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This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 155, Wanderings
🕑 Added 2022-12-13 01:01:46 +0000 UTCThis is, I think, an extra final "arc" to This Used to be About Dungeons above and beyond what I had planned for, in part because I'm still quite enjoying writing it. There's a good chance that I'll step down the number of chapters per week and run two/three serials side by side, but for now it'll be business as usual.
I do think that last chapter would be a perfectly good place to stop things, and it was written as a stopping point, but there are still four or five things that I want from this world and these characters, so I'm indulging myself.
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Thanks to the surfeit of magical lutes from the last dungeon they’d done, Isra could walk the world with an ease and grace that inspired a deep envy in most people. While their house made its slow, plodding way toward Plenarch on long metal legs, Isra got to exploring.
“Here,” she said one day, presenting a map on the dining room table after they had all eaten dinner together. The hexes of Greater Plenarch were all laid out, the hex grid having been printed on a long piece of paper that Isra had bought in Dondrian on her last trip there, but the individual towns, meadows, and forests had largely been Isra’s own work. She had marked places worth seeing, then charted a revised course.
“This will take us some extra time,” said Alfric, looking it over. “We’ve been trying to go in a straight line.” This was, formally, a ‘party meeting’, which meant that all the people they’d eaten dinner with had left the table. Marsh was out in the field, sparring with Bib and taking it quite easy on the boy.
“We could speed up though,” said Mizuki. She brushed her hair from her face. She had switched to long hair after three weeks in wizarding school, since apparently that was a part of wizardly style. They liked things long — long robes, long sleeves, long beards, and long hair. The length had been obtained through magical means, and she was clearly not used to it yet. “I mean, this house can gallop.”
“It’s harder to control when it’s moving at speed,” said Alfric. “We want to be conscientious travelers and leave no trace of our passing, at least as much as possible.”
“Gods forbid the walking house draws attention to itself,” said Mizuki with a roll of her eyes. “Gods forbid, Alfric.”
“We could still be goin’ faster though,” said Hannah. She had her arms crossed. “Not a gallop, per se, but faster.”
“If one of the legs clips a wall, we have to pay for it,” said Alfric. “We would also have to stop, if that happened.”
“I am regretting letting you be captain,” said Verity with a sigh. “I have loved the trip thus far, but if we could get where we’re going in half the time …”
“We took a vote on captaincy,” said Alfric. He frowned. “But alright, I can speed up a bit tomorrow.”
“Look, there’s no way that Alfric wasn’t going to be the captain,” said Mizuki. “But if I could have a turn at rampaging the house through the villages of Plenarch —”
“Yes, there’s a reason that Alfric is the captain,” said Hannah. “Though we should have gotten him a hat.”
“There’s still time,” said Alfric, looking hopeful.
“What are all these things?” asked Verity, who’d taken the map and was looking over it. “This just says ‘cool cave’ here.”
“I tried not to spoil it for myself,” said Isra. “What I would do is go to various villages, introduce myself at the local taverns, buy people some drinks, ask them what things were worth seeing in the area, then warn them about the large house that might be coming down their roads in the near future.”
“Aw, you warned them?” asked Mizuki. “Scaring people with a giant walking house is half the fun.”
“Wait,” said Verity. “With the Commute Lute you can travel a hundred hexes a day. How much travel have you been doing?”
Isra hesitated. “I like to travel.”
“But, as an actual answer to the question … ?” asked Verity.
“Somewhat more than a hundred hexes a day,” said Isra. “Since I have other lutes for travel as well.”
Verity shook her head. “Well I won’t say that it’s excessive, but there’s a point where I think a person is right to worry.”
“How much are you spending on buying people drinks?” asked Mizuki. “That must be quite the bill.”
Isra shrugged. “We don’t lack for money.”
That much was true. The money that they had would let them coast along for years, and their funds weren’t the kind that could be depleted by modest living, nor by buying drinks or food for strangers. It was, in fact, the kind of wealth that could only be depleted through the purchase of high-end entads, a house, or fancy things whose prices, it seemed, could have no limit.
For her part, Isra hadn’t been spending all that much of her share. She’d bought makeup and clothing, then more clothing when she grew dissatisfied with the first round of purchases, but it had only made the smallest dent in the pile of rings — which wasn’t a literal pile, but rather, a bank account in Plenarch that could be borrowed against in ways that still felt foreign. Mizuki had assured her that no one ever really got used to banks, nor understood how they worked.
