Chapter 6

Red Sands Desert, Contested Border Region.

Abandoned Site Seraph, Sagitarius Imperial Installation.

"GET DOWN!"

Emilia winced at the shout...and winced even harder as she felt the thump of a detonation. She closed her book, and looked up, waiting politely.

A good fifteen second after the detonation, Alexandra walked through the doorway, her armor covered in black marks, and her hair looking like it had been on the wrong end of a hurricane spell. The golem that escorted her looked even more singed. She'd detached a golem from CQ's Palatial Guard, declared him a Praetorian Guard, and named him Jared. She said she needed an assistant, but quite honestly Emilia hadn't seen the poor golem do much more than follow Alexandra around or dodge out of the way when something inevitably went wrong. She wasn't even sure why Alexandra was insisting to have her body be physically present whenever she created something (she was a dungeon after all, she could make enchantments through her dungeon view anywhere in her influence), but she refused to budge. Then again, it probably wasn't the easiest to switch from being a human to a dungeon. In fact, given what she'd read about people that had been turned into dungeons, she'd handled it surprisingly well, especially for someone who was transformed against their will.

"Alright. I give up. Please make it?"

Emilia sighed and stashed her book.

"You know, this could have been over a good, oh, three hours ago, if you hadn't insisted on doing it yourself."

"I need to learn how to do it. Not necessarily for that particular enchantment, but for enchantments in general. It's simply too vital for my future as a dungeon. Plus, one day I'll have construction projects so big you'll never be able to keep up."

There, the sometimes infuriatingly stubborn dungeon had a point, decided Emilia. Several in fact.

"Fair enough. Now come on, at least watch so you try to correct what you did wrong."

"Way ahead of you vampy."

Emilia rolled her eyes. After a few weeks of living with her, she was getting used to her teasing....a little bit. At least enough to brush off her nickname. She'd gotten better at it when she'd realized the extradimensional was doing it just to get a rise out of her.

The vampire was still a bit unsure of what to think of her friend (and her ward). Alexandra was energetic (although she had infuriating bouts of laziness from time to time), motivated, nice, and undeniably brilliant. But she was also...reserved. There were things she was keeping to herself, and sometimes...sometimes, even with all of her power, and all of her confidence in her abilities, Emilia couldn't help but be scared of her. They hadn't spoken much about Alexandra's past, but the bits she had shared were full of wonders. Ships the size of cities floating in the void, stations with millions of inhabitants orbiting a planet housing billions upon billions of people. Alexandra had even tried to describe to her what it was like to look at another sun for the first time, not only to see, but to know that you were in a whole different solar system. That you had crossed the gigantic void between the stars, and had arrived there, at an alien star system, with alien planets, just waiting to be explored. Yet there was something behind all of those. Emilia wasn't especially perceptive with people, but she'd seen the same shadows in her mother's eyes when she talked about her past. She had done horrible things. Things she regretted.

Emilia didn't have the experience or the knowledge necessary to help her. She wasn't even sure anyone could. After all, if the people that had colonized other planets and even solar systems couldn't heal her, how could she? Still, she'd try. Not directly, but she'd try to help when she could.

It was part of the job description, after all. From the "dungeon assistant" and "friend" parts.

"So, are you gonna do it or what?"

Emilia shook her head.

"Right." And she started the process of weaving the enchantment together.

*****

Alexandra looked at Emilia for a second, and mentally shrugged. It wouldn't be the first time the vampire girl had been lost in her thoughts in the middle of something. She looked intently as Emilia started creating the enchantment. She'd discovered that she could 'see' magic if she was close enough. Apparently that was normal for a dungeon...but it wasn't normal that she was able to do it so close to someone. And she could only do it through her body. That had very much unsettled the vampire, as apparently being able to 'see' what your opponent was mindcasting was simultaneously the holy grail and the bane of mages. The holy grail because it was an incredibly powerful ability if you knew how to use it...and the bane because if used against you it would almost certainly spell your defeat. Ah. 'Spell'. She'd have to save that pun for later.

PUN DIRECTORY UPDATED.

She really needed to stop coding these things. She had so many lists and files set to automatically update she was going to need a subroutine to sift through them soon.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

Still, they had their uses.

