January 31, 2019, 3:57 pm. The moment the door closes.

Rufka is already conjuring water as the door closes behind us. And I'm already working to enhance the walls with a second layer, increasing the soundproofing. As the tub fills, I can't help but watch Rufka, admiring her form as she slips inside. I'm knocked free of my daze when she pats the side of the tub. Undressing quickly, I follow her in, snuggling into her side as we conjure the water together.

"So," Rufka says as the tub fills, leaving the warm water swirling around us.

"So?" I ask, her tone causing me to look up at her face. She's looking at the roof of the bathhouse, which I realize is far too blank. I should put some sort of mural there too.

When I start to do so, she sighs, rubbing my head. So I stop.

"Didn't say you had to stop," Rufka says, giving the top of my head a kiss.

"Yeah... but you did sigh," I point out despite the part of me that wants to keep adjusting the ceiling.

Rufka shifts slightly, bringing my face towards hers. "I do love your fascination with magic. Just... sometimes I want it to be just us. And... maybe I'm a little jealous. Of you spending time with Kellica."

"Oh," I say. Then I look at the closed door. Not even Smoulder is with us, outside with the others. She didn't have time to join us. And now I realize that was probably intentional. Leaning against Rufka, I can't help but repeat myself. "Oh. Guess we should schedule time together? Just us time."

Which produces a rich laugh from Rufka, prompting me to glare up at her.

"Sorry. If you were anyuser else, that wouldn't be so funny," she says, giving me a kiss on the lips. Then we get lost in each other for a while. Long enough there's a knock from the door. Well, more of a thump. Smoulder's the only one brazen enough to interrupt. When I send her a pulse letting her know I'm busy and would appreciate alone time, I'm surprised when she sends back a simple acknowledgement.

I'd been worried about hurting Smoulder's feelings for a week, and that's all it took?

I...

Don't think about it, cause Rufka quickly distracts me again.

She's really good at that.

When Rufka and I finally emerge, no one else is in the clearing. Which... not surprising. When we seek them out, we find them gathered around a table in the rest area.

Rose starts to raise his voice, but barely manages to get out, "Hey, Lex. What do you-" before he's elbowed by Josh.

I raise my eyebrow as they fall away from the table, wrestling on the ground. Josh mutters something about original as he puts Rose in a chokehold. Rose manages to escape Josh's hold with the full application of all four arms to pry his way free as he says, "No way. Atlantis."

Turning to Roberts, I ask, "What's that about?"

"They've been arguing about Stargate all morning. Rose was going to get your opinion," Roberts replies as he raises a delicate tea cup to his lips. "Josh wants to keep you out of it."

"And... they're fighting over that?"

"I believe it's the same as you wrestling with Tipan and Rufka after your little races," Roberts observes.

"Right. Makes sense," I agree, sitting down next to the recently mentioned Tipan who's having a quiet conversation with Kellica. Something about different flavorings of meat-crisps at Desh'mersa games.

"Sorry bout running off like that. Are we going to start on the next set of challenges?"

"Actually," Tipan says, turning away from Kellica halfway through her sentence. "We were talking about it. And we thought it might be better if we let you do the challenges first, then showed us what we'd be up against. Some of us didn't get the bonus for completing without failing last time."

"It was Tipan's idea," Kellica states. "And she's talking about me. I'm the only one who didn't get the bonus quest completion."

"Hey, I don't mind," I reply, already pushing myself to my feet. As I'm rising, Smoulder emerges from where she was resting on Tipan's lap, jumping to my shoulder with enough force to make me have to consciously catch myself.

"Excellent. While I may not have failed, I came close a couple times," Roberts says before taking another sip from his tiny little cup. "Having some forewarning would be most helpful."

With that decided, I give Rufka a peck on the head then head out. This time, I decide to head straight to the metal challenges. The blob resolves itself into the open sphere of overlapping rails that it's taken every time before. Like a wireframe globe. The trials are held at the core of the sphere, and if I was a regular mortal, I'd think getting to the trial area was almost part of the test. But with my capped Agility, it's a cakewalk to balance on the thin beams leading up to the testing area.

