The first thought to cross Vivi’s mind as she stumbled away from the massive stone doors that marked the Trial entrance was that teleportation was horribly uncomfortable. Between the abrupt shift in lighting, the dizzying feeling of sudden acceleration and the chilling sensation of being surrounded by an unknown magic,she barely managed to keep her balance long enough to find something to grab hold of.
That thing was, unfortunately, Jubel, who seemed to be handling the sudden shift only slightly better than she was, resulting in them both tumbling to the floor in an undignified heap.
She lay there, waiting for the room to stop spinning until Jubel pointedly cleared his throat. “Hey, Vivi?” Vivi blinked, flushing as she realized for the first time that she’d landed directly on top of Jubel. “Maybe you should move?” He suggested awkwardly. “Not that I mind you being on top of me, but I think Ignis might be getting the wrong idea.” As if to hammer the point home, Lucy whistled suggestively at the pair and began to clap.
Red faced and spluttering incoherently, the bard rolled off Jubel as quickly as she could manage, but not before Lucas and Ferris had the chance to join Lucy in a wholly excessive round of applause.
“Perfect form, stuck the landing,” the lycanthrope said with a smirk.
“Too generous,” Ferris deadpanned. “Needs improvement. Landing should be flying tackle, not stumble and trip.”
“DO YOU MIND?!” The flustered elf shouted as Lucy began to cackle.
“Why are they so weird?” Damaia asked as Monika helped pull her to her feet.
“They’re degenerates,” Niko answered from his place on the ground. Monika glared at him for a moment before slowly smiling.
“He isn’t wrong,” she admitted with a laugh. “You get used to this sort of thing, traveling with those two. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Damaia, but it would seem Lucas is nearly as bad as Lucy in that regard.”
The engineer shrugged. “I’ll just follow my older brother’s advice if they get too annoying,” she said as she idly checked her suit for damage.
“What was his advice?” Niko asked.
“Hit boys with something heavy if they misbehave.”
“Why don’t we head back to the inn?” Zen suggested as the adventurers laughed. “I’m sure each of you is curious as to what happened with the other team, and I, for one, would like to share my own admittedly short tale.”
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Much to Vivi’s delight - and everyone else’s frustration - the scholar refused to elaborate until they’d not only returned to the Winding Path, but also shared their own accounts of what had happened since they’d been separated.
“That explains a great deal,” he said thoughtfully as Lucas finished describing his conversation with the Crimson Truth. “His reputation for cunning was well earned, it would seem. The Trial was designed to test those that challenged it, and he was bound to serve as its keeper - so he chose to test your strength of character in a way that gave him the greatest chance of escape. I have no doubt that if you had agreed to help him he would’ve declared you to have failed the Trial the second he was free.”
“I thought he was honest,” Damaia said, clearly confused.
“He is,” Zen replied seriously. “He’s never been known to lie, but if you fail to elicit a guarantee of your safety before releasing him, he wouldn’t see harming you as hypocritical or dishonest. If, for instance, you asked for immortality, he would gladly grant it - just before turning you into a slime or petrifying you into a statue made entirely of adamantium. Technically, you’d be immortal, but you wouldn’t enjoy it. It’s hard to really call him malevolent, though, because if you manage to word your desires properly, he will grant purely helpful wishes without complaint. In fact every story in which he’s done so seemed to indicate that he enjoyed the idea of matching wits with someone clever enough to get a proper wish out of him.”
“Maybe that’s why he was smiling at the end,” Vivi suggested. “You said you managed to steal from him, right? Maybe the same logic applies - you proved clever enough, so he doesn’t hold it against you. Of course, in order to be sure, we’d have to hear the whole story...”
The scholar smiled as all eight adventurers leaned close to hear him. “Very well - but I warn you, the tale’s rather bland compared to Ignis and their battle against a half demon. While Therilax was chatting with Valorous, I slipped through a hidden door and found the Core room. I can only assume he let me find it on purpose, intending to trap me there by letting me think I was being clever, but he underestimated my capacity for runecraft. Instead of being sealed in a room with no exits, I was given what amounted to a massive magical battery and all the time I needed to make use of it! I analyzed the runes used and the effects they seemed to project, then made use of my rune chisel to make a new array and link it to the original, siphoning off the power that protected the core and using it to create an exit!”