"Done!" Said Emilia as she stepped back, and admired the result of her work.

Said work was, in this case, a pedestal. Well, now an enchanted pedestal. After making a general upgrade to the dungeon (and expanding her influence by a fair bit, she now had 12 rooms!), adding her new Legionnaire golems, essentially a copy of her Palatial Guard Mk2s but with swords (although they had lighter armor than the Palatial Guard Mk2s) throughout the dungeon, and tried to establish a somewhat gentle difficulty curve. Emphasis on tried.

Right now, they were working on her first puzzle room. It wasn't hard (in fact, it was downright easy, as in Skyrim level easy. Alexandra wasn't sure how that term had survived, given the fact that the game had been more than a century old, but it's dozen or so remakes had kept its references more or less mainstream well into the 22nd century and the interstellar age). The puzzle was simple, there were 4 pedestals, each had a symbol etched on them, and a square stone button on top of them. The three rooms leading up to that one each had one of the symbols carved into the ceiling. Enter the symbols in the right order, and bam, the giant stone slab that serves as a door lifts up, and you can go forward. Enter the 4th, trapped symbol, or the wrong combination, and well...You better have packed fire resistance (figuratively. Or maybe literally. Who knew what spells would let you do to the laws of thermodynamics). Fortunately, a simple fireball shouldn't be able to incinerate an entire body, and Alexandra would be able to resurrect them. She was especially thankful for the fact that the spell she had chosen to make the Orb of Resurrection (she'd decided to modify the name a bit, to make it sound...grandeur) was powerful enough to bring back even...highly damaged individuals. As in slightly (but not fully) incinerated.

To be fair, the puzzle room was also an excuse to use enchantments. Not only on the pedestals themselves, but on the door as well. Granted, the amount of mana required to move a giant 3 meters tall, 2 meters wide and 1 meter thick stone slab was...not inconsequential. But it looked cool as all hell, and frankly it's not like Alexandra was especially worried about mana. Emilia still fretted about it from time to time, but truth was that Alexandra was producing nearly twice as much as a normal dungeon would at her level. Now, the amount she generated through her extradimensional...peculiarities got steadily outpaced by how much she produced through her influence (her base mana production was tied to the size of her influence. She had no idea why, and neither did Emilia), although that would probably reverse once adventurers started pouring in and she started accumulating essence again. Synthesis was all good, but it was sooooo sloooooow. Plus, she had better things to do with her mana than use one of the 'synthesis techniques' Emilia had shown her (especially since they were far less mana efficient than natural synthesis). Namely, getting her influence to the entrance. She was approximately 2/3rd of the way there, and she could almost taste the technology of the turret she'd been forced to leave outside.

When she'd mentioned that to Emilia, she'd laughed, and called her a 'Knight Preserver'. Apparently, there was a somewhat eccentric order of knights whose sole goal was collecting one of every artifact and object on the planet and storing them in a massive vault/museum hybrid, to forever preserve them for future generations. They were so devoted to (and so good at) their task that they had the reputation of being able to smell their way to rare artifacts. The hilarious part was that while the knights were genuine collectors and artifact hunters, they also had a tendency to...take everything. Juuust in case there wasn't already that particular thing in the Vault. That lead to their nickname of 'Loot Goblins', and the recurrent joke that the spatial bag (essentially a container housing a pocket dimension that could house a much greater volume than the container should be able to. The more expensive ones had also enchantments to reduce the weight of the object inside. Interestingly enough they were used for storage purposes and even as ammunition sometimes) industry was held up only by the voracious needs of the Knights Preservers to store their artifacts.

Honestly, raiding that vault might be a dungeon's wet dream. Of course, according to Emilia, a lot of people had tried. The Knights Preservers were still there, the thieves...not so much. After all, the upside of having your knights constantly scouring the world for rare artifacts was that not only were they extremely experienced and accomplished adventurers (and thus, combatants), but they were armed to the teeth with powerful relics and artifacts. According to Emilia, their leader and Order grandmaster, Cybiecus the Golden Curator, had his armor so covered in amulets, bracelets, enchanted jewelry and other trinkets that no one was even sure what it looked like underneath it all. It was also worth mentioning that the Vault was buried under the Fortress of Lavascio. Fortress with a capital F because these insane knights had turned an entire mountain in a massive stronghold. As in, they made kilometer high walls out of the sides of the mountain, then covered them in weapons, firing slits, with what even looked like artillery emplacements on the image Emilia had shown her from one of her books on the great military wonders of the world (3rd Edition). That fortress had stood there for 3 millenia and no one had even gotten close to taking it.