The thick metal book appears when I accept the prompt for the Control challenge, asking me to turn a single page. Which is a lot trickier than the initial challenge of just opening the book without breaking it. Which is part of Power's challenge, except I have to overcome the stone lock wrapped around it. Then Flexibility requires me to dog ear pages. Which feels weird, since all the pages are blank. Channelling used to require adding pages. But this time, the challenge requires me to replicate the entire book.

None of it is especially tricky, and I'm back to the others less than twenty minutes after I left.

I have to re-examine my estimation of how challenging it was as I work with the others. Luckily, Tipan picked it up immediately, and is able to help. Cause she's much better at teaching than I am. I follow her lead, showing the others how to guide mana to each task without blowing things up. Or creating random spurs of metal. Or twisting them into weird shapes.

None of these are problems I've faced, but everyone else except Tipan has at least one mishap.

Once everyone has it, I head off to the next trial. And we repeat the process again. And again. By the time we've finished the first seven, I have a headache. Not an actual physical headache, but I'm starting to get annoyed at how bad a teacher I am. Tipan is ten times the teacher I am, and... I'm kinda jealous. I don't mention it, but instead of staying to help the others as she starts teaching them what to do, I head straight for the eighth trial.

Saved fire for last, since Smoulder wanted to play. The stone platform is covered in torches again, though the subtle little furnaces and pools of glowing magma tucked in corners are both more prevalent than the early platform. The challenges are the same as usual, a little bit of avoiding burning things for Control. Then Smoulder's favourite, burning things that are resistant to being burned. We're all the way up to some sort of dark stone. And we don't burn it so much as melt it. But that's still a success. The pattern for fire's flexibility test is reminiscent of the sphere we do the metal challenges in. At least in the expanded form. More of a ball when it's collapsed.

Finally, Smoulder's second favourite part is increasing the fire's flames to the point where the light would've been blinding before we came here. Now it just shaves a few fractions of health off every second.

As I wait for Smoulder complete the challenge, I look out into the open air. It's a little strange how the islands are all floating without anything to anchor them against. The dungeon doesn't even try to hide its nature. No fog or mountains or cave walls. Just sky for as far as I can see in any direction.

Instead of heading back once we're finished, I plop down on the edge of the island and just stare into the distance. I can hear Smoulder playing in the background as I think about how everything's gone today. Technically, it's going well. Tipan's been teaching everyone everything, and no one's failed a challenge. I just... it feels like I'm barely contributing.

With a dramatic plop, I lay down on my back staring up into the sky. As I'm staring into nothing, Smoulder pops her head into view, blinking down at me, her paws on my cheek. Then she reaches forward to bop my nose with her own, a sense of silliness being transmitted over the bond. Specifically, that I'm being silly.

Chuckling, I grab her and hold her over me.

"You know Smoulder, you're right."

Her usual smugness returns over the bond. She might not understand most of the things I say, but somehow, I think she knows what those words mean.

"I am being silly. Tipan's a better teacher than I am. But I can watch her and maybe that'll help me be better too."

Smoulder doesn't have a response to this, other than to continue broadcasting her smugness. Which is interrupted when I bop her on the nose then dump her as I leap up to race across the bridge, sending back my own sense of smugness. We spend a few minutes chasing each other around the central island before I return to the rest area. Only Roberts and Tipan are in the central area when I walk in, and they both look up from their... card game?

As I sit down, I recognize the metallic cards. They're regular playing cards from earth. Sab and I went through so many decks of those cards. Rarely playing card games though. More often they'd be used for... well, pretty much anything we could think to use a small cardboard rectangle for. The sailboats were a fun but ultimately flawed premise. Probably be even worse with these metal cards.

"Roberts is teaching me... what was it called, poke her?" Tipan asks, enunciating the English words. Rather poorly.

I can't hold back a small snort as Roberts just smiles and corrects her, "Poker. One word."

"Poker. It reminds me of a game my mother and I used to play when she spent her days at the barge-docks. Though we used System enhanced disks instead," Tipan says, almost lowering her cards so Roberts can see them.

He corrects her grip with a single metal card from his own hand. She smiles as she pulls the cards close. "Though I'm having trouble remembering not to show my cards. With the System disks, it's impossible to accidentally reveal your hand."

"I see that," I say, sitting down next to them. As they play out a hand, I find out they've both completed the previous trial and Rose and Josh are completing it now.

