, nodding. She raised her hand and snapped her fingers, and someone in a uniform came in through a side door, which swung open. The room they were in was fairly small, only big enough for the long table and some chairs, but it had large windows, and there were more plants next to the windows, giving it some sense of openness and life.

“You can request whatever you’d like,” said Doreda.

“Two fried eggs, gelatinous center,” said Mizuki without missing a beat. “Three slices of bacon, some fruit, I don’t care what, and some kind of pastry. And a glass of whatever juice you have.”

The woman nodded, then looked at Isra.

“Two chicken eggs, boiled,” said Isra. “Oatmeal with honey and jam.” She had seen someone eat that and read about it in a book, but never actually had it. “Three slices of bacon. And… fruit.”

“Will you have the eggs hard or soft?” asked the uniformed woman in a pleasant voice.

“Soft,” said Isra, guessing from context.

“The usual for me,” said Floren.

“And me,” said Doreda.

There was some silence until the woman left, which Isra thought was curious. If the woman could hear the snapping, surely she could hear everything they were saying.

“Now then,” said Floren. “How was your second dungeon?”

The question seemed abrupt to Isra, before she remembered that these three were all in a guild together, and Mizuki likely hadn’t just talked to them about the druid business, she had probably included quite a bit more. Knowing Mizuki, perhaps lots more.

“Good!” said Mizuki. “Actually, quite good. We didn’t get as much of a haul from the second one, but we made out well, I think, and we have some eggs incubating, which I have a good feeling about. Though I do have a professional question.”

“So early?” asked Floren. “Very well.”

“There was a giant bear-thing,” said Mizuki, frowning as she tried to remember. “It was the size of a house. And our bard was putting all of her effort into a song specifically for me, some kind of blended amping up of my power. It was like I was electrified, in a good way, able to feel the aether like it was an extension of my skin. I drew on everything I could and focused it into a powerful spell that still somehow managed not to kill the bear. The thing was, I… hurt our bard somehow. I didn’t just break the song, which would have been bad enough, I… took something from her?”

“Ah,” said Floren. “Comes from youth, and indolence as far as your studies go, and not having been in enough parties. Your bard will be fine but likely laid out for a week or so.”

“No,” said Mizuki, frowning. “She was up and singing within an hour or two.”

“Then she comes from good stock,” said Floren, raising an eyebrow. “Most can’t handle it so well.”

“Right, but what happened?” asked Mizuki.

“You pulled from her,” said Doreda. “There are mechanisms within a bard’s mind that affect the aether. They share some similarity to the constructs a wizard can build, though they’re much more tied to the individual and personal to them.”

Mizuki frowned. “So I didn’t just break the spell she was casting to power me up, I broke… her?”

“A piece of her, yes,” said Doreda. “It’s not advisable except in case of emergency, and as my sister said, it typically makes a bard useless until they recover. There’s also a chance that there won’t be a recovery. Sometimes a wound heals back wrong, not the same as it was before. It has to do with the party, which makes people exceptionally vulnerable to each other when it comes to magic.”

“It does?” asked Isra. This had not been mentioned to her when they’d asked her to join the party.

“Oh yes,” replied Floren. “There is a marking to magic, a way in which our magic is ours and not others’.”

“There is some defense against magic that is not your own,” said Doreda, “though it’s trivial to circumvent, in most cases. Your party members have no such protections against your magic, though they do gain some of the innate protections that you have against your own magic.”

“Meaning,” said Mizuki, “that I’d have a harder time killing Isra?”

“It would be difficult in the same ways that killing yourself with magic would be difficult,” said Floren. “By no means impossible.”

“So you’re saying that I touched some part of what it means to be a bard,” said Mizuki. “I… broke it open.”

Floren nodded. “Something that she’d likely been cultivating for a few years.”

“For nearly her whole life,” said Isra.

“Well, all the more impressive that she was able to bounce back,” said Floren. “Or it could be that the collapse was only partial, that you managed to stop what you were doing, or any number of other things.”

“Thinking about the damage, I find it unlikely I only took a part of it,” said Mizuki. She tapped her fingers on the table. “So all I need to do is never do that again, huh?”

“Unless it’s an emergency,” said Floren. “A matter of life and death that’s worth risking your bard.”

“We’re probably not going to run into that,” said Mizuki. She did a poor job of suppressing a smile. “Our party leader is a chrononaut.”

“I’m not sure he wants that to be public,” said Isra. He had not, after all, informed them of it until forced to.

“Yeah, I guess,” said Mizuki. She momentarily looked worried, but it passed quickly. “Well, it’s a real boon for us, and I’m still kind of trying to figure out what it means, but if we go into the dungeons, he can just undo everything if it goes wrong.”

“Unless he’s knocked unconscious,” said Floren.

“Or there’s a problem he doesn’t know about until it’s too late,” said Doreda.

“Well, okay,” said Mizuki. “But it’s nice to have, right?”

“Perhaps,” said Floren. “Opinions on chrononauts and their role in both society and our personal lives vary.”

“We’ve never met one,” said Doreda.

“Well, I’m excited,” said Mizuki, folding her arms.

The food was brought out, and the conversation quieted down as they ate. There was something to the presentation of the food that Isra couldn’t quite put her finger on, a way in which the things she requested had been laid out on the plate, that was unlike other meals she’d had before. The thinness of the plates and bowls that everything was served on seemed to be a part of it, though Isra couldn’t fathom why it was necessary for them to be that way, especially when they seemed so thin. Soft-boiled eggs, as it turned out, were eggs that had been boiled for less time, and Isra was pleased with herself for having figured that out without incident.

It was all delicious, and the oatmeal, while it had a strange texture, she enjoyed more than almost everything else. It was sweet in a way that her own cooking rarely was.

The clinking of utensils on plates and bowls was interrupted when a tall woman dressed in several bulky layers came in and took a quick seat.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said as she settled in. Her eyes moved to Isra. “You’re the baby druid?”

“I guess so,” said Isra.

“Odd for someone not to know,” said the woman, who was no doubt Dom. There was something masculine in her features and a depth to her voice. Isra found it somewhat alluring. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” said Isra. “I think my father knew. He must have.” That was something that had been on her mind. “I didn’t, until recently.”

“But you haven’t asked him about it?” asked Dom. She turned to the serving woman who had come in and said, “Three eggs, boiled soft, and a bowl of oats like the girl has.”

“I didn’t ask because he’s dead,” said Isra. “It happened five years ago.”

“Ah,” said Dom. “A shame, but I’m glad I didn’t stick my foot in it with a pain that’s fresh. Your mother?”

Isra hesitated. “She died in childbirth.”

Dom froze for a moment. “Hmm,” she said, her eyes burning a hole into Isra. “Do you know enough to understand why I would be suspicious of that?”

“Yes,” said Isra. “I was told a druid only comes from a child who has the company of her mother.”

Dom nodded. “And if your mother died in childbirth, you were then raised by…” She trailed off, allowing Isra to fill in the gap.

“My father,” said Isra.

“And what did you do for milk?” asked Dom.

Isra frowned. “I don’t know.”

“If you’re a druid, you can’t have a wet nurse, not unless it’s an animal wet nurse, and—” Dom paused, looking down at Isra’s plate. “Is that bacon on your plate?”

“Yes,” said Isra.

“You understand a pig is a sort of animal?” asked Dom.

“I do,” said Isra. She tried not to be insulted by the question and failed.

“Odd to meet a druid who hasn’t come to the same conclusions about the consumption of meat,” said Dom. “Not the oddest thing about you though.”

Isra frowned. “Sorry.”

“Well, don’t be sorry, it’s your own choice, but you’ve spoken with animals, haven’t you?” Dom frowned. She was moving fast, with a sort of impatience that Isra was unaccustomed to. “Have you?”

“I have,” said Isra. “They seem not to have the same minds that we do.”

“Well, no, I’ll grant that,” said Dom. “There’s nothing complex in the thinking of a pig, but there is quite a lot that’s simple. You almost wouldn’t call it talking, but it feels like talking, and of course when you have an animal with you, it takes on something of you.”

“It does?” asked Isra, not quite following.

“Certainly,” said Dom. “Haven’t you noticed that they have moods to match your own?”

Isra thought about that. “No,” she finally said. “I haven’t noticed. I’ll watch for it next time.”

“Druids are rare,” said Dom. “And we’re a poorly understood breed, even more than sorcs, where we find some common cause.”

“It’s impossible to make a sorcerer though,” said Floren. “That’s one of the primary places we differ.”

“As well as having completely different powers,” said Doreda, nodding.

“All the same, misunderstood,” said Dom, waving a hand. “Tell me, what do you do, aside from having lived in the woods alone for what seems to have been most of your life?”

“I… hunt,” said Isra.

“Oh?” asked Dom, with deliberate calm. “What do you hunt?”

“Deer,” said Isra. “Foxes. Rabbits. The least agreeable of animals.”

“So you discriminate?” asked Dom. “You pick and choose which ones aren’t worthy of life?”

Isra stayed silent for a moment, trying to collect her thoughts, which were swirling. It wasn’t that she thought that a deer wasn’t worthy of life, it was that certain creatures seemed to lack the nobility of others, and if there was a twinge of regret when she loosed her arrow, it was lesser with something like a deer. She didn’t seem to think that she was unique in that regard, not when people kept certain animals as pets and ate others. The decision of what to eat and what to keep seemed, to her, somewhat arbitrary, but she had made her own arbitrary rules on the basis of how she felt about those animals, and it worked for her, in the sense that she’d made peace with killing certain animals and not others.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” said Isra. She turned to the twins. “Thank you for the food.”

“Settle down,” said Dom as Isra started to rise. “You’re right, it’s an inappropriate thing for us to talk about. You didn’t come here for that. Stay, and I can talk about the things that you did come here for.”

Isra settled back in her seat. “I’ve heard stories about us.”

“People think we can do many things, and we can,” said Dom. “But the things they think we can do aren’t always possible. I offer that by way of caution.”

“We can talk to plants,” said Isra. This was not something she’d ever really tried until a few days ago and seemed to take both skill and patience.

“‘Talk’ is perhaps not the right word,” said Dom, nodding. “But it’s close enough. Things take on a bit of you when you interact with them. They get some of you when you get some of them. Trees… they need more of you and have less of themselves to give. Other plants have even less. The way I think of it, and druids aren’t all the same in this way, everything that I touch becomes a bit of me, at least for a time. Once you realize that, you can exercise it, more than you’ve been doing naturally.”

Isra frowned at that, thinking. “They have their own personalities,” she said.

“With animals?” asked Dom. Isra nodded. “Well, they do have rudimentary minds, of a sort. But it’s also because of how you view them. That matters. One of the things you’ll learn, if you haven’t learned it on your own, is to view the world in different ways and draw out aspects of what you see.”

Isra frowned. “How do I do that?”

Dom laughed. “Well I have no idea how you view the world, do I?” she asked. “So how can I tell you how to view it in a different way? It’s like trying to give you directions to a place without knowing where you’re starting from. And I have to say, you seem like you’re in need, but having a baby druid as an apprentice isn’t what I’ve agreed to here.”

“That’s fine,” said Isra. “I only need to know.” It felt like there was more to that thought, but it was complete on its own, and Isra left it there. ‘I only need to know everything’.

“Your powers, such as they are, extend to everything in the natural world except people,” said Dom. “That includes rocks, by the way, though if you thought trees were slow, you’ve seen nothing of the thickheadedness of a rock.”

“Uh,” said Mizuki. “Rocks can’t think though?”

“And trees can’t move,” Dom said, nodding. “They don’t have muscles. Once you realize that being a druid means having a part of yourself in the world, and the world inside of you, it gets to be a lot easier.”

“But not other people,” said Isra.

“Other people, no,” said Dom. “Not worked materials either, metal being the worst of them, with glass a close second. It would be handy to know a person in the way you can know an animal, but no.”

Isra pursed her lips. That would have been beyond handy, just to know people like she knew the flowers and the pines, or the martens and the voles. And if druidism worked in the way that Dom said it did, then having a bit of Isra in the people around her and a bit of them in her would have cured all her woes as far as people went. She would understand them, and they would understand her.

Dom got her food and ate it quickly, the eggs going into her mouth whole, and the flavored oatmeal following it down after that. Isra stayed silent, finishing her own food, even the bacon, which was apparently taboo for a druid. Mizuki made small talk with the twins, mostly involving what she’d done in the dungeons, as well as some technical details with regard to the magic that Verity and Hannah were able to provide. Mizuki, at least, seemed to be enjoying it.

“Well,” said Dom once she’d finished, “I have some outstanding questions about your father and how you could possibly be a druid, but I can read the room well enough to know that can wait for later. What’s left, I think, is to ask whether or not you’re in a guild and whether you’d want to join ours.”

“I’m not in a guild,” said Isra. “I never have been.”

“I can give you an invitation, and it will be voted on tomorrow morning, though you’re sure to be in,” said Dom. “It’s a guild of druids, most of those in the Greater Plenarch, about a hundred all told. They’ll have questions of their own, I’m sure, but you don’t need to give them much in the way of answers. There’s some matters of etiquette that I’m sure your party members will fill you in on. And with that, there are things I need to attend to.”

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “I had a question about dungeons.”

“Dungeons?” asked Dom. “Meaning?”

“Why can’t she do the animal control thing in a dungeon?” asked Mizuki.

Dom looked between Mizuki and Isra. “You’re a dungeoneering party?”

“Er, yes,” said Mizuki.

“Oh,” said Dom, sitting back in her seat. “Not very usual, for a druid.”

“You don’t call yourself a woods witch?” asked Mizuki.

“What?” asked Dom. “No.”

“There’s a madness to the creatures in the dungeons,” said Isra. “A madness that their children don’t share.”

“Yes,” said Dom. “Only toward people and not typically each other.” She shrugged. “A mistake of Editors long, long past and apparently impossible to rectify. Probably, anyway, they’re tight-lipped. You be careful, going into the dungeons, that you don’t let it infect you.”

“Infect me?” asked Isra.

“The world takes on a part of you, and you take on a part of the world,” said Dom. “That applies just the same to the dungeons. The better you are at extending your being into the world, the better the world will be at extending itself into you. It’s something you’ll want to be careful with. Close yourself off to the world when you go into a dungeon. Practice closing yourself off to the world, so that you can’t hear the birds or the clouds.”

“It’s dangerous,” said Isra. “In dungeons. For me more than others.”

“A bit,” said Dom. “Worth it for your team though. You’ll know what’s good to eat and what’s not, what can be taken, hides that can be skinned, plants that might bear fruit. You’ll know stones that can be grabbed and processed for ectads.” She shrugged. “We’re in demand. Join the guild. We can do it now.”

Dom had a well-worn piece of paper with the instructions written on it, and they went through the motions together, and the invitation was extended and confirmed. It wouldn’t be until tomorrow morning that the vote went out, and the day after that when Isra got her first message. She was nervous about it.

“We’ll help you as best we can. You’re unusual, as far as druids go, but you’re still a druid, and we have certain ways of looking at the world.” Dom stood up once again. “It was good to meet you, baby druid, even if you’re not so much a baby as we usually get.”

“It was good to meet you too,” said Isra, though she was feeling like a stone had been dropped into her stomach.

When she’d been told that she was a druid, it had felt as if everything was going to slot into place, as if this would explain everything. It had, in a way, but only in one way, and now, looking at Dom, seeing a fairly normal person and being told that she was unusual by the standards of druids and wasn’t expected to fit in with them… well, the stone-in-the-stomach feeling wasn’t going away. If anything, it was getting worse.

Chapter 32 — A Tree from a Stone

Knowing that Lola was around in Liberfell put a bit of fear into Alfric.

Being the only chrononaut made things simple. It was only him, and it was always the first time the day had been done. With a second chrononaut, he was put in the position of everyone else, which he had never found himself enjoying. Was this the first time through? Was it going to be wiped away like chalk washed from a slate, living on only in the mind of someone else? Or was he going to be blindsided by something that had happened in an undone day? He trusted the people in his family to tell him if they had some kind of interaction with him, since they did that on a regular basis, but with Lola, there was the opposite of trust. She was almost solely responsible for everything bad that had happened to him. She was every bad thing they said about chrononauts.

They were still, in some technical sense, pacted. Alfric had gone to his parents and explained things, then gone to her parents and explained things, and this was taken to be a temporary spat between the two of them, as much as he’d said that he wanted nothing to do with her. He was never going to marry her or have children with her. To have children, his children, be raised by her seemed unconscionable.

In quiet moments, when he was feeling the pain of her departure, he wished that she would somehow die. He didn’t wish violence on her and of course had no intention of taking offensive action against her, but if she could just… not exist anymore. He felt guilty for these thoughts, but that didn’t stop them from coming.

Chrononauts interacted with each other on a system of priority, and Lola had come into her power first, by quite a few years, despite them being the same age. This meant that she got to live the day “first” in some technical sense, but it also meant that he could respond to whatever it was she ended up doing. Overall, he wasn’t certain which position he would prefer to be in, because there were advantages of either. That was the way it was though, and Alfric knew there was no choice but to live out the day and not think too much about what might be happening with the flow of time.

“The hotel lobby has pastries,” said Hannah. “That’s a good enough breakfast for me, if it suits the two of you.”

“I don’t think I’ll have breakfast,” said Alfric.

“Me neither,” said Verity. She had gotten up late, as predicted, but not as late as she normally did. “My stomach still isn’t quite used to it, even with almost a week of having Mizuki cook for me.”

“Well, I can eat as we walk then,” said Hannah. “We’ve things to sell today and a trip to the local League office.”

“We need to get the wardrobe back to Pucklechurch,” said Alfric. A thought occurred to him. “Better to get it back sooner than later.”

“You’re still worried about it getting stolen, are you?” asked Hannah.

“I’m worried that Lola knows about it,” said Alfric. “And if she knows about it, then yes, there’s a possibility that she’ll steal it from us.”

“I don’t really understand why she hates you so much,” said Verity.

“I don’t either,” said Alfric. “We were pacted, and we were friends beyond that, but… I don’t know why she’s intent on interfering. If she is. I don’t know why she’s here.” Certainly if the previous day was viewed from the perspective of ‘everything that happened was what Lola wanted to have happened’ it didn’t seem all that bad. She had stirred the pot, but not to within the limits of her ability. She hadn’t planted rumors and apparently hadn’t even told Mizuki that they were chrononauts.

“I mean no offense,” said Hannah. “But how do you know she was responsible for it all? Your other failures.” She said it very gently.

“I was wondering that myself,” said Verity. She was less gentle.

Alfric felt a sourness in his gut. “It’s a fair question,” he said. “She admitted to taking the party and doing it to manipulate me. I think she must have tried other methods before doing something so extreme, and it obviously took some planning on her part. Relationships between chrononauts are complicated, though, because you end up knowing someone through undone days, and most of what passed between the two of us probably happened in days I never experienced.” He could feel himself hesitating when it came to the core question. “She did take the party though, and that was first for leverage, which failed, and then for spite. As for everything else, the rumors seem like they have her as the obvious source, unless people suddenly decided to make things up about me at the same time she left with the group. Actual sabotage… I don’t know. For too much of it, she was on the other side of Inter. Not that she couldn’t have used travel entads, and her family has good ones, but… I don’t know. It seems implausible to do it and not get caught by anyone.” It was entirely possible that some of the failures were his own, beyond the problems that Lola had created.

“The rumors might have started because you had a group collapse on you,” said Hannah. “Just playin’ the imp, since I don’t know, of course. There were rumors about her, after that, weren’t there?”

“I suppose,” said Alfric. “Uglier than the normal rumors about her.”

“Four men and a woman,” said Hannah, clucking her tongue. “I can practically taste the rumors.”

“I’ve never really understood that,” said Verity. “They get that women and men can sleep with each other in any combination, don’t they?”

“Well, ay,” said Hannah. “And let me tell you, at the seminary, where symmetrical sexuality was more of a given, people would jump on any two women spendin’ time together as cause for gossip. Alfric, do you think she would?”

“Would what?” asked Alfric.

“Have a relationship with any of them,” said Hannah. “Just out of curiosity.”

“This is the ectad shop I was told about,” said Alfric. He was still lugging around the book, which had the stone in it, which in turn had the two tall trees they’d managed to get into it. He was going to be happy when he could go without carrying around fifty pounds of book. His legs needed a rest. “And no, I don’t think she would, but when she left, she made it clear that I didn’t know her as well as I had thought.”

The ectad shop was on the edge of town, as ectad places often were, since they needed somewhere to house their equipment. Wilch, over in Tarchwood, hadn’t had the full setup, but this place seemed to have it all. There were big vats for distilling down materials, grinders for reducing stone to dust, and furnaces for melting metals. Ectad materials came in a variety of different forms, which then had to be refined in various ways, all of which had to be done differently depending on what the end result would be, especially because they usually started ‘expressing’ partway through the process. A half-completed waterstone would start leaking water, which would create all kinds of problems if the ectad engineer wasn’t prepared for it.

“Wait,” said Alfric as a man walked over to them. “Wilch?”

“Nah,” he said. “Wilch is my brother.” He shook his head. “Not even twins, and we get mistaken for each other all the time.” He held out a hand to Alfric. “You must be the up-and-comer. I got a guild message about you. Name’s Besc.”

Alfric shook hands. Besc had the same build as Wilch did, barrel-chested and a bit of fat on what were probably powerful arms. They were both mostly bald, with wild hair, a thick beard, and a wide nose that marked them as having Chelxic ancestry.

“Pleasure to meet you,” said Alfric. He looked around the yard. “We have two trees, but they might be a pain to get out, and any assistance you could give would be great.”

“And these trees,” said Besc, nodding, “they’d be the ones lodged up your butt?”

Verity burst out laughing, and Besc smiled at her, chuckling to himself. “Only a joke, only a joke,” he said. “Wilch told me about you, and I take the shots I see.”

“The trees are inside an extradimensional entad,” said Alfric, not quite sure how to deal with this sort of man. “You access it through a stone.”

“And how large are the trees, kworma?” asked Besc. It was a Chelxic word of affection, one of only a few that Alfric knew, and meant something like ‘friend’, though was used more casually.

Alfric held his arms out. “Three feet wide, about.”

Besc whistled. “A good haul then.”

“Hopefully,” said Alfric. It was quite a lot of wood, overshadowed by the bear but probably the most valuable thing in that dungeon. “They’re of the growth variety. You handle that here?”

Besc nodded. “Wilch probably told you we have a better setup here. This one is the family business, the one in Tarchwood was taken over by Wilch about ten years back. It’ll take time and effort, and growth is harder to process than the others, but I can handle it.”

“Getting it out of the stone is the first thing,” said Alfric. “It felt like a miracle that we were able to get them in, and I’ve been worried about whether or not we’d be able to extract them.”

He took his pack off and extracted the book, quickly flipping to the page that had the stone and then pulling it out. The stone itself was also heavy, but with the book, it wasn’t so bad. He set the stone down on the ground, thankful that it took a tiny mental push to activate, and looked at it for a moment. It was pale, with lots of vesicles. He touched it and felt himself transported to the garden, though he knew that he was still present in the normal world. The two trees were exactly where he’d left them, immense and probably impossible to move without cutting them up, which was a problem, given that you had to stay touching the stone in order to stay ‘in’ the garden. The trees were huge, a valuable find that they wouldn’t have been capable of removing without the stone, and it had only just barely been done, with this further complication.

It was the kind of thing that had attracted Alfric to dungeoneering, the same as the uncomfortably large wardrobe. He couldn’t quite explain what the appeal was.

“You can touch it,” Alfric said to Besc. “See what we’re dealing with.”

Besc moved forward and tentatively touched the stone, then kept his grip there for a moment. He stayed right where he was, but it was clear that he was looking around at things that the rest of them couldn’t see. He moved his hand from the stone, then stopped to look down at it.

“Well,” he said. “Any secrets to this stone, or is this what we’re working with?”

“You can bring in organic things,” said Hannah. “And take organic things out. Entads work, if they’re completely organic, and ectads work too. Not glass, not metal, not stones unless they’re unworked. You’ve got to keep your hand on the stone though, or you’ll end up out of the garden.”

Besc whistled to himself. “Thorny,” he said. “Chengu. But with what’s there, I see profit in it for both of us.” He let out a sigh.

“We’ll try getting the trees out the easy way first,” said Alfric. He looked around the area. “We should be able to put a tree along this road, if I can get it out. If I can’t, then I think we move on to raising it up high enough. The way we got the trees in was by momentarily ‘catching’ them as they fell.”

“Seems dangerous, kworma,” said Besc, rubbing his hairy chin.

That wasn’t the half of it, since Alfric had been working with Mizuki, and she was using whatever was available in the aether, namely, immense amounts of tightly focused fire. He’d been lucky she hadn’t killed him in the process.

Alfric picked up the stone and repositioned it so that if the first tree came out, it would be lying across the road, then went into the garden, made sure that it was lined up, and reached over to touch the tree. He tried to set his mind on it, to will it into his grip and bring it out.

This didn’t work, but Alfric hadn’t been optimistic enough to think it would.

“All right,” he said. “The easy way didn’t work.” He turned to Besc. “Do you have floatstones I can use?”

Besc grimaced. “I do, but what happens to them when they’re in that space? Besides, it’s a delicate operation, using them, and usually I’d have chains, but I don’t think that would be possible.”

“Ropes then?” asked Alfric. “They’re made of hemp or flax and should be fine to go through.”

“How much buoyancy would you need to lift one end of those?” asked Besc. “We’re probably talking in the hundreds of pounds, and that runs some real risks, especially with just rope to hold things down and a hand on the stone at all times.”

“A foot should work too,” said Hannah. “That would leave two hands free.”

“Ah, well,” said Besc. “Still a lot of problems to be solved there.” He stepped forward and placed his hand on the stone again, then put out a hand toward where the tree was in that other space. “My guess is fourteen thousand pounds, all told. That’s a rasan of raw material, but it’ll take quite some time to process. I can do, say, a thousand pounds a week, if that. And with two? That’s half a year of work.”

“He’s already trying’ to talk down the price,” said Hannah. “I can respect that, ay.”

“I can’t pay for it all,” said Besc, shaking his head. “Not at anywhere near a proper rate. Just being upfront, kworma. I can do the processing and pay you once I have the money coming in, but nearly thirty thousand pounds? Not sure who would handle this kind of thing, if not me. Wilch doesn’t have the equipment for it. That means you’d be going, oh, up to two hundred miles away, maybe more.”

“Probably all the way to Plenarch,” said Alfric, sighing. “Which we’d almost certainly need a portal for, and that will be down to timing, along with what’s probably a long hike.”

“We’re not in a rush, are we?” asked Hannah.

“No, we’re not,” said Verity. “So long as we can come collect in six months’ time, it seems like it would be fine.”

“I suppose,” said Alfric. “But we can’t do anything until the trees are out.” If they could get the trees out in the first place.

“Just making sure that we’re on the same page,” said Besc. “It would be a shame to do all this and then come to a disagreement once the labor is done. There’s the matter of terms,” he said. “The wood will take time to process, and the product—well, it would be better if I had a buyer for it before I started putting it into molds. Growthstone is good for a lot of things, but it’s best for dungeon plants. For something like this, not that a half-year job is usual, I’d take seventy percent.”

Alfric grimaced. It was on the high side. Knowing the people out here, there was probably nothing like auditing services, though it wasn’t clear how much money they’d get from the sale in the end and whether the services of an auditor would be even remotely worth it. Besc did own all the equipment, had the knowledge to run it, had the assistants to help with labor, and would be doing most of the labor himself.

“Sixty-five, for a first-timer,” said Besc. He had, perhaps, mistaken Alfric’s waffling on the deal for an attempt at bartering. Alfric didn’t particularly like bartering or haggling, but it seemed painfully common in the region.

“Sixty,” said Hannah. “With this kind of volume, the work is easier, and you’re makin’ more off it, ay.”

“My equipment, my labor, and if you want to go elsewhere, you’ve got a few days of work ahead of you,” he said. “Sorry, but that’s how it is.”

“Fine by us,” said Hannah. “We didn’t have much else planned.” She moved to the stone and began to pick it up, as though she was actually going to put it back in the book, after all that.

Besc sighed. “Sixty then, you cheeky kids.” He held out a hand, and Alfric shook it. Besc chuckled. “Sorry for pressin’ it, but I had to try, eh kworma?” He looked to Hannah. “Would you really have gone to Plenarch?”

“Ay,” said Hannah. “Best not to bluff, because then someone might call you on it.” She gave him a wide smile.

“You be careful of these Cairbre women,” Besc said to Alfric. “They can be fierce.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Alfric.

Besc looked at his workshop. “Before we try the floatstones, we’ll lever it up. I don’t think I have the floats for that much weight anyhow.” He looked back at Alfric. “You’re a big strong dungeoneer, can you swing a hammer?”

“I can,” said Alfric, frowning. “But why?”

“To get a wedge under,” said Besc. “With a long length of wood and a wooden hammer, we can try elevating it up, and from there we might be able to do a rope, and from there, if we can do it in a secure way, the floatstones, though that’s its own problem, since the mountings I have for the ballast are metal. Might be worth it still to make wooden ones, but we’ll see.” He rubbed his face, looking down at the pocked stone. “I don’t know of anyone with a storage entad that could be used for the transfer. The best I know is two thousand pounds, my friend Geoff, but it’s half metal, so probably wouldn’t make it through. Might be a better way to go about it though. Or we could get a cleric involved…”

“I’m a cleric of Garos,” said Hannah.

“Well, not too much help there,” said Besc. “I was thinking Oeyr, to fracture it into pieces, though that would create some problems… Can you move the stone?”

“Move it?” asked Alfric.

“Move it in the garden,” said Besc, looking down at the stone. “Pick it up and put it somewhere else.”

Alfric swore. “I never even thought of that. In my defense, we’ve only had it for a day, but—it’s worth a shot.”

He touched the stone, entered the garden, then used both hands to pick the stone up, which did, in fact, seem to work. It meant that he would be able to arduously maneuver around by hefting the stone, and better, possibly just strap it to his back, though the fact that he was still moving in the normal world, completely blind to what was around him, was a fairly significant drawback to the whole thing.

It took a few hours, and Alfric half expected Verity and Hannah to slip away, but they stayed through it, which he appreciated. A cleric of Kesbin was summoned, and once it was explained to her, it all went a little bit easier. Division into parts was a part of Kesbin’s domain, and with enough time and preparation, it was possible for the cleric to make precise cuts along centerlines. This naturally required some pay, which turned out to be somewhat significant, given that it wasn’t the sort of thing that a cleric could do without limit. With Hannah helping though, each ‘cut’ only needed to be halfway through before Hannah could make it symmetrical.

It was nearly noon when they got the first piece of tree out, but once that was done, the rest of it seemed to go faster, in part because the smaller sections of the two trees were easier to work with. Pieces came out, one by one, and once they did, Besc went at them with a huge axe, chopping them into more manageable sizes, which were then carried off by his assistants.

They gathered a little bit of an audience as time went on, mostly friends of Besc who wanted to see what was going on, but also a few people who seemed to have nothing better to do than to stop and chat. Partway through, perhaps because she’d been in conversation with some of the people who were watching, Verity started to sing, though she didn’t lace the song with any magic. She seemed happy enough to sing, and Alfric was pleased that she seemed to be in high spirits. Verity hadn’t liked her life at the conservatory, but she did like music and seemed like the sort of person that would have pursued it even if there was no magic involved.

As a show of friendship, Besc bought lunch for everyone who’d had a hand in the effort, including Alfric’s party. Alfric had suspected that it would be Chelxic food but was mildly surprised that it was instead from a Kiromon place. They were ginger-pork sandwiches, made with a milk bread and some kind of crunchy breading on the pork, and Alfric wondered whether this was something Mizuki knew how to make.

“Not so many people from Chelxic here,” said Besc. “Liberfell has at least a thousand from Kiromo, though most of the old-timers went back home, and the people left are the ones who were raised here. The change of emperors was a big thing.”

“There are a lot of Chelxican people in Dondrian,” said Alfric. “I miss the food.”

“A true kworma,” laughed Besc. “Our father, gone to the Spirit Gates now, came out here because the city offered him good pay. I can’t say it’s wrong, but there’s a lot we miss. I’ve got three little boys who aren’t going to taste yucra or tuntre unless we make a long trip, and even then, it won’t be from Chelxic.” He wiped his mouth. “Do you ever think about going back to Tarbin?”

“My family has been in Interim for five hundred years,” said Alfric. He shrugged. “I don’t even really know what it’s like there. We’ve been Inter for more than a dozen generations, Inter for longer than most of Interim has been Inter.”

“Ah, well, your roots don’t go away,” said Besc.

Alfric wasn’t so sure about that, but it was hard to know. His family was unique in more ways than one, and he didn’t really have much to compare them to. Perhaps Besc was right and he would be able to find something in common with people from Tarbin, but he somewhat doubted it. Of course, Tarbin was a conglomerate nation, stuck together from many component peoples and provinces, and his own family traced their history back to North Tarbin, but he knew relatively little about it.

“Well, that took longer than expected,” said Hannah. “And no sign of little Lola.”

“No, thankfully,” said Alfric. His thoughts went to undoing the day and the unhappy prospect of doing all that work over again, though if he had to, he thought that he’d probably be able to do everything a lot faster and without so much thinking the problem over. “We still need to visit the League office. I don’t really want to spend the night in Liberfell again, but it’s seeming more and more likely that at least one of us will have to stay behind to finish up with lingering business.”

“You have your dagger, don’t you?” asked Verity.

“I do,” said Alfric. “It’s back in Pucklechurch, at the temple, so I can return to it, but I’m not going to leave the four of you behind. I can take one person with me, maybe, but part of the reason we’re here is to see if there’s a solution for taking all four of you.” He’d tested it with Mizuki two days before, and the two of them had gone with her standing on his feet, but he hadn’t had the armor then, and it was close to the weight limit.

“Do you think Mizuki’s idea would work?” asked Verity.

“Which was that?” asked Alfric.

“Going into the garden naked, carried in,” said Verity.

“You wouldn’t need to do that, if it were possible,” said Hannah. “All you’d need is to take off your metals, I’d think. But like I said, we’d want to test with an animal first, just to make sure you can breathe the air there.”

“Tie it up with some twine,” said Alfric, nodding. “Since we wouldn’t be able to put a cage in there. Okay, we’ll add that to the agenda.”

“I thought you should know,” said Hannah. “That we—me and Mizuki—ran into a few of your old teammates over noodles. Grig and Mardin. We talked a bit. Mizuki blabbed but less than she might have.”

“And they talked?” asked Alfric. He felt a weary resignation more than direct apprehension.

“They seemed guilty about it,” said Hannah. “And had nice things to say about you, more or less. Seems like there’s some trouble within their party, much of which is down to Lola.” She shrugged. “I think Mizuki just wanted some assurance that we weren’t in bed with a viper, and so far as I could tell, she did feel assured.”

“Good,” said Alfric. “That’s what’s important.”

“They said,” said Hannah, “well, that at least some of the split was over money, or equipment. I just wanted to let you know that for me, that’s nothin’ I care too much about.”

“No?” asked Alfric. “Can I ask why not?”

“Your perspective, if I understand it, is that you need self-determination,” said Hannah. “You need to know that your life isn’t just down to the circumstances of your birth, that your success is from the sweat of your brow. I can respect that, and it’s a common enough sentiment, enough so that we’re taught about it at the seminary.”

“It’s partly that,” said Alfric, nodding. He looked over at Verity.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever felt the same,” said Verity. “I wanted my successes to be my own. I suffered under the pressure and from wondering whether I was being praised for my actual talent or—circumstances beyond my control.” She still hadn’t told the others that she was a Chosen of Xuphin, and Alfric hoped that she would, in her own time. “But I would never take pride in using worse tools.”

“That’s the other part,” said Alfric. “Going into a dungeon kitted out with world-class entads, it would mean… well, being a tourist, basically. It wouldn’t be the same thing. I’ve tried to explain this before, and I don’t think that I’ve gotten any better at it, but to me, it would suck everything marvelous and wonderful about dungeoneering from the experience. And I know, I say that as someone who can,” he lowered his voice, “turn back time, and who comes from a very rich family, and was given every single advantage, but slicing through a dungeon with autonomous blades and foot-thick armor, incinerating anything that came within a hundred feet of us, then picking up entads that we’d have no use for, which would get sold off… I don’t know.”

“I understand the feeling,” said Hannah, nodding. “There’s no fun in winnin’ a game that you’ve cheated at, at least in my experience.”

“I don’t want to say that going into the dungeons is a game,” said Alfric. “It’s not, I know it’s not.”

Hannah put a hand on his knee. “I’m not here to attack you. You’ve got your ideology, and while I don’t know that I quite agree, I don’t think it’s bad, and I hope you know that I’m not going to ask you to leverage,” she waved her hand, “whatever advantages you have. And I doubt that Verity feels differently.”

“I left a lucrative career,” said Verity. “And a family of means.” She had been mostly silent. “Different reasons though.” She shrugged. “I don’t think you see it as a game. I think for you, it’s… something else. A pretty song you don’t want stripped of its melody.”

The metaphor didn’t track for Alfric, but there was a feeling to it that he could see the sense in.

