Dungeons Just Want to Have Fun

It was all very strange. Tyla had expected to be caught and dragged back to her pen. At best, she had thought that she might manage to make it to the street. She would be penniless and barely clad, but she would be free for at least as long as she lasted. Instead, she was wrapped in expensive cloth while eating meat and greens wrapped in a spiced flatbread.

Tyla’s mind mulled over the inexplicable events that had led to her current circumstances. First, there was the way that the guard had died. There had been a noise, but no other sign of a cause.

That stank of magic, as far as Tyla was concerned. True, she didn’t know of any spells that made a head explode, but spells could do many things. She was certain that she hadn’t heard of every kind of spell. Magic meant a mage, and mages were a threat.

At least they were back home. Mages came to the forest looking for numenstones. The tribes protected them as best they could, but they had failed many times as the dark-skinned humans pushed the forest back.

Tyla wasn’t sure what to make of a mage being here, though. If they were after numenstones, they were far away from her forest. Any numenstones here were not hers to claim.

The second strange thing was the pale-skinned woman who had beckoned her over the wall. Tyla had heard that humans that pale lived far to the north. If that was where the woman was from, she was far from home indeed. Was she the mage? Had she come all this way to plunder the southern lands for numenstones?

The third, and most inexplicable thing was that Cheia’s sister was here. Cheia had spoken of her family, and her sister was supposed to be a baker’s apprentice, like Cheia. The woman who had led her away from the slaver’s compound and brought her to this inn did not seem like a baker’s apprentice. She smelled of smoke and iron, and her long leather coat seemed too heavy to be anything other than armour.

And yet… she looked like Cheia. She was called Aris, which was the name that Cheia had used for her sister. And she was anxious about her sister.

“You’ve seen her recently, right?” Aris asked. “How was she?”

Tyla considered the question. It seemed a strange one to ask, but Tyla thought that might just be her perspective.

“She is fine,” she tried. “As well… as can be expected.”

“Then, is she… has she… did they…?”

Tyla gave Aris a blank look. It wasn’t supposed to be blank, but in this moment, blank was suddenly all she had.

“One gets used to it,” she said. “Most of the guards are not cruel.”

“Oh!” Aris exclaimed, her face falling into dismay. “You— you were as well… I’m sorry.”

Tyla nodded. The woman had nothing to apologise for, but it felt nice to hear it. That seemed to have killed Aris’s appetite for questions, so Tyla asked one of her own.

“Why are you here?”

Aris smiled weakly. “Isn’t it obvious? We’re here to rescue Cheia. Oh, and all of the rest of you, as many as we can. But mainly Cheia.”

Tyla nodded again. That was indeed obvious. Cheia had often expressed her hope that her family would come and rescue her. Most of those dreams had featured her sister’s boyfriend, rather than her sister. He was an adventurer, apparently, the child of two Heroes. Those three had often been mentioned when she talked of being rescued.

Tyla had asked the wrong question. “How are you here?” she asked.

Aris smiled, more warmly this time. “That’s… a really complicated story”, she said… “It started when…”

By the time Aris had finished her story, the sky had gone dark, and Tyla’s mind had gone blank again.

A numen?

She was still processing the implications when the rest of the party returned.

“All hail the conquering heroes!” the pale one, Kelsey, said cheerfully on entering the room. She had a cask of wine tucked under one arm.

Tyla quickly rose from her chair and went down on one knee in front of Kelsey. She bowed down low, one hand across her chest. Kelsey blinked.

“Aw, no need to bow! I might have helped you out, but only a little.”

“Ah, no,” Tyla replied, still with her head bowed. “I am grateful, but this is the respect due to a numen, according to the traditions of my tribe.”

“A what now? Please, get up, you’re making it weird. Or wait— maybe it's because everyone else isn’t kneeling! Give it a go, guys, let's see how it feels!”

The dark-skinned man—Anton— snorted and spoke up. “We won’t be doing that,” he said firmly. “Please. Stand up. Kelsey doesn’t require that sort of thing.”

Reluctantly, Tyla got to her feet. Anton nodded at her. “I’m Anton,” he said. “This is Zaphar, and you seem to know who Kelsey is.”

“Now what’s all this about a numen?” Kelsey asked.

“Numen… are the spirits that live in the Great Mazes in the depths of the forest,” Tyla said uncertainly. “They come from numenstones, and there are stories that say that the greatest of them can take on a physical form.”

Kelsey smiled smugly. “You see, Anton? I’m the greatest. Hang on, let me chat to Mel about this.”

Despite her words, Kelsey did no such thing. Instead, she got them all seated around the main table and cracked open the cask she had brought.

“We’re celebrating a successful mission,” she said when Aris questioned why she was serving drinks. This time it was Zaphar who snorted.

“Okay!” Kelsey declared after they all had a cup. “So according to Mel, elves are the best. They still keep to the old ways, or pretty close. They honour dungeons, live in harmony with them, and they never, ever, try to kill them.”

“Why didn’t you know this before?” Anton asked.

“Mel never mentioned it,” Kelsey said. “In fairness, I don’t get out much, so there wasn’t much of a need.”

Tyla bowed again. “Then, wise one, will you aid me?”

Kelsey raised her eyebrows. “I mean, sure? We’ll help you get at least part of the way home. Worst case you’ll have to make your way home from this guy’s town, but I think the elven tribes are sort of on our way?”

