“On my oath as a cleric,” Filera said, nodding. “There’s no need to share it with anyone else, and I have no idea why someone might want to know.”
And that led Alfric to talking about Lola and the party that had been taken from him, which took some time.
“You think that if she knew we’d been talking, she would try to get information from me?” asked Filera.
“I don’t know,” said Alfric. “The more I talk about it, the more it’s obvious to me that I should probably confront her and clear the air, but everything is so poisoned between us that I’m not sure that’s going to be productive.”
“You’ll have to let me know how that drama resolves itself,” said Filera. “You gave me more than I’d hoped, and I hope talking about things has been a help to you, but I have other duties to attend to. I visit the elder’s home every day, and it’s getting close to the time for me to be off.”
“Thank you for listening,” said Alfric. “And for the identification.” He looked over at the wardrobe and wrinkled his nose. “I’m going to take that with me, I suppose. I’m mostly worried about the floatstones, which I need to return to Liberfell.”
“Are you planning to make some rings from it in town?” asked Filera. “Because you’re welcome to leave it here for the next few days, at least until you find a place to install it.”
“That would be great,” said Alfric. “I’ll take the floatstones off and leave it, let people know they’re free to use it while it’s here. Better to get the word out so that we can start making money off it.”
Alfric took his time removing the floatstones and was grateful that he was able to do it indoors, where they might crack a ceiling tile but wouldn’t go shooting off into the sky. It took quite a bit of work to marry them with the loadstones that had been stuffed in the book, but once it was all done, the wardrobe was standing there in the temple room looking almost like it belonged there.
On his way back home, or ‘home’, as it were, he began composition of a guild message, one asking for advice on whether actively wanting to fight monsters was a necessary part of it. He knew his mother’s opinion on the matter, but there were members of the family whose thoughts he’d never heard. He didn’t think it likely that he’d ever send the message, but it was still good to compose it because it helped to get his thoughts in order.
There were aspects of fighting monsters he liked. He enjoyed figuring them out, taking all the rules he’d learned and putting them into practice, assessing the situation and what it called for… but the actual insertion of a sword into flesh left him feeling nothing in particular. He liked to win, certainly, but the actual fighting, not as much.
When he got to the house, Mizuki was in the middle of cooking, and the other three were in the kitchen with her, talking about plans for the garden. Alfric was mildly surprised to see Isra there, especially because he hadn’t heard anything over the party chat. Had she come to the house to see Verity, or had she just figured they had returned?
“It’ll take the three of us,” said Verity. “Mizuki to tell us the names and what they’re used for, if she knows, Isra to figure out what’s local, and me to actually execute the plan.”
“Sorry,” said Alfric. “I know I’m coming in late to this, but is there a reason that Isra couldn’t just do it all?”
“I like gardening,” said Verity. “And gardening is work, even if you’re a druid. Isra will help, and I’m sure it will be a far better garden for it, but I’ll be the one putting in the work.”
“It’s mostly going to be focused on Kiromon things,” said Mizuki. “I don’t actually care that much for traditional Kiromon cooking, but it’s nice to be able to draw from the same set of ingredients that my parents used to. Oh, and Hannah and I are embarking on a journey of noodle-making. Hopefully we can make something edible.”
“I do like a low bar for success,” said Alfric.
“But we should talk about the next dungeon,” said Hannah. “Isn’t that right?”
That hadn’t been what Alfric had intended to say at all, but it was a segue that seemed like it was worth taking. “We have options for the third dungeon. I read a fair number of the dungeon reports, and we’re going to aim for something that has a good chance of being easy for once. We need to rest though, and we need to start doing informal drills.”
“Drills,” said Verity, making a face.
“I said informal,” said Alfric. “But the point I’m trying to make is that I don’t want us to be going in with undue risk, and looking back at the last dungeon, it really seems like we did. We hit high variance, but—”
“Question,” said Mizuki, who was cutting up a fish. “Is variance a real thing, or is it just something that you say to make people more likely to go into dungeons?”
“It’s a real thing,” said Hannah. “I’m not sure the second dungeon was all that high variance though, aside from the bear at the end.”
“I put in a report to my guild,” said Alfric. “They agreed it was high variance and proposed some possible explanations, though there was nothing remotely like consensus, and variance doesn’t really need an explanation.”
“Next time you write a report, tell your mom I said hi,” said Mizuki.
“We try to keep things professional,” said Alfric. “Though we do follow a heading system to separate out messages that are more… frivolous.”
“Fancy,” said Mizuki.
“Not really,” said Hannah. “Most larger guilds have such a thing.”
“I joined the druids’ guild,” said Isra. “This morning.”
“Oh really?” asked Verity. “You should have said. I’ve been going on about the garden and you had actual news to share. Though I suppose you haven’t heard anything from them yet.”
“There was a welcome message,” said Isra. “I think I need some help writing a reply.”
“You just think it,” said Alfric. “It’s pretty easy, I’ll help you with it later, if you’re going to be sticking around.”
“Isra is the beneficiary of always planning for an extra person,” said Mizuki as she continued cleaning the fish.
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” said Isra.
“You didn’t,” said Mizuki. “You can treat this like your house, and the spare bed in Verity’s room like it was your bed. But you should have used the party channel to let me know that you were going to be eating with us, and then I could have gotten a bit more food so we don’t need to stretch.”
“But you prepare more than we need,” said Alfric. “So it’s not actually a burden.”
“You’re going to lecture me about contingency planning?” asked Mizuki, momentarily stopping her knifework. “And I never said it was a burden, just that I like to plan out food, and it’s easier to do that when I don’t have to walk back to the shops right before dinner. Think about it like this, if we’ve got someone claiming the extra plate, what are we going to do if we have a random visitor?”
“How likely is that?” asked Alfric. “Do you get random visitors often? The kind that you’d feel obligated to have a meal ready for?”
“Well,” said Mizuki. “No.”
“Um,” said Verity. “I talked to the town cartier, Xy, today. Alfric, you’ll need to arrange things with her, but she’s shown some interest in being the first member of our counterparty.”
“Oh,” said Alfric. “That’s great news. But when you say town cartier, you mean she serves a wide region?”
“She does,” said Verity. “We would want to give her as much advance notice as possible, and I suppose I’m not entirely clear on what her duties would be, so the whole conversation was light on specifics.”