By the time Vee returned to Sculla’s, the sun was setting and the sky had taken on a pleasantly warm hue of orange and red. As if to prove that looks are not to be trusted though, the air was frigid, and Vee pulled his collar close in an attempt to keep his cheeks and ears warm. Otherwise, they’d start to ache.

Reginald’s brim offered a bit of protection against the chill, but the hat was definitely more style than substance, and Vee resolved to invest in a headband or something similar as the seasons grew colder.

He heard the familiar sound of clanking armor coming from the alley behind the boarding house. Alforde must have been practicing his hammer work. He’d done that constantly as of late. Tucking his hands even further into his pockets and wishing that he had a heatstone – another thing to buy at the next opportunity – Vee decided to go and watch.

The armorsoul was indeed training. He swung and swept Hammy as he leapt and lunged up and down the alley, in a battle to the death with an enemy only he could see.

“Take that, and that! And that too!” Alforde cried as he thrust his hammer like a spear and then turned it into a nasty upwards sweep that would violently transform the teeth of any poor soul hit by it into paste.

Apparently, Alforde’s foe didn’t have teeth though, as the [Dungeon Champion] danced back, bobbing and weaving like he was dodging a vicious counter-attack. “You may think that this dungeon is yours for the taking, but you’ll have to get through me first!”

“FOR THE LOVE OF PARADISO, SHUT UP!”

The yelling came from an open window on the second floor of the boarding house. A scrawny man wearing glasses poked his head out of the window and all but shook his fist at Alforde. “Look, I’m trying to be patient here, but you’ve been doing this for the past hour, and I can’t hear my vision sphere. Larsene Canis III is challenging the Crypts of Lorimar tonight, and I paid twenty-five bronze fleurs to watch the run! I want to hear the announcer, not your idiotic chatter.”

Alforde stopped and straightened up, looking at the man sheepishly. “Sorry about that, Mister Watson. I’m just about done for the night anyways.”

The scrawny man muttered something Vee couldn’t hear and then slammed his window closed. Vee wasn’t sure why he hadn’t just done that in the first place, but who was he to judge?

Alforde waited a moment, and then settled into a crouch. “I’ll confess, your skills are better than I initially gave you credit for., but you’re no match for my ultimate attack!”

He was doing his best to keep his voice down, but as he spoke, Alforde’s voice grew louder and louder until he finally shouted, “[Cyclone Smash]!”

That was what always happened when the armorsoul got excited.

Grabbing his hammer at the bottom of the handle with both hands, Alforde started spinning. He went faster and faster until he was a blur of shimmering steel that moved slowly down the alley. It wasn’t the most practical attack, Vee thought, but it was visually impressive.

About halfway down the alley, Alforde stopped spinning and slammed his hammer down into the ground. It shattered some of the sidewalk.

The window flew open once again and Mr. Watson stared out with wild eyes. He also held a small switchblade in his hand, though Vee couldn’t imagine such a weapon being much use against Alforde. After all, he was literally made out of armor.

Mr. Watson seemed to realize the same thing as Alforde looked up at him and held up Hammy so that the weapon’s gleaming head was only a few feet from the man’s face. The angry boarder slowly put the knife down.

“Are you like, mental or something?”

“Sorry! That’s it for the night. I promise!”

Another grunt, another slam of the window, and then Alforde seemed to notice Vee for the first time.

“Hey! Did you see my new moves?”

Vee nodded. “They look great!”

“I just unlocked [Cyclone Smash] at level 8. I’m hoping that I unlock [Unstoppable Charge] at level 10. Then I’ll just be like Ser Hallheim Pielbrayne! If I keep practicing, I should be able to reach level 10 by the time we open.”

“And the talking?”

“It’s one of my [Dungeon Champion] skills. It’s called [Condescending Banter] and it’s supposed to intimidate my enemies so that they’re not as good at fighting back. Hopefully I can scare off some of the first adventurers that make it to my arena. The best battles are the ones you never have to fight! I read that in a book once. Or, at least, I think I did. What did you think?”

“I think you need a bit more practice. You sounded too respectful.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. I think that if you’re trying to intimidate people, you should say stuff like ‘Was that supposed to hurt?’ or ‘I almost felt that’. You know, confident things.”

“Oh, I see! Maybe I could tell them that it’ll be another year before they’re on my level. That’s a pretty common thing people say in books!”

Vee shook his head. “You probably want to up the number of years there. Try twenty, or better yet, a hundred.”

“But most of them won’t be alive in a hundred years. Even twenty years would mean the functional end of an adventuring career for most people. Aren’t you aware that the average adventurer only stays in the guild for a couple years?”

“I think that’s kind of the point,” Vee said with a shrug. His stomach rumbled and he popped one of the caramel apple candies he’d bought earlier into his mouth. It was sweet and tasty, for all that it temporarily glued his teeth together. “You want to go for a walk?”

Alforde nodded, his helmet scraping along his chestplate, and Vee was now pretty sure that his friend’s appearance was slowly changing as a result of his [Dungeon Champion] class. Instead of an almost perfect sphere, Alforde’s torso looked more like a cube. His horns were definitely longer now, and there was a slight texture on his pauldrons that reminded Vee of those horrible popcorn ceilings he’d seen in friend’s houses growing up.

They walked to the front of the boarding house and spoke to Sculla, who was perched on the steps with her pipe, as always.

“There are a few boxes coming later that need to be brought in tonight,” the ogre said. “Would you two be willing to grab them when you get back?”

Vee started to protest but Alforde interrupted him and said that they’d be happy to. The ogre grinned over a puff of smoke and waved at them as they walked inside.