“We’re here for you,” said Hannah. Her voice was soft and warm. “History won’t repeat itself, not with us. I can’t speak for the others, but for myself, you’re a good partner and a worthy leader.”

Alfric nodded and hoped that it was true.

Besc came over as Alfric was finishing his sandwich. “Thanks for the help,” Alfric said. “We’ll stop in periodically to see how you’re progressing.”

“Don’t expect much for another week or two,” said Besc. “Should I hold one for you? Dungeoneers tend to like having a spare growthstone.”

“Unless you have a buyer,” said Alfric, shrugging. “We haven’t found any seeds or plants yet, so it’s not urgent.” With Isra, they could do some plant identification, and perhaps that would allow some level of comparative advantage. Most plants and animals pulled from the dungeons were worthless though, and it was a numbers game in terms of finding something that was good enough for propagation or cultivation.

<We’re finally done at the ectad seller,> said Hannah. <What are the two of you up to?>

<Done with breakfast, done with lunch,> said Mizuki. <Isra wanted to go for a hike around some of the local woods and parks, and I decided to go with her. We’re looking for rocks and plants.>

<I collect them,> said Isra.

<Seems good enough,> said Hannah. <We have more business, and we’re hopin’ to finish up by nightfall so we can take the dagger back to Pucklechurch. We were going to do your idea and hide away inside the garden.>

<Seems scary,> said Mizuki. <What if we get stuck?>

<We’ll do testin’ first,> said Hannah.

<Well, we’re continuing on with our hike,> said Mizuki. <Let me know when you’re ready to go and we’ll meet at the warp point.>

Alfric was glad to hear from them and to know that they were okay. Business was continuing along as normal, and there had been no signs of Lola or the others, for which he was grateful. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all going to go south.

Chapter 33 — Possibilities

As they stepped into the entad shop, Verity was contemplating what she was going to buy, if anything. A musical instrument wasn’t a must for a bard, but it could be helpful in many ways, and it was how she’d been trained as well as being her preference. The problem was that entads didn’t tend to have the most convenient forms to them, and a dungeon was as likely to produce a baryton or a viol as it was to produce a drum or a lute. In fact, the dungeons would also produce instruments that bore only surface similarities to the kinds of things a luthier would make, bespoke items that seemed as though they had been manufactured by some alternate alien world. The many-finger flute, which she kept strapped to one leg, was useful in that it could make some of those instruments usable when they otherwise wouldn’t be, which Alfric had brought up days ago. She’d appreciated the insight.

The lute was Verity’s preferred instrument, the one she practiced with every day, but like any self-respecting conservatory-trained musician, she was well versed in musical theory and had practiced to some level of proficiency with many different stringed instruments. Still, if she found a proper entad instrument, there was likely to be a transitional period in which she simply wasn’t up to snuff with it, and she loathed the idea of giving up her lute, which she had a long, fond familiarity with.

The entad shop was a small one, by comparison with some of the enormous places available in Dondrian, but it was nice and cozy, in a way that a lot of places in the area seemed to be. In Dondrian, many of the shops seemed to be using their space as a way to seem grand and imposing, but in a place like Liberfell, where land was plentiful and the population was relatively small, there was no need for that, so they went with making it as welcoming as possible. It was an interesting difference and one of the things that had made Verity happy that she’d chosen to come so far away from the big cities.

Verity found herself mildly impressed that Alfric had been carrying around the fifty-pound book for so long. She was, at least, glad that she wasn’t the one who had to do it. She busied herself with looking at entads while Alfric and Hannah talked to the shopkeeper, a boy around their own age.

Each of the entads in the shop had a little card next to it, which described the effects of the entad and its particulars, including how it had done on something called a scratch test and some details of its provenance and testing. The costs weren’t listed, which was somewhat traditional in these places since each entad was, by definition, unique.

There was a pencil that would never run out of lead, a matchbox that could make matches out of plain sticks, and a pillow that could change size. Verity stopped at a dictionary that would give the definition of any word you spoke aloud, in any language, with the caveat that it would give made up definitions if the word didn’t exist.

“Kworma,” she said.

The definition appeared within the pages of the book. ‘Kworma: noun, Chelxic word for friend or ally, often used as a term for a customer or conversational partner.’

“Besidle,” she said. She didn’t think that was a word.

‘Besidle: verb, coming up to a friend who doesn’t know you’re there.’

Verity took some joy from this small thing, but she had no use for it, and surely it would be priced for someone who needed to know a lot of words for their profession. There was a temptation to spend the whole rest of her time playing with the thing, making up words and seeing what it would give her for definitions, but she moved on.

There was a brick that jumped around like a frog (which had been put into a metal cage), a quill that could do sums for you, and a hair clip that could do your hair in various complicated braids. That last was sure to be expensive, as cosmetic entads often were. As Verity moved deeper into the store, she could tell that she was getting to the more useful and valuable things, especially as many of them were larger in size. A full suit of armor sat on a mannequin and would surely cost many thousands of rings before even considering its magical property, which was apparently the ability to make anyone who struck it see through the eyes of the wearer for a full minute.

Possessed by some impish desire, she tapped the armor on the chest, and when that wasn’t enough, she struck it harder, rapping against the plate.

It was only after she’d done it that she realized that the mannequin didn’t have any eyes to see out of, but that was apparently not a problem, since she saw out of the visor anyhow. She could still feel her body, and hear through her own ears, but it was undoubtedly quite disorienting. She watched herself waving a hand. It wasn’t like looking through a mirror, because a mirror would reverse everything: she was seeing herself as others saw her. Tall, for a woman, poised but somewhat sullen. She smiled for herself and tried on various faces to see whether they suited her better. There was a sort of smile that she had learned for performing in concert halls, the kind that she could keep in place at the end of a performance when the audience was clapping and giving their adulations. She did the smile for herself and could immediately tell how false it was, a smile meant to save strain on the muscles and be visible from a distance.

A minute was a long time, and Verity stayed where she was, waiting for it to wear off. It was a bit too much for her, seeing herself. She had a tendency to focus on the negatives, but that was largely because an honest appreciation of how she looked wasn’t necessary for playing her role. Fixing what flaws and issues she could see was, so she’d learned a critical eye from a young age.

By the time the effect lifted and Verity had her own sight back, she had decided that something needed to be done about her look. She had moved halfway across the world but kept the same appearance, with the exception, sometimes, of less makeup. There was still something so severe about it, the neatly composed concert musician. Side by side, she thought that someone could mistake her for being the same sort of person as Alfric. Stolid. Was that the word? She went over to the dictionary and confirmed that it was. She appeared stolid and didn’t particularly like that.

The very back of the store had a variety of weapons, which she had little interest in, but beside them, there were a handful of musical instruments, five of them hanging from the wall. There was no lute among them, but there were two different drums, an overly long stringed instrument that was probably played standing up, a mouth harp, and a very complicated wind instrument that was covered in valves and pipes. She read their descriptions though she had no interest in buying any of them. Drums were decidedly not her area of interest, and both the stringed instrument and the tube with its valves seemed like they’d be nightmares to take into a dungeon. The mouth harp was more interesting, but it would mean giving up singing, and lyricism was one of Verity’s favorite aspects of music, though she didn’t consider herself to be terribly good at it.

“Have you found anythin’?” asked Hannah.

“No, I think not,” said Verity with a sigh. She gestured at an area close to the instruments. “So many weapons they have here.”

“Well, sure,” said Hannah. “The only people who buy them are dungeoneers, and a dungeoneer doesn’t need to hold on to a sword once his career is done. Beyond that, you don’t tend to need more than one weapon per person. So they sit and rot on the shelves, waitin’ for someone to pick them up. Prices are usually not too bad. And, I s’pose, they don’t actually rot or rust or what have you, so stock can stick around like a bad smell.”

“And instruments get snatched up,” said Verity, frowning at the five that were there. “Because every tavern of any note has a bard in it.”

“Well, ay,” said Hannah. “But not every entad instrument has any actual use to a bard.” She pointed at the placard next to tall stringed instruments. “No tavern bard is going to need to send out spectral blades, ay?”

“There have been times it would have been nice,” murmured Verity.

“Actual problems?” asked Hannah, raising an eyebrow.

“Not really, no,” Verity replied. “Just people getting drunk and demanding songs I didn’t know or didn’t want to sing. When you’re working at a tavern, you’re there for them, the customers, but some of them take it a bit too far.”

“Ay,” said Hannah. “We both work in service to others, by our natures. Better in the dungeons or worse, do you think?”

“Better,” said Verity. “I consider you my friends.” It felt slightly embarrassing to say that out loud so soon, though they’d been spending quite a bit of their days together, and it had gotten quite intensive quite quickly. Hannah gave a smile, and the embarrassment faded. “So far, no one has made demands of me. Even Alfric has been understanding. He thinks I know my job better than he ever possibly could and is content to let me do what I think is best. I have to admit that it wasn’t what I’d expected of him, especially after our first meeting.”

“He’s given me no notes either,” said Hannah.

“You know, I never thought about how similar our professions were,” said Verity. “I would suppose we have similar stories.”

“Ay?” asked Hannah, who seemed doubtful.

“Are there ever people who come in for healing and think they know more than you?” asked Verity.

“Oh,” said Hannah. She let out a little laugh. “Oh, ay, well, it comes with the territory. I won’t call them idiots, but there’s some role-play we do at the seminary, and you get to hear all kinds of stories to prepare you for what you might run into. I understand it, I do, it’s their body, which they’ve known their whole life, but some of that confidence people have is quite misplaced.”

“Well, people have their own ideas about bardic magic,” said Verity. “And usually they’re arguing with me while I’m trying to play a song and can’t respond to them. So the choice is to stop and have it out with them, or attempt to communicate without words, or speak to them within the lyrics, or—there’s no good way to do it.”

“I’d thought you liked bein’ a tavern bard,” said Hannah, putting a bit of question in her voice.

“I did,” said Verity. “But mostly when it’s going smoothly, when I’m allowed to do whatever I want and read the room in the way I choose. I like the freedom and choice, and yes, I like to help people with their woes or at least to help them enjoy their meals.” She sighed. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with myself when Cynthia replaces me at the Fig and Gristle.”

“You’ll be with us,” said Hannah, shrugging. “Grow food in the garden, practice your music, find a nice boy in the village… Seems like we’ve got the tools now to do the five dungeons left around Pucklechurch without all that much hassle. So far as travel time goes, that means Pucklechurch can be our base for quite a bit longer, enough that we can do two hexes out without needin’ to camp.”

Verity nodded. Her eyebrow had gone up at the ‘nice boy’ comment, but it seemed incidental and not worth correcting. She’d have expected a cleric of Garos to use the neutral ‘partner’, and a small part of her wondered if she was a bit too unobvious about her inclinations. “And this is how I become a dungeoneer, slowly, without even realizing it.”

“Ay,” said Hannah, smiling. “But it’s not a bad life.”

“You’ll back me up, if I tell Alfric I need time to rest?” asked Verity.

“Of course,” Hannah said with a nod. “Though I don’t expect you’ll need backup, he’s a good lad. Now I need to go tend to him and make sure he isn’t fumbling the sales.”

Verity nodded. It was good to talk to Hannah. It was good to have all of them, even Alfric, though he sometimes rubbed her the wrong way.

Thus far, Verity had spent next to no money from the first dungeon, let alone what they’d get from the second, even if it seemed like the payout would be lower. As she walked along, she entertained the notion of actually purchasing one of these things, even if there was no direct need for it or even if it was just for fun. She thought it was the kind of thing that Alfric would hate, but perhaps she was being a bit too harsh on him.

The person that Alfric reminded her most of was her mother and a few people that her mother surrounded herself with. It wasn’t enough to grow plants in the greenroom; they needed to be displayed for guests and entered into competitions. Verity entered into the Dondrian Gardening Society, not against her will, exactly, but after a bout of coercion and a discussion with her mother about the importance of being seen and making connections. Of course, the Gardening Society was really only tangentially about gardening, and Verity had grown to hate it. There had been a particular day when she’d come to one of their luncheons with a pot full of succulents and received exactly two comments on it (both compliments, thankfully) followed by several hours of discussion about the latest fashions, the newest places to eat, the events of the last week’s society ball, the theme of the upcoming party, on and on until it felt like her ears would bleed. It wasn’t enough to like plants, you needed to like plants with a purpose, and in fact, forget the plants, devote yourself instead to the purpose with the plants only as set dressing.

In fact, the things that Verity had taken an interest in seemed to fall into two distinct categories. The first were things that would look good for the family, which were lauded and praised, given trainers and tutors, and made into something proper and perfect. The second were things that wouldn’t look good for the family. Those Verity was simply not allowed to do. If she ever pressed the issue, there would be a talk, and she would eventually back down. Martial arts had been a particular weakness of hers, and while she was at the conservatory, she had snuck out to see bare-knuckle brawls on three occasions until she’d been caught by the conservatory’s housing director. It hadn’t been the violence she’d been so attracted to, nor the men (as the director had opined), but the idea of throwing yourself into something, pitting yourself against danger using nothing but your will and training.

When Verity’s mother had found out, they’d had a talk about it, and the suggestion had come up that perhaps if this were Verity’s new area of interest, she might enjoy being a part of the Greater Dondrian Fencing Club or at least attend a few of their exhibitions. Verity hadn’t thought that sounded all that nice, but she’d gone to one with her mother all the same, partly by way of apology. Fencing was perfectly all right, but not so different from any other sport, where the rules seemed like they got in the way of things. The injuries sustained in fencing were tiny things, barely even worthy of a healer, and they stopped for them every time. With a cleric of Garos and a cleric of Xuphin on hand, it seemed like they should have been able to go much further, but no, it was tightly constrained. While she was certain that it had its own rich history and depth of technique, as most sports did, she couldn’t help but be bored.

Verity kept looking at the entads in the shop, hoping that one of them would spark her interest. There were a few articles of clothing, carefully hung on mannequins, of which the shop seemed to have a few. Most of the clothes seemed a little redundant, like a shirt that would go rigid as steel if you tried to pierce it, or a sweater that would keep you warm in a snowstorm. They did what clothes and armor already did, but a little bit better or easier. There was a pair of pants that would kill any bug that got within ten feet of it, which seemed a bit excessive. Only a third of the entads could resize themselves in any way, and they were carefully marked. Thinking back on what Hannah had said, it seemed likely that resizing was a more common property, but that it was easier for resizing items to find a home and go into active use.

“Those pants are amazing,” said Alfric as he came over. He looked at the tag on them and frowned. “Not resizing though.”

“They’re probably too small for you,” said Verity. “They look like a better fit for someone Mizuki’s size. Or smaller. A child’s pants.”

“It might be possible to alter them,” said Alfric. He looked them over. “Bah. It’s tricky with entads.”

“I know,” said Verity, nodding.

“Are we talkin’ entad alteration?” asked Hannah as she came over. “Because I know a thing or two.”

“We were talking about how we all know a thing or two,” said Verity. She gestured. “Alfric wants the pants.”

“Seems rough, from a size perspective,” said Hannah, rubbing her chin. She looked at the tag. “Because you just got done goin’ up against a horde of insects?”

“Partly,” said Alfric. “They’re notoriously tough to deal with. But for alteration… Maybe I could ask Mizuki to wear them, and if we ran into bugs, she could just move forward to handle them.”

“Even for her,” said Hannah. “I’d think you’d have to split the seams on the sides, then hope that the magic held.”

Alfric checked the tag again. “It doesn’t say what counts as wearing them,” he said.

“They need to be on your legs,” said the shopkeeper, whom Verity had heard introduce himself as Rolaj. “I’ve had a few people come take a look at them, but it’ll take either someone quite short, or a cleric of Kesbin, or an actual child. My father has told me not to let them go unless it’s for quite a sum though. We’ve actually used them for labor a few times, with my sister wearing them. Cleaning out infestations, mostly.”

“I suppose that’s a better use than dungeoneering,” said Alfric, nodding. “You could practically make a living on it, going town to town.”

“Dungeoneers go from town to town,” said Rolaj. “It could be work you did on the side, while recovering from the toll of the dungeons.” He looked hopeful. The sale had been completed, and Verity guessed that with what they’d sold, there were some rings in their pockets. “Imagine this, you go into the town, ready to head for the nearest dungeon, but before you do, you put up a notice in the town or put in word at the local taverns that you’re available for pest control. It’s an easy way to make a few hundred rings, I would guess.”

“We’d have to talk to Mizuki about it,” said Hannah.

“Mizuki?” asked Rolaj. “Oh, are the three of you… her party?”

“You met her?” asked Alfric.

“Yesterday,” said Rolaj. “We talked for a bit. Is she… I hesitate to ask this, because it feels a bit unprofessional, but is she partnered?”

“Partnered?” asked Alfric.

“No, she’s not,” said Hannah. “Though I don’t know that she’s open to a relationship.”

“I think she probably is,” said Verity.

“And is she… interested in men?” asked Rolaj. His hopefulness was almost painful.

“I don’t think we know,” said Alfric.

“Definitely men,” said Hannah.

“Men,” nodded Verity.

“Oh,” said Rolaj. “I just—the woman she was with, I’d thought—there seemed to be something there.”

Hannah laughed. “Between those two?”

“Sorry,” said Rolaj. “I didn’t mean to embarrass myself, I just misread.”

“Ay, but how?” asked Hannah. “Granted, I’m a cleric of Garos, but it seems a hard thing to mistake, that’s all.”

“A mistake, nothing more,” said Alfric.

“I thought I saw jealousy,” said Rolaj. “That’s it.”

“Ah,” said Hannah. “Now that, I s’pose, I can see.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “And should we send her your way, our Mizuki?”

Rolaj was already blushing, but the blush deepened at that. “I’d appreciate it, yes, if you think she’d be receptive.”

“We’re in Pucklechurch,” said Alfric. “I don’t imagine we’ll be through Liberfell all that often.”

“I’m not expecting much,” said Rolaj. “I was just… thinking about her, since she came through yesterday.”

“Well, for my own part I’ll put in a good word,” said Hannah, nodding. “You seem like a good enough sort.”

“I’ll let you shop,” he said, backing away. “Let me know if you have any questions, and I apologize for any awkwardness on my part.” He bowed slightly and returned to his position behind the counter, which, in Verity’s opinion, made the whole thing even more awkward.

“I haven’t seen anything interesting,” said Verity. “Or rather, I’ve seen a great many things that are interesting, but they’re either priced too high or of no practical use.”

“We have enough rings that you could get something fun,” said Alfric. “There’d be no harm in that. I saw you talking to that dictionary.”

“Well, yes,” said Verity, looking over at it. “But unless I want to start singing nonsense songs, I don’t imagine that I would get more than a few hours of entertainment out of it. Not what you’d pick, I’m sure.”

“Well, no,” said Alfric. “I see two spears, and if you don’t mind me, I’m going to go look at what they do.” He ambled over to the back wall with all the weapons. He had a grin on his face, which Verity thought was somewhat unusual for him. He looked like a better, more compelling person when he was smiling.

“Well, better to talk to Mizuki now,” said Hannah. “Just in case we were wrong and she’s not so interested. But then it falls to us to let the poor shopkeep down.”

“Go ahead then,” said Verity.

“I was hopin’ you’d volunteer,” said Hannah. She sighed when Verity didn’t budge. <Mizuki, it seems like the shopkeeper Rolaj at the Chixli Emporium is a bit sweet on you, and would like to see more of you, if you’ve got any interest.>

There was silence for a little bit, long enough that Hannah wondered whether Mizuki had gotten the message.

<Neat!> the reply finally came. <He’s cute, right?>

<He said you met him,> said Verity.

<I did,> said Mizuki. <I was asking whether you found him cute.>

<Not particularly my type,> said Hannah. <But he’s got a sweetness to him.>

<Not my type either,> said Verity. He’s a man, after all.

<He seems young for you,> said Alfric.

<Ask him his age,> said Mizuki.

“Are we really doing this?” asked Verity.

“How old are you?” Hannah asked across the store.

“Eighteen,” he replied.

<Eighteen,> said Hannah.

There was a bit of silence. <Is that too young?> asked Mizuki.

<Four years seems like a large gap,> said Alfric.

<That would be like you dating Isra,> said Verity.

<I’m an adult,> said Isra. She spoke differently over party chat, as though she was attempting to be loud and clear. It was subtle but definitely there. One of them would have to take her aside and explain that wasn’t necessary, and Verity imagined it would probably be her.

<Well, I’m gonna go for it,> said Mizuki. <And if it turns out he’s too immature, that won’t be the first time I’ve had that problem, age being an issue or not.>

<Good luck,> said Hannah. She moved over to where Alfric was standing and looking at the spears, and Verity did too.

“This one,” said Alfric, pointing at a thin red one with a gilded tip. “Capable of extending to eight times its length and, per the scratch tests, extremely difficult to destroy. It also exerts force when extending, which means if I could get it under a monster and wedged against the floor, I could use the power of the entad to drive it through the flesh or armor.” He moved his finger down to indicate something that looked less like a spear and more like an enlarged toothpick, pointed on both ends and made of wood. “Or this one, which penetrates the opposite side of whatever it touches and can teleport the wielder.”

“Is this a test?” asked Verity.

“No,” said Alfric. He raised an eyebrow. “Just looking for opinions.”

“Ay, well,” said Hannah. “Seems the second one might put you into more difficult situations, away from your healer, which isn’t a good place to be.”

“True,” Alfric said, nodding. “The best-case scenario for it is a monster with armor on the front but not the back. I’m not sure that either is necessarily that good, though if I had to go with one, it would probably be the first. There the primary benefit is being able to lengthen or shorten the spear at will, which can be valuable in combat. Normally you choke up on the spear if you need to get closer to the opponent.” He held his hands out in front of him, which was apparently meant to demonstrate.

“Is there a reason you don’t approve of Mizuki dating?” asked Verity. She’d been rolling the conversation over in her mind, and the question had come to her unbidden. She’d only said it out loud because it was Alfric, and he seemed to prefer directness.

“Not really,” said Alfric. He looked somewhat uncomfortable. “My mind goes to certain scenarios where we lose her as a team member or where it interferes with our ability to run dungeons. I’d be happy for her, I enjoy her company, and I want the best for her, but… as far as replacements go, sorcerers are rare, and wizards come with their own problems. Finding a wizard who wants to do a dungeon is a bit of a tall ask.”

“So it’s about her utility?” asked Verity. “And I suppose the same goes for me?”

“Teams fall apart,” said Alfric. “Parties disband. The last year has given me a lot of experience with that. I’m trying to be realistic and to plan for the worst-case scenarios.”

“Once burned, twice shy,” said Hannah, nodding. “I can understand where he feels it and how he worries. Most likely, Mizuki will go on a date or two with Rolaj and have a brief liaison, but there’s a chance she’ll find somethin’ more in him and then declare she’s out of the party, which would be a problem for us all, considerin’ we’re livin’ in her house. Not to say that we don’t want her to be happy, ’cause of course we do, but if you’re Alfric, you’re lookin’ ahead to see the stick through the spokes. If it’s all well and good, there’s nothin’ that needs doin’. It’s not about utility, per se, I don’t think, it’s wantin’ to make sure that if somethin’ bad happens, he’s prepared for it.”

“It’s also a little about utility,” said Alfric. He frowned. “And a bit selfish, I’ll admit to that. Do you think it warrants an apology?”

“No,” said Verity. She paused. “I’d wondered whether, perhaps, it was a bit of jealousy on your part.”

“Jealousy?” asked Alfric. He looked over at the counter. “I don’t have any interest in Rolaj.” He grinned, making it clear that this was a joke.

Verity waited for Hannah to press the issue, but for whatever reason, the cleric didn’t, and while Verity had some interest in the subject of why that was a joke, she’d been taught that it was best to let such subjects pass if those involved brushed them aside.

“Do you think you’ll get the spear?” asked Hannah. “I s’pose you trained with all kinds of weapons.”

“Hammers, blades, and spears,” said Alfric. “Though not equally with all three. Quite a bit of my training was in the fundamentals, meaning how to adapt to unique circumstances and how to train with new equipment. It’s entirely possible that we’ll go into the next dungeon and pick up a trident that’s as good as Isra’s bow, and I’ll end up using that for the rest of my adventuring career.”

“And that’s the sort of thing you like,” said Hannah. “It’s like carryin’ a wardrobe up a hill.”

“In a sense,” said Alfric. “Dungeons and entads both offer unique challenges.” He hesitated, perhaps hearing how that sounded: too polished and soulless. “I really like knowing that there’s not some rule somewhere telling me how to do things. I like feeling like I’m on a frontier, out in the wild.”

“Seems a bit misplaced to me,” said Hannah. “Bemoanin’ the settlement of the world when you’re only eighteen. But I think I’ve come to understand you better than I did yesterday.”

The bell attached to the door jingled as someone entered, and it was only after she saw Alfric freeze in place that Verity turned to look. She’d expected the enigmatic Lola, but it was someone else, a tall man wearing blue robes with stars at the bottom hem. The staff he carried as well as the bangles marked him as a wizard. At first Verity thought he was old, but the more she looked at him, the more she thought that he was just prematurely balding.

“Josen,” said Alfric. He had a scowl on his face.

Chapter 34 — Woods Witch

“You’ve been keeping track of where we’re going, right?” asked Mizuki. It was becoming clear that if she was going to continue along with this profession, she was going to need better shoes. There was simply too much hiking involved.

“No, I haven’t,” said Isra, not glancing back. “Why would I?”

“Uh, so we don’t get lost?” asked Mizuki. It felt like they were deep into the woods, though the area they were in was technically a park, one with marked trails.

“I think that ‘lost’ is something other people get,” said Isra. She had a soft and quiet nature that quite appealed to Mizuki, along with a confidence that was reassuring.

“Well, so long as you’re by my side,” said Mizuki. “We’ll probably want to get going back fairly soon. I need to go see that boy about a date.”

“Mmm,” said Isra.

“I don’t suppose,” said Mizuki, “that you’ve dated?”

“No,” said Isra.

“They do it differently in Tarbin?” asked Mizuki.

“They do,” said Isra. “There are matchmakers.”

“Down in Cairbre they basically do a series of ‘engagements’,” said Mizuki. “Or one engagement, if you’re lucky. It’s much less of a big deal to break an engagement off. I was actually with a guy who wanted to do it that way, but I laughed it off, since it seemed so ridiculous. We ended up doing some normal dates, and it didn’t work out, which seemed like basically the same thing as a failed engagement, I guess, if you squint.”

“Matchmakers seem like they make more sense,” said Isra.

“They do, I guess,” shrugged Mizuki. “But I grew up in Pucklechurch where there wouldn’t have been much of a point to it. There were seventeen kids in my year, and I knew them all through comp.”

“Comp?” asked Isra.

Mizuki looked at her, or rather, at the back of her head. “Compulsory schooling?” she asked.

“Ah,” said Isra. “I knew about that. I hadn’t heard it called that.”

“And your father… opted you out?” asked Mizuki. You could do that, technically. Mizuki had begged her mom for it for a brief few days when she’d had a big fight with another girl at school, and been denied.

“I guess,” said Isra. “We didn’t talk about it.”

“Anyway,” said Mizuki. “In Kiromo, relationships are religious, and it’s kind of like having a matchmaker, but the matchmakers are clerics. And I still wonder how it’s done in small towns like Pucklechurch, where you know every single possible partner by the time you reach puberty. And most people are paired off early, so.” It had almost happened for Mizuki, but then she’d had a falling-out with her possible husband, and after that, it had mostly been a series of brief courtships that never went anywhere, even the ones that had seemed intense and promising. At twenty-two, it was getting harder and harder to find someone her own age who was unpartnered, and she had this sinking feeling that she was going to eventually settle with someone older, a widower, perhaps. So she knew how it was done in Pucklechurch, yes, but she didn’t know how it was done for her, specifically.

“You think that Rolaj might suit you,” said Isra.

“Oh,” said Mizuki. “Well, I don’t know, he seemed nice. I’m a big believer in giving people a chance. He is young, but I’ve spent the last few years just doing basically odd jobs with no real stability, so maybe that balances out a bit.”

“Odd jobs?” asked Isra.

“You know, if someone needs some sorcerous might,” said Mizuki. She sighed. “Not that it comes up often, but I can clear a tree from a road faster than just about anyone. Of course, some of my time is spent tracking down magic and trying to make something useful out of it, but there are precious few things that allow me to make real money. The will-o’-wisps were always the best for it, but kind of a pain.”

“How do you make money with a will-o’-wisp?” asked Isra.

“Oh, they have a rare all-destroying thing,” said Mizuki. “Normally, it’s like… there’s some kind of magic that eats up wood, and that allows me to do creation of wood, kind of? But for the will-o’-wisp, for whatever reason, it’s anything you want. I pick gold every time since it doesn’t matter if it’s misshapen, and it’s easy to test and sell. So yeah, before this dungeon thing, I was going out during the time for will-o’-wisps, just a bit after dinner, trying to get close enough to them that I could use some of what they did to the aether.” She shrugged. “Not hard work.”

“People don’t farm them,” said Isra, almost like a question.

“People have tried, but you can’t,” said Mizuki. “They’re easy to kill, too, so every time someone tries to capture one, they end up with a dead will-o’-wisp. Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard from the other sorcs. They’re a much-loved creature by sorcs everywhere, but they’re also one of the reasons that we tend to stay away from each other. Them or things like them. It’s kind of a lonely profession, in that way.”

“They’re not a creature,” said Isra. “They’re something else.”

“The will-o’-wisps?” asked Mizuki. “Sure, I didn’t mean to say they were one particular kind of thing, I was just kind of talking freely. You know, I sometimes consider myself an adherent of Qymmos, but other times I just wonder what the point of it is. Categories and things. I dunno.” They passed a leafy plant, and Isra stopped to caress it before moving on. It seemed like Isra feeling free to do weird things in front of Mizuki was a good sign.

“I don’t like Qymmos,” said Isra.

“Yeah?” asked Mizuki. That didn’t seem like all that much of a surprise. Qymmos, God of Sets, was one of those gods that people tended to feel strongly about. By contrast, Oeyr was one that people took a fair amount of time to actually grasp, and that shielded her from both love and scorn.

“The thoughts laid out in the Qymr Mos are muddled in a way that the others are not,” said Isra. “Qymmos feels like a god out of step. The infinity of Xuphin and the symmetry of Garos exist in our world, in part, and they want us to see the beauty of those things.” She shook her head. “That’s not true for Qymmos.”

This… wasn’t the sort of answer that Mizuki had expected. Religion was a bit of a weak point for her, and she didn’t know how to respond. “Huh,” she said, for lack of anything better.

“I haven’t spoken with the clerics much,” said Isra. “I have only gone to worship a few times.”

“Oh, I almost never go,” said Mizuki. “I did when I was little, with my family.” And on holy days, and when it was an Oeyr sermon, and a few other times, like if someone suggested she should. Temple days were social events. The more Mizuki thought about it, the more she thought that ‘almost never go’ was maybe a lie. “So most of what you know comes from, what, your father?”

“I’ve read the holy books,” said Isra. She hesitated for a moment as they walked, perhaps waiting for Mizuki to add something. “Is that unusual?”

“Not really,” said Mizuki. “You’re supposed to. But there’s also a kind of, um, guidedness to it? Like, in the month we were reading the Qymr Mos, we had a cleric come into class for an hour or two to explain things, and a lot of us didn’t end up reading the actual book.”

“A month for a thin book?” asked Isra.

“Oh,” said Mizuki. “No, sorry, I forgot you didn’t go through it. Usually the teacher breaks things up into sections, so the ‘month’ was really more like one or two hours a day.”

“And you did this with the other children your age,” said Isra.

“Yeah,” said Mizuki. “Everyone born between the start and end of the year, which usually ends up being around twenty kids, but sometimes there are big years.” She tapped her lips for a moment. “I don’t know how it’s done in Tarbin, or in Dondrian, or even in Kiromo, but in Greater Plenarch a teacher sticks with their students from basically the year they’re born until we’re out of comp.”

“Like another parent,” said Isra.

“Kind of,” said Mizuki. She shrugged. “We had a good one, Miss Liko. She left right around the same time my parents did. I kind of miss her.”

“It sounds nice,” said Isra.

“It was,” said Mizuki. “I mean, I’d never want to go back to school of any kind, but I enjoyed comp. So you were just out in the woods that whole time?”

“I was,” said Isra. “Hiding.”

“I might talk to the hexmaster about it, if that’s okay,” said Mizuki. “You’re eighteen, so there’s nothing to worry about, no risk that, I don’t know, anyone would try to adopt you. But I do want to find out how much they knew about you and how you, um, slipped through the cracks, no offense.”

“I hid,” Isra repeated, shrugging. “I could usually tell they were coming from a mile off.”

“Yeah, but they could still have put in more effort,” said Mizuki. A young girl living all alone wasn’t the sort of thing that was supposed to happen, druid or not. “When I think of you being out there, all on your own, or I guess with animals, it makes my heart break.”

“You’re very sentimental,” said Isra after a moment had passed.

“Well, we’re a party now,” said Mizuki. “We look out for each other. Your pain is my pain.”

Isra didn’t seem to quite take that in the spirit it was intended, and Mizuki shut up for a bit, taking in the woods. It seemed a bit odd to be going on a walk after they’d done a pretty grueling six miles the day before, but Mizuki liked being out in nature, and she had her walking stick, which helped with balance. Every now and again, she would use it in a fancy way, vaulting herself over a rut or branch with ease.

The woods were nice and pleasant, and while Mizuki knew the names of very few trees, she spotted what she thought were twin oaks, growing in pairs, and a number of birches, clearly identifiable from their papery skin, which she’d loved when she was younger. In certain places, the undergrowth seemed to vanish save for small grasses, as the canopy blocked out light, and they were treated to moss-covered logs and stones. It gave the same sort of feeling that walking into the large temple in Pucklechurch sometimes did, both in the silence and in the grand, open space. She was glad that she’d asked to come along.

“Do druids date?” asked Isra. Mizuki was mildly surprised, because Isra didn’t seem to enjoy starting conversations.

“I’ve got no idea,” said Mizuki. “I don’t see why they wouldn’t. But you’ll be able to ask your guild in another day or so. And even if they say they don’t, which I don’t know why they would—” Mizuki shrugged. “—being a druid,” she went on, a bit sad to let the idea of ‘woods witch’ die, “is kind of like being a sorc, I think, where people have all these ideas about what you’re like and what you do, and none of it changes that you’re just a person with your own stuff going on. You don’t need to be the way that other people think you should be.”

“That’s a lesson found in books,” said Isra. “No one seems to believe it though.”

“Well,” said Mizuki, “yeah, you can run into problems if you’re too different or different in the wrong ways, I guess. And people will make their own judgments about you, which is probably fine if you’re a fairy princess, but not so much if you’re depending on the kindness of strangers, or having a job, or getting customers, or whatever.” Mizuki tapped her lips. “But I don’t think any of that applies to dating if you’re a druid, because it’s not like the other druids are offering you anything, and if they have a problem with you finding a boyfriend, I’ll be first in line to help you drown them.”

Isra faltered. “Drown them?”

“Um,” said Mizuki. “It’s a Kiromon saying. I think there’s something like it in Inter. It’s just an expression.” She racked her brain trying to think about where it came from. Something from the Abohan Dynasty? A buried memory slowly resurfaced. “Drowning kingdom officials was, um, a traditional punishment.”

“Why did the kingdom do that?” asked Isra. There was a bit of alarm in her voice.

“Well, the kingdom didn’t do that,” said Mizuki. “It was the village folk. The kingdom had officials who lived in every village as part of taxes and other stuff, administration, I guess, and they were mostly jerks, I think, but sometimes one of them would cross a line, and the villagers would get together to drown them in a local pond. They did it with drowning because then people could say that it was an accident, and the kingdom kind of looked the other way, because if you were enough of a jerk to be held down by a dozen villagers, you probably deserved it. Grim, I know, but those are the kinds of stories my grandfather was full of.”

“You would help drown someone for me,” said Isra.

“Yeah,” said Mizuki. “I guess. Depends on what he had done. I don’t know you well enough to know what your standards for drowning someone are.”

“When I was thirteen years old, my father died,” said Isra. “I was left all alone. One of my father’s friends, a man named Angun, came to our house bringing food and condolences. He tried to poison my drink, something to make me sleep, but I could tell that something had gone wrong when my back was turned. When I refused to drink, he subdued me and stole everything of value from the house.”

“Wow,” said Mizuki. Again, she felt a tightness in her chest, like her heart was being squeezed. Isra already seemed like someone who perhaps didn’t need to be defended but whom Mizuki would gladly defend anyhow. Imagining little doe-eyed innocent Isra being assaulted and taken advantage of like that, well, Mizuki felt a great deal of pain and anger, and she took a moment to wipe away a tear that had been forming.

They walked in silence for a bit, and though Mizuki had thoroughly lost her bearings, she felt like they were going back the way they’d come. It felt good to walk, especially if they were going to be able to take a shortcut back to Pucklechurch when the end of the day rolled around.

“I guess finding him will be the first step,” said Mizuki. “And then getting away with it will be the hard part. I don’t know what kind of entads the Greater Plenarch province has for doing detective work, but we’d want to figure that out. If we made it look like an accident, they wouldn’t do a full investigation, but we’d really want to know what we were going up against.”

