The dungeon’s gift shop was yet another scene that shattered Kaldalis’s immersion. It was a strangely-familiar taste of capitalist hellscape inside the videogame. The walls were lined with shelves sporting the plush versions of the monsters from the dungeon that he had expected, in a half-dozen different sizes.

There was a veritable swarm of little blue water elephant toys, with their four glass eyes artificially large to give them an adorable, infantilized look. Half the shop was a swath of purple of various sized aquarius vulpes dolls. On top, in the gaps in between the highest shelves and the ceiling, there were enormous stuffed toys that would dwarf even a pre-teen child, clearly made to depict the aquarius fenrus with its large horns and exposed fangs.

In the middle of the room were racks of mementos and memorabilia. Shirts bore a stylized logo, with the words “Raging River” made to look like rushing rapids, and the word “Fissure” looking like it was made of the ancient stalagmites of the cave. There were smaller trinkets and carved wooden figures here and there. There was a rack of artwork as well, with the piece on the front a picture-perfect depiction of the imaginary black metal album cover Kaldalis had imagined when he’d seen the final boss. He didn’t know if the worldbuilding in this world accounted for the printing press, so they might have been actual unique paintings, and not mass-produced printed posters.

He felt a deep desire - conditioned by every trip to a zoo, aquarium, or museum - to own some memento of his trip. A painting of the caverns with the river rushing alongside them, to hang above his bed in his quarters in Cotanaku. A little glass sculpture of the Aqualephant to fill out space on a shelf. A shirt that he’d probably never actually wear. Even just a stuffed Soakanine to bring back as a gift for Heluna. He pushed the compulsion down, but it was still very much there, in the back of his mind.

As the party entered, Myayuan immediately rushed into the store, looking at the various trinkets for sale. Voron gave a long-suffering sigh and followed after. Jerporbernit, though, went straight to the counter next to the entrance. Trying to resist the urge to grab anything from the shop, Kaldalis followed the healer’s lead.

As Jerporbernit turned over his receipt and had his deposit returned to him - while the clerk tried to upsell him on a memento of the trip - Kaldalis took one last look around. It still bothered him that he didn’t know where Iarsa was. He’d expected her to be here, and it bothered him that she was missing. He knew he’d intentionally undermined her script, but he found it hard to believe that she’d taken it so personally that she’d abandoned her post.

Jerporbernit got his deposit back and left, and Kaldalis approached the clerk next. Somehow, he had a small stuffed Soakanine in his hand, without really remembering when he’d grabbed it. As he put it on the counter along with his receipt for his deposit, he reasoned that it must have been fate.

“One moment sir,” the clerk said. She was a human woman who looked a little too young to be holding a full-time job. Or perhaps she was just very short. She consulted a big sheaf of papers, quickly locating his name before counting out a few crescents. “For the doll, minus your deposit, that’ll be ten crescents.”

Kaldalis tried not to wince. His deposit had been twenty crescents, so the small stuffed toy - barely larger than two fists - was thirty crescents. The fee for the dungeon run itself had been forty. Apparently this gift for Heluna cost almost as much as the whole fucking dungeon. Classic gift shop. It wasn’t highway robbery if your victims walked in and handed over their money, like Kaldalis was doing now.

“Oh, hold on,” she said, pausing as she put his money into the till, her eyes still looking on the sheaf of papers before her. “I need to take you to speak to my manager.”

“Uh, okay?” Kaldalis said, suddenly getting a bad feeling about this.

“Yeah, don’t worry,” she said, shooting him a fake retail-worker smile. “You’ve been selected for a random quality assurance interview.”

“Uh-huh.” He suddenly started to see where this was going.

Despite his doubts, he followed her to one of the shelving units, which she pulled aside to reveal a door that led into the back room.

“Just head straight back. You can see his door there at the end,” she said. With a glance over her shoulder to where Voron and Myayuan were arguing about one of the giant aquairus fenrus dolls, she added: “I’d walk you back, but I can’t leave the store unattended.”

“Don’t worry,” Kaldalis said, trying to give his best retail-worker sympathy smile. “I think I can find it myself.”

The office was indeed right down the side of the small back room. Inside the room was a Talsar man working on paperwork. The room was a shoebox of an office, filled with boxes of papers lining the back and side walls, framing the manager. He was a little bit thicker than the average talsar, with a scaled fold under his chin that made him look slightly like a bearded dragon. As Kaldalis tapped his fist against the doorframe, the man looked up from his work.

“You must be, uh.” He paused to glance down at the forms on his desk, scanning the documents with his slit-pupiled eyes for a moment. “Kaldalis?”

“Yeah,” Kaldalis said, stepping into the room. The Talsar gestured at a chair on the other side of the desk, and Kaldalis sat down. “What is this about?”