This time, when I teach them how to do the fire challenge, I watch Tipan as she instructs Roberts. And I realize the big difference. She doesn't tell him how to do things. She just asks questions. As the others pass through, she does the same with them. Or breaks down what they're doing and gets them to try it with a different approach. As Rufka, this time choosing to go last, walks off to complete the Fire trial, I turn to Tipan. "You're really good at that, you know?"

"Hardly. I don't have half the skill with Fire manipulation you do," Tipan replies, though her ears do flick slightly at the compliment.

"I meant teaching. You're good at it," I say as Kellica takes a place across the table from us.

Tipan acknowledges my clarification with a small nod, and the barest hint of her ears laying back. But then my attention is diverted as Kellica leans forward, her eyes shifting back and forth as she takes a deep breath.

Tipan and I trade a glance as Kellica mumbles something low enough I can't make it out, even with my enhanced Perception.

"Pardon, what was that?" Tipan asks as we both lean toward Kellica.

With a grimace, Kellica straightens herself out, glancing over her shoulder at where the others are playing cards before turning back to us. "I said. I'm sorry."

Again, Tipan and I exchange looks before I ask, "Sorry for what?"

"I... you know I'm a Taken, yes?"

"Yes..."

"And that we are spies for the Aetherium?" Kellica presses, her eyes boring into mine.

"I mean... sure," I reply. Wasn't exactly a secret.

"I... I just got a quest update. A hidden objective."

"Isn't that a good thing? That's why we've all been putting in all this work."

"I don't think she means relating to the dungeon," Tipan observes, frowning at Kellica.

Shaking her head, Kellica points at Tipan. "She's right. Before... when we were preparing to come here. I sent in a report."

"Okay," I say, squinting at her as if I could extract what she's trying to say faster by looking at her harder.

"My hidden objective? It was to assist in stealing from a Silver-rank user's stronghold," Kellica hisses, looking at the entrance that Rufka walked through just before she sat down. "They stole something from the Crimson Archmage, and it's all my fault!"

As Kellica flicks her ears back and forth continually, I can't help but blink at her. Did she really help them steal from Genitha? And how is that even possible? The one part I don't doubt is that something was stolen. Unless...

She's lying to us about that.

When I glance at Tipan, I can just barely see the corner of her mouth twitching upwards.

Which prompts my own smile.

"What?" Kellica asks, her brow furrowing as she looks between us. "What's so funny?"

"Oh... just the idea that someone stole from the Crimson Archmage... without her letting them," Tipan says, glancing at me.

I nod, smiling along. "What did you tell them?"

Kellica squints at us, her upper eyes closed as she flicks her lower eyes between me and Tipan. Finally, with a sigh, she says, "I... may have listened in when you went into the dome with the Archmage."

"You... I didn't know you could do that," I say, now feeling unsettled. If Kellica was able to listen in, then none of that protection was worth anything. And that's not even to mention that I still haven't told Tipan about Ivicka's book.

"It's not perfect. But I was able to confirm that the Archmage was going to be away from her stronghold for a few days," Kellica says, her eyes flicking towards Tipan. "And that she was taking some book to get inspected."

"A book?" Tipan asks, raising her eyebrows as she glances at me. But she doesn't press, turning back to Kellica. "Is this a class skill of Venom mages? I'm not aware of many ways to pierce a privacy barrier."

Kellica shakes her head. "No. It's... oh Vaus, I shouldn't be telling you this..."

Again, she looks over her shoulder. This time, I can't help but wonder if maybe it's not the others she's worried about. Maybe she's concerned the other Taken will follow her here somehow.

Afterall, Ivicka's found a way around dungeon limitations before.

"Look. It's fine," I say, reaching across to pat Kellica's hand.

"It is?" she asks. Which is closely echoed by Tipan.

"We knew you were a spy. And Genitha is the one who invited you to come with us. It's kinda her own fault if she underestimated you," I say as I lean back.

This draws a snort from Tipan, who nods along. "Indeed. I don't think even she will be upset with you for doing your job."

"Mhm. But uhm." This time, it's my turn to cast a look over my shoulder, looking at the door Rufka left through. "We should probably figure out how we want to tell Rufka."