Jogging to keep pace with Alforde, Vee looked around the decrepit streets and abandoned buildings that made up the deserted section of Westown. The rain was falling harder now, and Vee found himself missing Reginald. The hat’s brim would have offered some welcome protection from the pesky droplets.

Alforde glanced back at Vee and slowed down when he saw how his friend was struggling. Vee stopped to catch his breath and closed his eyes, checking in with his orchestra.

“Any sign of them?” Alforde asked.

Vee opened his eyes and shook his head. “Not yet, I’m afraid. They couldn’t have gotten too far though, especially with all this crap on the streets.”

He kicked a bit of rubble out of the way to illustrate his point.

“I don’t know that blindly running around is going to be productive,” Alforde said. “We should probably just try and find an open spot somewhere nearby and wait until the orchestra finds them.”

Vee agreed, and the two waded through the debris until they found themselves in what looked a little bit like the market square over in Northown. There were a few broken statues here and there, and plenty of rusted old stalls.

“I bet this place used to be nice,” Vee said as he walked around. There was a big fountain in the center of the square that was cracked and overgrown, Tiny white flowers bloomed along the side.

With Alforde’s help, Vee made his way atop a pile of trash and looked around in every direction. He didn’t see any movement, but that wasn’t really saying much.

He cursed some more as he shivered at the chill of the rain. The orchestra still hadn’t found anything, and Vee was starting to have the first flickers of nagging doubt that they’d be able to find the teenagers at all. Deserted Westown was simply too big.

His mood soured further, and he impatiently tapped his foot while he waited. Alforde paced around the square and made a few short forays down the various alleys nearby, but the minutes ticked by without any updates.

Just before Vee was about to give up on waiting for an update and resume his search on foot – unproductive as it might be – a blur of orange light whizzed by. A few glittering motes shaped like pumpkins floated to the ground like snowflakes in its wake, and Vee almost lost his balance as he slid down the garbage pile to chase after it. Alforde joined him and they ran further into the abandoned remnants of Westown.

Within a few steps, Vee had once again fallen behind, but his mind was elsewhere.

What’s Luna doing here?

Reginald watched the adventurer walk back and forth inside the hub room and wanted to scream. It’d been three minutes since he’d returned from collecting his first orb key, and the [Hunter] still hadn’t made up his mind about which room to challenge next!

He reached out to activate the magnifying crystal to tell the guy to get on with it but stopped himself. It was true that there were plenty of other adventurers waiting to make their runs, but it wouldn’t be sporting to rush the poor guy.

[[email protected]#@[email protected]%@ ^^^@]

[Patience +1]

Finally, the [Hunter] took a step towards to room of Wit, and Reginald asked him if he was sure in his decision before pulling up the door. Once the adventurer went inside, the [Core Spirit] was free to let his mind wander a little bit.

He probed his seal. It was still there and intact, but clearly something wasn’t quite right with it. Another stat had re-emerged. What could that mean?

Before he got to ponder the question properly, his break was cut short by a series of clunking footsteps outside the door. The hat turned to look as the door slowly opened.

“Back so soon, boss? I thought you were going to track down those –“

He slammed his mouth shut and hoped he hadn’t said too much, because instead of Vee, it was Seidon who walked in. With him were two other well-dressed types and a gaggle of [Bodyguards]. The burly, suited men all scanned the room for any potential threats and grunted that the room was safe.

The councilman grinned and gestured for his companions to follow him over towards the desk, while the [Bodyguards] took up positions around the room. Reginald noted that two of them went right to the window and made sure it was firmly closed before standing in front of it with their arms folded across their chests. Clearly they weren’t interested in any sort of repeat of the last time the councilman had come to visit.

Reginald made eye contact with Seidon and scowled. He didn’t know why the councilman was back now but he was pretty sure it couldn’t be anything good.

“What an unpleasant surprise it is to see you,” the hat said curtly. “My insincere apologies, but the boss isn’t here right now. If you want to leave him a note or something, I’ll be happy to pass it along when he gets back.”

Seidon chuckled and shook his head with mock indignation.

