If neither Ix nor Ashmor, got the results they wanted from Ix’s death, what of the third participant? Fyskel, the God of Balance, is not highly respected among humanity. As one of the more numerous races, humanity often finds that ‘Balance’ means tipping the scales against human progress and human interests. Not for nothing is he known as the Turncoat God.

If the world before was balanced between Ix and Ashmor, then the world after was still balanced, but in a much more complex manner. Alliances shift, treaties are broken, irreparable rifts are forged. And in the middle: Fyskal, playing both ends against the other.

It could well be argued that of the three participants in the Shattering, only one got what they wanted. Whether that was a coincidence or not, is not for mortals to judge.

- Heresies of Kaval

I was at a party. My first one since coming here, unless you counted the Ball, which I did not. That was far too formal to be a party, even before the murders started. Hopefully, tonight would be murder-free, but I wasn’t going to bet on it. Things were getting rowdy.

It had been Cerise’s idea - probably something to do with the money burning a hole in her pocket. She had said that it was Adventurer tradition to drink a toast for any departed companion, and had dragged us all to the tavern to do so. It was an adventurers tavern, so there were plenty of people willing to be roped into a drinking session. Another drinking session, that is, as they were already drinking.

Cerise and Vasidi went around rounding up people that had known Fleurette, while we had the enviable job of trying to cheer up Channing. Mostly that meant listening to him tell stories of Fleurette.

He and Fleurette had been close, which seemed to explain why he was such a mess, while Vasidi was… broken up, but functional. As he told stories, I was struck by the parallels between the two of them and the couple in our group. I wasn’t the only one, as I could see Kyle getting grimmer as Channing spoke. The possibility of being in the same position as him did not sit well with him.

Things cheered up as others arrived, to commiserate with Channing, and to tell stories of their own. The toasts started getting made and the drinks started flowing.

I stayed in the background, as much as I could. I’d never known her after all. But that just meant there were people who wanted to tell me about her, wanted to drink to her memory. I tried to keep that under control - I didn’t know my limits in this world. Did three [Strength] mean three times the drinking?

That quickly proved not to be so. As the night progressed, it became clear that a high [Strength] did not mean a high drinking capacity. It seemed that my experience with Company parties was still serving in good stead. Of our team, Kyle was the first to drop out, getting led away by Felicia while he could still walk.

Cloridan was a true professional, drinking heavily and not showing it at all. He was off the clock, of course, and seemed to be making real progress with Oadi.

I decided that it was time for me to leave. Not a complete fool, I let Cloridan know I was leaving. He made as if to escort me, but I told him I was fine.

It’s remarkably easy to leave a party unnoticed. Everyone’s focused on who they’re talking to, so all you have to do is make sure no ones talking to you, and you might as well be invisible. I looked around, just to be sure that there weren’t any other anti-social types hanging around the edges, and then I cast [Greater Invisibility].

People were going in and out of the tavern all the time, so it was easy to slip out behind someone. Soon I was standing in the street, breathing the nighttime air, and admiring the way the two moons lit up the place nicely.

I hadn’t chosen to go invisible because I was afraid of being molested on my way home. Though that was a concern, and this should prevent any attempts, I had another reason.

I looked up. Cloridan had drilled into me that no one ever looked up, so above was the best place to hide. I’d been drinking in a tavern for hours, it could well be assumed I’d be off my guard and not looking out carefully. It was a good time to relax, and not worry about little mistakes.

Like sitting a little too close to the edge of the roof while waiting for me to come out.

I thought about taking action. I could climb up there, [Blind] the guy. He’d probably fall. Maybe I could put a little Phantasmal ice under his feet, make him slip without ever realising what happened. It seemed a waste though. He’d be replaced. Slipping away from him like this, he probably wouldn’t even report it. As it stood, I knew they were watching me, but they didn’t know I knew that, which put me ahead in the game.

Whatever. So Aubert was having me watched. If he thought that was going to help him… well, I guess I’d let him waste his money.

“So you didn’t kill him?” Rhis asked.

“No.” I leaned back on my deck chair. We’d learned that the featureless white void could be shaped into whatever you wanted. Right now, I was on a reasonable facsimile of Bondi beach at night. It was less real than an illusion - the waves crashed and made a sound, but you couldn’t walk over to them, let alone feel the sand under your feet. Still nice though.

“I know you said you don’t have to kill everyone,” Rhis continued. “But you also said that sometimes you don’t have a choice.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. He was getting better at this, I swear, but he was really finding the whole ‘not killing’ thing a challenge. I’d be more concerned, but he still didn’t have access to the real world.

“So I’ve been keeping track,” Rhis said. Was that pride in his voice? I guess keeping track of things was new to him. “And the thing is, I’m pretty sure you haven’t killed anyone!”

