CHAPTER 17: FINAL PREPARATIONS

The morning broke, bleak and grey, and I shambled my way out of my stall and over to the breakfast hall for some bacon and mash. On the way I pulled up my character sheet and found that I'd earned enough Attunement overnight that I was able to buy Mystic Acceleration back. I also grabbed a Channeling +2 and unlocked another Common node. Mr FloatyBox charged me 1094 Attunement to unlock it instead of the usual 216; I thought that meant it was going to be something really good, but it turned out to be just another Physique +1. Well, at least it had four connections coming off of it, and one of them was an Uncommon. I didn't have enough Attunement left to unlock anything, but I would be able to tomorrow.

I slouched into the breakfast hall and went over to the kitchen pass where the young lady from yesterday was working. I got my front paws up on the counter so that I could see her.

"Good morning. Could I have some of the mash with bacon, please?"

She smiled brightly at me. She was a dog lover, I could tell. "Of course, sir. That'll be thirty stone."

"Oh...um...I don't have any money. We've been staying here and...." I trailed off. I wasn't exactly sure what I had been thinking to simply walk in like this.

Her smiled disappeared and she bit her lip. "I'm sorry, sir. We're a cash-only business."

"...Oh." I dropped back to all fours and turned away. "Thank you," I mumbled, glancing back. Mom always told Cassie that please and thank you were important.

I looked around vaguely for a moment, unsure of what to do, and then I went and lay by the fire until my friends showed up to buy me food.

o-o-o-o

They did eventually show up and Eugene insisted on buying me a big breakfast with lots of and lots of bacon. Estelle said something quiet to Marcus and then sat on the hearth beside me. I put my head in her lap and she ruffled my ears and petted me while Marcus went to order his own food.

"I set up a tab for you, Athos," Marcus said. "Five hundred stone, you can order whatever you want whenever you're hungry. When it runs out, let me know and I'll refill it."

I picked my head up in surprise. "You did? You mean if I'm up before you guys I can have breakfast?"

He smiled. "Yup. And lunch, and elevenses, and midnight snack—well, actually, I don't think they're open at midnight. Anyway, whenever they're open you can eat."

I was lying under the table (it was a good place to feel sorry for myself), so his face was out of reach for a good slurping. I snoot-bumped his ankle instead.

"Hey, speaking of money," Eugene said. "You guys got 5,000 Spirit yesterday. You didn't exchange all of it, right?"

"No. We set aside 533 for Athos and changed 1,000 of it for 100,000 stone which we put in the account so that when those 66,000 in charges come in we'll be covered. Why?"

"I was thinking," Eugene said, clearly picking his words carefully. "I bet that we could get Simon to heal him with some of the remaining Spirit."

I sat up suddenly, which involved thwonking my head on the underside of the table and then ducking out from under it before sitting up properly. "That would work! If Simon could put some of the Spirit into me it would heal me!"

Marcus looked confused. "Wait, what? How would Spirit physically—"

"I think what—" Eugene started to say, speaking quickly.

"Oh, it's because of my Dyadic Unity skill. See, my body and my spirit are one, so my numbers are really big and physical healing or spirit healing, it's all the same thing."

Eugene groaned and slumped back in his seat.

Marcus and Estelle exchanged looks. "That sounds like a very powerful Skill," Estelle said carefully. "Are you saying that you have one big pool for both hit points and mana points?"

"Athos," Eugene said. "Maybe—"

I waved a paw dismissively. "Oh, it's fine. Marcus and Estelle are friends! See, it's part of this Epic skill called 'Supreme Exemplar'." (Murray was kind enough to follow my intent so he made his voice extra deep and goofy when he said the name.) "It made me big and smart and floofy—"

Estelle grabbed my snoot in both hands and pressed my mouth shut. "Quiet!" she hissed, looking nervously around the dining room. It was still early; there were only three other guests and they didn't seem to be paying attention.