“Something on your mind, Vee?” Alforde asked. “You have that look you get when there’s something important you want to talk about. Your brows get all furrowed and look like you’ve just smelled something nasty.”

Vee was about to mention the stained glass images on the window of Thien’s shop and what that meant for Oar’s Crest, but he stopped himself just in time. He wanted to hear his friend’s thoughts on the matter, but not quite yet. There was something he had to do first.

It was hard to think about something while most definitely not thinking about it at the same time. Ever since Reginald had made that little crack about the Luna-shaped places Vee’s mind had a tendency to wander, he’d been trying to think of a way to obfuscate his inner monologue. Of course, doing that was also difficult, and so he hadn’t made much progress. Or any at all, really.

At its core, the germ of the idea in the base of his brain was simple. He couldn’t say why, but he had a feeling that the stained glass snail and Reginald were connected somehow.

“Wait here a second,” Vee said as he started the slog up the stairs. “I’m just going to drop something off and then I’ll be right back down.”

Alforde looked at him strangely, but did as requested.

After fumbling with the key to his lock, Vee opened the door and tossed Reginald into the room.

“What’s the big idea?” the hat protested as he hit the ground. “I thought we were going for a walk?”

“Alforde and I are, but you’re staying here,” Vee said. “[Would You Kindly] update Cecil so that his sheets properly account for the cost of the dungeon rewards? [Excellent Spreadsheet].”

Reginald gave him a sour look, which was quite impressive given that his eyes were virtually the same size and shape as they always were. “But that sounds boring!”

“No, that’s details. Isn’t that supposed to be your specialty, [Majordomo]?”

The spirit hat had no retort to that, and so Vee left him with the talking spreadsheet and bounded back down the stairs with a huge grin. Sucker.

[Leadership +1]

[Devious Mind +1]

[Your Devious Mind Skill is now 7! You have unlocked Hide Intent!]

Vee checked the skill in his soul’s mirror.

[Hide Intent]: Skillfully conceal your true motives for a single statement.

Well, that was something at least. A nice skill to dovetail with his [Detect Lies] and [Detect Falsehood]. Depending on how long it took to use successively, perhaps it’d be useful to keeping some of his thoughts from Reginald. Something to experiment with, to be sure.

Alforde looked confused to see Vee without Reginald on, but didn’t say anything about it. The pair left Sculla’s and Vee followed his feet to a small residential street down the way. The houses here were small and dingy, but fairly well maintained, all things considered. They were almost all painted in pastel yellows, blues and greens, but one pink house stood out from the rest.

It was this one Vee sat down in front of and gestured for his friend to do the same.

The armorsoul landed heavily. Maybe he still needed more work on his gracefulness.

[Upkeep due! Your Orchestra requires refined ectoplasm to be sustained!]

Vee sighed as he gestured for Alforde to wait and closed his eyes. He focused on each section of the orchestra. Thanks to Dheart, distributing the refined ectoplasm to the fiends across such a distance wasn’t a problem, and Vee could feel satisfaction coming through the bond that linked him to his orchestra. He’d have to come up with additional tasks for them once the dungeon opened.

The tower was so clean he could eat off the floor, and the construction had been finished for days. The medium section had continued collecting more usable materials from around the rest of Westown, but Vee didn’t know where to store all of them. For now, they were simply stacked around the back of the dungeon, and Vee was trying to find a place to put them before Crestheart opened. Having the dungeon surrounded by trash wouldn’t make a particularly good first impression.

Originally, he’d planned to use the orchestra as minions inside Cresheart, but he’d become so intrigued by the way that they seemed to be developing more than he expected that he didn’t want to see them destroyed by a bunch of adventurers. Plus, he’d invested a good chunk of refined ectoplasm into preserving their service, and didn’t feel much like throwing it all away.

Problems for another day. Increasingly, Vee felt more and more like this was his new normal. He didn’t have time to actually sit down and think about things and come up with good solutions or really make a plan, he had to perpetually live in the moment and wing it as things happened. It wasn’t entirely a bad thing, but Vee really didn’t know how to feel about it. New town, new me. I guess.

“So, what’d you want to talk about?” Alforde asked once Vee opened his eyes. “Oh hey, did I tell you that I found a cool book at the library?”

Vee leaned back, feeling the pine needles and bits of gravel digging into his palms. His plan to tell his friend about his thoughts regarding the stained glass snail and Reginald melted away as Alforde broke down each chapter of his most recent reading experience. Eventually, Vee simply decided not to bring it up at all that night. Since coming to Oar’s Crest, him and Alforde hadn’t really had any time to just hang out the way they used to back home, and once Crestheart opened, he couldn’t be sure when they’d next have the opportunity to do so.

After all, a break once in a while never hurt anybody. Maybe the old me wasn’t all bad afterall.

Vee Vales:

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 15

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 4

Might: 6

Wit: 23

Faith: 12

Adventurousness: 8

Ambition: 5

Plotting: 5

Charisma: 2

Devious Mind: 7(+1)

Leadership: 6 (+1)

Guts: 3

Intimidating Presence: 1

Alforde Armorsoul:

(REALIGNMENT) Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 8 (+2)

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 7

(REALIGNMENT) Tertiary Class: Clunker (Vee Vales), Level 6 (-1)

Additional Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 3 (+1)

Might: 20 (+1)

Wit: 10

Faith: 23

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 5

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ???

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 29

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 4

Might: 1

Wit: 24

Faith: 2

Ambition: 21

Greed: 16

Deceptiveness: 35

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