Moriko was in quite a good mood the next morning. Kazue had proven quite entertaining, and they’d toyed with her through extensive over-grooming until the kitsune had been left a quivering mass of overstimulated flesh. Then Moriko got to enjoy some personal attention from Mordecai. Things became a bit of a blur after that; she knew Kazue had recovered at some point, and at some point after that there was a bath, but the details became vague.
While this left Moriko with quite a bounce in her step, Kazue seemed to have the complete opposite reaction. The woman was drifting somewhere between a perfect zen state of being, and just being a blissed-out zombie. It was adorable.
Mordecai had completely regained his composure of course, and had called them both cute. Moriko refused to acknowledge that naturally, but she was in too good a mood to argue it either. Imagine, calling a 36-year-old married woman cute! She had to swallow the giggle that tried to escape at the thought.
They needed to behave normally, after all, Kazue’s parents had joined them for breakfast while the delving group got ready to hit the fourth floor. A perfectly normal married trio eating a perfectly normal breakfast with their perfectly normal in-laws. Hehehe.
Goddess, why was she so giddy this morning? Moriko started to send her thoughts out to ask if either of them was feeling unusual, and it was like dunking her head into a bucket of pure joy. Kazue was feeling so happy that it was leaking over their bond. Which was kind of nice, and Moriko took it as a compliment of sorts, but it made it a lot harder to think. It was also the first time that one of their emotions had affected her so directly and so subtly. Or maybe it wasn’t, and it just hadn’t been inconvenient at the time? Moriko wasn’t sure now that she thought about it.
It was kind of hard to be upset, though it could be a bit more frustrating if the kitsune was depressed this heavily or something. There was some similarity to when she’d felt Mordecai’s anger through his flashback, but that had been more clearly external. Kazue’s feelings seeped through instead. Still, it was affecting Moriko’s thoughts, so the monk started cycling through some mantras in her mind until the meditative process had isolated Kazue’s leaking joy into a nice warm glow off to the side of Moriko’s mind instead of pervading her thoughts.
All this passed while trying to have a normal seeming breakfast. The occasional suspicious looks that Kazue’s parents sent their way suggested that it was clear something was off. Moriko decided to distract them with a question she’d had in her mind for a while. “Akahana, um, would it be rude to ask a question about your shape changing?” she decided to start off obliquely. The kitsune woman was currently in her human form, which she appeared to prefer for eating.
“You mean why I never developed a hybrid form?” She grinned at Moriko, obviously guessing the nature of the question. “I don’t have a fox form either. Or druidic shape-changing skills outside of specific spells.” She shrugged. “I just never had much of a talent for it. Having the two forms has worked well enough for me, so I never put in the effort to develop a skill that didn’t come easy. Tailless works well for things like eating and kissing, and my normal kitsune form works well for most outdoor work. Fur protects better than skin does after all.”
Well, that did answer Moriko’s question. It did not provide with as much of a distraction as she would have liked, but it did provide Ricardo with the opportunity to tease his wife about being shown up by her daughter, and Mordecai talked about how Kazue was practicing to master her shape-changing to be able to take on almost any humanoid form.
Kazue was mostly humming happily as she ate, but the conversation was slowly drawing her out of her zoned out state, and eventually she realized she wasn’t contributing to the ongoing conversation at all. “Oops, sorry, I was just enjoying listening to everyone talk, I forgot to actually say anything!” Moriko wasn’t entirely certain where the line between truth and obfuscation was there, and she wasn’t sure Kazue knew either.
But at least the conversation had gotten flowing normally now, and before very long, they were getting ready to head back to the war room. The whole process was pure luxury to Moriko, which she seemed to be experiencing a lot of lately. From their introduction, the bunkin had been very eager to be helpful and the recent flood of visitors, combined with the giant pool of literature to read, was giving them experience and interesting ideas. Every meal seemed to have at least one dish that they were modifying out of the books. Of course, things like meat required Mordecai or Kazue to produce the base materials; the dungeon denizens didn’t exactly hunt each other.
Which reminded her of something, if indirectly. “Hey, have you guys been getting any new animals? I know some of the caravaners who had some free time were off trying to capture rabbits and such.”
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Kazue nodded happily. “Yep! And mostly rabbits too, since that’s what we asked people to look for. We’ve been giving our new residents time to settle in and be comfortable before becoming dire rabbits.”
“Twenty-nine so far, including the babies from the pregnant ones." Mordecai added, "I’m thinking that we can free up a few of our older dire rabbits for some further evolution. There’s an interesting new variant I’d like to make for the river.”
