This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

“In a good way or a bad way?” asked Mizuki, wrinkling her nose. Bethany had been in the year below, and they knew each other fairly well, especially from their combined classes. They had never been close in school but had slowly grown closer, in part because neither of them had settled down with a partner or children.

“Good,” said Bethany. “That Alfric—he’s made an impression.”

Mizuki nodded. “Big-city energy.”

“Not so often you see so many mages in a party,” said Bethany. “No offense,” she added to Hannah.

“None taken,” said Hannah. “It’s a matter of luck, though a sorc would be worth a lot less without aether manipulation. The real luck, from my point of view, is not in the findin’ of people, but findin’ them without needin’ to break up a party. My guess, knowin’ Alfric a bit now, is that if we’d said no, or we’d already done all the dungeons around the area, he’d have gone to his alternates, and if they hadn’t worked out, he’d have gone down a list until he’d found someone that would agree to it. Easy enough to follow a man like that into the dungeon. If things had been different, he might well have come in here, askin’ you whether you’d ever been in a dungeon before, and if you hadn’t, whether you’d like to fill out the team.”

“I actually have been in the local dungeon,” said Bethany. She smiled. “And after that, I decided that one dungeon was all I ever needed to do.”

“Who’d you go with?” asked Mizuki, frowning. “And when?” She had imagined that if Bethany had gone in the dungeon, it would have been hard to avoid news of it.

“Two years ago,” said Bethany. “With the Pedder boys and Neil. It was after you’d stopped hanging around with them.”

That did explain it. Things had gone wrong, and Mizuki had made herself scarce for a bit, especially around Bethany, whenever possible. Mizuki had been the token girl of their group, until all three of the Pedder boys had feelings of one kind or another for her, and it became an absolute mess. She accepted at least some of the blame for it.

“And how’d you make out on your one dungeon?” asked Hannah.

“Horribly,” Bethany said with a laugh. “We cleared it, but we were pretty bloodied up, or at least the boys were. We stumbled our way back to Pucklechurch.” She reached up and touched her earrings, which were jet black in the center with silver swirls around the outside. “I got thirty rings and these, along with a scar on my leg.”

“Entad earrings,” said Mizuki. They had a very faint trace of magic about them, a minor disruption to the aether. “What do they do?”

“They let me hear better,” said Bethany, shrugging. “Only a little bit. It’s like… well, like I’ve got ears all over my head, I guess. I can pick up soft noises a bit better and don’t need to be turned toward people. Not worth risking my life over.”

“I could remove the scar for you, if you’d like,” said Hannah. “I’d imagine it was left there through Oeyr’s rapid healin’?”

“Oh, the scar is—well,” said Bethany, “I was going to have it removed, but I liked the look of it, and no one can say it wasn’t hard won.”

Mizuki might have said that it wasn’t hard won, but she really had no idea. Her own three thousand rings and awesome spoon hadn’t felt hard won. It had been scary, but she hadn’t really done all that much. Alfric had taken the brunt of the punishment and done virtually all of the planning and getting the party together, on top of dealing with selling everything. She felt like she owed him and wondered whether she should have offered him some of her share, but no one else had done that, so maybe it was a stupid idea.

“How many are you going to do?” asked Bethany. “Alfric made it seem like this was a serious venture, not just a few local dungeons.”

“I think we’ll end up doin’ quite a few,” said Hannah. “At the rate we’re plannin’ to go, a year of dungeons would be fifty, all told, and if luck is on our side, or I s’pose even if it’s not, we’d get a great many entads from it. There’s lots you can do, if you’ve got fifty good entads to your name.”

“Unless they’re like this?” asked Bethany, gesturing to her earrings.

“Well, ay,” said Hannah. “But if you do enough dungeons, eventually you strike some valuable ore, ay? And by the numbers, we’d be likely to run into somethin’ that we could live off, whether that’s somethin’ productive or somethin’ we could use for labor.”

“Alfric wants to do thousands, I’m sure,” said Mizuki. “Big-city energy. But hearing about how things went for you… I’m starting to think that he’s pretty competent.”

“Well, our little adventure wasn’t all bad,” said Bethany. “I did get the earrings. And the Pedder boys went off to do another two dungeons, but lost the will to do more, even though they were sure they’d get rich off it. Fern nearly died, and then their mother put her foot down.”

“Nearly died?” asked Mizuki. Fernard was the youngest of the three. “Was he okay?”