“We didn’t do the Pucklechurch dungeon twice?” asked Hannah. She wrinkled her nose. “It was only once?”
Alfric let out a sigh. “Yes,” he said. “Everything was only once, Pucklechurch, Traeg’s Knob, any personal time we’ve spent or conversations we’ve had. This is my first time living today. The only way I would have chosen to do it over would be if something horrible happened.”
“Wait,” said Mizuki. “Why didn’t you tell us that? I would have been way more relaxed about the whole thing if I’d known you could just undo it all.”
“How do we know you’re not lying?” asked Verity, setting her food down.
“That,” said Alfric, gesturing at her. “And that,” he said, gesturing at Mizuki. “Those are both very good reasons not to breathe a word of it to anyone.” He shook his head. “Lola.”
“If she hadn’t come along, when would you have told us?” asked Verity.
“I was planning to,” said Alfric. “I just needed to build up trust, to build up the team, to get us working together. Maybe it would have been tonight, if things were going well, or at least after the next dungeon.”
“You understand why it’s hard to trust you,” said Verity. “Why we might think that you’re hiding things? More things, that is?”
“I never lied,” said Alfric. “Just… lies of omission.” He seemed to really believe this and to see it as a defense. Verity found herself enormously frustrated with that line of thinking.
“That’s the magic you know,” said Mizuki. “You’re a chrononaut.”
“Yes,” said Alfric. “But—” He turned to Verity. “If people know that you can do the day over, they’ll worry that you’ve done the day over, and there’s no proof you can offer them. Some people get it into their head that you’re just… I don’t know, an evil person or someone who’s casually playing with their life.”
“Wait,” said Mizuki. “This Lola person too?”
“Yes,” sighed Alfric. “And if you’re wondering whether she’s had a conversation with you before, whether this is her second time through the day, then the answer is probably yes.”
“Seems a good power for a dungeoneer to have,” said Hannah. “But you’re the one who gets to decide whether or not to use it, ay?”
“I would use it if anything happened to any of you,” said Alfric. “And then you’d have no memory that anything bad had even happened, and I would have to disclose whatever did happen that required the power to be used.”
“Or you would just lie,” said Verity. It felt bad to say it, once the words were out, but the possibility needed to be put out there by someone, and she seemed like the only one to do it. Her emotions were getting the best of her.
“I wouldn’t,” said Alfric. “And if I had told you right from the start that I had this power, you would have had the same thought, that perhaps I was lying, or you would think that you were safe and didn’t need to worry, and—it’s a gift of my bloodline, it is, but the way people deal with it is… why I wanted to wait to tell you. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry, but you don’t disagree with the general approach you took,” said Verity, gripping her fork. She had mostly forgiven him for agreeing to spy on her for her parents, but it was still there in the background of their relationship. If she hadn’t hit her limits, she might have started in on a tune to keep her frustration and suspicion down.
“What can I do to make it up to you?” asked Alfric.
“I think I need to take a break from all this for a moment. It’s been a long day,” said Verity, standing from her chair. “No one use the party chat for a bit, please, I’ll be in my room.” She took her plate with her, because she wasn’t done eating, and retreated to her room, closing the door behind her.
There was a temptation to eavesdrop on the conversation in the other room, but Verity resisted. She had been a proficient eavesdropper in her childhood, but it was mostly by way of listening in when people thought she was absorbed in something, rather than putting an ear where it wasn’t wanted.
Instead, she thought about Alfric and what was to be done about him. Did she like him? Well… probably the least of all of them. He was everything that she didn’t like about Dondrian, pushing too much, focused too much, wanting too much from everyone else. He had been giving them all time to adjust to what he wanted from them, but he was doing it in a way that made it clear that was what he was doing. Verity could see what someone might like in Alfric, without particularly liking it herself. Did she want to keep going down this path of dungeoneering with him? Well, the answer was both yes and no. She liked almost every aspect of it aside from the dungeons. To be a part of a team, to train together, to live together, to travel and see new things, to have interesting magic, and to sing songs for people who were quickly becoming friends? It was nice. The monsters were much less nice, but her role in the dungeons was in some ways a pleasing challenge, a test of her skills as a bard.
She wondered how much more Alfric was keeping from them, but her guess was that it wasn’t all that much. The name Overguard did ring a bell, but only vaguely. Dungeoneers weren’t usually high society, even if they had quite a bit of money. If they were a family of chrononauts, that explained some of their success.
Verity had her own secrets, of course, and she wondered whether she’d be better viewing Alfric’s status as a chrononaut as something similar to her own Choosing as Xuphin’s own. She hadn’t told anyone, and it didn’t matter to her, it was only a pressure that came along on top of everything else. If people knew, they might treat her differently, and it wasn’t as though they had a right to know, not when it wasn’t impacting them in the slightest. And if Alfric was telling the truth, then there was the same lack of impact, save for there being a large safety net beneath them. No repeated days, no conversations she didn’t remember, no second or third attempts at dungeons. He’d intended to tell them but was holding off because the mere knowledge would cause problems. It wasn’t so different, and Verity had no plans to tell any of them that she was Chosen. Through that lens, she could understand Alfric a bit better, and she felt a bit of shame at how she’d handled things.
Verity ate her sandwich while hunched over on her bed, trying not to get crumbs on the linens. It was a nice bedroom with a far larger bed than she needed, and she wondered who was paying the cost of it.
With her food finished, she laid back in bed. She was tired down to her bones, not just from the long hikes, but from the magic she’d used. Bardic stamina was something built up over time, and Verity already had more capacity to go the distance than most people ever had, but with whatever Mizuki had done, and with the sheer length of the dungeon, she was about as drained as she’d ever been. It was clouding her thoughts. She should have refused to give them a song for moving the wardrobe and simply gone with Isra and Mizuki, but she’d wanted to do her part for the team. Beyond that, she was socially drained, as there’d been too much talking and time with people, with not too much of a break. She lay down, trying to ignore the dim murmurs from beyond the door. Whatever Alfric’s problems were, she would learn about them later, when her mind was in a better place for it.