Too long had passed between dungeons.
It was getting warm, proper summer weather in Pucklechurch, and Alfric was surprised by how much heat there was. He was used to Dondrian, which was always a bit on the warm side, and he’d thought that Pucklechurch in the summer would be the same, but no, it actually got hotter, perhaps because it was inland. He found himself sweating as he trained, soaking his shirt in the beating sun.
The clouds moved in, taking their time, and Alfric took off his shirt, letting his skin breathe. He was in the backyard, and hoped that it wasn’t too indecent. There was an argument for training in the heat with his full armor, but he wouldn’t be able to go as long that way, and if they were going yet another day without a dungeon, he wanted to make the most of it.
The sword had been appraised, and while it had two abilities, both of them were underwhelming. The first was material in nature: anything the sword touched, it could temporarily take on the attributes of, with the time lasting for a day. Alfric had a tiny sliver of harkmetal that he’d used on the sword, which would make it sharp and durable … but there were entad swords that were sharp and durable on their own, without needing to apply an effect every day, and so it wasn’t anything all that special, just a different way of arriving at the same effect.
The other effect was to draw in ambient conditions and expel them afterward, but it too was problematic, mostly because of the long time it took to charge up and the weakness of the effect when it actually happened. If it sat in a room for a day, it would have the power to expel air, and if it were sitting in a basin of water, it would expel water. Alfric had tried putting it in a fire, or against a heating element, but it didn’t take on fire, it took on heat, and the blade of heat seemed quite weak, not the searing cuts he’d been hoping for. It was, at best, good for a single strong attack per dungeon, but that didn’t seem to justify taking it with, not until he had a way to quickly swap between weapons in the middle of battle.
He trained with the sword nonetheless, mostly for the difference in feel from his bident.
The helmet was something else, a godly piece of equipment on the battlefield, and while Mizuki had a strong affection for zipping around Pucklechurch with it, there was absolutely no way that Alfric was going to let her have it in the dungeons.
One of the primary problems of dungeon combat was that of height, especially against monsters of unusual size. Against something the size of a raccoon, you would often find yourself stabbing toward the floor at an awkward angle, and against a giant, you might find yourself unable to strike at anything but his legs. The helmet didn’t do much about racoons, but it meant that for larger creatures, Alfric could get right in their face or other vital upper bits.
He practiced flying, allowing the helmet to provide him with momentum, zipping forward to put his whole body weight behind a thrust or a spinning slash. The helmet didn’t grip the head, but rather, made everything feel a bit weightless, as though the earth had no hold on him anymore, and it was difficult to adjust to. Normally, a lot of the power of a sword stroke came from the legs and a firm stance against the ground, but when flying, it was more about the body moving in at high speeds.
Toward the end of it, sweat was dripping down and Alfric was out of breath. He drained his waterskin and toweled off, and then looked up at the house, where he caught Mizuki looking at him. She disappeared almost as soon as she realized she’d been spotted. Alfric watched the window for a moment, and saw the top of her head appear very briefly before she quickly ducked back down.
This was all enormously more awkward than if she had just given him a friendly wave.
While Alfric was cooling down, sword and helmet set to the side, he went through the guild messages, which hadn’t had much for him. There were two dungeon reports, both fairly sparse on details, and a rather lengthy discussion on his brother’s proposal for a chrononaut newspaper. The idea wasn’t new, but the last time a chrononaut newspaper had been around was at least a generation ago.
From some of the back and forth, the previous newspaper had shut down due to mismanagement rather than a lack of demand. It turned out that a newspaper with information from undone days needed to actually function as a competent newspaper first and foremost, one with articles that people would want to read, and news “from the future” could only be so compelling. The other major issue was that most newspapers used some form of chrononaut information already. Much of the familial discussion was about attempting to compete with existing business interests. A chrononaut newspaper was one thing, but it was entirely another if ‘the chrononauts’ had their own inferior newspaper that came at the expense of the regular newspapers. It was all of only mild interest to Alfric, internal family politics that he had no strong opinion on.
There was also some discussion of Lola, kept to its own thread, one which he had not yet put a single message into. She was, apparently, being kept on a small island under house arrest, seemingly in perpetuity, though she would stand trial for her crimes in Plenarch at some point. Those crimes included only the dungeon escape and the assault. The government of Plenarch would do nothing about what had happened in undone days, but she would get a slap on the wrist for everything else, which was down to her family connections and wealth, and the lack of much ‘real’ harm. Alfric wasn’t particularly happy about that, but there wasn’t much that could be done about it, and the family was handling matters with far more vigor than the civilian authorities could. He did wonder what the guild messages of the other clans looked like, but there were back channels between clans, and he hoped that they were in full use.
