Love Potion Number 9

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/60400780.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: ダンジョン飯 | Dungeon Meshi | Delicious in Dungeon
Relationship: Kabru/Mithrun (Dungeon Meshi)
Characters: Kabru (Dungeon Meshi), Mithrun (Dungeon Meshi), Touden Party
Members (Dungeon Meshi)
Additional Tags: Canon Divergence, Canon-typical monster fighting, Kabru’s extensive
internal monologue, Kabru is not the most reliable narrator, Mithrun’s
reckless teleportation, Bad cooking (Kabru’s), Various monsters -
Freeform, Sex Pollen (thoroughly negotiated), Slow burn (kind of)
(emotionally anyway), Mithrun’s terrible self-image, Attempted
Masturbation, Sorta priapism, Blow Job, Implied Anal Sex, There Was
Only One Bedroll, Good cooking (Senshi’s), More spiders than you’d
think (yum), Hot Springs, Canoodling in the tunnels, Campfire stories,
Daltian Clan mentions, Fun with undines (no one’s having fun),
Hurt/Comfort, Happy Ending
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2024-11-21 Updated: 2025-01-30 Words: 83,751 Chapters:
21/25
 Love Potion Number 9
by FlamingoQueen

Summary

When Fleki’s familiar fails to arrive, Kabru and Mithrun must continue to wander the lower
levels of the dungeon, encountering monsters, getting to know each other, and eventually
running into the Touden party.

Can Kabru successfully play mediator between a Canary captain and a party that used black
magic? Will Senshi’s cooking change Kabru’s mind about monster cuisine? And just what is
Kabru supposed to do about his developing affection for Mithrun? Is that affection returned,
or is that more wishful thinking?

(Or: What if there was some sex pollen down there and Kabru caught feelings, and then the
duo ran into Laios and the others? Merged party for the win?)

Notes

Bit of a departure from my usual, but Dungeon Meshi bit me and shook me and compelled
me to dip my toe into the water.

This here is a canon divergence from around when Kabru and Mithrun encounter the
“griffin.” It’s largely from Kabru’s POV, but we briefly explore some other characters from
time to time. ^_^

I’m very nearly finished writing, and it’s over 20 chapters at this point. So I’m aiming for 25
this time. I guarantee it won’t become 151 chapters, haha! << Update: It's now totally
finished and has a set chapter count.

Content warnings, when needed, will be in the endnotes, to avoid spoiling people who don’t
want them.

Enjoy!
 Succubus Fountain / Giant Spiders

Kabru’s stomach gurgles irritably at him, complaining that he hasn’t filled it in too long, and
he ignores it.

They haven’t encountered anything to eat since waking up and setting out for the day, and
they finished the last rubbery, crunchy, burnt remnants of what he is generously calling the
griffin egg “quiche” while packing up their meager and stolen belongings after the latest of
their brief semi-sleepless nights.

There’s nothing else to eat until they come across another monster down here, so it’s
pointless to entertain thoughts about how it’s probably time to eat.

Kabru isn’t sure what time it is, anyway, when it comes to morning, noon, or night. Or even
which day it is.

He had tried keeping track at the start, when he and the captain had first fallen into the pit and
ended up on what the other Canaries had assumed was the sixth floor of the dungeon based
only on Mithrun’s description of the temperature and whatever prior research they’d had of
the place’s general layout.

And how terrifying had that been? Finding himself on the sixth floor with a single, largely
unknown companion when he’d regularly wiped out on milder floors with a full party of
compatible adventurers around him. Knowing that he didn’t have what it took to survive
against monsters on lower levels. Not even knowing what kinds of monsters he’d be facing
on these levels. And with the knowledge that the Canaries held metaphorical daggers to his
friends’ throats the whole time.

Kabru had done what he could to manage the chaos in his thoughts when he was first
presented with his predicament. He’d arranged all of the knowns in order and weighed them
against the unknowns. He’d formulated plans and counterplans. He’d come up with
contingencies against every possible outcome that he could conceive of.

He was on a floor of the dungeon several times beyond his skill level… but he had a Canary
captain with him who was presumably an expert at dungeon crawls and who at least didn’t
have any intention of doing him harm. (And if it was borderline insulting that Mithrun had no
intentions toward him whatsoever despite Kabru’s earlier actions, well, Kabru would take
whatever he could get out of the situation.)

He had no idea what monsters were lurking down here… but Mithrun knew not only what to
expect but also how to get around those threats. (And if Mithrun’s first notion of how to get
around those threats was to launch Kabru at them like a human projectile, well, that was less
than ideal, but also temporary. The captain hadn’t repeated the move, and had since taken to
putting himself in between Kabru and any monsters they encountered, instead.)

His friends were being held hostage… but for all intents and purposes, didn’t Kabru also
have a hostage of his own down here? (Though, it was less and less like a hostage situation
between himself and Mithrun as time went on and more and more like a situation where they
needed each other to the point of near-certain catastrophic failure if either of them were
removed from the picture. Kabru didn’t like his chances down here without Mithrun, and
without someone to keep track of his needs, Mithrun wasn’t likely to do much better on his
own.)

And it was only for a week, at most, he’d told himself while following Mithrun down that
first corridor. All he had to do was survive for a week and see to Mithrun’s needs, and hope
that in that week’s time, Laios and the others managed to reach the heart of the dungeon and
defeat the lunatic magician.

A week. He had told himself he could manage a week. And he’d set about trying to do
exactly that.

He’d tried keeping track of their meals—how much they ate, how often they ate. That they
ate. (Not what they ate. Kabru tries not to think about what they’re eating, even now, several
days in.)

He’d tried keeping track of their sleep, too—making sure the captain got at least four hours of
sleep when they intentionally made camp for the evening, and that the elf slept until he woke
up naturally if they ended up being forced to make camp on the fly just because the captain
had collapsed again.

But keeping time without daylight to measure it with is a challenge, and Kabru’s own
circadian rhythm is becoming increasingly skewed by the constant glow of Mithrun’s mage
lights, the sporadic sleep schedule they’re keeping, the even more sporadic meals they’re
managing, and… And by Mithrun himself, if Kabru’s going to point an honest finger at the
problem.

One of the benefits to having a full party with routine needs they all acknowledge is that
everyone in the party tends to agree that they’re hungry or tired or thirsty at roughly the same
intervals. But down here, with just Mithrun and his relentless forward charge into the
dungeon, Kabru is having a harder time than he likes to admit when it comes to peer
pressuring the elf into paying attention to various physical needs.

More often than not, the peer pressure goes the other way around, with Mithrun’s single-
mindedness becoming contagious. Kabru is uncomfortably aware, after all, that he’d rather
starve to death in a dungeon than consume monsters. And if it were solely his own life on the
line…

But it isn’t. It’s Kabru’s life, and also Mithrun’s life, and also Kabru’s friends’ lives. Possibly
also the lives of Laios and his party and everyone in the dungeon and on the Island, too.

He’d like to think that it’s getting better, or easier, to manage Mithrun’s needs as time goes
on. That he’s getting used to regularly winding up the clockwork gears of sleeping, eating,
and all the rest that keep them both going day in and day out. But the truth is that, even with
so much on the line, Kabru sometimes doesn’t notice his own exhaustion until the captain is
swaying on his feet.
(And frankly, Kabru doesn’t want to pay attention to his own hunger because of the horror
involved in satiating that hunger.)

Even with his own party, before—and when there’d been travel rations and not monsters—it
had been others who sounded the need for a break. Mickbell or Rin insisting that they were
hungry. Holm pointing out that he needed time to rest and meditate before they moved on.
Daya organizing their sleep schedule to ensure that everyone was properly rested while they
rotated who was keeping watch.

And now, with a party of two, one of whom can’t register his own body’s needs and both of
whom tend toward forging on ahead despite those needs whenever allowed to do so…

Kabru sighs.

There’s a fountain up ahead at the end of this hallway. It’s the same fountain as before, and
while they could and probably should stop for water and a rest, he knows that they’ll be
taking a side corridor instead of approaching the fountain, just like the other times the
hallways have led to this fountain. The captain isn’t starting to flag at all, and it’s not worth
the argument until they do get to that point.

Kabru’s been doing his best with the situation presented to him, and that’s all there is to it.
His friends’ lives are on the line, after all, if Cithis is to be believed. (He’s not sure she is.)

He doesn’t think the Canaries would actually harm his friends—not directly. They’re far
more likely to simply hold onto his friends until well after they’re satisfied with the outcomes
in this dungeon. It’s just that that satisfaction might not come for decades, even if they
manage to seal the dungeon in a matter of days, and Kabru doesn’t want the lot of them to
end up in the West living out their years as curiosities.

Far better that he does an outstanding job seeing to the captain’s needs and manages to secure
his friends’ freedom from the whole situation before anyone gets any ideas about further
questioning in the West.

While he might not be managing an outstanding job, Kabru would like to think he’s doing an
adequate job. He has been able to ensure they eat at least three times a day, just like Cithis
had stipulated. He is just having to make some assumptions about how long their days are, is
all. They keep a schedule, of a sort—eating three times during a “day” and then sleeping for
however long they can manage it before waking up to do it all again.

They might not be eating well by any stretch of the word, but they are eating. They might not
be sleeping full nights, but they are sleeping.

Kabru gives the mental math of timekeeping another try as he follows Mithrun through yet
another side corridor. They’ve been going in circles since they set out this morning as far as
Kabru can tell, repeatedly coming across the same fountain surrounded by greenery and stone
lions and repeatedly backing away from it rather than approach.

It’s as though every hallway they try loops around onto the same courtyard, but Mithrun
refuses to cooperate with the shifting layout and just accept that they are going to explore the
courtyard the dungeon is presenting them with. Kabru would ask about it—the courtyard with
the fountain doesn’t seem dangerous enough to go to all this effort to avoid—but there’s
plenty of time to be curious after Mithrun runs out of steam, which he’s bound to eventually
do given the pace he’s set for them.

So. The first night, or what Kabru is calling a night because there was sleep involved, they
spent five hours waiting for Kabru to finish having a nightmare he doesn’t remember the
details of after eating the walking mushroom. Then there was the night after they found the
Touden party’s packs in the snow and Mithrun collapsed. Then the night they ate the
barometz stew. Then the night at the base of that column with the spiral staircase inside it.
Then—

Kabru misses a step as the ground in front of him suddenly ceases to be magically lit stone
corridor and becomes instead pitch dark… grass? Something softer underfoot, anyway, and
then Mithrun’s globe lights flicker into existence above him, revealing that yes, they’re now
in a thoroughly overgrown garden.

Without a water feature that Kabru can see or hear.

So far, every garden or similarly grassy area they’ve come across in this level of the dungeon
has had a pond or fountain of some sort. The lack of running water sets Kabru’s nerves on
high alert. In this dungeon, even stone hallways that would have no logical reason for it often
have running water coursing through lion head fountains. For a garden to be without one…

Despite his ire at the unannounced teleportation, Kabru doesn’t bother to shake off the
captain’s hand on his bicep as he looks around at the tangled vines and leggy plants that criss-
cross what was once a neat flagstone path to the right. If there’s any need to teleport them
both out of the area, he doesn’t want to cause a delay by being out of reach—or worse, end
up left behind.

The garden is too quiet. He doesn’t like it.

He likes it even less when his traitorous stomach growls again, possibly alerting whatever
monsters lurk in the garden to their presence.

“No need to worry. They won’t come here,” Mithrun murmurs, sounding satisfied as he steps
away.

For all that the captain seems at ease, Kabru doesn’t relax one bit.

“ What won’t come here?” he asks, dreading the answer.

“The succubi.”

“Succubi?!”

“There’s nowhere to lay their eggs, and the spiderwebs would tangle up their wings.”

Kabru doesn’t see any spiderwebs. He’s not sure whether that should be a comfort, though,
because any spider big enough to be setting traps for a succubus could just as easily be
hunting them . And if he misses the signs, maybe gets caught up in a web…

“There were succubi?”

He didn’t see any succubi. Weren’t those supposed to actively approach their victims and lure
them to their deaths? If they were there, why hadn’t they made themselves known?

“In the fountain, yes. Their larvae. That courtyard would have been swarmed with the adults
if we’d been noticed, but we didn’t get close enough.”

A lone succubus would be formidable for an unwary adventurer. Taking on an irresistible

form and rendering even the most strong-willed victims putty in its grasp… And a swarm of
them?

Kabru isn’t sure what form a succubus would take for him. A beautiful woman, maybe? That
was said to be the norm. Whatever his “ideal” was, whatever would make him weak in the
knees and helpless to put up a fight as he was drained dry. Would it be someone he knew, or
just a beautiful stranger? Which would be worse?

And would it even be possible for a succubus to find a form someone like Mithrun would
respond to, with his missing desire? Kabru can’t quite see how that would work, or what the
captain would see if accosted by a succubus.

But even if Mithrun didn’t find himself lulled and seduced in an encounter with the monsters
the way any ordinary adventurer with intact desires would be, he could probably be
overwhelmed by sheer numbers if there were a swarm, and Kabru himself wouldn’t have
been of any help in the situation.

He can see why Mithrun had opted to flee those hallways when it was clear they were being
funneled toward the courtyard despite his best efforts and had instead chosen to confront the
possibility of giant spiders. At least Kabru stands a chance against a giant spider.

Though… if they end up battling a giant spider, they’ll end up eating that giant spider, and—

Kabru puts the entire thought out of his mind before he ends up dry retching over it.

“Why don’t we see if there’s a room off of this garden where we can rest a bit, Captain.
Maybe it’ll have running water, or—”

“You’re wanting things again.” Mithrun levels a disapproving look at him.

“Sure,” Kabru says with a smile. “I want to avoid eating spiders, and I want to fill up our
waterskin without getting sucked dry by a succubus, and I—”

Mithrun shakes his head, picks a direction, and starts walking.

He’s unsurprised that Mithrun doesn’t see—or perhaps simply doesn’t care for—the joke in
his words, and he’s equally unsurprised when it turns out that the joke is on him, instead.
Because within the span of an hour, they have found a room just on the other side of this
overgrown garden festooned with vines, they have found a place in that room where they can
rest for a bit, they have found some running water courtesy of yet another ubiquitous lion
head fountain in that room…

And they have found and dispatched three distressingly plump giant spiders with hairy legs
as thick around as Mithrun’s wrists, glistening pincers in vivid hues of pearlescent green and
blue, and shimmering black eyes that wouldn’t stop following Kabru’s every move even long
after the spiders themselves were dead, courtesy of well-aimed rocks teleported somewhere
inside of their bulbous spidery bodies.

Which means they have found dinner. Or breakfast. Or something in between, depending on
what time of day it actually ends up being when they’re finished butchering the spiders for
meat.

Kabru’s stomach gives another gurgle as he glances at the pile of leg segments to the side of
the makeshift stone ring he’s trying to light a fire inside of. It’s a gurgle of hunger, sure, but
it’s also a gurgle of protest.

At least the non-edible parts of the giant spiders are piled up outside in the garden where
Kabru doesn’t have to look at them and they can’t look at Kabru. At least there was a
consensus that only the legs were edible and Kabru didn’t have to face the prospect of
digging through the soup of spider innards looking for something to pour into a cookpot.

He’s not sure there are enough cities in the entire world—let alone that he has memorized—
to get him through trying to eat boiled spider goop.

“Are you going to stare at the spiders, or are you going to start a fire?”

Kabru tears his eyes away from their revolting raw ingredients and resumes striking flint and
stone. Maybe his attempts to start a fire will fail and they will just have to go hungry, after
all. Oh no, so sad.

Except, he would rather eat cooked giant spider legs than raw ones, if those are his choices,
and they are. (Why, why are those his choices?)

“What do you think they’ll taste like?” Kabru asks before blowing gently on a bit of fluffy
dried grass to encourage the sparks to take.

Mithrun is quiet for a moment, maybe pondering the question, maybe ignoring him. It can be
hard to tell sometimes.

“Bad,” Mithrun finally answers.

Kabru nods in mournful agreement and starts stacking up a loose bed of dry branches over
the top of the budding flames to serve as a grill to buffer the spider legs from the fire. This
way, even if the meat inside is disgusting, it won’t also be charred. He hopes.

“Maybe it’ll be like crab,” Kabru suggests. “Or lobster.”

“It won’t be.”

“You never know. The barometz tasted like crab, and it was a sheep.”

“It was a barometz.”

Kabru sighs. So much for wishful thinking. He’s not sure why he thought the captain would
be interested in pretending this meal would be anything other than disgusting. There wasn’t
much evidence to support that sort of fantasy, anyway.

Especially not once the first few leg fragments are balanced on the makeshift grill and the
acrid stench of singed hair fills the room.

Maybe they should have done this outside in the garden and saved the room itself for eating
and sleeping. But then they’d have been exposed to whatever other predators were out in the
garden, and there’d have been piles of spider bodies right there to draw attention.

Well, too late now.

He’s not sure how long to leave the first batch of spider legs on the fire, but Kabru errs on the
side of overdone, waiting until the shells are charred and then turning them to get the other
side equally cooked before flicking them off to the floor to cool down enough to handle.

Since the result is essentially an impenetrable tube of burned chitin that presumably has some
edible meat inside, he opts to smash one open with a rock rather than risk their stolen kitchen
knife’s blade.

And it… does taste bad. Mithrun was right. The meat is stringy and tough, and it sticks to the
inside of the shell and has to be ripped out in clumps. There’s a greasy quality to it, also. Not
like something that was badly fried, but like something that produces its own oil with every
chew, except that the oil is rancid.

It’s a struggle to get the first bite down, and an even fiercer struggle to keep it down, what
with his imagination insisting that the spider is trying to crawl up his esophagus between
every compulsive swallow.

Maybe the captain won’t notice if Kabru simply doesn’t eat any more of this. There’s a
chance, right? Mithrun doesn’t care about him, after all, has no plans concerning him,
couldn’t even supply the bare minimum of detail needed for that shapeshifter earlier… Kabru
can simply hold the spider leg and Mithrun will ignore him long enough for him to pretend
that he’s finished it and toss it out with the rest…

But no, Kabru is not so lucky.

Mithrun is dutifully chewing his own meal, but he’s also watching Kabru’s efforts with
interest. It’s an unfortunate development as their time traveling together has worn on.
Mithrun isn’t able to tell when he’s hungry and relies on Kabru to manage that for him, but
he’s taken to managing Kabru in turn.
If Mithrun has to stop and eat something, then Kabru does, too. If Kabru tries to go without,
Mithrun will dig his heels in and refuse to cooperate until Kabru relents and joins him. Sure,
sometimes Mithrun gets lost in his thoughts or distracted by something and doesn’t pick up
on how little Kabru eats during a meal, but this is not one of those times.

Kabru reluctantly ferries another wad of greasy spider gristle into his mouth and begins the
arduous task of chewing it into submission. Maybe the next batch of spider legs should cook
for less time on each side. It’s worth a try.

“How much longer do you think that familiar will take to find us?” Kabru asks as he passes
another segment of spider leg over to Mithrun.

The elf sets the segment on the ground and braces it with a foot before starting the process of
smashing it open with a half-brick. It’s the first of the second batch, and while cooking it less
doesn’t make it any easier to get into, it does make it more prone to splattering when the
exoskeleton finally does give way.

Mithrun doesn’t seem to mind the mess, but Kabru gags on his behalf and then passes him a
cloth from their stolen supplies all the same.

“They said a week,” Mithrun says as he dabs at his uniform, unconcerned.

“It’s been a week.”

“Has it?”

Kabru shrugs. “Near enough. The sooner your squad picks us up, the sooner we can eat
something that hasn’t tried to kill us.”

“Mm.”

“Maybe you’re not looking forward to eating real food again, Captain, but aren’t you at least
tired of eating monsters?”

“I don’t mind. Though field rations are quicker.”

Right, because the speed with which a meal can be completed is the important factor.

Kabru thinks back to the last meal he had that could be rightly considered a meal. A full
spread at the tavern, with the rest of his party. Good, high-quality ingredients, prepared well,
served fresh, eaten in comfort, without a thought spared for the likelihood of intestinal trauma
to come.

Hadn’t he said something about how they should enjoy it while they still could before going
back into the dungeon?

And now he’s choking down monsters just to survive.

Kabru stares at the half-empty spider leg segment in his hands. Surely there was a decision he
could have made differently somewhere along the path that led him here, but whenever he
goes chasing down that decision in his mind, all he comes up with are the reasons he stands
by the decisions he’s made.

Even though he loathes everything about his current predicament, if he had it all to do over
again, he’d end up here all the same.

Maybe he’d have stashed some salt in his pockets, though. He doubts a bit of seasoning
would save any of the monster meals they’ve had, but it definitely couldn’t have hurt.
 Blade Fish

They set out again in the morning, having taken turns sleeping a few hours apiece before
eating leftover spider legs for a cold breakfast. There are still six spider leg segments left of
the stockpile Kabru had roasted last night, and these get jammed into Mithrun’s pack
however they’ll fit, spilling out at obscene angles as though there was a whole spider tucked
away inside writhing and trying to escape.

Kabru tries to tell himself they’re lucky the spider legs will keep, unlike the barometz buds
that had rotted away in the night the very same day they were harvested and been
unsalvageable the following morning. He tries to tell himself that the spider meat is like
jerky, that it’s a staple they are fortunate to have come across, that they will be thankful to
have it later.

He also tries to tell himself that the familiar will find them today, for sure. It has to have been
a week by now. The familiar will find them no matter what, Mithrun had said—well, unless
it’s been eaten.

Mithrun had definitely mentioned that as a possibility the first time Kabru had asked about
the familiar, back when they were running from the griffin. Kabru simply hasn’t allowed
himself to dwell on that possibility, because if the familiar has been eaten, that means they
are stranded down here indefinitely, doesn’t it? And that’s not something he can bear to
consider.

So yes, the familiar is on its way, and it will find them. Soon. Maybe even today. Maybe
before he has to pull Mithrun aside and distribute more of the spider meat for them to have
for their midday meal.

Please, please let the familiar find them before he has to eat more spider meat.

At least they manage to wander through a different part of the mining town today instead of
getting caught up in the spiral of hallways leading to yet another succubus fountain. Kabru’s
pretty sure his “ideal” at this point would end up being a platter of slow-roasted non-monster
pork complete with glazed vegetables and some forest fruits, maybe a loaf of crusty bread,
chased down with a mug of good, hoppy ale.

If a meal like that wanted to suck him dry and leave behind his shriveled husk, Kabru is not
altogether certain he’d object.

And now he’s definitely hungry again, but the clacking of the spider legs against each other
in Mithrun’s pack makes him eager to ignore that sensation in his stomach and press on after
the elf as they make their way through various abandoned streets and railing-lined cliffside
stairs with their apparently toxic mushrooms.

Maybe there’s some other monster encounter they can have in this town, something that will
provide them with less objectionable meat.
He’d eagerly run away from another griffin if they happened to find a pile of sticks with an
egg nestled inside. He’d even go for another walking mushroom, as long as it wasn’t toxic
like the ones sicking out of the ground here. Or it would be amazing if they found more
barometz, even if there were more dire wolves involved in the harvesting process.

There have to be more non-monster food options like the barometz in the dungeon. Aren’t
there supposed to be rabbits and things? Couldn’t they set a trap?

Only they’re definitely in a town right now, not a field or other agricultural center where it’s
possible wildlife could thrive. And even vermin that might be counted on to live in the
shadows and feast on human refuse would require a population of humans or demi-humans to
sustain them. Town this may be, it’s been abandoned long enough even the rats have moved
on.

Which is a shame, because Kabru would much rather eat rats than monsters.

But the pantry of this kitchen they’ve been searching is just as empty as every other building
they’ve taken the time to explore in the town. Not a single grain of ancient rice to collect, not
a single dusty flour sack to salvage, not a single cobweb in a corner to indicate that there’s
life… even the lion head fountain has run dry in this building.

If there were orcs or goblins or something down here once upon a time, they are long gone by
now and any foods or signs of life are long gone with them.

Kabru follows Mithrun back out onto the street without even a disappointed sigh. He might
prefer a juicy rat over the spider legs in their supplies, but he does know better than to fan his
preference into an outright desire. For one, Mithrun’s warning about wanting things in
dungeons is still valid. For another, given Kabru’s luck lately, the dungeon would provide a
horde of giant rats the way it had provided a garden full of giant spiders earlier.

Kabru is just about ready to admit defeat in the quest to put off lunch until the familiar can
find them when Mithrun comes to a stop in a dead end alley and puts a hand up against the
stonework blocking their path.

“Captain?”

It’s not like the dead end came up out of nowhere or was a surprise. Kabru had been
expecting Mithrun to lead them through a door into another one of the side buildings when
they came down the alley, not to stand there looking perplexed by a wall that unsurprisingly
didn’t move out of their way.

Mithrun looks up, hand still on the wall in front of him, and then back at Kabru. “Hm.”

And Kabru’s about to repeat himself, maybe elaborate a bit and ask the elf what’s wrong,
when Mithrun blinks out of existence for the space of time it takes Kabru to squawk his
dismay at the move and then reappears a foot to the left.

It’s far from the only time Mithrun has employed teleportation without caution or warning,
but with his empty stomach and building frustration over everything, Kabru finds himself
snapping about it this time.

“Don’t do that!”

Kabru grabs for Mithrun’s arm with both hands and pulls the elf against his side, heedless of
the way he ends up essentially hugging Mithrun’s pack full of spider legs for his trouble. This
way, at the very least Mithrun has to take him along if he tries to teleport again. It’s not as
satisfying a solution to the impromptu teleportation problem as slamming Mithrun into the
wall so he can’t teleport at all would be, but Kabru figures this leaves room for escalation
later if that’s necessary.

Hopefully it won’t be. Hopefully, he can convince Mithrun to stop recklessly teleporting
around on a whim and save it for when the teleportation is actually warranted.

“There’s—”

“That’s dangerous ,” Kabru insists. “Don’t just flit around without warning. What if I’d
moved before you got back and the space you thought was clear was actually where I was
standing? What if you ended up—”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Well I don’t! At least tell me first so I can either stay put or else clear the area so you don’t
teleport into me on your way back.”

Mithrun points upward. “I could see you the whole time. I was just on top of the wall.”

Kabru takes a deep breath and pointedly does not release Mithrun from his grasp. Whether
Mithrun could see him or not isn’t the point. Or it isn’t the whole point. It helps, sure, that
Mithrun at least kept his sight lines clear this time. But the problem is more than that. The
problem is a whole pattern of behavior that is going to get Kabru killed eventually, and
maybe messily enough that the death will be permanent.

The problem is when Mithrun doesn’t have sight lines, or when his sight lines won’t make up
for his lack of depth perception or his terrible sense of direction. The problem is that Kabru
can’t anticipate his teleportation and runs the risk of ending up stuck in a wall or just plain
ripped apart. Teleportation is dangerous magic and requires planning and advanced notice to
reduce its inherent risks—and Mithrun might understand the risks, but he clearly doesn’t care
to avoid them.

Kabru thinks back to the first floor of the dungeon, to the shadow governor’s men who might
still be stuck in the walls to this day and who may or may not have been left with room to
expand their lungs while trapped inside those walls. That’s a terrible way to suffocate to
death, even if their faces are free.

He thinks back to the handful of times Mithrun has “missed” with his teleportation—whether
intentionally or unintentionally.
Did he actually try to teleport that rock into the chimera’s head, or was he aiming to drop the
rock from above its head instead? Did he mean for Kabru to land near the shapeshifter as he
had or did he mean to use Kabru to tear the shapeshifter apart by teleporting Kabru into the
same space the shapeshifter had been occupying?

What about while they’d been chased by the griffin and Mithrun had sent it “away”
somewhere instead of into one of the pillars like he’d meant to? Or the giant walking
mushroom that had also ended up somewhere random? Mithrun couldn’t possibly have
known the exact dimensions of the fourth floor of the dungeon to make an intentional
exchange of mushroom for water.

Mithrun’s fellow warden had said point blank that it was amazing his aim was as good as it
was given that he only had one eye to work with. And his squad had been panicked when he
lost the second rock mid-teleportation and sent it near their heads when Kabru had grabbed
him and broken his concentration.

Kabru has a bad feeling that teleportation mishaps are a routine occurrence where Mithrun is
concerned, and while nothing has gone fatally wrong for them so far in the past week despite
Mithrun teleporting them blindly to different areas of the dungeon as they’ve fled an
assortment of unpleasant situations…

Kabru can’t help but suspect his luck is going to run out if he can’t convince Mithrun to take
a few more precautions.

But he also realizes the futility of expecting a rant from Kabru—a tall-man he’s known for a
mere week—to have any effect where the impassioned pleas of his squad and superiors have
clearly been ignored for over a decade.

So, not a rant. But also not anything so well-crafted or elaborate that it could seem insincere.
There’s a balance Kabru will have to strike just right.

“Captain, we’re in this together, aren’t we?” Kabru asks, keeping one of his hands wrapped
around Mithrun’s wrist while the other strokes his arm soothingly. “You and me, down here
in the dungeon, we’re relying on each other and working together, right? So that we can
accomplish our goals?”

Mithrun looks up at him and blinks. “Yes.”

“Then we need to be actually working together, don’t we? As a team. I can’t anticipate your
needs and stay out of your way when I don’t know that you have in mind. So tell me when
you are going to teleport us somewhere, or when you’re going to teleport yourself
somewhere, or me somewhere, so that I can do my part to support you, okay?”

Kabru can see the gears turning behind Mithrun’s eye and hopes his approach has been
correctly tailored without having come across as overly premeditated. Who knows if it will
work—Mithrun had seen through him in the Island Lord’s manor, after all, when all the other
Canaries had taken him at face value. And Mithrun used to play many of the same
interpersonal games Kabru plays, so he’s familiar with the art.
“Okay.”

“We’ll get further through the dungeon if we avoid mishaps. We might even run into the
other party down here in time to get through to them about the demon and get them on board
with defeating it. At the very least, we’ll be in one piece when your squad finally collects us.
But only if we work together more effectively.”

He hopes Mithrun doesn’t balk at the idea of being more transparent about his teleportation
intentions. Kabru knows the lack of heads up isn’t about keeping secrets from Kabru or
holding his cards close to his chest. Mithrun doesn’t have any desire for privacy or secrecy
left after his dungeon, after all; he’s already given Kabru an annotated list of all his cards,
complete with a comprehensive analysis of his past self’s playbook.

“I already agreed.” Mithrun reaches out with his free arm to tap the wall. “We’re going on the
other side of this wall now.”

And then they are on the other side of the wall, right in the center of what looks like another
abandoned garden. How many gardens and scenic courtyards does this mining town even
have? Certainly far more than it needs.

Kabru can’t be certain whether Mithrun failed to fully understand the spirit of Kabru’s
request for a heads up before teleporting or if the elf is just being a little shit by giving him
the barest minimum of warning, but done is done, and Kabru will just have to try to clarify
later.

Because this bit of garden has a water feature, unlike the spider garden from before, and they
are standing in it, ankle deep, balanced on a submerged rock.

“Let me guess,” Kabru says, letting go of Mithrun’s arm and stepping out of the shallow pond
and onto the cobblestones that surround it. “You missed?”

“No. Don’t step off the path.” Mithrun squints down at the water lapping his ankles and
makes no move to leave the pond despite Kabru holding out a hand to assist him. “I don’t
recognize all of the foliage out there.”

Kabru takes a very careful step back toward Mithrun and the pond, though he doesn’t put his
foot back in the scummy water. There’s foliage everywhere. And if Mithrun doesn’t
recognize some of it, then what do they do about it?

“This seems like a worse position to be in than the other side of the wall, Captain.”

“But it’s closer to the edge of the town.”

Kabru isn’t seeing that as a benefit, honestly. At least there wasn’t any suspicious plant life in
the streets they’d been navigating, and there were houses they could shelter in while they
waited for the familiar to find them, provided they didn’t run into another one of those
looming headless knights.
Here, though… Just how are they supposed to cross a garden filled with unknown and
potentially hostile plant life?

It would be one thing if Kabru had his sword and could hack things down as they went, but
all he has is the kitchen knife that was in the packs they found in the snow and the dagger in
his boot that remains the only ace up his sleeve in the event that the Canaries turn into a
bigger problem than he’d like, assuming Mithrun hasn’t somehow guessed he has it.

Neither weapon has the kind of range Kabru would like for the task of clearing their path
through the garden.

“And there are tadpoles,” Mithrun adds, as though that has any bearing on the situation.

Kabru turns to look at him. He frowns. “Are you suggesting we eat the tadpoles?”

Tadpoles or spiders? Kabru’s not sure which is the less gross option. But just a few minutes
ago, he was salivating over the prospect of rats, and a garden might mean an opportunity to
set some kind of trap or snare…

Mithrun shrugs. “Tadpoles become frogs. And giant frogs can indicate boundaries between
dungeon levels.”

“Wait. You’re suggesting we leave the town—where it’s pretty safe—and go further down to
where it’s less safe, by following giant frogs through a probably poisonous or man-eating
garden. Instead of hunkering down and waiting for rescue that’s supposed to be at most a day
away.”

“The town is full of succubus breeding grounds and hostile spirits, neither of which is easily
avoided or fled from once we’ve been noticed. It’s not ‘pretty safe.’ And the dungeon lord is
further down.”

Mithrun jabs a finger toward the other side of the garden and his mage lights extend their
glow in that direction like lighthouse beacons.

“That way.”

Kabru looks across the garden, following the direction Mithrun is pointing. It looks like
there’s an even bigger pond in the distance downhill, or maybe a stream. There’s a small
wooden bridge, anyway, which probably crosses water of some sort.

If they’re lucky, maybe there are fish. Kabru would much rather eat a fish than more spider
legs. Or slimy tadpoles. And fish might be easier to catch than rabbits. They do have some
rope in their supplies, and Kabru has seen people fishing before, even if he’s never done it
himself. Maybe they could unravel some of their rope thin enough that the fish would go for
it, tie some spider meat on one end…

“Okay,” he says, drawn in by the prospect of fish, even though that is probably just another
bout of wishful thinking on his part. “So we make for the bridge and reassess from there.
What about the monster plants between here and there? How do we avoid—”
Mithrun holds up a hand, his palm hovering about an inch from Kabru’s bicep.

Kabru braces for the sudden weightlessness and stomach lurch of teleportation, but it doesn’t
come. Maybe Mithrun understood his earlier request after all.

“Are you sure you can land us on the bridge, Captain? It’s a long way off, and it’s a small
bridge.”

Mithrun smiles slightly, the only kind of smile he has that isn’t smug, at least that Kabru has
seen so far. “Only one way to find out.”

Well, at least he looks confident about it. Kabru nods and hopes beyond hope that he doesn’t
end up becoming a human splinter embedded in that bridge.

Miraculously, Mithrun deposits them a mere three feet above the target. That target, however,
is more than half rotten with age and moisture, and collapses under their weight the moment
they land, plunging them both into the stream below.

Kabru manages to keep to his feet, but it’s a near thing with the uneven stream pebbles and
rotten wood fragments—and Mithrun ends up fully submerged beside him. He hauls Mithrun
upright by the straps of his pack and helps the elf clamber up the slick stream bank,
wondering if they’ll have the time and opportunity to fully dry out their gear and themselves
before needing to move on.

He hopes so. It’s somewhat warm on this level of the dungeon, but Mithrun’s thin enough
that he can’t afford to lose any of his meager body heat.

“Let’s get everything wrung out and spread it to dry, Captain,” Kabru says as he sets about
doing just that with Mithrun’s pack.

The bedroll will take the longest to dry and will need the most air circulation, so he starts
with that task. The coat and scarf can wait, or even just dry during the night once they make
an official camp somewhere, but…

“Captain?”

Kabru looks around for Mithrun, only to find him kneeling on top of the water several feet
downstream and staring down into the water between his braced hands. He has one of the
spider leg fragments with him, dipping one end of it into the water.

“What are you doing?”

“…Fishing.”

Kabru blinks and then leaves him to it. The stream is too shallow for fishmen or another sea
serpent, so hopefully it’s too shallow for other monsters, too. Worst case scenario, Kabru gets
out the rest of the spider legs and they sit on the remains of the bridge and eat a deeply
unpleasant soggy spider meat lunch while their things dry.
Best case scenario, it turns out the captain actually does know how to fish. Kabru has his
doubts, though. Some elven nobles do hunt for sport, Kabru knows, but they tend to use
hounds, horses, and a string of retainers. Mithrun has none of that to hand, nor any fishing
tools, improvised or otherwise. And his already questionable depth perception will suffer
even more than usual when trying to judge distance through the water.

Once Kabru has their supplies unpacked and spread out with the bulkier cloth items draped
over bits of the bridge, he walks over to observe Mithrun. The elf hasn’t moved from the
spot, but to Kabru’s surprise, the water beneath him isn’t as unoccupied as it had been earlier.

There are fish gathered under Mithrun, taking turns darting forward to nibble at his spider leg
offering. So many fish.

Kabru’s stomach murmurs hungrily at the prospect of eating some of those fish. But surely
they’ll scatter the moment Mithrun makes any attempt to collect them. He doesn’t have a
hook or a net or anything, and it will take time to unravel rope.

“Get ready to catch some,” Mithrun says.

“With what?”

Apparently, the answer is with his bare hands, because in a moment, the grass at Kabru’s feet
is covered with writhing, flopping fish and a small deluge of water teleported directly from
the stream. Most of the fish use the receding water as a return ticket to the stream itself, but
Kabru manages to grab several and toss them further away from the water where they can’t
escape their fate.

That afternoon—if it’s still afternoon by the time they’re fully dry again and ready to eat—
they sit around a small campfire munching contentedly on absolutely perfectly normal non-
monstrous fish. (Once the bladed fins are removed, anyway. Kabru isn’t going to overthink
it.)

And it is amazing.

The fish is dried out from overcooking and almost flavorless, there are at least three bones in
every bite Kabru takes, and his fingers still smart from getting slashed while trying to gather,
kill, and clean the fish, despite or possibly because of the healing cantrip Mithrun cast on his
bleeding hands afterward.

But Kabru would not trade it for anything else they’ve eaten down here. He’s near tears at
how much less objectionable this meal is than the last several he’s had to force down, and he
could happily stay by this stream for however long it takes that damn tardy familiar to
actually reach them.

Except that they have zero shelter here by the stream, and there were signs of giant frogs in
the area earlier on the other side of the garden, after all. Even though the town had seemed
devoid of roving monsters and no frogs have actually shown themselves, he and Mithrun
can’t be the only things out here that would be interested in a water source filled with
delicious fish. And the delicious fish are probably not the only things in the water, despite the
stream being fairly shallow.

So they can’t stay by the stream, however much he’d like to.

Instead, once their gear is merely damp instead of thoroughly sodden, Kabru douses the fire
with a pot of stream water and kicks at the coals to scatter them while Mithrun studies the
terrain for whatever clues there are to lead them into the unknown.

At least they have some leftover fish to eat for dinner later on, instead of being forced to
finish off their spider meat.

“Did you get enough rest?” Kabru asks as he hoists his pack up onto his shoulders. “We
might not be able to make camp here overnight, but we can linger a bit longer if you need the
rest.”

Mithrun waves aside his concern, and honestly, Kabru isn’t sure why he even asked. It isn’t
like Mithrun would be able to tell if he got enough rest or needed more downtime. The
important thing is that they dried off thoroughly after their dunking, ate a hot meal, drank
plenty of water, and had the opportunity to sit down for a while.

He’ll just keep an eye out for any wobbles or missteps and make sure Mithrun sleeps a full
night once they do find a place they can safely make camp. As with everything else since
they fell down here, it’ll have to do because there aren’t many alternatives.

Still, Kabru can’t help but feel that things might just be looking up.
 Giant Frogs / Man-Eating Plants
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

They follow the stream for nearly an hour as it meanders along the outskirts of the town. For
the most part, the terrain is level with only a slight decline indicating a transition to a lower
floor of the dungeon. But on occasion, they need to scramble down over short drop-offs and
uneven ledges.

Kabru keeps an eye out for somewhere secluded or protected where they can hunker down
for the night, even though Mithrun seems to be holding up well despite the longer-distance
teleportation across the garden, the thorough soak in the stream, and the lengthy hike. The
rest they had earlier must have been sufficient.

Kabru is still going to insist they take the first shelter that presents itself.

The further they get from the defunct bridge, the more heavily crowded the landscape is with
vines that Kabru would swear twitch in anticipation when they get too close, and so they
keep their distance from the vine-choked water when possible rather than end up dangling
over the stream—or worse, dragged under the surface.

It’s easy enough to keep near the stream without being directly beside it, though, and they
manage to avoid any detours that might take them out of earshot of the water.

Kabru is relatively certain they can rely on the stream again for dinner at some point, after
they locate a suitable campsite. It should be simple enough to make a trip to the water’s edge
to teleport some fish out onto the grass. They can clean the fish by the stream and then make
their way back to their camp to cook and eat their meal.

It’s actually a quiet trek, almost pleasant now that his belly is full of food that he doesn’t
worry is only playing dead and planning to ambush him from the inside. The colorful
streamside vines are festooned with flowers that scent the air sweetly, the gentle burble of the
stream is a nice enough backdrop to the sounds of their footsteps, and the softer ground of the
town’s greenbelt is easier on the ankles than the cobblestones of the town itself.

Peaceful.

That’s how Kabru would describe it, if anyone were to ask. It’s easy to forget this is a
dungeon and not a nature path through some noble’s estate back in the West.

Kabru does his best to avoid being lulled into a sense of safety, repeatedly reminding himself
that the vines he and Mithrun take care to step over or around could be sentient, that the trees
they duck beneath could house monsters ready to attack, that even the stream itself could be a
source of danger if they don’t stay alert.
But for all of that effort to keep himself aware of the true nature of his surroundings, Kabru is
still caught completely by surprise when a pale pink tentacle shoots out from within a thicker
patch of shrubbery and jerks Mithrun off his feet—and off of the path—by its grip on the
elf’s pack.

Mithrun reappears a moment later, having lost his pack, looking irritated but unharmed with
bits of leaves in his hair.

“We found the frogs,” Mithrun mutters, glaring into the rustling foliage he’s just emerged
from.

“Don’t you mean they found us?”

“Same difference. Stay on the path if you can.”

Kabru readies their kitchen knife, not sure if Mithrun’s injunction about staying on the path
precludes retrieving the pack that was just stolen.

They’ve split their supplies somewhat unequally between the two packs so that Kabru can
shoulder the majority of the weight, leaving Mithrun largely unencumbered—both to prolong
his energy reserves and to cater to his need for mobility in a fight. After all, Kabru’s tallman
stature and stamina will allow him to haul the heavier load for longer.

The downside to that is that Mithrun’s pack is the one with their food, in no small part
because Kabru hates the idea of monster flesh pressing into his back all day while they walk,
whereas Mithrun simply doesn’t care about that one way or the other. They can take a hit to
their rations—and good riddance to the spider legs. They’ll just have to hunt replacements,
which they’d already be doing anyway.

But with only one pack, how will they carry those replacements?

And where will they manage to find another sleeping bag, another blanket, another pillow?
It’s true enough they take turns sleeping, so they don’t need two of each. But given the
choice, Kabru would rather they have a backup. And what if the weather turns cold again and
they’ve lost the coat and scarf stuffed into Mithrun’s pack?

Mithrun disappears and reappears directly behind him, and then urges him forward along the
path with a light push. “Go.”

“But our supplies!”

“Not worth getting surrounded, just go.”

Kabru lets himself be steered along the path, not daring to turn his attention toward the
abandoned pack lest he lose his footing or fail to see a viny threat in front of him.

Surely if they ended up surrounded again, Mithrun could just teleport them to safety, the way
he did with the dire wolves. And they wouldn’t have to sacrifice anything in the process if
they managed to actually grab the pack before they fled. Frogs, even giant ones, couldn’t be
more dangerous than dire wolves.
Though frogs do have something dire wolves don’t have—sticky, prehensile tongues. Maybe
something like that would prevent Mithrun from teleporting himself out of harm’s way,
leaving him wrestling a monster without the benefit of weapon or leverage. Mithrun may be
strong for an elf, after all, but he’s still an elf and he wouldn’t have a weight advantage over a
giant frog the way Kabru probably would. He also doesn’t have so much as a belt knife.

But it seems likely Mithrun has other spells at his disposal beyond the teleportation, healing
and water walking. Kabru hasn’t seen any evidence of it, but that doesn’t mean anything.
Neither Rin nor Holm were ever limited to what they happened to demonstrate in group
battle. They’d both had backup spells for personal defense in the event of an enemy getting
too close. It was unwise for a magic user not to have something like that in their back pocket.

Surely Mithrun has similar.

But in some ways, Mithrun isn’t a typical magic user. He’s not even a typical Canary.

Kabru knows that Canary wardens are supposed to play supporting roles when exploring
dungeons—they’re ultimately just as expendable as the rest of the unit, but they should
ideally be the last to die so that the unit as a whole can last longer. They should stay behind
the line of convicts, focus on healing magic, cast barriers, run communications via fairies.
But even so, they would have some spells that were purely self-defensive in case of disaster.

In some rare cases, a warden might be skilled with a weapon, like Milsiril, and might put that
skill to use during an expedition. But generally, the convicts are supposed to be the ones
taking the bigger risks in dungeons while the wardens direct their efforts from somewhere
marginally safer.

And maybe the other warden in Mithrun’s squad adheres to that norm, casting the barrier
over the dungeon’s entrance to protect the team from giant walking mushroom spores and
enacting that greed-inspiring spending strategy of Mithrun’s while Kabru and the others went
to see the shadow governor.

But Mithrun clearly doesn’t lead from behind and manage personal risk like he’s supposed to.
When the convicts under his authority had offered to take down that giant walking mushroom
on the first floor, he’d waved them aside and done it himself, only using the geomancer’s
assist to get himself beyond the barrier and not to crush the monster while he remained with
the others.

Before that, he’d faced—and trounced—the shadow governor’s entire guard force without
hesitation, like it hadn’t occurred to him to enlist help from either Cithis or Kabru, even after
they were both free to act. And to judge by the tiny smirk he’d worn during that battle,
Mithrun would have refused any offers of help, anyway.

This particular Canary warden has an obvious preference for being in the thick of things, and
has close to no regard for his own safety or wellbeing. Does that mean he doesn’t have some
last-ditch emergency spell prepared for his own self-defense? Does he rely on teleportation
magic so extensively that he couldn’t manage a fireball or an energy blade?
If so, some of Mithrun’s insistence that they simply abandon half of their supplies and move
on rather than risk a situation where he can’t effectively use his teleportation magic makes
sense.

And Kabru—

“Dodging.”

“Wha—”

Kabru finds himself off the path and plunging headlong into an overgrown hedgerow full of
brambles before he even fully registers the stomach-flipping sensation of teleportation, and
he doesn’t have time to get his bearings before the sensation is repeated not once but three
more times in rapid succession.

It’s just like the time they fled the griffin, with Mithrun bouncing them all over through the
snow, narrowly missing a dozen pillars half-covered in gold before finally teleporting just
Kabru off into the distance far enough away from himself that he could attack the griffin
without putting Kabru at risk of getting swiped or dragged off.

Only this time, the elf had at least offered a single word of warning first.

By the time his head clears and he’s confident that he’s right-side-up and not magically
embedded in anything for the rest of time, Kabru has decided to focus on the warning itself as
a good sign rather than lament the inadequacy of that warning.

After all, Mithrun’s trying, isn’t he? This is an improvement over his earlier teleportation
antics, however minimal, and given the apparent need to dodge something, the teleportation
hadn’t been trivial or a matter of convenience. Mithrun recognizes and respects that Kabru
needs a heads up before being teleported, that giving Kabru that heads up will make their
travels through the dungeon more successful.

At least, that’s what Kabru’s going to tell himself. He’d like to believe that Mithrun is starting
to see him as a partner down here, someone to be worked with and relied on rather than
luggage to be carted around until his squad finds them and relieves Kabru of his caretaker
duties.

“Thanks, Captain.”

“Hm?” Mithrun looks up at him blankly, his face framed by broken hedge twigs and a large,
feathery leaf.

Kabru pulls the leaf away, careful to avoid tugging on Mithrun’s hair in the process. “For the
heads up before teleporting us.”

“Oh.” He shrugs. “You asked, didn’t you?”

“I did.” Kabru smiles and brushes the twigs out of his own hair. “And I’m grateful for the
warning.”
He takes a moment to look around. They’re in a cavern of some sort now, not a garden or
greenbelt, but there are still vines and fronds everywhere he looks, some clinging to the walls
of the cavern like roots and others dangling from above or waving like seagrass from the
cavern floor. From above, blue strands dangle like glowing pearl necklaces, illuminating the
whole area.

He and Mithrun happen to be on a large fallen rock that sticks out above the foliage, but
Kabru isn’t seeing much of a path through the rest of the cavern. They might have to wade
through the plants and hope none of them are actually stinging tentacles. Or maybe they
could rely on more randomized teleportation, but Kabru doesn’t like that idea for a number of
reasons, one of which being Mithrun’s mana stores, which are probably getting depleted to a
dangerous degree without the elf noticing.

These plants don’t look like the same ones as before, where Mithrun had cautioned him to
avoid the unknown. Maybe that means these ones are known—and preferably harmless, if
anything can be said to be harmless in a dungeon.

“I don’t suppose you recognize this set of plants, Captain?”

“We should be fine. Just avoid anything purple.”

Mithrun teleports himself down off the rock and waits for Kabru to clamber down by more
mundane means before striding off through the waving knee-high sea of foliage.

Purple, huh. Kabru can’t see anything purple in the tangle he’s wading through, which he
chooses to take as a good sign.

“What’s wrong with the purple ones? Are they different somehow?”

“Those things are common dungeon nuisances, but not dangerous. They turn purple when
they start flowering. We’ll lose hours if we have to deal with them, maybe even a whole day.”

“Are they man-eating? Toxic? Something else?”

“Something else. Just keep away from them. It’s unlikely you’ll have an allergic reaction on
your first exposure to their pollen, but it’s not worth taking chances.”

“What about you? Are you just not allergic to them?”

“Immunization is standard operating procedure before investigating a dungeon. Our ship’s

medical officer refreshed the incantations before we disembarked. It’s not perfect, but I could
probably inhale an entire dryad’s pollen count without a single sneeze.”

“Convenient.”

“It’s definitely less of a hassle than the alternative.”

“So are these flowers a kind of dryad, then?” Kabru asks.

He isn’t even sure why he’s asking. He’s not actually becoming interested in monster life, is
he? Is all this eating of monsters somehow turning him into Laios? Is he becoming that guy
after all?

“They’re not even distantly related. Dryads don’t actively benefit from violence, despite their
classification as a predatory plant species, and they tend to populate more secluded areas
where they have a higher chance of being left alone. They only lash out when they sense their
fruit is being threatened.”

And these plants aren’t related to dryads, according to Mithrun—who would know—so
maybe they do benefit from violence. Maybe they do lash out. Maybe they deserve the
predatory plant classification. Although Mithrun had also said they were “something else”
rather than man-eating, so…

“So, just to confirm, these ones do benefit from violence, making them definitely predatory.”

“Technically not, at least by my standards, since they don’t digest their victims.”

Kabru sighs. “What do they do, then?”

