"I thank you for your aid, Vol," Ir'alith said, inclining her head slightly.

Relief surged through Volcatia.

Why hadn't she just used Foresight while she thought about this?

Actually.

These were the first mystery legs she'd discovered in all the time since she'd realized she loved legs.

Maybe…

Could these be the only mystery legs in existence?!

The thought brought with it excitement and terror.

The excitement of figuring out whether they were great or bad!

The terror of never being able to enjoy this sort of chase again!

She needed to enjoy it while she could.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

There was no question in her mind.

No Foresight.

No skills.

If she was going to judge these mystery legs, she had to do it with her normal abilities.

A true challenge.

She'd be victorious in the end, but it might take a long time.

Demons could supposedly live forever, so she could spend a while on it.

She wasn't in a rush.

Fine, she sort of was.

She needed to know!

She stood up again and walked towards the portal.

"Sure," she said with a smile.

This was so exciting!

She didn't look at the mystery legs as she passed through, even when she walked past.

She frowned a little.

Where the fuck was she now?

Rocky dirt stretched out in every direction under the dim starlight, interrupted only by more rocks, and a lantern glowed softly on the ground nearby.

"Vol, we meet now for a third time," said Jungrathol, who was standing a short distance away next to a glowing helmet.

Jungrathol had okay legs.

She waved, resisting the urge to look back at the mystery legs.

"Vol, there you are!" called Valgud. He sidled over with two big tankards that had their lids flipped open. "Need to keep a clearer head since we're past the idea-having part, so I'm only having one drink tonight. Brought this one for you though. Special-made from one of our oldest brewmasters. If you can stay standing after this, she said, you'll be welcome to drink her brews in Khir Turuhm any time."

He offered one tankard to her, then frowned and pulled it back. "Now which one was…" He looked down into each tankard in turn. A moment passed, and he sniffed each one.

"What've we—Oh, hello, Valgud," Mina called as she walked up.

"Not now, Mina, this is important dwarf business," Valgud said, continuing to stare at the tankards. "Dwarves got a name for this situation. Whurmok's dilemma. Long story, but he was a messenger sent to deliver a toast on behalf of an ancient dwarven king to another king as a gesture of friendship. Had two sealed tankards. One was a rare ale they only had enough of to fill one tankard for the king; the other was some normal swill. Got to the other king and had no way to know which was which because they'd never marked the things. Couldn't taste either one, because—"

A blue claw reached down to point at one of the tankards. "This is the more potent of the two," Ir'alith said.

Valgud glared up at her. "Can't be interruptin' dwarven lore like that!"

"Was Whurmok able to determine which was the correct one?" Mina asked.

"Nobody knows, but he lived to tell the tale, so probably," Valgud said. He frowned down at the tankards again, then held out the one that Ir'alith had indicated, which wasn't the one he'd originally offered.

Volcatia accepted the drink.

It was just like she'd thought.

When it came to drinking, dwarves were the best.

"To dwarves," she said.

Valgud clinked her tankard with a toothy grin showing through his beard. "To dwarves!"

She took a drink.

Huh.

Tasted like…

Everyone was staring at her.

What was this flavor though?

She took another drink.

It didn't make sense, but…

"Tastes like green?" she said.

Valgud nodded. "Yep, that's what she told me. Don't understand how those colored ales work, but Thuzzy's damn good at what she does."

Huh.

It…

Huh.

She took a longer drink.

Yeah, it tasted like green.

The color green.

"How can a drink have the taste of a color?" Ir'alith asked, her face pulled into an expression of curiosity.

Volcatia wasn't about to miss this chance.

"Wanna try it?" she said, offering up her half-emptied tankard.

Ir'alith's green eyes looked down at her for a moment. "I am curious," she said as she carefully grasped the tankard in her clawed hand. The tankard tipped up, and she drank.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Volcatia was already having a great night.

She'd just heard a dwarven drinking story from a dwarf before being offered ale made by a dwarf and then drinking it with a dwarf.

Was it possible for there to be a better way to drink?

And now Ir'alith was drinking with them?

The same Ir'alith who had mystery legs?

Volcatia realized she'd spent the past few seconds staring down at those same legs and looked back up.

"It tastes of green," Ir'alith said, frowning down at the tankard in her hand. "Strange." Her eyes met Volcatia's again. "I thank you for sharing this drink with me, Vol."

Volcatia took the tankard back and tossed it into her Inventory. "Sure. Now what's this project I'm helping with?"

"We've a need to disable a great number of machines like the one we were examining last night to aid Ir'alith," Mina said. "I'd thought perhaps—"

"Why?" Volcatia asked.

Obviously she'd ask.

She was still trying to figure out how to get Ir'alith to take her armor off.

Demons didn't like humans very much, excepting Carl and Mina, apparently.

It was a real challenge.

Mina glanced down at Valgud, who was peering back and forth between the two older women. "It's—"

"I seek to rescue Carl's wife," Ir'alith said. Her tail tapped the ground next to her.

Volcatia stared.

She hadn't even considered the tail!

What did it feel like?

It seemed so flexible!

Was it strong?

How did a tail work anyway?

A new idea struck her at that moment, and her eyes widened.

Did a tail count as a leg?!

She wasn't sure!

She'd never needed to make a decision about this before!

Mind buzzing, she forced her thoughts to return to what she'd just heard.

What had she just heard though?

She fought to remember, but her eyes fixed to the tail as it twitched again.