“I don’t think that’s what I want,” said Isra. She was hesitant. “When you talked about drowning someone, my mind went to him. I want what was stolen returned to me. I want justice.”

“Oh, good, I was getting worried, I have no idea how to kill a person,” said Mizuki. She shook her head. “I mean, I know how to kill a person in theory. Magic is supposed to be pretty good at it. But I’d have been way out of my depth.” She took in a breath and was feeling better about it. If Isra had immediately started talking about logistics, well, Mizuki would probably have gone along with it, but it might have ended up as one of those things she went along with because it seemed like a good idea, then turned out to be a very bad idea. Still, screw that guy. “Did you ever report the crime?”

“I was thirteen,” said Isra. “They would have taken me from my home.”

“Probably,” said Mizuki. “I can’t imagine what I would have done in your situation. I was just asking because now that you’re old enough, they can’t do that, so you could report the crime and maybe get a bit of help from the province, depending on what was taken.”

“It was five years ago,” said Isra. “He could be halfway across the world. Or not even in Inter.”

“Sure. But going to the authorities couldn’t hurt. There are some fabulous tracking entads out there if there was something in particular you wanted to get back. And if it’s justice you want…” She shrugged. “Sorry if this isn’t anything you wanted to hear, it’s just what I’d do in your shoes.” Mizuki wanted justice too.

“There were entads,” said Isra. “Five of them. There were also a number of rings stolen.”

“Good entads?” asked Mizuki.

“Some. A feeding spoon. A bottled garden. A dagger that went through the air like a whisper.”

Mizuki felt questions coming and swallowed all but one of them. “A bottled garden?” she asked.

“It was small,” said Isra. She stopped her hiking and turned back to Mizuki and showed with her hands, something no larger than a cabbage. “A seed dropped into it would shrink down and grow quickly, usually within a day. A miniature. We had a small tin of seeds that we’d saved. It gave us oranges in the winter.”

Mizuki nodded, though she had more questions about the bottled garden. It sounded neat. Were they eating miniature fruits? Could you pull a whole tree from it? How were they getting the fruits out? She had lots to ask, because it seemed like an interesting thing to have, with lots of complications. Talking excitedly about something that Isra had lost, especially something with sentimental attachment, seemed like it would be a big and obvious misstep though, and for once, Mizuki was able to shut her mouth in time.

“Is it okay if I talk to Rolaj about it, or not?” asked Mizuki.

“About the entads?” asked Isra. “No.”

“No, it’s okay, or no, it’s not okay?” asked Mizuki.

“It’s okay,” said Isra.

“I don’t mean to butt in with your business,” said Mizuki. “I just thought… maybe it would be worth a shot. And if you’d like, I can go deal with reporting the crime.”

Isra was silent. “Why?”

“Um, I’m hoping that it would help get this,” she waved, trying to find the word, “resolved?”

“Why are you doing it for me?” asked Isra.

Mizuki shrugged. “I’ve been alone for a bit. I have lots of friends in town and had a series of boyfriends, but I know what it’s like to not really have someone to depend on, not that the community hasn’t been good for me.” She’d been looked after and checked in on when her parents left, but it wasn’t really the same. “Hannah came in and said the house looked neglected, which I guess is true, and Verity came in and said that my garden was terrible, which was definitely true. But here I’ve got a chance to do something for someone, even if it’s just stuff like dealing with the hexmaster for you or talking to a bunch of entad people about what’s gone through their stores in the last five years. Those seem like things that you might not want to do or that you’d find annoying, and I won’t say that they’re exactly things that I’m good at, but I don’t think I would find them annoying. And if I did find them annoying, I’m willing to be annoyed for your sake.”

They walked together for a bit. Mizuki worried that she was overstepping. That series of boyfriends had taught her that she had a tendency to come on strong or form attachments quickly, and sometimes that screwed things up, or the initial affection flared up so bright that it burned itself out. She was really, really hoping that she wasn’t doing that with Isra, but if she squinted, it seemed like it might be a part of the same pattern.

“I was wrong about the world,” said Isra.

“Yeah?” asked Mizuki.

“Yes,” said Isra.

In a normal conversation, this was where Isra would elaborate, so Mizuki gave her some time. It was pretty clear that Isra wasn’t all that used to talking to people and maybe didn’t understand certain aspects of it, like following up on a profound, sweeping statement, especially if it was particularly vague.

“And in what way were you wrong about the world?” asked Mizuki, unable to wait as long as it seemed to be taking.

“It’s less complicated than I’d thought,” said Isra. “There’s more good in it.” She glanced back at Mizuki. They were coming back to Liberfell proper, with the sounds of the city around them. “Knowing that I’m a druid, that I experience the world in a different way… it’s brought everything into focus. The people of Pucklechurch were just blind and deaf, unable to experience the world in the same way I could. They weren’t liars. They thought I was strange, not because I was an outsider, but because I had abilities and senses. I was strange.”

“I would think that would be kind of nice,” said Mizuki. “Being able to make sense of a whole bunch of confusing things?”

Isra nodded. “You’re very nice,” she said.

“Oh,” said Mizuki. “Well, thanks.”

“I wish that I had met you before last week,” said Isra. Mizuki was listening closely, and she wondered whether she’d only imagined hearing Isra’s voice catch.

Mizuki diverted to lighter fare for the rest of their walk and kept the conversation afloat on her own, but Mizuki had quite liked their talk, and it seemed that Isra had too. Mizuki found herself making a list in her head of all the things she needed to do, and the ones involving Isra went to the top of it. Alfric would be so proud of her.

And if they did find the man who hurt Isra, well, Mizuki wasn’t planning to actually drown him, but she was going to keep her options open.

Chapter 35 — Alumni of the Junior League

The Adventurers’ League was in charge of all matters related to the dungeons across Interim and predated the actual conglomerate country by quite some time. It had originally started as a trade association, but through the many centuries it had been around, it had eventually come to be nationalized and served as a semi-independent arm of the Interim government. The League were the ones who put locks on the dungeons, dealt with needed repairs, created maps of where the dungeons were, tracked dungeon status, and most importantly authorized who would be allowed to go into the dungeons. Anything that came out of the dungeons was for some other department to deal with, but anyone who wanted to go into the dungeons fell under the authority of the League.

The League had set a strict age limit on dungeoneering, under the rationale that the younger you were, the less likely you were to have proper training and the more likely it was you would make bad decisions. But because there were always enthusiastic young people wanting to get into dungeoneering, the Junior League had been formed, and its mandate was to get these young people ready.

Alfric had entered into the Junior League as young as possible, age twelve, and immediately found it to be a bit of a disappointment. For one thing, it was simply too little time, only twice a week for a few hours. The other big problem was that it didn’t seem to be taken very seriously either by the other members or by the adults running the thing. It was more social than practical, an ‘activity’ for kids to do. They went on too many field trips that were only loosely tied into dungeoneering, like going to the Dondrian Metropolitan Zoo to see all kinds of examples of monsters, most of which were docile forms grown from dungeon eggs or hostile forms tucked behind smoked glass. If it had been accompanied by a frank discussion from a dungeoneer about the varieties of monsters found in dungeons, Alfric wouldn’t have minded it so much, but no, they were just wandering between exhibits, gawking at the captured monsters.

It was on one of those pointless trips that Alfric had properly met Josen. They had been in Junior League together for nearly a year but had known each other only by name. While the others were playing around and staring at the monsters in their habitats, Josen had been looking through a small pane of glass he held in his hand. Alfric approached cautiously.

“Is that an entad?” he asked.

“No,” said Josen. He stood there for a moment, looking through the piece of glass and giving the impression that he was hoping their conversation was done. “It’s meant to be a method of seeing the aether, but I don’t think it’s working.”

“If it’s not an entad, what is it?” asked Alfric, frowning.

“I’m a wizard,” said Josen. “It’s a mana construct anchored to the glass. But like I said, it’s not working. If it was, you’d be able to see it too.”

“I tried wizardry,” said Alfric. “My teachers didn’t think I was very good.” Anyone could, in theory, be a wizard, but in practice, if you didn’t have the proper aptitude, you would be forever behind those who had it. Working five times as hard just to tread water wasn’t something Alfric had thought was a big deal, not at the time, but his parents had told him no.

“It’s the only thing I’m good at,” said Josen. He looked down at the non-functional pane of glass in his hands. “Usually. This is complicated.”

“Most wizards can’t do anything until they’re much older,” said Alfric.

Josen nodded. “My mother and father are both wizards. They trained me early.”

“My mother and father are both dungeoneers,” said Alfric.

This was the first time that Josen showed anything like respect or interest toward Alfric, and from that point on, they gravitated toward each other at Junior League. Josen was most interested in wizardry and spoke about it often, which Alfric listened to patiently, understanding relatively little. Josen had a seriousness to him that the other Junior League kids seemed to be lacking. His interest in dungeons was largely mercenary, mostly to get what entads he could and make as much money as possible. When they were fifteen, they did some math together and found that ten years of dungeoneering would see both of them set for life, even using conservative estimates for both time traveled and days per dungeon.

They had dreams together, in their own way. Alfric’s dream was always of gearing up and meeting the challenges of the dungeons, while Josen’s were largely about the constructs he would build when he had virtually unlimited access to mana stones. Alfric didn’t quite understand the compulsion even though Josen spoke about it often. All Alfric knew, all he thought he needed to know, was that Josen had grand plans and was going to be along for the ride.

Party composition was a hot topic in the Junior League, especially since one of the points of the organization was to get everyone ready to eventually embark on actual dungeoneering. The Junior League was where plans were made and parties were formed. By the time they were fourteen, it was obvious to both of them that they were going to form the core of a party, and from there, they had a number of discussions about who the other three might be. Alfric considered a bard to be an absolute necessity, because a skilled one could act as a multiplier on the entire team, allowing what felt like circumvention of the five-person party cap. A cleric was another must, at least until later on in their career when healing could be done almost entirely through entads, though a cleric would still be helpful even then. Alfric favored clerics of Oeyr, largely because they could stop people from dying and had good offensive power when they weren’t doing that, but Garos was a close second because they were able to directly cancel out a wide range of damage. Other clerics could offer utility of one kind or another but nothing like the raw healing power of those two. That left the last position to fill, and they’d gone back and forth on that one. Eventually, more by chance than planning, they’d come across Marsh, who was a triple threat, being both a warlock (locking things in place, or in relation to one another) and a nascent Pyro, as well as a proficient fighter.

By the time they were all sixteen, the party seemed like it was fully together. There were arguments, sure, but it seemed like they were going to go out and conquer the world, figuratively speaking. They spent quite a bit of time together, and while Alfric did his best to keep them on track, it was only natural that they’d become friends. It was always Josen who was closest with Alfric, and privately, Alfric thought of the two of them as being the core of the team.

And then Lola had taken it all, but it wouldn’t have been possible for her to do that without their help.

— ⁂ —

“Josen,” said Alfric. He couldn’t keep the disdain from his voice.

“Alfric—what are you doing—what are you doing in Liberfell?” The shock was clearly visible on the wizard’s face. He looked at the door he had just come through, as though he was going to run away, which was laughable, because Alfric knew from experience that he could almost double Josen’s speed, even without the stride boots.

“Did you get my letters?” asked Alfric. There had been three of them over the past year, all without a response.

“I did,” said Josen. “But I didn’t—didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”

“The others I understood,” said Alfric. “We’d had our disagreements about funds. But you were always on my side in those arguments.”

“She—she came to me last. She had already gone to Grig, Marsh, and Mardin. She’d gotten them to agree to break the party. She knew that I would be the toughest, and she had someone lined up to replace me.” Josen was wringing his hands. “The decision was mine, she said. I could stay with you and try to cobble together a new party from scratch as quickly as possible, or I could go with her and carry out your plan.” He repositioned his staff and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. He’d lost quite a bit more in the past year, his hairline continuing its steady march backward. That had started around fifteen, horribly young for it, and Alfric had always felt a bit bad for him. “And then you spent a year floundering, and… I’m sorry, but it felt like I made the right decision.”

Alfric already knew quite a bit of this. He’d tried to undo Lola’s sabotage and spoken with all of them. But that attempt had itself been undone by Alfric, in part because he’d realized that Lola had put in too much preparation too many days in advance. The deal had been all but done; it was just a matter of her executing it. He could still remember the look in Josen’s eyes, the mixture of sadness and defiance, but for Josen, this was their first time seeing each other since the betrayal.

“How many dungeons?” asked Alfric.

“Fifty-four,” said Josen.

“One every six days,” said Alfric. “That’s slow.”

“You overestimated the pace,” said Josen. “And there have been setbacks along the way. Days lost for no good reason. We’d be doing better if we had you, but I’m doing better than I’d have done if you and I had to build up a party from scratch. I’m sorry, but you know it’s true.”

“If you’d stuck by my side, I’d have been back up and running in a month,” said Alfric. “Less, even. I wouldn’t have looked like someone who was cut for some nefarious reason.”

“It wasn’t personal, Alfric,” said Josen. He had a pleading look in his eyes. “You were the one who always said we should treat it like a business. You said we should give ourselves the best shot at success. It was just… that it happened to be that the best shot for me was without you.”

Alfric felt his fists clench into balls. “Well, I hope you’re happy.” He moved forward, and Josen stepped back. Alfric continued on his way, out of the shop, which jangled the little bell. “Tell Lola I have no interest in seeing her.”

Josen seemed like he had many things to say, but they stayed on his lips, and then Alfric was out into the streets of Liberfell. He found himself clenching his jaw. Josen was right, it wasn’t personal, but perhaps that was what made it hurt so much. They had been best friends, or at least he’d felt like that, and in the wake of the party break, there had been nothing but dead silence.

“That was rough,” said Hannah, who’d come out of the shop right after Alfric.

“Bad blood,” said Verity. “We’ll get going soon. No need to meet the rest of your old party.”

“We still have work to do in Liberfell,” said Alfric. “And we need to find an animal so we can test the stone and make sure we can get home easily.” His blood was pumping, like he’d just been through a battle. A part of him wanted to go back and have it out with Josen, a long, drawn-out conversation, but it felt too painful.

“Are you okay?” asked Hannah.

“No,” said Alfric. “Josen and I were friends.” He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to center himself. “Sorry I didn’t introduce you.”

Verity gave him a somewhat pitying smile. “I think in this case we can forgive the breach of decorum.”

“Let us know if there’s anythin’ we can do for you,” said Hannah. “If you need, I can deal with the rest of what needs to be done in Liberfell, and you can go back. Or, if you prefer, I can handle Lola.”

“Handle her?” asked Alfric. That sounded like possibly the worst idea he’d ever heard. “No, I don’t want anyone talking to her. I want her out of my life.”

“I’m a cleric,” said Hannah. “We’re trained to mediate disputes, especially between two people who had somethin’ like a romance.”

“I want nothing to do with her,” said Alfric. “If you feel the need to talk with someone, go talk with the other members of her party and try to convince them that she’s been hoodwinking them.”

“Do we think that’s true?” asked Verity.

Alfric looked at the entad shop. Josen was still in there. “We should move,” said Alfric. “We still need to go to the League office.”

“I can do that, if you want to hole up or leave Liberfell early,” said Hannah.

“No, I’m the one with special dispensation, and I want to do it,” said Alfric. He started walking, trying his best to remember the directions he’d been given the day before. “And for your question, Verity, he said fifty-some dungeons over the course of a year, which is slower than planned, and obviously she brought them all to Liberfell so she could see me, which she didn’t tell them about. They should be at least seventh elevation by now and doing harder dungeons than the ones found in the area, at least if they want to maximize their risk-to-income ratio. If they’re not following the plan, then it’s almost certainly because of her.”

“It’s an accusation that you’d want proof to back up,” said Verity.

“I know,” Alfric said, sighing. “And if I hadn’t felt like stabbing him, it would have been good to talk with Josen to get a better understanding of what they’ve been going through. That way I might have been able to convince him or one of the others. Sorry, I just—I wasn’t properly prepared for this. I woke up this morning and thought to myself that I would just go about my business.” He’d thought he was prepared, that he’d gotten a handle on things and his head straight. Clearly that wasn’t the case.

It wasn’t terribly far to the League office, and Alfric again did his best to steady himself before pushing open the door. An ornate building, it had columns on either side of the heavy brass-plated door in a style that wasn’t much seen in this part of the world. The building was old and a bit run-down, with some chips taken out of one column. Above the door, on the second floor, a stone inscription was visible and marked it as being the onetime home of Liber Cosmetics, which had apparently been established more than a hundred years ago.

A slender, reedlike woman was reading beside an unlit fireplace when they came in, and she stopped only slowly, putting a bookmark in place as though she was saying an extended goodbye to a loved one. She had blond hair that was starting to gray, contrasted against darker skin, and she wore a long dress that nearly touched the floor when she stood up. Her feet were bare, and she was unadorned in any other way as well, a relatively plain person.

“Priya Voyt?” asked Alfric.

“Yes?” she asked. Her voice was high and thin, almost unpleasantly so, and she looked Alfric over like he was a fish she was worried was rotten. “Oh,” she said. “You must be Alfric. I was told to expect you.” She stepped forward and held out a slender hand, which Alfric shook. She barely moved her hand at all and let it quickly fall from his. “You have a party?”

“I do. Five members, with two dungeons done. My provisional status allows me to do another three before any registration, but I’d rather get the registration done quickly, just so it’s out of the way. I have reports written for the two dungeons we’ve done, which were Pucklechurch and Traeg’s Knob. Neither seemed to have notes left by other teams.”

“My,” she said, drawing back slightly. She looked at Verity and Hannah. “Would any of you like some tea?”

“I don’t s’pose you have tuber tea?” asked Hannah.

“I do!” said Priya, clapping her hands. “Do you know, I’ve never come across someone else with a keenness for tuber tea? Do you prefer the corms, the leaves, or the petioles?”

Hannah froze for a moment. “To be honest, I don’t think I’ve heard any of those words before, aside from leaves.”

“The corms are the tuber itself. The petioles are the stem that connects the leaves to the stalk,” said Priya. She waved a hand. “I’ll get the petioles, they’re my favorite for tea, though they’re best with a spot of honey, if you don’t mind.”

“Honey would be lovely,” said Verity.

It was becoming clear to Alfric that this was going to be one of those conversations, the kind that went on aimlessly before it finally got around to the matter at hand. It was something that sometimes just happened, and unlike a negotiation or a proposition, it seemed like there was no ulterior motive at play, no need to psychologically soften each other up. Alfric’s requests were perfectly within the rules of the Adventurers’ League, and there was no element of diplomacy necessary. But it seemed that he’d been overruled, and so he resigned himself to a cup of tea and a rather slower run of things.

To his surprise, Priya pulled a giant axe down from the wall. She set the head of it in the fireplace, and the axehead was suddenly engulfed in flames, burning brightly. She left it unattended, then walked over to a cupboard and took down a large kettle, then spent some time filling it from a sink. This first floor was wide open but separated into different areas by the arrangement of furniture, and it seemed that in addition to being a common area, there was also a dining table and a little kitchen. If it was like most Adventurers’ League places, there would be a few rooms in the back where traveling parties could come spend the night for a very modest fee. In fact, it was entirely possible that this was where Lola and her party were staying, though with half a hundred dungeons under their belt, it seemed likely that they could find better accommodations.

Only once the kettle had been placed on the flaming axehead did Priya return her attention to Alfric.

“You’re of the Dondrian Overguards, yes?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Alfric. He was thankful that bit of information was out, so he wouldn’t have to explain it to the others.

“I partied with your mother, for a time,” said Priya. “Fearsome woman. Tough as nails.”

Alfric frowned. “When were you with her?”

“Early in her career,” said Priya, waving a hand. “We went our separate ways. I’d had a falling-out with Fossy, if you know him.”

That was, to Alfric, Uncle Fossy, a bear of a man who often showed up to family dinners. “I do,” he said.

“I’m retired now, obviously,” said Priya. “But in my time, I ran two thousand dungeons.”

That gave Alfric pause. “That’s a good record.”

“A good record?” she asked. She gave him an incredulous laugh. “There are perhaps twenty people of my generation who have run more.”

Alfric looked around the room, trying to reevaluate. He’d been to a few League houses over the years, as one of those things done as part of a field trip in the Junior League, and this one had its own eccentricities, but didn’t seem like it was all that much out of the ordinary.

“I don’t live here,” said Priya, sighing. “Though I do spend quite a bit of time here, and I’ve built up a nook.” She gestured to one of the chairs by the fireplace, where there were books on a shelf and a table with snacks. “I handle some of the administration across all of Greater Plenarch, but this is my favorite haunt. For my home, I own a demiplane.”

Alfric nodded. “A heavy investment.”

Priya laughed again. “You have a way of understating things.” The teakettle began to whistle, and Priya went over to pull it off the flaming axe, which she touched on the side and put out. The kettle was then brought over to the kitchenette area, and she brought four ceramic cups down from somewhere and set them on the counter, along with a small pot of honey. “I’ll make the tea and then, yes, to more serious matters.” She dropped a ready-made sachet from one of a dozen tins into the kettle, then swirled the water inside around for a bit. “So, Alfric, you have business to conduct.”

“Yes ma’am,” said Alfric.

“You want official recognition of your dungeons in preparation for asking me for a second-level key, is that right?” asked Priya.

“No,” said Alfric. “I’m not intending to take a key until we’ve exhausted all of the lower dungeons in the area. I’ve been told that it’s better to get things in when you have a chance, rather than attempting to get credit for ten or twenty at once. Further, we were in the area, and I wanted any information you had on the surrounding dungeons. I already have a key from Dondrian and special dispensation for party formation and expedition from my time in the Junior League. I don’t think there’s anything that we ‘need’ from you at the moment, and probably not for another few weeks or…” He looked at Verity. “Months.”

“Well, good to know,” said Priya. “Better not to rush things. You have a good party composition,” this she’d have known from a letter he’d sent, “and from the information I’ve gotten back from Dondrian, a good pedigree, if a bit of trouble in the management aspects.”

Alfric nodded. He didn’t like his ‘pedigree’ following him, but he could accept responsibility for how the parties he’d tried to form had fallen apart. “I’m hoping there won’t be any problems?”

“Nothing that I can see,” said Priya. “I’d like to talk to each of you before you get the second key, but I don’t expect there will be any issue. My role here is mostly to stop those who haven’t done the slightest preparation and to serve as a line of communication. I don’t think we’ll have any issues.”

“There’s another party operating here,” said Alfric. “Lola.” He watched her eyes for recognition and saw that the name was familiar. “There’s some bad blood between us, I should warn you.”

“Unless it happens in the dungeons, which is impossible, or it happens to the dungeons, which seems unlikely, it doesn’t concern me,” said Priya with a shrug. “I suppose you might have a fight in the League house, but I’m hoping you know better.”

“Has she asked about me?” asked Alfric.

“No,” said Priya. “But she did go looking through the dungeon reports and leafed through them like she was trying to find something. You are welcome to submit what reports you have.”

Alfric hesitated. If Lola was in Liberfell, there was nothing to prevent her from coming back here and looking through the dungeon reports again. He didn’t want her reading them, though in the long term, it couldn’t be helped.

“Perhaps I’ll hold on to them for the time being,” said Alfric. “If I could read what you have?”

“Certainly,” said Priya. “They’re public, open to anyone. They are kept in a magical tome, which needs to be kept on-site.”

“Are they staying here?” asked Verity. “Lola’s group?”

“They’ve taken a name, Vertex,” said Priya.

“Ugh,” said Verity, making a face.

Alfric stayed silent. He had liked the name when he’d picked it, but hearing it out loud, it did sound a bit… off.

“Well, they can’t all be winners,” said Priya. “I suppose if you had a name, you’d have declared it already?”

“We can come up with one now,” said Hannah.

“No,” said Alfric. “Mizuki would never forgive us if we did. And if we’re going to have a name, then we can take our time on it, especially since we’ll be having downtime later anyway.”

“Well, I’ll start thinkin’,” said Hannah. “Somethin’ to do with animals?” Alfric gave her a brief shake of the head before she could mention that Isra was a druid. It was better to play that close to the vest for as long as possible, which, given Lola, probably wasn’t all that long.

“We can save it for later,” said Alfric. “I’ll get on those reports. We were planning to spiral out from Pucklechurch, and I need to check whether that’s sensible.”

“But why a spiral?” asked Verity.

“Well,” said Alfric. “In theory, it makes the most sense to do adjacent hexes in order to minimize travel time. The original plan called for making a base in the middle of nowhere, then doing dungeons in roughly a spiral, which would mean there’s always only six miles of travel between dungeons.”

“Assuming a straight line seems unwise,” said Priya.

“Approximately six miles,” said Alfric. “But it seems pretty clear that we’re not doing it that way, so… Sorry, just going by the old plan, rather than the new one.” He wanted to go look at the reports, but the conversation was feeling like molasses, the kind that was nearly impossible to leave without rudeness.

“The new one where we don’t push ourselves too hard?” asked Verity.

Alfric nodded. “Yes. Besides, between the wardrobe and the dagger, there’s not as much benefit to a spiral pattern.”

“I’ll grab the book that has the reports,” Priya finally said. “If you’re looking for the ones that Vertex submitted, they’ll be the most recent ones for Traeg’s Knob and Pate’s Knob.”

“Just those two?” asked Alfric. She kept saying ‘Vertex’ rather than ‘The Vertex’, and he wondered whether she was making a mistake or if they’d dropped the article from the name.

“Just those, in the week they’ve been here,” said Priya. “They might have done more and not put in reports. There’s no need to write a report.”

“The League gives special allowances for advancement, and reports are one of the metrics,” said Alfric.

Priya blinked at him. “Does it?”

“It was offered as an incentive five years ago,” said Alfric. It seemed difficult to imagine that she didn’t know this, but if she was a retired or semi-retired adventurer who had landed in this position by virtue of her skill in a dungeon… well, her core competence was probably not in administration. “From what I understand, report rates had been abysmal, and they thought it would be better for everyone if they had more of them.”

Priya shook her head. “Idiocy. Leverist idiocy.”

“If the incentive is there, I’m going to do it,” said Alfric.

“They should be instilling values in the Junior League,” said Priya. “We’re all supposed to be in this together, helping each other because it makes the world a better place for us all. And instead, we have the leverists putting in one of their levers, and of course the result is a spate of low-quality reports put in only because people are hoping to get something from it.” She waved a hand, perhaps sensing that Alfric wasn’t a receptive audience for a rant against the leverists. She picked up a big book from back in the recesses of the open room, then returned to them. “It’s not to leave the premises, so you’ll have to read it here. It’s an entad. You can add your own reports, and they’ll become a part of it. The index at the start updates itself.”

Alfric nodded and moved over to the book. It was larger than the party’s storage book, with a metal frame around the outside that seemed like it was adding quite a bit of undue weight. He placed it on the table next to the kitchenette and opened the cover, which showed him the index.

“A wortier worked on this?” asked Alfric. He was looking at the circles at the top of the index page. “A very, very skilled wortier?”

“Yes,” said Priya. She’d come over to look at the book with him. “I came out of the dungeoneering game with rather a lot of money, and I spent some of it here. The book itself is nothing special, it just eats up the dungeon reports, corrects some spelling, and makes it all in the same font.” She leaned past Alfric and pressed one of the circles, the one labeled ‘Places’, and the index rearranged itself, listing out the roughly hundred hexes in this region of the Greater Plenarch province. But it wasn’t just the index that was rearranging, because the page numbers had changed as well. The entire book had been rearranged by placing a thumb against the circle.

“I’ll leave you to it,” said Priya. “I’m past my normal time here; you were lucky to catch me when you did. If you ever need anything, at least between sunup and sundown, there’s a bell you can ring, there on the mantel.” She pointed, and Alfric saw a brass bell he hadn’t noticed before. “I don’t always drop what I’m doing to help out, but I do come eventually, in a half hour to an hour. Make sure you have someone here. If that bell gets rung and there’s no one to meet me, I will find out who rang it, and they will wish they’d had a bit more courtesy. It was nice to meet you. Give your mother my love the next time you see her.”

“I will,” said Alfric. He wondered whether his mother knew that an old friend was working here, and decided that she probably had known. Both his parents had deep connections. And given that this woman ‘just happened’ to be here when she did administration for seven regions of the province, well, Alfric wouldn’t be terribly surprised if this meeting was because of a favor changing hands. Not help, per se, but something like it.

Priya disappeared with a puff of air, and Alfric looked at the book for a moment, then pressed the circle marked ‘Reporter’. The list changed again, this time growing much longer, bleeding onto the next page. It didn’t take Alfric all that long to find Lola’s name, and he flipped to the start of her entries.

“Goin’ right to it?” asked Hannah. “No pretense of lookin’ elsewhere?”

“No,” said Alfric. “In theory, they could all walk through that door at any moment. And if Lola submitted reports already, my guess is that she did it with the intention that I would read them.”

“Why are you reading them if you don’t want to talk to her or any of them?” asked Verity. “It seems to me like you want a clean break.”

Alfric paused and thought about that. “They were my party,” he said. “They were… what I had wanted, what I’d thought I had. I want to see how they’re doing. I want to know.”

“You want to know whether your plan would have worked?” asked Hannah.

“I guess,” said Alfric. He looked down at the page. The words weren’t rendered in Lola’s handwriting, but as he started reading, he could tell that it was her voice.

“We’ll leave you to it,” said Hannah with a sigh. “Verity, would you like to tour this place?”

“Of course,” said Verity. “It will be interesting to see how normal people do things.”

Alfric ignored them. He was already engrossed.

Chapter 36 — E7 Report

Party:

Lola Underhill—alienist, chrononaut, E7

Josen Park—wizard, E7

Grig Tinsmith—bard, E7

Mardin Longshore—cleric of Oeyr, E7

Marsh—warlock, Pyro (delayed service), E7

My favorite tutor when I was growing up was my math teacher, who spent a month of our time talking about variance. Variance is important for chrononauts, part of our bread and butter, but I was deep in the guts of the Junior League at the time (mostly because of a boy), and it’s even more important for dungeoneers. The upshot from that tutor’s lesson was that luck doesn’t exist, and a cold streak doesn’t mean that you’ll keep being cold.

Still, we’re on a cold streak.

At the end of the Pate’s Knob dungeon, Marsh blasted a monster with a jet of fire hot enough to melt rock and destroy anything of value that was behind the creature. We’d been in the dungeon for hours, and he was getting irritated and tired. It was a dumb thing to do, and he knew it. The bad luck for us was that the monster wasn’t just immune to fire, but fed on it. It grew to three times its size and flicked one of its six spindly tendrils out and absolutely destroyed Josen’s left arm. Most of his shoulder went missing with the arm, some of his mage stuff got obliterated, and he lost four entads in the process. Mardin grabbed him by the collar and hefted him out, which left the three of us to face the thing down, and Marsh was useless unless we wanted someone else to lose an arm, or worse. Really, Josen could have died pretty easily. Any of us could have. We did manage to kill the thing and get almost nothing for it, but it was just me, alone, with Grig backing me up on vocals.

After, there was a lot of argument about whether to reset or not. There always is; they just never remember because I’m the one undoing things. Sometimes it’s obvious, like if one of them dies, not that it’s happened much. Other times I need to be convinced. Losing a good entad? That’s a maybe for me. Obviously we’re not bounding through the dungeons for the great view. We’re going to make money, and losing an entad, especially a good one, can throw the whole enterprise in the garbage. In that case, always better to do it over. For Josen though, the four lost entads were piddly crap, ‘irreplaceable’ entads that he’d taken a fancy to. One gave him better finger dexterity, I remember, and I don’t remember what the others did, but they were all minor trinkets, aside from the bracer, which was part of a pair that stopped working. It doubled his strength, but he’s a wizard, and it unfortunately bound to him, which was the only reason he ended up with it.

Mostly they were just complaining because things had gone wrong. They always complain. I made them count up the costs incurred against the winnings and made them do the math, which I always do. Sometimes it comes out in favor of letting it ride, but more often, they call for me to undo. This time, Josen was a bit out of it, mostly upset about the arm thing, with some recriminations and accusations. He wanted the whole dungeon undone, mostly because he thought losing the arm was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. He didn’t appreciate me saying that it was the worst thing he could remember. There was some back-and-forth I won’t get into, but I pointed out that while it could be undone, I was the one putting in more labor. It felt like the twentieth time we’ve had this conversation, and I don’t know how many of those have stuck, but it feels like probably a few. They’ve run nearly fifty dungeons or whatever, but I’ve run closer to eighty. It all just keeps getting undone.

Undoing things is not free! I have to actually live through the day! I’m doing twice the labor!

These reports are supposed to be a place to gripe about your teammates, right?

It’s not like the payout was all that great either. We had thirty rooms total, which stretched us to our limit, and we got fifteen entads, only three of which were any good, and none of which we’re planning to keep. Ectad junk. A handful of eggs. Some seeds. More than enough to pay our way, but not a big contribution to the endgame. The whole team is feeling sour, and they wish that I had undone it, but I’m far more burnt than they are. We handed most of the stuff off to the counterparty and let them deal with it.

We started out with great equipment and a clear plan, and now it’s just a matter of going through the motions. We’ve got enough now that we can live in relative comfort, not that it was ever in question for me. One of the things they don’t talk about in Junior League is how to deal with problems in the party, and half of me wants to go see a cleric about it, though I’ve got no clue which one.

And that was it, all there was for that entry. It was as though Lola had gotten bored halfway through.

As a dungeon report, it was basically useless, saying nothing about the general character of the dungeon and very little about the threats that might be found there. It likely wouldn’t have been all that useful to Alfric, given how much higher their elevation was and the difference in what they were bringing into the dungeon, but part of the point of dungeon reports was to get a sense of the range of probabilities. You weren’t supposed to read just one of them, you were supposed to read a bunch of them and then get a general sense of the dungeon’s shape. Sometimes there were commonalities. A report like this though, one that detailed nothing, was worthless for that purpose.

As insight into the party, the dungeon report was revealing. It was hard to know whether the things Lola had said were accurate, especially since she must have known that Alfric would be reading it, but all the same, it had the ring of truth. Lola was tricky in that way though, an accomplished liar who knew that people would more readily believe her if she offered some vulnerability or let them in on a secret, or simply told them what she thought they wanted to hear. He had seen her do it with others, and she’d talked with him about it. She just didn’t take lies and manipulation all that seriously. Everyone lied, in Lola’s opinion, and everyone manipulated to some degree or another. It was normal and natural to her. Alfric hadn’t agreed, had never agreed, not just because of how he’d been raised, but because it seemed normal and natural to him that people should say what they mean and mean what they say. All of it called into question the report, naturally.

If it had been Alfric in her position, he’d have worked out some kind of monetary exchange with Josen to compensate for the loss. It was the loss of entads, payment to the clerics, and labor for remaking mana constructs, measured against the labor for Alfric of another dungeon. It seemed there was likely some kind of equitable exchange to be had there. It was the sort of thing he’d suggest to her, if they were still on speaking terms.

The second entry from Lola, for Traeg’s Knob, was much less illuminating. It had been similar to their experience, with a wet place and mostly natural interior, though they’d faced tougher monsters and more rooms. It was a bit of a surprise just how similar they’d been, but based on the timing, Lola’s party must have done Traeg’s Knob within a day or two of Alfric’s.

Alfric took some time to read through other reports, but most of them were terrible in one way or another, either sparse on details or with far too much in the way of extraneous details. It did seem like Pucklechurch was a more difficult place than most expected it to be, and Alfric supposed that was due to a higher concentration of magic there, from either the artifacts that had been left there or the leyline that had once run through it. Pucklechurch was a place of power, but an old and weak one.

“I think there are worse places to stay,” said Verity as they finished their tour of the League house. “Relatively few people around though, for all that they have three rooms of five beds each.”

“Most parties who do the local dungeons are themselves local,” said Alfric. “And most parties who are from outside the region looking to do a full clear will camp rather than stay in town, or they’ll have their own ways of getting around, or their own mobile housing, which means they don’t need to use League housing.”

“So why have it?” asked Verity. It was rare that she showed any interest in dungeoneering, and Alfric was thankful that she seemed curious.

“It probably gets used with some frequency,” said Alfric. “Though the ideal time for doing easier dungeons is early spring, like I said, so we’re probably in a lull right now.”

“And we could have stayed here for free rather than going to the hotel?” asked Verity.

“Probably,” said Alfric. “Some of them charge, but having met Priya, I doubt this one does.”

“It’s good for a town to have dungeoneers come through,” said Hannah. “Most try to make it easy. Same reason we don’t get taxed.”

“We don’t?” asked Verity.

“Why, were you keepin’ a ledger?” asked Hannah.

“I don’t think I’ve ever paid a tax,” said Verity.

“You should look into that,” said Alfric, frowning a bit.

“We used to have someone who did that kind of thing for us,” said Verity. “An accountant.”

“Sounds expensive,” said Hannah, wrinkling her nose.

“If we’re on this for long enough, we’ll be picking up people,” said Alfric. “Someone to handle the money is usually pretty vital. Vertex has a counterparty, which would probably be two porters, a merchant, a coordinator, and an entad specialist, though a counterparty usually splits up their duties a bit more than that, and with fifty dungeons done, my guess is they’re not quite there yet. Maybe two or three people.”

