The dungeons were terrifying, and Mizuki didn’t know how everyone else was handling it so well. For Alfric it was obvious, he was a dungeon freak, this was something he’d been training his whole life for. For Hannah, Mizuki could maybe see it too, she was a sturdy, no-nonsense kind of woman who had seen a lot of pain and suffering in her time training to be a cleric, or at least it seemed like that. And Isra, well, who knew about her. But Verity? Verity was supposed to be a prim and proper city girl, and she was somehow able to see all the blood and gore and keep on singing with perfect tempo and marvelous melodies, sometimes even improvising songs while monsters were trying to kill them. Sometimes songs about the monsters that were trying to kill them. Who was able to think of a rhyme for cyclops while looking at a cyclops? Verity had likened it to a concert performance, the stress and tension and fear bottled up and tamped down, but Verity also didn’t shrink back at the sight of blood, so maybe she was just built different.

If Mizuki hadn’t been the only one who felt that way, there was a good chance that she would have dropped out of the party. Dungeons were scary, and monsters were scary, and after her magic was spent, she was just kind of standing there uselessly, waiting for there to be enough magic in the air that she could get off a second shot. There was a trade-off, waiting for it to build up or choosing to use it as it was, and Mizuki was, frankly, terrified of screwing things up for Verity again. Having done it once, it was easier to see the shape of that internal magic, to trace back the effects of the bardic influence to see a nexus of something that was within Verity herself. Something breakable.

Alfric was, thankfully, a beast. He ascended through the tower-in-the-wall, and for most of it, Mizuki was just following behind in fourth position, after Hannah, who was there to heal Alfric, and Isra, who could occasionally fire off a careful shot. But it was almost all Alfric, boosted by Verity, who was singing without any line of sight, and presumably just blindly boosting him. She’d been learning quickly and practicing what felt like almost too much, though Mizuki had no real way of knowing. The effects couldn’t be argued with though, since Alfric would sweep through a room, killing the things where they stood, mostly silent as he moved, keeping them from raising the alarm.

The things in the “tower” were all of a sort, with too many legs and faces like moles, large teeth in the center but little at the sides, no lips, bulging eyes, floppy ears, and big, lumpy bodies. Their legs were little, disproportionate to their arms, and their flesh was warped and shiny, like scar tissue, not that Mizuki had seen all that much of it. They were positioned, in places, like people, two sitting at a table together, one under a blanket in a bed, none with clothes, per se, but they were using tools and weapons. There was a certain horror to it, seeing these things behaving like people. Mostly though, Mizuki just didn’t see them as they were, because by the time she got into the rooms, Alfric had already killed everything and was going on up.

He’d explained to them earlier that he preferred to keep up his momentum, in part because his heart started pumping hard and there was an excitement that ran through him, a storm of emotions and energy that didn’t lend itself to slow, deliberate movements with frequent breaks. He hadn’t called it bloodlust, but Mizuki wondered whether that was what it was. There was a lot of blood left in his wake, though it was green rather than red, which made her feel a bit better. Still, most of the killing in the early floors was against creatures that had been totally unaware of him, and the one who was bleeding in the bed seemed like it had been taking a nap or something.

Maybe because of the noise, which seemed minimal, or because there were more of them awake, there was some resistance from the upper floors. Alfric made a stand at the bottom of a flight of stairs, weathering improvised weapons thrown down at him. He flashed in with his sword from time to time, almost always getting a kill, and Isra’s arrows flew over his head from time to time, also usually resulting in a kill. The corpses piled up on the narrow stairs and the remainder of the creatures stepped on their fallen allies to get at Alfric, dying soon after they made their way to him. This, too, Alfric had explained: dungeon madness usually resulted in unchecked aggression, which meant that one strategy you could employ was to find a choke point and wait for them to come at you. It was a poor strategy in some ways, since it meant that you could only employ a single fighter and left the artillery unable to act, but there were some cases where it was for the best. He was displaying the strategy for them in gruesome detail. The air didn’t have the iron smell of blood, but rather, a different metal, maybe like just after she’d washed her copper pan.

Each of the rooms was small, no larger than Mizuki’s own bedroom, and there was hardly any access to the aether, which meant that Mizuki was totally useless through the whole journey up the tower. Once the battle on the stairway was finished, Alfric climbed up over the bodies, stabbing a few of them who weren't quite dead, and Hannah went up after him, not seeming to care that she was stepping on dead things.

When it was her turn, Mizuki followed Isra, grimacing at the grossness of it. She didn’t particularly like dead things. She had mostly gotten used to butchering chickens on her own, but really preferred to have a butcher do it for her, even if it cost a bit more. Once they’d had their head and feet taken off and been plucked, it was easier to not think of it as something that had once been living.

Past the stairwell of corpses, it was a bit more palatable, just empty rooms that went up another few floors. They had things in them, a table with chairs, a dresser, a small kitchenette with an unfamiliar stove and a sink that, when tested, wasn’t connected to any tank.

