Chapter Two Hundred and Fourteen — Planning Commitea
Chapter Two Hundred and Fourteen — Planning Commitea “The next one’s hard,” Howard said.We were out of the first floor and a good ways into the cave-like passage that Howard said cut through the entire dungeon.“It’s one that requires that you fight,” the fishman added.“We’re pretty tough in a fight,” I said. “We can work together pretty well too.”Howard gestured out ahead where the cave split. To the right was a wide, broad passageway. To the left was another path, smaller and thinner, that curved up and out of sight around a bend. “It’s to the left here. We should wait a little bit before going in. Best to know what we’re all going to be facing in there.”I agreed. “We should take a bit of a break then,” I said. “I’m not hungry or anything, but I could use something to drink. Anyone want some tea?”“A bit of tea wouldn’t be amiss,” Emmanuel said.The others seemed to agree too. Awen pulled a rolled-up blanket from her pack and set it on the ground where it was dryer, and I sat down next to her and rooted through my backpack for my kettle.Amaryllis filled it, using some neat spell to draw water out of the air. She made sure I used Cleaning magic on it afterwards too. “This place could use a few dehumidifying runes. It’s making my feathers itch.”“That must be annoying,” Awen said. “I can’t stand it when my scalp is itchy.”Amaryllis hummed. “Having hair must be a pain, it’s so long. I imagine it gets everywhere. Does plucking it hurt?”“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t your feathers hurt when you pull them?”“It depends, of course. A properly groomed harpy will ensure that any broken or bent feathers are plucked. It stings a little, but it also feels kind of nice? I never really thought about it. Hard to describe, I suppose.”“Like picking at a scab?” I asked.“No, that’s disgusting Broccoli.”Bastion sat down across from us with a heavy sigh. “I have some biscuits,” he said as he reached into his own pack. “Better than the rations we get in the army, but not by much.”“I’m sure they’re fine,” I said. It was going to take a minute or two for the tea to warm up. I was going for a mixed herbal tea. Some ginger which I’d bought along the way, and some dried lemongrass. It had an interesting smell, at once bitter and citrus-y. “Hey, Bastion, you have wings, right?”Bastion looked at me, then glanced to his side where his wings were fluttering a bit. “Yes?”“What’s that like? Do you need to do special stuff for them?”“Not really? They’re surprisingly robust. Harder to cut into than skin, but a lot more brittle. There aren’t any bones in a sylph’s wings, unlike a bird’s. The only maintenance is keeping them washed. You won’t see too many sylph’s in drier places either; it makes our wings feel fragile. Warm is fine, just not dry.”“Huh,” I said. “That’s cool! How do you wash them though?” I imagined someone trying to twist around this way and that. I could only just touch the middle of my back, and I was pretty sure my Flexibility stat was cheating that for me.“Communal showers, though you can do a good job of it yourself with a sponge on a stick.”“There’s sponges here?” I asked.“Yes?” Bastion asked. “They’re from the ocean?”“Oh,” I said. I felt silly. Time for a change of subject! “So, Howard, what can you tell us about the next floor?”Howard had found a little bump on the floor to sit on. His legs splayed out a little, with his pipe on one thigh and a little pouch which he was fiddling in on the other. Refilling his pipe again? I supposed smoking was kind of a complicated process. And probably not that great for anyone’s health, but I wasn’t going to throw stones from my glass balcony.“Next one’s tough,” he said. “There’s no end to the monsters in it, not that they’re too much of a challenge.”“What are we facing?” Bastion asked.“We call them Mist-folk,” Howard said.“That’s both mysterious and ominous,” I said as I started to pour the tea out into some tin cups. The vapours from the tea wafted up and fought with the damp air to be the strongest smell around. “What’s a Mist-folk? Are they nice?”“Afraid they aren’t,” Howard said.I gave everyone their cups. Emmanuel hunched down so that he was laying on his tummy on the far end of Awen’s blanket from us. He took his cup carefully in both hands. “Thank you,” he said.He could be nice when he wanted to!I sniffed at my tea, then inspected it.Ginger and lemongrass tea, to soothe stress and inflammations, and help fight back against infections.I took a sip and let the warmth seep into me. It was nice, really nice.