Under different circumstances, the sheer stupefaction Emin was displaying would have been funny. Unfortunately, it was significantly less so while I was standing there completely nude with Emin still pointedly staring at me, mouth open.

Did I seriously forget to lock the door? Wait, not the point right now!

“Emin! Out!” I sank back into the water, the resulting waves helping to obscure me, though not nearly to the extent that I wanted.

For his part, Emin seemed to have short-circuited. Rather than sprinting out of the room (like he should have), he stood there, mute, his eyes locked on me. The only saving grace was that his face had frozen into an “oh my” expression rather than a lecherous one, but it was a small comfort.

To make matters worse, he, of course, was buck-ass naked as well.

Guess he really was pretty bony under all of those robes, huh? Also not the point!

Not quite mortified enough to justify shooting an arrow at him, I opted to cast Summon Pebble instead. I whipped the resulting pebble out towards the nude researcher, and it smacked into his shoulder with a loud thwap.

Finally brought back to his senses, Emin jerked to alertness.

“Right! Sorry! Out!” His eyes lingered for another second, and I revised my stance on mental magic. Had someone handed me a spellbook that would have let me delete the man’s memories, I would have used it in a heartbeat. True to his words, however, he finally turned about, leaving me to myself.

As the room’s previous silence settled back into place, I couldn’t help but interrupt it with a long and drawn-out groan. I slid back, bringing my head under water once again, though this time more to hide myself from the outside world.

Worst of all, as I tried to let the warmth of the bath melt away the entire preceding experience, one thought bubbled up to the surface faster than all the rest.

Pretty bony ass too, huh?

As much as I was trying to keep an eye on Emin while he was here, in light of the awkward experience we’d just had, I sent him on ahead of me to make his own way back to the forest. The idea of walking together on what would have inevitably been a painfully silent trek just wasn’t very appealing to me.

With Emin taken care of, I could have passed my time in pretty much any way I wanted to. Despite that, I opted to head to bed. It was a touch early, but I figured it would do me some good, and the waters of the bathhouse granted a buff to restful sleep.

I awoke the next morning feeling far better than I had the night before, putting the unpleasant experience with Emin completely from my mind. In fact, I put Emin himself completely from my mind. He’d be fine in the forest for the day doing whatever it was he did with all the herbs he found.

For my part, I still had some check-ins to do. After a light breakfast, I opted to hunt down Carpin first. The Logistician gave me some fairly standard updates, noting how the dungeon had grown more efficient since last I’d seen him.

We were finally at a point where it might start making sense to save up our settlement energy for some of the bigger perks, like making the dungeon instanced so multiple parties could run it at the same time. We weren’t particularly close to being able to buy something like that yet, but we were getting diminishing returns on decreasing the dungeon’s recharge timer at this point.

With how little had truly changed, I found myself only half-listening. I was only a second away from thanking him and moving on when he casually mentioned something that caused my focus to snap back to him.

“Sorry, repeat that one?”

“Mm? Right, the death count. With the information we’ve been sharing about what can be found within, we’ve been keeping the number of deaths well under what’s standard for a dungeon at this level. It took all the way until last week for us to have our first full party wipe, and we’ll be taking some further measures to try and prevent another.” The words came out so matter-of-factly that, for a moment, I figured I must have misunderstood him.

“Full party wipe? Like. They all died?” Just like that?

Not seeming to feel the same level of gravity that I was, Carpin simply nodded. “Indeed. You seem somewhat taken aback, which I suppose does you credit. But that’s what adventuring is, you know.” He brought a hand up to scratch at his bald head. “Sometimes you return stronger. Sometimes you don’t return at all.”

I confirmed that I hadn’t known any of the dead, but even so, I left my meeting with Carpin distraught.

“Deary! You’re alive! One begins to wonder after a while, isn’t that right Edgar?” Hive Queen Aval’Kethrid clamped down onto my shoulders in greeting while the shorter kexid by her side bobbed his head up and down.