“What a hostile greeting! I must say that I’m disappointed to have such a cold reception from a member of Mister Vales’ staff. I expected better. However, dear [Majordomo], let me assure you that we’re not so rude as to barge into your office without an invitation. My colleagues and I spoke with your boss earlier and asked if we could watch a few of the day’s runs and he agreed.”

Reginald’s dislike of the councilman grew even stronger. Seidon’s grin was far too nice to be genuine. What’s your game? He wondered.

A flicker of movement down in the dungeon drew the hat’s attention. The [Hunter] had completed his second trial and was walking out of the room of Wit. He held up his fist in triumph and threw the blue orb into the fire.

“You have completed two of the necessary challenges to move on, but one still remains. Choose wisely,” Reginald called through the magnifying crystal. Once he deactivated it, he added, “And this time try not to take so freaking long.”

He looked back at the council members. “Well, if Vee said it’s okay for you to be here who am I to argue? Is there anything in particular about the dungeon that you’re curious about?”

The woman, dressed in a long gray coat with a striped dress beneath it, took a step forward and smiled. “The doors and the fire. How do you make all of that work?”

Reginald returned her grin. Her enthusiasm for the dungeon was at least partially genuine. He explained the mechanisms of the dungeon to her and described the way they were linked through the tiles to his controls. When she asked a question about how Crestheart’s layout was determined, he pointed her towards Vee’s notebook, which was sitting nearby. Having gone through it before himself, Reginald knew that there wasn’t anything secret or incriminating inside – other than a few crappy doodles of a girl wearing a witch hat that he assumed was supposed to be Luna – so it wouldn’t be a problem if she took a look.

The councilwoman examined Vee’s drawings of the dungeon’s traps carefully, flipping the pages back and forth and mumbling to herself as she tried to decipher Vee’s chicken scratch handwriting.

Reginald snuck a glance over at everyone else in the room. The third council member –who bore the glassy expression of a man dragged along to satisfy one of his wife’s curiosities – was looking at Dheart but hadn’t said anything yet. Reginald decided to let him be.

Seidon, on the other hand, kept turning his head to look out the window. Reginald wondered if the man knew where Vee had gone. Hopefully his boss hadn’t been stupid enough to mention the missing youths.

The orb of light that showed the dungeon run flashed red and Reginald pressed the button that deactivated the remaining floor orders in effect. The [Hunter] had abandoned his run shortly after entering the room of Dueling. Shadowforde’s attacks were simply too much for him to overcome. Taking down the adventurer’s final time, Reginald gave Do and the other [Dungeon Maintainers] the signal to reset the dungeon for the next run.

“Excuse me, but wouldn’t it be easier to have all of that automated with crystals?” the woman asked. “Surely it’s slower to have it done by staff members.”

“Indeed,” Reginald said. “But money’s a bit tight right now so we’re making do with what we have. The [Dungeon Maintainers] do a great job, and by doing it like this they can replace damaged pieces of the dungeon before they break. I know the boss wants to eventually upgrade Crestheart so that more of the layouts are handled by crystal automation, but we’re nowhere near that right now. Vee is doing his best to balance a bunch of different things.”

Seidon snorted, and Reginald paused his preparations for the next run.

“You got something to say, mister?”

Seidon shook his head, but Reginald pressed the matter further.

“Are you sure? Do you need a tissue, then? A snort like that means one or the other, usually.”

The councilman didn’t answer. He simply resumed his vigil of looking out the window.

Should have had Alforde “drop” him the last time he came up, boss. Cursing the boy’s soft heartedness, Reginald got back to work as the next adventurer entered the dungeon. He explained the rules again – maybe it’d be a good idea to procure a recording crystal so that he didn’t have to repeat himself so often – and glared at the councilman when he was done.

[Loyalty +1]

Luna urged more magic into her cart as she dodged around the various obstacles in her path. The tingle pulled her forward, and then left, and then right, and then left again and she found herself zooming towards a tall stone building that looked like it was on the verge of falling over.

Scratch that. As she drew closer she saw that there was a big hole in the back that had already done so. A string of fiends – twelve or thirteen in total – headed towards the rubble with murder in their eyes.

“Get back, you monsters!” a voice from inside yelled. A few pieces of debris flew out and bounced off the nearest fiend’s chitinous chest.

