Chapter 20: Arc IV – Scouting the Dungeon – Chapter 20 – Dancing in the Dark

Chapter 20 - Dancing in the Dark

When I came to, I was met with the expected pitch darkness. Just like the last time I had been unwillingly swallowed into the Dungeon, I had no memory of falling asleep or being knocked out. The last thing I could recall, I had been screaming obscenities at a drunken moron. Speaking of…

In an attempt to find my companions in the blackness, I began feeling around, but my fingers were immediately met with a barrier. On all sides. That was unexpected. There was scarcely room enough for me to wiggle around from my prone position. I could not even sit up! Was I in a box? Taking in the texture of the enclosure, it had a grainy, rough feel to it, with long vertical ridges extending downward, rather like wooden slats. And it smelled… like pine? I was in a pine wood box. Shit, was I in a coffin?

Searching the edges, I could not find anything like a latch, so I started pounding in the hope of maybe seeing some daylight. Instead, I was met with a face full of dirt. Spitting to the side and scrubbing the soil from my eyes, I came to a sudden yet unavoidable conclusion. To say nothing of the fact that it made no sense whatsoever, I had somehow been buried alive.

What was going on? Was I not in the Dungeon? What had happened to the nice and safe dark room with the poetry crystals? That had been fun! Well, okay, not really, but it was better than this! I felt around frantically, taking deep shuddering breaths. I was starting to sweat.

Great. I’m panicking now. Need to conserve air, right? Keep calm. Think. What do I do? My exposure to situations like this was somewhere in the vicinity of zero, as you might expect. The only thing I had to go on was video games and movies, the modern man’s substitute for actual life experience. Uh… One inch punch? It worked in Kill Bill. I closed my eyes. Yeah, no. That’s dumb. I was neither strong nor trained enough to pull something like that off. I did not know if that was even possible. And was that part one or two? I could not remember… It was after Michael Madsen shot the Bride with the salt rifle, right? What was his name in that movie? Buck? Buddy? Buster? I shook my head. Not important.

Jax! That’s right, Jax could dig me out. Where was he, anyway?

Oh, that’s right. “Thank you, Bline. Uh… Lady Bline.” Maybe it was the situation, my general state of mind just then, or my recent but temporary brush with her actual voice, but I felt I should perhaps start being polite to her. Courtesy is the grease in the wheels of society, after all. I had heard that somewhere, and I agreed with the sentiment — even if I often was guilty of conveniently forgetting about it when people pissed me off. In any case, seeing as how she was a real person having to deal with my moron ass all the time, I was certain that she would appreciate it.

Thirty minutes, huh? I could wait thirty minutes. Wait, it had said four hours the last time I had checked the timer. Had it really been so long as that since I had been thrown in here? I knew I had fallen unconscious somehow but four hours? Did the Dungeon knock you out for a while to set up a scenario? Ugh… No. No more endless speculation. Although… now that I was speculating, did I have thirty minutes of air in here? That would be good to know!

“Help!” I called out, really starting to freak out now. Maybe Menda or that other guy… Uh… B… B-something. Boy, I was having trouble with B-names today. “Is anyone out there?” I yelled again. Broahn! That was it. Maybe they were out there? Those goblins had probably thrown us all in here. Where were they? For that matter, where was…

Suddenly, I heard muted thud from above me somewhere. “Hello?” I shouted. “I’m down here! Whoever you are… unless you’re a monster,” I trailed off. Oh boy… I may have just killed myself.

A muted voice trickled down to me from above, but I could not make out the words. Voices were good, right? Although, the Goblins could speak. Ah, to the Watcher’s nethers with it. Deciding to risk it, I continued yelling, “It’s me, Donum! Help! I’m buried down here!”

Pressing my ear to the wood above me, I distinctly heard the sound of someone shouting, followed by a rhythmic thump-swish. Laying back, I tried to relax and settled in. Closing my eyes, I started fighting with myself to breathe slowly and evenly. Whatever was coming, it was coming. There was nothing now but to wait. I just needed to last that long.

 

Twenty five minutes later, to the second, a distinctive thud shook my little wooden box. It was none too soon, too. I was starting to feel light-headed. The air had gotten stagnant and swampy from my breath, and my undergarments were soaked with sweat from the slowly increasing heat.

“Fucking ‘snails. Finally,” I heard from above.

I did not know that deep and husky, yet feminine voice all that well. Still, I had a pretty good idea of who it was. “Hess? Is that you?” I called out weakly.

