The two of them have been staying in the ruined city for a few days now, having found an old house outside of the large dungeon-gate, which stands in the center of the ruins. The furniture has all long since rotted and broken away, the windows long since crumbled and shattered by time and the elements. Only the bare skeletons of the heavy stone foundations and walls, together with some bits of very rusted metal, remain to give proof of the fact that people had once lived here.

Now, they do so again. Sort of.

The two of them had tried to enter the dungeon a few times. But the gate doesn’t work. They aren’t sure why, but the fog doesn’t let itself be walked through. Rather, it’s like moving against a solid wall.

Canta had thought this was odd, but then he remembered that the instance-fog in his old life used to be blue or red. Maybe gray means -

Standing in front of the gate, he looks at Alleluia who is hanging up his clothes to dry, out on a jutting piece of metal. The sunlight shines off of her metallic body, creating a scene that is almost picturesque in his eyes.

- Maybe it means that the dungeon is dead? Empty. Drained of magic. Now, only a door remains, but it has nowhere to connect to.

“I’m going to walk around,” calls Canta over to her.

“Okay! Be careful,” she calls back, busy with more work. “Remember what I asked you!”

He shakes his head. He isn’t sure how, but she had found another book here and it seems to have inspired in her some oddity that he can’t explain. But she’s been running around the ruin that they’re sleeping in and ‘fixing it up’, playing house, no matter how often he tells her that they’re going to leave soon, so there’s no point.

Oh well, as long as she’s having fun and not hurting anyone.

As for the virtue, the smell that lingers in the air, he can’t find the source. It’s as if the city itself carries the scent, as a whole. Like somebody, some saint, had passed through here and laid hands on every single building.

The perfume coats the world and he isn’t sure how he feels about it. It’s making him hungry in a way he hasn’t felt hungry before. But it’s also not just a hunger. It’s a longing hunger, like reminiscing of the cooking of a long-since passed loved one. It’s a taste that you can never have, but one that you know.

Canta walks in through a ruined door, looking around the structure and at the scribbles that are visible through the vines, etched into the stone. The same hand wrote these that had written all of the other carvings, in all of the other buildings in the city.

‘Where is the lizard?!’

He sighs, shaking his head. Whoever had been here was certainly an odd one. They had carved all sorts of nonsensical, non-informative sentences and questions like this one into every building. Often, they would describe their great affection for creatures and critters like frogs or lizards. Other times, there would be crude drawings of monsters, or of some odd blob that Canta assumes is a slug. The one in ‘their’ house is the most detailed one. Being a grand mural, which depicts some odd, shapeless-entity surrounded by a party of others. A human with a sword, an elf, noticeable only because of her long, pointy ears and a hominid-slime.

Canta has no idea what these have in connection, if anything at all, or if the artist was just a depraved lunatic. But they seemed dedicated, if nothing else. He can’t explain it, but something about their passion for these things, or for whatever it is that they lived for, touched these ruins and stuck to them.

Flipping over some debris, he looks at a chest that he sees beneath. Cautiously, he gives it a good kick, to make sure that it isn’t a mimic. He remembers them. They’re devious little things. They were basically monsters that disguised themselves as treasure-chests, to snap off any unsuspecting fingers.

This chest seems legit though.

Carefully opening it up, he looks inside, expecting to find some coins in the worst case, or maybe even some useful equipment in the best.

Canta blinks, reaching in for the oddity inside of the box. A small, old, leather wrap, rolled neatly together and filled on the inside with several metal implements. “What the fuck?”

[Watchmaker’s Toolset](Masterwork)

A full set of artisanal watchmaking tools.

Quality Effect:

Durability +500%

Rust-proof

Weight: 0.16kg Durability: 30/30 Value: 460 Obols

He lifts his head, looking around the blank, stone, space. His eyes go wide as he quickly runs through the large, open, stone doorway in the back and looks around the room. It might have once been filled with clocks. There might have once been a desk here with a lantern on it and a cot there, against the stone wall. But none of those things are here now, in what was once the watchmaker’s workshop. Oriol’s house.

Canta looks around, confused. Is this really his home? What are the odds? They’re too low. This is too convenient. That feeling returns to him, that paranoid feeling that causes him to doubt any and every step that he takes.

This is where it happened, this is where Oriol, the man with the hat, did his work. This is where he made the pact with the demon-king. Yet there is no inkling of that. Rather, all there is, is that faint smell of something good and whole, always just on the edge of his nose.

Looking at the thing in his hand, he makes his way back, steeling himself for the sacrifice to come.

“Honey, I’m home,” he says, walking in through the door, but still rolling his eyes. Alleluia beams at him, having specifically requested that he say exactly this the next time he comes back. It’s something she read in that book and she seems to be captivated by the image that that story presents to her. Canta tells her about his discovery, asking if she wants to see it. Alleluia agrees and the two of them head back and look around again, but nothing really pops up.

If she does have a connection to this place, in any sense, she doesn’t seem to know about it, simply shaking her head as she looks around the watchmaker’s workshop.

Canta had expected as much however. Is she Evita, the watchmaker’s daughter? He doesn’t know. Is she some offshoot of the original clockwork-person? He doesn’t know.

Once the two of them get back, she takes off her robe and allows Canta to use the tools to try and fix up some of the workings of her body that have gotten damaged, not only from her fall weeks ago, back in the church, but simply from their adventuring. Just normal wear and tear. Like any machine, she needs routine maintenance. So, she sits there with crossed legs and reads her book, while Canta fiddles around with her back.

“Have you ever not had your crank wound up?” asks Canta, twisting a screwdriver to loosen a bent, bronze screw.

Alleluia thinks for a moment. “Huh? What? That’s an odd question.”

Canta narrows his eyes, poking her forehead lightly with the screwdriver. “It’s called smalltalk.”

She laughs. “I always kept myself topped up. I never wanted to ask the others. It’s a good thing too, because one day, everyone just kind of… stopped.”

“They stopped?” asks Canta. “They stopped doing what?”

Alleluia shakes her head. “No, they just stopped. Poof.”

His fingers run beneath his hair. “Poof?”

“Poof,” she nods. “The dungeon-magic ran out, so… they stopped.”

“Oh… sorry,” he says, realizing that he was bringing up old wounds. “Do you want to try sleeping?” he asks. “I can wind yo-”

“No!” she exclaims.

Canta lifts his hands and shrugs. “Okay, I just wanted to offer.”

She turns back to her book. “What will happen if you get sick again and fall over while I’m asleep?”

He presses a spring up and down a few times, checking if it is still compressed right. “Huh?”

She shakes her head. “Or what if you smell something and run away to eat it?”

“That’s not gonna happen.”

“Or what if you get lost in the city and fall in a hole that you can’t climb out of?”

“I wouldn’t go anywhere while you’re asleep,” assures Canta. “I’ll stay right here.”

“Or what if you take advantage of my helpless, unconscious body to satisfy your animal desires?”

Canta sighs. “You really shouldn’t be reading those books.”

She lifts a finger, before turning a page. “You have my permission.”

“Stop making this weird, you degenerate!” barks Canta and Alleluia starts laughing. The real truth of the matter is though, that she feels like she’ll die if the crank stops. If it’s turned again, whoever comes back after that, isn’t going to be her. She thinks.

The two of them sit there for a while, Canta working on her body as best as he can and Alleluia reads meanwhile. After half an hour, they trade places, Alleluia now working on his body, though he doesn’t read.

He can’t help but feel watched however, by the mural on the wall. Especially by the drawing of the slime-girl. They’re such odd creatures, he hopes that they don’t exist anymore.