“The Mist-folk are the challenge to the floor,” Howard said. “To exit you need to open the locks on an old well at the far end of the town. To get the keys, you need to fight and win against a Mist-folk. There’s one key for every person that walks into the floor.”“So we need to fight six of them?” Awen asked. “Are they hard to fight?”“They’re not, and yep, six of them,” Howard said. He finished pushing something into his pipe, then lit it with a flick of his fingers. He knew a bit of magic then. “It’s more complicated than that. See, if you go in as a group, you’ll never get to the end of town. Not for lack of trying. Just... the town ain’t normal. You’ll walk to the end of the street and find yourself back at the start. Moving through some doors in a house will land you in another house across the town. Sometimes you’ll turn the same corner four or five times and never get anywhere. Only way for things to be normal is to have a key.”Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.The fishman leaned forwards and scratched something onto the ground, the Eldersign he’d mentioned.“That’s cut into the side of every key. They have triangular heads.”“So, we wander around, find six Mist-folk, convince them to give us their keys, then we’re good?” I asked.Howard shook his head. “They won’t show up if you’re not alone. The town will try to split us apart too.”“Oh,” I said.That was actually kind of scary.“Now, the Mist-folk, they’re clever in their own way. They’ll look like one of us. You won’t be meeting yourself, you’ll be meeting your friends. Might even really be your friends, the town will throw you back together sometimes.”“They’ll look like Broccoli and Amaryllis?” Awen asked.“Like any one of us,” Howard said. He puffed at his pipe. “They’ll talk, be real convincing.”I frowned. That sounded like trouble. “We could use a codeword? To tell who is who?”Howard shook his head. “They’ll use it. Don’t rightly know how it works. We always just figured they could read your mind, tell you what you want to hear from your friend.”“Wait, wait,” I said, raising a biscuit-filled hand to pause the fishman. “We need to fight monsters that look like our friends?”He nodded. “That’s the whole of it. Hard to tell whether they’re a friend or not. There’re some tricks. Asking the Mist-folk to use magic or abilities they don’t know. Or you can smell them. They don’t have a smell.”“I don’t want to be sniffed,” I said.“You probably don’t even have a smell,” Amaryllis said. “What with the amount of Cleaning magic you use.”Howard shrugged. “It’s a trick that’s worked before. Miss Bunch has her Cleaning magic, if you meet her, ask her to clean something. Not yourself. That’s asking for trouble. They can use offensive magic, and will attack if you lower your guard.”“That’s awful,” I said.“We should organize things then,” Bastion said. “Broccoli’s Cleaning magic is hard to reproduce. Amaryllis, you have your own interesting sort of magic, as does Awen.”Amaryllis nodded. “If I see anyone, I’ll zap first and ask questions later.”“Um,” I said.“A small zap.”“Ah, I have glass magic,” Awen said. She raised her hand, focused very hard, and a piece of glass appeared in her palm, at first just a tiny thing, like a diamond, but it grew in fits and starts, wrapping around and forming into a small crystalline ring. “Would that work?”“Might have to let anyone you meet pick up the glass to inspect it,” Howard said. He shook his pipe. “This is my trick for this floor.”“Oh, it smells strong,” I said.He nodded.“I am not certain as to what I could do,” Emmanuel said. “I suppose it would be hard for anything to copy my grandeur.”“Hmph,” Amaryllis said. “Just stab any cervid you see. Mist-folk don’t bleed, right?”“They don’t,” Howard confirmed.“O-one moment,” Emmanuel said.Bastion hummed. “I’m not sure what I could do. I don’t have any particularly flashy skills, and many of my skills rely on me having a weapon in hand, which isn’t something you’d want to see in a negotiation.”I sighed, downed the last of my tea, then stood up. Everyone else seemed to be done too. “I guess we’ll just have to be careful then,” I said. “Bastion, if we meet a monster that looks like you, we’ll attack it first. Just don’t resist, okay?”