Thankfully, Floor 10 was a victory p, and it only took us a half hour to get through the gauntlet of combat challenges to reach the final room, where a stormy gss teapot sat atop a pedestal.

  "Fucking finally," Summer muttered. "Feels like we've been in here for ages."

  "It's been six days," I said. "So... We know this thing is an Oracle, and we also know it's a visual pun on 'tempest in a teapot,' meaning a small problem blown out of proportion by narrow-minded fools. So... I'm going to guess that this thing is meant to settle small arguments, and I want someone else to offer a contradictory theory."

  "It's a teapot, clearly it's for making tea," Talia said.

  The green tempest in the gss teapot roiled more vigorously, a tiny bolt of lightning fshing through one little cloud, before a vaguely humanoid shape emerged from the spout, made of little green clouds of mist.

  "Catherine is correct," the spirit of the teapot said. "My name is Cassandra, The Tempest In The Teapot, and my domain is the adjudication of small, interpersonal disputes."

  "How mad should I be at Cat for having sex with my mom?" Emily asked.

  "You are allowing your dislike of your mother's sexuality and how she chooses to use it color your opinion of your friend," Cassandra said. "Ultimately, Melody is an adult, and can do what she wants; likewise, at the time at least, Catherine was still thinking of Melody as her own person, rather than as the mother of a girl she had only just met earlier that day."

  Emily opened her mouth to rebut, but then thought better of it, and closed her mouth.

  "...That's a fair point," Emily admitted, sounding genuinely upset about it. "But, I mean-"

  "Catherine and Melody are still adults who are free to do as they please," Cassandra said. "You are as well, and of course, you are free to cut ties with Catherine for any reason, including continuing to have an affair with your mother, but if Catherine and Melody do decide to continue their affair, then that still isn't something you can reasonably take moral offense to."

  Emily turned and looked at me.

  "Aside from the fact that I know you better, there's another key factor in my choice," I said dryly. "I have to live with you."

  Emily snorted. "So romantic."

  "I mean, sure, there is that giant pile of corpses in the Bck Desert that I made specifically on your behalf, but you were there for all that. I don't have to remind you that I fistfought a Demon King for you."

  "It is hard to forget," Emily admitted, lightly biting her lower lip. That was...

  ...god, I keep forgetting how much Emily loves violence. Despite being a Healer who swore an oath to do no harm- although, considering how she'd stabbed Paimon, it seemed there were a few exceptions for self-defense under duress- she was by no means a pacifist.

  "Hey, Cass," Summer said, stepping past Emily and approaching Cassandra and the Teapot. "Why'd Helen throw you down here in the first pce?"

  "She did not like what I had to say," Cassandra said simply. "When she took Jason Goldmist's heart, a great many people were upset with her. Her daughter Ariel, she expected- Ariel had been courting Jason, after all. But her father, Lysander, was also upset with her, and Helen thought Lysander was simply taking Ariel's side out of petty favoritism."

  "So she asked you whether they should be mad at her or not?" Summer asked.

  "She did," Cassandra said. "And I told Helen that they were right to be mad, that she had crossed a very serious line, and that she needed to apologize. And Helen... Helen did not respond well."

  "So she was always a spoiled brat," I mused.

  "Wait," Faith said. "You said took his heart?"

  "I did," Cassandra said, nodding.

  "What?" I asked.

  "Dragons had the ability to form these psychic bonds with people," Faith said. "That's what all those stories about dragons and dragonriders are about- the bonds between the dragon and their dragonrider, unbreakable by anything short of death. Well, what if Helen managed to find a way to force that bond to form between her and Jason, with some sort of insane magic? We know she's an Archmage, and a thousand year old Wizard. If anyone could do it, it'd be her."

  "We know she's currently an Archmage and a twenty five hundred year old Wizard," I corrected Faith. With Cassandra and the Tempestuous Teapot right there, I figured the easiest way to get information was to start an argument that could only be resolved by the truth we simply didn't happen to have. "We have no idea what her skillset was like when she actually bonded with Jason. Who's to say she didn't win his heart fair and square?" I mean, aside from the fact that Ariel Silver wasn't so petty that she'd estrange herself from her family for thousands of years just because the guy she liked ended up dating her mom instead.

  "I am," Cassandra said. "I see the shape of your thoughts, Catherine- you believe me to be an Oracle of limitless potential, so long as the information you seek is the best way to resolve an argument. Unfortunately, I am no such thing- my divination is simply calling upon the Essence of Reconciliation to guide my tongue, as I seek to settle the dispute at hand. I only know how Helen stole Jason's heart because I was there."

