Edge Cases

78 - Book 2: Chapter 15: Friendship

"You said their name is... the same as the innkeeper's?" Sev frowned.

"It might not mean anything," Vex offered hopefully, though he didn't really feel like that was true. "Maybe it's just a coincidence."

"I think we have the experience now to say that it's probably dungeon fuckery." Misa scowled. "Or system fuckery. Or both.""

"Probably," Sev said with a sigh. "It's pretty convenient that the first shop you wandered into happened to be a shop with a shopkeeper that gave you the tools you needed to learn magic... But I don't know. Sometimes people are just nice, you know?" Sev glanced to Derivan. "Any thoughts there?"

"I do not know," Derivan said with a light shrug of his shoulders. Vex relaxed a little bit, looking at him; if Derivan didn't seem too concerned, then maybe he didn't have to worry too much, either. "It is best we speak to the mages that the shopkeeper spoke of, however. Perhaps they have made progress in understanding the problem."

"I just worry that it's my fault," Vex said softly; he felt Derivan reach for him, and felt an armored hand pet the back of his head again, in a soothing, gentle movement. He couldn't help leaning into the touch.

"It is not," Derivan told him firmly. He knelt down, even, so he could speak eye-to-eye with the smaller lizard. "You spoke to Noram, and told him that it was not his fault for opening the door. The same applies to you. It is perhaps not even the system's fault, for the system has been failing around us ever since that dungeon first appeared. Do not spend your time worrying about who to blame. There is new magic here to be discovered, and a solution to be found; is this not the exact sort of opportunity you wished to have, when you first began your journey?"

Vex blinked. "That... was the most you've said in a while, I think," Vex said with a slight chuckle, trying to ignore the way the intensity of Derivan's eyes, the certainty in them, made him feel. "...It is, yes. Thank you."

"You should do speeches more often," Misa whistled.

"That was barely a speech," Derivan said, shaking his head as he stood back up, and Misa just grinned at him.

Vex did feel better about it all, though.

Not completely. But better.

The party made their way through the city, leaving the more worn-down outskirts behind; the city grew more sophisticated and strange as they made their way further in, with the architecture getting progressively more fantastical in a way that hadn't been visible as they'd made their way down the path into the crater.

Here, they could see, the river of mana above split off into tiny, smaller streams; it filtered down through the sky and fell onto the homes and shops like slow-falling rain. Some buildings seemed to have special, purpose-built filters to capture this rain, little funnel-like structures built of magic that drew mana in like some sort of sinkhole; others were built to allow the magic to flow off of them in patterns, the almost-liquid energy etching glyphs deeper wherever it went.

Vex was fascinated. Here was a city built like the city of his dreams; Elyra had mana crystals everywhere, albeit enchanted and protected, built to empower all the various devices they had created to support daily life. But this was a city that was built to live in synergy with the mana there was no taking, here. They took what the mana had to offer, and no more. He wondered briefly if something similar would be possible for Elyra, in time, but...

...the system seemed to make that impossible. Mana never gathered in this abundance, not even in the wildest or emptiest places he'd been to on the surface.

"Excuse me," Sev was saying, and Vex blinked himself back to paying attention. "Could you tell us where the city hall is? We've been told that's where the mages are."

"Of course," the woman he spoke to replied unlike many of the other creatures down here, she seemed to be almost entirely human, save for some unearthly etherealness about her. She inclined her head closer towards the center of the crater. "Just look for the tallest building there. You can't miss it, really. The city hall functions as a Mage Tower."

Well, that explained the massive building stretching up high enough to reach the mana river.

The odd thing was that the building simply hadn't been visible until they'd known about it being a tower and now that they did, it was impossibly obvious. Some more obfuscation magic, perhaps? Vex was beginning to think he needed to put more of a focus towards learning magic like that; the privacy it would give him was unparalleled.

"Thank you," Sev said, and the woman gave him a gracious nod before walking away.

"'City hall' seems like a weird name for something that's a big fuckoff tower," Misa remarked, staring up at the tower. Sev and Vex both snorted out a laugh, and Derivan chuckled in amusement.

"Maybe it's a translation thing?" Sev offered. "It is weird that they speak the same language we do."

"It's not that uncommon in dungeons, though," Vex pointed out. "There's almost never a language barrier in a bonus room, unless that barrier is part of a challenge the dungeon intends, or something."

"I still think it should just be called a big fuckoff tower," Misa said.

"That is not a particularly friendly name," Derivan pointed out, his tone amused. "Perhaps they wish to be more welcoming to visitors. They have mentioned that there are usually many more Roads open than this one; I am sure they are used to more visitors. It would make sense, then, to name the tower something its visitors would know to look for."

"And yet it doesn't even show up until you know it's a tower," Misa said with a dramatic sigh. "Classic wizards."

"Hey," Vex said, pretending to frown at her, and she smirked at him.

