It had been a long day of walking and when they settled into camp for the night Kazue was quite foot sore. She barely had the energy to bother with driving the alarm-spike into the ground and channeling the energy to activate it. It was a fairly simple enchanted device that registered who was present in an area and gave off an alarm if it detected a new significant presence in that area. This close to the forest they were unlikely to have issues but this trip was a dry run to get used to doing stuff like this before going anywhere more dangerous.
Just that little bit of effort made Kazue feel unsteady on her feet and she sat down with a thump. The fact that Moriko could cover twice this distance in half the time or less on her own amazed the tired kitsune. Thankfully her rather amused wife was happy to pamper her with foot massages and a simple cooked dinner before treating Kazue to less tender but just as loving attention.
In the aftermath, Kazue lay on their bedrolls in a light daze, staring up at the moons in the sky as her mind drifted. She could see the flickering light of the campfire mingling with starlight and moonlight on the nearby trees, and hear Moriko moving about the little campsite as she cleaned up their gear and food and banked the fire.
She could also hear the rustling of the wind in the leaves and branches, the songs of night birds, the sounds of insects flying, and distant animals moving through the woods. For all that she’d often spent the night outside to enjoy the beauty of the moon and stars, Kazue had never been so far away from civilization. At least, if one didn’t include the early days of her existence as a dungeon.
And she’d never felt so in tune with the pulse of the wilds. It was dangerous and ever-changing in one view, but even that ever-changing cycle of existence was simply true to its nature. Not unlike the mercurial, primal goddess of the night and moon. For all the moods and aspects of Mericume that had been displayed during the brief visit of her avatar, all of them were a part of her.
The same could be said about Kazue in some ways. Her mind flitted, sometimes she seemed almost childish, and other times she could be completely in control. The kitsune was simply fluid in how her mood and thoughts shifted, and that was fine. Because it was true to herself. Kazue felt like she’d reached a small epiphany about nature in general and her own nature, and smiled as she felt Moriko slide under the light blanket with her to snuggle before they both drifted off to sleep.
Moriko awoke first of course, and Kazue awoke to the smell of cooking meat. “Mmm, yum.” She murmured with a purr as she opened her eyes. “What a tasty thing to wake up to.” Kazue grinned as she eyed Moriko’s lack of clothing, and the half-elf smirked back.
“Get up lazy bones. Time to eat breakfast. You don’t get any more dessert until tonight.”
They flirted through breakfast, and then Moriko passed on a ‘letter’ from Mordecai, with a small addition from Kazue’s core. It was going to be weird for a while to be sending messages to her other self, but then, Kazue’s life was simply weird. A little more weirdness just made sense.
After breakfast, Kazue went through her morning rituals and meditation to settle her mind and tune the flow of her magic. As she did so, there was a little extra ‘hum’ in her mind, and a flickering awareness of an ethereal presence, but it didn’t feel like an intrusion. Nor quite an invitation. Just, a sense of something more. And it felt related to her thoughts last night. She decided to think about it more rather than talk about it just yet, as she didn’t know how to describe it without it possibly sounding worrying.
It took most of the rest of the day to reach Riverbridge, and Kazue simply hurt all over by then. While she’d continued to practice her brand of magic through most of the morning, by the time lunch rolled around she’d been too tired to keep it up, her muscles complaining from a second day of ‘hard’ use. With the sun setting low and Kazue practically limping, Moriko ended up giving her a piggyback ride the last stretch, with the backpack shifted to Kazue’s back.
“Come on, I’ll take you straight home. We can check out the inn for a private room tomorrow,” she said, and Kazue simply nodded limply. It was absolutely unfair that Moriko still had all this energy.
Kazue also suspected this was part of why Mordecai had suggested this particular route. They were going to be here for a bit, and that would be time to heal before she set out for another long walk. And then a long stop at the clan, more resting, and then on to the capital. She’d simply seen it as a casually paced tour of the kingdom from the way he presented it, but now she also saw it as him being sneaky about making sure she got sufficient rest as she toughened up. Taking care of her without pointing out that she needed to be taken care of. It was somewhere between endearing and annoying. Mostly endearing. It might be more annoying if the man wasn’t right most of the time.
Really, her annoyance was mostly at the fact that she needed to be taken care of at all. She was soft in more ways than one. And while some of that softness was put to good use entertaining both her husband and her wife, Kazue was starting to feel annoyed at other aspects of it. Hmm, if she mastered her shape-changing, could she slim down her excess when on the road, and enjoy the curves when she could relax? That sounded nice.
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Her mind continued to drift on random thoughts for a little bit until Moriko set her down. “What?” She started to ask, then realized they were in front of the gate guards. Kazue blushed. “Oh, er, hello.” She just now realized that she’d heard them talking, it just hadn’t registered. “Um, I’m Kazue, Moriko’s wife.” She was pretty certain that she’d heard them talking about who she was.
The guards still looked skeptical. “As in the dungeon everyone’s been talking about? Moriko, are you trying to pull something over on us?”