My answer came in the form of a fist punching through the wooden board above me and ripping the lid away. Blessed cool air rushed over me even as a slight cascade of soil tumbled down to my sides, and I almost moaned as I got my first breath of fresh air in what felt like ages. The light of the setting sun filtering into my little hole, dim as it was, still caused me to flinch. Squinting, I took in the outline of Sherr Hess above me. Her dark hair, usually pulled back in a complex side-braid, had come loose and was now more an assortment of fly-aways than a hairdo, and she was positively covered in grime. Besides that, for some reason, she had a severed rope tied to her neck, and… of course, she still did not have any pants on.

“So,” she said, slightly out of breath from her excavation, “You’re my ‘cripple in the crypt’, eh?”

“Hess,” I breathed. “Boy, am I glad to see you!” I actually meant it, too. Even if she was… unreliable.

She frowned down at me, “You been in that box too long? I can’t understand ya.” So saying, she offered me a hand and hefted me out of my early grave like a full grown man pulling up a toddler. Much like her, I was covered in sweat and breathing heavily. The soil from the hole we were both sitting in had immediately stuck to my sweaty and still shirtless torso. In an odd way, we were like a reflection of one another in that moment.

“Can’t understand…” I said confused, still panting with my hands on my knees. Oh. Right. Standing up straight, I switched languages, “Much apology. Still very new speaking. I bad remember to talk Laoi’na.”

She snorted, “’Bad remember’ is right. You talk like some kind of Gob-kin trying to sneak into a ball.” Turning, she climbed her way out of the little ditch we were standing in. I caught myself staring at her naked, muscular backside as she went, and I turned away. I really did not know what she would do if she caught me, and I really did not want to find out. She could pop my head like a grape.

Following her, I asked, “What means ‘cripple in the crypt’?” I knew what the words meant, of course, but in this context?

“Oh, that,” she said, looking around. “Got a quest when I woke up. Said that if I found a certain ‘cripple’ and kept them alive, I’d get a bonus at the end. Guess that means you.”

Coming to stand next to her, I found myself looking out over a large graveyard. Row upon row of granite gravestones were arranged in neat lines out to a distance of maybe two to three hundred yards in each direction with a white picket fence all around. Beyond that, far off in the distance, I could see what looked like a collection of buildings. Large trees were interspersed among the graves in an irregular pattern. One of them, I noted, had several dead bodies swinging from it, hung from the neck. I looked back and forth from the rope around Hess’ throat to the tree, “Did… Was you hung?”

“Oh, that?” she chuckled, “Yeah. Got a sense of humor sometimes, does the ol’ Dungeon.” So saying, she pulled the rope from around her neck and tossed it into the hole. She thought being hung was funny?

Shaking my head at her continued… eccentricities, I returned to my earlier question, “But I not am cripple. Why get quest?”

She shrugged, “It’s hard to say why they happen. Usually, it’s something you wouldn’t normally want to do or if it’s stupidly hard.” She looked me over, “Maybe both, in this case.” I made a face, but she continued before I could say anything, “I didn’t take you for a Quester. What is your core layer at, anyway? Four? Five?”

I coughed, “Two.”

“Two?!” she exclaimed. Squatting down and putting her head in her hands she muttered, “Oh, ‘stits. ‘Cripple’ is right. No wonder…” Lifting her head back up to look at me, she asked, “How did you manage to make it through the Dungeon as a second layer? Why would you even try?”

I shrugged, “Did not have choice. Got swallowed. Big frog in Allenwood.” I spread my hands wide, as if I could somehow show its size with the expanse of my arms. But then I frowned, “How you know, anyway?”

Sighing, she said, “Because you’re here with me, obviously.”

Whatever was so ‘obvious’ about it, I was failing to see. “Explain please. I not am understanding.”

“Well, those Goblins threw us both into the Mouth at the same time…” she paused. “They were Goblins, right? I wasn’t seeing things?”

I nodded, “Yes. Goblins. Us two and Menda and Broahn.”

“Menda and who?” she asked, but she interrupted before I could answer, “Never mind. I don’t care.” More quietly she muttered, “Ugh… Goblins. Hogtied and tossed into a Mouth by a bunch of Goblins. That’s a new low.”

Silently, I glanced down at her exposed privates. That was a new low?

