This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 182, Outside Interests (Patreon)

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The bloodwinds usually came in the autumn, sharp and pungent. The name was literal, but there was relatively little blood in them, just a brief, fine mist on the most intense of days. People would bring in things from outside, lock their animals in the barns, and wait it out. When the bloodwind was over, they would wipe down their windows, scrub the worst of it from their walkways, and get on with their lives. A good bloodwind followed by heavy rain was a boon to the plants, who would suck the nutrients up through their roots, the bloodbloom following. The heavy rain wasn’t a guarantee though, and if a dry period followed the bloodwind, the people would be stuck walking on tacky surfaces while the blood-soaked plants were starved of sunlight. The plants had adaptations, naturally, an ability to shake the thin layer of blood off, or to fold their leaves up in anticipation so they could open back up once the bloodwind had passed.

A huge war had passed through the land centuries ago, but there had been no battles since then. Still, there was an enormous amount of detritus from the war, crumbled castles and forts being the most obvious. Swords and spear-tips were often found in the ground, and occasionally pieces of armor, most commonly breastplates which had only a tinge of rust on them despite their age. The war had largely been fought with constructed entities, creatures made of clay and controlled, twenty or thirty at a time, by warmasters with enchanted helmets. There were no bodies laying in the fields, only equipment that had been made en masse with ealdry and a slight color difference in the soil where the men of clay had melted into the surrounding earth. Historians had only recently begun collecting these relics and studying the long-ago war. Because ealdry made exact copies and craftsmen often signed their works, the course of warfare could be charted from which relics were found where with stunning accuracy.

The beasts of the world were varied, their magic often powerful yet mundane. The cry of the red-breasted heron would make hair float up for a few hours, and was considered to be good luck by those who encountered them only rarely, but a nuisance for those who were woken by the cry every morning: it had a major influence on regional hairstyles. The pomppotottamus glowed with daylight in the night and was shrouded in shadow during the day. They had a variety of long-necked chicken that wanted people to eat its eggs: it was intelligent enough to sneak into a person’s house and lay eggs on the counter, a problem if you had too many of them in the area or just didn’t like eggs. A hefty lizard that flew with insectile wings liked to tend to farms, straightening out rows if they were crooked and pulling anything that it thought was a weed, sometimes incorrectly.

They had no proper clerics, but they did have ‘zealards’ and ‘devotaries’, two separate classes of something that was at least close, tied to the concept of ‘god’, which was far different, the gods themselves more human. There were no churches, just shrines created and maintained by the common folk. The zealards would stand by the shrines, giving passionate orations, whether that was a story or a sermon, and they would collect tips from the townsfolk. The devotaries were more personal in their faith, going on never-ending pilgrimages, sometimes bringing their families with them, immersing themselves in the lives of their gods. The zealards would leave behind a boon that hung in the air, while the paths of the devotaries would become enchanted as though they’d been stepped on by the gods themselves. Wagons followed devotary trails, the sites of religious significance dictating the shape of trade.

Alfric read from the book until it was far too late. The pages were not, in fact, infinite, but there was so much there that it felt like it could go on forever. Every page had something new on it, a reference to track down with the expansive index, an article for every subject. Each animal had at least three pages discussing its physical features, lifecycle, diet, and role in history, culture, and industry. The book had no pictures, but made up for that with copious descriptions, some of it precise and clinical, but paired with evocative prose, some of which had so many references that it took the index to unravel.

“How late you stayin’ up?” Mizuki asked sleepily.

“Not much longer,” said Alfric, late into the night. He had intended to go up to his own bed once he was ready to sleep, but there was always more of the book, and the hours had slipped away. Mizuki had fallen asleep for at least an hour of it, her gentle snoring one of the only sounds in the room.

She fell back asleep, and Alfric kept reading.