  "Ah," Summer said weakly.

  "So, you're not a supremely useful Oracle who'd be of invaluable help on, uh... whatever quest Summer has to go on, that she won't tell us about?" I said.

  "I am not," Cassandra said, shaking her head. "But I can tell you that, yes, foul sorcery was involved in Helen taking Jason's heart, and that Jason is unable to meaningfully want to be apart from Helen. And, at the time, Helen was 44, Ariel was 26, and Jason, 53."

  "...Wait, Helen was eighteen when she had her daughter?" Summer demanded.

  "Yeah, teen mothers are a thing among elves too," I said dryly. "It's not as common, because we have easy access to birth control and only ovute once a decade, but it happens."

  "Fuck," Summer muttered. "I just... What the hell do we do with this?"

  "It's..." I trailed off. "...Well, the situation's been like this for twenty five hundred years. As fucked up as it is, it's probably in a stable equilibrium, and, well. We're all eighteen. I feel like nobody's going to be mad at us specifically if we can't figure out a way to resolve-"

  "When you see Helen, tell her to grow up and apologize to Ariel already!" Lysander had said, the first time I saw him in death. The second time, he'd told me that what happened with the Rosewoods and Jason would very much become my business, and that he expected me to build enough of a rapport with Helen to do something productive about the situation.

  I cut myself off, scowling. What the fuck was I supposed to do about this, Lysander? How did you expect me to sort out this problem? This problem that, I should note, sted effectively the entire life of your daughter, and which you still apparently couldn't figure out how to solve!

  Ugh. Well, that certainly answered the question of whether I should learn to commune with the dead so I could ask for his help- he'd had two thousand years to figure it out, and failed, so clearly he didn't know what he was doing here. But where the hell did that leave me?

  Once again: what the fuck was I supposed to do about this, Lysander?

  "...We can talk to Jason about it?" Emily suggested.

  "I'd rather we didn't," I said quietly. "Jason is... I need to build up a rapport with him, before I start digging into old family drama with him. He likes the idea of me, but he barely knows the real me, and it's going to take time for him to stop seeing me as just Another Ariel Rosewood. I might take after my mom a lot-"

  "Oh, is that why you resisted egg-cracking?" Faith asked. "Because you thought it'd disappoint your dad?"

  I blinked.

  "...That's not something that occurred to me, but now I'm gonna be thinking about that for a while," I said. "Fuck you."

  "I live to serve," Faith said, bowing.

  "Well, we should probably ask him what 'dragonblooded' really means, because that's one of the traits I got from, uh... well, after Cat's egg cracked-"

  "You two banged," Talia said. "We know."

  "You weren't quiet," Faith added.

  "Well excuse me for feeling things when I got sodomized for the first time!" Summer compined.

  "Can I ask what else you got from me, that your weird Occult thing thought was my iconic skillset?" I asked. "Because I'm a deranged polymath, and I'm good at a lot of weird, different things."

  "Well, that's the thing," Summer said. "After the fifth time you fucked my ass, I stopped getting new skills, but the first one I got, alongside 'Dragonblooded,' was a skill called 'Polymath.' Which, as far as I can tell, is just an XP multiplier that makes it easier for me to learn things."

  "I don't- is XP sng for 'experience' where you are?" I asked, frowning. "Are you saying that you require less hands-on experience to grow in skill now?"

  "That's... You know what, fuck it, close enough," Summer said, shaking her head. "I ain't inflicting D&D on y'all's asses, I ain't that mean."

  "What does that mean," I hissed.

  "Right, let's check the loot chest," Summer said, ignoring me. "Ooooh, gold coins! Hell yeah!"

  We emerged from The Abyss about five minutes ter, from Professor Takeda's perspective, but from our perspective, we had in fact been down there for almost a whole week.

  "Hello again, children," Professor Takeda said warmly. "How badly did you mangle your sleep schedules while in a time-dited room with no sunlight or clocks?"

  "I'm... I'm tired," Faith admitted.

  "We got the Tempestuous Teapot, though," I said. "And, uh... Also some stuff we wanna talk to a dragon about. Where's Jason?"

  "In his office," Professor Takeda said. "I'll show you the way."

  AnnouncementAs always, if you like Ironheart and want me to keep making it, the best way to do that is to leave a comment, here or on my discord server.

  Also, I'm taking suggestions for public bonus chapters in between books. The ideas I've currently got range from "The remaining Kings of Hell react to the political upheaval caused by Paimon's death" to "Joseph Ironheart visits a neighbor and pys dominoes." Anything goes.