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This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 184, End of the Road [End]
🕑 Added 2023-06-26 21:44:46 +0000 UTCThis will be the final "proper" chapter of Dungeons. There will be a few epilogue chapters that I'm looking forward to writing, but I'm happy enough to look around and declare that the "extra innings" are over. (If you have epilogue requests, I'm taking them.)
Unrelatedly, my father fell and broke his hip yesterday, and is in the hospital. When they're good to release him, he'll be living with my family for a bit. I'm really hopeful that this won't impact the schedule at all, but I'm enough of a pessimist to give some warning that I might have to slow down a bit.
~~~~
The house settled into a plot in Plenarch that had been waiting for them. Mizuki was the one to do the honors, folding the legs up beneath the house and gently setting the stairs down so they connected to a pathway. It almost looked like it had always been there, and the house got more than one confused look from passersby in the following days — not that it hadn’t drawn a crowd as it lumbered down the city streets.
They were within walking distance of the Rayedhcraft School, and there were shops all around, including a number of restaurants that they sampled from over the course of the next month. Their yard was smaller than it had been in Pucklechurch, and it felt even smaller once they had a garden going, but they had a whole city around them, and public spaces with plenty of nature, not just parks and preserved woodland, but the beaches too.
The original plan had been for Quinn to live in her own house not too far away from them, but after a week in which she was eating with them almost every night and stayed over twice, Mizuki extended an invitation, which Quinn happily accepted.
“Logistically,” Alfric had said. “There are four bedrooms in the house. Isra and Verity are in one, I’m in the attic, you’re in the master bedroom, and Pinion is in the spare. How is this supposed to work?”
“She’s got laundoncraft,” said Mizuki, crossing her arms. “She can just put a door anywhere, with your help, and have that be her room.”
“It takes her a long time to make a room,” said Alfric. “Where’s she going to sleep in the meantime?”
“The attic?” asked Mizuki.
“I’m in the attic,” said Alfric.
“Right, right,” said Mizuki. “But the way we’ve been doing this, with me laying in bed with you and then slinking back to my own room, that’s just not working. It’s not logical. Really impracticable, you know? And so I was thinking that, for the sake of logistics, just as a point of praxis, that we should share a bed.” She smiled up at him and watched as he crumbled.
“Alright,” he said. “Sure, that makes sense.”
She had wrapped him in a hug, then helped him move his things. Her plans were working perfectly, and she knew that Alfric loved a good plan.
Wizardry was going surprisingly well, in part because Mizuki had half a dozen people helping her get good in a hurry. The ability to suck up ambient aether and store it into wizardly reserves meant that Mizuki had a base level of power greater than normal wizards did.
She was better at putting these things into words and seeing the shape of them in the way a wizard would. Wizards divided magic into constructs, those things made from mana that were meant to be more or less static, and energy, which was meant to flow through the constructs, often being released to destructive effect. The split wasn’t as sharp as first presented, with the lines between halves blurred, but since Mizuki could translate ambient aether imbalance into energy, it meant that she could focus almost entirely on the construct aspect. Doing the energy transfer required a construct, but it was still overall a net gain, at least so long as Mizuki was in a place with a lot of aether to suck down — and the Rayedhcraft School had a lot of students who weren’t the best at efficient wizardry.
“Every sorcerer should learn wizardry,” Mizuki declared one morning during a meeting with the research team. “It’s so good.”
“Not every sorcerer has the knack,” Arturo replied. “And until you came along, some of the potential was unexplored.”
“We’re heading into infinite fireball territory.” She was looking at her staff, which was decked out with constructs that were invisible to the naked eye. The infinite fireball was a mythical goal of her own invention, the myth only a week old. In theory you could use a store of mana to shoot a fireball, then use the resulting imbalance to shoot another fireball, and so on, until everything was dead and your ears were ringing.
“That’s never going to actually work, you know that, right?” asked Rosalind. “Efficiency is far too low. We’d be lucky to achieve a fireball and a half.”
