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This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 112, Stones and Tones
🕑 Added 2022-06-20 18:50:29 +0000 UTC~~~~
Removing the stone turned out to be a bit of a problem, though mostly because there was nowhere to put it. It wouldn’t eat entads, but it would eat anything else that wasn’t held or worn by a person. In fact, they had discovered some structural instability that the stone had been causing, and even before their excavation efforts had properly begun, a part of the dungeon had cracked and collapsed thanks to what was being slowly eaten away, out of sight.
“I don’t understand this,” said Mizuki. “If this is how this stone works, then how does the whole building above the dungeon entrance not sink straight into the ground?”
“Unclear,” said Alfric.
“There’s something the stone doesn’t react with,” said Isra. “A layer under the stone.”
“Wait, you know that for a fact?” asked Alfric.
“Yes,” said Isra. “I guess I just didn’t think about me being the only one who could know that.”
“Well what was it?” asked Alfric.
“Some kind of metal alloy,” said Isra with a shrug. “It’s hard to say.”
“But nothin’ we could replicated with what we have on hand,” said Hannah.
They had been using the modified staff to cut out pieces of stone that were of a size to be moved, taken by going in at a corner of the entryway. A brief test of putting them in the garden stone had shown that they would eat through the soil beneath the flowers, and eventually some feet down to the ‘base’ of the garden stone’s world. It didn’t eat the flowers themselves so long as they were living, but the foliage wasn’t quite thick enough that it wouldn’t be able to dig down. That was a last resort, mostly because of the difficulty of transporting the stone in and out, especially if they were going to have to dig several feet down to get the stones back out.
The problem with placing them in the chest was that everything else would need to be emptied out first, which no one particularly wanted to do, especially since the chest had been full of things before they’d come into the dungeon. If the stones were resting on top of something, they would eat through it, which meant they needed to be at the bottom.
“Wait,” said Verity. “What about that entad blanket? We can just put that down as a layer, and since it’s an entad, it won’t get eaten.”
“That works for one end, I guess,” said Alfric, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Please tell me we brought the blanket?” asked Verity. “Pretty please?”
“We did,” said Alfric. “It’s party bound, there was no reason not to. But we’ll still have to move things out of the way. And I was hoping that we could use the blanket as part of a procedure for moving the stones.”
“We also need to figure out how we’re goin’ to store them once we’re home,” said Hannah. “If they’d burrow down into the ground, or through floorboards, that’s an issue.”
“We just place them on top of the blanket, right?” asked Mizuki. “Easy.”
They had defaulted to using their voices outside the party channel, which was a minor breach of protocol. It had happened because Verity wanted a side conversation with Isra, and while that was going on, there had been a second side conversation, and then it had simply continued. There wasn’t really any risk to it, though Verity had the idea in her head that it was mildly annoying to Alfric, and wondered whether she should say something.
“We need to place them on the blanket when they go into the chest,” said Alfric. “That means we won’t have the blanket to lay them on when we take them out. Besides, we’d have to stack them all on the blanket’s footprint, and I was hoping to cart out more stone than that.”
“How much stone are we talking about?” asked Verity.
“Well,” said Alfric. He rubbed his head. “Figure that we’re shooting for fifty pounds or so, that would be, um, half a cubic foot each. That will be our standard brick, light enough that I can lift a whole lot of them, heavy enough that they’re a nicely sized chunk. So then, the limit is probably how many of those I can load before getting exhausted, even with breaks, which … let’s say two hundred of them in total?”
“You’re not the only one with muscles,” said Hannah. She had begun shedding her armor, the better to do manual labor, and Alfric’s thimble armor was already in retreat. Verity was eager to get out of her own armor, but she had no illusions about being helpful with moving giant chunks of stone. Fifty pounds seemed like a lot, especially when dropping it could easily shear off some toes.
“Let’s say,” Alfric looked around. “Four hundred in total?”
“You think you’re doing half the work?” asked Mizuki.
“How much do you weigh?” asked Alfric.
“Including armor?” asked Mizuki.
“Why would you include armor?” asked Alfric.
“I just — okay, well I haven’t weighed myself, but probably like … a hundred and ten pounds?” She looked down at herself.
