The place was a wreck, and that was putting it mildly.

Robin stood in the centre of ‘his’ tavern and looked around in dismay. About the only thing still completely intact was the foundation. The roof was riddled with holes. The walls had gaps. The doors were missing. The floor had rotted away in several places.

Saress had cleared this as suitable for the gambling pot? Robin seriously began to question the lizardkin’s skill at divination. Or his morals. He wouldn’t put it past Zhatin to try and cheat that way.

Robin stepped around a mound of trash piled on the floor. There were splinters of wood, but that was all that remained of the furniture. There wasn’t even enough left for him to attempt to magically fix with [Minor Repair]. Though he might be able to patch some of the holes in the wall and floor with what was left. The roof would be trickier.

To test his theory Robin gathered up several of the larger bits of wood and took them over to one of the smaller holes in the wall. He fiddled around until he found one that filled half it it, though he had to carefully pick through several splinters to fill in small gaps. He invoked [Minor Repair] and watched the wood seamlessly fuse together.

It worked! It was smooth, and solid, and incredibly ugly because the grain did not match at all, but the hold was partially filled.

His elation didn’t last long. Patching this place up by himself would take a long time, not to mention he would swiftly run out of materials. He guessed most of the furniture had been burned for heat long ago.

It was too bad. This place had good bones. It was in an interesting location, commanding a corner where three streets met just at the edge of the entertainment district.

Well, he’d just have to fix the place up! It could be a nice location to perform, maybe get the tavern running again and make extra money on booze and fried foods?

He was getting ahead of himself.

He needed to check the basement. If there was any part of this place that he could clean up and turn into living quarters, that was going to be it, for now. Robin’s skin crawled thinking about what possible creepy crawlies might currently be infesting the place. Nothing for it, though.

Robin hunted for an hour before he managed to find the trapdoor under all the detritus clogging the floor. With any luck, that was a good sign. It made it less likely anyone—or anything—was using the place as a lair.

To be on the safe side, Robin conjured up the [Visual Phantasm] of a pile of trash covering the open trapdoor. That should keep any nosy pests out of his hair if they happened by while he was down there. Without any clear knowledge of alternate exits.

He stepped carefully though the illusion and descended into the basement. Again he thanked Rhyth for the ability to see in the dark. It was coming in very handy in a lot of situations.

The basement was much bigger than he had expected, verging on the cavernous. There were the remains of large wooden braces, presumably for supporting massive casks of beer or ale or wine, and several bins that Robin suspected once held vegetables or other stores.

He explored further. It was cool down here, and the wall that he estimated was opposite the front of the tavern was slick with damp. Robin wondered if perhaps the sewer flowed past on the other side.

That was a curiosity to satisfy another time. The cellar would do for a place to stay. The piles of detritus from above were largely absent, and once he patched the holes above him (in what was the floor of the tavern above), he should be reasonably snug.

And if he was going to clean the place up, he might as well have a bit of assistance. He still didn’t have access to an [Invisible Servant], a choice he was finding more and more vexing, but he did have his [Familiar Bond]. It was time to call his familiar back to him!

He’d first made the bond on the trip to Noviel from Bordertown, but to avoid inconvenient questions from the Sisters Sharp and any inspections at the gates of the city, Robin had sent the little guy back to the Plane of Shadows.

Robin pulled a stub of candle out of his storage and touched light to it with his fingertip, courtesy of [Legerdemain]. He needed a few more supplies for the summoning ritual, but he’d stocked up before they left Bordertown. Robin retrieved more candles, a few bundles of herbs, and went about placing them along the lines of a medium-sized sigil on the floor.

He lit the other candles with the one he’d touched life to. Together, they filled the room with a wild horde of dancing shadows. All the better. Robin made himself comfortable and began the long and arduous chant that would call his familiar to him from across the void.

Could he have done it much faster and with a lot less effort? Yes, if he were willing to expend his spell points. Given he was in a new city, though, Robin wanted to reserve them in case of emergency. He had time right now, so there wasn’t much drawback to using it to call Rerebos to him.

After over an hour of sustained chanting, Robin’s arse was well and truly dead to the world and his tongue was quickly losing sensation as well. His cheeks ached from the odd syllables he was forcing out of his mouth. Nearly there.

‘Actum Rerebos!’

There was a small pop in the centre of his summoning diagram and his familiar was there!

Rerebos looked like a tiny dragon, about the size of your regular house cat. His scales glittered like liquid night and his eyes were limpid pools of purple starlight. He chirruped a greeting to Robin and flicked his wings, darting over to land on the bard’s shoulder.