“Buy one, get one free,” said Mizuki. “We could do that, right?”
“Maybe,” said Rosalind. “But … your party isn’t doing dungeons anymore, you said?”
“Right,” said Mizuki. “Right.” The worst part about being banned from dungeons was that she wasn’t supposed to tell people that they were banned from dungeons. They didn’t have an official cover story, which was kind of a shame, because she was sure that they could come up with something super cool if they had given it even a little bit of effort. Alfric had thought that was just begging for trouble though, since they would have to lie a lot. Instead, they were mostly just sticking with ‘eh, some of our party members are just not feeling it’, which wasn’t technically a lie, and which no one would ever care enough to investigate.
“Have you been thinking about what you’ll do once you’re finished with school?” asked Arturo.
“Finished?” asked Mizuki. “I mean … I’ll be a wizard. But that’s not for a few years.”
“It’s never too early to take your future into account,” said Arturo. “You’ll be a wizard, but presumably this wasn’t all a lark.”
“Sure,” said Mizuki. “Not a lark at all.”
“You’ll have to find your field, and with your talent for the craft, and being a sorcerer, there will be all kinds of options for you,” he continued. “There’s plenty of call for us in industry, construction, anywhere force must be applied, as well as where our sight is needed, as you know. I have three sons, all of them wizards. One works as a horologist, doing fine manipulations and magnification. Another works for a mining company, unearthing and processing rare and magical metals. And my youngest, who left the school only a few years ago, has taken up work in a foundry for the time being.” He seemed less enthused about that. “I can speak with you privately, if you’d like.”
“I didn’t know you had kids,” said Mizuki. “How come you never talk about them?”
“It’s a bit unprofessional,” Arturo sniffed. “But I do want you to think about your future, especially after that nasty business with the bursar appears to have passed. Some stay at the school for ages, like my youngest, but I have a feeling that you’d prefer not to be here more than a few years and learn as you go.”
“I guess,” said Mizuki. “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”
“There are good career prospects for you, whatever you do,” Arturo nodded, almost to himself. “We don’t have much longer with the research we’ve set out to do, and it will take some time for the book to come out, though there’s always the possibility of a second if the first does well.”
“We’re in this to sell books?” asked Mizuki, blinking.
“No, no,” said Arturo. “We’re in this for the advancement of knowledge, with hope for the side benefit of increasing the power and utility of wizards and sorcerers alike. And that, in turn, is for the good of the realm. But the knowledge is the main thing. The selling of books is only a proxy for how important and exciting these discoveries are, and what our chance for funding will be in the future.”
Mizuki nodded slowly. “Well, I’ve enjoyed it, I guess.”
“We’ve some ways to go,” said Arturo. “There are plenty of tables to fill out, and I think our new measurement devices will provide quite a boon.”
The testing and observation had seemed endless, and finding out that it wasn’t left Mizuki feeling a little sad. They had never really pushed her very hard, and there was something nice about sitting in a room with people who were sort of friends — actual friends, in Rosalind’s case — and being asked to do simple things with no real pressure. It had become part of the rhythm of her life at wizarding school.
Routine made time pass quickly, especially since the house was now parked. The path from school to home and back again was always the same, with none of the recalibration and excitement of new places. Verity’s tour had come to an end, which meant the nights of strange new taverns with their own quirks and local foods had come to an end as well.
Plenarch, by itself, was a fun city. There was lots to do and see, and because it was just across from Kiromo, there were places where Mizuki could get in touch with her roots. Mizuki hadn’t grown up with Kiromon cooking though, she’d grown up with Pucklechurch cooking by Kiromon immigrants, and it wasn’t quite the same. Plenarch was awash with seafood, and Kiromon exports came into the docks every day, spices and sauces that were available in Pucklechurch only rarely, with substitutions used frequently.
