There were eight large tents lining the interior of the settlement walls. Before, I had assumed they could hold about twenty men each, but when we entered our tent I saw that they were supposed to house more than that at the expense of space.
Fifteen cots lined both sides of the long tent with barely enough space to stand between them. It didn't look like every one was in use, though, and a few beds had been pushed together. In the back, two men finished tying a curtain around the last tent poles as promised.
"How many workers are there?" I asked.
"There are 112 right now," Felder answered. "We're all spread out, so it's not as bad as it looks. Keith wanted to make sure this would be profitable before really committing."
"Calling in 112 workers isn't committing? That's a lot of people."
"Aye, but that's nobility for you," Felder said with a shrug. "He's got the coin to throw around and, if there's one good thing about Keith as a boss, it's that he's not frugal."
"Usually nobles correct you when you call them mister instead of lord," I noted. He hadn’t when we last spoke.
"He doesn't bring it up much unless he has to. Family history, you see," Felder said. "He's surprisingly down to earth, for what he is. If he learned to stop being so lecherous, he'd be a proper scion."
“If only."
Ferrisdae nodded to the men who put up the curtain as they made their way out, and left to see her new area. The divider was the same material as the tent and hung loosely to the ground. Behind it were two cots pushed together with a pile of blankets and pillows on it.
"Truly, the life of luxury," Ferrisdae said sarcastically. "I guess you and Cojisto will be sleeping right outside the curtain."
"Yes. I don't care that you can brutally rip a man in half with a spell that emulates a spinning saw," I said, causing Felder to give me a confused, slightly alarmed look. “I’m not going to be leaving you alone in a tent full of miners. And Cojisto.”
Ferrisdae chuckled to herself. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m actually really good with kids.”
“Really?” I sighed. “That’s what you’re trying to joke around about?”
“It’s got two meanings, since I’m old enough to be the great grandmother of any Human here,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows.
“Yes, I understood it,” I deadpanned. “I just didn’t find it funny.”
“It was a little amusing,” Felder said.
“Mr. Rockcrusher said it was amusing,” Ferrisdae repeated, smirking.
“As the only one in the room with a sub century life expectancy,” I said. “I assure you that it is not.”
Felder chuckled, then looked towards the exit. “Alright, I need to get back to my men. Dinner at the mess begins two hours before sundown, though I expect that Keith will want to invite at least one of you to a private dinner.” His eyes flitted to Ferrisdae, but there was no need to watch him to know what he meant. “Tomorrow, I’ll brief you on what to expect in the mines when we’re on the way.”
“Thank you for showing us to our quarters,” Ferrisdae said. “We appreciate your assistance." She suddenly looked very somber. I didn't think a couple of jokes would lift her mood, but they were nice to hear.
“And for sharing information,” I said. “If you have a map, then that will be handy as well.”
“Aye, I can do that for you,” Felder replied with a nod. “One of the boys fancies himself a cartographer. It’s not amazing, but it’ll get you through alright. Now, I must be off.”
Felder left the tent and Ferrisdae sat down on her bed. Silence descended on the makeshift room as we both thought about the things we just learned. “Do you think Cojisto and Moose will be coming back before sundown?” Ferrisdae asked. “Carr said it was about a day’s ride on horseback, but I don’t know how fast a moose can run.”
I thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know, either,” I answered. My tone turned bitter, and I sighed. “But I don’t expect this dungeon to extend that far. Not that my expectations have done anything but be wrong this whole time. I don’t like not knowing things, Ferrisdae.”
“Yeah, I feel that,” Ferrisdae said softly. I noticed something shift in her demeanor as some of her old sunshine came back. “We’re putting together the pieces of a brand new story. It’s not going to be a swashbuckling adventure where we bust through a dungeon, thwarting every plan to stop us from doing our job quickly. Or at our leisure. Ori’s dungeon was pretty tame if you consider that the death traps worked in our favor instead of theirs.”
“Just a big puzzle,” I repeated. It could work. While I would have preferred a quick and easy subjugation run, that clearly wasn’t what we were getting. Simply wishing that things were different wasn’t going to get us anywhere. Calming my mind, I nodded. “I think that will do for now.”
“Atta boy, Badger,” Ferrisdae said with a grin.
I stared into her eyes and it hit me: she was putting on a brave face for me. All of my complaints before were with my usual bluster, but the moment she thought I was actually deeply stressed by the situation she hid her own discomfort. How could she suffer openly if a friend is?
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What a Halfling thing to do.
“I’m going to go to the river and get cleaned up,” I said, trying not to betray my emotions.
“I have the Clean spell, if you like,” Ferrisdae offered. “So you don’t have to bother with the river if you don’t want to. It’s how I’m planning on getting away with not being ogled, as much good as that’s done for me so far.”
I immediately shook my head. “No. I appreciate the offer, but no,” I said firmly. My body shivered at the thought of it. “I hate the way it feels, the way it just… travels down your skin. Ugh. No thank you.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Ferrisdae said teasingly. “It’s just a light tingle and all the dirt just falls off.”
“Yes, I know how the spell works, thank you,” I said, still feeling grossed out by the thought of it. “I’m going to the river and I’m washing up like a regular person.”