There were books in normal dungeons, and they could be translated and read. There was always something lacking in them though. Internal consistency wasn’t a strong suit, and if they said something concrete about the world, it always had to be taken with a grain of salt and double-checked. But a recipe book would have units of measure that no one had heard of and ingredients that weren’t clear, sometimes with pictures that didn’t match the descriptions and steps that were clearly missing. A history book might repeat a king or two, or skip over an interregnum, or mix up the dates. Stories were better, because with only a little bit of work they could be hammered into shape, and there was always something interesting in them, even if they had their leaps in logic.

This was something different. There were no inconsistencies, no references that pointed nowhere, and if Quinn had gaps in what she could remember, whatever had caused that didn’t seem like it had infected the book. It was complete, fully realized, and Alfric was enchanted. He wouldn’t have said that the book was useful, but there was something to it, a completeness.

He set the book to the side and shuttered the light long after he should have, and stayed in bed with Mizuki, cuddling next to her while his tired mind was still trying to find traction.

He woke just before the witching hour only grudgingly, more tired than he normally was, his training the only reason that he hadn’t slept through it. His stomach turned in knots as he checked and rechecked the guild messages. He had a message that would be sent to the guild, but read in undone days, meaning that the reply would come almost instantly. He suspected that they might have visitors to the house starting from a few minutes after the witching hour as chrononauts on their second or third pass through the day teleported in, though that would be bad manners for something that didn’t require an immediate hands-on response.

One moment the guild messages were stale, the next moment, there was a flood of them from dozens of family members. Alfric began reading, knowing that he wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon.

Normally, guild messages had chronology to them, a series of replies and replies to replies which gave a sense of conversation. For chrononauts, especially when something big happened, there was nothing like that. The messages needed to be composed quickly the second or third time through, but importantly, they couldn’t be part of a thread of replies. Instead, the solution the guild had landed on was a system of codes in their message titles, the better to make a coherent conversation that those involved could mostly follow. Unfortunately, if you were low in priority order, that meant that you were sometimes met with incomprehensible messages from two or more people who all knew they had read each other’s messages and were responding to information that had been lost to subsequent resets.

There were several different conversations going on. Some of these were about the practicalities of this new technique, while others were more concerned with ethics. There were more than a few messages directed toward him, some of them expressing frustration that he’d chosen to lock in the day without consulting any of the family, and those made him clench his teeth. He’d know that some of his family would have preferred he do it differently, that strange women pulled from a dungeon would be a hypothetical that they could debate and plan for rather than a reality that needed to be addressed and reported.

A message from his mother outlined a plan of action that she’d discussed with him, including a list of people to get in contact with. She thought it best to keep this from being chrononaut business, because it wasn’t, really. It would be news, of course, and the only way of helping that would be if the government of Inter could keep mum, and that was a long shot. Quinn would have a choice in where to go, and Ria hadn’t said what that choice would be, but it was also the sort of choice that would take more than a day to make. She would be kept secret as much as possible, her name and identity known only to a select few.

Alfric had committed not to give her name or any details about her, and was pleased to see that he saw no identifying information in the guild messages. His family, as a rule, knew the importance of keeping quiet about certain things, and they had taken up his use of the phrase ‘the individual’.

Similarly, Alfric had said nothing about the process that had created Quinn in the dungeon, not even mentioning that Verity was involved. He’d been largely silent about what they had been attempting, at least in the guild chat, though as a party they had never really felt like it was necessary to keep it under wraps. That was before. Now it was a matter of utmost secrecy. That wasn’t to say that they wouldn’t share it, but if what Verity had done was a teachable skill, then it wasn’t one that should be taught without due consideration of all the consequences. Until they had actually made a decision, it was important that they not so much as hint at how it was done.

There were no pressing matters for Alfric to address, and any guild message he needed to send could be composed later in the day, when he was more awake. He had some inkling of what the day ahead would hold, which would largely involve messages and speaking with people — none of them chrononauts — but if there were any serious bumps in the road, he would have been told. That was reassuring, in its own way.

