Sylvia Redleaf hummed a mesmerizing tune as she went about her least favourite chore. Chasing butterflies around the meadow was a pain in the bright orange butt. Some ran away, others moved themselves out of order, and a third, particularly annoying group even maliciously complied with her demands and exploited whatever loopholes they found. It was an inordinately frustrating duty, but the fox saw it through without complaint.

She knew its importance. The lost library couldn’t possibly retain its function without all its monarchs herded—failing to redirect even a single individual to its rightful place could easily amount to an intruder’s untimely death. That was not necessarily a problem in and of itself. Torches existed to be burnt, after all, but there was a strict time and place for everything. Needlessly throwing kindling into the fire would only consume it for no substantial reward.

Its importance was precisely what made the chore so lengthy and tedious. Sylvia had been at work for seven hours at least, but she showed no signs of tiring. It was not a function of her stamina that allowed her to last, but rather the occasional magical note that she sang and self-applied. Her physical abilities were rather subpar for her level, but her spells kept her running far longer than the burliest meathead. A perfect illustration of the duality of bardkind.

She frolicked about until the mirewood blackened—the sixty seconds of evening that signalled the coming night. Kicking herself into overdrive, she forced the last nymphalid in place just in time for the bell. She double-checked her handiwork, looking it over and nodding to herself before finally spinning around and greeting the phantom that had soundlessly appeared behind her.

“Hey, Al. What’s up?”

“I happened to have a few moments of spare time.” A bright, floral scent wafted from the smoke in his pipe despite his nonphysical presence. “So I thought we could have lunch while we checked on your torch.”

“Oh, good idea,” said the fox. She clapped her hands in a rhythmic beat, and after a brief delay, warped herself into the celestial’s space.

It was not the library to which they relocated, but an ancient laboratory filled with tools and tomes. The horizontal space was lacking; its radius was only maybe fifteen-odd meters, but it was over two kilometres tall, with various desks and objects suspended just far enough from one another not to get in the ancient human’s way. Few of the scattered work surfaces were positioned upright. Most were rotated at completely random angles, tilted in certain ways to jog the human’s memory should he ever return to the tasks still at hand.

The room’s centrepiece was a leather seat roughly three hundred meters up. A cursory glance revealed Alfred’s work in progress—there were hundreds of bright blue screens surrounding the chair, each of which featured a different scene or block of text in motion. Even with its master non-present, the wizard’s wand was still working, scribbling away at a thousand strokes a second and filling the various text fields with entries born of his perverted mind.

The man himself stood at a different station, upside-down, with a flask in one of his hands and a bubbling cauldron sitting in front of him. The milky white liquid inside was stirring itself with no ladle, moving just enough to stop it from sticking to the bottom.

“One second.”

The man measured out a spoonful of the pink liquid that filled the flask, and after eyeing it to ensure that it was level, poured it into the pot. Two cups were dipped into the fluid, which had turned a brilliant emerald green, and subsequently extracted with the herbal liquid in tow. One beautifully scented chalice went to the human’s lips while the other slowly floated its way to the fox.

“Thanks,” said Sylvia. Alfred’s homebrewed tea was always delicious. The soul essence worked into its flavour only enhanced its already incredible taste.

Alfred continued fiddling with some other experiment while the fox enjoyed her tea. He played with a sheet of numbers, haphazardly populating its cells, generating a series of relevant graphs, and subsequently observing their results.

“Things have been going a little too well for the citadel lately,” he said, as he played with his beard. “I’m thinking I should probably introduce a new breed of monsters, or perhaps organize some sort of event, but I can’t seem to come up with anything fun.”

“Mmmnnn… Can’t you just throw a few pinnaclams at them or something and call it a day?”

“I said fun,” complained the old man. “I’m sick of the pinnaclams. They were fun when I first made them, but the novelty’s long worn off.”

“What about something eldritch then?” suggested Sylvia. “I’m pretty sure the old guy with the octopus face would totally help us if we asked.”

“Absolutely not.” Alfred breathed a sigh and rubbed his creased brow. “Eldritch beings are far too unstable, and the god of the abyssal depths will no doubt be cross with us if we continue to meddle in his business.”

“Aww….” Sylvia collapsed into a sad pile on the floor. “Come on! They’re so much fun.”