Mizuki kept being reminded that she wasn’t from Kiromo, no matter how many noodle places she ate at.
Two weeks after the house had settled in Plenarch, Verity had a concert in the city’s largest concert halls. This was her first ‘proper’ concert since her final one in Dondrian, put on with only a little bit of planning help from the party. The concert was the end of her ‘tour’ of Greater Plenarch, the culmination of having played dozens of taverns and inns along their route, almost always with new songs. She had decided on doing the concert, then had been a nervous wreck about it, pouring all her time and effort into practicing and refining her setlist until it was as close to perfect as possible. Toward the end, Mizuki was getting a little bit sick of listening to the same songs over and over, and the tweaks didn’t, to her ears, make the songs sound much different.
The night of the premiere, they all dressed up and came to support her.
“So did she settle on autobiography or geography?” asked Mizuki as they waited for everyone to take their seats. They had a box, like they’d had for the opera in Dondrian, but the crowd wasn’t nearly as rich or finely dressed, and the hall was much smaller.
“Both,” said Isra, who was looking stunning in a dress that sparkled with gold.
Mizuki settled in, threading her fingers through Alfric’s, who was in the chair beside hers. He was sharply dressed and very upright, and she was feeling cozy sitting next to him. With a little bit of work, she thought she might be able to rest her head on his shoulder while the music played. They’d been spending more time together since the move to Plenarch, in part because of the shorter travel time. He would come to have lunch with her more often than not, and sometimes show up at the school to walk her home, which she found rather sweet.
Hannah had been going eastward, but for this special occasion, she’d returned, Marsh in tow, both of them dressed up and neither looking entirely comfortable with it. Hannah’s dress showed off her muscular arms, stoutness on full display, and Marsh had been stuffed into a suit with his beard braided and bejeweled. It was good to see them again, though Marsh was stationed out of Plenarch along with the rest of Vertex, at least for the time being. Hannah hadn’t had a proper send-off, which had been her wish — she’d left shortly after the party that marked Mizuki’s wizarding finally coming to fruition, and said that a party that wasn’t about saying goodbye was a much better note to leave on.
Quinn was there as well, as was Pinion, though Pinion was wearing the dress that could make him into a girl. Mizuki had quizzed him about that, and he’d shrugged and said that Verity would get a kick out of it, which hadn’t answered her questions. He was next to Isra, leaning in and talking with her quite often.
“I’ve never been to a concert before,” said Quinn. “Are they always like this?”
“They’re not usually this crowded,” said Alfric, looking out at all the people still taking their seats below. He’d set the schedule, which meant that they were early.
“And it’s going to be the same music we’ve been hearing?” asked Quinn.
“Mostly, yes,” said Isra. “I believe there’s a duet we haven’t heard.”
“She’s going to be playing with someone else?” asked Quinn.
“You’ll see,” said Isra.
When the lights dimmed, the audience quieted down, and shortly after, Verity walked out from the wings, lute in hand, to scattered applause. She sat on a chair that had been placed near the front of the stage and cleared her throat, smiling politely as she waited for silence.
“Thank you,” she said, voice projecting out, magically amplified by an assistive entad. “I’m so glad you could join me tonight for the very first concert I’ve ever put on for myself. My last concert was in Dondrian, and I played mostly the classics, but tonight I’ll be playing you music of my own, much of it written this very summer. My friends and I are dungeoneers, and we’ve been traveling across the province of Greater Plenarch, seeing the sights and speaking with the people we’ve seen along the way. I’ve played in taverns and inns, and sometimes on street corners, all for the love of music and the joy of sharing it with others, and I’m so happy that I get to play the best of it for you.”
Verity had been a bundle of nerves in the time leading up to the concert, and had briefly floated the idea of canceling it altogether, even though there was a not-insignificant amount of money that she’d put on the line. On the stage, she was calm and graceful, betraying nothing, exuding warmth and friendliness. Mizuki found it hard to believe that it was an act, even knowing Verity as well as she did.