“Well, I’m fine with detours and a longer trip,” said Alfric. “Part of the reason we’re doing this is because we can. We’ll have to consult with Vertex to see whether it suits them, but I have to imagine that it does.”
“I’m ready for the next dungeon,” said Verity. “I want to make clear that I’m not the hold up here.” She looked over at Mizuki.
“Right, sorry,” said Mizuki. “It’s just … running a dungeon right after I’ve had a week of school, or late in the day on the day of school, or the day before school, all feel kind of, uh, bad? But before the next temple day, for sure.”
“We have a date then?” asked Alfric.
“I’ve mostly been sittin’ around the house,” said Hannah, waving a lazy hand. “No conflicts here.”
“Same,” said Verity. “I’ve been practicing for the dungeon as best I can.”
“Good,” said Alfric, taking a breath. “Then I do think we should have a refresher on dungeon protocols, and I’ll go over the equipment, make sure everything is in place, and that we can bunker down for an extended time in the dungeon. Given what happened last time, we’re going to have to change a few things so there’s no risk that we can’t immediately get back to the exit.”
“Oh no, he’s back on the dungeons again,” said Mizuki.
“I’m not,” said Alfric. “I mean, I do still want to go into dungeons, especially if we can manipulate them, but I’m not as unabashedly enthusiastic as I was when we first started. Partly I don’t need to be, because I know and trust you all.”
“Aw,” said Hannah. She smiled wide. “So sweet.”
Alfric gave her a very serious nod.
“And we’re not having the house walk at night?” asked Mizuki.
“Too dangerous,” said Alfric. “Even if we decked it out with lanterns.”
“We should deck it out with lanterns anyway,” said Mizuki. She gave a little laugh. “Can you imagine walking by, and there’s a house where there wasn’t a house the day before, lanterns shining out into the night? I’d run the other way.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Isra.
“You’d go straight for it,” said Alfric.
“Alright, fine, I would love to find a mystery house, and I would act without the slightest hint of self-preservation,” said Mizuki. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“It’s the truth, at least,” said Hannah with a laugh.
This was the part of ‘party meetings’ that Isra loved best, when they were just talking with each other rather than getting down to brass tacks. She cared about the business aspects of the life they were leading together, but not as much as she cared about sitting around and having fun. Alfric seemed to think that there was a time and place for everything, but Isra appreciated that they could sometimes spiral off into some tangent for half an hour.
“In theory, you should assume that it’s someone’s entad and just leave it alone, right?” asked Alfric.
“Oh, this is somehow germane, but talkin’ about temples isn’t?” asked Hannah.
“It’s germane, but it’s secondary,” said Alfric. “It’s not a matter of party business.”
“And findin’ houses in the night is?” asked Hannah. She seemed legitimately grumpy. She’d wanted them to make arrangements to have a place to go for each temple day, and Alfric had put it off as something that was outside the bounds of a party meeting — important only in that they would need to travel in a group to whatever temple they ended up going to.
“It’s important in that we’re going to be living in a house that people might stumble across,” said Alfric. “Most people won’t assume that it’s an omen of some kind. My hope is that they recognize it’s an entad and then move on, rather than coming up and asking us about it.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” said Mizuki. “What’s the point in having a moving house if you’re not going to talk to people about it?”
“It seems annoying,” said Alfric. “Maybe not the first time, but by the fifth I think it’ll be a nuisance.”
“No need to have the house squat down then,” said Hannah. “Just raise it up on its legs like they’re stilts, no one will knock on the door then, because they won’t be able to.”
“I’d throw a rock, if it were me,” said Mizuki.
“We can work out which temples to go to along the way,” said Isra, taking the map from Verity, who had finished looking at the notes. “I didn’t ask around at any of those places, but if you’d like to wiggle the route, we can do that? Are there clerics whose sermons you want to hear? Or places you want to go?”
“Pucklechurch had an interestin’ church,” said Hannah. “I’m not sure what’s on the way, but you shouldn’t go to temple for the temple itself, that’s missin’ the point, so it is said.” She nodded. “We’ll talk about it later, if it’s not ‘official’ business.”
