The inspectors entered the dungeon, leaving us to wait around ourselves in the meantime. It is early in the morning, maybe too early for some of us. Kallion is still deep asleep, having stayed up last night to study some textbooks his master had left him with.
His dedication to knowledge is admirable, at least. And it takes as much to be a competent wizard, not just the blessings the goddess bestows, as I am told. It is great to have him on our team.
But while waiting for my team to awaken, I have time to kill, so I decide to play around with the mask.
Honestly, if it weren’t for that constant awareness of it that comes with equipping magical items that grant abilities, I would probably forget I am even wearing it. It rests comfortably and lightly atop of my face and since it is invisible right now, if you would not know about it there would be no way to realize I am wearing it short of touching my face.
And even then, my understanding of the mask is that when I use it to change my features, it kind of melds with my face, at least that is what it feels like. So while using its transformative abilities, I guess even a physical inspection won’t reveal its presence.
Shrugging to myself, I focus and attempt to change my voice. A little game we have settled into during our three day march was for me to try and imitate my teammate’s voices as best I could, so I began the little routine I had set for myself.
Adjusting my voice works like flexing muscles I didn’t have before, gently altering my pitch and inflections. It also somehow grants me increased control over anything I can do with my voice naturally, so I run through a vocal warm-up while doing slight adjustments here and there.
After several minutes of this I feel like I have a solid grasp on it and do my first test. Being a young man of similar age to me, Kallion’s voice should be easiest for me to copy. My efforts are sloppy, however, at best.
“It does sound somewhat like him at least.” Allea comments from up on her perch on the dirt walls Baerdur erected with his earth magic. “Keep that up and you will have his voice down in three years or so.”
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“Thanks for the vote of confidence. I guess it will take fifteen to imitate yours then?” I bite back with a grin on my face.
“I’d be happy to provide you with samples if it speeds up the process. I don’t think I have that kind of patience.” she replies with a smirk.
“Isn’t patience important for being a ranger? You should really be working on that, then.”
Like that we banter back and forth, all the while I make an effort to more finely and accurately control it.
Talking to Allea is strangely natural. Out of us four, she is the one I have known the shortest amount of time, but it feels like the two of us are on the same wavelength a lot. Her father brought her to Aresmouth nearly two years ago now, and since he is a former party member of my mothers and both of Astrid’s parents, we kinda naturally started hanging out together.
I am interrupted in my musings by the sound of Kallion stumbling out of his cot, awake but not entirely aware of his surroundings yet, which is his typical state on early mornings.
Grabbing Astrid who has been busying herself on the other side of the small encampment with gear maintenance, we fall into our daily team drills since we are in relative safety right now. I keep the pace light though, since the only thing between us and a potential monster attack is a dirt wall, even if it is reinforced with magic.
But then again, there should not be too dangerous monsters about in this part of the Belt. The only thing that comes to mind in terms of “run immediately” dangers would be those cultists that they mentioned. Given that they were smashing low tier cores they could not well exceed the second tier, at least, which does give us a fighting chance, should push come to shove.
The second tier is where adventurers begin to enter the realm of the superhumanoid, exceeding most conventional limits by the goddess’ grace, but it’s only barely. The third tier is where they become truly monstrous in capabilities. A well trained tier one can hold their own against your average tier two, but the same cannot be said for tier two and three. Supposedly, the gap continues to widen, but there are not a lot of tier four’s or higher around. The only known tier five in humanoid lands, the adventure king, is more like a force of nature than a person, if accounts are to be believed.
After our drills, we sit down to recover. I wonder what's going on inside the dungeon right now. They have been in there for a while now…