Sophia Blair’s temporary space in Athir’s Mage’s Guild tower definitely couldn’t compete with what she had back home. Unlike her lavish corner office in New Frausta, she had been tucked away in an unused room on a floor full of them. I knew this because the clerk at the front desk had retrieved Maribelle instead of the woman in question. The liaison's secretary had told me all about it on the way up.
Now I was waiting patiently for Maribelle to fetch the Kitsune. Sophia was staying in the tower, so it wasn’t like she had far to go. It was more likely that she was making me sit here for longer than I needed to simply because she could.
It was typical, really.
I panned my gaze around the office as there wasn’t much else to do. Both Sophia’s desk and Maribelle’s in the corner were covered in paperwork. At the very least, it looked like they were keeping busy. Their job might have been to secretly look into Carimella Rose and her dealings, but it appeared as though that task had a much larger trail than they were expecting.
While I was curious to see how their investigation was going, I held myself back. I wasn’t about to go through someone else’s stuff for idle curiosity, not even if it would mean I’d get under Sophia’s skin when she returned.
Which was very tempting. When I started debating on whether or not I should change my mind, the door opened and I turned to face the new arrivals.
“Looks like you picked up a stray,” I said with a smile. “Suppose you’re not the only one anymore.”
The Kitsune, in her tall Human form as usual, stared daggers at me. Ferrisdae stepped around her, saying nothing. She was used to seeing this kind of interaction between us by now just like Maribelle was. The secretary brought up the rear, closing the door behind her.
“She’s your apprentice. Maybe if you didn’t lose her, you wouldn’t forget who she is because it’s been five minutes since you last saw her,” Sophia tiredly replied with a roll of her eyes. “On the way up here, we got a message that someone else was looking for us. We went down instead of coming up here to see you, as is proper, and we found her.”
“I got the maps,” Ferrisdae said as she approached me, ignoring the insults. “They’re in my Dimensional Pocket. Would you like them?”
“No, they’re fine where they are,” I answered with a shake of my head. “Was there any trouble with the Consortium?”
She shook her head. “None at all. They were really forthcoming with everything I needed after I flashed my badge.”
“What do you need maps for?” Sophia asked. Then, she put up her hand. “Actually, I don’t need to know. Badger, we aren’t supposed to be in communication. I’m supposed to be here completely separate from you.”
“Trust me, I wouldn’t be here asking you for help if I didn’t need to be, but I am because I do,” I said with a scowl.
The Kitsune’s demeanor changed in an instant. She stood up a little straighter as if intrigued. “Really?” she asked, her voice taking on a high and mighty cadence. “I’m not sure if you deserve my help after barging into my office so late at night, talking about strays or whatnot.”
“Would it not be weirder if I came in here begging?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.
She stared at me for a moment before shaking her head. “No, that would be very weird. I’d have to wonder if you were actually Badger,” she conceded. “Either way, what do you want? Just because you need help doesn’t mean you need to bother me while I’m trying to sleep.”
“We need a teleport back to New Frausta,” I told her.
“Then you can wait until the morning when there are mages working the teleportation rooms,” Sophia growled. “You don’t have to barge in here and probably ruin everything.”
“So you keep saying, but we need to teleport to the Department of Dungeons. Brackenhorst’s office, specifically.”
Beside me, Ferrisdae exchanged a glance with Maribelle. She hadn’t been told what I was worrying about, so all she could do was shrug.
Sophia narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why?”
It wasn’t easy, but I managed to ignore the chance to twist her words. “I’m not entirely sure if this level of urgency is needed, I’ll admit that, but it’s something I’d rather do quickly and be wrong about than let it sit overnight and be right,” I told her. “Brackenhorst already knows we’ll be coming. I called him on the Stone on the way here, I’m waiting for him to get back to me so I know he’s ready for us.”
“You’re saying a lot of words, but you’re not actually telling me what is going on,” she complained.