So smooth!

She crackled slightly, trying to shock herself out of her current series of thoughts.

Right.

A little too human there.

She took a breath.

They were…

She frowned.

"Why's Carl's wife need to be rescued if he's from another world?" she asked, turning her eyes to Valgud, who seemed safe to look at since his legs were average and he had no tail.

The dwarf sipped from his tankard as his eyes narrowed.

"I wished to speak with her, and she requested that we speak here," Ir'alith said. "It was a mistake, and I must now return her to her world."

Huh.

Volcatia had questions.

She also knew that people didn't like to talk about their mistakes.

But why was Carl's wife here?

That seemed bad.

How long had she been here?

Eh.

Nobody here was acting like it was urgent, so probably she didn't have to take immediate action?

She should maybe check though?

She could sort of understand not telling Carl if it was a mistake that was easy to fix.

Yeah, that must be it.

This probably just happened a day or two ago, and they…

Fine.

She'd definitely go check herself if it didn't seem like things were going in that direction soon.

Very soon.

Carl was her friend, and if anything happened to his wife, she was sure he'd be sad.

That wouldn't be something a good friend would let happen.

Carl and Ir'alith seemed to both think they were friends, so probably Ir'alith wouldn't let that happen either?

And Mina was his daughter, so shouldn't she…

Volcatia was starting to confuse herself with all this thinking about friend shit, so she moved her thoughts forward.

"And the machines?" she asked.

Valgud took another drink from his tankard.

"She remains a captive, guarded by them," Ir'alith said. "They consume my magic, so I cannot fight them."

"Oh." Volcatia frowned more deeply and turned to Mina. "Why the fuck didn't you just say that yesterday?"

"I'd been quite irritated with you at that time," Mina protested. "How was I to know you'd be capable of aiding us?"

"Could've asked."

That was always the problem with Smart people.

"Oi, how're the both of you still standin'?!" Valgud demanded suddenly. "I watched you down half a tankard of ale that'd kill most dwarves if they drank it that fast!"

Volcatia rubbed her forehead.

Fuck.

She'd forgotten to be drunk.

It was the distraction.

There were all the dwarf parts to the drinking, there was Jungrathol looming silently behind Valgud with all four of his arms crossed like a statue which was a little funny, there was…

There were plenty of other things.

Okay.

Fine.

Fine!

She'd been thinking about Ir'alith's legs the whole time and forgot.

She admitted it.

She'd forgotten something just like humans did.

Humans forgot things all the fucking time.

She glanced up at Ir'alith.

Maybe—

"We are not dwarves," Ir'alith said. "And she is not human," she finished, pointing to Volcatia with her tail.

Volcatia opened her mouth to protest, but then she had a smart idea.

Maybe even a Smart idea?

Maybe.

Valgud looked to her and took another drink from his tankard, his eyebrows drawing even farther down. "Looks human to me."

"I'm not human at all!" Volcatia said with a grin.

It was an amazing idea.

She was almost so stunned by thinking of it that she'd almost been unable to act.

If demons didn't like humans, all she had to do was not be human!

She was definitely becoming smart.

She could feel it.

There were a number of times she'd thought she was getting smart before, but only a smart person could think of something like this.

Her grin widened.

"Do something that's not human," Valgud said before he took a longer drink, continuing to stare at her over his tankard.

It was amazing that there was anything left for him to drink at this point.

"Valgud, that's not polite!" Mina exclaimed.

"How's this?" Volcatia asked as she sent electricity coursing through her eyes.

He squinted from the sudden brightness, and his frown changed to a scowl. "Could be magic. Hate magic."

"I can't use magic."

"How do I know that?"

"Valgud."

"I just told you I couldn't."

"Could be lying."

"I just drank that ale without getting drunk too."

Valgud ran a hand through his beard. "Yep, that'll do it."

Mina grasped the top of her nose with her her fingers. "If we're quite finished with our game of Is Vol A Human Or Not, then—"

"I'm definitely not human."

"—Perhaps we might turn our attentions to the task at hand?"

Valgud tossed his tankard behind himself, striking Jungrathol in one of his arms. "Right, just finished m'warm-up drink, so I'm ready. Got a—"

"Why did you throw that at me?"

"Uh, sorry 'bout that."

"I forgive you."

Valgud turned back towards them and cleared his throat. "Had an idea after last night," he began. "If we make an even bigger scrap finder, Vol can do whatever she did with it, and then we can shut down more of the machines."

"I'd had precisely the same idea, Valgud," Mina said, smiling down at him. "If we were able to construct a significantly larger version of Valgud's electromagnet, the effect created last night which destroyed the machine would also become larger, would it not?"

"Yeah," Volcatia said.

If it was an electromagnetic pulse they wanted, she could make one without needing an actual…

Eh.

She glanced at Ir'alith, but the demon was staring off into the distance.

Volcatia had met lots of people.

Some had wanted to be saved.

Some had wanted to succeed by their own efforts.

There were other types, but between these two, she judged that Ir'alith was probably the second type.

The difficult type.

Maybe this was going to take even longer than she'd thought.

"I'd hoped you'd say so," Mina said, sounding happy. "I've a solution for our issue then. We can simply have Carl's dungeon cores manufacture the larger electromagnet, following which we can return it to here using a portal."

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

So this was being Smart?

Volcatia felt a sudden, intense depression.

She wasn't even close.

How fucking Smart did someone even have to be to come up with an idea like that?!