“Meet me down in the courtyard,” Estelle says. “There will be more room to work with and I would prefer it if you did not break my possessions.”

She becomes invisible again and phases through the bookcase and down to the ground. This is only marginally less mysterious and ghostly for being able to see her still.

Rowan and I locate our party members. Burdock is still reading, while Anise and Meadow are gossiping about men. I wonder if I’m going to be winding up with another sibling or cousin in the near future.

“We’re heading down to the courtyard,” I say. “Estelle agreed to give a quick lesson in Enhanced Muscles (Spirit Barrier).”

Anise nods. “Right, let’s head that way and be alert in case the spiders have respawned.”

The spiders in the common room have, indeed, respawned by this point, but Rowan and I are less terrified them now that we’ve killed a couple dozen of the stupid things.

The courtyard is on the opposite side of the inn from the kitchen, surrounded by the ring of rooms. A cracked and dry fountain stands in the middle, its stone tiers overgrown with moss. The grass and decorative plants are overgrown to the point where it would not surprise me if some of them had been plant monsters, but there’s no hostile red auras among them.

At the near side of the courtyard, Estelle goes visible again as we approach, her intangible dress phasing through the tangle of grasses rather than being caught up in them.

“Good, you’re here,” Estelle says. “Let me explain what we are doing. [Spirit Barrier] is a skill for Enhanced Muscles and one anyone over the age of 7 should be capable of. Now, tell me. How do enhanced attribute skills work?”

“You… make your body stronger, faster, and better,” Rowan says.

Estelle clicks her tongue, and turns to me. “What about you, young reincarnator? Can you tell me?”

“They’re the World-to-Self categories of each of the eight attribute types,” I say. “They involve drawing conceptual energy from the world to enhance yourself.”

“Congratulations, you’ve read a book,” Estelle says. “Now what does that actually mean?” She turns to Burdock. “What of you, child? Do you understand the forces you play with?”

“Not really,” Burdock admits. “I just do what feels right.”

Estelle looks toward the two adults next. “What are you teaching children these days that they cannot answer such a simple question? Tell me at least one of you had the answer.”

“Don’t look at me,” Anise says. “I just stab and burn things. I’m a Sorcerer and barely know what I’m doing half the time.”

Meadow sighs and puts her face in her palm. “Alright, I’ll try. It’s like breathing. Breathing seems simple and we all do it automatically, but there’s more to breathing than just breathing. We all eat things, and the things we eat help to maintain and build up our bodies, but not all food is the same. When we’re using World-to-Self skills, we’re ‘breathing’ or ‘eating’ concepts from the world around us.”

“Hmh,” Estelle grunts. “Incomplete, but largely correct from a layman’s perspective. Sufficient. Now, I have no doubt any of you could learn this skill if you apply yourselves, but Rowan will have the easiest time of it due to his class and his name.”

“My name?” Rowan asks.

“Your name is a powerful symbol of protection,” Estelle says. “Embrace that. Draw strength from the world and use it to empower yourself. This locus bears the concept of spirits, and a courtyard holds the thought of protection. Hold these images and thoughts in your mind and absorb the aether around you to become a part of your vis.”

“Still not sure I understand, but I will try,” Rowan says.

Estelle looks about the overgrown courtyard. “Before we can start, I recommend clearing out some of the plants in this area to give us room to work with.”

“On it!” Anise says a little too cheerfully.

Meadow just sighs. “Let’s not burn down the nice ghost’s inn.”

“Bah, you never let me burn anything.”

Estelle chuckles. “Be assured that you will not harm the inn. No one under Epic rank is likely to be able to cause structural damage to the building itself.”

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“Woo!” Anise yells, and proceeds to set the courtyard on fire.

“We’re also in the courtyard, Mom!” I shout.

“An excellent opportunity to practice [Spirit Barrier],” Estelle says calmly. “Face the flames, child. Stand in front of Drake and protect him like a mighty tree shelters you from the wind. He is small and weak and will surely perish without your aid.”

“I’m not even going to protest that description…” I say.

“This is an Elite-ranked spell and I’m only Basic rank,” Rowan complains.

“Is that all?” Estelle says. “You resign yourself to death before you’ve even tried because it’s too hard?”

“Anise wouldn’t just let me die,” Rowan protests.

My lunatic mom is gleefully using Sorcery (Pyromania) on every innocent weed in this courtyard. Rowan’s emotional state grows increasingly fraught as the flames grow ever closer.

“Anise certainly wouldn’t be so careless as to kill her own son,” Rowan says, his voice quavering.

“I’m sure you have to have figured out by now that my mom is an idiot,” I point out.

He glances aside to Meadow and Burdock, but they’re standing back to see what happens. I’m sure they’ll intervene if necessary. I’m sure the Necromancer could put out the flames with a snap of her fingers.

