This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

Mizuki relaxed. “And that’s it? We wouldn’t be,” she hesitated, “hexed?”

Hannah laughed. “Imagine that!” she said. “Imagine thinkin’ in this day and age that you’d be hexed of all things for makin’ changes to a house!”

Mizuki scowled. “Well, I don’t know, do I?” she asked. “I’ve never run afoul of the churches.”

“Yes, you have!” said Hannah, still laughing. “You have loads of times.”

“Yeah,” said Mizuki. “But not like… sacrilege.”

“Well,” said Hannah, “it’s fine.”

“What’s a hex?” asked Isra. These were decidedly not in the holy books.

“It means six,” said Alfric. Isra had known this. “But in this context, a ‘hex’ is a godly curse of some kind, administered by a cleric of the six gods.”

“What does it do?” asked Isra. She had been eating away at her sandwich as the others talked and was now almost finished.

“Varies by the gods,” said Hannah. “They’re not really used anymore, except in dungeons, and Garos has the weakest of the lot, aside from Qymmos. Might be better to think of a hex as the opposite of a miracle, or blessin’, or whatever you want to call the things that a cleric like me can do.”

“A spell,” said Mizuki, nodding. Hannah gave her a look that suggested disagreement but said nothing.

“You deal in healing though,” said Isra, feeling confused. “What harm could you do?”

“Oh, well, not much as yet, but I’m still just a journeyman,” said Hannah. “And there’s not much ability to practice the sorts of things I’d need to call on. But if a cleric of Garos wants to hurt a person, she’ll lay hands on him. There are two general methods, one easy and clean, the other hard and brutal. The first one, the easy one—” She hesitated. “Does anyone mind me sharin’ this over lunch?”

“I think I’m done anyway,” said Verity, pushing her plate forward. She’d eaten only half of what Mizuki had prepared. “It was delicious, but there was simply way too much of it.”

“I’m done too,” said Alfric. He looked at Verity’s plate. “Unless you mind me taking that other half?”

“Be my guest,” Verity replied. Alfric reached over and plucked the half sandwich up.

“I don’t mind,” said Mizuki. “Unless it involves guts.”

“And if it does involve guts?” asked Hannah.

Mizuki had taken a bite of her sandwich and took a moment to chew and swallow it before answering. “I don’t like guts.”

“Well,” said Hannah. “The first method of attack, for a cleric of Garos—and again, I can’t say that I’d fare too well if I tried, not in combat, but I s’pose it’s somethin’ that’ll get tested sooner than later—the first method is easy and clean. It’s just the reverse of symmetrical healin’, isn’t it? You find a wound on their body and mirror it on the other side. One slash across their skin becomes two, a puncture gets doubled, and they bleed out twice as fast. Now, obviously it’s not great, because you have to be touchin’ them, and they have to already be hurt, but I could manage it, if I had to.”

“And the second?” asked Isra.

Hannah eyed Mizuki, who was wolfing down her sandwich like she was worried someone was about to say something that would make her lose her appetite. When she’d swallowed the last bite, she gave a thumbs-up to Hannah.

“Well, the body isn’t all symmetrical, as a sad matter of fact,” said Hannah. “Even leavin’ aside the ways that arms, legs, skin, and so on are different if you’re not symmetricalized, there are places where we’re just plain squiggly.” She patted her stomach. “And yes, that includes the guts. The guts weave back and forth inside the body like a drunkard on his way home. And since the body is so otherwise symmetrical, a cleric like me could lay hands on someone and make the guts suddenly mirror themselves.” She shook her head. “Nasty way to die, because it’s not fast. Usually with symmetrical guts you bleed out before you can starve. And there’s no way to fix it, because that kind of thing is beyond even the highest cleric of Oeyr.”

“Welp,” said Mizuki, “definitely glad I finished before you said that.”

“The heart isn’t symmetrical either,” said Isra.

“No, it’s not,” said Hannah. “And you could kill someone that way too, it would just be a smaller target, harder to do, and a killin’ hex from Garos, well, the point isn’t just in the killin’, if you catch me.”

“You’re talking about traditionally though,” said Alfric. “It’s not something that clerics do now, because they’re not in the business of hexing.” This was directed at Isra, and she appreciated it.

“Oh, ay,” said Hannah. “And shame on me if I made anyone feel different.” She looked around the table at the other four. “It’s part of the old ways, the very old ways. You’d get in a lot of trouble if you did any of that on a person.”

“What are the other hexes?” asked Isra, mostly out of morbid curiosity.

“Ay,” said Hannah, “let me think for a moment and remember.” She drummed her fingers on the table, then looked around. “Is this too much?”

“I’m done eating, so I’m going to take a walk,” said Mizuki. “I’d rather not get into the gruesomeness of it.”