“You planned that far in advance?” asked Verity, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s the family trade,” said Alfric. “A counterparty is the natural outgrowth of a mid-level dungeoneering party. At a higher level, there can be more than one counterparty, though it would be a bit unusual for them to travel to every dungeon, depending on what entads are available.”

“And your parents employed hundreds, ay?” asked Hannah.

“Not for dungeons, no,” said Alfric. “They do a handful a year, maybe a large handful. But once you have enough entads, you’re usually able to build some kind of business around them, and those businesses employ hundreds. Maybe more.”

“It was a joke,” said Hannah, sighing.

“Ha ha,” said Alfric.

“How far away from hiring someone are we?” asked Verity.

“Not far at all,” said Alfric. “If we can use the stone to move the whole party through the dagger, then it might make sense for us to hire a cartier, though if we’re going at a more sedate pace through the dungeons, it wouldn’t be full-time.”

“There’s a cartier who services Pucklechurch,” said Verity. “She comes by the Fig and Gristle every now and then. She’s a friend, of sorts. Xy.”

“A friend?” asked Hannah.

Verity gave her a look. “Yes.”

“A special friend?” asked Hannah.

“A bit special, yes.”

“Oh, ay,” said Hannah. She seemed a bit flustered. “Sorry for the confusion, earlier.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” said Alfric. Neither of them offered any comment. “Relevant to our core mission?”

“No,” said Verity. “Definitely not.”

“Well, I’ll speak with her, then, and see what her terms would be. It would only be once a week, running the dagger over to whatever the next dungeon is,” said Alfric. “And then, I suppose, running it back and getting it in position. In theory that would allow us to stay in Pucklechurch for a long time, especially if she’s using our wardrobe to cut down on distance.”

“Well, I’ve had enough talk about dungeons for the day,” said Verity. “It seems like the last thing we need to do is to figure out whether the stone can hold us.” She hesitated for a moment. <Are the two of you done with your walk?>

<Just finishing up,> said Mizuki. <What’s going on?>

<I was hoping that you could get an animal for us to do the stone testing with,> said Verity.

There was a brief silence. <What kind of animal?> asked Isra.

<As close to a human as possible,> said Verity. <Not a bear.>

<A squirrel?> asked Isra. <Will it be okay?>

<She’s holding a squirrel in her hand at the moment,> said Mizuki.

<In theory it will be fine,> said Alfric. <We’ll just tie it up, put it down in the garden area of the stone, then pull it back out. If all that works, then we can try with people.>

<Why would we tie him up?> asked Isra. <Why not just tell him to stay still?>

<Oh,> said Alfric. <Right. But what happens if the squirrel takes off? We don’t want it stuck in the garden.>

<A squirrel doesn’t want to be stuck there any more than we do,> said Isra.

<Well, we can meet up at the warp,> said Alfric. <I think we’re done for now.> He gave Hannah a questioning look, and she nodded.

“We’ll have to use this place next time,” said Verity. “I think I would like it better than a hotel. All together?”

“It’s more traditional accommodation,” said Alfric. “Though different regions of Inter have different ways of handling the inevitable flow of adventurers. Ready?”

They both nodded, and Alfric double-checked that he had everything he needed and then cast the warp.

He’d had a knot of tension at warping, because this was the most likely place for him to run into Lola and the others, but instead it was just his people, quickly moving off the warp before the attendant could wave for them to move.

“Nice to see you guys again!” said Mizuki. “Productive time?”

“Mostly,” said Alfric. “We got the ectad stuff squared away and spoke with the rep at the League office. They have rooms there, by the way. All empty, it seemed. But we’re not staying here tonight, not unless there’s something we need done. We can be back home in an hour.”

“Heh,” said Mizuki. “‘Home’.”

“You know what I mean,” said Alfric, flushing slightly.

“No, I liked it,” said Mizuki, grinning.

“I have the squirrel,” said Isra, pulling it from a pocket. It poked out from in her hand.

“We should move somewhere a bit more quiet,” said Alfric. They were still in the warp room, though off to the side. In the city, if you stuck around, people would give you dirty looks, but then again, the whole thing was a lot different. As they stood there, someone came in and took a moment to orient, then walked off toward one of the exits. It was so casual.

They found a park easily enough, one with a rotunda and a good view of the valley that Liberfell was built above. Again, Alfric worried that he would see Lola and the others, but there was no particular sign of them, only people sitting around and playing in the wide green area. Three children were throwing a disc among themselves, and Alfric felt curious about it, but there was work to be done.

Isra touched the stone, which had been brought out of the book, and held the squirrel in her hand. When she went to set it down, it vanished.

“It’s in,” said Isra, removing her hand from the stone. “I told it to wait by the stone. You did some damage to the plants with those trees.”

“Sorry,” said Alfric. “But I don’t think the other side of the stone being a garden is, er, relevant. And there’s technically some risk of the flowers spreading to the outside, though I would be surprised if they were either dangerous or worth anything.” He frowned and looked at Isra. “Are they?”

“I don’t think we could sell them, no,” said Isra. “But I like them for their own sake. Not everything in nature can be used by humans. They aren’t any variety I’ve ever seen.”

Alfric nodded. “And they are pretty. We’ll try to be more gentle with them. If it’s possible for a person to go in there, maybe we can transplant them away from the central area, but I do have to warn you that I’m already drawing up plans for the interior.”

Isra frowned slightly and looked at the rock. “How long were we going to leave it in there?”

“I was thinking five minutes or so,” said Alfric. “Then Hannah can check the squirrel over for issues, and we can send it on its way and, hopefully, put the four of you in so that I can use the dagger to get back. You won’t be in there for longer than five minutes, I shouldn’t think, and then we’ll be back in Pucklechurch.”

“Do people ever get trapped in entads?” asked Mizuki.

“Not to my knowledge,” said Alfric. “If I thought there was a risk, I wouldn’t be doing it.”

“I guess if we get stuck, we can just undo it,” said Mizuki. “There’s no real risk.”

“There is a risk,” said Alfric. “It’s a risk that I have to do this day all over again and explain that I allowed this to happen, and then, if things go wrong, there’s not the same cushion of safety. Look, you cannot depend on chronomancy. It makes things so much harder for us unless there’s an explicit plan in place.”

“Always with the plans,” said Mizuki, rolling her eyes. “But fine, I will refrain from doing anything too stupid just because I know you’ve got my back. If I do something too stupid, it will be for normal reasons.”

“Thank you,” said Alfric. He turned to Isra. “You can probably pull the squirrel out now.”

Isra nodded and bent down to touch the stone again. She held out her hand, and a squirrel appeared in it. She looked him over, and there was something unutterably odd about the way it moved in her hand, being a party to the inspection, showing her his tail and stretching out his legs. At one point, the squirrel looked right at Isra and opened his mouth, showing its teeth.

“He seems fine,” said Isra. She handed the squirrel over to Hannah, who seemed extremely skeptical. Clerics were called on as vets with some regularity, but Alfric didn’t imagine it was a particularly strong point for her.

“Seems fine indeed,” said Hannah, after a few minutes.

“All right,” said Alfric. “Then I guess we can do this here. Metal off, and we see if we can put a person in, and then see if we can get a person out.”

“I volunteer to go first,” said Mizuki. She pointed at him. “No nudity.”

Alfric saw the grin on her face and found himself smiling. “If you say so.”

Mizuki set down her bag, which had her helmet in it, then set down her dagger as well, which she hadn’t once used in any capacity that Alfric had seen. Once that was all done, she stepped over to him. He ducked down and took her outstretched hand, then touched the stone. When he looked over, though he could still feel her small hand in his own, he couldn’t see it, and she wasn’t present in the garden world.

“Try stepping up onto me,” said Alfric. “Step on my foot?” He couldn’t see her, and it felt as though he was in another place, but he was still between worlds. He felt the pressure on his foot, then Mizuki appeared there, in the garden.

“I can see,” she said. “Do I just… step off?”

“Probably,” said Alfric. “Try to step into the garden, if you can.”

Mizuki stepped off Alfric. As she did, she disappeared from his view of the garden, and when he released the stone, he saw her standing there in the park beside him.

“Well shoot,” said Mizuki. “That didn’t do what we wanted.”

“Let’s try again,” said Alfric. “I’m going to actually hold you this time and release you.”

“Okay,” Mizuki said with a shrug.

There was some unavoidable awkwardness with picking her up, namely in terms of where to place his hands. Eventually he was holding her in both hands, one under her knees and the other under her back. She was lighter than he’d been expecting. She wrapped her arms around his neck to give herself a bit more support.

“Now I just need to touch the stone,” said Alfric. He look down at it and sighed. “Shoot.”

“Here, I’ll lift it up,” said Hannah. She went over to the stone and hefted it up for Alfric to touch, which didn’t actually help matters all that much. The stone appeared, in the garden, to be floating in the air. Alfric touched it, and Mizuki hopped down. She was still standing in the garden, independent of the stone. “Works!” she said, throwing up her hands. She looked around. “We should get some furniture in here. This could be a place to camp.”

“I’m going to release my hold on the stone now,” said Alfric. “I want you to come over and try to exit on your own. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Mizuki.

Alfric let go of the stone. Even if you couldn’t get out of the stone on your own, it might be possible to have someone pull you out, but it needed to be tested. He waited for five seconds, worried that she might panic, but after a moment, she appeared standing beside the stone.

“Works both ways,” said Mizuki. “Shame you can’t go in without help.”

“You might be able to,” said Alfric. “Stand on it barefoot, and try to launch yourself into the garden? We’ll do some testing of it. The point is, if we just repeat all of that, we can get everyone into the stone, then everyone out of the stone, and skip all the walking it would take to get back to Pucklechurch. And so far as I’m concerned, we’re done here and can go.”

“I was going to set up a date with Rolaj,” said Mizuki, frowning. “But I suppose I can do that with a letter.”

No one else had any pressing need to stay in Liberfell, and Alfric was thankful for that because he wanted to leave behind Lola and her people. What remained was to get everyone stripped of their metal, which there was a surprising amount of. Some of it went into the book, but quite a bit of it would have to be carried, along with the stone. Once that was done though, they went into the stone one by one, and then Alfric went about picking all the pieces of metal up, mostly armor and weapons that had been too big for storing away. He double- and triple-checked that they weren’t leaving anything, because it was a long way to go.

Then, with barely more than a thought, he was standing in the Pucklechurch temple, a place he’d chosen because of its close proximity to a cleric in the case of an emergency. They were in the room used by clerics of Garos, though Lemmel didn’t seem to be there.

“It feels great to skip a long trip,” said Mizuki.

“It does,” Verity agreed.

“Well, we’re going to have to go back to Traeg’s Knob in order to get the wardrobe,” said Alfric. “And it will need to be brought back to Pucklechurch somehow. I was able to negotiate with Besc for some floatstones to rent, which means that I should be able to bring the wardrobe back either single-handedly or with the help of a volunteer. I’d like to do that tomorrow.”

“It’s likely been fine for a day and will likely be fine for a week,” said Hannah.

“All the same,” said Alfric. “Is there a volunteer?”

“Och, fine, I’ll go,” said Hannah.

“Can I just go one way?” asked Mizuki.

“Um,” said Alfric. “I guess I could cut you with the knife, then have you come when I get there? But the two of us can probably handle it.”

“I’d like her with,” said Hannah. “She’s probably not much for carryin’, but if it’s awkwardness you’re worried about, she can probably help with the steerin’, and that way we can switch off and make better time.”

“Sounds good,” said Alfric. “And now, it’s high time we headed home. Our second dungeon and most of its associated business is complete.” Leaving aside the appearance of his old party for now. “I think we’ve earned ourselves a rest.”

Chapter 37 — Cartier

The prospect of a day with nothing going on had, at first, seemed like it would be nice and pleasant, a chance to work in the garden, perhaps, or laze about once the ritual practice was finished, but then, in the morning, the rain clouds had begun to hang heavy in the sky. Verity woke up too late to see the party off, but there was a note and a cold breakfast in the chiller for her, thoughtfully left by Mizuki, who seemed to really be going out of her way to be a good host. Verity didn’t normally eat breakfast, but she had a feeling that was going to change if they kept pushing it on her. She had no strong aversion to breakfast nor affection for the Dondrian way, she just woke late enough that it seemed sensible to wait until lunch.

<Isra, is it going to rain today?> asked Verity as she sipped a cup of hot tea and ate a cold hard-boiled egg.

<I moved the clouds up so they’ll sweep across us,> said Isra. <I wanted to give them good weather for moving the wardrobe. It should be done by fourth bell. The plants need the rain.>

<Okay, thank you,> said Verity. She tapped her foot for a bit and thought about what to do with herself. There was enough time to get to the heart of Pucklechurch, but once there, it would probably start to drizzle, and Verity wasn’t all that sure she wanted to be around people all day. She had half a mind to see whether Isra wanted to do something together, but Isra was used to being alone, and the only thing for them to do was in the garden, which would mean rearranging the weather. Verity didn’t want to impose, and Isra was right, the plants did need it.

She settled in for some music practice instead, though she wasn’t feeling particularly creative, and went to old songs instead of new ones, classic pieces that she’d played in concert halls and at the occasional private party. Most of them were wordless or meant to be accompanied by more vocalization than she would be able to give them. Without her concert lute, the sound seemed small, though the living room of the house had surprisingly good acoustics.

She thought about the next dungeon, and the one after that. The stress and pressure of dungeons was manageable, especially since everyone seemed to be understanding about wanting to relax and take it slow. Mizuki was an ally in that, but even Alfric, for all he was champing at the bit, seemed to take most of his actual pleasure from oddball things like hauling a huge wardrobe up a hill. He hadn’t made it difficult for her. Perhaps he would, in the future, but Verity somewhat doubted it. He was nice. The lies he’d told were small and understandable. She actually somewhat liked him.

The rain started while she was in the middle of playing, and the change in humidity made the strings feel sluggish and slow. She stopped and put her lute away, feeling somewhat frustrated. She’d be playing again at the Fig and Gristle later in the night anyhow. It seemed like Cynthia was going to take a long time in finding a new bard, though that wasn’t terribly surprising. Verity had been playing for not much more than room and board, but it was likely a replacement would come from out of town and would be looking for a more favorable arrangement.

There was nothing to do in the house as it rained. There were a number of books, including those brought over by Hannah. It seemed that Hannah had a particular affection for romances involving exclusively men, which wasn’t in the slightest what Verity had an interest in reading, especially as they seemed to be soaked in maleness. Mizuki had two books from the local library, both of which seemed to be overdue and unread, one a dense history of a man named Alcaran, the other a light adventure story. Neither held any particular interest for Verity.

Eventually, and somewhat despite herself, Verity began to snoop. She consoled herself that this wasn’t exactly snooping, given that she lived in the house, and she kept away from the bedrooms, where people might be keeping things that they really did want kept secret. But she snooped all the same, going down into the basement, looking around in the kitchen but making sure not to put anything out of place, taking stock of the wine cellar, and so on. She looked at the places where things had been, holes in the wall where a nail might have once held up a picture. There were no great revelations from this exercise, only a better sense of the history of the building, which seemed to have accumulated quite a bit of age, despite not being all that old.

She did, however, find a quite nice umbrella, and on a whim, or perhaps because she was bored, she decided that she was going to venture out into the rain.

Verity did like the rain, but rain was better from the inside with a hot cup of tea, listening to the raindrops beat a staccato on the roof. There was something nice about the smell, though, and even the wetness in the air. It brought a vibrancy to the plants, a color that they didn’t normally have in the sun.

The walk took her into Pucklechurch, and from there it was a question of where to go next. It wasn’t a market day, the taverns held no appeal given that Verity still technically worked at one, and there was nothing she wanted to shop for, though she had brought her rings. That left the temple for a bit of prayer, never her favorite thing, or trying to get out of the rain by finding some kind of activity to take part in. On rainy days in Pucklechurch, people did some extra baking, the quilting circle gathered, and the woodworking space grew crowded with amateurs using the communal equipment. Verity idly wondered whether there was some kind of gardening group in Pucklechurch, but if there were, it seemed unlikely that they were meeting on a rainy day. Besides, while it was exciting to be back in a garden again, she was worried that the Pucklechurch Gardening Society, or whatever it might be called, would have all the same problems as the group she’d belonged to in Dondrian.

Verity was saved from having to make a choice when she saw the town cartier, with whom she ostensibly had some business.

Xy Longstride wasn’t, in a technical sense, the ‘town’ cartier, but she did service Pucklechurch, bringing in mail and goods from elsewhere, along with larger packages on occasion. She was a sprightly girl, not too much older than Verity, and yes, Verity did have some interest. Xy had a kind of rough-and-tumble way about her, and they hadn’t interacted all that much aside from a few pleasantries at the Fig and Gristle. The timings had been a little bit suspect in the past few weeks, made mostly in the evenings, when Verity was working. Xy had even stopped by for dinner a few times and listened to Verity play, but if the attraction was mutual, Xy had never acted on it.

Verity didn’t really understand girls. She’d had one brief flirtation at the conservatory that went nowhere and felt like it might have been imagined, save for the memory of a kiss being burned into her brain. The Church of Garos quoted one in ten women being interested in women, but that left nine in ten of them decidedly not, and it sometimes felt, to Verity, like finding a needle in a haystack. There were exceptions, of course, obvious signals like wearing a pin of Garos, but the number of girls who wore such a pin seemed to be far less than one in ten.

Xy wasn’t wearing such a pin, but there were other signals, like a particular haircut that seemed to be universally worn by that kind of woman and an outfit that was slightly boyish, overalls that stopped just below the knees. She was the kind of girl with a grin almost permanently plastered on her face, eager and ready for anything. Xy was the sort of girl who was like catnip to Verity, in the sense that around such a girl, Verity got nervous and started doing things that didn’t make a lot of sense.

“Hi!” said Verity as she came over to Xy. The cartier was standing out in the rain eyeing a package.

“Hi Verity,” said Xy. The rain didn’t seem to be touching her: the work of some kind of entad, Verity was pretty sure, but it was hard to see what was happening to the water as it fell. “I heard you joined a party to go raid dungeons?”

“Oh, right!” said Verity. Her voice felt like it was an octave too high. “Yes, a week ago. It’s really been pretty great.” There were too many superlatives, but it was the kind of problem that became apparent only once the words were out of her mouth, impossible to correct in the moment.

“I fought some monsters,” said Xy, nodding. She looked at Verity, taking her eyes off the package for the first time. “Ten dungeons, which is kind of a lot. It’s how I got this thing.” She pointed to a flask that hung on her hip. Verity had never seen it before. “Keeps me dry, but needs to be emptied every ten minutes or so when it’s raining, which is a pain when I’m on the move.”

“Yeah,” said Verity. She was nodding too much. “Exactly.”

“So you’re done at the Fig and Gristle?” asked Xy, who seemed to have abandoned whatever she’d been in the process of. “Aww. I’ll miss your music.”

“Well, I won’t be done done,” said Verity. “But I’m going to get replaced, and no one is clamoring for an encore. So.”

“Are you sure they’re not clamoring?” asked Xy. She smiled at Verity and cupped a hand to her ear. “I, for one, hear it. People like your music. I like your music.”

“Thanks!” chirped Verity. “But we might actually see some of each other, since there’s some dungeon work.”

“A counterparty?” asked Xy. “Awesome. Yeah, I’m in, totally. You have some way of contacting me?”

“Um,” said Verity, who was very quickly realizing that she was a bit out of her depth, having only half listened to Alfric, or only half been instructed, she didn’t know which. “I don’t think we have anything yet. We’re going like once a week, so when you’re in Pucklechurch, I guess we can leave you a note at the mailbox?”

“Nah, we’ll figure something better out,” said Xy. “I’ve always wanted to be a part of a counterparty. Do you want me for transporting you, or the stuff?”

“Um, both?” said Verity. “Sorry, someone else should have done this. I’m not really a part of the management end.”

“It’s cool,” Xy said, shrugging. “We know each other, kind of. Tell you what, give me a week or so to get things in order, then I should be able to divert for you. I do charge, but I’ll take my payment in cut-rate entads if that’s all right with you, the stuff that’s barely more than a henling.”

“I’ll talk to Alfric,” said Verity. “He’s our party leader. He’s super great.” She felt the conversation skip a beat. “Our sorcerer, Mizuki, got a spoon that can turn into almost any spoon you can think of.”

“Yes!” said Xy. “That’s absolutely the kind of thing I would love to have. Of course, half the fun is just playing around with them, so I guess I’ll talk to your guy and see if I can do a bit of that too.”

“Oh, Alfric isn’t,” said Verity. “He’s not really my guy. Just a party leader.” This felt, in immediate retrospect, like an inane and stupid thing to say. “But yeah, you should talk to him, we’re all living in a big house down the lane, though he and most of the others are moving a big wardrobe over from Traeg’s Knob.”

“Cool,” said Xy, nodding. “Well leave me a note at the mailbox for next time I’m in town, and I’ll figure out where to go from there, shouldn’t be long before I’m back, and I’m definitely interested in being a counterparty, especially if the pay is good.” She looked down at the package at her feet. “I’ve got to get this done. Nice talking to you, as always.”

“Yeah, you too!” said Verity. For a moment she stood there awkwardly, but having nothing better to do, she moved off down the street like she, too, had business to attend to.

Verity was not good at flirting. She also wasn’t good at sending out the right kind of signals or picking them up from other people. In theory, this was something that she should talk to Hannah about, because Hannah, by her position as a cleric of Garos, should know all about it, but Verity felt some embarrassment on that score. She wondered whether things had gone as poorly with Xy as it felt like they’d gone. The catnip effect had felt particularly strong. Verity couldn’t help but remember her cat drooling heavily next to a sprig of catnip it had torn apart.

It was also possible that Verity had a faulty reading on Xy and that Xy simply wasn’t interested in women in that way. The same thing had happened with Mizuki. That first night, when they’d come back from the dungeon, Verity had thought there were signals, or flirtation, or something like it. Mizuki had offered to make food, then offered to top off her wine, then offered her a room, and when Verity had lain down on the bed… well, she had thought that Mizuki was going to come over and at least lie down with her, and from there it wouldn’t have been long until they were kissing. Verity had mentally prepared herself for it. She was ready. Eager, even. But the moment had passed, and Mizuki seemed unaware that it had even been a moment, which meant that maybe it had all just been in Verity’s head.

The same had happened with Isra, when they’d shared a bed together. It had felt like perhaps there was something there, some signals getting exchanged, but Isra hadn’t made a move, and Verity hadn’t wanted to make a move in case it was just another misreading, and also because she was a coward when it came to love. So the moment, if it had been a moment, had passed. Verity was left to wonder whether she’d been imagining things. She had been rather sleepy.

Verity had sat in the pews with her family and listened to enough sermons from clerics of Garos to know the common wisdom: just ask. Of course, asking might indicate to the other person that you were interested in them, and that could be awkward, but it was better than dying alone. The clerics never said that, but it seemed to be the gist of things. And obviously there was a lesson there for everyone, because the same problems plagued everyone, all mankind. That was a common refrain of the sermons of Garos.

“Parents think that they know the inner lives of their children,” the cleric had said on one of those days. “When they are young, this might be true, because their inner lives are simple, if no less rich. But when they grow older, parents have a tendency to think they know everything their child is going through. They think they know the thoughts that go through the heads of their children. And sometimes, I’m afraid to say, our understanding of our children turns out to be wrong. The assumptions we’ve made about what they’ve been thinking about, and what they’ve been up to, and how they feel, are not what we’d wished or hoped, and sometimes our thoughts do not align, whether we feel anything about that misalignment or not. It can hurt, to have this idea of someone close to you and to find out it was an illusion you’d built up in your mind. We must, nevertheless, soldier on. If you find yourself faced with someone who is not as you’d expected them to be, you must readjust your perception of them, reorient, and not allow it to affect you overmuch.”

Verity’s mother had been there, at that sermon, and seemed to take the lesson as it applied to the fellowship of Garos.

“We have the Brumal Ball coming up, and I’d like for you to look your best,” said Verity’s mother as she fussed over a dress-in-the-making. The tailor was one of those obsequious cowards who showed deference to every little request, and it felt like the little bows had been moved three times. “There are a number of eligible bachelors there, and it’s none too early to be thinking about courting.”

“I’m not interested in the bachelors,” said Verity.

“Well, I know you’re only fifteen, but you’re a woman now, and it can take some time for a match to be found, so better to start early. You’ll not get married until perhaps twenty, that gives you five years to find someone, and if you comport yourself well, we can ensure it’s a good match.” She was playing with the fabric, trying to figure out where the darts would go to best emphasize the bust. Verity was, through this process, little more than a mannequin.

“I’m not interested in being with a man at all,” said Verity. Her heart was in her throat. What was she worried about? A bad reaction, perhaps. Her mother had plans for her, and in the past, anything that interfered with those plans was cause for both alarm and recriminations.

“Oh,” her mother had said. “Well, bachelorette, then.” There was a brief pause. “A smaller pool to draw from, but let me see, the Elthfield girl would be a good match, or the Kyllip girl. Verity, you should have told me sooner. I’ll have to put out feelers and make some new lists.”

And while Verity was occasionally chided for not having told her mother sooner, that was as much as was ever said about it. The plan required some reorientation, but nothing had substantially changed. Her father hadn’t even spoken to her about it, not that she’d necessarily wanted him to.

It was just everything else her parents had a problem with. The idea that Verity could say ‘Oh, I’m not that interested in playing so much music’, was inconceivable and reckoned to be a mistake or an act of rebelliousness. Doing something else with her life, like seeing the world, or playing in a tavern, or even something acceptably traditional like being a gardener, was simply dismissed out of hand. She had tried, at one point, arguing doctrine with them, letting the cleric’s words come out of her mouth, but her parents had not listened, and there seemed to be no way to make them listen.

She was going to have to have Alfric send them a letter soon. They’d sat down to do it, but there were relatively few places in the house that were private, and none of them had a desk to write at. The bigger issue was that Verity didn’t know quite what to say and didn’t feel fully comfortable sharing as much as she probably needed to share with Alfric. That, writing the letter, was something she should have been doing on a rainy day when there was nothing pressing, but it was also something she wanted to put off for as long as possible. If she sent a letter to her parents or had Alfric send one with information about her, there was a decent chance that they would try to follow up or, worse, come to Pucklechurch. She wasn’t about to put that past her mother, and the thought made her nauseous.

She took a moment to clear her mind as she went about her aimless walk through Pucklechurch. The rain had let up a bit, becoming just a gentle drizzle, and looked like it would move more toward being a mist.

Verity turned her mind to the third dungeon. Dungeoneering was a bit like being a professional musician, in a sense, particularly in terms of both training and always looking forward to the next gig. ‘Playing’ in a group as well, when she thought about it, though that metaphor was a bit strained. The goal for Verity was to execute better, and that seemed to involve the magical side of musicality, which she had only reached the bottom rungs of.

Progressive melodies were the next obvious step, but easier, and perhaps more pressing, were party melodies. The magic of a party made everyone just a bit the same, melding their essence in chiefly magical ways, and if you knew the right techniques, you could draw on that enforced sameness. Bardic magic worked with what was there, but what was there, for a party, meant the entire party. Properly constructed, a party melody could multiply Alfric’s strength not just by his own strength, but by the strength of the entire party. Admittedly, he was the strongest of them by a wide margin, but their combined strength had to be at least double. The same went for almost everything else, though the uniqueness of their individual talents did them little favor.

And beyond that, there were more complicated party melodies, those that took the confusion of personhood to a greater extreme. Some entads worked only for a specific person, but in a party situation, it was possible to blur that line a bit. And because the party link persisted no matter the distance between members, it was also possible to sing a song that would affect someone on the other side of the world. The same was true for guilds but to a much lesser extent, and it was unheard of for a bard to be able to perform a proper guild melody before the age of thirty. A bard could heighten that confusion, though it was a matter of degree, and there were some obvious problems with attempting to maintain complex melodies, since at a certain point, trade-offs had to be considered.

So far, there seemed to not be all that much use for that kind of melding. Isra’s bow could probably be confused into working for someone else, but there was no reason to do that. Alfric’s dagger could, perhaps, take the entire team, but they already had a workaround for it. There was probably something on the horizon though, some entad that they would find in the next five dungeons, or the next ten, or however many they ended up doing.

Verity was slowly starting to come around to the idea that this might simply be what she did with a fair chunk of her life. Aside from the very end, the second dungeon had gone swimmingly. There was quite a bit to like about bardic music in a dungeon, as opposed to in an auditorium. In the dungeon, she was given free rein, and if anyone had been second-guessing her, they had wisely kept their comments to themselves. There was room to experiment with the magic, to try new things that might not entirely work.

Verity didn’t have her lute with her, but she began to make her way back to the house and sang herself a song as she did. It would have been easier with so-called standard lyrics, but she couldn’t resist the urge to make up her own.

“She runs to the leylines, and tacks to the wind, she screams through the forests, and I wish we were twinned,” Verity sang. “I’d strip off her clothes, and look at her bare, we’d tongue each other, and not have a care.” It was too lewd, and it felt like ‘tongue’ was both awkward and had too few syllables. Verity did like a good cheat, but ‘tuh-ung’ felt awful to say. ‘Finger’ had the right number of syllables, but it was so lewd that even just thinking it in her own mind left Verity blushing, let alone saying it out loud. She knew a fair number of bawdy songs, but there seemed to be relatively few of them about women, and she’d never actually performed one for an audience.

“Butterfly feeling, your touch is so healing,” Verity sang. But that felt too much like it might be about a cleric, and while Verity probably would have accepted a proposition from Hannah, they weren’t exactly on the same wavelength, or at least it didn’t feel like it. Of course, Verity had absolutely no idea what she was doing when it came to romance. She didn’t know how to give off signals or how to read signals. “My love I conceal, can’t wait to reveal.”

The bardic melody depended, in part, on holding the song in your head, and spinning up new lyrics definitely made things much harder. Still, it felt like she was getting to a party melody, though a simple one, increasing her own strength as though she were as strong as the five of them put together.

“Pinkish-red lips, gentle curved hips, tied-back blond hair, are you aware, of the nervousness running, through my spine and my veins? Do you think of my heart, and what it contains?” It was all rubbish, but it was a nice kind of rubbish at least, free and honest, found in the moment.

“Who is that song about?” asked a familiar voice from behind her.

“Eep,” said Verity, turning around. Xy was standing there in what remained of the rain, which was disappearing before it could touch her. “No one.”

“No one, but blond?” asked Xy, grinning. Her blond hair was tied back. “Sorry, didn’t mean to sneak up on you, but I thought I would check out the house before I left, so I knew where it was.”

“You heard all that?” asked Verity. She felt mortified and was incredibly glad that the ‘finger’ line hadn’t been said out loud.

“Most of it, I think,” said Xy. “I was hoping you’d hear me, but the rain covers up a lot of sound. Sorry, I didn’t mean to listen in, if it was… private.” She bit her lip, which did a bad job of hiding her smile.

“No, um,” said Verity. “I was… I thought you weren’t interested. In me.”

“Yeah?” asked Xy.

“And I guess I’m still not sure,” said Verity. She was fidgeting with her umbrella. She felt a bit useless.

Xy laughed. It was a high, pretty laugh. “Do you like to be teased?”

“Um,” said Verity. “Teased?”

“Some people don’t,” said Xy. She was still giving her winning smile. “I wouldn’t want to tease you, if it was just making you uncomfortable.”

“I don’t think I do like being teased,” said Verity.

“Then I won’t tease,” said Xy. “Yes, I’m interested, depending on what you’re interested in. I don’t come into Pucklechurch that often, usually every few days, and my schedule is a bit tight, but we could go on a date, and see how we get on together. Longer than that… It would be your first time?”

“Yes,” said Verity. “More or less.” She was, thankfully, able to stop herself from launching into a story about the conservatory. “Sorry if it’s… obvious.”

“There are probably some things for you to learn,” said Xy, nodding. “And I am more than happy to teach you.” She took a step forward, and Verity felt herself sway. “I’m sorry I don’t have the time now. But now that I know you’re interested, and you know I’m interested, the next time I come to Pucklechurch, we’ll have a good time together.”

Verity nodded. “I’m looking forward to it,” she managed.

Xy grinned, then took off the other way, moving with a cartier’s speed. Verity had no idea where the nearest leyline was, but cartiers were always moving toward one or the other of them, and Xy ran fast, sixty miles an hour, out of view in a heartbeat.

Verity was left wondering whether this was what swooning was like. She was blushing, that certainly couldn’t be helped, and the cool of the rain felt good against her hot skin. That Xy didn’t seem to be too interested in anything long term, that she had put in qualifiers, all that did nothing to reduce Verity’s warm feelings.

When she got back to the house, she lay in one of the chairs, smiling and soaking in it.

Chapter 38 — Jockey

“You know,” said Hannah as Alfric attached the floatstones to the wardrobe, “it’s quite likely that in another dungeon or two, we’ll have somethin’ that makes this wardrobe useless.”

“You’re saying this is probably pointless?” asked Alfric. He grunted slightly as he strapped the floatstones down. They were using chains with cloth padding so as not to scratch the wood.

“I’m sayin’ that I’m preparin’ myself for all this work bein’ for nothin’,” said Hannah.

“It wouldn’t be for nothin’,” said Alfric. He glanced at her to see how she’d taken the tease about her accent, and she grinned at him. He’d done a terrible job. “We’ll still have the entad back in Pucklechurch, and if we don’t need it, we can sell it. Besides, I don’t want to have, in the back of my mind, some worry about whether someone is going to steal this.” Thankfully, no someone had done so. Alfric had seemed unreasonably worried about it, especially after knowing Lola was in the area, but it was sitting right where he’d left it, without a scratch, still totally functional.

“No one is going to steal it,” said Mizuki. She rolled her eyes. “Besides, if someone stole it, there would be, like, eight possible options. It would be easy to track down.”

“If someone has a storage entad, they could just hide it away,” said Alfric. “In fact, that’s the most likely way that it would get stolen.”

“So there’s also a chance that the next dungeon we do, we’d get one of those for ourselves and make this whole wardrobe-moving thing pointless?” asked Mizuki.

“Well,” said Alfric, “yes. But traditionally speaking, I would expect a third storage entad to come with some restrictions, and the wardrobe is large and unwieldy, likely to hit several different limits on weight, size, or something else.”

He stepped back to look at his work. The floatstones seemed to be secure. He tugged at the chains, making sure they would hold. Hannah did too, just to double-check his work, which he seemed to approve of.

“The big problem with floatstones is that there’s no way to stop them from floating,” he said. “These two provide two hundred pounds of lift, which means that if you want them to not go floating off, you need them to have two hundred pounds of ballast, preferably more.”

“Which is just about the only use for the loadstones, ay,” said Hannah.

Alfric took the two of them, each smaller than a dinner plate but fifty pounds apiece, and put them into the book, which he’d had Mizuki bring when she teleported to them using the knife. Loadstones were practically worthless, but he needed to bring them back to Besc, and that meant carrying around the book, which meant fifty pounds of extra weight. Alfric was eager for another storage entad, and there had been quite a bit of discussion about limitations and methods the night before, all leading up to this. Mizuki had come in later, leaving Hannah and Alfric to walk together, which had passed mostly with idle conversation. Perhaps Hannah should have taken the opportunity to talk about a few sensitive matters with him, but it didn’t seem like he would have taken it in the spirit it was intended.

“So if you screwed this up, the wardrobe would go floating into the sky?” asked Mizuki.

“And we’d never see it again,” said Alfric. “Unless you could fly after it, I guess.”

“It’s not, unfortunately, something I can do on demand,” said Mizuki.

“You can fly, Mizuki?” asked Hannah.

“Yeah, I’ll show you tomorrow,” said Mizuki. “Or later today, if we get back in time, which we should.”

“I’ve always wanted to fly,” said Hannah, nodding. “It’s a bit useless in most dungeons, but if there’s somethin’ for fun that I’d want, it would be some way to soar through the air.”

There was an older tract on Garos that Hannah had once read, which posited that people walked along the ground by the will of Garos, since the ground defined a symmetry between the ground and the sky. It was the sort of spurious writing that seemed to have filled the library in the seminary, with many pages devoted to all the ways in which this metaphor worked and did not work and how the dichotomy between ground and sky might be explained by other gods. Hannah had no problem at all with thinking of the ground and sky as being counterparts to one another, it was the kind of exercise that she liked, but the writer hadn’t seemed to have been of the opinion that he was having a flight of fancy, he was much more making grand statements about the gods and how they had made the world. It wasn’t even settled whether or not the gods had made the world, and though Hannah was of the opinion they had, it rankled when she saw someone simply take it as fact without adding a whole host of caveats.

A more interesting symmetry, in her opinion, was between the sea and sky, where you could transpose birds to fish and vice versa, and that was the kind of thing that seemed ripe for a good prayer session. Hannah had never particularly wanted to swim in the ocean though, not like she wanted to fly through the sky.

She refrained from saying any of this out loud. The laity tended to accept religious talk and the quotation of scripture, but there were limits, and Alfric was likely to be spotty on the finer points of theology, to say nothing of Mizuki.

