“How flaming long has it been since ye used up the Master’s luck?” Jax yelled over her shoulder as we pelted down the hallway.
“I don’t know!” Lynnria shouted, chest heaving. “Like… yesterday?”
“Watcher’s eye,” I groaned from my position trailing behind the pack. “You’re going to need to start keeping track. This is ridiculous!”
The wheezing conversation halted briefly while we navigated through yet another island of furniture, variously dodging, weaving, or hurtling over desks and divans depending on physical ability. I was mostly just trying not to trip over anything.
The coin we were all chasing had picked up an incredible speed by that point, defying logic and reason to a preposterous degree. You would have thought the damned thing was in free fall, not innocently rolling down a hallway.
“Do you still see it?” I yelled.
“Yes,” Arx shouted from well ahead. At her Agility levels, she was much faster than the rest of us—because apparently, that was how that worked. “I’d have caught it already if it weren’t for all this crap in the way!”
Right about then, we came to a much wider area, for once devoid of furniture save for a familiar-looking rug. And a door on the windowed side of the hall. As we passed the double set of ascending stairs, the conspicuously nude statues, and the undeniable remains of the table Lynnria had broken earlier, there could only be one conclusion.
“The fuck?!” I huffed. “The hallway loops?”
“We wasn’t running backward,” Jax shot back, herself struggling not to gawk.
Almost before we had even processed that insanity, we were through and on down the hall again—as ever, straight as an arrow and with no signs of even a gentle curve.
I tried taking furtive glances at the doors as we passed them, trying to get some nebulous idea as to their signage, but there was almost no hope of remembering them all. I was not even certain whether these were ones we had already seen, or if they had been replaced by new ones.
Because who knew what the Dungeon’s rules were anymore. They might as well have been assembled by a bunch of gerbils rolling around on a typewriter.
Distracted as I was, my shin took the opportunity to slam into an inconveniently placed footstool, and I slid to the floor in a heap.
“And done. I’m ready for testing now, if you’d all—” Mia paused. “Wait, what’s going on? What did I miss this time?”
“We’s already testing one o’ yer dead pish skills,” Jax yelled, her voice fading as she drew away.
Mia ignored the insult. “You are? Then… why are you lying on the floor, my liege?”
Biting back the automatic, pained cursing I wanted to reply with, I instead stumbled to my feet to limp after my party. Because of course, the wizard would be the one to get left in the dirt. Maybe I should invest in something like an Expeditious Retreat? That’d be nice.
“Mia, what exactly does the Luck Rune do, anyway?” I panted.
“Mmm~?” Mia thrilled huskily. “Lord Donum…! Naughty. I haven’t even cleaned up yet.”
“Fair enough.”
Right about then, there was a distant crash followed by a pair of equally distant, gray legs upending themselves over a table. “Son-of-a-’stoe-sucking whore!”
“Don’t… lose it!” Lynnria called, clearly winded. She might well have been quite the runner amongst her peers, but stats were stats. Even I had better stamina.
A sudden pain lanced through my rib-cage.
Slightly better stamina…
“Lose what?” Mia prompted.
“Coin…” I explained. Shortly. “Chasing… coin.”
“You’re chasing a coin,” Mia repeated—from her tone, as though reacting to a gaggle of five-year-olds reporting on little Jimmy’s heroic victory over the terrible, inch-long lizard they had happened upon. “And I gather our friend, Lynnria, has temporarily enchanted this coin with a Rune for good fortune? Did it never occur to you that losing it would be most unfortunate? Quite the opposite of the intent of the Rune, wouldn’t you say?”
I managed to suck in a deep breath. “Why, no, Mia. That hadn’t occurred to me. Because I don’t know how the damned Rune works!”
“Fair enough,” she chortled, echoing me. “Well, then. Until you do catch it, why don’t we go over your skill advancements?”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“It’s not like you have anything better to do,” she reasoned. “But, if you’re too busy to attend to my literal purpose in life…”
I rolled my eyes. “Fiiiine. But no huge cards in my face. I have to see where I’m going.”
“But I’ve already updated…” She sighed mournfully. “Whatever. You only really care about the big milestones, anyway.”
“Explain to me why I should care about a bunch of one-point increases, and maybe I will,” I shot back, slowing to a much more sustainable jog. There was no chance for me to catch up to the Dolilim, anyway. Even with the obstacles.
She sniffed. “I suppose a single point isn’t so significant in the grand scheme of things. However, it is a step along the journey toward Mastery. And perhaps beyond.”
“Okay. An explanation as to what these steps are and what they mean might actually be helpful.”
