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The first floor of the dungeon was dangerous. It was once the catacombs of a small town, as quiet and forgotten as the dead, but after a dungeon opened beneath it and money could be made, the place became a trading hub. Every time she came here the place practically writhed with the human races. Their bodies disrupted the shadows. Their mouths filled the air with noise.
Laudna took a deep breath and let the odd pressure of air filling her lungs help her to focus. Her disguise wasn’t as good as the last time she came here: the breastplate was too short for her lanky frame and the helmet was so big, the horns adorning it so heavy, that it would slowly drift around her head without constant adjustments. But with some extra clothes to pad out her emaciated form and a thick cloak to obscure her, she felt human enough to brave the catacombs.
Her fingers swirled around a little chunk of onyx, worn smooth with constant worry, and the shadows deepened further beneath her drifting helm as she stepped fully into the light.
It felt like stepping onto the sun itself. Lanterns blazed from every corner, and people gathered in little strongholds around them. She bit back her instinctual revulsion and tried to find the blessing in this curse: more adventuring parties meant more possible trades. She might even find someone who could sell her sugar, so long as the treasure bugs in her pocket stayed asleep.
She shouldn’t stay longer than the stun spell’s hold anyway. More eyes meant more chances for someone to see through her shadows and chase her off again. She didn’t want to find a new disguise. Most the clothes on the fifth floor were beyond repair even for her magic, and she’d grown rather attached to the horned helm.
Laudna looked over her potential customers as she meandered carefully around the brightest lanterns, appraising their packs to see if any seemed over-supplied. Several parties closed their circle as she passed, but a young knight looked up, spotting her across the large room. Her eyes were piercing: a strange lavender that Laudna had never seen before, and she nearly ran under the scrutiny. The knight blinked, finally, and turned back to a small pot that was boiling over a fire. A giant scorpion lay dead at her hand. She picked it up, about to stuff the entire thing in, and Laudna recoiled in horror. The poor thing would make herself sick eating that.
Laudna pulled her scarf a little higher and set her helmet down over her eyes. She clenched her fists inside the ill-fitting gloves and quickened her pace to stop the young knight before she gave herself the runs and ruined all that useful venom in the process.
The knight looked up again as Laudna approached and dropped the scorpion onto the floor.
“Sorry,” she said, though to Laudna or the scorpion, Laudna was unsure.
“Beg pardon?” Laudna said, then coughed as her rusty voice protested its sudden demand. She really should have practiced her hellos on the staircase.
The knight’s strange violet eyes flashed in the low light and Laudna was struck with the odd taste of mana. Laudna felt the breath leave her body as the taste dissipated. A magic user didn’t usually wear armor. It’s why her own helmet made such a good disguise. Mages were worse than martials. A sliced limb could be reattached with thread, but she didn’t want to know how long it would take to reassemble herself from an explosion.
The knight’s curiosity didn’t sour once the light dimmed in her eyes. Whatever spell she had cast must not have exposed Laudna for what she was.
“That’ll be a terrible waste of venom if you let it cook through the meat.”
The knight cursed softly as she swept a small green book up from under the scorpion. She squinted hard at it, her nose nearly buried in the centerfold. It was a little dim in the catacombs for humans, but the young woman must have been a bit nearsighted to boot. Strange, then, how quickly she’d spotted Laudna across the room.
“I swear I read it up and down and the damn authors said you could eat the whole thing.”
The woman’s easy and adorable drawl somewhat dampened the ferocity of her frustration. Laudna caught herself smiling and forced the edges of her mouth back down before they escaped the confines of her scarf. Laughing at someone’s displeasure didn’t make for easy friends.
“Well, they’re not wrong…” She hovered over the knight, hands at her chest, unsure if she should reach further. She wanted to help, but the rags she’d used to pad out the arms of her jerkin made her lumpy and she didn’t want to look lumpy in front of this pretty young knight. “Although, a weak constitution might only be able to eat it whole once.”
The knight huffed a laugh and handed her the book. “Maybe you can tell me how wrong this thing is.”
Laudna flipped through the ragged and dogeared volume as best she could with the oversized gloves. The thing seemed awfully interested in anatomy, but almost no regard for consumption. “If you want a cookbook, you should find a chef. A lot of these recipes look like speculation.” The page on mushrooms suggested roasting it whole in a fire, which would char the thing horribly and leave the best bits cold and chewy. She soured further as she found the page on giant scorpions. “Not even a footnote on the paralytic properties of its sting. That’s the best part!”