“Are you saying you warped us outta there?” Niko asked in astonishment. “I figured it was just some Dungeon nonsense, especially with that weird voice announcing it!”
If they could’ve seen beneath the man’s bandages, Vivi was sure the scholar would be beaming. “I was able to locate you using the Core and mark you as targets,” he said proudly. “Though the voice was, as the others explained, Therilax himself. I suspect his bindings compelled him to speak, since the Core he was protecting was the source of the spell.”
If she could’ve seen beneath the man’s bandages, Vivi was sure the scholar would be beaming. “I was able to locate you using the Core and mark you as targets,” he said proudly. “Though the voice was, as the others explained, Therilax himself. I suspect his bindings compelled him to speak, since the Core he was protecting was the source of the spell.”
“You couldn’t have made the trip a bit gentler?” Vivi asked with a shudder. “That was awful.”
“My apologies,” Zen said dryly. “I’ll be sure to account for my passengers comfort next time I’m trying to steal a Dungeon Core from under the nose of an Archdemon using only an enchanted chisel.”
“Damn,” Jubel chuckled, “looks like our scholar grew a sense of humor while I wasn’t looking.”
“And a spine,” Lucas added with a smirk and an approving nod. “Takes guts to even try a stunt like that, no matter how confident you are in your skills.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“Do you mean annoying Vivi or stealing from a demon?” Damaia asked innocently.
“Yes,” Lucas, Lucy and Niko all said in unison.
Nobody could keep a straight face after that - but there was a tension to the laughter that followed. Some of them, at least, had an uneasy feeling they couldn't quite shake, a tiny part of their minds still screaming at them that something was wrong.
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The creaking floorboard that woke Jubel that night wasn’t a particularly loud sound. In fact, on any other night, he might’ve slept through it, but something about the way Therilax had smiled as they vanished had left him feeling so on edge that he barely even managed to fall asleep in the first place.
He rolled out of his bed, calling the hilt of Rend to his hand with a thought as he strained his ears. Was someone coming? He hadn’t forgotten the succubus that tried to stab him after they returned from Invicta - and the more he’d thought about it, the more certain he was that his family must’ve hired her. His uncle was never a man to leave things to chance, though… was this another assassin?!
It sounded like someone… closing a door? On this floor? Now there were footsteps, but they were headed away from his door, not towards it.
Slowly, carefully, he opened his door just wide enough to see into the hallway, ready to defend himself at a moment’s notice. By sheer chance, he was just in time to see Vivi, her violin case strapped to her back, quietly creeping down the stairs. Curious, quickly threw on some clothes and slipped into the hallway.
“Where’s she going?” Damaia whispered just behind him, nearly giving him a heart attack. Before he could answer, a sigh from down the hall caught his attention.
Lucas, who’d just emerged from Lucy’s room in a plain, threadbare tunic and trousers, was blinking wearily at them.
“I was just gonna go to my room,” the drowsy Mercenary muttered exasperatedly, “because Lucy’s a bed hog, but it appears I’ve stumbled into something. How typical.”
“You can go back to bed,” Jubel said. “Damaia and I are going to go figure out where Vi’s sneaking off to.”
“We are?” The felblood asked, sounding mildly surprised.
“Well, I figured you’d want to join me for this, on the off chance something horribly dangerous happens. But, I mean, what are the chances of that?”
Lucas and Damaia shared a look as the half elf’s words hung in the air. “You just had to say it, didn’t you?” the lycanthrope muttered grumpily.
As they silently trailed their elven companion, Valorous couldn’t help but feel nervous. Something about this seemed… off. Peculiar. Strange and secretive and distinctly not Vivi.
Or at least, that’s what they thought until they heard the music.
It was distant at first, a soft and haunting melody that beckoned them onwards, but as they drew closer, it seemed to subtly shift into something distinctly and deeply personal. It wasn’t until they reached the locked gate to the town’s graveyard, just beyond the edge of the town proper, that Jubel recognized the tune.
“Azure meets Emerald,” he whispered.