"You booby-trapped your sketchbooks. You totally fall into the same trap of doing unnecessarily complicated shit."

"I do not," Vex said with a huff, and with absolutely no heat to it.

"Don't worry," Sev said with a grin. "We'll build you a tower one day and let you cast whatever spells you want on it. Maybe some decorative lightning? That would be pretty cool."

"I will help," Derivan said, with far too much seriousness for the topic, and Vex buried his snout in his hands.

"...I want a wizard's tower so badly now."

"But you want to adventure with us more, right?" Misa grinned at him, and Vex pretended to frown at her for a moment more before he broke into a smile of his own.

"Maybe I'll just have to put legs on the tower. I'll even give you all your own rooms."

"Now you're talking," Sev snickered.

"I'm not sure Derivan needs his own room," Misa said, teasing. "Maybe he can share with you?"

Vex felt his face warming up with a blush beneath his scales, but he kept up an appearance of haughty dignity, though he could practically feel Derivan's curious gaze piercing into him.

"I would not mind," Derivan offered, perfectly seriously. And then, a hint of a joke: "Though I am a bit concerned for my safety. The last time I touched one of his notebooks..."

Both Misa and Sev burst into laughter, and Vex tried very hard to make sounds that were more coherent than vague grumbles but for all that he protested, he felt a small warmth growing in him. That small ember of his remaining worries didn't go away, exactly, but it was shielded from him by a reminder.

No matter what the room was doing, or what was happening with the system, it wasn't a problem he had to solve alone and as they joked and bantered all the way to the doorstep of the tower, he found himself smiling.

Sometimes he let himself forget that things weren't the same as they had been with his family in Elyra. Sometimes he felt that he had to tackle his problems alone, to prove himself and hold himself to some invisible standard he could never quite reach.

But not here. Not now. Not anymore.

Vex stepped into the tower after Sev and Misa, with Derivan right at his back.

The city hall and it felt strange calling it a city hall, when Misa was right, and it was indeed just a 'big fuckoff tower' was about exactly what they expected on the inside, which meant that it looked nothing like a city hall at all. There was what seemed to be a makeshift desk that was mostly made out of stone, stacked with official-looking paperwork, and that was the only thing that made it city hall-like at all.

The rest was...

Well, there was what Vex was pretty sure was an otter sleeping on the desk, for one thing. For another, magic swirled all around in gleaming patterns that were visible to the naked eye; the walls were painted with more of those glyphs, these ones far more complex, almost complete paintings in and of themselves.

And right at the side of the tower were stairs. A long, frankly unsafe-looking series of wooden planks leading up to the upper levels of the tower.

"...I guess we climb?" Vex said, trying to keep the uncertainty out of his voice. Sev blinked, looking around the tower for anything else.

"Might as well," he said. "I don't see a bell we can ring or anything."

He was the first up the stairs, but he'd barely taken a few steps before a low, gruff voice stopped them. "Hey!" it said. "Where do you think you're going?"

Vex glanced back. "Um," he said. He didn't see anyone there. Some sort of [Invisibility] spell? But he should have seen the traces in the mana, if someone was invisible. "We're going to find the mages. We were told that there are problems here, and we wanted to see if we could help."

He had no idea why he was speaking for the group. This was Sev's thing! But the cleric seemed more than content to allow him to speak, and he'd already started talking, so he'd sort of trapped himself in this position.

"Want to see if you can help, huh?" the voice scoffed, and Vex peered closer, trying to figure out who was speaking

...It was the otter, wasn't it.

The otter stood up, folded little arms at him, and glared a little glare. "The upper floors are off limits. If you want to petition for an audience, you need to do it here, with me."

"We didn't know that," Vex said, a little helplessly. He glanced to Sev for help, and the human seemed to finally take pity on him.

"We apologize if we were rude," Sev said. "We're pretty new here, and we're still getting used to everything. We came here from the Roads the town we're helping is being raided, and according to them, they're being raided by goblins... but the story is very inconsistent. We were told you might have more information."

The otter narrowed his eyes in a way that looked remarkably human. "We might know something," he said. "But you should tell us what you know first, and then we'll tell you what we know."

Sev stared at him. "You don't know anything, do you."

"Of course we do!" The otter puffed out his chest, which was a bit of an absurd look, for an otter. It mostly ended up looking cute. Vex had no idea how to process any of this.

"We're wasting our time here, guys," Sev said, sighing dramatically. "Let's go. We'll find an inn or something and investigate this by ourselves. I'm sure having one of the best wizards in Elyra on our team will help."

"Sev!" Vex complained, but he was fairly sure he was blushing again.

"He is correct," Derivan said with a nod. "I am sure this will only take us a day or two"

"A day or two!" the otter exploded. "It took us weeks just to narrow down the possibilities, and we still have almost nothing to show for it! You're not going to do it in a day or two!"

Sev grinned.

The otter facepalmed.

"Fuck," he said.