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Chilchuck sits alone in front of the magic mirror.
He shakes his head, stands up. This is selfish. His life is good. He's never once regretted any of his daughters.
The fact that he knows that he'd never tell any of them what he's about to do gives him a bad feeling, deep in the pit of his stomach.
He cherishes every memory he has with them. He does, he really does. From their first cries (and the surprise of a second girl so quickly after the first) to their first steps to their squabbling to their first tastes of independence, he adores his daughters with his everything he's got.
But here he is, sitting in front of the magic mirror, asking it what would happen if he'd listened to his siblings when they told him the importance of contraception.
Chilchuck, thirteen years old, sneaks back into the house through the kitchen window. The latch is broken, and the right shutter creaks if you open it too far, but he's still small enough that he can get in through just the left half of the window.
He slides headfirst down the wall, hands out to catch himself against the floor noiselessly. He's done this before and he'll do it again.
One of the kitchen chairs creaks.
"Told you he knew about the window!" his sister says.
Chilchuck finishes worming his way inside, then looks up at his siblings.
His brother passes a string of coins across the table. His sister counts them while his brother starts talking. Oddly, he's talking in the common tongue, instead of their usual comfortable half-foot.
"I know you're starting to get serious with your first girlfriend," he says, "so that's why we've decided to give you the real facts about the risks and rewards of everything."
Oh, right. Their parents didn't speak the common tongue. Smart.
"No, don't run away," his sister says. "Sit with us. You're a young man now, and we don't want you to be getting into any trouble because you don't know something, or you've been given bad information."
His brother slides an empty bottle across the table and Chilchuck obediently slides a condom down its neck. "Remember, there's sperm in pre-cum, so you can still get someone pregnant if you pull out. Utilisez le préservatif pour le temps privatif."
"And you can get sexually transmitted diseases from non-penetrative sex, so make sure you use a physical barrier even when you don't plan on going in," his sister warns. She slides a small leather box across the table top, beckons for him to open it.
"They're more expensive than the linen ones, but it's worth it," his brother says. It's a box of lambskin condoms. "Unless you're really going at it like a rabbit with this girl, these should last you a while. Be responsible."
Chilchuck leans back, propping himself up with both hands. That version of the 'talk' that never happened is remarkably similar to the one he gave Mei and Fler when it was their turn to be mortified by an older family member.
In the universe that did happen, Chilchuck ran away after his brother first spoke, scampering off to bed. He and Jaylark got married because he didn't know how to properly use contraception. It wasn't a bad life.
Chilchuck, fourteen years old and not sporting a wedding ring, or a baby-carrying sling, sits beside Jaylark on a park bench.
"Really, you're a great guy, but we're just not headed in the same direction," she says. "I want a family. You… You don't."
"We're still young," he says. "Things might change."
"I know you, Chil, and you know me. We're not going to change that much. I want to start a family while I'm still young, and I don't want to do it with someone who's not as into it as I am." She scoots away from him, just a little bit.
Chilchuck opens his mouth, closes it again. Doesn't scoot closer to her. "Okay."
"Okay?" Jaylark repeats, rubs her temples. "I guess this is the best response, but I was hoping you'd be more sad about it."
He shrugs. "I am sad. But you're right. We're better as friends. I can be fun uncle Chil. I'd be a terrible father, anyway."
"No you wouldn't," Jaylark laughs. "You'll be a good one when you meet the right girl. I'm just not the girl who's going to be that for you."
"See you around?" Chilchuck asks, slapping his knees and standing up.
"A bientôt," she replies.
Well, that was certainly a much easier breakup than the one that really happened. For one, it was a real breakup. They sat down, face to face, and talked. There were no kids to get hurt by it. They didn't waste a decade of their lives enjoying each other just enough to think it was love.
That relationship defined his adult life. His first serious girlfriend, then the mother of his children, then his wife. Even after their separation, every relationship he's had since has had her shadow looming over it somehow. Not just in the sense that every sexual partner is compared to his first and most frequent lover, but because everyone he connects with comes to a point where they want to know about his past.