“A fifty pound block is about half your bodyweight,” said Alfric. “You’re just not going to be able to do it that many times.”
“So we make the blocks smaller,” said Mizuki.
“The problem would still be there,” said Isra. “Four hundred seems like plenty, if we have nowhere to put them.”
“The form-shifting wand?” asked Mizuki. “That would require almost no effort at all.”
“It would change their properties,” said Alfric, rubbing his head and staring at the wall. “Maybe at the end? But even then, I think it would be better to have a pristine product, even if there wasn’t as much of it. Maybe at the end, stacked on top? But if they shift too much, they might end up eating each other, which wouldn’t be good.”
Verity slowly began to tune out the logistics talk, though she was mildly surprised that Isra was taking part. It was part of the ‘new’ Isra, she supposed, though in this case not unwelcome.
“It’s a shame we can’t talk the stones out of the wall,” Verity finally said, after they’d gone around one too many times. She had meant it as a comment on the continued discourse, but as soon as she said it, the idea was there, and she turned to Isra … who slowly shook her head.
“Yes, point taken,” said Alfric. “Better to just start and see where we’re at ten minutes from now. We’re going to want plenty of breaks built in.”
The cutting had been done by first scoring it into a grid, then coming in from the side and chopping everything up into bricks. Four hundred bricks had sounded like an enormous amount to Verity, but it was only four ten by ten grids, which seemed like hardly anything at all.
They took the stones down one by one, with Alfric going first. They were lowered into the chest, with the layer of blanket below. Verity was particularly proud of remembering the blanket before anyone else did, especially since she was a little bit mentally fatigued from all the bardic work. This would have been the perfect moment for a song of strength, but the progressive had done a number on her, especially since it had been extended with Mizuki’s help. If bardic magic was a muscle, as she’d been so often told, then it was a muscle that needed a rest.
When it came time for Mizuki to lift a stone out of the wall, they got an unexpected surprise.
“I’m a god!” she shouted, lifting it over her head.
“For the sake of all that’s holy, don’t lift it over your head,” said Alfric.
Mizuki set the stone down in the chest, where it sank to make room for another. “It’s the bracers,” she said, looking down at them with a grin. “I am a god.”
“You’re not a god,” said Hannah. “Bein’ able to lift heavy stuff — I know you’re playin’ around, but please tell me you know you’re not a god.”
“I know, I know,” said Mizuki. She was smiling at the bracers. “But I can lift things like a god. See? This is why you should always test things when you’re in a dungeon instead of waiting for the next day.”
“Alright, let me give a brief test of your knowledge,” said Alfric. He had his arms crossed and was frowning at her. “Why should we not hoist things over our head using an entad whose function we don’t know?”
“You know I love when you play teacher,” said Mizuki. She grinned at him. “But fine, because, I don’t know, there might be some horrible drawback, or it might be limited and run out at any moment, which would end with me being crushed, or other things, I guess.”
“Does it make you strong?” asked Hannah. “And if it does, how have you not noticed it until now?”
“It’s not strength,” said Isra. “Strength would still require proper posture, and she was swinging the block around like it weighed nothing.”
“Like it was made of air, yeah,” said Mizuki.
“So you’re even less of a god,” said Hannah.
“Feh,” said Mizuki. She turned to look at Alfric. “So do you want me shoveling bricks into the chest or not?”
“I do,” said Alfric. “But carefully.”
Mizuki went quickly, thinking that there might be some time component to the bracers, but after she’d done twenty of them in rapid succession, the real limitation became apparent.
“I don’t feel so good,” said Mizuki. She slumped down against the wall, and Hannah rushed over to her.
“You’re freezing,” she said. “Seems like you could’ve said somethin’ earlier.”
“I get cold sometimes,” said Mizuki. She looked down at the bracers. “I’ve been betrayed.”
“Take them off,” said Alfric.
“Can’t,” said Mizuki. “They locked in place and I don’t know how to undo it.” She took a deep breath. Her lips looked blue.
“Not much I can do about this,” said Hannah, frowning. “I think she’ll be fine, but … might be her temperature is lowerin’, and if it’s happenin’ as a response to what she’s been doin’, then it might dip down low enough to do damage.”
“Time for drastic measures then,” said Alfric.
