This first step of their journey, a delivery of a message, was something personal to Elanor. She had Brevity standing beside her while she spoke:
"I bring Far Reach a missive from Northridge and its allied dungeons. Those who are ruling within your walls are parasites. Their venom killed your rightful ruler. If you wish to fight against them, please provide my courier with a small boon to show you assent."
Waiting a few moments, Elanor shrugged and looked at Brevity. "How would we know if it even heard me?"
"If I was a city, and I had the one I'd grown up with and held dear murdered, I'd listen closely to those who came from other cities, hoping one carried a message like th—" Brevity froze. Power pooled around the two of them, growing and swelling, and finally burning into an inferno of magic. "Wow."
Elanor, her eyes wide, struggled to get her emotions under control. The burst of magic would be obvious to anyone with a talent for it, and her own family had that. "That wasn't small, b-but I'll take that as an offer of support. Northridge will petition to have them removed and, if they aren't, will take things further. Thank you—and I'm sorry for your losses." The train whistle blowing pulled her attention to their impending departure. "I'll do what I can."
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[a brave young priestess' journal]
Miss Brevity Delling tells me that she's sure there is someone on the train who is looking for us. It's not surprising. I smuggled Miss Snipsnap under my coat and into the passenger car. Miss Brevity doesn't know I did, but I won't sleep soundly unless I have at least one friend watching my back.
This will be so much better when we have our own train line. Maybe I could work for Mister Travis keeping the boorish types off? I wonder if he can open a new entrance in another city? That could make the entire train thing obsolete. He could pop open an entrance in the capital. I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong.
No, Miss Journal, I am not having an attack of the vapors. I know the King wouldn't stand for that, even if the Capital's genius loci did. I'm sure opening an entrance outside the city, at a negotiated distance, and allowing Travis to build a fortified station around it would be within the realm of possibility.
Perhaps that is something I could ask the [large ink smudge]
The train jolted me and I made a mess. I wonder what the prince looks like? Surely he'd be handsome, and daring, and rugged.
Miss Journal, I am so sorry.
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Ludmiller cherished the little gift Travis had made for her. The pad of paper was a luxury that no adventurer would usually waste gold on, not given how hard it would be to write on it in the field. When Travis had told her there was something better to do it with, she'd scarcely believed she'd be able to make notes of a dungeon while delving it. Each floor she'd been in had carefully written directions that would make getting back out easier. She lifted her head when she heard her friends arrive in the boss room she'd been calmly sitting in.
Standing up, she stretched and walked away from the three big trolls and to the entrance of the room. Fife was looking fierce, as always, but she remembered that the last boss had been Fife's to fight.
The wolves, she had found out, always talked together in their own language before engaging. Ludmiller had heard it enough that it intrigued her with its cadence and rhythm. Even when she'd listened to siege engineers working their machines unaware of her presence, during the siege, she thought it had a lyrical nature. Now, it sounded like violent music—music that would be played on bone instruments.
As she reached them, Ludmiller willed herself to become visible and flashed the wolves a toothy smile. "The big one favors his left leg. The other two have missing armor plates on their legs, it looks like there's armor there, but it's thin sheet metal."
She got a nod for that and proceeded past the wolves to the rest of her friends—many of whom she now considered her party. "By my records, we should be about five floors from where we were last time. If Astrid and her pack were keeping this place from growing any great amount, we should be able to reach the bottom before tomorrow night."
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[Notes in the border of Ludmiller's notebook, written with a charcoal pencil, on "Floor 37"]
I miss Wild. These dungeon crawls are fun, and I like keeping in practice with traps and adventuring, but he is so fixated on protecting Travis. Not that it's a bad thing. That big dungeon softy is the second-best thing that ever happened to me.
Why am I writing this? I don't even know. I don't plan for anyone to read it, and I'll probably smudge it before I get to read it again, but whatever. It's weird, but I get the sense that people in Travis' world wrote a lot of things down like this. I can see why, too. It helps me get my thoughts in order when I write them down.
I think the bosses, at least, are being brought back to life. The trolls from this floor were, last time I saw them, on the thirtieth. I'll sketch them so I remember for next time.
[The following page has a picture of three trolls with some notes about markings]
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What will happen after we destroy this place, I wonder? Will the gnolls be friendly like Breath of Spring and Huntress? I guess Wild is finding out right now. I think it's good he spends more time outside. We don't need to worry, so long as Squishy is still upright, and then there's the cave scorpion and a bunch of Astrid's wolves.
It's weird. He was so terrified of making monsters for so long. Now he has some, he seems much more relaxed about it. Maybe Pen - being who and what she is now - helped? Or maybe it was Astrid and her pack? Life was complicated and messy, even inside a dungeon where we don't have to deal with things we don't want to.
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Baron Brolly Windchime wiped his brow and looked over the city guards that were working beside the laborers. Penelope was snoozing nearby, which meant that they could afford to relax somewhat and bend their backs a little—and he would never ask his people to do something he wouldn't.
