It happened so fast. By the time I blinked my arms had been nearly emptied, leaving behind a pair of healing potions, a scroll that had torn edges and a fist full of copper coins. The others, including A’rea to my annoyance, peered over their new gains. I still had the strange amulet and tucked it away before it found its way into a certain white haired cat's pocket.

I checked the scroll by undoing the knot of leather keeping it rolled up and nearly lost my balance from the shock.

Damaged Scroll of Fireball added to inventory!

Uncommon Magical Item

As long as the scroll is secured by the leather knot this scroll is an inactive item. Once unfurled a creature with spell-like abilities is able to utilize this scroll to cast the spell inscribed on its surface.

Warning - This scroll has a 15% chance of spell failure and will have a random unstable effect.

I packed my new treasures away, carefully tying the knot to secure the scroll, and putting it into my bag before taking one last look at the stage. The last thing I needed was to trip on a loose stone and somehow accidentally set it off. All around me I could see the aftermath of the battle. The ground was damaged, busted up from spells and Snowflakes’s mace, there were broken arrow shafts and bloodstains streaking the ground. My blood to be more exact.

“I found the tomb!” Lin called from behind the strange statue.

It was a hidden stairwell activated by a round button along the base of the statue. It caused a slab of stone to slide under the statue, revealing a steep stairwell that led to darkness. I was still quite dizzy, and the others handled the doll girls. A’rea used her stone shaping magic to funnel the ashes into one of the pots we had stolen from the apartments.

The tomb under the statue was a simple, carved out, rough stone room with three shaped cutouts for coffins in each wall. There was a pile of unused wooden coffins tucked away under the stone stairs, as if the keepers knew they might need them soon. Lin pulled them out and Snowflake put the fallen warriors in each one. They had left the armour on then, which was fine because we had damaged it to the point it was unusable. The ones with broken weapons had them at their side, and I helped Lin cross their arms over their chests while Snowflake stuck a dried oak branch with wax leaves in their hands.

Knowledge Religion : Partial Success!

Henienkia’s symbol, the great mother oak tree, holds great meaning to her followers. Her clerics, paladins and devout followers carry small branches from the sacred groves from the holy lands. These branches are typically used in many religious ceremonies.

+1 XP gained.

A’rea held her light wand over them so Snowflake could make sure everything looked proper. I stood back and inspected the room more. If my internal compass was right, the northern wall had in addition to the coffin spaces an alcove. There were signs of careful work being done, with a shaped tile trim in dazzling white going around it. In the smooth wall was a small depression displaying the relief of a black robed, masked mage standing on a platform with his arms stretched towards the earth. Minions on the ground knelt and raised their hands towards him, as if he was a divine figure.

“Wow, this guy was full of himself,” Lin chuckled. I felt her gently bump me with her elbow, and she nearly toppled me over. “How long till you commission art like that?”

“Like we can afford something like that,” I said, shaking my head. “Also that’s not my style.”

A’rea placed the pot with the leader of the doll warriors remains on a shelf beneath the artwork. It looked like there was space for several burial urns. Snowflake clasped her hands and mumbled a soft prayer to the fallen doll women. I rubbed my ears and tried to focus, but found it impossible to hear her. Maybe I messed up my hearing with my elemental nuke.

Snowflake seemed satisfied with herself and we left the tomb quickly. Or they did at least, I was huffing and out of breath by the time I reached the top of the stairs. I had my hands on my knees as the world seemed to tilt, and I forced myself to slow down.

I did a quick check up on the team, now that we were directly under the stage light again. Snowflake was perfectly fine, practically invincible in her insane gear set, A’rea had sat out of the fight so she was all smiles and joy, while Lin looked exhausted, but unharmed. Her divine lucky talent I had given her was pulling double duty it seemed. I sent off a silent prayer to thank Heinekia and her bountiful tits, just like Lin would have wanted.

Then there was me, caked with blood and ash, and stumbling on my feet. “Lin, I’m out of mana…”

“What?” Lin asked, turning on her heels. The others had started to head for the door, and Lin jogged back to help me along. “What did you do?”

I quietly filled her in on my risky gamble, and earned myself a slap on the back of the head. Lin faced me with a twisting expression, complete with random noises, flipping between being impressed, angry and worried. Eventually she settled on impressed, and hugged me tight.

“I’m just glad you're okay,” Lin said, squeezing me tightly.

I hugged her back, squeezing her as hard as I could. I broke the hug and scratched at the back of my head. “Sooo, this means I can slack off now and let you take care of the dungeon, right?”

“Oh that’s it huh?” Lin asked, sticking out her tongue. “Little wizards, they run out of mana and all of a sudden you have to carry them on your back.”