"Thorry?" Murray said for me, translating with the tone that I would have had given that my mouth was currently being held shut.

Estelle leaned close, putting her lips right up to my ear. "You cannot talk about having high-level Skills in public, dopey dog! You've already had someone try to kill you once! And definitely don't talk about them in front of Murray." Slowly, she let go of my snoot and sat up straight again.

"I was just going to say that—" I stopped when she raised a scolding finger and gave me the Mom Stare. "Um...well...." I looked around in embarrassment. "I think Eugene is right? It would help?"

They digested that for a moment. "Fine," Marcus said at last. "It's seven o'clock now. Aerith said he'd be at the bastion at noon, right?" Eugene and I both nodded. "In that case we head over to Simon now and see about getting you healed. Then we go to the bastion and have Aerith kill some more of those worms. Is he going to be able to get them all today?"

"Yesterday he healed me five times and he killed off four worms, then five, then five, then six, then six." I said. "Four and five is...nine. Nine and five is...um...fifteen—"

"Fourteen," Marcus said.

I looked away, embarrassed. "Right. Fourteen. So the first two cured nine. Then add five for the third time and that gets fourteen. Add six for the fourth time and that's...um...twenty. Add six more...." I paused; there had been too many numbers there and I'd lost track. I went back through it, miming writing the numbers on the ground to make it more visual. "Twenty-six! Right?"

"Right," Marcus said. "Did more hatch today?"

"I think so? According to Mr FloatyBox I was at minus forty-eight Recuperation yesterday, but that doesn't make any sense because my character sheet said seventy-five. And 'minus forty-eight' doesn't even make sense—what's the forty-eight being minused from?"

There followed another half-hour lecture on arithmetic, this time going over negative numbers. Eventually the mean old humans took mercy on my poor aching brain and told me that eleven new worms had hatched. I did at least get clarity on the fact that I wasn't at -48 Recuperation, I was 48 points below my normal Recuperation. That mattered because apparently Aerith's healing Skill worked based on my Recuperation (well, Recovery for most people but Recuperation in my case) so each time it would do a better job and that I probably wouldn't be fixed today but tomorrow should do it because numbers and addition and estimates and ow my head. I decided I was going to trust them and not worry about it.

Eugene had waited not-super-patiently for the math lesson to conclude. His leg was jiggling and his toe was tapping and I could smell the frustration on him, but he didn't say anything.

"Better plan," Eugene said once the math finally ended. "You and Estelle go prop up your little scam. Cash in another couple thousand Spirit, rent the arena for three or four more days, make sure everything keeps spinning for at least that long. Then you go to Simon's and pay the freight for the stabilization, have him do it immediately. For now, Athos and I will go check out some of the shops on Skill Street, see what sort of prices we could get for selling a Rare Skill. At noon I'll take Athos over to have Aerith fix him up. We'll meet you at Simon's at one, get Athos topped off, and then we can jump into the first domain. We explore around, get a feel for what we're looking at, spend a day on it, then portal back here tomorrow so that Aerith can finish healing up our boy. We go back in and keep working through whatever's there. If it's as dangerous as Simon implied then we'll earn a shit-ton of Attunement. Hopefully by the end of the week we'll have enough Attunement that we can sell that Rare unlock. That will give us enough money to get fully outfitted so that we can tear through all of it."

"Since when are you coming?" Estelle demanded.

"Since yesterday. Athos invited me."

"I did?" I said, frowning. I was glad to have him along—yay, have all the friends!—but I didn't remember actually inviting him. I should have invited him, but I think it slipped my mind.

He looked at me, clearly hurt. "Yeah. Yesterday, on the way back from the arena. Don't you remember?" He paused, the 'hurt' transforming into 'worried'. "Hang on, do we know what the effect the worms have? Maybe we should have Aerith check you over, see if they might be affecting your brain as well as your body."

Eeep!

