Chapter Three Hundred and Eighty-Seven - They Held the Line

No one really wanted to drag a bunch of chairs up to the deck. The chairs below were all kind of bulky and hard to navigate through the narrow corridors of the Beaver. So we mostly settled on sitting right on the deck, though I did go and get a chair for mister Lepido to sit on, since he was a guest.

The fish was nearly done frying by the time everyone was properly introduced, and we passed around bowls for everyone to eat with. I... really wasn’t too hungry, but I still took a small portion for myself because it smelled really good and my tummy was sometimes louder than my brain.

Besides, I was plenty active! I’d burn off those extra calories in a few bounces, no problem!

“So,” I said as I nibbled on a wooden spoon. “Judas and Wendy both mentioned trouble with a moth dungeon?”

Lepido frowned into his bowl. “That’s correct. Us mothfolk have lived nice, quiet lives for so long now that we weren’t prepared for the trouble we encountered. We’re more dependent on our dungeon than I would have expected, and now that it’s closed to us, we’re left with little recourse.”

“What happened, exactly?” Caprica asked. She was sitting on the deck, legs folded under her quite primly while she blew daintily over the top of her bowl to cool it off.

“A strange plant took hold of the dungeon’s core, and after some time, grew and grew until the dungeon’s light was nearly extinguished. It’s still a small dungeon, you see, even after all these years. A small, kindly dungeon that we’ve grown quite fond of, and in a way, I think it's grown fond of us in turn.”

“Dungeons can be fond of people?” I asked.

Amaryllis made a so-so gesture with a wing. “There’s no concrete proof that dungeons have any real personality. But... there are some people that insist on personifying them, and it’s true that occasionally the challenge a dungeon poses will change from person to person, which only encourages the thought that the dungeon has a personality behind it. Of course, those changes could be entirely arbitrary, or coincidental, and the factors that go into them might be so complex as to be invisible to the common person.”

“I don’t know about all that,” Lepido said. “But we like our dungeon and it’s been fair to us in return. Slow to grow, not much of a challenge, plenty of fantastic goods. It’s allowed our little village to prosper. Candlelight Glade wouldn’t be what it is today without our dungeon. I know that because now that we are without, our village is suffering.”

“When did the first plants show up?” I asked.

“Oh, about two years back,” he said, clearly while searching his own memories. “It started off small. A few little strands around the core. Then it slowly grew, until today, it chokes out the entire dungeon. We couldn’t make it to the fourth floor at all a few months back. Now the third is almost inaccessible.”

I nodded along. Sounded serious, and yet... “Two years is a long time,” I said.

“Much slower than any other Evil Root infection we’ve seen,” Amaryllis said.

“Maybe it’s a different kind?” Awen asked. “Plants can be pretty different from each other while staying the same kind of plant.”

That was possible, I supposed. A slower-acting sort of Evil Root, maybe. "What do the plants look like? What colour are they?" I asked.

Lepido frowned. “They’re more like vines,” he said. “They’re blackish-brown?”

I shrugged. I didn’t know enough about botany to actually tell vines and roots apart, really. “So, either a slower kind of Evil Root, or something different but similar, or... hey, did any of the mothfolk try to stop it?” I asked. Maybe they’d done something to slow the growth down, but then it hadn’t worked?

“We tried everything,” he said. “The moment we discovered it was harming the dungeon we started trying to cut it up, but the vines kept coming back. They’re quite resistant to magic, you see, but some of our farmers are quite skilled, and weeding skills would level very rapidly when trying to kill those vines... or you call them Evil Roots? Have you seen them elsewhere?”

“Yeah, assuming we’re talking about the same thing,” I said. “But, before that, did the farmers succeed?”

“A little. A day’s work could clear out a whole floor’s infection. But eventually it started growing back faster and we only have so many farmers. We tried burning it, freezing it, we brought in anyone from Codwood that we thought could help. We even had a rotation going for nearly a year, farmers going down to weed the dungeon every single day. But then the harvest season came, and we were all quite busy, and the weeds exploded out of control. It took months to push them back, and by then they’d grown faster and tougher.”

“Oh, maybe it’s not so different from other Evil Roots, you were just more proactive about trimming it.”

Amaryllis hummed. “That seems entirely possible, yes. Have any monsters emerged from the dungeon?”

He nodded. “Some. The dungeon had mothsters, of course. They used to stay within, but soon they were roaming outside of the dungeon and making a mess of things. Then there were these strange... plant creatures. Skittish but quite aggressive. We have a rotation of folk by the dungeon’s entrance now, keeping them at bay.”

I clapped my hands, then almost dropped the bowl I was balancing on one thigh. “Okay, we should definitely try to help.”

“Can you?” he asked. “I feel like even if we get rid of the plant, it might be too late for Candlelight Glade now. So many young families have moved to Codwood, and some are finding life here just as good as it was back home. The folk of Codwood are a little... annoyed--some of them, at least--about so many of us showing up and looking for housing and work, but for the most part they’ve been fine, friendly folk. New families have found new homes.”

“That’s not all bad,” I said. “If we can clear out the dungeon’s root problem, then that just means your village will be able to keep growing, right?”

