--- Galanys ---
"Rania, you look sad. What's wrong?" Galanys asked.
"I'm not sad. I'm practicing my brooding. I have to become good at that, because I'm a vampire now." Rania responded.
"Is that also why you are wearing all black? You realize you don't have to be edgy just because you are a vampire? That's what the Living City wants you to do."
Galanys could virtually see the gears shift in Rania's head as her words sank in.
"So if we are fighting the Living City, that means I should do the opposite of that, doesn't it?"
"Yes, it does." Galanys agreed.
"Then I am going to wear pink, and bright green, and all the most annoying colors! It's going to make the Living City so mad! It will be great! Oh, Galanys, can you help me with this? You are really good with fashion and with knowing what people want."
Galanys did not have a mirror in front of her, but she imagined one would be able to see the stars in her eyes. "I am so happy to help you with that! I am going to give you a makeover that will creep out the eldritch abomination in your head! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to practice psychological warfare! Now come with me. We are going outside to see which of my dresses looks the most garish when the sunlight causes your skin to sparkle!"
"Thank you!" Rania responded. "The Living City is screaming at me already. This is so much more fun than brooding!"
--- Balron ---
"...and the third backup adamantine lock goes in this bottomless bag over here, and secures the stasis pod filled with living shadows." Balron summarized.
He was making an inventory after their shopping spree to prepare for the upcoming adventure. They were being bankrolled by both the Orukian government and the Shan government. Not to mention, the Coros were putting out feelers on their behalf to acquire items that you normally couldn't buy with money.
After Denissa Mardok made it clear that this prophecy was important, the politicians were all falling over themselves to make sure that team Nundru would succeed, or at least that no blame would fall on them if they failed. Adam had even implied that he was going to ask Denissa Mardok for access to some of the artifacts in her vault. He hadn't made any promises, but Balron was holding out hope.
"Wait. Wouldn't that put the stasis pod too close to the Rod of Ethereal Disjunction?" Dov asked.
"You are right." He responded in shock. "That could have ended badly. This is why it's good to have someone else double-checking my work. There is enough stuff in here by now that your perfect memory is really coming in useful."
--- Xilly ---
"Good news, Rania. The drug I created to suppress the negative parts of your vampirism comes with a number of side effects. Some of them are bad, but most of them are useful. Now listen closely, because this is a unique and experimental magical elixir, so it is important that you understand exactly how this is going to work."
She then proceeded to explain the drug to Rania in great detail. Maybe it was uncharitable of her to think that, but somehow she got the impression that the elf was not listening to her at all.
--- Dov ---
"On behalf of the House Ulein of Thela, I recognize you as Cilia Ulein, and swear fealty." The envoy said.
That was the second envoy to swear fealty to Dov so far. Getting herself recognized internationally was taking some time. Revealing her identity publicly could have some unfortunate political side effects that she rather wanted to avoid, so she had to contact people indirectly. Still, she was getting powerful noble houses to swear fealty to her just by sending message spells and giving some passwords. Getting this much political power with this little effort felt like cheating, and offended her sensiblities as a follower of Brytius.
--- Atrog ---
Atrog knocked on the door.
"No solicitors!" Came the shout from within.
"What about old friends?" Atrog asked.
After a few seconds a halfling ripped the door open and greeted him with a bright smile. "Atrog! So nice to see you! Come in, come in. You have made quite the name for yourself. Traveling with a princess. Killing an Old Power. I thought you would forget all about us."
"Never!" Atrog replied to his former traveling companion and mentor as he made his way inside the house. "I just haven't found the time to visit as often as I would like because you chose the most remote possible village to settle down. How are the others? Is everything still good?"
"It couldn't be better. We are all still enjoying our early retirement. Let me tell you, being in the prime of your life with plenty of money and no work feels amazing. I thought at first that I would get wanderlust out of boredom after a few years, but it hasn't happened, yet. Besides, one look at the little one and the thought of leaving makes my heart stop cold."
As if on cue, his son chose that moment to enter the room. "Uncle Atrog!" He said, and promptly fell over.
Atrog picked him up and put him on his shoulders, to the kid's delight. Atrog did not know if he could ever settle down like his former companions had, but he was glad to see that they were happy with their choice and he enjoyed his time with them.
--- Balron ---
"You really think that shunting these security mechanisms half way into the feywild is safe?" The chief of the guards asked Balron.
"I am quite confident about that, yes. I have talked to an expert about it who wishes to remain anonymous."
"In that case, I approve." She responded. Then she smiled and shook her head. "You are one strange man, Balron. you are about to go on one of the deadliest adventures I have ever heard of, and you use that time to update our security protocols?"
