The food was surprisingly good. We managed a nice stack of sandwiches made from a chewy dark bread, stuffed with dire boar ham, spicy mustard, and pickled greens. Dunnie also turned up a bag of roasted nuts to share between us. I may also have had a bit of a buzz going from the rut gut which was doing wonders for my mood. I really did owe Dunnie a solid for not having to deal with this shit dead sober. Pun intended. I told them as much and they gave me the look of someone who’s heard the same joke way too many times. It was great. The inconsequential small talk that goes with simple tasks and the Companionable snacking that followed was a welcome respite. For both of us I think.

The skeleton crunched idly on the nuts as I started in on my second sandwich.

“Wish I could just hand you off to Old Grimm.” Dunnie mused.

I raised an eyebrow in a silent question as I chewed.

“Your world's reaper. That bag of bones is an artist with this kind of problem. Has tricks I just can’t pull. Translocate your soul to the nearest suitable vessel in some other world downstream, think cosmic hermit crab. Reincarnate you in your own world with a couple of sneaky knots in fate to help you settle business without you even knowing. Grimm could even set you up as a kinda Deputy Reaper and put you to work, lucky prick’s got a whole squad last I checked.” they shook their head in Admiration. “Hells, all That’s without even callin’ in favours. The magnificent bastard has at least three ways to pull together true resurrections if something really pisses them off. Perks of being a full world’s reaper, I tell ya.”

I considered those. “I’d be all for a do over of Course. The hermit crab thing doesn’t sound like the worst and hanging out with you might be fun, but starting from scratch. Being a kid again? No thanks. My childhood sucked and I’d rather not spin the wheel on that again. Not that these are options anyway. So what are we working with here?”

“Right, to Business then” Dunnie said, raising their glass to me before starting in.

“First, and I do not recommend this one, but it is your right to choose here so you’re getting all the options regardless.” I nodded my understanding. “You could just tell me to shove off. I’d leave you alone. One little ghost against the universe. There's a chance you could cobble together some spiritual powers that wouldn’t end up with you as an insane revenant but it’s bad odds. Real bad odds.”

“Yeah. No, thanks.” I’ve seen revenants. Not touching that with a ten foot pole. Nope.

“Good lad. Second, I’ll start by saying this one isn’t as dire as it may sound so try to hear me out.” I tipped my chin at them after another bite of my Sandwich. “We boot you through the gates of a lesser hell. Not one of the torment pits or anything” they said immediately raising their hands before I could cut in. “Lesser hells are more unsupervised dumping grounds than anything. Chaotic and brutal sure, but not all the way through bad. Lots of edge cases get stuck in them for all kinds of reasons. You’d be a spirit in a spiritual realm so kinda the same difference as having a physical body. Just with some rule changes you’d have to get used to. Plus as an unbound soul there’d be no greater force sealing you in the realm. Just Kick ass and take names Till you build up enough spiritual mojo to brute force your way to a world proper. As a warrior I’d give you decent odds of pulling it off, and you’d come out the other side as a real badass as a bonus.”

I chewed for a while as I thought that one through.

“I’ve known meat heads that would jump at that. The kind that live for ‘the crunch’ always looking for the next fight to get their fix. Never been me though. Defender through and through. I Fight to protect. Don’t like fighting for fighting's sake.” I tapped a finger on the table. “Still that one’s a maybe. Just sounds like a big dungeon to me. Could handle that if I had to.”

I grabbed a handful of nuts for myself before Motioning for Dunnie to go on.

“Option three. I can get you set up as some flavour of cursed undead. I know more than a couple Necromancers as you might imagine. Wouldn’t be able to manage anything with real long term possibilities, vampire, lych, haunted doll, etc. You’d end up a greater zombie, ghoul, maybe rotting flesh golem if we’re lucky. Only real upside here, you’d get to walk out the Dungeon with something resembling your old body. The downside, they’re called the cursed undead for good reasons. This is another option I can’t recommend. Really it’s just a roundabout way to get your soul banished and sealed into one of those lesser hells we talked about. So unless you got some short term unfinished Business you're willing to trade your Literal actual soul to settle up we should move on.”

