“There will probably be lots of birds,” said Alfric. “A surprising number, really. Something like eighty percent of all recorded monsters had some kind of bird-like appearance, even if they weren’t strictly feathered or flying. Interior will be something like ninety percent natural, maybe more, or that’s the expectation from the logs I read. We’re expecting fewer and more naturalistic entads, and more ectad materials. But again, that’s general.”
“Be ready for anything!” Mizuki chirped. She looked at Alfric. “Right?”
“Right,” he said. He looked at Isra. “If we have fliers, you’re our best defense.” He turned to Mizuki. “And you’re potentially our second-best defense, depending on what kind of magic is in there.”
“Okay,” said Mizuki, though she looked doubtful. The variability of the dungeons was getting to her, Alfric knew. It was something they’d talked about a few times. It was entirely possible for them to go into a dungeon and have Mizuki unable to provide much of anything unless their other casters were using their abilities — and that was often too late, since Hannah didn’t do much healing in the middle of combat.
Alfric approached the dungeon portal with due reverence. It was locked, and he had the key, but it was the same key, the kind that opened only those dungeons in relatively unpopulated areas, where magic tended to be thin. He was itching to try a harder dungeon with the group, maybe Liberfell or Tarchwood, but with things as they were, he didn’t want to push anyone. Latchet Point was, in fact, supposed to be one of the easier dungeons in the entire area, and he’d selected it because he wanted something that wouldn’t need the absolute pinnacle of teamwork.
Alfric went first, bident held in front of him. He had wanted a better spear from Dondrian, but had set budgetary rules for himself, and the spear he’d been admiring would have required him to take out a loan. Still, the armor itself could serve as a weapon, if the conditions were right.
Once he was through the transitory zone, Alfric was greeted by warm and pleasant sunlight, or something like it, which filtered down through tall trees all around him. He waited, not moving more than five feet from the entrance, and kept his eyes peeled for creatures. The open room was large, reminding him of the dungeon they’d done with the tall pillars, that time he’d been turned into stone, and he idly wondered whether the others would think the same. There didn’t seem to be any monsters though, and it wasn’t long before the others had entered the dungeon too.
In response, Verity strummed her lute with her many-fingered hand, starting in on a light and pleasant song about petals falling in late spring. Alfric had been worried that her songs would be of a mood, but it was a lifting tune, one of hope.
Alfric nodded.
These large rooms were trouble, mostly because the threats could come from anywhere. This one was a forest, so much like the one they’d left that once they were a ways into it, it was almost as though they weren’t in a dungeon at all. The ground cover was sparse, just short grasses and small ferns among the decaying plant matter, which made it easier to move through. Alfric marked trees with chalk as they walked, though the sun was at enough of an angle that he wasn’t too worried about finding his way back. Even in a dungeon with something like a sun, there was rarely a day-night cycle. He was keeping his eye on the sun though, just in case.
The shriek of the birds could be heard before the flapping of their wings. The tall trees made it hard to pinpoint their direction, but Alfric had heard them coming, and was facing the right direction for them. Isra had lifted her bow and nocked an arrow, ready to fire. From the sounds, it was a cluster of less than ten rather than a flock, something large and threatening, and Alfric hoped that it wouldn’t be another dive-bombing situation again.
The first of the birds swooped in with talons outstretched, moving so fast that Alfric didn’t have much time to take it in. The plumage was colorful, yellow at the leading edge and blue toward the back, with a black beak and feet that were difficult to see. The size was hard to judge until it was close, and then when it was close, he realized that it was bigger than he was. Isra got it with an arrow, but it raked its talons across Alfric’s helm and knocked him to the ground. He got to his feet at once and turned around to track it, but it had been pierced through the skull and tumbled to the ground in a burst of feathers. By the time Alfric turned around, the rest of them were coming, their shrieks almost deafening, following one after the other in a bone-shaking harmony.
Alfric was in front of the others, guarding them as best he could, and raised his bident into the air, trying to catch one of the birds as they tried to slash him with their talons as they passed. He got one, briefly, and the force of its movement wrenched the bident from his hands, leaving him momentarily unarmed. One of the birds landed in front of him and began pecking at him with its oversized beak, and it was like being smacked in the chest with a sledgehammer, heavy bruising blows that his armor couldn’t fully dissipate.