“Sounds bad,” said Mizuki. She was shivering and her voice was weak. It wasn’t clear how cold she could get from having used the bracers twenty times in rapid succession, but Hannah seemed worried.
The drastic measures, as it turned out, meant grabbing the merging sword. When Alfric had rearranged to get the blanket, he’d taken other entads out too, perhaps hoping to make a second barrier for the stones. He hesitated for a moment, looking at who the best option was, then apparently decided that it was himself.
They both changed, each becoming like the other until they could have been twins. Mizuki was almost instantly better, and Alfric was almost instantly worse, as each had half the affliction. In terms of form, they had dark brown skin, mid-length curly hair, and a level of androgyny that Verity hadn’t seen before. Their clothes didn’t fit right: Mizuki was straining hers, and it sounded like some of it had ripped, while Alfric’s were baggy.
“So much better,” said Mizuki. She was resting her head against the back wall.
“So much worse,” said Alfric. Hannah went over to him and laid a hand on him.
“I think you’ll be fine,” she said. “If worse comes to worst, we can use the sword again, spread the damage out another level.”
“I think it’s retreating,” said Mizuki. She looked down. The bracers were still around her wrists, slightly larger, having grown when her forearms grew. “Okay, so … no more using these?”
“It’s not a bad drawback, if you know it’s coming,” said Alfric. He was shivering, as was Mizuki, with both of them sharing the coldness, if not the magical affliction that had caused it.
“Seems to be a terrible drawback, if you don’t know the price you’re payin’,” said Hannah.
“We’ll have to figure out safe levels,” said Alfric.
Mizuki stood up. “Well, I’m feeling better now.”
“And I need a break,” said Alfric. He sighed and looked down at his body with its baggy clothes. “Not how I planned to spend my time.”
“I hope we get home soon,” said Mizuki. “Kell would freak. Though I do need to get out of these clothes, which are pinching me in all the wrong places.” She began stripping out of her clothes, and Alfric turned away. “You know, there’s no harm in looking, we’ve got the same body.”
“I’m fine not looking at a freakish hybrid of us,” said Alfric.
“If we’re done with this business, there’s still stone to move,” said Hannah. “And if Alfric is going to be half as strong, I’ll be doin’ my share now, plus a little extra to make up for the delay.”
She began moving ‘bricks’ into the chest, one by one, and Verity’s eyes went to Mizuki, who was getting into the garden stone to retrieve a fresh set of clothes. The mixture of the two of them was odd. Verity had always thought that Mizuki was cute, and had always thought that Alfric was a fine man, if not personally appealing to her, but the two of them merged together was like something from a horror story, uncanny and off-putting. Verity had found the mix of her and Isra to be quite pleasant, actually, exotic and alluring. This was something else though. The ill-fitting clothes definitely didn’t help. Verity was polite enough not to say anything, though Alfric clearly agreed, and tried to be polite enough not to stare.
“Surprised you didn’t hand the sword to me,” Hannah said to Alfric after a grunt of effort to drop another brick in the chest.
“It was a calculation,” said Alfric. “I’m bigger than you, which means that I’ve got more mass, which means that a blend would have more mass, which in theory means that I’d be bringing more heat to the equation.” His voice had changed, growing higher, though his cadence and speech patterns had stayed the same.
“It’s bad healing,” said Hannah. “It’ll probably sell for a fair amount, I would think, but we should sell, and use that money to supplement, especially if dungeons are goin’ to be so dangerous.” She took a breath, then went to work moving the next brick.
The Alfric-Mizuki hybrid looked at Verity. “No progress on controlling the roll of the dice?”
“No,” said Verity. “We’ll have to test entads, but nothing I was consciously focused on manifested. Things I was subconsciously focused on … my mother, death, the tomb around the dungeon entrance, all that sort of thing, I suppose I might have influenced, or I might not have, and we’ve no way of know, especially if I’m the only one in the entire world who this happens to.”
“I think we need to be more systemic about it,” said Alfric. “And … possibly see if the dungeons are different when you’re not under so much stress.”
In Verity’s opinion, the stress was probably a part of it. Stress made her body feel different, and marinated her mind in a particular feeling that always had some element of things being pushed out of the way. When the stress was pounding down on her, as with these concerts, all other thoughts were sidelined, put out of mind, squashed while they were just a tickle of an idea.