“What do you mean best part?” The knight scooted to the side, her armor clinking against the cobblestones. “You want to show me?”
Laudna stared at the invitation, then slowly folded herself over the scorpion. “You don’t have to kill them for the venom. If you can get them to sting a membrane over a jar...” She slit her knife through the underside of the tail, then carved through the bulb at the end. It would be easier to reach in and pluck the organ from its place, but that would mean removing her gloves and exposing her claws. Her hands were already sweaty beneath the sweltering layers and her cuticles would no doubt be leaking black. “It makes for an easier time with stitches if you swab a bit of scorpion venom over the cut. You don’t feel them as much.”
“Well the plan was to eat it. I don’t have much in the way of provisions. Don’t plan on needing stitches, either.”
“Most don’t plan for injury.” Laudna nodded and the helmet slipped further down her face. “It’s easier to have a healer, if you can befriend one.” She grunted and tilted the helmet back, then angled her knife to gently pry the venom glands out of the bulb. They popped neatly into her waiting glove, and she set it against her pack to keep the precious liquid from leaking out.
She glanced at the knight, waiting for her to cry thief, but the woman only watched Laudna with interest.
“You’ll need to remove the digestive system too, or the whole thing will taste pretty foul.” Laudna spoke as she cut through the muck and let it slop onto the cobblestones. “It makes decent fishbait, if you can stomach the smell carrying it all the way to the fourth floor.”
The knight’s pretty nose wrinkled in distaste, and Laudna shuffled the offal to the side of her fire.
“The rest should boil up nicely.” Laudna dropped a few claws and legs into the pot. There wasn’t room enough for everything, but the job of cutting was done, and the knight could certainly handle a pot. “Can I have this?” she asked of the venom glands. They were plump, full, and if she moved quick enough, she had some bottles in a safe house that could store the poison without degrading.
“Don’t you want some of the meat, too?”
The shell was brightening to a lovely red, and even without the sprigs of garlic leaves she carried beneath her breastplate, the fragrance was enticing. She couldn’t die of starvation, but her stomach knew the joy of food. She hadn’t eaten in a day. She saved all her scroungings to trade for a taste of the surface, whatever that taste she might find in the catacombs. A month ago, she’d managed to get some boiled sweets off a half-foot when he found her kelpie kebab enticing. She kept the last sliver of one in a treasure chest on the second floor, which she was saving for a proverbial rainy day.
“You would part with it?” asked Laudna. Her breastplate was stuffed with goods, but scorpions were easy to find. She didn’t want to trade away her stores for anything she could fetch herself within the dungeon.
The woman smiled “Of course! You helped me cook it so I didn’t poison myself. That feels like a pretty good trade to me.” Her lavender eyes seemed to pierce through Laudna’s shadows and stare into her soul.
Why did she say trade like she read it off Laudna’s eyes?
Laudna breathed again, enough to ruffle the fabric that covered her mouth, her teeth, her smile that always seemed to set people off. Her helmet slipped as she took the knight’s chopsticks, and she pulled it lower to hide her eyes. “Thank you,” she muttered, and fished the scorpion claws and legs from the boiling water.
“It’s better with garlic and cooked into a broth, but the meat is still good if you have to eat it plain.”
She passed a claw to the knight, then dropped the rest of the scorpion into the pot. For herself, she took a claw and three legs. She didn’t want to be greedy, and the knight needed to eat well if she was truly going to brave the dungeon alone. Laudna took some sailcloth from her bag and began to wrap the bundle.
“You’re not going to eat with me?”
It was difficult to eat with the helmet on. Impossible with the scarf tied over her mouth. The shadows were heavy in the catacombs, but they felt flimsy and insubstantial so near this shining lavender knight. Her disguise was hot. Her desire to stay was boiling in her gut.
Laudna hadn’t checked her face in weeks. Her skin did not feel like it had slipped, her teeth felt like ordinary teeth, but it never seemed to matter. Sooner or later, anyone she spoke to would see what she was, and they would turn on her.
She didn’t want to put this lovely knight off her meal. Or watch her run away.
