Scholarly Report:

  Memories

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  In his memories, the smell of his father’s study never changed: old leather, spiced walnuts, and an aroma best described as authoritarian with hints of dread. Even the door was the same, regarding anyone who dared come close with a look that said, “Really? You?” before—reluctantly—permitting entry.

  That evening, it creaked open with a deep, weary sigh.

  The boy tried to keep his head high, his tone unbothered, but in front of the silhouette that rose behind the desk, every word was doomed to sound feeble, “Dad… My playmates never arrived today.”

  It was a conscious decision not to turn it into a question. His reward was an answer:

  “Playmates?” the man repeated, never glancing up from the sigils he was etching. “That rabble? Don’t lower yourself by calling them anything other than what they are: beggars, thieves, and snakes.”

  “But—”

  His father raised a hand, and a small cascade of metal tokens clattered across the desk, like pennies thrown to the poor.

  “647 credits,” he said. “Do you know what that represents?”

  The boy shook his head. Guessing wrong was worse than not guessing at all.

  “It’s the price of your ‘playmates’ loyalty. That’s all it took. They spied on you for months. Reported your every conversation to the servants. All seven of them, betraying your trust for chump change. Remember this, son: the only things that matter in this world are money, power, and fear.”

  At the ripe age of five, Lionel J’Khall received his first lesson on the subject of “friendship”. It was the first of many such lessons that would be taught to him over the years, carefully crafted to shape him into another perfect heir.

  ***

  Lionel had died.

  He was certain of it. He would’ve even wagered a sizable amount of money on the fact. Yet as he blinked his eyes open, he found himself staring at a ceiling streaked with dust and afternoon sunlight. It didn’t look like any afterlife he’d been promised. For one thing, it was far too ordinary. And not even in the “eternal torment in the form of boredom” sort of way. Just… mundane.

  His nose itched with the scent of mildew. His shoulder hurt in the specific, intimate way that only dislocated joints can manage. And the damp scrap of fabric that had been thrown over him hardly seemed woven with deeper meaning. If he had crossed into a new realm of existence, surely there would have been something more? A few trials? A booming voice? Maybe a tasteful slideshow of Where It All Went Wrong?

  What he got instead was the quiet after-drip of a rainstorm that had passed, and the steady grrnnnkkk of… someone grinding damp wood with a dull saw? No—snoring. Definitely snoring. Accompanied by the unmistakable weight known to anyone who has ever owned a pet, or been owned by one: the full, oblivious sprawl of a creature deeply unaware of both boundaries and mass, fast asleep across his abdomen.

  With a determined wiggle, Lionel managed to free his good arm and lift the cloth aside.

  There she was, blissfully snoring and perfectly content—as if using the recently deceased as a mattress were the most natural thing in the world.

  “You’re awake?”

  The hushed voice drifted across the room—across the tailor’s shop, Lionel realized as he glanced over. The taller of the two Delvers sat slumped against the wall like a life-weary scarecrow. The crooked candle holder was there as well, leaned against her shoulder as if it were something far more heroic than the piece of scrap-metal he saw.

  She didn’t look as if she’d slept at all, yet she still offered him a thin, wry smile. It was the sort of smile that said, “I’m glad you’re alive, but I reserve the right to collapse at any moment.”

  “What… happened?” Lionel croaked.

  “Isn’t that supposed to be my line?” She snorted, shaking her head. Then, she went quiet, as if the memories resurfacing needed a moment to settle in.

  Her next words came like a confession, “We never left this shop. Couldn’t, really. Were in no position to…” Slowly, she dragged her fingers through her hair, as if the dull sensation could ease the guilt. “All we got were the echoes. The rumbling. Explosions. Screaming. Horrible things. Enough to let us know that we were going to die. That there was no hope left to cling to. Yet just as I was starting to come to terms with it, everything just… stopped.

  “The whispers went quiet. The rain ceased. And then she appeared at the door, wobbling like a drunk ghost but standing just long enough for us to confirm you weren’t dead. She collapsed shortly after. Hasn’t budged an inch since.”

  “She’s the one who brought me back?” Lionel asked, looking down at the snoring Gremlin splayed across his stomach. Drool ran down her cheek, and with her arms and legs spread wide, it really seemed a conscious effort how she was taking up as much space as possible even when passed out.

  Feeling some of her exhaustion rub off on him, he let his head thunk back onto the bolt of fabric someone had mercifully placed there as pillow. It was not comfortable, but it was at least a step up from the afterlife he’d expected.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  He rubbed at his eyes.

  He had died back there. He was sure of it. Absolutely certain—well, ninety-seven percent certain, which was an acceptable margin for error. And yet here he was, alive. The very thought made his skull throb.

  He could recall the screaming. The distant, desperate kind as he’d hit the cold, unyielding stone. There had been shadows. Frantic movement. And then there had been… things. Things he did not understand, things that turned into blurry, throbbing fragments the moment he tried to remember them.

  If anyone had answers, it was the snoring girl draped across his abdomen like a lazy housecat with boundary issues. This thought, unfortunately, made his head hurt twice as much.

  “Your friend,” he said instead, addressing the ceiling, the universe, and anything else that might be listening. Turning his head felt like negotiating with a committee of disgruntled vertebrae. Talking wasn’t much better, but it seemed polite. “Did she make it?”

  “Yenna?” came the reply, arriving just as his eyelids decided to stage a graceful, closing-curtain moment. It paired nicely with Annabell’s ongoing snore. “Yeah, she’s alive.”

