“So? What do you think?” asks Sockel.

Hineni looks at her and then looks around the corridor behind the kitchen; the one that connects to the library.

“About what?” asks Hineni. Sockel had told him to meet her here.

The elf nods, pleased. “Exactly.”

“…What?” asks Hineni. “Sockel. What are you talking about?”

He looks around the corridor. Behind him is the kitchen, which is closed for today because it is already late. To his right is the library. To the immediate left is a simple cupboard, used to store various house things that nobody ever really needs, but also aren’t worth throwing away because they might be needed one day.

Sockel steps to the side, pulling open the cupboard. The inside is in its usual state of disarray. There are some old coats stacked up on the bottom of the shelf, because the hangars they were hanging from had broken, but nobody has had the will to bother getting new ones. There is a replaceable mop handle in the back, leaned against the corner. There are some towels on the lower shelf, all just kind of thrown in. They had fallen out once from the top, where they were neatly folded. But then whoever they fell on had just stuffed them hastily back into the bottom shelf instead. Apart from that are some other odds and ends. A feather-duster, a bucket and just… stuff. There’s just all kinds of random stuff here.

“Did you breathe in some weird vapors from some old ledger?” asks Hineni. “Some of that old ink isn’t even available on the market anymore because people got poisoned by it?”

Sockel rolls her eyes, closing the door to the cupboard again. “First of all, that ink was poisoned on purpose.” Hineni blinks, watching as she opens the door again. “Secondly, no, I did not breathe in any old fumes because I haven’t had a chance to look at my books today.” She closes the door again. “And thirdly -” starts Sockel, pulling the door open a third time. Hineni waits. Finding a third thing is always hard in these situations, he knows the plight well. “- Shut up.”

Hineni sighs, shaking his head. “You used to be a really nice person, Sockel,” he says. “You’ve gotten pretty froggy lately, you know?”

Sockel tsks, pulling the door to the cupboard fully open.

“— She’s just trying to build emotional distance to us before her inevitable betrayal,” says a voice from behind them. Rhine leans around the corner from the kitchen with an owl-shaped cookie in his mouth, obscuring his smug grin. He gives them a thumbs-up. “So that she can sell us out without doubts when the time comes,” he says with his mouth full.

Some mechanism on the back wall clicks.

“Shut your yap, twerp,” warns Sockel. “People disappear in the dungeon pretty often these days, you know?”

Rhine shrugs, unimpressed. “I’m just saying that you’re being a jerk because you think being around us is making you soft,” says Rhine, wiping a strand of blue hair out of his face.

“Look at the sad state of my life, I’d almost say you’re right,” replies Sockel, looking back towards the cupboard. She holds her hands out towards it. “Ta-da,” says the elf, unenthusiastically. The back wall of the cupboard has moved away, revealing a hole down behind it. “One secret vault, as ordered.”

Hineni blinks. “…Sockel, when did this get built?” he asks. “I never even saw any workers.”

Sockel shakes her head. “Wouldn’t be a good secret room if you did, would it?” she asks.

Hineni stares at her and then over towards the hole. He supposes that’s a strong point. “Fair enough.” He leans in, looking down. There’s a ladder that goes down into a space below, like in the cellar. “Is it insulated, like I asked?” he says.

Sockel waves him off. “Yeah, yeah,” says the elf, squeezing past him to climb into the cabinet. “Eilig’s gonna be fine,” says the elf, grabbing the ladder and sliding down it first. “The walls are so thick down here that even Rhine’s skull couldn’t get through them.”

Rhine narrows his eyes, watching her vanish into the darkness.

Hineni shrugs, doing his best to awkwardly climb over the contents of the cabinet without knocking them over into the hole and he makes his way down.

At first, the area around them is entirely dark. But a slight squeaking rings out, as Sockel twists on a lantern, hanging from the wall.

They find themselves standing in a room the size of the ice-cellar. Strong supports sit along the walls, along with several chests and cabinets of various sizes nested between themselves. There are several pedestals, covered in glass. One of them is adorned by the frozen-skull. The others sit empty.

Ahead of them is a vault door, made out of orichalcum.

“Can we afford this?” asks Hineni. “I know we’re doing well. But are we doing ‘orichalcum vault well’?”

Sockel waves him off, heading to the door. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Hineni walks after her, looking around the room. “I feel like this is exactly something that I should be worried about.”

Sockel pats the door. “Anything really high tier, we can keep in here,” she says. “Double layer of security never hurts,” says the elf. “Plus it can be used as a safe-room in an emergency.”

Hineni nods.

He doesn’t really know what kind of emergency would happen here that would make them need to hide in a secret, underground, magic-proof vault in all honesty. But it’s always good to have options.

“I heard the war’s getting pretty crazy,” says the man across from him to another adventurer.

Hineni leans back against the bath, closing his eyes as the strangers talk.

“I still think the whole war is dumb,” replies the other person. “They should have just let the elves leave. I mean, who cares?” he asks. “I don’t.”

“Do you know how much money is made down there?” asks the man. “Between the wood and the rare monsters and everything else, it’s a ridiculously productive region.”

“Still not sure I care,” replies the other person.

“Doesn’t matter if you care or not. The people who pull the strings care,” explains the man. “Anyways, like I said, it’s getting wild down there. Like, crazy wild.”

“Huh? What? It’s a war. Of course it’s gonna get a little rough -”

“No, you don’t get it,” says the man, sounding enthusiastic almost about the subject. “There’s a bunch of stories. The leylines are going batshit. The elves are using them to summon a bunch of monsters and stuff. They’re overloading the spawning zones.”

“…Can they do that?” asks the other one. “That seems pretty wild to me.”

“Yeah, it’s what I heard. But we’ve had some freaky stories too,” says the man. “I know a guy who knows a guy who works in logistics,” he says. “They’ve been shipping some small, weird boxes to the front. Hush-hush stuff. No idea what’s in them.”

“…So?” Water splashes as the other person gets up to exit the bath. “It’s probably just some embarrassing personal items or something. I bet the military has thousands of weird boxes flying around.”

“Yeah,” says the other guy, getting out of the water too. “But there are just… I don’t know, there are stories, man. People getting drained of their soul-points in an instant, the ground is decaying in large circles here and there. There’s all sorts of weird stuff popping up down in the south.”

“There are always stories,” replies the other person, grabbing a towel from the wall. “War gets dramatic fast and honestly, as long as it stays down there, I guess I don’t really care,” he says.

The other man shrugs, drying himself off as well.

Hineni stares back at the empty bath across from himself, thinking. It sounds like his first skulls have arrived there in the south and are being put to work. If these rumors are true, people are being harmed and hurt and killed with his creations right now, right this very instant.

He stares up towards the ceiling for a time, wondering if that bothers him, as the two men get dressed and leave the bath.

But he finds that it doesn’t.

Hineni slides down lower into the water, resting his head against the basin and closing his eyes as he exhales.

It’s very relaxing.

Life is good.