“Are you going to apologize for that pun?” asked Mizuki.
“I stand by it,” said Alfric. He began stacking logs into the fireplace, or at least the ones that would fit. “Are you going to help me light this fire?”
“Sure,” said Mizuki, getting up from her chair and going over to the fireplace. “This is actually a bit more tricky than it seems though. Most things don’t want to start on fire, and if it’s at all wet, which stuff from the woods probably is, then the water needs to be cooked out before it will be properly on fire. I don’t want to use up the ambient imbalance in the room just to turn the outside of a log into cinders and then not have a flame.”
“Or I could just use a firestarter, if this is going to be a whole production,” said Alfric.
“No, it’s fine, I just need to concentrate,” said Mizuki.
“How much of that bottle has she had?” asked Verity.
“Not too much,” said Hannah as Mizuki crouched down by the fireplace. “We’ve been pacin’ ourselves. Not the sort of state where I’d be doing delicate work, but it might be different for sorcs.”
“It is,” said Mizuki, who was holding out a hand toward the logs. “We actually get slightly better after a glass of wine. There’s a lot of instinct involved. Wine lubricates the mind.”
“I wonder whether that’s actually true,” said Verity.
Flame came out of Mizuki’s hand in a gout and lit up the logs, sticking to them for a moment before the fire became more natural. Mizuki stepped back and smiled at the fire, then took another sip from her wine
holding her arms wide. She just barely kept from splashing wine from her glass.
“Not to undercut your impressive and important display of power,” said Alfric. “But I definitely could have done that too.”
“Firestarters are cheating,” said Mizuki.
“They’re not,” said Alfric. “But even if they were, I have flint and steel and could do it that way.”
“You carry flint and steel with you?” asked Hannah.
“In the book,” said Alfric. “It was cheap, and there’s plenty of room for small things like that. I actually have a whole kit for making fires, including some char cloth. Wilderness survival sometimes ends up being important for dungeoneers, either within the dungeon or outside of it. I won’t say it’s common, but knowing how to start a fire might save someone’s life or allow us to get at some loot we would otherwise lose.”
“Seems a bad idea,” said Hannah, “to light a fire in a dungeon?”
“Depends on the circumstances,” said Alfric, shrugging. “Obviously you don’t do it if you’re going to smoke yourself out.” He’d gone back to sit on the couch with Mizuki and stretched slightly. “We still need to do dungeon school, ideally before the next dungeon.”
“You know what we need?” asked Mizuki. She turned to Alfric. “Do you mind if I have my legs on you?”
“What?” asked Alfric.
“So I can stretch out,” said Mizuki.
“Sure,” said Alfric. “Fine.”
Mizuki stretched out, resting her bare feet on Alfric’s lap and taking up basically the whole of the couch. “Nice.”
“You were sayin’ we needed somethin’?” asked Hannah. “Unless it was just to stretch out.”
“Oh,” said Mizuki. “What we need is a name. All the cool adventuring groups have one.”
“Is it just me, or is ‘adventuring’ a weird euphemism?” asked Verity.
“It’s an old word for an old profession,” said Alfric. “Mostly it points at the element of luck. I think it’s appropriate.”
“Maybe,” said Verity. “But if I included it in a song, I would feel awkward about it, like I was using a turn of phrase for the sake of it.”
“I do prefer ‘dungeoneering’,” said Alfric. “It sounds more professional.”
“So for our name,” said Mizuki. “Do we want something professional? Is that a requirement?”
“If you have a weird name, you have to be good enough to make up for that,” said Alfric. “There are some stupid names where you think, ‘Oh, that’s just some people who don’t take things seriously’, and there are other stupid names where you think, ‘Oh, they take this so seriously that they picked a stupid name because it wasn’t going to matter either way’.”
“Got a whole philosophy, have you?” asked Hannah.
“‘The Vertex’ was a good name,” said Alfric. “But sadly, it’s taken now.”
“Do you really, honestly believe that it was a good name?” asked Hannah. “Because it calls into question your judgment.”
“It was good,” said Alfric, shaking his head. “Strong, simple, easy to remember. But not too in-your-face.” He turned to Verity. “You’re a bard, do you have any good suggestions?”
“Not at the moment,” said Verity. “I don’t have a good sense of what people choose in terms of party names. If they’re names like ‘Vertex’ the pool seems to be quite limited.”
“An adjective and a noun is quite common,” said Alfric. “Or a pun, or a place-name.”
“Something Puckle?” asked Mizuki. “‘Puck’ means… fairy or demon or something like that.”
“I would worry about the rhymes,” said Alfric. Verity let out a little laugh.
“We could do something from scripture,” said Hannah. “‘The Hands of Man’ or ‘Reflective Children’.”
“Those are both terrible,” said Mizuki. “You’d make everyone think that we have hands like a man’s hands.”
“Or that we’re children,” said Verity, wrinkling her nose. “But I feel like at the rate we’re going, we’re going to have to settle on something that none of us like.”
“The Settlers?” asked Isra.
Verity turned to her as soon as she spoke. “Isra! You came!” She must have slipped in without making a noise and was still in her outdoor clothing with thick layers, boots yet to be removed.
“I said I would,” said Isra. She gave Verity a hesitant smile. “Sorry, I should have knocked.”
“Nonsense!” declared Mizuki. “You’re welcome in my house anytime. The bed upstairs is yours whenever that’s convenient for you, just let me know ahead of time if you’re going to be eating with us.”
“Is there a place to sit?” asked Isra. The living room had two armchairs and a couch, but the seating, normally enough for five, offered less accommodation because Mizuki was stretched across the couch.
“I can move,” said Mizuki, though she seemed annoyed that she was compelled to offer.
“You can sit with me,” Verity said to Isra. “This chair is a bit oversize.”
“It’s a tenyon,” said Mizuki. “It’s meant for two, if they’re close friends or—” But she didn’t finish the thought, instead taking a sip of wine.
Despite that, Isra moved over and sat in the chair with Verity. It was tight, but not uncomfortably so, and Verity felt pleased to be pressed up against someone. Isra was somewhat chilly, having just come in from the mild cold, but she was also nice and soft.
“I like Settlers,” said Alfric. “But it needs something.”
“What are we meant to be settling?” asked Mizuki. “The dungeons?”
“It just has a nice adventuresome quality to it,” Alfric said. “I can’t explain it.”
“All the best lyrics are like that,” said Verity. “They have an unexpected fittingness.”