Alfric moved forward rather than back, only a moment’s thought spared for his team, who were on their own. He shifted the plates of his armor, losing protection around his arms to form the plates into pointed weapons. They were dull, but with enough force, a dull weapon would be good enough. He slammed his plate-covered fists together against the side of the bird’s head, edge on, using the full weight of his muscles, and the sloppy attack caught the bird in one eye. It wasn’t enough to break the skull, but Alfric had the bird’s head held, and used the plates like a vise, their force adding to his. The bird kicked him, using its sharp talons against the heavy metal on his stomach, almost hard enough to take the wind out of him. He held tight to the bird’s head and pressed with all his might, begging the armor for more power, until finally the skull creaked and groaned, then gave way. The bird collapsed to the ground, and Alfric spun around to look at his team.
Blood was seeping from between the gaps in Hannah’s armor, and the thimble armor that Isra wore had gashes ripped through it. Alfric hadn’t been able to count the birds as they came in, but at least three were still standing. Verity was the only one not actively fighting one, but she was on the ground, strumming the lute with hair pasted to her face by blood and sweat. Alfric raced for Mizuki, who he was most worried about — she had little combat experience — but before he got there, the bird tried to kick her in the chest. She caught the foot in the open mouth of the skull on her armor, and chomped down hard, shearing the leg off at the backwards knee. The bird hopped back, bleeding, then lost its balance and collapsed, beating its wings against the ground. Mizuki was on it in a moment, skulls opened wide.
Alfric tackled one of the birds from the side, taking it off Isra. He rolled with the bird, wrapping his armor around it and trying to squeeze hard and pin it in place. As he did that, he found his strength doubled, Verity’s work, and the flesh of the bird gave way to the dull edges of the plate armor. The bird wriggled beneath him, threatening to break free, bucking and twisting, but just as Alfric thought he might not be able to hold it pinned, the bident came down from above, piercing through the bird’s head, which then popped with a muffled explosion. It was Isra who’d used the bident, and she helped Alfric to his feet.
He turned to where Hannah had been, and was just in time to see her land a solid blow against the last of the birds. It was slow to rise, and Mizuki blasted a hole through its torso before it could find its footing.
For a brief second there was silence save for Verity’s song, which she’d kept up through being knocked to the ground and the frantic bout of combat, and then Alfric remembered his training.
Alfric himself felt unsteady on his feet, and his chest ached. He thought it very possible that he’d broken a few ribs, which wasn’t too big of a deal, and worried more that he had some kind of internal injury that was beyond Hannah’s ability to fix.
It took some time for them to get as patched up as they could be, and no one really seemed to feel like talking. The enormous birds had been a difficult and frantic fight that they very easily might not have made it out of, and there was no loot to show for it. As a start to the dungeon, it was inauspicious. Mizuki should have been happier that her skull armor had actually worked in its first real combat test, but she seemed a bit dazed.
They trudged on through the woods, and Alfric left more chalk marks on the trees. He was on higher guard. The first fight of a dungeon was often the most dangerous by virtue of it being the one that happened before your head was really out of the real world and back into delving, and he hoped that everything after would go better. He hadn’t seen enough of how everyone had reacted to know whether mistakes had been made on their end, and now wasn’t the time to ask.
They saw the gap in the woods before they saw the chasm. It was at least a hundred feet across, a sheer drop, and they couldn’t see the bottom, which was saying something, given there was full sunlight. They could see, on the opposite side, the way that soil transitioned into clay and later rock. It was unstable, too. Bits kept falling off into the place where the light didn’t reach.
said Hannah, staring at the gap between the sides.
They hadn’t yet moved on when they heard a bellow from across the way. It was large, slug-like, dripping mucous and pounding its pseudopods against the ground, but it seemed as incapable of crossing the gap as they were.