“I really should tend to this venom before the glands begin to degrade.” She could feel her own organs degrading under the woman’s gaze. She had to get away before she made a terrible mistake of sharing a meal and letting her see what was hidden beneath her scarf.
“You want to get away from me,” said the knight. She wore a resigned smile that didn’t meet her eyes. “That’s alright. I’m used to working alone. Thank you for your help.”
“I don’t.” Laudna bit back her fear. She pulled every ounce of propriety left within her withered bones and put it into a handshake. “I don’t want to get away. I’m just… busy. And I forgot my manners in my haste. I’m Laudna.”
“Imogen.” The knight stood as she said it, and thrust her hand out in practiced chivalry. She ended the shake with a little bow that might have stopped Laudna’s heart if it were still beating.
“You’re skinny.”
Laudna dropped the woman’s hand.
“Sorry,” Imogen blurted. “It’s just, I can feel your hands under the gloves, and your face looks so thin... You shouldn’t go into the lower floors without eating something. In case you die. You need to give the resurrection office something to work with.”
Laudna frowned behind her scarf.
“I don’t mean to doubt your skills, Miss Laudna. I mean, you said you’re familiar with the fourth floor, and that’s further than I ever got. And maybe you’re strong enough you don’t have to worry about dying, but I can’t think of anyone as skinny as you who hasn’t died a couple times to get there and… and if you die in this state, they might not be able to bring you back.”
“Have you died many times?”
Imogen nodded, eyes clear, mouth a hard line. “More than I care to think about. You?”
“Only once,” said Laudna. She spoke without thinking. Her hands clenched as if they could pull the truth back in and hide it away, but Imogen heard. She exhaled in surprise, her eyes wide and curious, and the glow returned within them. Laudna pulled the helmet low and hunched over the bits of scorpion she secured. She swept them into her bag, backing away as she did so. “I have to go.” Imogen reached for her and Laudna flinched, ducked, skittered away. “Thank you for sharing your meal with me.” She bowed to hide her face further. “Good luck on the lower floors.”
The rest of the scorpion was still boiling. Imogen’s supplies were in a scatter across the floor. The woman would have to spend some minutes packing them before she could follow, or a party of thieves might scavenge them and leave her with nothing but the armor on her back. Someone with manners would have stayed to help her clean. Would have sat to share the meal, but Laudna could only play at being someone.
Laudna ran for the stairs that led to the floor below. If she heard the woman shout after her, beg her to stay, she decided that she didn’t. The helmet was heavy and packed with cloth that could not make it sit straight. She could choose not to hear anything but the emptiness of shadow where blood might have pounded in living ears.
***
The second floor was bright with its artificial sun. It stung Laudna’s eyes and it made her skin boil, but it was a necessary evil for all the good things it grew. Chief of which was the green room. Her safe house was a cave of brush and man-eating vines that she had woven into walls and a roof over a little scaffold of fallen branches. It was only a small room, but the patch of green grew like wildfire, and she was in the process of building out an additional room. The vines kept adventurers from pilfering her collection of treasures and trashing any they didn’t understand, and it was far enough from the beaten path that she could come and go with little interference.
She tossed a bit of scorpion tail to the hungry vine that guarded her front door and skirted around it to duck inside. The vine never bothered her. Whatever senses man-eating vines used to find food had, it seemed, deemed her too decayed to be worth eating. Laudna usually counted it as fortune to have such a balanced symbiosis with her home, but today it left her melancholy.
“Not even a nibble?” she asked it, prodding an ungloved finger at the grasping vines. They remained limp as the toothy flower high above her gnawed through scorpion shell, untempted by her boney hand.
Laudna sighed and dropped her helmet to the ground with a muffled, mossy clang. She pulled her scarf away from her mouth and unpacked the parcel of scorpion claws. She cracked it over the helmet, then scooped one heavenly bite onto her tongue. Perfect. She smiled and licked her own claw clean, pleased that she managed to leave Imogen with something delicious and nourishing, even if her manners had been wanting. Food was meant to be enjoyed.
And Imogen had been so accommodating. So generous with the venom and the offal and a parcel of meat. Laudna regretted leaving her with the cleanup. And with no one to share her meal. Humans shouldn’t have to eat alone.