“Okay,” said Alfric. “Seems like with the book as additional ballast, this whole assembly will only be about twenty pounds. I think we’re ready to go.” These were approximate guesses, and based on their disagreement about the wardrobe’s actual weight, Hannah mentally revised his estimate upward.

They set off out of the room they’d been in, with Alfric and Hannah maneuvering the wardrobe. It only weighed thirty pounds or so, but it was bulky, and beyond that, it still had mass to it, meaning that it was slow to get moving and then, once moving, slow to stop. The trip back was going to be a long six miles, though Hannah was fairly confident that they would get into the swing of things.

“Better for me to be in the front,” said Alfric once they were out. “That way if it runs someone over, it’ll be me, and hopefully you can heal me up.”

“Always willin’ to take a hit, that’s what I like about you,” said Hannah.

“I can think of lots of things I’d rather be liked for,” said Alfric.

“No, she’s right,” said Mizuki. “It’s very fetching, how you offer to get stabbed for people.”

“You know what, I’ll take it,” said Alfric, grinning at her. “And if you ever need someone to get stabbed, I guess I’m your guy.”

“Have you been stabbed before?” asked Hannah.

“Oh, many, many times,” said Alfric. “My father gave me a lot of training with clerics on hand to heal me. It was pretty enviable, I feel. Besides, I’m a chrononaut, so there are experiences possible for me that aren’t possible for someone else. I’ve been stabbed, burned, decapitated, strangled, you name it.”

“Well that’s horrible,” said Mizuki.

“I wasn’t pushed into it,” said Alfric. “My parents offered, and I said yes.” He shrugged. “In their opinion, it was better to know what trauma felt like in a safe, controlled environment before having to experience it in a dungeon, and I agreed. Still do, actually. If the first time I ever got burnt was while my life was on the line, I’d be far less likely to handle it well.”

“Yeah, I would just… not do that,” said Mizuki. “But also, isn’t your life never on the line?”

Alfric sighed. “It is, and it isn’t. I really, really need to drill into your head that resets are not ‘free’ and that these things still happen, for me. People think about chrononauts as though… well, as though you’re at a dinner party and make a joke that lands poorly, so you get to try it over. That’s not how it is at all though. You have to go back, wake up, do everything else you did that day, run errands, have conversations, do chores, and then finally, twelve hours later, you get back to the dinner party, and you have to explain that it’s your second time through, or if you don’t, you have to hope that you’re a good enough liar that you can sit through the same set of stories with only minor variations and remember not to mention anything you shouldn’t have knowledge of.”

“Ay,” said Hannah. “Bein’ a chrononaut sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.” Her voice was dripping with sarcasm.

“Well,” said Alfric. “It’s just… not what people think. That’s all I was trying to say.”

“I get it,” said Mizuki. “But Hannah’s got a point, that complaining about having a really really great power is a bit, um.”

“Myopic?” asked Alfric.

“On what planet is that the word I was searching for?” asked Mizuki. “I have no idea what that even means.”

“It means your eyes don’t work right,” said Hannah. “Nearsighted.”

“Yeah,” said Mizuki, frowning. “I guess that fits.”

“Because I’m not looking at the bigger picture,” said Alfric. “And I do understand that. Sorry. I’ll try to complain less.”

“Well I don’t know I want that,” said Hannah with a sigh. Most of this conversation was conducted toward the back of his head as they went down the road. “It’s somethin’ important to you, and obviously there are some pent-up feelin’s about it, ay? So we want you to share, I’d think, but also to realize that it is a gift you’ve got.”

“It’s mostly a safety net,” said Alfric. “When I think about the benefits, it’s in the context of not needing to worry about worst-case scenarios or sometimes being able to take more days off. I think about ninety percent of my problems would go away if people had the right perspective on it.”

“Same with sorcs,” said Mizuki. “If people could understand that most of the bad stuff we do was just chasing something in the aether, we’d be a lot better off.”

“You did come into the temple explodin’ things,” said Hannah.

“I created explosions,” said Mizuki. “That’s very different from exploding things.”

“And why did you do this?” asked Alfric.

“There were energies there,” said Mizuki, shrugging. “I thought that I might be able to make a construct.”

“Like a wizard?” asked Alfric, who didn’t seem to be all that educated in terms of magic, or at least, preferred to let other people be their own domain experts he could lean on.

“Kind of?” asked Mizuki. “The aether is complicated, but yeah, there are ways for a sorc to do more long-term kinds of things, in the right circumstances, stuff that would last a month or so.”

“But instead, an explosion,” said Hannah.

“Well, right,” said Mizuki. “I hadn’t encountered that particular, um, disturbance before. So it makes sense that I wouldn’t get it right the first time.”

“I recall two explosions,” said Hannah.

“You know what I mean though,” said Mizuki. “What I should have done was to talk to a cleric, get permission, whatever, but what if they’d said no?”

“That someone would deny you permission isn’t a good reason to not ask for permission,” said Alfric.

“Well, either way, it didn’t work out,” said Mizuki. She shrugged.

Hannah was very aware that this wasn’t an apology, not that one was really called for. Hannah hadn’t been the senior member of the temple then and now wasn’t technically a member at all. Or perhaps she only technically was. But the fact that an apology wasn’t strictly called for didn’t mean the lack of apology went unnoticed. From Hannah’s perspective, Mizuki had gotten carried away chasing after something shiny in the air and either didn’t reflect on how this painted sorcerers or couldn’t connect the dots.

Before the conversation could go further, a young boy of around ten came riding up on a bird.

“You shouldn’t steal,” said the boy.

He was bare-chested and scrawny in the way that young boys often were and barefoot on top of that, wearing only pants. He was sitting on a small saddle, holding reins that went up to the bird’s head. The bird itself—well, Hannah knew very little about birds, only that she was likely too heavy to ride one, but it had blue plumage and a longness in both its neck and legs. Birds needed to be enlarged by clerics of Xuphin to be rideable by anyone but a child. Enlarged above a certain size, they’d just die. There was metal on the clawed feet and the beak, partly to protect the creature and partly to keep it doing what it was supposed to be doing, which was carrying the rider.

“We’re not stealing,” said Alfric, who wasn’t sparing much attention toward the boy.

For his part, the boy seemed to be expertly riding the bird and had brought it to a slow walk alongside the wardrobe. “You are too stealing,” he said. “The wardrobe belongs to Alfric.”

“I am Alfric,” said Alfric. “This is my wardrobe.”

The boy looked at him. “Prove it?” he asked, clearly trying the question out.

“How would he do that?” asked Hannah.

“I don’t know,” said the boy. “But anyone who read the note could say they were Alfric.”

“And who are you?” asked Alfric.

“I’m Bib,” said the boy. “My dad is the hexmaster of the Knob.”

“Yeah?” asked Alfric. “And can you prove it?”

“Your name is Bib?” asked Mizuki. “That’s not a name.”

“People call me Bib,” said Bib. “It’s not my name.”

“Well, either way, you can’t prove it,” said Alfric.

“I could get my dad,” said Bib, frowning.

“You could get someone to vouch for you, sure,” said Alfric. “But I have people to vouch for me.”

“I have never seen this guy before,” said Mizuki. “I actually just started following him because he was carrying the wardrobe. It seemed really suspicious.” She had a mad grin on her face.

“He asked me for help movin’ it,” said Hannah. “But now it does seem a little suspect. Alfric, if that is your name, is this a theft?”

“I’ll give you a cut of the proceeds if you stop asking questions,” said Alfric.

“Was I not already gettin’ a cut of the proceeds?” asked Hannah. “Well then, good citizen am I, doin’ work for a stranger for free.”

“You’re making fun,” said the boy. He was frowning at them. “I really don’t know if you’re stealing it.”

“We’re not stealing it,” said Alfric. “We pulled it from the Traeg’s Knob dungeon and just needed to store it at the common house for a day.”

“It’s the Hill House,” said the boy. “Where are you taking the wardrobe?”

“To Pucklechurch,” said Alfric. “Where we live.”

“And you’ll charge people to use it?” asked Bib. “That could make you a lot of money.”

“We’ll see what the limits are,” said Alfric. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it had some kind of limit on how many people can go through in a day, or a weight limit, or something else like that. And if it doesn’t have that kind of a limit, we’ll probably sell it to someone in a big city, where it can get more use, or set up a business or something.”

“A business?” asked Mizuki. “For this thing?”

“Sure,” said Alfric. “Place it in Plenarch and charge ten rings for someone to use it.”

“Plenarch is a terrible choice, ay?” asked Hannah. “It’s on the coast, water in three of the six directions.”

“Well, maybe somewhere else then,” said Alfric. “I guess we’d also want to make sure it can’t end up dumping you in someone’s home.”

“Ten rings sounds like absolutely gouging people,” said Mizuki.

“You wouldn’t pay ten rings to skip six miles of walking?” asked Alfric.

“We wanted it in Traeg’s Knob,” said the boy, cutting in on a conversation that had moved its focus away from him.

“Who is ‘we’?” asked Alfric.

“My mom and dad,” said Bib. “They wanted it to stay in the Hill House.”

“Well, that’s not happening,” said Alfric. “Sorry. I said on the note that I was keeping it there only for a bit.”

“But you did pull it from our dungeon,” Bib ventured. “So we should have some say.”

“That’s not the law,” said Alfric.

“Well it should be,” said Bib, who seemed to have quite a bit of conviction about this despite being a shirtless boy riding a large bird.

“No,” said Alfric. “Because then you’d have someone whose job it was to camp out by the dungeon entrance, and to check to see what people came out with, and to make sure they weren’t ‘stealing’ from the dungeon. Those people, those dungeon guards, they’d be going up against five people who were well armed with lots of magic and expertise in how to kill things. And on top of that, those five people are going to be gone from the area in short order, so it would be hard to catch them. Tell me, would you want to be sitting around a dungeon entrance, in charge of stopping powerful people from taking things out of it?”

“No,” said the boy. “I guess not.”

“He’s talkin’ spit,” said Hannah. “The real reason it’s not done is because if it were, dungeoneers simply wouldn’t come, and if they did, they wouldn’t have nearly the incentive to pick the dungeon clean. We wouldn’t have lugged this thing out of the dungeon if we had thought the locals would try to steal it from us.”

“The real reason,” said Mizuki., “is that all the dungeons are under an ancient curse. If you try to accost people coming out of a dungeon, you’ll die in the next seven days.” She wiggled her fingers in his direction.

“You made that up,” said Bib.

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Mizuki.

“It’s very hard to say,” said Alfric. “Mizuki is a font of unconventional wisdom.”

“Well, I think we should keep the wardrobe,” said Bib. He seemed stubborn, which Hannah liked in a child.

“Well, you’re free to think that,” said Alfric. “If you need to, go tell your father that we’re taking it, and I can quote the relevant laws to him along with a brief history of why things are structured the way there are. There’s a real depth of governmental policy and extraction philosophy to go over.”

“Um,” said the boy. “I don’t think so.” He squeezed his legs on the side of the bird a bit, making it trot further down the path. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Have a good rest of your life,” said Alfric as they watched the boy go off into the distance.

“Think he’ll be back with his pa?” asked Hannah.

“No,” said Mizuki. “Alfric has successfully weaponized being boring.”

“It’s actually not that boring,” said Alfric. “There are a lot of stories from both sides, especially stuff before the League more or less had control or in places where the laws were different. I just said it in a boring way.”

“It seems boring,” said Mizuki.

“You think armed conflict between professional dungeoneers and townspeople sounds boring?” asked Alfric. “The history is quite long. A lot of warp conflicts too, since any kind of taxation or extortion at the point of exit from the dungeon could just be avoided by warping out. But I won’t bore you with any of it.”

“You said a lot of things,” said Mizuki. “And I am interested in learning more, but I’m worried the answers are boring.”

“Warp conflict just means any kind of fight that takes place at a warp point,” said Hannah. “No need to use that kind of language for it.”

“But that’s what it’s called,” said Alfric.

“So you use the warp and end up surrounded by people with swords?” asked Mizuki. “Sounds horrible.”

“Doesn’t happen much these days,” said Alfric.

“He says, with a wistful sigh,” said Hannah.

“Well, you know me well enough to know what that’s about,” said Alfric.

“See, I think I’m fortunate,” said Mizuki. “All the things I really want to do are things that no one is going to stop me from doing, like making noodles with Hannah or having a cup of tea.”

“The thing I really want to do, going into dungeons, just has the hitch of needing like-minded people,” said Alfric. “Aside from that, people are eager for me to do it. Most of the barriers have been stripped away, nothing like in the past.”

They walked for a bit. The weather was quite nice, which they had already said their thanks to Isra for. There seemed to be an unusual amount of butterflies about, but that might have been because of the area they were traveling through. A few of them, small blue ones, seemed to be attracted to the wardrobe, and they landed on it from time to time, just enough that it was noticeable.

“Do you think we’re going to see more of that child?” asked Hannah. “Or his father?”

“I don’t know,” said Alfric. “But I know the law, and I’m ready for a shakedown.”

“Does that happen?” asked Mizuki.

“Not often,” said Alfric. “There are a lot of things that surround the business we’re in though, things like counterparties and dungeon assistants and stuff of that nature. Shakedowns happen every once in a while, and you just tell them to piss off or suffer the wrath of the higher-ups.” ‘Piss off’ sounded like unusually strong language coming from Alfric. “Hexmaster is probably the highest position in the hex, but if he gets the attention of the provincial chief, it’s possible the whole hex would face sanction.”

“I kind of feel like comp schooling let me down,” said Mizuki. “We never learned about any of this.”

“It’s nothin’ you would learn,” said Hannah. “No sense in teachin’ children about the way the world really works and especially not the things that only help if you’re goin’ into a lot of dungeons.”

“Well, still,” said Mizuki. “I feel like I’m playing catch-up.”

“There’s really not all that much you need to know,” said Alfric. “Honestly, of things I know, ten percent is useful, another ten percent is useful if a single person in the party knows it, and the other eighty percent is trivia. A lot of the useful things to know can just be taken as they come. And I really don’t want to bore you.”

“Alfric just needs to learn to punch up the borin’ stuff,” said Hannah. “I’m sure there are all kinds of great stories he’s got to tell. Alfric, you’ve gotta tell them as stories, it makes it less painful to get a lesson.”

“Is it a lesson for you?” asked Alfric. “I’d thought you knew a lot about the dungeon life.”

“Well, ay,” said Hannah. “But I was never in the Junior League, and my parents aren’t both dungeoneers, so I imagine there are things you picked up that I didn’t.” There was a reason that she’d nominated herself as his lieutenant rather than attempting to take the reins from him. Alfric knew dungeoneering backward and forward, which was likely to be because his parents had imparted their fair share of knowledge but also because he had a fiery passion for it.

“So you were saying about dungeon assistants?” asked Mizuki. “How is that different from this counterparty thing we’re going to have?”

“For the more popular dungeons, people set up shop outside them,” said Alfric. “But it needs to be a quite popular dungeon, because each dungeon is only done once in a person’s life, so it’s not all that common. And what you do if you’re setting up shop outside a dungeon… well, it depends.” He seemed to think about what Hannah had said. “My mom used to tell a story about coming out of a dungeon, half dead, only to find a boy probably not much older than Bib who tried to get her to pay an exorbitant amount of money for healing. She was sitting there, bleeding, trying to negotiate with him, while explaining that most of her best stuff was bound to her and couldn’t be given away.” Hannah’s mind wandered to the missing bits of that story, like why his mother wouldn’t have just warped. There were answers, but they were the kind of answers that he’d decided the story didn’t need, or perhaps they were a sign of embellishment.

“That sounds kind of horrible,” said Mizuki. “Like, I feel like you thought it was a funny story, but it’s really not.”

“My mom found it funny,” said Alfric, shrugging. “It was a day she undid because half of the party had died. She actually went and tracked down the kid, hired him on. She liked his initiative, even if it was callous.”

“Your mom sounds tough as nails,” said Mizuki.

“Oh, you have no idea,” said Alfric. “She holds a couple of family records.”

“For?” asked Mizuki.

“Most dungeons run, longest dungeon run, biggest haul from a single dungeon, most entads from a single dungeon, most dungeons in a day,” said Alfric.

“Isn’t she only in her forties?” asked Hannah.

“Late forties. There was a time she was running really hard,” said Alfric. “She had created a party composition specifically for not taking breaks and then just kind of… kept going, I guess. They ended up with good entads for it. According to her, and I don’t know how true this is, there was a year when her party accounted for nearly ten percent of all new entads in Dondrian.”

“That sounds suspect,” said Hannah. “Not that I’d call your ma a liar.” Though there’d been something that he’d said earlier, about his original ambition to do dungeons at a level not seen in decades, and it occurred to Hannah that perhaps he was talking about his own mother.

“Yeah, better that you don’t do that,” said Alfric. “I did ask her about it, but all she had to say was that she was told that number by an entad dealer, and maybe they would know, but.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t a boast she made often, but she did have a habit of boasting, at least when other dungeoneers were trying to puff out their chests. Mostly to put them in their place, I guess.”

“Think we’ll meet her someday?” asked Mizuki. “Because she seems neat.”

“I’d like to make a name for myself before I go back home,” said Alfric. “At least, say… twenty dungeons?”

“So half a year, at current rates?” asked Hannah. “I can’t see us goin’ too much faster than that, which I know isn’t what you want.”

“All that stuff with Lola aside, I’m going to dungeons and actually enjoying myself,” said Alfric. “And no one stole the wardrobe.” He shrugged. “Faster would be better, yes, but with two dungeons done, and a third on the way… I’m actually doing it now, which I’m grateful for.”

“You had a tough time of it before us,” said Hannah.

“My standard of living was high,” said Alfric. “I’m not going to complain about it more than I already have.”

“You have feelin’s though,” said Hannah. “Doesn’t do to let them go unexamined.” There was almost nothing about that in the Book of Garam Ashar but plenty that Hannah had been taught at the seminary. People often thought their problems were small and left them to fester, and that was true of their bodies as much as their minds.

The boy on the bird came back just about then.

“How about it?” asked Alfric. “Are we under arrest?”

“My dad isn’t the hexguard,” said Bib. “He would send someone else, if he wanted to.”

“Well, unless you’ve got a posse coming, I suppose we’re in the clear,” said Alfric.

“I have to apologize,” said Bib.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Alfric. He probably would have waved a hand, if he hadn’t been keeping the wardrobe steady.

“I have to apologize,” said Bib. “Dad said that if I didn’t, I would get in trouble. So I’m sorry for saying that you stole it and that you should keep it here, and my dad told me that I should ask if I could make it up to you, because you’re not supposed to berate strangers, he said. And you’re not supposed to repeat conversations from the dinner table to them.”

“So you owe us a favor, is that it?” asked Alfric.

“I guess,” said Bib.

“Well, I’ll think about it,” said Alfric. “But we have nothing for you right now. That bird makes you fast, and I think we can use that, if your father is okay with you going a bit far from home.”

“I go where I want to,” said Bib, holding his chin high.

“Well then, remember me, because I’ll be calling on you,” said Alfric.

“Okay,” said the boy. He turned his bird around and sent it off down the trail again, this time without saying goodbye.

“You think you’ll be able to collect on that?” asked Hannah.

“No,” said Alfric. “But it doesn’t hurt to have a favor from a nosy little kid.”

“You like kids?” asked Mizuki, eyes brightening somewhat.

“I like them well enough,” said Alfric. “I was a mentor in the Junior League for a bit, when I was floundering.”

“I had thoughts of being a teacher,” said Mizuki. “But I wasn’t all that good in school, and to be a teacher you need to go off training for three years.”

“Three years isn’t so much,” said Hannah. “Not when you’re talkin’ about takin’ care of the little ones.”

“How long is seminary?” asked Mizuki.

“Five,” said Hannah. “Though you can do the final year as part of a placement, if you so desire. Most of it is just tryin’ to get the right mindset for Garos, which was never much of an issue for me.” She turned to Alfric. “Seems strange to me that you like children.”

“Why’s that?” asked Alfric.

“They’re just… not very serious creatures, it seems to me,” said Hannah.

“Depends on the kid,” said Alfric. “Some of them are very serious, and maybe that’s what I like: being the only person that sees that seriousness and being the only one who will indulge it. In the Junior League, as a mentor, I was always on the lookout for them, the serious ones, when I wasn’t trying to keep my brothers in line.”

“Brothers?” asked Mizuki. “I thought you were an only child?”

“Why would you think that?” asked Alfric.

“You never talk about them,” said Hannah. “And you have that kind of energy, I s’pose.”

“I’m not sure I know what that means,” said Alfric. “Mizuki, can you come scratch the back of my head, or would that be weird?”

“It would be weird, but I’d do it,” said Mizuki. She walked past the wardrobe and reached up to scratch Alfric’s head.

“Lower,” he said and then sighed with relief. “Honestly, I probably could have just carried this thing with one hand for a bit, but the more work we put into it, the more I worry that we’re going to drop it and make all that labor be for nothing. Thank you.”

“No problem,” said Mizuki. She stayed at the front with him, walking side by side. “So wait, how many siblings do you have?”

“Five,” said Alfric.

“There are five of you?” asked Mizuki.

“It would be six, if there are five siblings,” said Hannah.

“That’s even worse,” said Mizuki. “How did your mother have six children while also doing near-constant dungeons?”

“Entad solutions, I would guess,” said Hannah.

“Yes,” said Alfric, nodding. “My mom always said that if she’d had to go through a pregnancy herself, she probably wouldn’t have had children. So we were all technically decanted, not born.”

“Things of that nature are usually reserved for the church,” said Hannah, frowning a bit. Couples not being able to have ‘natural’ children was one of the serious issues, and while there were occasional entads that helped to deal with it, they were in perpetually short supply. The idea that someone had used one for convenience was, well… it seemed a bit selfish and contrary to the common good.

“My mom personally pulled six of those entads from the dungeons, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Alfric. “All were donated to the Church of Garos.”

“Ah,” said Hannah. “That does make it a bit better.”

“‘Decanted’,” said Mizuki. “What, like pulled out of a bottle?”

“Yep,” said Alfric.

“Weird,” said Mizuki.

“Yep,” said Alfric. “Anyway, about five years ago, Mom started slowing down. She went through a monthlong dungeon and came out with several tons of loot and a different perspective. She’s been much more, uh, motherly since then. With mixed results.”

“Well now I really want to meet her,” said Mizuki. “She sounds like a blast.”

“Honestly, and I know this sounds like boasting, it’s very possible she’s one of the most accomplished dungeoneers in human history,” said Alfric. “But records are pretty poor, and a lot of the very best have had the incentive to puff up their accomplishments. It’s very, very unlikely that anyone really did complete fifty thousand dungeons, but I guess you never know.”

“Fifty thousand does seem unlikely,” said Hannah.

“Stepping foot in fifty thousand seems doable with the right travel entads,” said Alfric. “Actually clearing them of monsters and taking everything of value… much less so.”

“Why would you want to just step foot in a dungeon and then walk away?” asked Mizuki.

“Bragging rights,” said Alfric. “Or maybe to catalog if you could do that safely through entads or mana constructs or something.”

“I guess,” said Mizuki.

“I tried to work out the math a while ago,” said Alfric, “and it left me skeptical. It’s more than two dungeons a day for fifty years or something like that. Possible, but you’d need pretty much inhuman endurance if you were doing a full clear.”

“You were lookin’ it up because of your own ambitions?” asked Hannah.

“I want to be a great dungeoneer, like my parents,” said Alfric. “But after how things have gone the last year, I’ve resigned myself to not setting any records.”

“Ah, the disillusioned and world-weary eighteen-year-old,” said Mizuki.

“Things lined up for us now,” said Alfric. “And it’s a slower pace than I had planned, starting out. But the team is good, and that’s worth quite a bit to me. Dungeoneering isn’t something you can do solo, not if you want to make any actual progress.”

“Dyin’ would be the bigger thing,” said Hannah. “Though I s’pose for you, it’s not as much a concern.”

“No,” said Alfric. “Not so much.”

Given that they were only technically carrying twenty pounds of weight, they were able to keep up a decent enough pace, and they took turns with the wardrobe after Mizuki realized that perhaps she shouldn’t just be with them for the company. It was under her watch that Alfric was almost crushed by the wardrobe, but they managed to right it without any injuries.

When they arrived in Pucklechurch, the ground was wet from a recent rain, and Hannah enjoyed the smell, which reminded her of home, where the rains seemed to be more common than Pucklechurch. Of course, the weather of Pucklechurch had quietly been manipulated by Isra for likely Hannah’s entire time there, so perhaps it wasn’t something about the region, but about Isra’s particular preferences for rain and sun.

“Now the question is whether we take it to the temple first,” said Alfric. “I think we do, since it’s on our way. That way we can have Filera take a look at it before we move it home, if we do move it home.”

“You’re keen on startin’ a business?” asked Hannah.

“I doubt that we’d make much, if the wardrobe works in volume,” said Alfric. “But if it does work in volume, there’s no sense in having it sitting where people have trouble using it.”

“We could have it there for the public good,” said Mizuki.

“We could, I guess,” said Alfric. “Would that pay off?”

“What do you mean?” asked Mizuki. “Like, you’re asking how or whether we would eventually make some money by, uh, having people bake us pies or something? Donations, like support comp and the temple?”

“The temple is largely funded through provincial tax,” said Hannah.

“Well, you know what I mean,” said Mizuki. “But… no, I don’t think we’d get back what we put in if we just made the wardrobe free to anyone. That’s not the point, the point is just to help people out.”

“Right,” said Alfric. “Well, we’ll have the cleric take a look at it, and maybe any debate will be moot. I’m a strong believer in charity, but I’m not sure we’re in a position for it now.” Hannah looked back, and he seemed lost in thought. “Let’s say it’s a hundred rings a day, that would be twenty apiece, which isn’t all that much, but over time… And there would be expenses, I suppose, a lockbox, and not everyone would pay if we didn’t have someone watching the thing, which we couldn’t unless we gave a cut to a storekeeper.”

But they came to the temple and managed to get the wardrobe through the door, steering it until eventually they were outside the Qymmos area.

“Hannah, do you want to make yourself scarce?” asked Alfric.

“Why would I want to do that?” asked Hannah.

“Prior religious disagreements?” asked Alfric.

“I’ll stay, if it’s all the same, I had nothing else to do today aside from doin’ my first proper bake in Mizuki’s house,” said Hannah. She wasn’t sure she appreciated the offer from Alfric but on reflection decided that it came from a good place, and that was what mattered.

“Filera,” said Alfric as they came in.

“Alfric, Hannah,” said Filera, nodding to them. She had her usual cool demeanor and set down her book as soon they’d entered her area. She was always reading and seemed to have a good mind for it, which was little surprise for a cleric of Qymmos. There was something very restrained about her, a feeling like she was holding herself back and always in control.

“Are you busy?” asked Alfric. “We have an entad we’d like you to look at. A few, actually, but the others aren’t with us right now.”

“I suppose I did say that I would do it for free,” said Filera with a sigh as they put the wardrobe down. She stepped closer to look it over, circling around it, though for a cleric of Qymmos, that wasn’t strictly necessary. “It’s a travel entad, but I gather you already know that, or you wouldn’t have taken so much trouble to get it here. It’s from Traeg’s Knob?”

“Yes,” said Alfric. “We acquired it two days ago, but took until today to get it here.”

“Mmm,” said Filera. She was still staring at the wardrobe, doing some miracles in her mind, finding the categories that the wardrobe belonged to, pinning it in place.

“What’s she doing,” whispered Mizuki, who’d moved close to Hannah.

“I’m no cleric of Qymmos,” Hannah whispered. “But she likely knows the so-called language of the entads and is goin’ through it word by word to see what applies. They use somethin’ called a binary, a choice between two, splittin’ things down where they can.”

“That’s reductive,” said Filera. “And it’s a useless approach to entad identification, unless there’s a keyword that needs to be found.”

“Well, then what are you doin’?” asked Hannah.

“I’m finding the sets,” said Filera. “Entads don’t fall into the natural sets, and their so-called language is the best way of finding their function, but right now I’m interrogating the function of the location mechanism. The wardrobe leads to a place in a different hex when selected using the dial, oriented as upward being north, but where in that other hex is in question, and there are standard mechanisms with variants. I’m trying to find out which one and with what variants.”

“We’re most interested in how often it can be used and in what conditions,” said Alfric.

“I’m intending a full analysis,” said Filera. She had a way of keeping her tone mild while saying something that seemed to be a rebuke. “It will take some time though, perhaps an hour, if you want my certification. If you’ll be talking, I’d prefer it’s just outside.”

“Well, I think I’m going home,” said Mizuki. “I’ll go see what Verity has been up to, then maybe start on dinner. Any requests? Easier to fulfill them now, while we’re not far from the shops.”

“Something light,” said Alfric. “Fish?”

“A good fish stew would do,” said Hannah.

“I have no idea how to make that, and it sounds disgusting,” said Mizuki. “But I can do fish and potatoes and some kind of green thing. You always need a green thing.”

“Not always,” said Hannah.

Mizuki shrugged. “Well, when you cook, you can leave the greens out. I know Cairbre food is mostly whites and browns. Anyway, I’ll see you both later, it was fun.”

“She’s very likable,” said Alfric, once Mizuki was out of earshot and they’d moved away to give Filera some space.

“She’s agreeable,” said Hannah. “Never makes much of a fuss, and I get the sense that would be true even if it were important that a fuss be made. She’ll tell people what they want to hear and go along with ideas someone else suggests.”

“And you don’t like that?” asked Alfric.

“I like Mizuki,” said Hannah. “But I’m the opposite.”

“Disagreeable?” asked Alfric.

“I like to tussle with people,” said Hannah. “I like to challenge and be challenged. Mizuki is like pushin’ over a pile of wet paper. I like her, but my instinct is to push and prod, and I have to keep in mind that can’t really be done with her, lest she dissolve at my touch.”

“She’s different from what you’re used to,” said Alfric. “I can understand that.”

“No, I’ve met people like her before,” said Hannah. “At the seminary, I always held them in contempt, but that was because we were there for the glory of Garos, the ideas were the point of it, and some of them just crumbled when questioned or pressed. The seminary was a bit two-faced about it though.”

“And not in a good, symmetrical way?” asked Alfric.

“Har,” said Hannah. The more she thought about it, the more it was a little funny. “No, on the one hand they want, need, people who are passionate about Garos, who understand his fundamental nature, who eagerly seek to interrogate what he means, but on the other hand, there’s doctrine and keepin’ people in line.”

Alfric nodded. “Two hands and two faces.” He was grinning and not seeming to take the conversation too seriously, which was a bit of a disappointment. Hannah liked his seriousness. He had a real ability and willingness to tussle, so long as it was a matter he cared about, which was to say, so long as it was about dungeons.

“It’s the same with the dungeons, isn’t it?” asked Hannah. “When you were in the Junior League, there were people who would wave off discussions of the dungeons? People who would accept what they were told, rather than speakin’ up and tryin’ to get to the bottom of things?”

“Yes,” said Alfric. He contemplated that and judged his words. “Absolutely. I don’t think I have that same desire to press that you have, but when told not to do something or that we must always do something, the ‘why’ was important to me. Other people seemed to just accept it.”

“Because the ‘why’ might save your life someday,” said Hannah, nodding in agreement. “Or there might be an edge case or some underlyin’ theory or somethin’. But some people just want instructions they can follow, rather than to think for themselves. And in our case, with sweet little Mizuki, she seems content not to think too much. That’s all.”

“And you find her agreeableness disagreeable,” said Alfric.

“Not much, no,” said Hannah. “But I have to remind myself who she is, or she’ll annoy me.”

“So far, I haven’t been bothered by it,” said Alfric. “She’s a surprisingly proficient sorcerer for someone who doesn’t seem like she’s taken her education all that far, though part of that is that we’ve got a nice collection of casters. You let me know if there’s anything that I can do to grease the wheels between the two of you.”

“Och,” said Hannah. “I like her, but you have to understand me, that when you say anythin’, almost anythin’ at all, I’ll like to say ‘but’ and then hammer it out with you. So if you’d said that you didn’t care for Mizuki, I’d feel myself inclined to mount a defense, but when you said she was likable, I went straight for the things I wasn’t so fond of. And that’s one of the things that people don’t like about me, which I think is fair. I tilt toward the contrary. I always have.”

“Good to know,” Alfric said with a nod.

“I think I will head out,” said Hannah. “If you think you’ll be fine movin’ the wardrobe on your own? I’m in a bit of a mood and need some prayer, perhaps in the direction of Mizuki.”

“Of course,” said Alfric. “I’ll either bring the wardrobe by myself or leave it here, and we can get it tomorrow. It’s possible that I might be able to get it a temporary home in town, so we can start banking rings off it, but I guess we’ll see.”

“Thanks,” said Hannah. “For all you do. And for listenin’ to me reflexively complain about someone who didn’t deserve it.”

Alfric nodded. “Go, clear your head, I’ll deal with Filera.”

Hannah thought about stopping in to speak with Lemmel, but she did need to clear her head and instead elected to go find a bench to sit on for a bit and pray.

Chapter 39 — Holy Numbers

Alfric, having nothing better to do, came back into the room with Filera early. She was still standing there and looking at the wardrobe with her eyes narrowed. There was no longer any inspection of it, only a sharp gaze. Alfric found himself a chair and calmly waited.

The party was getting along well, and he included himself in that assessment. Hopefully Lola would forget about him, or be convinced not to chase him down, though both of those seemed like they had a rather slim chance. If Lola’s party broke up… well, that would be the opportunity that Alfric had once dreamed about, a chance to put everything back together again and do it how he’d always wanted to do it. He felt a pang of guilt, since it would mean leaving the Pucklechurch party he’d formed. The feelings were more complicated than he would have imagined. It was a combination of Lola’s report on problems with the party and his growing affection for the Pucklechurch team, he thought.

“Sixty-six times a day,” Filera said into the silence.

“An auspicious number,” said Alfric.

“Less than you’d think,” said Filera. “Sixty-six is eleven sets of six. It only has two sixes in the number because of how we choose to count. Better would be seventy-two, which is twice six sets of six. Thirty-six is particularly auspicious, as it’s six sets of six.”

“Okay,” said Alfric. He rubbed his chin. “As a matter of doctrine, or preference?”

“Doctrine,” said Filera. “But as with all matters of doctrine, there are detractors.” She turned her eyes from the wardrobe to Alfric. “Sixty-six times a day should give you some ability to make money with this, though I imagine you’d be better off selling it to someone in a larger city. You’ve probably already surmised that the dial orients itself with north being up and similar relationships for the other settings. The entad uses a somewhat simple unidirectional doorway function, centered on a random ‘safe’ point of land within a hex, avoiding structures out to around ten feet and people out to a hundred feet. If there’s no safe space to create the door, it will attempt one of the surrounding hexes, and if none of those are suitable, it will go further.”

“Meaning?” asked Alfric, frowning.

“I’m in the business of identification and information, not monetization,” said Filera with a shrug. “Is your question about the function or how to use that function?”

“It could be put on a ship and allow access to land no matter where on the oceans you are,” said Alfric, after a moment of thought. “But I have a hard time imagining that we couldn’t get more from it by just charging people for passage in a large city.”

“So there is some intellect there,” said Filera, giving him an approving nod.

“You need a keen intellect if you’re going into dungeons,” said Alfric. “It helps with not dying. I’m available to talk now, if you are.”

Filera regarded him. “I suppose I am.” She gestured for him to sit down and offered tea and snacks, which he declined. He wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted from this, but he was willing to indulge her if it meant that she would spend some time identifying entads for them. It was somewhat rare for an entad to dramatically rise in value when a cleric of Qymmos had a look at it, but there were definitely exceptions to that, including those with command words, or those whose apparent function cloaked a deeper, richer function.

“Clerics of Qymmos are of two minds when it comes to dungeons,” said Filera. “I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a schism, but it’s emblematic of two very different approaches to our god. For some, the dungeons are an endless source of new things to categorize, a paean to our god. For others, they’re a mockery of that same desire to categorize and systematize.”

“And which camp do you fall in?” asked Alfric.

“The former, naturally,” said Filera. “That’s part of why I wanted to speak with you. Do you go to clerics often?”

“Only for healing, not council,” said Alfric. “In Dondrian, I attended a weekly sermon, usually with my family. We were in rotation, a different church every week save for an expectation on holy days. The same six churches though, and a community of turners with us.” The term ‘turners’ was somewhat derisive but appropriate, in Alfric’s opinion. “I suppose it’s different here, when you’re all in a single temple.”

“It is,” said Filera. “There’s a weekly sermon, which rotates through the gods. In my opinion, the community is closer for it, but I imagine there are arguments for doing it the other way. People have their own understanding of the churches and their place within the community. The social aspect has always seemed, to me, irreplaceable.”

“Can I ask… why I’m here?” asked Alfric. “You must have people coming in all the time to hear about their problems. I want to make sure that your part of the deal is satisfied, and maybe I could do better if you’d tell me what you want me here for.” That felt like it was perhaps too direct and to the point, in a way that the people of the region didn’t care for.