“Yeah, so…” she continued, not noticing my look, “if you had never been in the Dungeon before, you wouldn’t have been in here with me. You’d have been with Menda and… whatever you said his name was. You’ll notice, they aren’t here with us. The Illiterate are always sent to a special area. You remember right?”

The what now? Setting that aside, I decided to focus on her question. I nodded, slowly, “The tutorial. Got ass kicking there.”

She smirked, “Yeah, well, most don’t try it at as a ‘stit sucking second layer, do they?”

I did not reply. How would I know, after all? Instead, I asked, “How you find me, anyway? Lot of graves here.”

“Your marker. It was the only one I couldn’t read,” she said, jerking her thumb behind her. “Then, I heard the yelling.”

Turning curiously, I found my tombstone, canted slightly from being disturbed by Hess’ excavation. In perfect English, the engraving read:

“Here lies Donum.
The gift of his dick
never found the slick.”

My face instantly flashed to red.

 

It was not exactly easy to explain the joke to Hess, what with the language barrier. I had not wanted to either, but she had latched onto my look of embarrassment like a retriever to a chew bone.

“So… it’s saying… you’ve never had sex?” she said, finally. Her tone bespoke genuine befuddlement.

I nodded with relief. She got it. She was not laughing, but she got it.

She scratched at her cheek, “But why not? Don’t you want to?”

Realizing what I had unintentionally admitted to, I turned away. This was not a thing I was overly proud of, after all, and it certainly was not something I wanted to spread around, especially to a woman like Sherr Hess. But the can was open now, and there was no closing it. I supposed I could lie, maybe claim that the tombstone was making up stories, but what was the point? Sherr Hess would hardly be impressed just because I had managed to bed a woman. “Yes. I want to.” Turning back, I tapped my chest, “Human women… not like shy men. Not many.”

“Really?” she said curiously. Reaching out, she grabbed my face in one hand and looked me over like a trader looking at a horse’s teeth. “Can’t say I’ve met any before you. You aren’t all that bad looking, though. Especially for second layer.” She smirked, “Tusks are a little small, though.” Letting her hand fall away, she turned to look at the setting sun. There was perhaps a single finger’s breadth of light left. She pursed her lips as if considering something. Finally, she said, “Maybe later. We have more important things to discuss while there’s time.”

Maybe later?! What?

“The Dungeon always tailors the challenge to the Questers,” she began, ignoring my sputtering, “and that means that, for the most part, it’s going to be pushing at me. And the damned Gob-kin threw us in here with no weapons. So, if I’m to keep you alive, I need to know everything about you. What is your class? What skills do you have?”

That made sense. Although, trying to fully explain my situation was going to be… complicated. “Can heal. Slow mend wounds. Make me hungry. Cost Life Energy. Is best skill.” I decided to start with the basics.

She nodded, “I think I remember that. Might be useful. What else?”

“Make shadows hide you. Us. Uh… Allies.” It was not the best way to describe that ability, I knew, but I would have a hard time explaining exactly what it did even in English. “Called Fortunate Shadows.”

“I’ve not heard of that skill. Stealth abilities aren’t too unusual, though. And?” she motioned I continue.

“Oh… uh… when I not move… people forget I there.” Even I had almost forgotten that one, “It do not come up much.” It was pretty hard to remember not to move in the middle of combat, after all. I winced mentally. I really needed some lessons with actual combat strategy.

“Okay, there we go.” She seemed relieved. “That’s perfect then! If you can keep things from noticing you, that’ll make my job a lot easier.” She frowned, “If I can get through this. It’ll be harder to do while I’m sober, and I’m out of a lot of resources right now.”

“Uh… why matter you sober? Not good thing?” I asked. I was actually kind of enjoying talking to her without the usual drunkenness to wade through.

She smiled ruefully, “That’s my class. I’m an Ignoble Tramp.” Seeing my look, she explained, “It’s kind of a jack-of-all-trades class. You can go a lot of different ways with it, but mostly you get a lot of bonuses and energy from engaging in ‘hedonistic acts’.”

I blinked, slowly. And here I was thinking my class was messed up. “W-What… How you mean? How get?”

She waved away my stuttering attempt at a questioning her, and said, “No time for that now. What is your class? What is it designed to do?”

Okay, sure. Fair enough. We could talk about that insanity later. I was not really sure I could fully answer her question, though. Even I did not truly know what my class was supposed to do beyond just a few basics. I took a breath, “Uh… Is called Lilim Trainer. Use lilim to fight. Give buffs to allies. That kind of thing.”

