“I was looking for a naming day present for my aunt,” I say.
Wren nods, a little too eagerly, following my lead. “Didn’t want to bother you, especially if we didn’t find anything. You’d’ve been sad to miss out on a big sale on something you’ve had a hard time moving.”
“Really now,” says the Heroic woman. “Fine then. Buy something expensive and I will kindly forget you were poking around somewhere you weren’t supposed to be.”
“How much is the growth vase?” I ask.
“For such esteemed customers, I’ll let it go for the low, low price of thirty gold.”
I have no idea how much such a thing would normally go for, but I assume she’s tacking a small fee onto the price.
“I’m not carrying that much on me,” I say. “This is a bad neighborhood, after all. Can you send the bill to Corwen Hearth?”
“Certainly,” she says. “And then, once it’s paid in full, I will have your item delivered. I’ll just take a small down payment of whatever is in your pockets at the moment.”
This is probably robbery but I don’t think I have much choice. Oh well, it’s just money. I toss a handful of silver onto the counter.
Cliff scoops the coins into the magitech cash register. “Thank you for your custom.”
The woman adds, “And I’m changing the locks on the storerooms so don’t try this again, Wren.”
Does that really need to be a skill? Oh, fine, whatever. I am apparently not above bribery to avoid trouble. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than [Meekness].
As we’re leaving, Wren whispers, “Maaaan, I’ve never seen 30 gold in my life. I hope your Hearth will actually cover it because Fern is pissed.”
“She wasn’t that pissed,” I say. “[Empathy] was mostly picking up suspicion and greed.”
“Do you even know how much a gold coin is worth?” Anise says, more amused than angry herself.
“One hundred pulp novels,” I reply.
“Is your Hearth likely to even pay for that?” Wren wonders incredulously.
Anise shrugs. “Dunno! Maybe Aunt Savannah actually wants a fancy, expensive vase. In any case, we got out of there without being stomped by an irritated store owner who outranks us and it only cost us pocket change.”
Wren shakes her head in something of disbelief. “And you see silver as pocket change. Happy to be a member of your party, then. What’s our next move?”
“Moving out of your apartment,” I say. “We’ll also need to figure out which is the closest basement to the shady shop that’s feasible to get into. And then we’re heading down to the caves.”
The violet skies are clear when we leave Amroth, but a blizzard descends upon us as we approach the entrance to the In-Between. If it weren’t for Basalt, we might entirely miss it, but he leads us straight there even though the cave is buried under a heavy blanket of snow.
“You sure the cave is here?” Wren asks, shivering.
“Yep,” Basalt says. “Don’t have a shovel on me, though.”
“I’ll get this,” Anise says, fire springing to her hands and starting to melt the snow. Basalt interrupts and points her to where the cave entrance actually is before she melts everything in the wrong spot.
It’s a relief to get inside, into the comparatively tropical first layer of the In-Between. I’m happy for all the levels of [Cold Resistance] I’ve been getting lately, but quite glad that we don’t have to travel further above ground at the moment.
Wren brushes and shakes the snow off of her. “I wish I had clothes made from that nice black wool you guys are wearing.”
“That can be arranged,” Anise says brightly. “Sorry, I didn’t bring extra clothes or anything or I’d have handed you some before I demanded you stroll through a blizzard.”
“It’s fine,” Wren says. “An adventurer should never complain of a chance to train skills, and my Survival skills could definitely be higher. Still happy to be out of the storm, though. Why is it so warm down here?”
“It’s not really that warm,” I say. “It’s just that it stays the same temperature all year round. It feels cold in summer when coming in out of the heat.”
The tunnel opens up to give a good view of the huge cavern with Splott Lake glittering in the middle of it under the light from glowing fungus. Wren slows and we pause to give her a chance to gape in awe at her first sight of the place. She tries to play it cool at first but I can see the emotions in her aura.
“I never even knew this was here, so close to the town I’ve been hanging out in for two years,” Wren says finally.
“The world is full of surprises,” Anise says. “Let’s go say hi to the friendly goblins, shall we? Splotts love company. Wanna go for a ride on a goblin boat?”
Wren chuckles. “Sure, why not.”
We head down to the lakeside and introduce Wren to the Splotts. A fair number of them are capable of speaking Common by this point, and they’ve even put up road signs. She goes from being bemused to amused when she reads one that says, Welcome nice humans! Unwelcome not-nice humans. Go away, bad monsters.
Last time we were here, we didn’t bother to actually cross the lake, but I want to give Wren the full experience and not just rush past to locate the caves beneath Amroth. I was never very good at interpreting facial expressions, and now that I can see auras, I don’t have to be. I never understood how others could read intentions and emotion just from someone’s eyes.