He fell back asleep with some difficulty, not wanting to be tired for the day to come.

When he woke, he was momentarily confused, as he’d slept in Mizuki’s bed rather than his own. She was gone, and it was late enough in the morning that it was possible she’d gone off to school. He hadn’t meant to sleep so late, and grabbed the book from the nightstand, then went upstairs to change his clothes.

Alfric brought the book with him when he came downstairs, and Pinion almost immediately took it from his hands. Mizuki had, in fact, played hooky from school, and was cooking up a somewhat late breakfast. There was no sign of either Verity or Isra. Quinn was sitting at the kitchen counter, looking slightly down as she poked at her eggs. She gave Alfric a smile though, and perked up slightly.

“Find anything interesting?” she asked.

“I almost didn’t go to sleep last night,” said Alfric with a sheepish grin. “It felt like the book had an answer for every question, if only I knew where to look.”

“There’s an index in the back,” she said, slightly puzzled.

“Sure,” said Alfric. “And I used it. But I think if I used the index for everything I came across, I would go blind before I made my way back to the surface. There are so many things in there.”

“Are there things … missing?” asked Quinn.

“How do you mean?” asked Alfric.

“I mean … is there a section on forks?” asked Quinn.

“Ah,” said Alfric. “You have gaps in the things you know, the things that you remember.”

“Do your people have marriage?” asked Pinion, looking up from the book for a moment. He hadn’t been taking it in, just rapidly flipping between pages, looking up references or skimming articles and then moving on.

“Wow, that’s super forward of you,” said Mizuki. “She’s only been out of the dungeon a day.”

Pinion stuck his tongue out at her, but he did look slightly embarrassed. “It’s not in the book,” he said.

“Marriage?” asked Quinn, giving him a quizzical look. “That’s — hrm. I was going to say that’s ridiculous, that of course it should be in the book, but I’m not sure that I could name a single married person. My mother and father, they were … no, I couldn’t say.” She blinked. “How odd.”

“There’s really nothing in there about it?” asked Alfric. That surprised him. He hadn’t been looking for gaps in the text, things that should have been there but weren’t, but he’d been so impressed by what he’d seen, how full it felt.

“Not that I can find,” said Pinion, leafing through another few pages. “We should bring it to a wortier, but that’s far down the list of things to be worried about. I was hoping to do a comparison, to see whether they share the same logical gaps. It does suggest something about her mind though.”

“Oh?” asked Quinn, cocking her head to the side. “And what is that?”

“Well,” said Pinion. “It would make sense for there to be no forks in the house and for you to be unaware of that fact. You might have some alternate explanation for why there are no forks, or maybe your culture just doesn’t use them. That would be … tidy, I suppose. But if you know what a fork is and have some internal definition of them, and know they’re something that’s supposed to be found in a kitchen, that means … well, I don’t know quite yet, but it means that your knowledge comes from somewhere other than your invented experiences, and that whatever internal process or phenomena created you wasn’t the same thing that populated the tent with silverware.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Mizuki. She had put some pork belly into a pan, and it had started to sizzle. The kitchen was smelling good, and Alfric was made aware of just how hungry he was. All the work with the ‘horses’ and moving the junk around in the barn had exerted him more than he was used to, even with his conditioning. “It should all be the same thing, right?”

“Well, no,” said Pinion. “I mean, not under the common theories. There are a lot of things that are found in the dungeons, and classically, we split them up somewhat by type, with the theory being that there are different aspects or processes of generation for each of them. Entads, ectad materials, environmental conditions, monsters, you could say that there’s one process that creates all those, but if that’s true, then it still makes sense to say that the outcomes are different. But at this point I think we have to say that we might know more about dungeon generation and how it works than anyone else alive, simply because we know things that they don’t.”

“Monsters,” said Quinn. “Those are … one of the things found in dungeons?”