"I'm sure you're fine," Marcus said, throwing a glare at Eugene. "There's been no signs that it's affected you mentally. Besides, you'll be cleared of the worms by tomorrow. Did you invite him?"

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"Yup." I must have, right?

Marcus's lips tightened for a moment, but he nodded. "Okay, more firepower is to the good."

"Going back to this 'better plan'," Estelle said. "It's a terrible plan. The goal is to get Athos home. We've got a week per domain and you've got us wasting the first week."

Eugene shrugged. "Athos needs probably two more sessions with the healer, one today and one tomorrow. That's two days that aren't going to be spent making progress through the domain. Best option is to use them to do some initial scouting so that when we go in for real we can be prepared and have our strategy set."

"Skill timeouts reset at midnight," Marcus noted. "The first part of your idea is fine. We sort the arena and have Simon do his mumbo jumbo while you two check Skill Street and then go to the healer. We all gather back here, get some sleep. Up at eleven, get to the healer for the final fix-up, then we jump to the first domain."

Eugene's eyes narrowed for a moment but then he smiled. "Sounds good. I'll message you once we're done at the healer."

o-o-o-o

Plans, they are lovely things. Kinda fragile, though.

Eugene and I checked Skill Street, which turned out to be an entire row of storefronts selling Skills and information about Skills. The proprietors had compendiums of information about various Skills and would answer questions for a fee. They had maps of various parts of the Skillweb and would sell information about what Skills connected to what and the best routes from one useful Skill to another. One woman sold consultations on 'build optimization', which apparently meant that she talked to people about what Skills they had, what they wanted to do, and what Skills they should buy. She even had pre-packaged 'character sheets' with easy to remember names like 'Ranger' for someone who did a lot of traveling and wanted to be able to travel quickly and safely. She had two sample sheets named 'Basic Sword and Board' and 'Advanced Sword and Board' for someone who wanted to make their living fighting and used sword and shield as their weapons. The difference between the two sheets was how many Skills there were and which ones. It was really interesting, but Eugene hustled us in and out quickly, because he wanted to get unlock prices from everyone on the street.

After his curiosity was satisfied we went to the Bastion and met Aerith. After he finished the healing (thirty-four worms! I mathed it myself!), that was where the plan broke down.

"By the way," he said casually, "I'm not going to be around tomorrow so we'll have to do the next session when I get back."

"Hang on," Eugene said. "These worms are hatching inside him. If you don't clean it up tomorrow then they'll spawn again."

"They don't hurt, right?" Aerith asked me. "You aren't in any pain?"

"No...?"

"And they aren't damaging you, right?"

"Well...no."

"But he can't heal!" Eugene said angrily.

Aerith shrugged. "He's not hurting, he's not taking damage, it's not a big deal. Don't do any more tournament fights, don't talk about or show off high-powered Skills in public and he'll be fine."

Eugene took a breath and smiled, losing the 'angry' and allowing his demeanor to become friendly. "I get it. Life is what it is and sometimes we have to do stuff. Still, he's your patient. Skills reset at midnight; how about we hire you for an after-hours appointment then? You'll get a ton of cash and a bunch of Attunement from it."

"Sorry," Aerith said, standing up and patting his pockets to make sure he had everything. "I'm leaving in about twenty minutes. Won't be back until noon on Fifthday."

"Fifthday! That's three days! He spawned eleven last night, you healed thirty-four today. In three days he'll be right back where he is now."

"Don't know what to tell you. I'm leaving for something important and private. You're welcome to look around for someone else who can do the job, but good luck with that. These worms are tough little bastards."

"You're farming him for Attunement, aren't you?"

Aerith raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"When we first met you, didn't you say that you earned seven hundred Attunement a day?"

"Rather more than that. What's your point?"

"You killed 34 of the worms today so you got...what, about 3400 Attunement for five minutes work? That's a week of normal income for you. I bet that right now you're going down to Skill Street to buy some tasty stuff. Stuff that will let you earn even more Attunement going forward. On Fifthday you'll do the same and then you mysteriously won't be available for another three days. How am I doing?"