Still, it might be worth it to take some inspiration from their stronghold. Plus, they might be an interesting group to...convince to come to her. They might be amenable to a polite exchange of artifacts. She'd have to think about designing unique items, that might get them to pay a visit. Plus, adventurers were suckers for unique, special items.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED.

"Well, it should be good. It was the last one."

Emilia nodded at Alexandra's words, and very pointedly avoided looking at the scorched ceiling, the only sign left of Alexandra's multiple attempts to make the fireball enchantment work on her own. She could do the fireball part just fine, but it was the...anchors and containment that gave her problem. The way an enchantment was made was similar to a spell, but much, much harder, because you couldn't incant, you had to mindcast in a very particular way (most people called it 'weaving') at least the anchors, triggers and containment, all of what made an enchantment, well, and enchantment. That, or you needed enough people to create them all simultaneously, and she only had Emilia. That explained why enchantments were considered hard to make and were rather expensive. The complexity of the enchantment was completely disproportionate to the spell it contained. That....severely limited the Earth Born's options. And rather explained how she couldn't just make a giant fire enchantment and just incinerate everyone in a room in case of an emergency. Well, besides the incredible mana cost of such a spell.

"Our first puzzle room is complete! Next on the list is...." Alexandra blinked as she pulled up her TO-DO list. "Light. Uh. Didn't think it was that high on the list."

Emilia's eyebrows rose.

"Lights? Is it really that important? We can see just fine in the dark, and packing a light orb or torches is virtually mandatory for adventurers."

"Yeah. Right. Mandatory." Said Alexandra as she rubbed her neck sheepishly. She...hadn't packed any light source during her time as an adventurer. "But still, it's a general quality of life thing. Plus, it looks nice, and makes the dungeon looks more like, well, a dungeon, rather than just a hole in the ground, or some ruins packed with squatters."

Emilia tilted her head, then shrugged.

"That's fair. Plus it'll give us the option to have sections with different lighting for a more atmospheric feel."

Alexandra snapped her fingers.

"That's true! Nice one vampy!"

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

She smiled, letting out a chuckle at the vampire girl's eye roll.

"All right, so, light. Would you recommend those light orbs things?"

Emilia nodded.

"They're the simplest ones. They're essentially a manacrystal cast into a rune engraved sphere of glass. So you won't even have to enchant anything! You'll have to change them every month or so, but that about it."

Alexandra's eyebrows rose. That was pretty good for an essentially medieval society. Guess Niadra had been too poor to afford them, because she hadn't seen any when she was there. Then again, it was a town lost in the middle of nowhere. The adventurer guildhall had been oddly large though...

She shook her head. No time to dwell on the past. She had other things to do.

"Alright then, let's get going!"

Alexandra plunged into dungeon mode. She quickly created a few different types of fixtures to hold the spheres. The simplest one (embedding them in the ceiling or walls) was...practical, but it was also fairly basic. She quickly decided on holding them with a simple stone sconce, like a torch. They wouldn't be easily stolen (at least not without demolishing the sconce), and she added some...dissuasive measures. Emilia had produced a quite frankly staggering amount of books on dungeons, traps, and weapons from her spatial pouches, and one of them, 'Christopher's book of various traps & armaments', had included a trap using silicate dust. Basically, lots and lots of small quartz crystals. Inhaling a large quantity of it was...not recommended for someone's health. As such she hid a small cache of the dust inside every sconce, so if they were ripped off the walls or broken, they would release the dust. There wasn't enough of it to be truly lethal, but at least it would make most adventurers think twice once the word got around...and constitute a clear warning not to fuck with the lights.

If they tried to systematically steal them afterwards, well, they'd have earned their fate. After all, it'd be so inconvenient if every pedestal's fireball enchantment in the puzzle room was to go off at the same time the second one of those teams' members pressed any button, right? That was only possible because she had Emilia install a remote activation (and disarming) system linked to her influence. She preferred always having a backdoor into her own weapons. You never knew what might come up.