I gave her a serious look. “Remember the village of Ral?”
“Our greatest failure?” she scoffed, crossing her arms defensively. “You’re bringing up the past in front of your rookie now?”
“She already knows that I’m the Nameless thanks to a knuckle-headed adventurer. One tale won’t hurt,” I said, glancing at Ferrisdae. While I didn’t plan on sating all of her curiosity, a little bit of context certainly could help
“And I don’t know any more than Tabs told us. Haven’t looked it up or anything,” the Elf said, holding up her hand as if swearing on it. Despite that, her curiosity was evident. “Also, Cojisto’s smarter than you give him credit for.”
To that, I simply shrugged. He did have some esoteric knowledge relating to some things that I never thought important, but that was all I was willing to give him. I gestured to Sophia. “Do you remember it or not?”
“Of course I remember that,” she snapped. If she wasn’t hiding her true form, I was sure that the hair on her tail would be standing on end just thinking about it. “It was… a horrible way to go. Why are you bringing that up?”
I turned to Ferrisdae.. “Back when we were Reliable Rhodes, we did a lot of traveling,” I said.
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“And now the old man’s reminiscing,” Sophia muttered.
“Context is important,” I responded, not looking at the Kitsune. “We went from town to town, village to village, usually avoiding the big cities along the way. I didn’t care for them, but neither did Gro Khal.”
“He was the Orcish archer, right?” Ferrisdae asked, pulling up a chair so she could sit. She leaned forward, looking at me like I was about to tell her that she was getting whatever her heart desired.
“He was,” I confirmed with a nod. “While we were traveling, we came across this little Halfling village.”
“Ral,” Sophia said, apparently deciding to be a part of this conversation. “It was beautiful. Situated near one of the Tarlor Mountain peaks and built around a waterfall. It was full of happy people that were simply glad to be alive in such a wonderful place.”
“But, this isn’t a happy story, is it?” Ferrisdae asked slowly. “On account of it being your greatest failure.”
We both gave her a solemn nod. “The dungeon had gone unnoticed because there was another one inside the mountain much further below it. It showed up as one on Brackenhorst’s map, so it was missed.” I explained.
“It’s an exceedingly rare phenomenon, but it happens,” Sophia added.
“It’s only happened one other time since the beginning of the Department of Dungeon, yes,” I agreed.
“So far as the records show, at least.”
I gave Sophia an exasperated glance before moving on. “When we arrived, we decided to take a break. No fighting, just relaxation after a few hard quests.”
The Kitsune leaned in towards Ferrisdae. “That’s where Tabitha proposed to him,” she whispered. Ferrisdae grinned at the unexpected information.
“None of that!” I chastised, aiming a hard glare at Sophia. “This is the story of Ral, not of me and Tabs.”
“My mistake,” she replied with a smug smile. “Please, continue.”
Maintaining the glare, I continued. “Turns out, there had been a hole to the Plane of Water up in the mountain where the waterfall started, though we wouldn’t find that out until later. That’s where the main draw of their village was coming from. They assumed it was the work of some local deity or another, but that’s neither here nor there. Not two days after we arrived, the waterfall started spewing out more than twice as much as it had been. An Elemental had taken up residence on this side, and apparently had for a while.”
“By our standards today, this one would have been considered a Greater Water Elemental,” Sophia chimed in. “It was bigger than any of the houses there in Ral, and after the top blew off the mountain it was angry.”
“The top of the mountain blew off?” Ferrisdae asked.
“Like a volcano,” I answered. “Water spewed everywhere, people were panicking, and it was only through luck that we were there.”
“While we weren’t prepared, Danella was a worshiper of Sasalarn, Goddess of the Sea,” Sophia explained. “It took a quick miracle, but through her faith she was able to part the torrential water away from the village.”
“The Elemental didn’t like that,” I said.
“Oh, absolutely not. It was pissed.”