Part of the problem, at least as Isra saw it, was that Hannah had been left with nothing to do. Alfric was guiding the house, Mizuki was going to wizarding school, Isra was exploring the countryside, and Verity was working on her music. Hannah had no real purpose as the house moved, and worse, couldn’t do what she called ‘proper’ baking while the house moved. unless it was while sequestered away in her private extradimensional space — and there was only so much baking that a person could do in a day anyway. The house was overflowing with bread, frankly.
When they eventually ended the ‘meeting’ after deciding on a few alterations to the route, then went their separate ways. Isra took one of the cinnamon buns that Hannah had brought out, then took the stairs up to the room she shared with Verity.
Isra sat and listened to the natural world, staring up at the ceiling with her own eyes, but also looking out at the world with the eyes of the animals around the house. They had turned the corner on the year, and the nights were once again getting shorter, which meant that all of the animals had started to prepare for winter in various ways, putting on weight or storing foods as best they were able. They weren’t far enough from Pucklechurch for there to be much difference among the animals, and they were avoiding areas that were both swampy and mountainous. It would be somewhat different once they reached Plenarch, which was practically on the other side of the province, but that would be because of the warm air that came over the ocean and the salt that made the winds smell different.
“Knock knock,” said Mizuki, rather than knocking.
“Enter, if you dare,” replied Isra. She looked up and watched Mizuki come in. With the longer hair, Mizuki looked older, which might have been part of the point.
“How’s it going?” asked Mizuki.
“Fine,” said Isra, laying back down. “You know, I’d like to see a desert someday. None on the path though.”
“Yeah,” said Mizuki. “Tarbin’s got deserts.”
“I know,” said Isra.
“So … you were wearing the headscarf today,” said Mizuki. “I wanted to ask about that, but not in front of the others, just so you wouldn’t feel weird about it.”
“Ah,” said Isra. “And if I said ‘I don’t know, I just felt like it’, you’d accept that?”
“Of course,” said Mizuki. “I mean, I think it looked good, it’s just you kind of stopped, and now started again, and I don’t want you to ever feel weird about what you’re wearing, but … also I didn’t know whether anyone else would ask you about it, if it was more than just ‘I felt like it’.
Isra thought about that for a moment. “There is a reason, but it might be a stupid one.”
“See, now I’m glad I asked,” said Mizuki. She found a seat at the room’s single small desk and put her hands on her knees. “I’m ready for some stupidity.”
“I was off traveling, as I’ve been doing,” said Isra with a sigh. “And I saw these women, a small group of them, probably family, just going about their business in a village to the west, very normal, except they wore the headscarves, and they had the same dark skin. I waved to them, and nearly pointed at my own head, except … I wasn’t wearing it, obviously. I had on a shirt with no sleeves. So I just stared at them mutely, and they stared at me, and I think they thought … I don’t know.” She let out a little groan. “I was thinking about that all day.”
“Thinking what?” asked Mizuki, leaning forward a bit.
“I recognized them as my people,” said Isra. “I got excited by that, seeing other immigrants — not that I was ever truly an immigrant, but I was raised by my father in the custom of Tarbin, at least in part. It made me feel lonely.”
“I never really got that,” said Mizuki. “The headscarf thing. Modesty as a virtue of Kesbin I guess I understand, but I’d think that would involve less clothes, not more.”
“It’s about being a gentle and quiet person,” said Isra. “Not drawing attention to yourself. It goes for men as well.” She frowned. “At least, as I was taught.”
“So someone walking around naked is less of Kesbin because they’re calling attention to themselves?” asked Mizuki. “In theory, the most Kesbin thing would be, I dunno, full camouflage?”
“Something like that,” said Isra. She grinned. “I imagine you could have a very illuminating discussion with a cleric, and that they could have wild disagreement about the principle of the thing.”
“Do you like the feeling of being camouflaged?” asked Mizuki.
“Hmm,” said Isra. “I think … I was stared at for my manner of dress for a long time. Perhaps not stared at, but definitely noticed. It was the opposite of camouflage, at least in Pucklechurch, something that made me stick out.” She smiled. “Not of Kesbin at all, in that way.” She looked at Mizuki, with her long hair, in her robes. “And … you’re engaging in camouflage?”