“You’re a lot better like this, I think,” Ferrisdae mused, watching me with a hand on her chin.
“Clueless about the predicaments we find ourselves in and covered in sweaty clothes?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “That’s an odd way to think of anything as better.”
“No, Badger,” she said, laughing. “I mean you’ve opened up a lot more. When we first met, you were just a golem getting the job done. Now I’ve seen you happy, excited, angry, sad, anxious. You’re not holding back, and you even trusted me with an answer that was different from your own. You’ve come to enjoy having me around, haven’t you?”
I stared at Ferrisdae. She was right, of course. It was already a comfortable partnership despite the short time we had been working together. As far as people who could have been forced to work with me, this teenage Elf was a surprisingly good fit, and that had the stink of Brackenhorst and his schemes all over it.
However, she had called me out on it and I had a reputation to cling to until my dying breath. I also thought an answer she'd expect would be better.
“I don’t mind your presence and I find you more tolerable than most,” I told her. “There could have been worse juniors assigned to me, but there also could have been better.”
“High praise,” Ferrisdae whistled. “I really liked that statement about how I’m tolerable. I’m going to hold on to that first part and discard the second, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind, but I’m not going to argue because I feel gross,” I told her flatly. “I trust you can behave yourself for as long as I’m gone?”
“Probably not, but I’ll see what I can do,” Ferrisdae responded mischievously.
"Will you be okay on your own?"
Ferrisdae paused. I could see her facade falter before she tried to cover it with a grin. "I think I need some ‘me’ time, you know? You go get cleaned up."
I nodded before heading to the entrance of the tent. Then I stopped, a thought suddenly occurring to me. I turned to face Ferrisdae. "If you have Clean, why did you make up an excuse not to go into Gar's smithy?"
Ferrisdae shrugged, smiling. "Must have slipped my mind," she claimed.
I rolled my eyes and took my leave. Sassy brat.
******
The place where the workers came to bathe was easy to find. It was a short walk from the camp’s gates, and I followed a trail created by the footfalls of many people. It wasn’t as developed as the dirt road leading to the silver mine or to Antrinarc, but it was a start. Someone had built a shed to keep supplies in, and I helped myself.
It took me some time to get into the water. The air was brisk, and the water even more so, but after slowly inching my way in I managed to fully submerge myself. There was no one else around; I assumed everyone was still working, and I was able to relax and listen to the sounds of the forest.
Birds chirped merrily, frogs croaked from the riverbank, and the wind rustled the trees whose branches on one side nearly touched the branches on the other. I allowed myself to relax, laying in the water with only my face exposed to the brisk air.
After everything we had gone through to get to this point, relaxation was exactly what I needed. My emotions were clouding my mind, making me flustered, and that wasn’t going to be good for anyone. I had to set a good example for Ferrisdae, and I certainly wasn’t going to let Cojisto or Moose see weakness in me.
My mind wandered; from my home in New Frausta, my family, my job, to the events that led me here. How I used my skills to become one of the best Dungeon Inspectors the DoD had ever seen, and how I was taking advice from a teenager who was older than my great grandparents.
They said truth is often stranger than fiction, and I had to agree.
Even this place, this so-called Story Dungeon, was something that I wouldn't believe if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Regardless of my frustrations at being stuck here, it was very impressive. I was loath to admit it, but the fact that he could command such mastery over dungeon magic truly made him The Dungeon Master, Master of Dungeons.
What really sold it for me was the people, though. I wasn't making an honest effort to make them break character, and I had no doubt I could if I put my mind to it, but they seemed like they were really into their roles.
If this guy could raise people up in power on a whim, and had a creature that could learn everything about someone via illegal magic, what was stopping him from doing that to these people?
In fact, where did all of these people come from? If over one hundred people went missing and it was Razorbeak’s fault, we would have gotten that in the report. The alternative was that, just like the area, none of them were real.
Which was a mind bending thing to even think about, but it was the only thing that seemed possible in my mind. No matter who Brackenhorst put on the job, there was simply no way "kidnapped a hundred or more people'' could escape our notice.
Who was this person? How could they create so many lifelike people? From our conversation about Himia, it seemed like we were all speaking to her at the same time, but I found it difficult to believe that. It was far more likely that she had put us in a magical sleep or stasis and talked to us individually. That was a more plausible scenario than dividing her attention four ways and learning how to speak moose. At the very least, I hadn't sensed any hesitation during her answers.
There were those times she claimed to have answered my questions in her head and didn't say them out loud, which was odd, but I also didn't sense any deception. But would I detect something from someone claiming to be an Information Elemental? Could I believe that? What in the world even was an Information Elemental?
I groaned as I realized I was thinking in circles. All this amounted to was trying to figure out answers with the barest of facts and becoming stressed because nothing fit. In my frustration, I raised and slammed my hands down into the water, splashing it everywhere.
"This world needs to start making sense," I growled.
Then I paused as something else entered my mind. Something that had been bothering me this whole time, but I hadn’t been able to put my finger on.
It hit me all at once, and I scrambled out of the water. I needed to get back to town and talk to Ferrisdae.