“Still alive, just a little busy. What’s up, though? Everything been okay lately? Any major updates?” More than any of the others in the city, I felt an obligation to check in on Ava, as there was still something of a language barrier between the kexids and the others. Theoretically, her book club meetings with Barb would help her on that front, but it hadn’t been quite long enough for her to fully master a new language.

Un-clawing me, Ava began to usher me through the subterranean passageways that snaked through the underground city. “Everything is lovely, deary. No need to worry your head at all. As for updates, I do have one! Oh, it’s so exciting to be able to show you this. The other surface dwellers never visit; it’s quite a pity. Come along then.”

Has she maybe thought about installing some lights? I was lucky in that the Illuminated Sight boon I’d gained from killing Ephesis had granted me darkvision, but I doubted too many others shared in that trait. Going underground with a large group of bug-like people you couldn’t understand in the complete darkness probably wasn’t most people’s idea of a fun time.

Meh, she’ll figure it out. Probably.

The walk was considerably longer than I expected it to be, highlighting just how much of Kesser’Thalis the kexids had managed to dig up or remake. As we descended lower and lower, I couldn’t help but worry about cave-ins and feel a touch claustrophobic, but I had to assume that the kexids knew what they were doing. I didn’t spot much in the way of support beams, but then again: magic.

Considering how cramped and sparsely decorated the lower city tended to be, it was something of a shock when we finally reached our destination -- a massive stone chamber, large enough to hold thousands. Not a single stretch of the walls was smooth, though instead of depicting any scenes or murals, the rock had been engraved with dizzying geometric patterns and textures. Even past that, the walls weren’t remotely flat, either, with large divots and protrusions, like a pond struck by rain.

The chamber was largely empty, but a few kexids ambled about inside. Ava called out to one, her voice echoing across the room.

“Hello! Yes, you! We have a guest! Could you be a dear and fetch some performers for us?”

The kexid in question scurried off without a word, leaving me wondering exactly what I was in store for. I didn’t have long to wait, however, as in record time, a host of kexids rushed in to join us.

While most of them came empty-handed, a few lugged about a pair of the largest horns I’d ever seen -- of the instrument variety, not the animal kind -- easily putting even a tuba to shame.

Am I seeing some kind of concert, then? Not how I’d expected this visit to go, but I supposed I wasn’t against it.

With a kind of well-practiced haste, the kexids surged into the middle of the room, forming three concentric circles. The outer circle was perhaps 20 strong; the middle, five; and the inner made up of just two kexids along with the massive horns.

In something of an unexpected twist, once they were all in place, a surge of mana lit up the floor beneath them, and the ground they were standing on rose upwards. Each group rose more than the last, making their stage look like a three-tiered cake.

All the performers fixed their eyes on the hive queen as if waiting for a signal. I didn’t spot her give one, but perfectly in sync, the outer circle began the performance.

Not by dancing or singing or anything I might have guessed, however. They all began to vibrate.

Each of their bodies shook back and forth while their mandibles clacked up and down and their arms tapped against the chitin on their legs over and over again. The scene itself was somewhat disconcerting at first, but the sound…

It was enveloping, bouncing off the surrounding stone and fully filling the space. The encompassing barrage of staccato taps had an almost rain-like quality to it, making me feel as though I’d been transported into the center of a storm.

Bypassing the middle circle, the inner duo started up next, breathing life into the colossal woodwind instruments. The resulting noise was impossibly deep and resonant, thrumming through my bones and washing away every bit of background noise. Goosebumps formed on my skin as the weight of the music settled into me.

And at last, the five in the middle circle joined in, not by vibrating like the tier beneath them, nor by singing. Instead, they whistled.

Except, there was no mistaking it for the sort of whistling a human could ever pull off. It was the sort of sound that could only exist in a fairytale, made by some mythical creature resting within a dense veil of fog. Crystal clear, unremitting, it cut through the patter and the thrum, piercing through and pushing them to the side. All five kexids began in unison before one by one peeling off, bobbing and weaving into haunting and enchanting harmonies.