She started placing the lights one by one. Fortunately, she'd found some tools that made it easier to construct on at least a moderate scale, and she didn't have to micromanage everything, she just pointed where she wanted it, and bam, it popped up. It still took her a solid 15 minutes to light everything, then she reintegrated her body.

She blinked. It felt....slightly weird to have the light sconces on the walls now. She was a bit too used to having bare rooms with just golems standing there. She looked at Emilia, who was blinking a bit.

"It feels a tad bit...odd, doesn't it?" Said the Earth Born.

"Yeah. But you're right, it does look a little more proper." She winced. "Honestly, I hadn't realized how...bare everything is until you put them up."

Alexandra nodded.

"Yup. We might want to decorate...but later. It's not a priority now, and I doubt we'll have the resources for a while. Plus, it'll be nice to make the first level very spartan. Kind of an empty feel, like the top level of a set of abandoned ruins, scoured by the winds and adventurers."

Emilia giggled, and Alexandra raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, of course it'll be like that dummy! It is the top level of abandoned ruins, scoured by the winds and adventurers!" Her smile disappeared. "Well, abandoned...." She looked down at the floor.

Alexandra followed suit.

"I know. We'll have to dig up whatever's in there one day." Alexandra smiled reassuringly as Emilia looked at her, alarmed. "Relax, I don't want to break the edict of the God of Fire. But we'll have to expand down and through whatever's in there one day. I'm sure we'll be able to come to a compromise. Plus, it's a long way into the future."

Emilia nodded slowly, looking slightly dubious. Alexandra turned towards Jared.

"Alright, next, let's get some more work in on those new golems. I'm sure I can make some joints for their armor work if I spend juuuust a little more time on them."

Emilia rolled her eyes, and Alexandra winced. It had, after all, been the fifth time she'd said that....and the first time was nearly 3 days ago, which was the day after they'd finished working on the Orb of Resurrection. It had been slightly over a week since the adventurers had ventured into her dungeon. She'd been working on the armor joints problems (she was trying to make something that didn't consistently jam or got stuck. In this case, the strength of the golems was working against her, because if something got stuck, they pushed too hard against it and the joint got jammed.) on and off for the last 3 days, usually in-between expanding her influence a bit and learning the basics of enchantments and dungeon magic with Emilia. Well, no, being taught by Emilia.

Still, she was sure she could make the armor joints work....eventually.

*****

"So, what now?"

Allya's shoulders sagged at the elf's question.

"Now? We find a tavern. A much better one that the last one." The one where they had stayed hadn't been much better than a place to rest and get a bath. "One with good alcohol, decent food, and bedrooms. I think a bit of celebration is in order. I'd propose going shopping in the Bazaar as well, but quite frankly I'm really tired with all that has happened today."

"That's fine by me. Do you know a place?"

Allya smiled as the elf looked around. They were just outside the guildhall, still up the steps, overlooking the Great Bazaar. The last embers of the sun were disappearing on the horizon, and the Bazaar wasn't even close to slowing down. In fact, if everything, the activity seemed to be speeding up.

"Nope! But, my instincts tell me it'll be somewhere close to the guild, but far enough to avoid waking up clients with the sounds of the Bazaar." She nodded towards the mess that would have instantly reduced any city planner to frothing madness, and offered her hand to Pyn. "Come on, take my hand, and let's go find ourselves a place to get drunk."

"Now that I can get behind!"

Pyn took Allya's hand, and squeezed. Allya raised an eyebrow, but Pyn simply smiled. The assassin shrugged and started moving towards the crowd.

A good 30 minutes later (the Bazaar was indeed way more busy at night) they emerged from the crowd, and made their way into the streets. It didn't take them long to find a tavern that catered to adventurers. The abundance of armed people coming and going was a dead giveaway, as was the crossed sword and torch (the universal symbol of adventurers) underneath the tavern sign. Fortunately, it seemed to be one of the calmer ones. In her experience, there were 4 types of taverns that were specifically targeted towards (or targeted by) adventurers.