Laudna sat down on the springy vines that made her bed. She shed the rest of the armor, rusty breastplate packed with drying herbs, greaves padded with cloth and padded again. She never really got hot, but masquerading as a living tall-man was clammy and uncomfortable work. She took bites of scorpion while she changed into her own clothes. A pretty skirt decorated with lace. A flowing blouse dotted all over with embroidered flowers. The thread had been a miraculous find in an untouched house on the fifth floor. It elevated her simple dark red blouse to something enviable. She never met an adventurer who bothered with embroidery. It made the dungeon a very dull place for fashion.
There was a mirror in the same house where she found the thread. Laudna visited it often, until someone must have spied her sneaking in. It was stolen the next time she visited. It wasn’t gold and it wasn’t particularly pretty. She thought that was enough to make it hers, but pickings had turned slim for treasure hunters. Maybe someone hawked it for another day’s supplies.
That had been months ago, and she hadn’t seen her reflection since, but she remembered feeling quite fine as she admired her embroidery and lace. In the gloom of the fifth floor, far from the mirror, her reflection might have been mistaken for that of a lady. What a fanciful notion.
Her sweaty hands were near black at the fingers. She was likely covered in gray slime for how well that helmet breathed. It was probably good fortune that the mirror had been scavenged before she could lug it up several floors and prop inside the green room. The sun that made it through her rafters would have illuminated too much and burned away any ideas she had of being pretty.
She dipped a claw inside the shell and found it hollow. Laudna frowned. She still felt hungry. She had other foods in her pack, but it was all dungeon fare. A sorry return for braving the catacombs. If it hadn’t been for Imogen’s generosity, the entire trip would have been a waste. Scorpion might not have been her favorite, but when it was flavored with the memory of company, that almost made up for the lack of salt. Now it was gone, and all she had to season her gatherings was herbs and hunger.
She lunged from the bed to gather the cloak that was still lying on the floor and rummaged around the pockets until she found a treasure bug. It was just starting to wake, a single antennae beginning to twitch. She shoved the entire thing in her mouth and crunched down with a dissatisfied grimace. Sweet and flavorless. Barely worth swallowing.
The walls shivered around her. The vines slithered overhead, pointing toward some prey. Laudna pushed her face into the walls and peered outward for whatever attracted her house. She hoped for something meaty and slow. Instead, she saw her lavender knight at the precise moment a vine snaked around the knight’s ankle and hoisted her screaming into the air.
Laudna choked down the treasure bug and spluttered curses under her breath. The knight’s screaming was going to alert adventurers. They’d bust in, break her house, loot her things!
And Imogen was in danger. Imogen had been nice. Nice people shouldn’t be eaten by houses.
Fuck.
Laudna scrambled around her bed for something; kitchen knife, helmet, jar of bones, Pâté… there! The glands of scorpion venom! She didn’t know if it worked on houses but it was a stronger weapon than anything else at hand. Laudna grabbed the venom and her knife, then skittered out through the vines.
The screams had stopped by the time Laudna made her plan. Imogen was twisting in the vine’s grasp, her face determined but clearly fading as the thing restricted her breath. Her hands sparked with some unfamiliar magic, fingers raked out but finding no purchase with how tightly the vine held her arms.
The vine hadn’t noticed Laudna. Probably didn’t care. She skirted around the tussle of kicking feet and twisting vine, crouching low to find the relatively still trunk that held Imogen aloft. There, near the base, a weak point where some of the bark had stripped from the old growth. Laudna slapped the venom glands against the exposed flesh and drove her knife through them. The vine shivered at the strike. Laudna pulled out her knife and jabbed it again and again, perforating the skin and forcing venom beneath. The vine rattled Imogen like a dog with a bone, then drooped and crashed down to the earth in a cacophony of clanging armor.
Imogen rolled out of its grasp. Unconscious.
Laudna bit her lip and looked around. No one rushing over yet. It was good that Imogen traveled alone.
Laudna ran inside the green room for her cloak, and with a mighty heave, she rolled Imogen, armor and all, onto it. The vines slowly closed over them as she pulled her into the green. Thankfully, the vines were sluggish from the scorpion venom, and Imogen’s shallow breath did not reinvigorate their hunger. Laudna needed to make record of the venom’s effectiveness when she got a moment, but for now, there was the problem of an unconscious woman in her home.