It felt distinctly like something that could only be heard, not captured. The kind that you could attempt to throw into a tape recorder, only to find the tape blank and empty after the fact, the universe flatly refusing to let you experience the sound in anything but the unaltered, original form.

Images traveled along with the sounds, flickering through my mind as though a roll of film was being dragged through my ears. Fields filled with green seaglass, dark waves high enough to drown the heavens, an expanse of mist that went on endlessly in all directions.

The experience continued for some unknown and unknowable amount of time as I felt myself getting completely lost in the performance. Had it continued forever, I wasn’t certain I’d have been able to pull myself away.

And yet, like all things did, the music eventually ended, slowly fading away until all that was left was its absence. The silence was heavy, palpable, painful.

Until, all at once, it was not.

“Oh! Edgar, look! She’s doing the thing. The human thing with the eyes and the water. So peculiar how they do that, isn’t it?”

I raised a finger to my cheek, shocked to find that she was right. I couldn’t recall exactly when they’d started, but the tears trickled down steadily.

“So, deary? Do tell. Did you like what you heard?”

It took me a while to respond, as if the music had rendered me mute, taking away some vital piece of me that was necessary to speak. Eventually, however, I found my voice, answering as simply as I could.

“I did. Yes.”

The rest of my tour with Ava passed in something of a daze. Along with the music hall, they’d also fully uncovered and touched up a pottery studio, and if somewhat drab in the colors, the various ceramics I saw highlighted the kexids’ mastery over the artform.

The aftereffects of the music stayed with me for the next few hours, putting me into a more detached and pensive mood. By the time dinner rolled around, I found myself feeling far less mortified, violated, and incensed about the bathhouse debacle than I’d been before. It was an accident and I was 27. It was hardly like no one had seen me naked before.

Still didn’t mean I wasn’t a little annoyed, though, especially with how long he’d stared after I’d yelled at him.

Feeling like it was best to clear the air, however, I went to fetch Emin from his tent. The moment I called out to him, he rushed out and began apologizing profusely, stumbling over every other word.

I held a hand up, motioning for him to stop. With my other, I reached into my pouch and brought out a cup -- the same one I’d used before the start of the semester for my Chill Liquid training. I held it out to him, motioning for him to take it.

He slid his teeth back and forth in his mouth, examining the cup as if it were some sort of snake before ultimately accepting his cluelessness.

“A cup?”

“A cup,” I agreed. “You’re forgiven if you go to the bar, fill it up with moonshine, and come back here. Do not tell the bartender who it’s for or let her -- or anyone else -- rope you into conversation.” I’d already broken a good deal of my “keep Emin away from everyone” rules, and at this rate, I figured once more couldn’t hurt too much.

“O- Okay?” Equally confused and concerned, he accepted the cup from me, and I did my best to give him directions to the dryad bar. Seeming to decide it was best to not ask any questions, Emin rushed off.

Considerably faster than I’d expected, he returned, the full cup marking his trip as a success.

“I feel a deep need to rant about how incredible the exterior of that bar was, but I’m quashing it,” he informed me. “What now?”

I accepted the moonshine from him and beckoned him to follow, activating one of my spell effects for the second time ever.

Emer’Thalis Moonshine

This liquid is a valid target for Conjure Water’s secondary effect. Would you like to bind it? Note, based on the cost and rarity of this liquid, you would be limited to conjuring a total of 11 glasses a day.

Pretty sure I’m only allowed to conjure five glasses of the Springtime Spritzer I have it bound to now. Evidently the moonshine, though stronger, wasn’t considered a luxury item.

As we walked off into the forest, I confirmed the prompt, swapping out the spritzer for what, if I recalled correctly, was essentially paint thinner.