I thumbed the crossguard of my longsword and held it in a low guard, showing I could still fight. The tip wobbled, and try as I might, I couldn’t get it to hold still. Lin patted me on the back, took it from me, and slid it back into the scabbard.

“Hey, don’t sweat it. We got the quest item. Let’s just grab Catherine, and go look for the others,” Lin said. She tapped the long thin sword and a fat dagger that had found their way onto her belt. “If we get into a fight I can cover you. I want to try my new blades out.”

“Come on, I was the one that fought her and cut off her sword arm,” I protested.

“You already have a magical sword!” Lin said back in mock fury. Light danced behind her eyes and she tapped her chin. “Maybe instead of dungeon delving you could level up your magical crafting skills and make me one. Then I wouldn’t steal your loot.”

I grumbled as I struggled up the stairs. My magic crafting skills still hadn’t levelled up to rank one yet. Rolada and Sliva both said they took a very long time to get anywhere because they were such potent skills. Like Lin had told me when we first met, a decent mage with magic crafting skills could usually coast along on a comfortable paycheck for the rest of their life. After only two true dungeon delves I could see why they preferred that.

We went out the doors finding Snowflake and A’rea keeping an eye out for trouble. They led the way back to the apartment complex, while Lin stayed at the rear watching our backs. I strained my ears trying to listen, but only heard the sound of our steps and Snowflakes armour rattling. There was something else too, a constant white noise. I had definitely messed up my hearing.

Damaged hearing : -2 to Perception checks that rely on hearing until healed.

Great.

We made it to Catherine’s apartment without incident and Lin explained the situation. Catherine merely nodded and fell in line with me as we made our way back to the central room I had set ablaze earlier. As we reached the garden room we froze and waited to see if we could hear any bloodbugs.

There was a high pitched whine as a single horrible bug floated in from a hallway. It lazily circled around fallen golems and charcoal minions. One of the wings was bent and didn’t move in sync with the others causing the creature to move erratically. All of a sudden it rushed at us, rising and falling as it failed to fly straight.

Snowflake stepped around the corner and bashed it with her shield, impacting the wall. The bloodbug burst like a balloon, coating the wall and her shield with rancid green goop. Snowflake hissed a curse and shook her shield trying to dislodge it. After hearing nothing else we came into the room.

“Ugh,” I said, turning up my nose at the bugs' remains. “It smells awful.”

“Don’t get it on your skin, it will stain it with that smell for weeks” A’rea warned.

I looked down at the remains of the bug trying to inspect it, wondering if any parts of it were useful.

Knowledge World : Failure!

Not only that, but I saw new piles of smoking ashes, probably from the bugs that got to close the pillar of fire from before. Sadly there was nothing else to loot there.

We continued down the massive hallway we first came down and made it to the old keeper pool with the boulder stuck in it. A’rea whistled and looked at the recent devastation. Catherine curiously gazed at the boulder, and tilted her head.

“How far down do you live?” Catherine asked.

“About a league away. I have a safe house we can crash at while we check you over. I have some old vestments you can have from when I was a young lady, they don’t fit me anymore,” A’rea said, chuckling to herself.

“We better go find our party members, you two take care,” Lin said. She patted Catherine on the back and gave her a sad smile. “Hey, if you ever find yourself on the surface feel free to drop by our home.”

“Oh, speaking of that,” A’rea said. She dug around her pack and took out a shard of slate that was as big as my palm, with white chalk filled runes carved into it. “If you ever want to make a fully functional underground base or mage tower, feel free to hit me up on your wizard orb.”

A’rea held it out to me, and I took it, carefully inspecting it.

Knowledge Arcane : Success!

Calling stones allow users to use magical communication devices to reach out to people at long distances. The power of the magical tool determines the quality of the audio and visual information when communicating.

+2XP gained.

“I’ll get right on that.” I leaned towards A’rea and lowered my voice. “I don’t have a wizard orb, is that bad?.” I passed the fragile looking calling stone to Lin for safe keeping. I straightened myself out and talked normally again. “But if I find myself in need of an architect I’ll call you to get your rate.”

A’rea put a hand up to her mouth and I could hear her snicker. “Most proper mages do. You should be able to get a cheap one at any magical ruins. You could find a truly powerful orb at one of Kin’s towers. If you get one of those, I’ll be willing to take it off your hands in exchange for my old one.”

“Rodney might have one,” Lin said, sliding into the conversation. “I can shake him down for it.”

I rubbed my tired temples. “Give Rodney a direct line of communication with me? That seems like a bad idea.”

“Oh and darling, you will have to hire both me and my new apprentice now,” A’rea said. She offered her hand to Catherine and picked up the doll woman, placing her on her abdomen. She tied a rope around her waist and coiled the end into a handle, holding it out to Catherine. “Better hold on dear, unless you have some spider boots in your back pocket.”