Hell, even the realization that he's a loveless aromantic was born of a conversation about his wife. Does he ever realize he's loveless, without her in his life?
The mirror begins to flash through years of relationships.
Chilchuck has a couple of flings in the following weeks. Most of them, predictably, are blonde. A few months after Jaylark breaks up with him, he starts going steady with someone.
The two of them are walking down the street one day, arms linked. Jaylark is walking back from the shops, a ring gleaming on the hand that clutches a bag of root vegetables to her chest. They stop and chat, because it was a good breakup and he wants to stay friendly.
She tells them about her plans to marry and start a family, lets them coo over the craftsmanship of the jewel casing. Chilchuck's met the new man a couple of times, in chance meetings like this one. He seems nice enough. Jaylark asks him why he's not put a ring on the radiant beauty he's forgotten to introduce to her. She chuckles when he goes red, smiles sweetly at his girlfriend as he struggles through a few sentences about how they met and how neither of them are looking at marriage quite yet.
The new girlfriend breaks up with him, too, but this time because he doesn't seem to have any ambition. It's true, he's content to run deliveries for the locksmith. He gets to meet people, and he makes enough for his lifestyle. He has no reason to want anything more.
There's another few weeks of hookups and first dates, and then Jaylark introduces him to her husband's brother. Chilchuck dates him for almost half a year.
It's not like he's heterochromatic, or whatever that thing is that Marcille calls him when he gets sick of hearing about her dates with Falin. Heterochromatic isn't right. Homostatic? That's closer.
He's not homophobic, it's just strange to learn that if he didn't have kids with Jaylark, he'd end up screwing men left and right before he was eighteen. Does that mean he likes men in this world too? Sure, he's had sex with them, but it's only happened twice, and he was drunk and though they were trans women.
Half-foots don't label themselves like elves do. He prefers it that way, mostly. Perhaps he could see if he likes men in this world.
He rushes through the rest of his youth. Most of it is listless, just short-term relationships and running deliveries for the locksmith. It feels odd, watching a version of himself that didn't exist have sex with people he's never met.
Around the age of twenty, the locksmith takes Chilchuck on as an apprentice. He's been a loyal delivery boy for more than half a decade, after all.
He proves to be good at it, and completes his apprenticeship in good time, becomes a partner.
The woman who taught him how to be a locksmith sits him down one day and tells him that he's too good at this to stay in their shitty little town. She puts him in contact with a hotel on the coastline of Kahka Brud that needs a locksmith.
He has nothing tying him to his hometown. He moves without fuss. Jaylark, her husband, and her children come to say goodbye to him. He has few other friends. Some of his exes help him pack.
At the hotel in Kahka Brud, he gets to meet lots of people. His first gnome, his first ogre. He's met elves and tall-men before, but they're still exciting to him. His hometown was mostly half-foot, so he doesn't speak any of their languages, but he makes a strong effort and picks up mostly functional dwarvish within two years.
It's about six months before he meets a dwarf man, and that's who he has his first inter-species relationship with. They stay together until the dwarf man is called by his party leader to go into the dungeon.
By twenty-four, he's fed up with how all the people he pursues leave him for the dungeon. He starts to look into picking locks and disarming traps. He moves to the island. Someone points him to a half-foot guild who'll make sure his contract is fair and that any party he signs onto is safe for half-foots.
It's good to see that someone started the guild even if it wasn't him. Chilchuck burns with curiosity at who it is, but knows that this alternate version of himself isn't likely to come in direct contact with the head of the guild. He's green behind the ears even this late in life. The Chilchuck sitting in front of the mirror had been working in dungeons for the better part of a decade by this point.
The Chilchuck inside the mirror is so naive about everything. How different it must be to not wake up curled into a ball, to not be constantly aware of how loud his footsteps are, to not flinch when someone mentions succubi. He's going down into the dungeon for fun, to see what's so much better about the dungeon than a relationship with him.
Chilchuck, twenty-four years old, pulls his bag over his shoulders and stumbles a little bit under the weight. So he may have over-packed. But it's his first trip, and he's nervous, and the guild representative was very stern in his warnings about the dangers of the dungeon.