There has to be a reason Mithrun bothered to warn him away from the purple variety
specifically. And it can’t have come from a desire to share his knowledge of dungeon flora
and fauna, because he doesn’t have any desires like that left.

“They drag potential pollinators into their flowers. The reluctant pollinators struggle to
escape and this agitates the plant’s stamen and pistil, which fertilizes the flower. Plus, all the
commotion tends to attract predators.”

“Oh.” That sounds stressful, though not like something that would take up a whole day
getting away from. “Good to know.”

Kabru doesn’t see any flowers in the immediate vicinity, purple or otherwise, though there
are whole clusters of them a short way off. Are those the flowers Mithrun is talking about?
Are they big enough to trap a person inside?

Something like the captain’s describing would have to produce large flowers in order to
consider larger victims suitable for the pollination job. He can’t imagine Mithrun would have
warned him about anything small enough to easily escape.

“It’s just like with the barometz,” Mithrun adds. “The plant itself isn’t the primary hazard,
except for scheduling hassles.”

“Speaking of barometz, I don’t suppose there’s some kind of edible fruit involved here, too?
Something we can have for dinner?”

“Not that I know of. Some apothecaries use the roots in love potions, though.”

Kabru misses a step, but corrects himself before he falls. “ Love potions? ”

“Mm.”
“Those aren’t even real, ” Kabru huffs. “Love potions are just something out of novels and
plays. Made up for the plot and drama of it all.”

Mithrun shugs. “The potions are real enough, even if there’s no love involved. It would be
more accurate to call them sexual stimulants, but I imagine that doesn’t have the same
literary appeal as ‘love potion.’”

“Yeah,” Kabru says weakly. “I guess it doesn’t.”

Literary appeal, huh? Just hearing him say the words “love potion” is jarring enough without
the discussion of the term’s merits. It’s definitely not something Kabru had expected to come
up in conversation.

Kabru wonders just how well-read Mithrun is when it comes to epic romance, which is where
magical aphrodisiacs tend to feature prominently. He’s next to positive that the elf doesn’t
have any interest in the genre now, but before his dungeon?

Mithrun had been a young noble like any other, if not more popular than most. And despite
his insistence that it had all been a facade, Kabru has a clear picture of the captain in his
youth: friendly, outgoing, well-liked, well-connected… A social butterfly flitting around
dazzling everyone with his charm.

And a great deal of that charm would have depended on being able to hold his own in
conversation with anyone he encountered at frequent extended social gatherings, adding to
his conversational partners’ overtures and participating in a lively discussion of whatever
topics were at hand. So yes, he’d have been well aware of the cultural gems studding elven
high society.

Literature, theater, music, art—Mithrun would have been very, very knowledgeable. Hell, he
might have contributed to the arts himself, at least before he was shipped off to the Canaries
and found his life upended.

Plenty of idle nobles filled their time that way while waiting for their long-lived elders to
hand down the reins of social, economic and political power. Throwing oneself into a creative
endeavor was one of the more productive ways to deal with the century or more of otherwise
wasted time. Certainly it was more productive than the elaborate weeklong parties less
industrious nobles favored, filled with obsessive gossip, constantly shifting social alliances
and clandestine sexual dalliances.

Also much less likely to result in a scandalous accident like Mithrun himself.

Kabru knows more than he’d like to know about Mithrun’s extremely busy social life, both
before the Canaries and immediately afterward, but he doesn’t know about Mithrun’s hobbies
from before. Those somehow hadn’t come up in his story. Did he have so little remaining
interest in them that they hadn’t featured? Or was the social dance itself his hobby back then?

It’s hard to reconcile the before and after pictures—the engaging and charming socialite and
the determined and no-nonsense captain—but one thing Kabru is certain of based on the level
of detail in Mithrun’s story is that Mithrun still remembers everything he knew before the
demon ate his desires. So he knows the contents of dozens of popular elven romance sagas,
whether he can appreciate them anymore or not.

And he’s well aware of love potions as a plot device in these sagas. Maybe even has opinions
on that plot device.

Kabru wonders what his favorite romance series had been, back when he was able to have a
favorite. Was it the Daltian Clan saga? That was one of the more popular ones. Or was that
released too recently for him to have picked it up? Did his caretakers try reading it to him
when he was recovering, trying to reignite an interest in such things?

Kabru had never much enjoyed the books himself, though he had read the first several
volumes in an attempt to understand the saga’s popularity with his foster siblings and the
elves he interacted with. He can’t remember exactly what the last straw was that caused him
to put the books down, or even which volume was the last one he’d picked up.

Real people are a much juicier source of drama and intrigue, anyway, and while they
sometimes act predictably, their motives are rarely so cliched and one-dimensional as the
ones often presented in literature.

Give him real people any day, and Kabru would happily examine their lives and interactions
with each other, observing how they behave and deducing why they behave that way. Real
people are fascinating, and they are always changing. It never gets old.

“There’s a puddle,” Mithrun says from several feet ahead. “Looks empty, though. But watch
your feet.”

The elf points to the side and continues walking. It’s possible he only pointed it out so that
Kabru wouldn’t walk straight into it, lost in thought as he’d been. But a puddle might be
useful. They should at least take a moment to consider it.

“Wait, Captain.”

They do still have some water in their remaining waterskin, so they don’t technically need to
refill it here. Plus, this is standing water. He has his doubts about how fresh it is, even if there
aren’t succubus larvae or tadpoles or anything in the water. But still…

Kabru closes the distance between them, eyes focused on the area Mithrun had pointed at
more than on the area directly ahead.

And this, it turns out, is a huge mistake. Before Kabru gets even halfway to Mithrun and the
puddle, something closes around his ankle and hauls him off his feet and through the fronds
of the foliage they’ve been wading through.

Kabru can’t make out the color of whatever has grabbed him, being half-blinded by the
variegated strands of plant life rushing past as he’s dragged along. And worse, he seems to
have lost the kitchen knife by the time he’s enveloped from the thighs up in some kind of
thick, fleshy sheet.
The cloying smell that surrounds him is almost overwhelming, and no matter how much he
claws at the insides of whatever it is that’s trapped him, there’s no more give than if he was
trying to rip apart a heavily quilted blanket. His fingernails dig something up, but the walls
around him are too thick for him to get through.

Kicking his legs only results in more vines wrapped around them.

Just as he’s starting to worry about suffocating in the dark confines of what must be a man-
eating plant, there’s a bit of light from near his waist. That light reveals itself to be a slit in
the vegetable prison, carved by the kitchen knife he’d dropped earlier.

Mithrun. He must have found the knife in the undergrowth. That must be why rescue took as
long as it did.

An arm reaches in through the slit and tugs at a strap of his armor, and Kabru gasps and
wheezes as he tumbles out of what he can now see is a deep violet flower streaked with
bright yellow fuzz on the insides of the petals. He rolls up onto his knees and accepts the
hand Mithrun offers to help him to his feet.

He steps out from the now-loosely coiled vines that had tangled up his legs, and sighs as he
accepts the knife back from Mithrun.

Crap. The flower petals aren’t the only things streaked with yellow fuzz. He’s covered in the
stuff all the way to the waist, and Mithrun’s got yellow pollen on his arms as well. Worse, the
stuff both clings and spreads as Kabru moves further away from the plant. Three steps will be
enough to cover him fully.

“We should find a reliable water supply and wash this off,” Mithrun says. “Your chances of
an allergic reaction increase with prolonged exposure.”

“The puddle?”

Mithrun shakes his head and points. “There’s a little building. If this were my dungeon, it
would have a fountain inside. It’ll be safer there.”

Kabru follows Mithrun’s outstretched arm with his eyes and can’t help but notice that the
area between themselves and what is probably a shed is dotted with purple. Given that they
can hardly see where they’re stepping in the thick carpet of vegetation and the high likelihood
of purple vines lurking in the mix and waiting to drag them into nearby flowers, Kabru isn’t
too excited about that journey.

But they need a place to rest for the night, they need a way to wash off all this pollen, and
they need both of those things quickly. He’s not sure how much longer Mithrun can hold up
without some actual sleep, and he doesn’t want to find out partway through this cavern.
Maybe Mithrun has enough mana left for one more long-range teleportation casting.

“Okay,” Kabru says. “Captain, do you think you could teleport us there so we don’t have to
deal with more of these flowers?”
 “Yes.”

“Then let’s do that.”

Chapter End Notes

We all know what's coming up in the next chapters, right? *wink wink*
 Sex Pollen I
Chapter Notes

Somewhat obvious content warning in the endnotes.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

To Kabru’s immense relief, the shed does have a lion head fountain on one wall, and a two-
tiered one at that. Below the fountain’s main basin is a trough that the basin empties out into,
which then drains… somewhere. Kabru can’t tell at a glance, and he’s not spending the time
to investigate the dungeon’s plumbing.

It also has a pile of ancient straw in the corner farthest from the door, a stack of thick,
scratchy blankets that look like they’ll disintegrate when moved, a stone stove with a supply
of wood beside it, a pair of lanterns that light up on their own when they enter the shed, a
number of rotting gardening tools, and some hooks in the walls they’ll be able to string rope
through to hang their clothes to dry.

All in all, a very lucky discovery. That, or maybe Kabru had wanted too hard again.

Kabru drops his pack near the fountain, where it’ll be easiest to clean up the pollen it sheds,
and gets started on his armor.

The last and only other time he’s ever stripped out of his armor this fast, he was
contemplating how to stealth attack a chimera on a killing rampage. To be honest, he might
be in more of a hurry this time, simply because he doesn’t have to worry about keeping his
intentions hidden.

Beside him, Mithrun is a bit wobbly on his feet, occasionally reaching out to steady himself
against the wall. But the elf doesn’t seem to require any help getting his Canary uniform off,
so Kabru leaves him to it.

Mithrun can afford to take his time, after all, since he isn’t looking at a potential allergic
reaction to this stuff. Kabru is. It’s imperative that he gets himself pollen-free as soon as
possible. He’ll be able to help Mithrun afterward if the elf turns out to need it.

It’s a shame the trough isn’t big enough for Kabru to dunk his whole body under the water.
He’d like to take a full bath to confirm that he won’t be carrying any pollen with him—just
like they did for the changelings. But he kneels in the trough anyway, once he’s stripped to
his smallclothes, and uses one of their bowls to scoop up water and pour it over himself. It’ll
have to do.

Once he’s thoroughly drenched and scrubbed, Kabru stands up and steps out of the trough.
There’s nothing he trusts to dry himself off with, all of their things being covered in pollen
and the blankets looking both scratchy and structurally unreliable. He’s content to drip dry,
though. It’s not like he and Mithrun haven’t seen each other like this before.

“Your turn, Captain.”

Kabru helps Mithrun into the trough, not trusting the elf’s footing or balance when he’s this
exhausted. The last thing Kabru needs is for Mithrun to fall over and crack his head open on
the fountain.

Kabru hands Mithrun the bowl for pouring water over himself and then turns his attention
toward the process of starting a fire. He gets all the way to the point of needing his flint and
striker before realizing that these are in the pollen-covered pack. Meaning he’ll have to get
his hands covered with pollen in order to start the fire itself. Ugh.

When he returns to the fountain to get into the pack, he sees that Mithrun is staring at the
water pouring from the fountain’s basin, and isn’t actually doing much of anything else.

“Do you need help?” Kabru asks. Maybe Mithrun is too tired to do this on his own.

“No.”

“You’re just kneeling there.”

Mithrun blinks and then scoops up a bowl of water. “I was thinking about the soap we had.
Last time.”

“That was in the pack we left with the giant frogs.”

“I know. It was high-quality soap for a dungeon crawl.” He pours a bowl of water over his
head. “High-quality soap even for a wealthy house.”

The captain doesn’t sound judgmental about the soap. Doesn’t sound wistful or like he
regrets there isn’t any soap, either. He’s just observing. Why he’s choosing to observe now,
when he didn’t seem to care when they were washing changeling spores off earlier, well,
that’s anyone’s guess. Kabru certainly doesn’t know.

“It was, wasn’t it? Lucky us, that we got to use it that once, right?”

“Unlucky us that we lost it, too.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

Kabru leaves him to the task of washing pollen off himself, now that he’s actually doing so,
and empties the pack by dumping it out in a pile. Everything is going to need to be washed
with the way this pollen gets everywhere, even the floor. But for now, Kabru just takes the
things he needs, rinses his hands and forearms off, and gets to starting a fire. The rest can
wait.

It is curious about the soap, though.

He takes a moment to ponder what it means for Marcille—because she’s the only possible
owner of that soap—to have brought along such an obvious luxury item. It speaks to her
background and upbringing, possibly her inexperience with traveling rough, possibly the
nature of her latest trip to the dungeon, the latest trip she’d been able to prepare for.

Was she indulging herself with something harmlessly frivolous, just as a treat? Was the soap
a splurge possibly denoting a recent windfall? Was that level of quality something she
considered unremarkable? He knows she was a magic school graduate. That indicates a social
standing at least high enough to have been sent there.

Possibly she’s the daughter of an elven court mage. Not from the North Central Continent or
anywhere like that—there’d be no reason to send someone from that social rank to a magic
school when tutors would happily come to them. But a court mage to a short-lived court in
the East, maybe.

Would that be a social standing high enough to shield her from the consequences of using
black magic?

Kabru watches Mithrun out of the corner of his eye as the elf methodically scrubs off in the
trough. He really does have a sturdy back, even as an elf. And good shoulders. Kabru shakes
the thoughts from his head.

Technically, high ranking elves from extremely noble families were permitted to use black
magic—the rules didn’t apply to them the same way they did to common elves or anyone
who wasn’t an elf at all. There’d be consequences to their actions, and they’d be monitored.
But they were more likely to be taken into custody as an assistant to a court mage who would
manage their parole, and less likely to have their ears notched and be forced into a role with
the Canaries.

Could Marcille be from a noble family that high ranking, though? Not in the West anywhere,
he suspects. If she had ties to a noble family that mattered to the elf queen, Kabru would have
heard of her before coming to the Island. So she wouldn’t have immunity or anything like it
where the Canaries were concerned. She’d end up executed, spending centuries in prison, or
else back in a dungeon with notches in her ears and an expectation that she be useful until she
was used up.

However, that fate depended on a lot of things.

Would he and Mithrun even catch up to the Touden party down here? If they did encounter
them, would Kabru be able to warn them in time to keep their mouths shut about the black
magic and their involvement with the chimera? And would Laios even be able to keep his
mouth shut?

But also… how much would Mithrun actually care? He doesn’t strike Kabru as eager to
fulfill his duties as a Canary beyond the single all-encompassing goal of getting revenge on
the demon. Trying to take Marcille into custody would get in the way of his progress through
the dungeon, particularly if he had to deal with the rest of Laios’s party to do so.
True, Mithrun thinks they should kill Laios before he has a chance to step up as the next lord
of the dungeon. But it isn’t out of a sense of duty or justice. If Kabru can prevent Laios from
falling into the demon’s trap, then there’d be no need for conflict with him as far as Mithrun
is concerned.

In fact, Mithrun might be willing to fall into line as a supporting member of an enlarged
Touden party rather than insisting on rejoining with the Canaries and furthering the elf
queen’s goals. So long as the Touden party wants to destroy the demon, their goals line up
well, and Mithrun wouldn’t hesitate to pursue those goals with whatever help he encounters.

So long as he gets the one thing he does want in the world, he might not even care about the
consequences of how he achieves that goal.

Would the Canaries discipline him for breaking rank if the demon is ultimately defeated?
Kabru isn’t sure. On the first floor, they’d been perfectly at ease using whatever means came
to hand in order to clear out the upper levels of the dungeon, even if that meant people got
hurt. Kabru suspects that the ends justify any means where the Canaries are concerned.

“You’ll burn yourself sitting that close to the fire.”

Kabru leans back with a start. It is uncomfortably warm this close to the fire, yes. He’d been
too lost in thought to realize.

“What were you thinking about?”

Kabru looks up at Mithrun and is struck by how toned his muscles are. Even with his slender
elven build, it’s apparent that the captain is stronger than most—anyone not raised with elves
would probably miss it, but Kabru can see just how much power is packed into the lithe
figure before him.

He pushes this thought away and settles on a half-lie. “The soap, actually. Just wondering
why Marcille would have brought that and not a cheaper bar. She’s the Touden party’s mage,”
he clarifies.

“And what conclusion did you come to?” Mithrun asks, taking another step closer to the fire
—and to Kabru, by extension.

“I, uh.” Kabru looks back at the fire to avoid having to think about the captain’s proximity.
He’s not even sure why that proximity matters right now. Why is he having these thoughts?

“Many Canary wardens bring trinkets from home on their first few dungeon crawls,” Mithrun
says, apparently not noticing Kabru’s reaction. “A favorite pen for writing reports, a picture
of their family or a loved one, some small luxury item in place of the version in their field
kit.”

Kabru isn’t sure what to say about that—other than having a sudden need to know what
Mithrun had brought with himself his first few times—but Mithrun continues before he can
ask.
“They do it because they are afraid, and soft, and still have some faith that they haven’t been
abandoned.” Mithrun pauses. “They outgrow that, eventually, if they don’t die first.”

“So you think Marcille just wanted a bit of something that reminded her of life outside of the
dungeon?”

Mithrun shrugs. “It’s possible. It’s also entirely inconsequential.”

“Well, that’s true enough.” Kabru gets to his feet and moves over to the stack of moldering
blankets.

They’re scratchy, and they won’t feel good against the skin, but they’re a step up from loose
straw, and two steps up from the stone floor. And since their remaining bedroll is covered
with pollen still and needs to be washed and then dried, the blankets will have to do.

Kabru sets up the best approximation of a comfortable sleeping pallet he can manage and
urges Mithrun to settle down on it.

“It’s not the best, but it should be okay. Please lie down.”

Mithrun studies him for a long moment, and then does not lie down at all, but instead takes
one of the hardly burned logs out of the fire, dips it in the fountain, and uses it like a charcoal
to make a few symbols on each wall near the floor and on all three sections of the doorframe.

That he has to stand on his tip-toes and reach to get the mantle of the door marked, even
while holding a small log, strikes Kabru as amusing and a little cute, but he keeps his
amusement to himself.

“There,” the elf says. He passes the log back to Kabru and begins muttering an incantation
under his breath.

Kabru can’t see any difference in the room they’re occupying, but he can feel the prickle of a
barrier sealing them in—or perhaps sealing everything else out.

“What’s that for?” Kabru asks as he puts the log back in the fire. “We haven’t needed a
barrier anywhere else we stayed for the night.”

“Just a precaution.” Mithrun settles onto the straw-and-blanket pallet and pulls the last
blanket over himself. The blanket miraculously holds up to the handling.

“If you do have a reaction,” he continues, “you’ll be like a beacon for all kinds of monsters
that prey on adventurers in a state of arousal until the effects wear off. Now they can’t sense
you from a distance. This wouldn’t keep anything determined out—barriers aren’t a strong
suit of mine—but it will hide you from anything that’s merely curious.”

Kabru swallows. He does not want to be a beacon for monsters of any kind. If he had it his
way, monsters would stay away from him. He’d never have to even see a monster again.
There wouldn’t even be monsters in the world.
Wait. State of arousal? Is that what Mithrun said? Is that the allergic reaction?! Kabru had
been hoping for hives, or watery eyes and a sore throat. Sneezing, sniffling, congestion.
Maybe even trouble breathing.

But it makes sense, doesn’t it? If they use the roots in… in so-called “love potions,” then why
wouldn’t the pollen have something to do with arousal?

He really hopes he doesn’t have a reaction. The very thought of being aroused in a dungeon
is dreadful, and the knowledge that he’d be in such a state with an unaffected audience…

“It goes without saying,” Mithrun says, “but I’m going to say it anyway. Kabru. You are shit
at fighting monsters even when you’re in your right mind. Stay in the room, even if you do
find yourself lacking privacy.”

“Well, I can’t exactly argue with you there,” Kabru mutters.

He honestly doesn’t remember how many times he’s died in this dungeon since coming to the
Island, but he knows he’s never come close to death while traveling with Mithrun. And
Kabru is well aware that he, himself, is not the reason for the newfound positive survival rate.

Mithrun falls asleep with very little effort on Kabru’s part, which is hardly a surprise. Kabru’s
borderline amazed he had enough mana left to cast the barrier.

While the elf sleeps, Kabru starts the process of cleaning their gear. The rope gets dunked
first, swished around in the trough and then held under the clean water from the fountain to
rinse anything that might have stuck in between fibers. This can then be strung up between
the hooks in the walls, which will give him somewhere pollen-free to hang up their clothes
and other items once clean.

It’s halfway through washing their clothes, and after tucking a bit of ivory that looks almost
like a tooth back into the pocket of Mithrun’s pants, that Kabru realizes the fire is possibly
burning too hot. It’s sweltering in the room, and he’s practically overheating despite being in
his smallclothes. But the fire looks perfectly normal, maybe even is starting to die down a bit.
So it’s not that.

Kabru frowns, hoping this isn’t the start of a reaction to the pollen, and focuses his attention
on the task at hand—getting their clothes pollen-free so he can hang them up to dry. It just
doesn’t help that his insides itch, that he he feels restless, like he needs to do something that
isn’t laundry and can’t put a finger on what it is he needs to do.

He hurriedly washes their blanket and hangs it beside their clothing, and then looks at the
bedroll itself, sopping wet but with the pollen at least cleaned off of it. There’s room for that
over the rope nearest the fire, where it should dry better than if hung up elsewhere in the
room. Kabru can deal with that and then deal with a possible pollen-induced allergic reaction.

The more he shifts uncomfortably, the more the heat inside him starts to pool at his groin, and
he finds his smallclothes are more and more uncomfortable as his arousal swells. Damn it all.
This is definitely a reaction.
Is it because of all the pollen he’s been dealing with while washing their gear? Is this repeated
exposure and not just one lengthy first exposure?

Maybe Mithrun had planned to do this in the morning to prevent repeated exposure, and
Kabru shouldn’t have taken it upon himself. But what else was he supposed to do while
Mithrun slept? Just look at the pollen-streaked clothes and declare them not his problem?
While practically naked?

Kabru looks over at Mithrun, confirming that the elf is definitely still sleeping. He is.

In a perfect world, Kabru could slip outside and handle this himself in maybe five or ten
minutes. It would be great stress relief. And he could use some stress relief. It would also
distract him from hunger and the gnawing low-grade fear that being in a dungeon always
plagues him with. He makes a habit of finding release this way after any trip to the dungeon,
just to clear his mind, but he hadn’t had an opportunity between the last trip down and this
one. It had been too important to stop the Canaries.

He is not in that perfect world, though. If he were to slip outside, he’d be a beacon to
monsters, Mithrun had said. It wouldn’t just be anything in the immediate area that came
after him, but could possibly include monsters from a lot farther away. Maybe even lots of
them.

He’s just going to have to tough it out. Wait until it subsides. Or… Mithrun is sleeping.
Kabru can be quiet. The combination might equal privacy. He can just…

Kabru slips his hand inside his smallclothes to draw himself out, and begins a familiar routine
to get himself started. His fingers stroke the full length of his member with just the right
amount of pressure, taking time to massage his tip and spread the moisture along his shaft.
He tries to imagine the things he usually imagines, one or another of the various bedpartners
he’s had over the years. He tries to forget where he is entirely, tries to forget that he’s only
doing this at the prompting of some monster plant pollen.

The minutes drag on and on as he works himself, not into release, but into an ever higher
state of arousal. This is not working.

Not only is it hard to keep a prior lover in mind, but it’s hard not to think about the dungeon
surrounding him, the dungeon he is deep in the bowels of and possibly trapped inside
forever.

Ordinarily, that kind of thinking would kill any erection in the span of a heartbeat. But he
remains hard, his member hot and heavy in his hand, and worse—starting to ache with the
need for release.

Kabru grits his teeth and tries harder. Tries for nearly an hour, until his whole body is burning
with the need to finally climax, his muscles tense to the point of pain, his heartbeat sounding
in his ears like a timpani, his dick hard as ever but chafing from his desperate attention. He
hurts everywhere, and he has no idea how long this will last.
But he can find out, can’t he? There’s an expert right here in the room with him. He can ask.
At the very least, he’ll know what he’s in for. Really, he should have asked sooner.

Mithrun can verify that this is what an allergic reaction to the pollen looks like and not some
other complication. He would know how to deal with this, or at least how long it will last and
how much worse it will get.

On the one hand, Kabru doesn’t want to bring any attention to his increasingly urgent
situation, just out of embarrassment. On the other hand… his situation is becoming less and
less manageable. Just how much worse will this get?

Kabru tucks himself into his smallclothes the best he can, rinses off his hands, and then goes
over to Mithrun’s side and gently shakes his shoulder.

“Captain Mithrun.”

It takes a moment, but Mithrun’s eye opens a crack and he looks up at Kabru blearily. “Mm?”

“How long does an allergic reaction last?”

Mithrun’s gaze drops to Kabru’s crotch, and he sits up in his blanket cocoon, the blanket
itself finally succumbing to time and crumbling as he does so. “So you did have a reaction.”

“Yeah.” Kabru shifts uncomfortably. Mithrun has always looked like this, hasn’t he? There’s
always been something appealing about the elf, right? “How long does this last?”

“Could be as long as twelve hours. Might only be a few. But you’ll—”

“That long?!”

“I said we could lose a whole day to this, didn’t I?”

Kabru drags his hands down his face as the torturous ramifications of his situation become
clearer and clearer to him. He’s in actual physical pain after perhaps an hour, and there could
be as many as eleven more hours to go?

“That’s so long,” he moans.

He might die from embarrassment before he dies from whatever twelve hours of sustained
arousal does to a body. It can’t be good. Maybe his heart will explode. Maybe his dick will
explode. It does feel like more and more blood is rushing into it. He doesn’t think he’s ever
been this hard before.

“The Canary training manuals all say that it helps if you ejaculate,” Mithrun says. “I wouldn’t
know personally.”

Because the lucky bastard gets magically innoculated against this before every trip to a
dungeon, Kabru recalls. If the elves weren’t so dedicated to secrecy, maybe that spell would
be part of the standard adventurer’s kit at the guild and then Kabru wouldn’t be dealing with
this. Fucking elves.
 “I’ve tried that,” Kabru grits out. “While you were still asleep. It didn’t work.”

Mithrun’s head tilts to the side. “Didn’t work,” he repeats. “You ejaculated but are still
feeling the effects of the pollen, or you weren’t able to orgasm?”

“Wasn’t able…” Kabru might actually die of embarrassment.

“Mm.” Mithrun nods. “That’s understandable. The manuals suggest a partner for that.
Thankfully, you have one available.”

Chapter End Notes

Content warning: There’s some explicit material in this chapter, as the title indicates. I
don’t think it’s enough to change the rating on the story, but let me know if I should
consider upping the rating. Also let me know if you'd like more specific content
warnings on future chapters.
 Sex Pollen II
Chapter Notes

Was going to post this Friday morning, but figured what's the harm in posting it the
night before, instead? ^_^

See the end of the chapter for more notes

A… partner?

… Available?

Kabru looks at Mithrun with growing horror as it dawns on him that the captain has actually
offered to help him get off. The thought of Mithrun’s hands on him, those cool, delicate
fingers stroking him, caressing his length, driving away some of the heat… Possibly even
Mithrun’s lips, chapped as they are, descending on him, enveloping him—Mithrun
swallowing him down…

Dangerous thoughts. Dangerous, delicious thoughts. Kabru tells himself that he’s only even
entertaining these thoughts because of the pollen—damn monster pollen—and that the
thoughts only sound good to him because he’s desperate to put an end to this allergic reaction
and the torture it’s inflicting throughout his body.

Anyway, it’s not like he can act on the thoughts. Even if Mithrun is offering to help, he can’t
actually want anything like that. Right? Kabru’s never been with someone who didn’t want to
be with him. He’s not about to break that pattern now, even if he is crawling out of his skin
with the need for… something. For sex, clearly, if Mithrun and the Canary training manuals
are to be believed.

“Do you… want to…”

“Not particularly, but I’m willing, able, present, and experienced. What more do you need?”

“Enthusiasm would be nice,” Kabru mutters.

“I doubt I’m capable of that. But I am able to experience pleasure and to enjoy the
experience.” He shrugs. “I can like things, you know, and I can dislike things—such as your
cooking. I just don’t have any desire to do something about it, to seek them out or avoid
them.”

“And sex is one of the things you like, that you enjoy, ” Kabru says, seeking confirmation and
ignoring the comment about his cooking.
Experience and willingness don’t necessarily equal enjoyment; that combination could mean
a number of significantly unpleasant things instead, especially coming from someone who
just said outright that he doesn’t go out of his way to avoid unpleasant things. And Kabru has
to be sure before he even considers sleeping with Mithrun, no matter how tempting the elf is
right now or how much Kabru needs release.

“I believe so,” Mithrun says, and then shrugs again. “I used to, anyway, for the most part.”

For the most part. Great. What a glowing review. Though it does stand to reason Mithrun
would have had some less than fulfilling encounters, statistically. Kabru has had a number of
them, himself. But he’d still count himself as fully enjoying the process of bringing a partner
to his bed—or more often, being brought to a partner’s bed—and then learning how to take
that partner apart at the seams, what makes them tick, what makes them unravel into a
thoroughly pleasured mess.

That’s how he can approach this, perhaps. Despite his need, despite the burning ache inside
of him that urges him to throw caution and compassion out the door and take what he needs
from someone who is offering, despite the plain fact that Mithrun would let him do exactly
that, even to the point of injury, and likely wouldn’t even complain about it… Kabru can
override the monster pollen’s urges inside him and focus on Mithrun’s enjoyment.

He can make sure that this is one of the encounters Mithrun thoroughly enjoys, and not just
“for the most part.”

Learning people is one of his greatest skills, after all. And while he started this trek out
entirely disinterested in Mithrun as a person, he’s grown beyond that. Perhaps that’s just a
result of learning his past, perhaps it’s more the extended proximity, but the fact is that
Mithrun has become as fascinating as any other, if not more fascinating than most.

This is just one more frontier, really. Learning what Mithrun finds appealing, even if the elf
doesn’t seek it out, and finding a way to give that to him. He’ll need to study every inch of
his travel companion to pick up the clues. It’ll be a challenge, and that challenge might keep
Kabru’s mind sharp despite the effects of the pollen that threaten to dull everything but the
drive to find his own release.

However… There’s a distinct issue with their current situation that makes pleasant sex near
impossible. They have nothing on hand to ease the way, no oil, not even a sliver of soap.
Saliva won’t help much. He’s a tall-man, and unless he’s very much mistaken, Mithrun has
only ever been with other elves. If ever there was an occasion where preparing a partner was
essential, this would be it.

“Without this,” Mithrun says, cutting into his thoughts, “it could be a whole day before
you’re able to move on. We know what the problem is. We know what the solution is. Why
are we not already solving the problem?”

“Because…” Kabru scrubs his hands through his hair. “L-logistically…” He sighs. What
happened to all his eloquence? Why doesn’t he know exactly what to say in this situation? He
was just thinking it a second ago!
“Spell out your concerns, Kabru.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, for one. We don’t have anything but spit and precum to use for
lubrication, and those aren’t going to last long.”

Mithrun waves a hand dismissively. “There’s a spell for that. What else?”

Of course there’s a spell for that. Maybe Mithrun has regained enough mana to cast it, too.
It’s probably something he picked up before being sent to the Canaries, some furtive bit of
knowledge passed around between noble elven youths in hushed whispers along with their
gossip. There might be an official spell for it that the Canaries use, but Kabru’s betting the
version Mithrun knows is not the one in the training manuals.

“Kabru.”

“Right, sorry.” Even with his intention of focusing on Mithrun’s pleasure, Kabru feels like he
has to get confirmation that this, that whatever they are about to do, is something Mithrun’s
okay with. “I’m still not sold on your participating in something you don’t actually want. I’ve
never slept with someone who didn’t want me.”

Mithrun sighs, not a soft exhalation but something irritable and rough. “You’re focusing on
semantics, not facts. I will not play that game with you. I may not ‘desire’ this, or you, or
anything else but revenge, but I assure you, I’m extremely motivated for this to happen.”

“I just would feel horrible if… If there were regrets.”

Mithrun stares at him. “What is there to regret? Surely you realize neither of us is capable of
conceiving. You’re young, granted, but Milsiril wouldn’t have allowed you to leave before
you were at least that knowledgeable about human reproduction.”

Is Mithrun seriously suggesting that Kabru might not know that? “I—”

“If it’s diseases you’re concerned about, there are—”

“N-no, no!” Kabru waves his hands. “I’m not worried about any of that. Forget I mentioned
regrets. Please.”

It would figure that Mithrun approaches the subject of sexual regret so cavalierly. When in
doubt, draw on prior experiences, after all. And what had his prior experiences been other
than high-class elven noble house parties and all the gossip and dalliances those entailed? So
long as no one came down with an illness—or worse, a pregnancy—what was the harm in
“socializing” before being weighed down by responsibility?

That, or there’s a possibility that Mithrun is messing with him. He’s noticed over their travels
that Mithrun does still have a sense of humor, however infrequently he applies it.

“Kabru,” Mithrun says softly. “I understand that I am not an appealing partner for this. I’m
neither whole nor attractive, and anyone would rightly be mortified to bed me.”

“That’s not—”
“But you are needlessly extending your suffering,” Mithrun continues, talking right over
Kabru’s objection in a tone that brooks no argument. “I assure you, I am neither fragile nor
possessive. You won’t do lasting damage. This won’t go any further than is needed to quash
your symptoms. And I will not be heartbroken when you put me aside afterward.”

Mithrun shifts from his sitting position to a kneeling one in smooth movements that betray
none of his earlier exhaustion. He sits back on his heels and brushes away the lingering
fragments of the blanket.

“This isn’t about anyone’s feelings,” he says. “This is about returning you to an appropriate
state as soon as possible.”

Mithrun reaches out to take hold of his jaw, pulling Kabru closer until he has to shift to his
knees. His fingers are cool on Kabru’s face, a welcome relief against the heat in his cheeks.

“Now let me help, ” he growls.

Kabru’s dick twitches where it’s trapped in his smallclothes, and it’s all he can do not to
respond with a squeaked out yes-sir. Kabru hadn’t known that about himself. Interesting. He
is distinctly proud of himself when he manages to keep an even tone to his response.

“Okay.”

Mithrun nods at him and releases his face. “Strip,” he commands.

This is not how Kabru had imagined this going—how could he have imagined this
demanding, take-charge side of Mithrun returning in a moment like this one? Sure, he’d been
very much in command of the Canary squad he led when there was action to be taken, but
this is a very different set of circumstances and a very different sort of action. And one Kabru
finds he very much likes.

Kabru doesn’t hesitate to stand up and comply with the command, pulling his smallclothes
down and stepping out of them. He tries not to be embarrassed by the state he’s in, though it’s
difficult when his dick is staring Mithrun right in the face. It feels almost disrespectful.

Mithrun doesn’t seem to have any problems with it, though, and wastes no time at all in
sliding his hands up Kabru’s thighs, his chill fingers splayed against Kabru’s heated skin,
mapping out the contours of Kabru’s legs. One hand reaches the hinge of Kabru’s leg and
trails around to the side of his hip, cradling the back of Kabru’s thigh, while the other comes
to rest at the base of Kabru’s member, palm flat against the cloud of curls there.

Kabru feels a shiver crawl up his spine, despite the heat that otherwise rages through his core,
and he takes as steady a breath as he can manage while waiting for Mithrun’s next move. Will
he tease Kabru, taking his time and playfully stirring him up? Will he be no-nonsense about it
and engulf Kabru all at once in the warm wetness of his mouth?

Teasing, it seems, is what Mithrun has in mind, which comes as something of a surprise to
Kabru. Chapped lips trace their way along his inner thigh, nibbling and sucking their way
upward while the hand at his base lightly trails fingers along his length, following the
contours and veins without applying pressure.

But maybe it’s not meant to be teasing. Maybe this is just exploration, Mithrun getting a
sense of the territory before engaging fully. Whichever is the case, it feels amazing and Kabru
wishes he hadn’t put this off so long.

“Why did you decide to refresh your exposure to the pollen?” Mithrun asks between nuzzles
to Kabru’s testicles. “Nothing needed cleaning that couldn’t wait for me to do it when I woke
up.”

Kabru groans. So it was a repeated exposure and not a prolonged one. Damn it. He did this to
himself. And it sounds like Mithrun had planned to handle the task himself once he wasn’t
swaying on his feet and in danger of collapsing. This could all have been avoided with some
communication. Kabru could scream.

“Captain Mithrun.” Kabru hates to distract the elf from his work, but it has to be said. The
point has to be driven home again, clearly.

Mithrun hums his response, his mouth otherwise engaged with holding one of Kabru’s
testicles and gently sucking.

Kabru sucks in a breath and reminds himself of what he needs to say. “You need to get better
at communicating your intentions.”

Mithrun releases Kabru with a wet sound that is entirely too appealing. “I’ll try.”

Kabru wants to follow up, wants to obtain a promise that he’ll do more than just try, wants to
make sure the captain knows that better communication could have saved them this
trouble…

But by the time he formulates a way to accomplish this without derailing Mithrun’s efforts or
starting an argument that will leave him dealing with the pollen’s effects on his lonesome for
the better part of a day, Mithrun’s wandering mouth has at last joined his hand on Kabru’s
shaft, and the motions of the elf’s tongue drive the thoughts from Kabru’s mind.

He fights the urge to jerk his hips forward as Mithrun swallows him down, forces himself to
remain as still as possible while Mithrun works at him with nimble fingers and soft tongue,
clenches his fists to keep from reaching for Mithrun’s hair as he shudders under Mithrun’s
ministrations.

Elves’ ears are sensitive, he knows. Touching them in a moment like this is intimate. The
kind of intimate that carries meaning Kabru doesn’t want to accidentally convey, even if he
knows Mithrun wouldn’t mind it any more than he minds anything else. Best to avoid getting
too close to his ears. So no threading his fingers through Mithrun’s hair.

Likely unaware of Kabru’s struggles, Mithrun continues to play Kabru like an instrument,
repeating maneuvers that leave Kabru quivering and moving on swiftly from anything that
fails to bring an appreciative moan or breathy gasp from Kabru’s throat. The captain is
neither shy nor unskilled, but Kabru can tell that he struggles at times, particularly when
Kabru is at his deepest.

Even so, Mithrun doesn’t back down from the challenge. He continues to take Kabru into his
throat regardless, holding him there until he chokes and drawing back without complaint only
to dive back down once he’s sucked in a breath.

Kabru had meant to be the one learning Mithrun’s preferences, reading Mithrun’s responses
and following whatever miniscule cues the elf gave him. But the tables have turned. Despite
his earlier lack of attention to Kabru’s details, Mithrun’s clearly paying attention now.
Kabru’s tempted to forgive him for the shapeshifter after this.

His climax hits him suddenly, but in the form of a series of waves rather than one giant
tsunami. Kabru tries to draw back to avoid flooding Mithrun’s mouth with his spend, but the
elf has him firmly in hand and Kabru is helpless to resist beyond the first attempt. He quickly
loses himself in the rush of blood thundering in his ears and the brightness that washes over
him.

By the time Kabru’s vision clears and his head stops throbbing in time to his racing heartbeat,
he realizes to his shame that his fingers are tangled up in Mithrun’s hair, right up against the
torn edges of his ears, as he lazily pumps his hips to the last eddies of the raging torrent that
has racked him for hours now.

Kabru hurriedly releases his grip and mumbles an apology. But he doesn’t manage a step
back, because Mithrun hasn’t let him go yet, is still appraising his member and gripping his
thigh tightly.

After a moment, the elf sighs. “No good, huh?”

Kabru’s about to ask what he means—because it was very good, and he came, so they’re
done now—but then he feels the heat inside of his core starting to build up again and groans
instead. Is he in for another round of this? Is Mithrun?

“Sorry, Captain. I did really enjoy that, but… It wasn’t for lack of trying, at least.” Kabru
smiles down at him. “I thought you said you couldn’t manage enthusiasm.”

Mithrun looks up at him, hair more mussed than usual, eye a bottomless well, lips still
chapped but now plump and pink from his efforts. It should not still have such an effect on
Kabru, but it does, and Kabru blames that on the damn pollen. If only Mithrun had looked up
at him during the act. Kabru’s knees might have buckled.

“Effort and enthusiasm are different things,” Mithrun says. “Anyway, putting in the effort is
the only way I know to do that.”

“Maybe, but you didn’t have to swallow.”

“I don’t mind.” Mithrun waves off the sentiment and settles back on his heels, still eyeing
Kabru’s hardened member with a hint of exasperation, like it had purposely failed to go
down. “Seminal fluids are a strong lure for monsters, and it’s a risk I’d rather not take, even
with the barrier.”

Kabru looks to the side and doesn’t try to cover himself, though he kind of feels like he
should, given the way Mithrun is looking at him.

“I’m sorry for touching your ears at the end, there,” he murmurs. “It was inappropriate.”

Mithrun shakes his head. “I enjoyed that. It’s been a long time—other elves naturally find the
mutilation ghastly, but I suppose tall-men wouldn’t share the sentiment. Or maybe it’s the
pollen affecting your judgment. Hm.”

Kabru scowls, but Mithrun doesn’t give him time to combat his negative self-image.

“Regardless,” Mithrun says, “I suspected that would prove insufficient, though it was worth
the attempt. We’ll need to proceed to other activities. This should negate your earlier
concerns.”

Mithrun reaches for Kabru again and murmurs a spell under his breath while giving Kabru’s
still-straining member a solitary stroke from root to tip and then taking his hand back.

“There,” Mithrun says, sounding pleased with himself.

Kabru reaches down and finds that he’s impossibly slick now, far slicker than any amount of
saliva or even oil could have made him. That’s the lubrication spell, then. So Mithrun is
definitely on board with penetration, still.

Which is doubly obvious given that Mithrun has shimmied out of his own smallclothes by the
time Kabru has caught up to the present moment and is looking up at Kabru impatiently from
where he’s propped up on his elbows on the makeshift pallet.

Unlike Kabru, Mithrun isn’t the slightest bit hard, but Kabru decides he’ll take that as a
personal goal rather than a reason to abandon the encounter. After all, abandoning the
encounter means trying to go it alone again, and that had gotten him nowhere.

At least with a partner, he gets some temporary reprieve after an orgasm.

“Get down here already,” Mithrun says. “You require more attention, and I doubt a second
round of the other will be any more effective than the first.”

“Of course,” Kabru says as he steps over to the pallet and kneels between Mithrun’s legs.
“And thank you, again. For the assistance.”

Kabru palms himself, intending to get some of the slick onto his fingers so that he can
prepare Mithrun, but it doesn’t seem to be transferring to his hand at all. His fingers aren’t
even damp when he rubs them together. What? Did Mithrun cast it wrong? That doesn’t seem
likely, but…

“Um, Captain, this lubricant doesn’t spread. At all.”

“It’s not meant to.” Mithrun meets his gaze squarely, not seeming to see any problem with his
statement.

“What?”

“It’s meant to stay exactly where it’s put and not stain any clothing or get anything else
unnecessarily messy. It’s circumspect by design,” he adds, “ideal for trysting.”

Kabru keeps his groan to himself, but just barely. It might very well be “ideal for trysting,”
but it’s not really going to cut it in the here and now. He can’t prepare Mithrun with dry
fingers. He’s going to have to ask the captain to cast the spell a second time and then deal
with slippery fingers he can’t wipe clean.

But when he does ask, Mithrun stares at him as though he’s asked the unthinkable. “Why
would I have practiced chain-casting a spell that lasts four hours?”

“Four hours?!” Kabru yelps.

Mithrun frowns up at him. “Tall-men aren’t the only ones with stamina in this world.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Kabru pinches the bridge of his nose.

Ugh, he aches. He wants nothing so much as to just let Mithrun have his way, to shove in and
let the elf deal with the pain of it. But he won’t. That’s the pollen talking, he knows, and he
won’t obey some monster plant’s directives when they conflict with his standards.

“I just— Surely this won’t take that long,” Kabru says, hating the whine in his voice.

“It might. I don’t know.” Mithrun lowers his gaze to study Kabru’s erection again. “I’ve
never been someone’s way out of this predicament. By which I mean the pollen.”

He’s going to scream. This time, Kabru really is going to scream. But he doesn’t. Instead, he
takes some calming breaths that don’t calm him down at all, and tries to put the flood of
urges crowding his brain off to the side long enough for him to think this through.

The facts haven’t changed. He needs this, desperately. This is absolute agony and every
passing moment brings him closer to a point beyond which he isn’t sure he can control his
actions despite his convictions. But he won’t stoop to hurting Mithrun in order to get what he
needs. And he can’t prepare Mithrun properly with only the spit in his mouth.

“You’ll get relief sooner if you lean into it.”

“Lean into it? I’m trying to prepare you for sex as we speak. I’m already leaning pretty far
into it, Captain.”

“If you say so.”

“Fine. I’ll lean into it.”

If he can’t effectively use his fingers to loosen Mithrun up for this, he can at least return the
blow job. If he can manage to get Mithrun off, preferably while massaging his rim, that
should help him relax. Maybe it’ll chase out enough tension that the rest of this won’t be so
hard on him. Mithrun carries a lot of tension just in general, Kabru’s found over the past
several days, so he definitely needs help to prepare for this.

Kabru rests a hand on the crook of Mithrun’s hip and begins to lower his head, fully
intending to start much the same way Mithrun had, with an exploration that would hopefully
perk the captain up and get the blood flowing where it needs to flow.

He doesn’t get very far, though—doesn’t even get his lips within reach of Mithrun—before
the elf draws in a sharp breath that doesn’t sound at all like he’s enjoying the anticipation.

“What are you doing?” Mithrun demands, his voice tense to the point of snapping.

“I’m…” Kabru raises his head back up, not sure where he’s gone wrong but wanting to
course correct as smoothly as possible. “I’m returning the favor, from earlier. A blow job to
help you relax.”

“Don’t.”

The word and the tone are both pretty final as far as Kabru is concerned. He has no idea why
Mithrun’s resistant to receiving at least as good as he’d given, why he’s drawing a line here,
but Kabru recognizes that it’s been drawn and he won’t cross it.

The important thing, at least in this moment, is not understanding the nuances of the refusal,
though that is something Kabru will continue working on. No, the important thing is to
reassure Mithrun that Kabru’s heard him and won’t pursue what Mithrun’s put off-limits.

“Alright,” Kabru says. “I hear you. I won’t.”

It’s Kabru’s turn to sit back on his heels now. He gives himself a few strokes, not because he
needs any help staying hard—ha, as if—but more to reassure his body that relief is on the
way, that it just has to be patient a little longer.

“I’m a little unsure how to proceed, though,” Kabru says. “You’re even more tense now than
before, and the goal was to relax you before we started.”

“I can relax. It’s fine.”

“I know you can relax, Captain,” Kabru says, even though what he knows is that Mithrun
can’t actually relax on his own. “I… How about we start with just a massage, to get your
muscles loosened up?”

Mithrun quirks an eyebrow. “You want to put me to sleep? If that’s what you’re into, fine.”

Kabru feels his cheeks heat up. “That’s not— Wait, are you teasing me?”

“A little bit. You noticed this time.”

 “Captain, I’m serious. I don’t want to hurt you. And none of my ideas for how to prepare you
for sex are working out the way I planned.”

“Don’t worry about hurting me. It’ll be uncomfortable at first, and I’ll adjust. If you tear
something, I’ll heal it.” Mithrun points at Kabru’s dick. “That’s a really good spell. People
use that spell for fisting in some circles. You won’t damage me.”

“Did not need to know that, Captain.”

“I think you did. Now will you stop worrying about me and start worrying about yourself?”

“I—” Kabru doesn’t have anything to follow that up with. He doesn’t worry about himself.
Ever. That’s partly how he’s gotten this far in life. Worrying about others is more effective in
the long run.

“You’ll go slowly,” Mithrun says, his voice pitched low and gentle. Like he thinks Kabru
needs some reassurance. “You’ll take your time. And if you still end up tearing something,
we’ll stop and heal it. But you won’t.”

Kabru accepts the reassurance being offered, even if it does kind of rankle. It’s well meant,
anyway, and on some level, Kabru does need to hear it. He’s never been with a man without
thorough and well-oiled preparation. And he hardly trusts himself to be able to remain gentle
with the pollen driving him like this.

“Kabru.”

He looks over at Mithrun in time to see the elf sit upright on core strength alone—which
should not cause Kabru’s stomach to flip over, but does—putting Mithrun suddenly very
much in Kabru’s personal space. Kabru doesn’t protest Mithrun’s arms coming up to wrap
around his shoulders, or the cool, nimble fingers that play lightly with the sweaty hair at the
nape of his neck.

“Come here,” Mithrun murmurs against his neck, leaning back without releasing his loose
hold on Kabru. “For once in your life, stop thinking.”

After a moment's hesitation, Kabru nods and follows him down.

Chapter End Notes

Content warning: This chapter contains a bit more explicit material than the last one, but
it still seems to me that the story on a whole warrants the mature rating rather than the
explicit rating. Again, let me know if I should reconsider.

Also, in his thoughts, Kabru briefly alludes to the possibility of "significantly

unpleasant" sexual encounters when someone has as little drive to avoid unpleasant
things as Mithrun does, but in a vague and nonspecific way.
 Sex Pollen III / Touden Party I
Chapter Notes

Mild content warning in end notes.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The fire has been reduced to smoldering ashes and charcoal by the time Kabru finally
collapses onto Mithrun’s heaving chest as the elf struggles to catch his breath. Just as the fire
has died down, so, too, have the waves of arousal that drowned him for hours finally
subsided into a gentle ripple that feels like it’s fading away for real instead of biding its time.

Kabru feels bad letting his weight press down on Mithrun like this, at least now that his mind
is clearing a bit. But his arms are like a jelly that won’t support him now that he’s finally
recovering from the singularly most desperate and body-wracking orgasm of his life to date.
It’s all he can do to pant along with Mithrun, his cheek pressed against Mithrun’s breast and
Mithrun’s heartbeat a wild timpani chorus in his ear.

After a few more minutes lying boneless and spent on top of Mithrun, Kabru manages the
core strength needed to roll off of him to the side. He utters a hoarse apology, but gets no
response.

A peek over at the elf tells him that Mithrun probably didn’t even hear him. He’s still got that
wild, overstimulated look on his face, his good eye wide but staring at nothing in particular
and his cheeks flushed a pretty pink. Kabru wants to paint that expression and that hue so
he’ll always have it to look at.

Thankfully, Mithrun looks happily overwhelmed instead of the alternative, at least as far as
Kabru can tell. A pleasantly breathless, exhausted, blissed-out wreck, and it’s all Kabru’s
doing.

“Thank you, Captain,” Kabru murmurs. “It finally worked. I feel… well, normal isn’t quite
the word, but not desperately aroused, at least.”

“Told you,” Mithrun sucks in a gasping breath, “to stop talking…”

Kabru doesn’t bother to hide his fond smile, since he’s on Mithrun’s right side, anyway, and
the Captain can’t see him.

“You did, yeah.”