Mizuki came out of the stone wearing baggy clothes in the same style as Alfric.
“You took my clothes?” asked Alfric.
“Mine wouldn’t fit,” said Mizuki. “Obviously. Hey, we should spar like this, we’d be evenly matched for once.”
“I would absolutely crush you,” said Alfric.
“We’re savin’ our strength for the blocks,” said Hannah, who had continued moving them.
“Fine, then after we get home,” said Mizuki.
“We’ll be back to normal by then,” said Alfric. “And no offense, but I don’t want this body for any longer than I have to have it.”
“Why would I be offended?” asked Mizuki. “I mean, I don’t want to be in it longer than I need to be, at least once we’ve done all the fun stuff.”
“I think Isra and I rather enjoyed having hybrid bodies,” said Verity.
“We did,” nodded Isra.
“Well, I didn’t mean like that,” said Mizuki. She glanced at Alfric. “Thanks for saving my life, by the way.”
“I don’t think your life was in all that much danger,” said Hannah. “Though hypothermia is outside my ability to fix, at least at the moment.” She was slightly out of breath and wiped her hands on her pants. “I’m done for the moment, ‘til my breath comes back.”
“But someday?” asked Mizuki, who was sitting on a chair she’d brought out of the garden stone. “I mean, I don’t see how you’d do that with symmetry, and I do try to listen.”
“False mirror technique,” said Hannah. “You use two people, sat across from each other, then reflect the healthy person onto the ill one. And for all the reasons that you know about, if you’ve been listenin’ to me, it takes someone with experience and a depth of connection to Garos that I don’t have, not yet.”
“I’ll take my turn,” said Isra. She sized up the blocks, which were sitting within the wall, on top of each other, having already been cut up by Mizuki’s melting staff. Verity was worried, but Isra handled it easily enough. She got through ten in total before sitting down to rest a bit.
Verity hadn’t thought that she’d be handling the bricks of stone all that much, but having seen Isra do it, it didn’t seem so difficult. She took her turn as though it were a perfectly natural thing to do. When sliding the block to the edge though, she became convinced that it was going to crush her, and only resisted the urge to jump out of the way by the same instincts that helped her not deteriorate into a mess when she was doing a performance. She caught the block as it slid down into her arms, then managed to move it over and slide it into place with the others in the chest.
Isra clapped, and Verity blushed, and then, because it would have felt pathetic to only do one, she did another, and then another after that, making it to six until she felt like there was a serious risk of dropping one or snapping a tendon in her arm.
They took turns taking down blocks, until eventually Alfric and Mizuki switched back to their usual selves. Alfric seemed relieved, and Mizuki was in clothes that were many sizes too large for her, and the work continued apace, with the blocks removed from their slots in the wall and placed into slots in the chest.
A discordant note and rumble came through the dungeon again, and they all turned to look at it.
“The dungeon is falling apart,” said Alfric. He looked down at the stone they were all standing on.
“There’s a chance that this collapses and kills us all, right?” asked Hannah. “Just for clarity here.”
“Yes,” said Alfric. “Technically.”
“We go fast then,” said Mizuki. She rolled up her oversized sleeves. “Real fast.”
“Not you,” said Hannah. “The bracers?”
“Oh,” said Mizuki, looking down. “Right.”
They did push themselves, and the work, which had been somewhat sedate up until that point, became frantic. Verity hadn’t been keeping count of how many blocks they’d been putting into the chest, and was surprised when Alfric declared they’d reached their goal of four hundred. Relatively few of those had been Verity’s, but brute strength had never been her domain.
“I think we should go out,” said Alfric. He was panting, having done most of the work — though he was much stronger and taller than any of them. “I’m going to be sore tomorrow.”
They used the bathroom before they left, peeing in random corners with only a thin veneer of privacy. It was something that Verity had instinctively rebelled against the first time it had been discussed, but now she found something nicely transgressive about it, as though she were thumbing her nose at propriety. Her mother would have been mortified.