She gave me a searching look, “Okay… and what exactly is a lilim?”

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Just then, I noticed the timer pop up once more. It looked like our conversation had eaten up all but about five seconds, so instead of answering directly, I said, “Lilim come now.”

There was a flash of white light, and Jax’s form slowly took shape, a piece at a time, within it. It was as if his body was being burned back into existence from nothingness. Actually, the effect kind of reminded me of that old show, ‘Quantum Leap’, with Scott Bakula, that I used to watch when I was a kid. Whatever else you could say about this place, whoever was designing it had good taste for their special effects.

When the light died, Jax slumped over and almost fell before his eyes snapped open, and sucking in a great gulp of air, he caught himself. Looking around confusedly and panting for a moment, he suddenly threw himself to the side and violently heaved into the dirt.

Looking back and forth between Jax’s hunched over form and Hess’ look of confusion uncertainly, I grimaced. “Ta da~” I gestured lamely.

Sherr Hess stood mute for a few seconds before simply saying, “Huh…”

Whatever she had meant by it, our time was up. As the last sliver of the setting sun dipped below the horizon, a lot of things happened at once.

For one, I suddenly realized that there was a sun in the Dungeon. That raised a whole slew of questions that I had absolutely no time for. Two, I got a pop-up saying something about Resurrection Sickness and stats that I must admit that I did not read, because three, the whole Maiden-cursed graveyard came to life. In hindsight, I really should have expected that part.

The earth started churning all around us, and gravestones toppled over as mottled gray hands slowly dug their way to freedom. Above us, in the tree, the swinging corpses started gurgling and thrashing.

“Ugh… Zombies,” Hess muttered. “Of course, it’s Zombies.” She turned to me and pointed, “Come on. Let’s head to that town over there . We can’t fight this many of them bare-handed.”

Getting out of here sounded like a fantastic idea to me. Turning to Jax, I patted him on the back roughly before saying, “Can you stand? We gotta move!”

Still shivering and dry heaving, Jax nodded silently and lurched to his feet. I looked to Hess and gave the go ahead.

We made our way to the fence at a quick jog, weaving our way through the gravestones. Or Hess and I did, anyway. Jax moved with more of a stumbling lurch. Hands grasped at our feet as we went, trying to trip us and drag us under. Behind me, Jax started up a litany of cursing in between bouts of hacking and spitting. Finally, he managed, “Donum, you knobdobber! Where ta fuck are we? What is goin’ on?”

Ahead of us, Hess punted the head off of a Zombie that had emerged and was biting at her ankles. “Head,” she said half-heartedly, almost in reflex.

In English, I replied, “Bit of a long story there. But the short version is that I got captured by the Gob-kin and tossed into a Dungeon Mouth along with Sherr Hess and a couple others.” I jumped over an arm trying to trip me up.

“The Dungeon!” Jax shouted before face-planting. In his surprise, he had missed a grasping hand and went to the ground. Twisting around, he summoned up his axe and set to chopping off the offending arm. As I helped him back to his feet, he growled out, “The arsebadger do you mean we’s in the Dungeon? This don’t look anything like the Dungeon!”

Hess had paused ahead of us to pulp a couple of Zombies that had dared bar her way with her fists. Snatching up the Gems they turned into, she made to put them in her pockets before realizing something. Spinning around with gore dripping from her hands, she yelled, “Where are my pants?”

Jax actually cackled, “You jus’ now realized that, ya bampot?” But as we passed her, he frowned.

Growling, she ignored him, and said to me, “We actually had that whole conversation, and not once did you think to mention that I wasn’t wearing any pants?!” Just then a Zombie grabbed her from behind and started chewing at her shoulder. Judo flipping it over her, she followed it to the ground and thundered her fists into its head until it went still. Picking up its Gem, she jogged to catch us up.

“I thought you not care?” I said, sidestepping the shambling corpse of a long-dead laoi woman. Jax chopped down on her head, but his still trembling arms made the blow too weak. Hess’ follow-up haymaker jerked the weapon from his hand, causing it to vanish.

Hess paused in surprise at this, but she apparently decided she would rather have her argument with me. “Of course, I care! I don’t want some man to be ogling my privates!” Despite her saying so, she was making no effort to actually cover herself. Shoulder-checking another two shamblers to the ground, she cleared the way forward.

Jumping over their prone forms, Jax muttered to me, “She be lying, mate. I dunno why but… it be like… like she wants sommat?”