Isra was the first to hear the other sounds. It was a full flock of birds this time, a swarm in the sky, racing through the woods, from the direction of the bellowing slug, possibly called by it. A cascade of monsters wasn’t unheard of. Once Isra called out the flock, they got into a more defensible formation, with Verity toward the back, and Alfric braced himself. A large flock of small creatures wasn’t something they were really prepared for, not with Mizuki being lacking in offensive capabilities this time around. There was a part of Alfric that wanted to call for a retreat, but it seemed likely the birds were faster than them. They could get in the chest and have someone race to the exit with the helm, but that would take more time, and as these thoughts were running through Alfric’s head, the birds appeared.
They were black, with long tails, and there were hundreds of them. The only reason not to panic was that they were small, but Alfric knew from experience that tiny creatures could be a problem.
Verity moved in close as Alfric opened the plates up around him. He was just barely able to fit her in with him, the plates covering them both. The plates were no longer overlapping around his body and instead interlocking around them both. It effectively removed both of them from the fight, but Verity was the only one of them who wasn’t in full plate or its equivalent, and the small beaks would have torn her to shreds and taken her out of the battle anyway. She was still singing her song, though she was pressed against him and unable to play the lute.
The rain of birds started with a solid plink against the armor, moving it only slightly, the sound echoing for a bit before Alfric held out his hand and called for the plates to still. The second came soon after the first, and then they were beating against the armor like heavy rain. Alfric hoped that they were dying in the process, but it was impossible to tell, not without leaving a gap in the plates. Alfric tried to treat it as a storm to be weathered, but he was worried about how everyone else was doing out there. His own contribution against a flock was largely insignificant, and he tried to fight down the urge to go out there.
The sound of birds slamming against the armor began to die down, and there were other sounds that followed, some of them a plinking as birds tried to get into the shell, a few sharp blasts that Alfric thought was probably Mizuki cobbling together some spells, and the clamor of people moving around in a disordered way.
“I need to help,” Alfric said to Verity, partly by way of apology. Before she could respond, he stepped out from the armor, leaving through a brief parting of the plates, as easily as stepping through curtains hanging in a doorway.
He was beset at once by small birds, each no larger than a handspan, and they were weak, tiny things, though still capable of nipping a pea-sized bit of flesh from a person, as they proved to him almost right away. He slapped at them as though they were flies, and found that their bones were thin enough that they died in a single hit, which gave him the resolve to continue on. He was being bitten, but they were more concerned with biting him than avoiding his wrath, and Alfric smashed them over and over as his wounds wept blood.
The flock thinned over time, and every dead bird meant that there was less damage taken in killing the next one. Still, there was a limit to how much a person could bleed and still be well, and Alfric knew that he was nearing that point. The others were doing their part, though Hannah’s armor seemed to make her impervious, and Mizuki had taken to the skies, zipping in and out of the trees as the tiny birds followed her, occasionally releasing a sharp blast of magic behind her. She stopped all at once and covered her face with her hand, letting the birds run into her, chomping down on them with the skulls where they tried to beat against her.
Alfric hadn’t been watching Isra when she fell, he only saw her standing one moment and then on the ground the next. The thimble armor was too weak to protect her, the beaks of the birds sharp enough to rend it. He rushed over to her, trying to shoo the birds away, but they were dungeon mad, and focused only on the killing. He didn’t know how long she’d been down, but the thimble armor had been ripped, and her face was uncovered, now with wounds all over it from the pecks of dozens of birds.
Hannah swore when she laid hands on Isra, and Alfric turned his attention away, back toward the birds. With another sharp crack, the last of the birds following Mizuki died, and she immediately landed and began bashing more of the birds, smashing some off Hannah. There were only a few of them left, and between the two of them —
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Alfric looked to where Isra was laying. There were too many holes in her face, a grotesque pocking of flesh. He felt his stomach lurch.
Verity was playing a progressive, the same she’d used on Isra before, a bard’s version of a healing miracle. Nothing seemed to be happening though. The wounds weren’t sealing. The blood, in fact, had stopped flowing from the wounds. The thimble armor had started to retract, seemingly of its own volition.
Hannah sank back and let out a breath.
Verity burst forward from the plate armor, tossing her lute to the side, the song ended before it could reach its conclusion. She shrieked when she saw Isra laying there, then rushed to the body and cradled it, as though a hug could somehow bring Isra back to life.
Alfric felt a cold chill in the pit of his stomach.
Verity was crying, and Mizuki was too.
said Alfric.
