I spent the rest of that day spending time with Cori, learning how to disable traps more thoroughly without damaging internal components, maximizing the amount of salvageable, and thus sellable, parts. Eventually, we all went our separate ways, after I set a time to teach Cori my techniques.
We decided the gym would be a better place for it rather than trying it in a small, dirty shack down a dark alley that was full of very breakable things.
I decided to make a small detour back to Atelier du Maiden, returned my uniform, and changed into the clothes I left behind. I got greeted by more hugs from the other girls there, and continued assurances from the manager I was still welcome to work there, and they even gave me a small meal. I did my best not to distract them, as there were still guests. Even the ruckus of the evening before wasn't enough to deter our regulars. That warmed my heart somewhat.
I returned to my dorm room and climbed up to my bunk and flopped into the soft comfort of my bedding. I needed sleep. Real sleep. Real proper sleep.
Thankfully, my rest wasn't disturbed by the dark dreams again. I was tired of nightmares. I was tired of a lot of things.
I dreamt of light, of a giant crystal made of starlight, it spoke words to me, but words I couldn't understand.
Whatever else I dreamt, I couldn't remember, their form and substance lost to memory and ephemera.
I woke feeling more refreshed than I had in weeks.
I rolled out of bed to see Smitty and Myth likewise going through their own morning rituals. Cori was gone of course, but now I was beginning to wonder how often she was just sleeping at her secret workshop.
I smiled to myself. A little less mystery in my day but knowing was worth it. Probably.
I joined everyone in the process of getting ready, which involved some strategic shuffling around each other. Dorm rooms were never big places, but having three of us trying to navigate was a fun challenge. A sick mind could claim it was good training for dealing with dungeon halls. Whoever says that is an arse, however.
I looked at our schedule for the day, and felt myself perk up with excitement. Dungeon Core studies today. My favorite subject!
Dungeon Core studies taught us about what was known about the mechanisms of dungeon cores, how they grew, how they generated monsters, and how to properly prune them.
I had found them fascinating when I read about them as a child, such things being a large inspiration for why I went to dungeon school after my casting out. My first taste of pruning one week prior had me wanting more. It felt so satisfying for some reason.
I could see Smitty and Myth did not share my enthusiasm, but that was fine. Everyone had their interests and focus.
I took a little extra time this morning to do my hair up in braids to keep from having to keep my long hair under control. I had been recommended time and again to cut it short, like many others, but there was some vain part of me that didn't want to do it. I liked my hair. Bright red, long, silky, and shimmery. After all my hardships, time on the road, conflicts, brawls, and more, it still looked lovely, and it was a point of pride for me.
I had been mocked for it as a child, mostly by my siblings, and even my parents, but some deep part of me refused to feel any kind of shame about it. It set me apart from the other elves of Burgotova, and I wasn't going to let them keep me down about it.
That said, it did get in the way sometimes, thus the braids.
I realized the process took much longer than I had hoped, and I had to run out of the dorms with my book bag in tow to try to get some kind of breakfast in me before class started.
Thankfully, the lines were short. Less thankfully, it was short because the good food was all gone. Gruel and tea today. All the coffee was gone. A lack of coffee should be a capital crime, as far as I was concerned. One day I would become queen of the world and make that a law.
I snickered to myself at the silly thought and found myself a seat to scarf it all down as quickly as possible.
As I shoveled the mushy, tasteless, though nutritious, slop down my gullet, someone pulled out the seat across from me. I recognized the perfume, and my appetite immediately soured.
"I have neither the time nor the patience to entertain you today, Togalli. To be frank, I never have either in any quantity, so kindly go annoy someone else today." I said without looking up at her.
"I expected such an attitude from an exile, such as you. As much as I enjoy our verbal fencing, I am here on official business." She signed and put an envelope in front of me.
I wasn't fond of envelopes.
"What is it?" I stared at it as if it were a venomous snake waiting to take my hand off.
"Just open it, Alta. I don't like this any more than you do, but apparently, despite being exiled just like you, I've found myself being volunteered to be the messenger today. Please just open it so I can leave. I have to witness this, much to my displeasure." She groaned.
I put down my spoon and picked up the envelope.
It had a triad of seals upon it. One belonged to the City Lord of Revenstahd, the next being the seal of the Guild of Messages, which meant it was officially witnessed. The third made me scowl. The seal of the Order of the Obsidian Gauntlet. The pompous bastards had to drag me back in. I couldn't even have one day of peace from these sniveling low lives who pretended at chivalry.
I tore it open with little regard for preserving the seals and read the letter. I swore, read some more, and continued swearing.
The knight whose arm I had broken had made a deal with the City Lord and agreed to forget the entire thing in exchange for a duel of honor to be held this weekend in the courtyard of the Lord's Manor. This was the last thing I wanted. I tossed the letter onto the table and swore again.
"Very creative use of the common tongue, Marchesi. Is it what I think it is?" She asked, resting her chin in her hand, pointing at the offending letter with a finger.
"A duel of all things. At least they didn't ask for an apology. I would rather eat my tongue than apologize to a knight!" I practically spat the invective.
"What is your deal with Knights, anyway? Even as kids, you hated them, but I never quite understood it. They serve a purpose in the Mortal Kingdoms. They fight monsters, protect the roads, and act as proxies so we don't burden our citizens with wars from all the petty feuds. It’s not a bad system, you have to admit." Mariana asked me with a raised eyebrow. Her tone had no condescension in it, so I would entertain the question.