The last item of interest was an open thread about pacting, which Alfric had also not offered his input on. It wasn’t explicitly a thread for him, just one in general use for his branch of the chrononauts, but it had clearly been brought back up as a topic of conversation because of Lola. Alfric was free to be with who he wanted, at least for the time being, and the list of eligible women was vanishingly small. There were only two viable candidates for Alfric, one a widow who was five years his senior, the other a girl that was five years younger. Neither interested him in the slightest, but that wasn’t really the point of the pact, it was to procreate in a way that would help to build up the population of chrononauts. The older one being a widow was momentarily puzzling to Alfric, since death was unusual for their kind, until he saw that it was a suicide. He hadn’t heard about that, but he didn’t pay all that much attention to the grapevine, and it was the kind of thing that a different branch of the family might have wanted to keep quiet.
He considered making a plea that he not be required to make the pact, but it was a duty, not just to the clan, but to Inter as a whole. The more chrononauts there were, the more forewarning the world had. Chrononauts prevented the worst calamities, so long as they could be dealt with on a one day horizon. Alfric hadn’t personally contributed much to the world, but the mere existence of chrononauts was considered a universal good.
Alfric pulled himself away from the guild messages and looked out at the backyard. The garden was coming along nicely as spring had turned into summer. It was manicured and managed, the overgrown plants having been trimmed back or pulled out, and in due time, there would be a bounty of food, most of which Mizuki had already spoken for. The herbs had been planted with what felt like foresight, given how hungry the three dragons were going to be, and there was much variety for them. Isra’s touch was obviously helping, as was the weather she controlled.
When Alfric had properly cooled down, he put his shirt back on and went inside. Mizuki was there, working on dinner, though it was rather early for that. It was stew again, and from what she’d said, it was a meal best prepared well ahead of time.
“I wasn’t watching you,” said Mizuki.
“It’s okay if you were,” said Alfric. “I’ve said that I can help you do combat training.” He wasn’t quite dense enough to believe that this was why she’d been watching him.
“Do you like tomatoes in your stew?” asked Mizuki.
“They’re fine,” said Alfric.
“When I do stew, it’s as many root vegetables as I can find, plus some goat or lamb, plus tomatoes,” said Mizuki. “But the tomatoes are the odd one out, I’ve always felt.”
“I don’t have a strong preference,” said Alfric.
“Oh, plus some onions, garlic, herbs, all that stuff,” said Mizuki. “Hannah made some good bread this morning, nice crusty stuff that’ll go good with the stew. Do you think we need some other kind of vegetable to go with it? Stew is like eighty percent vegetables to start with, but there’s not all that much roughage, and I don’t want to add in cabbage.”
“I think it’ll be fine either way,” said Alfric. Mizuki was talking a lot, and Alfric wasn’t entirely sure why. “I’m going to get some reading done upstairs, dinner will be an hour or so?”
“Two hours, maybe more,” said Mizuki. “I’m giving it time. Stew is always better when the flavors have melded together.”
It was, in Alfric’s opinion, too hot a day for stew, but he kept his mouth shut and retreated upstairs. He had a guess at why Mizuki was acting awkward, though he didn’t think that it should have been a big deal. She had been watching him train, and thought that he looked attractive. Was that so difficult a thing for her to admit? Alfric would have readily admitted to thinking that she was attractive. It didn’t mean anything, just like their flirting didn’t mean anything. They’d now had a few undone days together, and she was always much more flirtatious, and Alfric found himself enjoying that. If she was going to be awkward about being attracted to him though, that was a problem.
He put it out of mind though, since there was nothing actionable. His thinking, as always, returned to the dungeons.
It had been too long since they’d done one, at least in his opinion. That last dungeon had been a rough one though, given how much danger Mizuki had been in, and while the chest was a good get, and the helmet was better, he felt like it had made the others a bit skittish. Hannah had also shared a third-hand story about someone who’d taken a head injury in a dungeon and never recovered, and while she wasn’t outwardly rattled by it, there was a bit less enthusiasm from her. Adding on to all that, Verity had the concerts coming up, and needed to be able to competently perform the entire stack of sheet music that had come in the mail.
Everything that he could do in undone days had already been done. The entads were all identified, all information that could be extracted from the dungeon reports had been, and there were limits to how much he wanted to speak with various merchants, as well as limits to how productive that could be. He’d made trips to Liberfell and trips to Tarchwood, had scoped out future dungeons to make sure he knew where they were … and now it was time to delve again, to get into the guts of a dungeon where he could see the unknown and interact with things that were unique and interesting.