The wall behind Verity was white, and as Verity finished speaking, it lit up with a picture: a map of Greater Plenarch and its features, stylized and with their route drawn over it, the landmarks oversized. Mizuki wondered how the picture was being made, but it didn’t appear to be magic, which meant that it was being projected in some other way, maybe by a lens, a bright light, or a translucent painting. It was such a puzzle that she was distracted by it, leaning forward and not entirely listening to what Verity was saying — but before Mizuki could decide on how it was done, the first song started.
The picture changed again, this time showing Pucklechurch’s eponymous church. Verity had said something about it, but Mizuki had been looking for the device that made the picture on the wall. It was a good painting, just a little bit off in the proportions, and the song was a somewhat melancholy one about a wayward leyline whose subtext seemed to be about a certain wayward bard. It wasn’t a sad song, not exactly, but it had less pep than Mizuki liked, and given that it was about her hometown, she found herself wishing that it had been more complimentary.
When the song finished, Verity went right into the next one, and the picture changed again, going dark between images in a way that seemed like it might give a hint as to how it was working.
Sometimes the songs seemed to be straightforward pieces of their time on the road — a time that Mizuki had only been there for part of — and sometimes the songs seemed totally disconnected from what the images were showing or what had actually happened to them. Isra had said that it was a mix of biography and geography, but even knowing Verity’s entire biography and the entire geography of the trip, it was sometimes hard to connect the dots. Eventually, Mizuki just let the music wash over her, accompanied by the paintings up on the wall, and settled into her seat to enjoy it rather than thinking too much. She rested herself against Alfric and he softly kissed the top of her head.
The whole thing continued without an intermission, and toward the end, they had a special treat — the promised duet. Mizuki was surprised and delighted when a stagehand wheeled out a familiar box, which was folded down and opened up to show the ectad stone within. The only difference between this music box and the one in their house was that ‘Parson Musical Appliances’ was in much larger lettering, visible to most of those in the crowd so long as they were close enough.
“Many of you may have heard of this device, and a few of you may have actually heard it,” said Verity, the first time she’d spoken since her opening words. “My father and his ectad engineers are building them in Dondrian, and I’ve been supplying them with songs. Some of those, you can now hear in establishments around Inter. Tonight, I have something special for you, something that so far as I know has never been done before: I’ll be playing a duet — with myself.”
Mizuki felt a grin spread over her face. It was weird, and she liked weird. Better, it was a surprise, something that Verity must have been working on in private, since Mizuki had never heard any of this before, not in the endless practice sessions that Verity had been doing.
Verity got everything into place with the music box, then positioned herself with her fingers on her lute, waiting.
If Mizuki hadn’t known better, she’d have thought there were simply two of Verity playing. Whatever work had been done to get it working, it was seamless, the volume from both Verity and the music box the same. They were playing different parts, Verity’s lute high, the box’s low, sometimes with one singing, sometimes the other, and occasionally both in harmony. The subject of the song was a girl who found a magic mirror and played with her mirror friend.
Halfway through, Hannah gave a little gasp, and Mizuki realized that the song had gone through a change: now Verity was playing the high part while the box was playing the low part. The song wasn’t just a duet, it was mirrored, with a reversal of roles. Mizuki was sure that if she knew more about music, she’d be suitably impressed, but for her, Verity harmonizing with a recording of herself was novel enough.
Mizuki had thought that the duet was going to be the final song of the show, which might have been nice, since she needed to go to the bathroom, but Verity had one more in store. The wall behind her lit up with a familiar sight, that of Plenarch and its many bridges, and the song began in earnest, an ode to the city that played well with the crowd. Verity strummed with enthusiasm, eventually standing up and letting the lute hang from its strap, walking the stage. Mizuki wasn’t quite sure how Verity managed it, but the crowd got involved, repeating the refrain of the salty city at the edge of the sea, and she beamed out at them like they were all her tavern patrons.