The very last wrinkle was the chest, which couldn’t be moved out of the dungeon on its own. Normally this wasn’t a problem, but everyone was tired and sore, and working together, they could hardly lift it. Verity was entrusted with the Bident of Death, which she held well clear of her or anyone else. It gave her the creeps. Eventually the chest was out though, and Verity stepped through the tunnel that led back to the real world, happy to be done. There was something about a dungeon that was quite like a song, she thought, particularly the way it vanished when it was over, an experience more than a permanent thing.
“Fresh air,” said Isra, taking in a deep breath. It was late in the day, though the summer sun hadn’t yet begun to set. The air was warmer than in the dungeon, and the omnipresent lighting was gone, which was an adjustment for the eyes.
“Fresh air for just a moment,” said Alfric. “We’ll have everyone pile into the garden stone and then I’ll fly home.”
“Not the dagger?” asked Mizuki.
“It’s a difference of maybe twenty minutes,” said Alfric. “I want to keep the dagger on standby in case we need it later.”
Verity sighed, but did as was asked of her, stepping briefly on Alfric’s foot, then ending up in the familiar garden again. It was a nice garden, and there were plenty of improvements to it, but it wasn’t where she wanted to be at the moment. Isra stepped in after and gave Verity a kiss on the cheek, smiling.
“Glad to be done,” Isra said as they walked away to make room for the others. They had their own permanent tent set up in the garden stone, though the trip wouldn’t take long. “I felt like it wasn’t the dungeon for me.”
“You had it rough,” said Verity. She reached out and took Isra’s hand, which she squeezed.
“I don’t mean that,” said Isra. “I was just … ineffective.”
Verity laughed. “From Mizuki, I understand it, that’s her, but don’t tell me you’re feeling the same way.”
“I was,” said Isra. “Am.” They reached their tent and Isra stepped inside, laying down on the blankets there. Verity readily joined her. They were both in need of a shower, or better, a long bath, ideally together in the large tub. “I’m very serious about wanting new arrows. Mizuki complained that she was worthless, then killed hundreds of walking corpses all by herself and invented a weapon that could kill with a touch. I shot those bladed women and it did practically nothing, and had to be saved by Hannah, and by you, and there was no redemption to be had at the end.”
“Do you want me to cheer for you?” asked Verity.
Isra gave a disgruntled noise. “I don’t want to be mocked.”
“Were you mocking Mizuki when you cheered for her?” asked Verity.
“No,” said Isra. “Though I did think it was funny to cheer.”
“Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a solicited compliment,” said Verity. Isra had been laying on her stomach, and Verity’s hand was under her shirt, rubbing her back. “If you need nice things said about you, I understand that.” Isra had a particularly muscular back, though Verity was no expert. Isra seemed receptive to the touching, and Verity traced the muscles alongside either side of Isra’s spine.
“And if you had to say good things about my dungeoneering?” asked Isra. She turned back slightly to take a glance at Verity.
Verity thought for a moment. It wasn’t a matter of giving true and honest compliments, it was a matter of giving the right compliments. There was something deceptive about saying what another person wanted to hear, and it was something that Verity had training from her mother for.
“There’s a steadiness and intensity to you when you go into the dungeon,” said Verity. “Your speed is impressive even without that bow, and with it, the arrows fly through the air like driving rain, peppering the beasts before ripping out of them and leaving fountains of blood. It doesn’t work on everything, no, but against the things it does work on you’re better than Alfric, capable of killing a score of them before I can even get to the second verse. You move like the wind, you aim like you have the eyes of a hawk, you step on silent feet with the quiet of a moth’s wing-beat. I can sing a song, if you’d like?”
“No,” said Isra. She flipped over, dislodging Verity’s hand. “You know, that actually did make me feel better.”
“Compliments generally do,” said Verity. “I meant every word of it. Though when I think of you, it’s not where my focus usually is.” She leaned forward and gave Isra a slow kiss, their lips parting only reluctantly.
“You’ll be practicing when we get home?” asked Isra.
“I need to clean up first,” said Verity. “And then, yes, I’ll be practicing into the night.”
Isra reached out and pulled Verity close so they could lay together. “Did the dungeon make you feel better?” she asked.
“Moving blocks, not so much,” said Verity. “But being a bard, supporting my team, playing away as raw fuel for Mizuki’s creations … just us being together. This is what I want with my whole life, to be here, like this.”
“Mmm,” said Isra. “Even though I’m changing?”
