I sat in my dorm room, rolling the little ball that was the infant dungeon core around in my hand. I got the sense that it was enjoying itself, which brought a feeling of warmth to my heart.
Such a strange feeling it was, to feel that kind of emotional connection to something that, until recently, I would not have believed was alive. It was a nice distraction from everything I was dealing with right now.
The biggest of which was my upcoming duel on Sixth-Day. No matter how things went, I still only had one day of freedom before the cycle of classes began again. I had planned on hopefully trying to spend that day with Eira, if I could. Who knows what shape I'd be in after the duel?
I couldn't help but sigh. A deep, long sigh that felt like it came from the very depths of my soul.
"You keep that up, and all the air is going to leak out of you." A voice said from one of the bunks. I started at the sudden sound, swearing.
"Myth?! When did you get here?" I stammered and clutched my chest in shock. I wasn't used to being startled like that. I thought for a moment my heart would leap out of my chest!
"I've been here for, like, an hour or so? You've just been staring at that little ball the whole time with your serious thinking face on. You're gonna get wrinkles like that." She tutted at me.
"Elves don't get wrinkles. It’s one of the advantages of being an elf." I glared at her. I admit, I have a bit of a streak of vanity in me, and it didn't like her assertions of my future wrinkled status. I knew she was just playing with me, but I wasn't in the mood.
"Keep up the glaring and scowling like that, and you'll be the first. Behold, Alta the Wrinkly!" She laughed as she lay down on her mattress and pulled out a book to read. Looked like one of Smitty's, given the tawdry subject matter on the cover.
Smitty happily loaned us her books, something I never really took advantage of. Up until very, and I do mean very, recently, romance hadn't even remotely been something I concerned myself with. Certain half-elven Spellsongs had begun to convince me otherwise.
I sighed again, wistfully this time rather than forlornly. I had developed quite a lexicon of sighs lately.
"There goes that air leak again." Myth snarked at me, and it took all my energy to keep from throwing a pillow at her. I eased up and let my irritation flow out of me.
"Sorry about that, Myth. I have a great deal on my mind, and I'm not entirely sure how to deal with all of it. I can't even talk about all of it to get advice!" I rolled the little ball around as I talked, the motion and feel of it helping me focus.
"I get that. I may not look like it, but I do keep my ear to the ground, and the word is, you've got a really stacked plate of troubles. I know you can't tell me all of it, but maybe venting a bit could help. I'm a good listener, yeah?" She smiled at me as she put the book down and joined me at the little table in our room.
I sat there and looked at her for a moment. She never seemed put together, even at her best, but I couldn't help but feel like I could trust her. We had been in a dungeon together, fought together. We had both seen each other naked more than a few times, which is more than I could say for many people. When you spend enough time with someone in such close proximity with so much shared stress, you either learned to like and trust them, or you start to hate them with all your being.
I had assumed from the start it would be the second of those options, but I had to admit, the first option was better. Myth had gone from an asset to a nurturer, to a friend and companion in a relatively short time.
Dungeons had a way of doing that, I guess.
"I appreciate it, Myth. I suppose you heard about the duel, right?"
She nodded.
"Yeah, you broke some arse grabbing knight's arm, and he got really mad about it and challenged you to an honor duel, right? And someone got the bright idea to make in an event and is even taking bets. Really rude of them to do that, but I kind of get it. Isn't enough going on for entertainment this time of year, so everyone wants to let off some steam somehow or another."
"That, surprisingly, sums up that situation perfectly," I had to admit.
"Yeah, I won't lie, I put some money on it." She didn't even look ashamed. I wasn't sure if I should be angry or impressed.
"Please tell me that you bet on me to win." I sighed and rubbed my temples.
"Of course! I know knights are good, but so are you. And you fight dirty, which is the best kind of fighting! Nothing better than to see a stuffy knight get their face rearranged by a proper fight! They never fight anyone on equal footing, and seeing one get their just desserts will be delicious!" She had a grin that belied a deep-seated rage that she had never really shown before.