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“That would be nice,” he said. “We started with little more than half a dozen families, now there are a couple hundred folk living in Candlelight Glade, even after so many moved on.”

“Then you’ll just grow again,” I said.

Lepido smiled. “Maybe so. Do you think you can help us? We don’t have much to pay for that kind of thing, else we would have sent for help out in Inkwren. We had a few strange sorts show up, but none of them were able to help.”

“We can try,” I said. “We have a bit of time to spare, right?” I asked the last to Amaryllis who frowned and made a so-so gesture. “We have some time to spare. If we reach the dungeon by tonight and clear it out before morning, then we might only lose half a day to this adventure. That would make it all worth it.”

Joe, of all people, raised a hand and I blinked at him. “Hey, uh, think that once the dungeon’s cleared, we might give it a go?”

“After it’s cleared?” I asked. “You mean, if we manage to remove the Evil Roots?”

He nodded. “All three of us are nearing our tenth level. Don’t know if I want my second class to be a moth class, doesn’t seem like it fits, but it’s better than nothing, and it’ll unlock more general skill slots in any case.”

“Even if you decide not to take the class?” I asked.

“Oh, they could switch out their second class with something else,” Amaryllis said. "Once they have something to switch with. Doing that means you lose the progress you made toward that second class, but you don't lose the progress on your first class. Whereas, if you wait to take a secondary class until you have the perfect one, you'll be capped at level ten and won't be able to advance at all. Some progress is better than none."

That seemed... entirely fair. “Alright,” I said. “Lepido, how long does it normally take to clear out the dungeon?”

“Before all this evil plant business? A few hours, at most,” he said. “Everyone in Candlelight Glade has gone through the dungeon at least once, most of us more than that. We cultivated a lot of materials there. Silks and cloth and dyes. That means we go down into the dungeon two or three times a day. Some of us, at any rate.”

“Ah, okay,” I said. In that case, it wouldn’t hurt to ask some of the mothfolk to escort the Scallywags through the dungeon if it wasn’t too dangerous. “Clive, Steve, Gordon, do you think you guys would want to give it a try too?”

Clive was sitting with his back to the railing and was calmly stuffing his pipe. “Nope,” he said.

Steve and Gordon looked to each other, then started debating it. I left them to it. If they wanted to go, they could.

“Alright, so, how far is Candlelight Glade and what’s the dungeon like? Amaryllis hinted at it already, but we really don't have much time to spare. We're trying to get to a wedding, and even if it's more than a month away, we need to arrive early."

Lepido smiled. "Ah, a wedding. Always a lovely event. You a part of it?"

"Nope! Well. not yet, at any rate. Hopefully! Um, we're friends with the couple. I guess we haven't technically been invited, but mostly we just need to get there to keep a bunch of terrorists from crashing the ceremony."

Lepido stared at me.

"Anyway!" I hurried along, "We'll need to make things quick. Can a big group enter the dungeon? What kind of challenges are there?”

“I never heard of the dungeon having problems with big groups,” Lepido said. “Do you really think you can help?”

“Maybe,” I said. I didn’t want to make any promises I’d end up breaking. Still, a little hope wouldn’t hurt. “I think I can help, in any case. We’ve cleared out Evil Roots from other dungeons before. But never a dungeon that had been infected for this long. It might be a lot harder than any of the previous dungeons we fixed up. So yeah, no promises except that we’ll give it a good try.”

“I wouldn’t mind coming along,” Calamity said. “Don’t know if I’d want a moth class for my third one, but your idea of getting it as a stopgap ain’t so bad.”

“I’ll come as well,” Caprica said. “I have some experience in dungeons, and I'm probably our strongest combatant, so it makes sense for me to help spearhead the fighting.”

I glanced at my other friends. “Of course I’m coming,” Amaryllis said. “To help our ‘strongest combatant’ here, if nothing else.”

“Ah, I’ll come too,” Awen added. “It might be a nice experience, and, um, I guess I wouldn’t mind having more arms.”

“And lots of cute fluff,” I said. “And wings!”

She nodded. “That too.”

“Alright!” I said as I bounced to my feet. “Let’s grab the gear we need. Mister Lepido, how far away is Candlelight Glade from Codwood?”

“Half a day’s walk,” he said. “A little less if your hips aren’t as old as mine. Even less by carriage.”

That was further than I’d like. “In that case... do you think we could park the Beaver above the town?”

“That’d be mighty strange, but there’s room for it, I suppose. No docks or anything though.”

That was probably fine. We could hold steady over land without too much trouble, and we had rope ladders for coming aboard and disembarking.

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” I said.

Lepido blinked. “We haven’t even talked payment yet, though. I don’t know how much a group of adventurers costs, but we had a hard enough time convincing the few that showed up to come already. We’re not the richest little village.”

“We’ll do it for free,” I said.

Amaryllis flicked one of my (bunny) ears. “We’ll discuss remunerations on the way over,” she said. “Seeing as how we are in the region already, I’m certain we could do the work for a steep, yet reasonable, discount.”

I massaged my ear. “Okay, fine,” I said. “I’ll let Amaryllis fleece you for a bit, and then we’ll charge half of that. In the meantime... let’s pick up, everyone! We have some flying to do!”

***