"Yes, I am." Balron responded, deliberately ignoring the subtext and unasked questions. "I am also updating my lecture notes so that things will go more smoothly once I get back from the Library of Akash. With any luck, the Coros will have finished building the Center for Interplanar Cultural Exchange by then."
The chief sighed. "You really are married to your job. And so confident that you will succeed."
"Confidence has nothing to do with it." He replied. "I might succeed, or I might die. I need to be prepared for either situation. The university moves slowly, so I have to make the preparations for my return now, not later. After that I will visit some temples and make arrangements in case our excursion does not go as planned and I die in the process."
She snorted. "Of course. You wouldn't want something as predictable as death to stop you."
"Exactly."
--- Dov ---
"*Alright, fine. You win.*" Morgan said angrily. "*First you become an Old Power, and now it turns out you are better than me even at biomancy, where I am supposed to be the expert. I spent weeks trying to get dragon genes to work and you just have to upstage me and get the genes of a fucking Genesis Dragon out of fucking nowhere. Where do you even find mythical creatures like that? And of course those genes end up being easy for you to integrate, too.*"
Gods, her sister was annoying. Dov had never seen this as a competition at all. She just strove to become the best possible version of herself. But Morgan saw it all as a sibling rivalry and Dov's success was offensive to her ego. The worst part was that Dov couldn't even talk about that openly, because admitting that she didn't see it as a competition at all would sound like an enormous insult to Morgan.
"*I got very lucky.*" Dov decided to say instead. "*But even though the Genesis Dragon genes are relatively easy to integrate, they still don't play well with my telepathy, which is just too important to give up. I have never found a way to make my psychic powers work properly with other genes.*"
"*That sounds like a challenge to me.*" Morgan declared. "*This time, I will be the first to figure it out.*"
Good. Dov hoped that her sister would succeed. Her bruised ego was doing nobody any good.
Why couldn't she be more like Alexis? His single-minded pursuit of sorcerous bloodlines was kind of crazy, but he was always nice and polite to talk to.
Or better yet, why couldn't she be more like Galanys, who was so empathic and had such a good understanding of her own emotions that they could simply talk through any issue and resolve relationship problems directly, without any drama?
--- Aranea ---
Aranea sank her fangs into yet another dire wolf, killing it instantly.
"And that's two hundred! Yay, we are done with the quest!" Rania said.
Her Big Sister sounded very happy that it was finally over, and Aranea couldn't help but agree. Two hundred dire wolves really were a lot of wolves, and they were all the same and posed no challenge to her at all.
Two days ago Rania had told her that she had found a fun, adventurous way to pass the time: The government had put out a bounty to hunt dire wolves, because the creatures were overpopulated. None of the others had liked the idea. They said that hunting dire wolves was a boring routine job even for weaker adventurers. Atrog said he would normally join in because it was important to cull the dire wolf population regularly to keep people safe, but he also said that the Shan were right there, with their armies of modified monsters. It would be dumb to go on the hunt himself when there were other people around that could use the practice anyway.
Rania disagreed. She said it was about the experience, and that hunting dire wolves was one of the most traditional adventuring experiences possible. She called it a fetch quest, even though there was nothing to fetch. Aranea had been delighted to go with her, and together they had spent the last few days hunting dire wolves.
It had been fun at first. For a few hours. Then it became a boring routine. So many wolves!
"I'm sorry this took so long, Aranea. This was much less fun than I was hoping for. I did not expect it to take so long to find that many dire wolves and once we got started I didn't want to abandon the quest. The poor Quest Giver would have been so disappointed in us!"
Aranea hugged Rania. It was fine. She liked spending time with her sister, even if the quest was boring.
--- Rania ---
"*...and that is why the Living City puts a lot of effort into ensuring equal opportunities for all its citizens.*" Adam lectured them. "*The children of slaves receive the same education as the children of the rulers. Teachers hold some of the most prestigious and well-paying jobs in their society and interfering with the education and fair evaluation of a child is a fast way for a noble to get executed. This makes the Living City one of the most egalitarian countries on the planet.
"*Of course, the reason for this is anything but benign: The Living City believes that glory can come from one of two things: Exceptional individuals, and groups that work like a well-oiled machine. Their education system is designed to produce as many exceptional individuals as possible. Everyone who does not make that cut is treated like dirt, and forged into a faceless soldier for the army. The schools in the Living City are very effective at education, but they are also extremely competitive, oppressive and ruthless. They produce the greatest wizards in the world, just as the Living City claims they do, but they also cause immense suffering to their students. In essence, the Living City is a tyrannical meritocracy.*"
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
Adam was explaining the Living City's history to them, since it was important to know your enemy. Most of the information about the city was deliberately shrouded or just plain made up, and Adam wanted to make sure that team Nundru would know what they were dealing with.