Kabru waits to see if Mithrun has anything to add, and when it turns out he doesn’t, he raises
himself up onto an elbow to more fully survey the results of the last few hours.
It’s apparent they both need to be wiped down, between the sweat and the sticky evidence of
their repeated climaxes. Mithrun’s warning about attracting monsters plays back in Kabru’s
mind. The barrier is still in place, isn’t it? But the captain hadn’t wanted to take the risk
regardless, so Kabru shouldn’t waste any time in getting them both cleaned up properly.

He shakily gets to his feet, staggering at first as his knees threaten to buckle under him, and
drags one of the washcloths off the drying rope to use. That and a bowl for the water, and he
shouldn’t need to make too many trips to refresh his cleaning supplies. He does wish for
soap, warm water, a spacious tub, but not hard enough for the dungeon to hear him, he hopes.

Mithrun is about as pliable as a ragdoll when Kabru maneuvers him to his side, but he
belatedly swats at Kabru’s hand holding the washcloth.

“I can do it,” he mutters.

Given how lazy and delayed that swat was, Kabru has his doubts about the captain’s energy
levels. He only slept two hours before Kabru woke him up, and he’s been pretty active since,
to say the least—and on an empty stomach with low mana levels.

“ Can you?”

Mithrun glares at the rag Kabru holds out to him for a solid minute. “…Maybe you should do
it.”

“Okay. I’ll be quick.”

Kabru adds a touch of massage to his task, kneading softly at muscles that could be sore after
the intense workout they’ve just had. He’s pleased when Mithrun’s response is to gradually
fall asleep, and when he’s finished making sure Mithrun is clean and back in his smallclothes,
he tucks what remains of the blankets around him to keep him warm and hopefully
comfortable before turning his attention toward cleaning himself up.

Other than his core muscles, it’s his knees that hurt the most. Over the course of the last few
hours, they’d shifted positions several times, but most of those positions still had him on his
knees, and the hay and blanket combination wasn’t that soft. But his back hurts, too, and it’s a
sharp sting when he moves rather than the duller aches of muscles or abused joints.

Kabru hisses as he runs the washcloth along his back. When he inspects the cloth, he finds
traces of blood and is stumped for a minute until he remembers that yes, Mithrun had
particularly enjoyed a few of his moves and had let him know via fingernails in his back.

Kabru considers it high praise. It’s definitely not something Mithrun would have done before
the Canaries—even with the ubiquity of simple healing cantrips for light wounds and
scratches, Kabru imagines not many noble lovers would appreciate the risk of their activities
being discovered by a washerwoman if a bit of broken skin left a mark on a chemise. Before,
Mithrun was far too proud to have run a risk like that. Now, though, he clearly doesn’t care
about restraint.
He gently pulls Mithrun’s hands from under the blanket fragments and cleans under his
fingernails, where there are still traces of Kabru’s blood. Maybe he’ll suggest they trim these
when Mithrun wakes up.

Kabru had worried, at first, that Mithrun would be difficult to get a read on, that his
expressions would be naturally minimal or purposely restrained. He needn’t have worried.
Mithrun, as it happens, is quite expressive, between the shifts in his breathing patterns, the
many pretty sounds and faces he makes, the flushed cheeks and bared throat, the way he
would tremble or suddenly release a whole heap of tension Kabru hadn’t even noticed he’d
built up. And yes, the way he uses his fingers, digging at whatever is in reach, whether that
ends up being a handful of straw or a trail along Kabru’s back.

It had taken some time to get Mithrun going, what with his insistence that Kabru was the one
needing assistance, but by the time Kabru finally caught the ultimate release he’d been
chasing for hours, he’s sure Mithrun had found his own release at least twice, possibly a third
time. He was a surprisingly stimulating bedpartner and one of Kabru’s only regrets is that
he’ll probably never get to experience him like this again.

The other regret…

Kabru wrings out the washcloth one last time and hangs it over the rope to dry with the other
laundry he’d washed before succumbing to the pollen’s effects. He pulls on his smallclothes
and settles in the small pile of straw that hadn’t made it into the pallet, sitting cross-legged
against the wall near Mithrun’s head.

He’d been so set on not hurting Mithrun. Had been adamant. And while he can possibly
excuse those initial sensations as necessary discomforts, Kabru can still see in his mind the
pained twinges in Mithrun’s expression and the sharply indrawn breaths as the elf worked to
accommodate Kabru. Kabru had tried to go slow, he’d tried to be as gentle as he could
manage, and he’d kept apologizing for every minimal thrust until Mithrun had told him point
blank to stop talking.

Kabru had stopped talking.

And just like that, Kabru had stopped thinking, too. Really stopped thinking.

He’d lost what control he had over himself as the pleasure and the pressure of Mithrun
around him steadily built, and even though Mithrun had been right—he wasn’t injured and
he’d adjusted swiftly relative to their time in that position—and had seemed to enjoy the
majority of their extended coupling, Kabru still feels a bit monstrous over that loss of control.

Especially now that his mind has finished clearing and he can process the love bite blooming
on Mithrun’s throat. It’s not the only mark on the elf’s skin by a long stretch—Mithrun has
even more scars littering his body than Milsiril. But it’s a mark Kabru made, and one he
shouldn’t have. So are the bruises along Mithrun’s sides and hips, and along his thighs, and at
the hinge of his knees, all from where Kabru had gripped him too tightly.

He remembers manhandling Mithrun into a variety of positions during the course of their
time together, and he doesn’t remember making sure those positions were comfortable ones.
Yes, he’d been ordered to keep his mouth shut, but he could have asked. Kabru had asked if
he could kiss Mithrun, and he’d merely nodded—no reprimand for talking.

So there was no excuse for not asking other questions. Questions like whether Mithrun was
comfortable, or whether he needed to shift into a different position, or whether Kabru was
being too rough or moving too fast or thrusting too deeply. Questions like whether Mithrun
needed a breather—because Kabru doesn’t remember giving him one, and the captain is
sleeping even more deeply than that first night in the dungeon.

Kabru has always prided himself on being a consummate gentleman as a lover, on reading his
partners and conforming to whatever it is they need most in the moment, on pleasing others
rather than pleasing himself. This time around, he can’t say much for himself on that front.
He’d been selfish and rough, he’d taken what he needed, and worse—he feels this prickle of
pride for it, even now, for having brought Mithrun to such a state, for leaving him bonelessly
exhausted and dead to the world.

Kabru reaches over and plucks a few bits of straw from Mithrun’s hair; he doesn’t stir in the
slightest.

He supposes it isn’t too terrible, though he’d be mortified if anyone knew he was capable of
such callous disregard for the needs of a bedpartner.

Despite his intention to remain upright and keep watch, Kabru finds himself nodding off
more than once and eventually decides it’s a lost cause. He also hasn’t had any sleep in too
long, and on the same empty stomach. It’s a lucky thing he doesn’t also have to worry about
mana depletion on top of it.

There’s room on the straw pallet behind Mithrun—not a lot of room, but enough—and so
Kabru tucks in behind him, holding him close and trying to keep his fingers from stroking the
faintly raised ridges of the scars within his reach.

He wonders what this whole incident with the pollen spells for them going forward. Mithrun
had insisted that none of this was about feelings, so Kabru is fairly certain they will be able to
continue their dungeon delving without too much awkwardness between them, at least on
Mithrun’s part. This last several hours was just business in some ways, part of the wide
gamut of experiences adventurers have in the name of surviving the dungeon.

There are even entries about it in Canary training manuals, and it’s a common enough
occurrence that the Canaries immunize whole squads against such things before a dungeon
dive.

The Canary squad up on the first floor, though… How would they feel about this? He was
supposed to be looking after their captain and taking care of his needs. Getting a double dose
of monster plant pollen and bedding their captain for several hours—roughly enough to leave
bruises—is not taking care of his needs. Maybe they would understand, but maybe they
wouldn’t.

And now that he’s been exposed to the pollen, any future exposures are guaranteed to have an
effect on him. This cavern is full of those purple flowers, at least the parts they’d been in
toward the end. Maybe there aren’t any beyond this shed they found. Maybe they will have a
clear path in the morning—or whatever time it ends up being when they set out. He hopes so.
There’s no way they have the resources to blunder into another one of those plants.

What they need is to find food and move on, not get stuck wasting their energy like this.

As much as he hates to think it, what they really need is to run into Laios’s party down here.
They’re entirely self-sufficient in the dungeon, and could probably expand their party by two
without a problem.

He knows they’re down here. They have to be. They can’t leave the dungeon until they deal
with the chimera monster that used to be Falin Touden. They’d been on the fifth level of the
dungeon when they parted ways, and were headed down. Their party has to have reached the
sixth level around the time he and Mithrun fell to the sixth level.

Kabru’s given up on the familiar finding Mithrun. By now their best bet is to consider closer
options—options like the Touden party and their dwarf chef, Senshi. Plus, joining with
Laios’s group would increase the Touden party’s odds against the lunatic magician and
decrease Laios’s odds of falling into the trap of becoming a replacement dungeon lord.

He’s confident in the whittled down version of Mithrun’s history. If he can do the explaining
instead of Mithrun, he can convince Laios. Mithrun is likely to let him tell the story, too.
However much of a talker Mithrun might be when prompted to explain his past, he doesn’t
often go out of his way to communicate his thoughts.

And when he does, well, he hadn’t been very convincing with the lunatic magician on the
first floor. That had been a catastrophe. Imagine thinking he could reason with someone
while straddling them, holding their throat and telling them their obsession was dead and
dusted, and had hated them in the end, on top of that?

Kabru finds himself huffing a soft breath of laughter into Mithrun’s hair and shifts his hold
on the elf slightly to reach up and rearrange the lock of hair he’d blown into Mithrun’s face.

It’s only when he does so that Kabru realizes he’s getting hard again, and he doesn’t think it’s
the pollen’s fault this time. There’s no heat rushing through him, no itch deep inside of him
like before. No, this is just a natural physical response to everything he and Mithrun have
been through recently, and it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just that Mithrun feels good in his
arms. That’s it.

Kabru moves his hips slightly, trying to avoid pressing himself into Mithrun, and to his
chagrin, the elf stirs in his sleep.

“Again?” Mithrun murmurs, his voice soft and rough with sleep.

“It’s nothing,” Kabru says, hoping Mithrun will take him at his word and not put so much
thought into it that he wakes himself up all the way. “Go back to sleep, Captain.”

“…So you are into that.”

“Wha— No!”

Kabru props himself up on his elbow to look down at Mithrun, aghast. “No, it’s just that this
isn’t the pollen,” he insists. “It’ll go away on its own.”

“Mm. Wake me if it doesn’t.” Mithrun shrugs and closes his eye. “Or don’t. I won’t mind
being used in my sleep.”

“Captain!”

Mithrun’s smile is the only indication that he hasn’t immediately fallen back asleep, and
Kabru watches that faint smile until it finally does fade away back into the slackness of sleep.

Teasing him. Again. Kabru wonders what meanings could lie behind something so
innocuous. It’s been a gentle, playful teasing each time, not anything cruel or cutting.
Mithrun is far gentler with his teasing of Kabru than his humor at his own expense. Treating
himself and his illegitimacy as the punchline of a joke is right up there with claiming
hideousness for the state of his eye and ears.

It’s not a need as outlined by Cithis at the start of this journey, and it might be overstepping
his place to try tackling it, but Kabru suspects one of Mithrun’s needs that’s been neglected
since his dungeon fell—if not long before that—is the ability to see himself in a positive
light. To see that he has worth, not because of his lost ability to project a happy sunshine
image, but because of who he is on the inside.

That’ll be a harder need to meet than most, but Kabru’s feeling up to the challenge.

Kabru isn’t sure how long he dozes curled up against Mithrun’s back, but he feels positively
rejuvenated by the sleep when his eyes open of their own accord however many hours later.

Mithrun, Kabru notes as he carefully extracts himself from the tangle of limbs, is still deeply
asleep, with even more straw in his hair than before, which seems impossible given that the
elf hasn’t actually moved an inch.

Kabru picks at the straw for a bit and then gets up, deciding to stop before he accidentally
wakes Mithrun up. Better that the captain can get as much sleep as possible.

There isn’t a whole lot he can do within the barrier-shielded shed, at least if he wants to avoid
another pollen exposure, but Kabru pulls on his clothes and dons his armor as quietly as he
can manage.

There are still a few embers in the ashes left behind, and Kabru pokes around at them with a
bit of kindling to get the fire going again. If they had something to eat for breakfast, that
would be great, even if it was a monster. If all they have is hot water, that’ll still be better
than nothing. Of course, that depends on Mithrun being awake to wash the rest of their gear
so that Kabru doesn’t risk starting this whole process over again.

He can wait.

And he does wait. Strangely, the quiet of the shed with its slumbering Canary captain and
softly crackling fire is not the same as before. Kabru sits near Mithrun again, and is prepared
to do some more strategizing about the possible fallout with the Canaries above over what
happened with the pollen, but he’s distracted by what sounds like voices.

They’re coming from outside, he’s sure, not from inside his head or in the room with him.
Could it be the Touden party? Could it be a monster trying to lure them outside the barrier?

Someone is complaining out there. Saying that “sex pollen” spells the death of party
cohesion, that parties always dissolve afterward because of the resulting interpersonal
tension. No one can look anyone in the eye after that. It’ll be a disaster.

That doesn’t sound like a monster. The voice is muffled by the barrier, but the tone and the
sentiment sound a lot like that party's half-foot, Chilchuck.

And the whining that follows—something about flower petals having a sweet flavor and firm
texture—has to be Laios. A monster wouldn’t be able to replicate that, surely. With the
barrier, his mind is safe from prying, so surely any shapeshifter monster or succubus
wouldn’t be able to read his impressions and reflect them back at him.

It has to be the Touden party!

They’re approaching the shed, their voices getting louder and clearer as they argue the merits
of a flower feast against the risk of that flower’s pollen. Only one man in this whole world
would think about eating those things and be happy about the thought.

Kabru looks over at Mithrun.

First impressions matter a lot, and while he’s certain the captain wouldn’t care if the others
first encountered him passed out in his smallclothes on a pile of straw and age-rotted
blankets, Kabru wants better for him.

He gets to his feet and crosses the small space to the door. If the barrier is anything like
Pattadol’s more polished version, he can leave without any issues, though getting back in
might be a problem. It’s a risk he’ll take.

He pulls the door open and feels the faint fizzle of the barrier coming down, apparently
broken once the seal was opened. Kabru murmurs a quick apology for that and steps outside,
closing the door behind himself.

“But surely there’s fruit!” Laios is saying with a gesture to a book in his hand, and then he
notices Kabru with a start. “Oh, it’s… um…”

Kabru beams at him and gives him time to recall his name, though he kind of wants to
throttle him for still not remembering. It’s only been a week!
“Ka…”

“Kabru!” Marcille says in greeting, coming up from behind Laios. She squints at Kabru
suspiciously. “Wait. How did you get down here? Are you really Kabru?”

So they’re worried about shapeshifters, too. Maybe they encountered the one Mithrun drove
off on the sixth level. He can’t imagine having to try to tell a whole party’s worth of copies
apart. He had no idea which Mithrun was the real one until the copy had turned into leaves
when the shapeshifter got far enough away.

Kabru laughs. “Of course I am!”

“Kensuke’s not shaking,” Laios says, which somehow eases Marcille’s worries about him
being a shapeshifter or something worse.

“But how did you get ahead of us? You went back to the surface with the teleportation
scroll!” Marcille says. “Did you come back that same way?”

“And why aren’t you dead?” Chilchuck adds. “You’re always dead when we run into you,
and your whole party with you.”

Kabru’s well-practiced smile doesn’t dim in the slightest as he laughs and cups the back of
his head. “Ah, well, I’m not alone. Captain Mithrun is an expert.”

They all look behind him at the shed, especially the… cat person? Beast-man, his mind
supplies as she catches up to the others, followed by the dwarf. She’s dressed like she might
have been part of Toshiro’s party. Maybe Asebi, the one who wasn’t located in time to go to
the surface. It’s good that she ran into the others. No one could live long alone down here.

“He’s sleeping,” Kabru offers. How much to tell them about the predicament that landed the
two of them here for so long? They can’t go into the shed or they’ll risk stirring up pollen.
And Mithrun deserves to make a first impression on his own terms. At least in person.
Kabru’s definitely going to handle the verbal introductions.

“There was, um, monster pollen,” Kabru says. “It’s still kind of scattered around in there, so
we should wait out here for Mithrun to join us.” Kabru smiles wide.

“Some expert, if he led you into one of those things,” Chilchuck mutters. “That’s a beginner’s
mistake.”

Kabru shakes his head. “No, no. I got distracted, is all—he’s immune—and…” He waves a
hand and laughs. “It’s all fine now.”

Chilchuck crosses his arms over his chest. “No one’s immune to that stuff.”

Laios gestures with his open book. “That’s true. It says so right here—the more often you’re
exposed to it, the worse the reaction will be!”

“He is, though, I assure you. It’s—” Kabru closes the distance between himself and the
group, makes a point of looking at the shed, and then speaks softly but urgently.
“Look, that’s not important. This is. The western elves are already here in the dungeon.”

“Already here?!” Marcille yelps, looking around like the elves in question will pop out from
the bushes. “We have to—”

“They were in talks with the Island Lord when we got to the surface, and hearing about the
chimera was the last straw.” Kabru shrugs. “We did what we could, Toshiro and I. We didn’t
mention you at all. Just that there was a chimera.”

Marcille groans. “Why’d you even have to mention that ?”

“Toshiro was going to make a report, whether I brought up the chimera or not. I just got
ahead of it to be sure it was presented right.”

It’s not a lie. They don’t have to know whose idea it was to keep the black magic a secret, or
that Toshiro would certainly not have mentioned Laios’s party. He needs to ingratiate them to
himself somehow, and quickly, so that they’ll accept the rest of what he’s saying.

“Just don’t bring up the black magic, and you should be fine,” Kabru says.

Now offer them a convincing pre-built story they can fall back on if questioned by the
Canaries later. They might not take him up on the offer—Laios in particular might get too
chatty—but he’ll have tried to help them hide their mistake. Bonus points for Kabru.

“You can blame the chimera on the dungeon lord,” he says. “No one has to know about the
way you resurrected your sister. Toshiro won’t tell, I’m sure. Maizuru won’t be asked.
Everyone else who knows is down here.”

“That’s not a complete disaster…” Marcille worries at her lower lip and hugs her staff close.

Clearly nervous, and for good reason as far as she’s aware. If it were some other Canary
down here with them, she’d be right to be nervous. But Mithrun is unlikely to care about any
of this unless it impedes his progress through the dungeon or hinders him in the fight against
the demon.

Now it’s time to sell them on the captain.

“There’s a squad of Canaries on the first floor trying to break the dungeon,” he says.

“Canaries?” Laios asks, seeming uncertain.

“Officially the Dungeon Investigation Unit. Captain Mithrun and I fell down a hole from
there to the sixth floor after fighting the lunatic magician and the chimera. That’s how we got
here ahead of you.”

The chorus of overlapping responses comes almost too fast for him to identify the speakers,
but Kabru has been to many a Tol family gathering filled with dozens of eager elves coming
at him from all angles offering cake and asking inane questions about how much taller he’ll
get and how old he is now. He can sort through them.
“He fought the lord of the dungeon? How did he do it? I need to talk to him!” Marcille, eager.

“Why were you with them?” The beast-man, Asebi, suspicious.

“Falin was on the first floor? But the mana is too thin for her there!” Laios, concerned about
his sister.

“Captain, was it? Of the Canaries. That’s the western elves! And this guy’s with them. We
need to lose these two, fast.” Chilchuck, already set on retreat.

Senshi is silent, but observant. Kabru can’t get a read on him, yet.

Kabru holds up his hands and projects innocence. “No, no, the captain isn’t— He probably
won’t even care about the black magic, to be honest,” Kabru says, aiming for conspiratorial.
He’s offering an inside scoop. He’s someone they can trust.

“He’s way more likely to help than to get in the way,” Kabru insists. “He was a dungeon lord
himself, once, and all he wants is to put a stop to this.” Well. After a fashion.

Marcille’s eyes are wide open and shining with hope. “A dungeon lord?”

“He had the lunatic magician all but defeated before the chimera showed up,” Kabru adds,
skipping over the dungeon lord part of things for now. He shouldn’t have mentioned that so
soon. Is Marcille the one they should be worried about taking over the dungeon, and not
Laios? A thought for another time.

“He spared the chimera and tried talking to the person inside it, to Falin.” That bit for Laios.
In truth, Kabru has no idea how sympathetic Mithrun would be to Falin’s plight or Laios’s
loss. But the fact also remains that he tried to reason with the chimera and didn’t kill her with
a rock to the brain.

“The captain has information and experience, and if we handle the situation right, he’ll be a
valuable asset,” Kabru finishes. Please let them accept his words, and also himself and
Mithrun into their party…

“‘We?’” Asebi asks, one ear flicking. “Whose side are you on, exactly?”

Kabru takes a deep breath. This is good. This is an opportunity to tell his story. “I want the
dungeon’s curse lifted and a tall-man in control. Not elves taking over the dungeon and the
Island with it. To the best of my reckoning, that puts me on your side.”

“For now.”

“We share goals. My village was destroyed when monsters poured out of a nearby dungeon,
flooding the town and killing everyone. This dungeon is growing just like that one did. I just
want to prevent a repeat of the Utaya disaster.”

“And the western elves wouldn’t prevent that?” Asebi asks. “They want to break the
dungeon, too, right?”
 “They couldn’t prevent my village from being destroyed, even though they tried. I don’t
know if they can prevent a disaster here. But when the Canaries are dispatched to a dungeon,
it means things are at a tipping point.”

In actuality, Canaries investigate dungeons of all growth stages, to monitor them and ensure
they don’t grow out of control, or even reach the so-called tipping point. But he doesn’t
expect them to know that, and the point stands that their presence now, here, does mean that
this dungeon is dangerously unstable.

“We need to take control of the dungeon and then shut it down.” Kabru looks at Laios
directly. “ You need to take control of the dungeon,” he reiterates. “And then you need to shut
it down.”

“We have to find the winged lion and rescue him,” Laios says. “He’ll help us defeat the
lunatic magician, and then everything will be okay.”

Winged lion? Which one of the millions of winged lions in this dungeon do they mean to
find? Have they not noticed them? Laios’s sword is even a winged lion! Or is this winged
lion an actual monster somewhere in the dungeon? Are they thinking of joining forces with a
monster to overpower the dungeon lord? Or—

Kabru’s stomach sinks as a new thought hits him square in the chest.

…Is the winged lion this dungeon’s demon?

Chapter End Notes

Content warning: Mature content here, probably not explicit, though. Also, Kabru is
being very unkind to himself in his mind and is not accurately judging how rough he
was. He is an occasionally unreliable narrator, after all.
 Touden Party II / Candied Mandrake
Chapter Notes

I’ve always thought that Mithrun would be more than passingly conversant in monsters
due to having been surrounded by them in his dungeon, likely having summoned or
created them based on prior knowledge gained during whatever passes for Canary
training. We get some extra material about him rattling off factoids to Kabru, as well,
while they harvest the barometz.

But I saw a truly inspired comic on Tumblr once that drove home how much comedic
potential this monster knowledge could have, and I must refer you all to it so that you
can get as big a laugh as I did:
https://www.tumblr.com/edlucavalden/765408018873630721/hm-it-seems-that-they-
have-something-in

Mithrun opens his eyes and looks around blearily. There’s sleep sand in the corner of his left
eye; the right tear duct doesn’t supply any moisture to dry out, and so is fine. He raises a hand
and rubs at his eye. The arm aches with the movement.

Everything aches, actually. He is decidedly uncomfortable. Everywhere. That’s not typical,

but it’s also not implausible. He’s worked himself to injury before, and he’ll do it again
unless someone stops him. Pulled and strained muscles are not a problem. He’s long since
lost the ability to care about such things.

There are lanterns above, hung on chains from the ceiling. Also, his uniform and the bedding,
draped over rope. A makeshift clothesline. That’s right. The tall-man had taken it upon
himself to wash pollen off their clothes.

Stupid choice.

Thoughtful, as is almost everything he does, but still stupid. Kabru is absolutely not cut out
for a dungeon. The logic needed for survival is different in dungeons, and Kabru operates
strictly on surface logic. It’ll get him killed if he doesn’t pick up the dungeon’s patterns.
Unless he has someone like Mithrun around to run interference between him and the
dungeon.

And he’d thought he could conquer the place. Laughable, really. Mithrun might chuckle over
it, if laughing was a thing he still did.

He should get up. He doesn’t want to.

The barrier has fallen, breached from the inside, from what he can tell. Kabru left, then, of his
own volition. Not to masturbate privately—he knows better than that, and besides, Mithrun is
right here, rendering a solo attempt unnecessary. And not to explore the surrounding area.
The tall-man is smarter than to try to hunt down a meal alone. There will be some intelligent
reason for leaving the immediate area.

Is he curious about that?

…no, he decides. Not particularly. The reason will be explained eventually.

Kabru’s clothing is absent from the clothesline above, and turning his head to see better
reveals that his armor is also gone. Good. He’s ready to move on. Mithrun will join him.
There’s no need to waste time lying here uselessly.

Mithrun sits up with an involuntary wince and then gets to his feet.

Yes, everything aches, from his feet to his jaw. That’s natural enough, though. Why shouldn’t
he ache after a literal roll in the hay? It’s been over forty years, after all. He’s out of practice.
And if his recollections are accurate, he’d made a few miscalculations about sleeping with a
tall-man. Proportions, for one. Strength for another. Kabru was pleasantly strong—very
pleasantly—and well versed in human anatomy.

He has Milsiril to thank for that, he’s sure. Mithrun won’t be thanking her, of course. She
wouldn’t appreciate it. And she might hate him for it.

He doesn’t care, exactly, whether she hates him or not. But on consulting with his past self,
he decides not to make an enemy of the House of Tol. It would be too much work to craft a
message and send it, anyway, and for no gain that he can see.

He reaches up for his pants and then withdraws his arm again. Proper containment and
decontamination procedure would have him take care of the pollen first to avoid repeated
exposure to others. And there is actually an “other” to watch out for now.

So he leaves the clothes and focuses on washing off the pack, wringing it out, and stuffing it
with each item he cleans, one by one. There’s a broom in the cluster of tools in the corner, so
he wets the bristles and sweeps up the pollen that’s been shed on the floor, taking care not to
stir up any dry pollen in the process.

It’ll do. He can’t bring himself to care much beyond the basics of not wasting another half
day on pollen-related nonsense. Kabru is already outside. He won’t be rolling around on the
floor trying to collect whatever stray flecks of pollen Mithrun missed. And a few extra flecks
of pollen won’t likely have an impact on the tall-man, anyway. If pollen was medicine, that
amount would hardly be considered a fraction of a dose.

He pulls his pants off the clothesline, checks the pocket for the lion’s head tooth he broke off
a fountain earlier—it’s present and accounted for—and tugs the pants up over his legs, taking
note of the bruises along his legs and at his waist as he does up the laces. Yes, very pleasantly
strong, that Kabru. And uninhibited once he finally stopped overthinking everything. A far
cry from any previous lovers he can recall, and probably not all of that due to the pollen’s
prompting.

The spidersilk skirt and arm guards go on, followed by the overdress, and then all that’s left
are neck guard, socks and boots. He’ll sit… on the hay pile for that last bit.

Hm. He has a clear preference for the hay opposed to the stone. He wonders why, as he pulls
on his footwear and does up more laces. The hay is softer, certainly, but that hardly matters.
He’d be sore sitting anywhere right now, regardless of softness. Ah. Farthest area from
potential lingering pollen, he realizes as he fastens the neck guard. That must be it.

He does always have a reason for his few preferences. It’s nice to see that hasn’t changed.

Kabru returns while he’s fastening the bedroll to the pack. The tall-man knocks first, which
Mithrun ignores in favor of tying a knot. More surface logic. Making unnecessary noise in a
dungeon is foolish.

“Captain Mithrun?”

Kabru eventually opens the door a crack and peeks inside, before opening the door the rest of
the way and stepping cautiously into the shed.

Mithrun turns his head to look at him directly. “Yes?”

There’s a small crowd behind Kabru, very likely the Laios he’d mentioned several times, and
Laios’s adventuring party. One of them looks worried, the half-elf woman in blue. Marcille,
with the luxury soap. No, two of them are worried. The half-foot, as well.

Hm. What do they have to be worried about? That is something to be curious about.

“Ah, you’ve still got straw in your hair, Captain,” Kabru says, stepping within range. “May
I?”

Mithrun shrugs and stands with the pack in hand. “Do as you like.”

In response, Kabru picks at his hair, fusses with it, finger combs it into place. It’s far more
familiar than the time he plucked a leaf off of his head, less concerned about making a social
misstep. It feels nice. Soothing. When the tall-man’s fingers withdraw, he almost manages to
miss them.

“Look who found us,” Kabru says, taking the pack and shrugging it on despite the dampness.

The tall-man of the party crowds around the door, and he’d very likely slip inside if the
party’s half-foot didn’t drag him back by the sleeve.

“No way, Laios.”

“I just want to try a little! Just to see what it’s like!”

“No!” the half-foot says. “Are you stupid?!”

Kabru turns toward Mithrun while the other tall-man is hauled away from the door and gives
him one of the fake sunshine smiles that haven’t made an appearance in several days. He’s
obviously dying a little inside from the embarrassment of his contact turning out to be an
idiot. And after the shadow governor, too. Poor Kabru. Ever in want of a truly reputable
contact.

“This is the man I told you about, Captain. Laios Touden.”

Kabru is in hell. That’s the only explanation for his current situation.

They’ve left the monster plants behind, thankfully, so there’s no more risk of a pollen
reaction—he can’t imagine the horrors of needing a party-wide orgy to settle everyone down
after that, and he doesn’t want to imagine it. He still has mixed feelings about his own pollen
adventure with Mithrun, who is not walking as smoothly or as quickly as he usually does.

Did he hurt the elf in some way he hadn’t realized? More so than he thought he might have at
first, when he was still in his right mind and hoping to go slowly enough that he could adjust
to the intrusion? If he had, Mithrun would have healed himself, surely. He’d said that he
would. Did he simply forget to?

Other than his gait, Mithrun doesn’t look uncomfortable, though. And he’s not limping or
anything. No one else has noticed anything amiss, and why would they, having just met him a
short while ago?

Of the Touden party, only Chilchuck has seemed to appreciate the exact nature of the pollen’s
effects. He’d rate the half-foot’s occasional staring as judgmental. Not in a bad way,
necessarily. More a sense of weighing the outcomes. Trying to gauge the likelihood of
various futures based on observations in the present and knowledge about the past.
Analytical, maybe. Measuring.

And based on what he’d been saying about party cohesion and the way “sex pollen” could
shatter it due to the tense post-pollen interactions and lingering embarrassment, it seems
about right that Chilchuck would be wary of a potential rift between Kabru and Mithrun, and
how such a rift would impact the Touden party.

For his part, Kabru is… not embarrassed. But he has regrets about how rough he was in the
end. He also has pride wrapped up in the many ways he was able to bring out an expressive,
even vulnerable side of Mithrun. The regret and pride war against each other inside of him,
but he can’t see it causing a rift between them. And Mithrun… doesn’t seem to have been
impacted at all, long term, except for the change in his gait.
Regardless, Mithrun is not the reason Kabru is currently miserable.

First, there’s this mouthful of tender, sweet, slightly bitter root vegetable with an actual face
he has to look at while he chews and chews and chews the thing’s twisted little arm. Candied
mandrake on a stick. They each have one, him and Mithrun, because apparently skipping out
on a meal or two is a high crime in Senshi’s lawbook and there were some leftovers from the
Touden party’s last meal.

No matter how long he chews, he can’t stop looking at the thing’s face with its mouth open in
a pained rictus. He should have started by biting the head off so he wouldn’t have to actually
look at it any longer than necessary. The rest of it could be a really dark piece of ginger that
happened to grow like a funky, limbed carrot, if he didn’t think about the awful truth.

A plant that actually screams and appears to feel pain, and he’s staring at the evidence of that
pain impaled on a stick. He’s not above eating something that has a face. He ate the
barometz. The fish. Even the spiders. He just doesn’t want to be looking at his meal’s face
while he eats it. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Then there’s Laios at his side, accosting him with questions about the entire pollen debacle,
seemingly from start to finish, and without even letting him answer before he asks another
question.

What was the vine like, did it grip him tightly or merely snugly? What was the flower like?
Was the pollen sweet like the book says? The petals are said to be made of flesh—were they?
How long was he inside the flower? Was it warm and welcoming? Did he get a good look at
the stamen and pistil? Were they really shaped like human genitalia? How did he escape?
Were there any predators drawn to his struggles?

Did he know that barometz also attracts predators, despite being harmless itself, so that the
predators can spread its seeds using their poop?

Thankfully—though shockingly—Mithrun steps into the conversation before Laios can

return to the matter of the pollen, noting that barometz seeds are indigestible due to a tough
outer shell that requires a period of intense frost in order to properly germinate, which
prevents the new seedlings from sprouting just ahead of inclement weather and dying before
they have a chance to grow large enough to thrive.

Laios nods excitedly. “Stratification! There’s a whole chapter on it in one of the monster
guides I’ve read that goes over how fickle dungeon climates require monster plant species to
adapt to more than just variable mana levels.”

“A dungeon with proper, routine climate controls,” Mithrun adds after taking another bite of
his own mandrake, “will ensure a plentiful staple crop without overcrowding or nutrient
depletion in the soil, allowing the natural predators to thrive as well.”

“M-hm!” Laios nods again.

“Healthy food chain,” Mithrun intones, “healthy dungeon.”

Kabru gradually slows his pace to let the two of them walk and talk without him having to be
involved in the conversation. He’s nearly positive Mithrun didn’t engage Laios out of pity for
Kabru or any desire to help Kabru bail out on the topic of pollen monsters or barometz. But
he might as well have, because the result is that Kabru is free.

Well, he still has a mouthful of sticky sweet-and-bitter mandrake to swallow, and a whole
root on a stick to choke down after that, but otherwise, he’s free.

“So when you say ‘lord of a dungeon,’” Marcille asks, coming up on his left, “did he create a
whole dungeon? Do you know how he did it? I have so many questions.”

Trapped again.

Kabru smiles and chokes down his mouthful finally, only to be left with the aftertaste of it
lingering on his tongue. Eugh. And still, the mandrake looks at him. Accusing.

“He took over an existing dungeon,” Kabru says, keeping his voice down. It’s probably fine
to share the streamlined and softened, polished , version of things that he’d come up with, but
it still seems rude to discuss Mithrun while Mithrun can hear the discussion.

“How does that work?”

Kabru forces his shoulders to relax before they even start to hike up in dismay. Maybe they
really do need to worry more about Marcille than Laios.

“Well, I’m not the expert on the subject,” he says, “but that dungeon didn’t have a lord at the
time, and—” Kabru pauses. The story is meant to be told in a certain order, but he supposes
he can take bits out to share on their own.

“And?”

She’s so bright-eyed and hopeful about it, it’s painful to look at, knowing what he does about
dungeons, demons, and the results of getting mixed up in that trap.

Kabru shrugs. “He wanted something very, very badly. And that’s how the dungeon trapped
him.”

He watches out of the corner of his eye as her expression crumples into a frown. Too bad,
Marcille. There’s no good news to be had here, no helpful tips for getting your very own
dungeon. Just heartache and loss.

“Being a dungeon lord isn’t good for you, Marcille,” he says. “Or for anyone around you.
You go mad, and everything you want is devoured until you can’t desire anything at all.”

“How does that work?” Izutsumi—not Asebi, he’d learned the hard way—asks. “Everything
you want is devoured? That doesn’t make sense.”

“At the heart of every dungeon is a demon,” Mithrun says, breaking off whatever
conversation he was having with Laios to join this one instead. “The ancients built dungeons
solely to trap the demons inside so that they wouldn’t destroy civilization again.”
Well, that wasn’t part of the neat and tidy dungeon lord backstory he’d crafted. Kabru isn’t
sure whether to try to steer things back on track or just let it all get jumbled up in this much
more overarching disaster storyline.

“…Destroy civilization?” Marcille asks, her voice small and high-pitched. “Again?”

“All a dungeon lord is,” Mithrun continues without answering her question, “is a human
who’s made a pact with a dungeon’s demon. The demon gives them what they want, grants
their wishes within that dungeon.”

Mithrun waves his mandrake, which is mostly just a stick with a knob of root vegetable on
the end at this point.

“And in return,” he says, “when the lord of the dungeon is deemed ripe enough, the demon
eats them alive until nothing is left but a husk incapable of desire and devoid of any will to
live.”

He turns to fix her with his left eye briefly before turning to face forward again. “Very, very
rarely, a dungeon lord is given an opportunity to recover from that. But they are never the
same, after.”

Mithrun pops the last of his mandrake in his mouth all in one bite and chews, the darkness of
his prior words at odds with the cuteness of his puffed out cheeks.

“Those desires will never come back,” he says after swallowing. “Even rescued, a dungeon
lord will never want to live again, to eat, to sleep. Nothing will appeal to them. They will
truly be an empty shell that merely resembles who they were before.”

That appears to do the trick of getting everyone in the newly combined party to abandon the
idea of conversation for a while. No more talk of pollen or monsters. No more talk of
dungeons and demons. No more talk at all, small or otherwise. Just the scuffing of footsteps,
the clanking of armor, the swish of fabric.

Eventually, Kabru finds himself and Mithrun near the back of the group, with Senshi and
Laios up near the front, discussing meal planning options quietly. Something about thigh
meat, and Kabru doesn’t want to think about what monster they hacked apart to get the
ingredient.

He holds out his mandrake to Mithrun. “Here. You should eat more, Captain.”

Mithrun glances at it and then back ahead. “So should you.”

“It has a face,” Kabru whispers. “Please.”

Rather than argue back about how all creatures have faces, the elf grabs his wrist and pulls
Kabru’s hand—and the mandrake he’s holding in it—toward his mouth. He bites off the head
and then releases Kabru.

“Now it doesn’t,” Mithrun mumbles around his mouthful of mandrake. “Eat it.”
Kabru looks down at his decapitated mandrake and sighs. He really can’t argue with that
reasoning. It doesn’t have a face anymore. Surely he can pretend it’s just a mix between a
carrot and a piece of ginger.

Half an hour and three very difficult bites later, Mithrun sighs, reaches over, and plucks the
rest of Kabru’s mandrake from his hand to finish it for him.

Kabru can’t thank him enough, and so he doesn’t even try.

 Frog Leg Soup

They make camp in a natural pocket of the cavern system, bare rock forming a rounded
alcove with a high ceiling and unnaturally smooth sides.

Kabru sets his pack down against one of those walls and runs a hand along the smooth
surface. Dwarf-hewn, almost certainly. There are loads of tunnels from a variety of sources
that lead to the dungeon, some dug after the dungeon’s discovery and some from before.
That’s the reason there’s water on the fourth level of the dungeon, after all.

But they’ve been traveling in tunnels connecting caverns for a while now. Not a full day, but
long enough. Has it been curving around, or going straight? He knows it’s been angling
downward, since the walking is easier. But if they’ve been moving away in a straight line…
are they even in the dungeon proper anymore?

And if they aren’t… does resurrection magic still work here? How far through the tunnels
around the dungeon does the dungeon’s immortality magic cover?

Kabru has his doubts about just how survivable the dungeon would be without resurrection
magic. Though he does have to admit that with a party as successful as Laios’s around him,
and with Mithrun potentially looking out for him especially, he is the safest he’s ever been in
a dungeon. It probably won’t matter, either way, whether resurrection magic still holds.
Hopefully it won’t be put to the test.

Mithrun sits down next to him, on the bedroll-topped pack itself for some reason, and crosses
his arms over his chest with a silent huff of air.

Kabru imagines he’s sore from walking so much after their pollen encounter—Kabru himself
is glad for the breather, after all, and he wasn’t bent in all kinds of uncomfortable positions
for hours on end. But Kabru also knows that wasn’t a sigh of relief just then. It was irritation.
Mithrun would walk until he collapsed if Kabru let him, and here they are, apparently making
a full camp after only half a day’s travel.

But maybe it’s night for the Touden party. Kabru certainly hasn’t been able to keep track of
time down in the dungeon. It makes sense that they wouldn’t all share the same time sense.
And they can’t expect the other party to shift their pattern to match his and Mithrun’s.
They’ve joined the Touden party, not the other way around.

And it does turn out that they are stopping for the night—bedrolls are being unpacked and
rolled out, blankets sorted, a magic circle drawn for a fire that won’t smoke up the alcove and
doesn’t require logs. Oh, and a massive pan that Kabru had taken for a shield at first is
coming out.

Kabru watches the meal preparations with a mixture of horror and interest. Horror, because
there is a large hunk of glistening pale flesh being sliced up and seasoned, which Senshi
helpfully announces to be the thigh of a giant frog. If only he’d said something like “chicken
breast” or “turkey meat.” Kabru might even be okay with basilisk if… okay, no, he wouldn’t
be okay with that. Just the thought. Ugh.

He wonders if that’s the giant frog that stole Mithrun’s pack. Maybe it’s one of the ones he
and Mithrun dodged via teleportation. How many were there in that area, anyway?

And then, after the horror, interest, as Senshi does the unthinkable.

He pulls out… an onion. A real, actual, not-a-monster onion. And then a few potatoes.
Another pair of mandrakes and some pickled tentacles, which Kabru can overlook because
there are carrots to follow. Carrots!

What’s worse, the dwarf is saying they were picked from an overgrown garden.

“There were vegetables back there?” Kabru asks.

He tries to remember the gardens they frequently ended up in while traveling in the town. He
recalls greenery, yes, but nothing that looked edible. But with root vegetables, how does one
even tell what’s edible from the surface? All the leafy bits look the same.

“Yes,” Senshi says with a smile. “Many of them.”

“I had to eat spider legs!”

Laios perks up immediately. “That was you? We saw the spiders piled up, and the room with
the fire, and… Hey, maybe it was you guys every time we saw someone had made camp
somewhere before we got there!”

Kabru had fully expected the follow-up to be a question about how the spider legs tasted, so
he’s thrown a bit when something sane comes out instead. But before he can answer, the man
follows it up with the insane questions he was expecting in the first place.

“How did they taste? Did you eat any of the succubus larvae? How did you avoid the
dullahan? For that matter, how’d you avoid all those succubi? They were awful.”

Mithrun saves him from having to answer.

“The spiders were nutty, stringy, and dry, with a rancid aftertaste,” Mithrun says flatly. “We
did not eat the larvae. I teleported the spirit and its horse elsewhere. We didn’t approach any
of the fountains and thus were not within the succubi’s range.”

“Oh.” Laios looks crestfallen to receive such succinct answers. Or maybe it’s because the
giant spiders were gross and they won’t be able to compare larvae dishes. “You must have
been the reason he was missing his horse.”

“I didn’t know you could teleport spirits,” Marcille says.

Mithrun nods at her. “Mm. There are more limitations to what should be teleported than there
are to what can be teleported.”
Then, looking back toward Laios: “How did you handle the succubi?”

Laios laughs, mood lifted instantly by Mithrun’s apparent interest. “Pretty badly, really. We
tried to stay in pairs, but we also split up at first, and actually, it was Izutsumi who saved us.”

Mithrun has to turn his head so that he can see her, sitting to their right. “And how did you do
that?”

Izutsumi’s story isn’t as lengthy or as complicated as Mithrun’s but she spares no detail in a
way Kabru finds similar. She describes the shrunken blissed-out state of the party
exhaustively, as well as the monsters’ attempts to swarm her when they couldn’t get an
accurate read on her ideal due to her dual nature. And her larvae-flinging defensive
maneuver.

Kabru is still stuck on the way they tried to appear as her forgotten mother. That’s not the
kind of “ideal” he understood to be the danger when dealing with a succubus. Would Kabru’s
mind supply his own birth mother to a succubus hunting him? He’d far rather be attacked and
drained dry by a beautiful potential lover. For his birth mother to be used against him like that
would be horrifying.

And if something can be yearned for enough that it gets picked up by a mind-reading
monster, even if the person themself doesn’t know about it… that does lead him to think
about what a succubus would do with Mithrun’s mind.

He doesn’t want anything but revenge… that he knows of. He might not have an ideal
anymore, but is there something else lurking inside that could be used without his being able
to anticipate it? Something else the demon left behind, or some desire the demon would have
eaten that hadn’t been present for the demon to consume?

Could there be new desires forming, even now? It seems that anything the demon devoured is
gone forever, but the demon couldn’t have eaten things that weren’t there. So those things,
absent in the past, could flourish without the old desires crowding them out. Maybe—

“And I nursed ‘em all back to health with the succubus milk!”

“I’m sorry, with what?” Kabru asks, shocked out of his train of thought. “You milked a
succubus? They have milk?”

He’s afraid to hear the answer. Truly there is no end to the list of horrifying monster-based
food items available in a dungeon. Succubus milk.

“Not like a cow or anything. You just poke ‘em until they leak and collect it all in a big pan.
Then boil it with— I think it was sugar, but I couldn’t tell.” She shrugs. “Man, it took forever
to get it all back inside them.”

“Them?”

Izutsumi jerks a thumb in the party’s direction. “These guys, of course. Where else would I
have put it?”
“Fair point,” Kabru says with a laugh he doesn’t feel.

What he does feel is queasy. What are the odds that they have succubus larvae for dinner? Or
leftover succubus milk? They’re okay with eating harpy eggs, he knows, so they don’t have
any qualms about humanoid monsters. Why would they have qualms about monsters that can
simply project what’s in a human’s mind?

But no, it’s frog meat on the menu. That’s right. Giant frogs. Kabru would rather eat a frog
than larvae of any kind, even if it is a monster frog. And there are vegetables involved. Real
vegetables. Vegetables he and Mithrun could have been eating if they’d known what to look
for.

Or rather, if Kabru had known. Given his knowledge of barometz seeds and dung and
whatever else, Mithrun might very well have known there were vegetables and not thought to
mention it because he wasn’t asked and he wasn’t hungry. So irritating.

Well, that’s in the past. And he can definitely smell the onions in whatever it is Senshi is
cooking on the other side of the alcove. That bodes well. There’ll be flavor that isn’t monster,
and Kabru can focus on that and ignore the frog meat and whatever tentacle nonsense is
going on in that pan.

“It’s ready!” Senshi calls out after approximately half an hour of Laios and Mithrun
discussing the merits of various methods of hunting and dispatching giant spiders.

Kabru is torn between eagerness to eat something that actually smells good and anxiety about
what he’ll be putting in his mouth. It’s going to be better than anything he’s cooked for
Mithrun, even the blade fish. And a large part of Kabru resents that. Not because he has any
illusions about his cooking abilities—he hadn’t so much as boiled water before this latest
dungeon adventure, and he’s not improved much at all.

No, he’s resentful because monsters should not taste good. They should be good for nothing.
Not even eating. There should be no redeeming qualities to a monster. There shouldn’t even
be monsters.

Kabru joins the rest in getting up to get food, putting on an especially appreciative face. He’ll
get food for himself and Mithrun, since the elf will almost certainly not go out of his way to
feed himself.

“Frog soup with tentacles and root vegetables,” Senshi explains while handing him a
steaming bowl. “I added some mandrake greens for a bit of color and mana restoration.”

“It smells amazing,” Kabru gushes. “I’ve never even had regular frog, so a giant frog is really
something. And I didn’t know tentacles were edible!”

Senshi nods happily. “Edible and delicious if cooked properly. But don’t go handling them
without taking precautions.”

“Right. I’ll bring Mithrun his—”

“I can get it,” Mithrun says from directly behind him.

Kabru manages not to spill hot soup all over himself, but barely. “Captain! You’re hungry?”

Has all the reluctance to eat been due to Kabru’s cooking this whole time? Does he actually
have an appetite when the food smells good? Is the struggle to feed him finally over now that
Senshi is on the job?

“No.” Mithrun blinks up at him.

“Oh.”

Well that’s too bad. It would have been nice—if a touch insulting—if he’d actually felt some
stirring hunger finally.

Kabru holds out his own bowl, since it’s had longer to cool and will run less risk of burning
Mithrun’s mouth. “Well, here, anyway. It’s hot. Blow on it first.”

Mithrun takes it without comment and stands there holding it until Kabru directs him toward
the loose circle around the pan the others are gathering in.

Kabru joins him a minute later with another bowl of soup. He looks across the circle to where
Izutsumi has a plate, not a bowl, piled with a trio of perfectly fried blade fish. What he
wouldn’t give to have blade fish instead of frog soup. With tentacles.

“Thanks for the meal,” most of them say in unison, with Mithrun merely blinking.

At least he waited for everyone to be served and seated. Kabru suspects it’s too much to hope
for that he’d care about etiquette around meals. It isn’t like they’d been practicing proper
etiquette themselves in the last several days.

Kabru stirs his soup while the others start eating, examining the various chunks inside of it.
The broth is pale and almost creamy. Is there succubus milk in it? Or is that because the frog
meat is so pale? He lifts a bit of what he thinks is potato on his spoon and blows on it while
he steels himself to plaster a delighted expression on his face regardless of the taste.

“How is it?” he asks Mithrun as a stalling tactic. “Do you like it?”

“It’s good,” comes the response. “Parts of it are slimy, probably the tentacles. The vegetables
are tender, and the meat as well. The broth is savory, with a hint of sour. I do like it.”

Kabru nods. “I’m glad. After all the terrible cooking we had, it’ll be nice to get something
tasty to eat.”

Mithrun watches him as he blows on the hopefully-potato again, and Kabru senses the elf is
about to pull the trick of refusing to continue eating until Kabru starts eating. The time has
come, then. He must eat this soup or Mithrun will balk and they’ll end up insulting Senshi’s
cooking without meaning to.
He moves the spoon toward his mouth. It’s just a potato. It’s a potato. He enjoys potatoes,
and they aren’t monsters. This will be—

It is not a potato.

It is a hunk of tentacle, and it is slimy, yes. The more he chews, the slimier it gets, coating the
insides of his mouth with a slightly tangy film that he fears will linger long after he’s finished
eating.

Kabru recalls the various times he’s died in the dungeon, including the time a tentacle
strangled him. He tries to think of this as a form of revenge against the tentacle monster. He
chews. And chews. And chews. And he can’t help but think that this is actually not revenge
on the tentacle monster that strangled him, but a way for that monster to deal him additional
psychological damage.

Kabru finally manages to swallow and breathes a sigh of relief. This is possible. This isn’t so
bad. This bowl of soup will not last forever.

“You don’t like it,” Mithrun says, still watching him.

“No, no, it’s really tasty,” he lies. “I was just trying to place the flavor. I could swear I’ve had
something like this before, where the savory and sour are mingled.”

“Mm.”

Well, Mithrun at least doesn’t believe him, but the others are nodding happily as they
continue eating. It’s fine if he doesn’t convince Mithrun. There’s no need to even try, there.
Kabru kind of misses just being himself like he was with Mithrun before.

Kabru scoops up another bite and puts it in his mouth quickly, without examining what his
spoon has on it. It’s a carrot, thankfully, and it goes down easily, even with the broth. Maybe
he can just eat the whole bowl quickly, without thought. He knows that the excessive
chewing just prolongs his suffering, after all. If he ate more quickly…

If only he could bring himself to swallow as quickly as he can put things in his mouth. A few
chews and down it would go. But swallowing is taking the monster fully into himself,
becoming one with the monster. Swallowing makes it real. It’s the swallowing that’s the
hardest part.