Verity rose to her feet, letting Isra’s head rest against the ground. By the time Alfric realized what she was going to do, she was already in motion. He was faster than her, but he’d been too slow to react, and the cliff was too close to them. She disappeared over the edge before he could catch up, and it was quite some effort to stop himself. She screamed, into the open air rather than the party channel, and then there was silence, not even so much as a thump.
Alfric screamed down the pit, outside the party channel, the first thing that the dungeon would have heard from him aside from the fighting. Verity was gone, as dead as Isra, which meant not really dead at all, because the day would be erased. Still, it hit in his gut. He’d have to disclose it. He’d have to think about it, and find the right words, and maybe give a lecture on why no one should ever do that, even if they were confident the day would be reset, and it was nothing that he’d want to do.
said Alfric. He slumped.
They left Isra’s body where it was, and there was no talk of going down the pit to see Verity’s ultimate fate. If Isra had actually died, died for real, they’d have taken the body and done the proper rites, helping to send her spirit off along its way to the Spirit Gates, but they left her there instead. Protocol, as Alfric had said a few times, was to pretend that the day wasn’t going to reset, even if you knew that it was. That helped to avoid the accumulation of downstream effects on the day, so you knew that what you saw happen the first time around was what would likely happen the second time. Beyond that, it set you up so that if the day wasn’t reset, for whatever reason, you wouldn’t have to live with ill-considered actions. Actions like, for example, jumping off a cliff.
The death — deaths — were sitting heavily on Alfric’s mind. He hadn’t really seen death before, not of people. His life had been untouched by it. This wasn’t death, not true death, but it was just about as close to true death as you could see without it sticking. The lifeless body and pecked-at face would stay in his mind for a long time, he knew. He had training, quite a bit of it, inoculation against the trauma and horror of being killed himself, against the pain and suffering, against all sorts of things, but he wasn’t superhuman, and the weight slowly settled on his shoulders.
They left the dungeon, with Alfric and Hannah carrying the chest across the border. Once they were out, Alfric let the plate armor unfold and leave him, stacking up inside the opened chest. It had done well, for its first outing, and he felt like he knew it better for next time, but that was about as much positive as he could say about that particular dungeon run. He had wanted an easy dungeon. That was why they’d gone to Latchet Point in the first place. Now he was going to have to report the failure, and he was worried about the impact it was going to have on both team morale, and their willingness to do another dungeon.
Very briefly the thought of not telling them went through his head. He rejected it, of course, but the thought was there, intrusive and present, wanting to be argued against rather than snuffed out without further examination.
“So … does this just become a normal undone day now?” asked Mizuki.
“Seems so,” said Hannah, when Alfric didn’t answer. “Alfric, are you alright? Do you need to talk about it?”
“Uh,” he said. “Just thinking. And yes, it’s a normal undone day, try to go about your business as best you can. Neither of them are really gone. I’ll be resetting at sundown, well ahead of the witching hour, using the extra hours for, I don’t know, thinking about things. How to word the disclosure, I guess. Especially when it comes to Verity.”
“How can we help?” asked Hannah.
“I don’t know,” said Alfric. He took a deep breath of the loamy forest air. “You probably can’t. Mostly I’m worried that what she did — that if I tell her about it, that will normalize it, make it so she’s more likely to do it next time, if there is a next time after this.”
“I think it was an understandable reaction,” said Hannah. “Given the circumstances, anyhow. She knows that she’s not going to remember the day anyhow, she knows that there would be half a day of dazed emotional pain ahead of her —”
“I can’t have people killing themselves in undone days,” said Alfric. “I can’t. Not just because it can screw things up for information flow, because it affects me to see these bad things happen to my friends. She should know that.”
“It was selfish,” said Hannah. She nodded. “I don’t think she realized that, but it’s somethin’ to talk about with her. I’m not sure what all you should say to her, to make sure it doesn’t happen again, but she’s not in a great place right now, especially as it regards our druid.”
“Are you saying to cut her slack?” asked Mizuki.