“That... is very much not something I want to test,” Bastion said.“We won’t attack you to hurt you,” I said. “Just to poke you a bit. Like, uh, your leg?”Bastion stared, one eyebrow rising. “We’ll see,” he said.“Great!”We packed things up. Awen took her blanket back and we made sure not to leave any trash behind. It wouldn't be nice to make everything all dirty, especially not for the next people who would come down to visit.“Does anyone want a hug before we go on?” I asked.“Your new buffing skill?” Bastion asked. “I noticed the minor buff with the tea. Interesting, but not entirely useful in this particular situation.”“I don’t really have the time to find great teas,” I said. “But one day I’ll find some great ones that’ll do all sorts of things. Anyways, hugging is my new skill. It doesn’t make you stronger, but it does make you feel better.”“Better how?” Emmanuel asked.“Well... like a hug normally does, I guess?”The cervid shifted a bit. “I think I’ll pass.”Awen was quick to raise her arms for a hug when I looked her way, so she got the first squeeze. Then it was Amaryllis’ turn, because she liked hugs even if she always made a fuss about it and tried to look all tough.“Do you want one, Bastion, Howard?”“I’m a bit old for hugs from pretty young misses,” Howard said with a grin. “But thank you.”“I think I’m well enough without,” Bastion declined.I nodded. There was no pushing hugs on people. “Right, let’s go!”Howard took the lead, taking the leftmost path with careful steps. I was a bit worried, he was a little on the older side, even if he was still very spry.The cave opened up onto a beach, with water lapping at the shore, and a half moon hanging in the sky above. The air smelled of seaweed and that sorta salty fishy smell that the ocean always had.Not too far away was a little shack, and, beyond that, a path that led away from the beach and up a small cliff to a town overlooking the calm waters.We’d made it to the second floor.
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Chapter Two Hundred and Fifteen — Un Mist Takeable
Chapter Two Hundred and Fifteen — Un Mist Takeable “I really don’t want to split up,” I admitted.Howard actually nodded, even though he was the one that told us we’d have to. “I know what you mean. But it makes it easier.”I scrunched my nose in distaste. I didn’t want to be apart from my friends. “How?” I asked.The fishman scratched at his rubbery neck. “If you go with someone, you’ll be split up anyway. One moment you’ll glance away, and your partner will be replaced by the Mist-folk. You’ll look back, and they’ll be right where you think they are. Then they’ll attack you. Same for your friend. They’ll be following you. Between one step and the next, they’ll walk through a door and be in another part of the town, or they’ll turn a corner and be alone.”I shivered. That was way too spooky.Amaryllis patted me on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine,” she said before walking past me. “Come on. I’d like to get this entire thing over with sooner rather than later.” With that, the harpy moved on ahead of us, aiming for a staircase cut into the side of the hill leading into the town.I sighed. “Fine,” I said. “We just need to get some keys and wait by some well, right?” I asked.Howard nodded. “Just keep walking, you’ll get there eventually. And remember not to trust anyone.”I grumbled a bit at that, and jogged up to follow Amaryllis. The others followed after me too. It was a bit strange that we were talking about having to split up, but were all bunched together while climbing the stairs.This whole thing felt very forced, and I didn’t like it one bit.So, maybe I was in a bit of a grumpy mood when I reached the top of the stairs and looked over the town.It didn’t even have a name, as far as I knew. It was just a little fishing town, with sparse woods around it, and some three dozen homes dotted here and there around a crooked road.“Stay safe,” Awen said.“Indeed. If you’re in any sort of trouble, just call, and Emmanuel shall be there!”I nodded, mostly to Awen. “We’ll see each other in a little bit,” I said.I stepped up ahead of everyone. I might not like... anything about this, but I was still our sorta-leader. I had to set the example, and it wouldn’t do for that example to include me being very grumpy.Now, if this dungeon ended up hurting my friends, I’d be showing it what-for, that was for sure.I slowed down as I reached the main road. It wasn’t all that wide. Maybe some three metres across. Too narrow for car traffic, but maybe not for carts and horses and such. The ground was shrouded in a thin mist, only-just tall enough to reach my ankles.