“I believe we’ll have to agree to disagree there, my dear child,” said Alfred, with a small frown. “How are things going with the torch?”

The fox flopped her tail from left to right before speaking with her eyes still closed. “I think it’s going okay. She’s been onto me from the start, but it hasn’t really been a problem.”

Alfred took a huff from the pipe. “Really? I’d have suspected they were going much worse, given our last conversation.”

“Don’t worry, Al,” said Sylvia with a sigh. “I mean, I got her to Borrok Peak, didn’t I? I’d say everything’s going according to plan.”

“That’s not exactly what I was worried about.” The human frowned. “But no matter, I suppose.”

There was a brief lull in the conversation as they both drank from their cups and basked in the tea’s delicious fragrance.

“Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask you this for a while, but…” Sylvia broke the silence to point a paw at an object on another desk. It was attention-grabbing; there was a pelt squished between two glass panels and a number of smaller glass cubes that contained thin cross-sections of what she assumed to be the monster’s internals. “What the heck is that?”

“Oh, that? I captured it wandering the labyrinth recently. I think it’s probably something some other god made, given that it’s entirely immortal.”

“Wait, really?” asked the fox.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Alfred nodded. “I’ve separated all of its vital organs out from its core, and I’ve even tried hitting it with a couple of billion points of direct health damage. But somehow, it’s still alive.”

“Hmm… that’s weird,” said Sylvia. “Have you figured out who it belongs to yet?”

“It’s Flux’s handiwork, no doubt,” he said, as he stroked his beard. “She’s set up a callback that reincarnates the poor bastard’s soul into the exact same body every time he dies. The real question though is if she’s doing it for herself, or at someone else’s behest. I’m leaning towards the former right now, given my imprisonment of her paladins, but I would say it was her fault for failing to discourage their visitations to begin with.”

“Mmnnn… a part of me thinks you’ve probably made a few too many enemies,” said Sylvia.

“Whatever the case is, the threat has been neutralized,” said Alfred. “I’ve already half-stripped his soul. All the important parts are gone, and the rest will be turned to ether in another month or so.”

He washed his hands in the sink as he led the fox out the door and into a much smaller room with its hearth already lit.

The distantly related pair was placed atop a set of newly formed chairs. The seats would have been invisible if not for the mana that leaked from the perfectly imperfect spells. They were made entirely of conflicting vectors numbering in the hundreds of thousands. It was an impressive demonstration of the celestial’s mastery, but the fox thought nothing of it. She was long desensitized to the celestial’s antics; it had been over a decade since he had last impressed her.

The man’s wand accompanied the pair into the breakroom as well, and with a wave, created a room-scale display. It sat right in front of the fireplace and took up nearly the whole wall, hiding the crackling flames behind its dark crystalline base.

“Now, let’s see what that torch has been up to,” he said, with a grin. “Hopefully, something lewd.”

“Al…”

“What? Don’t you think it would be amusing to catch her in the midst of self-pleasure? Or perhaps the climax of a passionate tryst?”

“Not really,” said Sylvia. “That’d just be weird, especially since I feel like I kinda know her already.”

“Bah! That’s nonsense. It is precisely your acquaintanceship that makes it all the more exciting.”

“That’s just you being weird, Al.”

“I am not weird, I am cultured,” said the celestial, firmly. “Now, mirror, mirror on the wall. Show us her most private moment of all.” He waved his wand as he spoke and ordered the crystalline screen to life.

A sniffling sound echoed through the room as they saw a tiny girl surrounded by a series of icy walls, hugging her knees to her shoulders as tears streamed down her face.

“Well then… Not quite the direction I expected that to go.”

“Uhmmm… I kinda feel like we probably shouldn’t be seeing this.”

“Honestly, I’d say that this is as good… material as any, but I suppose I shouldn’t be entertaining my libido with my great-grandaughter still watching,” he said, with a cackle. “The first two times were entertaining, but a third would make a habit.”

“Wait, the first two times!?” cried Sylvia. “What the heck!?”

“You must never ask a man of his adventures, Sylvia. That is nearly as criminal as asking a woman for her age.”

“I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count as an adventure, Al.”

“Oh, it most certainly does. Have you not read the tales I keep around the shelves? The ones that speak of journeys ventured in the name of true love? Well, with the most beautiful woman in the world still actively rejecting me, I have no choice but to make do with Mrs. Hand.”