The first was a rowdy place where everyone mingled together, shared stories, jokes, yelled very loudly and spilled alcohol on the person next to them. It was very convivial, but you better head in there with your party, and you probably would get into a fight or in someone else's bed (sometimes in the bed of the person you'd fought against too) before the end of the night.

The second was mostly a business place. Kind of like a miniature guild hall. It was mostly solo adventurers and a few parties that went there. People shared advice, tips, and it was mostly the place where if you needed an extra in your party for a quest (or wanted to form a party of freelancers for one), this was where you went to recruit. In fact, it was precisely in this sort of place that Arkor had recruited Allya (although he hadn't known that Allya had specifically targeted him, and acquired quite a bit of dirt on him before he recruited her). Or Pyn, for that matter. She had no idea where he'd found Orokis, he was already with her old party leader when they'd met.

The third one was calm (or rather, as calm as adventurer taverns ever got). People were friendly, but it was most definitely the type of place where you didn't plunk yourself down in a chair at a table full of people and asked 'what's up?'. There was still a fair amount of noise and conviviality, but it was rude to pop into a conversation or go at a table uninvited. Bar fights were also unlikely there, unless they were between two parties or individuals that knew each other very well.

The fourth was what most called the 'classy pansy hotel'. Both with contempt...and envy. It was the place were most high rank parties stayed when outside of the guild (which most of them did, surprisingly, especially when they weren't looking for a job. The food was better, for one, and at the rank that most people who stayed there were, the mana fees for the small comforts afforded by the hotel were insignificant). Most low to medium ranking adventurers saw it as a soft place, not fit for 'real' adventurers. But it was also viewed as the place they wanted to end up in, as it was a sign of status to have the rank and the money to stay there.

This one was the 3rd type. Calm as it usually ever got, and the ambience seemed to be nice. She nodded towards the door, and Pyn nodded back.

The two young women made their way to the tavern, whose sign pictured a centaur with massive horns, and had 'Oromar's Tavern' printed under it (probably a locally famous adventurer), and opened the door. It was...fairly classic. There was a bar counter towards the back, with stools lined up in front of it, and tables surrounded with chairs were scattered throughout the room. A flight of stairs at the back led to the rooms for rent. The tavern itself smelled like beer, alcohol and cooked beef and pork, with a persistent undercurrent of cheese. Racelette, if Allya was any judge.

Allya immediately made a beeline towards the bar. There, she simply took a stool, and flagged down what looked like the tavern owner, a rough looking woman with a scarred cheek. The woman nodded, finished serving the drink she was making, and quickly walked to the assassin.

"Yes? What can I do for ya?"

"A room for two, please. Separate beds." She rushed to say as the woman started to smile.

The tavern owner simply smirked.

"If you say so. Each of our bed can accommodate two people though, just so you know. 3 mana for the room."

Allya wordlessly searched into her coin pouch and pulled out 3 singlies (mana coins containing a single point of mana), and handed them over to the tavern owner, who pocketed them with the ease of long practice, and handed her a key from the rack behind her.

"Room 15, ladies."

"Right. Next, what's on the menu today?"

The tavern owner pointed towards a blackboard set a bit further on the wall behind the bar.

"Today? Boeuf bourgignon, pot au feu, lamb chops with vegetables, coq au vin, daily soup, today with beef, chicken, carrots, beans and potatoes, and our special here at Oramar's Tavern, the Oromar special raclette."

Allya almost winced. She liked raclette, but maybe something a little lighter was in order for today.

"Alright, thanks. We'll take a table and flag down a waitress for the order itself."

The tavern owner nodded wordlessly, and went towards another client.

Allya looked at Pyn, who simply gestured toward an empty table. The assassin nodded, and they made their way there. They each pulled up a chair, and sat in front of one another. Pyn opened her mouth, but Allya slightly shook her head, before nodding towards the waitress currently making her way towards them.

"Hey there ladies!" Said the cheerful young woman. "What can I get you?"

Allya looked at Pyn, who simply gestured for her to go first. The assassin turned towards the smiling waitress.

"I'll take the boeuf bourgignon please."

"Alright, and you?"

"The lamb chops with vegetables."

"Excellent! Any drinks?"

The two shared a look again.

"Depends, what do you have?" Said Pyn.