He's not used to the weight of armour, light though it is, so that slows his pace too. They only go to the second floor, but the aggressive vegetation has Chilchuck scurrying to stay in the middle of the group.
His hands shake, a bit, when they haul a chest across the ground to him. He's just so nervous. He's never done this before. What if he messes up and kills everyone?
The picking goes off without a hitch, and he opens the chest gingerly to reveal a chest full of cast iron cookware. It's not treasure, but it looks like it'll fetch a good price at market. His party leader claps him affectionately on the back, tells him, "Good job."
On their way back out, his foot gets caught in a vine. The dwarf fighter standing beside him hacks at it with her axe; the tall-man mage lights the man-eating plant aflame with a spell.
While they're freeing him, something comes crashing through the undergrowth. A... giant chicken? The dwarf swivels to attack it, but gets bitten by a snake that grows from the monster's tail.
After they scare the basilisk away, the dwarf dies. The party's healer revives her, and they feed her a hearty meal, and she's alright before they bed down for the night. It still terrifies Chilchuck more than he's ever realized he could be terrified.
Someone died, to protect him. They died because he got stuck in a plant. He's not cut out for this. He's not cut out for this at all.
Well, he did always say he was a coward at heart, didn't he? It's really strange, seeing himself as a soft surface dweller, unaccustomed to the risks of the dungeon. It's nice, too, to see that he's not so jaded in that universe. That he gets to enjoy life without worries.
Mostly, he's jealous of himself, Chilchuck realizes. The Chilchuck in the mirror doesn't even realize how easy his life is. And all of this came about just because he didn't run away from his siblings that night.
He doesn't resent his children, he really doesn't. But there's a part of him — a part he hates more than any other part of himself — that wonders if he did the right thing. Would they have been better off not existing at all? They would have been spared countless late nights wondering if their papa would arrive home safely, grumpy mornings of snapping at them for playing too loud after he'd overindulged the night before. And of course, the split. That was hard for everyone.
As much as he loathes that part of himself — he loathes that part of himself with every other part of his body, he does, he really does — he's not convinced that he did the right thing. They could have at least stopped at two children, surely?
Oh, fucking hell, he's an asshole. He's not seriously thinking their lives would have been better without Puck?
Well, he is, kind of. But he's not really serious about it, right?
He feels sick. He can't vomit in here. Shouldn't, at least.
No, he doesn't regret his life. He's glad he got to experience the hardships. They make him appreciate the good moments even better. Yes, that's the spirit.
The hardships. Like being constantly talked down to. Like being used as bait for assholes to make a quick buck. Like always being hungry because if he's not hungry, he's dead. Like people always being surprised when he eventually admits to having a wife and three daughters, because he looks so young. Like staying in a marriage with a woman he doesn't love, and who doesn't love him, because he doesn't know any better.
The good moments he got don't seem as good as the ones the Chilchuck in the mirror got.
Oh, fuck. He's an asshole.
Chilchuck, twenty-four years old, passes his adventuring equipment over the counter of a consignment shop. Once was enough for him. That whole process of dying and being revived is something he does not want to have to experience for himself.
He returns to his shop, limits himself to flirting with adventurers, and promises himself to never venture into the depths again. Even if the pay was awfully good for only two days.
Chilchuck, twenty-eight years old, grows restless with replacing the same forgetful old man's keys every week. Surely the dungeon can't be as bad as remembers it. People wouldn't go in if it was. He needs some adventure in his life.
His employees tease him about something called a midlife crisis. He brushes them off. He's just looking for something to keep him occupied for a couple of days. Give himself something else to do for a change.
He wanders down to the guild and asks if they've got anything suitable for an old man with only one excursion under his belt.
They point him to a dark-skinned tall-man with striking blue eyes.
Kabru's party? Really?
It's not like Chilchuck dislikes Kabru. Far from it. He's just shocked that out of all the novice adventurers in the world, he could have ended up in that party. It also puts into perspective just how different his skill level would have been had he not gone into the dungeons to provide for his family. They must have passed Kabru's party dead on the floor at least three times before everything with the Winged Lion happened.
