This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

“He managed to make money,” said Isra. “But many of his bastles died along the way, for as much as he tried to help them. Where they live, what they eat, the things they want to do… he was ignorant.”

“You felt bad for the animals,” said Verity. With her head against the pillow, she was feeling sleepy.

“I felt bad for the man,” said Isra.

“Felt bad that you were better?” asked Verity.

“No,” said Isra, glancing over for a moment. It was a bit of an awkward conversation, with the both of them staring at the ceiling and both clearly fairly tired. “To devote yourself and have nothing come of it is sad.”

“He’s probably raised hundreds of bastles,” said Verity. “Thousands, even. He’s helped people with new pets and farmers with new animals. I don’t think it’s right to judge ourselves against perfection, and I certainly don’t think it’s right to judge others against perfection.” That was how Verity had been judged for what seemed to be most of her life. “Did he seem happy?”

“He did,” said Isra. “He responded to a slight with kindness.”

“A slight?” asked Verity, glancing over. “From you or Mizuki?”

“From me,” said Isra. “An unkind assumption. Unintended. Still, he was warm to me.”

Verity wondered whether Isra had issued an apology and decided that she probably hadn’t. “Mmm,” she said, for lack of anything better to add.

“What’s it like to be a bard?” asked Isra, some time later.

Verity had already started to drift off to sleep, and her eyes fluttered open, the promised lullaby forgotten. She turned to the side and found that Isra was turned too. They looked at each other for a moment. Isra had her piercings out, and up close, the small holes in her skin were clearly visible. Again, Verity found herself constructing lyrics, and it took her a moment to remember what the question had been.

“There’s a song to a person,” she said. “There are notes that resonate with them. Perhaps it’s less like a sound and more like… acoustics, knowing how the notes sound in a particular room, then trying your best to weave them together.” She made a little tune to demonstrate the point, something to pull on the sweetness of Isra, but with her overworked mind and sleepiness, it didn’t last more than a few bars. Still, she could see the change in Isra’s face, a smile on her lips that reached up to her eyes, like they were sharing a joke together. There was nothing shy about it.

“Can you do that again?” asked Isra, almost as soon as the song petered off.

“Tired,” said Verity. Really, she shouldn’t have pushed it, but it was always tempting when things felt that they could readily flow. Even the song she’d sung up the hill, a simple song of strength, had been pushing it. A song for Isra, tugging on and enhancing her sweetness, was beyond even that and risked her losing her ‘voice’ for a few days, which had happened twice before.

“I wish I could feel like that all the time,” said Isra.

“You can,” murmured Verity. The world kept slipping away as her thoughts descended into dreams. The last thing she was fully conscious of was feeling the heat of Isra’s body through the blankets.

That Alfric was a chrononaut was, in some sense, a surprise, but in another sense, made certain things fall into place. That was almost certainly what Filera had seen in him during their encounter at the temple, and it explained some of his rush to get things moving when they’d all started out. He’d wanted to do as much in a day as possible, because that way, if things had gone poorly, he could have started the entire thing over. Perhaps he hadn’t even been thinking like that, it was just something that had been ingrained in him by a whole family who had that ability. Hannah wasn’t entirely sure.

“Is Verity going to be okay?” asked Mizuki, looking at the closed door. “Also, that was going to be my room.”

“She’ll be fine,” said Hannah. “Alfric had a safety net he didn’t tell us about, and he wasn’t keen to use it.” She hoped Verity would be fine. She furrowed her brow and looked at Alfric. “But why didn’t you want to go after the bear then?”

“We had done well enough,” said Alfric. “I didn’t want to put anyone in danger.”

“But if one of us had died,” said Mizuki. “You’d just… redo the day? Make different choices?”

“If I’d been on the second day through, I’d have postponed the dungeon and not risked it without the ability to undo it,” said Alfric. “And, obviously, I would have told you all what had happened.”

“Obviously, ay?” asked Hannah. She pursed her lips. “The temptation wouldn’t have been there to make some excuse?”