The armor looked unscathed, but the woman’s sleeves were torn where the armor did not cover. Prickly spines stuck through the fabric. It had caught her across the face, too: spines traveled in an angry red line from her jaw to her hairline just over her ear. Laudna thought at first that it had touched her hands as well, until she looked closer. The marking there were old scars that seemed to glimmer in the low light. They carried the same odd purple not-light that shone behind her eyes when Imogen looked through Laudna in the catacombs.
Laudna wasn’t a healer. Her magic was sticky and caustic and probably quite evil, but the first step to making better is cleaning, and Laudna was well versed in that. She removed the armor so she could easily work around the clothes, then carefully withdrew the spines sticking into Imogen’s skin. They left pinpricks of blood in orderly little lines, spaced a fingernail apart, and Laudna cleaned them away with some of the spirits she had bottled weeks ago. Once cleaned, she wrapped the wounds in some linens that she kept in a treasure chest she’d plundered. It always struck her that the adventurers never seemed to understand that a very good box could be its own treasure, but that just left more for her.
She’d left the woman’s face for last. Hands and arms were already an intrusion, but one of medical necessity. Laudna made her introductions to Imogen’s fingers, her arms, her neck. By the time she was at her face, they were practically old friends. She could be forgiven for tending to such an intimate wound. Laudna found a new edge to her rag, wetted it with alcohol, and gently wiped away the pricks of blood that stood up from inflamed skin. The woman’s eyes fluttered open and the quiet illusion of friendship was shattered. Laudna skittered away.
“Laudna?”
Laudna fumbled over the floor and grasped for her helmet, her cloak, anything to cover herself, but in her haste to tend the knight she’d left her disguises out of reach.
Imogen placed a hand against her face where the alcohol evaporated. She looked down at her arms, her missing armor, her exposed skin between the bandages.
Laudna pulled her hair across her face and spoke through her hands, her eyes on the floor. “I’m not stealing your armor. I didn’t steal from you. You were hurt—”
“And you saved me.”
Laudna nodded fiercely at the dirt under her feet. Imogen stared on, then blinked away and looked around the green room.
“Am I still in the dungeon?”
“Yes.”
Imogen squinted hard and tipped forward on the bed for a closer view. “Are you a ghoul?”
Laudna met her eyes, and with a sudden horrid understanding, she remembered that her gloves were gone. Her dark claws and gray skin and jutting bones, all of it was in full view as she covered her face. She couldn’t hide it all at once. Laudna backed further into the wall of vines and prayed for them to part and swallow her whole.
“I just—I never seen a ghoul talk before, and I think, if you are a talking ghoul, then that’s a serious omission from the book. And if they’re missing something that big, then maybe the authors’ insights are worth more as toilet paper than scientific study.”
“I’m not a ghoul.”
“Well I know you can’t be a vampire because you had every chance to drink my blood and instead you sealed it back up.” Her eyebrows furrowed as she counted the thought against her fingers. “Unless you aren’t hungry yet, and you’re keeping me for later…”
“I’m not a vampire,” Laudna stammered around her fingers.
“What? I didn’t catch that with you chewing on your nails. Or claws?”
Laudna dropped her hands and barked at the woman. “I don’t know what I am!”
“Oh!” Imogen said it as though that made all the sense in the world. “I don’t know what I am, either.”
The admission was so baffling that Laudna forgot to hide her face. She tilted her head and blinked at the woman. “You’re a tall-man.”
Imogen smiled. “Well, yeah. That’s the easy part to figure out. And I’m sorry for scaring you with all these questions. Now that you’re not hiding behind your hands it’s clear you’re much too pretty to be a ghoul.”
Sorry for scaring… pretty? Laudna felt as though she’d been plunged into the depths of the pool on the fourth floor and spontaneously grew gills. The lovely knight called her pretty. Worried about scaring her.
Imogen flushed as the silence deepened between them. “Upstairs, you said you only died once.”
Laudna nodded. “Yes. I’m uh…” she steepled her overlong fingers, black claws clicked softly together. “I’m kind of in the middle of my first death. I can’t die, but I can’t be revived. I tried asking the corpse retrievers, but they were…” Laudna smiled, her thin lips pulled tight across her long teeth. She had made the mistake of showing teeth to the corpse revivers. She thought it was polite to smile openly, to be genuine. They had brandished their weapons and didn’t stop chasing until she fell down a trap too dangerous to follow. She spent a week at the bottom, picking herself off the spikes and bandaging herself back together. It was there she learned she could not die. “They were unhelpful.”
