The dungeon remained under vigilant guard, despite also remaining closed for expansion. Sir Brais had followed the prescribed procedures for investigating aberrant behavior in a dungeon, which so far meant notifying the nearest Temple of the Gods and requesting an inspection team, while preventing anyone from entering or anything from exiting the dungeon.

Under the law based upon the prior covenant, a team of priests or champions dedicated to at least three different high gods had to unanimously agree that a dungeon was a danger to the local population before it could be subjugated and the dungeon heart stone destroyed. There were seven high gods represented in the group that rode into the Sea Crest Dungeon Village some fifteen days after it closed itself off. Some of those gods had more than one representative.

Cerise and her family were not idle during that time. They broke ground for her mother's food hall. Mahayan enjoyed herself by learning and then skilling up Sculpting and Masonry skills along with her Geomancy. She leveled twice, and thanked Cerise for her Lend Potency and for just studying the nature of mana together.

Cerise learned Ritual Casting and Channel Mana from the books Mahayan shared and then observing Mahayan in action.

Tatara also learned skills. Discovering Astrid had learned Stinking Cloud, he quickly became a huge fan of cabbage and beans as he tried to imitate her success. Sadly, for him, Tatara did not fart. He burped. It just wasn't the same.

He did, however, become quite adept at making ceramic statues. He did not actually have a flaming breath attack, but picked up Geomancy from helping Cerise and Mahayan, as well as Aquamancy. He swore he learned it from Cerise and her Greater Cleanse, but Cerise didn't see how.

Tatara also learned of flies and ticks. His first reaction was to feel betrayed. Then Cerise showed him the blister some of the more noxious flies left, the pain they caused poor Daisy, and told him about the Sleeping Sickness carried by ticks and how it had laid low the Guardian of the Silverwood Grove.

Cerise completely won him over to being the Scourge of Flies and Ticks when she reminded him, "People often forget that small bodies can present the biggest dangers. Sure, fear the drake in the forest that you'll never walk through, but it's the fly's bite that makes your horse buck that's more likely to send you off to Noq-el's judgment."

When Cerise's mother spotted Tatara's sculptures, she praised him and asked if he would consider practicing his Sculpting by making plates and bowls and cups for her food hall. He had, by this time, been introduced to her Cooking, and he haggled his way into getting some pan cakes for his efforts.

As soon as the food hall's cellar was properly dug out, Mahayan paused in making bricks from the piled up dirt to turn the cellar walls from dirt to stone. While she did that, as they had done for the house, Matais, Jiotian, her father, and Mykhal laid out the bricks Mahayan had already made, then went off to fell lumber for the parts of the building that wouldn't be stonework.

Bergin, meanwhile, set up things with the Sea Crest [Farmers] Cooperative to open a third-day market on their commons. She handled trades for the seeds they had collected with their tenant [Farmers] and, at just about everyone's request, brewed as much healing potion as she could, and cooked. In the odd moments when she had no other pressing matters to see to, she made the cloth goods for their house, or assembled the furniture pieces Rhene prepared as his relaxing work.

Cerise, like Mykhal, turned her hand to the odd chores around their home between practicing and helping with the building.

On the day the priests rode into town, they were putting the roof on Bergin's Food Hall.

Cerise was handing up bundles of thatching straw when Tatara swooped in, landing on her shoulders and then hiding under her hair. "Mind the claws, please," she reminded him.

«Shh! I'm not here!» he whisper-hissed in Beast Speech.

With that, Cerise expected one of the tenant [Farmers'] children to come around, looking for the baby dragon. Tatara enjoyed playing with the younger ones, but the children close to becoming youths annoyed him, and he often played small pranks on them as repayment for poking at him with sticks or trying to make him entertain them.

She did not expect the clop of hooves and the wash of Inspect skills rolling over her and her family.

"Visitors!" she called up to her father, who was on the roof with Jiotian, staking and spreading the thatch.

"Ah! Get me if you need me, and have Matty start handing us up the bundles," he said.

Cerise got Matais moved over on tasks, and went to greet the slew of riders. She spotted Sir Brais among them and relaxed a touch. "Hail and well met, Sir Brais! My apologies that we are not ready to receive visitors. As you can see, we're putting the roof on Mama's Food Hall."

"Sadly, we are not here for the food," Sir Brais said, with obvious regret. "These excellent people with me are priests and champions of the gods, come to assess the oddities of our dungeon. As you have been involved in that oddity, they are here to discuss matters with you."