We cross the lake in four boats. Goblins take Anise, Rowan, and Basalt, and let me use a boat to take Wren across myself. The one I built myself years ago has long since fallen apart, but they still respect how I actually built one and paddled around the lake. I’m bigger than I was then, and these boats feel a lot smaller. Fortunately, my Stamina meter is also bigger and I don’t have to stop to rest every five minutes anymore.
Wren stares down into the lake, then reaches out to touch the water with her fingers and splashes it playfully. I do my best to keep the boat steady even though the passenger in front of me has very likely never ridden a kayak before.
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“Don’t lean too far, unless you want a quick lesson in Athletics (Swimming),” I warn.
“Right, sorry,” Wren says sheepishly, gripping the kayak’s sides and centering herself.
I manage to get us to the island without us becoming more damp than necessary. Wren hops out once we reach the shore and I pull the boat out of the water and leave it in the hands of the goblins, who have gotten the others here ahead of us with their superior stats and skills.
I’ll take every boat-related skill level I can get. (If I want to grind boat skills, I should probably be spending more time around boats. I’ve been busy, but there are many more adventures to be had provided I’m not grounded forever for buying a very expensive vase.)
After a nice visit in warm Splott out of the snow, we head out to Hebron next. A few Basic-rank monsters bother us along the way, which we kill without issue and bring their corpses with us so that the core can absorb their essence.
“I’ve never visited a dwarf village before,” Wren says as we reach the stairs. “How many people live there?”
“Just me, and I’m rarely there,” Basalt says with a chuckle. “I suppose we were too busy shivering to tell that particular story.”
“Oh,” Wren says. “You’re the last survivor of your Hearth?”
“No. I was spawned less than year ago after Drake and Rowan rediscovered Hebron by accident.”
“You guys have had some very odd adventures already,” Wren says. “Rediscovering a lost dwarven ruin? I’m glad I joined up with you guys.”
We give her a brief summary as we head in. Uncle Hawk and his party are in the common area when we arrive, eating some sort of meat that smells good but is weirdly orange.
“Hey kids!” Uncle Hawk says. “Good to see you. New party member?”
“Hey, this is Wren,” I say. “Wren, my Uncle Hawk and his party, whose names I have forgotten. Sorry.”
Violet the elf, Schist the dwarf, and Marjoram the human wizard reintroduce themselves, more amused than offended about it. They usher us over to share some giant salamander barbecue. It’s surprisingly spicy, leaving my lips burning and wishing we had some milk. Uncle Hawk grins upon seeing my expression and passes me a cup of life-aspected water to cool it down.
“We went to Amroth and joined the Adventurers’ Guild and ran the rat basement a few times,” I say once my mouth no longer feels like it’s on fire. “How’s the exploration going? Seems like you found something tasty, at least.”
“Great!” Uncle Hawk says. “We’ve found three new dungeons so far. One each of Elite, Heroic, and Epic. It’s awesome, an Epic dungeon here in Tempest that nobody else knows about yet. Except the orcs, and they haven’t bothered us much. Areas seem to get higher level the further south we go.”
“We’re going to dig a tunnel into Amroth and burn down a shop selling illicit potions.”
“Sounds fun. Good luck, and be careful!”
“This place is… nice,” Wren says. “Never thought I’d say that about a cave, but it feels safe here. Never really thought I’d feel safe anywhere.”
“The home that should have been yours was no home to you,” Basalt says. “You should have been able to feel safe and welcome there. And yet they drove you away. That was their fault, not yours. Any Hearth should have been happy to have you.”
“No normal Hearth would want a known quest denier,” Wren says.
“Well, I don’t have a ‘normal’ Hearth. Who’s to say what’s normal, anyway? Maybe in the future, not getting quests you hate will be normal.”
Wren looks off at nothing and leans back in her chair, letting off a heavy sigh. “That would be a dream, wouldn’t it? Cores just letting us live our lives, or even supporting us instead of abusing us.”
“Maybe I could adopt you,” Basalt suggests. “If you like. You deserve a good home. I don’t know if Hebron is that, yet anyway, but I can try.”
“Are you serious?” Wren says, shock and hope rippling through her aura.
“Of course. It can be done, can’t it?”
“Yeah, I got an option to pledge myself to the core when I touched it,” I put in. “Needless to say, I didn’t, because I like my core, but you should get the option too.”
A spark appears from nowhere and settles on the edge of Wren’s aura, where her quests are located. “Well,” Wren says, blinking. “Farlow just gave me a quest to subjugate Hebron. Piss off, Farlow, I’m not doing that. For one thing, that would be incredibly stupid when there’s an Epic-rank party here.”