Imogen’s eyes shone with tears. Her face fell in horror. Laudna sighed and picked up her cloak from the floor. She’d have to pack quickly if Imogen began to scream. The knight did not scream. “A week?” she choked out through tears.
Laudna felt a strange kick in her chest, a sudden reminder that her heart did work, but it only seemed to do so at the worst moments.
Imogen shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hear that. I’ll try to forget it.” She pulled pieces of her armor close to herself and fumbled with the straps, as if desperate to don it and make her escape. “I’m really sorry.”
“Hear what?” asked Laudna.
“I can read minds.” She laughed bitterly. “Actually, I can’t really stop reading minds. It’s how I found you… I only wanted to thank you again and make sure you got enough to eat, but just now you were thinking about the corpse retrievers and… Laudna, that’s awful what they did to you.”
Her heart kicked again and something slow and thick rose through her veins. “It’s only natural for adventurers to hunt monsters.”
Imogen’s lip curled in distaste. “A monster wouldn’t care if I poisoned myself with scorpion meat. Wouldn’t have pulled me out of a man-eating plant, either. You may not know what you are, but I know for damn sure you’re not a monster.”
Laudna’s lip twitched around her sharp teeth and she tucked the thought away to ponder later. “You don’t seem like a knight.”
“I ain’t much of one, but I promise the armor’s mine.” Imogen rolled her eyes. “I paid through the nose for it when I got to this island. I thought if I had my magic, some armor, and I practiced with some lockpicks, I could reach the castle grounds without having to bother with a party.” She huffed out a frustrated little laugh. “I don’t work well with others. Apparently I don’t work well alone either, because I couldn’t even get past the second floor without needing you to drag me out of a plant.”
“You would have made it further if you hadn’t sought me out.”
The walls shivered around them, and a curious vine snaked across the ceiling, swaying gently over Imogen’s head, seeking her breath. It seemed the scorpion venom was wearing off. Laudna cursed herself that she’d forgotten to record the time when she struck it. Time elapsed would be useful knowledge. If she could get a supply of it, set up a controlled environment, make herself a nice little chart…
The vine drooped, zeroing in on Imogen.
“You should go.”
Imogen nodded. “Right. Sorry. I’m disturbing you.” She redoubled her efforts to get into the armor. Laudna frowned as the movements attracted more of her ceiling.
“No, I mean, the vine is waking. Move slowly. I need to get you out, then I’ll retrieve the rest of your armor.”
Imogen’s eyes widened as she noticed the leaves moving on their own. The scars across her hands lit violet and light crackled in her fingertips. She touched the breastplate she had half buckled and a shimmering, dangerous light spread across the metal. Laudna stood to guide her through the vines, but Imogen held a sparking hand out in warning.
“Careful. I made myself a little home-brewed abjuration spell, but it’ll shock anyone that touches the armor.”
“Oh. I was going to cover you. The vines aren’t interested in me, so I thought we could walk together…”
Imogen grinned. “Well if I’d known you had such a clever plan I wouldn’t have wasted the energy!”
That smile was infectious. Laudna returned it before she could stop herself. Imogen looked down. Laudna dropped her smile, ran her tongue along her teeth. It did not seem unnatural to her, but perhaps the points were in the wrong places.
Imogen picked Laudna’s cloak up off the floor and held it out to her. “This should insulate you well enough. I’m going to keep the spell going just in case your house gets nippy. Nothing personal.” Another encouraging smile as she stepped a little closer, unafraid to walk in Laudna’s shadow.
Imogen spaced her feet apart, mirroring Laudna’s stance. She held her hands out expectantly. “If you want to lead us out like it’s a dance, I promise not to shock you.”
Laudna looked closer at Imogen’s hands. They were wrapped in scars, but warm and living and coursing with light. Her own were blackened and withered, the nails long and hooked. She shouldn’t touch something so soft without a barrier. Without something to soften her frozen edges.
Laudna spread her cloak and twisted its ends around her hands before taking hold of Imogen’s. The cloak fell between them, hiding Imogen beneath her withered frame. Imogen was small beneath her bulky armor, and Laudna was lanky enough to disguise her.