"That's quite an accusation," Aerith said. "Are you calling me out? If so, I warn you that I will choose no-limits combat under the Solati Protocol."

Eugene hesitated.

"Don't know what that means, weed?" Aerith laughed, the sound cold and cutting. "Typical weed. Doesn't even spend the time to learn the laws. Allow me to educate you. 'No-limits' means what it says: Any weapon, any Skill, any tactic, anything goes. The Solati Protocol means it's to the death, no quarter asked or given. Now, I ask again: Are you calling me out, you little chickenshit?"

Eugene's jaw worked as he struggled to keep his temper. "No," he said at last.

"Great. See you on Fifthday. Stay out of fights, dog."

He turned and left the room.

o-o-o-o

Eugene was still in a rage when we got to Simon's. I walked quietly along beside him, trying not to do anything that would bother him while he processed his fury. I wasn't used to people being this angry, or for this long. It was a little scary, and I was glad it wasn't at me.

Marcus and Estelle were leaning up against the front of Simon's shop, waiting for us. They straightened up the moment they spotted us. Estelle's face was as calm as always, but Marcus looked worried when he saw Eugene. Eugene had messaged that we were coming and that I was healed but nothing more, so his visible anger was a surprise.

"Problem?" Marcus asked.

"The fucking healer is fucking farming Attunement off our boy. He's 'out of town' until Fifthday, by which time the worms will probably have spawned enough to undo all the healing he did today."

Marcus's face went cold. "That's can't be legal," he said after a moment.

Eugene snorted. "In this town, every fucking thing is legal as far as I can tell. He's powerful and he likes to fight under the Solati Protocol so most people aren't willing to challenge him."

"The Solati Protocol?"

"You didn't look this stuff up, huh? It means the fight is to the death. No surrender allowed."

Marcus winced.

"Excuse me," I asked hesitantly. "Is Simon going to be able to fix me?" The moment the words left my mouth I wanted to call them back. "Not fix me fix me. I meant heal me. I got all my bits back when I got Sup—when I got patched here and I'd like to keep them if that's okay." I really hoped it was okay.

Marcus smiled and ruffled my ears. "Yeah, he can. It's a little spendy but we got it done. How much do you need?"

"Say it quietly," Estelle noted.

I checked my character sheet. "My max is 113 and I'm at 33 so...um. The maximum minus the current is how much I'm missing, so 113 minus 33. Subtract three from both—I can do that, right? Okay, good. That's the same as 110 minus 30, which is the same as 100 minus 20 which is...um...80?"

Marcus grinned. "Very good!" He scritched behind my ear and I leaned into it so he'd do it harder. "We can do that, no problem. Here's another question for you: We have to pay him three times as much Spirit as we want him to put in you. How much is that?"

I tilted my head so that I could give him Soulful Eyes. "A lot?"

"You can do it," Marcus said. "It's 80 times 3. Start simple: What's 8 times 3?"

I whimpered. "Could we please go get the healing done and not do math?"

"Yes, we can," Estelle said firmly. "Also, good job with the subtraction. Here." She held out her hand with something in it. I pushed my nose into her hand and whuffled curiously; the sulfur stench of the city was still clogging my nose but not so much that I couldn't smell what this was: Bacon! And something sweet. I snorfled it up happily, enjoying the crinkle of the outside and the yummy deliciousness of the inside.

"Bacon, oats, and honey with a rice paper wrapping," she explained when Marcus gave her a curious look. "I asked Pasha to make them last night."

Hmmmm. 'Them', huh? I started snuffling at Estelle's pockets to see where the rest of the bacony goodness might be hiding. She laughed and pushed me off. I made a game of it, coming back for another snuffle and letting her push me off again, but I knew that game was only funny a couple of times so I didn't press it.

"Who's Pasha?" Eugene asked.