She tsked. “I’m sure it would. However, you know I can’t reveal more than what is generally understood by the populace. You’re supposed to figure out the finer details yourself.”
What I knew was that what Mia could or could not reveal vacillated quite a bit depending on her mood. She preferred to play her cards close to her chest, but she would lay them on the table in a heartbeat given the right circumstances.
She was a bit like a gossip that way. Maybe she’s just starved for attention.
“I’ll take what I can get. All I really know is Novice, Intermediate, and Competent.” I hoped, in rattling off what little I had managed to glean, that the incompleteness of my knowledge might shake something loose. “But other than a vague idea that each is better than the last, I’m in the weeds.”
“After those are Proficient, Expert, and Master,” she explained. Then, a moment later, she added, “Grandmaster, too. Though, that is exceedingly rare. No more than six or seven in a generation—across all known skills.”
Bingo. “Wow… why so few?”
She giggled. “Flirt.”
For a moment, I thought I might have overplayed my hand, however my reply was delayed by a need to pick my way through a small scene of overturned furniture and broken crockery.
“Improving one’s skills requires challenging oneself in their use,” she continued when I did not. “You have experienced this before during your… infrequent training sessions.”
“I’ve been a little busy, Mia.”
“Yes, my lord,” she agreed—perhaps a tad too easily. “Of course, in the beginning, literally everything you do with a skill is a challenge, so progress comes quickly. Things slow considerably later on.”
I nodded. “Okay, that makes sense. It’s just like mundane skill progression.”
“As opposed to what?”
“Uh…”
I briefly considered getting into what life was like back on my own planet. She would have probably appreciated the candor, but that would require a whole lot of talking on my part. And I was right in the middle of trying not to get left behind by my trio of lovers.
“I’ll tell you later,” I promised, picking up the pace.
Mia hummed with a tinge of disappointment. “As… you wish.”
Another handful of seconds passed. Whether they passed awkwardly or not, I did not know. Sucking oxygen into an increasingly starved pair of lungs has a way of pulling one’s attention away from social mores.
Mia did not have that problem.
“I suppose there’s no harm in admitting,” she said finally, “the various tiers of proficiency are not anything particularly special. They mean specific things, of course, but they were only ever intended to be a little badge to let you know you’re doing well. And She-that-I-was usually includes a report on how the skill is evolving under your care.”
I missed a step. “You mean I don’t get bonuses for achieving them?”
“Bonuses?!” She made a disgruntled little sound. “No, no. That is a frustrating misconception. It implies an external force working on the skill, but that is not the case, at all! It is only your own Will continually working to push the skill in a direction you find most suitable for your needs.”
“For example… Efficacy in the Gloom, your accuracy spell—”
“I remember.”
She clucked at the interruption. “Yes, well. You requested that information be on the card, and since someone doesn’t want to be distracted—”
“Sorry, sorry… go on.”
“Anyway, you just managed to get it to level 20 during your most recent battle. You’ve been quite satisfied with it overall, so it has not evolved much. The only thing I’ve written here is a note about the slight improvement to the skill’s potency. By contrast, Windfall of the Thrall…” She paused expectantly.
“My luck aura,” I filled in.
She made a pleased sound. “Just so. It has recently ticked over to level 43—putting it within the range of Competent. However, despite your literal request on gaining the skill for it to continually push at your companions’ libidos, you have only ever been frustrated by this feature.”
“Because I can’t turn it off!” I growled. “Besides, at the time, Arx gained power from that sort of thing.”
“She still does,” Mia countered. “Both of your Dolilim feed from all the emotions around them. Not just your own. Jax, in particular, gains strength from this arousal. So despite the inconvenience, it is to the benefit of all.”
I groaned. It was a sound argument, but that did not mean I had to like it.
“Yes, okay. Fine. In my defense, living with three girls who are constantly horny is exhausting. Worse, I feel like I’m letting them down whenever I’m not in the mood. And I should be allowed to not be in the mood! For that matter, so should they!”
“Well, there’s not much you can do about that now. Both of your bonded companions have chosen to remove that state of being from themselves. Not being in the mood is no longer in their natures.”
She paused for a moment to rifle through some papers then began to scratch something down.
“If you really feel like you’re letting them down,” she mused over the sounds of her writing, “I could craft you a skill to change your own nature accordingly. It would have to be secondary to the skill’s primary function, however. We wouldn’t want the arousal to worsen with skill improvement. So perhaps as a negative side-effect? Yes… that would work to strengthen the ability.”