Cerise, meanwhile, skimmed her gaze over the dozen people. She saw two faces she recognized. On spotting the first, her face brightened. "Mort-el! It is a pleasure to see you again! It's quite a way from Va'Velton tho--." At that point, she spotted the second familiar face and her happily clasped hands went to her hips, her bright smile turning to thunderous frown. "High Champion Marsen, I can see from here that you have not received the benefits of a Greater Restoration so what howling calamity has you this far from Va'Velton this soon after your surgery? Did you think I was joking about how dangerous it is to be pushing yourself this early into your recovery?"

He laughed, which made Cerise swell with fury. He held up a forestalling hand, and said, "My apologies, Miss ban Silverwood! You are not the first to take me to task, though even the Luns have been more tactful."

She bit back the angry retort on the tip of her tongue and asked instead, "Did Solaris require you make this journey?"

"My honor as a Champion of Solaris required it," he said.

"Which would be a no," she said. Pursing her lips, she let out an aggrieved sigh. "Well, you're here now and I won't insult the Luns with you by asking if you're well. It would ease my mind to examine you and see just what harm your reckless disregard of your health has done you."

Cerise could tell the Luns among the party of holy people by the smirks of schadenfreude on their faces. With the exception of the Mort-el and Marsen, the rest, including Sir Brais, looked scandalized by her manners.

"I would be honored to ease your [Healer] hearted concerns, and I do promise you that I have, as you instructed when you removed Talamayan's curse from me, been listening to my body and paying careful attention to the line where healing discomfort edges too close to harmful pain. I have been working very hard to avoid that threshold." Marsen looked at Cerise with a serious expression softened by what might be gratitude.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Cerise glanced at the sky, noting the time, and started to say that at least he would have the benefits of her mother's cooking. She held up a hand, her eyes rounding with the thought, spotted Mykhal looking at her as he brought another stack of thatching hay over to be bundled. She used the hand gestures they had learned on the caravans to ask him to relay that they would have important guests tonight. He nodded and Cerise knew it was taken care of.

Turning back to their guests, she said, "If we're discussing the dungeon, and how its guardian responded to a peaceful request to enter the holy place the dungeon guards, that will likely take through dinner time. Let's put your beasties in the corral. My apologies that we will have to speak outside. We have no servants, and we're still building our home. I mean you no disrespect that I cannot offer you more hospitality."

Marsen said, "It doesn't help that we came to you without notice. I appreciate the hospitality you do show us."

They got the horses and the horse-like beasties settled in the corral, and then moved off to a spot recently cleared of trees, settling on stumps not yet pulled up. Mykhal found them. He came carrying a cask of small beer and a wooden box of cups that also had several water bags tucked in. "Mama says to ask if anyone has a food they dislike or that disagrees with them."

One of the priestly types said, "Small seeds and the like hurt my gut. By small, I mean as you find on strawberries."

Mykhal dipped an incline from his shoulders and everyone else opined some variant of "food is good".

Cerise discretely used Greater Cleanse on the cups before she filled them and passed them around. She was sure a few of the priests and champions noticed the more magical skill, but everyone appreciated the beverage.

Introductions were made all around, at which point Cerise learned that the Mort-el was named Gamais.

Cerise explained herself, her thoughts as she read the old covenant, the association with holy places that seemed so self-evident to her, and what she knew of the rites and rituals around holy places. Then she described the rituals she, Mykhal, and Jaxin had observed.

"We don't know which god uses dungeons as an extension of aegis to their holy places so we made sure to follow as many of the common rites as we could recall: ritual cleansing, fasting, preparation of sacrifice--"

Gamais interrupted. "What sacrifice?"

"Things we made or gathered by our skills. So, I made sure to gather and store seeds as we came down from the North. To prepare them as a sacrifice, I pulled out the most magical ones we had, put them in a paper pocket, and carried it with me for a week. I studied the uses of each plant and their growing needs, and any seed I could not recite that information from memory for, I took out and set aside. It wasn't suitable as a sacrifice because I couldn't imbue it with enough intention.

"Mykhal did the same with fangs and claws of the beasts he hunted during our journey, and Jaxin sacrificed a knife he made from ore he mined and smelted."

"So you brought aspects of Death into this holy place?" Gamais asked, an eyebrow raised.

"'In the holy place, commit no violence, shed no blood.' We are human. Humans are part of Life, and Death is a very important part of Life. Without Death we cannot Live, so I guess you could see it that way, yes. We ate the meat of every creature Mykhal hunted."

Gamais smiled syrupy sweet at the Luns. "That's why she's blessed by my god!" He smiled slyly to Cerise and asked, "Why don't you say his name for me?"

