Mister I grabbed the little black shard with his tweezers and tugged it out of Corvayne's ankle. It made a little plink sound as he placed it in a steel cup. When washed off the chunks looked less like metal and more like black crystals.

Mister I had found a coffee cup worth of the slivers since Corvayne woke up with one poking out of his elbow early in the morning. The monk had been awake, thankfully, so Corvayne had monopolized his morning with some impromptu surgery.

“I am pretty sure this time we collected everything. Hmm. Well, if not, you seem to be pushing them out! That's a healthy response!”

Corvayne . “Did anyone else have shrapnel?”

“No. All healthy! Except your water girl... her humors are all out of balance! Ha ha ha!”

Corvayne stared at Mister I who laughed at his own joke for a good thirty seconds before patted Corvayne's shoulder.

“She is worried about her figure, because... she's retaining water!” Mister dusted his hands off.

Corvayne stared at him. “Icariii, are you finished?”

“But really, never had a patient where the problems were so clear!”

Corvayne waved at Mister I as he walked out the door. “Great. Thanks.”

He went back up to his apartment. As he opened the door Hari stuck her head in from the other room and snapped at him “Out!”

Corvanye stepped back outside his apartment and waited until she opened the door. Hari smiled. “Sorry! Spears needed measurements so we could get her clothes.”

“Isn't her body malleable?” Corvayne thought about trying to jab her with a spear. Perhaps he should have tried a T-shirt?

“Yes but she has a shape she naturally takes. Seru and I are going shopping with her!”

Corvayne nodded. “Just remember we are going to have to put some of our money into the expedition.”

Hari laughed. “I know that. That's why we are going, to make money. People watch us do things, and it's I guess like a little play they pay for?”

“The more I learn about money the less I know about it.” Corvayne tried to figure out what would motivate someone to watch someone spend money. “Okay, have fun. I'm going to shower off and actually get some rest.”

Hari laughed. “Lazy bones!”

Corvayne shook his head. “No, I had a bunch of shards in me.”

Hari kissed him, and turned and waved as Spears-Like-Water came over, wearing his black outfit which contrasted her bright blue watery form. She brushed a strand of liquid hair out of her face, and looking at her Corvayne was surprised at how well the little changes in blues made her face readable. In this case, she looked tired, despite him being the one who slept on the couch.

“Thank you for lending me your bed...” She mumbled, looking down.

Corvayne nodded. “No problem but... you look exhausted.”

She looked back at the room. “Sorry, I woke up every time I heard something, so I got about an hour of sleep.”

Corvayne knew Wick had a tool to help her sleep and looked to Hari. “Can you get her some noise canceling headphones while you're out?”

“A magic item?” Hari pulled out her magic tome and started looking for it. “Might be hard. Cascadia doesn't have a good market set up yet, but perhaps if I talk to Miss Dawn we could find a broker...”

Corvayne patted her on the shoulder. “It's not magic. I guess Seru can help you both out.”

Hari slipped past his hand to give him a longer deep kiss, and he heard Spears gasp. Hari coyly pulled back, then turned and grabbed the sputtering Spears-Like-Water and dragged her out the door. Corvayne heard the click of the door locking and retired to the bathroom. As he cleaned himself up he felt another shard on his back and pulled the little sliver out. Holding in the running water, it didn't look like metal, even the darker steel that the grating had been made of. Maybe it was hardened residue from the thorns? But then Lady Blood Claw hadn't had any shards that he had seen. It might also have been bones of the whale in the jelly that had pierced into him when he broke the monster in two.

As he dropped the shard to let it wash down the drain he felt the rolling sensation return. Standing there, leaning on the tiles while hot water spilled about him, he felt queasy, even though it wasn't nausea. His footing was good and it wasn't a feeling in his gut, but almost like standing before a great wave and knowing it's coming, then being lost in the force of it when it hit, over and over. Closing his eyes and taking a spear stance seemed to slow the unbalanced feeling. Corvayne took a long deep breath, focusing on the act as his world shrank, and with that the feeling died down. He felt totally fine by the time he had dried off, so he just made a note to ask Mister I if it was an ailment he had heard of before. He put fresh sheets on his bed and consigned the ones Spears used to laundry, then laid down.

It was late afternoon when he woke. There was something stiff under his back and he saw that his fresh sheets had what looked like a crusty black section in a circle under where his back was. He sighed and picked them up to go to the laundry room. It would take the machine a few hours to wash and dry his clothes so he went over to the other tower to ask Wick if there was anything that needed his attention for their plans to leave.