“Nah,” said Hannah. “Just tryin’ to understand where she’s comin’ from, to reflect on what it was like for her, so I can figure out what the right words would be. She said she loved Isra, but I don’t know if that was just emotions runnin’ hot, or if she really felt it at that depth. They’re both terrible about how they feel, for their own reasons, and I try not to mind it, but —” She shook her head. “Alfric, I don’t know if your ethics allow it, but I’d like if you talked with me in private when you redo the day, before you talk with the others. I do want to help, but I’m not sure that my thoughts right now are what you want. I feel like complainin’ more than you probably feel like listenin’ to me.”
“It’s fine,” said Alfric. “And yes, I’ll talk to you first.”
“Once we get back home, I’m goin’ to speak with Marsh, try to get my head on straight,” said Hannah. “But assumin’ that we’re havin’ a ‘normal’ day, and not really mentionin’ the deaths to anyone so as not to cause alarm, I’ll be home for dinner. We can talk then, when we’ve both gathered our thoughts a bit.”
Alfric sighed. “Alright, well I guess there’s no sense not using the dagger, hop into the chest and we’ll get out of here.”
Moments later, Alfric was in the temple. Hannah and Mizuki were taking the trunk, which would trundle toward him at several hundred miles an hour as soon as the lid was closed.
“Dungeon day?” asked Filera. She had probably seen from his clothing, though the armor had been stowed.
“Yeah,” said Alfric. “A pretty short one. We’ll talk about it later, sorry, I’m short on time right now.”
It was a lie, from a certain point of view, but Alfric couldn’t bring himself to care. He left her chamber with shoulders slumped and was halfway out of the temple when the chest caught up with him, kicking up dust behind it. He opened the lid, and the two remaining members of his party got out. It made him feel awful not to have Isra and Verity there.
“I’m goin’ to see Marsh, I think,” said Hannah. “I’ll be home for supper, maybe with him in tow.”
“We’ll have extra food,” said Mizuki. She looked a little guilty as she said it, as though she didn’t like to be thinking about the practical considerations.
“Actually, if you could make sure that he comes with, that would be good,” said Alfric. “Lola told them about catastrophic undone days with some regularity. I want to know what not to do.” He hadn’t meant it as a joke, but Mizuki gave a weak chuckle.
After saying goodbye to Hannah, Alfric and Mizuki went back to her house together, mostly in silence until the large house was in view.
“You know,” said Mizuki. “To my way of thinking, when we know the day is going to be undone, you become the most important person in the world. Because none of this is going to keep on, right? It’s all just going to be in your head. We all become memories for you. It’s weird, to have everything, the realm of six gods, distilled down to a single person.”
“You’ve never mentioned that,” said Alfric.
“Oh, I didn’t mean that it was just how I thought of things,” said Mizuki. “It’s something that occurred to me now, while we were walking.”
“Ah,” said Alfric.
“But maybe pass it on to me, I guess?” asked Mizuki.
“Sure,” said Alfric. “I imagine there’s some more palatable way of phrasing it than ‘in undone days, I’m the most important person in the world’.”
“I’ve really never had that thought before?” asked Mizuki. Her hands were behind her back, folded together.
“No,” said Alfric. “Or if you did, you never shared it with me.”
“Huh,” said Mizuki. “And we’ve had something like a dozen undone days together.”
“More than that,” said Alfric.
“I guess this is the first time an undone day has been sprung on me,” said Mizuki. “Even for the wedding, you had mentioned that it was a possibility. Here, it’s just … ‘alright, we’re not keeping this day, all that stuff is going away’.” She looked up at the sky. “Looks like rain. Weird.”
“Weird?” asked Alfric.
“Yeah,” she said. “If Isra were still around, she’d make sure that it wasn’t raining until we got inside, at the very least.”
“Ah,” said Alfric.
“So,” said Mizuki. “What do you want to do tonight? You’re the most important guy in the world, what do you need?” They pushed into the house, taking off their boots and then making their way to the living room without a word of conversation about what came next. Their gear was slowly strewn about as they shed what they’d taken into the dungeon. Eventually, they were left in more or less normal clothes, though Alfric only had thin material on beneath the gambeson.
“I don’t know,” said Alfric, doing his best to answer honestly. “I want to mourn, I think. What I should be doing is preparing. I don’t know how I’m going to break the news.”