"You need your Noq-el love?" Cerise asked, delighted by the joyful shiver that went up the Mort-el's body. She turned to look to the Hunt God's champion. "Does it please you to hear El-Ahrand's name so, too?"

The champion addressed smiled a goofy smile, but the chuckle that came with it was low and sultry. "Yes."

"I will keep that in mind," Cerise said.

They talked more about the details of the ritual Cerise's team had undertaken, and were just getting to the part where they approached the dungeon when Mykhal came, carrying another crate of dishes. "Mama is minding pies in the new oven, so I'll be back with the food for your guests."

"She's not really your mother, is she?" one of the Sol party, a woman just past her last growth, challenged.

Cerise could feel Mykhal looking at her with a betrayed hurt, but the full force of her attention was on the woman. "Champion Nahia, I don't know where you got that idea, and I don't actually care, because you don't get to decide what makes someone a 'real' mother."

Nahia opened her mouth, but Marsen spoke first. "Stand down."

The champion looked to the High Champion with her jaw stubbornly jutting forward. "Truth will out."

"In its time," High Champion Marsen agreed. "Now is not that time."

Nahia bowed her head, her jaw working.

Mykhal said, "Miss Bergin did not give birth to me, but she has been more of a mother to me than the one who did, and Mister Rhene is the father I always wished I had. This is my family, and we chose each other. The blood we choose is thicker than milk." Then he walked back the way he had come from, his back straight and shoulders squared.

Cerise frowned at the two Solar champions. "Is there something I should know?" she asked.

Marsen said, "In due time, yes. We need to deal with the dungeon first, though."

Cerise turned to Champion Nahia. "I don't know how much of my family's history you have or haven't been told, but Mykhal very much is part of our family. Respecting that is a non-negotiable requirement to remain welcomed in our home."

Marsen put a restraining hand out. He said, "Nahia will respect that."

Gamais spoke up. "So, setting aside Sun Ball drama, you were going to tell us about getting to the dungeon, and all of that. What happened?"

Cerise allowed herself to be redirected back to the dungeon business, and gave a quick recounting, leaving it at just "checking in with the guards" before approaching and stating their intentions. Her description got to the dungeon's response before she was interrupted for a slew of questions seeking greater detail. Cerise was barely begun on answering when Mykhal returned with a steaming grand platter.

Shooting a wary glance Nahia's way, Mykhal said, "Papa Rhene and Mister Jiotian sent Matais to Mama because he started having one of his bad moments. She says he just needs some calm, so she's staying with him, and I'll be over working on the thatching. Send Daisy or Tatara if he comes back from his rounds, and I'll come see what you need."

"Thank you," Cerise said. She took the platter from him and set it on a central stump, then used the cup box as an extra support. Speaking to their impromptu guests, she said, "Again, I apologize for the rough hospitality. We can only provide so large a group a campfire meal." So saying, Cerise began to dish up plates and pass them around, letting the priestly types figure out their own meal hierarchy. "Mama has a personal distaste for knives at meals so we have skewer pairs you may use if that's more comfortable than the utensils you brought with you."

Sir Brais waited for everyone to sort themselves out, then asked, "Matais, that's the simpleton you intend to see classed?"

"He is the simple man, yes," Cerise said. "I'm surprised you don't make a greater effort to see your fey-souled classed down in the plains. Is it because of the slavers?"

"How's that?" Am-Nahar's Ager-el asked.

"Slavery isn't much of a thing on the border. Not may have the time to keep someone where they don't want to be so we're more likely to use shame or exile for punishments, or execution for the aggressively dangerous. That said, we've heard how slavers love to find Novices with mana-touched classes, and better those who are fey-souled so they can pretend to be caring for them while using their mana-sensitivity for treasure hunting."

"I meant, why do you think simpletons are fey-souled?" the Ager-el asked.

Gamais laughed. "Because we are. I was fortunate enough to remember my patron and walked under his aegis into a classing room. Most of those born like me are too ... disoriented by the differences. Those who lack patronage, even when they manage to class, rarely live long enough as a human to fully settle into this strange flesh."

Gamais turned a curious gaze to Cerise. "I do wonder, though, why you choose to aid fey-soulded 'simpletons' to class."

"Matais is a member of my village. He has as much of an innate right to seek his prosperity as any other being, and as a member of my village, the more he prospers with us, the more reason he has to help the rest of us to prosper with him. Being simple doesn't change that. If anything, he's more likely to come back with a class that none of the rest of us could achieve because he isn't bound by the same mindset or skills the rest of us possess."

Gamais asked, "So you do this for your own prosperity?"

Cerise smiled. "Absolutely. After all, what is more precious than the people we surround ourselves with?"