“You were randomly-selected for a post-dungeon interview is all,” the man said. He was a terrible liar. “Just a few questions. For quality assurance procedures, you know. We gotta pull three people a day for this. You’re free to leave if you decline to give feedback, but I’d appreciate it if you’d stick around.”

Kaldalis nodded along, though he was trying to figure out if Iarsa was his daughter or something, and if this was a setup before he got beat up by thugs.

“Just a couple of questions,” the manager repeated. “Ah, how did you hear about Raging River Fissure? Word of mouth?”

“I didn’t,” Kaldalis said truthfully. “I just figured there was probably a dungeon around here somewhere and just asked for directions until I got there.”

“Hm. Hm.” The man scribbled something down on a page. Kaldalis couldn’t see it clearly from here, but from what he could tell, he couldn’t have learned anything about it if he’d leaned over the desk to look right at it. It was all handwritten, and he was either writing in a weird shorthand, or else his handwriting was literally incomprehensible. “And did you read any of the guidance materials before you arrived? Safety pamphlets? Code of conduct?”

“No,” Kaldalis said, slightly confused. “I don’t think I received any such documents.”

“Nobody handed you anything?” the man asked, arching the scaled ridge above his left eye. “No pamphlets? Leaflets? Anything?”

“No,” Kaldalis said. “Not a thing.”

“Alright, thank you,” the man grumbled. He fished through some other papers, and started to copy something down. Kaldalis saw that it was a copy of his receipt from when he signed up. “I will have to have someone talk to the clerks up there to make sure proper procedure is being followed.”

“I don’t want to be getting anyone in trouble,” Kaldalis said quickly.

“No trouble, no trouble,” he said, putting on a fake smile. “That’s why we have these interviews. If people don’t follow proper procedure, then we get incidents like this.”

“Incidents?” Kaldalis asked, leaning forward. “I thought you said this was a random interview.”

“Kid,” the man said, meeting Kaldalis’s eye. “You’re not an idiot. We both know that.”

Kaldalis wanted to dispute the point, but the man’s grumpy demeanor made him hesitate to snark at him.

“You’re smart enough to know why I’m talking to you,” he continued, gesturing around himself. “All this paperwork to be done, and I have to pull someone in on their day off to fill three more runs tonight because Iarsa just walked out.”

“Wait, she quit?” Kaldalis said. “Why?”

The manager fixed Kaldalis with a slit-pupiled glare that would have poached an egg.

“I mean, I didn’t mean anything by it,” Kaldalis added. “I was just getting impatient, you know? She was doing great. I liked her! I was just here to fight stuff, not get a walking tour.”

“She was great,” the manager agreed, clearly growing angrier. “One of my best guides. Not just good at the job, but reliable. Always on time. Always professional. I’ve never heard a single complaint against her. Do you know how rare that is in this business?” He slammed his hand down on the table, raising his voice. “And now she’s gone because of you!”

“What did I even do?” Kaldalis found himself yelling, matching the intensity of the angered Talsar. “I ran through a few rooms a bit faster? I didn’t play red-light-green-light in the boss room?”

“You broke safety procedures!” The Talsar was really shouting now. “You put everyone in danger!”

“It’s a dungeon!” Kaldalis shouted back. “It’s supposed to be dangerous!”

Kaldalis was about to launch into explaining that even for NPCs, death in a dungeon was only temporary, but the man slammed his fist on the desk again, interrupting him.

“For the safety of my staff and clients, you’re banned!” he bellowed. “Permanently! And not just here. I’m sending your name and League ID number to every dungeon in Zara! You’ll never run a dungeon in this country ever again!”

“Great!” Kaldalis yelled back. He didn’t know why. He wasn’t even really that upset. The Talsar’s rage was so intense he was quivering in his seat, and it was infectious. “This is the last time I have a dungeon experience this fucking boring? I see this as an absolute win!”

“Get out of my office!” The Talsar rose to his feet, pointing back the way Kaldalis came. “Right now!”

“With pleasure! Good day, sir!” Kaldalis screamed back at the man, shoving himself to his feet so hard he toppled his chair over. Despite himself, he stopped to set the chair back upright before turning on his heel and stomping his way back out.

As soon as he rounded the corner and was no longer in sight of the enraged Talsar manager, Kaldalis calmed down. He hadn’t actually been that angry about what had happened. When someone yelled at him, he either diffused the situation or matched their energy. The double-chinned Talsar had just been so upset over what Kaldalis interpreted as nothing at all. There was nothing to do but lean into the absurdity of it.

At the very least, he could hope Iarsa found a more fulfilling career.

He gave the clerk at the front counter a friendly smile as he walked past her and out of the gift shop. From the look he got in return, he assumed that the back room was far from soundproof. He headed out of the building and started making his way through the market and back towards the city, trying to think of what he was going to do to fill the time until Garyung’s meeting.

He just hoped the long-term consequences of this encounter weren’t quite as dire as the dungeon manager had made them sound.