"*I don't know.*" Rania began. "*I feel like the Living City is way more nuanced than it really needs to be. It's a Bad Guy. The main Bad Guy in the world, really. It would be great if it was more evil so that we don't have to feel bad about killing its people. They are super evil in most ways, but then actually have a good point in others. It's weird.*"
"*Why are you telling us all this, anyway?*" Galanys asked. "*Aren't you afraid that it could cause us to become more sympathetic to the Living City? That would make its manipulations more effective.*"
"*That is exactly why I am explaining it. The Living City is a master manipulator, and through Rania it can now talk to you. If you believe the official version of history, it will have an easy time manipulating you by telling half-truths. But if you know the whole truth to begin with, then you won't be as easily manipulated.*"
--- Dov ---
"*You are a good host. You are making Brytius proud.*" Cilia's voice said inside Dov's head.
Dov knew it was a manipulation tactic, but she felt flattered all the same.
"*You could take my place. Follow the original plan. Take the power of the Living City for your own, and ascend to godhood. I won't stand in your way. If you prove yourself better than my alternate selves, then you deserve it.*"
"*Sure. I'm going to just listen to the voice of a millennia old manipulator in my head promising me the power of a god. What could possibly go wrong?*" Dov said.
"*If you want me to take you seriously,*" she continued, "*then I have homework for you: Give me an itemized list of reasons to trust and to distrust you. If the list is missing any reasons to distrust you that I can think of myself, you fail.*"
Naturally, since Cilia Ulein couldn't know what Dov knew or what she considered a reason to distrust her, she would have no choice but to be very honest and reveal reasons to distrust her that Dov didn't actually think of herself. Of course it also helped that Cilia was isolated within Dov's mind and Dov was able to inspect her thought processes with some effort. Cilia knew the gist of it, but not the details, so she would have difficulty accounting for that as well.
Even so, trusting anything she said would be dangerous. But at the very least, this homework assignment would be a very educational exercise for the both of them. Brytius would approve.
--- Aranea ---
Aranea's civilshape exercises were not going very well. She was trying very hard to follow Tanya's instructions. Let go of her body image. Understand that all is one. Imagine the creature she wanted to be.
Nothing happened.
So she kept practicing. Persistence was the key, Tanya said.
And eventually, it worked. Sort of. But not really?
During her meditations to achieve oneness with the universe, she suddenly noticed a shift in herself. When she opened her eyes she saw that she still looked like a giant spider. But something was odd. She was looking at the world not with eight eyes as usual, but with nine.
Her ninth eye had been opened.
"Whoa, what is that?" Rania asked. She was sitting nearby and reading a book to keep her company during her meditation. "I can see your ninth eye! It's totally glowy! Oh do you think you have psychic powers now?"
"*Maybe?*" Aranea responded telepathically, before she realized what she did.
"*You do! You are telepathic now! So cool! You have this really cool purple aura, too! It looks so great! I was wondering if you would get any cool abilities from being so close to the Xeltek artifact when you became sapient, and now we know the answer is yes.
“*Now you have psychic powers and you look kind of like some of the Shan monsters, although you are much cuter and smarter, of course. It's like you are doing some kind of reverse crossover back into Dov's story. It's really nice, and it's only fair that her story would get some help from us too, after Dov has helped us out so much.
"*Oh, I have an idea! It would be kind of weird to have two psychic people in the same team because you would have overlapping and redundant skill sets. But Dov is all subtle with her powers, and you are glowing ominously. So I wonder if you can do different things?"
Aranea was excited to try it! Her civilshaping didn't work yet, but maybe she had other cool abilities?
Half an hour later they had their answers.
"*Ok, so we have now learned that your eye lasers can set things on fire. That's cool.*" Rania commented from atop Aranea’s back as she floated through the air, wrapped in a mysterious field of crackling purple energy.
"And we have also learned that tents are surprisingly flammable and that your teleportation does not cause enough wind to put out the fires. That is less cool, and I hope someone else shows up with water soon."
--- Lilian ---
"*Hi Atrog, I wanted to discuss something with you.*" Lilian said.
"*Wait. Dov isn't here. How are we talking right now?*" Atrog replied telepathically on instinct.
"*Oh, I'm also psychic now.*" Lilian explained. "*It turns out that some ancient mad scientist from Oruk managed to capture an Elder Mind Warper during the Great War.*"
She shared a mental image of the laboratory they had found in the Ivory Tower. It looked so creepy and ominous. Full of unnecessary blinking lights, steam vents that served no purpose, and far too many unlabelled levers.