After exchanging our goodbyes, A’rea used her stone shaping magic to open up the ground near the boulder. She crawled down, and as they dipped over the edge Catherine waved goodbye to us one more time. A’rea shaped the ground back to the way it was, sealing off the passage. When we were alone we faced the direction the rest of Snowflake’s party went.

“So…spider lady. Never thought I’d meet one,” Snowflake said, sounding unsure of herself. “We did a good thing working with her right?”

“Hey, at least she was nice,” Lin said.

I shrugged. “She was kind of crazy, but she did seem happy to help out Catherine. I don’t think she was evil.”

If anything she just seemed to be a hardcore fan of Kin the witch. A bit quirky, and from the way she acted towards me I assumed there was something culturally going on there I didn’t know about. Regardless, I might need her to help me improve my dungeon.

I heard something over the hissing in my ear and turned my head towards it. “Did you hear that? It sounded like a scream.”

The silent underground dungeon was interrupted by maniacal laughter. We broke into a sprint, running towards the source. We managed to make it down the archway Snowflakes’s party members had gone down easily, as the floor was free of tripping hazards. The others must have cleaned out the area in case they needed to make a hasty escape. We rounded the corner to the scene of a battle. Or more accurately a one sided massacre.

Lex and Cidean cowered behind a pillar that stretched towards the roof, covered in soot, ash and sweat. Grannul stood out in the middle of the hallway, waving his arms around with some kind of tube attached to a brass backpack covered in gears, pipes and tanks. A stream of flame shot out of it and ignited charcoal minions, reducing them to ash in mere moments.

“He has a flamethrower?” I asked.

Grannul lifted it over his head and laughed like a madman, taunting the dungeon. The battle was over in a few more seconds, and the dungeon felt even darker than before. There had to be no less than thirty enemies still smouldering on the ground. Grannul pointed the weapon at a pile of ash and spat, clicking the trigger one more time.

When nothing happened the dwarf looked down the tube and shook the hose connected to the backpack. “Cidean! Why isn’t it working?”

The elven wizard pulled at this soot coated hair, getting his hands covered in it. Cidean’s hands turned into fists and he glared at the dwarven warrior. “It’s out of fuel or mana you idiot! You nearly fried us!”

Grannul grumbled and headed over, waving when he saw us. “You folks missed the fight, it was a hell of a brawl.” He tipped his head towards Lex and grinned madly. “Even got the quest item along with some new toys. I think he learned a thing or two from your lady friend there, he managed to actually find some traps on his own!”

“That thing…is an affront to wizardry, magic crafting and too anyone with good senses!” Cidean scoffed, crossing his arms. “Grannul, I won’t help you fix it!”

Grannul looked unimpressed and thrust a stack of papers into my arms. “You are the fun wizard now Josh. Here, all yours, also here’s some coins for Lin and you. Out of Cidean’s haul.”

The elven wizard stormed off and pouted. I caught the small coin bag and looked down at the papers. In the light of Lin’s lantern I could see schematics written in Igni, the magical language of fire. I could make out a decent amount of it, and my thoughts instantly turned to using this in the defense of my dungeon.

“Grannul,” Lin said, putting her elbow on the dwarf’s shoulder. She leaned into him and gave him a friendly smile. “You certainly know your way to a woman’s heart.” Lin tossed the coin bag into the air, and as it hit her palm it vanished. “Thanks a million!”

“You are also my favourite rogue,” Grannul said, pausing to give Lex an angry glare. “While he managed to find the traps he also managed to set them off, losing us some loot.”

Lex looked up from Snowflake checking over an injury on his arm. The human rogue spat at his party member. “You and Cidean can see in the dark, I can’t. So when you force us to douse our lights, guess who is flying blind? Can you really blame me for tripping over the wires in the dark?”

Cidean rolled his eyes. “You certainly flew pretty well when you stepped on that springboard trap.”

The party banter went on for a while. Each of them taking turns to point the blame at the other for any difficulties they had run into. Seeing we weren’t getting anywhere Lin managed to coax them into going outside the dungeon, and the complaining kept continuing. The long metal and clay tube that led to the exit amplified their voices, and I watched Snowflake hold onto her helmet. Lin took out wads of fabric that she stuck into her ears, sighing with relief when it muted the loud mouths.

I just let the white noise drown it out. I was really curious what that magic stone they needed looked like, but felt it was better to let it go. I didn’t want them to get suspicious if I was too nosy. If anything their party banter made it so they didn’t question Lin and I on our quest item.

“That cave lizard found us because you put on perfume, in a dungeon, where only the three of us were,” Lex said to Cidean.

