This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

“Well that makes me like the name a bit less,” said Alfric, frowning.

“I like it,” said Hannah. “But I’d rather not decide on anything at the moment, not when half of us are in our cups.”

“Which half?” asked Mizuki. “Do you mean me? Because I’m just warm and comfy. This fire is great.”

The fire was nice, and it warmed the room, but some of the warmth was coming from the wine as well, and Verity felt her cheeks getting a bit flushed. Isra was nice and warm as well. Verity hoped that their closeness wasn’t too intimate or unwelcome. Beneath that worry, there was curiosity about whether affection would be returned. Her mind practically raced at those thoughts, which she blamed on the wine.

“Did we decide on the next dungeon?” asked Isra, whose thoughts were apparently not on pushing their two beds together.

“Would you like some wine?” asked Mizuki. “Or actually, something to eat?”

“I would, thank you,” said Isra. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Not at all,” said Mizuki, though she certainly made a production of getting up from the couch. It was like in the final act of a play, when the hero looks like he’s been bested by the villain and must slowly rise in one last act of superhuman will and effort.

Once she had gone off to the kitchen, Alfric got up and tended to the fire, adding more logs.

“Not that one,” said Isra, and Alfric stopped with a log in hand. “It’ll smell.”

“Smell?” asked Alfric.

“It releases a smoke that stinks,” said Isra. “Borgswood.”

Alfric set the log off to the side and kept feeding the fire, glancing back at Isra every now and then. He prodded the fire with a poker a bit, moving things around, and there was something quite nostalgic about it for Verity. She remembered her father doing the same.

“So to answer the question,” said Hannah. “We’ve decided nothin’ at all about the next dungeon. Myself, I’m partial to movin’ eastward and possibly doin’ two back-to-back, with a longer rest after that.”

“There’s really no point, when we have the dagger to bring us back,” said Alfric. “We have five dungeons left a hex away, and all of those can be hit with a few miles of walking. Wardrobe to the hex, warp to the center, walk to the dungeon, dagger back home.”

“Depends on what we have,” said Hannah. “There are things too large for the book and not natural enough for the stone.”

“Seems like that’s an argument for only doing one,” said Alfric.

“Well, the other argument is that we’re already goin’ a hex away and setting out with all our things, and it’s better to work two days with a week and a half of rest and trainin’ than to try to split it. Goin’ forward, seems like we’d be better off with a few intense days separated by longer rest periods, right? Double dungeons, if you ask me.”

“With the option to bail out,” said Alfric. “But it’s really not going to depend on me. I think it will depend on the others.”

“I like the dungeons,” said Mizuki, who came back in with a giant tray of meats, cheeses, bread, and fruit, as well as another bottle of wine in the other hand. “I hope this is enough.”

“It’s enough for six people,” said Alfric.

“Well, I didn’t know,” said Mizuki. She pointed to two small pots that were on the tray. “Mustard and sobyu.” She sat down and began making herself a small sandwich, which wasn’t actually all that small.

“Do you actually like dungeons?” asked Alfric.

“Oh, they’re terrifying,” said Mizuki. “But I’ve been feeling like the days that we spend sitting around are kind of… wasted. It feels weird to be a dungeoneer who doesn’t do dungeons. Besides, we talk about them all the time. And we want to catch up with Vertex, right?”

“Do we?” asked Verity.

“Hopefully we’re not going to see them again,” said Alfric. “If we could go the whole rest of our lives without learning another thing about what Vertex has been up to, I would be fine with that.”

“Well, still,” said Mizuki. “I like doing the dungeons, though not the actual fighting, if that makes sense.”

“It does,” said Alfric. “But the fighting is the main thing. If it were just going into dungeons that had no monsters in them and clearing them out, we’d be a glorified moving company.”

“What’s a moving company?” asked Isra.

“People who come in and take all your things,” said Verity. “Then go put them in a new house or office or wherever. It’s a very Dondrian thing that I don’t think exists in Pucklechurch.”

“You’d just get your friends to do it,” said Mizuki. “Unless it was a long move, in which case, I don’t know. My parents were going to sell pretty much everything in the house until I decided to stay. You’d need a lot of entad support to get everything out of this house and over to Kiromo, and they didn’t want to bother, especially not when the place they were moving to was furnished. Unsentimental people, my parents.”

“But you got it instead?” asked Hannah.

“Most of it,” said Mizuki, nodding. “But they always expected me to fold after a year and come to Kiromo and to sell all the stuff when I did.”

“The point being,” said Alfric. “The dungeons.”