“This isn’t that spooky,” I said. I’d seen worse watching horror movies just before my bedtime.I glanced back and saw my friends moving behind me. They were keeping a few paces between each other, but we were hardly split up yet.Sighing, I put my spade over my shoulder, made sure my bag was on snug, then started walking ahead.The homes were wooden, with fronts made of overlapping bare planks. The windows were broken on a few homes, and it looked like there were some flickering candles in some others. Mostly, it looked like the houses here needed a lot of maintenance.It looked... fine? A bit boring even.I reached the middle of the street and looked back. Awen was half a dozen metres behind me. She noticed me looking, then waved. “Um, hi?”“Hey,” I murmured. “Did the others go down other roads?”She blinked, then looked behind her. “Oh.”“Uh,” I said. “I guess we keep going?”“Yes?”I nodded. “Okay.”“Right.”We both hesitated. Then Awen took a deep breath, balled her fists, and walked past me. I watched her go until she turned a corner. Then she was gone. Her footsteps on the gravelly road cut off between one step and the next, and suddenly I was alone in a bubble of silence.My grip on my spade tightened.I started to look around again. There was something off about the town. Not just the general B-movie creepy vibes I was getting.The house to my right didn’t have a door. It had steps leading up to a wall that looked like it should have had a door, but there was just more wall. The lights in one of the houses across the street were flickering, just the normal waver of a candle flame, but the shadow cast by that light on the ground was perfectly steady.“Okay, I’ll give it to you, that is a bit creepy,” I said to the town. “Like, more uncanny than really creepy though. I’m not spooked, I’m just kind of confused.”The town, of course, didn’t say much to that.I shrugged and walked on while raising my hand to my side. I cast one of my favourite spells, Fireball. The small globe of burning light helped illuminate the town a little better. Of course, the shadows moved in the wrong direction as I walked.I rolled my eyes. That was a bit overdone.Someone screamed. Amaryllis!My heart thudded in my chest, almost as if trying to escape from my throat, then I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.“Stupid dungeon,” I muttered. “Amaryllis is too proud to scream. Maybe if it was Awen... or Emmanuel.”I was in quite a huff.I stomped ahead. I didn’t like being in a bad mood, but this place was pressing all of my buttons. I’d just have to find one of those Mist-folk and give them what-for.I spun around a corner, and squeaked to a stop just before bumping into someone coming my way.Amaryllis and I stared at each other. “I heard you scream,” she said.“I heard you scream,” I replied. “But I’m pretty sure it was a fake thing.”‘Yes, a fake thing,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. “Say, Broccoli, I happen to have a bit of mud on my shoes.”Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.I looked down. Her feet weren’t visible through the mist on the ground. Also, Amaryllis didn’t wear shoes. “Uh.”“I want you to use Cleaning magic, you dolt,” she said.“Oh, right,” I said. I had my spade in one hand and a fireball in the other. That made it a bit awkward to use magic. Then again, I didn’t need to use my hands for something like Cleaning magic. I just poured more mana into my aura and let it wash over Amaryllis.She rubbed at her jacket where there might have been a stain. “Right, so you’re real. Now I just need to confirm that I’m real too.”“Right,” I said.She looked pretty real to me.Amaryllis huffed a sort of impatient ‘why do I have to do this’ kind of huff, then she flicked her hand out to me. A little wire shot out from her talons and wrapped itself around my wrist.“Huh,” I said. “That was neat. I didn’t know you were getting that good with your puppetry stuff.”“I’ve been practicing,” she said. “Now, that obviously isn’t enough proof.”“It isn’t?” I asked. Could the Mist-folk fake wire and that kind of fluid control? I wasn’t fighting it or anything, of course. Still, it was very impressive.