Once the two of us had walked long enough to put the shadows’ settlement well behind us, I picked two sturdy-looking trees that grew close to one another and motioned for Emin to sit with me.

Having used my spell as desired, I returned the cup to him, fetching another from my pouch -- a teacup that Barb had gifted me on a previous trip. One cast of Conjure Liquid later, and the two of us both had full servings of moonshine.

Without any preface, at last, I addressed him. “Are you sorry for being dumb and walking in on me and then ogling me for a stupidly long time?”

Nearly spilling all of his moonshine as he animatedly bobbed his head, he sputtered out his words. “Y- Yes! My gods, you have no idea how embarrassed I was. I- I mean, not that it’s about me, of course, but what I’m trying to say is-”

I rolled my eyes and extended my cup out towards his. “Good. Then it never happened, and we’re drinking until we forget what we saw.”

Having a functioning nose, Emin eyed his cup somewhat skeptically, but hesitantly he extended his cup towards mine. The two clinked together in a cheers of sorts, and with much more conviction, he nodded.

“Never happened,” he agreed.

And with that, we took a sip.

“Not fair! Solidarity!” I grumbled. Emin was using his go-to drinking trick of using his class skills to disable his taste buds and the nerves in his mouth, leaving me as the only one who had to suffer.

He merely snorted in response, my goading not enough to get him to undergo the pain of the moonshine. On the flip side, my aversion to the drink was at least helping me pace myself whereas Emin had no issue sipping from his cup as if it held water.

We were on cup two at this point, and I was starting to feel it. Thankfully, the alcohol had quickly dissolved the awkward tension between us, both from the bathhouse debacle and the library incident before that. As best I could tell, things felt pretty back to normal at this point.

“I should have done this with that bottle Alara’s uncle gave us at my dinner party,” I reflected with a laugh. “Can you imagine if I could conjure that stuff? I think that was the drunkest I’ve seen any of you.” Emin in particular had barely been able to walk by the end of the night. Now that was good “drink until you forget things” liquor.

Despite the reminder of his previously slightly sloppy state, Emin only smiled. “That was a good night, wasn’t it? We should do something like that again soon.” As if doing his best to recreate the aforementioned state, he took a big gulp from his cup.

“Yeah? I’d be down. Although I’m not hosting the next one. What about you -- are you volunteering? Party at chez Emin?” Actually, I realized that I knew very little about Emin’s living situation. At most, I’d met him at the lab space he got through the Chamber of Knowledge to work on his research. “Wait, are you also living with your family, or are you the only one of us all that has a place to yourself?” Alara apparently lived with her parents, and Verin stayed in a wing of the Sylum mansion.

Emin fiddled with a weed by his side, seeming to hesitate before answering.

“I suppose a bit of both, actually.” He let off a wry chuckle, plucking the weed from the ground. “I am my only family, so I live alone and live with my entire family, if you think about it.” He drained the rest of his cup, holding it out to me for a refill.

Having unwittingly made the mood considerably darker, I refilled his cup with a wince. “Oh. Sorry. Were they- Was it recent, or…” Condolences had never been a strong suit of mine.

Thankfully, he batted his hand, waving the mood away. “No, it was well over a decade ago at this point. Remember how you asked me once what made me want to go into potion research?”

Right. The night we’d gone dancing, after a woman had called him a “lost puppy.” “I’m pretty sure you told me it was a ‘sob story?’”

He nodded. “Just so. A confluence of bad circumstances. I managed to fall and scrape my knee pretty badly, and my parents used the last of our health potion on me. We always tried to keep some around, but they were costly, you know? So my parents decided we’d wait a few weeks before we bought another one.” He stared straight ahead, deep into the woods rather than looking at me. Each sentence was punctuated with a light sip from his cup.