“Hmm?” Damaia asked drowsily.
“The song,” Jubel whispered, slowly walking along the fence as he looked for an easy way into the cemetery. “It’s hers. She played a little bit of it while we were practicing last week. When I asked what it was called, she said she wrote it a long time ago, and it was called ‘Azure meets Emerald.’”
He saw a small gap in the iron fence - a spot where a tree must once have blocked the way, but now, only a stump remained. He wasted no time in slipping through the empty space, following the sound of the elf’s violin.
The haunting music through the cemetery led the trio to the foot of a large hill, upon which a single tree. It seemed to Jubel that something else stood beside the tree, but with the tree itself blocking the moonlight, it was impossible to see exactly what.
Halfway up the hill, slowly moving in rhythm with the song she played, Vivian Vintas swayed in the moonlight, her eyes closed tight as she lost herself to the music. Jubel’s heart skipped a beat as he watched her dance. He always found her breathtaking, but the sorrowful melody and macabre setting cast her in a different light. Had he not known better, he might’ve thought her a wandering spirit, or perhaps even a Winter Fae, come to remind all who heard her tune of the bittersweet end that awaited all living things.
Then, she opened her eyes, and the music stopped.
“W-what are you guys doing here?!” she hissed, her voice caught halfway between a whisper and a shout. “You should be asleep!”
“So should you,” Damaia shot back, suppressing a yawn as best she could. “We heard a noise and went to investigate - turns out it was you.”
Lucas nodded. “What’re you doing out here so late?” he replied testily.
“Early. It’s well past midnight now, so it’s early, not late. And I’ve already slept, thank you very much! I only need 4 hours, remember?” The elf glared at the lycanthrope, who simply yawned in response.
“Fine, but seriously, why are you all the way out here?”
Jubel was the only one that caught the flicker of indecision that crossed her face, or the way she briefly bit her lip. “I was practicing, obviously,” she said quietly. “I need to practice my skills with my violin, and I don’t get to use it much when we go out adventuring, so I try to brush up on my skills when we’re in town. I have all this extra time where I don’t need to sleep, so it seemed like a good chance to play a few songs, but if I play at the inn, I’ll wake someone up.”
“Why not cast a silence spell?” the felblood asked sleepily.
“How can I practice if I can’t hear myself?” the elf countered. “Plus, I… actually don’t know one. I probably should, but it never seemed that important.”
“Fair enough,” Lucas muttered. “Mystery solved, target’s safety is confirmed, and the mission’s a success. Now let’s get back to the inn before I pass the fuck out, yeah?”
Damaia nodded, turning to leave without a second thought, but Jubel hesitated. “You guys head back,” he said with a nod. “I’ll stay out here for a bit longer. Just in case.”
“In case of what?” Vivi asked with a raised eyebrow as the others turned to leave. “Do you think I’m gonna get mugged or something?”
“Honestly, with there being no guards around here, I’m more concerned that some nocturnal monster might mistake your song for a dinner bell,” Jubel said with a tired half smirk. “I’ll stay out of your way, don’t worry.”
He waited until he was sure the rest of the team was out of earshot before he spoke again, his previously playful tone replaced with one of sincere concern. “That wasn’t the whole story, was it?”
“Why would you say that?” the elf asked.
“Because you’re a horrible liar,” he replied gravely. “Or, alternatively, I’m a genius when it comes to reading people. I’ll let you decide which is more likely.” When that failed to get a laugh, he sighed. “Do you wanna talk about whatever is bothering you?”
“Not really,” came the stiff reply.
“Ok. If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” She stared at him as if expecting
him to leave, but he simply lay in the grass,
“Why are you still here?” she finally asked in a soft, weary voice.
He paused for a moment before answering with a sincere smile. “I just like hearing you play.” His blue eyes seemed to almost glow in the moonlight. It reminded her of -
She looked away. “I suppose I don’t mind an audience.”
For hours, he lay on the hillside, listening as she went through dozens of songs, weaving together old tunes with new as she danced blindly through the moonlit night.
Perhaps it was just a trick of the moonlight, or his weary mind playing tricks on him, but as he finally drifted off to sleep, he could've sworn she was smiling.