"*Anyway, I ended up ritually eating the Mind Warper's brain on a dare.*"
Atrog said nothing, but he gave her a look.
"*Don't look at me like that, it makes sense in context, I swear. Anyway, I'm pretty sure my psychic powers are not related to Dov's powers, or Aranea's. They feel different. Honestly, I think this was just an excuse by Tonos to get me infected with a bunch of Mind Warper curses. It puts limitations on my actions.
“*I have a lot of sympathy with the fey now, and with Rania now that she is part vampire. Dealing with curses is just the worst. The Phenomenal Cosmic Power I got as part of the deal does sometimes make up for it, though.*"
"*Why is everyone getting psychic powers now? First Aranea, now you. This is getting out of hand.*" Atrog asked.
"*I don't know? Maybe Tonos just has a phase? Thirty years ago he was a big fan of pirates and I kept encountering them everywhere, somehow even in landlocked countries. Maybe he just likes psychic powers now?*"
--- Pymion ---
As he exited the dungeon from the feywild, Pymion was happy. He finally gained a second warding ring to complete the set.
Bob the Senior Dungeon Builder was already waiting for them to give their report, although he was polite enough to give them a few minutes to recover first. Delving into his dungeons was exhausting.
"Everything was great this time." Pymion told the fey. "It had just the right balance of danger, risk and reward. The only thing that annoyed me was that we keep finding magic shortswords. None of us use those."
"That makes sense, though." Lynn disagreed with him. "They did have a lot of magic shortswords at the time. It was standard equipment for every soldier. We might not need them, but we can still sell them for money."
Bob nodded at this, happy with the review.
Team Delta had spent the last couple of weeks dungeon delving in the feywild, to test Bob's dungeons. They were getting training and many magic items out of it, while Bob was very happy for the opportunity to get detailed and honest feedback on his work.
"What did you think of the mimic?" Bob asked.
"It was very unexpected." Norsh responded. "But it made sense in retrospect, why it was there, once we read the research logs and understood what the facility was really for."
Pymion agreed. It made sense in context.
All in all, going dungeon delving in the feywild was an amazing, mutually beneficial arrangement. The others loved it, too. Lynn was drinking much less than usual, and she kept selling almost all the loot she got for money instead of keeping it. Norsh was the opposite, and by now he had acquired a complete set of magical hunting equipment, complete with magical boots and a stealth cloak.
None of the magical items they found were all that powerful individually. They couldn't compare to the loot they got as part of the prophecy Zephyrion the Genesis Dragon had given them, especially not to his cursed shield. But quantity was a quality all of its own, and the sheer number of magic items they got was staggering. Buying them all from a shop would have been ruinously expensive. Being able to sell excess items instead was amazing. They were getting stronger and richer at the same time.
He could get used to this. Delving Bob's dungeons was steady if slightly monotonous work. It felt almost like farming.
--- Rania ---
Rania was frustrated. She was trying to reach out to the Spirit of Adventure. It had seemed lonely, and she wanted to see if it wanted a friend.
But she couldn't find it. It was the strangest thing. She was pretty sure that it was present. Adventure was all around her. She cared about adventure more than almost anything else, except maybe her friends. And yet, she couldn't find the Spirit of Adventure.
Maybe it was shy?
It didn't need to be shy! All the other spirits respected it greatly. It said that Pebble was correct and very brave to call out the Living City, and that praise alone had made Pebble even more popular with the other spirits. They were more likely to listen to him now when he asked for something. More importantly, they liked him more. He was already popular before, but after that praise his popularity skyrocketed. Just yesterday he gave a small comedy routine, and the other spirits loved it. All the shampoo bottles clapped! It was very impressive.
Pebble tried to help her to contact the Spirit of Adventure. In fact, he was the reason she remembered about it at all. Her memory of what happened when the vampire mind controlled her had been hazy, but he had helped her meditate on it to clear her memory, and argued with other spirits that amnesia without a good in-universe reason was a terrible trope and she should totally be allowed to remember.
Her memories were still fragmented, but she vaguely recalled meeting the Spirit of Adventure and thinking it was lonely.
Unfortunately it still hadn't responded to any of her attempts to reach out to it. She would keep on trying, though. It had saved her life, and it liked Pebble, and she really wanted to say thank you and befriend it.
--- Lilian Weaver ---
Lilian was witnessing the most unnatural thing she had ever seen, and couldn't believe her ears.