Desperately trying to dodge out of the way as more and more of the things headed for us, I barely had the head-space to understand what he was saying. “What are… What are you saying? What does she want?”

“I ain’t sure,” he replied, resummoning his axe. “I feel like she’s tryin’ to make ‘er ownself… horny?”

Hess had grabbed the ankle of one the Zombies and was currently swinging it around like a throwing hammer. Letting it go, it crashed into a group of four that was coming in on our left. Gasping for breath, she had started trembling. I looked at her, surprised. There was no way that she was out of endurance yet. Noting my look, and wildly misinterpreting it, she said, “Ah~ You like it when I’m out of breath, little man?” Turning to deliver a quick uppercut to another that had gotten too close, she said, “That why you never said anything? You’ve been perving on me this whole time, haven’t you?”

Despite everything going on, Zombies ripping themselves out of the ground, desperately juking this way and that, and Jax scything away at rotten flesh at my side, somehow this woman the size of the Undertaker still made me blush. She noticed, too.

Gasping, it was as if she pulsed suddenly with energy, and laughing wildly, she started cannonballing a path forward. Each blow, each punch and kick she landed now started letting off miniature shockwaves that pulped any dead flesh it came into contact with. Her movements started taking on a fluidity and grace they had not had before, and she seemed able to almost predict where her enemies would be before even they knew. It did not last long, though.

Frantically grabbing what Gems we could as we trailed behind, we were shocked when the whirling tornado of carnage ahead of us suddenly came to an end and Hess dropped to her knees. Jax ran forward to stand over her, axe at the ready. We were so close to the fence, but there were still another twenty Zombies between us and our goal, to say nothing of the countless hordes behind us.

“What happened?” I yelled, skidding to a halt.

“I dunno!” Jax shouted. “It feels like she got depressed all of a sudden.”

“Hess!” I grabbed her by the arm. “Get up! No stop now!” I ducked as the axe hurled over my head and lodged into a Zombie skull before disappearing in a flash.

“Can’t,” she panted. “I need… need more!”

“The fuck is this great radge shite on about?!” Jax yelled, as his axe flashed into his hands again. “We need ta move!”

Just then, one of the reeking creatures tackled me and bore me to the ground. It was all I could do to keep its gnashing teeth away from my face, but my hands could not keep purchase on its squishy rotted flesh. Finally, I snapped. If this thrice-damned woman needed to be sexually excited to fight properly, then by the Three, I was going to do it!

“Hess! Get off knees! Or wait for Zombie army eat vagina!? Arrgh!” I screamed as the abomination raked across my chest with the exposed bones of its fingers. “Get up or help me, I do it first! Even die to try!”

Suddenly, with a great thump, the Zombie atop me went sailing, the force of Hess’ kick passing overhead knocking the wind from my lungs. Struggling to breathe again, I looked up into her face. She was staring down at me with a huge almost manic grin. Picking me up slowly, she pulled me up until we were face to face. “Oh?” she said, casually backhanding another one that had gotten too close with enough force to knock the wind back into my lungs. “What else do you want to do to my… vagina?” She was mocking my lack of language finesse, I knew, but at the same time, she was practically vibrating as she waited for me to say something.

Well… in for a penny. “Look, dog woman. Get me out this alive, I make you howl moon long you want!” She pulsed. “I make knees shake!” She pulsed again, harder. Her eyes were starting to dilate. “I make flood so much, wash whole town out! Make soldiers come! Divert river!”

Her grin fell for a moment as she processed what I had just said. Then, throwing her head back, she cackled like a lunatic. Reigning herself in, she growled out, “I may just hold you to that, little man.” Releasing me, she inhaled something into her lungs that caused the wind all around us to sweep in towards her, and turning, she thrust her hand forward. Shouting out an incantation that was at once familiar and utterly alien, a ball of some kind condensed in her outstretched palm that distorted the air before shooting out to the encroaching pack of Zombies between us and the fence. Whatever it was, when it impacted, there was a crunching sound and partially decomposed bodies rag-dolled everywhere. Laughing almost innocently, she pranced forward, and somersaulting over the fence, she turned, “Come on, boys. Town’s awaiting.”

We had not wasted any time in chasing after her. Grabbing a few stray Gems before hopping the fence, we ran for all we were worth. The fence was not much of an impediment, after all, and a few Zombies did trail after us. However, they only moved in a slowly dragging shamble, and after we got some distance away from them, they seemed to give up.

