This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

“Eep,” said Verity, turning around. Xy was standing there in what remained of the rain, which was disappearing before it could touch her. “No one.”

“No one, but blond?” asked Xy, grinning. Her blond hair was tied back. “Sorry, didn’t mean to sneak up on you, but I thought I would check out the house before I left, so I knew where it was.”

“You heard all that?” asked Verity. She felt mortified and was incredibly glad that the ‘finger’ line hadn’t been said out loud.

“Most of it, I think,” said Xy. “I was hoping you’d hear me, but the rain covers up a lot of sound. Sorry, I didn’t mean to listen in, if it was… private.” She bit her lip, which did a bad job of hiding her smile.

“No, um,” said Verity. “I was… I thought you weren’t interested. In me.”

“Yeah?” asked Xy.

“And I guess I’m still not sure,” said Verity. She was fidgeting with her umbrella. She felt a bit useless.

Xy laughed. It was a high, pretty laugh. “Do you like to be teased?”

“Um,” said Verity. “Teased?”

“Some people don’t,” said Xy. She was still giving her winning smile. “I wouldn’t want to tease you, if it was just making you uncomfortable.”

“I don’t think I do like being teased,” said Verity.

“Then I won’t tease,” said Xy. “Yes, I’m interested, depending on what you’re interested in. I don’t come into Pucklechurch that often, usually every few days, and my schedule is a bit tight, but we could go on a date, and see how we get on together. Longer than that… It would be your first time?”

“Yes,” said Verity. “More or less.” She was, thankfully, able to stop herself from launching into a story about the conservatory. “Sorry if it’s… obvious.”

“There are probably some things for you to learn,” said Xy, nodding. “And I am more than happy to teach you.” She took a step forward, and Verity felt herself sway. “I’m sorry I don’t have the time now. But now that I know you’re interested, and you know I’m interested, the next time I come to Pucklechurch, we’ll have a good time together.”

Verity nodded. “I’m looking forward to it,” she managed.

Xy grinned, then took off the other way, moving with a cartier’s speed. Verity had no idea where the nearest leyline was, but cartiers were always moving toward one or the other of them, and Xy ran fast, sixty miles an hour, out of view in a heartbeat.

Verity was left wondering whether this was what swooning was like. She was blushing, that certainly couldn’t be helped, and the cool of the rain felt good against her hot skin. That Xy didn’t seem to be too interested in anything long term, that she had put in qualifiers, all that did nothing to reduce Verity’s warm feelings.

When she got back to the house, she lay in one of the chairs, smiling and soaking in it.

“You know,” said Hannah as Alfric attached the floatstones to the wardrobe, “it’s quite likely that in another dungeon or two, we’ll have somethin’ that makes this wardrobe useless.”

“You’re saying this is probably pointless?” asked Alfric. He grunted slightly as he strapped the floatstones down. They were using chains with cloth padding so as not to scratch the wood.

“I’m sayin’ that I’m preparin’ myself for all this work bein’ for nothin’,” said Hannah.

“It wouldn’t be for nothin’,” said Alfric. He glanced at her to see how she’d taken the tease about her accent, and she grinned at him. He’d done a terrible job. “We’ll still have the entad back in Pucklechurch, and if we don’t need it, we can sell it. Besides, I don’t want to have, in the back of my mind, some worry about whether someone is going to steal this.” Thankfully, no someone had done so. Alfric had seemed unreasonably worried about it, especially after knowing Lola was in the area, but it was sitting right where he’d left it, without a scratch, still totally functional.

“No one is going to steal it,” said Mizuki. She rolled her eyes. “Besides, if someone stole it, there would be, like, eight possible options. It would be easy to track down.”

“If someone has a storage entad, they could just hide it away,” said Alfric. “In fact, that’s the most likely way that it would get stolen.”

“So there’s also a chance that the next dungeon we do, we’d get one of those for ourselves and make this whole wardrobe-moving thing pointless?” asked Mizuki.

“Well,” said Alfric, “yes. But traditionally speaking, I would expect a third storage entad to come with some restrictions, and the wardrobe is large and unwieldy, likely to hit several different limits on weight, size, or something else.”

He stepped back to look at his work. The floatstones seemed to be secure. He tugged at the chains, making sure they would hold. Hannah did too, just to double-check his work, which he seemed to approve of.

“The big problem with floatstones is that there’s no way to stop them from floating,” he said. “These two provide two hundred pounds of lift, which means that if you want them to not go floating off, you need them to have two hundred pounds of ballast, preferably more.”