The top floor was what looked very much to be a museum, if a very small one. There were lots of things behind glass in display cases, and next to all of them, paper cards with lots of vertical glyphs on them, unreadable but all with some kind of unifying design.

asked Alfric, looking around.

the Mizuki. It was so much easier to see the faint emanations of entads when Verity was boosting her. The suit of armor was on a mannequin, big and visible.

said Alfric.

asked Hannah. She gestured out the window, where the black expanse of the room with tall pillars was sitting. They were high up, and Mizuki tried not to think of what a horrible fall it would be.

said Alfric.

said Isra.

said Alfric.

They were all looking through the things in the small room, but Mizuki was the only one who had any real utility here, for which she was grateful. Still, entads were barely visible to her, and it was worrying to think that if she missed something, they might lose out on potentially thousands of rings. There were lots of things in this mini-museum though, and toward the end of her surveying work, Mizuki had to admit that she was going a lot faster, and not just because she was getting more familiar with the conditions. In the end, there were four things, including the armor, with the other two suspects being a ring — the kind worn on a finger, not money — and a stick that had been carved without changing its general shape. She might have tentatively called it a wand. The fourth and final one wasn’t one of the items on display, but instead, the little card of paper next to a cracked stone egg.

asked Verity.

said Alfric.

Mizuki held up the ring and looked at it. It was dark and iridescent, like a beetle’s shell. The outside had geometric lines and there was ‘writing’ on the inside, indecipherable. When Mizuki went to put it on her finger, it resized itself in her fingers, and she was so spooked that she nearly dropped it.

asked Alfric.

Mizuki hesitated for a moment. There was something about the ring that felt, to her, evil, but she was pretty sure it was just her imagination acting up. she said. It felt better or safer in some way, though obviously there wasn’t a lot of risk from an entad.

Alfric took the ring from her and slipped it onto his finger, then turned to stone.

asked Mizuki.

He was frozen in place, and after a second, he began to tip.

Hannah rushed in though, and with effort and some help, got him back upright.

she said. She held the statue in place so it wouldn’t tip again.

Through all this, the stone Alfric had not moved, unless you counted tipping.

asked Mizuki. “Alfric!”

said Hannah.

asked Mizuki. She could feel the panic rising.

said Hannah. His clothes had changed to stone as well, but the ring itself was just as it had been, some kind of hard metal.

asked Mizuki.

asked Hannah. She seemed mildly annoyed.

said Verity.

said Mizuki.

asked Hannah, raising an eyebrow.

said Isra.

said Mizuki.

said Hannah.

said Mizuki.

said Hannah. She sighed.

So they sat and waited. No one really wanted to deal with the other entads after what had happened with the first one, especially if Alfric was suddenly dead, bypassing his chrononaut thing, which seemed … well, possible, at least, if maybe not the likeliest thing. Mizuki still wanted to know what the wand, armor, and card did, but not if it was going to risk someone dying.

So instead, having nothing much better to do, and not wanting to move because the dungeon was decidedly not clear, they just sat and talked.

asked Mizuki.

asked Isra.

said Mizuki.

said Verity.

said Hannah.

asked Mizuki.

asked Hannah.

said Mizuki. She frowned.

said Verity.

asked Mizuki.

said Hannah.

said Mizuki.

There were some uncomfortable looks around the place they were sitting next to Alfric’s statue, which was balanced against the wall. It seemed possible that this was what they’d already done.

said Verity.

said Isra.

said Verity.

said Isra.

They all looked at the statue. In the dark of the dungeon, it wasn’t clear how much time had passed. Mizuki was grateful that she had her lantern.

said Mizuki.

said Hannah. She shrugged.

said Mizuki.

asked Verity.

said Mizuki. She looked at the statue again.

asked Verity.

said Mizuki.

asked Hannah.

asked Mizuki.

said Hannah.

asked Mizuki.

said Verity.

said Mizuki. She folded her arms, and a bit of silence descended on their group.

said Hannah.

They talked some more, but no one’s heart was really in it.

said Mizuki.

said Hannah.

said Verity.

said Isra.

asked Hannah.

said Verity.

said Isra.

said Verity.

said Isra. Her saying that made Mizuki feel a little pleasantly warm. It was true, obviously, but maybe she also liked that Isra appreciated Alfric.

Hannah laughed.

asked Mizuki.

said Hannah. She got up from the ground and propped the statue up so it was standing again, and reached down to touch the ring.

And then Alfric was alive again, moving around, alert and a bit confused. It took him a moment to work out that everyone had changed places and he’d been moved just a bit, with some time passing that he wasn’t aware of.

he asked.

said Hannah, holding the ring out to him in her palm.

asked Alfric.

said Mizuki.

said Isra.

asked Mizuki, turning to her.

said Isra.

asked Mizuki.

said Isra.

said Hannah.

asked Mizuki.

Alfric took a moment to think about that.

He looked down at the ring for a moment, turning it over.

said Verity.

said Alfric.

asked Hannah.

said Alfric. He looked around.

