Ch.34
The fire took three tries to light.
Welf had found dry wood near the crystal tree line, slow-burning stuff that didn't smoke much, and I'd gathered grass from the lakeside that worked as kindling if you balled it tight enough. Lili supervised from her spot against the tree trunk. She'd changed her torn backpack strap with a length of rope from the emergency kit and her crossbow was across her knees and the cut near her eye had scabbed over in a thin dark line.
The fire caught on the third match. Small, warm, the light orange against the blue-white glow of the crystal ceiling. Floor 18 didn't get dark the way the upper floors did. The crystals kept the space in perpetual twilight, the light shifting from blue to purple as the hours passed. There was no sun to set, but the Dungeon had its own version of dusk.
Welf cooked. He'd brought dried meat and a can of beans and he heated both on a flat stone near the fire and the smell of food was good. We ate in silence. Lili ate precisely, saving a portion in her pack for morning. Welf ate everything and then looked around for more. I ate slowly and watched the lake.
The lake was still. Perfectly flat, reflecting the crystal ceiling like a second sky below us. Nothing moved on the surface.
Lili slept first. She curled up near the fire with her pack under her head and her crossbow against her chest and she was out in minutes. Welf lasted another hour, talking about the Minotaur horn reforge and whether the crystalline grain would hold through Tsubaki's tempering, and then he lay down against the tree and was snoring within two breaths.
I sat by the lake and watched the crystal sky.
A footstep on the grass behind me. Soft. Deliberate. The kind of step that wanted to be heard.
I turned.
Ryuu Lion stood at the edge of the firelight in a hooded cloak, carrying a pack that was larger than her torso. Her sky-blue eyes caught the crystal glow and the fire glow at the same time and the two colors mixed. Her flaxen hair was tucked under the hood but a few strands had escaped and hung past her jaw.
"You missed dinner at the Hostess," she said.
"We got held up."
She set the pack down. Inside: rations, water, healing potions, a blanket, dried fruit, and a sealed container of Mia's stew that was still warm. She'd carried all of it down seventeen floors.
"Ryuu."
"Syr asked me to bring supplies." The excuse was smooth and the reason behind it wasn't Syr. Her sky-blue eyes were on the camp behind me, counting bodies. Lili asleep, Welf asleep, me sitting by the lake.
"You came alone?"
"I'm Level 4. The upper floors aren't a concern." She sat down beside me. Measured distance. Her hip was a foot from mine and the space between us was precise. "What happened?"
"Pass parade on Floor 17. Someone herded a monster stampede into our corridor."
Her jaw set. "Deliberate."
"Yeah."
"Which Familia?"
"Don't know yet."
She looked at the lake. Her profile in the crystal-light was sharp, the line of her nose and the point of her ears and the set of her mouth, and the light made her skin look like carved ivory, pale and smooth, and I looked away because looking too long at Ryuu Lion in crystal-light was a problem I didn't need.
"Is your supporter injured?" she asked.
"Cut near her eye. She's fine. The beetle that pinned her almost wasn't."
"You killed it?"
"Pulled it off the wall with my hands and crushed its core."
She was quiet for a long moment. The lake reflected both of us as shadows on its surface. A crystal somewhere in the canopy above cracked and a small shard fell into the water and made a sound like a dropped coin.
"I used to be an adventurer," she said.
I looked at her. She was still facing the lake. Her hands were in her lap, one over the other, her fingers still.
"Before the Hostess," she said. "Before the uniform and the customers and the cleaning schedule. I explored these floors. I fought down here."
"What happened?"
"I lost people."
She said it flat. Stripped. The elven formality was gone.
I didn't push. I sat with it. The crystal ceiling hummed above us and the fire crackled behind us and neither of us spoke for a while.
"I know what that's like," I said.
She turned her head. Her sky-blue eyes were steady and they were asking a question she didn't say out loud.
I stared at the crystal sky. The glow was shifting from blue to violet. Time was passing up there even if it didn't feel like it down here.
"Not from experience," I said. "From knowing it's coming and not being able to stop it."
She looked at me for a long time after that. Her gaze was on the side of my face. The words had sounded like empathy. They were true in a different way. I knew what was coming for the people in this world because I'd watched it happen on a screen, and the things I couldn't change sat heavy.
But she heard a boy who was afraid of losing the people he loved. Which was also true.
"You speak as though you carry more years than your face suggests," she said. The formality was back, soft, careful. She was watching me the way she watched the Dungeon. Assessing the terrain.
"I've been told that."
"By whom?"
"A goddess with a very specific way of reading people."
She didn't ask which goddess. She looked back at the lake.
We sat there. The crystal light shifted. A bird that shouldn't exist underground flew across the ceiling far above us and disappeared into the crystal canopy. Neither of us commented on it.
My hand moved on the grass between us. Toward hers. An inch, maybe two, my fingers crossing the measured distance she'd put between us. The edge of her hand in my peripheral vision, pale fingers against dark grass.
