The golden key weighed heavy in Apexus’ hand. Its form had been left unblemished by the passage of time. What dirt and grease could have accumulated in the ups and downs of its ornaments had been carefully cleaned by Maltos. The head of the key was a circle, containing a tiny, stained-glass relief. A dot of red in a circle of white, shaped like a flickering flame. The symbol of the fifteenth goddess, Melysia of Hearth and Home.

The tip of the key pushed into rippling air, itself a reason for the party to breathe a sigh of relief. Where the key let them pass, there was no danger to be expected. Apexus turned the key. A lock clicked and the shape of a door was projected onto the air in front of them. Within a radiant outline, brown finely carved wood appeared. A lightning bolt danced over the grey dark clouds above. Its foreboding light failed to overcome the gentle, inviting glow of the artefact.

Apexus withdrew the key and pushed it under his collarbone. Once through his skin, the slime within pulled it deeper, until the key rested in his chest. There was a lot of room there, for a being who did not need lungs or heart.

Pure metal he could not digest, not even if he tried, and so the safest place for their home was between the bones of his lower arm. Even if a thief got his Adventurer’s Bag, it would always be with them. Albeit, Apexus would still move it to the bag before they entered a dungeon or a place of other, frequent combat. The key was an item of incredibly high level. Still, the humanoid chimera did not care to test its shock absorption or heat capacity.

He grabbed the handle and a quick mental exchange occurred. The spirit within the key, now dwelling in the set-up space, confirmed that its owner was attempting to open the door and inquired who was allowed to enter with him. Apexus revealed the faces and names of the people, the thoughts he had for them, and the spirit understood swiftly. The door opened.

“That was quicker than usual,” Korith squeaked.

“It remembers,” Apexus told her.

“It occurs to me that the manner by which it identifies us is subject to trickery. Even a scan of appearances and surface thoughts can be overcome,” Aclysia stated.

“Nothing’s ever totally safe.” Reysha hissed at the clouds. “Can we get inside before I declare war on rain? Fuck, if we landed in another Autumn Leaf imma stab something.”

“You always stab something,” Apexus remarked and stepped into the home.

“That’s not true, sometimes I get stabbed!” Reysha complained and followed, alongside the other two party members.

The Wandering Estate was an item of a high level, which was the very reason why the goddess who had created it had built in a safeguard to not make it too attractive to be used by just about everyone. The spirit that dwelled within, in many ways an angel of much lesser status and intellect than Aclysia, used parts of its owner's magic to access the space it then shaped according to their instruction. In other words, to access the true luxury the Wandering Estate could provide, one had to be an adventurer of power.

At Apexus’ current level, they entered a single room, roughly five of Apexus’ strides deep and three wide. It was slightly larger than the house that they had left in Tacuitos. The walls were of a non-specific, brown wood, the roof flat, the floor smooth with flawlessly set tiles of terracotta. A singular window in the left-side wall let in dim light, increasing to bright flashes occasionally.

Korith hurried over to the window, held on to the sill, and peeked outside. It was like staring at a decorative fish tank. Less than a metre deep and ending shortly beyond the boundaries of the window frame, the pocket space contained a miniature sun covered entirely by tiny thunder clouds that crackled, copying the weather conditions and time of day of the world outside.

The kobold’s tail wagged. “If I could get that tiny sun out of there, how much do you think it would be worth?” She turned her head to Aclysia and Reysha, who knelt down just a step away from her by a stone fireplace.

“Not particularly much, it appears to be a more powerful version of the basic Ilumni spell.” Aclysia created a ball of warm light above her hand. “It is a basic spell that Priests of all seasons are privy too. I therefore expect it to be of little more worth than your average magical light, if it is even capable of being physical moved at all.” Aclysia concentrated the magic of the ball of light and turned it into a ray that then struck a pile of neatly stacked wood.

Apexus closed the door to the space behind them. If anyone had been watching them from the outside, the door would have vanished from their sight at that point. In return, the group was clueless regarding anything going on outside besides the weather communicated through the window.

The humanoid chimera put his hand in a vase full of water in the corner and drank deeply. The level of water decreased visibly, as he refreshed himself. The rainwater outside would have done it, but this was more efficient. Once he withdrew his hand, the surface began to rise back up.

The Wandering Estate provided some luxuries. Both the firewood and the water were created by the magic of this place. There was a limit to both that exceeded standard consumption by a comfortable amount. The toilet in the room accessible through the door opposite of the window was also self-cleaning, which was especially comforting to Korith.

There was a limitation to this in that the resources generated in the Wandering Estate could not be removed from it. When they filled their waterskins from the vase, they would find them emptied the moment they stepped out. The wooden logs disintegrated into nothing in a similar fashion.

The Wandering Estate provided no food, nor service, nor any variation of heat to the water – not yet. It also did not provide any furniture, which was why they had spent about an hour before leaving behind the Teacher’s Isle moving their belongings from the house into this new place. Their haybed, the pots and pans, the table, the cushions, all of that was in there. The Wandering Estate did provide fresh hay for the bed, so they slept as comfortably as one could ask for.

The fire soon burned, giving some direct and additional heat for the drenched women, who settled down on the blanket spread out in front of it. Aclysia grabbed a teapot, hanging from a metal bar under the ceiling. The other cooking utensils rattled when she tapped against them. She proceeded to fill the pot with water and a couple of leaves, and just a sprinkle of the magical herbs they still had. “Best to use these while they still have some power,” she said, as she hung the pot over the flame.

“Fuck, I hope we find something on this Leaf I can eat.” Reysha checked her eyes in the reflection on the water. She spread her lids wide open with her fingers. “They’re almost pitch black now,” she said and then looked at her crimson, barely translucent nails. “Noir almost ran its course.”