Mizuki went forward and gave him a hug. There had been a part of her that really had been worried that he was dead, and maybe a hug wasn’t the right thing to do, and was a bit embarrassing, but she decided not to care about that. Alfric hugged her back, and he was surprisingly good at hugging. He let her be the first to let go, which she appreciated.

said Alfric.

asked Mizuki.

said Alfric. He looked at the armor.

Mizuki laughed.

said Alfric.

asked Mizuki.

said Alfric. He picked the wand up from the shelf that it had been set on, then went over to the window, which looked out over the black.

He aimed it carefully into the blackness, but nothing happened.

said Alfric, holding it up and looking at it.

Mizuki was a bit unnerved. The idea of Alfric being suddenly dead from the entad ring had stuck with her, and he seemed to be brushing it off like it didn’t matter, or like there was no risk in testing anything else. She liked entad testing, but she could tell that it would take her some time to feel safe about it again, for all his assurances. What she wanted was a number, but even if he could give a number, she wasn’t sure that it would help her. How likely was an entad to kill you when you put it on? One in a thousand? One in a million? Higher? She wasn’t sure what the right number was to make her feel safe about it. Of course, the ring hadn’t killed Alfric, and maybe if the statue of him had fallen, it wouldn’t have shattered into pieces like it had in her imagination, but … still.

Alfric took the cracked stone egg and set it on the windowsill, then pointed the wand at it, which did nothing, and finally, touched the egg with the tip of the wand. The egg vanished with a slight shimmer, and Alfric frowned. He very tentatively moved his hand forward to the space where the egg had been, and it passed through empty space.

asked Hannah.

said Alfric. He held the wand in front of him, pointing it at the windowsill, and with a faint shimmer, it appeared again. He was smiling.

said Isra. She moved forward and looked at the stone egg.

asked Alfric. He peered at the egg, and for a moment, both of them were studying it together.

said Isra.

Alfric’s face fell.

asked Mizuki. Her mind was still on Alfric getting turned to stone.

said Alfric. He looked at Mizuki.

said Mizuki.

said Alfric.

They did some minor tests with the piece of paper and the armor, but their functions weren’t immediately obvious. The paper showed changes to the writing when it was touched to something, but it remained in the same impenetrable language. For the armor, Alfric suspected that someone would need to put it on, and it did seem to resize itself, but no one wanted to go to the trouble of getting armored, not when it might be a dud, or hard to work with, and not when they were already wearing armor. Alfric was a bit circumspect about it, which made it difficult to get excited about.

They found three other entads on their way down, or Mizuki did, because she was the only one that could see them. One of them was one that she’d actually thought she spotted on the way up, a wooden table, and she had no idea how they were going to get it out of the tower, given that it was wider than both the windows and doors. It seemed like they would have to use the wand, but Alfric said that it was better to save worrying about it until later. The function of the table wasn’t immediately obvious. Another was a blanket on one of the beds, which had a hole through it and was covered in blood from where Alfric had stabbed through it to kill the creature underneath. The last was a map, one of the cartographer’s, which had an unreadable legend and seemed to show a place that none of them had ever heard of, which Alfric suspected might work better once they were out of the dungeon. All in all, it was a bit frustrating to have so many things with unknown purpose, but Alfric was somewhat insistent that they could go more in-depth once the dungeon was finished. If there was another entad incident, he wanted to be able to extract with all their winnings, rather than being forced to leave a dungeon’s worth of loot behind.

said Mizuki. She was trying not to look at the corpses. She’d have tried not to look at the corpses anyway, but the one that had been in its bed was making her have funny thoughts.

asked Alfric.

she asked.

asked Alfric.

said Mizuki.

said Hannah.

said Alfric. He paused, scratching his head for a moment. He sighed.

said Mizuki.

said Alfric.

asked Mizuki.

said Alfric.

said Verity. She looked genuinely crestfallen.

Alfric shrugged.

said Mizuki.

said Alfric.

They moved downstairs and Alfric moved aside the corpse sitting at the table to point at the half-finished map that had been sitting there.

he said. Mizuki moved closer to look, not liking how close she was to the dead creature, the creature she’d killed. The map was like the others, but in the section that hadn’t been filled in, there were strokes of a pen, some shoreline, but repeated like an echo, done over and over again until the ink was off the paper and on the wood. His finger went to the map and the repeated line, then with a frown he picked up the pot of ink on the desk.

Mizuki breathed out. That did make her feel better.

asked Alfric.

said Mizuki.

said Alfric.

asked Mizuki.

said Alfric.

said Hannah.

said Alfric, frowning.

Mizuki nodded. That seemed unlikely then. It was nice that Alfric was taking her feelings seriously, especially if they went against the conventional wisdom.

asked Hannah.

said Alfric. He frowned.

Mizuki felt better about it. It helped to have Alfric there, explaining things, even if he wasn’t giving her what she wanted, which was a plain and clear message that these things couldn’t possibly have been anything remotely like people.

They continued on through the dungeon, and Mizuki tried to focus on her current role, which was putting holes in things.