This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

A party. She had never been in a party before. It had always been her and her father, until it was just her. She wasn’t sure what to think of these people. Already, she felt that they fit together in a way that excluded her. But even if that were the case, the money and entads were too enticing. Before Alfric had come along, she hadn’t even really known that was what she wanted. Before the dungeon, she’d still had reservations. A dungeon was like hunting, she thought, but without any of the regret of having to kill an innocent animal who only wanted to survive.

With the water still quite hot, she decided to make herself a cup of spiced tea, one made from various herbs that she’d foraged in the weeks prior. Dried herbs weren’t nearly as good as fresh ones, but she kept long braids of them as a matter of habit so that she could get through the winter months and still have something warm to drink. The kettle took only a moment on the stove to get hot, and she used a combination of dandelion and chicory root, which together had a nicely earthly, burnt flavor to them.

She was excited for the second dungeon and hoped that they would go soon.

The next day, Isra had a cup of morning tea, this time using actual tea leaves from a bush that sat outside her house, and got properly dressed to warp to the center of the hex. She checked herself over twice, making sure that she had everything. She’d had a constant fear, with the warp, that she would somehow go through naked and end up in the center of town with no clothes on. It had been a nightmare of hers for quite some time, sometimes in lesser versions, like going in without her headscarf or her pack. She had gone into town without her headscarf before, but that had been on purpose. She’d felt too naked without it and also like she was disrespecting her father, who had seemed to place great importance on it, especially once she came of age.

When Isra arrived at Mizuki’s house, it was bustling with activity. All four members of the team were there, with Mizuki preparing lunch for them.

“Isra!” called Mizuki. “You made it!”

“I did,” said Isra.

“And have you thought about it?” asked Mizuki. “Do you think you’re a woods witch?”

“I do,” said Isra. “It will be important to go find the other. I have questions.”

“We can probably answer some questions too,” said Alfric, who had come in from the living room. The couch and chairs there had been covered the day before, but now the covers had been removed, revealing soft cushions of rich leather. Hannah and Verity stayed there, in low conversation with one another.

“I was reading a book last night,” said Isra. “A book from Tarbin. It was about a boy who discovered he had magical powers.”

“Oh?” asked Alfric. “And… you think it’s like that?”

“It’s a book my father read to me,” said Isra. “I don’t think it’s like that though. I think it’s like discovering that everyone else doesn’t have magical powers.”

“Well, technically, everyone but Alfric has magical powers,” said Mizuki.

“We understand what you mean though,” said Alfric. “And we’ll help you in any way that we can. Having a druid in the dungeon might be a powerful thing, it’s just not something that I had planned for. If I had, I’d have read more books on druids in Dondrian. From what I know, the animals and plants in the dungeons are unlikely to respond well to you, but you’ll still have diagnostic powers that will be virtually invaluable.”

“Diagnostic?” asked Isra. “The word is unfamiliar.”

“It means figuring things out,” said Mizuki. She was making a type of lunch that Isra had had once before, with thinly sliced cold meats between two slices of bread, called a sandwich. The way that Mizuki was doing it seemed alien though, because she was using far more ingredients than seemed reasonable, two types of meat, a layer of greens, slices of tomato, cheese, two sauces… it seemed extravagant, for a lunchtime meal.

“You want me to tell you about the animals after we’ve killed them?” asked Isra.

“That’s one of the applications, I think,” said Alfric. “Dungeon eggs or newborns can also be fairly profitable, though you have to keep them sealed, and… I’m not so sure about where we would sell them. There are markets, in Dondrian. I suppose I don’t know how they get the dungeon animals in the first place.”

“Are they really dungeon animals if you take them out of the dungeon?” asked Mizuki.

Alfric nodded. “They are. They’re considered a bastle until the first viable breeding generation. After that, the terms for them are different, but it’s not very important for us, since we won’t be the ones breeding them.”

“We won’t?” asked Isra.

“Well,” said Alfric. “We could raise bastles, or clandes if we find plants, but we’ll be away from any potential farm for most of our time, so we would need someone involved in plant and animal husbandry, and we would need to be able to pay them.”