"*I will start doing the meditation exercises you recommended.*" Galanys told Dov. "*I need to learn how to suppress my curiosity when it comes to infohazards. I have always hated the idea because curiosity is a virtue to me, but I understand now how this is a special case. I will also talk to Balron to see if there are any spells that can help with that.*"
Galanys and Dov were calmly discussing their issues. They didn't shout. There were no accusations, only genuine attempts to understand the other person's point of view. They even had well-established boundaries and habits for more open communication that they set up weeks ago, after earlier disagreements.
There was no drama here. No misunderstanding that didn't get discovered immediately. No grievance that was left to fester, either. Their response to a "what is wrong?" was not the traditional "oh, it's nothing." but an actual explanation of what bothered them. And then the other of the two would not get offended either, but would take the explanation at face value and they would look for a solution together.
"*...I understand now that cold reading is basically just an advanced form of empathy to you*" Dov said. "*You are doing it instinctually, so it would be cruel to ask you to stop that entirely. I will see what I can do on my end to counter it. My mother Damiah should know a thing or two about it, so I will send her a message.*"
They had been talking like that for over an hour, and they were both still calm. They even seemed happy that they were clearing up their problems, and they said so out loud to each other because apparently positive reinforcement was a thing, as they explained. She had asked about it, and mentioned how strange she found all this. They expressed surprise at that. Wasn't that normally how people talked through their issues?
No. No, it was not. But Galanys was a student of psychology, and Dov had a biologically built-in capacity for introspection that would make any monk jealous, as well as a religious inclination to make full use of this ability.
To them, this was normal. To Lilian, whose life might as well be an actual adventure novel, this was the most unnatural thing in the world. Her own love life was rather intense and probably had more drama in it than usual. More than one ballad had been written about her amorous adventures and their fallout. But those relationships, while fun, had not been particularly healthy. Suffice it to say, she was no longer in contact with most of her exes.
She was so jealous of Dov and Galanys for their unnaturally healthy relationship. It was an open relationship too, which Lilian sometimes took advantage of. But there was a difference between having some fun with someone in bed, and knowing that the other person had your back no matter what happens. Lilian had never had a relationship like that herself.
But the two of them were just absurd. Not merely normal and stable, but a step beyond that. They weren't just dealing with drama, they were preemptively planning to defuse future drama before it even happened. If Lilian was an actual priest of Tonos, instead of his unwilling Chosen, she might have taken that as heresy.
"*...I suspect that the Living City will try to drive a wedge between the two of us, or between us and our friends.*" Dov said. "*We should start making a list of things it could say and deal with that in advance.*"
"*I agree! It will definitely try to do that.*" Galanys responded and adopted a thinking pose. After a few seconds of thought she continued "*I think that if an eldritch horror that can discover the deepest and darkest secrets of a person wanted to ruin our relationship, it would probably tell you about the time I...*"
Lilian wanted to scream.
--- General Brun ---
"I must admit I am still confused why we are being kept out of the loop here." General Brun asked. "Why are only team Nundru and some of our specialists being prepared for this mission? Princess Dov's life is at stake!"
"As I understand it, it's all because of Lilian's plot hole." General Rumera replied. "Apparently it only works on very specific people and it interacts with Her Highness Denissa Mardok's recently revealed prophecy. Their party happens to match the preconditions."
"And those prophecies prevent them from asking us for advice?"
"Maybe?" General Rumera answered with a shrug. "You know how adventurers are."
"Adventurers." General Brun sighed in exasperation.
"Adventurers." General Rumera agreed, as he put a hand on her shoulder in sympathy.
--- Adam ---
"I am telling you, there isn't enough space in the tank to fit another battery, sir." The engineer said.
"Nonsense." Adam replied. "This fit in Boomwagon the First, and I will not let Boomwagon the Second be inferior in any way. How much more money do you need?"
"It isn't a question of money, sir. With all the other devices in there, we simply do not have enough room. The spatial warping is already at the limits of what money can buy."
"Fine. If money can't buy what I need then I am going to scrounge Denissa Mardok's vaults for artifacts until I find something that works."
--- Rania ---
Rania was bored.
It had been weeks, and their preparations were still not done!
Sure, hanging out with her friends was fun, but sometimes they were off doing other things, because everyone was busy with preparations, and some of those were just plain boring.
Why did it take so much time just to prepare for an excursion into hostile territory in a foreign country on the other side of the world? They just wanted to infiltrate a facility protected by a precognitive Old Power that had been fighting the entire rest of the world to a stalemate for most of recorded history.
On second thought, maybe she was answering her own question with that description.
Rania sighed, and continued reading the fun spinoff novel of Magical Girls Sugar Explosion Squad in front of her. The characters in that novel had basically no downtime. It was just one cool fight after the other. She was so jealous.