Rowan takes a deep breath to steel himself and immediately regrets it as smoke billows in our direction. He steadies himself and stands in front of me, raising his turtle shell shield.

“Spirits, protection, spirits, protection, spirits, protection,” Rowan mutters to himself. “How do I even know if this is working?”

Aether swirls around Rowan’s aura, rippling and twisting. After wrestling with it for a few long moments, something about his aura starts to solidify and harden. The flames reach Rowan’s shield and… stop. Patterns in Rowan’s aura flicker and struggle against the onslaught, and the fire seems to decide that if it can’t go through Rowan, it will just go around. All these Basic rank plants are perfectly flammable to a pyromaniac Sorcerer.

Skills increased: Discipline (Composure), Discipline (Delegation), Clairvoyance (Empathy)

Before we can actually get hurt (more than a bit of smoke inhalation, anyway), Meadow steps forward and waves a hand, and the fire nearest to us quickly dies down.

“I accidentally unlocked Sorcery (Killjoy) a while back just from having to deal with Anise,” Meadow grouses. “Did you get the skill, Rowan?”

“I got it!” Rowan exclaims. “I didn’t think I was going to but it worked and I got it!”

“Anise!” Meadow calls out. “You can stop burning things now!”

“Killjoy!” Anise yells back, but does comply. She makes sure nothing is still burning before heading back over to us. “I’m just disappointed that there weren’t any plant monsters.”

“I would have mentioned if I’d spotted any,” I point out.

“You can practice that on your own time now, young Rowan,” Estelle says. “Let us return to my atelier. It will be more comfortable to chat than a smoldering courtyard.”

“Sorry, maybe I should have used something a little less inflammatory,” Anise says.

Estelle chuckles. “Don’t worry. It will be back to looking the way it did when you found it by morning. I have challenged many aspiring gardeners to hone their skills on it, and it always reverts.”

We return to the upstairs. Estelle gets to levitate and phase through a wall. We get to kill the damned spiders in the common room again. If this is any indication of the level of annoyance respawning monsters is likely to cause in dungeons in the future, I guess I’d better get used to it.

“Who used to stay here, back when this was a functional village?” I wonder. “This seems like an awful lot of rooms for what Liz described as the start of a ‘round’.”

“The dungeon has expanded it in the past centuries to make room for more monster spawn points,” Estelle says.

“It made the building bigger just to add more spiders?” Rowan asks incredulously.

Estelle turns to me. “I don’t suppose, by some chance, you speak French?”

“No, but I know a reincarnator who does,” I say.

Estelle brightens immediately. (Literally.) “Truly? There’s a French reincarnator alive in Tempest now?”

“Well, no,” I say. “He’s Canadian.”

Estelle dims. “Ah, well, close enough, I suppose. I would appreciate it if you would bring him here, then. I have written a number of poems in French that I do not trust the auto-translator not to mangle.”

“It seems to do a pretty good job, to me,” I say.

“Yes, ‘pretty good’,” Estelle says. “It is sufficient for common purposes, but it can miss or misinterpret the nuance of words. By a poet’s grace, I wrote the words I meant.”

I refrain from making any commentary about French poets. “I’m sure he’ll be willing to come and listen to your poetry. We can probably go and get him here before swarm season.”

“Excellent,” Estelle says. “Now, before you go, I have a list of materials I would like you to bring me in exchange for lessons in Enhanced Soul.”

“Ah, fetch quests,” I say.

She hovers a piece of paper over toward me. Clearly she had made this up ahead of time to shove at the next adventurers to show up looking for fetch quests. It’s mostly mundane things like paper, ink, paint, and so forth, but some of the items are likely to prove a little harder to get.

Anise peers over my shoulder at the list. “Oh, you want romance novels? Great, I’ve got a couple of the latest Dungeon Crawlers books I’ve already finished reading that I can bring you. There’s some really steamy scenes in the last one.”

“I said romance novels, not smut,” Estelle says with a smirk. “Although I suppose it’s too much to ask for to find novels where people fall in love, get married and live happily ever after.”

“What’s ‘married’?” Anise wonders.

Estelle shakes her head with a sigh heavy enough to echo on your soul. “Never mind.”

We wrap things up in the Spooky Grove and bid farewell for now to Estelle, and leave (after killing the spiders in the common room one more time).

It’s back to Corwen to prepare for a quick jaunt to Grubwick. We’ve been allowed to run dungeons with nothing higher than Elites, but the want to include a Heroic or two or even an Epic if we’re going down into the caverns, even if it’s just to Grubwick. Troublesome, but I can’t even argue considering the battle of Splott a few years ago.

“I will accompany you there myself,” Aunt Savannah says.

“Thanks, Mom,” Meadow says. “I hope there’s no problems this time, but we won’t need to be down there long.”