“Traditionally, yes,” said Alfric. “Any creature found in a dungeon, unless it’s a baby, will be what we call ‘dungeon mad’, incapable of anything except for unchecked aggression.”

“That’s not strictly true,” said Pinion. “The unchecked aggression is only displayed toward outsiders, for unclear reasons. A group of dungeon creatures won’t tear each other apart. It’s an area of active study, and thanks to Verity, one that we’re much much closer to cracking.”

“The brighten?” asked Quinn. Pinion nodded. “But will people think … I mean, I’m not aggressive.”

“There’s likely to be some stigma,” said Alfric. He hated to admit that, because it was another thing that was going to make her life in Inter worse. “There are people who’ve been pulled from the dungeons before, as babies, raised here, with Inter the only home they’ve known. Bastlefolk, we call them. There are very few of them. My aunt actually runs an orphanage and argues for their cause, and she's in the city we’ll be going toward. I’ll start the house going again once we’re done with breakfast.”

“And breakfast is done,” said Mizuki. She brought a stack of plates down from one of the cabinets and grabbed a handful of silverware from a drawer. “We’ll be eating in the dining room.”

“Where are Verity and Isra?” asked Alfric.

“Out to see the birthen,” said Quinn. “It’s not a far walk. Isra was hoping to ride one.”

“Ride one?” asked Alfric. “That’s reckless, but I guess she’s the druid.” He swallowed his objection and hoped that they would be okay.

“Also,” said Mizuki as she plated everything up, “I really think that ‘horse’ is going to stick a lot better than ‘birthen’. I mean, it’s a weird name, no offense.”

“And I can’t help you with that?” asked Quinn, peering at the plates. “I normally make my own meals, though I wouldn’t say I’m a good cook, and some of those ingredients aren’t familiar to me.”

“You sit tight,” said Mizuki with a wave. “I’m going to introduce you to all kinds of stuff. This is your first breakfast in a new world, I have come prepared.”

Alfric hadn’t realized just how many pans she had going, nor that there were things in the oven, but it seemed as though their entire supply of meat and eggs had gone into this one meal. It was strange, sometimes, how Mizuki had her areas of extreme competence, and the kitchen was one of them, even if school meant that she wasn’t cooking as much as usual. Breakfast, when she made it, was usually a matter of two or three things, cooked quickly, often eggs, some sort of baked good, and a bit of meat. This time, she’d made seven separate things, and aside from that, there was a basket of things that must have come from a bakery in the village.

It was too much food, and trying to fit so many things onto each plate was a bit of a challenge, but Mizuki soldiered on, and Alfric helped to bring the heaping plates out to the dining room. The food had a decidedly Kiromo bent to it, ginger and sobyu and a salty, pungent sauce that Mizuki had given him the first time she’d fed him breakfast, which he now knew was posaso. There was the pork belly, but also some sausages, two ways of cooking eggs including a poaching method that Mizuki had always said was a pain in the butt, mixed mushrooms in butter, fried potatoes, and honeyed carrots.

“How are the horses?” Alfric asked when Isra and Verity came in.

“Good,” said Isra with a smile. “They can be ridden, I’m just not sure they can be ridden by anyone but me. We borrowed Bib’s saddle, which didn’t fit well, but I think riding without a saddle will be much, much harder.”

“It’s really a riding animal?” asked Alfric.

“It really is,” said Verity. She tied her hair up in a bun as she sat down at the table. “You should have seen how fast she went.”

“I was going slow,” said Isra. “The saddle didn’t have a good fit, the horse wasn’t trained, and we were in a field instead of on the road. Obviously they won’t be running fast regularly, but walking, I think they could cover maybe three hexes in a day, six hours of travel.”

“That’s not much faster than a person can walk,” said Alfric with a frown. “I could do that, if I prepared. And because I could warp, I’d be covering double the distance.”

Isra shrugged. “I can only tell you what I know. Maybe you won’t be able to sell them.”