There was silence, like a falling cup before it hit the ground, an anticipatory silence. “You’re a statue I saw through the window,” said Verity. “I loved it and held it precious, the statue, but I was seeing it only from one angle, and then one day I stepped outside and realized that there were other angles, and it was disorienting, for a bit, to see this thing I loved had other facets, entire features I’d been ignorant of.” It was a diplomatic way of putting it, and a bit flowery, but she hoped that it got her point of view across.
“I don’t think I’m like that,” said Isra. Her voice was soft. “I think I really am changing, or trying to change. A statue is like that tomb we were in. The whole point is for it to stay the same.”
“It’s a bad metaphor,” said Verity. “Can you give me a moment to think of a better one?”
“I’m like an egg in a nest, valued for being rounded and hard,” said Isra. “And then I hatch, and I’m wet and slimy.”
“That’s a horrible metaphor,” said Verity with a laugh. “You’re like a field that I had only seen in times of winter, now resplendent with chartreuse flowers following the rains of spring. And of course we’re going opposite directions, you and I.”
“We are,” said Isra. She shifted beneath Verity, extracting a hand to stroke Verity’s hair. “I’m glad you said that. Sometimes it feels like in another year, I’ll be living the life of a high society debutante, and you’ll be living as a wild woman in the woods.”
“Except,” said Verity. “If that were to happen … I don’t particularly like high society debutantes. And I don’t imagine that you particularly like wild women.”
“I don’t think either of us will go that far, not really,” said Isra. “There’s too much for you to learn about the woods, and you’re not a druid.”
Verity found that outrageously funny. “Isra, the number of things you would need to learn to pass in my mother’s circles — the number of books you’d need to read, rules you’d need to learn, hidden references that would fly right over your head — you’re doing well, very well, I don’t mean to take away from your successes, especially your performance at the Gardening Club, but — you understand that I have a whole life of training?”
“Do you think that I would do worse among the society ladies than you would do in the woods?” asked Isra. She seemed more curious than offended, though there was a trace of indignation.
“You know, I don’t know,” said Verity. “Most likely if we went as we are now, I would die. So by that metric, yes, you’d do better.”
“Hmm,” said Isra. “You know, I don’t want to fit in with the society ladies. Though I do want to move smoothly through the human world.”
“You should stop calling it ‘the human world’, for a start,” said Verity, smiling.
“I don’t want people to think that I’m odd,” said Isra.
“I know,” said Verity. She pulled Isra close, giving her a half-hug. “But you also don’t want to feel like you’re hiding your oddness too much, like you’re playing a part or holding up a mask.”
“No,” said Isra. “No, I don’t want to feel like I’m walking a tightrope, or like I’m the only one who hasn’t been given the script.”
Some time passed as they lay together in the tent. They had been having these sorts of conversations more often, and Verity thought that she was starting to get a handle on them. Isra was changing, and Verity wanted to be there for it, supportive and understanding. But Verity was changing also, had been changing ever since she’d come to Pucklechurch, and the concerts were, in her mind, the death throes of her old life. There was something funny in the way that she and Isra had seen each other. There was a song in there somewhere, about a fish who envied a bird, and a bird who envied a fish, but it wasn’t clear how such a song would end, not if they changed places with each other as they both seemed to want.
Isra fell asleep, but the nap lasted only five minutes or so before Mizuki called out that they were home. Verity disentangled herself from Isra, who seemed like she was content to sleep a bit longer. There was food to eat, and there were songs to practice, and time in Pucklechurch to enjoy before the next concert.
Comments
Ross Owen Qualls
That was very sweet
fbt
yeah, it's the first clear sign of healthy progress on V&I's relationship, which was looking a little at-risk for a bit, so that was nice. And M's perpetual thoughtlessness caught up with her in a nonfatal way (whether she's capable of learning is still tbd, ofc). Lots of good stuff in terms of group dynamics and so on; they're starting to mesh well. But the ending was my favorite bit, tbh. :)
Gorexn
Excellent chapter, really really liked this one. The party put in some work, doing the job as best they could. Took some risks and faced consequences, then solved the resulting problem with finesse. Exchanging metaphors at the end was cute, yet also insightful and meaningful! Great stuff.
