March 28, 2026 — 1:37 am

Mizuki was feeling great. The curse, such as it was, had been lifted, they had more lutes than they would ever need, an awesome sword had bound itself to her, and Alfric was in such a good mood that it made her realize just how stressed and anxious and down he’d been. The morning after the Endless Dungeon they had all celebrated with a huge brunch spread, and Mizuki hadn’t even had to do any of the cooking, which was a bit of a relief. Instead, Alfric had arranged something special ahead of time, prepared by Marta, who did things like that occasionally when she wasn’t busy selling meat at the market or helping her husband with the butchery. They ate at her house, at a table in her solarium.

“So what would have happened if we’d failed?” asked Mizuki. “I mean, hypothetically?”

“Failure brunch!” said Alfric with a smile. “One half commiseration, one half congratulating ourselves for trying.”

“You make that sound so much less grim that it would be,” said Verity with a laugh. “I can very much imagine us sitting around a brunch table, with the full spread, as glum as blobfish.”

“Badgers are actually the saddest animals,” said Isra. She gave Verity a grin.

“Glum as badgers then, sorry,” Verity smiled.

They had apparently patched things up, which was good, and they were sitting next to each other, which was as things should be. For a week or two it had seemed like they were just never going to talk to each other again, but the dungeon and some time seemed to have helped them.

Mizuki did wonder whether they were flirting though. She tried to put herself in their shoes and couldn’t, and then tried to imagine that one of them was a boy, and if one of them was a boy, then it all seemed like flirting to her, but she was probably mixed up about how that worked. Laughing and joking with someone was different than flirting, she thought, though the more she thought about it she realized that she just had no idea what flirting actually was. It was an easy thing to get twisted up in your own head.

She had never dated someone twice, or had an on-again off-again thing. Some people would return to the same boyfriend a half dozen times, always trying to make it work out, as though something could be had from the failures. Maybe that was right, because Thomma and Clarc had gotten married after the sixth time, and they were still together four years later, with two children.

She wondered what it was like. She thought that maybe it could be boring, because you would know how things would go with them, their quirks and their moves. Rolaj had a way of placing his hand on her, with his fingers on her back and his thumb against the bottom of her rib cage. He’d done that three times, and she had come to expect it when they had a date, or when she would see him at his shop. She liked the assertiveness and familiarity of it. She wondered, on a second attempt of making it work, whether she would find it familiar and good, or boring and bad, or something else. It was hard to know.

Brunch was an entire spread. There were three kinds of meats, some of them slow-cooked, others grilled, and there were all kinds of sides as well, and different kinds of breads with jams and jellies that they didn’t have at home. It was all at Marta’s place, but there must have been other helpers, and Mizuki found herself looking at the kitchen more than once, wanting to see who it was. There was smoked pork belly and fatty venison, eggs that had been mixed with goat cheese and fluffed up, with caramelized onions in them. Potatoes had been done two ways, roasted with herbs and as something that was basically a crispy mashed potato cake. She was going to have to get the recipe for that one, because it seemed as though you’d need too much binder for it to taste good, except it did. There were a few token vegetables that seemed to mostly exist to add some green to the color palette. Mizuki approved of that. There were fruits as well, mostly the seasonal favorites like strawberries and raspberries. It was so much that they would say that they couldn’t possibly eat it all, but then would almost certainly clear the table.

“We have the world’s longest entad testing session ahead of us,” said Mizuki between bites. “Also, I have no idea what we’re doing with a hundred lutes.”

“Selling them,” said Alfric.

“Not all, surely?” asked Verity.

“First order of business,” Alfric began.

“Are we talkin’ shop at the table then?” asked Hannah. “We’re celebratin’, that’s not a time to discuss all the work we’ve managed to make for ourselves.”

“Working is how Alfric celebrates,” said Mizuki. She gave him a wide grin. “Look at him salivating over the thought of how we’re going to get those metal things out of the chest.”

“I actually think that’s going to be pretty easy,” said Alfric. “But yes, we can hold off on talking shop, I do think we can just bask in the victory and the absurd amount of winnings.”

Verity looked at Isra. “Do you want me to write a song about it?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Isra. “Yes, of course, I really do, but I don’t want you to hate doing it, if you think that you will.”

“I felt there was something there last night,” said Verity. “No music or lyrics, but something compelled me.”

“I’m actually not sure people will believe it,” said Hannah. “When I try to figure out how I’ll describe it to people, it sounds like dungeon fabulism.”

“Which is?” asked Mizuki.

“Dungeon stories, ay?” asked Hannah, raising an eyebrow.

Alfric nodded. “Five people go into a dungeon,” said Alfric. “They’re the only ones that ever experience it. The only way to ever confirm what they’ve seen is through their personal accounts, entad recordings, or what they bring out. Sometimes it grows in the telling.”

“So it’s like fishing,” said Mizuki. “People talking about the one that got away.”

“The one that got away?” asked Isra.

