"Fife has enough people with her. She doesn't need either of us; so relax." Ludmiller sat in the tavern on the second floor, her attention split between the meal before her and Wild at her side. "Squishy is happy to stay in Fife's boss room. Travis is safe. You don't have to stay here all the time."

"I know it's a rut now, but it's a comfortable rut." Wild managed to keep one arm around Ludmiller's shoulder while eating his stew with a spoon in his other hand. "I haven't just been guarding the tunnel. The practice dungeons need bosses, after all."

Leaning into Wild's side, Ludmiller let out a happy trill. "Okay, but what about outside? I was thinking of visiting the gnolls. We could have some fun sparring with them, playing some music, a—" Feeling Wild stiffen, she waited for him to speak his mind.

The old memory had come on strong the moment Ludmiller had mentioned it. Closing his eyes, Wild remembered a time when everything seemed bigger than him—a time when his mother would sing songs. "We sang and played together when I was young."

Surprised at learning something new about her partner, Ludmiller gave him some more time to add more, but he seemed to have slid back to his pre-kobold recalcitrance with his speech. "You've never sung for me. I think I'd like to change that."

Wild sat in silence for a few more moments, working the idea around his head. He knew he was falling into his old ways, so he squeezed Ludmiller and kissed her cheek. "Then we will go and, if they will let us, we'll sing together."

Their little moment was broken when a dragon worked her head into the room. Neither Wild nor Ludmiller felt a particular need to kick Penelope out of what was her own tavern.

Nonetheless, Penelope froze when she saw the couple. "I'm not interrupting?"

Looking at each other, Ludmiller and Wild broke into laughter. Recovering first, Wild shook his head. "No. We were talking of plans to visit the gnolls."

Ludmiller turned to watch Penelope crawling the rest of the way inside. "Maybe we should widen all the tunnels like we did for that passage the miners use?"

Stopping with her wings half inside, Penelope turned her head to look at Ludmiller. "Are you saying I'm getting fat now I'm a noble?" She squirmed some more before getting her hips to squeeze through the narrow door with some kind of space-warping happening.

Slumping on the floor and reaching out with one talon to grab a keg of ale from behind the bar, Penelope glared up at Ludmiller, ruining the maliciousness of it with a smile. "Well?"

"I am trying to think of something to say that won't get me devoured," Ludmiller said. "Was that good enough?"

"For now." Rearranging her back end, Penelope used a claw to knock the bung out of the top of the barrel and tipped it. It wasn't as undignified as lapping, but licking the drizzle of ale that came out the hole was the best she could manage.

"I saw your fight. That woman was incredible." Wild sipped at his own beer. "It makes me wonder how Fife stood up against her."

Shaking her head, Ludmiller said, "I don't think anything could kill her until she's ready to let it."

"Right?" Penelope asked. "And look at her now! She's huge! I don't think a cannon hitting her in the face would do more than make her stagger back a step. How'd that happen, Luddy?"

"She and the wolves were fighting the boss of the goblin dungeon. There were spores everywhere in the air and any time Katelyn wasn't spitting fire, the damn rot was spreading everywhere. So she filled the whole chamber with flames. Fife could heal through it with Breath of Spring healing her. I guess whatever magic makes the dungeon work finally got sick of her insanity and threw its arms up in the air and made her a fire dragon."

Wild slumped a little. He reached down to his bowl, now mostly devoid of any large chunks, and picked it up. Tipping the remaining contents into his mouth, he felt satisfied at having filled his stomach. He didn't want to be jealous of Fife, the wolves, and even Penelope, but they all seemed to leave him behind.

"Do you want to spar?" Ludmiller was surprised how fast Wild's head jerked up at that. His smile told her all she needed to know. Standing up, she held out a hand to him.

Using Ludmiller's arm to pull himself over the table, Wild waved back toward Penelope as he chased his mate out the door.

Sighing, Penelope looked at her barrel with a little regret. "I hate drinking alone."

"Then it's lucky I came." Wearing an arming shirt, trousers, and some chain mail armor, Hilda walked into the barroom. "Thank you for the duel."

Penelope watched Hilda take a seat at the bar. She looked more relaxed and calm, almost serene, than before their fight. "How are you settling into the fort?"

Grunting, then getting up and circling the bar to pour herself an ale, Hilda said, "It's perfect for us. Breeze"—biting back the old hatred for magic, Hilda pushed on—"is generous with food. It's hard to break away from our old ways of doing things, but we work at it."

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Slurping some of the ale from her barrel, Penelope wanted to stretch her wings out, but there wasn't enough room. "Breeze is—" Penelope knew her own thoughts on Breeze were colored by Travis', but she didn't mind that so much since Breeze was a very open dungeon. "She's something all right. Dungeon inspectors entered her almost a week ago, and we haven't seen them back since. Breath of Spring promised they wouldn't be harmed, but it's a long way to her lower floors now."

"The workers have made a unique method for reaching the thirtieth floor fast. It's a small wagon on rails. I would not recommend it." Hilda shivered at the memory of hurtling down the floors only to be caught by a sheep with more limbs than she cared to think about. "Breeze's monsters don't like fighting."