"Well..." The waitress looked up, obviously trying to remember the full list. "We have soda. Orange, citrus and strawberry. We have some fruit juices, orange, apple, mango and pineapple. Other than that, in alcoholic drinks, we have 3 different types of beer, vodka, whiskey, ale and tequila."

"I'll take a pint of ale"

Pyn looked at her friend, then shrugged.

"I'll take one as well."

"Excellent! I'll be back with your drinks in a few minutes, okay?"

"Sure!"

They watched as the waitress departed, before looking back at one another.

"So, Allya, I was meaning to ask you something."

Allya shrugged.

"Shoot."

"Why go to Elkaryos? I mean, why the merchants guild to begin with? Why not any regular corporation?"

Allya chuckled.

"It's simple. The members of the merchants guild take risks. Normal corporations don't. Their whole thing is to take calculated risks and investments, and get a much, much bigger payday than what we would consider normal companies. It's why the merchants guild is so powerful. While most corporations refuse to take even the slightest bit of risk, and try to keep everything as usual to the point of stagnation, the merchants guild and its members push forward. Sure, sometimes they lose. Sometimes they even don't survive their losses. But most of the time it pays off. Because they don't take stupid risks unless they're thoroughly necessary, and they're ready to back their bets 'till the end." She shrugged. "A Merchant would have been the only person that would have funded this venture without sending an assessment team. Heck, they probably would have been the only ones willing to fund it in the first place, at least without planning to stick a knife into our back. That's part of the reason why I decided to go for Elkaryos as well, a Merchant will never, ever betray you. Not even by skirting the legal limitations of their contract. Oh, they'll try to get the best deal they can, but they won't stab you in the back. It's not how they do things, and those that do so...aren't welcome anymore in the merchants guild."

Pyn slowly nodded.

"So that's why you said to Elkaryos that he'd get in trouble with his guild if he sent his assessment team without signing the deal?"

"Yep. He knows I'm hiding something, to try to make some extra profit. And he knows that I know he knows. That's the whole point. He's taken a risk that if I'm willing to do that, then he'll make enough money to justify underwriting the thing and overlooking whatever I'm trying to hide. Of course." She smiled. "I don't think he'll expect something quite like what we've discovered."

The elf chuckled.

"That's very true, then again-"

Allya made a gesture, and the elf stopped talking, and turned around as the waitress approached them with two pints of ale. She quickly set them both down.

"There you go! Your meal should be there in 15 minutes! Enjoy!"

"Thank you! We will." Said Allya as she flipped a singlie to the waitress, who caught it and smiled. It wasn't to pay for the drinks and she knew it. The tip might be a bit disproportionate, but it always helped to be nice to people...and most waitresses had a tendency to have sharp ears and loose tongues.

Allya watched as the waitress walked off, then sighed.

"Right, you were saying?"

"I was about to say that you can't really fault him for that. A new...discovery" She was very, very careful not to say dungeon. They were, after all, in an adventurer tavern. "like this one doesn't happen often."

"No, no it does not." Allya raised her pint, and took a swing. It was...pretty good, honestly. Not great, of course, but decent. And it had a decent content of alcohol from what she could feel.

For a few seconds they just sat there, nursing their pints...Then Allya lifted her head up.

"Hey. Can I ask you a personal question?"

Pyn blinked.

"Sure." She smirked. "If you let me ask one in return."

Allya froze for a second, thinking it over.

"Alright, fine. Why did you do it? What got you...unwelcome at home, back in the Confederacy."

The elf winced, and took a swig of her ale, probably go give herself time to think.

"You're right, that is a personal question."

She set down her pint, and put her elbows on the table, joining her hand under her chin, looking slightly up. suddenly she looked far more serious than Allya had even seen her.

