Shaky Ground

Chp 106

“You absolute dumbass!” Mina cursed. Andrea shoved her back, not wanting to deal with her or the tears. They hadn’t known each other before the pendants; Mina was a late addition to the party. She’d always been strange, openly emotional despite her status as a hero.

“I’ll do as I like and if I sell my soul it's no one's business but mine!” Andrea shouted.

“Wow, everyone calm down a bit,” 42 interjected. No one was really listening to her for the moment, however. Mina shoved Andrea in return.

“42! If you accept, we’ll have nothing to do with you!” Mira shouted.

“Hey!” Andrea cried, not caring that she was being shoved down. She wanted to sell herself, but Mira had been talking about a town to feed the dungeon. There wasn’t much hope a single soul would be more enticing to 42, and Andrea felt a rising panic.

Andrea hadn’t grown up particularly pampered and her interest in swordsmanship had inclined her even less to delicacy than most. Before everything had happened, she’d had a brash temperament but reasonable impulse control. Now she was lashing out, a fist flying for Mina’s face. Hetcha got involved, but that didn’t cause things to improve.

“Oh for fucks sake! Break it up,” 42 growled. The people who’d emerged from the house waded into the fray and quickly pulled the former hero’s party apart.

“I’m not agreeing to shit just yet, so consider this a timeout for everyone,” 42 added. Andrea felt the world fizzle oddly, then found herself in a stone room. Unlike the one she’d been imprisoned in, it was rather small and plain, without even a fountain. Only the strange glowing stones embedded in the ceiling cast any light and she felt a rising panic.

Andrea didn’t have time to get too far into her new misery. Without warning the room began to expand, doors appearing along with a long cut-out in the wall that let in a rush of air. It filled a moment later with glass. Very quickly Andrea found herself in what looked like a sitting room complete with a dining table and a couch.

A glass door of all the mad things led out onto a balcony that seemed to be legitimately outside going by the stars she could see. Two additional doors were cut into the plain stone walls, only one of which featured a bolt instead of just a handle. She tried the one with a bolt first and found it led to a corridor not unlike the ones she’d seen before in the dungeon.

Opening the other she found herself looking at a bedroom. A rather grand, if plain one with a massive bed and several more doors. One led to the balcony, the other two a closet and bathroom respectively. Heading back to the sitting room Andrea nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Andrea,” 42 commented dryly. The room was fairly well lit, but the chair where the Dungeon Master sat was held in deep shadow in defiance of anything as mundane as light. Still, it made a bit of a difference and Andrea was able to see more detail than before. Namely sharp nails and a suggestion of a toothy maw.

“Mistress,” Andrea said flatly.

“I’d have left you in the valley, but I don’t think you want to see the others just now,” 42 said. Andrea just nodded, not enjoying being back in the dungeon but without an alternative.

“About the contract-” Andrea started only to be cut off when 42 raised her hand.

“You're going to sleep, have breakfast when you get up, and we’ll talk when I have time tomorrow,” 42 declared.

“Why wait? I’m ready now!” Andrea countered.

“That doesn't paint a flattering picture of your impulse control, kid. I have my own business to attend to, you’ll either wait or you can just go ahead and leave now. The magic circle at the end of the corridor will teleport you back to the entry chamber. You’ll be able to walk out on your own,” 42 replied.

Andrea felt a protest bubbling up, but bit back on it. She didn’t have any power in the dungeon. As if to emphasize that 42 seemed to fade from her view, becoming one with the shadows and disappearing.

“What did you do with her!?” Mina shouted the moment 42 reappeared. There wasn’t much of an indication of the Dungeon Master's presence physically, they could only see the green flames, but the shift in atmosphere was palpable.

“I gave her a room for the night,” 42 said with a sigh.

“You locked her up again!” Mina countered.

“Release her,” Mira added grimly.

“So you can all start fighting again?” 42 asked. That quieted the group for a moment. Hetcha was the only one who hadn’t protested yet. She seemed rather unconcerned with the proceedings for the moment, unlike the other two.

“I’m not promising anything, but I’m going to find out what she wants and why. It's strange she’d be interested in a deal, since up to now she just wanted to leave,” she added.

“She didn’t know you could reset classes before,” Hetcha said.

“That's a big enough deal that she’d be willing to sell her life to me for it?” 42 asked, disbelief clear in her tone.

“The alternative is going to the church of Stromholt for the service. So yes. Even I find the idea tempting,” Hetcha replied.

“Bun!” Mira cried, scandalized.

“I won’t, it’s just tempting,” Hetcha said, trying to placate her partner.

“Okay… How would that work, if you could get them to do it?” 42 asked. Mira and Hetcha exchanged glances and shrugged.

“You pay them an assload of ‘donations’ and they use a crystal thing,” Mina supplied. The other two looked at her in surprise.

“What? They wanted to make me a saint at first. I ended up seeing a lot of bullshit at the church before I got the pendant,” Mina said.

“A crystal? So, a magic item… which would probably be easy enough to get a look at,” 42 said, the last part turning into a mumble.

“Yeah, seeing them isn’t that hard. They usually get put out on the altar as holy relics. The expensive part is getting a priest to activate them,” Mina supplied.

“42, I meant what I said earlier,” Mira said. The conversation was taking an odd turn away from Andrea and she didn’t like it. There were several beats of silence before the warriors who’d come out of the house and were lounging on its front porch snickered and made some quiet comments. Hetcha’s ears twitched, more than able to pick them up.

“Hey, shut it!” 42 growled. The group disappeared in the next instant but the new house remained.

“Look, this went sideways pretty hard… for a couple of reasons. Stay, go, do whatever you like. If you're still around tomorrow, Andrea might come down on her own,” 42 said as she began to fade from view. The messy pile of goods on the ground likewise vanished along with the feast table and the leftovers.

“Holy shit. That is so freaky to watch,” Mina said. She collapsed to the ground, sitting on her knees. Now they were unobserved, she didn’t care even slightly about dignity or putting on a brave face.

“More than a little bit,” Hetcha agreed.

“What did those men say?” Mira asked Hetcha.

“That… They were joking about if we’d try storming the dungeon again. They were talking about placing bets on how far we’d get now that we can fight properly,” Hetcha said after a moment.

“They did? That is fucked up,” Mina said, flopping on her back fully on the thick grass.

“Was that all?” Mira asked, clearly not quite believing it.

“Something about asking a bard what our epic should be called. He didn’t know a word that combined farce and tragedy properly,” Hetcha said. She sighed, electing to sit on the ground as well and Mira joined her.

“Tragomedy, tragic comedy,” Mina offered.

“Is that a word from your world?” Mira asked.

“Probably not, I just made it up,” Mina replied and laughed. The others joined in, and if it had a hysterical edge to it, that was their business and no one else's.