They had eight entads in all, a good haul, and Alfric was quite hopeful that the wardrobe was the prize of the lot, not just because it had been guarded by the bear, and not just because if it was worthless they’d have to leave it, but because he seemed to take some joy in the large, uncomfortable entad.
“My dad used to tell me stories about entads like this,” he said. He was smiling. “You only really have a problem with them early in your career, when you can’t shrink things down or stuff them away, or just deal with them somehow. For him there was always some fun in it. There was one, a table, nearly four feet across, six feet long, which he navigated down the roads with his friends.”
“What did it do?” asked Mizuki.
“It was a map,” said Alfric. “A big map that went almost to the edges of the table, with bumps where the hills or mountains were, and little square bits where there were houses. I think he sold it to one of the Dondrian hexmasters, but I don’t really remember that part of the story.”
“There’s no reason that it’ll be good just because it’s big, ay,” said Hannah. “Just as likely it’ll clean the laundry you put in it.”
“That would be pretty good,” said Mizuki. “I hate laundry day.”
“The dial,” said Alfric, pointing to the front of the wardrobe. “It’s got six notches; that’s certainly suggestive. Six cardinal directions?”
“Six gods,” said Hannah, folding her arms.
“Six fingers,” said Verity, smiling as she held up a modified hand. She was still somewhat out of it, not her usual self, and Hannah was slightly worried.
“Six Spirit Gates,” said Mizuki.
“Those are just an extension of the gods,” said Hannah.
“No?” asked Mizuki.
“Well, there’s some argument on that score,” said Hannah. “The point is, there’s lots of things that six might mean, and since it’s an entad, it’s just as possible that it’s six outfits it can store, or something like that.”
“I have a good feeling,” said Alfric. After the fretting and postmortem, he seemed to be in a good mood, perhaps because they had managed to win against the bear. Hannah hadn’t expected him to suggest a retreat, not when he seemed to put so much emphasis on how you could only do a dungeon once. It made her like him a bit better, knowing that he’d argue for safety like that, even if she thought he’d been a bit overcautious. It made all his talk about being the first line of defense and running away if it got to be too much seem less like the shallow words of someone who just wanted a party.
After a full bell had passed, they’d assembled a pile of things in addition to the entads. Isra had insisted on taking some of the bear meat, which she also insisted was good to eat, and that had been stuffed away in the book, nearly a hundred pounds of the stuff, wrapped up in butcher’s paper that Alfric had thought to bring along. The trees were ectad material, and a fairly valuable one, which could be refined into growthstone, but they had only a handaxe, and Alfric didn’t think they were worth the effort. There were also, according to Isra, eggs up in one of the trees, though so high up and with so many branches that it was hard to see how they’d get them.
“We should do entad testing,” said Mizuki, who’d changed clothes now that the dungeon was more or less finished. Hannah had to admit that she did look a lot better in her normal clothes. “What if there’s something that helps us take a tree out? That would be worth it, wouldn’t it?”
“It might,” said Alfric with a sigh. “We have the staff, the sword, the wardrobe, the coin, the rope, the goggles, the rock, and the dagger. None of those are likely to be of any assistance, except for the wardrobe. I think you just want to do entad testing.”
“To be fair,” said Mizuki. “Entad testing is, like, the best thing about being a dungeoneer, right?”
“It’s seeing new things,” said Alfric.
“Money,” said Isra.
“Well, I enjoy seein’ these worlds, even if there is a lot tryin’ to kill us,” said Hannah. “But I agree with Mizuki, it makes more sense to test first, just in case we can take a tree.”
Dividing up the entads for testing was a bit of a mess, and Hannah grew to understand why Alfric preferred to have it done once they were out of the dungeon, though he seemed to place more emphasis on the idea that dungeons were never safe. If they bound to the entads, then there was no point in having people test too much, and to test them before, well, people got attached to things, then hoped for a bind. She could see how it might be messy.
Hannah ended up with the rusted sword, which was damp to the touch even after having been out of the water for a half hour. The barnacles and seaweed seemed to be a part of it, rather than having grown on it, and after trying for some time, she couldn’t pick them off. Given the appearance, Hannah expected it to have something to do with water, but it took her quite some time to figure it out, mostly because she was reluctant to go into either of the dungeon’s two pools. Eventually, she decided on filling her mouth with water from a waterskin, and that was enough to confirm that yes, it had the obvious effect of allowing a person to breathe underwater. Hannah was hopeful that there was more to the sword, since it didn’t seem like it would cut that well, and breathing underwater wasn’t all that good unless you were a pearl diver or some such.
No one else was done with theirs, so Hannah went and picked up the coin, which had been hidden under the bed in the stonework room. It was big, almost as big across as her hand, and it was a bit funny to see a coin, given that the world had switched over to rings ages ago. She flipped it in the air, felt something change, but she wasn’t able to figure out what it was before the coin came back down and she caught it in her hand.
She tried again, this time more focused, and she could feel it a little better in her senses, though it was hard to identify exactly what she was feeling. It was a sense of rightness, she supposed, like she was more sure of herself.
She was still flipping the coin, trying to figure it out, when Alfric came over.
“There are a number of duds,” he said. “I’m somewhat convinced that the wardrobe is what I think it is, but if it is, it’s not going to work until we’re out of the dungeon, and… well, the obvious limitation is that it might not take itself with it, if it can help us to travel.”
“Bad business, tryin’ to predict entads,” said Hannah, shaking her head as she flipped the coin again. Whatever it was doing, it felt good. Perhaps that was the extent of it.
“The dagger lets you know how aware of you someone is,” said Verity. “It seems like the kind of thing we shouldn’t sell.”
“Do we need it?” asked Alfric, raising an eyebrow.
“No,” said Verity, frowning. “I meant because I wouldn’t want it to end up in the wrong hands. It’s the kind of weapon a thief would love. Or an assassin.”
“Is that why you were behind me?” asked Mizuki, who was standing upright on top of the staff, which had grown to twice its size. “You were trying to stab me?”
“I was trying to discover what it did,” said Verity. “But yes, I was quite certain that you weren’t aware I was creeping up.” She shrugged. “If it doesn’t bond, we sell it, I guess. I don’t think assassins are actually all that common anymore.”
“I want this staff,” said Mizuki. “It’s neat.”
“Better balance?” asked Alfric, looking up at her.
“And it extends,” said Mizuki. She kicked out a foot, which caused the staff to go the opposite direction, but somehow she was able to stop it, balancing with the staff going one direction and her body going the other. “I always wanted to be an acrobat.”