Kabru is the last one to finish eating, predictably, even after the others have gotten a second
bowl to eat. Even Mithrun accepts the second helping that’s offered to him, though he hadn’t
asked for it.

He passes it off as savoring each bite, and while Mithrun continues to almost but not quite
frown at him for the lie, Kabru is at least convincing to Laios. That’s the primary reason for
the facade, after all. Laios is what matters—making a solid positive impression and gaining a
place of trust so he can steer his decisions about the dungeon.
“So how’s that work, with only one bedroll,” Chilchuck asks, arms folded over his chest and
expression full of disapproval.

Kabru continues kneading the arch of Mithrun’s left foot, letting the look slide off him
without impact. Chilchuck’s might be the only disapproving look, but there are definitely
glances from everyone else as they get ready to sleep, and some curious staring from Laios.

“We take turns sleeping,” Kabru says. “There were only two of us, and someone had to keep
watch.”

“And now? You can still keep watch, but not every night and not all night. Everyone should
take a shift and some nights that’ll mean you both sleep the whole night.”

Kabru supposes he’ll sleep on the ground in that case. Maybe he and Mithrun will take turns
or something. Maybe they’ll find another bedroll.

“There’s room,” Mithrun says. “I don’t take up much space.”

“You’re supposed to be trying to fall asleep, Captain.”

“It’s not time to sleep,” Mithrun says with an edge to his voice, “and I’m not sleepy.”

Kabru digs his thumb in a little harder than is necessary. “Well, try anyway.”

“So you’ll share a bedroll,” Chilchuck says.

Kabru sighs. “Sure,” he says. “Why not?”

He and Mithrun have already crossed essentially every boundary there is to cross, thanks to
that pollen. He’s slept well curled behind the elf, and Mithrun doesn’t take up much space at
all on his side, especially if he’s not bundled up in a bulky blanket. They’d both be sharing
the blanket, anyway, so there wouldn’t be any bundling.

The only downside Kabru can see is… it feels really nice to hold Mithrun like that, and he
can’t help but feel like it’s inappropriate for him to like it so much. Maybe he just hasn’t
cuddled against anyone in ages and he’s feeling the absence of that sort of trusting intimacy.
Or maybe it’s a lingering effect of the pollen that will continue to fade with time.

Or maybe he just likes Mithrun. The way he feels, even the way he acts to some extent. He
feels like he understands Mithrun to a larger degree after experiencing him being so open and
vulnerable with him, trusting him, behaving like a piece of putty in his hands.

But Mithrun is incapable of desire. Can’t possibly want him. Likely can’t fall in love with
him, can’t be hungry for him physically or even emotionally. Can’t crave his touch. Can’t
miss him when he’s absent.
All that was, before, was a glimpse of Mithrun experiencing pleasure and enjoying that
experience. But he said explicitly that he wasn’t able to seek out things he liked, or to avoid
things he didn’t like.

If he were to actually fall in love with Mithrun, to chase the feeling starting to develop, to
follow the fondness he feels to a natural conclusion… Mithrun wouldn’t be there waiting for
him at the end of the path. Couldn’t be there. Isn’t able to feel those things in return, isn’t
capable of love.

Right?

So Kabru will just have to quash that budding sensation of wanting more. It should be easy.

Easier than pushing an alert Mithrun into the realm of sleep, certainly. Maybe he should take
Mithrun up on the sleeping spell tutorial.

Kabru works his way up to Mithrun’s calf, where the muscles are just as stiff, if not as
chilled. He wonders how a sleeping spell actually works. Would it relax Mithrun, or just
render him unconscious? Would it be restful at all? It feels like it wouldn’t be as restful.

Kabru uses alcohol to sleep, himself, when sleep doesn’t come naturally, and he’s never well
rested the next morning, despite technically sleeping. He vaguely recalls similar effects when
he couldn’t sleep as a child and Milsiril would cast a spell to help him.

The perpetual bags under Mithrun’s eyes are clearly a result of decades of unsatisfying,
unnatural sleep cast on him by caregivers who didn’t care enough to try something that took
longer than a potion or a casting. A week of foot rubs isn’t going to fix that, but it’s a start.

He wonders how those caregivers are doing up on the first floor. Because his squad has to be
responsible for all of this regularly. Kabru is just stepping in due to unusual circumstances.
What if they’re upset by the delay? What if they think Kabru is sabotaging the rescue
somehow?

What about his friends? How are they holding up? He might as well ask. Mithrun isn’t
looking any sleepier, despite the party falling asleep around them, except Marcille, who’s
apparently on first watch.

“Captain, what do you think is happening above?”

“You mean on the first floor? My squad?”

Kabru nods.

It makes sense Mithrun wouldn’t be thinking about Kabru’s friends who are being held
hostage by said squad; they don’t concern Mithrun, after all. He probably couldn’t pick any
one of them out of a crowd of two.

“Among other things, yes,” Kabru says. ”That familiar was supposed to find us in a week. It’s
been longer than that.”
“It was probably eaten.”

“So what happens then?”

Mithrun considers it for a moment. “If she didn’t fully disengage from her familiar before it
was eaten, they’ll kill her and revive her. Then she’ll send another one.”

Kabru blinks, his hands pausing on Mithrun’s calf. What? Kill her? The Canaries aren’t
known for being all that forgiving, but they don’t have the numbers needed to take risks like
that. Not after the Utaya incident decimated the force. And revival spells don’t have a perfect
success rate.

“…W-why would they kill her?”

“Brain damage.” Mithrun shrugs, ignoring or not hearing Marcille’s quiet squeak of dismay.
“Some things can’t be healed without a full revival spell. Full revival spells don’t work on the
living.”

”Oh.” So using a familiar is far riskier than he’d thought. “And she’d be fine afterward, I
guess. And she’d send another familiar to find you.”

Mithrun nods.

“Let’s say, then, that her first familiar got eaten on day six after we fell down the pit.”

“That’s specific, but alright.”

“She sends another one out after resting for a day,” Kabru continues.

“And that’s generous,” Mithrun says. “Pattadol would not allow a whole day to go wasted
while I’m theoretically being held hostage. But alright.”

“We keep getting further away, so it might take the familiar longer to reach us. But she knows
the terrain her familiar has already traversed, so that might speed things up enough to negate
the added distance.”

Mithrun doesn’t respond beyond a blink, like he knows Kabru is thinking aloud and not
needing answers until he’s posed the final question.

“So her second familiar might find us in the next few days. In another week, at the outside.
Right?”

“Unless that familiar gets eaten, too.”

Kabru sighs. “But they’ll keep trying to find you, Captain. And she’ll know that her familiars
are getting eaten by monsters and that I’m not sabotaging anything. Right?”

“…I guess.”

“You guess?” He needs Mithrun to do more than guess.

“They will keep sending familiars to find me, yes. That much is guaranteed.” Mithrun pauses.
“If Fleki is able to convey what happens to her familiars before they die and plunge her into a
coma, then my squad will know you are not responsible. If Fleki doesn’t have the chance to
communicate her familiars’ fates, I don’t know if she will remember after revival. So yes. I
will have to guess on that part.”

“…Do you think they’ll take out their frustration on my friends? Because this is taking longer
than the week they thought it would and they don’t have any way of knowing that I’m
holding up my part of the deal?”

Mithrun frowns at him. “Why would they do that?”

“Cithis made this a hostage situation, Captain. Remember? Your safety for my friends’
safety.”

Mithrun shakes his head at that. “You’re the one who made it a hostage situation when you
threw a fit and took me hostage,” he says, his voice some mixture of gentle and scolding.
“Cithis just turned the tables on you later.”

Kabru would argue that the situation is not at all a fair exchange, as Mithrun’s squad
outclasses his friends and far outnumbers them if the whole ship disembarks. But he’s well
aware that Marcille is listening, and possibly some of the others aren’t as fast asleep as they
look.

“Anyway,” Mithrun adds, “she said it was a favor.”

“Yeah, a favor I had to do for them or they’d ‘entertain’ themselves with my friends.”

Mithrun scoffs. “Pattadol is in charge while I’m down here, not Cithis. And not Flamela.
Your friends are fine.”

Flamela? He is certain that’s a new name, not one of the squad that he knows. There’s a good
chance this Flamela is still on the ship, but it doesn’t hurt to ask, especially if she would
potentially take things out on his friends.

“Flamela?”

“The other captain. Still on the ship with the other squads unless Pattadol has panicked and
called them all ashore.”

A captain, possibly the same rank as Mithrun, or perhaps higher if she lacks his disabilities.
Hm. And he knows nothing about her except this. How to calculate her likely actions…

“And if Pattadol did call for reinforcements?”

“Then they’ll focus on sealing the dungeon. If your friends stay out of their way, no one will
bother them.”

What? That doesn’t make sense. Why would they just abandon a warden—and a captain at
that—to a dungeon? They’re all expendable, but surely an effort would be made to get him
back.

“They’d seal the dungeon with you inside it?”

“Flamela would try.”

Mithrun doesn’t seem to think much of this other captain. Is there a rivalry between them?
Just a general dislike? He seems accepting enough of most things, once you get past the
initial hurdle of assuring him you don’t actively stand in his way as he goes for his goals. It’s
surprising that he’d care enough about another captain to have any feelings or opinions about
them. But he seems to be a bit to the negative side of neutral about her.

“It wouldn’t work while there’s a lord of the dungeon,” Mithrun continues, “but they could
take steps in that direction. Make it easier to force a collapse once the conditions are right.
And we’re down here, so we have an opportunity to set up the right conditions.”

“You mean, kill the lord of the dungeon.” Kabru glances at Laios, careful not to move his
head so that Marcille won’t realize where he’s looking. “But then what happens? Doesn’t
whoever manages that become the next lord of the dungeon?”

“It’s not a cause-effect situation. And no one has to die. That’s just the easiest, quickest
method, so most prefer it. Most of the time, the lord of the dungeon is dangerously unstable
and won’t listen to reason. It’s safest to strike before they’re aware of the threat and then seal
the dungeon before anyone takes over.”

“But you tried to reason with him, on the first floor. Though you’re a terrible negotiator. It’s
no wonder you just made him angry.”

“He’s in danger. And my research indicates he was just a youth when he was caught by the
demon. He deserves a chance to free himself before he’s devoured—every chance I can
afford to give him. Not all of them do. Some dungeon lords deserve exactly what they get out
of the deal.”

“You didn’t deserve what happened to you.”

“Didn’t I?” Mithrun asks with a sardonic expression that perfectly matches his tone.

“No,” Kabru insists. “You didn’t. You were alone, caught by surprise and lured in before you
had a chance to think straight. You were miserable and hurting, and the demon was able to
make use of your pain to strike during a moment of weakness.”

“Mm.” The expression on his face is still dismissive at best. “You’re too generous.”

“Maybe,” Kabru says, not backing down in the slightest. “But you’re not generous enough.”
 Tunnel Spider Caviar

The next day passes without much excitement.

Kabru seizes the opportunity to tell them Mithrun’s streamlined story in the morning before
waking the captain up for the day, and it’s well-received. He can tell there’ll be questions
once they finish processing it, especially considering the way Mithrun had volunteered the bit
about the ancients the prior day.

And their new party gets to see one of the long-lasting effects of that story in action when
Mithrun’s first words of the day are that he’s not hungry for the breakfast Kabru offers him.
It’s a mystery omelet—because Kabru didn’t ask and doesn’t want to think about it—and
some kind of mousse made out of a pumpkin with a face, so he doesn’t blame the captain for
not wanting to eat it. But eat it they must.

Mithrun eats his portion of the meal without too much resistance once Kabru pushes the plate
physically into his hands. And Kabru eats his own portion with much chewing, but he does
manage to swallow every bite, even if he doesn’t scrape the plate clean afterward.

The day is mostly filled with tunnels, just as the previous stretch had been. As they walk,
Mithrun answers questions about monsters and dungeons that Laios and Marcille ply him
with, each with their own angle.

Laios is truly just interested in monsters, though he asks about demons as well and wonders
what his desires had even tasted like, which is the kind of insensitive thing Kabru expects
from him, but Mithrun doesn’t seem to mind. Mithrun can’t tell him what his own favorite
monsters had been, but he is able to list those he’d used and where he’d placed them. Laios is
most excited to hear about the minotaurs and how they self-governed.

Marcille is more interested in the management of a dungeon, how the monsters are chosen for
different areas, the way things need to interact in order to be a stable environment, the way
mana needs to be concentrated in some areas and relatively sparse in others, how mana
circulates through a dungeon to keep everything thriving and avoid stagnation. It’s almost
interesting to hear how stability and stagnation are opposing states.

And Senshi even chimes in, wondering what Mithrun ate while a dungeon lord. Mithrun’s
reply that he had lost that desire early on and hasn’t been hungry since then doesn’t sit well
with the dwarf. When pressed on the issue of needing to eat whether hungry or not, Mithrun
just shrugs and says the dungeon sustained him. He didn’t eat again until he was rescued, and
then it was mostly restraints and force-feeding until he recovered somewhat.

Senshi is quiet and pensive until they stop for lunch, clearly upset by the answers he received.

Lunch is some sort of quiche—one that actually tastes good and isn’t rubbery, burned, dry, or
eggshell-riddled, which Mithrun unnecessarily comments on to Kabru’s chagrin. Kabru is
able to put aside his reservations about just what sort of egg it is that he’s eating—it had
looked like a snake egg, which at least isn’t a harpy with a human face and other human
endowments. Swallowing it is a bit easier, which he takes as a small personal victory.

He can see as they travel that Mithrun is impatient with the pace, particularly the way they
stop for meals that are involved and require preparation. But he doesn’t object, at least
verbally. He also doesn't object to the reminders to eat, drink, or join Kabru for bathroom
breaks.

He does sleep poorly that night, though, which Kabru attributes to his not being physically
exhausted by the more relaxed pace of their journey. Frankly, Kabru has no complaints about
needing to spend a bit more time getting Mithrun to fall asleep, because it also means that
Mithrun hasn’t collapsed from mana exhaustion or physical exhaustion, which they can both
do without.

He also has no complaints about tucking himself in against the elf once Mithrun has finally
fallen asleep. It’s necessary, after all. He took a longer than usual turn at being on watch that
first night, and so he needs to sleep through this night. Chilchuck’s orders.

Mickbell might have been somewhat right about Chilchuck. Very by the rules, very much
into ensuring party cohesion, proper roles, and evenly distributing the workload that goes into
party maintenance.

As he’s the founder of a guild devoted to protecting half-foots and their rights, this all makes
plenty of sense. Kabru and Mithrun might not have signed a contract when joining the party,
but they are clearly considered party members now, and they have to bear their share of the
workload and also take their share of the downtime.

Kabru isn’t sure whether the longer sleep is the sole contributor to his energy levels the next
morning or whether holding Mithrun through the night has had something to do with it as
well, but he wakes up the next morning thoroughly energized and ready to pack up and head
out.

First, though, they must eat yet another meal.

This time, for some reason Kabru can’t place, Mithrun takes an interest in the meal
preparation, standing a short distance from Senshi and observing carefully. To Kabru’s
amusement, the dwarf quickly offers him a cutting board and a handful of greens to chop
while he sautés more of the weird pumpkin.

Mithrun examines the kitchen knife appreciatively and then does as Senshi directs, cutting
the tougher stems out and chopping them into small slices, and then cutting the remaining
leaf portions into wide ribbons.

Senshi adds the stem slices to the pan, and then hands Mithrun a bit of dried meat—is it
bacon? Or more to the point, is it real bacon or monster bacon? Does Kabru dare to hope?
Does he dare to ask?

The bacon gets cut into even smaller pieces than the leaf stems, slivers about the size of a
thumbnail and quite thin, and added to the pan. It smells delicious. It probably shouldn’t, but
it does. And Kabru can’t help but salivate a bit, despite the fact that the pumpkin had a face
and the bacon couldn’t be from a normal surface-raised pig.

The leafier parts of the greens get added at the very end and only long enough to “wilt,”
Senshi explains to Mithrun. The elf nods in acceptance of this fact, and Kabru is too far away
to hear if he also makes one of his soft, wordless hums as well.

The meal is excellent, and with the exception of the questionable bacon, it’s entirely
vegetables as far as Kabru can tell. Even if the pumpkin had a face. He’s never heard of a
monster pumpkin, after all. The chunks of bright orange face-pumpkin are crispy on the
outside and soft and creamy on the inside, and the bacon is crispy, the leaves are tender, and
Kabru happily gets a second helping for himself and Mithrun to share.

Unfortunately, Kabru has a horrible feeling about lunch.

Because about midday, both Laios and Mithrun call for them to stop, each with urgency in
their tone. A monster. One they’ll no doubt eat for lunch.

“Which direction do you think it opens?” Laios asks, looking at a perfectly ordinary patch of
rock about two feet in front of them. “We’ll want to be on that side to grab it when it comes
out.”

Mithrun is quiet for a moment, examining the same patch. Then: “The other side. We could
try to skirt the edge, but the moment we’re in range, it will strike, and we’d be at a
disadvantage. Easier way is to teleport across. We can bypass the entire thing.”

“We don’t want to bypass it, though,” Laios says. “We need to restock our supplies. And I’m
sure Senshi can cook something tasty with a tunnel spider. Even if the other spiders weren’t
very good.”

He turns to look at the dwarf. “You think you can salvage spider legs?”

“I know I can. Legs and more. There’s a lot of eating on a spider of any size.”

Laios nods. “It’s settled, then. We drag it out, kill it, and chop it up for lunch.”

Mithrun stares at him long enough that Kabru is almost worried there’ll be an outburst about
wasted time and moving on. But in the end, he just nods, puts a hand lightly on Laios’s bicep
in a move Kabru knows all too well, and sends the man about twenty feet further ahead in the
tunnel.

“Wah!” Laios screams. But then he looks back at them. “Oh, that’s brilliant,” he calls back to
them. “Send the others, too!”

One by one, they get deposited on the other side of whatever Laios and Mithrun had seen in
the ground, far enough down the tunnel that they won’t trigger whatever it is they’re seeing.
Mithrun even murmurs a quick “I’m teleporting you across now” to Kabru when it’s his turn.

In the end, despite Senshi’s teleportation sickness, the group successfully crosses far enough
away, Laios assures him, that the vibrations won’t trigger an immediate attack. Then Laios,
Mithrun, and Izutsumi turn the tables on the spider lurking beneath the ground, provoking the
spider into attacking from out of the hole hidden behind a webbed trap door illusioned to look
like the tunnel floor.

And the spider is massive, much more massive than the three spiders he and Mithrun had
encountered before. It towers over them, and its legs are easily as big around as theirs. It
takes all three of them to keep the spider from retreating back inside the moment it notices
that it’s outnumbered by irritating pests and not ambushing its typical prey.

Izutsumi seems to dance through the air, antagonizing the spider and jabbing at its eyes from
above, every bit as impressive as the party of Easterners had been against the harpies. But
Mithrun appears content to take the low ground, ducking underneath the hulking spider and
avoiding getting stung or stepped on while occasionally kicking at the joints of its legs to
throw it off balance.

As he harries the spider from one side with his kitchen knife and from a safe enough distance
that he shouldn’t need to be resurrected after this—Kabru finds himself wishing Mithrun had
just teleported a rock into the thing so they could be done with it. Just the same as the other
three from when they were traveling alone.

There are rocks available in the tunnel, though the rock-to-spider size ratio is maybe not as
promising. He has no idea why they’re using Laios’s more dangerous method this time when
the other method works just fine and is much quicker. If the rocks are smaller relative to the
spider, Mithrun could just use more of them. Right?

While the rest of the party’s current fighters keep the spider distracted and drive it away from
its lair, Laios climbs up the side of the tunnel wall and waits for them to herd the spider over
to him. He manages to leap onto the smaller part of its body—its cephalothorax, Kabru later
learns and promptly forgets—and thrusts his sword horizontally into the bigger bulbous part
to finish the thing off in a shower of translucent pale blue sludge.

The blue sludge—maybe blood, maybe guts, maybe both—sprays out over Laios and also
pours down over the exoskeleton, coating Mithrun below, before the spider spasms violently
and falls to the side, flinging Laios off. The spider continues to spasm, its legs folding in on
themselves and then splaying out again, for several minutes before it is still, legs remaining
tightly folded.

“Gross,” Izutsumi says, backing away from the spider and from Laios as he goes to pull his
sword free. “Why’s it blue?”

“Spiders bleed blue,” both Laios and Mithrun chorus.

“I stabbed it in the heart,” Laios adds.

Its heart is in the big part of it, huh? Kabru would have thought it was closer to the chest area,
but it’s a spider, and a monster, so he supposes its heart can be anywhere it likes. Even in its
butt half.
Kabru holds a hand down to help Mithrun to his feet so he doesn’t slip in the pale blue puddle
he’s currently sitting in. “Bet you wish you used teleportation from a distance, same as last
time, right, Captain?”

Mithrun reaches up and grips Kabru’s hand, standing without a problem. “Didn’t know what
parts they wanted to eat. And, well. Aim. There was a higher risk with the rest of you
jumping around or lunging into striking range.”

“That’s right. I guess I’ve gotten too used to standing off to the side while you teleport stuff.”

Mithrun grants him a tiny smile. “And all this time you should have been getting used eating
to spider meat.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Watch the fangs, even now,” Laios warns as Senshi moves in with his vastly superior
kitchen knife to dismantle the horrible thing. “Instant full-body paralysis if you get so much
as nicked.”

“Better that than turned into a statue, huh Marcille?” Chilchuck says with a grin.

“Hey, that was no picnic! My eyelashes broke off!”

“That’s why I said this was better than that!”

Kabru wonders when in their travels she’d been petrified, and more to the point, how they
managed to undo the petrification curse with their magic user as the victim. She couldn’t
have cast anything to save herself while turned to stone, and none of the rest of them know
magic, as far as he is aware.

Despite, or perhaps because of Laios crowding Senshi to excitedly explain each of the organs
inside the spider carcass, Marcille pushes a horn of something at him and insists that he and
Mithrun go wipe themselves down while the rest of them set up camp away from the spider’s
lair.

It’s easy enough to backtrack to the natural hot spring Izutsumi and Chilchuck had heard
earlier, though with Mithrun’s sense of direction, Kabru opts to accompany them. The fact
that he’s relatively clean helps, as well. He can hold the towels and what clean clothes they
have between them to change into while their blue-splattered clothes are cleaned.

Senshi promises to have a nice, hot meal waiting for them when they return, which only
makes Kabru want to lead Mithrun off into the unknown and never return.

Laios isn’t interested in a soak, but he does wash his face and hands, changes his clothes, and
re-dons his armor after cleaning it. Mithrun is in no way going to escape without a full-on
bath, though, and he seems to know this because he doesn’t even hesitate to get into the hot
spring and hold his hand out for the soap.

“Will you two be okay on your own?” Laios asks as he fastens the last of his buckles. “I want
to go see that spider again, maybe investigate its lair.”
Kabru nods and waves him on his way. “I know how to get back. Take the lantern, and be
careful,” he adds.

The last thing they need is to lose Laios to some unanticipated danger deep inside a spider’s
pit trap.

“Let me help?” Kabru asks Mithrun as Laios disappears into the main tunnel and the elf
gestures for some magical light of their own.

“Hm?”

“I can wash clothes while you wash you.” Kabru smiles. “We’ll be done that much quicker.”

Mithrun shrugs, puts the soap on the rocks around the hot spring, and sinks another few
inches into the water, until he’s roughly chin-deep. “Given what sort of meal waits for you, I
would have thought you wanted to take your time.”

He does have a point. Even a very good point. But as Kabru starts scrubbing off spidersilk
armor and dipping it in the water to rinse, he knows they won’t escape a spider meal, no
matter how long they take. If he’s going to eat whatever it is Senshi makes out of that carcass,
it’s probably better to eat it when it’s fresh.

“You’re going to get your own clothes wet that way,” Mithrun observes after a moment.

“And you’re not going to get your hair clean just sitting there, Captain.” Kabru picks up the
horn of soap and waves it a little. “I can do it if you’d prefer.”

“I don’t care, either way.”

But he makes no move to reach for the soap, Kabru notes, and so he sets the horn of soap to
one side and strips down before joining Mithrun in the water. It feels good, just hot enough to
sting without being hot enough to burn. And it’s not too deep, just deep enough to sit
comfortably with his head and chest out of the water.

“Come over here, Captain,” he says. “Turn your back to me. I’ll get your hair, then you can
wash your face. You have spider goop congealing on your eyelashes.”

Mithrun heaves a put-upon sigh, but he does move in the water, and sits where Kabru
instructed. He’s also even more pliable than he was back in that shed, tipping his head back at
the merest hint of direction to do so, closing his eyes when Kabru tells him to, letting Kabru
cup his palm against the back of his head to keep him from simply toppling backward in the
water.

It’s probably just the hot water. He’s been sitting in it longer than Kabru has been, and the
heat has just thoroughly relaxed his muscles. That’s the reason Mithrun is so complaisant, so
easily moved into whatever position Kabru needs in order to properly clean his hair. And the
heat is also the reason his ears are flushed. The rest of him is equally flushed, after all. It’s the
heat of the water, the heat of the steam.
But some traitorous little scrap of Kabru’s mind wants to believe it’s something else. Wants
to believe that it’s not the heat, but Kabru himself, that Mithrun is recalling Kabru’s earlier
attentions that had brought him such pleasure and is falling into the same pattern. Possibly in
hopes for a repetition.

Kabru imagines kicking the wretched little scrap of his mind out of his skull entirely, maybe
after brutally strangling it. It has no place here. All he’s doing here is helping the captain with
his hair, lathering it and rinsing it until it no longer runs blue but is returned to its silvery
gray. And if his fingers happen to comb through the strands of it as they fan out in the water,
that’s to try to chase away tangles. No other reason.

He does what he can to salvage Mithrun’s clothes after rinsing the last of the soap out of his
hair, wringing the fabric out repeatedly in the water until it rinses clean, and then setting it
aside to work on another piece of clothing. By the time Kabru’s done with Laios’s cast-offs
and with the task of scrubbing Mithrun’s boots to a passable state, Mithrun himself is largely
ready to climb out of the water and dry himself off.

With one exception.

“Captain, you have some—” Kabru dips his rag in the water and wrings it out before
gesturing for Mithrun to lean toward him. “Close your eyes.”

Kabru waits for him to do so—and firmly puts it out of his mind that he wants to lean
forward and kiss him, even with spider blood on his face—and then gently wipes at
Mithrun’s eyelashes, hoping that he’s not being too rough. Mithrun doesn’t flinch back at all,
so Kabru can only assume he’s not applying too much pressure as he eliminates the last traces
of blue crust from the lashes.

“There.”

Kabru sits back in the water and braces himself to get out of the hot spring and greet the
cooler dungeon air. His fingers have pruned up, and he knows that they’ve been here long
enough already. Any longer is just indulgence that they don’t need.

They share the remaining dry towel before Kabru takes it and bundles it around the wet
clothes and the towel Laios had used to wipe himself off. They’ll hang these things by the
fire, and might end up needing to just camp for the rest of the night before everything is dry,
which he senses Mithrun won’t appreciate. But there isn’t any help for it.

Luckily, Marcille had a pair of pants Mithrun can wear while his uniform pants dry, and
Laios had donated a shirt, which Mithrun dons over the top of his cleaned boots and
spidersilk armor. With the addition of a spare bit of twine to use as a belt, Kabru trusts the
ensemble won’t be too uncomfortable. It’s only for the rest of the day and possibly the night,
anyway.

Maybe if it’s uncomfortable enough, Mithrun won’t put himself in the position of getting
covered with spider viscera again.
Kabru almost has to laugh at that notion, as he pulls on the last of his own armor in
preparation for the trek back through the tunnels. No amount of discomfort would persuade
Mithrun to go out of his way to avoid a repetition. He simply can’t want that for himself.

He ties the fabric back over the opening of the horn of soap and hands it to Mithrun for
safekeeping. This way Kabru’s sword arm will be free to wield the kitchen knife if needed
while they walk back, and Mithrun will have a handy projectile to teleport into any monsters
they come across. It shouldn’t come to that, of course, but it helps to remain prepared.

However prepared he might feel to face monsters, Kabru is entirely unprepared for that little
piece of himself he keeps banishing to scurry back inside his skull and plant notions in his
brain as he catches sight of Mithrun in his current oversized attire. He looks so much smaller
wearing the others’ clothes, so much more vulnerable.

He supposes it serves as an echo to that earlier vulnerability, when the captain had given
himself over to Kabru’s needs fully and willingly, had opened himself up to feeling the
pleasure Kabru strove to bring him, had allowed himself to experience what Kabru had to
offer. That’s the only explanation he has for the sudden urge that rips through him, and that
he can’t seem to help acting on.

Before they reach the main tunnel, Kabru pulls Mithrun to the side.

“Can I try something, Captain?” he asks, already thinking better of it but deciding to see it
through anyway.

Mithrun looks up at him curiously, his head tilted just that tiniest bit so that his wet bangs fall
to the side. “I don’t mind.”

It’s not exactly enthusiasm, but it’s permission of a sort, and Kabru reaches out with his free
hand to cradle Mithrun’s cheek before pulling him in for a well-telegraphed and gentle kiss.
He’s not sure what he expects the move to result in, what reaction he’s thinking this will get
him. Not a slap, certainly—Mithrun wouldn’t care enough to slap away an unwanted kiss.
But what?

To his surprise, Mithrun melts against him almost immediately, neither pulling back nor
stoically receiving the kiss without reaction.

It’s true that Mithrun’s responding kisses are tentative ones, feeling Kabru out as though not
sure he’s wanted—as though Mithrun wasn’t the recipient of unasked for attention but was
instead the instigator to be pushed away—but he’s definitely receptive to being kissed. And
he rests a hand on Kabru’s chest without pushing Kabru away at all.

And to Kabru’s very great pleasure, he’s definitely flushed when Kabru eventually ends their
kissing, looking up at him with that same pretty hue across his cheeks and in what portions of
his ears poke through the strands of his wet hair.

“What was that about?” Mithrun asks.

Kabru smiles softly. “I’ve wanted to do that,” he says. “Thank you for taking care of me
earlier, with the pollen. I don’t know if I ever thanked you outright.”

“You did.”

“Oh, good. So, this,” Kabru continues. “Did you enjoy it?”

Mithrun blinks at him. “‘Taking care of you’ earlier, the hot spring, or the kiss just now?”

“Um. The kiss just now.”

Mithrun reaches up, his hand leaving Kabru’s chest and coming to his own mouth, the tips of
his fingers ghosting across his chapped lips. After a moment, he nods. “I did.”

Kabru smiles again, relieved. “I enjoyed it, too. It’s a shame we’re stuck in a dungeon,” he
adds. “Because I’d like to get to know more of what you enjoy.”

“Why does being in a dungeon stop you?”

Kabru looks at the opening to the main tunnel. “Well,” he says. “Chilchuck is pretty
particular about avoiding intra-party dalliances in the dungeon, and on top of that, Laios is
probably going to be too curious for anyone’s comfort levels if he ever did pick up on
something between us.”

He isn’t sure he likes the confusion on Mithrun’s face. Trying to explain again that privacy is
something Mithrun is entitled to—and something that Kabru would also like to enjoy, thanks
—is going to sour things by removing the sense of discovery. If a light is shined too brightly
on a subject, all the mystery is gone at once, after all.

He’d like to discover Mithrun, and he’d like for Mithrun to have the opportunity to discover
him—to discover that he can learn to desire him, maybe—without the pressure of knowing
Kabru’s hopes all at once and having to declare them futile before those hopes have a chance
to germinate.

“So, yeah,” Kabru continues hurriedly, “probably best to keep this to ourselves. Plus, your
squad will probably skewer me on the spot if they ever learned about the pollen. Let’s never
mention that again.”

Something about that settles the confusion, because Mithrun’s expression clears. “They’re far
more likely to laugh than to become violent,” he says, “and it isn’t like ‘intra-party
dalliances’ are avoided among the Canaries, anyway.”

It’s Kabru’s turn to be confused. “They aren’t?”

“There are wardens who become partners in all ways in other squads,” Mithrun says with a
shrug. “And the criminals in my own squad will spend their spare time however they see fit.
Lycion and Fleki in particular are close. Pattadol is tight-laced enough to avoid unnecessary
fraternizing, and no one would look at someone as disfigured as myself and think to get too
close, but—”
“I find you attractive,” Kabru interrupts. “No matter what others might think.”

He means to continue along those lines, but Mithrun is too quick for him.

“You’re a tall-man,” he says, “so your poor taste can be excused. But if you truly don’t want
the others in our current party to suspect anything, then we need to get back to said party.”

Mithrun starts to walk off down the main tunnel, and turns back in confusion when Kabru
grabs his wrist only a few steps into his trek.

“Wrong way, Captain.” Kabru gently tugs him the other way, and then gives Mithrun’s hand a
brief squeeze once the elf is on the right course.

Butchering the tunnel spider must have taken a lot longer than Kabru suspected it would,
because when they arrive back at the remains of the carcass and follow the trail to the party
camped a few hundred feet further down the tunnel, the food is still being prepared.

So much for missing out on lunch.

By the time he and Marcille have the wet clothes and towels hung near the magic cookfire to
dry, it’s ready.

Soon, each of them has a section of boiled spider leg and a small mound of pearl-sized white
spheres, garnished with herbs, that squish when poked with a fork. Kabru stares down at his
plate of white, glistening spider caviar and feels a little like screaming. Maybe a lot like
screaming.

“These are way easier to get into than the mimic legs,” Laios says with a grin as he pulls
meat out of his leg segment. “We can use forks this time.”

“Mmm,” Marcille says with obvious relish before swallowing one of the eggs. “Nutty and
rich, and a bit creamy.”

Creamy is not what Kabru wants to be eating. He might bring every single bite back up if the
texture of these things is creamy.

He looks over at Mithrun, who is methodically eating what he’s been served without much of
a reaction. “Well?”

“She’s right. The herbs are bitter and a bit sour. Their flavor cuts through the other nicely.”

Kabru sets his plate down and focuses on the dusty brown spider leg instead. The meat isn’t
stuck to the shell with these, and in fact pulls right out with a twist once he gets his fork in
there. It’s a little stringy, but in the way crab might be, instead of the other. It’s also sweet like
crab, with a hint of nuttiness toning down the sweetness.

Much, much better than the ones he’d made over their fire. He’s not sure even Senshi can
salvage spider eggs, but the leg meat is tasty, even if it comes out of a thick, hairy shell. It’s
too pale and firm to be confused with barometz, but it does remind him of the flavor—
something crab-adjacent. Not actual crab flavor, but close.
“You’re not afraid they’ll hatch inside you, are you?” Chilchuck asks with an elbow to
Kabru’s ribs and a pointed glance at the plate of spider caviar on the ground by his feet.

“I wasn’t,” Kabru laughs in response.

Damn, they’ve noticed. He is going to have to eat the spider caviar. Mithrun can’t save him
this time, because Mithrun is being plied with more, himself, as though Senshi is determined
to make up for that five-year window of not eating while he was a dungeon lord.

Well, he can at least save it to last, and then if he claims to be too full… It’s worth a try.
Worst case, he can try to swallow them like medicine. They can’t pop open in his mouth and
gush creamy spider egg insides all over his tongue if he doesn’t chew them at all.

Though, what if they do hatch in his stomach because he didn’t break them open?

Kabru picks up his plate and experimentally mashes one of the eggs with the back of his fork.
It pops unpleasantly, and yes, there’s a thick liquid inside, like a mostly set jelly. Maybe that’s
the safer way to think about this. Just mash them all up and treat them like jelly. He gets to
mashing.

They’ll need to move on as soon as the clothes are dry, and they’ll need to wash dishes before
then—there’s no time for him to be squeamish if they want to get further away from the
spider carcass before making a true camp for the night.

“You think too much,” Mithrun murmurs to him, using court elvish and a tone that’s gentler
than any he’s used with him so far.

Court elvish? It’s possible Marcille knows the variant, given what he suspects is her
upbringing, but the others wouldn’t know it. Why is Mithrun choosing secrecy? Why now? Is
he trying to hide something? What?

“Stop thinking,” Mithrun adds, using the same language and tone. “Just eat.”

Kabru sighs and resolves to do exactly that.

 Explorations
Chapter Notes

Hey guys, sorry I missed this last Thursday/Friday--had a ton of real life stuff going on.
^_^

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The clothes aren’t fully dry when they decide to move on, but they aren’t sopping wet, either.
It’ll be easy enough to just carry them while they head for a more secure pocket of the tunnel
system Izutsumi and Chilchuck found up ahead. They won’t have made much more forward
progress, but they will be out of range of the spider carcass and whatever monsters come to
investigate it.

Dragging Laios away from the carcass turns out to be the hardest aspect of shifting their
campsite.

Kabru sacrifices himself to go back to get him, followed by some of Mithrun’s mage lights,
and he regrets it immediately when he sees firsthand—really sees—just how little of the
carcass is left. And therefore, how much of it they’ll be eating in some form or another.

“Did you know spiders don’t have a long twisty tube for digestion, the way we do?” Laios
says, sitting by the monster with a lantern and stroking the bristles on a bit of leftover
carapace. “They have a pumping stomach in their cephalothorax—that’s this bit here—that
extends a little bit into their legs, and then at the back end…”

Kabru nods, his expression full of excitement that’s a distinct counterpoint to his disgust, as
he tunes the educational lesson out.

Laios is fond enough of this monster that Kabru wonders how he was even able to kill it. But
he did end up able to attack the chimera in the end, and he swore to Toshiro that he’d handle
that whole situation as well, which can only end with the chimera’s death, certainly. Even if
the monster used to be his sister.

Kabru… doesn’t understand personally what that would be like, exactly, to be raised with a
sibling from such a young age. His foster siblings all came later, when he was older. But he
likens it to if Rin had been transformed, not by illusion into a fishman, but in actuality into a
massive murderous beast with all her magic and also all the attacks a monster has at its
command. He’d have to kill her, but he’d do it as quickly and cleanly as possible.

And since she’d be a monster, he would mess it up, just like he did with the chimera. Because
Mithrun was right—he sucks at dealing with monsters, and in this hypothetical situation, Rin
would be, just like the Falin chimera, a monster in the end.
He would be devastated to end her life, but he would feel honor-bound to do it. Rin wouldn’t
want to live on as a monster. She’d want him to save her and if the only way to do that was
by killing her, then that is what she’d want. Surely Falin would have wanted the same thing.
Surely Laios would be able to realize that.

Though… Can Laios really be trusted to end a monster that he clearly is impressed by and
also fond of? He ended the tunnel spider readily enough, but that spider wasn’t his sister at
any point. And can Falin be trusted to have wanted something different for herself? He never
got a read on the sister, and his read on Laios is still too simplistic for his liking.

It can’t truly be that all he is at the heart of him is a lover of monsters. Why would he love
monsters? What is it about monsters that makes Laios so awestruck and fascinated? Is it just
that they’re different from anything outside a dungeon? Is it that he feels an affinity to them
somehow?

Laios is indifferent to people, after all. Perhaps in his childhood people were indifferent to
him… Perhaps he never felt like he fit into the picture he was part of, and dungeons are
where he finally found himself understood and accepted. It would follow that monsters—also
creatures that don’t and shouldn’t fit in—would be something he felt a kind of kinship with.

Kabru’s own childhood fears that he was a monster could be useful in connecting with Laios.
His birth mother had raised him on her own, before the dungeon disaster, because of his blue
eyes and his father’s reaction to them. And the people in Utaya had shunned him to some
extent for the same. The evil eye. Cursed. Able to curse others. Dangerous. Monstrous.

“Belongs in the dungeon” some had muttered when they thought he couldn’t hear.

Milsiril had laid some of that fear to rest with all the genealogy tomes she’d given him to
read. But blue eyes were so common for elves, and other lighter colors, that it was still hard
to be one hundred percent certain that it was possible for his parents to have made him
without the interference of a monster of some sort.

After all, the only people with blue eyes in Utaya had been adventurers from foreign parts,
clearly outsiders in their dress and demeanor, in the accents with which they spoke. And from
his birth mother, he vaguely recalls, he had learned that no one in their family but Kabru had
ever had blue eyes. And no one in their home village, whose name—like his birth mother’s,
like his own—he can’t even remember.

Would Laios understand what that was like? If he grew up feeling like an outsider in his own
family, his own village, would he understand some of what Kabru felt, both before the
disaster and while being raised in the elven lands? Always an outsider in his own home, no
matter how welcomed his mothers sought to make him feel.

In the end, Kabru loses his chance to connect. Just as Mithrun had said, he thinks too much.

“Oi, are you two coming or what?” Chilchuck calls from down the tunnel.

“Oh, right,” Kabru says with a bright smile. “I was supposed to come get you, and here I’ve
just been listening to you this whole time!”
“That’s okay,” Laios says, getting up with one last pet along the carapace. “It’s nice to have
someone listen to me ramble on about these things. Everyone else tells me to shut up and stop
being weird.”

Kabru nods as they walk down the tunnel toward the others. “That must be hard, never
feeling understood.”

Laios sighs. “Falin always understood. Even when we were just little kids, she always
understood, and no one else ever did.”

“I’m sorry,” Kabru says. “I’m sorry you lost her, and like this. I didn’t have any siblings
when I was really little. Only some foster siblings when I was older. I can’t imagine how it
feels to lose her.”

Laios grins—a reaction somewhat the opposite of the one Kabru is expecting.

“But we’re getting her back!” he exclaims. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to kill her, yes. And
then— We’ll have a feast, and we’ll eat all of her dragon parts. Then, when the dragon is
digested, we’ll resurrect her, and she’ll be herself again!”

Kabru stares at him, aghast. Eat… his sister? A feast? A whole dragon’s worth of meat? The
chimera is huge! How would they even accomplish this, if they do go through with such a
horrifying and simplistic plan?

“Uh…”

“There are the orcs, see. They’ve agreed to help us, and they’ll have no problem with a feast.
Their wargs can help, too. And there are the people of the Golden Country. They have no
appetite, but they can still eat, and they’ll want to help. And then, of course, there’s Shuro’s
party, and your party—you’ll help, won’t you?”

Laios looks at him with such hope and confidence that Kabru finds himself nodding before
he can do the more reasonable thing and cross his arms to ward off the very idea.

“Great!” Laios says. “And then, we needed another big group, because a dragon is huge and
that’s a lot of meat. But now with the Canaries here, they can join us. Mith… Mith… Um,
your captain friend, he seems to be okay eating monsters, and he can get the others on board
with it, I’m sure.”

“Mithrun,” Kabru says. “His name is Mithrun, and I don’t think the elves will be on board.
Sorry.”

Laios frowns. “But we’re going to defeat the lunatic magician, and then after Falin is safely
resurrected, we can close the dungeon, just like they want. I’d rather not close it, if it were up
to me, and if I had to take over as the dungeon lord after beating Thistle, it would be up to
me. But if it meant the elves would help us eat Falin’s dragon parts, I’d close the dungeon.”

It’s… It’s a lot to digest. And Kabru hates that digestion is the first place his mind goes.
“So you’d be bargaining with the Canaries,” Kabru finally says. “Eat Falin with us, and we’ll
close the dungeon for you.”

“Yep. Why, do you think it won’t work?”

Kabru shrugs. “From what I know of them, it doesn’t matter who the lord of the dungeon is.
They just want to break the dungeon, kill the lord of the dungeon, and seal what’s left so it
starves to the point of collapse.”

“Hmm… That does present a problem.”

“If you were the lord of the dungeon,” Kabru says, “all you’d be accomplishing is shifting the
target from… Thistle’s back to your own.”

Thistle? That’s the lunatic magician’s name? How does Laios know his name? And did he
say the Golden Country? As if he knew the people there? Has he met them? How? Did he go
there? When? And also how? And the winged lion bit…

“Laios, listen.” Kabru waits for his attention. “About the winged lion.”

“We have to rescue him from the lowest part of the dungeon, yeah. He’s going to help us
against Thistle.”

“You remember what Mithrun said about a demon at the heart of every dungeon?” Kabru
asks.

“…You think the winged lion is the dungeon’s demon,” Laios says after a beat. “That the
ancients are the ones who trapped him.”

Kabru shrugs. “I don’t know how he got trapped or who trapped him. But I do think he’s the
demon. In Mithrun’s dungeon, the demon appeared as a goat. Just a little thing at first, a kid,
friendly and harmless. But it grew as it fed on his wishes and if it had been able to gather
enough strength in the end, when it devoured his desires, it would have broken free of the
dungeon.”

He pauses.

“And if Thistle managed to trap the winged lion before it could eat enough of his desires to
take away the desire not to be eaten, then maybe it’s best to leave the thing trapped.” Kabru
runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know how to defeat a demon, Laios. I don’t think
Mithrun does, either, for all that’s his only desire in life.”

“But if we don’t free him, we can’t beat Thistle. We can’t save Falin. We can’t break the
curse on the Golden Country. Without the winged lion, none of the rest of it works.”

“Thistle is just an elf, right?” Kabru asks. “Insane and insanely powerful, but human. I can
deal with humans. And we have Mithrun, who might not be able to reason with anyone worth
a damn, but who still managed to bring Thistle down in mere minutes.”
Laios frowns again. “I’ll think on it. Even if we don’t free the winged lion, I’m sure we’ll
find Thistle at the heart of the dungeon. So we keep going as we were, and we can make
some decisions later.”

Kabru smiles, and for once around Laios, it’s genuine. “That’s all I can ask.”

Their new camp is at the junction of two narrow cross-tunnels, which isn’t necessarily more
secure than their prior camp, but is well away from the spider carcass and near another
natural spring, this one surprisingly and refreshingly chill. From what Kabru knows of
geology, it shouldn’t be possible. But from what he’s come to know about dungeons, he’s not
completely shocked after the initial discovery.

Senshi immediately begins the meal prep, cutting a long blue tube into bite sized chunks and
adding it to a pan of water over the magicked cooking circle and makeshift rock stove. Kabru
doesn’t know what part of the spider that is, and he doesn’t want to know. All he knows is
that he needs a distraction when Senshi adds large chunks of the hairy carapace to the water
“to make a rich stock.”

So Kabru joins Marcille in hanging up the towels to cover the four tunnel openings, adding
the still-damp clothes to the setup. They’ll definitely be ready to wear again in the morning.
And in the meantime, they contribute to the cause of blocking their camp’s light from any
monsters that might investigate, and muffling their voices.

It’s a bit early still to be making camp, and Mithrun is a dark little raincloud about it in his
borrowed oversized clothing. Kabru could swear the elf is close to pouting, and he can’t help
but find it adorable. But while he might not mind if Mithrun decides to complain about their
pace, he does want to keep the peace. So he’ll need to distract Mithrun from the fact that they
aren’t moving on.

When Izutsumi announces that she’s going to scout ahead, Kabru sees the perfect opportunity
to keep Mithrun both engaged with the party and also feeling like they’re making progress.

“We’ll come with you,” Kabru says, gesturing toward the captain. “If you don’t mind.”

From what he knows of her between the past few days and the week he spent traveling with
her and the rest of Toshiro’s party, she will absolutely mind. But she might accept them,
anyway. It’s worth a shot. If she rejects the offer, they can scout ahead on their own, try a
different tunnel, see where it leads them. Maybe even take a moment to share another kiss.

“Ugh, fine, but you better keep up.”

Mithrun summons up some light for them and they head out. They take several turns as the
tunnels branch, backtracking when they hit dead ends or drop offs that are too steep to
navigate. Somewhere, the theory goes, there will be a transition point to a lower level of the
dungeon.

Kabru hasn’t mentioned his fears that they aren’t actually in the dungeon but are outside of its
sphere of magical influence, and he doesn’t bring it up now for fear that it’ll be confirmed.
They’ve definitely been switching directions as they go, so at least they’re still near the
dungeon instead of following some long exit passage to the surface or the ocean.

“You were a dungeon thing,” Izutsumi says as they examine a waterfall above them that
flows down past them into the depths. “Lord or whatever.”

“I was.”

“What do you know about black magic?”

Kabru had really hoped this wouldn’t come up. But he’s not sure how to change the subject
without obviously changing the subject, and he’s equally unsure that Izutsumi will accept a
change of subject in the first place. She might just restate her question.

“Quite a lot,” Mithrun answers.

“And beastmen?”

“There’s a beastman in my squad. Lycion.” Mithrun steps to the edge of the drop-off and
peers down, sending his lights over the edge and into the hole to see how far down it goes.
“He’s very effective at clearing a path. An adept fighter. He chose to become a beastman,
though. You didn’t.”

That makes Izutsumi back up a step before she bristles and steps closer again. “How do you
know that?” she demands.

“I listen.” Mithrun calls back his mage lights, apparently finding little of interest down in the
hole. “Lycion talks about his crimes every time he’s given an opportunity to. His condition
and yours are very different.”

“So?”

“So, it stands to reason that if he is a human who chose to merge a beast’s soul into his own,
you would be the opposite. An unwillingly created beastman. Young enough, certainly, to
have had no choice in the matter.”

Izutsumi glares at him, and then turns her glare on Kabru for good measure. “I’m not going
to the west. Not unless you elves can change me back. You can’t take me prisoner.”

Mithrun nods. “We’d have no use for you, and therefore no reason to bring you back with us
unless you wanted to come. You obviously aren’t responsible for your condition.”

“…So you can’t change me back?”

“Lycion would know for sure. I don’t.”

“Oh.”

Kabru bets the demon could grant a wish like that, at least if it was made in the dungeon, but
he doesn’t say anything of the sort. There’s no sense in giving yet another member of Laios’s
party a reason to become the lord of this dungeon.

And who knows? Maybe the wish would only remain granted while she was inside the
dungeon. Maybe she’d revert to this form if she later left the dungeon. Would she consider
that worth it? Staying trapped in the dungeon for the rest of her life? It’s not a bargain Kabru
would make, that’s for sure. Even if he was literally part monster.

Izutsumi’s voice has lost a lot of its bite when she next speaks: “I thought maybe the lunatic
magician would know how to do it, because he’s lord of the dungeon. And knows a lot of
black magic.”

“He might know,” Mithrun allows. “I doubt any spell he cast to split your halves would last
outside of this dungeon, though. His powers as a dungeon lord are limited to the dungeon
itself. Outside of the dungeon, he is nothing more than a misguided elven youth.”

“Youth? Isn’t he, like, a thousand years old?” Izutsumi glares. “I know I heard the story right.
He’s older than all of us put together.”

Mithrun shrugs. “Time treats people differently under an immortality curse. The dungeon’s
lord placed the spell on all of the Golden Country, himself included. From what I saw, he’s on
the cusp of adulthood.”

Kabru had thought he looked young, up on the first floor. Not just short for an elf, but young.
And hadn’t Mithrun all but confirmed it their first night with the Touden party? Youth would
contribute to the enraged outburst in response to Mithrun’s harsh and less than diplomatic
announcement that Delgal had wanted him dead in the end.