Robin reached up to stroke Rerebos’s brow ridges. In return he got a feeling of warmth and approval. Their bond was new, only capable of communicating empathic signals. In time, it would deepen and become strong enough for direct telepathic communication, but that day was a ways off still.

‘What do you think of our new lair?’ Robin asked.

Rerebos launched himself into the air and swooped around the space, investigating. He could understand Robin’s words well enough, and thanks to [Tongue of the Fallen Tower], Robin could likewise comprehend his speech. Most bonded pairs would have had to wait for the deepening of their bond, but Robin’s gifts allowed him to take a shortcut directly to talking to Rerebos.

‘Hardly befitting my stature as a Prince of my people,’ Rerebos sniffed, ‘but if there is no alternative, at least it is spacious and pleasingly underground.’

Robin had no idea if Rerebos was truly a prince or if the little bugger simply had delusions of grandeur, but it didn’t really matter. He was going to be equally demanding whatever the truth was. The important thing was he was susceptible to flattery and was naturally inclined to Robin’s way of thinking. That is to say, he was sneaky, had no compunctions about tricking his way to success, and possessed a large dramatic streak.

He was much greedier than Robin was, however. That, at least, he had in common with the larger dragons of legend he resembled. Rerebos liked shiny things and had a tendency to steal and hoard them. It made him eminently bribable.

He also wasn’t terribly discerning. Robin thought he lacked any kind of appraisal skills. So the bard had laid in a large supply of cheap, shiny trinkets to use as bribe fodder, should he fail to persuade Rerebos to aid him out of the goodness of the beast’s heart.

Robin had the feeling he would definitely have to break into his stash to get Rerebos to help clean the place up.

‘There are holes in the ceiling,’ Rerebos complained. The little beast’s native language was very sibilant, and sounded like shadows sliding over a razor. Without his magic, Robin was quite certain he’d have no chance of replicating it.

‘We’ll patch those next,’ he said. ‘You can scout out bits of wood and I’ll use my magic to seal them up. If you find particularly good pieces of wood, I’m sure we can make this place more of a lair befitting Your Highness.’

Flattery worked almost as well as bribery, Robin was swiftly discovering. Rerebos puffed up and launched himself into the air. He was soon up and through the illusion covering the trapdoor. As Robin’s familiar, he could see through Robin’s illusions whenever Robin could. One of the many benefits to the arrangement.

Robin followed, carefully closing the trapdoor and covering it with a pile of detritus. No need to make it obvious where it was. He’d need to figure out another way of concealing it while he and Rerebos were held up down there.

Not that either of them needed much sleep. Rerebos was also benefitting from the magic of Robin’s items. So far, that meant only that the little beast needed almost no sleep at all.

Robin wasn’t looking forward to Rerebos discovering what he could do with access to the powers of Robin’s [Mask of Disguise], though it would certainly make turning the little guy into a spy much easier. Tiny pseudo-shadow-dragons were things that got noticed. Ravens, rats, and black cats, less so.

As Rerebos gathered fragments of scrap wood, Robin fitted them to the gouges and holes in the floor, and mended things as best he could. It wasn’t pretty, but it was solid and it wasn’t costing him anything other than time. That was a good price, though he was a bit flusher with cash than he had been, thanks to his big win at the Dragon Poker table.

He didn’t have nearly enough money to rebuild or fix this place. Wood, brass, glass, hinges, doors, chairs, tables, artisans and workmen…he could only imagine the bill!

The treasure Zahn wanted him to find danced in the back of his head. His share would go a long way to fixing the place up, as well as fund his other needs. He’d need to ask around, see what things cost here.

Robin measured the room as he went. It was far too large for him to fully cover with illusion, at least at his current capacity. He’d noticed some peculiarities in the system that would allow him to cast spells more efficiently, effectively increasing his caster level and thus the range and duration and effect of his illusion spells, but he didn’t have any open slots for them!

He might be able to make one corner presentable with a combination of intense cleaning via [Legerdemain] and judicious use of [Visual Phantasm]. It would limit his performance options, but it might work.

He needed to find some way to gather funds and sound out potential party members, after all.

Rerebos was complaining, but he was still searching out scraps of wood. Robin suspected his participation hinged a bit more on the little guy finding the occasional shiny scrap of metal to add to his hoard. Where he was hiding them, Robin had no idea.

‘How much longer must I lower myself to this menial labour?’ Rerebos demanded to know after they had worked for a few hours and patched nearly all of the holes in the floor.

Magic certainly made quick work of some things. He could probably reconstruct the whole place through will alone if he had the right build.

Ha. Right build.

‘We’re nearly finished. Come on—’ Robin went quiet. He’d heard something.

Voices were drifting through the wreckage of the tavern.

Trespassers!