In the end, everything moved as quickly as anyone could want due to having Jason to corral everyone into helping, Jason to provide an earnest encouragement that had everyone giving their best efforts, and Jason to deploy a thorough understanding of first-responder medical care.

Possibly due to how expeditiously everyone was moving, the two injured Guards were treated—wounds debrided and cleaned, frostbitten extremities warmed up, and the relevant bandages or splints applied to various places—and on their feet again by the time anyone thought about how they were going to get back to the surface.

“I’m not saying I can’t take ‘em back,” Trio muttered to Harriet. “Just feels wrong not to stick around.”

“Well, sure, don’t split the party and all.” The girl shrugged. “But, like, sometimes you gotta split someone off for the expedition or side quest, and it’s not like we can send any of the other three.”

“I know, I know. It just—”

“Query, answer the following without telling me the answer, resolve any errors or inconsistencies in favor of the priors explicit in the query, and then update the answer and express it: given that Trio is a member of our party by all definitions related to receiving experience or any other quantum of the set of metrics I typically describe as growth, will he receive experience from our quest progress while being busy with a sidequest?”

A creature enlisted to join your group

counts as a member of it , receiving a fullsha

reof experience points awarded

.

When the pain cleared and Cassandra could see again, she wasn’t surprised to find herself being supported by her husband’s arms. “Ow,” she expressed, and then, elaborating, “ow, fuck. Shit, is—”

“We got the filtered version,” Jason reassured her. “She’s fine.”

“I just want to be clear here,” Harriet interjected, “so that there’s no misunderstanding. Mom literally just passed out from having Query slam some malformed information through her skull, and the first thing she does is ask if I’m okay?”

“Shut up, don’t be a—an asshole,” her mother muttered weakly, accepting a proffered waterskin and drinking deeply of it. “Gremlin,” she added afterwards, voice firmer.

“I lost consciousness,” the gremlin said in a deliberate parody of her mother’s mellifluous voice. “This is totally not a problem and I’d better worry about someone else! Definitely not myself! Mom,” she said, anger creeping into her tone, “you know this place is utterly fucking up Query, you need to not do shit like—”

“That’s enough, Little H.” Her father reached down to put a hand on her shoulder, catching her eye with a shake of his head. “Don’t be mean to her. She just got knocked out by what should be something she uses, not gets hit by.”

“Where’s… I forgot his name.” Cassandra brought her hands up to rub her eyes and stopped short as they brushed her horns. “Right,” she said after a moment and a shudder, “tiefling. I have horns from my… demonic heritage, right. I’m good, I’m good. Trio, where’s Trio?”

“Gone to get the other two Guards back to Caravan Master Mook and Lieutenant One-Venture-Commanding Surge,” Jason said with a smile. “Hobgoblin, goblin, and goblin made themselves scarce, too—they’re going to let everyone know what you told them. And that includes the three who were in the Double Big Water room between us and bugbear.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Harriet steepled her hands together in a praying gesture, smirking. “They are spreading the good word of the Claires,” she preached, “unto all those who in bondage to their alignment and a shitty civic equilibrium are kept. Woe betide those who get in our way, and may the consequences be someone else’s to deal with; and let us say, RAmen.”

“RAmen,” her father affirmed supportively. “They offered to fight bugbear with us, but I told them no.”

“Good.” Cassandra straightened, reaching up to pat her Paladin on the shoulder. “Good. We need them on the strategy layer more than we need them here tactically.”

“Oh.” Jason blinked a few times. “I guess so! I just didn’t want them risking themselves in a fight we can handle without them, you know?”

“I do know you, dear, yes.” She pulled his head down for a kiss, then started walking westwards. “So that water room is empty, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. Checked it out myself, then sent Harriet to do the same. But hobgoblin told me that the bugbear’s got two hobs with him and some sort of pet.”

“Probably a nasty one, given everything. Tell me about the room, you two. Harriet, you first.”

“The room of the cave has a couple of big ponds, full ones. They’re being filled by a waterfall in the western wall. Doesn’t look like there’s any access up the waterfall or anything behind the water. There’s a couple of dams of some kind or another, I dunno, which have gates—I think the idea is they can flood the stream going through the cave tunnel, which would have really sucked for us. Then there’s another cave opening to the south which is where bugbear is hanging out, and there’s two accesses on the east side; one to the bridge, and one to the shitty ledge that you and Dad can’t use because Trio says it’ll collapse if you try.”

“The room is about thirty five feet wide at its widest,” Jason supplemented, scratching the back of his head. “By about fifteen feet? All of the, uh, not doorways, huh…”

“Call them entrances,” Cassandra said breezily. “Or exits.”

“Call the south one an exit,” Harriet offered, “and the east ones entrances.”

“Okay!” Jason beamed at them both. “The entrances and the exit are all around five feet wide, and it’s pretty loud in there.”

“Five feet wide,” the other two members of his family murmured in almost-unison.

Looking at each other, they both smiled very similar smiles.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Mom?”

“I dunno, honey, are you thinking about ways to trivialize a boss fight with a keystone enemy who would otherwise be a lethal threat to us?”

“And so it was,” Harriet declaimed, “that the Miracle took place, and the Light Did Not Run Out, and thus do we celebrate.”

“Young lady, if you think we’re going to stop to make fried food in the middle of a dungeon, you have errors in your understanding.”

“Fine, we’ll stick with stupid ration. Do I get to do the setup?”

Cassandra stroked her chin in thought, looking at her daughter with a critical eye. “How much do you need to deal, and what’s your proposed margin of error?”

“Twenty seven! And um.” Harriet’s eyes crossed. “That… depends…”

“On?”

“On whether the big one books it for what has gotta be the way down to that room with the animals, through those cracks. I mean, the topology works out that way, right?”

“Topography, you over-read munchkin.”

“Right. Thanks, Mom, topography, topology is something else,” the over-read munchkin agreed.

“I didn’t even think of the other exit,” Cassandra admitted with a sigh. “Alright. Tell us what to do.”

“Holy shit, I didn’t think you’d say yes.” Harriet slapped her hands to her mouth, chewing on her knuckles briefly. “Okay. For starters, I’m going to need your help taking my armor off, so that I can sneak past the badgers. Then, you’re gonna need three vials of oil, and you’re also gonna need…”

Her parents listened to her with a focused intent that made her both preen and quail at the same time. She had no doubt that they would execute the plan exactly as she was laying it out, just as she, Trio, and Jason had done the same for her mother’s plan, and that was terrifying on a lot of levels.

She could, at least, take comfort in the fact that even if things went horribly wrong, they’d be ready for whatever came. For all their willingness to let her come up with the plan, she was going to be back in armor when the penny dropped, and everyone would be going in with their weapons in their hands.

She didn’t want their faith, not exactly. What she wanted—what they gave her, each and every time, unstintingly and without fail—was their confidence.

And this time, she had the feeling it was all going to go exactly according to plan.