When the show was finished, Mizuki got up and raced to the bathroom, beating the rush. When she had finished, the line was long, and she felt very pleased with herself for having the foresight.
As people began to filter out of the concert hall, their little group waited, and after not too long, Verity emerged, holding the case that contained her lute. Up close, she looked like she was wearing a bit too much makeup, but that was just how it was for someone who needed to be seen by people in the back. Mizuki wondered whether all the things that Verity had gone through were easier or harder when they were of her own volition: for the concert in Dondrian,Verity had to have the whole hair, wardrobe, and makeup thing done at the behest of her mother.
“Alright, so how did they do the picture on the wall?” asked Mizuki.
“They were paintings,” said Verity. “There’s a lens and a bright light. I had a stagehand swapping them out.”
“Yeah, but how?” asked Mizuki. “I mean, how do you do a painting that you can see through like that?”
“It’s painted on some very high-quality glass,” said Verity. “It’s not that unusual.”
“I’ve never seen it,” said Mizuki. “You did the paintings yourself?”
Verity laughed. “I wish. I did small little studies, then handed them off to someone who does this for a living.”
“You did wonderfully,” said Alfric. “I was surprised though, with that and the music box. Normally you put a focus on the music first and foremost.”
“Normally,” shrugged Verity. “The music box has been a part of how I’m feeling though, and the paintings … I think in the past I might have thought of them as cowardice, or a crutch, but I just felt like a painting might be nice, to allow the songs to wander out away from their original subject.” She shrugged again.
“I appreciated the music box song,” said Hannah. “Every bit of it.”
“You were an inspiration,” smiled Verity. “Did you see how I moved the chair over, so we’d be on separate sides of the stage?”
Hannah grinned and nodded.
“At any rate, I’m done playing, I’m done talking about playing, and what I think I’d really like is a night at the beach, preferably with a fire that I can smell in my hair the next day,” said Verity.
This was, thankfully, exactly what they had planned, with a brief stop at home to change into more comfortable clothes.
~~~~
Alfric sat down with Quinn and began an education in laundoncraft. He had her book to follow along with, but was also taking whatever instruction she had to offer. It was, to hear Quinn tell it, relatively easy to pick up and very very difficult to master, with all kinds of facets once you dug in deep enough. Mizuki might have understood it better had she been a part of the lessons, but Alfric enjoyed enthusiastically explaining it to her, which was even better.
“To hear her describe it, it’s all extradimensional spaces, but there are lots of subfields within it, and her tent is actually a lot more capable than I had thought,” said Alfric. “There’s a trick you can do where you link rooms together, and then have one of the rooms as what she calls a ‘feeder’ to the other. I mean, they’re technically, if I understand it, overlapping rooms in some sense, but the cool thing, what really stumps me, is that they read intent.”
“Intent … like an entad that knows what you mean?” asked Mizuki.
Alfric nodded. “So you have a room and you’ve done all the necessary work to make it unfold into, say, five rooms. You set it up so that when you open the door, you go into the room that’s being ‘fed’, and with enough preparation, the feeder will populate the eater.”
“Er,” said Mizuki. “Meaning … you put a bed in the feeder, you think real hard about a bedroom, that bed pops into the eater?”
“Yes,” said Alfric. “Exactly.” He smiled. “Isn’t that amazing?”
“I guess,” said Mizuki, though she was feeling a little doubtful. “I feel like you’d end up squishing things?”
“Apparently not if you do it right,” said Alfric. “But you see what this means, right?”
“I absolutely do not,” said Mizuki.
“Quinn has always seemed like a little bit of a packrat, right?” asked Alfric. “She’s got the barn, which was full of stuff, and she seems like she hoards things. Part of that is obviously that she’s got the space for it all, and part is that the backstory of her world is that things are replicated, removing quite a lot of scarcity. But the other reason is because she can pretty easily set rooms up to draw from the clutter!”
