Chapter Ninety-Eight - Bun of Her Word

The moment that Rhawrexdee took off and flapped away, I fell back into the chair I’d appropriated and felt my everything turning to jelly. “Whaa, that was a little scary,” I said.

“A... a little scary,” Amaryllis repeated. “You absolute.... I don’t think my language has a word to express how stupid you are. I... well, you got rid of it, at least.”

I looked at her. “Oh, you didn’t hear our bargain,” I said.

Amaryllis tensed. “What bargain.”

“Ah, heh, it’s a... funny idea I had.”

Her eyes narrowed into dangerous little slits. “I’m listening.”

“Well. I got Rhawrexdee to agree not to eat people if we, um, taught-him-how-to-woo-girls,” I said the last in a rush.

Amaryllis went red, then she paled. “You want us to do what?!” she shrieked.

“He’s mostly interested in princesses, so I might have to rely on your knowledge. Both of you, that is.”

“Awa,” Awen said. “You, you want me to teach a dr-dragon? Not even uncle messed with dragons.”

I shoved myself off the chair, shook a little to unlimber myself, then nodded. “Yup. We have two days to get ready before he shows up at the gate.”

“So we have two days to run,” Amaryllis said as she slumped. “You had me going there, you idio--” she stared at me. She stared really hard. “You actually intend to go through with it?”

“Well, I did say I would,” I said. “And I’m a bun of my word.”

Amaryllis shielded her face with both hands as if she could hide from her new Broccoli-caused problems. I kinda felt bad about it. I hadn’t even told the girls my plan before putting it in motion.

“Ah, shucks. Look, I’m sure you can stay back here and--” Amaryllis bapped me on the head with a bunch of feathers.

“We need to hurry. I didn’t come all the way over to this hole just to get whisked away by some lovestruck dragon. C’mon. We can start our way through the dungeon now and finish it by nightfall.”

“P-pardon me, ma’am?” someone said. We turned to see a potbellied man holding a bowler hat over his chest approaching us. “I’m the mayor and... ah, that dragon...”

“We took care of it,” Amaryllis said. “It’ll be back in two days, so do try not to panic.”

“Ah,” the mayor said. He looked on the verge of panicking.

“We’ll take care of it then too. Now don’t get in our way.”

“Yes ma’am!” he said before scurrying off.

I took a moment to look around and finally noticed just how many people were staring, and whispering. I waved.

Amaryllis wrapped her talons around my wrist and yoinked me forwards. “Come on you. I’m not done telling you, in explicit detail, how dumb you are.”

“Aww, can’t we just skip that part?” I asked. “Being told I’m dumb a lot has got to be bad for my self-esteem.”

“That might be a good thing,” Amaryllis said. “Look at Awen. Self-esteem of a dead fish, but she’s actually clever. There might well be a correlation here.”

“Awa, a, a dead fish?” Awen squeaked.

Amaryllis’ stride carried us past a group of plate-armoured adventurers that were quick to scramble out of our path, as if we had eaten the dragon instead of just bargained with it. “Is what I did really all that dumb?” I asked.

Amaryllis was quiet for a bit, enough that we had crossed a few blocks before she answered. “Perhaps not. Dragons are... not the sort of creature people in their first tier deal with. That is, if you don’t count ‘being eaten’ as a way of dealing with them. They’re like natural disasters to most. When one comes you hunker down and hope for the best. Some nations have the power to fend off all but the most powerful dragons, and they’re not immortal, they can be defeated. But it’s always an expensive endeavor.”

“Okay,” I said. “But we didn’t fight Rhawrexdee, we bargained with him.”

“Yes. That’s also a solution. But one usually carried out by teams of diplomats with armed escorts, not some dimensionally displaced country bumpkin and her two friends who don’t know any better.”

“So what we did?”

“What you did,” Amaryllis corrected. “I’m taking none of the blame if it goes wrong and a third of the praise if it works.”

I huffed. “Meanie.”

Amaryllis grinned back at me, and I knew that she wasn’t quite as angry as I had feared she might be. We spun around a corner and found ourselves right before Yoland’s shop. The old woman was standing outside and leaning on a cane. Her eyes widened on seeing us. “Is it true?” she asked.

“Ah, hello, and is what true?” I wondered.

“You scared off a dragon?” she asked with barely concealed awe.

“How did you learn that so fast?” I asked. “And we didn’t scare it off. We had a polite conversation and I suggested it come back later.”

“World’s will,” the woman said.

“Um. We kind of need our things,” I said. “If it’s not too much trouble. We’ll pay even if you’re not entirely done.”

That snapped Yoland back to attention. “You’ll do no such thing, child. The experience I gained from working on mastercraft items, and the money I’d lose if that beast burned down the town, why, I can’t have you paying. Though I would appreciate you dropping a word about the fine work you purchased at Old Yoland’s.”

Grinning, I followed the woman into her shop.

***

It had taken us nearly half an hour to get everything sorted and ready, a half hour that Amaryllis had spent frowning and fretting. When we finally left (with a polite wave back to the nice older lady) Amaryllis led us straight south towards the far walls of the city.