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She let him in, seemingly in a pretty good mood in that she gave him a one-armed hug, the other balancing a bowl of colorful kids cereal. “How did it go last night?”

“Fine? I slept on the couch. Hari actually used her room for once.”

She took a spoonful and chewed loudly for a few seconds. “Oh Fuck. You didn't sleep with both em?”

Corvayne rolled his eyes. “I appreciate the confidence but I don't like her like that.” Of course this made him think about shoving his hand into Spears-Like-Water's chest and how warm she was. There was a part of him betraying the rest of his better judgment.

Wick was ignorant of this conflict as she just laughed. “What an asshole, dumping the girl who waited fifty thousand years for him!” Wick shook her head. “Tisk Tisk.”

Corvayne deftly disarmed her spoon and tapped her on the nose. “She's a stranger. The Spears-Like-Water I knew doesn't exist. That or she changed tremendously since I walked out of my village.”

Wick made a lifting and falling motion with her bowl. “Yeah, but you owe her at least getting to know her, right? Riiiight?”

Corvayne shook his head. “I know you love novelty but we've got a major project underway and-”

Wick with her free hand pulled up a piece of paper with green check marks next to a list and shoved it in Corvayne's face.

“You worked your ass off. I worked my ass off. Everybody worked their asses off. Money was raised. Mosh invented a few things. Dawn made deals. We know where the portal you came from is thanks to Grunt, Seru, and heck even Spears. For fucks sake, we all need breaks. There's only one thing left to do before we go, and at that it's a... curiosity we're doing the night we leave.”

Something about picking the night they were leaving raised suspicion in Corvayne, but knowing Wick it could be just some whim of a place she wanted to check out and it'd be fine. Maybe she was taking him to a meal at that big steel corndog that defined the skyline. Or she was taking him to a 'real mall' as she said she'd do. Or to a cemetery to look for ghouls. What was the worst that could-

No, he had better ask now. “What would this last minute errand be?”

Wick grinned. “Breaking into a bank.”

“Mmm. Okay. Why? I thought we had plenty of cash.”

She finally set her bowl down so she could wave both hands around. “Not to steal! The bank handled setting up a trust for whoever owns that plot of land the dungeon is on. I wanna know who owns that shell corp.”

Corvayne thought about this then he felt his eyebrow shoot up. “You think my problem and yours are connected?”

Wick nodded. “Goule is a weird wizard. You have beef with a weird wizard who told you to fight other wizards. Also, somebody owns that land. There's 0 chance we're the first people to find that spot. All the metal under the ground alone would have been found when they did a mining survey.”

Corvayne nodded and handed her the paper back, then sat down on her couch. “All right.”

Wick sat down next to him. She seemed to be waiting for something, so Corvayne just put his head back and waited too.

She poked him. “Aren't you going to tell me it's a bad fucking idea to break into a bank?”

Corvayne looked at how she was staring at him. He took a deep breath, then made himself look incredulous. He slid into a more masculine impression of her.

“Are you MAD Wick!? We can't break into a bank! We'll get into trouble!!”

“Better. Anyway... the current plan is four days to pack up and leave. I know if you don't get goaded to do Tower runs you'll So... I got you a little something to help you pass the time.”

Wick reached under her desk and pulled out a wood box and something like a stand... an easel? Corvayne felt his heart jump a little as he opened the wood box and saw six brightly colored plastic tubes of paint and five new brushes.

“I mean, you talked about art and you had a good guess with the painting before so clearly there was some sort of long-” Wick stopped. “Are you tearing up?”

Corvayne wiped his eyes. “Maybe?”

Wick slapped his arm. “You asshole! You're going to make me start crying too! It's just a little gift! You got me that selfie with a bigfoot and I wanted to get you something nice too.”

“Sorry, I'm just...” Corvayne blinked tears away. He was happy, it seemed silly that he was crying. The gift was nice, and now he had something that rivaled his spear for his most cherished object. He was just overwhelmed with the suprise. There was a weird feeling of nostalgia that washed over Corvayne as he closed the case and stored it and the easel. Wick handed him a few small canvases, still wrapped in plastic.

“Hah, but it's not free, since now I wanna see what you're going to paint!”

Corvayne frowned a little bit. “I can't promise anything astounding... I'm going to take some pictures of Old Town to work on if there's downtime when we are traveling.”

“Once again, isn't this where YOU tell ME that it's going to be dangerous?” Wick folded her arms but sounded amused.

Maybe if it was three months ago and he didn't know better. “I think everywhere is dangerous so it wouldn't make any sense to repeat that.”