Oh, if only they’d let Kabru do the talking. Why does no one let him do it? Sure, the shadow
governor had been too corrupted by the dungeon to reach. But that was a one-off failure.
Kabru is very convincing most of the time!

“So you beat up a kid,” Izutsumi says. “Up on the first floor.”

“I tried to reason with him. I tried to set him free.” He shakes his head. “I should have
teleported him to the surface on first contact. But I do make an effort to reach them, first.”

They head back after another few dead ends, with Kabru steering Mithrun along the path
toward the junction and their campsite after Izutsumi decides they’re walking too slowly and
takes off at a pace Kabru has no intention of matching.

When he catches sight in the distance of the towels strung up as a makeshift door, Kabru
reaches for Mithrun’s hand and holds him back.

“Would you enjoy a kiss, Captain?” Kabru murmurs.

 Mithrun looks up at him briefly, studying his face, his eye eventually lingering on Kabru’s
lips. “I would, yes.”

Kabru smiles and reaches for Mithrun, only to be met partway as Mithrun initiates a kiss of
his own. It’s a slow thing, their kiss, exploratory rather than eager, and it expands into several
such kisses, gradually deepening but gaining no urgency.

Kabru threads his fingers through the hair at the nape of Mithrun’s neck, holding him close,
but gently enough that he can break away whenever he wants to—if he even can want to. His
other hand follows the twine around Mithrun’s waist, coming to rest at the small of his back.

Though the leather and chainmail of his armor muffle the sensation into mere slight presence,
Kabru can feel that Mithrun’s hand rests on his chest again, and he wishes he was just in his
shirt so that he could truly experience Mithrun’s hand. He knows it would be cooler than
most—Mithrun runs cold, even for an elf, at least in his extremities. He knows it would be
resting somewhat lightly, not pushing him away at all. But he wants more.

Kabru stores away the sound of Mithrun’s sigh when Kabru finally pulls away, denying
himself what he wants for the sake of remaining outwardly compliant with Chilchuck’s edicts
against romantic entanglements. Kabru wishes he could hear that sigh again, wishes he could
hear the moans and groans and gasps from before in the shed, wishes he could hear the
panting breath and see the open, trusting expression painted pink with exertion.

But he’ll have to settle for remembering a simple sigh. Will have to take that sigh as a hint of
disappointment, perhaps, that their kissing has ended. Maybe a sign that Mithrun could learn
to seek out more of Kabru’s kisses, could learn to want Kabru.

Because the longer he spends his days and nights essentially glued to Mithrun’s side, the
more he gets to see glimpses of what lies behind the dull, apathetic exterior. And that man?
The elf who cares about others enough to try to reason with a dungeon lord despite the
protocol to kill them on sight? The one who tried, in his own way, to reassure Izutsumi, to
offer her some hope that his squad might have some answers when this is all over…

Kabru really, really likes him.

Rin will be so disappointed that he’s falling for an elf.

Chapter End Notes

Quick question, y'all: Since this is my first story in the Dungeon Meshi fandom, I'm
curious about how you found your way to the fic. Was it by rec, tumblr post, AO3
search, something else?
 The Daltian Clan and Other Tales
Chapter Notes

Happy holidays to anyone who happens to be celebrating one, and happy midweek to
everyone else!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“Took you long enough,” Chilchuck says when he and Mithrun finally duck under the
hanging towels to enter their campsite proper. “You get lost without Izutsumi to lead the
way?”

“Something like that,” Kabru says with a smile. “The captain has no sense of direction, you
know. Or he has a bad sense of direction, rather.”

“Well, you’re in time for dinner, so grab a bowl and have a seat.”

Oh, joy.

Kabru takes a seat to Mithrun’s left after fetching two bowls of a rich-smelling, reddish-
brown stew. He knows there’s spider in here. Whatever that blue tube thing was, and the
color probably comes from the bits of carapace that went into it. A quick stir with his spoon
reveals that the carapace is gone, at least, and that there are big hunks of potato and spider leg
meat, along with some smaller diced onions, the thin squares of now-black tube, and some
dark green stuff he can’t identify that looks herby.

Remembering Mithrun’s advice to not think about it too hard and just eat, Kabru does his
best. The leg meat he knows will taste good. The potatoes will be good, and the onions. He
hasn’t met an herb he doesn’t like, and this will be a filling meal. There aren’t any spider
eggs in it. That’s a huge plus right there.

His first spoonful is carefully selected to have only the things he knows he’ll enjoy, and it
encourages him to fish out one of the tube squares next.

“That’s the heart, right there,” Senshi helpfully tells him from across their circle. “Very good
for you.”

The heart of a giant tunnel spider. What is his life coming to? But it’s better than eternal elf
cake, he supposes. Given the choice between this dungeon with these people in this situation
eating this food, and going back to Milsiril, it’s no contest. He’d stay right here and eat the
damn spider soup.

Kabru puts the spoonful in his mouth and chews. The spider heart is surprisingly tender after
being stewed for so long, and it’s oddly more savory than the leg meat. He can’t place the
taste more precisely than that. The bite goes down somewhat easily, despite its contents, and
Kabru is proud of himself for not needing to chew for several minutes first—even if he’s also
a little horrified at his willingness to consume monster flesh.

He does politely reject the offer of a second portion, though.

Senshi scoops the last bit of the broth into a funnel to fill a waterskin with it for later, and the
process of cleaning up begins yet again.

“It’s pretty early to go to bed,” Marcille says as she dries bowls and hands them to Mithrun,
who’s been drafted to put them in the designated pack. “I know! Why don’t we tell each other
stories to pass the time?”

“Stories?” Mithrun asks.

“Yeah. Like the kinds of stories we grew up with. Bedtime stories, maybe, or—” she blushes
“—maybe stories we really enjoyed reading to ourselves, later on.”

Chilchuck huffs out a laugh and points at her. “You’ve got a story in mind, already, I can
tell.”

“Well, maybe. But it’s a really long one, and I wouldn’t want to take up the whole time.”

“Alright, then I’ll start.” Chilchuck adjusts himself on top of his still-rolled bedding and
begins. “It all started a long time ago, in a land far from this one. There was a little girl and
her younger brother, and their parents were very poor.”

His story isn’t terribly long, but it’s detailed enough that Kabru feels sympathy for the
children as the story builds up to a fearsome climax—lured to the candy-covered house of a
witch and charmed with black magic, the children are compelled to eat and eat until they are
fit to burst and want nothing more than to never see sweets again.

And then—

“That’s a terrible story!” Marcille says when he’s finished. “The children should have put the
witch in the oven and escaped back to their parents. Not been cooked and eaten by the witch.
Did you tell your girls stories like that? How did they sleep at night?”

“They slept fine, knowing better than to go wandering in the woods,” Chilchuck fires back.
“It’s a totally normal bedtime story. What’s yours like, anyway? All handsome elven nobles
with their eyepatches and noble steeds? I saw your succubus.”

Eyepatches and noble steeds? Could it be… no. Surely Marcille’s ideal isn’t General Hareus
from the Daltian Clan saga. It’s little wonder she was blushing earlier if that was the story
that came to her mind. And she must be a big fan for a succubus to read that in her mind and
take that character’s form.

Though he supposes it makes sense for her to have enjoyed the books. The half-elven
protagonist is treated well by the narrative, if he remembers correctly, instead of being an
insulting stereotype. Forva, he thinks. It’s been ages since he read any of it. It had apparently
caused quite a stir when the books came out some fifty years ago, treating a half-elf character
so well. Old news by tall-man standards, but still pretty recent for elves.

Once again, Kabru wonders just how familiar Mithrun is with the series. Did he get a chance
to read them before his dungeon and subsequent recovery and dedication to demon hunting?
If so, did he like them? Did he start and not finish, like Kabru? Had he been a huge fan, like
Marcille?

Kabru is certain he can engineer an opportunity to find out tonight. He just has to wait for
Marcille talk about it, which she almost certainly will do. She might be the one to ask
Mithrun, even, which would be better. If it comes from her, maybe the two of them can find a
connection point, get to know each other a little through mutual interests, or at least as mutual
as a prior interest Mithrun can’t currently sustain.

The more tightly connected they end up with this party, the better. They’ll be able to make
more convincing arguments about the demon and how to handle the dungeon—or Kabru will,
anyway. Mithrun shouldn’t try to argue anything with anyone if the intended result isn’t to
anger them.

And if Mithrun can get to know these people better, he may see his way clear to let them
handle the dungeon without the elves sweeping in and taking everything over. That would be
ideal. As it stands, the Canaries are like any other elves. They see short-lived races as
children. But maybe if they get a better view into the world of those tall-men and half-foots
and others they look down on, just perhaps, they could see that it’s just a case of the different
races maturing at different rates.

That a mature tall-man can, indeed, be a fit ruler without needing elven oversight. That to
think otherwise is insulting and not protective. Maybe this group of Canaries, anyway, can
come to accept that the short-lived races have their own knowledge and insights that elves
and other longer-lived races lack.

He’s gone back and forth in his mind a hundred times, a thousand, about whether there can
someday be some understanding between the short-lived and long-lived races. Sometimes he
thinks it’s possible, that the right situation might force the issue, that this dungeon might even
be that situation. Other times, it seems hopeless.

If Mithrun—a noble elf from an exceptionally famous and high-ranking family, with all the
occasionally questionable upbringing that entails—can come to see that a group composed of
tall-men, a half-foot, a beastman, a dwarf and a half-elf is competent and capable, and worthy
of being trusted with responsibility over a dungeon…

Yes, Kabru is feeling hopeful.

“—and that is how Chief Thornwaldt the Wurm Slayer made his name.” Laios nods his head
as though accepting bows from an adoring audience. Idiot.

Chilchuck joins Marcille, Senshi and their new party member Kabru in a quiet round of
applause, mindful of the need to avoid making too much noise. The last thing they need is a
monster attack from multiple sides, which is what they might be looking at if they lose track
of things.

They’ll need to post a double watch tonight, for sure. Take no chances. He didn’t come this
far to die or to see his friends die. Hell, even Kabru and his elf should survive the night.
Chilchuck wouldn’t want to see any of them die.

He’d like the dying part of dungeon crawling to be behind him. He’d like to retire after this.
Open up his locksmithing business. Dedicate himself to the betterment of half-foots on the
island and see if he can spread some of that unionizing spirit to other areas, like Kahka Brud.

But they’re dedicated to the plan, now. They’re going up against the lunatic magician, head-
on, with help from some monster-deity from however long ago. Truly, this is a job that just
will not end, and that breaks every third clause of his contract.

And now, because they couldn’t go to the surface due to Marcille’s black magic, they’re
traveling entirely unmapped areas with the company of one of the western elves that would
haul them all off across the ocean if they caught even a whiff of black magic use. Fuck, he’s
lucky—they’re all lucky—that the whole beastman thing didn’t cause any problems. That
was a black magic curse, wasn’t it? Making Izutsumi some kind of cursed artifact according
to the elves, probably.

This elf doesn’t seem to care, though. Doesn’t seem to care about much of anything, which is
a point in his favor. Elves in general are too finicky. Picky and particular about every little
thing, obsessed with doing things perfectly and beautifully, when just getting the job done
will do the trick sometimes. Elves are impossible to work with. Marcille has been a dream in
comparison to most of them, for all he gives her a hard time.

The elves up on the first floor, if they’re even still on the first floor and haven’t sent in an
invasion force to kill everything they come across on their way down here… What will they
be like? Prissy stuck up assholes so full of themselves they can’t take in what’s in front of
them?

They’re criminals, Kabru had said. Most of them, anyway. Two thirds of them. What’s an
elven criminal like? One that actually deserves to deal with the eternal, inescapable, hellscape
of waiting and wasting away that is the elven legal system? And what did they do to get this
kind of job? They can’t be simple thieves and murderers. What sort of black magic did they
get up to?

Was it for a good cause, like Marcille’s? Or was it truly dark elf behavior?

And mister lord of a dungeon over there, listening to Senshi’s story about a bird of some kind
that lost its parents before hatching and was raised by some other family of different birds.
What’s his deal, exactly?
Yeah, he doesn’t want anything. No desires. But what’s that even mean, truly? If he doesn’t
want to eat, doesn’t that technically mean that he wants to not eat? Wants to starve? It’s
impossible to just plain not want anything.

Or maybe Chilchuck just wants too much and it’s one of those things he’ll never understand.
He has dreams, goals, a whole bucket full of stuff he wants to accomplish before he dies one
last time. He can’t imagine all of that just being gone one day. What would he even do with
the rest of his life?

The elf’s answer to the question is revenge, but that doesn’t seem like it could really cover all
the empty places, no matter how thin he stretches it.

And Kabru. He knows about the black magic, knows everything because Izutsumi went and
blabbed about it after Laios told Shuro. Which was a stupid fucking thing to do, and exactly
what Chilchuck should have expected to happen, and it’s all his fault that they couldn’t go to
the surface because of the black magic thing. Thinking Senshi was the greater risk. Idiot.

Kabru has something he’s hiding. Probably a lot of somethings. He was open enough about
his village, Uta or something like that, being destroyed by monsters flooding out of a
dungeon. He doesn’t want a repeat, sure. Chilchuck understands that. But how is he going to
prevent a repeat? What’s his strategy?

He gives away his elf’s possible agenda, advises them on how to handle the elf so that they
don’t get caught up in Canary bullshit, things that would be a betrayal in his book if he were
Mithrun. But the elf doesn’t seem to care much about it if he does notice them “handling”
him. Not really discussing their plans until they’re sure he’s asleep.

At least, as far as Chilchuck knows. For all he knows, though, Laios has given the elf a
detailed, bullet-pointed list of their next steps and final goals. All because Mithrun knows
loads about monsters and is therefore wonderful in Laios’s eyes. Chilchuck isn’t blinded by
the need to find a like-minded compatriot in monster-loving, though—Mithrun knows
monsters like the back of his hand, but he doesn’t like them one bit.

And Kabru hates monsters and knows next to nothing about them. But he’s willing to eat
them, and tries to put on a convincing show of enjoying the food when his eyes say he wants
to vomit for days on end to make sure it’s all out of his system.

The party really has grown, though, even if he doesn’t fully trust the motives of their two
most recent members. But they’ve been useful, helpful. They’ve pulled their own weight and
haven’t complained. Though he’s pretty sure there’s a budding romantic entanglement there.
He can’t pinpoint exactly what it is that tells him the seeming necessities of a foot rub and
single bedroll are more than just necessities, but his sense of these things is never wrong. He
hopes it doesn’t get in the way.

Either way, Chilchuck figures he’s in it this far, and he’s in it for the long haul, too. Until
Falin is restored, at least. Dragon might not be his favorite meat, but it wasn’t bad, and he
won’t miss out on a feast, even if it’s technically feasting on someone he knows.
“That sounds really familiar,” Marcille says when Mithrun pauses to drink the water Kabru
pushes into his hand.

Looks like he missed most of the elf’s story. Not a huge loss.

“It’s just a summary of a play,” the elf says with a shrug. “‘A Tall-man in Rosemoor.’”

“I read that!” she says, her eyes gleaming. “My mother saw the play in the theater once and
bought the book for me when I was 39 because she thought I’d like it. She said the
performance was seven hours long with an intermission.”

“Mm. So the abbreviated version,” Mithrun says with a nod. “Frankly, that’s the better
version if you have to watch it at all. They cut out three unnecessary plotlines and the greater
focus on Florian and his lovers ensures that the themes are more pronounced.”

“I think I read the full version,” Marcille says. “I wonder what plotlines got removed…”

Chilchuck does himself a favor and tunes them out in favor of unrolling his bed for the night,
tugging off his boots, and generally getting ready to sleep. He’s got second watch tonight,
along with Laios. It’ll be easier if he turns in early, and he really couldn’t care about elven
romances.

The others eventually give up, as well, and allow Mithrun and Marcille to continue their
chatter about books they’ve never heard of. Even Kabru agrees to take the first sleep on the
condition that his elf wakes him up to help him sleep when second watch starts.

Unfortunately, Chilchuck can’t seem to fall asleep.

It isn’t that the talk of some general or other is interesting. It isn’t. But while Mithrun’s voice
could probably put him to sleep, Marcille is interested enough that Chilchuck can’t help but
follow the words, even if he ignores the meaning behind the words.

He bides his time with his eyes closed, figuring that rest is rest, even if it isn’t sleep, until he
senses that it’s about time for the second watch. That will force those two to stop talking
about “literature” and start counting sheep.

“Alright,” he says, sitting up. “Time’s up.”

“But I’m not tired at all,” Marcille argues. “I can easily take second shift, too. You go back to
sleep.”

Chilchuck slides his boots on and laces them up. “The schedule is the schedule.”

He gets up and pokes Laios awake while Marcille yawns—not tired, ha—and crawls into her
bedroll. “You too, Mithrun.”

“I’m not sleepy.”

“That’s why you’re supposed to wake him up,” Chilchuck says, pointing at Kabru. “If you
don’t get some rest, you’ll be worthless in the morning. And if you expect a foot rub, look at
 him, ‘cause no one else is touching your feet.”

The elf turns his head to look at Kabru, fast asleep in the bedroll the two of them have to
share. He looks… too fond, if Chilchuck is reading his expression accurately. It’s hard to tell
with this guy.

“Kabru needs more rest than he’s been getting,” the elf says, and continues to sit there while
Laios gets up and rubs his eyes.

“Look, it doesn’t matter if you actually sleep or not, you need to lay down and close your
eyes anyway, because when you can’t sleep, pretending to sleep is half the battle.” Chilchuck
glares at him. “You agreed to take a turn sleeping, didn’t you? Are you a liar or something?”

Mithrun blinks at him. “Are all half-foots this bossy?”

Are all half— Bastard.

Chilchuck jabs a finger at Kabru and the shared bedroll. Show him bossy. Chilchuck didn’t
raise three daughters without knowing how to send someone to bed.

“Head down, eyes closed, I better not hear another peep out of you until morning.”

Mithrun blinks at him again, observes the pointed finger, shrugs, and then—thankfully,
because Chilchuck absolutely can’t back up his dad-mode bluff in this circumstance—
complies.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” the elf murmurs as he settles his head against Kabru’s chest.

“I said not. A. Peep.”

He watches the elf for several minutes, ready for him to open his working eye and stare at the
tunnel wall in defiance or some shit. But he remains there, ear pressed to Kabru’s chest and
both eyes closed, even the fake one, the entire time.

“…fucking elves,” Chilchuck mutters under his breath.

The elf in question smiles but doesn’t respond.

Chapter End Notes

This chapter contains a brief (like, one line) reference to disordered eating behavior,
specifically purging/vomiting. No character actually does this, and it’s not presented as a
positive action or behavior.
 Bounty / Blackwater
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Kabru wakes up the next morning surprisingly well-rested and with a weight on his chest. On
his whole right side, actually, pinning his right arm and leg down. He opens his eyes to the
now-familiar sight of rock overhead, cast in soft yellow tones with mage lights and flickering
shadows from the magic cook-fire Senshi is already working over.

Less familiar is the silvery gray hair on his chest, Mithrun not curled at his side but angled so
as to be partially on top of him, with his left hand loosely clenched in the fabric of Kabru’s
shirt under the blanket.

It’s odd. Kabru has no recollection of getting up to help him fall asleep. He also has no
recollection of Mithrun ever managing to sleep without his help, except when passed out
face-first in exhaustion so total and sudden that it was a wonder he didn’t break his nose in
the fall.

Kabru peels back the blanket and takes the time to gently disengage Mithrun’s fingers from
his shirt before shifting sideways in a maneuver he hopes will allow the elf to continue
sleeping. It seems to work, too, because Mithrun’s only response is to shift into Kabru’s
warm spot.

He watches for another moment or two to make sure before getting up and stretching his
arms up over his head.

“Your elf’s a stubborn pain in the ass,” Chilchuck mutters at him when he puts his arms back
down and reaches for his boots.

Kabru smiles, not remembering to hide the fondness in his expression until it’s already there
and too late to pull back from. “He can be, yes.”

Oh. Damn. Should have said something about how he’s not my elf. Oh well. It’s too early in
the morning to have to hide the subject of pleasant dreams. Well, Chilchuck was always
going to be hard to hide from. The half-foot is perceptive, and already on the lookout for
anything that would dissolve a party before a contract expires.

He’d probably already sussed them out before Kabru’s slip-up just now. And anyway, it isn’t
as though he has anything to necessarily hide. So he and Mithrun kissed each other on a
couple of occasions outside of the hours-long pollen-fueled session in the shed. That doesn’t
mean that Laios’s party will fall apart. They aren’t even official members of that party, and
haven’t signed anything.

“Why didn’t someone wake me up?” Kabru asks. “I wouldn’t have taken up so much space if
I’d known I wouldn’t be awake again later to share.”
“Like I said. Stubborn pain in the ass.” Chilchuck shrugs, and then looks vaguely contrite.
“…He actually said you could use the sleep,” he mutters.

Kabru laughs softly. “He’s one to talk. If he passes out halfway between lunch and dinner,
never let him hear the end of it, okay?”

Chilchuck grins. “For sure. Did anyone ever tell you the one about Marcille and the
mandrake?”

“Do tell.”

The sounds of the rest of the group stirring, including Chilchuck’s rendition of a giant bat
swooping in spirals toward a tower, wakes Mithrun finally, and he sits up looking like a
mussed mess. Kabru wishes their comb hadn’t been in the pack that was stolen by frogs.
Maybe Marcille will let him use hers on the captain’s hair. Finger combing will not save that.

Uncaring as usual, Mithrun simply gets up and undoes his makeshift belt to exchange the
shirt and pants he’d borrowed from Laios and Marcille for his own clean uniform overdress
and pants, patting the pocket of his pants once and seeming satisfied that the bit of ivory
Kabru had noticed earlier is still there.

Mithrun’s torso and legs with their networks of scarring are nothing Kabru hasn’t seen, and
on multiple occasions now, but he can see the others looking at the scars and quickly looking
away again. He knows Mithrun either doesn’t notice or else doesn’t care, but Kabru feels like
saying something in explanation.

He doesn’t.

It’s Mithrun’s business, and if any of them have questions, they’ll have to ask Mithrun and
get far too detailed an answer. It’ll serve them right for asking.

No one does ask, at least not this morning, and after everyone is up, fully dressed, and fully
combed out in the case of the two magic users, they all sit down to a quick breakfast of
sautéed potatoes and dryad fruit with some spider broth onion reduction that Kabru has to
admit was worth saving the leftovers for.

A few minutes of washing up later, and they set out for what turns out to be an uneventful
day.

They traverse a waterfall around midday using Mithrun’s teleportation to avoid the risk of
crossing on foot and possibly getting swept away. They eat a whole nest full of treasure
insects piled up and gleaming in a massive skull for lunch—and Kabru learns finally what
had happened on the third floor, what feels like forever ago.

There’s conversation around that, apologies for misunderstandings, muted laughter as they
descend a jagged ten-foot crag and then audible squeamishness from Marcille as they fend
off a nest of much smaller spiders that don’t have the benefit of being shiny and jewel-like,
and which Senshi doubts would be as nutritious as the food they already have.
And when the party camps for the night, Kabru and Mithrun set off with Izutsumi and Laios
to explore the area around their camp, patrolling for monsters that might investigate them and
seeking potential new paths for the following day’s journey.

There’s a brief moment of excitement when Laios finds a cluster of tiny purple blossoms
nestled in a crevice high above them, which he and Mithrun agree to be a relative of the much
larger purple flowers on higher levels—fine-tuned to smaller pollinators, but still potent
enough to have an effect on larger pollinators.

Kabru immediately backs away lest a flower happen to fall at just the worst time, and gets
pulled away from a root system on the opposite side of the tunnel before he accidentally
connects with it. Mithrun releases him quickly, but with a murmur that if wants a repeat, he
can just ask.

Kabru isn’t sure what he means at first, but then he catches sight of a cluster of purple above
them on that side of the tunnel as well. He considers insisting that he didn’t mean anything by
it, that he hadn’t noticed the flowers or that they belonged to this root system—and these
must be the roots they make those potions out of.

But then Laios tries to climb the tunnel wall to see if he can smell the flowers, figuring that
it’ll be his first exposure and therefore harmless, and Kabru has his hands full along with
Izutsumi wrestling Laios away from the flowers and back the way they came.

He thinks about what Mithrun said, though, and about the way Mithrun had dragged him
away from danger by grabbing him, not teleporting him. Does Mithrun… want a repeat? Is
that why he planted the suggestion in Kabru’s mind? Or was he simply remarking on the
likely effect to be had should he be exposed to that pollen again? Suggestion, or warning?

Either way, he’d said that Kabru could just ask.

The thought distracts Kabru through dinner that evening and into the night, while he curls
behind Mithrun, cradling his smaller body in their shared bedroll and thinking things he has
no business thinking in a dungeon of all places.

There’s demons and monsters and a whole party of other people around. The fate of the
Island hangs in the balance, possibly the fate of the Golden Country, possibly even the fate of
tall-men and the other short-lived races.

And he’s contemplating the possibility of Mithrun on his knees in a tunnel with Kabru’s
hands in his hair and Kabru’s dick in his mouth.

By sheer luck, Kabru manages to avoid waking Mithrun with his erection before the thing
goes back down.

The next day is about the same, at least when it comes to danger.

It has the potential to become too eventful for safety when they discover signs of a giant ant
colony’s moss garden—at least that’s what Laios calls it, and Mithrun nods along. It looks
more like a mold garden to Kabru, judging by the mold lining the walls of the tunnel as they
approach it. But they avoid disturbing it, and therefore the rest of the nest, and instead pass
into safer territory on the other side of a sluggish cave stream.

There are a number of things to harvest on the other side, apparently, none of which look
remotely edible to Kabru at a glance.

There are some mandrakes that are so big they’re unsafe to dig up even using Senshi’s
decapitation method but which have lush and glossy leaves to harvest, and some algae, some
tentacles that are apparently upside down trees instead, and a lone dryad in the distance that
they send Mithrun out to dispatch for them so that they can safely gather some buds and
fruits.

And while gathering those dryad buds later, after the flower has been rendered harmless,
Kabru learns the lifecycle of a dryad—something he’d never wanted to know but which
Laios and Mithrun are both happy to show him in the form of a withered humanoid flower
already starting to turn into a fruit. Kabru suspects he won’t sleep well that night with images
of withered husk people in his mind.

It’s quite a haul, and Senshi is pleased with their selection. He’s even more pleased by what
they leave behind, repeating to himself something about the circle of life and their place
within it.

Kabru just hopes they remain at the top of the food chain long enough to see this through and
finally leave the dungeon.

All in all, they spend the better part of three days with uneventful travel, routine breaks for
spider meals in more variations than Kabru could have imagined in his wildest nightmares,
and social evenings after a bit of exploration with Izitsumi and Laios.

The somewhat peaceful travel naturally can’t last.

Chilchuck and Izutsumi swear there’s water nearby as they make camp for lunch. Lapping
waves, they insist, echoing in the distance. Like an underground sea.

Kabru knows to trust a half-foot’s hearing, and he imagines a beastman like Izutsumi is just
as well-equipped, considering what he knows of her.

But they’ve been around this particular maze of interconnecting tunnels all day, and the water
isn’t getting any closer. Could it be a trap laid by a monster, trying to lure them to a water
source only to ambush them? Could it be a spell of some sort? A distortion of sound through
the tunnels?

Generally they stay together for the lunch meal, saving the exploratory adventures for before
dinner, when their camp is set up in a more secure location. But Izutsumi wants to find that
water, and Mithrun is agitated as well, possibly due to whatever strange sense of direction he
has that works only in dungeons and tells him when something is important or odd.

Kabru and Laios agree to go with them—Laios because he clearly loves these little side
quests, and Kabru because if anyone abandons Mithrun in these tunnels, he’ll never see the
elf again.

And so they set off, while Marcille magically secures their otherwise unprotected campsite
beneath a natural crystalline dome and Senshi and Chilchuck work on lunch.

Several twists and turns in the tunnels later, which Kabru couldn’t quite mark this time, they
come out onto a vast cavern, far wider and more open than the glittering, geode-like structure
they chose as their midday camp. Also far darker and more apt to suck up the brightness from
Mithrun’s mage lights as though he were trying to illuminate the edges of a void.

Mithrun splits the trio of lights up, sending one into the distance to give them a better sense
of scale.

From what Kabru can tell, they’re about halfway up the wall of this cavern, and there are
many similar openings across the way, including one with what appears to be a stonework
balcony on it. That has to be a manmade structure and not natural. It’s too small in the
distance to make out any details that could tell them who made it or when, but Kabru would
like to think it means they have found evidence of the dungeon proper again, just much
further down.

Below them is an expanse of water, an underground lake or sea of some sort, but unlike the
glowing blue of the water on the fourth floor of the dungeon, this is inky black, and barely
reflects the glow of the mage lights back to them. It also ripples like the water itself is alive,
possibly teaming with creatures or possibly actually alive itself.

Kabru feels uneasy just looking at it, and a glance at Izutsumi shows that her fur is slightly
ruffled.

“We need to be on the other side,” Mithrun says softly, and unlike the echoes of the water
below against the sides of the cavern, his voice is swallowed up by the space.

“There.” Mithrun points to the structure that Kabru is only half sure is really a balcony. “The
balcony.”

“That’s a really small target, Captain,” Kabru murmurs. “And it’s really, really far away. And
there are seven of us to teleport.”

He has a horrible feeling about this. They’ll end up coming short of the edge and plunge into
the water below. Or they’ll become part of the cavern wall. Or they’ll all appear on the
balcony, but each one where the others are standing. Mithrun’s accuracy rate has been
astounding considering he only has one eye and no sense of direction, but this seems like too
big a risk to take.
“I can bring everyone over in pairs. Five trips, total, there and back. I’m more accurate when
I teleport myself, anyway.” Mithrun hasn’t looked away from that maybe-balcony once since
spotting it. “It feels right.”

Kabru’s inclined to agree with him, then, that that’s where they need to go. But he’s not sure
teleportation is the way to get them there. Maybe they can cast water walk and climb down,
cross the water, and then climb up. Maybe there’s a way along the side of the cavern up out
of the water, like a path carved in the side of a mountain for hikers. Maybe Marcille knows a
levitation spell. Maybe there’s a path through the tunnels that will take them there.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” Laios asks. “If we get there and it’s not where we need
to be, it’s still lower down than we are now. And it looks like the rest of the dungeon’s
architecture. More so than these tunnels have.”

“‘What’s the worst that can happen?’” Kabru palms his face. “You could end up teleported
inside of a rock, trapped there without room to breathe even if you had air to breathe, which
you won’t, and no one would ever find you to revive you.”

“That was intentional,” Mithrun says. “I meant to do that to those men. It was my entire
strategy.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better about the prospect of suffocating to death trapped in a
rock, Captain. And I’m just saying, it could happen. He asked about the worst case, and that’s
right up there with teleporting into someone else and basically ripping them in half.”

Mithrun sighs. “That doesn’t happen often. I’m properly certified.”

“Before or after your dungeon?” Kabru winces even as he asks the question, sensing that it
will hit a nerve at exactly the same moment Mithrun’s eye narrows.

“Both,” the elf says, his pronunciation decidedly crisp. “I can get us over there. Without a
mishap.”

“I say we try it,” Laios says, either not sensing or not caring about the tension of the scene in
front of him.

Probably not sensing it, Kabru thinks. He’d care if he did sense it, surely. He might be
unaware of others’ feelings for the most part, but when he is aware, he does respond in what
seems to him like the right way.

Kabru shifts back a step to give Mithrun some space, and he’s about to apologize, but several
things seem to happen all at once just as he opens his mouth to do so.

Laios’s sword rattles in its sheath, as if under its own power and by its own volition. Which is
impossible, because swords are inanimate objects and can’t do things like that.

Izutsumi leaps back into the tunnel behind them with a hiss, as if avoiding something that
snakes along the ledge from beneath their feet. Except that there’s nothing there but the bare
rock.
Laios calls out a wordless warning and reaches for his sword despite the lack of an enemy in
sight.

Mithrun shoves him toward Laios and Izutsumi and away from the edge of the opening, and
then promptly disappears, vanishing with a scraping sound as though he was torn clear off the
edge and down into the eerily echoless cavern below rather than teleporting himself
anywhere.

And the ledge they were standing on crumbles away, leaving a sheer drop-off into the cavern
with a whole foot less of space to navigate.

It all happens in a moment, a single heartbeat, too fast to process, too fast to react to, just
plain too fast. Kabru’s careening into Laios and sending them both tumbling in a clatter of
armor against rock while Izutsumi growls from further inside the tunnel, and Mithrun is not
in the tunnel with them.

Mithrun is not in the tunnel with them.

The ledge itself is gone, and Mithrun is not in the tunnel with them.

“Captain!”

Kabru scrambles forward on his hands and knees for stability, because he can’t be bothered to
stand, and because Laios is grabbing his ankle to keep him back from the edge.

He’s both relieved and horrified to hear a distant splash below as he kicks free of Laios’s grip
and looks over into the water. Relieved, because the silence was deafening and a splash at
least means Mithrun landed in water and not on rock. Horrified, because he’s so far below
them now with his mage lights, and won’t be able to see Kabru and the others well when he
tries to teleport back up to the tunnel.

From the tunnel’s new edge, Kabru can’t see Mithrun in the water at all, though he can see
bubbles from the disturbance and the two remaining mage lights hovering over the inky
water.

There’s a vine of some kind latched onto the cavern wall beneath this tunnel opening, the top
part of it now torn away and the rest of it thrashing but not able to reach him. It must have
been able to reach Mithrun, though, to drag him off the ledge and fall with him into the water.
Maybe it had meant to capture lighter prey.

They’ll have to deal with that when Mithrun teleports back up to the tunnel. He’s probably
too tangled up in the vine to leave it behind in the water when he teleports, which he’ll do
any moment now.

Except…

Kabru feels a chill run up his spine. Mithrun can’t actually teleport himself if he’s in full
contact with a large surface area. And the water surrounding him… is a large surface area.
Chapter End Notes

Don’t hate me! *hides*

 Undine
Chapter Notes

Happy early New Year’s Eve to folks. Hoping for the best all around. 😊
See the end of the chapter for more notes

Mithrun isn’t surfacing.

Kabru can see the water moving as though something or someone were thrashing beneath the
surface, but there is nothing actually breaching the surface.

Kabru knows the water walk spell. Rin taught him when they were first exploring the
dungeon, for if he ever needed it and she wasn’t around. Like now.

Kabru can’t cast it now, of course. First he has to get down there. Has to find Mithrun in the
water. Then he can cast it on them both at once, and it will pull them to the surface. From
there, if he’s breathing, Mithrun can teleport them away from danger.

And if he’s not breathing, Kabru will see if he can do something about that. He knows human
anatomy. He’s only really used it to attack, but he’s sure he can figure something out. He just
needs for fucking Laios to let go of him already, so he can—

There’s more splashing below, and Kabru looks down to see Mithrun finally spluttering up
near the surface, gasping for air between being pulled under as he clearly struggles with
something that’s determined to drown him. That’ll be the vine, Kabru thinks. Though why
part of the vine is still active when it’s been torn from the rest of the plant, he doesn’t know.

Mithrun would know.

“Are you sane again?” Laios growls in his ear, still holding him tightly. “Can I let you go
without you trying to fling yourself—”

“I know water walk,” Kabru insists, though he does stop his struggles as he thinks Laios’s
next words right as the man says them.

“So does he.”

So why isn’t Mithrun casting it, then?

Just a half second later, Mithrun bobs the rest of the way to the surface on his hands and
knees, streaming a cascade of clear water off onto the black lake and accompanied by three
reddish-black squid-looking things as big as his torso with clinging tentacles wound around
his limbs. A bit of dark green rope—no, the vine—slips off his right leg as he clears the water
from his lungs with great shuddering coughs.

The squid things must have been latched onto him beneath the surface and got caught up in
his water walk spell. One of them abandons its grip on him with a spray of black liquid only
to bounce along the surface unable to return to the depths until a gigantic set of reptilian jaws
come up out of the water to snap it up and disappear again.

Kabru has a sudden mental image of those jaws closing around Mithrun instead, and he
almost can’t breathe with the intensity of his dismay at the possibility. Mithrun has to get up
here as soon as he can. Sooner.

The other two squid things are more tenacious, and where their deep reddish-black tentacles
rest along Mithrun’s torso, there are splotches of brighter red spreading out along the fabric
of his uniform overdress—blood. The tentacles must be barbed or something.

More worrisome still are the trio of jet black undines that slowly rise to the surface a
heartbeat later, all of them rippling and angry, and all of them focused on Mithrun. The elf
barely moves in time, flinging himself to the side as the first undine strikes, rather than
rolling up onto his feet, and then teleporting himself and his squid passengers a few feet away
before scrambling upright only to stagger under their weight.

The undines unleash their pressurized water attacks in rapid succession, each one sending
multiple bolts of inky water and then reforming while another attacks, rotating their
movements to keep Mithrun moving in desperate lunges and driving him further away from
the safety of the tunnel, weighed down and off-balance as he is with two massive, tentacled
monster squids latched onto him.

One squid is cut off at the eyes in a watery blast that nearly takes Mithrun’s left arm with it,
leaving its tentacles wrapped around him and tangling up his limbs even as the majority of
the squid’s weight has been removed. And the last squid drops off with another spray of black
just as Mithrun catches his balance from the earlier attack.

Still tangled up in the tentacles with his left arm pinned to his side, Mithrun is not nearly so
mobile or smooth as he was fighting the shadow governor’s goons, but he uses just as much
teleportation, evading attacks at the last second and even teleporting himself above one of the
undines to then teleport it somewhere else with a swipe of his right hand.

Kabru’s nearly certain that Mithrun doesn’t know where the undine is sent, and he hopes that
doesn’t come to bite them later.

But for all his teleportation-related ability to be where the undines have not aimed, he’s going
to tire quickly at this rate, Kabru knows, and if he runs out of mana down there, he has no
way of getting back up to where Kabru and the others are.

What’s worse, the two remaining undines are getting louder and more agitated with each
increasingly uncoordinated attack, their screams rippling the water beneath Mithrun’s feet
and removing any semblance of sturdy footing while also becoming less predictable.
Mithrun catches a jet of water to his right leg that grounds him for the space of time it takes
him to mutter a healing spell, and Kabru feels like screaming, himself, as the two remaining
undines reform not into two separate spheres, but into one giant undine.

Kabru can get down there and cast water walk on himself, but he doesn’t think he’d be any
help beyond giving the undine a second target for however long it took for a bolt of water to
put an end to him. But he can be a beacon up here in the tunnel’s mouth. Give Mithrun
something to aim for with his teleportation.

“Mithrun!” Kabru shouts, waving an arm over his head. “Up here! Teleport, already!”

He watches with the first satisfaction he’s felt since this battle started as Mithrun spins
around to place the sound and scans the walls of the cavern trying to pinpoint his location.
Kabru can’t even blame that on his lousy sense of direction, with the way the undines have
kept him leaping and teleporting every few seconds. Anyone would get turned around with
that.

With his distorted depth perception, Kabru knows that Mithrun will need to concentrate on
not ripping his companions apart or ending up trapped in a rock himself when he teleports.
He just hopes the merged undine will give him that time, and that it won’t perceive Kabru as
a secondary enemy. There’s nothing they can do but run if the undine attacks them in this
tunnel, and then Mithrun would be out of luck.

But Kabru’s hopes are shattered when Mithrun finally locks onto his location only to take a
fist-thick jet of black water through the torso that sends him sprawling with a rush of blood,
displaced rib fragments, and what looks like it might be liver tissue.

The larger undine takes longer to reform, which is the only thing allowing Mithrun to shakily
force himself to his knees again and make a motion with one hand like he’s waving Kabru to
the side.

“Get back,” Kabru barks out, shoving at Laios to push him further into the tunnel. “Make
room for him.”

“Kabru…” Laios looks at him like he’s going to have to impart bad news and isn’t sure how,
and Kabru can’t deal with him just then.

“He’s coming up.” Kabru turns around to watch the tunnel entrance and wait. “He needs
space for it.”

“Can he even tel—”

And yes. Yes, he can teleport, just as Kabru had hoped, though that appears to be about all
Mithrun has the awareness or energy left to do.

Mithrun and the ten writhing, wrist-thick tentacles wrapped around him land with a wet slap
on the tunnel floor barely half a foot from the edge, along with a wave of bloodied but not
black water that apparently came along for the ride. Thankfully, none of that water seems to
be part of an undine, at least.
The merged undine below them screams in fury and pierces the lake surface with a barrage of
water streams, but Kabru has no time or attention to give to that thing anymore, not with
Mithrun within reach and in desperate need of medical attention as he bleeds out onto the
stone of the tunnel floor.

Kabru grabs for Mithrun in the flickering mage light, pulling him away from the edge and
further out of undine range, just in case, while Laios tries to yank tentacles off to get at his
injuries before finally giving up and leaving them in place.

“I can’t heal this,” Laios says, his voice low and urgent. “But Marcille can.”

“This way,” Izutsumi says, pointing.

And that’s all Kabru needs to hear as the tang of blood in the air mingles with the stench of
bitter ammonia from the tentacles or the ink or the water itself—Kabru can’t tell. All he can
tell is that Mithrun is too light in his arms as Kabru cradles him to his chest, one hand under
his knees and the other at his back, over the hole there, trying to keep any more organs from
tumbling out as he runs back the way they’d come.

Mithrun is too light, and too cold, and his breathing is too shallow and frothy, and while he
trembles slightly in Kabru’s arms, even that shaking is starting to fade by the time they arrive
at the camp—starting to fade along with the last of his flickering mage lights.

And they aren’t even in a dungeon anymore, are they, and what if he dies here? What if they
are still close enough to the dungeon and he can be revived, but only however Falin was
revived? What if he comes back wrong? Between his own dungeon and this one, how many
times can Mithrun come back wrong?

But Marcille is already rushing toward them as they arrive, having heard Laios’s yelling. And
she has her staff already glowing as she drops to her knees over Mithrun’s semi-supine form
and casts without even moving Mithrun to lie fully flat on the ground.

Kabru can feel the warmth of the spell on his legs as he kneels with Mithrun’s torso held in a
tight, trembly grasp. And he can feel the blood that had soaked through his clothes gather
itself up and sneak back into Mithrun, but there’s not enough of it. There can’t be enough of
it, because they left so much behind in the water, and in the tunnels as they ran.

They don’t have any goat’s blood to use for the spell, or pig’s blood, or anything. Even the
tentacles still twined around Mithrun and pinning his left arm to his chest don’t have any
blood left to give, if they ever had any.

But somehow, the organs and bones begin to re-form, leaving scarring in their wake but
present and accounted for when the skin begins to knit itself along the sheets of muscle. The
new skin is smooth and unscarred in the center, but surrounded by a ring of jagged red that
Kabru suspects will eventually fade to the silvery white of the rest of Mithrun’s scars.

Through the blood rushing in his own ears, Kabru can just about make out that Marcille has
stopped chanting, and he dares to look away from Mithrun, dares to look up at her and to read
whatever her expression conveys, even if it’s bad news.
She looks exhausted, but content. No healer would look content if their patient was going to
die, not after putting in that kind of effort to chase death away.

“Replacing what isn’t there takes a lot more calories than repairing what is there,” she says
softly. “I did what I could this round, even shared some of my mana to keep him stable. I’ll
try again later, see if I can accelerate blood production. He’s extremely low on blood and still
dangerously low on mana, and he was so thin to start out…”

Kabru knows this part. Mithrun didn’t have a healthy stockpile of calories to burn on a
massive healing spell, even with these last few days of eating really well on Senshi’s
cooking. The captain is streamlined, to say the least, and got by for decades on as little
nutrition as he could manage out of sheer lack of desire to do anything but the bare minimum
to feed himself.

Suddenly, the tentacles Kabru had been ignoring are too much. He can’t stand them. He hates
the sight of them, the knowledge of them. He loathes them. It’s all he can do to grab them and
rip at them and—

“Not like that,” Senshi says with a hand on his arm. “You’re only going to hurt him if you
tear suckers off carelessly. Sometimes they have hooks inside to better snag their prey. Let’s
work together and work slowly.”

Kabru lets out a harsh breath and lets Senshi move his arms down again, lets Senshi start to
unwind the tentacles and slice off hunks with his cooking knife. He sucks in a noseful of snot
and realizes that he’s crying for some reason. That’s stupid. The worst is over. He should be
relieved. He should be thankful. He hasn’t said thank you. He hasn’t thanked Marcille. Or
Laios. Or Izutsumi.

Mithrun is breathing, if shallowly, raspily, in small indrawn wheezes. Mithrun is breathing

and it’s thanks to them. And he hasn’t thanked them.

Kabru opens his mouth to do so, but nothing comes out.

It’s all he can do to sit here holding a living, breathing Mithrun while staring at the hole in his
uniform overdress that’s easily as wide around as Kabru’s palm, just over the lowest of his
ribs on the right side. So close. Nowhere in the torso is a good place to be shot through with
that kind of high-pressure water, but if it had been a few inches further up, or to the left, or…

And it’s all Kabru can do to stare and imagine again the gaping wound, the jumble of organs
trying to tumble out of Mithrun’s torso, the way his mind insists he could see himself through
Mithrun’s wound despite his knowing that wasn’t true. The edges of shattered bone and torn
muscles and tattered organ meats.

At some point he loses track of Laios and the others. All he has the wherewithal to process is
that there is not a single scrap of monster clinging to Mithrun anymore, that their bedroll has
been spread by the magicked cook-fire, and that he’s being invited to carry Mithrun over to it
to both rest and dry off the rest of the way.
That, he can do. Get him warm. Mithrun was always too cold, from the beginning, that first
foot rub. Cold and tense.

He’s relaxed now, but it’s a boneless, weak sort of relaxation that only serves to worry Kabru.
He sits by Mithrun’s head and strokes his ink-damp hair, hoping to lend him a sense of
security that might help him relax in truth if he’s aware enough of his surroundings to feel it.

“Thank you,” Kabru murmurs dully, not looking up from Mithrun’s lax face. It almost
doesn’t matter who is in the area to hear it. Senshi, Marcille, whoever. Even Chilchuck
helped pull tentacles off of Mithrun’s legs, Kabru is starting to recall.

“Of course,” Senshi says from across the fire. “They know, Kabru. They know.”

Kabru looks up finally and surveys the area they’d chosen for their campsite. The crystals
above them glitter brightly in the double light of the fire and Marcille’s mage lights. Senshi is
slicing squid tentacles into wide steaks and dipping them in water to soak. Marcille is
sleeping in her own bedroll beside Mithrun with bags under her eyes. Chilchuck is sitting in
front of a pile of tentacle slices, repeatedly jabbing a lockpick into each one for some reason
before putting it aside. Laios and Izutsumi are…

“They went back to see if they could find out anything more about the balcony,” Senshi says,
pulling out a pile of squid meat and putting it on the cutting board in front of Chilchuck.
“They’ve assured us they’ll be very careful.”

Kabru sighs. “I baited him,” he says. “Right before everything happened, I was baiting him.
Picking a fight over teleportation. I hurt his feelings. I could tell right as I said it.”

Senshi nods. “It won’t be the last thing you say to him. He’s been healed, and he’ll recover,
and you can say what you mean to say to him, instead.”

“Or you can drop it,” Chilchuck says with a particularly vicious stab of the lockpick. “With
that kind of blood loss, he probably won’t even remember, and you can pretend there wasn’t
a lover’s spat in the first place.”

“We’re not…” Kabru sighs again. “We’re not lovers.”

He’s so tired. But it’s true. They aren’t lovers. He doesn’t know if Mithrun can even be in
love with someone, whether Kabru or another. But isn’t that what Kabru wants to be? When
all this is over and he can spend the time to get to know Mithrun outside of a dungeon,
doesn’t he want to be Mithrun’s lover?

“Well you’re something close, and getting closer, and while I think it’s a stupid thing to
pursue in a dungeon, I do get it.”

“You get it?” Kabru asks.

“Sure. Monsters like that flower don’t give you a lot of choice when they hit you with their
poisons. You have to get it out of your system before you’re monster food.” Chilchuck
shrugs. “And it’s only natural to wonder, afterward, just how much of that was the monster
pulling your strings.”

He looks up from his work and gestures with the lockpick. “But word of advice is, wait ‘till
you’re back on the surface to start exploring your feelings, or everyone’s life is gonna be on
the line if you have a falling out.”

Chilchuck goes back to stabbing the squid meat on the cutting board. “Everyone’s gotta be
able to count on everyone in a party like this, and couples mess with that balance, even when
they’re getting along.”

Kabru lets out yet another sigh. The thing is, he knows all this. He’s seen parties break up
over things like that, partners getting preferential treatment, others getting sick of it, couples
falling out or love triangles shifting. He just never thought he’d be caught up in anything like
that because he always wears a mask. Always keeps people at a distance while reading them.

But he didn’t need the mask around Mithrun, or he thought he didn’t. And now look at him.

“That undine is going to be mad for a whole week,” Laios says as he and Izutsumi arrive
back at the camp. “If we know the direction we need to go, we can probably reach the other
side by then even with the tunnels twisting around.”

“Better that than sitting here looking at the rocks,” Izutsumi agrees.

“How are they doing?” Laios asks, his tone shifting into something softer as he comes over to
squat down by Kabru.

“Marcille is tired, but resting,” Senshi answers. “Mithrun is much the same as before.”

Kabru smiles at Laios, something small but genuine. “Thank you for helping,” he says.

“Of course.” Laios smiles back.

“What do you mean by a whole week?”

“Mr Tansu, this old gnome we met a while back, said that undines are made of a lot of tiny
spirits, and that they only live for about a week before being replaced. So any angry spirits
will get swapped out with happy ones in a week. Some of them maybe a lot less.”

He doesn’t know why the undines were angry in the first place. Holm’s undine always
seemed very relaxed, even playful. And didn’t hold grudges that he could tell. All Mithrun
had done was fall in the water and cast water walk to get back on the surface. That wasn’t
enough to anger an undine.

Regardless of the reason for their anger, though, Kabru knows that Mithrun won’t tolerate a
week’s worth of delay to wait the undines out. Kabru’s inclined to try their luck in the tunnels
again, and see if they can possibly get closer to the other side—and therefore closer to the
dungeon, just in case they do end up on a monster’s bad side and can’t manage to survive the
encounter like they barely did this one.
 Mithrun can be irritable about the decision all he likes, Kabru is siding with Laios and
Izutsumi on this one. It’ll be days before he’s well enough to teleport them all across. A week
before it would even be safe to attempt it with the undines on the lookout for them. In that
time, they can be well on their way taking the long way around.

Chapter End Notes

I was deeply impressed by Mithrun’s canon multi-undine encounter, so I couldn’t resist

this. But now, with more whump. ^_^
 Restorative Broth

Mithrun rouses, though he finds he lacks the energy to so much as open his eyes. He’s been
here before, in this state or near enough to it. He doesn’t like it, and that doesn’t matter.

There’s an intense heat to his right, and a lesser heat to his left, pressed against his side. He
hears no fire, so can’t place the source on his right. The left, though… No. Another mystery.
A weight, maybe a blanket, rests on top of him. And a hand in his, holding his fingers
loosely. Who would?