“Ah… what I mean, wise one, is that numen are our guides on the Path and the source of all the Classes, so I was hoping you’d know why I can’t go back to my old Class.”

Kelsey shrugged. “Beats me,” she said. “And knock it off with that wise one stuff. I’m just Kelsey.”

“Actually, I might know,” Anton said. “You’re talking about Padascar Hunter, right?”

Tyla looked at him and nodded.

“That sounds like a local Class,” he continued. “They still work outside of the local area they were created for, but they can only be taken if you’re in the territory of the… group that caused it to exist.”

“So… I can’t take it until I return home?” Tyla asked.

“That’s right,” Anton said. “I wouldn’t recommend sticking with Doxy, but perhaps there’s something else you could take until then?”

“Nothing that appeals,” Tyla said sourly.

“Actually, I might have an idea on that front, but I need to think about it,” Kelsey said. “Don't make any hasty decision tonight.”

“You have an idea,” Anton said. “One that helps?”

“Am I not the Guide to the Path? Am I not the Way?” Kelsey said loftily.

Anton looked over at Tyla. “Great,” he said. “There’ll be no living with her now,”

Kelsey gasped and pointed at him.

“What?” he asked.

“You know what you did. Admit it!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Anton said. “Are we going to listen to Zaphar’s story now?”

“Yes! I mean, No! We can’t until you admit it!”

“Admit what?”

Kelsey scowled. “Fine. Tell the story,” she said to Zaphar.

Everyone looked at Zaphar expectantly, including Tyla. Now that she was looking at him, he seemed familiar.

“Fine, fine,” the young man said. He looked into his cup like it held his next words, then took a long sip of it.

“It all started when I got hit on by Soraya Malik,” he stated.

“Malik?” Anton asked. “Isn’t she a courl, then?”

“Yes. Yes, she is,” Zaphar said. “So, no, I don’t know what she was thinking. Maybe she likes humans? Her father trades in them after all. Anyway, she saw through my disguise.”

Zaphar paused and looked thoughtful for a moment. “I think that was what attracted her to me? The fact that I wasn’t a rich person there to buy slaves was interesting. She flat out told me that I was an imposter and asked me what I was doing there.”

He took another long sip from his cup. “And then he told me to tell her the truth.”

Kelsey cackled. “I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist meddling,” she said gleefully.

“Are we talking about the Fae?” Anton asked. Tyla’s eyes widened. Aris had mentioned a Fae, but Tyla had thought that she was exaggerating.

“Yes. So I told her and she offered me a deal. If I disrupted the auction, she’d see to it that I got what I was here for. At which point, she left me alone to “do my thing”. And thank Anyn for that.”

“I went back to my original plan and tried to find a way into the rest of the building. Everything was guarded, but he told me the exact timing to open one of the doors—”

“That’s where I saw you!” Tyla exclaimed. “You were the one who distracted the guard.”

Zaphar blinked at her owlishly, making the connection. “You were a pretty good distraction as well,” he said. “The guard chased after you, and I just slipped in behind.”

“Smooth,” Kelsey complimented. Zaphar scowled.

“I’d much rather do that sort of thing when there's no one in the house,” he said. “Anyway, they were too busy chasing you to notice me, and he told me what to steal to make a distraction.”

“What was that?” Kelsey asked.

“Some makeup that was on the table, they had a ton of it,” Zaphar told her. “Two lanterns worth of oil, all mixed up in a bucket.”

“This stuff burns?” Tyla said, alarmed. She had forgotten about the powder they’d daubed her with almost as soon as she put it on.

Kelsey came up and licked her finger before dragging it across Tyla’s cheek. She stayed quite close and as she brought her finger back into view Tyla saw the powder stuck to Kelsey’s finger just disappear.

“Hmm,” Kelsey said. “Low purity long chain polymer, probably natural in origin. Some sort of tree sap? Dried and ground up… It’s not particularly flammable, but it would make a lot of smoke if it did burn.”

“It did,” Zaphar confirmed. “I put it in a closed-up room so the smoke could build up before they found it… and so I wouldn’t be there when they found it. After that, it was just running and hiding.”

“Aw, don’t leave it at that,” Kelsey said. “There must be some amusing bit where you hid in the slave’s changing room and they hid you under a pile of their underwear.”

“If there were any stories like that,” Zaphar said stubbornly, “Then I will take them to my grave. It was very stressful, though. Eventually, Soraya found me.”

“How?” Anton asked.

“She walked around alone, in the deserted parts of the house, jangling those keys,” Zaphar said. “I thought about not contacting her, but she was going to attract attention to me before too long.”

He pointed at the keys, or rather, at Kelsey, who had made the keys disappear. “Those are supposed to be the spare keys for everything. From the outside gates to the slave quarters. It should only be a day or two before they’re missed.”

“Nice,” Kelsey said. “But the most important thing… did you get a level? What trait did you get?”

Zaphar looked at Kelsey for a long time, and Tyla thought that he wasn’t going to answer. She wouldn’t have answered, if Kelsey hadn’t been a numen. Coming from a mortal, the question would have been rude.

“Glamoured Disguise,” he finally said. “It changes my Identification information to match the disguise I’m wearing.”

“Nice,” Kelsey said, grinning. “We’ll make a face character out of you yet.”