I stopped. Pulled my hand back to my knee.
She'd seen it. Her eyes had tracked the movement, the reach and the withdrawal, and her chin dipped by a fraction and her lips pressed together.
We didn't talk about it.
"The stew is getting cold," she said after a while.
"Yeah."
She stood. Walked back to the camp and began distributing the rations she'd brought, laying out portions for morning.
I sat by the lake and pressed my hand flat against the grass where it had been reaching. The blades were cool and damp. My pulse was loud.
Rivira was smaller than I'd expected. A collection of semi-permanent structures built from crystal and salvaged wood, tucked against the far wall of Floor 18 where the terrain rose into a ridge. A few dozen adventurers and merchants populated the town, most of them hard-looking and overpriced. The tavern was the largest building, a two-story construction with a crystal-slab bar and a menu that charged triple for everything because the supply chain involved carrying goods down seventeen flights of monster-infested stairs.
We ate breakfast there. Welf complained about the prices. Lili paid without complaint, which meant the prices were within her recalculated budget, which meant the pass parade loot losses were already accounted for.
Ryuu stayed hooded. She kept her face covered and her ears hidden and she ate with her back to the room. She knew this place. She'd been here before. She didn't want to be recognized.
The woman at the corner table was easier to spot.
Aqua-blue hair with a single white strand running through it. Silver-framed glasses. Cyan eyes with dark circles underneath that said she'd been working through the night or several nights. She sat with a stack of papers and a quill and she was writing in a ledger that was organized with color-coded tabs along the edges. A half-eaten plate of food sat beside the ledger, forgotten.
Asfi Al Andromeda. Hermes Familia captain. The item-maker. Perseus.
I knew her from the anime. The one who cleaned up after Hermes, who built Talaria from scratch, who was smarter than her god deserved.
I walked to her table.
"Excuse me."
She looked up. The cyan eyes were sharp behind the glasses, even with the exhaustion underneath. Fast assessment, thorough, dismissive by default.
"Bell Cranel," she said. "Little Rookie. Hestia Familia." Three facts, delivered like items checked off a list. "You're the party that was caught in the pass parade."
"Word travels fast on Floor 18."
"Word travels fast when Hermes is listening." She set down her quill. "Can I help you?"
"What are you cataloguing?"
"Irregular monster reports. Spawn pattern anomalies. Floor behavior data for the Guild." She said it without hesitation because the answer wasn't the interesting part. "Standard intelligence work."
"For Hermes?"
"For Hermes." Exhaustion and loyalty and a sigh she'd stopped bothering to make.
I pulled out the chair across from her and sat. She looked at me like I'd committed a minor social violation, which I had.
"I saw you carrying a polyhedral object yesterday. Small, metal, faceted. You kept it in your inner pocket."
Her hand stopped moving. Her quill was suspended above the ledger. Her cyan eyes came up from the page and locked on me and the professional assessment sharpened into actual attention.
"Where did you hear about that?" she said.
I hadn't heard about it. I'd seen it in the anime. The Daedalus Orb. The key to Knossos, the man-made labyrinth beneath Orario. One of the most important objects in the series and she was carrying it around in a pouch on Floor 18.
"I notice things," I said.
"You notice classified Hermes Familia intelligence assets?"
"I notice shapes in pockets. It's a Dungeon survival habit."
She stared at me. Her glasses caught the crystal-light from the tavern's window and reflected it back. Her quill hadn't moved. After a long pause she set it down precisely beside the ledger and folded her hands.
"Bell Cranel," she said. "You're an interesting person to have noticed a thing nobody else has noticed."
"I get that a lot."
"Don't. It isn't a compliment." She picked up the quill again. "You may return to your breakfast. If you mention the object to anyone, I'll know."
"Understood."
I stood. Pushed the chair back in. She was already writing again, her quill moving with sharp precise strokes, and she didn't look up as I left.
Welf and Lili were at our table. Ryuu had disappeared, which she did. Welf was eating his second plate. Lili was counting coins.
"Who was that?" Welf asked.
"Hermes Familia."
"Why were you talking to Hermes Familia?"
"Curiosity."
Lili's brown eyes were on me. She didn't ask a question. She waited.
"She's cataloguing irregulars for the Guild," I said. "Standard work."
"Lili didn't ask."
"I know."
"Lili is noting that Bell-sama walked to a woman he has never met, sat at her table uninvited, and asked her questions that made her stop writing." She ate a bite of her breakfast. "Lili is noting this."
"Noted."
We finished eating. Paid the bill. Left the tavern into the perpetual twilight of Floor 18.
Ryuu was waiting outside. Her hood was up and her hands were at her sides and she fell into step beside me without a word.
"Thank you," I said. "For coming down."
"Syr asked."
"Syr didn't ask."
Her jaw tightened. A tiny motion, barely visible under the hood. She walked beside me in silence and her hand hung at her side and the measured distance between us was the same as last night by the lake.
Except she was walking closer.