Dungeon Champions

We gathered in one room, which made it a tight fit.

Although I’d purchased the best rooms available, they were nothing compared to the Fae one. The best part was their lack of lice or other parasites, according to Nym and Merielle. That admission had earned a snort of derision from Britney.

Nym, Sadie, and Britney were all lying on the straw bed, with the feline tucked near the base board. Nym’s feet were up in the air, kicking behind her, as her tail lazily whipped back and forth. Britney was lying still, but I noticed she'd changed into a tunic and a pair of soft leggings instead of the dress she’d been wearing earlier.

Merielle stood awkwardly by the door when I entered with Zuri in tow. The half-gorgon was still rubbing her eyes, trying to banish sleep from them. The redheaded elf stepped forward with a cup of water, earning a look of genuine gratitude from Zuri.

“I hope you’re all feeling a bit better,” I said, leaning against the door as I closed it. Skullie made a sound of protest, since that meant I was pinning him to the door, but I just dropped my bag to the floor and scooted it forward with my foot. “We did a little exploring, and I found out some interesting things about the town.”

“Oh, like what?” Zuri asked, looking at me over the rim of her cup.

“For one, it doesn’t seem like many adventurers come through here—the gate guard had a list of tasks big enough for three parties, and they’re all simple things. Clear a garden, deliver a message, find someone’s glasses… like these don’t exactly feel adventurer worthy.”

I paused, summoning my Tablet to share them. As I did, I noticed that the sub-tasks within the main quest had updated with location markers and estimates on how long it would take to complete them.

“It could be that they only have higher-level adventurers?” Merielle shifted her weight awkwardly. “Low level stuff won’t give much experience to those of higher level, and it’s unlikely that they’d just do it out of the goodness of their heart. Maybe this region has an academy they send budding adventurers to, or…”

The silence that followed spoke volumes.

“Right. So, we’ve got some tasks. And while we’re doing them, I’d like us to do a little sleuthing. Figure out what happened to all the low-level adventurers, if we can.” I looked at Skullie. “No one else was being brought in for sacrifice, right?”

His jaw worked for a moment, teeth clicking against one another. “Not that I saw. The Sisterhood ladies—no offense—were the only sacrifices I was expecting. It’s why we were so confused to see you there.”

Britney cut in, “Are you absolutely certain we were there to be sacrificed?”

Skullie tilted his head to look back over a nonexistent shoulder. The celestial was glaring at him over the edge of the bed, and he glared right back at her. “We sent Telund to find the red-headed elf, as she was the most martial and so we wanted her for our skeleton army. Her bones would have been strong enough to labor in our laboratories until an adventurer came along.”

He paused. “I don’t know what else other monsters had in store for the rest of you, but hopefully that answers your question.”

My party members all looked a little ill. It seemed to be settling on them for the first time that not only had they been tossed to the dungeon, but they had been expected.

“Do we need to keep him?” Merielle asked, her voice small as she hugged herself. “I don’t know that I like having him around anymore, knowing what he planned to do with my bones.”

“Completely an artifact of the past,” he said instantly. “I am Jordan’s familiar, and that means I would never hurt him, and by extension any of you. We are a party, and that means that the past is the past.”

“Still uncomfortable,” she said, although this time it was accompanied by an indignant pout instead of fear and worry. “Would be like if I talked about what I was going to do with the money I got from your phylactery after I beat it out of your skull.”

Skullie’s jaw worked in silence. “I can see why that would be uncomfortable. My apologies.”

Merielle nodded, but I could tell she still had some things to work through.

They all did.

But time would heal most wounds, and revenge would handle the rest. We had to get stronger to be able to enact that revenge, and that would take time.

“Back to the subject at hand,” I said, gently steering the conversation to the prudent topic, “there are three ways I can see us approaching these mini-quests. The first is that we split into three groups—two to a team—and tackle them piecemeal. That gives us the best chance to complete them as quickly as possible. However, splitting up doesn’t really get us our second objective: working together.”

“Only if you put someone with a person they’re already comfortable around.” Zuri nodded her head to Merielle. “She and I could tackle a task quickly and likely with some efficiency. Not because we’re more competent, but because we’ve worked together before. But put me with Britnayel or Nym? I’ve never worked with them. We would have things to learn.”

Neither the catgirl nor the celestial seemed to like this idea, at first glance.

“A good point, but I’d rather not throw anyone off into deep water without knowing if they can swim.”

Nym’s ears flattened to her head. “Swim? I don’t swim.”

“Especially not in that water!” Britney added. “It looks all… fishy.”

“No one needs to go swimming,” I said, amending that with an asterisk but not sharing that aloud. “Some tasks do require us to go down to the docs, but they shouldn’t require getting into the water at all.”

Nym didn’t look convinced. “I don’t do boats, either.”

“That might be a problem—we’re in a port town. There’s bound to be boat-related things.”

The catgirl flashed me a pair of fangs. “I don’t know how to swim. I’m not going near water.”

I rubbed a hand across my forehead. “Okay, noted. So, for everyone else, splitting you up into groups where you might not get along with your partner doesn’t sound like a good idea. It might cause animosity instead of unity. Instead, we could have two groups of three, but I worry that one group won’t have a good intermediary.”

“Who’s the sixth, boss?”

I looked at Skullie.

The skull blankly looked back up at me.

“Well, there’s Merielle—”

“Right.”

