Vee closed his eyes as he opened the door to his boarding house room, praying for a miracle but knowing that one wouldn’t appear. He waved his mother inside and waited for all of two rapid heartbeats, which was all the time it took for Emma Vales to let out a shriek.
Now, there were two kinds of shrieks. The first was quick, bright, and not too loud, like the kind a teenager might make when feigning anger at their crush over some silly bit of hijinks. The second type was horror made audible, a bloodcurdling yowl that brought to mind the stuff of nightmares: men with masks and bloodied knives lifted overhead, creatures with too many limbs for comfort and unblinking eyes, little girls dressed in green blocking the only exit of the store and trying to sell you cookies.
Truly horrifying things.
It should go without saying that the sound Emma Vales made was that second type, and that Vee had to awkwardly wave off no fewer than four concerned neighbors who popped their heads out into the hallway to make sure nobody was being murdered.
“My mother is visiting,” he said each time. This earned him two judgmental glares and a pair of sympathetic smiles, which was probably better than could be expected otherwise under the circumstances.
He stepped inside, his heart falling at the sight of cups, bowls, plates, and dirty laundry that had failed to be magically whisked away.
“Shame! Shame, shame, shame!” Emma scolded, puttering around the room and scooping up the mismatched dishes. “This is exactly what I was worried about!”
“I thought you were worried about him not eating, milady,” Edukaiser said from the corner of the room, the barest hint of amusement creeping into her voice. “Based on the state of these dishes I think that particular fear has been proven unfounded.”
Emma, eyes blazing, turned and faced the armorsoul. “You know perfectly well what I mean.”
Edukaiser nodded. “Of course, milady.”
Holding a stack of plates, Emma jerked her finger toward the sink and said, “You are going to help me wash these right now.”
There was no room for dissent or protestations, so Vee meekly nodded and trudged over to the sink, rolling up his sleeves and turning on the water.
For the next few minutes, mother and son simply scrubbed plates, soaked mugs and cups, and wiped out bowls. Emma’s anger sent ripples through the ethereal, but Vee didn’t dare activate [Third Sight] to take a look.
“Where did you even get all these?” Emma asked. “None of them match.”
“I just…sort of picked them up piecemeal,” Vee admitted. “I figured that since I wasn’t entertaining anyone the way they looked wasn’t really important.”
Emma shook her head. “Good aesthetics are always important. How you treat yourself in private carries over into public life too.”
“I know, I know,” Vee said. “Being surrounded by outer beauty brings out a person’s inner beauty.”
He’d heard this a million times before.
“Don’t look so skeptical,” Emma chided. “There’s a lot of strength in beauty, son. People like beautiful things. We’re drawn to it instinctively, we seek it out and give preference to it. Beauty is worth its weight in gold.”
Vee chewed on that, metaphorically speaking, while he handed his mother plate after plate and bowl after cup. Would the dungeon benefit from being made more beautiful? Probably not, but depending on how one chose to define beauty…maybe? At the very least, the outside of the dungeon could probably stand to see some improvements, even if the interior rooms benefited from their…utilitarian minimalism. The flowers Kai was growing and setting up were a good start, but there was definitely room for more. With the circuit now done, Vee had time to start building some ectoplasmic sculptures – or directing the [Dungeon Maintainers] to make some out of wood and metal – that could also help set the mood and improve Crestheart’s “beauty”.
Food for thought, and Vee resolved to return to the idea in the coming days once he’d settled some of his other more pressing issues. When the dishes were done, Emma turned her attention to Vee’s wardrobe and linens. She made her disapproval with both of those things clear and vowed that she’d take Vee shopping the next day to rectify all the things that she saw as unacceptable in her son’s living space.
“You’re a [Dungeon Master], not a college student,” she said when he protested. “Your living space should reflect this.”
It was late when she finally finished her examination and rectification, but eventually Emma and Edukaiser left. Exhausted, Vee flopped down on his freshly made bed and lay there for a moment.
His mind was running faster than it had any right to, but at the same time fatigue made his thoughts feel like they were running through mud.
At least one thing came through clearly and consistently: clean sheets and blankets felt wonderful.
Before long, Vee was asleep.
----------------------------------------
True to her word, Emma showed up at the boarding house early the next morning and loudly rapped on Vee’s door. Alforde opened it up, and the trio was dragged outside to go and do what Vee’s mother called a “light bit of shopping.”
Vee and Alforde groaned. Having been subjected to this type of thing on more than one occasion before, they both knew that it would be neither light nor just a bit. Instead, they steeled themselves for a long day of traipsing from one store to another, enduring prolonged conversations with [Shopkeepers] about the minutiae of their goods and the little details of their stores, and collecting enough bags to start their own enterprise.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Reginald, though, had no frame of reference for what to expect, and happily asked, “So when will we be back? Like an hour or two?”
Vee shook his head. “My mother is a high level [Socialite],” he said. “That means she has an endurance for shopping that regular people can’t imagine. If we end up spending hours walking around stores and looking at three hundred different versions of any given thing without buying a single one she’ll think it’s great, while we’ll wonder what sort of Great Beast we pissed off to be subjected to such torture.”
“Ah. I see. That doesn’t sound as good.”
“It might not be awful,” Alforde said brightly. “There’s bound to be lots of new and exciting things for us to see and explore! Since we’ve been so busy with the dungeon since we arrived, we really haven’t gotten out and explored all that much.”
“That’s the spirit,” Emma said, looping her arm through Vee’s. “Don’t look so dour, son, I’m sure we’re going to have lots and lots of fun.”