"Huntress does, though she's not going to be much of a fight for you. Big centaur—" At Hilda's confused look, Penelope described Huntress instead. "Horse with an elf's torso on top. Wicked-good shot with a bow, but close combat is her downfall."

"Why?" Hilda asked, but at Penelope's raised eye ridge, explained. "She has the body of a horse. Give her heavy armor, a halberd, the biggest weapon she can carry. She would be a fine close-quarters fighter."

Penelope was caught out by the direct thinking. "That makes sense, but I think she prefers her bow. She went back into the goblin dungeon to get more experience— Killing things makes people with dungeon classes get more powerful."

Musing over her thoughts while looking into the bottom of her mug, Hilda finally let out a grunt. "Can I have one of these?" She felt it was bold to ask, which was one of her favorite qualities.

"Of course you can. Your people too. It will help you grow stronger so you can beat me." Penelope flashed a fang-filled smile at Hilda, only to see her blush. "Was there something in particular you wanted to work toward?"

"Stronger. Bigger. I can't stop a dragon if I cannot hurt it."

"There are two ready paths to improve that. Soldier has a mix of skills in it, some offensive and some defensive—it also has some great stamina boosts. It leads to Tank, Ranger, and Berserker. If you would like to try magic, there's Mage, which leads to Wizard, Sorcerer, and Arch-Mage. That Fire Rain I used on you was a Mage spell. I also shielded myself with my mana and used Armor Breaker, from Soldier, to tear your armor open."

Hilda rocked back on her chair a little. Fighting a dragon—Penelope—had been a dream of hers for as long as she'd lived. She had built it up so much during the siege and the trip north that it had become the goal of her life. Now she'd done it. She had pitched her body and training against a dragon. Now that dragon was here telling her she had more options. "Soldier, then. I will practice with that."

"Trav, can you give Hilda the Soldier class?" Penelope asked.

"Sure." Travis would have liked to have paid with gold, but Soldier class was a thousand steel, of which he had plenty, and the only way to change the price to gold was at a hundred-to-one ratio. "There. Let me know if the others in the outpost want some classes too. I can only give them inside Northridge, Home, or here in my dungeon."

"Thank you." Finding it less weird to talk to a dungeon by the day, Hilda nodded her head. "How do I use it?"

Pointing to some of the weapons, armor, and shields hanging on the wall behind the bar, Penelope said, "Grab a shield and say Shielding Stance."

Curious, Hilda put her ale down and did as instructed. She held the shield before her without her sword and said, "Shielding Stance." A solidness seemed to support her. She held tight as Penelope reached out a huge talon and, with it clutched closed, smacked the shield with it. "I barely felt that."

"It's stronger if you are covering someone else with your shield, but there is a small benefit to using it alone."

"What else can I do with it?" Magic like this, Hilda had decided, was a tool. Penelope still would have overwhelmed her if she didn't know how to block and reinforce her stance, but this simply added a little more.

"You need experience to get more abilities from it. Killing things is the best way of getting it." Lapping at her barrel again, Penelope paused to head-off Hilda's next question. "We have training dungeons. They're filled with our creatures, and you are free to kill within them. The other option is you work as a mini-dungeon boss."

Turning and pouring herself another ale, Hilda thought it over. "I could organize skirmishes with my people and we would gain this experience for killing each other—even if we are brought back to fight again?"

Penelope could see the angle Hilda was working on, and she liked it. "You would, and you can. But if you do it inside Trav, he'll get experience for you. You could even ask Breeze if she would gain anything from it."

"You would fight me again?" Hilda asked.

"Of course. But remember, I'm gaining classes too. You could also ask Astrid and her pack for sparring. They're learning new tricks every day, it seems, and the lot of them went back into the goblin dungeon to level up their Tank class."

"Tank?"

"Tank is the class that Fife has fully completed. Everything in it boosts defense in some way. Regeneration constantly heals your wounds, Reinforced Armor lets you absorb armor into your body—Fife has adamantine scales. Hard Head makes her impossible to knock out with blows to the head." As she described it, Penelope could see Hilda's eyes widening more and more. When the woman drank half her mug in one gulp, she summarized, "The best defensive class we have, but you need Soldier at level ten to take it."

"And levels equate to the abilities these classes give?" At a nod from Penelope, Hilda smiled. "Then I have a task—to train my people until we are all ferocious, unkillable dreadnoughts."

Closing her claws around her barrel and lifting it, Penelope said, "To growing stronger."

It was a sentiment that Hilda could get behind. "Stronger and tougher!" She stood and carried her mug over to clunk it against the barrel Penelope held, and then drank along with her. "This is good ale. Can I take a barrel back with me?"

"I'll do one better—I'll carry it back for you." Draining her own barrel to the last, Penelope began turning herself around and making her way out of the dungeon. Leaving her own empty barrel beside the bar, she grabbed up two more and tucked each under a wing to make good on her promise.

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