He seemed very pleased with himself for having solved what was apparently a mystery, and Mizuki rewarded him with a kiss, though she didn’t quite understand why he was so elated about it.
“Still no luck with doing it yourself?” asked Mizuki.
Some of the eagerness went out of him. “No,” said Alfric. “I have all the principles down, I understand it, it’s just …” He shrugged. “It was a long shot anyway.”
“Giving up?” asked Mizuki with an arched eyebrow.
“No,” said Alfric. “We’re banned from the dungeons. I’m going to give it ten times the time and effort that Quinn thinks that it should take, and if that doesn’t work, then I’ll give up. There would be all kinds of trouble if it was learnable though, so maybe I should be hoping that it’s not.”
“Trouble like … government trouble?” asked Mizuki.
“Not just that,” said Alfric. “It would be metaphysical trouble. I suppose laundoncraft could be a lost magic, but there aren’t supposed to be lost magics.”
“Nah,” said Mizuki. “There’s probably a bunch of lost magics, we just don’t know about them, on account of them being lost.”
Alfric laughed. “Alright, probably. Probably twenty or thirty sorts of things that we just don’t know about yet, and only might know with coherent dungeons.”
“You should put that in your next letter to the government,” said Mizuki.
“I don’t write that many letters,” said Alfric. “Three. And the third was the last, unless I learn laundoncraft.”
“How many letters to the government do you think I’ve written in my life?” asked Mizuki.
“It’s stuff they should know though,” said Alfric. “Of course, it’s not like anyone has acknowledged me, and probably they’re not actually reading the letters, but I’m willing to give our government a pass on that.”
He’d been reading from Quinn’s book a lot, and while he had little hope of ever actually finishing the thing, he had annotated it and placed bookmarks. A trusted wortier had taken a look at, and said that it was the most coherent and expansive dungeon book he’d ever handled, but other than the magic that let it pack so many pages in, it wasn’t anything special or significant.
Alfric was using almost every undone day he got, whether that was on laundoncraft, the book, or trying to hone his various skills. Some of those days he took on his own, while others were with her, but he’d mostly stopped having undone days with her, on the theory that it was ‘unfair’. Mizuki only begrudgingly accepted that.
They were happy together, with none of the problems that he’d predicted, though she did think that he was floundering a little now that the long trip to Plenarch was done, especially with no dungeons to look forward to. He had taken up some work with the League, mostly in an administrative and advisory capacity, helping out other dungeoneering teams that were passing through, but this didn’t actually take up much time, and he was still young enough that people didn’t entirely take him seriously, even with the Overguard name.
It was early autumn when the house had arrived in Plenarch, and autumn slowly slipped away into winter. In Pucklechurch, winters came early and stayed late, but while Plenarch was further to the south, it was buffeted by winds and waves from the north. Still, the first snows fell more or less on schedule.
It was during that first snowfall that Alfric presented Mizuki with a cup. He had a smile on his face.
“A wooden cup,” she said, turning it over. “Thanks!”
“Look inside,” said Alfric.
Mizuki did, and frowned at it. With her second sight, the cup had the gleam of magic. “Er,” she said. “What … is this?”
“It’s a cup that’s bigger on the inside than the outside,” said Alfric. He beamed at her. “Made by me.”
Mizuki’s eyes widened. “Wow. You mean … ?”
“Apprenticing paid off,” said Alfric. “And laundoncraft can probably be taught to anyone who’s bloody-minded enough to stick with it.”
Mizuki gently set the cup down, then wrapped him in a hug. “I’m so proud of you,” she said. “You’re a magician!”
“Laundoncrafter,” said Alfric. He pulled away from her. “This house is going to have so many rooms. Our bedroom is going to be massive.”
“Massive bedroom?” asked Mizuki. “But my, what will we do there?”
Alfric only smiled.