Whoever was inside wasn’t much of a fighter, and Luna thanked whoever was out there that she’d made it in time.

Yanking off her hat, Luna felt her lance settle into her hands. The weapon was becoming ever more comfortable in her grip. Once she was in range to strike, the [Pumpkin Witch] squared up and slammed the weapon into the nearest monster, relishing the way the fiend burst into tiny wisps of smoke at the blow.

Inwardly, she breathed a sigh of relief as the monsters lunged for her and she dispatched them one by one. She’d been nervous about being thrown into a battle against something even more dangerous than Holly had been. Compared to the battle with the [Snowmancer], this was downright relaxing!

She was a blur of orange and gold justice, slashing and stabbing in all directions as she scattered her foes. The last of the fiends fell to Luna’s attacks, and she took a moment to make sure that no more were approaching. Dropping a few seeds from the pouch in her pocket onto the ground, she said, “[Pumpkin Magic: Trace].”

Tiny tendrils of golden energy rushed out of the seeds, and paltry pumpkins made of light grew along its length. They were like bells, ready to ring out a warning if anything drew too close. Luna focused on each of them in turn, looking around for any threats nearby.

Without the benefit of the tingle, her senses for such things weren’t particularly strong, but she didn’t notice anything she found worrisome. There were a few sources of energy skittering away from some of the nearby buildings, but Luna didn’t think they were a cause for concern. Still, she idly wondered what they were.

[~?????~]

There it was again. The strange notification that popped up after every tingle. Luna shook her head and it vanished.

Transforming her lance back into a hat, Luna turned to look at the people she’d rescued. Soaked and shivering from the rain, they were all a few years younger than she was. One of them – a guy with mangy black hair and a beard that desperately needed to be combed – was laying on the ground with his lower body trapped beneath a pile of collapsed rubble. Thankfully, he seemed to be mostly okay. He was still conscious and wasn’t screaming his lungs out, so any injuries he had probably weren’t too serious.

Luna knelt down next to other two people and helped them clear away the shattered bits of brick, stone, and glass that covered their friend . She moved quickly but carefully, making sure that she didn’t make a bad situation worse by grabbing a piece that was holding up others. Eventually, they reached the section of broken wall that pinned him to the ground and with a grunt, Luna pulled it out of the way.

The unkempt man she’d freed thanked her profusely as he tried to climb to his feet. He winced as he did so. “My ankle is pretty messed up,” he said with a groan. He looked at Luna. “Can you fix it?”

She shook her head. Healing others was well beyond her capabilities.

However, she could – and would – make sure that he got help. As she went to offer the man a hand and help him into her cart, her pumpkin alerts waggled at the approach of one….no…two figures. They weren’t really a threat, as neither had murderous intent, but one was fairly formidable and so she stood back up to take a look just in case it was an elaborate ruse.

When she saw who it was though, she smiled and relaxed.

The first figure, the one who seemed strong, was Alforde. The armorsoul’s eyes were bright and alert as he ran towards her, and his hammer was already in his hands.

The second figure, lagging way behind, was Vee.

Luna brushed her bangs out of her eyes.

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 24

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 16

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 5

Might: 10

Wit: 26

Faith: 18

Adventurousness: 6

Ambition: 11

Plotting: 14

Charisma: 9

Devious Mind: 16

Leadership: 14

Guts: 11

Intimidating Presence: 8

Citizenship: 14

Public Relations: 4

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 20

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 11

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 11

Additional Class: Clunker (Vee Vales), Level 2

Might: 31

Wit: 11

Faith: 24

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Endurance: 16

Intimidating Presence: 11

Heart of a Champion: 3

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 6

Vigilance: 4

Reginald:

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

--~%@(%[email protected] &% (*$ #&#e !i$$ (#$%#$%#[email protected]!)~--, #[email protected]& ????

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 37

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 9

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 5

Might: 1

Wit: 29

Faith: 10

Ambition: 25

Greed: 21

Deceptiveness: 28

Manipulativeness: 34

F^#$#$%@#

Loyalty: 44 (+1)

Patience: 12 (+1)

[#@$%%^*!#@__--#%]

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 4