I had to approach this carefully.
"You have history with the knights, I take it," I said evenly.
"You could say that. My sister joined them once. Order of the Everspring. Technically, they're protectors of the World Tree in the center of Middenveldt, but they spend most of their time shaking down the folks living in the area, saying that they deserved it for their 'Noble Sacrifice and Service', and claiming that Druids of the Tree approved of it. At one point, that was true, but the Druids were too scared to stop them." Her expression was darker than I had ever seen it.
"If this is too much for you, Myth, you don't have to tell me anymore." I reached out and rested my hand on hers.
"No. I- I need to tell someone. I've been keeping this all inside for too long. I'm just sorry to trauma dump on you when you've got so much going on too." She sniffled and started to tear up.
"It's ok, Myth. Go ahead, take your time." I hated to admit it but helping her through this took my mind off my own problems. I couldn't help myself, but I could hopefully help her and having the sense of being able to do something was a relief.
She nodded, took a deep breath, and began again.
"My sister joined them, less out of a sense of wanting to join in on their tyranny but wanting to hopefully use a position in their ranks to shield our family from them. My parents were lesser druids and tended to be the punching bags for the knights, but when she joined, they eased up. She tried her best to go along with things, and she climbed the ranks."
Myth leaned back in her chair, and her face darkened again. Her tears of sadness turned into a glistening anger in her eyes.
"Then she had had enough. She couldn't take it anymore. She began calling out their actions in public. In town, before the knight's leadership, before the Druids. The people were starting to side with her. They were just so tired of our 'protectors' abusing us. Then one day, there was a monster attack in the middle of town. She went to fight it, and the other knights just watched as it tore her apart."
"I had heard about that. That's what led to the riots, right?" I said, keeping my tone even.
The Everspring Riots were infamous in the Mortal Kingdoms. The citizenry rose up and nearly destroyed the Knight Citadel of the Everspring in outrage of the death of a local folk hero. It had been a mixed success. The role of the knights and their powers in Middenveldt was curtailed, but not before widespread destruction and death. I hadn't ever heard the details of what started it before.
"Yeah. That's what started it. My family left the World Tree city after that. We couldn't be sure that we'd be safe, and we moved to Kildjan after that. I never really got over it and couldn't focus on magic school. I needed the herbs just to get through a day without having a mental breakdown. Eventually, I just packed up, left, and now here I am." She sniffed. I handed her a handkerchief. I was surprised to learn she had gone to magic school. They were very prestigious, and in her situation, if she had managed to make it in, she would be more skilled than I gave her credit for. I'd have to dig into that later.
I had heard so many stories about knights that I had never known. I hated their knights from my interactions with them in Burgotova, but it seemed endemic to the Mortal Kingdoms. The Everspring and the Obsidian Gauntlet were known tyrants, but the others must be likewise. Everyone spoke of them with trepidation outside the circles of nobility. Even then, there was no love lost. Cori, Myth, and even I had our reasons to hate them.
Something had to be done, but it was too big for me. Right now, at least. Probably forever, for all I knew.
Myth's words and tears, along with Cori's tales, and my own experiences made my resolve turn to purest steel. I had to defeat Knight Cavendish, for them and me.
I didn't have much power anymore, but I would do what I could to bring smiles back to their face, and I knew that even the tiniest taste of revenge could do that.
I stood and embraced Myth. She needed a hug, and I did too for that matter.
"Thanks for hearing me out, Alta. I hadn't told anyone that before." She sniffed again.
"Don't worry yourself. We're friends, after all." I said, patting her head, as she held on to me. She was my friend. To the hells with all my previous thoughts of 'assets' and 'investments'. She was my friend. Occasionally annoying, herbed up little weirdo, but my friend anyway.
"It means a lot to me, Alta. You're a bit cold sometimes, so I wasn't sure if you liked me or not." She laughed.
"You irritate the piss out of me sometimes, Mithramanda, but it’s fine. Everyone irritates the piss out of me, though." I giggled.