Cidean opened a bottle and dripped cyan fluid onto his palm, then rubbed it into his neck. “Right after you opened the barrel we told you not too. I can still smell rotting fish. Ugh.”

Grannul walked out of the dungeon and hugged his new found love to his chest. “At least I got a flame belcher.”

“I think Josh called it a flamethrower,” Lex said.

“Oh wizards,” Grannul said, shaking his head. He waved a hand as he walked. “Think about it, ‘flame and thrower’, of course we can tell it does that. It’s too…boring. But flame belcher? Now that has some dwarven grit to it.”

“Fine, we will call it a flame belcher,” Lex said, throwing up his hands. “Cidean, can we agree on that?”

Cidean turned up his nose. He tapped his foot and huffed. “Flamethrower is kind of boring.”

The girls turned to me and I just nodded, praying that this was the olive branch that would end the conversation. As fun as it had been to meet and join a real adventuring party, some of the aspects of it left a lot to be desired.

“Shall we walk you two home?” Snowflake asked.

“No, we're good,” I said. I saw heads turn and I went pale as I realized that I came out too fast and too strongly. “You guys are on the clock right? Besides, it's not far and Lin can beat up any problems we run into.” I gave them my best ‘this isn’t suspicious’ smile that I could. “Right Lin?”

Deception : Success!

+3 XP gained!

Deception has increased to rank IV!

+5 XP gained!

When did deception get to four? I tabbed into my skill page, it seemed I had started to pile up with improvements. I was pretty pleased to see I was improving so well. My important skills were climbing and I had even managed to make it to rank four in melee.

“Right Josh?” Lin asked me back, hugging my side and looking at me with her lovely blue eyes. The shine in them changed from a loving expression to a dead panned one. “Were you listening?”

“Sorry,” I chuckled. “I think I got clobbered around a fair bit-”

Snowflake leapt to action, making me panic. Did she figure out my deception? Could she know what I really was?

“Heinekia’s balm!” Snowflake chanted, resting her hand on my shoulder.

I instantly felt better, the headache I felt approaching vanished and some of my sore pulled muscles eased up. Best of all the white noise went away with an audible pop, leaving only the sound of the wind to touch my ears. She inspected me over, and after seeing me visibly improve she took off her helmet, resting it on her hip.

Snowflake looked extremely happy, and she pulled me into a tight embrace. She kissed me on the cheek and moved on to repeat the gesture to Lin. Lin of course took the chance to turn at the last moment to peck Snowflake on the lips, which caused the ram girl to blush and giggle.

“Sadly I must go, with no truly evil foes to count towards my quest I must continue to venture on,” Snowflake said, looking to the sky. “Perhaps my goddess would be so kind to throw me one right now so I can go home with this wonderful maiden tonight?”

There was only the wind whistling by. Grannul coughed and pulled at Cidean’s pack asking him for a snack. Snowflake visibly deflated, but Lin cheered her up with another hug.

“Are you guys going to come back this way?” I asked, pointing at the dungeon. “There’s still more stuff inside.”

“By the name of the damned sock pixies, I won’t be,” Lex sneered. He kicked a pile of nearby snow and let out a howl of pain. He had ended up kicking a pile of hidden stones. As he clutched his shin he leaned against the cliff face and spoke in an annoyed tone. “Not worth the effort. We managed to find a few decent pieces of gear and a jewellery workshop, but that was it. The Guild might send mages in the future to investigate it, but that won’t be until Dastow calms down.”

There was an instant change to everyone else. Lin and Snowflake looked sad, Lex looked angry, Grannul and Cidean seemed fearful. I did my best to bite my tongue and not ask, it could be a conversation Lin and I could have on the way home. I didn’t even need to see the insight notification to tell it was a sore subject for them.

“I’m terrible at goodbyes,” Grannul said.

The dwarf then turned on his heels and walked away.

Snowflake wasn’t, she showered us with kisses, hugs, and a tearful goodbye. Lin held onto her as much as she could, and when they finally parted she wiped a tear from her eye. The adventurers waved and headed off, heading straight in the direction of Dastow.

Lin and I went back the way we originally came, and as we crested the snowy hill I watched Lin try to hide inside her coat. I waited a few moments before my curiosity ate at me.

“What’s got you so glum kitty?” I asked, squeezing her shoulder.

Lin pursed her lips and blew, sending out a wave of visible breath. “It’s cold and I want my soft ram to warm me up.”

I gave her rump a squeeze, earning myself a playful swat on mine from her tail. “Let’s get home and cuddle up in the bath then. I’ll even drag Rolada into the mix so you have a soft and cuddly fox.”

That improved her mood. My plan backfired however, because Lin ran me at a breakneck pace to go home.