We hustled along the narrow dirt track for quite some time before we finally decided it was safe to rest. Slowing to a walk, Jax broke the silence first, “Hess, you absolute weapon, would ye mind explaining what, by the ever merciful Hand, that was about?”

She gave him the side-eye for a moment before shrugging, “It’s like I told your… master?” Jax blanched at the word, but she continued, “Its a part of my class. I derive power from hedonism.”

“Hedonism?!” he said incredulously.

She nodded, “Oh, yes. Most of my abilities draw from drinking spirits. It’s so much easier to maintain. I was trying to build up for ‘Libidinous Fury’ back there, but… ” Turning to me, she grinned, “Make the soldiers come? Divert the river? That was hilarious! Wherever did you come up with a line like that?”

I blushed a bit, “Is a thing from… stage show I saw before. I say bad, though.” More like mangled, actually. We were just fortunate that it had worked… even if it was not exactly what I had been shooting for.

“A stage show?” she asked in wonder. “How marvelous! Oh, I haven’t seen one of those in ages.”

“Yeah, lucky twat’s seen a lotta them,” Jax chimed in. We walked silently for a few more steps before he asked, “So… Humor works, too?”

She made a sound low in her throat in assent, “Sure. Only for magic stuff, though.” Looking him over briefly, she asked, “So what’s your deal, then? Where’d you get a bound weapon?”

He glanced back at me, briefly, like he was asking permission. I could not fathom why he would need it, so I just shrugged. Taking that as good enough, he said, “Found it in a chest about a week ago… back when we was last in this forsaken place.”

“You found a bound weapon on your very first run?” she asked, incredulously.

His returning smile was a bit smug, “Sure. Hadda solve a puzzle fer it, though. Tricky little knobwasher.”

“Even so…” she said. “Lucky bastard. I’ve been looking for one of those for ages. Why, I’d give my left tit…”

“No!” I interrupted her hurriedly. Addressing the empty air fearfully, I nervously laughed, “Only joke!”

She cocked an eyebrow at me, while Jax rolled his eyes. “What are you afraid of? Aren’t you being a little superstitious?” she asked.

Truthfully, I was. And before I came to this weird-ass fantasy land, even I would have called myself a lunatic. But coincidences kept happening around here way too frequently for me to laugh it off anymore. “Someone listen!” I said in a hushed voice. “Not say thing you regret! Give away good thing, you might.”

“’Good thing’, eh?” she said with a lazy smile. “Why Donum, should I start walking around without a top, as well? Shall I dance in the nude for you?” So saying, she absently ran her fingernails between her breasts.

Seeing my furious blush, she laughed uproariously. I probably would have resented her teasing me like that, but now that I knew about her class, she was probably just trying to save up some kind of resource. Either that or ‘wanton slut’ was one of her many questionable personality traits. Maybe both. Well, it was not as if I was the most jovial individual to traipse across the planet. And besides, I already had a grumpy former bandit as a companion. What was one more weirdo?

As her laughter slowly died out, she abruptly turned to Jax, “Wait, did you say a week ago?”

“Yeah,” he growled out, “I feel like I barely just left this hole.”

“Said before,” I chimed in. “Big frog. In Allenwood.”

“But a week ago!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been looking for another Mouth for over a year!” She chuckled to herself quietly, “And then, of all things, I get just a little too drunk, and what do you know? I get tossed into one, half naked and unarmed with a couple of Monos.”

There were a lot of things I could say in response to that. Instead, I asked the obvious question, “Monos?” My library was coming up blank on that word.

“Yeah, sure,” she explained. “It’s what we call green Questers in the Athenaeum. You know… because you have a monovocabulary? As in, only one Word?”

I nodded, mentally filing it away. It seemed there were a lot of words related to a person’s Dungeoneering experience. Speaking of… “Uh… A-Athen…”

“Athenaeum,” she supplied again. “You probably haven’t heard of us. We’re not a very large group after all. The full name is ‘The Athenaeum for the Preservation of the Words’, but it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Mostly, it’s just a bunch of hot-heads, crazy fools, and the occasional scholar that join up. But we’re Questers all.”

I blinked a few times trying to reconcile my mental image of this insane woman as a member of a scholastic society. Then again, fraternities were supposed to be scholastic societies, and my mental image of them was a bit… strained. Mental dilemma resolved, I continued my questioning, “Okay. But how ‘preserve’ Words? No can say. No write.”

She gave me a sidelong grin, “Oh, but you can, though.”

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