“I’ll spare you the gritty details. Suffice it to say, my parents were shopkeepers, we didn’t live in a great part of town, and we got robbed. Dad always had a very ‘tough on crime’ kind of stance, you know? He wasn’t the type to just let someone try and rob him without a fight, only, the two of them were laughably bad at that sort of stuff. Well… you get the picture. Ended pretty poorly for them. Resulted in a pivotal moment for me, running around the house looking for a potion. Not finding one. Cue the resulting trauma and obsession.”

I stayed silent, not certain how to respond to something like that. Luckily, Emin switched the topic fairly quickly.

“All that nastiness aside, it gave me quite the career crisis, you know? For a couple of months, I was all gung-ho to become a guardsman of all things. Can you imagine it? I have a lot of respect for what they do, but I just don’t think I’m quite cut out for it.”

Recalling his bony body despite myself, I had to agree. Evidently haven’t drank enough to forget that yet.

“Besides, I’d already dumped five points into Charisma by then. Did I ever tell you that? I was planning to be an actor when I was younger. Took all sorts of theater lessons as a kid. Then after the… event, I ended up in a sort of Knowledge-run boarding school instead and went crazy about health potions, and now here I am.”

Not having the right words to give him, I opted to do something simpler, scooching over and leaning into him. He returned the gesture, leaning slightly into me, although seeming somewhat embarrassed as he did so.

“But, uh, now I feel like I’ve been talking forever, you know? Do you- Do you know what you want to end up doing after the academy and all that?”

Lord, what a loaded question. Still, if he wanted to change the subject, I would oblige. “You know, I really don’t know,” I realized. “I have a feeling I’m going to be training for a pretty long time, honestly.” It’s either that or eventually getting found by an overeager Antagonist, so… yeah. “After that, though? Not sure. Maybe travel. Pick up some hobbies. I think I mostly just want a good, stable life. I don’t know if I really have a passion or a goal like you do.”

It was something I’d mostly come to terms with by now. I didn’t need to have my name recorded in the history books. I mostly just wanted to be safe and happy. I’d probably fight a good bit just to level up and extend my lifespan, but I wasn’t trying to become some level 100 god-queen or whatever.

Emin tensed up a bit at that, gently pulling away from me. “Have you… Do you ever think about picking some sort of career path that will help people? You seem to be fairly strong, no? And with a lot of resources. Could probably do a lot of good in the world if you put your mind to it.”

Good. I rolled the word around on my tongue, mixing it with a dash of moonshine. I guess I should be doing something like that, shouldn’t I be? Not like many people get to be a Protagonist, so you know… Great power, great responsibility and all that. I mean, I’d certainly tried my best with the whole saving the forest quest, and it wasn’t like I was going to suddenly become evil, but…

“Yeah, I dunno, honestly. My class leans pretty heavily towards fighting, but I’m not really trying to become a hero or anything. Not sure where that leaves me. Maybe this is bad, but I think I probably won’t do anything like that?” If I naturally settled into something that happened to help people out, I’d hardly complain, but the end goal was more about having a happier, simpler life. Maybe running some dungeons for cash. Getting strong enough to beat up any Antagonists headed my way. Retiring. Reading a bunch of books.

Having finished my own drink, I pushed myself more upright and gave myself a refill. I caught sight of Emin’s face as I did so, and on it was some complicated expression I couldn’t identify. After a moment, he seemed to come to some sort of conclusion, nodding to himself. Rather than let me in on his thoughts, he just shrugged.

“Interesting.” He let the matter drop there, instead turning to much more important affairs. “Although aren’t you a full cup behind me? I could have sworn you took pride in your ability to hold your liquor better than me, and yet- Ow, ow!”

I playfully punched him in the side, perhaps giving it a bit more strength than I intended to. Rising to the challenge, however, I downed a full cup of the moonshine, barely managing to do so without gagging.

“So Emin. You know any good two player drinking games?”

I let the sentence hang there as I topped myself off again, and the two of us left all the heavy topics behind. For the remainder of the night, we did our best to get stupidly, roaringly drunk.