“Rosenbell is built on the edge of a cliff. It’s a pretty popular place to build a city nowadays. Easy access for airships, a good natural defence, and it allows you to see from afar. In this case it also acts as a barrier against the winds from Silver Salt Bay.” She shook her feathery head. “The geography lesson isn’t important. The point is, the dungeon is at the base of these cliffs.”

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“I think it’s neat,” I said as I jogged a bit to keep up with Amaryllis. “Ah, why are we running?”

“We’re not running, we’re walking with efficiency,” Amaryllis said.

Awen looked like she wanted to say something, but her face was red and she was puffing a bit.

“Amaryllis, slow down. Why are you in such a hurry?” I asked.

My harpy friend huffed, but she did slow down a bit. “What you did back there will attract a lot of attention. Not all of it good. Most of it will be... ambivalent at best. If we can disappear for a day things will calm down considerably. The dungeon is an opportunity to do just that.”

“And you want to level up too,” I guessed.

Amaryllis huffed and stomped on ahead.

I giggled, grabbed Awen by the hand, and pulled her along with me.

We arrived at a short wall at the southernmost end of the city. There was half a dozen meters of opened ground between the nearest house and the wall, with nothing bigger than a garden or two occupying the space. Beyond the wall I could make out gantries and the complicated machines used to maintain and dock airships.

Amaryllis pointed to an arch in the wall, one that wasn’t even guarded.

We stepped through and onto a wooden walkway that stretched out over the edge of a cliff. “Whoa,” I said as I looked down to the plains far below.

“Awa, it reminds me of home,” she said. “Look. They have a dock here too.” She pointed off to the side where half a dozen or so airships were parked in one of those strange vertical parking ports that I had been seeing ever since Port Royal. The ships docked here were noticeably smaller though, and none of them seemed like they were equipped for anything worse than a bit of harsh wind.

Merchant ships.

“Stop gawking.” Amaryllis said. “There’s a lift over there.” She pointed to a little lift next to a kiosk where a young man was reading from a book.

He looked up when we approached and set his book aside. “Heya,” he said. “Which level? And, uh, did you see where everyone went? The guards ran off in a tizzy.”

“Which level leads to the dungeon?” Amaryllis asked.

“Four, ma’am,” he said. “That’ll be three cop each.”

Amaryllis slapped a silver coin on the counter before him.

“There was a dragon,” I said. The boy fumbled his coin, barely snatching it before it could plunge over the cliff. “Don’t worry. We took care of it.”

“R-right,” he said. “Uh. Keep all limbs in the lift and try not to shift too much, please.”

We climbed aboard the lift, which was little more than a sort of basket with a steel frame and wicker walls. A motor puffed to life behind the kioske and we were lowered down at about the same pace a very tired snail might move.

“Not very subtle, are you?” Amaryllis said.

“I’m plenty subtle,” I said.

She snorted. “Oh, really?”

I nodded. “Didn’t you see how subtly I slid into your best friend slot?” I asked.

Amaryllis glared at me, then paused as if to actually think on what I’d said. “No. I refuse to believe that was on purpose.”

I grinned and hung onto the edge of the lift as it slowly wobbled its way down past a few other levels of the small docks. Things were moving pretty fast, but that was alright. I was certain we’d find some time to take a break once we were in the dungeon proper.

There hadn’t been any quest alerts about this one, so perhaps it wasn’t infected or anything like that and I was going to get to experience my first utterly normal dungeon run. I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t getting a little excited.

Awen was shifting by my side, and even Amaryllis was looking impatient... more impatient as our lift finally rumbled to a stop. The level didn’t seem to have any access to ships or anything of the sort. Instead there was a wooden walkway that led into a large bore-hole like cavern dug into the side of the cliff.

A large steel gate was barring the path into the tunnel with a sign hanging before it.

ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK

Dungeon Begins Beyond This Point

-Council of Rosenbell

“Is it locked?” I asked.

“It had better not be,” Amaryllis muttered a moment before she tugged at the gate. It swung opened with a faint squeal of metal on metal. “I guess not.”

Looking back over my shoulder, I took in one last look of the bright and cheery afternoon skies over the desert behind me. A deep breath carried the scent of festival foods and oils all the way over to me.

Then I turned and stepped after my friends.

“Look.” Amaryllis said. She was pointing to a rack to one side. Just a metal pole with two little handkerchiefs tied to it. “Two teams are in there already.”

“Should we do the same?” I asked. “I’ve got some cloth.”

Amaryllis nodded. “Give it to me first.”

Awen was the first to react, pulling a little scarf from the pockets of her jacket, the same one Amaryllis had given her when we entered the edges of the desert a couple of days back.

Amaryllis hummed as she tied it in a knot around the pole, then she pinned her Exploration Guild pin to the bottom. “There, now let’s go clear a dungeon.”

You are Entering The Palace of Strings

Levels 5-7

Your entire party has entered the Dungeon

This Dungeon is Occupied.

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***