He wonders what happened to Mickbell, and Kuro.
Oh, they're probably fine.
Chilchuck adjusts his posture, making himself comfortable. This should be interesting.
Kabru of the House of Tol, a tall-man with an elven title, is a friendly boss who's cautious about taking risks. He seems to know everything about everyone, which seems creepy at first, until Chilchuck realizes he's genuinely interested in knowing people. By the end of the first day, Kabru's identified no fewer than five friends they have in common.
Rinsha Fana, Kabru's childhood best friend, is the party's offensive mage. Her speciality is lightning, which never fails to amaze Chilchuck. She uses numbers to explain things about mysterious forces called electrical conductivity and magnetism which Chilchuck doesn't understand, but is fascinated by anyway.
Chilchuck doesn't really know whether or not he should trust the dwarf, Daya, seeing as how that scandal with the weapons smuggler is still fresh in the minds of his topside coworkers. She seems to be reliable enough, and shuts down a lot of his questions about dwarf crime, and he's not in a position to threaten her role in the party, so they get along well enough for Kabru and Rin. It's only after she brings a large barrel of dwarf ale to one of their gatherings that he warms up to her, but she's still cordial at best to him.
The other mage, Holm, is a lethargic and taciturn healer, which Chilchuck is also fascinated by. Even more interesting is his affinity for spirits, even stronger than usual for gnomes. It's Holm who points out that Rin has a crush on Kabru, and tells Chilchuck that he'd rather Kabru go after Rin and leave his sister alone. Chilchuck just nods thoughtfully, the idea of intra-party romance foreign to him. Sure, he's surrounded by married couples. But the life of a half-foot bachelor in a bustling city is an easy one, especially when you've got two jobs to occupy your time.
Kabru looks for another fighter to round out the party. The first of their applicants is an elf from the west. Neither he nor Rin seem entirely comfortable with a western elf, and he's not particularly interested in having someone who'll judge him in the party. They dismiss him with a polite message about looking for something different and go without a third martial fighter for the time being.
Chilchuck finds himself enjoying the company of this party, even spending time with them when they're aboveground. It's good for him, making friends with people who are younger than he is. It rejuvinates him, gets him out of his dejected funk. He's never had any interest in starting a family, but he does admit that his life is a bit lonely. Joining this up-and-coming party gives him something to look forward to every week.
Shit, Marcille's right, Chilchuck realizes, not for the first time. He really was a judgemental asshole in more ways than he realized. Thank fuck he's grown since then.
That's another benefit of the life he did lead, he supposes. Earlier exposure to other races, in a much more high-stakes environment forced him to trust that other races aren't out to betray him. Even if he did experience that firsthand from tall-men.
It's interesting to watch himself, so close in age to the Chilchuck sitting in front of the mirror, bumbling through traps that the real Chilchuck wouldn't even blink at. Probably more interesting to watch Kabru's party in action. That wasn't really a possibility when they were in the dungeon.
At the time, he didn't realize how little experience Kabru's party had in dungeoneering. Getting to watch himself react to simple tactics like attacking a monster with long-range magic to weaken it as if it's groundbreaking strategy is kind of adorable. When he beams with pride after remembering to check a chest for mimics before opening it, it's definitely adorable. They even celebrate after killing a slime.
With the gap in Kabru's party where they're missing another fighter, Chilchuck finds himself restringing his old shortbow just in case it comes in handy. He always was good at shooting back in his hometown, after all.
He's a bit out of shape, but he manages well enough. Archery isn't in his contract, so Kabru is pleased no matter how poor his contribution.
They go into the dungeon often, just to get experience. Chilchuck's paycheques get smaller and smaller, but he keeps coming back. It's fun, learning alongside these kids. He gets quicker and quicker at spotting traps, at picking locks, at notching an arrow when a giant scorpion is scuttling along the ceiling.
Kabru learns from his many connections with more experienced adventurers that the dungeon is behaving strangely. More strangely than usual, at least. He gets everyone together and explains his convoluted network of intel and guesswork and concludes that they need to work harder and go deeper.