“I find Pucklechurch a bit tepid, frankly,” said Filera. “The problems that people come to me with are ones that I do take some joy in solving, but I can already tell that I’m not cut out to stay here for the rest of my life. And that’s where you come in, an outsider whom I can vicariously live through. You’re never going to be more than an outsider, and my guess is that you’ll be moving on in a few months, so for once, I think that I’ll get something out of talking, rather than giving my time and attention.”

“You’re… lonely,” said Alfric.

“No,” said Filera. “Or I wouldn’t quite put it like that. There’s something that possesses the young, a need to wander and explore, to see the world, and I had my own chance at that, a dozen dungeons, which was more than enough for me. But the life I have now, and the people in it, fall into certain distinct sets, and the friends I’ve made in Pucklechurch, beyond just the congregants, don’t satisfy the itch.”

“Well, I can do my best, I guess,” said Alfric. “Did you want to hear about the dungeon?”

“If you would, please,” she replied.

Alfric essentially just repeated what was in the report. He wasn’t a natural storyteller, and he could feel that it was a bit dry but had no idea how to correct for that. He wanted it to be descriptive and evocative but gravitated toward the facts too much.

“Forgive me for stating something we both know, but you’re a chrononaut,” said Filera.

“Yes,” said Alfric. “They know now, but didn’t at the time.”

“You expressed reticence to engage with the bear,” said Filera.

“Having to redo a dungeon when we’d already gotten a fair amount from it didn’t appeal to me,” said Alfric. “Nor did the idea of dying or my teammates dying.” He had a very clear mental image of Mizuki getting sheared in half with one of those enormous shovel claws, though if it had been able to get Mizuki, it was far more likely that he would have already been dead by that point. “And a little bit I… don’t enjoy fighting the monsters as much as I thought I would.”

“No?” asked Filera, with an arched eyebrow.

“My mother doesn’t like fighting monsters, and she’s, well, possibly the most proficient dungeoneer in the world,” said Alfric. “She’s good at it, but being good at something doesn’t mean you have to like it. My father, on the other hand, seems to find some pleasure or glory in the fights, like it’s a chance to test his mettle, to best one of these creatures. And I’m competent at it, I feel, but the monsters are the thing I like least about dungeoneering. I keep hoping that a switch is going to flip and I’m going to find it exciting in the way my father seems to, but it’s, well… like doing dishes, I suppose. I take pleasure in the job being done, and I guess I don’t mind doing it, but it doesn’t fill me with the same kind of glee that I wish it did. I want something to flip over inside me so I’ll suddenly feel exhilaration from it, but so far… well, it seems like I take after my mother more.”

“And that explains some of your reluctance to engage with the bear,” said Filera.

“A small sliver of it,” said Alfric. “This is all in confidence, right?”

“On my oath as a cleric,” Filera said, nodding. “There’s no need to share it with anyone else, and I have no idea why someone might want to know.”

And that led Alfric to talking about Lola and the party that had been taken from him, which took some time.

“You think that if she knew we’d been talking, she would try to get information from me?” asked Filera.

“I don’t know,” said Alfric. “The more I talk about it, the more it’s obvious to me that I should probably confront her and clear the air, but everything is so poisoned between us that I’m not sure that’s going to be productive.”

“You’ll have to let me know how that drama resolves itself,” said Filera. “You gave me more than I’d hoped, and I hope talking about things has been a help to you, but I have other duties to attend to. I visit the elder’s home every day, and it’s getting close to the time for me to be off.”

“Thank you for listening,” said Alfric. “And for the identification.” He looked over at the wardrobe and wrinkled his nose. “I’m going to take that with me, I suppose. I’m mostly worried about the floatstones, which I need to return to Liberfell.”

“Are you planning to make some rings from it in town?” asked Filera. “Because you’re welcome to leave it here for the next few days, at least until you find a place to install it.”

“That would be great,” said Alfric. “I’ll take the floatstones off and leave it, let people know they’re free to use it while it’s here. Better to get the word out so that we can start making money off it.”

Alfric took his time removing the floatstones and was grateful that he was able to do it indoors, where they might crack a ceiling tile but wouldn’t go shooting off into the sky. It took quite a bit of work to marry them with the loadstones that had been stuffed in the book, but once it was all done, the wardrobe was standing there in the temple room looking almost like it belonged there.

On his way back home, or ‘home’, as it were, he began composition of a guild message, one asking for advice on whether actively wanting to fight monsters was a necessary part of it. He knew his mother’s opinion on the matter, but there were members of the family whose thoughts he’d never heard. He didn’t think it likely that he’d ever send the message, but it was still good to compose it because it helped to get his thoughts in order.

There were aspects of fighting monsters he liked. He enjoyed figuring them out, taking all the rules he’d learned and putting them into practice, assessing the situation and what it called for… but the actual insertion of a sword into flesh left him feeling nothing in particular. He liked to win, certainly, but the actual fighting, not as much.

When he got to the house, Mizuki was in the middle of cooking, and the other three were in the kitchen with her, talking about plans for the garden. Alfric was mildly surprised to see Isra there, especially because he hadn’t heard anything over the party chat. Had she come to the house to see Verity, or had she just figured they had returned?

“It’ll take the three of us,” said Verity. “Mizuki to tell us the names and what they’re used for, if she knows, Isra to figure out what’s local, and me to actually execute the plan.”

“Sorry,” said Alfric. “I know I’m coming in late to this, but is there a reason that Isra couldn’t just do it all?”

“I like gardening,” said Verity. “And gardening is work, even if you’re a druid. Isra will help, and I’m sure it will be a far better garden for it, but I’ll be the one putting in the work.”

“It’s mostly going to be focused on Kiromon things,” said Mizuki. “I don’t actually care that much for traditional Kiromon cooking, but it’s nice to be able to draw from the same set of ingredients that my parents used to. Oh, and Hannah and I are embarking on a journey of noodle-making. Hopefully we can make something edible.”

“I do like a low bar for success,” said Alfric.

“But we should talk about the next dungeon,” said Hannah. “Isn’t that right?”

That hadn’t been what Alfric had intended to say at all, but it was a segue that seemed like it was worth taking. “We have options for the third dungeon. I read a fair number of the dungeon reports, and we’re going to aim for something that has a good chance of being easy for once. We need to rest though, and we need to start doing informal drills.”

“Drills,” said Verity, making a face.

“I said informal,” said Alfric. “But the point I’m trying to make is that I don’t want us to be going in with undue risk, and looking back at the last dungeon, it really seems like we did. We hit high variance, but—”

“Question,” said Mizuki, who was cutting up a fish. “Is variance a real thing, or is it just something that you say to make people more likely to go into dungeons?”

“It’s a real thing,” said Hannah. “I’m not sure the second dungeon was all that high variance though, aside from the bear at the end.”

“I put in a report to my guild,” said Alfric. “They agreed it was high variance and proposed some possible explanations, though there was nothing remotely like consensus, and variance doesn’t really need an explanation.”

“Next time you write a report, tell your mom I said hi,” said Mizuki.

“We try to keep things professional,” said Alfric. “Though we do follow a heading system to separate out messages that are more… frivolous.”

“Fancy,” said Mizuki.

“Not really,” said Hannah. “Most larger guilds have such a thing.”

“I joined the druids’ guild,” said Isra. “This morning.”

“Oh really?” asked Verity. “You should have said. I’ve been going on about the garden and you had actual news to share. Though I suppose you haven’t heard anything from them yet.”

“There was a welcome message,” said Isra. “I think I need some help writing a reply.”

“You just think it,” said Alfric. “It’s pretty easy, I’ll help you with it later, if you’re going to be sticking around.”

“Isra is the beneficiary of always planning for an extra person,” said Mizuki as she continued cleaning the fish.

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” said Isra.

“You didn’t,” said Mizuki. “You can treat this like your house, and the spare bed in Verity’s room like it was your bed. But you should have used the party channel to let me know that you were going to be eating with us, and then I could have gotten a bit more food so we don’t need to stretch.”

“But you prepare more than we need,” said Alfric. “So it’s not actually a burden.”

“You’re going to lecture me about contingency planning?” asked Mizuki, momentarily stopping her knifework. “And I never said it was a burden, just that I like to plan out food, and it’s easier to do that when I don’t have to walk back to the shops right before dinner. Think about it like this, if we’ve got someone claiming the extra plate, what are we going to do if we have a random visitor?”

“How likely is that?” asked Alfric. “Do you get random visitors often? The kind that you’d feel obligated to have a meal ready for?”

“Well,” said Mizuki. “No.”

“Um,” said Verity. “I talked to the town cartier, Xy, today. Alfric, you’ll need to arrange things with her, but she’s shown some interest in being the first member of our counterparty.”

“Oh,” said Alfric. “That’s great news. But when you say town cartier, you mean she serves a wide region?”

“She does,” said Verity. “We would want to give her as much advance notice as possible, and I suppose I’m not entirely clear on what her duties would be, so the whole conversation was light on specifics.”

“Friendly though?” asked Hannah, keeping her voice casual.

“That’s something that I’d actually like to talk with you privately about,” said Verity. “It’s not really something I have all that much experience with. The, uh, mores and things, if there are some specifics.”

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “Are you going to be dating this girl?”

“Well,” said Verity, “that’s part of what I wanted to speak with Hannah about, because it seems like the arrangement she was interested in was being something less than partners.”

“Well you can talk to us too,” said Mizuki. “I know all about partners.”

“And you’re good at relationships?” asked Verity.

“Oh,” said Mizuki, deflating somewhat. “Well. Quantity has to count for something, right? Otherwise what was I doing with all those boys?”

“Ay,” said Hannah, raising an eyebrow. “What were you doin’ with all those boys?”

“Perfect chastity, no doubt,” said Verity.

“Well,” said Mizuki, blushing. “Chastity is only a virtue for Kesbin. But the point is, I have plenty of advice to offer. And if a boy came to me saying that he wanted ‘something less than partners’, that would raise some alarm bells, unless I was also looking for something less than partners, but I don’t think that usually turns out well.”

“With due respect,” said Hannah. “I did go to the seminary and spend quite a bit of my time learnin’ best practices for relationships of all kinds, but especially those between two women, platonic or otherwise. It’s among the duties I’m expected to perform as a cleric, givin’ advice. But that said, I do agree that I raise an eye at ‘less than partners’, unless that’s what you’d like. You don’t seem the type though.”

“I don’t?” asked Verity. “For all you know I’ve been with dozens of women.”

“Have you?” asked Hannah, voice quite innocent.

“No,” said Verity. “But I’m not sure what ‘type’ I seem like.”

“A sheltered life of parental pressure aside, and that’s just me readin’ between the lines, you seem like the type to go for the first girl to show strong interest in you,” said Hannah. “And from there, a relationship that moves quickly, because you like things to be sorted away. Then you’d get all the problems that come from that, the quickness, mostly things comin’ to a head some years down the road as you realize that you never built a solid foundation. But I’d be happy to hear your take on what you like and who you are, if that was all a load of feathers.”

“I like to think I’d be more circumspect in my partners than that,” said Verity. “But you’re probably right in the broad strokes. It’s a prophecy that I, well… think there’s some merit to.”

Hannah shrugged. “A lot of bein’ a cleric, the community aspects of it, anyhow, is about puttin’ people into broad categories as quick as possible, then goin’ through as you talk to them and seein’ all the ways they don’t fit, or where your assumptions are wrong, and they will be wrong, because people aren’t made for categories.”

“Is that what clerics do?” asked Mizuki, who was washing her hands. The fish was all laid out and seasoned, ready for the oven. “I guess I never really go in.”

“You should,” said Hannah. “You’d find some use in it, I think. Most people do. Though some more than others, I s’pose.”

“I’ll speak with Xy,” said Alfric. “She’s local, which is good, and she’s probably not going to be looking for full-time employment, which we couldn’t pay her for and which we don’t have enough work to justify. Thanks for making the first contact.”

“You don’t approve of me being with her?” asked Verity.

“I don’t think you want to hear my personal or professional feelings,” said Alfric. “I stayed quiet for a reason.” He glanced at Isra. She’d stayed quiet too, and he wondered whether that was because she had nothing to contribute or whether he had an ally in her.

“Well, I think I do want to hear it,” said Verity. “‘Want’ is probably a strong word. I’d like to hear your objections, in a way that I probably wouldn’t have if your opinions were offered without me asking for them.”

“I want you to be happy,” said Alfric. “I think a strong relationship with a member of a counterparty isn’t a bad thing, and isn’t likely to interfere with the business of dungeoneering in the same way that a relationship with a member of the party is. The counterparty isn’t engaged in potentially life-or-death situations with us, where tensions might run high and where depending on each other can be crucial. And one of the necessities, when it comes to a party, is all the partybound things, a pressure that’s not there for the counterparty. But at this stage, unless I’m mistaken, Xy is the only local cartier. Out in an area like this, she’s probably paid by the province, or by Interim itself. Most other cartiers move to the cities for better pay, or ply trade routes and leylines. So if we lose Xy, there’s probably no replacing her until or unless we have the money to get someone for that exact purpose, which we’re quite far from being able to do.”

“Understood,” said Verity. She frowned. “But she’s—we’re not anything yet.”

“I know,” said Alfric. “And I think you’re within your rights to have a messy relationship with someone we’re in some kind of business with. Keeping a coherent party is what’s most important. And perhaps a fling would be good for you, if part of why you left Dondrian is because of the expectations of your parents.”

“My parents expected flings,” said Verity. “Socially appropriate flings that would help me make a splash, but all the same. When I was still figuring things out, my mother gave me some very frank advice on that. Etiquette and protocol.” She made a face. “I don’t know if I would find it more palatable if she’d been talking about women instead of men, but I doubt it.”

“Well I’m here for you, if you have questions,” said Hannah. “Or you could speak with Lemmel, if you’d prefer someone who’s not a friend.”

“Better a woman than a man though, right?” asked Alfric.

“Perils of a small town,” said Hannah, shrugging. “Not everywhere can be Dondrian, where you have thousands of clerics.”

“Well, like I said, it’s nothing yet,” said Verity. “And nothing much to fuss over.” She did seem a bit pleased about the fussing though, happy that she could share some of her joy. Or perhaps she was just happy about the prospect of having found someone that reciprocated her interest.

“Part of the reason to have friends is to fuss over romantic choices,” said Mizuki. “But if you’d like some privacy, let us know.” She turned to Isra. “I don’t suppose you’ve had a partner?”

“No,” said Isra, who had mostly been silent through all this.

To Alfric, this felt like an implied question about Isra’s sexuality, but he couldn’t quite tell whether her answer was a rejection of the question or a misunderstanding of what was being asked of her. She seemed a bit put out by the conversation, though that could well have been Alfric’s imagination.

“Dinner is going to be ready pretty soon,” said Mizuki, who was moving vegetables around in a pan on the stove. “Fish doesn’t take long to cook. We’re doing Kiromon flavors, if that’s all right with everyone, including a bit of lakeweed.”

“There aren’t lakes in Kiromo though,” said Hannah.

“Well, no, it’s adapted,” said Mizuki. “And there are lakes, but they’re mostly on the inland section, what used to be Mien. Nothing like the Proten Lakes though. The flavor of lakeweed is different, but it’s close enough. Grandpa used to import bales of dried seaweed, which he sold to some of the other immigrants. It was a side business, I think. Now we mostly make do with what we get from the Proten and a few farms there.”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever had seaweed,” said Alfric. “What does it taste like?”

“A little fishy, which is why it goes well with fish,” said Mizuki. “It’s got a very green and, um, watery taste? Hannah made some bread to go with the meal, and it’s got some lakeweed in it too, so hopefully the flavor agrees with everyone. It’s not so much a ‘safe’ meal.”

“Safe in this context meaning something you’ve made before?” asked Verity.

“Um,” said Mizuki. “I’ve made it before but haven’t gotten feedback from anyone, and it’s not one of my staples. There are some recipes, like my stew, that I have down to a fine art, and each batch turns out more or less the same, depending only on the ingredients or what spin I’m putting on it. But there are other things where I don’t have a good feel for the cooking time, or the proportions, and it comes out different. This is one of those.”

“It’s a high-variance meal,” said Alfric. He grinned at her.

“Well,” said Mizuki. “Yes. But if you’re about to compare dungeoneering to cooking, no thank you.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Alfric. “If you see some parallels, that’s on you.”

“Oh no,” said Mizuki, pressing a hand against her forehead. “He’s in my mind, making me think thoughts.” She made a pained face. “Variance minimization. Entad allocation. Attack tier pattern vectors.”

“See?” said Alfric. “I knew you were listening.”

“Did any of that mean anything?” asked Mizuki.

“Uh,” said Alfric. “Well, there’s not a lot that you can do to minimize variance. The focus is more on ensuring that you’re prepared for variance and you minimize the impact it has on your dungeon runs. That means bringing along plenty of equipment like axes, ropes, pitons, sacks, ladders, or whatever else.”

“We didn’t bring a ladder, did we?” asked Hannah.

“No, but we will for the third dungeon,” said Alfric. “It can fit in the stone, which can fit in the book, so it wouldn’t add all that much weight and serves as a form of insurance. I’m still hoping that we get a better storage entad, but the book and the stone together get us about ninety percent there. In terms of how the second dungeon went, I think we did fairly well on the entads, but they’re support entads that help with logistics rather than directly helping us do the dungeons.” Alfric hated to bring it up, but they really did need to do a postmortem, especially now that they had some space to breathe and time to independently think about things. It would have been better to do it the night of, or the night after that, but things had come up, and he’d been feeling off kilter. There was a bit of silence as he tried to weigh his words.

“Oh, the postmortem,” said Mizuki, unprompted. “You’d mentioned it, and I think we can do it tonight. After dinner works for me? I’m fairly sure that none of you have plans.”

“Works for me,” said Verity.

“Me too,” said Hannah.

“Mmm,” said Isra, in a way that seemed like assent.

“Verity?” asked Alfric. “You’re not playing at the Fig and Gristle tonight? We can work around that.”

Verity very briefly looked at Mizuki, who gave a minute shake of her head. “No,” she said. “I’m taking a night off from that and would have wanted to arrange it ahead of time anyhow.”

“What’s going on?” asked Alfric. He looked between them. Something was going on.

“Mizuki felt bad,” said Isra. “She was thinking of something to cheer you up and settled on either a postmortem or dungeon school. Or both.”

“I don’t know that I need cheering up,” said Alfric.

“From the Lola thing?” asked Mizuki.

“Ah,” said Alfric. “Yeah. Well, I really appreciate it. I’m not sure what dungeon school would be though.”

“You know,” said Mizuki. “Like, you just tell us all the things we need to know about what dungeons are like, or something.”

“The problem is that there’s a lot,” said Alfric. “But I’ll do my best to distill it down, and we can have something like a class on dungeons, if that’s what you want.”

“I want to be better at this dungeons thing,” said Mizuki. “And I thought it would make you happy to have a postmortem without feeling like it was a matter of pulling teeth to sit us all down for it or like you were the one pushing things. I figured that sometimes it must feel like you’re carrying the team forward, which seems like it would get exhausting. It would have been better if we could have just left it at that though, without you knowing that we’d set things up ahead of time.”

“Well, either way,” said Alfric, “I really do appreciate the gesture and the willingness. There’s a lot that people find boring, and yes, postmortems and training tend to be a part of that. But that can wait until after we’ve had dinner, and there are other things to talk about.”

“Like Verity’s cartier?” asked Mizuki.

“I’m hoping the subject has been exhausted,” said Verity.

“Or cooking,” said Alfric. “Or the garden, or other things.”

“Sounds great,” said Mizuki. “Fish is done, vegetables are too, and we’ve got bread with butter, so I think we’re ready to eat.”

Chapter 40 — Postmortem

Isra was envious of Mizuki’s cooking. The meals Isra had in Liberfell and at the Fig and Gristle had been quite good, but they had been prepared by someone whose job it was to do such things. A person who had devoted their life to cooking would naturally be a good cook, that was right and fair. But Mizuki hadn’t devoted her life to cooking, it was only something she did casually, and she still seemed to be so good at it, and at a young age. It made Isra feel like she had been missing something from her life, a skill that she had never developed when she’d been perfectly capable of doing so.

Worse, it was a skill that didn’t seem to come naturally to her like so many other things had, because the interplay of flavors largely didn’t involve the living world she was so in tune with. She could tell whether food was good to eat or not, whether it had toxins, but what it would taste like was much more difficult, and the ways that the taste would change when paired with other tastes or in the process of cooking was even more difficult. She’d faced challenges when smoking meats or making pickles until finally arriving at something she found satisfactory. Mizuki seemed to know everything there was to know. The envy did nothing to dull the taste of the food. If Mizuki was serious about giving cooking lessons, Isra was going to take them. She’d kept a close eye on the food preparation, but had no real idea how such simple procedures had turned the base ingredients into an actual meal.

“Okay,” said Alfric. “The postmortem won’t take long, I don’t think, it’s just a matter of going over what happened in the dungeon, what went right and what went wrong, and trying to figure out what we can learn from it. Overall, I think we did pretty well, except at the end.”

“Because of the risk?” asked Hannah. “Or the outcome?”

“Both,” said Alfric. “But we’re going to go through room by room in chronological order, give brief thoughts on what we saw and how we responded to it and what we might do differently next time. Mostly doing this is just a way of running the dungeon a second or third time in our minds, which means that we milk the dungeon for experience much more efficiently.”

What followed was quite a bit of talking. Isra stayed silent for most of it. It was interesting to get different perspectives on what happened, but her own part in the dungeons was relatively straightforward. If there was something to shoot, she shot it, using the slowed time from the bow to get as many shots off as possible, then using it a second time to retreat if necessary. In every fight, her contribution had been roughly the same, with the outcome being different largely because the monsters had their own biologies and defenses.

“So was this because I missed?” asked Mizuki, when they were discussing the giant man covered in mussels.

“Did you miss?” asked Alfric. “You blew the arm off.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t trying to,” said Mizuki. “I was just lobbing the fireball at him and hoping it would kill him.”

“Is that something to work on for later?” asked Alfric. “Aim? So far as I can recall, you didn’t have a single miss through the whole dungeon, so I don’t have any actual complaints.”

“I don’t know,” said Mizuki. She shrugged. “Has it been working?”

“You had the majority of kills,” said Hannah. “But we’ve been facin’ what seems like more than our fair share of the big, slow-movin’ beasties, and those are what you’re best at.” She shrugged.

“We can’t really tell you what to do or how to do it,” said Alfric. “We’re not sorcs. Part of a postmortem is for you to reflect on what you’ve been doing and whether doing things differently would have been better. I have no complaints and no advice.” He hesitated. “Aside from, perhaps, not doing everything all at once?”

“Um,” said Mizuki, who seemed quite confused. “Meaning?”

“You work off aetheric imbalance, right?” asked Alfric. “So in theory, rather than doing a single giant fireball, you could do two smaller ones? Mostly I was thinking about the deer we fought and how a single large attack is less effective against multiple targets.”

“Hmm,” said Mizuki. She held out a hand and wiggled her fingers, and a series of pings, almost in unison, came up from the glasses of wine and water that were sitting around the table. “Like that?”

“I don’t know what you just did,” said Alfric.

“Applied force to all of the glasses?” asked Mizuki. “You heard the pings, right?”

Alfric gave a helpless shrug. “I did, but… yes, if you can do that in the dungeon with lethal force, it would be great. It was one of the only problems we ran into with the deer fight.”

“We… didn’t fight any deer,” said Mizuki.

“The black things,” said Isra. “With large heads. They had legs like deer.”

“Oh, those,” said Mizuki. “Right, I didn’t think of them as deer at all, more like a big black version of the long-legged skinks. I hated those.”

“Well, we’ll get to them,” said Alfric. “Does anyone have any more on the mussel man encounter?”

“Arrows did nothing,” said Isra. “I was just standing there waiting for someone else to kill it.”

“Some will be like that,” Alfric said, nodding. “Others will drop from a single well-placed arrow. Part of what we do, when dungeoneering, is to work a flowchart, and part of what we need to do, as a team, is to figure out what the flowchart looks like in practice. Mizuki putting down as much magical firepower as possible right from the start will probably be the default, and Hannah going in for a hex against something that’s already been injured is another good staple. So Isra, your role will be to loose arrows unless that doesn’t work, and if it doesn’t work, then… I don’t know. You did really well up close at the end of the first dungeon, but I don’t expect you to do that, not when you don’t have a good melee weapon or the proper training to use it. Not everyone is going to be good in every scenario, and that’s okay, so long as we have everything covered and plans for these different scenarios. Sometimes, you’re going to be able to kill whatever we find almost instantly.”

“I’ll need symmetricalization,” said Isra. “I don’t have the stamina for longer dungeons.”

Alfric nodded. “Symmetricalization, training, entad support, and learning when to hold off. Dungeons require a lot of physical exertion, especially for you and me. We should all be building up stamina as much as we can, and if we’re not doing that by running dungeons, it should be in other ways, like going for a morning run.”

Mizuki laughed. “No, absolutely not, thank you.”

“Well, something then,” said Alfric. “It’s not as important for you, but it would be good if you were able to sprint for two hundred yards without getting too winded. Being able to run away from danger is where physical fitness is going to count the most, for you.”

“Fine, point taken,” said Mizuki. “But if you think for even a moment that I’m getting up at first bell to go running, you’re absolutely insane.”

“We’ll figure out something,” said Alfric. “It’s your heart and lungs I care most about. Running, rowing, things like that?”

“What am I going to row?” asked Mizuki. “We’ve got a pond, I guess, but we’re light on lakes.”

“I lift stones,” said Hannah. “Usually just the one side though.”

“Stones?” asked Mizuki. “Like, rocks?”

“Ay,” said Hannah. “There are lots of forms. What you need most is a nice craggy rock that your hands’ll stick to. I have two, back in my room at the temple, and will need to transfer them over, or find some new ones.”

“You just pick up and then put down rocks?” asked Mizuki.

“Over and over,” said Hannah, nodding. “It’s about as boring as it sounds, but I like to have somethin’ to occupy my body when doin’ prayers. If I do it here, it’ll be outside, where I can drop the stones without too much worry about breaks or dents.”

“I’m not sure that I’m going to do that either,” said Mizuki. “Though I guess I could try.”

“Lifting weights won’t really get you the kind of benefit I would think you’d want,” said Alfric. “You want to work the heart and lungs, rather than gain strength, not that it would hurt to have both.” He waved a hand. “But that’s neither here nor there, because we’re still in the middle of our postmortem, and there’s quite a bit more ground to cover.”

They talked about each fight in some detail. Isra found it particularly interesting to get the perspective of Verity, whose effects could be felt but not seen and whose own view of each fight involved carefully watching all the others to see what was needed in any given moment. It also gave her an excuse to look at Verity, which she’d found herself doing quite a bit over the past few days.

“I feel bad that we were rushing on my account,” said Verity. “But if you want a song of that strength, it probably is necessary.”

“I trust you to know your own music,” said Alfric. “But I do think that I want to take the next dungeon a little more slowly. I think going from fight to fight is preferable for a number of reasons, but the fights are physically and mentally exhausting, and if they’re difficult or prolonged, there’s a limit to how many of them I can do in a row before getting gassed. The balance there is how warmed up and ready to go I am, and battle rush certainly helps to get through things.” The term ‘battle rush’ was unfamiliar to Isra, but from context, she thought he might mean how the whole body felt electric in a moment of intense combat.

“You’d like weaker but longer?” asked Verity.

“Well. When you change the fundamental nature of the song in mid-stream it creates problems too, right?” asked Alfric. “If we could have something more all-purpose that might be better, but I don’t want to make a request that betrays my ignorance as a layman.”

“I can try,” said Verity. “There are also some exercises that I can do over the next few weeks to work on my sustain. They’re incredibly boring, but if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s putting in the time and effort into something I find boring.”

“You’re a very good gardener,” said Isra.

“Just a bit of self-deprecation.” Verity smiled. She had a lovely smile, made more lovely by the fact that she used it sparingly.

“The other thing I wanted to talk about, when it came to rushing, was knowing when to call it quits,” said Alfric. “But we can save that for when we talk about the bear.”

“We don’t need to talk about the cyclops or the deer, right?” asked Mizuki. “I mean, Isra killed the cyclops right away, what’s there to talk about? And we already touched on the deer things.”

“I think the cyclops is a really good example of when to hold back, actually,” said Alfric. “The basic assumption of a dungeon is that there’s a single monster or group of monsters in a room, but ‘room’ isn’t necessarily the fundamental unit of a dungeon, and sometimes monsters will come in from elsewhere, either as part of their normal behavior or when they hear fighting. Mostly what sets them off is presence, but not always. So Mizuki, it might make sense to let Isra fire a probing arrow and see how that affects things before you lob a fireball.”

“It’s easier to hit something that’s not moving,” said Mizuki. She had her arms folded across her chest. “Besides, I’m limited by the room, it’s not like there’s a point in saving it. Isra can only shoot a bow a limited number of times per day, especially if we’re tearing through the dungeons as fast as we can.”

“That’s what I was talking about,” said Alfric. “You want to save the aetheric imbalance in a room for when it’s most needed, especially because there’s no way to get it back. It would be saved for tactical retreats or adds—additional monsters.”

“I get it, I guess,” said Mizuki. “Still seems like the kind of caution that could bite us in the butt.”

“Maybe,” said Alfric. “Something to think about, anyway. I’m only relaying conventional wisdom. Adds are one of the most fundamentally difficult aspects of a dungeon, and we haven’t had to deal with that yet.”

“We had those wolves,” said Mizuki.

“That’s different,” said Alfric. “But yes, we did well to contain them before they got out of hand. Isra, you did particularly good work there. I don’t know what kind of limiter they had, if any, but fast action seemed like it was the only way to get out of it. For my own part, I think being more verbal about what was happening might have gotten that fight done sooner.”

There was more discussion, and for Isra, it was a bit too much. She imagined sitting and talking about things like it was a muscle you had to exercise regularly and which you could build up strength in. For her, that conversational muscle was underdeveloped. She had come over to the house and spent some time talking with Verity, then some more time in the kitchen before dinner, and then the dinner itself, and it was all adding up to make her a bit anxious. Perhaps Alfric sensed this or was feeling the same because he moved the topic of conversation to something he seemed to really want to talk about.

“We shouldn’t have fought the bear,” said Alfric. “I think doing it got us the majority of the value in the dungeon, but I still think, in retrospect, that it was a risk we shouldn’t have gone for, and the fact that it worked out perhaps sends the wrong message about what the acceptable level of risk is.”

He waited for a moment, and there were some glances around the table.

“I think you may be right,” said Hannah. “And I’m sorry for pushin’ the matter. We were ridin’ high off a series of rooms we’d handled well, and—”

“I think we’d have been fine if I didn’t knock out Verity,” said Mizuki.

“Well, that’s another thing,” said Alfric. “We need to be able to handle the unexpected. Being a dungeoneer is about the unexpected because you’re always seeing things that haven’t been seen before and being put into situations that, at best, share some common features to things other people have seen. In this case, the unexpected thing was an accident of magic, but in the future, it might be something else, an entad misfire, a monster, a dungeon feature, or something like that. There’s a saying in the dungeoneering world—every dungeon is your first dungeon.”

“What kind of sense does that make?” asked Hannah.

“It’s a warning against complacency and overconfidence,” said Alfric. “By the time you’ve done twenty dungeons, or a hundred, you might have lost that edge you had in the first dungeon. You might let your guard down. But dungeons, almost by definition, can surprise you. The bear, if that’s what we’re calling it, really should have been killed by Mizuki’s overpowering strike, but the truth is that anything could have happened, and a large creature is usually more dangerous, just by virtue of his size. The bear could have split in two, or been powered up by the assault, or shrunk down, or… anything, really.”

“How close to death do you reckon we came?” asked Hannah.

“I think we were within spitting distance of one of us dying,” said Alfric. “Better communication, better response to the unexpected, better follow-through on plans… all would have helped. I don’t want to belabor the mechanics of the fight, it’s more about the feel, the flowchart, the shape of our approach. Better to not have done the fight though, even if it did get us the best entad of the dungeon and some trees that will hopefully pay out.”

“And the eggs,” said Isra. Their lone egg had, somehow, become her responsibility, which she was quite pleased about. No longer would she simply be the archer of the group, she would be the archer and keeper of the egg. It was nice to have two jobs.

“Those too,” Alfric agreed with a nod. “Mostly long-term things. I’m not hopeful about the eggs, because there are many things that can hatch that don’t serve any useful function at all, but in theory, we could still sell them to a zoo or a collector. At any rate, that’s all that I had for the postmortem, and now it’s time for you all to add whatever you’d like.”

“I need to get better about rushin’ in to apply a hex,” said Hannah. “And better about coordination with you for it, but that’s about it. Might be helpful for people to call out injuries, though Alfric aside, we didn’t have much injury to speak of.”

“I’ll have you do symmetricalization to me,” said Isra. This was something she’d been mulling over since they’d finished the dungeon.

“It would be good,” said Hannah. “But I’ll speak with you about what all it involves so you know what you’re in for, and we can restrict it to the arms and chest, if you’re mostly about the draw.”

“And the healing,” said Isra.

“Naturally,” said Hannah. She seemed somewhat reticent, and Isra had no idea why that might be.

“I have nothing more to add,” said Mizuki. “I was going to read a book.”

“I don’t think I have anything more to add either,” said Verity. “I need to practice and think about what less intensive songs would look like. I might send off a letter to someone I know asking for advice, though there’s a good chance it would get back to my parents, and, well. I worry that if they found out I was a dungeoneer, even if only a temporary one, they might take action.”

“We still need to write a letter to them,” said Alfric. “I can do it, but if you want input, which I think you do, you need to stop putting it off.”

“Fine, fine,” said Verity. “You are obviously and annoyingly right.” She gave him a limp smile.

“It looks like we’re done here, then,” said Alfric. “Thank you all for participating, I hope it was painless and productive. We’ll probably do this after every dungeon.”

“There was one more thing,” said Isra.

“Yes?” asked Alfric. He seemed genuinely surprised that she had something to add, probably because she preferred to remain silent for most of it, watching the others.

“I just wanted to say… there’s a wrongness to the dungeons,” said Isra. “The animals and plants can’t be felt as much. Nothing listens to me very well. I’m sorry that I missed as much as I did, and I will try to do better.”

“It’s fine,” said Alfric. “You were recruited for this team because I’d heard good things about your ability as a hunter. There’s something we call dungeon madness, which just means that about ninety-nine out of a hundred animals will attack you. We don’t know why it happens or how to stop it, and I really don’t expect you to be the one to crack it, because while druids are rare, and druids who go into dungeons are even more rare, they’re not so rare that someone else hasn’t already tried whatever you might think of. Just in case you were thinking about beating your head on the problem.”

“I was,” said Isra. She had been cautioned about opening herself up too much, but she was still exploring what it meant to be a druid, and it seemed that some experimentation was in order.

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “Chickens don’t attack people.”

“Dungeon madness is first generation only,” said Alfric. “It doesn’t affect eggs, or the extremely young if it’s not an egg. In dog equivalents, you’d need to be pulling out a two-day-old puppy. Everything else though, you’re looking at taking care of something that will be trying its best to kill you. It’s still sometimes worth it to take the adults though, if you can extract a breeding pair. There are setups where you can take care of the animals without interacting with them. I don’t think we’ll do that, but with Isra, it’s a bit tempting.” He turned to look at Isra. “We can talk about it more later, if you’d like, but I don’t want to bore anyone, and this has gone on long enough already. Too much talking.”

“Later,” nodded Isra. Again, she had a comfortable feeling. It was nice that Alfric understood her. “I do also need some help with the guild things, if you can.”

“Of course,” said Alfric. “I’d forgotten all about that. You’re connected with experts, so perhaps they can help you.”

The dinner over and the postmortem finished, they all went their separate ways, though Isra found herself staying around the house, not quite wanting to leave and return to her empty house. She went through the garden beds in the back and looked at the work Verity had done, peering deeply at the plants to divine their secrets and make guesses about what a person might have planted them for.

Halfway through, Verity came out to practice and played a song, one laced with magic that undid hidden knots of anxiety, and by the time it was finished, it seemed too dark for a walk through the woods. The bed at Mizuki’s house in the shared room with Verity was becoming, it seemed, familiar.

Before she went to bed though, Isra pulled Hannah aside. “Can we talk for a bit?”

“Of course. Did you need help with the guild?”

“Yes,” Isra said, though that wasn’t the primary thing she’d wanted. Alfric had already offered.

They went to Hannah’s room together, where there was a little desk, and Hannah pulled the chair out for Isra, taking the bed for herself.

“Now, the thing about guilds is that it’s mostly a matter of how you think into it,” said Hannah. “Think to open up the forum, try that now.”

Isra did. She’d done it once before, when she’d had a dim awareness that it was there, in the morning, but she’d done little else with it. “Done,” she said.

“Now you should see a few messages there,” said Hannah. “A message comes with a header, which is what it’s about, a name, which is who sent it, a date, which is when it became a part of the guild logs, and then the message itself.”

“There’s only one message,” said Isra, frowning. It appeared in her mind’s eye and had all the features that Hannah had talked about. It was listed as being from Dom.

“Oh,” said Hannah. “Well, it’s possible they do a regular purge, that’s not too uncommon. Anyone who posts a message can delete it, and if everyone agrees, the log can be kept somewhat clean. There’s no real need to do it, but some do. And you could open it?”