“No, we will,” said Alfric. “Even if they’re just a vanity animal.”

“Alright, alright,” said Mizuki, who had finished putting out too many baked goods on the table, along with bottles of syrups and sauces. “We’re ready to eat.”

“I have to ask first,” said Quinn even as a custard-filled roll was halfway to Alfric’s mouth. “Do you not pray before meals?”

“We do,” said Alfric, lowering the pastry. “Usually, anyway. It’s was usually Hannah who said something short.” In truth, they skipped meal prayers more often than not. Their meals were often informal.

“Do you have a meal prayer?” asked Pinion. He’d brought the book to the table, and had it open.

“I can, though my gods are, apparently …” she trailed off. “Well, perhaps it doesn’t matter.”

“I’d like to hear one, if that’s alright,” said Pinion.

Quinn looked sheepish for a moment, and she looked around the table to see whether they would let her get out of it, but no one seemed ready to come to her rescue and tell her that she could duck out.

“I’m willing to believe that none of it is real,” said Quinn. “But I still feel as though I’m the representative of my culture, my gods. Give me a moment.” They waited for her as she bowed her head, thinking or possibly preparing. Alfric would have to check later to see whether the book had prayers in it, but if she was coming up with her own, he wasn’t sure that it would.

“Eldrin,” she began. “You of Echoes, Endings, and Eternity. I seek your grace at this bountiful meal, in a land not of my choosing. Beneath your star-dusted mantle and watchful gaze, I lay bare my soul, my voice an echo in the grand symphony. Endings and beginnings entwine as the sun fades and the moon rises. Just as my old life is now closed, here begins a tale anew. Through your wisdom, guide my steps on unfamiliar paths, and help me find the joy that surely exists within this unknown terrain. Echo the laughter and love of my past, so I may remember fondly, and not with bitterness for what has been lost. Yet let not these echoes drown the present or shackle my future. Instead, inspire me to create new memories, worthy of your eternal archive.

“Eldrin, the Harbinger of Endings, grant me courage and resilience. I know even the most bountiful trees weather their share of storms. Let me face each ending with grace, as each ending signals a new dawn, as the cycle of life, under your watchful eyes, forever turns. Firm my resolve to walk this soil, foreign to my feet, head held high.

“Bless this meal, nourishing body and soul as sustenance for the journey ahead. May the echoes of my past, the endings of yesterday, and the promise of this new eternity, shape me into the woman I am destined to be in this new land. In your name, I pray, Eldrin.”

She lifted her bowed head and opened her eyes.

“It was a good prayer,” said Verity. Alfric wasn’t sure he agreed. It was an odd prayer.

“Thank you,” said Quinn. “I wasn’t sure which god to pray to, or whether it should be a general blessing, but,” she took a breath. “Enough about that. Let’s eat.”

They dug in. Alfric ate quickly, eating the meats first. He was hoping to take the book from Pinion, as some questions had occurred to him after coming down. Mizuki had been in top form for breakfast though, possibly planning it out the night before, and Alfric slowed down to savor it all. They hadn’t done a large breakfast in a long time, and he’d been living on pastries and hard-boiled eggs much more than pork belly and sausages.

“This is all delicious,” said Quinn. “What animal did you say this was?”

“Pork,” said Mizuki. “From pigs.”

“I’ve never heard of a pig,” said Quinn.

“They’re similar to a gruntel,” said Pinion.

“Oh,” said Quinn. She looked at the book he had beside him. “You looked that up just now?”

“Earlier, in the kitchen,” said Pinion. “There are going to be things that you won’t know about Inter, and I’m hoping that if I pick up enough knowledge from the book, I’ll be able to explain using things you do know about.”

“That’s very kind of you,” said Quinn. She looked at Alfric. “You’ll be sending off word of my arrival to the authorities?”

“I already have,” said Alfric. “We have a few hours, but we’ll have visitors today, and they’ll help you get squared away. I already have two offers to house you in Plenarch, but that depends on what the government has to say.”