----------------------------------------
The city was filled with the same quiet melancholy it usually was, but Vee thought he saw more smiles and heard more laughs than he normally did. That might not have been true on a strictly numerical basis, but there’s a strength in perceptions and Vee took heart in it all the same. With that said, though, after four hours of shopcrawling with his mother throwing fleurs around like they were rice or candied nuts at a wedding, Vee decided that he’d finally had enough. His feet hurt. His knees, lower back, and shoulders ached too. His palms didn’t burn anymore, but that was probably not a good thing.
Taking a deep breath, Vee stopped in front of a shop that advertised the services of a level 30 [Haberdasher] and refused to go any further.
“Please, mother. No more. I’m begging you. Let’s be done for the day.”
Emma paused and looked back with a confused expression, as if unable to fathom the possibility that someone wasn’t having as much fun as she was so Vee made a show of demonstrating how overburdened he was. He held a half dozen bags stuffed full of clothes and coats and socks and underwear he didn’t want or need. He’d argued against the first two, only to be talked into assenting by his mother, who was very persuasive when she put her mind to it. It’d only gotten worse from there, with Emma finding a half dozen things in every shop that Vee “needed” and “couldn’t live without.”
As bad as Vee had it, Alforde had it worse. The armorsoul was carrying a stack of boxes filled with dishes and decor that was nearly as high as he was tall, which meant that he was no longer able to follow them into stores. So far he’d somehow managed to keep them from falling while darting around the crowd, but Vee suspected that it was only a matter of when his best friend would drop them, and not a matter of if.
Even Reginald, or more specifically Dogginald, had been roped into carrying pieces of art that Emma insisted would look nice on Vee’s walls. The hat muttered darkly at being “put to work like a pack horse,” and complained endlessly, but after the first hour or so nobody listened to him any further.
He perked up now.
“Yeah, let’s go back to the boarding house,” the hat said. “I’ve had my fill of shopping for the next decade.”
Then, in a quieter voice that only Vee could hear, “If you went through this anywhere near regularly, boss, I’m starting to think you had the right idea in leaving home.”
That earned a chuckle from Alforde and a glare from Edukaiser, whose sense of hearing was uncanny. That brought back a bit of a memory for the [Dungeon Master]: as a child he’d often snuck out with his brother Emory to steal sweets from the kitchen. Edukaiser had almost always caught them, though she hadn’t been nearly as successful when Emory had gone by himself.
Vee wondered how his brother was doing. Maybe he’d have to write him a letter and have his mother deliver it for him.
A thought for another time.
“I’m tired,” he said aloud. “I want to be done and go back to the boarding house.”
“But there are so many shops left to explore,” Emma said. “We haven’t even finished this street yet.”
There was something in her tone that made Vee pause and take another deep breath. He’d always gotten along better with his mother than his father, and he was really happy to be spending time with her – which definitely made this harder – but he wasn’t enjoying himself and there were other matters that required his attention.
This wasn’t going to be another moment like he’d had with his father before getting kicked out, but if he didn’t manage things well here he could definitely sour things with his mother for a while and Vee didn’t want that. He didn’t want that at all.
Not for the first time in his life, Vee wished that he was a little better with words and pressed on anyways.
[Guts +1]
He jiggled his bags once again. “Look at all this stuff we’ve already got. We really don’t need to explore the rest of the street, do we? Surely this is enough for me to make whatever statement you think I need to, right?”
He paused for a moment before continuing.
“I’m tired. I’m cold. It’s been a long few weeks and I don’t have the patience for this. I’d much rather just sit and talk to you than go through twenty more shops and buy a bunch of stuff I’ll never use, you know? In the last two hours I don’t think we’ve exchanged any words that aren’t some variation of Come see this or Tell me what you think of that. I want to hear about how you’ve been. How things are back home. What Emory has been up to. How…how father is doing.”
His voice cracked at that last bit.
“Can’t we just be done for now?”
Emma’s shoulders stiffened, but she didn’t look angry or upset as she slowly nodded.
“Of course we can, darling. Of course we can.”
Vee breathed a sigh of relief, and the group trudged back to Sculla’s boarding house.
Main Character Sheets:
Vee Vales
Primary Class: G-h-o-s-t M-a-e-s-t-r-o? (Locksmagister University), Level 33
Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 24
Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 7
Might: 15
Wit: 41
Faith: 25
Adventurousness: 7
Ambition: 16
Plotting: 19
Charisma: 18
Devious Mind: 29
Leadership: 22
Guts: 15 (+1)
Intimidating Presence: 11
Citizenship: 24
Public Relations: 8
Determination: 7
Persuasiveness: 6
Bargaining: 4
Patience: 3
Competitive Spirit: 1
Pragmatism: 1
<3<3 Infatuation <3<3
Alforde Armorsoul:
Primary Class: Hammer Specialist (Self), Level 6
Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 18
Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 18
Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 11
Might: 59 (+1)
Wit: 15
Faith: 28
Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 9
Endurance: 33
Intimidating Presence: 15
Heart of a Champion: 14
Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 9
Vigilance: 11
Vanity: 2
Single-Mindedness: 1
Reginald:
Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ???
#$&Q#$)(@#$#@#$%!@#$##%#%()@#$**@@##
Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 43
Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 21
Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 14
Additional Class: Hyperthymesiac (Self), Level 5
Might: 2 (+1)
Wit: 37
Faith: 17
Ambition: 28
Greed: 24
Deceptiveness: 27
Manipulativeness: 42
$#&*!@!!: !!!
Loyalty: 47 (+1)
Patience: 11
Irritability: 25
Remorsefulness: 17
Expository Prowess: 23
#%$Pragmatism*#$: @#61$5
Hop@#!! @#$@!@#
@#$@%%^
#4^5#*&_!+++#(@$#
Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 9