“You know,” said Mizuki, though she thought it very likely that Isra didn’t know. “People tell stories about fishing, about how the line snapped, or the hook came out, or whatever, and because they’re the only one to have ever seen the fish, they can make it as big as they want. And even sometimes if they do catch the fish.”

“The … line?” asked Isra.

It took some time to explain fishing to Isra. She had only ever done fishing using traps, which was how she’d learned from her father, and she talked about a weir she’d made when she was fifteen, which was apparently just a bunch of relatively flat stones laid across a river so that all the water was channeled through one specific spot. She’d set it up so that the fish and eels of the river would get caught there, and it had been a lot of work, but she had felt a lot of pride when it had actually worked.

“Hooks seem barbaric,” said Isra when she’d finished.

“Is there a reason that you don’t just … command the fish onto shore?” asked Mizuki.

“I don’t know,” said Isra. “It always felt cruel to tell a creature to die for me. And they would rebel. There are deep animal instincts. I’ve done it, but,” she shook her head. “It feels better to acknowledge them, to have an understanding that they don’t want to be killed. It’s like they’re dying on their own terms. And if a piece of me is in them, when they die, maybe that’s why it feels so …” She shook her head again, and ate a muffin to fill her mouth and not have to talk.

Mizuki wanted to ask about the mice that had died in the dungeon, but it was obviously a sore spot, and it felt like it was a sore spot between Alfric and Isra.

“So you think that people won’t believe us?” asked Mizuki. “We do have a hundred lutes.”

“We can’t show off the lutes to people every time we tell the story,” said Alfric. “And there are other elements that, yes, I think people might raise an eyebrow at. When you hear a dungeon story, you think to yourself ‘how much is this embellished, how much does it fit in with what I know about dungeons’, and all kinds of other things, and I think that maybe people will dismiss some of it. But we’re not really in it for the accolades or the acknowledgement, so I’m not sure it matters.”

“You’re not in it for the accolades,” said Hannah. “Myself, I’m tryin’ to write a book on dungeons, and I do think a long, unusual dungeon like that, with the Overguard Maneuver to end it, might make it seem like I’m aimin’ to entertain more than to dissect.”

“So entertain!” said Mizuki with a laugh. “Would it be so awful if people read a book about the symmetry of dungeons or whatever and had fun with it?”

“It’s not what I’m goin’ for,” said Hannah. “Not a lot of laughs in it either, ay?”

“See, but why not?” asked Mizuki. “Crack a joke every now and then, I know I’d read loads of clerical texts if they had jokes in them.” She worried, sometimes, that she didn’t really understand Hannah, and after how swimmingly her date with Verity had gone, decided to set something up.

“Clergy jokes are awful,” said Hannah with a smile. Mizuki also worried that the lack of understanding didn’t go both ways.

“Example, please,” said Verity.

“I’d tell you a Xuphin joke, but we’d be here all day,” said Hannah. She was grinning. “I’d tell you a Bixzotl joke, but I’d hate to have to repeat it. I’d tell you a Qymmos joke, but there are a lot of different sorts. I’d tell you an Oeyr joke, but those are better if they come up organically. I’d tell you a Kesbin joke, but none are coming to mind.”

This got some chuckles. Mizuki wouldn’t have said that any of them were funny, per se, but there was something a little humorous in them.

“Wait,” said Isra. “What about Garos?”

“I’d tell you a joke about Garos, but then you’d have to tell one back to me,” said Hannah. “That’s the usual anyway.” She waved her hand. “It’s not funny.”

“Well none of them were funny,” said Mizuki.

“Ay, that’s what I’m sayin’,” said Hannah. “The Garos jokes are the worst, honestly. I heard a lot of them in seminary, and more once I got out. There’s somethin’ so corny about it all that it practically feels like blasphemy.”

“A little blasphemy never killed anyone,” said Mizuki. “Did it?”

“Used to be that it would get you arrested, but no, it was always people bein’ people, never the gods themselves,” said Hannah. “There are some things I think I’d like about the old days, but that’s not one of them.”

They ate for a bit, then ate some more, and just when Mizuki had thought that maybe she’d had a bit too much food, Marta had come out with hot tea cakes to cap off the meal. Mizuki had three of them.

“Question,” said Mizuki. “Is there a way that we can do this every week? Or after every dungeon?”

“Yes,” said Alfric. His reply was mild. “It’s an extravagance, but money’s not really a concern, and if this were coming from the party budget, we wouldn’t really feel it.”

“Is it not coming from the party budget?” asked Verity, frowning a bit.

“Er, no,” said Alfric. He looked around at them. “I paid for it all, just to do something nice.”

“Which means that we all need to do something nice?” asked Isra.

“No, no,” said Alfric. “I had just felt a bit — like the dungeons were going to keep rolling us. I wanted to be able to have something nice.”

“I’m already thinking of my nice thing,” said Isra, folding her arms across her chest. “I understand these games now.”

“I think this was lovely, and I can’t wait to see how Isra outdoes it,” said Hannah. She pushed her chair out and slapped her thighs. “We’re meetin’ at the house for entad testin’ later in the day?”

