— Serilda —
As Serilda drained the last of her most recent glass she noticed that Lovisa was giving her glass an odd look. It wasn’t the first time during the night that she had done so, nor was she the only person who seemed to have an issue with their drink.
After setting her glass back on the table Serilda jostled Lovisa gently, being careful not to unseat her friend, and said “What’s got ya looking’ at yer drink like tha’?”
Lovisa downed the last of her drink and sighed before answering “I don’t want to bring down the mood but I will say times like these call for a drink or at least some sleep. Neither are an option anymore.”
Serilda was slightly worried about her friend’s mood shift. Lovisa had always been a bit of lightweight, but she was normally more of a happy or sleepy drunk than a maudlin one. She gestured towards the elf’s empty glass and said “Ya sure ya haven’t had a few to many? Ya want ta get some food ta soak some a tha’ up?”
Serilda was fairly sure the grin Lovisa gave her was mostly genuine when she said “I should have been more clear. As nice as it may taste, this may as well be flavored water. Alcohol doesn’t have any effect on the undead. Oh well, I can at least taste it. Not all of us can.” With that Lovisa’s grin brightened and she continued “Speaking of tasting things, I want you to try the new mushrooms we got. They remind me of the steak from The Iron Keg Pub.”
Without waiting for a response she called over Mesalin and asked her for an order of rice porridge with something called somatic shrooms.
While Mesalin slipped through the plain wood that presumably led to a kitchen Serilda looked over at Lovisa and said “Jus’ one order? I dinnae know ‘bout ye but I’ve barely eaten today.”
Lovisa chuckled and shrugged before she answered “I ate for the first time since coming back like this today. I doubt I’ll be hungry again for some days yet.”
After a moment of steeling her nerves, Serilda finally said “It’s more than alrigh’ if ya dinnae want ta answer, but jus’ what’s it like ta be undead?”
Lovisa seemed lost in thought for a moment before she let out a little sigh and said “Well that’s not an easy thing to properly explain. Most of the time it isn’t that much different from being alive, but then something happens that reminds me. Sometimes it’s forgetting to breathe in before trying to talk, sometimes it’s realizing my body no longer does some normal thing like blushing. Mostly it’s this.” As she said that last sentence she reached out as if to grab her empty glass with her spectral right hand, which passed smoothly through it.
Before Serilda had a chance to respond, Mesalin returned with a steaming bowl and set it on the bar between Serilda and Lovisa. While Mesalin refilled their glasses, Serilda studied the contents of the bowl. The porridge had a faint opalescent sheen that she at first assumed was the light of her friend's arm shining on the rice. Sitting on top was a pile of deep red almost purple mushroom strips.
Serilda was slightly hesitant but she picked up the wooden spoon and scooped up some of the mushrooms and porridge. Before she could rethink it she placed the bite into her mouth. As the bizarre mixture of tastes and feelings filled her mouth she almost spat it out.
The porridge was bizarrely light and flavorless, like dense water foam. The mushrooms by contrast were dense with an intense taste of mushroom and red meat. Unfortunately instead of the pleasant taste of beef and truffle she’d expected from Lovisa’s description, it made her think of bog dwelling monster flesh with a thick coating of the corrosive spores of the explosive puffballs her unit often had to deal with in the Great Beast Plains.
Serilda briefly thought about forcing herself to swallow the deeply unpleasant bite of food, but the longer she had it in her mouth the more her mouth began to itch and burn. As quickly as she could, she retrieved the blood stained rag she cleaned her weapon with and finally rid herself of the awful stuff and immediately drained her glass.
If not for how genuine Lovisa’s surprised and concerned reaction was Serilda might have thought she’d poisoned her. As it was she still glowered and said “Jus’ what in the void was tha’?”
Lovisa looked back and forth between Serilda and the bowl before taking a tentative bite of her own and saying “Well, um, I'm not really sure what happened. It tastes normal to me. Oh, I’m an idiot.”
Serilda pushed her glass over for a refill and grimaced at the lingering aftertaste and feelings in her mouth before she said “I dinnae think I’m ready ta argue against that yet, but why are ya an idiot?”
“Well, when I tasted the oats and grapes I recognized how unpleasant I would have found them when I was alive. I, uh, just didn't think that the only reason I noticed that was because they weren’t foods that filled my new needs and this was.” Lovisa said as she gestured to the steaming bowl. “It tasted like delicious steak to me and I never even considered it wouldn’t taste like that to you.”
Serilda sipped her drink, letting the sharp sweet burn of the alcohol and the infused ember-berry wash away more of the lingering effects, before she finally said “It’s nay jus’ the taste. I dinnae think it’d be safe fer a living person ta eat.”
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Eventually after several more apologies and the last of the unpleasant residual effect faded away completely their night got back on track, and they spent several more hours chatting and drinking before Serilda returned to camp for some edible food and Lovisa headed back out on patrol.
— Keira —
After Keir left the distillery she made her way back to the temple academy of Syliantha. She was reasonably confident in her sense of direction and her first destination was a massive pillar of stone so she didn’t hesitate.
That confidence was rather short lived as she entered the warren of tangled, overlapping streets. Every path that seemed to lead in the right direction seemed to send her off in the opposite direction or turn into a dead end. She suspected that if she could read dwarven she wouldn’t be having such difficulty, even if it was unlikely it would be simple even then.