She let go and smiled at me.
"Hey, now that we've vented our souls a bit...wanna hit the herb a bit?" She offered.
I had never touched the stuff, but I wasn't really finding anything else that could calm my nerves.
"Sure. Why not?" I shrugged. Myth clapped her hands together in delight and grabbed some from her little storage space next to her bed.
I'm not entirely sure what happened after we started smoking. I know I coughed a lot at first, and then I got very giggly, and after that everything was a blur.
However, when I woke, I was in Myth's bed. Fully clothed, thankfully. Apparently, the herbs she smokes make me very sleepy. I think I slept better than I had in weeks, nay months. Not having strange and dark dreams was a blessing I could get addicted to.
I had to be careful. That could become habit-forming, and I could not afford that kind of habit. In multiple senses of the word.
I got up, stretched, covered her over with a blanket as she softly snored away, and got to my usual morning rituals of cleaning, taking a bit of extra time to shower as the herb smell felt baked into me. I set the little orb on the shower shelf with me, as to keep it from feeling lonely. Some part of my brain hoped it didn't get a contact high.
It just occurred to me that Smitty and Cori weren't there when I got up. Had they stayed out late or left early? No matter. They were adults.
As the warm water ran over me, I ran through my plans in my head. I needed to pick up my new equipment and find exactly what kind of new tools I was working with. The idea of it excited me. I had never really had properly magical items before. I would need to learn about them and test them before tomorrow. Luckily, it was my free day yet again, so today was the perfect time to give everything a test run.
I could barely hold in my excitement. I grabbed the core and ran back to my room in nothing but a towel, my dirty clothes stuffed in a sack to be dealt with later. I dressed quickly and made my way to the Cleaning Hall's assessor's office and practically danced with anticipation.
I never acted giddily like this and was surprised at this. Oh gods, if this was Myth's herbs doing, I was going to be in trouble. I needed my head clear. For dungeons, for my maid café job, for life in general, given the growing number of enemies I had been collecting. I'd have to talk to the girls and tell them not to let me indulge too often.
I forced myself to calm down and entered the office. As far as I could tell, the place was empty. I walked up to the front desk, and my eyes wandered at the wide array of tools and weapons on the walls, spread across desks, and attached to mechanisms of all kinds.
"Hello? I'm here for a pickup?" I called out.
"Just a moment!" A voice called from the back, with a slight tinge of annoyance in the tone. It wasn't the voice of the drakekin I had left the items with, but a newer, unfamiliar voice. I had never been here so early in the day before, so perhaps it was just the morning assessor. I heard some rustling from behind a curtain that hid the backroom from view, and it was suddenly pulled aside, and a human woman stepped out. She had silver hair with a red streak in it, round eyeglasses, and the look around her eyes of someone to whom a proper night's sleep was a long-forgotten memory.
She looked at me blearily for a moment, blinked a few times, and smiled, her teeth taking me aback for a moment. They were all pointed, like those of a shark. Maybe she was less human than I thought.
"Ah! I know who you are! You're the elf girl with the stuff. The magic-y stuff. Yeah yeah. Yeah, I got your gear already to go. Come on back, and I'll show you what you've got." She ducked back behind the curtain but then popped her head back out suddenly. She pointed at the door. "Could you flip the sign to closed and lock the door? We're gonna need a bit, and I don't want us to get interrupted when we get to the good stuff."
She grinned again, the razor-sharpness of the expression giving me a slight chill. There was something strange about her I couldn't put my finger on, but I wasn't going to do anything to make her angry with me.
I did as she told me and made my way to the back. My eyes slowly adjusted to the difference in the lighting, and my nose crinkled at the smell. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was unusual and wasn't something I could readily identify. Like a combination of cinnamon, machine oil, and a wet dog.
When my eyes finally settled into the new environment, I could barely suppress my gasp at what I saw.
Cori would absolutely flip her lid if she could've seen what I was seeing!