Ever since the final encounter (he hoped) with Eliza Sussaridge, Brolly had found himself stronger and more capable. Northridge's boons hadn't been temporary, like he'd thought they would be, but rather they were now part of him. His sword, when he'd drawn it privately to test, flared to life sheathed in a fire that would only burn those he intended harm to.
Right now, that meant he could pick up a log that would normally take five men to lift, and haul it on one shoulder. He'd gotten a few surprised looks at first. With his armor stripped off so he could sweat without needing to clean it, he noticed more than a few admiring looks from female and a few male workers.
That made him think, of course. He wasn't getting any younger, and his current title would become hereditary once he'd met with the King to have it fully realized. Musing on the thought as he hauled wood for those clearing the forest around Northridge, he decided he should look back and try to figure out who might interest him.
Northridge might have begun attracting softer women, but he liked the look of women who had a core of physical strength. Not just that, but who would be capable of work—and there were plenty of examples here today.
Several had even, like him, stripped off shirts so they could work and sweat without ruining their clothes. That level of openness and commitment definitely made him smile back when they stole glances his way.
He knew there would be those who would try to bind themselves to him for his name and power. Getting a hereditary title made you such a target, but if any woman thought she could live an idle life while he worked—she'd have another thing coming to her.
A larger, fuzzier woman who looked new to town was hauling a log almost half the size he was. She was taller than him, which was something he hadn't realized appealed to him as much as when he saw her. If she seemed to be turned off by his human self, she showed no sign of it as she winked.
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[Private journal of Baron Brolly Windchime]
Cathryn. She had no last name, as most cat kin. She arrived in Northridge only a week prior to today, receiving a signing bonus from Christine's missive to attract workers. Her eyes are so green they make me want to gaze into them for hours.
Enough of pleasant things, the daily reports were all positive. We're making good progress pushing back the forest to give long sight-lines for the new wall and its cannons. If the new dungeon that Travis has reported is not friendly, we will not allow it to encroach on Northridge or have any advantage against us.
Stephan notified the council today that Elanor Fitzgerald had arrived in, and subsequently departed, Far Reach. I asked him how he knew, and he told me one of the northern wolves paced them from the trees, circled around the city, and witnessed them in their train as they left.
That was a young woman I still hazarded to trust, but she has certainly gained a lot more than she had. To hear Stephan talk, she hates her uncle almost as much as the rest of us. Perhaps more. If she pulls this mission off successfully…
I guess I might even come around to seeing her as an ally. It's hard to make a call like that, given her family tried to kill me and my closest friends, but she's nothing if not unique. Though, she's no Cathryn.
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Randomness was never random. There was only order you didn't see the pattern of yet.
Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the market square, all around Ogmera seemed chaos. Every week brought more activity to Northridge. More people coming to the scent of gold. And, why not, she mused, it wasn't as if Travis hoarded the stuff. Her own pockets were packed to bursting with it, and she feared that if she stayed much longer she might get pinned down by wealth, love, or the strange temptation to ask the impossible and live forever.
She couldn't focus on her work, and that annoyed Ogmera. Opening her eyes, she looked down at the cloth, wheat, and wood in her lap and sighed. It was going to be one of those days when even the wild order of a market square wasn't enough.
Letting the wills of fate lead her feet, Ogmera wandered around the square until a very specific patter caught her ear. It wasn't the grand chaos-that-wasn't-chaos of merchants selling, but a single man's words to snare the ears of those with a little gold going begging.
She found him in an alley with a little table and a group of people gathered around. She knew the game, knew the moves, and knew the words. Approaching the table, she also knew that two of the crowd were in on this.
The man's words drew Ogmera in just as they were meant to, but for the wrong reason. This was what she needed to make her effigy. Drawing back a little from the heady position close to the "game," she sat down and unfolded her things again.
Not a trace of real chance or randomness existed. Every word and action was calculated to encourage participation in the redistribution of wealth. Ogmera put all that into the tiny effigy she made, and felt it build with power as she did.
Without missing a beat, she took out more wood and began a second.
"Oi, lady. You not gonna play?"
Lifting her head, Ogmera looked the man in the eyes. He wasn't pretty, he wasn't handsome, but he had charisma that practically fountained around him. She wanted to help him, be with him, do anything for him—simply to stay close. He was, she feared, a stake in the ground with a leash.
Her hands, finishing the second effigy, pressed a gold coin to it and imprinted wealth on the luck totem before holding the totem and coin up to him. "You are a fascinating man."
Standing, leaving the man mute with the odd gift, she brushed off her skirts and tucked her tools into a pocket. "Thank you." Then she left with a smile on her face and surety in her heart that she'd not left anything to luck.
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[Stitched into the back of the effigy]
Ogmera, Dragon's Glory inn
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