“—and Zuri and Nym—”

“Got it.”

“Britney and me…and you.”

“Who’s ‘you’?”

“You. Y-O-U. Skullie. My familiar.”

The skull jolted on his spine in shock. “You can’t be serious! I don’t have a body! There is no way I can babysit low-level adventurers and keep them out of trouble without a body!”

“Which is why I said I didn’t think one group would have a good intermediary!”

“You need to start being more clear! I’m sitting here thinking you’ve found another to add to your party, not that I’m supposed to watch over some Level Ones!”

Merielle crossed her arms over her chest again, but this time it was in defiance not concern. “Kicked your ass once before, skeleton man. Could do it again.”

“I am fairly sure I remember that going a different way.”

“Held my own against your friend and his skeletons, too.”

Skullie eyed me. “Jordan, did you not save her?”

I grinned. “Merielle was doing fine when I arrived. I just accelerated the timeline.”

That wasn’t…entirely true, but Merrielle shot me a grateful look and my familiar waggled his jaw at me.

“At any rate,” I said, once again dragging our conversation back to the topic at hand, “our third option is to simply go work on everything together. It’ll take the most time to focus down each task one at a time, but it’ll also allow us a great opportunity to just finish this as risk-free as possible and move on to something else.

“Like before,” I continued, “we’ll put it to each person to give their opinion. Eventually we’ll stop this, as I’ll know what your preferences are and won’t feel the need to slow us down with decision making. But these early conversations are key.”

Zuri nodded in my direction. “I think we cluster. A roving party means many eyes to watch for threats, and it’ll allow the most suitable of us to complete a task.”

“I dislike missing out on a lesson in unity,” Merielle said, picking at her thumb’s cuticle with her other hand, “but we do just need the easy experience. The first few levels take very few points to burn past.”

“Very true,” I said, making a mental note to see if my Tablet had experience tables in it. I’d had the idea to check earlier, but had been distracted with tantrums and team management.

“Do we plan on completing all the tasks?” Britney asked, looking to the side, at her Tablet. “The experience reward is really nice, but it’s not clear how much we need to do to earn that.”

“That’s true, but we could miss out on additional quests—the whole reason we’re going this route—if we don’t complete everything.”

Britney clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

“As long as I don’t have to go swimming or on a boat,” Nym said, “I trust you to decide what’s best.”

“Does that go double for Sadie?”

“Yes. She also doesn’t want to swim. Although she might need a bath soon.”

The feline opened one eye to glare at Nym, and she yowled angrily.

Britney twisted, looking at the cat like she’d forgotten to put on her arrogant mask, at least for a moment. “Hah—I thought she was asleep.”

Nym shook her head. “I knew she wasn’t. Just wanted to see if she was paying attention though.” The catgirl reached out to pet Sadie’s head and the feline swatted her away.

I turned to my familiar. “Skullie? Yours is the last voice. What do you think?”

He said, “Splitting up is best, but I am outnumbered and not willing to fight it.”

“Why is it best? Is there something we haven’t thought of?”

The skull rattled around on his spine like he was nodding. “Completing the tasks early is almost as good as completing them all. We could lose out on rewards just for taking too much time.”

I looked at the quest text again. It said Stranger No More was supposed to take us three to five hours. That wasn’t really enough time to go trapezing all over town, doing every quest.

“Okay. That is a very good point.” I pointed behind Zuri. “Can you check that desk? Does it have paper and a…” I paused while my memories filled in the blanks. “Charcoal stick.”

She nodded and fetched a linen-bound pad of paper and a charcoal stick. “You don’t have to do this all yourself,” Zuri said, quietly. “We don’t expect you to know everything all the time.”

“It’s good practice,” I said, squeezing her hand once. “You might forgive me, but there’s no guarantee it might not make someone else uncomfortable.”

She nodded and pulled away.

I drew a rough map of the town, based on what I’d seen so far and the very limited map I’d purchased. We went through each quest and marked where we thought it was more likely to take place—either in the more residential Upper Half, down near the docks in the Lower Half, or outside of town. Once we’d organized them, a clear picture started to form.

There were three tasks that we could easily assign to taking place outside of town—clearing debris on the road, helping with livestock, and gathering firewood. Those things also sounded outside our wheelhouse, so we crossed them out. Two of the tasks obviously started in one area and then ended up in another, so we removed delivering a message and delivering bread off our lists. While they were both very low energy, they would require traveling. If we weren’t splitting the group, they weren’t optimal.

The remaining tasks were fairly balanced. At least, as long as they took place in the districts we assumed.

Merielle tapped a finger to her chin. “We’re already in the Upper District. We should stay here.”

“Away from the boats and the water, yes,” Nym said, very quickly.

“I really don’t want to help with fish anyway,” Britney added.

“And ‘aggressive seagulls’ sound like they might eat my hair,” Zuri said, curling a lock around her finger.

“Sounds like it’s a resounding vote for the Upper District.”

Merielle nodded. “As long as all of them take place in this District, it should be pretty easy for us to clean them up.”

In retrospect, I should have known better.

Tasks Accepted

Help Annabelle with her yard work.

Retrieve the forgotten book from the Miller’s Daughter.

Investigate the whereabouts of Professor Ryd’s glasses.

Find the missing hammer.

Note: If you complete these tasks within [5 hours] and return to the quest-giver, you will receive a [small] bonus. You may return with less than all complete and still receive a portion of the reward.