Chatter in low voices in the near distance—though he can’t put meaning to the words. He
considers trying to understand them, but can’t muster up the willpower to do so. It’s an effort
he cannot want to make, and so the words wash over him as sounds, a low murmur that
almost sends him back to sleep.

He might sink under those waves if not for the searing pain radiating through the right side of
his torso. It’s bone deep and deeper, and every indrawn breath pulls at it, every exhalation
pushes it back into place. The pain throbs in time with his breathing, stabbing into the rest of
him and withdrawing at a pace he cannot control, a pace that stutters and halts—he is not
breathing normally, then.

The signs point to an injury, a high level of severity, a healing spell that has gone as well as it
could with the materials at hand. Mithrun is vaguely aware that he, like most elves, doesn’t
carry much extra weight around to be consumed by large scale healing or resurrection magic.
It’s simply one of the risks they run when investigating a dungeon.

So that is where he is, clearly. The voices are familiar, but they are not his squad’s voices.
And the accents they carry are not those of any Canary unit he knows of. In a dungeon with
another party, then.

He idly wonders how that came to be, and the elements that combined to bring him here
slowly fall into place. The tall-man, Kabru. His plan and ulterior motives. His tantrum. Their
fall. All the rest of it, bit by bit, assembles itself into a neat picture, from the walking
mushroom meal and Kabru’s nightmare, to the inconvenient but highly enjoyable delay in
that shed, to the tall-man’s party they joined…

Laios. That is his name. The one Kabru wants to take over the dungeon. The one Mithrun
must convince not to do so. And Marcille, the half-elf who might very well try to take the
dungeon for herself, given her interest in dungeon maintenance and creation. The rest of them
—Chilchuck who doesn’t seem to want anything, Senshi who wants only to provide and
protect, Izutsumi whose desire the dungeon couldn’t truly fulfill and who knows that now.

Mithrun summons the willpower to open his eyes, and though it takes a while and only the
left eyelid complies, a vision of shining purple and pink coalesces above him. It’s impossible,
clearly a hallucination. But there are such things in the world, he knows. He’s seen them on a
much smaller scale. Geodes, spheres of rock with glittering gemstone worlds inside, crystals
growing where none can see them without first shattering their plain outer shell.
Obrin collected them. Perhaps he still does.

It seems possible for a dungeon to have such a cave deep within it. Perhaps it is not a
hallucination. Either way, it’s… very pretty. He can appreciate beauty even if he can no
longer participate.

“Ah, you’re awake, then.” One of the voices—the dwarf’s, he believes—resolves itself into
understandable meaning.

“What?” Another voice, on his left, groggy, and the warmth there shifts, a body sitting up, the
hand in his clenching. “Captain, you’re awake!”

Kabru, then. Sleeping, by the sound of it, and suddenly awakened.

“Come, I’ll help you sit up.”

There is scrambling, Kabru getting into position and working with another—Laios, perhaps,
though on his right side, so he can’t see to know for sure—to get him partially upright,
leaning heavily on Kabru and panting from the pain of it.

“I’ve got you, Captain.”

He’s not sure why there is any insistence at all that he sit when he could be lying there
without all this fuss, but then the dwarf comes into view with a bowl, and he understands the
routine very well. They will feed him, though he does not hunger. They will pour water and
healing draughts into his mouth, though he does not thirst and does not—cannot—want such
things.

But he is beyond that, has already unwillingly lived through that, has recovered. He is not a
shell anymore. He has a goal, and the will and ability to meet that goal, to achieve it. He is so
close! This party is so close, and he won’t regress or be dragged back to that earlier state. He
won’t.

He moves his arms. He reaches for the bowl. He will feed himself. He does not want to, has
no desire for whatever is in the bowl. But he will do this.

Senshi lets him grip the sides of the bowl with his trembling hands, but does not let go of it.
And that is probably for the best, since Mithrun is not sure he has the physical strength to
match the strength of his will to hold the bowl himself.

“I kept this warm for you, Mithrun,” Senshi says. “There’s carapace for the calcium,
mandrake leaves for mana restoration, mushrooms for iron, and a bit of mashed up dryad to
give it body.”

He attempts to nod in appreciation for the ingredient list, though he’d willingly consume it
even if the ingredients were mud and ground arsenic, simply because that is what comes next
in this routine.

His nod simply results in his head tipping forward, and Kabru reaches around to help him
regain his earlier position.
This would not happen if he was wearing his neck guard. He wonders what happened to it.
He’s wearing the rest of his armor, and also that massive shirt from the other tall-man, with
the twine belt. Whatever injury he sustained must have damaged his uniform overdress to the
point of it needing repairs before he can wear it again.

The broth Senshi spoons into his mouth is thick and full of rich flavors—savory and a hint of
sweet, meaty without being overbearingly so, just salty enough to brighten and enhance the
flavors. A hint of bitterness from the greens.

So different from the flavorless slop of the years spent swallowing whatever the healers
forced on him.

He still can’t find any desire to consume this broth, any desire to swallow it down, to bring it
inside himself to fill whatever gnawing hunger or thirst is there that he cannot feel for
himself. But it is pleasant to do so, and he does so until the bowl is empty, without complaint.

Mithrun tries to thank him for the meal when the dwarf takes the bowl from him, and he can
actually hear the words, so he must manage it, however softly.

Senshi smiles, his eyes shutting in pleasure. “Of course. We’ll let that settle for a while.
There’s more, with mushroom pieces and the greens still in, but we’ll try that later. You might
have regained enough strength to hold the bowl yourself by then.”

He already feels a little stronger, and he raises his hand to touch his throat—bare skin, as he
suspected.

“Where is…”

“I took your neck guard off, Captain.” Kabru reaches for something and gives up without
retrieving it. “You were having trouble breathing, and I thought it might help if you weren’t
wearing that.”

Well, he supposes there wouldn’t be any harm in going without it for a while longer.

“It would be so much better if we could catch one of those undines and boil it for soup,”
Marcille says from off to his right somewhere. “They have so much mana. It really helps.
You’d be on your feet in no time.”

Kabru stiffens behind him. “You… drank an undine?”

“It was delicious. We had it in this kelpie soup with some root veggies and ivy tentacles. So
yummy.”

“You’re a magic user. Don’t you know what’s in those things?”

“Water spirits, of course.”

“Not always. Not just that.” Kabru shakes his head, his chin brushing the top of Mithrun’s
head as he does so. “Holm had one he raised as a familiar. He’d feed it anything liquid that
had mana in it, but especially human bodily fluids. Blood, urine, sweat, maybe other things,
too.”

Mithrun imagines an undine raised by a gnome as a familiar—because only a gnome would

do so—would have a different composition to one encountered in the wild. But from the
sounds of disgust scattered around the immediate area, that comforting thought hasn’t
occurred to most of the party.

“I’m sure a wild undine wouldn’t have all of that in it…” Marcille doesn’t sound too certain
of this, though, and when she continues, he can hear why. “The one that attacked me did
carry my blood in it, though. That’s how I could see it in the rest of the water.”

“I’m going to just pretend this conversation never happened,” Chilchuck says.

“Right,” Laios adds. “It’s in the past now, anyway. Done is done.”

The breath from Kabru’s sigh drifts through his hair, and Mithrun stops trying to hold himself
up, letting himself fall more completely against the tall-man. He might feel like he has more
energy, and there’s a trickle of mana starting to return to him, but he is weak. His few
remaining energy stores are being depleted by the sheer effort it takes to keep his eye open.

Unfortunately, Kabru notices. Even more unfortunately, his reaction is to help him lie back
down and get their blanket tucked around his torso. At least he leaves Mithrun’s arms free of
the cocoon.

Mithrun doesn’t want to sit up, doesn’t want to lean against Kabru, doesn’t want to move
with Kabru’s breathing or feel his solid warmth against his aching back. Doesn’t want to rest
his head against Kabru’s chest.

Doesn’t want anything at all.

But he misses that contact, all the same.

It was nice. It felt safe. Mithrun hasn’t wanted to be safe or even feel a semblance of safety
since he first wished for that back in the dungeon that became his. But he can still appreciate
feeling safe. And despite his absolute lack of skill when combating monsters or navigating a
dungeon, Kabru somehow feels safe.

He closes his eye against the brightness of the glittering crystals above him, and concentrates
on the rivulet of mana sluggishly pulsing through his body. He can recall a few instances
when he’s been this severely depleted, but the people around him are usually able to stop him
before he reaches this state.

This is beyond the point of collapse. This is the point where he has an active mana debt that
needs to be repaid. That tiny stream of mana isn’t charging him up, it’s merely filling holes
and restoring structures that were leveled. He must have cast something he didn’t have the
energy for, but he can’t place the spell or even the situation in which he’d be able to cast with
the amount of desperation needed to go into mana debt.
What does he even care about enough for that other than the demon?

The others are talking again, softly as though not to disturb his sleep. But he’s not sleeping,
just resting. And he doesn’t particularly want to sleep or to let them know he’s awake. So he
lies there and feels the restorative effects of that broth, and listens to the party’s discussion.

“Okay, let’s say the winged lion is this dungeon’s demon,” Liaos says. “He’s sealed right
now, chained up by Thistle. So if we can beat Thistle without the winged lion’s help, we can
leave him sealed, right?”

“And what if someone else comes along and unseals him?” Chilchuck asks. “We might be the
only ones to get here so far, but the Island Lord will send some other party to get through that
magic door, and it’s unlocked now. What’s stopping them from going through?”

Kabru brushes his fingers through Mithrun’s hair, and it’s a struggle to remain awake.

“The Canaries will seal the whole dungeon so no one can get in,” Kabru says. “And
hopefully, the monsters can’t spill out. But…”

“But?” Marcille sounds tired. Probably from healing whatever injuries he sustained.

“Leaving the demon sealed doesn’t actually defeat it,” Kabru says. “Just breaking this
dungeon means the whole thing repeats somewhere else, in some other dungeon. It’ll just
keep happening.”

Yes, exactly. Kabru has the right of it. They will never be done with the task because the
problem is literally infinite. There are dungeons that no one knows about that will grow,
reach the surface, be discovered, be explored, find a lord, become a problem. The supply is
infinite because the source is infinity itself.

There will always be another demon to destroy. And always, the demon in a dungeon
vanishes, undefeated, only to appear in another dungeon later, in a different shape. A new
form for each dungeon, something soft and pleasant, trustworthy, in the eyes of whatever
unfortunate explorer gets lured into the trap.

To actually kill the demon, that will be hard. But he has a feeling that he can manage it this
time. There have been so many dungeons since the one that became his, and all of them have
fallen without exposing their demon, allowing the thing to retreat to its infinite realm
unharmed. Only for it or another to appear later, elsewhere.

“If a demon is powerful enough to destroy civilization,” Kabru muses, “and the ancients’
only solution was to trap the demons in dungeons, maybe we can’t actually defeat them. But
we could work with what we do have.”

“Wishes,” Laios says. “Mithrun said the demon grants the wishes of the lord of the dungeon.
We can wish for a world where the demons aren’t a threat anymore. Or a world where they
go back to wherever they came from and stay there.”
Chilchuck clears his throat. “Wouldn’t someone have to be the lord of the dungeon to wish
that?”

“Maybe there’s a way to stop being the lord of a dungeon once you are one.” Laios pauses.
“Mithrun managed it, right?”

“Yeah, after losing all his desires and being a husk or whatever,” Izutsumi says. “Once he
was ‘ripe’ enough, remember? Don’t know about you, but I don’t want to take a turn at it.”

“But he tried to reason with Thistle,” Laios says. “And he said that killing him was the
easiest option but not the only one. So we can try to talk Thistle out of being the lord of the
dungeon, and then there’s an opening for one of us to become the lord of the dungeon just
long enough to make our wish about the world without demon threats.”

Mithrun is tempted to try to sit up for the sole purpose of leveling a glare at the man. What a
stupid, stupid plan. What a horrible idea. What a reckless thing to even consider.

The Golden Country is merely a footnote in the histories, but Mithrun studied that footnote
carefully before they set sail for the Island. Caught up in a war they couldn’t win, a war they
couldn’t even survive, accosted by an army of dwarves intent on taking the land in order to
drive the elves back into the ocean, and suddenly vanished.

Pulled under the water along with a ridiculously large circle of land around it, forming the
basin that is now Kahka Brud’s coastline. Pulled into a dungeon, the histories do not say. But
Mithrun knows. Thistle was the court mage, and he must have discovered that the city was
built over dwarven ruins—specifically the ruins of an ancient dungeon.

Thistle had to have become the dungeon’s lord to rip the city down into the dungeon along
with the surrounding lands. He had to have had good intentions, the need to defend and
protect the people of the Golden Country. Good intentions don’t mean a damn thing when the
demon starts to twist your mind.

And this Thistle has been twisted around for a thousand years, at least. He’s only rampaging
now because Delgal made it to the surface and vanished, but the insanity had been building
for a very long time before the rampage started. Anything could have triggered it.

What Laios is proposing, a quick and well-planned wish that goes directly against the
demon’s own desires, will never work. The demon is quicker than that, more suggestive than
Laios or the others could ever suspect, more convincing than they could know.

Whichever of them attempts this idiocy will fall to the demon’s persuasion immediately, and
worse—the demon will know that they want to essentially starve it of wishes and desires, so
the demon will be even more devious than usual to prevent them from getting around to
making the wish it does not want to fulfill.

The plan cannot work. Will not work. And will release the demon from the seal of a thousand
years. The demon might be ravenous enough to make quick work of Thistle and then devour
everything a new lord has to offer it, going through the party’s willing offerings one by one
until there is nothing left.
Worse still, the desires of a thousand years might be sufficient for the demon to reach the
surface, which it cannot be allowed to do. Monsters will spill out in a flood that takes the
entire Island, and even the full force of the Canaries on that ship will be powerless to stop it.
If they manage to seal off the Island like they did Utaya, maybe the demon will vanish and
leave a barren mana-blasted wasteland in its wake.

And then… Assuming he survives, it will be time to begin the hunt for the demon anew. But
it’s unlikely he’d survive, this close to the epicenter. And unfortunately, even less likely that
he could manage to take the demon with him when he dies, if the thing is full of Thistle’s
desires and strong enough to break through to the surface.

But how to kill a sealed demon? He’s never given it thought. By their nature and design,
dungeons are the seal, and demons are only reachable by entering the seal to approach them.
A seal within a seal? A dungeon lord with the willpower and foresight to seal a demon before
being devoured?

Do they have to unseal the demon to destroy it? If they do, will that demon devour Thistle
immediately and become too strong to destroy? Are their best options to leave the demon
sealed and hide the tomes that form its seal? Because the book must be where the demon is
trapped. Thistle could do nothing without it on the first floor.

There must be a second book, one that actually holds the demon and is connected to the first
book, so that Thistle can use the demon’s power without being under the demon’s power. It’s
effective as far as seals go. Brilliant, even. But after a thousand years, the demon is starting to
break free if it could engineer Delgal’s escape and trigger the rampage that always leads to a
dungeon lord’s downfall.

Even if they do defeat Thistle and leave the demon sealed, the demon is strong enough while
sealed to expand the dungeon and trigger the rampage. Leaving it sealed will not be
sufficient.

But to kill it, they might have to unseal it.

It’s a frustrating dilemma.

And too much to consider now that Kabru’s fingertips are gently tracing swirls and patterns
along his face, lightly but not so lightly as to tickle. It’s a distraction from the pain elsewhere,
but also a distraction from his thoughts.

Mithrun feels the clutches of sleep and doesn’t fight it off this time.
 Squid Paella with Ancient Rice

“You know,” Kabru says as he watches Senshi pack the sliced squid with more salt, “I really
thought we’d be eating that in something last night, when it was fresh.”

“It needs a bit more preparation, I think,” Senshi says, lovingly patting the top layer of the
packaged squid before folding the cloth over the top of it. “Salt will draw out the ammonia
while we travel, and Chilchuck was kind enough to tenderize the meat earlier, so this should
be ready when we stop for lunch.”

Kabru nods. Lunch. That’s when he’ll be faced with a monster that isn’t a spider or a violent
human-shaped plant’s head. He’s actually become inured to the spider. It’s strange, because
it’s a monster and also something he wouldn’t eat even if it was a non-monstrous variety, and
yet he has come to find it entirely palatable over the last few days. And they probably have
enough left for it to appear in a few more meals, though not as the main ingredient.

And more importantly, they have more of the broth with the mana restoration leaves and
mushrooms and whatnot in it.

Mithrun had been able to hold the bowl in shaking hands later in the night, had managed to
chew the mushrooms and drink the broth. Had even thanked Senshi again—something he
hadn’t been doing before except when he would belatedly join the chorus of them before a
meal began.

And he’d slept soundly the entire night, with Kabru curled up around him, feeling protective
and having nothing to offer but his own body heat and a solid presence. Kabru hadn’t slept all
that well, himself, waking throughout the night to reassure himself that Mithrun was really
alive, and to hope that they can both stay alive and see this thing through to the end.

And to hope that maybe Mithrun can return some of his feelings one day. Kabru is starting to
suspect he’d be okay with it if his feelings weren’t returned, so long as he wasn’t rejected
outright. But he also worries that when this is over, however it ends, rejection is what he’ll
face as Mithrun gets back on the ship and sails west.

And if that’s the case, then maybe he should be distancing himself from Mithrun in
preparation for the eventual, inevitable heartbreak. Or maybe he should be trying to get as
much as he can now, before it’s taken away.

Kabru doesn’t consider himself to be selfish. If anything, his few selfish actions have been
spurred by a desire to achieve better for his entire race and for all short-lived races as well.
But he feels like being selfish right now. It worries him almost as much as the thought that he
will lose what he has once this is over, and the knowledge that he doesn’t actually have
anything now.

Mithrun enjoys his company, enjoys kissing him. Mithrun respects his opinion enough to see
where this party takes them instead of immediately trying to kill Laios. But the captain can’t
love him… right? Can’t desire more of his company, or more of his kisses. Can’t desire more
of anything Kabru has to offer.

He also can’t walk more than a few paces when they finish packing up their campsite. That’s
the more pressing issue, and the one Kabru focuses on.

Laios takes his pack, wearing it backwards as they walk, while Kabru carries Mithrun on his
back. It’s almost like that first time he carried Mithrun, only this time, he’s really, really
conscious of two things: the captain doesn’t weigh as much as he did before, which is
worrisome; and the captain’s body pressing against his back is bringing Kabru’s mind to
other times they’ve been pressed together.

Kabru’s thumb worries at the hole in Mithrun’s pants where one of the undines had first shot
him through the thigh. So far, Mithrun hasn’t complained about him doing this, though
Kabru’s reasonably certain Mithrun fell asleep shortly after they started out down the path
Izutsumi selected for them.

The captain’s chin rests heavily on his shoulder, his cheek pressing into Kabru’s and his
breath coming steadily. It’s possible he’s only gripping his wrist out of reflex, having done so
while awake and merely continuing to do so in his sleep.

Kabru is careful not to jostle him too much, anyway, and to lean forward somewhat so that
Mithrun’s not likely to topple over backward.

The squid comes back out midday, when they reach a small cul-de-sac that branches off the
path and promises to be both hidden and defensible, and which offers quick access to a small
spring further along the tunnel. It’s plainer than their prior campsite by a lot, but Kabru
prefers the drab rock to the glittering crystals in their bright purples and pinks. It’s much
easier on the eyes.

Rather than watch Senshi’s preparation of the squid, Kabru accepts Laios’s help getting the
slumbering Mithrun safely off his back and propped up against the side of the cul-de-sac.

“Captain Mithrun,” he says, his hands on the elf’s shoulders to keep him from listing to either
side. “Wake up.”

“Mm,” Mithrun murmurs, but it’s not nearly as sharp as his usual, tapering off somewhat
weakly. “I’m awake.”

“You hardly look it,” Kabru says with a smile. He sits to Mithrun’s left, his back against the
rock, and stretches his legs out in front of himself. “Here, you can lean on my shoulder.”

Mithrun does as suggested, sliding over with a sigh and resting his cheek on Kabru’s
shoulder.

“Feeling tired?” Kabru asks.

There’s a delay in his response, which Kabru assumes means he’s taking the time to assess
his condition before answering and not simply ignoring him.
“Tired, no. Just weak. I feel as if I should be able to do things, and I cannot do them.”
Mithrun pauses. “But I know why, at least.”

“I bet that’s a comfort,” Kabru says. “Not knowing why my body did things—or couldn’t do
them—would really scare me.”

“You get used to it after forty years.”

Kabru turns his head toward Mithrun, but of course he can’t see the elf’s expression. He
could swear that was an attempt at humor, though. “Are you teasing me, Captain?”

“No.”

“Oh.” So much for being able to read Mithrun’s tone of voice after all this time together.

“…I’m making a joke at my own expense.”

Kabru smiles, even though the joke itself is more morbid than funny. “You’ve got a really
dark sense of humor, Captain.”

Mithrun nods against his shoulder. “So I’ve been told.”

“Thanks for sharing it with me.”

“Mm.”

There’s more of the soup to be had, the last of it, and Kabru is pleased to see Mithrun sit up
and eat it entirely on his own, with somewhat steady hands. It’s a marked improvement from
before, even from this morning.

For the rest of them, there is a bit of a wait before they can eat, as the squid needs to soak and
be rinsed off before Senshi can start cooking with it. The end result, after a few hours, looks
fantastic.

“It’s ready,” Senshi proclaims with pride. “Squid paella with ancient dwarven rice and
dungeon vegetables.”

The pan is filled with bright orange and black rice, studded with cubed squid meat, slices of
onion and other vegetables, and slivers of dark green herbs. It smells savory and salty, a bit
like fish, and with a hint of sweetness coming from what must be more of that dryad fruit that
is lending color to the dish.

“We had rice?” Kabru asks as he holds out a pair of plates to be served from the pan. “I didn’t
know Maizuru’s gift would last this long.”

“Oh, no,” Senshi says as he arranges a few extra pieces of the meat on top of both servings.
“We found this in the mining village. Most of the houses were empty, but we happened on
some rice in one of them that the mice hadn’t eaten.”
Kabru looks at the rice on the plates. The orange color comes from the dryad fruit. The black
appears to be an outer husk on the individual grains of rice, not at all like the uniformly white
and fluffy rice he’s had before.

“…Is it safe to eat if it’s that old?”

“I didn’t see any signs of damage or sprouting.”

Kabru hesitates, and then shrugs. This is the most normal thing he’s eaten in a long while,
and he’s just going to go with it. If they end up with food poisoning, Marcille can probably
help. She’s bound to have needed to help them at some point on their monster-eating journey,
so she’ll know a spell for that.

Kabru turns to bring Mithrun his plate of the rice, but Laios is already in the process of
helping the elf to his feet to bring him into the circle. So he just stands by the pack and
bedroll that’s been set up as a seat for him, and hands the plate down to Mithrun once he’s
settled.

“I know you’re especially not hungry after eating the soup earlier, Captain,” Kabru says as he
sits by Mithrun. “But this will help give you the energy you need to recover.”

“I know.”

They say their thanks and dig in, and Kabru is pleasantly surprised by the taste of the squid
meat. He’d thought there was a chance it would taste bitter and sour, the way it had smelled
when it was still clinging to Mithrun. But it’s almost got a sweet flavor now, mild and
delicate beneath the salt. And the rice is chewy and filling, the onions sweet, the herbs a little
tangy.

“This is really good,” he says. “This is easily better than anything they have at the tavern, and
it’s made with monster squid and dryads.” Kabru shakes his head. “It’s really unbelievable
how you manage to transform ingredients, Senshi.”

And… strangely… Kabru isn’t even lying through his teeth in an effort to charm anyone.
That’s the simple truth. The meal is amazing, and the ingredients—aside from the onions—
are all highly questionable. Kabru would rather not eat monsters, of course. That’s still very
much the case. But monsters are the vast majority of what’s down here, and they seem less
monstrous once Senshi has cooked them.

It’s after the meal when the others are washing up and Mithrun is nursing a mug of dryad
seed tea that Kabru starts to realize that Mithrun might actually need an explanation for what
happened to himself.

“Where did we acquire the squid?” the elf asks softly between sips. “A squid large enough to
dice up in that quantity would require a massive body of water.”

Kabru wonders where to start. If he starts with the balcony discovery, that’s the end of
Mithrun’s passive cooperation with the trek through the tunnels and the beginning of Mithrun
arguing for a return to that cavern so he has another shot at the balcony. If he starts with the
cavern and leaves out the balcony, though, that’s the end of Mithrun’s trust in him.

Kabru decides to start with the injury.

“An ivy tentacle of some sort dragged you off a ledge into an underground lake, Captain. The
squids were in the water, and also some angry undines. You nearly didn’t make it.”

“What color were they in life?”

“Eh?” Kabru tries to think back to that horrible stretch of time. “I think, maybe, reddish?
Dark? Everything was pretty dark. I don’t really remember that part too well. Does it
matter?”

“Hm. Reddish and dark. Probably drawn to a light source.” Mithrun nods.

“Sure, I guess.” Kabru still doesn’t see how that matters. “You had the mage lights. It was the
undines that did the damage, though. The one blasted out a good chunk of your liver and
some ribs along with it, and part of your lung. If it had been a central hit…”

Another nod, as though Mithrun is matching sensations to Kabru’s description to line them
up and see what he’s still missing of the picture.

“And my leg?”

“Undine. You healed that one while you were out on the water. Marcille healed the rest,
later.”

“Why stay out there so long?” Mithrun asks. “Squids in the water, multiple undines.” He
shakes his head.

“You were really interested in what was on the other side of the lake.” Kabru sighs. It has to
come out at some point. If he doesn’t say it now, Laios will say it later. “Something that
looked almost like a balcony. And we were up high on a cavern wall, so you couldn’t find us
to teleport back up to safety for a while. I think you got turned around by the undine attacks.”

Mithrun smiles softly, that slight smile that is the most he ever displays outside of his
occasional smug satisfaction, and that Kabru suspects most people would miss.

“I get turned around without undine attacks,” he says.

Kabru huffs out a laugh. “That’s no lie. I still remember you trying to walk out of the
dungeon and Cithis having to tell you to turn around.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes until it’s time to get back up and head out into the
tunnels again.

Kabru holds a hand down for Mithrun. “Think you can walk a bit, or should I carry you
again?”
“I’ll walk.” Mithrun takes his hand and pulls himself upright. “But I’ll do it slowly.”

“Just so long as you don’t try to teleport us to catch up to the others later.”

“Okay.”

They do walk slowly for the rest of the day, and the party walks slowly with them, Izutsumi
taking a point position and identifying the most likely paths for them to take, which she
marks with scratches on the walls courtesy of her kunai.

Kabru gets the sense that they’re making progress despite the pace, that they are having to
backtrack less and are looping back around to the same spot fewer times on the whole than
when they were moving at a more respectable clip. He hopes Mithrun gets that same sense,
because as the elf builds up his energy reserves and mana levels, he’s bound to get antsy with
a slower pace.

Their campsite that night is much the same as their campsite earlier in the day, but instead of
a fresh spring a few feet down a nearby side path, there’s a stagnant pool formed by dripping
water coming off a stalactite high above on the cave’s ceiling.

Kabru is immediately on edge and worried about succubus attacks, but Laios clears the pool
as having nothing swimming in it.

“That you can see, ” Mithrun mutters. He reaches down to lift up the skirt of his armor and
digs into his pants pocket.

“Here,” he says, tossing what Kabru had assumed was a trinket or souvenir of some sort to
Laios. “Unicorn horn, from one of the fountains higher up.”

Laios cradles the lion’s tooth in the palm of his hand and kneels to submerge it into the pool.
“This is great, thanks. I should have thought of taking one of those.”

He stands and hands the tooth back. “It’s just, the fountains are everywhere in the castle
portion of the dungeon, and it didn’t occur to me.”

“Mm.” Mithrun examines the tooth for a moment before returning it to his pocket and letting
his spidersilk armor fall back into place. “I wonder if that’s what upset the undines.”

Marcille touches a fingertip to her lips. “Well, unicorn horn purifies water, and an undine
isn’t actually water, but water spirits, so…” She smiles. “I think you’re right. Maybe they
thought you were trying to purify them out of the water.”

Mithrun shrugs. “Just bad luck, then,” he mutters. “I didn’t think simply falling on an undine
would cause that.”

“Also good luck,” Marcille says. “There wasn’t even a hint of grime in your wounds or your
bloodstream, and if the water was as discolored as that, I’m not sure I would have been able
to chase away infection along with the healing if there had been any foreign debris in your
wounds.”
Kabru feels like that’s a whirlwind of information to receive. The tooth caused the undines to
attack, maybe, but it also prevented infection and made healing possible in the first place
after the undine attack. Net positive, he decides, since it’s now cleaning a source of water for
them to drink.

That night, Kabru takes first watch along with Izutsumi, which ends up being a long stretch
of time without a word exchanged between them, but in a comfortable way. It gives Kabru
time to think, anyway, without interruption or those lingering looks of assessment Chilchuck
sometimes throws his way.

Mithrun is supposed to be sleeping when their watch is up, and Kabru had planned to make
as little commotion as possible when curling up on the bedroll behind him to avoid waking
him. But he finds Mithrun already awake and watching him when he approaches.

Kabru waves for Izutsumi to hold off on waking Senshi and Marcille for their watch. “I’ll do
it, after this,” he says.

“Whatever.” Izutsumi pads over to Chilchuck’s bedroll and proceeds to curl up on top of the
half-foot, who merely grimaces in his sleep. “A warm spot is a warm spot,” she says with a
yawn.

Kabru watches for a moment and then turns back to Mithrun. “Captain, you’re supposed to
be sleeping. You need to be rested if you’re going to be able to keep up tomorrow.”

“Mm.”

“Can’t get back to sleep?” Kabru sits down in front of him near his feet. “Here, I’ll massage
—”

“No.”

Kabru lifts his hands away from the blanket. “Okay.”

His thoughts swirl. This is only the second time Mithrun has objected to a foot rub, the first
being less objection and more statement that it was unnecessary and would never work. Does
he not want Kabru’s hands on him? Does he just not want to sleep despite needing to? Is he
in pain?

“Do you hurt anywhere? We can wake Marcille up to—”

“I’m not in pain, anymore. Not much, anyway. Nothing that healing would fix.”

“Oh.” That’s still not ideal. Also not ideal would be a sleeping spell, which Kabru had
refused to learn but could possibly learn now. It would be better than no sleep at all. “You
could teach me the—”

“I don’t want that.”

Kabru almost snaps out an unwise question about what he does want, in that case, but thinks
better of it in time to keep his mouth shut. He recalls trying that line of reasoning when they
were first starting out on this unplanned adventure together. Had countered Mithrun’s “I don’t
want to eat” with “then you must want not to eat,” and Mithrun had scowled at him and told
him he refused to “play the semantics game” with him.

After a few minutes, Kabru asks him if there’s something on his mind.

“…Yes, actually.” Mithrun doesn’t elaborate for a solid several seconds. “But you asked me
not to talk about it.”

Oh. Kabru looks across the campsite to Izutsumi resting on top of Chilchuck. He studies
Chilchuck’s breathing and can’t see any indications that he’s awake. And Izutsumi is already
snoring softly.

“We might as well be alone, if we’re quiet enough,” Kabru says. “I guess we can talk about it
right now. While everyone else is asleep.”

Mithrun goes on to not talk about anything for a minute, and Kabru sort of wants to shake
him and tell him to ask his questions already. Do his talking. He’s got permission, so spill
already. But when Mithrun finally does say something, Kabru wishes he had more of that
previous silence.

“Milsiril wouldn’t have encouraged you to participate in typical elven socialite nonsense. But
she also wouldn’t have taught you to feel shame about your body’s needs. So why do you feel
that way about the pollen? Was it such a horrible experience?”

A small part of Kabru wishes they could go back in time to when Mithrun didn’t actually
perceive him at all, but most of him is busily deliberating the best way to explain himself
without running any risk of contributing to Mithrun’s own skewed sense of self-worth. He
could insist that he doesn't feel any shame anymore, not after they've established that Mithrun
enjoys his kisses and they're starting to build something new. But there is still a part of him
that does still feel ashamed of how rough he was. And he doesn't want to lie to Mithrun.

“For me,” Kabru finally says, “yes. In some ways, and only in some ways, that was a horrible
experience. Not because of the physical sensations. Those were… some of the best I’ve ever
felt.”

Kabru feels his face heat up but forces himself to keep talking. “And not because I’ve gone
back to questioning whether you could have truly consented with your desires all eaten away.
You were really clear about agreeing to everything. Hell, the whole solution to the problem
was your idea. But…”

He shakes his head.

“I want to say that wasn’t me. I want to reflect on some of those actions and say they weren’t
mine. I want to insist that I would have been gentle the entire time, that I would have been
careful, especially at the start. I would have taken things more slowly, I would have insisted
on doing things right and not accepted the limitations of the situation so readily.”

“You hardly accepted the situation readily.”

Kabru sighs. “Still. The way I behaved toward the end was brutish. I may have only been in
my right mind for the first… chunk of that time. But I can’t just toss out all the rest of it as
not being my fault simply because I lost control under a monster’s influence. That spell of
yours lasted four hours, right?”

Mithrun nods. “It’s designed to, at least. I doubt I miscast it.”

“Right,” Kabru says. “I hate that I spent nearly four hours manhandling you, Captain. I hate
that I left all those bruises behind. I hate that I agreed to go ahead at all without preparing you
first. Properly. And,” he continues before Mithrun can object, “I don’t care that you had
experience to draw on.”

Mithrun frowns, but doesn’t interrupt him.

“Your experience is—or was—all with other elves, and tall-men are built different. I
remember considering that and being worried I’d really, really hurt you. And I hate that I
went ahead anyway. I hate that I made you wince and grimace. I hate that I caused you pain. I
hate that I took whatever I needed despite your discomfort.”

Kabru runs his hand through his hair and then covers his mouth.

“It feels monstrous,” he says, lowering his hand again. “It feels like something a monster
would do, and I’ve spent my whole life worried that I might be a monster, only to have it turn
out to be—” Kabru shakes his head. “That’s not the point.”

“…Then what is the point?”

Kabru sighs and looks away. “That sex was the best I’ve ever had, and a lot of that was the
pollen. Maybe even most of it. I feel so conflicted. I remember the sight of you, afterward,
laid out on the straw and flushed all over, hardly able to breathe and all because of me and the
pleasure I brought you. And I love that memory. I feel proud.”

He looks at Mithrun again. “But I also regret what happened, Captain. I regret the way it
happened. I feel like that situation revealed my true colors, and I hate them. And that’s why, I
suppose, I still feel ashamed.”

He doesn’t add that he wants more and isn’t sure he deserves it, that he wants more and isn’t
sure Mithrun is capable of giving it, whatever he says about Kabru just needing to ask. That
he wants more and knows he can’t have it. He’s admitted enough.

“Hm.”

“Just ‘hm?’”

Mithrun shrugs. “I remember it differently, is all.”

“I… Yeah?” Kabru’s surprised he remembers much of anything about it, given how wrung
out he was and the way he passed out right after.
“I did miscalculate a few things when I proposed that solution,” Mithrun says. “Tall-man
proportions, for one. And your stamina for another. But on the whole, it was a thoroughly
enjoyable encounter. I don’t have any regrets. And while I won’t try to dissuade you from
having your own regrets, I do have to point out a flaw in your reasoning.”

“Okay.” Kabru raises an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“You only took what I gave you,” he says as though it’s that simple. “And not anything
beyond that. If you were a monster, you wouldn’t have listened to me.”

“Listened to you? You didn’t say much of anything, Captain. For most of that, it was all you
could manage just to keep breathing while I—”

“When I told you to stop talking, you did so,” Mithrun interrupts. “When I told you not to
grab my thigh, you moved your hand away. I told you not to put your mouth on me, and you
kept your mouth to yourself. I didn’t say anything else once we really got started because I
didn’t have anything else that needed saying.”

Kept his mouth to himself? But… He hadn’t! Kabru left that love bite on his neck, and he
knows he kissed Mithrun because the muffled sounds the elf made while they kissed were
ratcheting up his own enjoyment in new and exciting ways compared to the open-mouthed
sounds he made otherwise.

“I kissed you, though.”

“Later, yes. You asked if you could. I nodded. That wasn’t what I’d objected to at the start
and we both knew it.”

He has to agree that Mithrun has a point about that, though his point doesn’t negate how
wretched Kabru still feels about the roughness with which he had handled the whole thing.

“Why did you object to that? I was trying to help you relax. Trying to give a little before
taking, while my mind was still clear enough to do so.” Most of his bedpartners have really
enjoyed that, men and women both.

“Too close to the way the demon ate my desires.” Mithrun gives him a bitter half-smile.
“Though you don’t have a snout to root around inside my torso with.”

Oh, shit. He had no idea. He’s not sure what he’d pictured when Mithrun had said that back
in that chilly room when he’d told his story.

“I’m glad you spoke up, Captain. It would have been awful to relive that, even if only by
association.”

“I guess.”

Kabru smiles, letting a touch of exasperation shine through. “It would have. Take it from
someone with plenty of experience reliving trauma.”

“Okay.”
They keep each other company in silence for a few minutes before Mithrun stirs again.

“You know, I’m well-versed in monsters, Kabru. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

Kabru looks down, not sure why it’s suddenly hard to meet Mithrun’s eye.

“Even if you discount the years I spent surrounded exclusively by monsters in my dungeon,
I’ve traveled the world dealing with all kinds of dungeons filled with all kinds of monsters.
You aren’t numbered among them, not among the human variety of monster or the other
sort.”

“…Thanks, Captain.”

Kabru sighs. It’s probably not the best moment to apologize, but that does fit the conversation
somewhat.

“You disagree?” Mithrun asks.

“No,” Kabru says. “I just… I’m sorry about earlier. Not as far back as the pollen, but the part
you don’t remember. I said something that hurt your feelings, questioned whether your
teleportation certification was valid after your dungeon. With the depth perception and lack
of directional sense. And I’m sorry.”

“You wouldn’t be the first to question it.”

“Maybe not, but I was talking out of fear, and I should know by now not to be afraid of your
teleportation magic.”

Mithrun looks up at him with confusion. “Teleportation magic is incredibly dangerous. It

would be stupid not to be at least a little wary.”

“True,” Kabru says, not commenting on Mithrun’s general recklessness with it. “But it hurt
your feelings that I didn’t trust your abilities, and I want to reassure you that I do trust you,
and your abilities.”

After all, it takes an expert to be reckless with something like that and still have it go well as
consistently as Mithrun does.

“You know, I had to fight to be recertified after my dungeon. They weren’t going to allow the
test, even. As a warden, they assumed, I wouldn’t be in the thick of battle, and should be
commanding rather than using magic like that.”

Kabru leans back on his hands. “Yeah?”

He tries to imagine what kind of fighting Mithrun’s talking about. Surely not physical
fighting with teleportation magic. That was a creative application of the art, not something
certifiable.

“I was so angry,” Mithrun says. “I got angry easily, at first, whenever there was a roadblock
to going after the demon. I demanded to see the head of the certification staff, and I
teleported her into the wall until she agreed to let me test.”

“Of course you did.” Kabru doesn’t fight his smile.

“I teleported her along with enough of the surrounding air to give her a buffer to expand her
chest for breathing, and I left her face free. She was impressed enough to certify me right
away, or else terrified I’d do worse to her if she didn’t.”

Mithrun pauses. “I went through the tests anyway, and I passed them.”

“Why do that if you didn’t need to?”

“Because I did need to. I needed to show everyone that I could still do it—all of it—not just
perform a unique and unconventional combat trick,” Mithrun says.

“I needed to be considered truly competent if I was going to make enough decisions in the
field to destroy the demon,” he continues. “A captain. A field captain, specifically. Sent into
the most dangerous places, not sweeping up the cobwebs somewhere mildly interesting.”

“And now you’re here,” Kabru says.

“Now I’m here. The closest I’ve come to achieving my goal.”

Kabru wonders just what Mithrun will do when his one desire is met and there’s nothing left
to live for. He hopes it doesn’t come to that.

“Well, you won’t achieve it if you don’t get some rest,” Kabru says. “I’ll wake the others for
their watch, but then we both need to sleep.”

“Head down, eyes shut, not a peep,” Mithrun says with a little smile.

Kabru has no idea what he means by that, but Mithrun is quick to do just those things once
Kabru lies down beside him, so he doesn't question it.
 Cave Lizard Balut
Chapter Notes

Mild content warning in end notes. ^_^

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Despite being awake for a large chunk of the previous night, Mithrun seems to be perking up
throughout the following day, regaining energy at a rate Kabru likes to see.

He and Mithrun still bring up the back of the party as they follow Izutsumi’s lead through the
tunnels, with Marcille sometimes lagging behind to join them. But they continue to make
better time overall with the slower pace, and Mithrun doesn’t complain.

Their day continues to be uneventful—just the kind of day Kabru likes down here, now that
he knows just how bad “events” can get—right up until they come up on a pile of rounded
rocks and globs of what look like mud, stacked up in one of the tunnels. Kabru knows that
events are soon to follow because Mithrun immediately goes on high alert once he catches
sight of the pile, and Laios, already standing beside the pile, looks concerned.

If their two biggest sources of knowledge about monsters this deep in the dungeon are
worried about a pile of mud and rocks, then Kabru is sure there’s a good reason for it.

“Which way was it going?” Mithrun asks as they rejoin the party beside the pile.

Laios frowns and points down a side tunnel. “Looks like that way, but it’s hard to be sure.
What do you make of the tracks on the ceiling?”

Kabru looks up and sees nothing much up there but a few short, stubby stalactites. Mithrun,
he notes, does not need to look up. Possibly he’s been looking up off and on the entire time
and Kabru simply didn’t notice. It’s a tunnel, though. Looking down to avoid holes in the
ground seems logical, and peering down branches off the main route. But who looks up?

“Definitely a lizard,” Mithrun says. “Not a salamander.”

“Yeah,” Laios says, sounding disappointed. “I thought so, too. But wouldn’t a salamander be
so neat?”

Mithrun doesn’t respond to that, instead reaching out to squish a bit of mud between his
fingers and then wipe his fingers off on his borrowed shirt. “Pretty fresh.”

“Um, what is it?” Marcille asks. “Just mud?”

“Giant worm droppings,” Mithrun says. “You can smell the petrichor, which is probably what
the lizard is following.”

“Ew! That’s so gross! You just reached out and touched it.” Marcille takes a step back from
the pile and from Mithrun. “We’re not eating worm poop. Or big slimy worms.”

“Well, not this worm,” Laios says. “This kind is probably poisonous. No slime in the
droppings.”

Kabru looks to the side, where Mithrun is merely nodding in agreement.

“I don’t get it,” Kabru says.

“And I don’t want to get it,” Chilchuck adds. “Just tell us what we’re doing next.”

Laios looks at Mithrun, and the two of them hold some kind of silent monster conference
before Laios turns to the rest of them.

“The worm is bad news,” Laios says, looking pained to be summarizing instead of going in
depth, “so we should avoid it. But the lizard that’s tracking the worm should be delicious.
Especially if we can get it before it gets the worm.”

“If we arrive afterward, cutting out the lizard’s digestive organs will save the meat,” Mithrun
adds. “But it’s still best to avoid the worm’s carcass if the lizard is feeding.”

“And it’ll be up there,” Izutsumi confirms, pointing upward. “Right? Setting up an ambush
for this worm thing?”

“Unless it’s already eating the worm,” Laios says.

Kabru doesn’t see how they’ll do much damage to a monster that’s so far out of range, unless
they expect Mithrun to teleport something into it—which they shouldn’t, given his current
mana levels—or Izutsumi to do all the work. But he’d rather eat a lizard than a worm,
especially if the worm is actually poisonous, so he’s invested in the idea.

Laios lays out a plan for them. Izutsumi can track it and help them get to a good position to
surround it. Marcille can stun it and knock it to the ground. From there, the rest of them can
attack, except Chilchuck and Mithrun.

If he objects to being left out of the fray, Mithrun doesn’t let on.

Kabru kind of wishes he was also left out of it, just given his current track record of dying or
failing or both when faced with new monsters. But he figures a lizard is a lizard, no matter
how large. Provided it doesn’t have hide like a dragon’s armored scales, he should be able to
accomplish something, even with just the kitchen knife. It’s times like this he really wishes
he’d brought his sword for what was supposed to be a brief, nonviolent negotiation session.

They end up able to avoid running into the apparently poisonous slime-free worm or any
more of its poop piles. And they manage to surround the lizard, for what it’s worth, in all its
pale orange glory.
But the thing is far bigger than Kabru had imagined, far quicker than he’d allowed for, far
more alert than he’d hoped for, and far too disinterested in a fight to stay put long enough for
them to do much of anything but be relieved none of them are hurt when it retreats.

The disappointment at their failed hunt quickly turns to excitement when they resume their
original course through the tunnels only to stumble upon a small opening halfway up a cave
wall that is filled with arm-length off-white ovoids. Kabru can hear the whoop of joy from
Laios upon making the discovery and hopes nothing else has heard him.

The ovoids turn out to be eggs. Lizard eggs, specifically, and still largely goopy from the way
they squish in his arms as he holds the two of them that Laios passes down to him. There’s
something solid in there, he can tell, but he chooses not to think about that. It’s up to Senshi
to make this something he can stomach, and the dwarf has a very solid history of success on
that front.

They haul away only four of the eggs, leaving plenty to become the next generation of
adventurer-evading cave lizards. Given the hopeful conclusion of this dungeon, Kabru isn’t
sure any of them will be around long enough to hatch, but Senshi is happy with the decision.

He’s also happy to set up an actual fire once they reach a natural chimney in the cave system,
using some handily harvested tentacles as logs to roast one of the lizard eggs on top of,
turning the egg regularly until it doesn’t squish at all. Both the tentacles—which are now
harmless on the outside and fluffy on the inside—and the peeled egg get cut into bite-sized
cubes and stir-fried in the pan with a walking mushroom and some fermented dryad buds.

Kabru looks at his plate of food after they’ve all gathered, and is pleased to find that his
portion of the meal only has egg-looking pieces of the lizard egg in it. Bright yellow-orange
and firm like the tofu he tried while traveling with Toshiro’s party, the egg cubes are rich and
yolky. The mushroom is somehow so much an improvement over his own attempt on the
sixth floor that Kabru can’t be sure it’s even the same thing.

He has only minimal complaints.

Marcille is not so lucky, pushing a few pieces of egg aside while she eats the rest and looking
like she’s trying not to cry.

“Those are the best parts,” Laios says to her. “They’re so crispy and crunchy!”

Kabru can vouch for that. By his side, Mithrun is crunching away on what had honestly
looked like half a lizard jawbone embedded in egg yolk, though missing any little teeth or
scales. He doesn’t seem to mind it, but Kabru can feel his own throat closing on Mithrun’s
behalf. A piece with a teeny-tiny lizard claw in it goes on the fork next, and Kabru looks back
at his own meal to avoid watching Mithrun eat that.

He can’t avoid the crunching sounds, though.

Marcille is the only one of them who doesn’t finish her meal, aside from Izutsumi passing her
mushroom chunks off to Laios, and Laios ends up finishing the lizard embryo chunks on
Marcille’s plate with great delight and much crunching after she insists that she can’t do it.
Cleanup is minimal, and the rest of the day brings no surprises, only easy, uneventful travel.
Things get more interesting the next day, when Izutsumi comes back from her preliminary
pre-lunch scouting to reveal that she can hear water up ahead. Lapping water, she insists. In
the distance ahead of where she turned back.

Kabru can’t help but flash back briefly to that awful black water and the floating undines
with their coordinated attack on Mithrun. If they’re still floating above the water, will they
notice the party in the tunnels? Is the balcony still there in the distance? Is it even really a
balcony at all? Are they closer to it now?

“Let’s make camp here,” Laios decides. “It’s only midday, and we’re already close to the
lake. Izutsumi and I will go find the lake, and we’ll report back. We can camp within an easy
few minutes walk of the lake tonight, if it looks safe.”

“Don’t you need a healer with you, in case it goes bad again?” Kabru asks.

Laios shakes his head and digs a coil of rope out of his pack. “We’ll tie this around Izutsumi’s
waist and she’ll go first. That way, if a ledge breaks or a vine tries to get her, I can pull her to
safety before she even hits the water.”

“And she won’t have the unicorn horn with her,” Marcille adds. “That should work.”

If that’s the way they want to do it and Izutsumi isn’t arguing, Kabru will have to be fine with
it. He’s just glad Mithrun isn’t insisting that he accompany them.

Lunch today is just the yolk from one of the lizard eggs, mixed up into an omelet around
some sauteed mushrooms and onions, with the embryonic cave lizard fried up on the side and
cut into five pieces.

“Only five?” Marcille asks as Senshi plates up the food. “The others will be back soon. I’m
sure they’d like a share.”

Senshi beams at her and hands her a plate without any of the lizard on it. “You and Kabru
will be happier without eating any of that,” he says.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she mutters.

Kabru’s feeling pretty thankful himself as he accepts his share and passes Mithrun a second
plate, this one with what looks like a small, spiny rib cross-section nestled on it next to the
omelet. Better him than Kabru.

Izutsumi and Laios arrive right as Chilchuck is getting served, and they quickly abandon their
conversation to come sit in the circle and accept their plates.

“Did you find the lake?” Marcille asks around a bite of mushroom.

“And was there a balcony?” Mithrun follows.

“Yes and yes,” Laios says. “And we found a pretty sweet lakeside cave that looks out over
the water. You can see the balcony from there, though it’s still pretty far away.”
Mithrun nods and returns to his food.

“And none of those undine things, either,” Izutsumi adds. “Not above the surface, anyway.”

“We’ll cast water walk before going near the edge, just in case,” Marcille says. “No sense in
taking chances with an angry undine.”

As they make their way to the selected campsite after lunch, Kabru and Mithrun fall behind a
bit, not because Mithrun needs the slower pace anymore—if anything, Mithrun is urging
Kabru to keep up with the others. But Kabru wants a little privacy, and he knows Mithrun
won’t leave him behind, so he dawdles as much as he can get away with, until he can see the
distant glow of Marcille’s mage lights but can’t hear the other group’s footsteps.

“The beastman and half-foot can still hear you,” Mithrun says as Kabru is just opening his
mouth.

Kabru sighs. “I figured. But at least it’s the illusion of privacy.”

“Mm.”

“Laios said the balcony was still far away,” Kabru says. “Do you still intend to try teleporting
everyone across the lake?”

This time, he’s not going to ask Mithrun if his certification is still valid—he knows it is. He’s
not going to make an ass of himself by challenging his skills. He’s not going to say anything
he’ll come to regret. But he does still need to plant the seed of “maybe think this through” in
the captain’s mind so that he does, in fact, think it through and take an honest stock of his
mana levels… to whatever extent he’s able to do that.

“We’re camping in the cave tonight, in full view of the balcony,” Mithrun says. “Between a
full night’s sleep and a lack of foot travel in the morning, I should be fine. I haven’t used any
magic in days.”

“Okay.”

“Was that everything?”

Kabru looks over at Mithrun and tries to read his expression. The tone of voice was matter-
of-fact. But the meaning behind the words… There’s no way to be entirely sure what he’s
asking. It could be literally as basic as wondering if there were other teleportation-related
questions. It could be a suggestion that they use the semblance of privacy while they still
have it. It could be anything, really.