I made a pained sound in my throat. While it could be argued that I was becoming something like an incubus already, deliberately doing that to myself was going to be a tough pill to swallow.
“You would have to come up with one hell of a skill…”
“Oh, I’m sure I can,” she murmured. I could just imagine the Cheshire grin spreading across her face. “Better than Lust resistance, that’s certain.”
“Hey, now. That’s a much needed skill around these parts.”
“Naturally,” she agreed off-handedly, returning the pencil to her desk with a click. I assumed. “In any event, because of your continued distaste, your aura has not been having quite the pronounced effect it once had. While the Luck it provides has continued to ramp up as normal, the arousal side-effect has deteriorated markedly. It would now take well over a day to reduce one of your non-resistant companions into a quivering ball of need.”
That explained a few things. Lynnria had definitely been frisky earlier, but a quivering ball she was not. And from the merry chase her charm had sent us on, my luck aura had had plenty of time to work on her.
“A bit of good news, for once,” I remarked, pleased. “Anything else of significance?”
“Well, the various skills related to your sexual prowess have—”
“Of significance!”
“Fiiine,” she groaned. “Let’s see…”
A prolonged series of fwipping noises—accompanied by quite a lot of polite swearing—sounded in my ear, and I realized with a guilty start that Mia must have been thumbing through a substantial pile of notes. A lot of effort had been expended to compile all that data, and here I was brushing it off as an inconvenience.
“Well… I suppose there is one thing,” she announced finally, defeated. “You have learned to Write.”
I frowned in confusion. “I already knew how to write.”
“No, my lord,” she said, almost flippantly, yet somehow still with a slight edge of significance. “You did not.”
Whatever she had meant by that, my attention was quickly pulled away. It seemed the rest of my party had finally stopped and were currently going through the throes of their post-marathon recovery.
The coin, I noticed on drawing even with them, had rolled to a stop—heads up—in front of an innocuous-looking door. The signboard swinging overhead bore the likeness of a hand, liberally bandaged and with a thimble on its pinky. The unfortunate needler?
It seemed like a bit of a stretch, but with the thimble, this might have been the shop of a seamstress or some such. They used needles. And with the bandages…?
Still, while I could not recall the details of each and every door we had passed, I was pretty sure we had not encountered this signboard. Which made no sense. But here we were.
Lynnria pointed a wavering claw at me. “You… cheater! You… you started jogging!”
I shrugged. “Mia wanted to go over my skill-ups.”
There was a collective groan.
“The lot of you can sodomize yourselves with a splintered broom handle,” Mia announced dismissively.
Arx and Lynnria both snorted with barely restrained mirth at that, but Jax seemed a little lost.
“What’s that mean?”
“Sodomy? It refers to the act of—fuck you! Fuck your tits! Fuck your father’s tits!” She cleared her throat loudly. “Yes… well, that. But anally.”
“Oh.” Jax pondered it for a moment, apparently with some seriousness. “I ain’t sure I like the sound of that… lessen the Master had two dicks. That could be fun. Might hurt, though.”
Slowly, her eyebrows began to climb upward.
I clapped my hands together sharply.
“Well! This seems to be our door.” I scooped up the coin, and brandished it like a bell on a stick for a bunch of cats. “Heads, we go in. That was the deal. Right?”
Arx hummed a few notes under her breath. “I’m not getting any negative vibes from it.”
“Good enough for me.”
So saying, I pulled out the green Key and, trying my utmost to project an air of confidence, slotted it into the triangular divot.
On contact, the metal Keyhole began to warp and flow, and I jerked back. We all watched, fascinated, as the now-liquid metal poured itself up and around the edges of the Key until finally solidifying again into the shape of a clawed hand. With the Key in its grip, the whole of it had transformed into a central doorknob—something like a demonic, hobbit hole.
Which I thought was pretty clever. However, we were soon distracted by yet another rumbling at our feet. And this time, a bit of dust accompanied it to the floor.
I held up a finger. “Okay, that’s definitely a pattern. Any time we accomplish anything lately, the ground shakes.”
“You don’t think we broke anything serious when we escaped from that maze, do you?” Lynnria hazarded.
I gulped. That was not a particularly pleasant thought. However, if it was some series of aftershocks, why would the timing be so precise?
“Maybe using a Key temporarily weakens the integrity of the Dungeon? So if something big is happening elsewhere…” I left the thought unfinished.
“I suppose it’s possible,” Arx reasoned. “Not a lot is truly known about the inner workings of this place.”
