Chapter 25: Chapter 25 – Lunch And A Little Strategy

“This is amazing.” It takes physical effort for me to hold my hands still, flat on the table, so that I can behave in a proper, polite manner. I tear my eyes away from the food on the table to look at her, and she smiles at me. “Really,” I insist. “You didn’t have to cook for us, much less to make something this good!”

“Because you were going to cook lunch for me, my lord?” She smirks, tone dry as dust.

I splutter. “I… fine!” I realize I’m spluttering and shove a bite of food into my mouth, controlling my laughter enough to taste it. The show of my eyes rolling back in my head isn’t just for show, but it’s mostly for show; impractical, really, and gets in the way of the eating.

“It’s grateful I am as well, Amber.” Zidanya stretches shamelessly, dressed in another one of those short robes. I’m staring a little, or more than a little, despite how thoroughly sated those desires currently are. “In truth, I had not considered the hour, nor the need, and left you with the duty undiscussed. You’ll grant that I cook next?”

“Readily. It wasn’t so complex a meal as that, though. The bread we had left over, and the rest was one load in the oven; the knife work on the broccoli and potatoes was more than the rest of the effort combined.”

“To me,” I chime in, mouth almost entirely empty of food for the moment, “it’s not about the time and effort. It’s about the fact that you remembered, and made the time to take care of us even though we were lost in each other.” Amber and Zidanya look surprised for a moment, as though they’d forgotten that I was at the table, and I shrug. “Not that I don’t also appreciate the effort! At least we don’t have to do any cleanup. Keyhome’s a delight.”

“Didst many dishes, Magelord?”

“Actually, yeah.” I smile at Zidanya’s smirk, and at the slightly confused look on her face. “I did two full intervals in the meal hall doing food prep, remember? And even after, I helped out a bit here and there. Of all the work to be done on the Spirit, it and creche-work were the two where there was no possibility I was displacing anyone else, or getting in anyone’s way.”

“Always need for hands with the littles,” she says with a considering nod, “and need for hands in the kitchen.”

“Yeah.” I return my attention to the food. There’s rice, which I’m more or less familiar with, since we use - or should that be they use, or maybe we used? - it as a cereal grain of sorts, and I know potatoes, though not this variety; they’re small and smooth-skinned, and have a golden amber color. Broccoli I’d had a few times, it was one of the absolutely dizzying varieties of brassica which seemed to cover about half of the vegetables in existence, but it wasn’t one of the variants we happened to grow, and these were all baked together with a blend of spices in which I recognized some citrus and some varieties of pepper, along with the comfortingly familiar paprika. It’s the chicken which elevates it beyond the realm of what I might have eaten outside of a Festival meal at home, back so little as two months or a month and a half ago; crispy skin and meltingly flavorful flesh, the leg quarters were baked above the rest of the food with their juices drenching the ingredients below them, and they were vast and flavorful besides. At a guess, the runoff of the dish had then been poured into the rice, which had absorbed it as though it were the most concentrated of stock.

It’s not a very long meal, not as hungry as we are and as delicious as the food is. We eat in silence, and clear the table efficiently afterwards, for all that I distract Amber for a few moments with a kiss to try to communicate just how grateful I am, and when we sit back down, it’s to a contemplative silence.

“We should expect the Temple to change its tactics substantially,” Zidanya says suddenly.

“How so?” She has my attention. I’ve had a lot of near failures even after I started being able to predict what the Temple was going to throw at me.

“It has been… predictable, an I comprehend rightly?”

I nod. “Clusters of rooms, two to six with the exception of that one antechamber with its doors. Every cluster has a combat encounter, but every cluster also has, uh, had, a puzzle and a trap navigation room of some sort, with at least one social encounter per half-floor, boss included.” The description comes right to hand, laying the pattern out matter-of-factly. “Clusters without enough rooms to qualify spill their requirements over into the next cluster. One Guardian, one Gatekeeper per floor; no pylons, whatever those things are, after the entrance until I got to Amber’s.”

That got a little bit of an eyebrow-raise. “No rest areas? Nary a waterfall or brook, store or market? Neither inn nor sanctuary in three floors?”

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“Honestly, I didn’t realize any of those things were options? I mean, I found the Home Key pretty soon, and the Temple was okay about giving me doors with keyholes until I exploited it, though obviously any time I took was time the encounters were growing harder. Besides, what would I have sold? I made a makeshift backpack when I set out, but I lost it in the second encounter, and Keyhome doesn’t have bags. So…” I shrug. “Nothing to sell.”

“Grueling.”

“Disorienting, definitely. I think I, like, disconnected for a lot of it, just sort of put one foot in front of the other, one room of enemies that I had to kill and then the next. Maybe disconnected isn’t the right word. Dissociated?” I scratch the back of my head, thinking. “Dissociated seems right. Eh. It was a relief being alive, after helldiving an unanchored wormhole, but also… I wasn’t doing super great.”

There’s a silence, and Amber sighs. “Strategy, I think. Adam, no more reminiscing until we’ve talked business. Zidanya, let the weeds lie a moment.”

“I expect we’ll see more mixed encounters.” Zidanya picks up the conversation after a beat. “A trap room with puzzles and mages taking shots at us, perhaps. A riddle game upon a spinning stage where we must match our answers to meter.”

“A siege, where we must see a resolution brought, where peace or mutual annihilation reward higher than one side’s victory, and we do not know what reinforcements might come, or what secrets might be wielded.” Amber chimes in with relish. “An arena, where we each must duel our opponents, and to refuse is to spark a conflict with the spectators, unless you can talk your way out of it!”

“I’m guessing these are all, like, actual examples?” I was starting to get a headache, hands coming to my temples to rub them. “What a disaster this last floor is going to be.”

“You’ll be fine.” Amber smiles at me beatifically. “Are you not good enough at the challenges that might be brought to bear?”

“No?” The flat casualness in my response seems to take her aback. “I mean, look at me. I found a trick or three, sure, but a lot of that was the orb-runes. I’m not actually good at any of this! You know what I’m good at? I’m good at a particular meta-school of mathematics, and I’m good at falling in love, which has historically turned out to be … not the greatest thing!” I stop, taking a couple of deep breaths, and Amber and Zidanya both seem content to wait for me. “Admittedly,” I say after a few moments, “I’m really good at both of those.”

They laugh, or at least snicker, which is definitely what I was going for. “You sell yourself short, Magelord.” Zidanya’s tone is something complex; maybe considering, maybe thoughtful, a little bit serious. “Your grasp of the glyphwork necessary to rebuke any wielder of spells, particularly System-granted ones, is proceeding apace in a manner I will not permit denigration of.”

“Is that going to help us right now, though?” I know I sound bitter, but I can’t help it. “It was one thing when an orb of one element or another, if I picked it right, took down a couple of enemies and I could pre-summon a little swarm of them before I walked through a door. Now?”

“My dear Magelord.” Zidanya leans forwards, a burning intensity in her eyes. “I am now, with you, in my first tier, and bereft of all but a hint of what once was my power. And yet.” She smiles, and my breath catches a little. “What am I, do you think?”

“Terrifying.” The word slips out through my lips without my thinking, and the moment’s tension breaks as we laugh.

It’s honest, that answer, and true. But the terrifying Druid is on my side, and that’ll do.

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