The next morning, the glitchlings woke up early. There was no sun, but Kiresula was aware that the sun had not risen when she woke. She then chided herself for the rash use of [Grains of Time]. That was one Seren she might need later. Then, she shook her head and massaged her neck. She slept ridiculously bad and only remembered stumbling from one nightmare, into tentative awareness and then into another nightmare until she eventually woke up, chilly, rigid and hungry. She immediately snuggled to Mayana for warmth.
Mayana hugged Kiresula tightly and whispered: “Good morning, my precious!”
She responded by hugging her wife and moving her face next to hers: “Have I woken my most lovely wife up?”
Mayana responded with a giggle: “No, I barely got any shuteye! It’s so cold here and we don’t have a blanket!”
Kiresula held on to her wife: “I am so sorry!”
Mayana asked: “Your Fortitude saved your night, didn’t it?”
That made Kiresula wonder: “Do you want me to boost yours so you can get some sleep?”
Mayana shook her head in a quick movement, rubbing against Kiresula’s cheek: “I am awake enough to enchant and fight today. But as soon as I am somewhere soft, I will fall asleep!”
The two chatted quietly about the upcoming day and brainstormed where they could explore and what they could do, when they heard a noise: Footsteps. Kiresula motioned at Mayana to hide under the bench and they both did so silently.
“Looks like there’s another group here!” a male voice said.
“Ach, what a shame! You can’t trust anyone! The guards assured us that we were the only ones!” The other person had an accent that Kiresula couldn’t place.
“Maleesh! Don’t feel like splitting experience at all!” Another voice grumbled, that one too had a foreign accent from a different place.
“Ha-qala maleesh malakheta!” A female voice cussed in a foreign language.
“Speak Mainlandish, I cannot speak Ha-shana!” the previous, unaccented voice complained.
“You don’t want to know what she said!” one of the men said, “our dear Layanqa has a potty mouth!”
“Qaaaah!” She shouted, as she saw the group. Kiresula looked at the group and shuddered: The 5 people looked well-equipped and quite high level, compared to even Haina. Their armour looked shiny and enchanted, their weapons looked shiny and sharp. Their features looked quite foreign.
“Do you want to go first?” Mayana asked, looking up from under the bench.
The group nodded and various expressions of “yes” and “Aq” were said.
Mayana nodded at the group: “If you know how we can get to the core, we wait until you’re out again!”
The group chatted among themselves in a mixture of Ha-shana and Mainlandish.
Kiresula said in Je-ashvehanu: “Make sure that we are safe! These people look dangerous!”
Mayana responded: “I make! Give me… trust!” The last word was in mainlandish.
Kiresula nodded: “Good!”
The woman responded in what seemed like Je-ashvehanu, but with a strong accent and slower than Kiresula spoke: “You also from outside country? You here to run?”
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Kiresula responded: “I learned it from the local Je-ashvehanu minority. We’re just some strange locals who broke into the dungeon. But, I would like to warn you: The dungeon contains swaths of broken magic! Some folks glitched here!”
The woman nodded: “We carry enchanted items. The enchantments break first if there is broken magic.”
Mayana asked the group: “Do you know how we can get to the core? We need to get there to handle the infestation of broken magic.”
One of the men nodded: “Yes. We do know a bit, but not much. We know that you need to exterminate both sides but you cannot do that. Generally, when you enter the dungeon on one side, you cannot hurt that side. The place has protection against friendly fire.”
Mayana and Kiresula nodded: “Do you know if this is also true if you break into the dungeon?”
The man nodded eagerly: “Yes, yes! If you dig in, you get assigned a side. And the dungeon is more vicious. So. There is a way to get in without choosing a side, but we don’t know it. We never had to get to the core of any dungeon.”
Kiresula nodded: “That is actually useful! Thanks!”
The man smiled broadly: “So, you wait until we are done and return here?”
Mayana nodded eagerly: “Certainly so! I have another proposition though: How would you feel trading your food for a better way to discover broken magic and stay clear?”
The man stares at her: “You mean: A zhuq protection rock?”
Mayana tilted her head in a way that Kiresula couldn’t help but find utterly adorable.
The man explained: “It’s a scam: A regular rock is sold as keeping zhuqs away, except that those monsters are quite a rare sight in the area and if encountered seldomly leave survivors to tell the tale and sue the salesperson.”
Mayana shook her head: “No, they actually work and you can test both with my wife as well as our travelling companion Kju.” She pointed to where he slept, seemingly unaware that anything out of the ordinary was happening.
The man raised an eyebrow: “How are you going to do that?”
Mayana smiled: “Craftsman’s secret! I am a level 42 enchanter, so I have some trade secrets.”
The man looked at the others while chatting animatedly in their native language, interspersed by Mainlandish words to the one person in their group who apparently didn’t know it. Neither Kiresula nor Mayana were able to follow their chatter, but eventually, the man nodded: “We accept. But we need to test that it actually works.”
Mayana nodded: “Do you have some unenchanted items that I can add the enchantment to?”
The man looked confused for a moment and then offered her a simple shovel.
Mayana had experience weaving the enchantments onto the material, then she asked Kiresula (in broken Je-ashvehanu) to cast [Sunlight] and [Illuminate] into two spell beads that were rewards of previous delves, Kiresula did so and then, Mayana weaved the spells into the material of the blade of the shovel. The process was quite fast. As Mayana handed the man back the shovel, he eyed it confusedly: “Doesn’t it need a source of magical energy?”
Mayana shook her head: “It casts with ambient energy.”
The man looked consternated: “But, if there is broken magic, how can there be enough ambient magic to cast a spell?”
Mayana smiled: “It uses broken magic for that. Try it!”
The man moved the shovel towards Kiresula and as it hit her skin, it lit up in a bright, but not blinding glow. He looked shocked: “Wow! I didn’t expect that to happen!” He chatted with the group which handed over both unenchanted items to be used as instruments of detection and enough food to last the group for a few days.
A short while later, the foreigners departed into the goblin side and told the group not to enter until they finished their runs.
As they left earshot, Haina opened his eyes: “You have some nerves to negotiate with these folks! They are dangerous!”
Mayana looked at him: “What do you know?”
Haina explained: “Shanastan is a country that doesn’t follow the Holy Order, they have some quite heretical ideas. I hear that they hate the ideas of the Holy Order. That they have insanely cruel training regimes. And I heard that they eat their young if they are born disabled.”
Kiresula shrugged: “You are doing something quite heretical right now, so I would not be too angry about them.”
Haina stopped in his tracks for a moment: “I guess I do. But that is different!”
Kiresula shrugged: “They are in a foreign country. Indiscriminate violence is not in their interest even if that was how they did it in Shanastan.”
There was a pause during which the different people were silent towards each other. Then Mayana suggested breakfast and everyone agreed.
After the long trip to ilkshehir and the stint in the jail of the Holy Order, the food of the Shana tasted exquisite. The party had stuffed flatbreads with a cheesy, spicy, oniony and meaty filling, which Haina’s group now feasted upon.
Afterwards, they waited for the Shanastanis to return. They waited mostly in silence, but sometimes, the group whispered among each other. That was when Kiresula had an idea.