“Yes,” said Isra. All this took was another thought. “The message is short.” It, too, appeared in her mind’s eye.

“Well, the only real things left to know are how to make a message and how to reply to someone,” said Hannah. “You just sort of… talk into it, if that makes sense, but it’s not like the party channel, where it uses your voice. There’s transcription to words, and if you think at it, you can alter it down to the letter, though few people do that. In some guilds you’ll see people make pictures out of letters, but it’s a bit frowned upon.”

“Okay,” said Isra. The phrase ‘pictures out of letters’ didn’t make sense to her, but it didn’t seem like something she’d do by mistake.

“Why don’t you try to reply to the welcome message?” asked Hannah. “And just tell me what you said, so I can make sure it’s good.”

“I don’t know what to say,” said Isra.

“Oh, somethin’ simple,” said Hannah. “Just, ‘Thank you for inviting me to the guild, it’s my first time, so let me know if you have any rules that need to be followed’.”

Isra put down that, more or less, and repeated it back exactly to Hannah. The message seemed to hang there in her mind, even when she wasn’t paying attention to it, and as soon as she returned her attention to it, there it was, in full, each letter capable of being moved.

“Now, to send, it’s just a bit of a push, more focused intent than anything else you’ve been doin’,” said Hannah. “You don’t need a header for a reply, though some people put that in, and your name and the date, those are just a natural part of it.”

“It knows my name,” said Isra, who could see it in her mind’s eye.

“Same as the census does. Have you sent it?”

Isra pushed with her mind, and the message slotted itself into place.

“Now, you should know that no one will be able to see it until tomorrow,” said Hannah. “It happens sometime in the middle of the night. If there’s another reply to that same message, they’ll be in the order they were put in, and the same goes for any new message.”

“You’re talking about mechanics,” said Isra. “But I don’t know what I should be doing with it.”

“Oh, ay,” said Hannah. “But most of that will depend on the guild. The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to just watch how things go. See what they say and how they say it, and follow their lead, whether they go short and terse or write long essays back and forth.”

“There might be hidden rules,” said Isra.

“Well, almost certainly,” said Hannah. “And ways of doin’ things that are unique to them, or just the way things have always been done. Maddening, probably.” She shrugged. “Watch the headers, some guilds use abbreviations, and watch how messages end, sometimes people use that to say who they expect to hear from. Remember that anyone can see and respond and that you can’t see messages from others that are in queue. It’s quite annoyin’ to get three identical responses to someone on the same topic.”

“And that’s all there is to being in a guild?” asked Isra. “Talking?”

“Oh, no,” said Hannah. “There are guild halls, though they’re not terribly common, and there are bits of magic that work with the guild, includin’ bards. But I don’t imagine any of that applies, and I get the sense you’re done talkin’ about this for now.” She gave Isra an expectant look.

Isra shifted. “There was a reason that I wanted your help instead of Alfric’s.”

“Oh, ay?” asked Hannah. “And why would that be?”

“I… don’t really understand why Verity is going to be with Xy,” said Isra. “Or how.”

“Ah,” said Hannah. “So it’s my expertise as a cleric of Garos, is that it?”

Isra nodded.

“And were your questions more of the mechanical variety, or of the hidden codes and language?” asked Hannah.

“I don’t know,” said Isra. “I understand animals better than humans.” She looked down at her hands. She had become so familiar with embarrassment over the years that it was difficult to remember that she wasn’t supposed to be embarrassed around these people. They had, so far, been very understanding. “I don’t even know when humans have their mating season, and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced it.” She looked up. “If I had… I would know, wouldn’t I?”

Hannah at first seemed amused by this for some unknown reason and then concerned, also for an unknown reason. “Isra… humans don’t have a mating season.”

Isra frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean they don’t—there’s no season for fallin’ in love, for us to desire another in a romantic way, for wantin’ sex,” said Hannah. The last bit was said with a frankness that Isra appreciated. It was a topic that people seemed to like to dance around, and in books, quite a bit of it seemed to be skipped over, with only the implication left behind. Isra hadn’t even realized that the implication was there, the first few times she’d read a romance.

“But then when a woman goes into heat is… random?” asked Isra.

“We don’t do that,” said Hannah. “At least, not to my knowledge, and I think I would know.”

“Oh,” said Isra. She sat with her hands in her lap, thinking about that. It seemed so wrong and confusing, that humans were uniquely missing a vital, fundamental part of their lives. They had rules of their own that they probably followed, but also these rules were the ones that people didn’t talk about very much. Looking at the animals, Isra had just thought, well, that it was the same in humans, and that she just hadn’t gone into heat yet. She had thought that romance would make a bit more sense then.

“Do you want help findin’ a partner?” asked Hannah. “Or… someone to decode for you, if I understand your problem with that kind of thing?”

“I don’t know,” said Isra. “I don’t understand what Verity wants with Xy.”

“Well, again, I have to ask, do you mean mechanically or emotionally?” asked Hannah. “Because it seems to me, if the talk around the kitchen had you confused, that there’s not meant to be much of emotions involved, and that can be a bit fraught, if you ask me.”

“And… mechanically?” asked Isra. “Because… they wouldn’t mount each other.”

Hannah then explained, in some detail, what might happen between the two of them. This included some lessons in anatomy that clarified a few things for Isra.

“There are some books with illustrations, back in the temple,” said Hannah. “I can show them to you. And obviously the mechanics are different for a man and a woman, at least some of the time, and I could show you them too. Best to be forthright about it, especially with you, I think.”

“I see,” said Isra. She’d felt increasingly bad as the discussion had gone on and was left, by the end of it, feeling rather glum.

“Are you okay?” asked Hannah.

“Fine,” said Isra.

“You know, I am a cleric,” said Hannah. “And I’ve been trained to talk to people about their problems, to give them advice, to help them figure things out. Beyond that, anythin’ you say will be in confidence, not shared with anyone else. It’s a bit delicate, given that we’re in a party together, but better to talk, in my opinion, even if the thoughts are half formed.”

“It makes me feel sick,” said Isra. “Imagining them together.”

“Ah,” said Hannah. “Well, that’s somethin’ that you’ll have to deal with, and I can help you with that—sick in what way? Sick like lookin’ at moldy food? Revulsion?”

“I don’t know,” said Isra. “No. Sad.”

“Mmm,” said Hannah. “Well.” She cleared her throat and there was silence in the air. “And do you ever think about bein’ with other people? Men or women? Bein’ kissed or touched?” The question was very gentle, reminding Isra of the way that people sometimes approached forest animals they were worried about scaring off.

Isra felt like objecting, because she’d had those thoughts, but it wasn’t like she’d actually been in heat. But apparently that wasn’t something that happened to women, and men presumably didn’t have any rutting behavior, so it was possible that the thoughts that had entered her mind were just the normal levels of desire that people had, and acting on them was natural, if the kind of thing that people just didn’t talk about.

“I think I might be done for now,” said Isra, standing from the chair. “It’s… thank you for the help, with the guild things, and the other, but—I need time to think, on my own.”

“Of course,” Hannah said. “And once your thoughts are in order, I’d be happy to talk with you again, especially over what you feel and how to handle it. You should know that for people your age, it’s not always so clear how to grapple with these things. This is universal, more or less, figurin’ out how things are for you.”

“Thank you,” Isra said again. She was feeling warm toward Hannah, grateful in a very tactile way, like she’d been rescued from drowning. It felt good to be told that she was perfectly normal, especially after she’d been corrected on what felt like a fairly major misunderstanding about human mating.

Isra brushed her teeth with the miswak twig, used the bathroom, and went to bed. Verity was already there, in a nightgown but not yet asleep.

“How did talking about guild things go?” asked Verity. She had a small bottle of something beside her and was rubbing something white onto her skin. “Lotion,” she explained. “Helps to keep the skin nice. Would you like to try some?”

“Sure,” said Isra. She came over and sat next to Verity and rolled up her sleeves so she could apply some lotion to her arms.

Verity talked for a bit about lotion and the regimes that she’d used back in Dondrian, different soaps and ointments that were meant to keep the skin perfect. Isra listened, but she also kept her eyes on Verity. Everything that Hannah had said echoed back and forth through Isra’s mind, like a wave of thunder.

Eventually, Isra went back over to her own bed, and they shuttered the lights.

It took Isra some time to fall asleep though. She kept running things through in her mind’s eye, trying to test how she felt about them, as Hannah had asked her. She imagined nuzzling Verity, or kissing her, or their bodies entwined beneath the sheets. It caused her to be possessed of a restless energy and made sleep come slowly.

Chapter 41 — Meddling

There were some ways in which cooking for quite a few people was more work than cooking for one, but an aspect of it that Mizuki hadn’t considered was the work involved in transporting raw ingredients. Not buying them, since that was easy enough, but if she wanted to bring home enough food for the five of them for the next two or three days, the pounds really started to add up, enough so that her large, trusty bag was digging into her shoulder. It was also hard to cook for five because it seemed impossible to make enough that there would be leftovers for the next day, which meant cooking was something that needed to be done every day. When she’d been alone, if she didn’t feel like cooking, she could just live off the same pot of stew for a few days.

Something was going to have to be done about it, but Mizuki didn’t quite know what. It was making cooking into a larger part of her life and in the process making cooking perhaps a little less fun. So far as she knew, none of the others could really cook, so it wasn’t like they could be depended upon to take up some of the slack. Hannah was the exception, and Isra seemed like she wanted to know how to cook, but… well. Mizuki was keenly aware that this was a problem of her own making. She had offered to cook and said that it was no problem. She had dismissed help with elements of the work where help would be appreciated. She had no idea how she was going to say, ‘Oh, actually, some days I just won’t feel like cooking’, or ‘I know that I waved off your suggestions that I take it easy, but actually I shouldn’t have done that’. It seemed awkward and unpleasant to do that.

“Mizuki, so good to see you’re intact,” said Marta, who seemed to be genuinely happy that Mizuki was there for market day. “How was the second dungeon for you?”

“Oh, it was an adventure,” said Mizuki. “We fought a bear the size of a house.”

Marta waved a hand. “You’ve got to be more realistic with your exaggerations, no one is going to believe that.”

“Very much not an exaggeration,” said Mizuki. “We really did.”

“And how would you have beaten such a thing?” asked Marta, giving Mizuki a raised eyebrow.

“By sucking all of the magic out of the room and breaking our bard,” said Mizuki. “And then having Hannah rush in to double the damage and nearly get herself killed.”

“Well, you be careful,” said Marta, frowning. “Dungeons don’t get very dangerous until you’re higher elevation, so if you’re having trouble now, it might be a sign that things aren’t for you.”

“So far it’s seeming like it’s extremely dangerous,” said Mizuki. “How many did you say you did?”

“Twenty-eight,” said Marta. She seemed to feel some pride in that, though she wasn’t quite puffing out her chest. “Of course, I was a wizard back then, filling a bit of your role, I suppose, though in a different way.”

“I’d meant to ask about that,” said Mizuki. “Why give up wizardry?” She’d known Marta for ages, though only as a purveyor of meats and other foodstuffs.

“There’s always work for a wizard, and I was a normal enough wizard for a time, but it’s intensive, mindful work, and never really gets less so,” said Marta. “Eventually I wanted to slow down, but if you slow, you start looking at all the equipment and thinking that it’s a load of money you’re not making the full use of, like sitting on a chair made of gold, so at a certain point I sold off all my mana stones and switched over to dealing in food, which was my husband’s work.”

“I guess it’s not the same for a sorc,” said Mizuki. “We don’t have equipment or really all that much training or anything. There’s nothing to give up.”

“Some wizards go into a sort of retirement and keep enough stones around for little things,” said Marta. “And I did, for a year or so, until it was clear that I was going to rust away.”

“Do you regret that?” asked Mizuki. “Switching vocations?”

“Oh, not at all,” said Marta. “Firstly, I think it’s better not to live a life of regrets, but secondly, I think that we can view our lives as having different phases to them, when sometimes it’s appropriate to be one thing, and other times it’s appropriate to be another. But I’m not sure that there are so many parallels between us, because being a wizard is, if you’ll forgive me, much more of a steady job.”

“True.” Mizuki looked down at the selection of meat. Marta’s husband was the butcher, and he had a skilled hand as well as some entad support, which allowed the meat to come out looking clean and perfect, almost an abstracted version of itself.

“You’ve been cooking for the whole house?” asked Marta.

“I have,” said Mizuki. “And they seem quite appreciative.”

“Five is a fair number to cook for,” said Marta. “You make sure you’re getting your worth from them, on that front and the other.”

“The other?” asked Mizuki.

“Dungeoneering,” said Marta. “Now, I’ve no idea how good you are in a dungeon, but we’re a bit alike, wizards and sorcerers, and my guess is that you do most of the killing. It’s a good position to negotiate from, if they know your worth.”

“Oh,” said Mizuki. “Oh, I would never do that. We’re, well, friends now. Mostly.”

“I like you quite a bit, more than my other customers, but don’t let them know it,” said Marta. “You’re always pleasant and cheerful, but you can’t negotiate to save your life.”

“Which is why I’m such a good customer?” asked Mizuki with a smile.

“Which is why you need to make sure no one is taking advantage of you,” said Marta. “I’m very serious about this. I know your family went back to Kiromo, and you don’t really have anyone, but just because someone is a friend, or just because you want to be nice, doesn’t mean that you should let them put too much on your shoulders.”

Mizuki had known Marta for a long time, and Marta was among a group of women who had made sure that when her parents left, Mizuki was more or less taken care of while she was alone in that big house. For the most part, it was in little ways, like occasionally bringing her food, or offering to help her out, or sometimes sending a son or grandson to do some chores, occasionally as a pretense for courting. These women had, perhaps, disagreed with the decision to leave her all by herself or were just fulfilling their community obligation, but it had been nice to have someone looking out for her, even though the support and check-ins petered off over the years as it became clear that Mizuki could handle herself.

It was still somewhat shocking to get such a forceful heart-to-heart with Marta. It wasn’t unwarranted, necessarily, but Mizuki hadn’t been expecting it. It was all true—she was agreeable and sometimes felt like she was missing out because of it, especially when it came to the odd jobs end of things, and the phrase ‘oh you can just pay me what you feel is fair’ had passed her lips a few too many times. Alfric was the one holding the purse strings though, and he was too upstanding to give her anything less than she was owed, but she was cooking for the whole house and perhaps offering a bit too much and waving away too many reasonable objections.

“I’ll think about it,” said Mizuki. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry to get so serious on such a lovely day, and of course I know it’s not my place,” said Marta. “We had all assumed that you’d be married by now, but if that’s not in the cards for you, and no reason it has to be, then you won’t have a partner to lean on and shore up your weaknesses, I’m sorry to say.”

“I’ve got the party now,” said Mizuki. “But yes, I’ll make sure that I’m getting what I deserve. Not that there have been any problems. Alfric has been great, and he’s the one who’s in charge of all the money.”

“Good. Now then, what can I get you in terms of meat?”

“You know, with Isra being such a good hunter, I should probably just see if she can bring some meat in,” said Mizuki. She said it very apologetically.

“She came by trying to sell dungeon meat,” said Marta. “And saying that she was a woods witch, which I suppose must be true, because it would be too outlandish to say otherwise. We couldn’t buy what she was selling though, not when there’s so much risk it will turn out to be poisonous or inedible. And of course if you plan to go with that, I wouldn’t fault you for it. Dungeon meat can be good eating.”

“I think it will be some time before I want to start experimenting with new meats,” said Mizuki. “Especially because by the time I had a good understanding of bear meat, the last of it in the whole world would be gone.” She looked at the selection. “Chickens, perhaps? I was thinking slow-roasted, with vegetables, something that’s not too much work, that can sit in the oven for an hour or two and be poked and prodded a bit.”

“That sounds lovely,” said Marta. “Oh, and I should let you know that Basil got in a selection of Kiromon spices but would probably let you have first crack at them if you went over there today. Seaweed, their roots, things like that.”

“Why’d she do that?” asked Mizuki, wrinkling her nose. “Not that much demand for it, with most of the Kiromon families gone.”

“Either she had a good deal on it, or she thought that people might be nostalgic,” said Marta. “You know, when your grandfather came here with the other families, we regarded them as a bit strange, but I grew up with your mother and father, off by a few years, and there were lots of us who played with them and went to their house for food. You remember your parents would sometimes make food for the community? There are a fair few of us who miss that.”

“Is that a hint?” asked Mizuki. “That I should bring something in for temple day?” She smiled. “I don’t think I’ve ever cooked for that many people.”

“Well, think about it,” said Marta. “Ingredients would be supplied for you from the community fund, and we’d get you some helpers. There are some younger kids who have yet to learn how to cook, and it’s good for them to see someone work. Or just bring something to potluck next time we have it. If money is an issue—”

“It’s not,” said Mizuki. “The dungeons have done us well.” Though it was clear that the rings weren’t going to last as long as she’d thought they would, and that dungeons in general weren’t going to be quite so lucrative as that first one.

Once the chickens had been bought, wrapped, and put into her satchel, Mizuki decided that she would go see Basil to learn what kind of spices were available.

Basil was a plump woman who was always moving around like she had something of great importance to get to, and Mizuki wasn’t sure that she’d ever seen the woman rest once. Basil was unmarried, and at her age, unlikely to ever be married, which Mizuki had heard through the grapevine was entirely by choice rather than a lack of options when she was younger or anything like that. Basil’s hair was graying, and she had slowed a bit since Mizuki was a child, but she was still in constant motion, hurrying around to get one thing or another done.

Her shop wasn’t really a ‘shop’, it was more of a loading and unloading place, a central point for larger shipments from elsewhere, including things the farmers needed. Basil had catalogs and contacts in the wider world, and if you needed something beyond what Pucklechurch could provide, there was a good chance she could get it for you, though it might take some time. She had a personal entad she used to make trips into Plenarch once a week, and she brought back quite a bit, some of it by request with a few rings for her trouble and other things that she stocked in her shop on a more speculative basis.

When Mizuki entered, Basil was talking with a tall boy, Kell, the local wizard, whom Mizuki had steered clear of ever since he’d come into town. As pleasant as Marta had been about it, wizards and sorcerers did not mix, and the bad blood between their two tribes ran deep. A sorcerer could destroy magical constructs that a wizard had spent weeks or even months on, and there had been times, in the bad old days, when sorcerers were employed as wizard hunters and, consequently, times when a wizard would kill a sorcerer on sight. None of that was true now, but it was still the kind of history that sat there in the past, informing the present.

Strangely, he seemed to be talking about the same spices that Mizuki was there for.

“You have a good selection and some authentic sauces,” he said. “Most of the stuff we get in Pucklechurch comes from Liberfell, and most of that is made from local ingredients that were on hand, including a lot of lake substitutes.”

“Enjoy your time in Kiromo, did you?” asked Basil.

“In most respects,” replied Kell, nodding. “It was only two months. It’s a lot different from Inter, but more the same than different, I think. Less welcoming, in a lot of ways. More formal.”

“Well, I never was one for travel, especially through a portal,” said Basil. “I’ve done it only twice, both times when I had no better option. There’s something creepy about it, passing through those tunnels.”

“Well, it’s the only good way to get to Kiromo,” Kell said, shrugging. “I didn’t mind it too much, but it might look different to someone who doesn’t have a mage’s eyes.”

Mizuki was looking at Kell while trying not to stare, which was hard to do. She could see the magic around him, in his implements, though less than she might have expected. He was holding a staff, and for that matter, so was she, but his staff had magical embellishments that a normal person wouldn’t even be able to see, all of them hovering like a cloud around the staff head. It was hard to see what kind of magic it was, but wizards typically went with pure force, shaped in different ways, along with something they called a reservoir, where raw materials resided that they filled from their mana stones. Mizuki didn’t know all that much about wizards except that being so close to him, in the same room, meant that if it somehow, improbably, did come to blows between the two of them, it was already too late for him, because she’d have the magic apart before he could even get started with using it.

It would never come to that, of course, and Mizuki had never used her magic against another person, not on purpose, but her mind still went there sometimes when there was a bit of a threat.

Not that Kell was a threat. He seemed nice enough. He had the bookish look that wizards often went for, and while he wasn’t wearing full robes, his shirt was loose and long, with sleeves that had a bit of a drape to them, not quite a wizard’s ‘uniform’, but near enough, and nicely tailored.

He chose that moment to turn and look at her.

“Mizuki!” he said.

“Um,” she said. “Kell?”

“It’s good to see you. I keep meaning to talk to you at the temple, but most weeks you’re not there, or you slip out as soon as the sermon is done.” He was beaming at her.

“Talk to me about… what?” she asked.

“Just, to uh, reconnect?” he asked.

“Reconnect?” asked Mizuki. “You just moved here two months ago, right?”

“Oh,” he said, looking slightly put off. “You don’t remember me?”

“I,” said Mizuki. “Uh.” She felt like she should have been listening to rumors a bit more, because she was certain that if she had met him, then the rumor mill would have had something to say about him. Mizuki wasn’t normally forgetful, not when it came to gossip, but it seemed like she’d missed something vital.

“Lay off her, Kell,” said Basil, stepping forward. “She was three years above you, and you have to remember that when you’re younger, you don’t care all that much about the littles, not with that big a gap. To not remember is expected, and if you didn’t, it’s because you filled your head too much with ideas. ‘Reunion’.”

“Sorry,” said Mizuki. “I have zero memory.” She was looking at his face, trying to connect it to something that might have been buried deep in her subconscious.

“Oh,” he said. “Well, I guess you stuck out a lot more than I did.” He looked down at his staff. “You don’t remember me going off to wizarding school at ten?”

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “Did we used to call you… Elk?”

Kell gave a sheepish grin. “Yes. I go by Kellan now, which is my actual name, though it’s Kell for short.”

“Oh,” said Mizuki. “You’re the same person.” That slotted quite a few things into place and made sense of some of the gossip about Kell and how everyone seemed to have known him as soon as he came into town.

“The one and only,” he replied, grinning at her.

“I’m really very sorry, but I still don’t really remember you,” said Mizuki. “I mean, I have a vague recollection of everyone down through at least five years below me, but… were we friends?” She was racking her brain trying to think about it.

“We live on the outskirts, technically outside the town,” said Kell. “My mom and I came in for temple sermons, and I came in for school, but I never really hung out, not with the older kids, not when I was ten.”

“But I left an impression?” asked Mizuki.

“You were awe-inspiring,” said Kell, shrugging. “You used to use your magic on the playground, do you remember that?”

“Sure,” said Mizuki. “I got in trouble a few times. I don’t really use magic in public anymore.” She thought about that. “Much.”

“Well, I went off and got magic powers of my own,” said Kell, holding up his staff. He grinned at her.

“You’re not worried I’m going to break things?” asked Mizuki, looking at the magic that was held in place around the head of the staff.

“Are you going to break things?” asked Kell.

“No,” said Mizuki.

“Then no,” he said. “Actually, I was thinking that maybe we could partner up from time to time. I read up on sorcerers at the wizard academy. There are some interesting things that we can do together.”

“There are?” asked Mizuki. “We—sorcs—don’t really have training, and no one said anything about wizards to me, except that I should do my best to stay away from them.”

“Oh,” said Kell. Again, he seemed a little disheartened. “Do you take the wizard-and-sorcerer feud seriously?”

“No,” said Mizuki. “I mean, I guess not. It’s old stuff.”

“It’s not that old,” said Kell. “It’s the kind of history that sits there in the past, informing the present.”

Mizuki frowned a bit. “Is that from something?”

“It’s from the Zotl Bixium,” said Kell. “There was a sermon a few weeks ago.”

“Huh,” said Mizuki. “It’s weird how those things get into your head without you even realizing.”

“Bixzotl is a favorite of wizards,” said Kell, nodding. “Mostly because we do the same things over and over.”

“God of Repetition,” said Mizuki. She looked over at the large crates of spices. “You’re here for the same reason I am?”

“I suppose so,” said Kell. “Bethany thought that I might want first crack at things.”

“Do you cook?” asked Mizuki, raising an eyebrow.

“I can follow a recipe,” replied Kell. “Can you cook?”

“It’s basically the only thing I’m competent at,” said Mizuki, smiling a bit. “You’ve actually been to Kiromo?”

“I’m half Kiromon, like you,” he said. “Again, it’s kind of funny that we grew up three years apart and you have virtually no memory of me. I’d be offended, if I offended easily. I came over to your house a few times, when our parents were doing things together.”

Mizuki shrugged. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine,” said Kell. “So long as you don’t call me Elk.” He hesitated for a moment. “Well, it was good to see you, even if it’s basically the first time for you. I should get going.”

“You’re not going to buy anything?” asked Basil, who had been standing off to one side for most of the conversation, pretending as though it wasn’t taking place in her shop and she wasn’t eavesdropping, which she almost certainly was.

“Oh,” said Kell. “Well, yes, a bottle of enyo, nienyo, tekon, then four ounces each of, um, tene, eri, and nibyu. Please.”

The transaction was completed somewhat awkwardly, and Mizuki couldn’t help but notice that Kell had a lot of rings on his string. That wasn’t all that unexpected. Wizardry was a skilled trade, and once they’d paid for their mana stones, they started bringing in quite a bit of money. They didn’t have the raw destructive potential of a sorcerer, but they had quite a bit more utility and fine control.

Once Kell was gone, Basil turned to Mizuki. “He seems smitten with you,” she said.

“Does he?” asked Mizuki.

“It’s a good match, if you ask me, historical enmity aside,” said Basil.

“I’ve actually got a date with a guy over in Liberfell,” said Mizuki.

“Tough to make it work over that distance,” said Basil. “It’s a shame Kell never seemed to have made much of an impression on you. He seems sweet.”

“He does,” nodded Mizuki. “I don’t know.” He did seem sweet, like the kind of boy her mother would have picked for her. Maybe that was the thinking, back when they’d been young.

“Not to your liking?” asked Basil. “You know, when you partied with Alfric, we thought maybe that would finally be your match. But I take it there’s no movement on that front?”

“There’s no front,” said Mizuki. “He’s not interested in me, and I’m—well.”

“Interested in every boy?” asked Basil.

Mizuki shrugged. “I like boys. It’s hard not to look at one and see all the good qualities. I see Alfric’s good qualities. There are things that would be good about partnering with him. Um, don’t let him know I said that.”

“But is the same not true for Kell?” asked Basil, raising an eyebrow.

“I don’t know,” said Mizuki. “It’s really hard to say. I don’t remember him. There was a little boy we called Elk, and I can picture him in my mind, but he didn’t leave much of an impression, and… I don’t know. Are you trying to set me up?”

“Historically, we’ve had little luck with that,” said Basil. “We just want you to be happy.”

“I’m happy where I am,” said Mizuki. “The party has been good for me, and I like having people in the house.”

“It’s temporary though, isn’t it?” asked Basil. “That’s what you said, last we spoke.”

“It’s temporary,” said Mizuki. “But there’s a part of me that wishes it weren’t. If we somehow manage to get through the next two rings of dungeons, we’ll be traveling further afield, and… well, eventually we’ll have to leave Pucklechurch.”

“I don’t think that would be so bad, if you were with people you like,” said Basil. “I know after your fallout with the Pedder boys you retreated for a bit. And there are others you’ve had your disagreeable moments with.”

“True,” said Mizuki, frowning. Some of this she’d relayed directly to Basil, and other bits of it had surely been collected as gossip. “You’d miss me though, right?”

“Oh, many people would miss you, but no one goes dungeoneering forever.” Basil shifted. “And perhaps some of the problems of the past would be forgotten in that time?”

“The boy troubles,” said Mizuki.

Basil nodded. “I’m sorry you’ve had problems. Too many things not working out. Never a game I was too interested in playing, but for those that play it, I know it can hurt.” She stepped back and looked at the Kiromon goods. “Was there anything you wanted?”

“Oh, all of it,” said Mizuki. “It’s all dry goods and shelf-stable sauces, and I need to stock up on the staples anyway. It’ll take some work to get accustomed to things that are actually made in Kiromo though. Can I ask why you got these? Marta said something about wanting to sell to people for nostalgia.”

“There’s a strong Kiromon influence in this town, thanks in part to your grandfather. Most of us grew up around a few Kiromon foods, at the least,” said Basil. “But the bigger part is that Kiromo is putting more of a focus on exporting now, and I don’t mind admitting to you that the prices are good. They say that with the current emperor, there’s a chance that Kiromo will be absorbed into Inter within a generation.”

“Huh,” said Mizuki. “But that won’t make traveling there any easier.”

“Have you thought about taking a trip?” asked Basil. “I suppose you’re busy with your party now, but once that’s concluded? It’s been some time since you’ve seen your parents. Your sisters?”

“Maybe,” said Mizuki. “But if I went, I know there would be pressure to stay, and with the portals, it would be at least a month there. Someday, maybe. You know, if I didn’t know better, I would think that you were trying to get rid of me.”

“I want you to be happy, and I’m not sure what happiness will look like for you if you stay in Pucklechurch.” Basil placed her hands on her hips. “You don’t seem to have the need to leave, not like some of them get, but to see the wider world, even if you end up back here… You’re treading water, and I’m afraid that you’ll end up drowned if you keep at it. That’s just my opinion, and I know you haven’t asked for it.”

“No, it’s welcome,” said Mizuki with a sigh. “I know where I am in life, and I know it’s not quite where I want to be. Thank you.” Her eyes went to the goods. “Okay, let me buy this, but I’ll be back later once I’ve taken stock. It looks like we’ll be eating Kiromon for a bit, and I’m going to have to remember how that goes.”

By the time the transaction was concluded, Mizuki’s satchel was about as full as it could get, and it weighed quite a bit. She trudged back to her house, mulling things over, but once she was there, she had people to talk to, and the uncharacteristically gloomy thoughts had left her.

“So,” said Hannah. “I know you’ve gotten the ingredients by now, but I was thinkin’ that I could cook tonight.”

“Really?” asked Mizuki. “Do you cook?”

“Ay, and I’ve said as much,” said Hannah. “But you didn’t seem to take it seriously, and I confess I’m better with baking, and if I’m bein’ honest, the kind of things I like to cook are the ones that seem most like it’s just another bake. Meat pies, egg bakes, a terrine from time to time. And you’re properly good at it, while I’m just good enough that no one complains.”

“Oh,” said Mizuki. “Well… yes, I would like that very much, just for tonight.”

“I’m happy to take a load off for you.”

“Can I ask—did you talk to someone in town?” asked Mizuki.

“About my takin’ a turn to cook?” asked Hannah.

“Yeah,” said Mizuki.

“Well,” said Hannah. “Ay. It seems a lot of people in town know your business.”

“I’ve definitely been getting that feeling today,” said Mizuki. “More than usual, anyway.” It seemed as though there had been a bit of a friendly conspiracy going on. She didn’t mind that people had been talking about her life, but she did wish that they’d had fewer criticisms or possibly that she’d given them less to criticize. “Did you come from a small town, originally?”

“Oh, ay, smaller than Pucklechurch even,” said Hannah. “A scant hundred people, and I was related to most of them. And then I was in the seminary, and there were so many people from all over the world, with a big city beyond the seminary’s walls. But having seen both ends, I have to say that I like a smaller place like Pucklechurch. Large enough that you don’t know absolutely everyone, small enough that you mostly see the same faces. And small enough that people will make some well-meanin’ interventions.”

“Well,” said Mizuki. “I like it. But I wouldn’t mind seeing what a proper city is like, if Liberfell doesn’t qualify.”

“If we can stick together, we’ll probably have our chance,” said Hannah. “Now, let me know what you have for ingredients, and I can try to make a Mizuki meal.”

It turned out okay. If Mizuki had been invited over to a friend’s house and been served the chicken and vegetables that Hannah made, well, Mizuki wouldn’t have complained. The seasoning wasn’t quite what Mizuki would have done, and the chicken was a bit overcooked while the vegetables were a bit undercooked.

Still, it tasted all the better because Mizuki hadn’t been the one to make it, and she felt grateful that people both inside the house and outside of it were watching out for her.

Chapter 42 — Singing Slow

When Cynthia broke the news, Verity was surprised how much it stung. The Fig and Gristle had found itself a new bard, one who was taking up Verity’s old room. It was made all the more awkward by Verity being informed of this when she’d shown up with her lute in hand, ready to sing for the night. There was a part of her that had wondered, earlier, whether she would feel good about losing her job, but no, it was mostly just a sort of emptiness. She’d known that she wasn’t going to be at the Fig and Gristle forever, that was part of the reason she’d agreed to go dungeoneering in the first place, but to have that chapter of her life finally closed felt awkward and unwelcome.

Having nothing else to do with her night, Verity brought her lute in anyhow and ordered a plate of food, waiting for the new bard to start up. She did have some loyalty to the place, where she’d lived for what felt like quite a long time. The patrons had gotten used to her, and she to them. There were some she saw almost every night and groups that congregated on certain days of the week. She wondered whether they would even notice the difference or whether it would reflect poorly on her to have a replacement, but it was entirely possible that the new bard was actually good.

When the new bard took the small stage, the first thing Verity noticed was how shockingly young she was. Verity would have been surprised if the girl was older than fifteen. She played a lute, too, which made the evaluation all that much easier, and from the outset, as the lute was being tuned in preparation for playing, Verity could tell that the girl was, at the least, not conservatory-trained. Once the song actually started, Verity winced. It was acceptable quality, for a place like this, but Verity had instructors who would have beaten her if she’d played that poorly. The girl’s form was poor and strained, her tuning was slightly off, and she was doing a poor job of keeping the rhythm.

The magic was even worse. It was the kind of thing Verity had been doing since the age of nine, a weak tune that made the food taste better and lightened some emotion, but did both those things without any real power.

The girl had long blond hair tied back in a braid and a pleasant look to her, and for all that Verity could see every flaw in the music, the new bard seemed to be enjoying herself and the production of the music. The song sounded like an original, though in the eight months or so that Verity had been playing at the Fig and Gristle, she hadn’t been able to memorize the entirety of the local tunes, just the majority. The girl’s voice was nice and mellow, but it was nice in the way that raw clay was nice, something that needed to be worked and trained.

Verity ate her meal and listened, composing a critique in her head that she wasn’t unkind enough to ever actually share. When she was halfway through the meal, Verity’s mind began to wander from the music and the magic around her, turning to the more advanced problems of her own. As she saw it, the most major issue she faced in the dungeons was that of stamina, which in her opinion likely descended from the particulars of her training.

When a bard performed in a concert setting, it was usually full-tilt, as heavy as possible without regard for being able to continue on past the end of the piece. When a bard was in a dungeon, however, sustain was one of the most important things because it allowed more time to regroup between encounters and less of a need to rush. Holding the song and not having it drain her when there was no need for the effects, that was something that Verity had never really learned, because there had never been much need. What she needed was to be able to carry the magic down to its lowest level, barely a heartbeat of a tune and, ideally, to do that without needing too much of her focus. Then, when there was an actual fight, she could rouse the song into its full power and give the party what they needed to defeat whatever evil was in front of them. She knew that this was possible, but it was difficult, and learning it was more difficult because she had no one to talk to and learn from.

While she ate her dinner, she spun up a song of her own, going along with the half-ring bard and providing a companion piece. Working with another bard was always difficult, and doing it without them knowing it was harder still, especially with one as unskilled as this one. But reducing her own magic to a minimum was, Verity thought, a bit easier this way, because her magic could float on top of the other magic, barely perceptible to either of them, but still there. She reduced it even further, until it was at the edge of even her own perception, following along with one beat in every four, then one in every eight.

Then Verity tried to go down to one in every sixteen, and she was surprised that she was able to hold it for a few measures, but then it wavered like a candle flame in a light wind, and Verity wasn’t able to recover it. It had been a small bit of muttered magic though, kept going through a tapping of her foot and a bit of humming, and there was very little of the usual feeling of being exhausted.

Verity went again, trying to get the magic down to a bare minimum, though she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to do it without existing music to serve as a guide. This time she was able to hold it at one-in-sixteen for an entire verse before it wobbled and fell apart like a top losing the speed necessary to spin.

It was quite the opposite of what she’d been trained for and went against some of the musicomagical philosophy she’d been taught since she was young. Her tutors and, later, the conservatory had emphasized consistency of impact and a kind of boisterous playing that went at magical production with gusto, and they had never taught her how to do what she was now attempting, minimizing the impact of her magic, stringing it along without contributing much, focusing on maintenance.

After nearly two hours, with a half-eaten dessert that was now room temperature in front of her, Verity had spun up and then petered out nearly a dozen songs, probably a record for her. She was feeling the strain of it, and she didn’t feel anything she’d been able to do would be at all useful in the dungeons, but she felt like she’d made some good progress, and if she could get better, then in a month, perhaps they would be able to stay on the same song while taking ten minutes for healing and rest before moving on to the next room.

For all Verity’s criticisms, the half-ring bard managed to go quite a while, keeping up the minor effects for a longer set than Verity normally did, though obviously it used less power when the effect was so weak. It was clearly a strain on her though, and Verity hoped that the girl wasn’t on the verge of injuring herself. It was her first night at the Fig and Gristle, and clearly she was trying to make a good impression, but it wasn’t as though Cynthia was spoiled for choice, and even a middling bard like this would probably be staying for at least a few weeks.