Imogen tightened her grip on Laudna’s hands. Laudna drew breath. The vines turned from Imogen and nosed around the bed that still carried heat from where she had laid. “I’m going to count our steps,” Laudna whispered into Imogen’s ear, and they shuffled through an awkward waltz until they stepped right out the door. Laudna pulled the woman further, into the prickling sunlight, far from the reach of her safe house.
It was too bright. Too exposed. She needed to get back to her home, but Imogen couldn’t follow.
“You’re pretty good at the two-step,” joked Imogen. Laudna barked out a laugh that was twice what the joke was worth, but how long has it been since someone gave her a joke? This was better than boiled sweets, than a pound of sugar, than a feast laid out of every food she hadn’t tasted in years. Home could wait a little longer, if she could have another moment that felt like friendship.
There was a lovely tree across a crumbling bridge from her home. It’s wide leaves provided a comfortable shade, but Laudna avoided it for the way its hollows attracted adventurers. Imogen could wait for her there while Laudna fetched her armor. It was nice enough that she might be persuaded to stay. At least for the time it might take Laudna to help her buckle the straps. She didn’t seem to mind proximity; she still held Laudna’s hands through the cloak.
Laudna dropped Imogen’s hands, swept the cloak around her shoulders, and beckoned Imogen across the bridge. Imogen skipped forward, jogging to keep up with Laudna’s long legs.
“Wait here.” Laudna gestured to the mossy roots. “It’s nothing fancy, but there roots make a natural bench… sometimes I pretend it’s a sunroom.” She bit her lip. The whole floor was a sunroom. She shouldn’t have shared such a silly notion.
Imogen’s smile seemed sad, but she took a seat regardless. She ran her hand over the breastplate, and the glimmer she’d set to it traveled up her fingers and settled back beneath her skin.
Laudna had studied other mages, desperate to understand how they channeled mana. The hands always seemed important, but she never saw anyone else whose magic so deeply marred the hands of the mage. If she had been better or richer or more talented or just luckier in life, she might have had a teacher. Someone to tell her why her own magic left such stains while others remained unblemished.
Maybe this was luck. Even after death, she found another mage whose magic wrote itself on the skin.
Laudna didn’t know how to speak this aloud. To ask this pretty young knight with her shining hands if she was somehow like a deathly specter with ink in her veins. And so she said,
“I’ll get your armor now.”
Laudna turned to return to the green room, but Imogen tugged at her sleeve. “I’m not in a hurry.” She gave another smile. This one shyer, but real. Without any sadness in her eyes. “And I think it’s pretty nice to meet someone like myself, too.”
“You really do read minds.” Laudna looked into her eyes, as if she could see her own secrets written in the irises. She thought of the noise in the catacombs, thought of it doubling, to hear all the things people didn’t speak aloud. “You must get so tired.”
Imogen laughed a strangled little laugh. “I do!” she admitted. “Yeah, I do.” She sighed, opened her mouth to say more, then her eyes flashed with light. “Oh shit.” She stood and reached for Laudna. “Quick, put your hood up.”
Laudna buried her head beneath her hood just as a large group turned down the path. She froze, hands twisted into the fabric. Her gloves were inside the green room. The scarf lay there too. She couldn’t go back to fetch it without the group seeing her dive beneath the man-eating vine. Rubbernecking adventurers could never leave well enough alone. If they saw her, they’d investigate and raid her of another safe house. She would be unsafe again.
Imogen touched Laudna lightly on her shoulder and Laudna startled at the touch. “It’s gonna be all right. Just act casual with me.” Her urgency had turned into a sly smile. It was warm. It invited Laudna into a secret. “Tell me something funny.”
She found herself obliging without question. She’d never had a conspirator before. Something funny: “I fought my house today.”
Imogen laughed as the party approached. There were so many of them. Far more than Laudna could fight. A party that big would attract monsters on the lower floors. On the upper floors, larger parties tended to act as thugs. They’d find their treasure in the pockets of parties too small to fight back.
One stood out from the rest, a large tall-man with gleaming armor and a scar across his face that left a permanent wink. “You ladies be careful, that up ahead is one of those man-eating plants.”
Imogen saluted the man and flashed an easy smile. “Thank you kindly, sir.”
He gave a gruff nod, and his party filed after as he passed. One member strayed behind. A skinny gnome that gripped his staff tightly as he approached them. Laudna found the chunk of onyx in her pocket and ran her fingers across it. She might be able to disarm him with a carefully aimed blast, or tie him up in shadow, but she’d have to run as soon as she did it, or the party would turn around and catch her.