Kabru reaches for Mithrun’s hand. “No. But there’s not really time for anything but this.”

Mithrun looks down at their joined hands, and maybe that’s a soft smile playing on his
chapped lips. Maybe it isn’t.

But while they walk, Kabru is certain that his hand is being held in return.
It would be wonderful, feeling Mithrun’s hand holding his own, their palms together as they
walk, if not for the echo of Izutsumi’s voice that finds them from around the latest bend in the
path:

“Yeah, they’re still back there. Just kissing or something.”

Kabru could swear that the sound he hears after that is Chilchuck smacking his own forehead.
He smiles.

After sleeping on it and eating a solid breakfast, Mithrun is even more insistent that he can
take the entire party across in a mere five trips.

Kabru still has his doubts, though, entirely based on Mithrun’s still-recovering mana levels.
Sure, he hasn’t used any magic in a few days, but it’s only been those same few days since he
was in such a dire stage of mana depletion that Marcille actually had to pour some of her own
into him to keep him alive.

Kabru doesn’t want to end up splitting the party, even for a single day, if it turns out that
Mithrun only has, say, three trips in him today. But the alternative is continuing as they have
been, spending another few days at best trying to come the rest of the way around the lake
and possibly never find the combination of tunnels that will lead to that balcony.

All while Mithrun grumbles about the balcony having been right there.

And Kabru has to admit with the rest of them that there may not actually be a path to that
balcony. It’s the only opening onto the lake that they can see that has any sort of manmade
decorative railing or anything else to indicate it was designed. That has to mean something,
right?

What’s more, the teleportation would be the fastest way over there, and Mithrun is certain
that the balcony is where they need to go. Kabru isn’t going to doubt him on that front. When
it comes to knowing the peculiar directions of the dungeon, knowing without reason what is
“logical” based on what he would have done, Mithrun has gotten them out of many scrapes.

“The railing on that balcony looks like the ones in the mining town,” Chilchuck says, “but
older. Also sturdier. It might be an actual city under the dungeon and not just a town that
sprang up afterward.”

“That’s why we were digging in the area, all those years ago,” Senshi says softly. “We hoped
to find these ruins, not the ones we did find.”

Kabru has so many questions. Was Senshi in the dungeon “all those years ago?” How many
years is that? It sounds like a long time, and for a dwarf, that could mean decades.
He doesn’t have an opportunity to ask before the conversation moves on from there to the
matter of what order they should be teleported across, skipping over the part where they
actually debate their options.

Kabru supposes they’ll be teleporting across, then.

After nearly half an hour of deliberation, in which every possible configuration and its
consequences are discussed, it’s decided:

Mithrun will take Izutsumi and Chilchuck across first. Then, after Chilchuck has checked the
entire area for traps with Izutsumi and Mithrun acting as protection against any monsters or
ambushes, Mithrun will return and take Kabru and Marcille, leaving Senshi and Laios for last
because they’ll be able to fend for themselves for a day if Mithrun runs out of mana partway
through the process.

It takes Chilchuck a while to declare the other side safe, and Kabru waits anxiously for the
trio to reappear at the balcony. Or for Mithrun to appear, preferably alone. The other two
should ideally stay out of the teleportation area lest they get torn apart by Mithrun’s return.

“He seemed to have a lot of energy this morning,” Marcille says, somehow having caught
Kabru’s tension. “And his mana levels were stable.”

She eyes the rippling black water below cautiously, possibly on the lookout for signs of an
undine taking an interest in their activity, but all that’s been down there has been the
occasional tip of some massive aquatic retile’s snout coming up for air.

“You really don’t like undines, do you?” Kabru asks.

“I’m just being really careful. I don’t want to anger them.”

“On the fourth floor, she dumped a pot of boiling water on one by accident,” Laios says. “It
was furious enough to kill Namari when Mr Tansu went to pacify it.”

Ah. Kabru’s only association with undines, before what happened to Mithrun on this very
lake, had been Holm’s pet undine, hand-raised from a cup of water or something like that.
Gross, what with the human bodily fluids diet, but extremely effective in battle when Holm
could safely get her out of her bottle. And generally harmless unless instructed to attack.

It sounds like Marcille’s only association is being attacked, watching one attack the Falin
chimera she was sure she could reason with, and seeing the results of the attack on Mithrun.
Kabru doesn’t imagine she has a very positive view of the spirits.

And to be honest, he’s got a pretty negative view of the ones in this lake, with its creepy
black water and human-sized squids, its massive mysterious lake reptiles and whatever else is
tucked away in the darkness. Maybe the unicorn horn tooth angered them, but the viciousness
of the response was—

Actually, in keeping with spirits. According to Holm, spirits were harmless unless angered,
but their anger was fierce and unreasoning at times once sparked.
“There he is.” Laios steps back from the edge of the campsite, joined by the rest of them.

It seems like the explanation of just what can go wrong with teleportation has sunk in pretty
well, along with Kabru’s reminder about Mithrun’s sometimes spotty aim and terrible sense
of direction. None of them want to be ripped apart if Mithrun appears to the side of his
intended target.

It’s one thing to trust Mithrun and his teleportation magic. It’s another to disregard the risks
involved and fail to take sensible precautions against those risks, after all. Mithrun himself
had said to be wary of it.

“The other side is safe,” Mithrun says the moment he appears before them. “There’s a tunnel
—sculpted, not natural—leading to a garden courtyard. No succubus larvae, no signs of
succubi. Beyond that, a dwarven stronghold. Ruined, but still standing.”

Marcille shrugs on her pack and grips her staff tightly. “Alright. Then let’s go across.”

“Mm.”

Mithrun stares at the balcony for a solid minute, just as he had the first time, and then with a
touch and the lurching sick feeling of being everywhere and nowhere all at once, they’re on a
smooth polished stone balcony. Too near the railing for Kabru’s comfort, but they didn’t fall
short enough to land in the water or become one with the railing, either, so he’ll take it.

Izutsumi and Chilchuck are waiting further in, lounging near a square fountain in the grass.
Chilchuck waves them over.

“Are you going back across right away, Captain?” Kabru asks. “Or should you rest a bit
first?”

“I can go now. It’s no problem.”

“Alright. We’ll be by the fountain, out of your way.”

The fountain is bubbling with clean water, has no moss growing on its surface, and looks a
bit like no time has passed since it was first installed. It’s even got a light source embedded in
the basin at the center, under what looks like glass.

Kabru studies it for a bit, and then turns his attention to the stronghold beyond the little
garden. It’s… actually lit up. There are poles with lights at the top, and some of the buildings
have lights on their sides, even. Only the ones nearest them, but it’s a wonder to see it. This
must be dwarven engineering from the time before the war. Or maybe from the time of the
ancients, even.

A few minutes later, Kabru can hear Senshi being sick over the side of the balcony’s railing
and Laios marveling at how similar the architecture is to the trolley, whatever that is.

So they made it. Kabru turns to greet them, and sees that Laios is actually supporting
Mithrun, though not carrying him, at least. So there’s still some mana exhaustion. His
reserves must not have been fully topped up yet. At least he didn’t collapse entirely.
They decide to rest by the fountain for a time, having the last of their cave lizard eggs for
lunch with a bit of dryad and dried mandrake leaves. It’s as delicious as usual, particularly
since he doesn’t have to confront the tiny misshapen lizard inside the egg.

After their rest, and fully energized by the prospect of exploring this new part of the dungeon
—because they all agree they are definitely back in the dungeon proper now—they set out
looking for food to supplement their remaining squid meat and other dwindling foodstuffs.

There aren’t as many garden areas or decorative courtyards as in previous levels of the
dungeon, but they do find a few, along with some blade fish in a small pond. These ones are
golden with orange and black splotches on their sides, but Senshi assures them that these will
taste the same as their drabber cousins on the upper floors.

There is also a nest in one dead end alley that has a trio of what Kabru recognizes as basilisk
eggs. They take one of those as well and leave in a hurry before the monster returns. Kabru
well remembers what dying from basilisk venom feels like, and he doesn’t want another
repetition.

As they travel through the city, the lights continue to flicker on when they approach, and the
lights they’ve passed fade to darkness again, so that they walk in a bubble of bright lighting
amidst the darkness of the rest of the city. It’s eerie, but Kabru’s sure the two magic users
appreciate the break from maintaining their mage lights.

Just as they’re beginning to tire and have shifted from hunting food to hunting shelter, they
come across a building without doors at all. Just an open archway leading into what turns out
to be a public building of some sort, with doorways but none of the heavy locked doors the
rest of the buildings feature.

“Finally,” Chilchuck moans. “A lock I don’t have to pick.”

“But there’s no door,” Laios says. “So no lock at all.”

“I’m just saying.”

On further investigation, the building is a bathhouse. Complete with a heated pool of water
easily fifteen feet across and appearing as clean as the water in the fountain. They put
Mithrun’s unicorn horn tooth in it just to be sure, and Marcille breathes a sigh of relief when
no undines rise up to object to the purification.

“It’s a lot of water,” Laios says. “We should probably leave the tooth in the water and take it
out when we leave. If that’s okay?”

Mithrun nods. “The pool is shallow, made for dwarves. It will be easy enough to find and
retrieve later.”

Chilchuck suggests a bath, “since it’s a bathhouse, after all,” and it’s decided that Marcille
and Izutsumi should take the first shift, with Senshi, Laios and Chilchuck after them, and
Kabru and Mithrun last. That way there’s always enough people dressed and on guard against
 possible monster attacks, and Senshi can work on dinner prep before and cooking after his
turn in the bathing pool.

It sounds like a solid plan, and Kabru is looking forward to seeing what Senshi does with
their new ingredients. Somehow, he’s gotten used to eating three solid meals in a day—
something he never did even outside of the dungeon—and he’s already starting to get hungry
in anticipation of dinner.

He wonders if Mithrun is being similarly affected by the regular meals and clockwork routine
of the Touden party’s dungeon crawling methods. Maybe he’ll ask while they’re in the bath
later. Maybe he’ll ask for some other things, too. More kisses. Maybe more than kisses, too.
They’d have soap and privacy, in addition to that lubrication spell…

Later, though. Probably best they’re going last.

Chapter End Notes

Content warning: The title says it all, folks. The team will be eating roasted fertilized
cave lizard eggs, which will have teeny-tiny little cave lizard embryos inside them. It’ll
be a lot less bloody than the time they cut open the unripe barometz fruit in canon. But
still, reader beware.
 Dwarven Bathhouse / Separation Anxiety

The water is absolutely perfect when Kabru steps down into the pool, just on the verge of
being too hot without getting there. It’s also exactly what his body needs after all this travel,
as his sudden awareness of aching muscles tells him. He can’t contain the groan that escapes
his throat, and he doesn’t really try.

There’s a slight ripple in the water as Mithrun joins him, but the water level remains the same
—neck-high on a standing dwarf, but perfect for taller humans sitting down, as well. It’s
constructed really well, with various levels of smoothed stone ledges for people of various
heights to sit on if they don’t want to stand.

And the engineering is different from the elven engineering he grew up around. Elves tend to
use spells to accomplish their goals, and it makes sense that a dwarven city would forgo the
magic and rely on technology so advanced it feels like magic. The kind of technology that’s
banned now across the world because of the ancient war.

It seems unfair that such good things have gotten lost in the shuffle of the war’s destruction.
Especially because the war itself was the mistake of the long-lived races and yet the effects
are unequally felt. Elves can still magic their way to these things as long as the spells are
limited, but no one can use machines to do it if they have no magic.

Problems for another time, though. This is his time with Mithrun, his time to soak up all this
heat and let his muscles relax. Maybe his time for a little lovemaking, even.

“The water feels good, doesn’t it, Captain?”

“It does.”

Mithrun doesn’t add anything to his words, but his hand shifts to the side, gliding on top of
Kabru’s in the water.

Kabru swallows and turns his hand over, palm up now, to hold Mithrun’s.

He’s been the one to initiate all of their contact—the intimate kind of contact, anyway—since
the pollen encounter. He’s been the one to start the kisses stolen on the way back to the
campsite. He’s been the one to reach for Mithrun’s hand as they walk behind the others. He’s
thought all along that Mithrun accepted his advances, tolerated his advances, even enjoyed
his advances, but that he would never make a move himself. Would never want to.

But here, alone and naked in a bath together, Mithrun is reaching out to him. Seeking
closeness, maybe. Inviting Kabru to take things further than a held hand, perhaps. He didn’t
pull away when Kabru turned his palm up, after all.

“…Captain?”
He probably shouldn’t be asking for clarification of intent. He probably should accept what
Mithrun is offering and be glad of it. If they are as close to the heart of the dungeon as the
signs seem to indicate, this might be the last opportunity to relax and unwind before they
have to fight the lunatic magician and his chimera and defeat a demon. Maybe asking for too
much will get in the way of that opportunity.

But after that’s taken care of, Kabru’s not sure what will happen.

He should make the most of this situation to prepare for the endgame of this trek through the
dungeon, should relax… but also…

Kabru moves away from the edge of the pool, comes to kneel in the water in front of
Mithrun, sliding his hand under Mithrun’s as he turns but keeping their palms in contact. The
elf’s chin is in the water, a reminder that he’s shorter than most tall-men, and so Kabru uses
his other hand to tilt Mithrun’s face up out of the water before leaning in to kiss him.

Mithrun returns the kiss as he usually does, tentatively at first, and then with confidence
when Kabru doesn’t back away.

Kabru wonders why that’s his pattern, suspects it has to do with feeling unwanted or
unlovable—mutilated and ghastly to use Mithrun’s own words. And perhaps in elven society
that would be the case, would be the prevailing opinion about his ears, his eye, his scars. His
other condition, the hidden one that no one can see except through how he doesn’t care for
himself.

If he could, Kabru would find a way to convince Mithrun that he’s wanted and lovable, that
he’s beautiful, that he should seek out the things that bring him pleasure, that he should avoid
what he doesn’t like, when it’s possible.

But there just isn’t time.

Still, Kabru intends to do his best. He deepens their kiss more so than he’s done before, licks
into Mithrun’s mouth, seeks out his tongue, encourages it to play. And it takes a moment, but
gradually Mithrun returns the advance, eagerly and with heat.

Somewhere in their kissing—Kabru loses track of the passing time—Mithrun takes hold of
his waist and pulls him back against the side of the pool, rotates them so that their positions
are reversed, and straddles him, breaking their string of kisses finally.

“It’s frustrating, you know,” Mithrun says against his cheek.

Kabru tucks a strand of wet hair behind Mithrun’s torn ear. “What is?”

“I used to have one goal.” Mithrun pulls back slightly so that he can run deceptively delicate
fingers along the top of Kabru’s shoulder. “One all-encompassing, frantic goal that took up
every waking moment and drove every decision I made.”

Kabru nods. He’s well aware. “The demon. Your revenge on the demon.”
“Yes. It was all very simple. But now I find,” Mithrun pauses, maybe picking his words, or
maybe disbelieving the words as he says them, “I have… two goals.”

Kabru holds his breath. He’s thought to himself that Mithrun could possibly grow to have
new desires, desires the demon didn’t devour because they weren’t there at the time to be
devoured. And he’s hoped, he’s hoped so hard, so selfishly, that one of those new desires
might be him. Could he have been right? Could Mithrun come to have feelings for him,
maybe someday to love him?

Could it be? Does he dare to keep hoping for that?

“I want to kill that demon, Kabru.” The hesitation from before is gone with that statement,
replaced with a hard grip on Kabru’s shoulder and a low, simmering fury that is reflected in
his left eye in a silvery glint. “I want to kill it more than anything else in the world. It’s what
gives me life, what keeps me breathing. But—”

Mithrun closes his eyes, and his fingers relax again along Kabru’s shoulder.

But? Kabru forces himself to breathe as normally as he can when Mithrun pauses after
cutting himself off.

“But it’s not the only thing anymore,” Mithrun says softly. “There’s something else there
now, alongside it.”

Mithrun’s other hand leaves Kabru’s waist, travels upward, trailing along his skin until it
comes to rest on his cheek, cupping his face gently.

“Captain…”

“More than almost anything,” Mithrun whispers, “I want to see where this is going, with
you.”

Kabru can hardly believe it, though it’s exactly what he’d hoped for. What he’s dreamed of
while curled close to him in the night.

It occurs to him that this could be a shapeshifter reading his mind and lulling him with what
he wants. It could be a succubus taking Mithrun’s form in order to drain him. He might have
lost sight of Mithrun along the way, might have allowed a replacement to infiltrate…

His thinking is ground to a halt by Mithrun’s lips on his, Mithrun’s chest against his own,
Mithrun’s thighs beneath his palms, and if this is an illusion, he almost doesn’t care.

“And that’s what is so frustrating,” Mithrun says, breaking away to put some space between
them but remaining on his lap. “Because I can’t.”

What? Kabru’s fingers grip Mithrun’s legs more tightly than he realizes at first, and he makes
himself relax his grip even when he wants to hold on and not let go.

“I can’t,” Mithrun repeats, his voice containing a hint of the same despair Kabru is reeling
with.
“The two goals don’t align. If I pursue the demon, as I always have, then when this dungeon
is broken and sealed, there will be another, and another, and I will go there each time. And
you…”

Mithrun gazes into his eyes, his own eye seeming somehow lighter than before, and he runs
his fingers through Kabru’s hair, sending a jolt down Kabru’s spine as if his fingers were
electrified.

“You are a tall-man,” Mithrun continues mournfully. “You cannot follow me there, even if
you were qualified to explore dungeons, which you aren’t. A tall-man cannot join the
Canaries—the queen would never allow that.”

Kabru knows that from experience, yes, and remembers his childhood disappointment on
learning that the secondhand Canary uniform elements he wore as a growing boy would
never be replaced with a new, official uniform of his own. Now he has another reason for
disappointment.

“And if I pursue you,” Mithrun says, “if I pursue this, whatever it is that’s forming between
us, then I cannot devote everything I have to killing the demon.”

He plants a kiss on Kabru’s cheek, and another at the corner of Kabru’s mouth, but he pulls
back when Kabru turns his head to try to capture his lips.

“I must pursue the demon. I must, but that would leave nothing for you. And you are a tall-
man. You will be gone in the blink of an eye, and so will this.” Mithrun shakes his head.
“There’s no time. Not enough for these two goals. I feel a sense of urgency and loss.”

Kabru nods. He can feel it, too. The urgency. The loss. Because his wildest hopes about
Mithrun and himself—that Mithrun could grow to return his feelings, to love him—have
come to pass, and yet Kabru is still losing him.

“I’m feeling a conflict where there wasn’t one before,” Mithrun says softly. “Where there
shouldn’t be one. And it’s frustrating. Because I want whatever it is you are offering, but I
can’t have it.”

Kabru knew, on some level, that Mithrun was ultimately unobtainable. But he hates hearing it
confirmed.

Yet Mithrun still perches on his lap, still straddles his legs, hasn’t pulled away entirely. And
while it might hurt less to call everything off now, in one cut, there is still time for them.
Time to enjoy what they do have and store up fond memories to reflect on. It’s worth the
added heartache later.

“Maybe you can’t have it in the long run, Captain. And maybe I’ll die in a few decades. But
right now, I’m available. And I think I’ve been falling in love with you. I want whatever this
is, too.”

Mithrun’s eyes close, but his body language is open, says that he’s still interested, that he
hasn’t closed himself off by closing his eyes.
“…Love, huh?”

“Maybe.” Kabru shifts slightly in the water, and Mithrun shifts with him. “I’ve never allowed
myself to fall for someone before. It’s kind of new to me.”

Kabru’s also never admitted that to anyone before, that he hasn’t just had a string of romantic
entanglements that fizzled before getting serious, that he has kept himself walled off from the
kind of connection that is necessary for a relationship to work. That he’s fought off love with
the ferocity of a wild animal so he can focus on his goals.

Mithrun sighs. “I know this one. This is where the protagonist—”

“It’s not a story,” Kabru says, his tone fierce as he fights for love instead of fighting to ward it
off. “It’s not one of those elven dramas about forbidden love and tragedy. It’s just you and
me. Forget all of the literature and just be yourself.”

“‘Myself’ is not an appealing prospect, I’m afraid.”

“ I find you appealing. And yes, I know you think my taste is warped, if not downright
appalling. But you’re wrong about my taste, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because it doesn’t
change the way things are for me. I find you incredibly appealing.”

Mithrun shakes his head and opens his eyes, the left once again as inky black as the false
eye.

“I don’t have anything to offer you, Kabru.” He sounds tired, like the effort of expressing his
newfound desire has worn him out. “Just a mutilated, broken body and a distracted, demon-
obsessed mind.”

“That’s enough, though,” Kabru insists, caressing Mithrun’s cheek and letting his fingers
brush against the ragged edge of his ear. “You’re enough. You’re what I want, just the way
you are, with everything you have to offer. All of you. So-called mutilated, broken body and
distracted mind and all the rest of you. I want you.”

Kabru pauses, hopeful that his words will sink in a bit.

“And right now,” he adds, letting a little heat slip into his tone to test the waters, “there isn’t
anything you can do to pursue your first goal. We’re camped for the night, dinner isn’t ready,
there’s nothing to do but wait. Wait… and maybe pursue that second goal for a while, while
we can.”

They do eventually get around to bathing, though washing each other’s backs leads to more
kissing, more touching, and Kabru discovering that Mithrun knows a much shorter version of
that lubrication spell, which he employs before giving Kabru an excellent hand job from
behind and leaving his own desperate love bites all over Kabru’s neck and shoulders.
Mithrun collects his unicorn horn tooth from the bottom of the pool before following Kabru
out of the water and allowing him to kneel and dry him off after Kabru’s finished drying
himself.

Kabru lingers on Mithrun’s chest, the circular scar with the smooth skin inside the border and
the older scars outside.

“I really thought I’d lost you when this happened.” Kabru swallows. “I wasn’t sure if we
were still under the immortality spell, or if I could get you to Marcille in time, or even
whether Laios was telling the truth that she could heal that kind of damage.”

He looks up at Mithrun and then stands, pulling the elf into a tight hug. After a moment,
Mithrun raises his arms to return the hug, clinging to him with every bit as much intensity.

“I know there aren’t any guarantees, Captain. That we could both die at any time. That you
will fight the demon as long as you live, chasing it from dungeon to dungeon. But… Try to
survive your first goal. For me, if not for yourself.”

“I’ll try.”

His words are muffled a bit from his face being partially pressed into Kabru’s chest, but
Kabru hears the certainty in their tone and that’s what matters.

They share a kiss before parting from one another, each to pull on his own clothes. Kabru
pauses in donning his armor to watch Mithrun’s new love bites disappear behind his
spidersilk neck guard. It was a risk leaving something like that behind, but Mithrun had made
such sounds when Kabru bit his shoulder and sucked the skin there that Kabru had been
inspired to leave three more of them—one on each side of his neck, and a second one on his
right shoulder.

He wonders how long they’ll last. He hopes it’s a long time, because they’re the only claims
he has on the captain. The only physical evidence of his affection. And they’re safely covered
up, a secret for them to share.

One of the sleeves from Laios’s borrowed shirt has come unrolled, so Kabru rolls it up to
match the other while Mithrun ties the makeshift belt on.

His uniform overdress, now irreversibly splotched with black squid ink turned a dull gray by
washing and sporting two large holes and a series of smaller holes from the tentacles’ hooks,
is a hopeless cause that hadn’t made it to the bathing chamber. It had gotten stuffed in
Kabru’s pack after the undine attack and may be good for rags later, if Kabru doesn’t become
sentimental about it.

He likes the way Mithrun looks in the oversized shirt, anyway. He looks softer and more
approachable, less like part of the monolithic sea of hardened Canaries and more like a
person. Relatable. And in a way his squad with their variations on the Canary uniform are
not, at least in Kabru’s mind.
“Ready to go back?” Kabru asks as he picks up the soap and the damp towel from a stone
bench.

“Not yet,” Mithrun says, pulling him closer for another lingering kiss. He looks up at Kabru,
his eye searching for something, or maybe just committing him to memory.

“Okay.” Mithrun extends his left hand to take Kabru’s right. “Let’s go back.”

The others are up the stairs and a few rooms down a hallway, and Kabru can smell something
vaguely like chicken roasting as they climb the stairs. He cannot wait to sink his teeth into
whatever that is. He’s built up a hunger and food will satisfy at least a portion of it.

But partway up the stairs, the building shakes, and there’s the scent of masonry before the
dinner smells vanish.

Mithrun is dashing up the stairs before Kabru even realizes they aren’t holding hands
anymore. He turns around suddenly and herds Kabru out onto the street, apparently not liking
whatever he found upstairs.

“This’ll be the lord of the dungeon,” Mithrun mutters.

“Coming here?” Kabru looks around and clutches the towel. “Can you—“

“I have enough mana, but I don’t think he’ll be here personally. He’ll send familiars.”

Mithrun holds onto his bicep and points to the top of the nearest building. “I’m taking us up
there to look around.”

The shaking is starting to die down as Kabru looks down at a completely empty cityscape,
devoid of movement or any sign of human activity other than the wide ring of lights that
spreads out from their position.

Kabru scans the darkness outside of that circle of light, looking for a matching circle that will
indicate the rest of the party. He doesn’t see even a faint glow of Marcille’s mage lights.

He also doesn’t see what cuts his cheek, other than that it’s quick and red. He looks up
instead of down and sees a small horde of red dragon things circling above them, each about
the size of a small cat.

In mere moments, the mob descends on them, and while Mithrun teleports the dragons he
touches to that ever vague “somewhere else” location when they come into range, Kabru
takes another three slashes before Mithrun teleports the two of them to… somewhere.

They’re in an alley too close to the side of a building, and they aren’t technically inside of
any walls, though Mithrun has to step out from an elf-shaped impression left in a wall from
his arrival. Mithrun doesn’t seem bothered by the near miss, so Kabru doesn’t mention it.

The healing spell Mithrun casts hardly stings at all, no more than the blade fish cuts he’d
collected before they ran into Laios’s group. He hopes it doesn’t take up too much mana.
“We won’t find the others,” Mithrun says, grim. “This is intentional. Whether it’s the
dungeon lord or the demon itself, I can’t be sure. But one of them knows we’re here and
doesn’t want us working with the others.”

Splitting a party up while they’re in the same building as each other, only a staircase away? If
it’s that easy to be separated… Kabru has a sudden image of himself all alone so deep in the
dungeon that there is no map or designated floor number, armed with a damp towel and a
horn of kelpie soap.

“What do we do?”

Mithrun grips Kabru’s arm tightly, but his voice is calm, if still a little grim. “We stay
together.”
 Basilisk and Barley

An assessment of their inventory while Mithrun heals the gashes Kabru sustained from the
wyvern familiars confirms that they are not anything approaching equipped for a dungeon
crawl. Kabru still has the hidden knife in his boot, but it’s not meant for hunting monsters.
It’s good in a pinch when your opponent thinks you’re unarmed, though, and this is a pinch,
regardless of his lack of opponent.

The whole dungeon is his opponent right now.

But aside from that, they have a bit of soap and a towel, the clothes on their backs, and a
small fragment of unicorn horn. The grand total of their supplies.

“Thanks, Captain,” Kabru says when Mithrun is finished with the healing spell. It itches, but
all healing itches, when it doesn’t hurt more than the injury itself.

“So we’re back at square one, and even lower in the dungeon than the first time,” Kabru
adds.

Mithrun shakes his head. “We have access to clean water whenever we find water of any sort.
We have a weapon I can really use, finally, and no reason to hide my use of it. And we’ve
stolen fancy soap from the same person a second time.”

He doesn’t mention Kabru’s boot knife, and Kabru still can’t tell if he knows about it or not.
But at this point, he doesn’t have anything to hide, so… “I do have a small knife still, but it’s
practically worthless against a monster of any size. I don’t even think it’d be good for
cooking.”

Mithrun shrugs. “It’s good enough to stab a dungeon lord who thinks you’re his friend. If it
comes to that.”

“Laios won’t need to be stabbed.” Kabru is very nearly certain of that. “His plan will—”

“Fail,” Mithrun bites out. “It will fail, and so will he. He isn’t smarter than that demon. He
will go into it intending one thing, and the demon will twist it around into another. Before he
knows it, he’ll be that demon’s feast.”

Mithrun shakes his head. “No, their plan to ask the demon to go away is ridiculous.” He
sighs. “But at least they know the dangers. At least they won’t go to this winged lion like so
many trusting sheep hoping the wolf is safe because it resembles the sheepdog.”

“…Do you wish we’d attacked them?” Kabru asks, not knowing if he wants to know the
answer. “You said we should kill Laios before he could become the lord of the dungeon. Do
you still think that?”

“I’m not sure. Time will tell if we made the right move leaving them alive. And soon, too.
The ancient maps list this city, but the Golden Country was built on top of it. They can’t have
dug down past this point before the current dungeon lord found the apparent answer to his
problems.”

“So we’re here,” Kabru says. “This is the heart of the dungeon.”

“Near enough. But I’m not so sure this is where the demon is sealed.”

“Almost all of these buildings have solid stone or metal doors that don’t open for a lockpick
with ease. It’s the perfect place to hide a sealed demon, isn’t it?”

Mithrun is silent for a moment. “If it were me,” he says, “I’d keep the demon close. On my
person. In that book the dungeon lord was carrying. And since he actually uses the book, the
rest of the demon must be sealed somewhere else. But still close to… home.”

“And home is…?”

“The Golden Country,” Mithrun says, as though that’s an obvious conclusion to make. “But I
have no idea where that is.”

Kabru isn’t sure how that’s any different from usual, since Mithrun is so bad with directions.
But he can’t see any Golden Country existing in a dwarven city. Especially not when the
actual castle town is up on the fifth floor of the dungeon. But maybe the dungeon twists in on
itself somehow. Maybe the Golden Country exists in some separate world that’s connected to
this one and only accessible through magic.

“We need to find something to eat, Captain. And we need to sleep. Before we try to find the
Golden Country.” Kabru sighs. “And we don’t have any supplies to help us do those things,
really.”

Mithrun looks for a moment like he’s about to argue, but then he simply nods. “Alright. Let’s
search the houses in this area and see if the residents left anything useful. Cooking supplies,
bedding. A sack of some kind to carry it in.”

“And let’s stay close,” Kabru adds. “I don’t want to be alone down here.”

Mithrun looks at him with something unreadable in his eye for a moment. Then: “Hand me
the boot knife.”

Kabru blinks. And then lifts his foot to do as directed. He has no idea what Mithrun intends
to do with it, since there isn’t anything to attack in a stone alleyway with the little red dragons
so far above them.

“Here,” he says, handing it over. “What are you doing with it? It’s too small to—”

Kabru cuts himself off when Mithrun nonchalantly grabs a bit of his own hair and slices it off
without hesitation and before Kabru can protest. Before he can shake off the shock and
actually process enough to respond, Mithrun is already speaking.

“Take it and put it in a pocket,” Mithrun says, holding out the lock of hair in one hand and the
knife in the other. “It’s still part of me, and I’ll be able to find it—and you, by extension—if
we do get separated.”

Kabru takes the knife first, puts it back where it belongs. Then he carefully ties the lock of
hair into a knot to keep it together and gets it situated in a pants pocket under his chainmail
and other armor. It takes some time to manage, and Kabru uses the time to think.

He’s going to be carrying a piece of Mithrun at least until the dungeon situation comes to
whatever conclusion they manage. Maybe the captain will ask for it back, afterward. Or
maybe he’ll allow Kabru to keep it, even if Kabru can’t keep Mithrun himself. He doesn’t
understand how it’s still part of Mithrun now that it’s been hacked off, at least in whatever
sense Mithrun meant, but sentimentally speaking, it is definitely part of him.

Back in the West, lovers sometimes exchange small locks of hair as keepsakes. That, Kabru
understands. But he has no idea how his having this particular keepsake will make him any
easier to locate if they end up on opposite sides of the city, or worse, entirely different levels
of the dungeon.

Still, he’s trusted Mithrun about most things, so far, and it’s mostly worked out just fine. If
Mithrun is confident he’ll be able to find Kabru, then Kabru can’t help but feel a bit of that
confidence, himself.

Maybe that’s the entire point. Kabru hopes he never has to find out.

When he finally has his armor adjusted back into place, he looks over at Mithrun and finds
the elf looking at him with a fond expression and a little smile, with a bit of new bangs
hanging over his forehead above his left eye.

“Ready?” Mithrun asks.

Kabru nods. “Ready. But let’s still stay close together, okay?”

“Right.”

They don’t end up finding a pack or anything like one, but they do slowly grow their
inventory as they cautiously explore the contents of each house they teleport into. There’s a
cooking pot, a large metal spoon, a small bag of barley, a smaller bag of salt, a single
unbroken plate.

Mostly there’s dust.

Kabru adds each new item to the makeshift sack he’s formed out of the towel, and after three
houses that contain nothing but dust, his stomach is growling loudly enough that he’s
considering eating the barley dry and unboiled.

But as they approach the next house, Mithrun stops and backs into him, in a move
reminiscent of the warning about the shapeshifter back when they started out together. Kabru
hopes it’s not another shapeshifter—he’s certain that his duplicate would be a lot harder to
differentiate by now. And Mithrun’s duplicate, as well.

“Shapeshifter?” Kabru asks in a low murmur.

“Basilisk,” Mithrun whispers. “Nesting. Partly blinded by the lights. Stay here.”

Kabru grabs his arm. “I may be useless against one of those things, Captain, but I’m not
going to risk us getting separated while you leap around fighting a venomous chicken-snake.”

“I’m hardly planning to attack it at close range,” Mithrun whispers. “Just hand me the towel.”

“The… towel?”

But Mithrun’s making an impatient gesture at him, and so Kabru sets the towel down and
removes their supplies as quietly as he can manage. He’s not sure what a towel will
accomplish that a handy brick wouldn’t. But he’s not going to question it.

“Here you go.”

Mithrun takes it and holds it up by two corners, taking turns peeking around the corner and
adjusting the towel’s angle relative to his body until he’s satisfied.

Kabru has a vague impression of what Mithrun must be doing—measuring the distance and
triple checking it in preparation for a teleportation spell. But even with his impression, he
can’t quite picture what a towel is going to do to a basilisk protecting its nest.

But after all that measuring, suddenly the basilisk shrieks in the distance, and Kabru can hear
heavy wingbeats and something wet slapping against the stone, then evenly paced footsteps
rapidly coming closer until a pair of scaly, feathery, bloody, spur-studded legs and a writhing
snake tail run past them and down a neighboring alley, leaving a trail of blood and shed
feathers in their wake.

He looks around the corner himself and sees the head and most of the body of the chicken
part of the creature flopping helplessly on its bloodied nest, still shrieking.

Mithrun drops a towel-thin sheet of meat and feathers and helps him gather up their supplies,
piling things into Kabru’s arms as the towel carry sack is currently trapped under a dying
basilisk torso and probably dripping with blood.

“…That’s effective,” Kabru murmurs, looking at the pile of meat and feather fragments on
the ground beside him. “I didn’t know the legs and snake tail could just get up and run on
their own.”

“The snake is the main body, and the chicken is the tail,” Mithrun says.

“What?”

Mithrun nods. “Not many people know that.”

Kabru bets Laios does. But Laios isn’t like many other people. He stands out.

They approach the still-flapping basilisk, keeping a safe distance from the beak, and Mithrun
drags the towel out from under it to teleport it through the monster’s neck, finally silencing it.
The wings and torso stop moving after another few minutes.
“We’ll have company if we don’t relocate quickly,” Mithrun says. “Harpies or some other
scavenger. Let’s go.”

He grabs the basilisk carcass by one wing, drapes the bloody towel over the feathers and
places his free hand on Kabru’s bicep. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Kabru says.

They end up in an administrative office of some kind instead of a house on their first try, and
end up breaking a wooden desk in the process when Mithrun teleports them partially inside
of it. The wood is old enough to break apart easily, though, and they don’t remain trapped for
long.

Rather than take their chances with another blind teleportation leap, Kabru suggests they
make do with where they are—there’s a massive ornate fireplace in the foyer, probably
intended to present a welcoming display more than to be used to roast a monster, but it seems
like it would work to keep smoke out of the room, and there’s plenty of wood to start a fire
with and to keep a fire going.

“I don’t have anything to start a fire with,” Kabru says. “I’ve seen it done by just rubbing
pieces of wood together, but…”

“I’ve got it.” Mithrun pinches a bit of wood between his thumb and index finger and when he
lets go, there’s a tiny flame dancing on the wood, like a pinched candle wick in reverse.

Kabru leaves the fire to him and looks around for something to use as a spit for the basilisk.
He’d like to try roasting it, but ultimately, he settles for hacking off chunks of breast meat
with his boot knife and cutting it up into bite-sized pieces to put in the pot with some water
from a manual fountain in a different room and a small handful of the barley.

It’ll be like chicken soup, he tells himself, adding a little of the salt and stirring before setting
the pot near the fire.

This attempt at soup goes better than the barometz, but only because the meat acts like meat
and doesn’t dissolve into a goopy red mess. It’s not anything like a Senshi-crafted meal, but
it’s enough like a cross between chicken soup and oatmeal that Kabru feels pretty good about
the ingredients and his preparation.

Mithrun fights to keep his eyes open while Kabru’s thumbs dig into the muscles along the
sides of his spine. The continual repetition—press and release, move, press and release—is
occasionally punctuated by intense pressure concentrated in one spot, what Kabru is calling
“myofascial trigger points” but which Mithrun has always known as merely “knots.”
Kabru truly is an expert in human anatomy as well as the typical human psyche, it seems,
right down to the terminology.

He wonders, as his eyes drift closed, whether Kabru has him figured out as well as he has
figured out others. His is not a typical human psyche, after all, having been mostly devoured
by a demon. And aren’t a human’s mind and actions ultimately just a bundle of desires and
the results of those desires?

He will not fall asleep, though. He does not want to. Not on some desk in an office building
where there is no room for Kabru to join him.

But he feels his muscles gradually turning into a jelly under Kabru’s skilled hands, feels the
tension releasing bit by bit, even the tension that isn’t muscular, the tension that’s entirely
wound up in and around the question of desire.

What he’d told Kabru was true. For forty years now, there has been a gaping hole inside of
himself, a hole he could not care about despite knowing that it was wrong, that it was
unnatural, that it should be filled with more than that single pulsating thread that was the
desire to kill that demon. For forty years, he’s nursed that thread of desire into a fine, multi-
strand braided rope, something strong enough to use to pull himself through a life he honestly
does not want to live.

The rope of desire to slay the demon has supported the weight of his useless self for forty
years, working tirelessly and alone in the midst of a void that would disturb anyone who truly
understood it—which would be no one, he supposes, unless they were doomed to experience
it, of course. The lack of desires was something even his brother’s caregivers could not
understand because they had desires, and many of them.

Kabru, he thinks, might actually understand.

Kabru has a two-stranded rope of a goal, himself. Prevent the Utaya disaster from ever
repeating; an achievable goal if they can successfully break and seal this and every other
dungeon. And bring equality to the geopolitical sphere of the world, bringing short-lived
races to the discussion table and not dismissing them as children playing at ruling. That one
seems less achievable.

And neither are achievable in Kabru’s lifetime. Maybe not even in Mithrun’s.

But Kabru devotes himself to that dual goal, and everything he does seems to be in support of
those goals. Kabru has other desires, and he acts on them, so he doesn’t have the same
desireless pit inside, but he has his priorities.

Mithrun suspects that he has become one of those priorities. Perhaps even another goal, a
second thread alongside the two-stranded rope of protection from dungeons and equality for
the races. Perhaps even a strand of the rope itself, making Kabru’s goals threefold.

Just as Kabru has become a thread alongside Mithrun’s rope.

Kabru, of all people, is someone Mithrun finds he desires. Kabru, a tall-man. Kabru, who
tried to kill him and himself by plunging into the pit. But also Kabru, who took the time to
show him how to sleep naturally, who still takes the time, who cares. Kabru, who ate and still
eats monsters despite his trauma surrounding them. Kabru, who thought he was a monster but
who is anything but. Complicated and simple at the same time.

Kabru, who somehow manages every night to break tension’s hold on him, to bring
relaxation to his muscles and his mind, to render him vulnerable at a mere touch and send
him to sleep.

Mithrun is not vulnerable, as a general rule. He does not allow himself to be. He has to be
ready to kill the demon. Others might interpret his passivity and willingness to do as directed
as vulnerability. Others might assume that, without any desires of his own, he’s left at the
whim of anyone who commands him.

Others would be wrong. He might not care enough to refuse a command, but only when the
command is not objectionable. His definition of objectionable might be skewed by the lack of
desires, of course. He’s certain he would not have done many of the things Cithis had him do,
before his desires were devoured. But he can’t always rely on Milsiril’s suggestion of “check
in with your past self and see what he has to say.”

His past self was a wretched people-pleasing wreck, full of superiority and inferiority at once,
the two in constant conflict with each other, the results of their warring leaving him unable to
trust a single soul. His past self cared far too much about what others thought of him, readily
accepted perceived daggers pointed his direction and defended against them by wrapping
himself in external charm.

Mithrun despises his past self. For all there is some advice to be had from him when it comes
to social graces, Mithrun regards him as useless on the whole. He certainly doesn’t aspire to
return to such a state.

No, he’s come to rely instead on that thick, supportive rope of a goal: kill the demon. Kill it,
kill it, kill it.

And now there’s a thread. A thread wrapped around the rope like a creeping vine surrounding
a tree or digging into the side of a building. Not strangling the rope, not yet, but eventually, if
allowed to thrive. A thread that is Kabru.

He’s not sure when the thread appeared, or how thick it was when it first appeared. He does
know that it’s thicker now than when he first noticed it. The kiss after the hot spring. Kabru
pulling him in, Kabru seeking permission, like he always does for everything, where people
don’t ask for Mithrun’s permission, except convicts he’s in charge of. People haven’t asked
his permission for things like this for forty years—longer, even—but Kabru does.

Kabru, somehow, finds him attractive, appealing. Kabru wants him. It’s baffling, but it’s
something Mithrun has to accept as a fact. Kabru rarely lies to him, and when he does, it’s
always readily apparent. Kabru is not lying when he says those things, when he asks him for
permission, when he kisses him, when he caresses his face or what’s left of his ears.
Love. Kabru said in the bathhouse that he thought he might be falling in love with him. That
he’s never allowed himself to do that before. It’s a new sensation for Kabru, something he’s
exploring. Something he wants to explore with Mithrun.

And it would be a new sensation for Mithrun as well, if that is what he feels in this growing
thread of desire. Mithrun never trusted anyone enough to love them before, no matter what
Kabru has to say about Sultha in his polished version of Mithrun’s so-called tragic backstory.
But he trusts Kabru.

He trusts Kabru to send him to sleep every night, and to remind him that they need to eat, or
drink some water. He trusts Kabru to keep him on a schedule, a routine, even while in a
dungeon, when the desire to kill the demon blocks out any sense of time or routine. He trusts
Kabru enough to follow his lead on Laios and the others. He trusts Kabru enough to forgo
checking for ulterior motives.

Does he trust Kabru enough to love him?

It’s hard to be sure, of course, as he’s never dealt with love before outside of the hundreds—
thousands—of stories and plays that deal with it. He knows it from the outside, has seen it in
others. Has never desired it for himself because who could he trust to get that close to him,
who could he trust enough to allow inside his very soul, when everyone he knew would only
use such intimacy to hurt him?

But that thread of desire, the one tangling itself around his desire to kill the demon, the one
that is Kabru. Is that love? Is that something that’s becoming love? Or that could become
love?

It’s a complicated thread, that much is certain. He wants Kabru. Wants Kabru’s safety and
happiness. Wants Kabru’s goals for Kabru’s sake. Wants to please Kabru, but not in the way
his prior self would have. Not as a proactive, preemptive defense against an attack that might
never come. But just… Just to please him, to make him happy, to help him feel content and
well and whole. And perhaps loved.

So many tiny wants wrapped up together in that thread of desire.

And the thread keeps growing. Keeps developing new strands to add strength to the thread. It
doesn’t matter what he does, either. If he attempts to reject the thread, to turn his back to the
desire and refuse to acknowledge it, the thread grows because he denies it. If he melts into it,
melts into Kabru, opens himself up and lets Kabru in, indulges in the desire for more of
Kabru, the thread grows because he embraces it.

But while the two desires—kill the demon, obtain (and perhaps love?) Kabru—are twined
together in that vast, mostly empty pit that used to be his desires, they are at odds with each
other. He cannot ultimately satisfy one of them without turning away from the other.

Right now, though, at this particular moment, he can strive for both at once. It is time to rest,
to recover strength, to rebuild mana reserves, all in pursuit of the demon. But it is also time
with Kabru, time to connect with him, time to touch and be touched by him.
Right now… But only if he doesn’t fall asleep on this desk. If he falls asleep here, Kabru will
sleep on the floor beside the desk, and Mithrun does not want that. He wants Kabru to be as
close to him as possible. Wants to sleep beside him, pressed against him, being held by him,
listening to his heartbeat.

“That’s enough,” he murmurs, and he does regret it when Kabru pulls his hands away from
the small of his back. Regrets the lack of touch. How has he come to crave Kabru’s touch so
fiercely in so short a time?

“Is everything alright, Captain?”

“Mm.” Mithrun pushes himself up and climbs down from the desk. “I’d rather sleep in your
arms than on the desk.”

There. He’s said it. He’s stated a desire that is not to kill the demon, and not in the steam-
fueled delirium of a dwarven bath.

Kabru smiles, the real smile that he had gotten used to when they traveled alone and missed
when they joined Laios’s party. “I’d like that, too.”

“Let’s do that, then.”

 Chimera Feathers

The next morning, after a breakfast of roasted basilisk, they wrap the rest of the meat in
papers and pile the packages in the washed towel along with their meager supplies.

Kabru isn’t sure it’s the best idea to leave the office building and pursue a demon sealed in
the Golden Country when they have no idea how to get there and will end up wandering a
city for days. But Mithrun is insistent, and so wandering is what they do.

They find the snake tail and legs of the basilisk early in their travels and add it to their
supplies after cutting off the head and spurs for safety. Mithrun wears the legs like a
backpack, holding onto the ankles and letting the rest drag behind him, while Kabru handles
the rest of their inventory.

They stay close, eat some basilisk eggs scrambled up with a pinch of salt in their pan over a
magic fire, and continue their wandering. The lights that come on as they travel give their
position away to the little red dragons up above, but so far, the awful things are content to
watch them, not attack. They eat the basilisk legs for dinner, roasted on another fire made
from what wooden furniture they can find in the city—ancient dwarves seem to have used
wood as an indicator of wealth and prestige, power and authority, so most houses don’t have
much they can use.

And they get nowhere, ultimately. Just another area of the city, this one stinking of harpy shit
and requiring them to keep a closer watch for the monsters that populate the otherwise long-
abandoned city.

That night, curled up together on the floor in front of another wood fire after a stress-fueled,
frenzied round of sex, they talk. They talk about what they imagine the rest of the party is
doing, what they might be eating, whether there’s a chance they’ll be successful. Mithrun
remains largely unconvinced that they will succeed, but Kabru can’t help but be hopeful.

And it’s by conversation alone—or conversation and post-coital cuddling, more precisely—
that Mithrun falls asleep, sans massage. It’s a small miracle.

Kabru isn’t sure how long he and Mithrun sleep, once they do both fall asleep. But he knows
the moment Mithrun wakes up because the elf jerks upright out of Kabru’s arms with an
audible snarl that Kabru first thinks is a monster attacking them.

“The demon has been unsealed,” Mithrun growls.

“What?”

“The demon has been unsealed.” Mithrun gets to his feet and starts pulling on his clothes
with harsh, jerky movements. “Those fools. The idiots!”

Kabru sits up. “Calm down, Captain. Let’s think this through.”
“There’s no time for thinking!” Mithrun snaps. “Get up. Get dressed. They unsealed the
demon and—”

“And what? What can we do about that right here, right now? Nothing. Sit back down.”

Mithrun paces instead, the very moment he gets his second boot on. He paces while he pulls
the spidersilk armor over his arms. He paces while he puts his neck guard on. He paces while
he slips on Laios’s oversized shirt and ties the twine belt in place.

And his expression while he paces is pure murder, feral hatred in an intensity Kabru's never
seen him display before. Hatred that seems to consume him, that has clearly clouded his
judgment.

“Mithrun, please. Sit down.”

To his credit, the elf stops in his tracks and stares at him at the use of his name and not his
title. But he doesn’t sit.

“If you don’t eat something before we set out, you’ll pass out before you even see the
demon.” Kabru gets to his feet and pulls on his own clothes. “I’ll boil some of the meat and
barley. We’ll eat. We’ll pack up what we can carry and look for the demon.”

“We need to teleport out of the city. I don’t know where. But the demon is not here. We need
to go.”

“Okay,” Kabru says. “We’ll do that. After we both eat and we’ve packed up our things.”

It takes several more minutes of convincing, but ultimately Kabru prevails. Mithrun sits
down, takes slow, measured breaths as directed, stares at the cooking food with only a little of
the murderous rage in his eye.

They eat quickly, right out of the pot—and they burn their mouths as a result, though Mithrun
doesn’t seem to notice or care. They rinse everything instead of fully washing it with the
soap, and they abandon the snake tail of the basilisk as being too cumbersome to bring along.
Kabru’s glad of that, because he’d rather they eat more basilisk breast meat than eat a snake.

And after a few teleportation jumps that take them, eventually, to the edge of the city, they
stop. The edge of the city is a wall, stretching left and right as far as Kabru can see. The
dwarves built out from a wall, and there is nothing beyond the buildings but stone.

“Captain?”

Mithrun looks lost, and not in the sense of location. “I don’t know where to go,” he whispers
harshly, desperately. “I need to find the demon. I need to kill the demon. I don’t know how to
get there.”

“Will it help to explore the edge of the city, working our way around it?” Kabru asks. “They
can’t have built something without an entrance that isn’t a lake. There has to be another way
into the city, and therefore another way out.”
Mithrun shakes his head. “The city doesn’t matter. They’re in some sort of pocket
dimension.”

“Let’s try it anyway. Dwarves like their geometry. This city is built on a grid, probably
aligned to a compass. Teleport us to the other cardinal directions and we’re bound to find
something useful.”

“As though I could find a cardinal direction on an annotated map.”

Kabru smiles. “That’s what you have me for. Let’s say we’re facing north right now. That
puts the lake at the south. Try teleporting us halfway backwards and then to the left.”

Mithrun nods and grabs his arm. “Two jumps,” he says. “One back, one to the left. To be
safe.”

Two gut-churning shifts through space later, they are looking at another wall of stone
stretching as far as he can see in either direction. But Kabru isn’t deterred. He’s now
relatively certain that the eastern part of the city has an entrance. And it’ll be the main
entrance, too. He studied dwarven architecture in preparation for dungeon delving, and he’s
sure of this.

“Now we turn around and teleport straight ahead, to what we’ll call east. This will do it, I’m
sure, Captain.”

“Okay. Two more jumps.”

Two more jumps leads them to an entrance, yes. It also puts them very near a giant spider’s
nest. Kabru would call it a web if it were as simple as that, but the webbing is thick and three
dimensional, forming a vast network of strands that would trap anything moving in the area
from any direction.