“Um,” said Mizuki. She grabbed her hair where it hung down her back and moved it so that it was in front. It was long enough that it ended down at her bellybutton. She stroked the sheath of straight, shiny hair, looking at it. “A bit? Mostly just trying things out, honestly. It seems like a pain to maintain though, I don’t know how you all do it. Takes forever to wash, takes forever to dry, so I probably won’t keep it. I just, uh, want to stick out in good ways?” She sat up a bit straighter. “How did it work out for you, going back to your Tarbin humility?”
Isra shrugged. “I didn’t feel much different. I do wish I were less aware of how people view me, so I could just be without thinking of what goes on in the minds of those who see me.”
“Yeah,” said Mizuki. She rubbed her knees. “So you spent years going into Pucklechurch, very aware that you weren’t dressed like other people, just very bullheaded about it?”
Isra nodded. “Alfric always found that bullheadedness appealing.”
“It is appealing,” said Mizuki. “Best thing about you, other than the druid powers, which aren’t really about you.”
“I’ve been coming back to it, in my travels,” said Isra. “I come into these villages dotted about the province as a stranger, walk into taverns that go entire years where they only serve regulars, and make a stir whether I want to or not. I think in the past I’d have stayed stone-faced, allowed their gazes to wash over me, but now I smile. Inside, it feels the same. I’m stepping on unspoken rules, making a fool of myself and trying not to care.”
“I thought you liked going out?” asked Mizuki. “Isn’t that why you do it so much?”
“I’m only talking of specific sorts of places,” said Isra. “Places that wilt my confidence, where I get through by being a hulking bear of a person who crashes around and knocks things down. A market is fine, people expect travelers. A temple sees visitors. It’s the taverns sometimes, and only sometimes, where they have a sense of it as almost a second home, and you as an intruder.” She shivered slightly. “It’s part of why I want to save as much as I can for exploring with my family.”
Mizuki gave a nod. “If you’re just one person, you stick out like a sore thumb, but if you’re a group of five people, you stick out like five sore thumbs, which is its own form of camouflage.”
Isra gave a bright smile. “And we’re dungeoneers, aren’t we? We’re supposed to be roaming the countryside.”
“I’m not getting my hopes up about the prospect of dungeons,” said Mizuki. “I think Alfric will come down from his room with a defeated sigh and say that it didn’t work out. But I’ve been known to be wrong. It’s happened twice.”
“Thank you for coming to talk to me,” said Isra.
“Sure,” said Mizuki. “I was a little worried this would be the fourth private conversation you’d had about it.”
“No, just you,” said Isra. “You’re a good sister.”
“I’m actually an awful sister,” said Mizuki. “I’m behind on my letters, and my parents don’t even know that I’m at wizarding school. I’ll lay claim to being a good surrogate sister though.”
Mizuki stayed and talked for a bit after that, and Isra had asked the obligatory questions about wizarding school. There was a torrent of names that Isra couldn’t hope to remember all of, which might have been because Mizuki was bad at giving important context to things, but it was nonetheless good to hear someone talk about something that excited them. Mizuki’s excitable nature was infectious sometimes.
It wasn’t until after Mizuki had left to ‘go bug Alfric’ that Verity had slipped in.
“I heard you talking,” said Verity. “Not overheard you talking, just heard that you were talking, and wanted to give you some space.”
“It’s fine,” said Isra. “It wasn’t anything important.”
“Oh,” said Verity. “Good.” She set her lute down in the lute case beside her bed. The sounds of her playing had drifted up from outside.
“How is your song-writing going?” asked Isra.
“Very good,” said Verity. “Though I think part of it is just a fool’s confidence. I think you need that though, as a creator of anything, an ability to say ‘no, this is not garbage’.” She shrugged. “You go out on stage and say ‘oh, this will be fine, they can’t see that I’m an imposter, they can’t hear the places where there are off-notes, where the lyrics underwhelm’.”
“It’s like that every time?” asked Isra.
“No, not lately,” said Verity. “There is, in my opinion, a real feeling of ‘well, what’s the worst that can happen?’ Confidence is at an all-time high, in part because the venues are microscopic, some even smaller than the Fig and Gristle was. I’ve gotten nice, polite applause, at a very minimum, from the four places I’ve played. Honestly, I’ve been a little surprised that it’s so easy to have places give me a chance.”
“You’re a world-famous lutist asking to play songs for patrons for free,” said Isra, raising an eyebrow. “In what world would that pose problems?”