“While Danella was doing that, we started evacuating the village,” I continued. “It was slow going. Thankfully, the river was still slick even though there wasn’t any water flowing down it. Sliding down the mountain was a time honored tradition amongst the villagers and there was a convenient path alongside it to a safer place. Those that could slid with their belongings, going around when it was too steep, while everyone else took the long way.”
“And most of them did get away, at first.”
Silence fell over the room. Ferrisdae was enthralled, and even Maribelle was watching us with barely veiled interest. The Human woman almost always had an air of disinterest about her, so this was new to me.
“We fought it,” I said quietly. “We weren’t prepared for something like a Greater Water Elemental. Danella was focusing on her miracle, Sophia was busy helping the villagers, and Gro and I were ill suited to combat something that our weapons passed right through. My wife, at least, was swiping at it with the flat of Britear, which was doing more than me or the archer. Ulrich was, unsurprisingly, prepared for anything.”
“That muscle-brained wizard was always prepared for combat,” Sophia snorted.
I nodded. “Tabs and Ulrich were the only ones of us making headway against it, so Gro and I played defense,” I said. “We took hits for him and Danella while they ran about, using cover when appropriate. Most of the remaining buildings were destroyed during the fight, but that was just property. They could have rebuilt.”
“Could have,” Ferrisdae repeated, catching on those words.
“Our greatest failure,” Sophia said with a thin, disgusted smile. “Once it realized it actually was going to die, it tried to scramble up the mountain back to the dungeon that formed around it. That’s when it found that it couldn’t.”
“So it escaped the fastest way it could,” I stated.
“Down the river,” Maribelle whispered, making her first sound since the story started.
“Right through the villagers. Even the ones on the path,” Sophia confirmed with a grimace. “Sometimes, I wish I had a bigger pool of spells to choose from. Like a wizard. If I had, I could have done something more than shout a warning when I heard the torrent coming and get a small group out of the way.”
Frowning, I reached up and tapped her arm with the back of my fist in an unusual case of solidarity. “You thought Danella’s goddess had stopped holding the water back, it was an easy mistake to make,” I said. “It’s not like it would have happened if we had the right tools to kill it. We learned, after that.”
“I know. That doesn’t make it easier,” she muttered. I gave her a moment, and she placed a hand on my shoulder for a moment before taking a step back and crossing her arms. Her demeanor went back to normal, though she couldn’t hide the pain I knew we were both feeling. Not completely. “So let me get this straight. What you’re saying is that there could be a calamity hitting Athir like it did Ral. Something that we probably can’t stop once it’s in motion even with the strength of a fully developed nation at our back.”
“To be honest, I really, truly hope that I’m only thinking of the worst case scenario,” I told her honestly. “If it’s not, then you have my permission to mock me mercilessly.”
Sophia scoffed. “As if I need your permission for that. Your wife threw you under that wagon a long time ago.”
“So she did,” I said with a dark chuckle.
“Wait, what happened to the Elemental?” Ferrisdae asked. “And the dungeon, and Ral?”
Sophia and I looked at each other before I spoke. “Slain, eventually. The dungeon doesn’t exist any more, and neither does Ral. There were only a handful of survivors and they didn’t want to rebuild alone. We adventured for another year or two after, but it wasn’t the same anymore for any of us. That was when we went our separate ways, and I decided to become a Dungeon Inspector to make sure this kind of thing never happened again.”
“More like he followed me into the profession,” Sophia said with a roll of her eyes.
“We were both thinking about it. Tabs was the one that pushed us forward. Not my fault that we were together when she told us to go for it,” I reminded her.
My jacket buzzed, and I pulled out the Sending Stone. A message from Brackenhorst was written on it. “He’s in his office,” I said. “He says he’ll be ready in a minute. Sophia, will you take us?”
Everyone turned to her. She looked at the six expectant eyes and threw up her hands. “Fine, let’s all teleport into the Chief’s office, why not!”
“Good girl,” I praised, and I could have sworn she almost snapped at me.