His parents had warned him. They’d said that life gets in the way. One of the problems was that dungeoneering was simply too profitable: you could coast on the money you got from the dungeons for weeks, maybe more, even when it came to a group of five people whose expenses needed to be paid. Mizuki’s view on money being meaningless was a bit extreme, but it was how a lot of people seemed to feel when push came to shove. Each dungeon ended up being less worthwhile than the last because you had the money to cover your basic needs, and then your extravagant needs, and then why were you even doing it?
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Alfric was doing it because it was fun, or if not fun, then at least meaningful, compelling, something that gave his life a sense of purpose. The others all had something else, some hobby or something that they’d rather be doing than getting covered in muck and gore. Not that Alfric liked the muck and gore, but there was something about showering off after a day in the dungeon that greatly appealed to him.
Alfric waited for something from Isra or Verity, and the channel was silent for what felt like a long time.
Everything was already packed, and had been for quite some time. The book had been reorganized, the rock garden was laid out with everything they could possibly need, and the chest was filled up with anything that didn’t fit in either of those. Mizuki had deemed Alfric a pack rat, but to him, there seemed to be no sense going into a dungeon without all the tools you might possibly need. You could do every dungeon only once, after all, and leaving behind potentially tens of thousands of rings because you didn’t have a pickaxe or bandsaw didn’t make any sense to him. That all these tools had cost a lot of money was, of course, a good argument, but those costs would be recouped by materials extraction, and besides, most of them had been bought used and would be sold when they were replaced with something better, or possibly at the end of a long dungeoneering career.
With his armor on, Alfric was ready to get into the proper mindset for a dungeon. He felt the fear, which was always there, but he trusted in his training and abilities, and on top of the fear, overwhelming it, was excitement.
He pulled out his map of the region, looking at it. It had to be Callipygian Point, that was the last ‘close’ hex aside from the waterlogged Laver Marsh, and it was on the way to Tarchwood, which meant that he’d been through there several times. He knew all this, but he looked at the map anyway, as though there were some calculations to be done.
They met in the kitchen, where Mizuki was using two big oven mitts to put the pot into the oven at a low temperature.
“I’m nervous about doing this,” said Mizuki. For a moment, Alfric thought that she was talking about the dungeon, but then he realized that she’d meant leaving the stew in the oven. “I’ve done it before, I’m just worried that we’ll get a crusty bottom or something. Usually I come in for a stir every half hour or so.”
“No need to keep it heated then,” said Hannah. “It’ll just be cold stew in a few hours.” She looked at Alfric. “That’s all this is, a few hours?”
“Probably,” said Alfric. “Though it’s hard to tell with dungeons.”
“I think it’ll be fine,” said Mizuki. “Though if we come back to a burned down house, I expect you to reset the day.”
“Deal,” said Alfric with a nod, though if that happened after a successful dungeon run, it would be a sharp sting. He hadn’t had to reset a dungeon yet, and was hoping he could keep that streak going.
They went into town together, and the wardrobe, which had been seeing greatly increased business as word got out, thankfully still had charges left. There was, of course, some obligatory conversation with Bethany, who was very excited for the upcoming wedding. Alfric sometimes spoke with her on undone days, primarily about business, and if he didn’t hear another word about the wedding until it was actually happening, that would be perfectly fine with him.
“What does callipygian even mean?” asked Mizuki once they were through the wardrobe and had rallied at the warp point.
“It means having a pretty butt,” said Alfric.
Mizuki giggled, then looked at him. “Wait, are you serious?”
“Yes,” said Alfric. “I had to look it up.”
“Use it in a sentence,” said Mizuki.
“Er,” said Alfric. “‘The woman was quite callipygian.’ Or ‘When she walked away, he noted that she was callipygian.’”
“Literally no one would understand what you’re talking about,” said Mizuki. “And why did they name this place that?” She looked around, as though she was going to spot some beautiful buttocks on the horizon.
“It’s a nice word,” said Verity. “Though not one I’ve ever heard before. Callipygian. Horrible rhymes though.”
“There’s a mile to walk,” said Alfric. “Then we’ll be down in the thick of it. I’d like for us to be moving fast, to minimize the risk that the house burns down.” Alfric wasn’t overly concerned about that, though the more he thought about it, the more he wished he’d pushed Mizuki harder to shut the burners off entirely.