They spend more and more time underground, and eventually work up the courage to try the third floor. Burdened by a week's worth of food, it's hard work getting down, but the third floor turns out to be easier than they thought it would be.
Undead monsters are, for the most part, slow. Slow to react, slow to chase, and slow to attack. Slow enough that they make good progress.
"I think we could go deeper," Rin says, looking over the edge of the balcony.
Kabru shakes his head. "Let's be careful. More experienced parties than us have been having problems."
"Problems with teamwork," Rin says.
Chilchuck lets their discussion fade into the background. The zombie that Kabru just struck down has a strange, square lump in its chest. He always feels weird and a little bit gross doing this, and not just because of the stench of rot, but he points at the corpse. "I think it was carrying something."
Kabru kneels down and sticks his arm up the corpse's shirt, passes an ornately decorated box to Chilchuck. "Let's see what we've got."
Chilchuck springs the lock after a minimum of struggling. He really is getting good at this.
Rin rolls her eyes, scoffs that these sorts of boxes are never worth the time it takes to open them.
Chilchuck passes the box back to Kabru. His party leader opens it and the shine of jewelry reflects onto his face. Everyone crowds in to look at it.
It's unbelievable. They've never gotten this big of a payoff before, and certainly not from something as easily defeated as a zombie.
They decide to divvy up the jewels before turning back. There's no sense in taking the risk of losing their treasures by venturing further down.
So that's how they died. Chilchuck scoffs, the first sound he's made in ages. He wonders how much of a difference he made to their death. Was Mickbell more cautious about rooting around in a corpse? Did Kuro smell something amiss?
For the first time tonight, he wonders what Laios' party is doing, without him. Did they hire whoever it was that ended up starting the guild? Have they hired someone who isn't a half-foot at all? Are they risking the dungeon without someone to detect traps and pick locks?
Is their picklock better at his job? Did he lose three days of food to a trap? Is Falin alive?
Chilchuck pushes these thoughts away. It doesn't matter if it was his fault that Falin got eaten by the dragon. It led to the re-emergence of Melini, didn't it? In a way, isn't he a hero, too?
Laios is a good enough king. Right?
Kabru's party wakes up to find their jewels missing. Stolen, presumably.
"If we turn back now, we can probably intercept the thieves on their way back up," Kabru suggests.
"We'll take a bad hit if he turn back and don't, though," Rin replies, shaking her head. "We should try to find at least something worth bringing back. We haven't even had to test ourselves very much."
"If we can beat them to the surface, we can return better equipped," Kabru says, reflecting her posture back at her. "We can't afford to risk going deeper and losing more."
"We haven't lost anything, though," Rin points out. "All we've done is not gained. Going back now is just a waste of food. We should at least stay on this floor for a little bit and get some practice against ghosts and mimics."
Holm clears his throat. "If it's all the same to you, I'd like to make this trip worth something.""
"Fine," Kabru takes a deep breath in. "Chilchuck? Daya? What do you think?"
"I want to get our jewels back," Daya says. "I vote we go back up now. The longer we wait, the further away they get."
"So that's two for going and two for staying," Kabru counts on his fingers. They all look to Chilchuck.
He frowns. "We don't know what the thieves look like, so the only way for us to catch them is if we beat them to the surface and warn the pawnshops. We can always come back. We can't always get our jewels back. I think we should go back up."
Rin and Holm give him their own types of contemplative looks. Rin's is almost inscrutable, just a slight furrowing of the brow. Is she mad at him? Holm, on the other hand, tilts his head to each side, and after a moment, slowly nods.
"Then it's decided," Kabru claps. "Let's turn back. We can get our jewels today and our experience tomorrow."
On the way back up, they meet a party composed almost entirely of Eastern tall-men. Well, tall-women. There's only one man, haggard and gaunt, who Kabru learns is looking for someone who died on the sixth floor.
"Good luck finding her," he says. "Did you happen to come across a person or group with a load of jewels? Necklaces, bracelets, coins? We got killed right after getting it from a zombie, and when we were revived, it was gone."
"No. Sorry," the Eastern tall-man — Toshiro — says. They pass on by.