Moriko shook her head and gestured to Kazue to explain. Gee, thanks. Well, she did have a better understanding of the whole avatar thing. “Well, more exactly, I’m Kazue’s invested avatar, but I’m still me. Just, sort of an extension of me. Or my other self. Look, it’s complicated, but if you want verification, you can ask Traxalim. He met me before and this avatar looks the same as my original avatar because they are both based on my body before I was reincarnated. And he probably knows a lot about dungeons anyway.” Though she certainly wasn’t going to explain why. “Just, please don’t take long. My feet hurt from two days of walking.”
Kazue gave them her best ‘pity me’ look, and it did seem to have some effect. After they consulted for a moment, one of the guards said. “Alright, we’ll record your name as you’ve given it, but we’re going to send a note to the high priest as well as note more details in the log.” Kazue nodded her thanks and walked limply after Moriko once the guards waved them on by.
She also pretended to not hear one of the guards muttering about understanding what might have made Moriko settle down. It was flattering, but it also made Kazue blush in embarrassment.
“Come on love, this way,” Moriko said, drawing Kazue to her side to help support her. The garden between the house and the shop was lovely, and the scent, invigorating. There was so much about a healthy garden that felt similar to a healthy forest, but the touch of order and care also made it very different. Too much order, taking away too much of what made up the web of life, would make the garden less healthy, but Moriko’s parents tended the garden with just the right level of taming to keep the plants they wanted healthy without ripping out everything that might be a ‘weed’. She loved it, and she could only imagine how much her mother had loved it when she visited.
The only thing better than the scent of the garden was the scent of food coming out of the house, and Kazue's pace picked up as she ignored Moriko’s snickering.
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Mordecai smiled to himself as Moriko updated him and Kazue about the welcome she and Kazue’s avatar received. It was nice to hear everything was going so well.
“Oh, but I’m jealous. That sounds so good. I want to be able to eat again. And have sex. And at right this moment, I am not sure which I want more.” Kazue whined while Mordecai continued his current work.
“I’d like to promise that you’ll get used to it, but I started off as a core so my base existence didn’t include those things.” On the workbench in front of him were all the tools he needed for jewelry and gem work, as well as several items not needed for mundane craft, such as mana-infused oils and engraving tools inscribed with runes that let them channel magic better. The centerpiece of all this was a ring that he was slowly assembling out of layers as each piece was properly prepared.
“I kind of want to have you be sexy for me, but I think that might just frustrate me that I can’t touch you,” she sighed. “Well, what are you working on, since we can’t build deeper right now?”
“One of my favorite enchanted rings, and one probably still popular for a lot of spellcasters. It lets you shift certain types of physical spells partially into the shadow realm, which can make it easier to bypass a target’s defenses. It does require being able to analyze your target to make the decision, but it’s usually a safe bet against heavily armored foes.” He wanted to have one ready for both Kazue and Moriko by the time they came by the dungeon again, and even with anticipated future visits.
This was one of the reasons he was always happy to trade a reasonable amount. Receiving real goods in exchange for mana-forged goods allowed him to turn those materials into specialized items, given enough time and effort. For example, he’d had to carefully cut a small gem into a very specific shape before carving channels and runes into it, and that gem was currently soaking in one of the infused oils while he shaped the next segment of the ring.
“We can also give this out as prizes for our ‘sixth’ floor boss fight.” Rather than renaming each floor, they considered their new top floor their ‘floor zero’ area. Though it wasn’t going to be a problem for a while, until the rabbit population produced enough dire rabbits to let more dire rabbits become bunkin, or become rabbats to let other rabbats become rabkin, they simply couldn’t grow again even if they had enough mana. They’d been pushing it before by shuffling laganthros around, but they could both tell that they needed to fill everything out and tweak all the floors before they could advance again.
Mordecai’s side of things was self-adjusting as the increased floor ‘depth’ helped the inhabitants to become stronger. Kazue was trying to fine-tune some time limits on her challenges where they couldn’t be reasonably tweaked to simply be stronger. Of course, until they had some new delvers to challenge them, they couldn’t know for sure. Mordecai expected some of those soon enough, people would generally want to wind down from their holiday before pulling together an expedition. They’d simply been preparing from well before the solstice and only two people had been leaving for the journey.
“I think I am learning a bit about how to put this together by watching you, but I can’t do this myself without my avatar, can I?”
“I’m afraid not love. That is why I taught you the basics so early, this way your other self can practice when she has some downtime, but some of our bunkin and rabkin have picked up the skills needed and are working their way up.” He was reserving the most expensive components for himself as he needed them for products like this ring, but outside of what he needed for his projects all of their inhabitants were free to practice and learn with whatever materials they had. Which also gave them more potential loot.
And if there were a few mistakes that led to cursed items, well, nothing said he couldn’t hand those out in addition to normal loot. Some cursed items could even be turned to beneficial use with a bit of creativity. Most curses were simply a malfunction of magic instead of deliberate maleficence.