“This is why you’re still single, Al.”

“I’m only single because Flitzegarde refuses to acknowledge the blatant beauty in perversion,” grumbled the celestial. “Can you believe that she thinks I wouldn’t make a good God?”

“Maybe a good god of perversion.”

“I wouldn’t mind that at all,” said the demigod. “It’d be perfect, in fact. I’d be free to force whatever fetishes onto whoever I wanted.”

“Don’t you already do that?” The fox raised a brow. “Because I’m pretty sure you’ve been forcing all the torches to like catgirls and stuff, and then there were all those pranks you played on Dad, like that time you made it so he really liked trees.”

“Well, yes, but it’s not quite the same. With another ascension, I would gain the power to dole out fetishes the way other gods dole out blessings. I could give them to everyone and anyone without recourse.” Alfred rubbed his hands together as a dark smile came across his face. “Wouldn’t it be fun to give all the worst fetishes to the people you hate?”

“Al… I just want you to know, I’m judging you right now. You’re being really weird.”

“Listen, Sylvia. Just listen.”

“...Fine.”

“Consider your mother.”

“Mhm?”

“You know she really hates it when your father speaks to other women? Now what if…”

“Please don’t finish that thought, Al.”

“Too late, my dear child. Far too late!” The human broke into a roaring fit of laughter, slapping his knees and cackling for a solid thirty seconds before finally catching his breath.

“Ughh… I hate you sometimes Al,” muttered the fox.

“That’s your problem, not mine.” He ignored Sylvia’s cold gaze, even after he recovered, and casually redirected his attention towards the crystalline display.

It flickered with a wave of the wand and shifted to another icy scene, with the halfbreed face to face with a magically armed watcher. They were engaged in a violent exchange of blows, with the smaller creature slowly but surely losing to the one-eyed beast’s raw strength.

“Quite the curious one, isn’t she?” said Alfred. “You’d think that most people wouldn’t immediately default to stabbing the first sentient being they find, but here we are.”

“Yeah, she tried to stab me too. She’s a bit of a weirdo, and it’s hard to get a read on her. She was actually talking in her sleep the other day. I’m not really sure what language she was speaking, but she basically kept saying the same thing over and over all night.” The fox’s tail flicked from side to side as she recalled the memory. The movement was rhythmic but uneven, starting slowly on each side and suddenly accelerating after a brief delay.

“Ahhh… yes, that. I remember seeing something similar. Even noted a few strange happenings before the bug in her log was destroyed.” Alfred magically grabbed a piece of meat off the hearth while passing the fox a plateful of fish. “One way or another, she managed to level up a skill in her sleep. Quite abnormal, quite abnormal indeed.”

“Wait, it was destroyed?” Sylvia’s tail and ears shot up, standing vertically as she turned from the screen and blinked at the ancient human. “Isn’t that really bad?”

“I doubt anything will come out of it,” he said, as he turned back to the display.

The fox frowned, but soon followed suit. She remained silent, lightly snacking on her fish as she watched the halfbreed’s tooth work its way through the watcher’s skull.

“Say, why did you choose Borrok Peak anyway? The cold looks like it’s making her kinda sluggish.”

“Why else did you think I picked it?” asked the human. “It wouldn’t exactly be a trial if it was easy, would it?”

“Right…” said the fox, as she raised a brow.

“Oh, come on now. Don’t give me that look,” said the old man. “This is technically a dungeon, and there is no reason for it not to serve the standard purpose.” He sat back in his chair with a boyish grin creeping up on his lips. “And besides. It’s been a while since anyone’s come here under circumstances like hers. It’s got me feeling all nostalgic.”

Sylvia blinked. Thrice.

“Ah, yes. I’m referring to one of the torches that perused the dungeon prior to your birth. I’d nearly forgotten that you were barely forty.”

“I’m not forty!” cried the fox. “I’m twenty-five! How the heck did you manage to forget when I just came of age last week!?”

“Twenty-five, forty-five, whatever. It’s all the same to me,” said Alfred. “Anyway, here’s the case file.” A series of documents appeared in his hand as soon as he snapped his fingers. “Give it a quick look. It’s quite the interesting read.”

“Oh, fine.” Though she puffed up her cheeks, still somewhat miffed by the whole mislabeling, the fox cracked open the folder and curiously examined the documents that laid within.