The gnome interrupted her plan of attack to ask, “Is it just the two of you?”
“Just us,” answered Imogen. “Don’t worry. She’s an expert guide.” She thumbed over to Laudna and the gnome looked up at her with a strange expression. Like fear, but without that tension that could snap in a moment and turn dangerous. It felt like admiration. Like awe.
“I haven’t seen you before,” said the gnome. His words carried no suspicion. He sounded like someone who wished to know her.
Laudna wished to disappear back inside her cave of leaves. “I’m just that good.”
He nodded, then ran off to catch up with the tail of his vanishing party. They took a wide berth around the vine guarding Laudna’s safe house. Imogen smiled up at Laudna as they went. The cheek on this one, smiling that way with her face still red from man-eating vines.
“How did you do that? Can you cast illusions as well?” Laudna looked Imogen over, but the scars were dim, and she didn’t smell like recently cast spells. Laudna felt her face, her hands, but didn’t sense anything different. Imogen hadn’t miraculously made her human again.
“Well first of all, I didn’t act so gods damned suspicious,” laughed Imogen. “If I couldn’t read minds I’d’ve thought you were picking pockets in the catacombs dressed up the way you were. Gods the things they were thinking of you up there were just hateful. It made it hard to even breathe.”
“You saved me.”
Imogen’s smile turned sad. “I just made conversation is all. I’m not fond of it, but I’m pretty good at it.”
Laudna bunched her hands in her cloak. “Do you need a guide? You said you’ve never made it to the fourth floor. I could take you. I’ve been all through this dungeon.” She tried a smile, close lipped. Her teeth felt all wrong in her mouth. “The monsters tend to ignore me. They think I’m one of their own.”
Imogen squinted at her. “You’re not, though. You wouldn’t have helped me, otherwise.”
Laudna shrugged. “I tried to leave the dungeon. When I first came back to life. My hands touched the sunlight and it felt like my soul was being torn from my body. I’m stuck here. So in that way, I’m as much a monster as anything else that dwells here.”
“You’re cursed,” said Imogen. “So am I. I don’t know how many mages I’ve talked to, how many schools I’ve seen, looking for someone who can tell me why I can’t stop hearing people’s thoughts. No one’s ever heard of a spell that won’t end, that never needed casting, that just started happening and won’t ever stop no matter how drained of mana I am.” Her voice lowered, afraid to speak openly even while they were alone. “I need to find older magic. Forbidden magic. This dungeon has an entire city at the bottom of it, filled with knowledge that the surface ain’t gonna talk about. I need to get there.”
“You said you work alone.”
“I did. I do, but I don’t like being alone. It just gets so loud around other people. That’s what made me look for you, actually. I’d never heard a mind sound so… so nice. I thought, maybe if I could find that mind again, I’d find someone nice.”
“And you want to work with me.” It felt like such a strange dream, the way this woman fell into Laudna’s home and upended everything. She couldn’t remember the last time a conversation lasted longer than “Aa! Ghoul! Kill it!” Laudna’s eyes narrowed in confusion as words tumbled from her mouth: “Because I’m nice.” They ended with an involuntary hiss, as though her vary nature wished to warn Imogen away.
Laudna always wanted to be nice. To have someone to be nice to, but something in her always seemed to fuck it up. Even before this unending death, it was like people could sense something was wrong in her.
“You are nice,” Imogen insisted. “And maybe if we find the books I’m looking for, we can do something about your curse, too.”
Laudna sighed. “You really are good at conversation.”
Imogen smiled sweetly. “Your curse aint as apparent as you think. With the right clothes and me doing the talking, I can keep any adventurers off your back. You can show me the way past all the monsters, and we’ll reach the castle grounds in no time!” She held out her hand. “Sound good?”
A contract. A handshake. Laudna met it gingerly, her bare ghoulish hand wrapped around soft pink flesh like teeth around a cut of meat. Imogen tightened her grip and shook on it.
“We’re going to break our curses, okay?” Imogen was still smiling at her, hand still in hand, uncaring about the claws or the stain or the cold. “Together.”
“Together,” repeated Laudna. The word felt so warm in her chest. It pricked tears in her eyes, and she smiled, all teeth, feeling like half her curse was already broken. “I’ll get us there. Together.”