“Definitely does not have your best interests at heart,” Basalt says. “Offer is open if you’re interested. You don’t have to decide right away.”
“I wouldn’t need to… make babies to populate the Hearth, would I?” Wren asks. “I’d be the only woman…”
“You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to. There’s a dwarf spawner. Once we get going, we’ll just be carving more statues to make new dwarves.”
“That sounds much nicer and less gross than pregnancy.” She stands up. “I’m going to take a walk around first, alright?”
“Of course,” Basalt says.
“Don’t fall in the centipede pit,” I warn.
“There’s a centipede pit?” Wren laughs. “That’s fantastic.”
She heads off on her own to explore the dungeon, running her fingers along the carved reliefs as she leaves the dining area.
“Did I hear that right?” Uncle Hawk asks. “Her core gave her a quest to subjugate the dungeon? That makes no sense. Why would it do that? It couldn’t possibly expect her to actually do that.”
I shrug and put out my palms. “I can’t speculate. I wonder what even happens with quests that are failed. There’s experience just sitting there, but where does it go?”
“You can see someone’s quests?” Uncle Hawk wonders in surprise.
“I can’t see their actual quest log or the details of it, but I can see the aspects of it frozen in their aura, waiting for a trigger,” I say. “It’s possible that there are psychics who can read your actual quest text.”
“Never knew Clairvoyance could do that.”
Wren wanders in a bit later, looking more pensive than I’ve ever seen her in the short time I’ve known her. “Yeah, I’ll do it. To the Void with it. No matter which way I look at it, it’s a fair sight better than what I got right now. And what I got right now is just an annoying shiny ball that puts system boxes in my head to tell me to do stuff I don’t wanna do and a Hearth I never want to go back to. It’d be nice to have someplace I can come home to and keep my junk.”
“Glad to have you,” Basalt says, smiling warmly. “Come on. I’ll show you to the core room.”
They head out into the hall, and I follow along as I’m technically the representative of the core’s liege or something. And I want to see what happens to her quests. Basalt leads the way to the secret door behind the carving of dwarves being trampled by elephants.
“This is it?” Wren says, following Basalt inside as I take up the rear. “There isn’t an actual Hearth and village, just this?”
“It was just a dungeon with a hidden core room when we found it,” I say. “It’s still kind of a work in progress. I’m not sure what would be the best sort of layout for this place.”
Wren examines the wood plaque with Basalt’s name and picture on it. “Man, only one plaque on the wall… Well, I’ll do what I can to help.”
We head downstairs where Hebron’s small gleaming orb on a pedestal lights up the room in green. Wren pauses and stares at it for a moment, then circles the room, looking at each plaque depicting dead dwarves from the first century of the Age of the Green Fox.
“All these poor dwarves, trampled by monsters,” Wren says. “Well, here’s to putting some happier memories on the walls. What… what am I supposed to do here?”
“Just touch the core,” I say.
Wren approaches the crystal sphere hesitantly, sighing a little. “You know, I hate these things. But if you’ll get Farlow’s stupid quests out of my head, then fine, you’ve got me, I suppose.”
She reaches out and touches the aether core with the tip of her finger. Concepts rush through her aura, and most of the waiting quests dissolve into aether. When the surge of energy settles, her aura still bears the mark of foreign vis, but it has been imprinted with concepts I recognize as ‘Tempest’ and ‘Hebron’.
“It… it gave me a new name,” she says softly. “Jade Hebron Tempest Tiganna.”
Basalt says, “You don’t have to use the name if you don’t want to, if you’d rather still go by Wren.”
She shakes her head. “No. I like it. Does this mean I’m a dwarf now? Uncle Basalt?”
“You can be a tall dwarf if you like,” Basalt says.
“She’s not that much taller than you,” I say. “You’re like 125 cm tall, and she’s about 150 cm.”
“Hmm,” I say as the precision in my head gets a little sharper. “Maybe more like 126 and 149.”
“I’d be happy to be a medium dwarf,” says the newly dubbed Jade Hebron. “It’s gone. The dreaded quest log is gone. Thank you! Never thought I’d be grateful to a blasted core for anything.”
We head back upstairs and take a look at the new plaque on the wall. Jade’s aura ripples with complex emotions as she approaches it.
“Huh. I have a new naming day,” Jade says, touching the wooden plaque. “Well, my character screen still lists my actual age.”
“This calls for a party!” Basalt says, a wide grin stretching his beard. “And I’m sure we can scrounge up some presents for you, too.”
“Well, I’d say you already got me more than I ever hoped for, but I never say no to more stuff…”