“I have a home?” asked Quinn, blinking in surprise.

“Is the tent not a home?” asked Mizuki. “It seemed like it had more than enough rooms.”

“It’s not a home, no,” said Quinn. “But I suppose you don’t have laundoncraft, so your homes must be smaller. I’ve been around this house, and I keep expecting to find a door that I missed, one that leads into a tucked room.”

“A tucked room being?” asked Alfric.

“Er,” said Quinn. “A room you add after the fact, one without windows. They’re usually pretty obvious. Most houses are designed with laundoncraft in mind though.” She looked around. “I could add a room to this house, I suppose.”

“Wait, what?” asked Mizuki. “You could?”

“If laundoncraft actually works,” said Pinion.

“It works,” said Alfric. “She can construct extradimensional spaces, at least on a small scale.”

“This is your second time through?” asked Pinion.

“No,” said Alfric. “Just guild chatter. I don’t know precisely what’s in store, except that we’ll have visitors to talk. There’s nothing calamitous, at least. We’re not going to be arrested.”

“You know, I just sort of accepted that you could find a house for me, many miles away, over the course of a few hours,” said Quinn. “I hadn’t even thought about it, I just accepted that was how things are done here.” She turned to Mizuki. “Can I just say how wonderful all of this food is, even if it’s unfamiliar?”

“You can compliment my cooking as many times as you want,” said Mizuki.

“And this,” said Quinn, poking at the sobyu. “What is it?”

“Sobyu,” said Mizuki. “It’s a preservation method for vegetables, mostly, we have a few different jars of it in the kitchen.”

“I’ve had something like this,” said Quinn. “We called them pickles.”

“No, we have pickles too,” said Mizuki. “There’s a jar in the chiller.”

“Your chillers are fascinating,” said Quinn. “These ectads — we didn’t have them. No light but what came through the windows. It was the most shocking thing about your house last night, and I didn’t learn about the magic until the morning. Fresh water from them too, it’s marvelous.”

“Wait,” said Pinion, who was half-reading the book, half-eating, and half-listening. “Apparently you just scoop up huge quantities of water and then place that into extradimensional space? That’s how you handle plumbing?”

“Yes,” said Quinn. “I had a laundon bottle in the tent.” She turned to Alfric. “Sorry, the conversation moved on, but you said that I will be able to do that, take it up as a trade, if I’d like?”

“Yes,” said Alfric.

“Could I teach others though?” asked Quinn.

“You tried to teach me,” said Alfric. “It didn’t work, but you also thought that a person probably couldn’t be trained in a single day.”

“That’s probably true,” said Quinn. “I suppose we’ve skipped over me saying that.” She took another bite of the sobyu. “I feel fortunate that I’ve landed among such gracious hosts.”

“We’re sort of responsible for you,” said Verity. “We also have a lot to share.”

“Tell me more about adding rooms,” said Mizuki. “Or … could you expand a room?”

“If I can find the materials,” said Quinn. “But assuming that you have as much in common with my world as I expect you to, then yes, it would be the work of a week or two to push a room larger.” She frowned. “It’s so odd for something mundane to be treated as wondrous.”

Isra was smiling at the other end of the table, and she grinned at Alfric when he caught her eye.

Breakfast concluded with Quinn asking some questions about the house, particularly the materials used in its construction and whether there were more sitting around, or other fuel for the laundoncraft. Alfric was a bit uneasy with the discussion of doing this new, untested magic on the place where they lived. Even if Quinn had memories of steady reliable usage for centuries, those memories couldn’t be trusted. She was new and exciting, as was her magic, but there were rules to how a person should treat new and exciting things.

An hour after breakfast, the first of the visitors showed up, a representative from the Adventurer’s League that Alfric had met before, in Liberfell, Priya Voyt.

She was, to say the least, unhappy.