To Verity’s surprise, when the bard had finished her set, she came over to where Verity was sitting and slipped into the chair without asking.

“You’re Verity, right?” the girl asked. She was flushed and sweaty, a clear sign that she’d gone too far with her playing, but she had a wide smile on her face. She held out a hand, and Verity took it. “Clemency.”

“Is that your name, or are you asking?” asked Verity.

“Both, I suppose,” replied Clemency. “I thought it was funny that we had similar names, when I heard about you.” They were both virtue names, though the name ‘Verity’ was among the more traditional virtue names, tracing back a further lineage than a name like ‘Clemency’.

“The lute gave me away?” asked Verity, nodding to the case that was sitting on the table, up away from foot traffic.

“You were doing some bardic work, weren’t you?” asked Clemency, quirking an eyebrow. She seemed exhausted but happy. “I thought that was a bit unusual.”

“Sorry,” said Verity. “I was trying something. I hope I didn’t interrupt you. I was trying to bring the magic as low as I could go without stalling out.”

“You got down to one in thirty-two very briefly there,” said Clemency. “I was quite impressed.”

“You have a good ear,” said Verity. “Or a good head for magic.”

“I’m not very good yet,” said Clemency, looking sheepish. “But I didn’t start until two years ago. I can do it better in my head than with my hands. I think I drifted out of tune for a bit, sorry.”

She had started out of tune, but Verity elected not to say that. It was the curse of any professional that they heard and saw flaws others didn’t. “You’re doing well,” said Verity. “I’m glad that my leaving won’t mean that the Fig and Gristle is without music.”

“Cynthia said that you’d decided to become a dungeoneer,” said Clemency.

“It’s more like an opportunity came to my door,” said Verity. “Which I suppose is now your door. It’s a bit of pressure, but nothing like playing a concert hall.”

“You’ve played a concert hall?” asked Clemency, eyes wide.

“In Dondrian, yes,” said Verity. “The Ellusifé twice and the Pallonia once.” It occurred to her after she’d said it that this could be seen as bragging, and following that thought, it occurred to her that this was saying a bit too much. “It was less of a big deal than it maybe sounds like. These were spotlight events rather than earned purely on merit.” But the clarification didn’t seem to have the intended effect because Clemency was still staring at her with wide eyes.

“But then why are you—” She choked back the question and looked at her hands.

“Here,” Verity finished for her. She mulled over the question, trying to find a good way to say it, one that would hopefully communicate everything there was to say on the matter. “For a bard in Dondrian, there’s a lot of pressure, at least if people think as highly of you as they did of me. When everyone is congratulating you on a performance you know you made a hundred mistakes on, when you get invitations to play at important places and they expect you to glad-hand for three hours after an hour-long performance…” Verity trailed off. She could see that she wasn’t getting through to the girl, and these sorts of problems weren’t ones Clemency could relate to. “I don’t mean to whine. We were a family of some means.”

“No, not at all,” said Clemency. “We all have our problems.” She smiled. “I hope someday those are the sorts of problems I have. I’ll consider it a mark of good luck that I’m taking a position you vacated.”

Verity gave her a small smile. “I hope that you get everything you wish for. And thank you, for stopping by. There’s a good chance that I’ll see you around Pucklechurch. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help make it a good transition. Cynthia was kind to me, and I have some affection for the place.”

“We could sing together some night?” asked Clemency. “I don’t know if you’ve ever done that, aside from whatever you were trying, but I’ve always wanted to. I doubt Cynthia would pay for it, but I would take a loss, if it meant—”

“We’ll figure something out,” said Verity, before the other bard could go any further. She had to suppress the urge to give the girl half a string of rings right then and there.

When they’d said their goodbyes and Verity had a short chat with Cynthia, who seemed apologetic, Verity was left to walk home, carrying an unplayed lute.

She had known, when she’d sought out the job at the Fig and Gristle, that she wasn’t going to be there forever. To settle down and be a tavern bard at eighteen… There was something she found a bit sad about that, though she could see how it would be possible. It had happened to better people than her, she was sure. There was a song, she recalled, about a man who sat down to rest for a moment and then realized a decade later that he had once been moving, but was so covered with moss and leaves that he couldn’t get up. It was her favorite kind of song, a jaunty tune about a depressing subject. When Alfric had come calling, Verity had already been starting to wonder whether she was going to end up at the Fig and Gristle forever. In fact, there was a chance that if the right girl had come along to woo her, she would have put down proper roots.

And it was possible that the same thing might happen with dungeoneering, if she wasn’t careful. Her excuse for not wanting to do more than just the six around Pucklechurch had been that she didn’t want to do all that walking, but with the travel entads, and with the other members of the party becoming friends, she could easily see them still doing this same thing fifty or a hundred dungeons down the way. Thousands… well, that she couldn’t imagine.

“We’re talkin’ next dungeons,” said Hannah once Verity had come in. “How was playin’?”

“There’s a new bard,” said Verity. “So playing didn’t really happen.”

“That’s a shame,” said Hannah. “I know you liked going there. If you’d like, the next time we’re all in Tarchwood or Liberfell, we can find a place where you can play for an audience.”

“I think it was the comfort and familiarity of the place,” said Verity. “Is Isra in?”

“No,” said Alfric. “And it’s getting late enough that I’m not sure it would be worth the trip for her. You’re welcome to try the channel though.” He was sitting with a glass of wine cupped in one hand. An open bottle was on the table between him and Mizuki, half drained. Mizuki’s face was slightly flushed. The house still smelled of the dinner she’d cooked, something buttery with chicken, and Verity almost asked whether there were leftovers, even though she’d already eaten.

“I think I’ll leave her be,” said Verity. “Though I suppose if she came, she could just take the spare bed.”

“It’s not really a spare bed,” said Mizuki. “It’s her bed, she just doesn’t use it most nights.”

“What’s the consensus on the next dungeon?” asked Verity.

“Nothing,” said Mizuki. “We’ve just been talking in circles.” She took a sip of her wine. “Speculating, which I’ve been informed by both of them is a stupid thing to do and which hasn’t seemed to stop either.” She gestured at the bottle. “There’s wine, if you’d like to join us in our wild speculations that will come to no conclusion.”

Verity almost said no, but she changed her mind at the last minute and instead set her lute case down to take a seat.

<Isra, we’re drinking wine and making wild guesses about future dungeons,> said Verity. <I would appreciate you coming over, if you’re not busy hunting or something. If you spend the night, we might convince Hannah to bake some bread in the morning.>

<I’ll be over,> said Isra.

<Excellent,> replied Verity. <Looking forward to it.>

“Bread?” asked Hannah. “I can, of course, unless you’d like to make a show of convincin’ me.”

“Oh, I would adore that,” said Verity. “Make us beg you. You’ll all still be up once Isra gets here, right?”

“I’m late to bed most nights,” said Mizuki. “Especially after some good wine. It’s just about chilly enough to make a fire, I think. I’d thought we were done with cold spring nights. I’ll have to complain to Isra when she shows up.”

“I’ll go get some wood,” said Alfric. “Is there a woodpile in the back?”

“Um,” said Mizuki. “I kind of just grab logs from the forest. In the winter there’s a fully powered heating element.”

“Then I’ll go find some logs in the woods, I guess,” said Alfric. He rubbed his hands together and took off without another word.

“Always quick to pitch in,” said Hannah, shaking her head slightly. “I don’t think I could be moved for anything right now.”

“Too much food for everyone,” said Mizuki. “And then wine on top of that. But I suppose lighting the fire will fall to me.”

“You have a firestarter though, don’t you?” asked Hannah. “I could have sworn I’d seen one around.”

“Hush,” said Mizuki. “I don’t get many chances to use my mystical powers for good.”

“Or for evil, right?” asked Verity.

Mizuki bit her lip. “Oh, just a tiny bit of evil, now and then. You know, they say that evil is the spice of life.”

“I don’t think that’s what they say,” Hannah said with a smile.

“What are we talking about?” asked Alfric, who had come back in with armfuls of wood.

“What’s the spice of life?” asked Hannah.

Alfric set the logs beside the fireplace, then stood up with a thoughtful expression. “Verity?” he asked.

There was a chorus of groans from around the room, and Mizuki threw a pillow at Alfric, which he caught with expected deftness, as though he’d been trained for it.

“Sorry I wasn’t able to get proper logs,” said Alfric. “I did my best.” Verity looked, and saw that it was an awkward collection of wood, none of it properly split or chopped. This was something she hadn’t really thought about before, but for a wood fireplace, the kind that was only really for nostalgia or entertainment unless you were quite poor, you needed a fair amount of preparation. The fireplace was fairly wide, but not everything Alfric had brought in would fit.

“Are you going to apologize for that pun?” asked Mizuki.

“I stand by it,” said Alfric. He began stacking logs into the fireplace, or at least the ones that would fit. “Are you going to help me light this fire?”

“Sure,” said Mizuki, getting up from her chair and going over to the fireplace. “This is actually a bit more tricky than it seems though. Most things don’t want to start on fire, and if it’s at all wet, which stuff from the woods probably is, then the water needs to be cooked out before it will be properly on fire. I don’t want to use up the ambient imbalance in the room just to turn the outside of a log into cinders and then not have a flame.”

“Or I could just use a firestarter, if this is going to be a whole production,” said Alfric.

“No, it’s fine, I just need to concentrate,” said Mizuki.

“How much of that bottle has she had?” asked Verity.

“Not too much,” said Hannah as Mizuki crouched down by the fireplace. “We’ve been pacin’ ourselves. Not the sort of state where I’d be doing delicate work, but it might be different for sorcs.”

“It is,” said Mizuki, who was holding out a hand toward the logs. “We actually get slightly better after a glass of wine. There’s a lot of instinct involved. Wine lubricates the mind.”

“I wonder whether that’s actually true,” said Verity.

Flame came out of Mizuki’s hand in a gout and lit up the logs, sticking to them for a moment before the fire became more natural. Mizuki stepped back and smiled at the fire, then took another sip from her wine

holding her arms wide. She just barely kept from splashing wine from her glass.

“Not to undercut your impressive and important display of power,” said Alfric. “But I definitely could have done that too.”

“Firestarters are cheating,” said Mizuki.

“They’re not,” said Alfric. “But even if they were, I have flint and steel and could do it that way.”

“You carry flint and steel with you?” asked Hannah.

“In the book,” said Alfric. “It was cheap, and there’s plenty of room for small things like that. I actually have a whole kit for making fires, including some char cloth. Wilderness survival sometimes ends up being important for dungeoneers, either within the dungeon or outside of it. I won’t say it’s common, but knowing how to start a fire might save someone’s life or allow us to get at some loot we would otherwise lose.”

“Seems a bad idea,” said Hannah, “to light a fire in a dungeon?”

“Depends on the circumstances,” said Alfric, shrugging. “Obviously you don’t do it if you’re going to smoke yourself out.” He’d gone back to sit on the couch with Mizuki and stretched slightly. “We still need to do dungeon school, ideally before the next dungeon.”

“You know what we need?” asked Mizuki. She turned to Alfric. “Do you mind if I have my legs on you?”

“What?” asked Alfric.

“So I can stretch out,” said Mizuki.

“Sure,” said Alfric. “Fine.”

Mizuki stretched out, resting her bare feet on Alfric’s lap and taking up basically the whole of the couch. “Nice.”

“You were sayin’ we needed somethin’?” asked Hannah. “Unless it was just to stretch out.”

“Oh,” said Mizuki. “What we need is a name. All the cool adventuring groups have one.”

“Is it just me, or is ‘adventuring’ a weird euphemism?” asked Verity.

“It’s an old word for an old profession,” said Alfric. “Mostly it points at the element of luck. I think it’s appropriate.”

“Maybe,” said Verity. “But if I included it in a song, I would feel awkward about it, like I was using a turn of phrase for the sake of it.”

“I do prefer ‘dungeoneering’,” said Alfric. “It sounds more professional.”

“So for our name,” said Mizuki. “Do we want something professional? Is that a requirement?”

“If you have a weird name, you have to be good enough to make up for that,” said Alfric. “There are some stupid names where you think, ‘Oh, that’s just some people who don’t take things seriously’, and there are other stupid names where you think, ‘Oh, they take this so seriously that they picked a stupid name because it wasn’t going to matter either way’.”

“Got a whole philosophy, have you?” asked Hannah.

“‘The Vertex’ was a good name,” said Alfric. “But sadly, it’s taken now.”

“Do you really, honestly believe that it was a good name?” asked Hannah. “Because it calls into question your judgment.”

“It was good,” said Alfric, shaking his head. “Strong, simple, easy to remember. But not too in-your-face.” He turned to Verity. “You’re a bard, do you have any good suggestions?”

“Not at the moment,” said Verity. “I don’t have a good sense of what people choose in terms of party names. If they’re names like ‘Vertex’ the pool seems to be quite limited.”

“An adjective and a noun is quite common,” said Alfric. “Or a pun, or a place-name.”

“Something Puckle?” asked Mizuki. “‘Puck’ means… fairy or demon or something like that.”

“I would worry about the rhymes,” said Alfric. Verity let out a little laugh.

“We could do something from scripture,” said Hannah. “‘The Hands of Man’ or ‘Reflective Children’.”

“Those are both terrible,” said Mizuki. “You’d make everyone think that we have hands like a man’s hands.”

“Or that we’re children,” said Verity, wrinkling her nose. “But I feel like at the rate we’re going, we’re going to have to settle on something that none of us like.”

“The Settlers?” asked Isra.

Verity turned to her as soon as she spoke. “Isra! You came!” She must have slipped in without making a noise and was still in her outdoor clothing with thick layers, boots yet to be removed.

“I said I would,” said Isra. She gave Verity a hesitant smile. “Sorry, I should have knocked.”

“Nonsense!” declared Mizuki. “You’re welcome in my house anytime. The bed upstairs is yours whenever that’s convenient for you, just let me know ahead of time if you’re going to be eating with us.”

“Is there a place to sit?” asked Isra. The living room had two armchairs and a couch, but the seating, normally enough for five, offered less accommodation because Mizuki was stretched across the couch.

“I can move,” said Mizuki, though she seemed annoyed that she was compelled to offer.

“You can sit with me,” Verity said to Isra. “This chair is a bit oversize.”

“It’s a tenyon,” said Mizuki. “It’s meant for two, if they’re close friends or—” But she didn’t finish the thought, instead taking a sip of wine.

Despite that, Isra moved over and sat in the chair with Verity. It was tight, but not uncomfortably so, and Verity felt pleased to be pressed up against someone. Isra was somewhat chilly, having just come in from the mild cold, but she was also nice and soft.

“I like Settlers,” said Alfric. “But it needs something.”

“What are we meant to be settling?” asked Mizuki. “The dungeons?”

“It just has a nice adventuresome quality to it,” Alfric said. “I can’t explain it.”

“All the best lyrics are like that,” said Verity. “They have an unexpected fittingness.”

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “Because we’re not the perfect party, and you settled for us?”

“Well that makes me like the name a bit less,” said Alfric, frowning.

“I like it,” said Hannah. “But I’d rather not decide on anything at the moment, not when half of us are in our cups.”

“Which half?” asked Mizuki. “Do you mean me? Because I’m just warm and comfy. This fire is great.”

The fire was nice, and it warmed the room, but some of the warmth was coming from the wine as well, and Verity felt her cheeks getting a bit flushed. Isra was nice and warm as well. Verity hoped that their closeness wasn’t too intimate or unwelcome. Beneath that worry, there was curiosity about whether affection would be returned. Her mind practically raced at those thoughts, which she blamed on the wine.

“Did we decide on the next dungeon?” asked Isra, whose thoughts were apparently not on pushing their two beds together.

“Would you like some wine?” asked Mizuki. “Or actually, something to eat?”

“I would, thank you,” said Isra. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Not at all,” said Mizuki, though she certainly made a production of getting up from the couch. It was like in the final act of a play, when the hero looks like he’s been bested by the villain and must slowly rise in one last act of superhuman will and effort.

Once she had gone off to the kitchen, Alfric got up and tended to the fire, adding more logs.

“Not that one,” said Isra, and Alfric stopped with a log in hand. “It’ll smell.”

“Smell?” asked Alfric.

“It releases a smoke that stinks,” said Isra. “Borgswood.”

Alfric set the log off to the side and kept feeding the fire, glancing back at Isra every now and then. He prodded the fire with a poker a bit, moving things around, and there was something quite nostalgic about it for Verity. She remembered her father doing the same.

“So to answer the question,” said Hannah. “We’ve decided nothin’ at all about the next dungeon. Myself, I’m partial to movin’ eastward and possibly doin’ two back-to-back, with a longer rest after that.”

“There’s really no point, when we have the dagger to bring us back,” said Alfric. “We have five dungeons left a hex away, and all of those can be hit with a few miles of walking. Wardrobe to the hex, warp to the center, walk to the dungeon, dagger back home.”

“Depends on what we have,” said Hannah. “There are things too large for the book and not natural enough for the stone.”

“Seems like that’s an argument for only doing one,” said Alfric.

“Well, the other argument is that we’re already goin’ a hex away and setting out with all our things, and it’s better to work two days with a week and a half of rest and trainin’ than to try to split it. Goin’ forward, seems like we’d be better off with a few intense days separated by longer rest periods, right? Double dungeons, if you ask me.”

“With the option to bail out,” said Alfric. “But it’s really not going to depend on me. I think it will depend on the others.”

“I like the dungeons,” said Mizuki, who came back in with a giant tray of meats, cheeses, bread, and fruit, as well as another bottle of wine in the other hand. “I hope this is enough.”

“It’s enough for six people,” said Alfric.

“Well, I didn’t know,” said Mizuki. She pointed to two small pots that were on the tray. “Mustard and sobyu.” She sat down and began making herself a small sandwich, which wasn’t actually all that small.

“Do you actually like dungeons?” asked Alfric.

“Oh, they’re terrifying,” said Mizuki. “But I’ve been feeling like the days that we spend sitting around are kind of… wasted. It feels weird to be a dungeoneer who doesn’t do dungeons. Besides, we talk about them all the time. And we want to catch up with Vertex, right?”

“Do we?” asked Verity.

“Hopefully we’re not going to see them again,” said Alfric. “If we could go the whole rest of our lives without learning another thing about what Vertex has been up to, I would be fine with that.”

“Well, still,” said Mizuki. “I like doing the dungeons, though not the actual fighting, if that makes sense.”

“It does,” said Alfric. “But the fighting is the main thing. If it were just going into dungeons that had no monsters in them and clearing them out, we’d be a glorified moving company.”

“What’s a moving company?” asked Isra.

“People who come in and take all your things,” said Verity. “Then go put them in a new house or office or wherever. It’s a very Dondrian thing that I don’t think exists in Pucklechurch.”

“You’d just get your friends to do it,” said Mizuki. “Unless it was a long move, in which case, I don’t know. My parents were going to sell pretty much everything in the house until I decided to stay. You’d need a lot of entad support to get everything out of this house and over to Kiromo, and they didn’t want to bother, especially not when the place they were moving to was furnished. Unsentimental people, my parents.”

“But you got it instead?” asked Hannah.

“Most of it,” said Mizuki, nodding. “But they always expected me to fold after a year and come to Kiromo and to sell all the stuff when I did.”

“The point being,” said Alfric. “The dungeons.”

“How much wine have you had?” said Mizuki. “You’re having trouble stringing things together.”

“No, there was a point,” said Alfric. He smiled at her. “Whether we do two in a row or not. I don’t drink much.”

“Well, I’m cutting you off,” said Mizuki, taking the glass from him and downing the rest of its contents in a single swallow. “Eat some food, there’s apparently enough for six.”

Alfric nodded and began making a little sandwich of his own, piling up the cured meats.

“I could do two dungeons, back-to-back,” said Verity. “But separated by a day and with an option not to do any. With Xy working with us, we can just have her run the dagger over to the next hex, right? No extra walking?” Perhaps it was the wine—she had already drained a glass—but the idea of a big project like that sounded nice. “I don’t want to end up sleeping in the woods.”

“Is that a problem?” asked Isra. She got up from where she was sitting with Verity, using Verity’s knee for support. For a moment, Verity felt like asking her to come back, but she was only grabbing food from the tray, as well as a glass of her own, and returned to her cozy spot beside Verity not long after.

“We’d need some supplies,” said Alfric. “Tents and bedrolls. Ideally we’d find something in the next few dungeons that would help us. Mobile housing isn’t hugely uncommon, but finding one would be a bit of good luck.”

“We could find a house in the dungeons?” asked Mizuki.

“Well, technically, yes,” said Alfric. “But mobile housing means,” he twisted his hand in the air, trying to find the words, “anything that lets you have shelter, basically. Things you can shrink down and go inside, a tent that’s bigger once you’re in it, a space like the stone, which actually, when I think about, might be workable with some preparation.”

“We’d have to leave our metal outside,” said Hannah. “And I’m not so sure I’d want to be in there for a whole night.”

“True,” said Alfric. “But it might be a problem we can solve with some kind of entad chain. We’re actually less far than I’d thought in terms of reaching, um,” he waved his hand, “you know, when it’s all coming together?”

“Apotheosis?” asked Mizuki.

Alfric blinked at her. “Criticality?”

“We’re close to bein’ proper dungeoneers, is what he’s saying,” said Hannah. “Where our problems all have solutions, and we’re off to the races.”

“I budgeted ten dungeons,” said Alfric. “In the original plan.” He leaned a little bit closer to Mizuki. “I think we could end up doing it in five.”

“You really don’t drink much,” asked Mizuki. “Or were you just not paying much attention?”

“Both,” Alfric replied. He leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes. “Do you mind if I stay here tonight?”

“You live here,” said Mizuki.

“It was a joke,” said Alfric. “I can be very funny.” He let out a sigh. “Sometimes.”

“Come on,” said Mizuki. “Let’s get you upstairs.”

“Chronos aren’t supposed to get impaired,” said Alfric as he got to his feet. “We have a responsibility. A hangover comes back if you have to redo the day.” He looked at Mizuki. “Is that just very strong wine?”

“It is.” Mizuki got up from the couch and put Alfric’s arm around her, though if she was trying to offer him some support, Verity wasn’t sure what good she thought she was doing. He wasn’t even that drunk, a bit sluggish but not swaying. They went off together, and Alfric was leaning on her a bit more than seemed entirely necessary.

“So, how long until they’re a couple, do you s’pose?” asked Hannah. She was looking at the doorway they’d gone through and had waited until they were out of earshot.

“You think they’ll partner?” asked Isra. “Alfric said we shouldn’t do that.”

“Oh, I imagine if she waits for him to make a move, it’ll be quite some time,” said Hannah, nodding. “It’s not a good idea, for a number of reasons, but sometimes if the attraction is there, people can’t help themselves.”

“What are the reasons?” asked Isra.

“We already went over that some time ago, ay?” asked Hannah, raising an eyebrow. Her eyes briefly went to Verity.

“But between them you mean it’s especially bad,” said Isra.

“Well,” said Hannah. “Ay.” Verity looked at the empty couch. Isra hadn’t moved, which meant that they were in the larger armchair, the tenyon, together on one side of the fire, and Hannah was in the other with the empty space between them. It felt a bit uncomfortable to be so far away, but Verity didn’t want to move. Hannah drained the last of her wine. “There are a lot of things necessary for a good relationship, and I wouldn’t say that there needs to be some commonality, but if there’s not mutual interests or personalities that align, you need people who are good at dealin’ with each other’s peculiarities. And I think Alfric has his own way of doin’ that, which I’m not sure works in the long term, and Mizuki… I’m less sure about. So they might have a nice roll in the hay, but after that, seems like there might be issues.”

“Roll in the hay?” asked Isra.

“Sex,” said Verity. “But I think that’s probably more than enough speculation about them.”

Hannah shrugged.

“Is that a matter of doctrine?” asked Verity. “Thinking that people should be similar?”

“The church is wide,” said Hannah, obviously quoting something. “But it is a part of how the Church of Garos approaches things. Now a cleric of Bixzotl, she might say that it’s best for two people to be copies of each other, liking all the same things, being the same in every way, but… well, that’s not quite the same as symmetry, ay? People call them the twin gods sometimes, Garos and Bixzotl, but… ah, I’m goin’ on, sorry.”

“I don’t mind,” said Isra.

Verity didn’t particularly mind either, and it was definitely preferable to talking about a potential romance between Alfric and Mizuki.

“Well,” said Hannah. “It’s true that there’s usually some symmetry in a copy, especially a copy of somethin’ that’s had the imperfections—the asymmetries—removed from it. But symmetry isn’t just about repetition, it’s about patterns, the ways that you get that little moment of ‘ah ha’ when you see that this one thing, if twisted and lined up just so, maps onto the other thing. It’s very different, actually. There’s no appreciation of opposites from Bixzotl.”

“Mmm,” said Isra. “There is a beauty in the negation of a thing.” This also seemed like a quote.

“From the Keserbin,” said Hannah with a nod. “Exactly. And what I was sayin’ before was that if you come across your negation, or your partial negation, you have to be careful, because you might be natural enemies, but if you’re natural friends, then there are things that you’ll need to navigate, surely, and for that you need wisdom and maturity, and—”

“What are we talking about?” asked Mizuki as she came back down.

“Theology,” said Hannah. “Negation as a mode of symmetry, opposites and such.” It was a decent cover, and Verity hoped that Mizuki hadn’t heard too much since the conclusion, which Verity happened to agree with, was that perhaps the pair of Mizuki and Alfric might be lacking in wisdom and maturity. If that were true, the lack of wisdom and maturity seemed like it mostly came from one side of that pairing.

“Oh,” said Mizuki. “Not really my thing.” She flopped back down on the couch, spreading herself out. She had her eyes closed and seemed like she was ready for sleep.

“It’s temple day tomorrow, are you going?” asked Verity. “I think I will. I usually do. It’s an Oeyr sermon.”

“I hope it’s not plates again,” said Hannah with a deep sigh.

“Plates?” asked Isra.

“Do you ever do temple day?” asked Verity.

“No,” said Isra. “But I have read the books.” She seemed slightly defensive.

“There’s a sermon that clerics of Oeyr like to give,” said Hannah. “I’ve heard it probably five times now. It’s the parable of the broken plate.” She sighed. “I remember sittin’ through it at eleven, thinkin’ to myself, ‘Oh, so that’s Emergence’, and every time after that I wanted to just go to sleep.”

“Every clerical order has their stock sermons,” said Verity. “I think they’re necessary.”

“True,” said Hannah. “Because there’ll always be someone who hasn’t heard it or who needs a reminder. I s’pose I shouldn’t mind it as much as I do. For Garos, it’s usually the sermons on sexuality, which need to happen but probably get old. Even I think they get old, and they were a help to me, growin’ up.”

“Me too,” said Verity. “But I don’t find them old. They’re… affirming.”

“Well, I’m going, if everyone else is,” said Mizuki. “Though I have trouble paying attention. Last time we had the plate sermon, he didn’t actually break a plate, which I thought was a shame.”

“I don’t understand half of what you’re saying,” said Isra. “I don’t think I can blame it on the wine.”

“Plates,” said Mizuki. “You break a plate, it breaks into pieces, and they look random, but the sermon is about how it’s not because there are underlying rules to, um, stress propagation and, um, other things. There are rules, and those rules are mostly invisible to us until push comes to shove. Nothing is really random, the lines of fracture are all, um, deterministic, just hidden until the shattering comes.”

“Does Lin use those words?” asked Hannah. “Seems a bit much for a sermon to lay people.”

“Lin gets carried away,” said Mizuki. “I’m surprised you haven’t noticed.”

“I’ll listen closely,” said Hannah. “But I think it’s time for me to get to bed if I’m to be ready for that in the morning, and if I want us to have some freshly baked bread when we get back.”

“Me too,” Verity said, sighing. She put a hand down on Isra’s thigh to push herself up, but found herself letting her hand rest there for a moment, just a bit too long to be strictly the touch of a friend. Then she did get up, because there was no signal back, and if Isra wasn’t interested, she didn’t want to make things awkward, not when they shared the same room.

Mizuki put out the fire with a pitcher of water from the kitchen, then put away what was left of the food and wine, protesting to Hannah that she didn’t need help. They took their turns in the bathroom, brushing teeth and getting ready for bed, then retired to their rooms.

Verity was still feeling warm from the wine, and like she wanted some affection. If their beds had been larger, she might have suggested that she and Isra share one, like they’d done in Liberfell, but the beds were small enough that if they were in the same one together, they’d need to be practically on top of each other. Verity wouldn’t have minded that in the slightest, not when she was feeling the effects of the wine, but she hadn’t had quite so much wine that she felt bold enough to suggest it or to just make a move. There was a possible pretense of just being friendly, but… well, it was paper-thin. And Verity felt some duty to Isra, a need to help her with an understanding of the world and people in it. Exploring each other’s bodies seemed counter to that, almost exploitative, though they were approximately the same age, and Verity wasn’t exactly a seasoned professional.

Still, she stayed up, lamenting the separate beds and having private fantasies, until Isra had gone to sleep.

It had been easy to forget the Fig and Gristle when she was with the others. The dungeons… Well, she could take or leave them, but it gave the party a focus, a purpose, around which they could organize. It was nice. For the night being the end of an era, her usual haunt as a bard no longer her own, she was feeling good and at peace.

Chapter 43 — Solo

Lying to people was easy for Lola. What was difficult was keeping track of the lies. Sometimes, she just didn’t bother. You could get your way out of lies with more lies often enough, and getting caught in lies didn’t do all that much damage, because people were willing to forgive and forget. Plus, she had the undone days to fall back on, one way or another. If someone said, ‘No, that never happened’, she could simply say that it had happened in an undone day, and she’d simply been confused, or maybe they were confused. And if there was a serious blowup, one that couldn’t be papered over with charm and misdirection, she could simply redo the day, be proactive about it, confess to her crimes, and beg for forgiveness, which always won points for some reason.

There were a few rules that Lola had established for herself, at least where extracurriculars were concerned, and while she had never been a big believer in rules, she at least thought twice before breaking the ones she’d set for herself.

The first rule was to avoid other chrononauts, at least if they had undone days left, but of course Alfric was a chrononaut, and she had her sights set on him.

The second rule was that it was always better to save bad behavior until the end of the day, when it was less likely that the complicated rules governing chrononauts could bite her in the butt. In theory, a chrononaut could do whatever they wanted and then reverse it, but in practice, other chrononauts always had higher priority, and they could reverse a day and remember the bad thing that had been done. Lola had been caught out once or twice and gotten slaps on the wrist that had stung enough to make a rule about it.

The third rule was, of course, that bad behavior should always be saved for undone days, but that rule was the one that got broken the most often.

Lola walked through the dungeon, mildly annoyed about the whole thing. The plan had seemed like a good one when she’d cooked it up, but actually going through with it seemed like it might be more trouble than it was worth.

Going into a dungeon alone wasn’t technically breaking any rules, except those of ‘common sense’. The Adventurers’ League gave out keys like they were candy, and Lola had one of her own, but even if they caught her, they wouldn’t take the key away from her, only deliver a firm reprimand, if that. It was a bit shocking how much you could do and escape with a mere warning.

The big reason not to go into a dungeon alone was that the monsters got worse, but that only meant death, and Lola didn’t fear death whatsoever—no self-respecting chrononaut did.

She turned a corner of the red-brick corridor and came face-to-face with a monster twice her size. It had fur the exact shade of the bricks, had long fangs the length of her forearm flanked by thick molars, and let out a wheeze rather than a roar. It tried to snap at her, but she had her protections up. The alienist bindings, shimmering green layers over her skin pushing back against the fangs, would protect from all but the worst attacks, and she had all eight tendrils out, two of them holding her most powerful weapons.

The tendrils had just enough strength that six of them together could fill the creature’s mouth, holding its jaw at full extension while she got a good look at it. She had always told herself that she was a chrononaut, immune from consequence, without fear, but she could feel her heart beating faster, and not just with the excitement of dominating a monster.

This one wouldn’t do. It was big enough, mean enough, but there was nothing that would mandate a response to it. She could kill it on her own, and there needed to be some twist to it, something that made it a proper threat, albeit one that could be put down by a local response.

Lola stabbed the creature through the eyes, frowning slightly as she did it, watching the puce blood drip from the thick eyelids. It wasn’t the pleasant kind of grossness, the kind that she could revel in. Besides, this sort of thing was always less fun when there was no one around to see it, when it was just her in the dungeon by herself, unseen, unheard.

She moved on, using her entad to get the blood off her, stepping lightly. For this to work, she was going to have to capture one alive, and that was a much more difficult thing to do. Winning a single fight against a monster meant for five was hard enough, but doing it while keeping the monster intact, getting it to go to sleep, putting it into storage, all of that was quite a complicated affair. She smiled to herself. That was why it was going to work: no one would suspect her of doing something that required so much of her.

The next monster, a creature encased in stone, was more promising, and Lola was more delicate with it, wrestling it into submission instead of using her blades. It was difficult enough to give her some thrill, and the creature almost bested her as it thrashed around, but her armor held, and the bruises she got in the process would be easy enough to heal at some out-of-the-way temple whose cleric would keep his mouth shut about the whole thing, if he thought it worth nothing at all.

She was looking the creature over for storage in her entad when she noticed something that made her heart beat a bit faster: the creature was pregnant, with engorged egg sacs. That was another level of danger, a serious threat, and she almost slit the creature’s throat rather than stuffing it away… but that same quick beating of her heart made her want it all the more, and she could imagine the future such a creature might bring, the panic that would set in, the work that would need to be done to contain it.

She took three more from the dungeon before she decided she was finished, all smaller than that first one, all tucked away in extradimensional space, either sleeping or tied up. It was hard, dirty work, but contrary to accusations against her, she had never held much disdain for getting messy.

Still, she stopped on the precipice of the dungeon’s exit. So far she’d done nothing wrong, nothing that might come back to bite her, but pulling monsters from a dungeon was against all kinds of laws and, worse, might bring the attention of her family down on her in ways that would be difficult to wriggle out of. No one had stopped her from going into the dungeon, there had been no proactive punishment for crimes not-yet-committed, but you had to think carefully when doing this sort of thing. She hadn’t always been careful in the past.

She’d done the dungeon late at night, not too long before the witching hour, and she’d made a habit of slipping out away from the party at odd hours, so that would arouse suspicions earlier. She’d trained them not to ask what she’d been up to, mostly by concocting elaborate lies about it, often embarrassing and uncomfortable to them.

She paused, thinking it over, hoping she hadn’t made a misstep she couldn’t unmake. There was a chance someone would be waiting outside the dungeon for her with questions.

She passed through the threshold and found no one there. For Lola, this was cause for a smirk rather than a sigh of relief. She had the monsters stowed away, and would take a few undone days to see what they were like, how much of a challenge they would present, and whether they were suitable candidates.

She wanted something that would put fear into them.

Thank you for reading This Used To Be About Dungeons, Volume 1. I hope you’ve enjoyed the start of this journey. Please consider rating and reviewing the book on Amazon, as well as any of your other favorite book-discussion sites. Thousands of books are published around the world every day, all competing to gain traction and attention from readers. If you enjoyed this book and want more like it to be published in the future, then reviews are one of the best ways you can support authors.

Regardless of whether you choose to leave a review or not, thank you for taking the time to join Alfric and his new friends!

All the best,

Alexander

Content

Wales Alexander This Used To Be About Dungeons

Dedication

Chapter 1 — The Fig and Gristle

Chapter 2 — Big-City Energy

Chapter 3 — Venison and Honey

Chapter 4 — Three Raccoons

Chapter 5 — This One Is Actually About a Dungeon

Chapter 6 — Henlings

Chapter 7 — Songbird

Chapter 8 — Late Meals in a Quiet Kitchen

Chapter 9 — An Unwanted Civics Lesson

Chapter 10 — Second Breakfast

Chapter 11 — Agates Among the Stones

Chapter 12 — Overgrowth

Chapter 13 — The Nature of Travel

Chapter 14 — Cracked Tiles

Chapter 15 — Good Next Steps, I Suppose

Chapter 16 — Notions from Elsewhere

Chapter 17 — The Blacksmith’s Apprentice

Chapter 18 — The Next Day’s Weather

Chapter 19 — I Suppose You’re Wondering Why I Gathered You Here

Chapter 20 — Temple Politics

Chapter 21 — Sitting in a Song

Chapter 22 — The Journey More Than the Destination

Chapter 23 — This One Is Actually About Dungeons Too

Chapter 24 — 10% Dungeons by Volume

Chapter 25 — A Post-Dungeon Pickle

Chapter 26 — Liberfell

Chapter 27 — Too Much Talking

Chapter 28 — It Takes Two

Chapter 29 — Historical Revisionism

Chapter 30 — Noodles

Chapter 31 — Delicate Arrangements

Chapter 32 — A Tree from a Stone

Chapter 33 — Possibilities

Chapter 34 — Woods Witch

Chapter 35 — Alumni of the Junior League

Chapter 36 — E7 Report

Chapter 37 — Cartier

Chapter 38 — Jockey

Chapter 39 — Holy Numbers

Chapter 40 — Postmortem

Chapter 41 — Meddling

Chapter 42 — Singing Slow

Chapter 43 — Solo