“Not a lot we could do about it, even if we did,” Jax returned softly, sidling closer to me. Her claws began to explore the ridges of my back. “Now, is we going through this door? Or is we gonna explore the ‘inner workings’ of me bum?”
The door began to swing open almost without my realizing I had my hand on it.
However, before I could see what laid beyond, Jax’s arms encircled me from behind. Her sharp teeth nipped the valley between my shoulder blades, and the stiffened peaks at her chest pressed firmly into my skin, contrasting sharply—yet oh-so-pleasantly—with the pair of softnesses surrounding them.
“Liar,” she whispered knowingly, the heat from her breath bathing the space between us.
It would seem I had failed to prevent that particular weed from taking root in her mind. And Jax did not have to try very hard to spread it to mine. Not anymore.
Yeah… definitely going to have to reject that skill… I glanced down, silently admonishing my second brain. That’s enough out of you! How sore do you have to get before you’ve had enough?
“Woot ees zat?” a tremulous voice drifted from the portal ahead.
Jax immediately slipped in front of me with a low, threatening growl on her lips. She held her palm out and down, ready to summon her ax at a moment’s notice. The constant sexual firestorm she seemed to embody had been put on abrupt hold the moment a potential threat loomed.
“I see ligh-ta!” the voice called again. “Ees zere soomeone zere?”
We exchanged glances. That had been a rather unmistakable accent. Can’t be…
Jax rolled her shoulders and began to cautiously make her way forward. The voice had sounded innocuous enough—distressed even—but one never knew what tricks might be in store.
The room inside was lit quite dimly but without any obvious sources. There were no flames nor candles. The windows to one side showed only pitch blackness beyond. Even the wooden slats at our feet had no trace of illumination slipping between them.
It was eerie, in a way. You could see. But only just.
However, even the dim lighting could not conceal the piles of horrifically—and unforgettably—garish clothing scattered about. Of course, none of it was quite so lovingly displayed as the last time we had seen it. The whole place looked to be as disheveled as Dorothy’s house after having smashed into the Yellow Brick Road.
“Zere eez someone! I coon ‘ear you.”
Heads swiveled at the sound, but there was no one in evidence. The man’s voice had come from somewhere beyond the low counter, however all we could see was something flat and gray slowly descending just to the other side of it. It almost looked like an empty elevator platform.
“Quickly! Ze creez-tal! Tooch ze creez-tal-uh!”
Jax relaxed slightly and cocked her hip. We still were not certain what to make of this scenario, but it was at least clear there was no immediate threat.
She folded her arms in front of her chest. “The what?”
“I think he said ‘crystal,’” I hazarded, very much guessing.
“Like that one?”
We turned to find Lynnria pointing toward a typical—if small—example of a Dungeon touch-stone innocently hovering over an iron lamp stand installed into the doorframe. Below it, there was a small, wooden sign that bore the inscription, ‘Customers.’
“‘Urr-ay, you foolz-ah! Before I am ponk-tured like ze ov-air-proofed bread!”
“Ponk-tured like bread…?” I blinked a couple of times, but there was no use in pondering foreign idioms right then. Whatever he was on about, the man seemed in genuine distress. “Tap that crystal, will you, Lynnria?”
She nodded, complying quickly.
However, rather than the riddles that so often came with installations like these, all that came of her touch was a cheerful little chime followed by the appearance of a small, holographic screen hovering about a finger’s width away from the crystal’s face. The girls all crowded close at this, fascinated. However, there was only a simple timer displayed there, dutifully counting down from one hour.
The rough scraping of stone on stone sounded behind us, and we all turned to see the elevator rising toward the ceiling. And then the series of spikes arrayed beneath it.
“By zee Grace of Maeve…” The man breathed a sigh of relief as he rose to his feet.
I did not know whether to be surprised or not at once more crossing paths with this particular individual. As ever, the tailor we had hired back in Raialie looked like a pencil dressed for an anime convention. But with more feathers. It was… a look.
The man paused on seeing us. Whatever fleeting gratitude he had been showing was quickly replaced by a barely concealed disdain.
“Ew… it eez you sree.”
The man did something that might have been a roll of his shoulders—perhaps in discomfort or just to resettle his extravagant outfit—except he did not seem to have any, so it appeared as if his stick-like arms momentarily drifted up his torso. Then, he dipped below the counter to retrieve an enormous hat and began fastidiously dusting it off.
“I see you have managed to lose those rags you were wearing before,” he continued in his own language. “Much as I dislike seeing all those jiggling… lumps your women seem so proud of, it is a marked improvement.”