And there are feathers stuck in the webbing. White feathers, some of them fluffy and short,
others longer—from wings, he realizes. And the amount of feathers, the pattern and size of
the feathered area of the webbing… Did the chimera come through here?

Mithrun seems to have the same idea, because that intense look is back on his face, the one
eye filled with animated motivation, the other half-lidded and dead, as usual.

“He’ll be with his chimera,” Mithrun mutters. “He’ll have his book with him, too.”

“So we follow the trail of feathers?” Kabru asks.

“No.” Mithrun shakes his head and points to a nearby wing feather. “We follow that feather.”

Kabru is about to say that he doesn’t understand, but Mithrun takes the towel-wrapped bundle
from him, pauses to measure something in his mind and then teleports the bundle into the
webwork.

They’re again without supplies save what they have on their person, but now they have a
sticky, web-covered chimera feather. Kabru sure hopes it was worth it.
“How do we follow a feather, Captain?”

“I need to focus. Hush for a moment.”

Mithrun places the feather on the ground, picks up a chunk of rock, and begins scratching
symbols on the stonework around the feather. At one point, he looks up at Kabru, but he
doesn’t say anything. Just returns to his task, scratching a wide circle around the feather and
his other markings.

When he’s satisfied, he tosses the rock aside and places his hands on the ground by the edge
of the circle, carefully keeping himself outside of the circle and off of any symbols. He
mutters a monotone chant under his breath and the circle disappears, along with the feather,
replaced by a shimmering gray nothingness.

“You made a teleportation scroll out of the ground, and it leads into… somewhere?” Kabru
asks, approaching for a closer look but not getting too close.

“Essentially. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” Usually with a teleportation scroll, you can see the other side. This
other makes Kabru nervous. More so than teleportation in general.

“To the chimera.” Mithrun holds out a hand. “The feather is part of the chimera unless that
connection is purposely, magically, severed. It’s a foundational principle used in forming
familiars and similar schools of magic. It’s how I’d use that bit of hair in your pocket to
teleport to you wherever you were, if we were split up.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t believe the feathers were severed. The dungeon lord is rampaging. He doesn’t have
the forethought to have done so. So returning the feather to its true location via teleportation
establishes a pathway. The feather traveled that path to be reunited with the rest of the
chimera. Now we will follow.”

Kabru swallows. “This is part of the certification thing? Just normal advanced teleportation
magic that people do regularly? That you know how to use?”

“Essentially,” Mithrun repeats. He waves his hand in a come-hither motion. “Let’s go.”

Kabru takes a deep breath and accepts Mithrun’s hand. “Essentially” is not what he wants to
hear. He wants a firm “yes, this is perfectly normal, not experimental in the slightest,
certainly not desperate, and guaranteed to work safely.”

He hopes that this “pathway” is as quick and relatively painless as the other teleportation he’s
gotten used to. He hopes they don’t end up directly on the chimera’s back. He hopes they
don’t go weaponless into the chimera’s personal space.

And some of those hopes are met. As he steps into the circle with Mithrun, there’s a brief
falling sensation, then the lurch of teleportation, but it’s as brief as usual and followed
immediately by landing in fluff. Fluffy white, to be more exact. Feathers. And one sticky
wing feather that Kabru has to pull off his chest and then shake off his hand. Gross.

They are on top of the chimera, but the chimera seems to be asleep, and hasn’t noticed their
presence. On a second inspection once safely on the grass, the chimera is dead.

Kabru struggles to take everything in. The chimera is dead. Not a single spot of blood
anywhere he can see, but the chimera is still definitely dead. How did that happen?

Even more bizarre, it’s daylight. The sky is blue and there are a few clouds, even. There is
grass at his feet, and it’s a vibrant green in the daylight rather than the sickly green shown in
mage lights. There’s a forest just a short way off, and a strangely three-roofed cottage. A
large table made with barrels for legs with a huge empty plate and a keg of something, a mug,
a normal sized spoon.

Nothing makes sense. They aren’t in the dungeon.

Is this the Golden Country?

And if so… Is he going to have to watch Mithrun kill or attempt to kill Laios and the others
in pursuit of the demon? Is he going to have to watch Mithrun attempt to kill a demon? Can
anyone really kill a demon? Is he going to have to watch Mithrun fail, then, and be killed by
the demon instead?

Is that what Mithrun wants, on some level? If a demon can’t be killed, Mithrun seems like the
person to know that. If Mithrun launches himself at the demon with the intent to kill it
anyway, is that actually intent to kill the demon, or a desire for something else? Maybe a
more complete oblivion instead of a desireless half-life filled with constant reminders of what
he considers a mutilated and broken body and a broken obsessed mind? Maybe he just wants
an end to it all.

No. Kabru decides that Mithrun doesn’t want to die by the demon’s hands, at least not
anymore. If he did at some point, that’s surely changed now with his affection for Kabru and
his promise to try to survive. If Kabru’s wrong, he doesn’t want to know about it.

And maybe it won’t come up. Maybe they unsealed the demon without falling victim to its
wiles. Maybe they’re busy trying to fight it and could use their help to… drive it off,
somehow, if killing it isn’t possible.

Kabru motions for Mithrun to join him in approaching the cottage. It makes sense, from what
Mithrun has said, that this would be the epicenter of any unsealing, the place where the
demon was kept by the lunatic magician. They have to be ready for anything. Kabru leans to
the side and raises his leg behind himself to draw his boot knife.

The door is unlocked, and the silence inside the cabin feels like one of aftermath, somehow.
As though something awful has happened and this is the calm after that storm.

Maybe it’s the mingled smells of something burnt and the ocean that does it. He remembers
the first time he tasted salt on the wind and smelled the ocean. It was just after Utaya, when
Milsiril had taken him in, and the smell of death and burning was still heavy in his nose.

Whatever it is, he gets the sense that something worse happened than merely unsealing a
wish-granting demon.

The entry leads to a hallway that intersects their path, with a smooth red carpet runner down
the center and lined with broken picture frames along one wall. Curiously, there don’t seem
to be paintings in the frames, but glass. Glass the same cloudy gray as the teleportation ring
Mithrun had used to get here.

Kabru stays on the unadorned side of the hallway, and glances down the hall to his right. A
library, it looks like through the doorway—he can see a shelf lined with books that appear
from a distance to be perfectly organized. To the left, though…

That’s where the ocean and burning smells are coming from. He follows Mithrun down the
hall toward what turns out to be a kitchen with a wooden table and chairs in the center.

A kitchen that has seen battle, both magical and mundane.

There’s a tree growing out of, or perhaps more accurately perched upon, the table, looking
like it’s been twisted into shape like fibers into yarn, only something large has broken out of
the tree and left it cracked open like a wooden cocoon. Wet-looking teardrop fruits hang from
a few branches, looking like round bags of liquid with a downward spout. It’s disturbing to
look at, and also not urgent unless the tree starts moving.

Far more urgent is what his eyes pick up next as he scans the floor: the Touden party,
slumped and sprawled under and around the table. And they aren’t breathing.

“You said you knew resurrection spells, right, Captain?”

Kabru isn’t sure Mithrun will even entertain the idea of resurrecting this party, considering
his reaction to their unsealing the demon, but Kabru has to try to convince him. If they’re
lying dead on a kitchen floor, they’ve definitely learned whatever they needed to know about
the dangers Mithrun had warned them about.

“I do.”

“Will you please bring them back?”

He watches as Mithrun moves around the table, inspecting but not touching anything. After a
moment, he scowls down at something Kabru can’t see from his current spot.

“Laios is missing.” Mithrun says.

“Maybe he—“

“He’s the new lord of the dungeon.”

“How do you—”
Mithrun raises up a figure in bright purple with red trim—Thistle, the lunatic magician,
unconscious or dead, and utterly limp in Mithrun’s arms. “This one’s been devoured.”

“Is there anything we can do for him?”

“He’d likely thank me for killing him, but no, there’s nothing we can do for him at this point.
Unless you do want to kill him.” Mithrun meets his eyes with a heavy expression, loaded
with significance. “You’d be doing him a favor. There’s nothing left.”

“You grew a new desire, Captain,” Kabru says firmly. “It’s possible. He could, too.”

He doesn’t understand. On the first floor, Mithrun had tried to reason with the lunatic
magician, had tried and failed to convince him to stop being the dungeon lord before it was
too late. He’d seemed to care, later, when talking about it, too. Now that the worst has
happened, he’s giving up on saving Thistle?

“Then find a comfortable bed for him and hope he doesn’t give up before we have a chance
to revisit his situation.”

Mithrun comes around the table and hands Thistle over, and Kabru knows that elves can be
smaller than average just how others can be, but Thistle is so slight, and he weighs so little.
And looks young, to Kabru’s eyes. Younger than he’d looked on the first floor.

“Please help the others while I’m upstairs?” Kabru asks. “We have a better chance with a
group than alone.”

“Mm.”

Kabru hopes that’s a yes and heads upstairs.

He wonders where Laios went. And why he would leave his party behind. Surely he’d have
wished for the demon to resurrect them, as his first wish. They were all his friends, more than
they were party members by guild standards. These were the people who stayed with him
through everything and he left them?

It doesn’t sit right. Something happened to drag him away from them. He didn’t leave
willingly, he wouldn’t have. Not Laios. He was stupid about some social things, but he was
loyal to a fault—it’s how so many former party members had swindled him for so long.

Or…

Does becoming the dungeon lord change people somehow? Would the demon have changed
Laios that drastically this quickly? Mithrun would know if that was possible.

Ah, the bedroom. A stack of books has been scattered on the floor, possibly knocked off the
bedside table. Kabru navigates around them and settles Thistle onto the bed. Lying there
without a blanket, he looks smaller than Kabru likes to see, so he gets a neatly folded quilt
out of a closet and drapes it over him.
It’s a wonder that this cottage is so well maintained. He’d have thought a dungeon lord would
have so much else on his mind that cleaning wouldn’t be a priority.

But then, Kabru has no room to consider the subject, considering the state of his room under
the tavern. It’s a pit on his good days, and the only reason it doesn’t smell bad as well as look
bad is that his landlord does his laundry and changes the bedclothes weekly when he comes
in to tidy the place up.

He tucks Thistle into bed, bundling the quilt in close to his sides. A neat little packet of
former dungeon lord, just like he had sometimes bundled Mithrun up. Cozy and secure.

“We’ll be back to care for you, Thistle,” he says. “So don’t give up. We just have to stop the
demon first.”

There’s no reaction, not even a flicker of his eyes, but Kabru hadn’t expected anything. He
hopes the elf doesn’t give up.

Kabru turns to go back downstairs and make another case for resurrecting the others, when he
happens to glance out the window and see something in the distance he thought he’d never
have to see again, and in the flesh this time instead of scribbled on the dungeon floor with a
bit of charcoal or drawn with too much detail in the back of a book alongside a list of
ridiculous special abilities.

It’s another chimera, out beyond the forest in a grassy depression. But not just any other
chimera. It’s the one Laios had described and even drawn earlier, after the Falin chimera had
attacked and then fled, the one with a little of every creature he thought was cool. Three
heads: a wolf, a bird, and some horned horse-like creature in the middle. All four legs from a
different beast. Two tails. Mismatched wings. And huge.

The ultimate strongest monster.

 The Ultimate Strongest Monster
Chapter Notes

Thanks for your patience on comment replies! I’m traveling unexpectedly, and it’s hard
to leave good replies on my phone. I still adore your comments and will reply when I’m
home again. <3

Kabru swears under his breath and takes the stairs down to Mithrun three at a time, tripping
halfway down when the ground shakes and only catching himself at the last minute to avoid a
neck-breaking tumble.

The ultimate strongest monster.

Damn it, Laios, why?

Did he summon that monster as the new lord of the dungeon? Did he wish for it to appear so
that he could marvel at it in life just as he did in his imagination? Was it a conscious desire of
his or something the demon took from his mind and manifested without being asked to?

He’d have thought Laios would wish for his sister to be returned to life as her normal tall-
man self. Or that he’d have asked for his party—his friends—to be resurrected and to join
him wherever he is in this place.

Maybe the demon does warp the mind of the dungeon lord this rapidly. Maybe after eating
Thistle’s desires after they’d ripened for a thousand years, the demon had too much strength
for one mere human to withstand.

In the kitchen, Kabru is pleasantly surprised to see that Marcille and Senshi are alive again,
with Mithrun working over Izutsumi and Marille focused on Chilchuck while Senshi
organizes ingredients and restores the kitchen to a functional state. So Mithrun did decide to
resurrect them. Kabru wonders what his reasoning is for that. It couldn’t be just because he’d
asked Mithrun to do it.

“We’ve got problems outside,” Kabru says once Izutsumi sits up and begins coughing.

“Of course we do,” Mithrun mutters. “We have an unsealed, well-fed demon out there with
the intention of leaving the dungeon and devouring the desires of the entire world. And a new
dungeon lord who has already been warped to the point of rampage, judging from the
tremors.”

Chilchuck sits up, rubs his head and coughs.

“What happened?” Kabru asks.

He gets back one answer from four mouths: “Dragons.”

Everyone starts relaying their final moments at once, describing a horde of dragons being
summoned and the kitchen and its contents growing to a massive size to accommodate that
horde. That might help explain why they were crowded around and under the table looking
like they’d fallen there, but it doesn’t explain the tree with the weird swollen fruit or what
happened to Laios.

Then the team starts tripping over itself describing the rest of their time apart, everything
from finding and cleaning Thistle’s cottage to digesting a phoenix, to puppeteering the team
and a dozen-odd dungeon rabbits for a chimera-sized curry dish.

“I don’t suppose you have anything to feed that chimera?” Kabru asks, pointing out the
window to where the ultimate strongest monster is flying what appear to be gleeful circles
around a wide, squat tower that wasn’t there the last time he’d looked.

Rather than crowd around the small circular window, they all file outside to observe for a few
moments. Laios’s party doesn’t look surprised, but at least has the decency to look
disappointed. Mithrun simply mutters that it didn’t take long at all, but since he seems to
have expected this, there isn’t the same level of disappointment in his expression.

“Now what?” Chilchuck asks. “He’s got his biggest wish, and it’s that thing. The plan is a
wreck.”

“Your plan was always a wreck,” Mithrun growls.

“Alright, then suggest something better!”

Instead of making a suggestion, Mithrun ducks back into the cottage and emerges a minute
later with a canister full of assorted cutlery. He squares off facing the tower and begins
walking down the gentle slope with purpose.

“W-what are you doing?” Marcille calls out after him.

“I’m going to kill a demon,” Mithrun says, his words pitched to carry but holding so little
emotion that Kabru is almost worried it’s not really him. Where the demon is concerned,
Mithrun packs plenty of emotion.

“With silverware?” Izutsumi turns toward Kabru. “There aren’t even any real knives in there.
Just smoothed out butter knife crap.”

Kabru shrugs and takes off after Mithrun. “A projectile is a projectile when you’re aiming for
a brain,” he says over his shoulder.

Not that he thinks Mithrun will be aiming for the demon’s brain, specifically. He has no idea
where Mithrun will be aiming, because he has no idea what a demon’s weak points are. But if
anyone did know, it would probably be Mithrun. Maybe there’s some metaphysical element
to a demon that he can reach with advanced teleportation.
Or, hell, maybe he’s bringing the projectiles along in case he needs to take on Laios’s
chimera. That would be smart. Smarter than Kabru, anyway, armed only with a boot knife.

What had Laios said about chimeras? Kabru tries to recall all of the sketches on the stone of
the dungeon. Hearts and lungs all over the place. Brains in every head. At least four tracheas
on that thing. Four brains. It seems logical that the middle head in the front is where the
working brain, the main brain, is located, but for all he knows, it could be the snake tail that
controls the whole thing.

And he’ll never manage to climb on the ultimate strongest monster to make an attempt at
slitting its many throats with the thing flying around. So what is he even doing, thinking
about fighting it? Maybe Mithrun can ground it by tearing its wings with the silverware and
Kabru can take a stab at it afterward.

“Are you sure you want to come with me, Kabru?”

No. No, he isn’t. He’s second-guessing everything.

“Yes,” Kabru says. Because deep down, that’s the truth, even if he is starting to panic about
this.

“Then we’re jumping past this forest. Let’s go.”

“I’m coming, too!” Marcille says before Mithrun’s even started to reach for him.

“Yeah,” Izutsumi agrees.

Kabru and Mithrun turn to face the group of them, not very far behind and clearly following
them. Senshi is nodding, and Chilchuck is… there, part of the group following them, even if
he looks reluctant.

“Can you take all of us, Captain?”

Mithrun sighs. “Link arms. It’s an open space, so none of you should get dropped in a tree.”

Kabru had meant taking them all to the tower in trips, but if Mithrun thinks he can do it all at
once, it might save his mana for the demon. Especially if the only reason he hadn’t
transported everyone at once the prior times he’s teleported the whole party is that he didn’t
want them ending up in tunnel walls or missing the balcony.

Kabru links arms with Marcille and the rest in a string of people and holds his hand out to
Mithrun as the ground resumes shaking. “Ready, Captain.”

They’re near the base of the tower almost the moment Mithrun’s hand touches his, maybe
fifty feet away from the stone foundation. And the tower is taller than it was before—the
source of the tremors, no doubt. Not a trick of perspective, either, because as he watches, the
tower grows another layer in its center, the brickwork climbing upward in a spiral from the
center, with each layer forming a spiral of stone brick stairs along the outside.

And near the top of that spiral, looking upward with his hands on his hips, is Laios.
He’s not in his armor, oddly, but is instead in a thick woolen overshirt Kabru hasn’t seen him
wear before, short-sleeved with a fur-trimmed collar, over his regular longer-sleeved white
shirt. He had time to take off his armor and don the overshirt? Or perhaps he’d been wearing
that when the previous dungeon lord attacked them with the dragon horde.

“Demon,” Mithrun snarls by his side, his eye fixed on Laios. He drops the silverware canister
with a jarring clatter and vanishes.

“Wait!” Marcille calls out, too late. “That’s just Laios!”

Kabru winces as Mithrun wastes no time tackling Laios, who falls backward under the elf’s
weight and laughs through being choked, from the sound of it. Once they’re down, Kabru
can’t see much other than Mithrun’s head, with his eye glaring down at Laios.

Kabru hears something about not having time to deal with Mithrun, in that same strangled
voice. The sound doesn’t carry properly enough for him to be sure, but he doesn’t think that’s
Laios. He doubts it’s a shapeshifter, but the words he does hear sound wrong coming from
Laios’s mouth. Taunting, where Laios would never do such a thing.

Marcille and the rest race up the spiral around the tower, yelling for Mithrun not to kill Laios
even if he is now the dungeon’s lord, even as the tower begins to grow from the base as well
as the center, rising up through the sky and then actually rising through the sky—hitting the
blue of the sky and puncturing it, punching through it as though the sky itself was just a dome
painted blue.

Pieces of the shattered sky fall in a cascade of thick slabs of stone around the tower, blue and
shining with sunlight on only one side. Beyond the sky, through the spaces, Kabru can see the
dwarven city coming apart as the tower rips through its foundations. It’s headed toward the
surface, then, and boring directly through the dungeon to get there.

Kabru expects the ultimate strongest monster to abandon its lazy flight pattern and swoop
down to pluck the others off the tower in defense of its master, but no such thing happens.
What does happen is that a slab of stone near where Kabru last saw Mithrun and Laios—or
Laios’s body, at least—shoots out from the tower and into the air, as though flung out by a
giant punching it free from within the tower.

Flung along with it is Mithrun, smacked bodily into the air by the block and sent sailing clear
off the side of the tower. The elf fails to immediately teleport himself either back to relative
safety on the ground or back into an attack position near Laios’s body, instead falling limply
through the air.

Kabru races over, trying—and ultimately failing—to get into a position where he can at least
cushion Mithrun’s landing if he can’t catch him outright.

Mithrun doesn’t land at all, though, snatched out of the air before he hits the ground by the
ultimate strongest monster’s eagle talons and then set gently on the grass in front of Kabru.
The ultimate strongest monster’s central head lowers itself toward Kabru and opens its
mouth, and Kabru raises his arms in an instinctive and futile attempt to protect himself only
for a giant hot tongue to lick his entire body with enough force to send him stumbling
backward.

Kabru rights himself and stares. Something is not right here. He has a suspicion, though. “…
Laios?”

Kabru points up at the tower, acting without thinking for once. “What are you doing down
here? Go find the demon! Smash him flat. Eat him or something. Don’t you want to know
what he tastes like?”

All three heads—four, with the snake tail joining in—swivel to follow Kabru’s finger, and
then the chimera roars and takes back to the sky.

Kabru kneels beside Mithrun, relieved when he discovers the elf is still breathing, has a
largely normal pulse, and was merely knocked unconscious by being struck by a stone block
the same size he is. His hands are limp now, but Kabru can tell from the blood under his
fingernails that they were previously digging into Laios’s body’s neck.

Laios’s body, Kabru thinks. He was right. Not Laios himself, because Laios has been
transformed into his made-up monster of choice. Kabru wonders if that was his wish that the
demon granted the moment Laios became the lord of the dungeon. Did Laios even get a
chance to wish for a world where demons weren’t a threat? Or did the demon twist his mind,
possibly offering something Laios couldn’t refuse?

Could the demon grant a wish that was left unspoken, that was merely felt deep within a
dungeon lord, so deep that maybe Laios hadn’t realized it?

There are shouts from the tower, and Kabru looks up to see a small horde of Laioses, all of
them identical and all of them spilling out of the tower and crowding the spiral stairs on the
tower’s exterior, wrestling the rest of the Touden party to keep them from reaching the upper
portions of the tower, above the cracked sky.

And all of them laughing, that same taunting laugh of victory, but now without the added
nuance of being strangled. The demon’s laugh of victory, Kabru realizes. Mithrun called it
earlier, long before Kabru had figured it out. The demon is somehow possessing Laios’s
body. They might have to kill Laios to defeat the demon. Can Laios even go back to his body
after this? Will he want to?

A trickle of black water from one of the cracks in the sky grows into a steady stream, and
then a small flood—the lake is pouring out from the layer above now that the dwarven city
has been torn up.

Kabru hopes whatever undines are in that water don’t remember them and hold a grudge. Has
it been a whole week since Mithrun landed on them with his purifying unicorn horn tooth?
No. But surely it has been long enough. Surely the undines are made of mostly fresh spirits
now and won’t go to the effort of attacking.

A reddish-pinkish squid falls out of the sky near them and Kabru scoops Mithrun up off the
grass and hauls the both of them up onto the first layer of the tower, where at least there
seems to be a barrier of some sort offering protection from falling debris from higher levels.

“Where is it?” Mithrun’s voice is hardly loud enough to hear, but Kabru catches the words.

Kabru tightens his grip on the elf, determined not to set him down to go back up to the
demon. Because he’s in no shape to safely teleport, and with a small army of Laioses between
himself and the demon in Laios’s true body, teleportation is the only way he’s getting close.

“Out of reach,” he says firmly. “Laios is—”

“No. I need to—”

“You need to stay here. You said you’d try to survive your goal, for me. So stay here, and
try.”

Mithrun shakes his head and points up. “Can’t let it reach the surface,” he says. “No one’s
surviving if it does.”

Kabru doesn’t have an answer to that. But he maintains his grip instead of letting Mithrun
slip free to stand on his own and possibly try to teleport to some higher level of the dungeon
in anticipation of the tower drilling its way upward through it with the demon helpfully
coming to him.

“At least let me stand,” Mithrun complains, pushing at Kabru’s arms with his left hand. “I
need to heal my arm.”

“Your arm?”

“It’s broken.”

Kabru almost sets him down immediately, but the can’t be sure Mithrun won’t teleport away
the moment his arm is healed. And adding a healing spell on top of the resurrection spells and
all the teleporting from earlier in the day… on a single meal… it won’t be pretty if he runs
out of mana entirely.

“You won’t teleport to the demon?”

Mithrun stares at him, deciding, for longer than Kabru likes before finally nodding. “I
won’t.”

Kabru sets him down and is relieved when Mithrun, in fact, stays exactly where he is and
merely murmurs a healing spell that’s accompanied by muffled crackles of healing bone.

Something massive and reptilian lands with a heavy thud on the wet grass below, thrashes
four giant oar-like limbs and a snake neck and dragon tail, and emits a low roar of distress.
Kabru looks over the ground around the tower, where the black water is forming a natural,
shallow moat due to the depression the tower is based in. A handful of undines are floating
above the surface, and the slowly rising black water is filled with squid and other things
Kabru can’t see well.
“We should climb,” Mithrun says, tugging at his hand and drawing him up the spiral stairs.

“Not to the top,” Kabru says. “Just out of reach of all of that.”

“You said Laios’s name earlier. The implication was that he is working on a second plan.
What is it?”

Kabru shakes his head. “I don’t know. All I know for sure is that the chimera that was flying
around the tower is Laios. Turned into a monster. I told him to eat the demon.”

“To eat—” Mithrun cranes his neck to look upward, though all there is to see are more
dungeon levels and debris, the movements of the Laios army rendered too small to make out
the details by distance.

“Yeah,” Kabru says. ”He probably won’t get far with that, but it seemed like it was worth a
shot.”

Mithrun looks back down at the water and then at Kabru. “It could work. He showed me his
chimera before we were separated. It can eat and digest desires. Among a whole host of other
unlikely things.”

Kabru feels a stab of hope. “Maybe he can eat the demon, then.”

Mithrun shakes his head. “The demon is infinite,” he says, and the stubs of his ears angle
downward dejectedly. “I… wasn’t going to be able to do much against it except maybe be
finished off finally.”

Kabru’s eyes widen. So his intuition was right, earlier. On some level, Mithrun’s desire for
revenge was a desire to have the demon finish the job it had started. And on some level,
Mithrun knew it, too.

“But if its desire to eat desires was in turn eaten by another,” Mithrun continues, “it might
leave this plane of existence. It wouldn’t be worth staying if all the appeal were gone. And I
would know.”

It’s selfish, and probably not worth the breath it takes, since they’re both going to die along
with everyone else in all likelihood, but Kabru asks his question anyway: “Is there truly no
appeal left in your life?”

“There’s appeal. You’re appealing.” Mithrun jabs a finger skyward. “That’s appealing, the
demon. Not that either thing will matter if the demon reaches the surface.”

And despite the appeal of a suicide mission to attack an infinite being, Mithrun is staying
here, with Kabru. If Laios fails to eat the demon’s desire and the world ends, then Mithrun
will spend his remaining time with Kabru, not throwing himself into what would only
amount to a quicker death.

Mithrun climbs a few feet higher up the spiral of stonework and sits down on a step, his legs
hanging over the side. “Might as well sit if we’re going to be useless.”
“Hopeful,” Kabru corrects. He sits on the step below Mithrun’s and wraps an arm around
Mithrun’s waist. “We’ll sit around being hopeful.”

Kabru supposes they could climb the rest of the tower, or teleport in short, careful jumps,
until they reach the army of Laioses, possibly toss some of them into the newly formed and
steadily more populated moat, maybe even manage to free Marcille and the others. But with
the tower’s uneven growth, it seems unlikely they’d be able to reach them, let alone free
anyone.

Far more likely is that they’d get pushed over the edge by the crush of Laioses and fall into
the moat, or that Mithrun would run out of mana at the worst possible moment.

“I want Laios to succeed,” Kabru says after several minutes of pondering the moat with
Mithrun, “even if this wasn’t part of a plan.”

Mithrun is quiet for a while, looking at the undines and the ripples of the moat below.

“I…” He shakes his head. “I don’t want him to fail, but…” Mithrun sighs. “I suppose I want
him to succeed for your sake. Want your happiness, anyway, and that includes a victory here
and not oblivion.”

Kabru smiles and leans against him. “That’s good enough, Captain,” he says. “You’re good
enough.”

“In that case,” Mithrun says, getting to his feet and pulling Kabru up as well. “In that case,
let’s do what we can to help the others, on the off-chance that it helps Laios. You won’t
accomplish any of your goals if we just sit here.”
 Uphill Battle
Chapter Notes

The unexpected travel is complete… and now I’m moving three hours away in about
two weeks, haha! But I should be able to respond to comments much more reliably since
I’ll have my computer. ^_^

The climb is a long one, and tedious in a way, despite the tension of the situation. Kabru’s
calves start to burn before they finally get back within easy earshot of the others. The Laioses
are no longer taunting them, but are reassuring them even as the sounds of struggle punctuate
their words.

Despite his flagging mana levels, Mithrun immediately begins teleporting Laioses off the side
of the tower to fall into the moat and be devoured by whatever now lives there, and Kabru
doesn’t stop him, though he does try to keep ahead of Mithrun to thin out the Laioses
available for teleportation by simply shoving them off the edge.

After all, if Mithrun overuses his magic here, he’ll collapse on a spiral brick staircase with no
railing, which can’t be good for him even if he manages to stay on the tower and not tumble
over the edge. And Mithrun simply doesn’t have the weight needed to reliably manhandle
Laios, so teleportation is his best option. The least Kabru can do is make sure he’s limited to
only a little teleportation use.

Somewhere along their progress through the throng, Kabru spots Marcille’s staff, though no
Marcille yet. The stonework of the tower by the Laios that’s holding the staff is scorched, so
she didn’t give up her staff willingly.

“Captain, don’t teleport that one with the staff,” Kabru says as he yanks another Laios off the
side of the tower.

Mithrun scans the crowd and then nods.

They’re getting close, and it’s easier than Kabru thought it would be to wrestle the staff away
from the Laios who has it and pass it over to Mithrun for safekeeping. The captain only needs
one hand to teleport, after all, where Kabru needs both hands and also his elbows and legs to
fight off the Laioses now that they have seen the two of them as a threat to be contained.

“Mithrun,” several of the Laioses say in a chorus. “Oh, Mithrun. So stubborn. I told you—I
don’t have time for you anymore. I’m the lord of the dungeon. I have to grant my own wishes
now.”
Mithrun snarls and Kabru hopes he doesn’t do something stupid, like try to tackle one of
them. But the snarl and a growled “shut up” are all the response they get, thankfully. That,
and getting whacked over the head with Marcille’s staff once he’s close enough to the ones
who spoke to him.

Kabru watches the struggle as two of the Laioses try to take the staff away from Mithrun, and
he’s about to try to intervene lest Mithrun get tossed over the edge, but Mithrun teleports both
of them out into the air beyond reach of the stairs apparently using their grip on the staff as a
way of touching them.

“Ambrosia!” comes Marcille’s voice from a crush of Laioses just ahead.

Kabru can just make out a bit of blonde hair that’s not as tall as the Laioses around it, and he
gestures for Mithrun to stay back while he clears a path to Marcille. They don’t want to
accidentally teleport her along with whichever Laios is holding onto her, after all.

It’s quick work to free Marcille, but only because the Laioses pinning her against the tower
wall turn their attention to Kabru instead. While he deals with them, Mithrun passes the staff
to Marcille, and Kabru is reminded just how dangerous it can be to fight literally alongside a
magic user—because Marcille’s fireball nearly takes him out along with the Laioses he’s
fending off.

“The others are up there,” Marcille says, gesturing with her free hand and keeping her staff
well away from the Laioses that would grab it. “I can’t blast these fakes out of the way
without hurting them.”

Kabru takes another step up the stairs. “That’s why we came,” he says. “Trying to give you
guys a chance to help Laios.”

“We’re fighting Laios!” she protests. “A lot of him.”

“Laios is the ultimate strongest monster,” Mithrun says between teleporting two of the fakes
away from the tower.

“Then who were you trying to strang— Oh! The winged lion is in Laios’s body. How could
you tell?”

Mithrun shrugs and teleports another Laios. “Instinct. Feeling. Doesn’t matter.”

Marcille takes it at face value and joins them in fighting off the Laioses, poking them with
her staff while Kabru pulls them off balance and over the edge and Mithrun teleports them off
the edge.

In short order, they’ve freed Chilchuck, who stays behind them, and then Izutsumi, who is
surrounded by Laioses with more scratched skin and torn clothing than Kabru could have
imagined. Kabru’s impressed they managed to overpower her, but it’s probable that they
don’t respond to pain as the actual Laios would.
Last of all, they encounter Senshi, not captured so much as facing off against an onslaught of
fresh Laioses and clearly flagging. Kabru and Izutsumi join him at the front of the group,
with Marcille casting fireballs at the Laioses further up the stairs. But the Laioses just…
keep… coming.

It’s looking hopeless against an infinite enemy host, but even as they are pushed back down
the stairs by the advancing Laioses, the enemy begins to falter. Instead of a uniformly and
creepily cheerful mob, there’s tension in the Laioses’ faces, even a snarl of dismay here and
there.

The Laioses turn around, press their way up the stairs and away from Kabru and the rest, and
start mobbing something else.

Could it be that they’re attacking the ultimate strongest monster now that the ultimate
strongest monster is winning against the demon in Laios’s body? Could they actually win
this?

Kabru looks over his shoulder at Mithrun to confirm his hopes, but finds that he’s leaning
against the tower wall looking drawn and even paler than usual beside a panting, sweating
Senshi who looks just about dead on his feet. Chilchuck stands near them, hands held up as
though he plans to keep them upright if they start to totter over.

It looks increasingly like they have won, though, when Laioses from further up the stairs and
around the curve of the tower start plummeting to the moat below of their own accord, like
puppets with cut strings.

“Look,” Marcille says, pointing up.

Kabru looks where she points in time to see the ultimate strongest monster, covered with
Laioses and bleeding from several potentially fatal wounds, try to take to the air again, only
to get a few feet away from the tower’s edge and fall with the air whistling through gashes in
its bat wing’s membrane.

“No!” Chilchuck yells at it. “Your stupid monster was supposed to win!”

“It… did, I think,” Mithrun says, sounding hollow in a way that chills Kabru’s insides. “I
don’t feel the demon anymore.”

“We have to get down there and see if we can heal or resurrect Laios,” Marcille says. “His
monster fell a long way, but I can revive him, I’m sure.”

She looks at Mithrun and licks her lips. “Could you, maybe, like when you got us all here?”

Mithrun sighs shakily and nods.

Kabru is pretty sure the answer should have been “no,” but if Mithrun is going to collapse,
it’s better he do it on the ground and not halfway down the tower. Kabru isn’t sure he’s got
the strength left to cart Mithrun down that far, after all, and they’d still have to cross the moat
once they got to the last of the unsubmerged stairs.
They gather around Mithrun and link arms, and then Mithrun lethargically reaches for the
nearest of them—Chilchuck, this time. One lurching shift later, they’re on the grass just a few
feet from Laios’s spent monster form and the dozens of limp Laioses that have tumbled from
the monster’s flanks, dead.

Marcille races to try to resurrect the monster, staff at the ready, even as the lower parts of the
monster’s hind legs and tails, having landed in the moat, are being gnawed at by strange fish
and sea monsters Kabru’s never seen or heard of.

Chilchuck approaches and points to something Kabru can’t make out from where he stands
over Mithrun as the elf sits in the grass.

“There’s a seam there,” Chilchuck says. “Like in a costume. In my village, every year, there’s
a festival where everyone makes an elaborate costume to wear. The arms and legs are sewn
on, and the head and the tail, if there is one.”

“You think the monster is like a costume?” she asks.

“Let’s just try to yank the tiger foot off and see if it works.”

Kabru looks down at Mithrun, sitting largely upright but slumped forward a bit. The captain
will be okay for a while, and the grass won’t hurt him if he does pass out.

Kabru goes to help the rest of the group pull at the tiger leg, and he’s just as shocked as the
rest of them when the seam Chilchuck had spotted pulls apart and the leg itself comes off
cleanly with a single gush of blood and no tearing whatsoever.

Inside, the body of the chimera seems almost hollow—there isn’t a bony socket or anything
else that would connect the leg to the torso.

“We need to cut it open,” Chilchuck says. “Senshi, we need to get in there. Laios might be
somewhere inside this thing.”

Senshi goes to work doing just that, and within several minutes, a bloody and unconscious—
but not dead, and not outwardly injured—Laios is pulled from the ultimate strongest
monster’s torso.

Kabru helps Senshi and Chilchuck pull off the bloody clothes and change him into the outfit
one of the fake Laioses is wearing, using another fake Laios’s tunic to wipe the blood from
his hands, face and hair the best they can, given that no one wants to go near the black moat
water, or risk purifying any of it with the unicorn horn tooth.

“Did we really win?” Marcille asks, looking at the shattered sky and the tower top far above
in the dark above the brightness of the remaining sky.

“I think we did,” Kabru says, hardly able to believe it. He looks back at Mithrun, who hasn’t
moved. “Let’s go back to Thistle’s house. We’ll have to walk, but we can eat and sleep,
recover a bit, and then find a way up out of the dungeon.”
The others agree, and Marcille casts a spell that creates some kind of floating litter that she
and Senshi maneuver Liaos onto while Kabru hoists Mithrun up onto his back with a
murmured apology that the elf ignores.

As they trek back uphill through the forested area between themselves and Thistle’s cottage,
Kabru can’t help but ruminate. They have a night, and then however long it takes them to get
from here to the surface. That’s the time he has available to try to cram some calories and
restorative sleep into Mithrun.

Because after that, they’ll have to confront whatever situation the Canaries have set up on the
first floor, which will be unpleasant, he’s sure. He doubts they’ll have forgiven him for
dragging their captain down into the pit with him, nor for the way they moved downward
through the dungeon at a pace that Fleki’s familiar either couldn’t keep up with or couldn’t
survive.

Especially not if he returns Mithrun to them like this.

And he doesn’t want to return Mithrun like this. Doesn’t want Mithrun to be like this at all,
and doesn’t want to return Mithrun whether he’s like this or like he was before. He wants to
keep Mithrun by his side.

Kabru can feel when the limpness of apathy in his passenger becomes the limpness of sleep
about halfway through the forest, and he smiles. Maybe the majority of this is mana
exhaustion and physical exhaustion mingled. Mithrun has been apathetic before, and a rest
always made him more energetic, even though he’d insist he hadn’t been tired or sleepy in
the slightest before sleeping.

Chilchuck, Izutsumi, Marcille and the floating litter reach the cottage before Senshi and
Kabru do, and by the time Kabru has Mithrun settled in beside Thistle to rest, Laios has been
cleaned up with actual, clean water and set up in the other bedroom upstairs. Kabru opts to
stay upstairs and sit on the floor by Mithrun’s side, his head leaned back against the mattress,
rather than return to the others downstairs.

He’d like to be here when Mithrun wakes up, or else be the one to wake him up when
Senshi’s meal is ready to eat. He doesn’t want to miss a moment with Mithrun now that his
time with the elf is potentially finite.

Before, it was easy to suppose that they’d never finish their journey in the dungeon, given the
way time moved and days were decided on by preference of the majority instead of dictated
by the rising and setting of the sun. Now, he knows that they have nowhere to go but back up,
where the Canaries wait for him, or wait for Mithrun, more accurately.

And they will try to take Mithrun away from him. Policy, protocol, operating procedures. It’s
all stacked against Kabru once the rest of the Canaries are involved. If Mithrun is like this
when they meet back up with his squad, he might not be able to make a case for staying with
Kabru. And if Mithrun doesn’t make a case, then Kabru has no case.

Mithrun is the one who decided to listen to him, to give his method a try, even if he didn’t
think it would work and was sure Kabru was planning something. The rest of the elves didn’t
see him as an adult worth listening to, but a short-lived tall-man child to be offered cake and
sympathy about Utaya.

Without Mithrun on his side, Kabru will fail to accomplish any of his goals, including the
goal of beginning a dedicated relationship with Mithrun on the surface, where he can get to
know all the captain’s facets and not just the driven, demon-obsessed facets.

Laios stirs in the next room, from the sounds of bedding rustling and then footsteps. He
comes down the hall and peeks into the room Kabru and the two elves occupy, and then
comes inside.

“I’m so sorry,” Laios says. “I tried, I did, but I failed. He kept questioning me instead of just
granting the wishes I made, and—”

“It’s okay,” Kabru says. “We won in the end, thanks to you. How did you beat the demon?”

“You were right. I wanted to see what he’d taste like, both because he was in a human body,
and because he was a demon. And his desires were…” Laios shakes his head. “I have never
tasted anything so sweet and savory in my life. They were everything I thought they might
be, and more. I can’t describe it.”

Kabru gestures for the rest of the story. “And then?”

“Well, he didn’t want anything anymore, so there was nothing here for him, and he went back
to his own dimension.”

Kabru frowns and reminds himself that Mithrun does still want something—him. Mithrun
has a desire to know him better, to spend more time with him, to explore him physically, to
pleasure him and be pleasured by him. Mithrun is not completely without desire, and so there
is something here for him, something for him to come back from his fugue state for.

This isn’t the end. He’s sleeping, and he was near catatonic, but he’s better off than Thistle.
There’s hope.

“But…”

Kabru shakes himself back to the present conversation. “But?”

“He cursed me.” Laios looks out the window, toward where Falin’s chimera form rests near
the edge of the forest. “He said he cursed me to never have my greatest wish come true.”

“What was your greatest wish?” Kabru asks. “It obviously wasn’t a world where demons
didn’t pose a threat. Because that one came true, I think.”

Laios shakes his head. “I don’t know. I thought it was to resurrect Falin in her own body, but
the winged lion was so confusing. I don’t know what my greatest wish was.”

Kabru suspects it was being the ultimate strongest monster, since that wish stopped being
fulfilled the moment the demon left. He doesn’t say that, though.
“We’re still in the dungeon,” Kabru says. “There’s still enough mana here that you should be
able to resurrect her.”

“No.” Laios’s shoulders slump. “We don’t have enough people here to eat her dragon parts,
and she’s too big to haul to the surface. She’d rot. And we can’t resurrect her as she is.”

“We’ll think of something. Don’t give up yet.”

Laios sighs. “I’m going to go down and see if they need help with anything. Is there
something I can bring you?”

Kabru thinks of all the things he wants, none of which are things Laios can offer. He shakes
his head. “No. Just come get us when it’s time to eat.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“Mithrun, or Thistle?” Kabru asks.

“Both, I guess. Either.”

“Thistle, I’m not sure about, but we’ll try. Mithrun should be okay after some rest, a hot
meal, and some more rest.”

As Laios nods and then heads down the stairs, Kabru hopes that doesn’t turn out to be wrong
information. On either front. It would be easy to abandon Thistle here to die of dehydration
rather than bring him along and hope to heal his mind. And it would be easy for Mithrun to
remain like this for longer than anticipated.

“Captain,” Kabru murmurs softly. “I hope you’re alright. I hope you can come back to me.
I’m not ready to stop seeing where this goes between us. I want more of you.”

There’s no response, but that doesn’t surprise him. Mithrun should be sleeping deeply after
all the resurrection spells, the teleportation, the healing spell, and the physical exhaustion. It
might even be difficult to wake him up when dinner is ready.

But if Mithrun can hear him in his sleep, that would make Kabru happy.

Mithrun turns out to be easier to wake than Kabru had suspected, but just as energetic as he’d
been before, which is to say: not at all. Kabru ends up half carrying him down the stairs to the
library, where they’ve set up a table with chairs so they can eat without needing to chop down
that tree in the kitchen.

But while he lacks the energy to walk by himself down the stairs and across the hall to the
library, Mithrun does have the energy it takes to feed himself, and he doesn’t balk at the need
to do so. His hands don’t even shake when lifting the fork or spoon to his mouth. Kabru was
prepared to hand feed him if it was necessary, but he’s glad it isn’t.

Dinner is sausages sliced up with onions and garlic, some potatoes cubed and fried up crispy
with butter and herbs, sauteed herbs and greens with garden vegetables, and a mushroom
cream soup. There’s wine to drink and also water.

Kabru treats himself to a glass of wine, which he finds is sweeter than he prefers, but still
something he’ll finish gladly. Mithrun, he notes, passes up the wine glass and instead drinks
only water. He’s not sure why, but it’s something he might ask about later. The rest of them,
barring Izutsumi who scowls after spitting out her first sip of wine, drink both beverages.

“Lots of mana restoring herbs in everything,” Senshi says as he piles another spoonful of the
sauteed vegetables and herbs onto Mithrun’s plate before the elf has even finished the rest of
his meal. “So make sure you eat up.”

Marcille also gets a second helping before she’s ready for it, and she murmurs her thanks
before taking a bite of the new serving. Mithrun, in contrast, merely sighs. But he does
manage to finish everything on his plate, including the extra mid-meal serving.

The others remain downstairs after the meal, discussing ways to preserve Falin’s body, while
Kabru helps Mithrun back upstairs instead. The elf leans heavily against him, but Kabru
doesn’t have to half-carry him, so it’s an improvement.

“I didn’t have a chance to ask you earlier if you preferred to share the bed with Thistle or to
sleep on the floor. I can make up a pallet.”

“I don’t care.”

Kabru nods. “I’ll make sure there’s room for you to rest peacefully on the bed, then. It’ll be
softer.”

Kabru shifts Thistle a little more off-center and pulls back the quilt for Mithrun, only to find
the captain staring at the bed as though having an unpleasant thought. It’s concerning, but
also a relief to Kabru that he’s being that expressive.

“Is something wrong?”

“I… changed my mind. I want to be closer to you.”

Kabru smiles. “We can do that. I’ll make us a pallet. Why don’t you sit on the bed while I do
that?”

Mithrun does as bidden, and is starting to nod off where he sits in the span of time it takes
Kabru to refold two quilts to the right size and shape for a bedroll and fetch down a pair of
pillows and a blanket. He must still be exhausted, Kabru thinks, as he helps him get settled
and then climbs in beside him.

“I’ll stay here at least until you’re fast asleep, Captain,” Kabru says. “I’ll need to touch base
with the others downstairs before coming up to sleep for the night, and we should try to get
Thistle some water to drink.”

Mithrun sighs and snuggles up closer to him, pressing against Kabru’s side. “Be careful he
doesn’t choke. He won’t swallow naturally.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Kabru brushes the hair out of Mithrun’s face. “And thanks for choosing
this. For choosing me.”

“I wanted to,” Mithrun says. “It was the only thing I wanted.”

Kabru feels a bit anxious at being the sole reason someone else has to live, but he is
determined to help Mithrun grow several more desires in the time they have together,
assuming the Canaries don’t sail west with Mithrun on board and gone forever.

Mithrun falls asleep quickly, his left arm tucked against his chest and his right slung over
Kabru’s chest. Kabru doesn’t, instead thinking over the day he’s had. It’s hard to believe that
it’s only been a day. That that very morning, Mithrun had woken up to the demon being
unsealed. That they teleported somehow to the Golden Country. That they fought off an army
of Laioses and rescued the real Laios from the belly of the ultimate strongest monster.

But the sun was shining when they arrived here, and it’s long since set, leaving the sky dotted
with stars Kabru can’t identify through the window. Different stars than he’s used to. Maybe
this is what the night sky looked like a thousand years ago. Whether that’s the case or not,
Kabru can feel the exhaustion in his bones that the night sky on the surface sometimes
prompts, those nights when he can fall asleep with ease and not need a drink.

A drink. That’s right. He was going to ask Mithrun about that. Well, he can ask some other
time. Right now, the captain is sleeping deeply and peacefully, and Kabru isn’t about to wake
him for something like an idle question about his drinking habits.

Not everyone in the dungeon has the same goals when it comes to not waking Mithrun up,
though. Not an entire hour after Kabru has returned downstairs to discuss their options for
getting back to the surface—and how to deal with the group waiting there for them—there’s a
loud crash from upstairs, the sound of breaking glass and a subsequent thump.

Kabru is the first one up the stairs, taking them several at a time, and so he’s the first to see a
large black raven dragging its wings behind it in what Kabru thinks must be exhaustion rather
than broken bones. Behind it, there’s a tightly rolled scroll. In front of it, Mithrun. And as
Kabru watches, the raven completes its journey to Mithrun’s side and pecks him right in the
forehead.

“Hey!” Kabru scolds. “Knock it off! Shoo! Shoo!”

He waves his hands at the bird, but there isn’t a startle response or any sign of fear. Instead,
there’s a baleful black eye turned toward him and another peck on Mithrun’s forehead.

“What is that?” Marcille asks from the doorway. “Is that a familiar?”
“From the Canaries on the first floor, yes,” Kabru answers, trying again to shoo the bird away
from Mithrun. He has to get Marcille out of earshot, too, before anything is said that might
cause trouble with the Canaries. “Why don’t you go back downstairs and tell everyone
everything is alright up here?”

Marcille heads back downstairs just as the raven jabs its beak into Mithrun’s forehead a third
time, this one succeeding in waking him.

“Ughn,” Mithrun groans, sleepily dragging an arm from the quilt to rub at his bleeding
forehead. He looks to the side, sees the raven, and closes his eyes again. “Mm. You’re
running a bit late, Fleki.”

The raven caws its displeasure—or maybe it’s Fleki’s displeasure—and pecks the back of
Mithrun’s hand.

“Hey!” Kabru waves his hands again, for all the good it’ll do with a familiar instead of a real
animal. “He’s awake, okay, so stop pecking him.”

The raven hops back only to pick the scroll up in its beak and hop forward again with it,
dropping it on Mithrun’s face and squawking loudly.

Mithrun picks up the scroll from where it rolls off his face, and nods, still not sitting up or
even raising his head or opening his eyes. “I understand. I’ll make my full report tomorrow.
I’ll be bringing Kabru and the Touden party up with the scroll, as well as the former dungeon
lord. The demon has been defeated for now, and the unit is to stand down. Keep the dungeon
clear, but keep the violence to a minimum.”

The raven seems to be waiting for more, though Kabru doesn’t know what more Mithrun will
be willing to offer at this point. He already promised a full report and told them who he’d be
bringing up. He gave them the gist of the information about the demon, even gave them some
marching orders.

“Oh. Good job. You’re dismissed,” Mithrun adds after a solid minute.

The raven caws again, just as loudly, gives Mithrun one last peck for good measure, and flies
back out the window it had shattered.

Kabru quickly loses sight of the thing.

“What should I tell the others, Captain?”

Mithrun does open his eyes at that, and fixes his left eye on Kabru. “In the morning, I’ll open
the teleportation scroll, and we’ll rejoin my squad on the first floor. Or wherever they are. I’ll
send you in first, then the others, and Thistle. I’ll come last to prevent anyone from getting
cut off from the rest.”

“What if you get cut off from the rest?”

“My squad wouldn’t do that. The rest of you don’t have that guarantee. I’d advise not saying
much of anything to anyone up there until I’ve given my report.” Mithrun frowns. “If you’re
pressed, just that we met up in the dungeon, traveled together, defeated the demon together,
and need to find a way to transport a large number of Golden Country citizens and a chimera
corpse to the surface. Otta and I will help with that.”

It’s Kabru’s turn to frown. “Otta will help with transportation?”

“Creating a path for the citizens of this country to climb to the surface, if they choose to do
so. I can’t teleport them all. But I can teleport the chimera. I just have to have something set
up on the surface to manage it.”

“Oh. Okay.” Kabru half wants to ask him to come downstairs and discuss some of this, but
instead he settles for asking if Mithrun can get back to sleep on his own.

“You’ll be back?” Mithrun asks. When Kabru nods, he continues. “Then I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Goodnight, Captain.”

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