~~~~
Law-making was apparently slow going. The entire party were called in to give their testimony to lawmakers, always with some care taken to not reveal precisely what had happened. It was simply called ‘the technique’, and so far as anyone knew, it had nothing to do with Verity. Mizuki only had to speak once, and briefly, because she hadn’t been there when it happened. Quinn went in on three separate occasions. The whole thing was simultaneously nerve-wracking and kind of boring, the staid halls of power seeming threatening and dull. Mizuki had no skin in the game though, save for her friendship with Quinn.
The legal issue was of particular concern to Alfric because once it was settled, he’d be able to go back to dungeons again. Depending on what the law said, it was possible that he’d be doing dungeons without Verity, but he wasn’t ready to give up on dungeons forever.
The funny thing about lawmaking was that even when everyone knew what the law was going to be, they still had to go through some pretty long processes that seemed to be matters of formality to Mizuki. This meant that Alfric could know what the new law said, know that everyone was going to vote for it, but still be restricted by the fact that it wasn’t actually a law yet.
“It’s a permissive result,” said Alfric at dinner. “Probably too permissive, honestly, but it’s hard to say.”
“Meaning we’re back in business?” asked Verity.
“If you want to be,” said Alfric.
“I’m ready, yes,” said Verity. “I haven’t practiced the technique, but I’ve been thinking about it, and what I would do next time. I think it’ll be easier if it’s an empty hex, one without people, but we can talk about it later.”
“We could have been talking about it this whole time,” said Alfric.
“I didn’t want to get your hopes up,” said Verity.
“She’s been talking to me,” said Isra.
“Dungeons!” said Mizuki. “Who’s going to be our fifth?”
“I’m actually long overdue to leave,” said Pinion, looking a bit sheepish. “The research has been shelved for the time being, and I’ve had laundoncraft to work on, but … I’m done, I think.”
“Oh,” said Verity. “I had thought you would stay.”
“I was only intended to be here for a short enough time to determine if Alfric was off his rocker about what’s going on within dungeons,” said Pinion. “As it stands, I need to go back.” He gave her a shrug. “Not forever, but there are findings that need to be disseminated, mentors to speak with, and the other things that are technically my job.”
“We could be right at the forefront,” said Verity, still frowning. “Everything you know could be turned around.”
“The law won’t pass for another two weeks at the earliest,” said Alfric.
“I will be back,” said Pinion. “I promise.”
“Then I’d like to be the fifth,” said Quinn. She looked at Alfric. “I have absolutely no relevant skills for dungeoneer, have never killed an animal, and haven’t had a lick of training, but if there’s a risk you might make people again, I’m perhaps the world’s foremost expert on what it’s like to be pulled from a dungeon.”
“We can’t tell anyone else what we’re doing,” said Alfric. “Or at least, I don’t think it would be wise to. You’re pretty much the only option. We’ll have to have a party discussion about it, but —”
“You’re in!” said Mizuki.
“Second,” said Isra.
“Third,” said Verity.
“Alright, fine, but we should still have a party discussion,” said Alfric. “There’s no rush though. Unless something calamitous happens, the law will be passed in a few weeks at the latest.”
“And then we’re back to dungeons,” said Mizuki. She was excited, especially if it meant a chance to test out her wizardry in a less sterile and controlled setting. Verity would try her best to make sure there weren’t monsters … but Verity had tried that before, and Mizuki almost hoped she failed.
Two weeks later, when the law came into effect, they were ready to go into the dungeons once more.
Comments
Rayling
Thanks for the story, it's been a great time. If you're taking requests for epilogues then I have a wishlist: The Editors, I'd love to know what their whole deal was. Cate, I'd be interested to see how her stuff goes. The return to dungeons and the impacts of Verity's Technique. General relationship development between the main cast, perhaps 5 or so years later? Whatever you decide is best for epilogues I'll be happy to read it. In the meantime I'm looking forward to the extra Thresholder chapters!
Sid_Cypher
Congratulations!