"Daro's daughter." She saw that it meant nothing to him. "The girl in the dining hall who serves you your food?"

"Oh, is that her name?" Eugene asked. "So she does requests, good to know. Anyway, let's get this healing done and then get moving. Looks like we've got more time than we expected for this little scouting mission."

"The portal stones and guidestones are surprisingly cheap," Marcus said as we walked in. "Thirty mana per guidestone, a hundred for the portal stones. He barely even negotiated."

"Welcome, welcome, welcome!" Simon said, grinning that needle-fanged grin that made me want to bite his heckin' face off. "So, I hear that someone needs a bit of a top-up? How much are we doing today?"

"Eighty," Marcus said, handing over a trio of spikes, each about as long as his index finger and as thick as a pencil.

"Sounds fine," Simon said. "One moment, let me get them aggregated." He took the spikes and bent down below the counter for a moment. "All righty, then." He patted the counter in front of him. "Hop on up here. There's a good dog."

I could feel my ears laying back involuntarily. This was like the vet except worse.

Reluctantly, I paced forward and hopped up on the counter. It was narrow enough that I had to stand sideways to him, which I wasn't thrilled about. I really wanted to have my teeth be the bit of me closest to him.

"Right!" Simon said happily. "So, let's get to fixing, eh? Hold still. You'll feel a little pinch..."

He rammed a knitting needle into my ribs. One of the big thick ones that Gramma used to make pot holders every time she came over for Christmas. I missed Gramma almost as much as I missed Mom and Dad and Cassie. She was a soft touch with the Christmas cookies and enjoyed having me floomp in her lap while she knitted. Still, maybe I could see her again. If we could get through this domain thingy I could get home and there could be Christmas cookies and floomping and belly rubs from Cassie and brisk morning drags with Dad and keeping Mom company in the garden and lots of things!

I tried to focus on the memories and the hopes because the needle friggin hurt. Not as bad as the quill had when it was sucking Spirit out of me, and actually maybe it wasn't pain exactly. It felt like someone was spraying me in the face with the garden hose from close range and it was going up my nose. My insides were stretching to take it all in. Places that I didn't realize were empty were getting filled up like water running into a bathtub. My body was swelling up, fur floofing out as though I'd been scuffing around on the carpet too much. It was not fun and my stomach started doing flips. I choked and—

Urrp!

I looked around, a little embarrassed and also a little satisfied at having puked all over Simon's stupid counter.

"Hoo-ee! Dat's nasty, boss. Whatchew been eatin'?"

{Kitchen scraps! They were yummy. And Pasha added extra bacon.} I sniffed at the puke, wondering if perhaps it would be just as good a second time around. Hm. Nope. Stupid enhanced senses. Or maybe it was stupid Simon's stupid counter.

"Feeling better, I hope?" Simon said, his fangs gritted and the smile clearly forced.

I hopped down off the counter and streeeeeetched, first the front end and then the back. Oh, that felt good. I was back to my full small-horse-sized size, nothing was achy, my shoulder didn't hurt. Oh my this was nice.

"Looks better to me," Estelle said, smiling. "Right, Athos?"

"Yup!" I yawned. "A little sleepy, maybe."

"Excuse me," Simon said, his tone a bit strained. He ducked through the door behind the counter and returned a few moments later with some rags which he used to wipe up the counter. I watched and grinned.

"So," Eugene said casually. "This domain thing. When can we get started?"

Simon wiped up the last of my barf and tossed the rags over his shoulder; they disappeared before hitting the ground.

"Now," he said. He gestured and the counter split, pulling back out of the way.

"All you have to do is walk through the door," Simon said, smiling again as he gestured to the black, looming door behind his counter.

We exchanged glances. Estelle cocked an eyebrow and Marcus silently held up the bag of guidestones and the other bag with the portal stone. All three of them checked that their weapons were ready to hand. I shook to settle my fur.

We walked through the door and into Hell's factory.