This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

“There was a giant bear-thing,” said Mizuki, frowning as she tried to remember. “It was the size of a house. And our bard was putting all of her effort into a song specifically for me, some kind of blended amping up of my power. It was like I was electrified, in a good way, able to feel the aether like it was an extension of my skin. I drew on everything I could and focused it into a powerful spell that still somehow managed not to kill the bear. The thing was, I… hurt our bard somehow. I didn’t just break the song, which would have been bad enough, I… took something from her?”

“Ah,” said Floren. “Comes from youth, and indolence as far as your studies go, and not having been in enough parties. Your bard will be fine but likely laid out for a week or so.”

“No,” said Mizuki, frowning. “She was up and singing within an hour or two.”

“Then she comes from good stock,” said Floren, raising an eyebrow. “Most can’t handle it so well.”

“Right, but what happened?” asked Mizuki.

“You pulled from her,” said Doreda. “There are mechanisms within a bard’s mind that affect the aether. They share some similarity to the constructs a wizard can build, though they’re much more tied to the individual and personal to them.”

Mizuki frowned. “So I didn’t just break the spell she was casting to power me up, I broke… her?”

“A piece of her, yes,” said Doreda. “It’s not advisable except in case of emergency, and as my sister said, it typically makes a bard useless until they recover. There’s also a chance that there won’t be a recovery. Sometimes a wound heals back wrong, not the same as it was before. It has to do with the party, which makes people exceptionally vulnerable to each other when it comes to magic.”

“It does?” asked Isra. This had not been mentioned to her when they’d asked her to join the party.

“Oh yes,” replied Floren. “There is a marking to magic, a way in which our magic is ours and not others’.”

“There is some defense against magic that is not your own,” said Doreda, “though it’s trivial to circumvent, in most cases. Your party members have no such protections against your magic, though they do gain some of the innate protections that you have against your own magic.”

“Meaning,” said Mizuki, “that I’d have a harder time killing Isra?”

“It would be difficult in the same ways that killing yourself with magic would be difficult,” said Floren. “By no means impossible.”

“So you’re saying that I touched some part of what it means to be a bard,” said Mizuki. “I… broke it open.”

Floren nodded. “Something that she’d likely been cultivating for a few years.”

“For nearly her whole life,” said Isra.

“Well, all the more impressive that she was able to bounce back,” said Floren. “Or it could be that the collapse was only partial, that you managed to stop what you were doing, or any number of other things.”

“Thinking about the damage, I find it unlikely I only took a part of it,” said Mizuki. She tapped her fingers on the table. “So all I need to do is never do that again, huh?”

“Unless it’s an emergency,” said Floren. “A matter of life and death that’s worth risking your bard.”

“We’re probably not going to run into that,” said Mizuki. She did a poor job of suppressing a smile. “Our party leader is a chrononaut.”

“I’m not sure he wants that to be public,” said Isra. He had not, after all, informed them of it until forced to.

“Yeah, I guess,” said Mizuki. She momentarily looked worried, but it passed quickly. “Well, it’s a real boon for us, and I’m still kind of trying to figure out what it means, but if we go into the dungeons, he can just undo everything if it goes wrong.”

“Unless he’s knocked unconscious,” said Floren.

“Or there’s a problem he doesn’t know about until it’s too late,” said Doreda.

“Well, okay,” said Mizuki. “But it’s nice to have, right?”

“Perhaps,” said Floren. “Opinions on chrononauts and their role in both society and our personal lives vary.”

“We’ve never met one,” said Doreda.

“Well, I’m excited,” said Mizuki, folding her arms.

The food was brought out, and the conversation quieted down as they ate. There was something to the presentation of the food that Isra couldn’t quite put her finger on, a way in which the things she requested had been laid out on the plate, that was unlike other meals she’d had before. The thinness of the plates and bowls that everything was served on seemed to be a part of it, though Isra couldn’t fathom why it was necessary for them to be that way, especially when they seemed so thin. Soft-boiled eggs, as it turned out, were eggs that had been boiled for less time, and Isra was pleased with herself for having figured that out without incident.

It was all delicious, and the oatmeal, while it had a strange texture, she enjoyed more than almost everything else. It was sweet in a way that her own cooking rarely was.

The clinking of utensils on plates and bowls was interrupted when a tall woman dressed in several bulky layers came in and took a quick seat.