“Sorry,” she said.Three jolts of magic zipped along the wires and snapped at me. It was like touching a handle after walking on a carpet with wooly socks on, but at three places at once. “Ow!” I said. It didn’t really hurt much, but it was surprising.“There, that should be sufficient proof.”“I believed you were real already,” I muttered with a pout.“Yes, but you’re an idiot,” she said. Her wrist twitched and the wire came apart.“How do you do that?”“Wirework. I haven’t quite gotten it to where I want it, but it’s at disciple now. Quite handy.”“Cool,” I said. “So we’re both real!”She shook her head. “You say it as if you doubted your own real...ism?”I shrugged. “Sometimes I wonder. So, uh, now what?”“I haven’t gotten a key yet. I think we continue on our way. Find one of those Mist-folk and kill them. Basically, do what Howard told us to.”“Right... Hug for the road?”Amaryllis was a much better hugger when no one else was around. We broke up, and we both reluctantly continued our trek. Amaryllis went around the corner I’d just come from, and when I peeked around, it led to a different part of the town.Annoying.I continued onwards. The moon above made the mist hovering over everything shine a rather pretty silver. If I forgot that I was in a creepy dungeon without my friends, it was almost nice. Like heading out to take a stroll.I was bored within a minute.Broccoli Bunch was not an impatient sort of girl, but this whole thing was frustrating to the point that it really stretched my patience.“Come on, silly dungeon, do something,” I said.“A strange thing to ask.”I jumped and looked around. I’d wandered into an alleyway, somehow. I had been going down a street and... maybe I wasn’t paying all that much attention. Was there something in the air that made it hard to focus, or was it just part of the dungeon’s illusion? Was it an illusion? Howard hadn’t been clear on that.I shook my head and looked around, until I saw Bastion coming out of a door set in the middle of the alley wall. A weird place for a door, but then everything was weird here.“Hey,” I said.“Hello,” he replied. “I heard you. So far the only sounds I’ve heard on this floor are calls for help. Well, and one conversation with a Mist-folk.”“You found one?” I asked.I eyed Bastion up and down, but the sylph didn’t look unusual. He smiled a bit, and tugged a small key from a pouch. “I did. A false Howard approached me.”“Oh, well done!” I said. I grinned at him, then brought my spade around. “I’m going to stab you now, okay?”Bastion stared. “Ah, right. I had forgotten about that. Could you maybe verify your own identity first?”That was fair. To identify me, no one had to be stabbed.I looked for something dirty, found that nearly everything was, then let loose a burst of Cleaning magic at the nearest wall. The dust and grime peeled off. “Taa-daa,” I said.Bastion nodded. “Very well. Now, about this stabbing, could you perhaps not?”“Nope, sorry,” I said with a bit of a cringe. “It really is the only way to know. Reach your hand out, I can just make a small cut. It’ll be a clean cut, so it’ll heal just fine.”Bastion sighed and reached an arm out towards me. “There,” he said.I smiled at him, set my spade against the wall, then left my fireball hovering in the air. The last was a bit tricky, but I managed.I had a little camp knife in my bandoleer, which I removed as I approached Bastion and leaned down over his hand. “Just a little cut,” I said.“Quickly then,” he said. “This place is dangerous.”I nodded, then swiped my knife forward.Bastion’s finger bled fog.I gasped and moved to turn back, but Bastion’s form was already shifting, billowing out into a thin monster with long claws. “Die,” it said in Bastion’s voice before its arms came swiping down.I jumped up, ramming my forehead into the monster’s face with a dull crack.It stumbled back, which allowed me to reach back with my mana and fling my fireball forwards.The Mist-folk danced around it, then leapt at me again.This time I was a little more ready, and when it came close, it earned my shoe in its face.The monster stumbled back, wavered, then puffed into mist.Ding! Congratulations, you have swept away ‘Mist Taken One’ Level 8!A key clinked to the ground, and I found myself standing there, panting with my heart beating like a bunny that had seen a hawk.“I really don’t like this place,” I swore.
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