“And here I thought I was paranoid.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

Corvayne laughed then composed himself. “Okay Miss Trusting-Others, if you are down to help... I was going to get some people gifts. I mean, I want to give Hari something she-”

“The dress!” Wick snapped her fingers.

“Oh. I suppose she'd at the very least be interested as it's a peculiar piece of loot. However, if she uses it I'd prefer at our house. Thought it may be presumptious...” He produced the dress in question. The living dress was still warm the to touch and was no worse for wear from being stored. What if Hari hated it? Or thought that he was accusing her of being gross.

Wick seemed to pick up on his hesitance. “Think of the horns that your little field trip fought over. She'll love it.”

“Well, maybe it's too much... but we'll check Hari off. I did have someone else I wanted to thank for their help. Can we take a pet on the trip?”

Wick stopped. “Uh, as long as it's dog sized, maybe? Or if it's a mount, but we'd probably kill a horse if you tried to keep up.”

Corvayne shook his head. “Okay, then let's go do an experiment, if you don't mind Wick.”

She hopped up and grabbed her blue robe, nearly tripping throwing it on. “YES! I thought I'd NEVER hear you say that!”

Corvayne and Wick stepped through the portal from Mere Island onto the infinite dock floor. The tent town near the exit arch had started to co-opt some of the buildings nearby to create a hotel inside the Tower and had been joined by a bar and restaurant, as well as parts of a more permanent medical hall. There were people wearing strange Tower versions of Cascadia outdoors-wear milling about outside the bar and bringing materials into piles for some future constrution. He was tempted to see what the restaurant was serving but no, he had a specific objective and would ignore anything else. He closed his eyes and tried using his compass power to find the nearest monster.

It took him down to the water where he saw urchins under the lapping waves, gently gliding along rocks. He waded into the cold water and with his spear broke down a bunch of a monster's spines, enough that he could wrap it in a towel without impaling himself. Turning, he went over to the exit arch and stepped back through.

Wick followed him out of the portal and down the stairs. He unwrapped the urchin, dropping on the ground. It was still alive, attempting to lunge as much as a creature with a top speed of a steady crawl could lunge.

She clapped. “It worked! I could get that slime pet!”

Corvayne killed it with a single spear strike, angling his weapon so it stayed on the tip as he turned to walk back into the portal. “Alright. Now for the real deal.”

He stepped through, tossed the urchin down to the concrete, then tuned his compass power for his real target.

Not too much later, he was knocked on Lady Blood Claw's door. He hoped she was in, as while she often meditated or studied spells in the early evening. The past few days she'd been reveling in walking around town out of disguise, especially finding high points to watch the ocean and let the wind run through her hair. Perhaps when he made a new bike for Grunt he'd work on getting one set up so she could ride around town when they got back; Despite her curt persona the word around town had spread that the 'drow lady' was nice. Likely Ayame's fault, but old guys also waved at her so maybe it was Curtis too? Either way he hoped tonight she was in.

Lady Blood Claw opened the door, clearly having just put her clothes on and stood before Corvayne with arms folded. “Corvayne, Wick. I was just about to take a bath. What's with that strap you're holding?”

Corvayne felt himself grinning and coughed into his hand. “Well, when we did a dungeon run earlier in the week you left something behind.”

As if it understood, the little levitating cephalopod from the dungeon floated around the corner then wiggled happily and Corvayne had to let the leash go as it flew a little circle around Lady Blood Claw.

She looked down at it, then looked up at Corvayne. Her skin flashed happy pink before it veered to a worried teal.

“Ah... but the trip...”

Corvayne smiled. “It can come along. We'll have a place for it.”

Lady Blood Claw looked down at it, her practically glowing pink. “Very well. I will care for this little beast. Pardon me, might I go take my bath now?”

Corvayne looked over to Wick who just nodded. “Sure, we'll leave you to it.” She tugged Corvayne's arm and he let her take him away from the door. He frowned a little bit.

“I had hoped she'd be more excited about it.”

Wick stopped and shook her head, smirking. “You are so clueless sometimes... walk quietly now.”

Corvayne watched, confused, as she started creeping back to Lady Blood Claw's room.

She reached the door and smiled, then motioned him over. Corvayne followed and could hear through the door what sounded like if LBC had inhaled helium.

“Aww you hungry little squidy? You want tickles and hugs? You like tickles and hugs? Yes you do! Yes you do!”

After eavesdropping for a few more seconds Corvayne eased away from the door and carefully moved back towards the stairs. Wick caught up and nudged his side a few times.

Corvayne smiled back at her. “Well, I suppose we'll have to see if Hari likes the dress as much.”