Moriko and Kazue both gave him a suspicious look at the usage of ‘interesting’, but they knew they’d find out when he was ready to reveal his plan. He liked being the Mysterious One sometimes. Which, to be fair, was not something Moriko or Kazue were good at, so if someone was going to do it, it might as well be him.
“Hmm, maybe I should get into the rabbit hunting game, too.” Ricardo interjected, which got him a light whap from one of Akahana’s tails as she shifted forms.
“You are making enough money from this trip. Plus, you got to marry me. You don’t need to think about a few silvers more when you are supposed to be occupied with being a newlywed.”
“Besides,” Mordecai commented with a smile. “You’ve already given us more than you realize.” He held up his hand, holding two long hairs between his fingers, one white and one black. “It took a bit to analyze since you didn’t bring either of them inside the dungeon, but even magical creatures shed hair onto people, and that hair then falls off later.”
Kazue gave her father a narrow-eyed look. “And here I thought Casey being a trained warbird was a surprise. I didn’t realize you were also holding back a secret like this.”
Ricardo groaned and looked to his wife for support. She simply smirked and looked away. “This is your own fault. I told you those two were trouble.”
Oh, this was going to be good. Moriko hadn’t wanted to press Ricardo about the not-horses, but if Kazue wanted to and Mordecai had information to back her up, Moriko would back them up. “Could you possibly be referring to the black horse with the poorly hidden malignant aura, and the pretty white horse who tolerated him?”
“I assume they weren’t in their true forms during your travels. That would be a kelpie and an alicorn.” Her husband replied.
Moriko suppressed her flinch. She’d known the black one was trouble, but a kelpie‽ “Oh, I have so many questions about that.”
Ricardo sighed. “It’s not that complicated. I think I can cover the basics. So, the alicorn mare is a friend of mine, and I did her a few favors a long time ago. The kelpie is an unmitigated asshole and was harassing me one night when Zara, that’s the alicorn, stopped by. Tiros was instantly smitten. Things got complicated, but long story short, she’s agreed to play at being a horse and letting him stay near her so long as she gets paid by me, which I am rather generous with, and so long as Tiros behaves.” The man shrugged. "It's a little expensive, but great security. Their presence alone wards off most minor beasts."
“Honestly, I was getting tired of Tiros’s crap. He hadn’t managed to kill anyone yet, but he had taken up a hobby of doing hit-and-runs on the caravan if we happened to be near the river. I was getting ready to get some cold iron traps made and set up an ambush. And no, I wouldn’t have accepted one of those blasted ride challenges.” Now he flashed a wicked grin. “However, that reminds me. His harness is what lets him stay away from the water for so long. What he doesn’t know is that it would also let anyone riding him breathe underwater. I figure that will be a fun surprise if he gets out of hand.”
Kazue whined at him suddenly. “And you never told me? I could have gotten to ride an Alicorn! And I always was good and fed both of them apples; Tiros could have bitten off my hand!” She sniffed, and Moriko schooled her face to show nothing. That last bit was way over the top, her wife was obviously having fun hamming it up to torture her father.
Ricardo sighed. “Lass, you know I never like to keep secrets from you. But that was part of the bargain. Akahana knew because, well, she’s a druid. Neither of them could fool her. There was nothing I could do.”
Kazue continued making sad eyes at her father until Mordecai broke the mood by rubbing the top of her head. “You’re being mean to him.” He said with a laugh. “Besides, I was thinking this would be a good place to see if one of the horses that were brought in might enjoy being a kelpie. Good boss for a river level, don’t you think?”
Moriko eyed him. “You aren’t going to put my training to waste now, are you?”
“Gods no. Aside from the fact that I like my limbs to remain intact, a brand-new kelpie is going to need time to adjust. I figure I can do that after this group passes through.”
“What about an alicorn? Could that be the second boss?” Kazue asked, beaming up at him.
He chuckled. “I considered that, and it does make for an interesting pairing, but I think a flying unicorn would want more space than this level gives. Besides, I have a more river-themed idea for the second boss anyway.”
Kazue turned her pout on him, but it was not quite as effective. “You are adorable when you do that,” he said, then over their link came, “and it might be fun to see if you can maintain that expression while being spanked. I’m sure Moriko would be willing to help.”
The kitsune’s pout disappeared as she struggled to keep from blushing. “A-anyway, they are almost ready to head into the library. We should focus on that!”
The delving party wasn’t quite ready to go, but they were packing up, so everyone let Kazue's change of topic slide as they settled in to watch their private show.