"I guess...I guess it was desperation. I wasn't a noble. I wasn't born in a wealthy family. We were just commoners. The common craftsmen that kept the Confederacy running. My father was...I guess he still is, a hunting bow maker. My mother is a worker at the town's potion shop. My brother is in the army as a private. My sister opted to try and learn magic. She succeeded, last I heard, she was accepted in the capital's mage academy." She sighed. "I wasn't skilled. I didn't know how to craft things for myself, so I couldn't be a crafter, I constantly questioned what I was told, so I wouldn't have made a good army grunt. And I wasn't smart enough, or had a good enough memory to get into the magic academies. The one thing I'm good at is planning and fighting. And not planning business deals, or plots, or whatever. I always had a fascination with cities. How were they built? How do you organize it? How the heck can you even supply them? Same for crafting houses, or even those factories you hear about from the Erisians, Tarkians or Gorromarians. That fascinated me. So I wanted to be an architect. And guess what? You want to be an architect? Too bad. You either gotta pony up a small mountain of mana to get into the school, or you have to be part of the nobility. Can't let the peasantry build their own houses, right?" She snorted. "Same for artificer training. And army commissions were either bought, or earned through nobility status as well." She shook her head. "So, my only choice was either to take up hunting, or become one of the seasonal workers that gather the bounty of the forests. I did, for a while. I wasn't bad at hunting, but it never interested me."

She smiled.

"I guess I always was a dreamer. With nearly all of my dreams shattered, there was only one left." She looked Allya in the eyes. "You can probably guess."

Allya nodded.

"Becoming an adventurer."

"Yep. Every kid has gone through that phase, where they said they wanted to become an adventurer when they grew up. Some never truly abandoned the idea. I almost had...but suddenly, it was the only option for me. I was ready to go out and do it on my own, when that bastard arrived."

Allya almost flinched back at the look of pure hatred in her friend's eyes, and watched as the elf's hands balled into fists.

"His name was Darthor Brex. 3rd in line for the County of Sarchelass. And he wasn't very discreet about the fact that he would very much like to be 1st in line. He came to...enlist my sister's help in his plans to have the 1st in line, currently at the same academy as she was, suffer a fatal 'accident'. He more or less took my parents hostage, with the help of his retainers." Pyn's eyes were bleak. "His pretext was that my father had stolen a series of magical items from him. A shortbow and a full set of leather armor, to be precise." She smiled sardonically. "Of course, my father had done nothing of the sort. When my parents were 'arrested', I was out hunting, so I managed to evade Darthor's henchmen. Some family friends, particularly one that worked at the city's central bank, quietly informed me that Darthor's men had rented one of the private vaults...and hadn't realized there was a magical recording system inside the vault. Darthor had his men put the objects he claimed has been stolen -and that he claimed he was still searching for while holding my parents hostage- inside the vault. And he openly discussed his plans with his retainers." She shook her head. "That family friend couldn't get the recording out. They could view it, but not duplicate it or get the data crystal. And Darthor had been very...generous in his gifts with the bank manager. Fortunately, he apparently forgot to mention to his benefactor that the vaults were monitored. Unfortunately, any attempt to get the recording out would go through him, and that corrupt bastard would fall all over himself getting the recording to Darthor, as well as the head of whoever had tried getting it out."

She forcibly relaxed her hands, and grabbed her pint, and took a long swig, before setting the pint back down.

"So I started what I did best. Planning. It took me a week, but I got the bank's schematics. Another week to get everything together. Then I did it."

Allya smiled.

"But you didn't stop at the recording ,did you?"

Pyn winced.

"No, I didn't. I got the recording, and got it to my sister, she gave it to the authorities...and Darthor's older brother, as well as all the correspondence he had with her. The recordings had seals on them to prevent tampering, which was the reason why it was so crucial. Fabricating such a recording would have been impossible for my family. Darthor got arrested. And when they went to repossess what was in the vault...they realized the objects were gone." She smirked. "And I had my adventuring gear. Best of all, with what I had done, I was pretty sure no one was going to pursue me that hard...or do anything to my family. Plus, some sympathetic 1st in line to some county is always willing pass letters of 'unknown provenance' to my sister or my parents. Funny, isn't it?"

Allya shook her head.

"That's one hell of a story girl."

Pyn smiled, then her smiled disappeared as she looked at Allya.

"What about you?"

The assassin froze.

"What do you mean?"

"You owe me a question. What's your story? What happened during that duel? Don't bullshit me, I might not be the brightest and most highly educated, but even I know an Eris noble would have access to resurrection spells, or someone to cast them. Even more of such a...highly placed woman as your unfortunate opponent. So what happened?"