For a moment, I was half-afraid the targets of his scorn might say or do something regrettable. And I was half-tempted to let them. This guy…
However, to my surprise, neither of them seemed to give a rat’s fart about his opinions. They made no move to cover themselves. Nor did they hiss or growl as they often did when challenged. The man might as well have been a disgruntled bug in their eyes.
Then again, they were not smiling, either.
“My women have very nice lumps, thank you very much,” I said finally, not quite able to suppress my irritation. And from the series of provocative smiles and poses going on along my peripheral, much to certain individuals’ amusement. “And you’re welcome!”
He shrugged… I think.
“Yes, very good, I’m sure,” he drawled before gesturing toward Lynnria. “This one is new. Seems familiar, though.”
She glanced at us, mystified, before addressing the man. “I’m… sorry. I don’t speak your language… sir? Ma’am? F-forgive me, I’m not even sure what kind you hail from.”
His left eyebrow rose so quickly, it was difficult to tell it had even moved. I almost thought I heard a little poink accompanying the gesture.
“You don’t recognize him?” I asked. “He’s a tailor from your hometown.”
“Oh, and because I’m a local, I’m just supposed to know everybody?” She shook her head teasingly. “Besides, I’ve only lived in Raialie for a little over a year.”
The tailor scratched at a spot just below his mouth approximately where his chin ought to be. If he had one. “A year, you say? Hmm… by any chanze, deed you wonze leeve in Bradfirth?”
Lynnria hesitated and began studying the floor. “I may have… passed through there. Once.”
Both of the Dolilim glanced at her before sending me a significant look. Not that they had needed to. She might as well have just held up a sign:
Hi! I’m Lynnria. And I’m keeping secrets!
But her act seemed good enough for the tailor.
“Zat must be eet,” he murmured.
His eyes flickered to my poor attempt at a loin cloth. I could not describe the look that passed over his face, but nauseated might be the closest.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting me to finish your commission?” he said, again in his own language. “I had just started on it when this whole debacle began. It’s in the back room, so we’ll have to wait for the poison gas to clear.”
Arx perked up. “Poison? We can handle poison if you need us to retrieve something for you.”
The tailor favored her with a condescending look before tapping at some sort of invisible barrier just over the counter. “I’m sure you could. But as you can see, that isn’t exactly possible. I am trapped here, yes? Forced to work as a shopkeeper for the Dungeon’s pleasure until I complete my assignment.”
“And with poison in the back room, you have to stand behind the counter while spikes come down on you?” I asked, horrified. The guy was kind of a prick, but that did not mean I wanted to see him suffer. “Until what? Someone happens to wander in?”
“I will admit, they move slowly. And I can drive them back. Irritating as that might be.” He pressed a hand to his chest and let out a wretched sigh before reaching below the counter to present a half-finished chemise. Shaking it angrily, he sobbed, “I have been made to knit! Can you imagine?! Me? A tailor of my caliber?”
I glanced up at the spikes above. “You have to knit… to keep from dying?”
He merely nodded, still too emotional to reply.
Man… Crafting Classes have it rough. It was like a cross between a sweat shop and the Temple of Doom in here.
“So what happened afore we came in?” Jax asked dryly. “Too good for a knitting needle, was ye? Couldn’t handle it no more?”
He looked down… his face at her. “I’ll have you know, I hadn’t slept since I got here! I must have drifted off. My only reprieve from the constant knitting is when a group of you types come in, and all they ever want is for me to do more work! None of them ever seem to care even a whit for my art, either. It’s been nothing but patchwork on sweat-soaked, bloody underclothes for days!”
“Ach, ye poor fannybaws. Me heart aches fer ye. Truly.”
From her deadpan delivery, Jax might as well have been holding up a sign of her own. But hers simply read:
Twat.
Because apparently, my imagination was being directed by Tex Avery this afternoon.
“So you have seen other Questers,” I said. “From Raialie?”
He performed another of his shoulder-less shrugs. “You are the first I have recognized. Not all have spoken a language I am familiar with.”
Hmm…
I turned to Arx. “Raialie is pretty deep into laoi territory, right? Would there be any Questers there who are unable to speak the language?”
“It’s… possible,” she allowed. “Questers range pretty far afield in search of Mouths. But I doubt they’d travel all the way there without at least someone with a translation ability.”
About then, a soft chime sounded from the back.
“That would be the poison clearing,” the tailor informed us, effectively cutting off that line of questioning. However, he made no move toward the door. From his distracted tapping at the counter, he seemed to want something. “Perhaps, you aren’t in… too much of a hurry?”
And here it comes…
I folded my arms. “Somewhat. Why?”
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