“Hmm, let me think,” I said, humouring him. I pretended to search my memory. “Yep, I think you’re right. Not a one.” I looked over to see him radiating confusion. I sighed.

“Rhis, being forced to kill someone is a rare thing, even here. There’s almost always something you can do instead. Back home I went twenty-four years without killing anyone. The fact that I’ve kept my streak going for another month isn’t that amazing.”

Rhis didn’t really get human timekeeping, but we’d been through days, months and years enough times for him to be able to puzzle it out. I let him ponder it for a while, before bringing up the other reason I’d activated him. I’d wanted to tell him about tonight, about how humans reacted when they lost someone, but he didn’t really get it.

“So, I also wanted to talk about the dungeon today,” I said. I’d already recounted the basics.

“Phfft, Chimeras,” he snorted dismissively. “I suppose it counts as a theme, with the whole ‘Forbidden Laboratory’ thing, but it's just lazy if you ask me.”

“How so?” I asked, amused. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that he was so into dungeon design, but he was really a perfectionist and hadn’t been at all complimentary about the dungeons I’d seen so far.

“There’s just one type of Chimera monster available,” he informed me. “So all that guy did was make a number of rooms, summon a Chimera in each room and call it a day. The summon is random as to what features each monster has.”

He started ranting about how it made it impossible to put in a decent ecosystem since every monster had different dietary requirements, so as soon as one got killed you had to re-jigger the entire lot.

“Wait, how does that work with multiple monsters of the same type?” I interrupted.

“All part of a single summon,” he said with a shrug. “You specify the Threat, and it can give you one big monster or several smaller monsters. Such a hack.”

“What about that trap room though?” I said. “It looked setup for smaller beasts, how will that work the next time they summon more?”

“Well, I suppose that they made the minimum of effort to move creatures to an appropriate locale,” he sneered. “It's not much, but it’s something.”

“Uh-huh. Also, it didn’t look like they had anything to eat? That made sense for the undead dungeon, but how does it work with living creatures?”

“Oh, any creature can be sustained with additional mana. It’s wasteful though, which is why you want to set up a proper ecosystem. This guy probably got lazy because he had so much mana to use. That reminds me of something…” Rhis trailed off, thinking.

“Oh yes!” he said, “I was going to tell you before. I’ve been getting notifications about the additional mana.”

“What, you’ve been awake when I’m not here?” I asked.

“Not exactly…” he said. “It’s more like I get woken up briefly to get told that there’s more mana available. I think that this location might meet the minimum requirements to activate the seed.”

He looked really eager, but I wasn’t keen on having him go back to killing people.

“Maybe the minimum requirements, but I don’t think this is a good location,” I hedged. “It’s right next to two other dungeons.”

“That’s true. You wouldn’t want your dungeon to be mana starved,” he said thoughtfully. I smiled in agreement, and let him go back to talking about lizard breeding.

I really need to figure out what I want to do with this dungeon seed.

“They’re probably the Baron’s men, not Aubert’s,” Cloridan said. We were having a late brunch, and Felicia was distributing hangover cures to us all. Everyone except Cutter, who hadn’t been drinking last night. This world might not have had a minimum drinking age law, but that didn’t mean I was going to let it happen.

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s his town, and he’s Lord Aubert’s man,” Cloridan explained. “It would be rude to send his own men, but he can just order the guy to keep an eye on you and tell him what you’re doing.”

“Huh. Does it make a difference?”

“Maybe,” Cloridan drank his potion, grimaced, and then ate some bread to erase the taste. “It means they’ll be locals, and we might be able to tell something from who they are.”

“What do you mean?”

“If they’re actually the Baron’s men, that’s one thing, but most nobles don’t have troops that are good at sneaking around. He might have hired one of the gangs to do the actual surveillance. If we can identify the men, we can work out which of the gangs the Baron is dealing with.”

“I can do that!” Cutter interjected. He was sulking from having missed both the dungeon expedition and the party afterwards, but the prospect of doing something exciting fired him up again.

“Don’t be dumb,” Cloridan shot back. “This isn’t Anchorbury, kids aren’t so common they get ignored. Plus, these guys have seen you with us, so if they see you they’ll know we’re on to them.”

“I could do it if I were invisible?” Cutter suggested.

“I can’t extend the spell if you get too far away from me, remember?” I said. “And how do you plan on identifying them anyway? Cloridan might recognise them, but there’s no way you will.”

“I uh… could follow them back to their base?”

“And what about when the spell runs out?”

“You were talking before, about an enchantment that did [Invisibility]?” he asked hopefully.

“It might come to that,” I said, and shuddered. “But let’s try every other avenue before I give an [Invisibility] amulet to a thirteen-year-old boy.”