“I’m not world-famous,” said Verity. “I have some level of fame in Dondrian, and a lesser level of fame in large cities where people might read newspapers from Dondrian, or take casual trips there. So if I show up at a tavern, it’s very likely I have nothing to present as bonafide proof. And I can’t imagine leading with ‘oh, I’m actually quite popular’.” She made a face. “Gross.”
“I could go ahead of you,” Isra grinned. “I’ll show up — in a disguise, of course — and ask whether the barkeep has heard of the great Verity Parson, Chosen of Xuphin, Voice from the Machine, Dragon-Botherer.”
Verity laughed. “Someday I’m going to run into someone who’s been keeping an eye on me, and I think I’ll just die of embarrassment. I’ve been making the papers for the wrong reasons, I fear.”
“We have a date for the dungeon,” said Isra. “Maybe we’ll make the newspapers for the right reasons?”
“Let’s hope,” said Verity. “If I can turn a dungeon into even half of what the Wildlands are, or better, do that and then teach the technique to other people, I will consider myself to be a proper Chosen of Xuphin.”
“And wear that label with pride?” asked Isra.
“Perhaps not pride,” said Verity, frowning slightly. “But I’ll be able to say that it wasn’t a mistake, which is always what I had feared.”
Isra hoped that was how it would happen. She liked this new Verity, who was meeting the world with more confidence, and she worried that they were just a single misstep from a regression to anxious moping. She didn’t say that out loud, of course, but she cared for Verity deeply, and also knew her friend well enough to know that there were things that could push her off course. A single negative review, a letter from her mother, even a lone boo from a crowd of hundreds, might return Verity to a grim state. Isra hoped that she was wrong, that this change was a permanent one, but she was trying to prepare herself for it.
She missed their relationship sometimes. Some of it was missing touch, the feeling of fingertips on bare skin, the press of lips against each other, and some of it was intimacy. She had made a few deniable overtures and watched how Verity responded, and she knew that there was a possibility that they could pick up right where they had left off. It was the thought of Verity slumped over, despondent, that stopped Isra. She loved Verity, but those moments had been difficult, almost torturous, seeing someone in pain and not being able to help them, giving them advice that they wouldn’t follow, being expected to stand by and not get frustrated or sad or angry. Isra didn’t know how married people handled it, but it was something that the custom of marriage seemed to expect.
There were also, as the expression went, other fish in the sea. Isra had been visiting towns and making a splash when she did, and she’d found that she attracted a specific sort of attention from men who were around her own age, interest and flirtation if not actual courtship. She enjoyed it, overall, though she imagined she’d have liked it less if she were obligated to stick around. As it stood, she could simply leave at the strum of a lute, though she’d only employed that tactic once, and not so much because it was needed but because it was funny.
With the lute, she was unconstrained by geography. If she wanted a boyfriend or girlfriend, it would be as easy as leaning into the advances, or making advances of her own, and while she wasn’t entirely clear on how all that was supposed to work, in her opinion making an effort probably counted for a lot.
It might get awkward, sharing a room with Verity. Isra was hoping for an extradimensional space of her own, like Hannah had, a simple room that she could retreat to, perhaps with someone in tow. It would be less awkward that way, if it happened that these encounters developed into something, if she was reading the flirtation and interest right.
It was entirely possible that she was reading the flirtation and interest wrong.
When Verity got ready for bed, Isra kept her eyes to herself, but it was cause to meditate on modesty and what it might mean. They all wore their own pajamas, some of which had been sewn by Verity, and Verity’s left most of her legs showing, her thighs almost bare. In conversation with Mizuki, they had talked about Kesbinite asceticism, but Isra was starting to think that it might be more about warding against Xuphinite desire.
Clothes weren’t an invitation, necessarily, but there was something about Verity’s legs that suggested an invitation, that at least made Isra think that a card might be in the mail. There was always a temptation in those moments to see how far the whiff of invitation extended, to climb into Verity’s bed and have it be like it was. Most likely Verity would be happy, her recent good moods propelled to higher heights.
But if Isra was lonely in that way, she thought it better to go further afield and find someone among the villages she was visiting. It wasn’t a goal of her travels, but it was a consideration.
The next morning, a researcher from Lambria showed up at their doorstep.