So he's caught up to the point at which Falin died. It's nice to know that she would have died regardless of whether or not he lost that food. He wonders, for a moment, why Kabru's party kept going deeper after they were revived. Was it really up to Chilchuck? It's a good thing he was there, then, because he prevented their second death, the one that left them floating on the fourth floor.
Oh, but something happened that made Kabru's party join up with Toshiro by the time they got to the fifth floor. He wonders how much of a difference that made.
There's no evidence of any jewel thieves when they arrive topside. None of the pawnshops have recently come into a load of jewels; nobody's heard any rumours about sudden wealth; even the seediest characters of the island are telling the truth when they shake their head.
"Maybe they're still in the dungeon?" Rin suggests. "We could go back down."
This time, even Daya is of the opinion that they should stay aboveground. "They'll have to emerge to sell our jewels eventually. If they were really good at adventuring, they wouldn't need to steal from corpses. They'll show up."
The tall-man grumbles, but doesn't argue more, knowing she's outnumbered.
They wait for days with no news of the thieves.
"Maybe they died down there," Rin says. "We could go down and find them."
"And steal from their corpses? Chilchuck asks. "We'd be no better than them."
"It would be different because they did it first, but Chilchuck's right," Daya says.
"We're not going back down," Kabru says, arms crossed in front of his body. The party all look at him, expectant. He doesn't use that stern voice very often. "A canary ship has pulled into port. They're going to try and beat the dungeon into submission. We can't be belowground when that happens."
"Canaries?" Rin asks. Her usually unflappable voice is laced through with fear. No, not fear. Apprehension?
"I need to speak to the Island Governer," Kabru says. "We're not going down there, and nobody else should, either."
"All your adventurer buddies aren't going to like that," Chilchuck muses. Rin glares at him. He raises his hands in submission. "I just mean that people like their jobs. Trying to kick people out of the dungeon isn't going to go well."
"Letting more people go in isn't going to go well either," Kabru shakes his head. "Trust me. I'm from Utaya."
Chilchuck's face is blank.
"A dungeon town on the western continent. The dungeon got out of control and swallowed everyone except me. I can't let that happen to the island, too."
"An admirable idea," Chilchuck says, careful not to offend. "I still think it's easier said than done."
"I'll be in touch if there's anything I need help with," Kabru says. "Don't go underground."
Chilchuck watches the canaries stream ashore, laden with weapons. The dungeon explodes outward, nothing like the tear in the ground that actually happens. Monsters rampage and adventurers are not plentiful enough to save everyone.
The version of himself who exists in this universe moves back to Kahka Brud. He learns from the town crier that the island's been shut down by elves. He mourns the few friends he made during his years there and sells his adventuring gear for good. The mirror blinks out with its one-hour limit before he gets to see how he dies. It's probably not accurate to the life that exists. For one, this Chilchuck doesn't seem to have a drinking problem.
Chilchuck needs to thank Kabru for whatever he did while Laios' party was still underground. Somehow, he managed to stall the canaries' attack long enough for everything with the demon to happen. It's common knowledge — at least among their social circle — that Laios would be lost as a king without his advisor, but apparently Kabru did something that made his position as king possible.
Chilchuck's brain whirrs, comparing his memories to what he's just seen. That death on the fourth floor must have been important. That's the first real point of divergence that he knows of. Whatever motivated Kabru's party to go deeper instead of turning back is what saved the island.
This is a good distraction from thinking about his children, about Jaylark. If he can just focus on Kabru's contribution to global politics, he won't think about his children. Really, he can blame it all on the fact that he was in Kabru's party and not that scab Mickbell Tomas. In a way, Melini owes its existence to the three of them.
What is he thinking? This doesn't make any sense. Melini owes its existence to countless little things that happened to allow Laios to come out on top. He's not the centre of the world, and neither are his daughters.
There are plenty of reasons not to regret his children. They're wonderful people. His life is better because of them. He doesn't need to justify their existence with geopolitics. Even if everything else was better without them, he'd rather live the life he's led, because they make his life better.
He needs a drink.