“Well, no,” said Alfric. “The lutes are stuck beneath the metal pieces, and those we need to move. There’s also a lot of work to do removing everything from the chest, especially all the goods we picked up along the way. I think it’s probably a lot of work. The lutes won’t be until tomorrow, at the earliest.”

“Ah,” said Hannah, looking less eager. “And you want this done today?”

Alfric shrugged, which surprised Mizuki. “Doesn’t have to be. It’ll all keep. Taking a day off when we’ve had so many of those in a row seems a bit odd, but we’re not in any rush to get back into another dungeon, which is a conversation we should save for later, maybe after the post mortem — which will also keep.”

“It’s a relief to hear you say so,” said Hannah with a nod.

“I wanted to test entads though,” said Mizuki, pouting at Alfric.

“If Hannah is alright with it, we can do some minor work without her,” said Alfric. “We have all the junk in the chest that’s above what we’ll need to remove, we can take that out, sort it, then do a brief bout of entad testing with what we grabbed in the second half of the dungeon. I think there are six in total.”

“I was actually thinkin’ that I might be with Marsh today,” said Hannah. “As in, the whole day?”

“He could come do entad testing?” asked Mizuki.

“I might just bow out, if it can be done without me,” said Hannah. “We’ll have a hundred lutes to get through.” She looked contrite. “Sorry.”

“You’ve got it that bad for him?” asked Mizuki.

She’d thought that Hannah would roll her eyes, but instead she just bit her lip. “I fear I do.”

“Interesting,” said Verity. “I think this is the first time I’ve heard you say that you actually like him.”

Hannah did roll her eyes at that. “I’ve said I like him plenty, don’t get it twisted up. I’ve said, in fact, that it’s serious.” A blush had spread beneath her symmetrical freckles.

“You know, if I had a cute boyfriend, I would never shut up about it,” said Mizuki. “Especially if it were serious. You can talk to us about boy stuff! I like talking about boys!”

“Yes,” said Alfric. “Please, talk to us about boy stuff.” He could do a good stone face, when he wanted to, and Mizuki found it hilarious.

“But I actually do want to know,” said Mizuki. She pointed an accusatory finger at Hannah. “You do this cleric thing where you pry a lot and then don’t want to share.”

“I share plenty,” said Hannah with a wave of her hand. “But there’s also nothin’ to share. It’s goin’ well.” Her blush betrayed her. Mizuki thought that it was going quite a bit better than just ‘well’. It made her happy, but also a little sad, because Hannah was two years younger and finding love when she hadn’t expected it. Mizuki was practically old and still floundering through a dry spell.

“I was going to help with the kids for the second half of the day,” said Isra. ‘The kids’ were a class who was down a teacher. They were five or six, and seemed to adore Isra.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Yes, we should get going,” said Alfric. “I’ll talk to Marta and we’ll head out. Mizuki and I can clean out the chest.”

“Tell her it was lovely,” said Verity, smoothing her skirt. “I assume you need more hands for emptying the chest?”

Alfric glanced at Mizuki.

“I think we’re good,” said Mizuki. “There’s nothing heavy at the top, I don’t think. You’re welcome, obviously, if you’ve got nothing else going on, but … you know. We’re fine.”

Verity nodded. “Then Isra, is it alright if I come with you to the school? I thought that the children might want to hear a performance.”

“Oh,” said Isra, who seemed surprised. “That … would be very nice, yes. Do you like children?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” said Verity with a smile.

That meant that it was going to be Mizuki and Alfric together for the rest of the day, and while there would be, yes, work, the brunch meant she’d already gotten out of making breakfast and lunch. Having nothing better to do, she followed Alfric, feeling a bit like she was glomming onto him. He had kind words for Marta, and she had kind words for him.

“I’m so glad that Mizuki has fallen in with the right crowd this time,” said Marta, with a wink in Mizuki’s direction.

“Thank you again for the brunch, we might do it some other time, though I’ll give you plenty of notice,” said Alfric.

“Oh, not at all, it’s good to make a big meal every now and then,” she said. She gripped him on the arm, smiling. “And we’ve got to support the young people when they go on their adventures.”

When they left, Alfric was smiling.

“Mood lifted?” she asked. “I mean, with the dungeon done, the curse gone?”

“I don’t know,” said Alfric. “Yeah.”

They were walking down the street together, back to her house. The chest was following behind them, since they’d been the last ones to go. It would stay put, if you told it to, but there hadn’t been much reason to do that. Alfric was walking slowly, which Mizuki appreciated, because she’d mentioned that she sometimes had a hard time keeping up with him. In fact, she had mentioned it two weeks ago, and it had never been a problem since. That was one of the great things about Alfric. He adapted to other people, and didn’t let something be a problem twice.

“Of course it’s not actually gone, the ‘curse’,” said Alfric. “If we have to do that again … I don’t want to do it again.”

“Because it was horrible, or because you don’t think we would win?” asked Mizuki.