They talked as they walked, of course, though very little of it was of consequence. Whatever weirdness was going on with Mizuki, she seemed to be over it, though she was talking about stew more than seemed to be warranted.
A mile from the warp point, they got to the dungeon entrance. It was in better condition than some they’d seen, and more built up, with a roof over the top of it to keep the rain out, and flagstones arranged in a pattern around the collar. The key turned easily in the lock, and with a round of checks, they were in.
The entryway was, again, without any monsters, which was always for the best. The chest had made packing less of an issue, so long as it stayed in the back, where the fighting ideally wouldn’t reach.
The chest was something special, with a number of very good abilities, but the best of them was its ability to move very quickly over all kinds of terrain, which would have made it incredible even if it didn’t have extradimensional space and a sturdiness that could rival a dragon’s scales. They hadn’t brought it with them when they’d warped. Instead, they had let it run to them once the warp was completed. It had crossed the twelve miles in less than five minutes, and from what Filera had said in an undone day, it would be able to do incredible speeds like that over extreme distances so long as it was on a relatively straight path to the closest person in the party. Alfric had checked three times that it wouldn’t be putting anyone in danger.
said Mizuki with a shrug. The one benefit of having a longer lull between dungeons was that Mizuki really did seem to be putting effort into learning. Alfric had been the one to get her what books he could, but she’d been reading them and even making notes. It hadn’t particularly helped her in describing the mechanics of what she was doing to others, but he did think there had been some improvement. They practiced together in undone days sometimes, and he gave her her own notes. The doorway had no door, and only led to a hooked corridor, so Alfric led the way. Verity had started her song early, and while the newly acquired lute was a good get, it was considerably louder when played in full, which wasn’t particularly to Alfric’s liking. The hook to the corridor was also not particularly nice, since it meant that if someone came looking for them, he would be facing it head-on without much support from Isra or Hannah. Verity must have been thinking the same thing, because her attention seemed to be on him, hardening his body and making his weapon and armor feel light. He’d gotten ten steps down the corridor when a creature came careening around the bend. It had very little in the way of natural weaponry, but made up for that with speed and aggression. Its front paws windmilled down against Alfric’s shield, breaking bones in its hand, and puke-orange blood sprayed out. Where droplets hit the skin of Alfric’s face, they stung, and Alfric did his best to thrust forward with the bident and stab it in what was probably its guts. The longer the creature’s blood stayed on his skin, the more the feeling of irritation grew, but there was no time at all to worry about that, not when the monster still lived. It had too many arms and a lumpy rib cage, with long hair obscuring the rest of its features. The face was barely visible beneath the shaggy mane that whipped back and forth, mostly just flashes of white teeth and beady black eyes. An explosion from the bident, right in the creature’s gut, caused it to stagger, and from there, a second explosion from a repositioned bident, this one at the chest, caused it to fall to the ground. As soon as it was down and Alfric had confirmed that there was nothing else coming, he called for a retreat back down the corridor. He opened the trunk with shaking hands and rummaged through the pack, half blind, until he found the soda ash, which he spread across his skin. Hannah laid hands on him, but this was precisely the sort of thing that the healing of Garos was terrible at, given that the acid had spread on both sides of his face. His whole body was wracked with tremors as he waited for the soda ash to do its work, the pain close to the limit at which he’d start crying. It would almost certainly call for the reset of the day, since acid burns were notoriously difficult for clerics to deal with, but he took a deep breath and tried to let the soda ash do its work. said Isra. Alfric tried to look at her, but his face had become swollen, and he could barely see. Hannah was over by the doorway, hammer at the ready, but nothing had come through. Alfric nodded, and a knot of tension released. Being burned in the face by droplets of acid was something that had long been a fear of his, and there was a lesson to be learned, which was that you couldn’t simply go with what you feared, you needed to assess. It was likely that putting soda ash on his face was still the right call given what he knew, but the idea of poison hadn’t even occurred to him. It took some time for the swelling to go down enough that Alfric was comfortable continuing on, and when his face was no longer plumped up, it felt like it was sagging, like the skin had stretched out. It was Hannah’s professional opinion that this too would fade with time, but it was an inauspicious start to the dungeon. Alfric was hoping for full plate armor sooner than later, and this was proof enough that he needed it. He’d been wearing the helmet that allowed for flying, and unfortunately, it was open at the front, providing no protection. If he could be fully ensconced in armor with protection from the elements and free range of motion, most of his woes would be resolved. The entad thimble had wrapped him in flexible metal, but it was proving inadequate for the stronger hits. They stepped over the creature’s body in the bent corridor and continued on, Alfric with his spear held in front of him.