  —And so am I, somehow…—

  “Whatever those flasks of yours were, they were strong stuff. Miraculous stuff. She just needed rest. She’s… well, not fine. None of us are fine. But yes, alive… She went out earlier to see if there was any sense to be made about our situation. I wasn’t exactly in favour, but the sun’s up. So how bad can it be, right? We figured…”

  ***

  Yenna and Gami. It turned out those were the name of the Delvers they’d met in that cursed Dungeon called Ashenmoor.

  Two days. Only two—or was it three?—had passed since they’d been unceremoniously dropped into this nightmare, and he’d spent the most of this last one dead, asleep, or somewhere in between.

  Yet somehow it felt far, far longer. “Time stretches itself in Dungeons, like an absent-minded taffy puller getting carried away,” someone once said, and walking down the docks as the sun sank toward the horizon, Lionel was inclined to believe them.

  Everything felt surreal. But then again, his whole existence had been surreal ever since Annabell Smith had burst into his life like a bomb entirely made of glitter and questionable ideas.

  Lionel had lived through five Grand Seasons—his sixth one soon to start—and had been quite convinced, as young people often are, that he’d grasped the fundamental workings of the universe long ago.

  She had proven him wrong.

  Listening to the waves break against a jetty that looked as if it was trying very hard not to fall into the sea, Lionel paused to glance back at the young woman following a few steps behind him. Yenna. The spellcaster. One of the only two survivors of the party that had tried conquering this Dungeon before he and Annabell arrived.

  She looked tired, ragged, and ever so slightly lost. To be fair, they all probably looked like that. Such was the life of Delvers: you either recovered or you died trying.

  “It’s this way, right?” he asked over the quiet breeze. The question was pointless; he had already spotted their destination. But he needed to say something—to get away from his thoughts if just temporarily.

  In a strange, unspoken way, he almost missed Annabell’s utter allergy to silence.

  The girl was further down the docks, her long hair fluttering in the wind.

  It might have been a serene sight… if not for her loud, unbroken snoring and the steadily expanding puddle of drool forming on Gami’s shoulder. The tall woman had volunteered as Gremlin carrier, and even if Lionel’s shoulder hadn’t been recently re-located, he wouldn’t have objected.

  “Yeah, it’s over there,” Yenna said, giving a small nod toward the strange structure he’d already noticed. She didn’t point, just jabbed her chin in the right direction. Throughout their walk she’d remained stubbornly hunched over, arms crossed over her ribs and side.

  Had Lionel been polite, he would have chalked it up to a lingering injury. Or the cold. Much of Yenna’s already wanting jacket had been sacrificed in her companion’s frantic attempts to keep her alive.

  But he had seen it: the piece of metal weaved into her side, pulsing faintly in time with her heartbeat. Still, if she was going this far to pretend it wasn’t there, Lionel possessed just enough tact not to mention it.

  For now.

  Ashenmoor had left its mark on all of them, and there were more pressing things demanding his attention. Namely: the structure ahead of them, sticking out like a sore thumb against the rest of the scorched and hollowed out docks.

  While its surroundings had been ravaged by fire, bloodshed, or otherwise introduced to unpleasant forms of entropy, this second, smaller jetty stood perfectly untouched.

  Stranger still was that Lionel recognized it, just that it hadn’t been here last time he saw it. At the end of it hung an eerie, ancient-looking bell.

  “It’s ominous, isn’t it?” Yenna said, stepping up beside him.

  “It is,” he agreed, staring at the bell and contemplating what sort of twisted scenario would put a trap this obvious at the end of everything they’d been through. Surely it couldn’t be—

  “Oh!” chirped a voice behind them, immediately followed by the sound of someone enthusiastically sliding to the ground. “I know this one!”

  Before Lionel could blink—before he could even think about blinking—Annabell Smith, eternal Gremlin, chaos in boot, scourge of silence, had cheerfully skipped past them and out onto the creaking jetty. Even if he’d had the strength to stop her, some deep part of him had already accepted the futility of trying to prevent Annabell from doing anything she’d already set her mind on doing.

  So, when she snatched the bell’s rope and rang it enthusiastically—its crisp clang carrying far and loud across the silent ocean alongside her shouted, “Yahoo! Over here!—Lionel simply turned to the other two women and offered an apologetic shrug.

  “Quite something, isn’t she?” he said, even attempting a smile as he prayed—very quietly, so as not to draw attention—that disaster was taking the day off.

  And perhaps, miraculously, it was. Because what answered her call was not a fresh wave of fish-scented horrors, but a dinghy drifting into view from… well, from somewhere.

  It was rowed by a lone oarsman—gaunt to the point of being skeletal, a wide-brimmed hat clouding his face—who didn’t appear particularly invested in speed, urgency, or even basic awareness.

  He rowed with the leisurely determination of someone who’d long ago decided that time was an illusion, and schedules were for the living. He neither sped up nor slowed down, regardless of how vigorously Annabell waved, cheered, or attempted to “help” by calling out course corrections.

  She really was a handful.

  In the short few minutes it took for the dinghy to reach them, she had even found time to poke Yenna in the wounded side, loudly ask what the metal bits were for, and whether they fired laser beams—because if they could, she definitely wanted a turn. Never, at any point, showing a single hint of shame.

  She liked cookies, long naps, and complained a lot—and somehow, she had single handedly destroyed a Dungeon of a higher grade than he’d ever dared dream of. She had also brought him back from the land of the dead.

  Sitting opposite her in the cramped dinghy, watching her tap her feet against the creaking wood as she hummed out a jaunty little jingle, Lionel realized that he barely knew a thing about the girl who called herself Annabell Smith:

  The first Delver he had ever signed.