This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

He touched the stone, entered the garden, then used both hands to pick the stone up, which did, in fact, seem to work. It meant that he would be able to arduously maneuver around by hefting the stone, and better, possibly just strap it to his back, though the fact that he was still moving in the normal world, completely blind to what was around him, was a fairly significant drawback to the whole thing.

It took a few hours, and Alfric half expected Verity and Hannah to slip away, but they stayed through it, which he appreciated. A cleric of Kesbin was summoned, and once it was explained to her, it all went a little bit easier. Division into parts was a part of Kesbin’s domain, and with enough time and preparation, it was possible for the cleric to make precise cuts along centerlines. This naturally required some pay, which turned out to be somewhat significant, given that it wasn’t the sort of thing that a cleric could do without limit. With Hannah helping though, each ‘cut’ only needed to be halfway through before Hannah could make it symmetrical.

It was nearly noon when they got the first piece of tree out, but once that was done, the rest of it seemed to go faster, in part because the smaller sections of the two trees were easier to work with. Pieces came out, one by one, and once they did, Besc went at them with a huge axe, chopping them into more manageable sizes, which were then carried off by his assistants.

They gathered a little bit of an audience as time went on, mostly friends of Besc who wanted to see what was going on, but also a few people who seemed to have nothing better to do than to stop and chat. Partway through, perhaps because she’d been in conversation with some of the people who were watching, Verity started to sing, though she didn’t lace the song with any magic. She seemed happy enough to sing, and Alfric was pleased that she seemed to be in high spirits. Verity hadn’t liked her life at the conservatory, but she did like music and seemed like the sort of person that would have pursued it even if there was no magic involved.

As a show of friendship, Besc bought lunch for everyone who’d had a hand in the effort, including Alfric’s party. Alfric had suspected that it would be Chelxic food but was mildly surprised that it was instead from a Kiromon place. They were ginger-pork sandwiches, made with a milk bread and some kind of crunchy breading on the pork, and Alfric wondered whether this was something Mizuki knew how to make.

“Not so many people from Chelxic here,” said Besc. “Liberfell has at least a thousand from Kiromo, though most of the old-timers went back home, and the people left are the ones who were raised here. The change of emperors was a big thing.”

“There are a lot of Chelxican people in Dondrian,” said Alfric. “I miss the food.”

“A true kworma,” laughed Besc. “Our father, gone to the Spirit Gates now, came out here because the city offered him good pay. I can’t say it’s wrong, but there’s a lot we miss. I’ve got three little boys who aren’t going to taste yucra or tuntre unless we make a long trip, and even then, it won’t be from Chelxic.” He wiped his mouth. “Do you ever think about going back to Tarbin?”

“My family has been in Interim for five hundred years,” said Alfric. He shrugged. “I don’t even really know what it’s like there. We’ve been Inter for more than a dozen generations, Inter for longer than most of Interim has been Inter.”

“Ah, well, your roots don’t go away,” said Besc.

Alfric wasn’t so sure about that, but it was hard to know. His family was unique in more ways than one, and he didn’t really have much to compare them to. Perhaps Besc was right and he would be able to find something in common with people from Tarbin, but he somewhat doubted it. Of course, Tarbin was a conglomerate nation, stuck together from many component peoples and provinces, and his own family traced their history back to North Tarbin, but he knew relatively little about it.

“Well, that took longer than expected,” said Hannah. “And no sign of little Lola.”

“No, thankfully,” said Alfric. His thoughts went to undoing the day and the unhappy prospect of doing all that work over again, though if he had to, he thought that he’d probably be able to do everything a lot faster and without so much thinking the problem over. “We still need to visit the League office. I don’t really want to spend the night in Liberfell again, but it’s seeming more and more likely that at least one of us will have to stay behind to finish up with lingering business.”

“You have your dagger, don’t you?” asked Verity.