“I’ll listen closely,” said Hannah. “But I think it’s time for me to get to bed if I’m to be ready for that in the morning, and if I want us to have some freshly baked bread when we get back.”
“Me too,” Verity said, sighing. She put a hand down on Isra’s thigh to push herself up, but found herself letting her hand rest there for a moment, just a bit too long to be strictly the touch of a friend. Then she did get up, because there was no signal back, and if Isra wasn’t interested, she didn’t want to make things awkward, not when they shared the same room.
Mizuki put out the fire with a pitcher of water from the kitchen, then put away what was left of the food and wine, protesting to Hannah that she didn’t need help. They took their turns in the bathroom, brushing teeth and getting ready for bed, then retired to their rooms.
Verity was still feeling warm from the wine, and like she wanted some affection. If their beds had been larger, she might have suggested that she and Isra share one, like they’d done in Liberfell, but the beds were small enough that if they were in the same one together, they’d need to be practically on top of each other. Verity wouldn’t have minded that in the slightest, not when she was feeling the effects of the wine, but she hadn’t had quite so much wine that she felt bold enough to suggest it or to just make a move. There was a possible pretense of just being friendly, but… well, it was paper-thin. And Verity felt some duty to Isra, a need to help her with an understanding of the world and people in it. Exploring each other’s bodies seemed counter to that, almost exploitative, though they were approximately the same age, and Verity wasn’t exactly a seasoned professional.
Still, she stayed up, lamenting the separate beds and having private fantasies, until Isra had gone to sleep.
It had been easy to forget the Fig and Gristle when she was with the others. The dungeons… Well, she could take or leave them, but it gave the party a focus, a purpose, around which they could organize. It was nice. For the night being the end of an era, her usual haunt as a bard no longer her own, she was feeling good and at peace.
Chapter 43 — Solo
Lying to people was easy for Lola. What was difficult was keeping track of the lies. Sometimes, she just didn’t bother. You could get your way out of lies with more lies often enough, and getting caught in lies didn’t do all that much damage, because people were willing to forgive and forget. Plus, she had the undone days to fall back on, one way or another. If someone said, ‘No, that never happened’, she could simply say that it had happened in an undone day, and she’d simply been confused, or maybe they were confused. And if there was a serious blowup, one that couldn’t be papered over with charm and misdirection, she could simply redo the day, be proactive about it, confess to her crimes, and beg for forgiveness, which always won points for some reason.
There were a few rules that Lola had established for herself, at least where extracurriculars were concerned, and while she had never been a big believer in rules, she at least thought twice before breaking the ones she’d set for herself.
The first rule was to avoid other chrononauts, at least if they had undone days left, but of course Alfric was a chrononaut, and she had her sights set on him.
The second rule was that it was always better to save bad behavior until the end of the day, when it was less likely that the complicated rules governing chrononauts could bite her in the butt. In theory, a chrononaut could do whatever they wanted and then reverse it, but in practice, other chrononauts always had higher priority, and they could reverse a day and remember the bad thing that had been done. Lola had been caught out once or twice and gotten slaps on the wrist that had stung enough to make a rule about it.
The third rule was, of course, that bad behavior should always be saved for undone days, but that rule was the one that got broken the most often.
Lola walked through the dungeon, mildly annoyed about the whole thing. The plan had seemed like a good one when she’d cooked it up, but actually going through with it seemed like it might be more trouble than it was worth.
Going into a dungeon alone wasn’t technically breaking any rules, except those of ‘common sense’. The Adventurers’ League gave out keys like they were candy, and Lola had one of her own, but even if they caught her, they wouldn’t take the key away from her, only deliver a firm reprimand, if that. It was a bit shocking how much you could do and escape with a mere warning.
The big reason not to go into a dungeon alone was that the monsters got worse, but that only meant death, and Lola didn’t fear death whatsoever—no self-respecting chrononaut did.
She turned a corner of the red-brick corridor and came face-to-face with a monster twice her size. It had fur the exact shade of the bricks, had long fangs the length of her forearm flanked by thick molars, and let out a wheeze rather than a roar. It tried to snap at her, but she had her protections up. The alienist bindings, shimmering green layers over her skin pushing back against the fangs, would protect from all but the worst attacks, and she had all eight tendrils out, two of them holding her most powerful weapons.
The tendrils had just enough strength that six of them together could fill the creature’s mouth, holding its jaw at full extension while she got a good look at it. She had always told herself that she was a chrononaut, immune from consequence, without fear, but she could feel her heart beating faster, and not just with the excitement of dominating a monster.
This one wouldn’t do. It was big enough, mean enough, but there was nothing that would mandate a response to it. She could kill it on her own, and there needed to be some twist to it, something that made it a proper threat, albeit one that could be put down by a local response.
Lola stabbed the creature through the eyes, frowning slightly as she did it, watching the puce blood drip from the thick eyelids. It wasn’t the pleasant kind of grossness, the kind that she could revel in. Besides, this sort of thing was always less fun when there was no one around to see it, when it was just her in the dungeon by herself, unseen, unheard.
She moved on, using her entad to get the blood off her, stepping lightly. For this to work, she was going to have to capture one alive, and that was a much more difficult thing to do. Winning a single fight against a monster meant for five was hard enough, but doing it while keeping the monster intact, getting it to go to sleep, putting it into storage, all of that was quite a complicated affair. She smiled to herself. That was why it was going to work: no one would suspect her of doing something that required so much of her.
The next monster, a creature encased in stone, was more promising, and Lola was more delicate with it, wrestling it into submission instead of using her blades. It was difficult enough to give her some thrill, and the creature almost bested her as it thrashed around, but her armor held, and the bruises she got in the process would be easy enough to heal at some out-of-the-way temple whose cleric would keep his mouth shut about the whole thing, if he thought it worth nothing at all.
She was looking the creature over for storage in her entad when she noticed something that made her heart beat a bit faster: the creature was pregnant, with engorged egg sacs. That was another level of danger, a serious threat, and she almost slit the creature’s throat rather than stuffing it away… but that same quick beating of her heart made her want it all the more, and she could imagine the future such a creature might bring, the panic that would set in, the work that would need to be done to contain it.