It didn’t help that the streets of the industrial area were almost devoid of people. The few people who were out and about were obviously busy, and more than a few looked a bit wary of the heavily armed stranger. When they noticed her eyes they tended to quickly turn down nearby streets before she reached them.
Keir wasn’t sure but she doubted most were concerned enough to seek out the city guard, but it was clear finding directions wouldn’t be easy.
More than once her meandering path took her to the edge of the industrial district or even more embarrassingly to the pillar, but not the portion of it with an entrance to the transit hub.
Eventually, and unexpectedly, She turned a corner and found herself almost directly in front of the entrance. From there the rest of her journey was much smoother.
She followed the orichalcum line and followed the instructions Marsaili had given her to call up a single person travel cart.
Navigating the temple district wasn’t incredibly simple but it was her second time walking to the temple with no guide so she didn’t take too embarrassingly long to arrive back at the temple.
Once there it was easy enough to speak to the single person working at the reference desk, a young batkin who was happy to summon an air elemental to guide Keir and send along some bestiaries detailing the more common threats in the area.
Keir was surprisingly pleased to see that the same elemental that guided her before was the one who answered the summoning bell’s chime. From the way it preened and posed on Keir’s shoulder it was clearly also rather pleased with itself.
Much like when she’d left the reading room to meet Marsaili, the little elemental mostly guided her from her shoulder. It was only when they reached a junction too complicated for simple signals that it flew out ahead until the path was more obvious again.
Also like every other time she’d been guided through the back halls of the temple she quickly lost any semblance of her relative position to her start or end point.
If pressed Keir would have said the trip took a similar amount of time as her earlier experiences but it was hard to keep track of time walking through near silent and almost entirely empty halls and staircases. Regardless, she was soon standing in front of the door to the reading room.
She only hesitated a moment before she knocked and identified herself. It wasn’t much longer before Antheia’s voice rang out from the room saying “You don’t need to stand on ceremony Keir. You can just walk right in.” As Keir opened the door Antheia continued “Your books already arrived so I was already expecting you to arrive shortly.”
As Keir fully stepped into the room she saw that at some time since she’d left her broken chair had been replaced. Her attention didn’t linger on the new chair, instead she focused on the room's occupants.
Antheia and Iida had been seated on either side of the small table but they had moved to the same side and were close enough to read from the same book. There was also a large mostly empty carafe, small containers of cream and sugar cubes, and two mugs.
Judging from the steam wafting off of the creamy brown liquid in Iida’s half full cup and the lack of steam from Antheia’s own fuller cup of dark brown beverage, Keir assumed most of the karaf’s contents had been consumed by the gnome.
After a slightly awkward pause Keir said “Are you sure I won't be in the way in here? I can read those in another room or the main library.”
Iida looked up from the stack of papers she was flipping through, for the first time since Keir walked in and said “huh, oh, your fine. These rooms aren't large but there is plenty of room unless you really need to spread out your materials a lot.”
Keir wasn’t sure if the slightly odd gnome had deliberately missed the point or was really just taking Keir’s words literally and at face value but the faint blush that creeped up on Antheia’s face said she understood exactly what Keir meant.
After a second, as her serpent hair coiled around itself, she shook her head slightly and said “There’s certainly no reason to concern yourself with that.” In a slightly quieter tone she added “But thanks.”
Before things could get too awkward the little elemental flew off of Keir’s shoulder and over to the pair at the table. With a mixture of gestures, wind sounds, and strange wispy clouds it created in midair it seemed to communicate with the pair and Antheia looked over at Iida who nodded and said “That should be fine. Without a relevant class skill it will still be temporary but if you’re able to create a link and Keir wants to accept it, it should work.”
Keir had a suspicion she knew at least part of what was going on but before she could ask for clarification Antheia looked back over towards her and said “This little gust has apparently taken something of an interest in you. It’s not exactly uncommon for elementals, especially lesser elementals, to fixate on people or places. It could be any of countless potential things that catch their attention, they also tend to enjoy being fully manifested on the material plane like this. It requested the mana to be able to assist you for a while. If you want me to, I can create a quick talisman that will let it hang around for a day or so instead of the few minutes it can remain with its current mana.”
Keir didn’t need to think too long before she agreed and Antheia quickly pulled over some paper and began drawing a complex series of runes and glyphs in a wavy spiral. In no more than a minute or so she passed the paper over to Keir and said “As I’m sure you can imagine just send a trickle of mana into the center there. The enchantment will pull a steady amount of your mana but even for a non-caster class it will be an inconsequential amount for a tier three.”
When Keir did as instructed she found that as she’d expected Antheia had been correct. She could feel the drain but her passive regeneration was more than enough to cover it.
As the rune at the end of the spiral very slowly began crumbling, taking the paper it was written on with it, Keir smiled at the harpy shaped figure of distorted air and pulled over the small stack of books as she sat down.
For the rest of the night and well into the morning Keir read the books and the little air elemental spent its time either standing on her shoulder, fliting around the room, and occasionally retrieving other books or documents from the main library. Across the table Iida’s need for sleep at some point conquered the highly caffeinated deep root tea she’d been drinking and she fell asleep.