Allya leaned back into her chair, and looked at Pyn for several seconds. The elf knew exactly what she was asking. Although they were in an isolated table, with far too much sound to be overheard...it was still an adventurer's tavern. It was the job of a lot of people here to be as alert as possible to prevent the gruesome death of their comrades. So it would be better to avoid giving titles and names. It was also a perfectly good way to rationalize the fact that she didn't want to talk about it.

"It...Look, I'm not going to go into the particulars. The short story was that I....requisitioned a family heirloom. I...I didn't know that some of its enchantments were more...esoteric than I was told. The sword had an enchantment to...prevent someone from being brought back." She shivered. "It...it sealed their souls."

Pyn's eyes widened.

"Holy shit. I've only ever heard of such enchantments. What was the sword even made of?"

"Malachite."

Pyn's eyes went even wider.

"Damn....Well...Thanks for answering."

"No problem." Said Allya sarcastically, and Pyn winced.

Fortunately, the waitress soon returned with their meals, which broke the awkward silence, and they started talking, mostly about their respective homelands and their cuisines, as well as some of the more spectacular vistas they had seen over the years.

"Hey, one thing. Why do you never lose the hood? balaclava? What the fuck are these called anyway? I don't recall ever actually seeing your hair. Or the rest of your face for that matter."

Allya paused, her mouth open, and the bite of beef on her fork a few centimeters from said mouth. She looked at her friend, then slowly finished the movement, chewing thoughtfully on the (fairly good) meat.

"I guess...I guess it's just that I've grown too used to it. Plus, call it paranoia or such, but I never liked for people to see my face after the...problem that made me leave home. And I always tried to keep a layer between myself and my party." She met Pyn's questioning gaze. "I'm a freelancer by necessity. Or rather, I was a freelancer by necessity. Couldn't get too attached to someone. It would have only ended badly."

The elf nodded slowly.

"That makes sense....What about now?"

Allya blinked, then chuckled.

"I guess it's opposite now, I need as many allies as I can get."

"That's good."

And Pyn gave her the most resplendent smile she'd ever seen the elf make. She just sat there, stunned for a second, not understanding why she was smiling so much. And for some reason, that smile filled her with dread.

"So, why don't you lose the hood then?"

The assassin froze. Oh, this was why. She suddenly felt as if she had just stepped on a fall trap, like the ones in the dungeon, and she was just realizing she was going to fall.

"B-Because I don't want to?"

"Come on! Don't give me that! People will need to see your face once you actually get to...the business we've come here to set up. Come on, how bad could it be?"

Allya looked at her, and her resistance crumbled. Her big sister had exactly the same expression when she wanted Allya to stop doing something stupid. And she wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer. The assassin sighed.

"Alright, fine..."

She took off her hood...balaclava...face hiding thing, and shook her head, freeing her air. Then she looked back at the elf.

"Satisfied?"

For once in her life, Pyn was speechless. Allya was...stunning, at least to the elf. Delicate features, but with a face that radiated command authority. She had surprisingly long hair, for being able to put it under her hood, but it was still fairly short, medium blonde, with chestnut highlights. And her eyes...her eyes were a piercing azure, like sky.

"Hey? Are you okay?"

"Ah! Uh, yes, sure, sorry." Pyn grabbed her fork and took a bite of her dish in a hurry, to hide her embarrassment at being caught staring. "I just didn't expect you to look like this."

Allya shrugged.

"Well, get used to it."

Pyn hid a smile. Oh yes, I will, Allya, she thought.

None of them noticed the woman quietly observing them from the corner of the room, carefully taking in as much information whenever she looked over the whole tavern, never lingering her gaze on the pair. Although to her credit, Allya did notice the much less careful, and less well-equipped rogue sneaking glances at them from time to time.

The rogue soon left the tavern in a hurry, and Allya hid a frown behind her pint. The woman in the corner of the room simply finished her mental checklist...and pulled out a crystal tablet. The kind that let people exchange letters or messages over long distances.

The message she typed would have been fairly innocuous. Except if the person reading it had the proper codephrases memorized (or more probably had the book containing them on their desk).

To them, it would have read this:

ATRB Agent Seraik to Command:

Target Acquired. Requesting go order.