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

“That one’s a hard pass.” I agreed. The Guild would wrap up my affairs well enough and send my goodbye letters to my few close friends and the retired members of my first party, the Falling Stars. I was mildly curious where my boots of comfortable walking would end up. I’d gotten them as a gift. The Glorious Dawn had looted them off my body. As is right and proper of Adventurers. Good boots should never be wasted on a corpse. Let alone enchanted ones. Still hardly a reason to shamble my way back to Mount Royale. It also just sounded fucking gross.

“Option four, it’s in a Similar Vein to option three but less cursed. Differently cursed? We find an object of power in the dungeon somewhere and I shove your soul into it. Then I do my best to make sure an adventurer finds you. That last bit is the sticky part. The Dungeon limits how I can interact with things like super rare loot, living adventurers, and the like. but I have my ways.”

“Wait, is this how we end up with all the stories about talking swords?” I asked.

“One of the ways, yeah.” They shrugged. “Talking swords are a magical wheel that gets reinvented a lot. Most aren’t invested souls. Wouldn’t have to be a sword at all though, book, shield, whatever we can dig up really. Not great for autonomy of course which ends up limiting your personal agency some but you’d be the next thing to indestructible and magical as all get out. It’s not a terrible option if you can find good partners. Luck’s a big factor though. Easy to end up collecting dust on a rich guy’s wall, or get stuck with a string of idiots for company.”

I Set down my sandwich and took a sip of my drink to mull that one over.

“Well it’s the least traumatic of the options thus far, I’ll give it that. But if I get stuck in some dragon's hoard just staring at coins all day for the gods know how long? I’d crack from boredom alone.”

“Eh, you get to take sorta magical super naps to skip that kinda downtime.” Dunnie Clarified.

“Ok, not so bad then.” I allowed.

“Most in your spot take this one.” The reaper confirmed.

“How often does this crap happen?” I asked.

Dunnie leaned back with a Disgruntled air.

“A Fuck over of this Magnitude? Thankfully they’re genuinely rare, once every handful of decades maybe but I’ve been at this as long as this realm has been the Dungeon so it still adds up to too damn meny if you ask me.”

A Sentiment I could get behind wholeheartedly.

The reaper was silent for a moment, Tapping on their jaw bone in thought before getting back to Business.

“Finally we come to option five, or as I like to call it the fun house mystery option.”

“Oh, now we’re talking.” I joked, “with a name like that how could I possibly resist.”

Dunnie tilted their head at me all but saying out Loud “are you done?”. I grinned and flipped my skeleton friend the bird. They took it in the spirit it was offered and continued.

“Basically I’d introduce you to the Dungeon proper then you let it incorporate your soul. I can guarantee you’ll still be you where it counts and you won’t lose your free will or the like. Those things just ain’t in the Dungeon’s Purview. Everything else? Don’t know. Dungeon will find you a place it thinks you’d fit. Fun house mystery option. Just think about what I said before, there's more to the dungeon then you’d guess. There’s life here you ain’t seen the half of. Don’t know what that life would look like for you. There'd be perks and drawbacks of course. but all said and done. you’d get a life to live again.”

Boy, were there things Dunnie wasn’t saying, wasn’t saying real loud. Still I got the feeling this wasn’t just the hard sell to get me on team dungeon. Older Instincts had been kicking since I was treated to the Gods insulting display of Skulduggery. The Instincts from before I traded nights of cloak and dagger for the days of block and bash. It had been a trade I was happy to make, but still you never really forget where you start. Rowan the sneak thief Orphan, Rowan the young Rogue of the Falling Stars. Rowan the Rat.

The Dungeon was the place gods played games with us all, and I was just pissed off enough to want to make an issue of that. However, I couldn’t do anything in that Direction If I was clawing my way out of some random hell, or decorating a mantle piece. You have to be in the game to play after all.

“Hey, before I decide, it came up a few times and I was wondering, What’s the First rule the gods were going on about?”

Dunnie cocked thier head and somehow looked inordinately pleased at the question. Before leaning in.

“If you cheat, don’t get caught.”

I smiled. The kind of game Rowanoak the Dauntless didn’t have a hope of winning, but Rowan the Rat? Maybe.