"The idea of independently operating heavily armed, high-skilled, and often magically enhanced individuals with a baked-in sense of superiority and entitlement isn't enough? I've never had an interaction with them that went well. Even as a child, the one retired knight my family hired to help teach me was a braggart, a cur, and I'm pretty sure he tried having his way with several of my maids, and I will not stand for that sort of thing. I've found that sort of behavior is so common amongst their kind that it almost seems the norm." I sipped my tea with an indignant slurp.
"Come now, I've met many perfectly fine Knights. Some orders are certainly full of those with poor characters, the Obsidian Gauntlet chief amongst them, but maybe you just haven't met the right knight." She smiled at me as she sat up.
"Forgive me if I don't hold my breath. If I did that, I'd likely join the ranks of the undead before I met this supposed knight you've described. If these knights were so good, surely, they would stop the bad ones, yes? If they don't, then as far as I'm concerned, they're just as bad as them." I snorted derisively as I could.
"Fine, whatever. You keep your notions to yourself. Though I am curious what you will do about the challenge?" She tapped the paper. "Not something you can turn down, is it?"
"No, I can't," I hated to admit, "if I don't accept it, then they may pin something on me just to blow this all over. The guard hates these knights as much as I do, but the City Lord keeps bending over backwards to help them. Probably afraid of them laying siege to Revenstahd or some nonsense."
"Do you think you can take him? He was drunk and unarmed. This time he will be armed and armored, and likely clear-headed."
"And so will I. So will I." I grinned a mischievous grin. I had a plan in mind.
I had managed to put the duel out of my mind for the time being and made it to class on time. I greeted my roommates with a wave and set up at my desk, pens, pencils, and notebooks at the ready. I was excited to see what we would learn today.
A short, but stout and heavily muscled reptilian individual entered the classroom. They were a drakekin and looked a lot like a small dragon without wings. And more humanoid in shape. Thinking about, outside the head and tail, they weren't that draconic, but I knew better than to ever say something like that out loud.
Their name was Zreenahclickclick. Or at least that was as close as I could come to pronouncing their name. They allowed us to refer to them as Zree. To which I was grateful, as the clicking sound hurt my tongue.
"Good morning, class, I hope you are ready for a busy day of notetaking. We'll be going into dungeon core formation and origin theory today. Everything I say will be on a written exam, so please pay attention."
They then turned to the enchanted chalkboard behind them, which began transcribing their words into an easier-to-read format for those in the back. It was a helpful spell some professors used as some folks had trouble hearing, and understanding accents was a problem for some. Dungeon School did its best to accommodate them, but it was up to the individual professor.
I focused on the lesson and set out to write down everything.
Dungeons are thought to be collections of mana pooling underground for a variety of reasons. The most commonly agreed upon ones are locations where a great deal of death had occurred in the past, in abandoned structures, and anywhere that had significant amounts of stagnant water. The last one wasn't as concrete as the others, but it did seem to be a repeating trend in areas where dungeons appeared.
The mana would pool, and if it didn't find some way to escape, it would crystallize. From this crystallization point, it would begin constructing passageways, flooding the air with the strange mana that the core emitted. Dungeons in natural areas would form tunnels as if they were dug by large burrowing animals, whereas dungeons that formed in abandoned structures would take the form similar to the construction of that location. It was not unheard of for dungeons to form in wooden structures and form new passages that looked exactly like the architecture of the original building, even if it had long fallen to ruin.
The theory for this was that the dungeon mana, when it encountered the stone of the depths could pick up impressions born from memories of denizens who had once lived there, intelligent or otherwise. Zree stressed that this was still theoretical at best but was still undergoing research.
Other things they were still studying about dungeons were why the cores would grow, why their growing warped space, what exactly was the mechanism for deciding what kind of monsters populated them, how were traps created, why did trap designs follow modern design philosophy, and more. After laying it all out, it felt like more was unknown than known.
That excited me. Maybe someday I could make some kind of discovery about dungeon origins and their nature. Find out why monsters happened. Despite all my setbacks in life, thinking about such things helped keep me going.
The class continued, with many questions being asked by various students and me. Class soon concluded with Zree assigning us some homework, an essay about known anomalies, which could be found in our textbooks. We will cover more about it next week.
As I packed up my books, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked behind me and noticed a person I had never met before. She was an elf, shorter than I, with less pronounced ears than I was used to on an elf. She had raven black hair, a serious look on her face, and thick glasses perched on her nose. She had something resembling a uniform on. I noticed the symbol of Dungeon School on her lapel. She was part of the administration then.
"Miss Marchesi? You are Miss Alta Marchesi, correct?" She asked with an official tone.
"Yes? Can I help you?" I was taken aback a bit, and I felt a creeping sense of dread crawl into my gut.
"The Headmaster would like to speak with you. About your upcoming weekend engagement." She adjusted her glasses as she said this.
I couldn't help but sigh. Of course. Why not? Why shouldn't the school get involved, too? I swear, I defend my derriere's honor against someone who had less sense than fingers, and my life has turned into a living hell.
"Lead on! Might as well see if I can collect the full range of annoyances today." I grumbled.
"Pardon?" She looked at me with surprise, her glasses slipping down again.
"Never mind. I'm in a deeply foul mood. It's nothing that you need to worry about. Please, take me to them. Let us get this over with." I picked up my bookbag, and I could feel my face scrunching up with irritation. Things really needed to ease up, or I was going to get wrinkles, which would be the last thing I needed right now.
"Of course, follow me, please." With that, she turned around sharply and led me out of the classroom door.