“Noir cannot run its course, it is a permanent affliction,” Aclysia corrected.

“No need to be so totally pedantic when everyone knows what I mean, bubble butt.”

“I cannot be sure if I know what you mean when your statement leaves such ambigui-.” A wet slap stopped Aclysia. Reysha’s soaked shirt wrapped around her face, the linen assuming the shape of the metal fairy’s face from the force of the throw.

The tiger girl burst out laughing, having not expected her titty-freeing manoeuvre to net her such a fantastic scene. The laughter only grew louder and more manic, when Aclysia peeled the wet cloth from her face and glared at the redhead, her backwards-combed, white hair dishevelled from the experience.

“Could you do me a favour and, at any point between now and our shared future, find your maturity?”

“Lots of wiggle room there, so I think I’ll get that done at some point.” Reysha peeled out of her pants next. They were handed over to Aclysia in a normal fashion and soon hung onto the metal bar, above the fireplace, to dry. The rest of the clothing of the party was put up there as well. Aclysia needed to put some of the cooking utensils on the floor to make space.

The water was hot by the time she got done with that and she poured everyone a cup of tea. Reysha and Korith could use it for warmth, Aclysia liked the taste, and Apexus had decided to pick up the habit. Not all that an admired person did had to be copied, yet there was a utility in trying things. Besides, he had found that herbs had some interesting effects on his physique, typically mirroring those it had on most other sapient beings. It was useful to have a general idea of what they all did.

“Maybe I should shorten my hair.” Apexus ran a hand through the wet strands, trying to drink the moisture out of them. It was a bother to deal with hair, especially when it was this long. There was a powerful counterargument, however.

“No,” Reysha denied.

“It looks good on you, darling,” Aclysia joined the tiger girl

“I-I also think you should keep it,” Korith made it a universal vote.

When the females around him aligned for an aesthetic choice, Apexus followed. His looks were more for them than they were for himself. As long as his physique overall remained efficient, he did not mind the minor heat loss that was wet hair. “Then long it remains,” he said and sipped on his tea. It had a strong, herbal flavour. Apexus liked that it was hot. The magic in the liquid was tasty.

As the heat settled in and their naked forms dried, comfort took hold in the room. The rain softly tapped against the window, the fire crackled, and Aclysia hummed. She stopped for a moment when she noticed, then continued without a care. There was no need to be embarrassed around them.

“We should buy a bookshelf,” Reysha said out of the blue.

“You? Suggest a piece of furniture for the storage of intellectual mediums?” Aclysia asked.

The tiger girl just shrugged. “Only stuff we can do in here is sleep, eat, play games, and fuck. I like all of those things, but might as well make the list longer.”

“I’d like a place where we can store board games,” Korith added. “There’s only so much I can do with dice and cards. A few wooden tiles would let us expand so much! We could play Hoardingsum!”

“How do you play that?” Reysha asked and was consequently the target of a lengthy diatribe of the way Hoardingsum was prepared and played. Apparently the spirit of the game was a balancing act between surviving and giving as much money as possible to the Hoard. The money in that game was actual coin or other easily tokenized valuables. “Lemme guess, squishy, at the end of the game everything in the pot gets actually sacrificed to Hoard?”

“Psh, whaaat…?” Korith turned her entire upper body away to dodge the inquisitive gazes of her party members. “W-well, there’s this home rule that only the winning kobold has the honour of sacrificing their spendings.”

“And without home rule?” Apexus asked.

“We all get the honour of… you know… giving to Hoard.” Korith bashfully pushed the tips of her index finger fingers together and turned with big puppy eyes to the party. “C-could we play without the home rule?”

“No,” Aclysia smote her down immediately. “Hoardingsum shall be a game, not our actual situation. Besides, we currently have little funds available.”

“How much is little?” Reysha asked. “I haven’t thought about our money in a fucking while. We weren’t spending anything.”

“You weren’t spending anything, I had to make sure we had salt, soap, and a list of other conveniences that foraging does not provide.” Aclysia opened her Adventurer’s Bag and pulled out the party purse. What came out was 1 single gold coin, 14 silver, 5 iron, 9 bronze, and 15 copper. An odd assortment of coins, much of which they had picked up just as change. “We are comfortably far away from broke, given our general self-sufficiency, Still, we should shore up our savings.”

“We should also start leaving part of the money in here,” Korith suggested. There were some concerned glances in her direction. “No, not so I can steal it!” she assured them, and there were chuckles around the table. No one distrusted her enough to think that was actually an option. “I just mean we should have it spread out a bit so we don’t lose everything at once if it gets stolen or if we get separated.”

“A good precaution,” Apexus agreed.

“Currently unviable,” Aclysia deemed, after some consideration. She scooped the coins back into the coin purse, then put the purse into the bag. “However, certainly a good course of action once we have acquired a measure of wealth.”

“Is that our next goal then?” Reysha asked.

“I do not know if chasing money is a worthwhile hunt,” Apexus stated. “We have little need of it overall.”

“That’s only because we’ve been avoiding civilization consistently.” Aclysia turned her empty cup with one hand in a rhythmic gesture. “If we want a bookshelf and items to fill it with, then we will require additional funds. I’d also like more clothes. Two outfits are better than one and still do not satisfy entirely. Further I’d like a proper cleaning utensil for the clothes.”

“If we ever make it to a proper adventuring Leaf, we could also buy some more equipment,” Reysha put it out there. “Iron and steel won’t cut it forever – specifically it won’t cut the dungeon monsters we’re facing forever. I only have that axe at the moment.”

Apexus nodded. “I understand… then yes, perhaps focusing on earning where we can would be wise.”

“Just leave the bartering to me!” Korith proclaimed confidently. “I can haggle!”

“That’s like the one area where I expect you to actually get aggressive,” Reysha giggled.