“I hate seeing you like this,” said Mizuki. “All … down.”
“You’re not affected?” asked Alfric. “Seeing them die? Especially Verity. That was awful.”
“I am,” said Mizuki. “But I’m not the most important person in the world, am I? I’m going to forget all this, and there’s comfort in that, you know? So I’m focused on you.”
“Thanks,” said Alfric.
“And you let me know if that focus isn’t doing it for you,” said Mizuki. “I’d give the most important man in the world his space, if that’s what he wanted.”
“I’m worried about how this affects the team,” said Alfric. “I’m worried that it changes how we see each other, especially coming now. We finally had to use the safety net. I worry that people will think it’s because of Isra or Verity, or that they’ll think that it was because of each other, when really, things were going more or less okay on that front. Lots of worries, really.”
“Hmm,” said Mizuki. She was looking at him. “I wish I could say I’ll help, but I feel like when you tell me tomorrow — today again, whatever — I’ll probably be thinking ‘oh, we all died while Isra and Verity are on the outs? That tracks’.”
“Yeah,” said Alfric. He closed his eyes and let out a low groan.
“And we won’t have this morning, huh?” asked Mizuki. “I thought that was a nice bit of, I don’t know. Fun.”
“It was,” said Alfric. “But that’s the kind of thing that happens in undone days anyway.”
“Like that?” asked Mizuki.
“More or less,” said Alfric.
“Huh,” said Mizuki. She sat for a moment. “You do a bad job of describing it then.”
“I do?” asked Alfric.
She propped her bare feet up on the table. “Well I mean, you say that we spent time together, but it’s always so dry, it’s topics of conversation and stuff like that, not the jokes,” said Mizuki.
“Jokes are of the moment,” said Alfric. “If I tried to explain them after the fact, you’d find them boring. They wouldn’t be funny, which is a crucial element of most jokes, I’m told.”
“I don’t know,” said Mizuki. “I just mean, I guess, not even the content, or that there were jokes, but you don’t talk about how your eyes light up, or your goofy laugh, or stuff like that. The way you kept waiting for me to leave the room until you gave up and decided to be fun. That kind of thing.”
“I don’t know how I would package that up,” said Alfric. “It’s hard, with those things.”
“Yeah, I guess,” said Mizuki. She bit her lip. “I used to like getting updates on undone days, but I think I didn’t realize how much time it actually is, how much gets said in a day, what we do and see.”
“And you still won’t realize it,” said Alfric. “Even if I try to explain to you.”
“Can you try?” asked Mizuki.
“Sure,” said Alfric.
“Sorry, I said you were the most important man in the world right now, and we were talking about me,” said Mizuki. “You’re still feeling bad, and yeah, I agree, you probably want to be calm and cool about it when you’re talking to us tomorrow morning. Let’s go over it then, a rehearsal.”
“I don’t really want to do that right now,” said Alfric. “I just want to … I don’t know.”
Mizuki smiled at him. “Did I mention that I would be playing all the parts in the rehearsal? You’d get to hear my Hannah impression.”
“Your Hannah impression is awful,” said Alfric. He leaned forward. “But yes, let’s hear your impressions of our friends.”
And for a time, Alfric was able to forget.
He waited until sunset to reset, after a long conversation with Marsh and Hannah, the four of them together in the dining room over a few bottles of wine. Alfric hadn’t personally been willing to risk the lack of control that came with alcohol. Marsh had talked about how it felt, to hear that you’d died horribly in a dungeon, and Alfric thought about that, and how best to handle it. Hannah had some experience with funerals, last rites, and talking to the friends and family of those who had passed, and she talked to Alfric about it, handing on what she could, and imploring him to talk to her first, which he agreed to.
Then it was time for him to reset, and in the space of a blink he was up in his bed. He tried to go back to sleep, found himself restless, and eventually he crept down the stairs and opened the door to Isra’s room, just a crack, so he could confirm that she was fine. He’d have done the same for Verity, but she was in the cabin, far away. A part of him wanted to wake her up using the party channel, just to hear her voice, but that would be a step too far. They were alive. The magic had never failed, and it never played tricks. No, what he had to deal with was his anxiety about the loss, and his worries about what would have to come next.