Then I took a look at the rest of the dungeon. There were flies everywhere, and bats swooping through them to feed. The bats were still hungry, so clearly, I didn't have enough flies. The bees were busy (and happy), the plants were in good condition, and the program I'd written to stash little figurines around the dungeon had clearly worked, because there were little stone bees all over the place, on ledges and shelves and half-buried in soil, glinting and gleaming and inviting any visitors I might get to slow down and explore (and get stung all over by angry bumblebees).
I set about housekeeping.
I made sure the bumblebees were comfortable in their pine needles, and that the icy bumblebees were doing well. I tweaked the locations of a few treasure spawn locations and admired the glittering figurines that sat about the dungeon, some damp with mist and others completely dry.
Now that my dungeon was a bit tidier and better organized, I turned my attention to my minion templates and expanding my defenses.
First, I designated one of the bumblebee larvae to be raised into a new queen, an action that didn't cost me any impurities or mana, then split the queen they had off to make a new colony that I placed in the second room, with a new pine needle mat to nest in. Second, I summoned a few new creatures: mountain mouse and snow spider.
They were both incredibly fluffy. I'd never been much of a spider person, but this spider look downright cuddly. I opened its menu and considered my options, then made a note to myself to set up snow spider population levels and spawning behaviors. It could make egg sacs that would release spiderlings, but I didn't want to completely overrun my dungeon with mana-hungry spiders. In the meantime, I directed it to find a comfortable place to build itself a web.
The mountain mouse was still sitting where I'd left it, all fluffy and brown. Its little pink nose wiggled and I wanted so badly to have hands to that I could reach out and touch it. It wasn't able to reproduce without another mouse to partner with, but it also wasn't suffering from being all alone. For now, I told it to find a comfortable place to hole up.
I considered my to do list while the mouse scampered off to make itself a nest. One of the best things about being a crystalline soul-computer-filter-thing was that I didn't need to write things down. I could just want a word processor, and somewhere in the depths of my mind, one appeared and I could leave myself whatever notes I pleased.
- Figure out mouse food
- Set up spider population
- Figure out spider food
- Improve bat food situation
I connected bat food and spider food. They could both eat flies, I was sure. I added "more flies" to the list.
Then I spent the rest of the day spawning more dung decorations and directing the flies to lay eggs on them. Once my fly population was projected to quadruple, once the eggs hatched and the maggots grew up and those flies laid their own (many, many) eggs, at least, I kicked back with a few happy memories to reward myself for a productive... couple of days.
----
Greyex reached the base of the mountain and began to climb. It was hard, harder than he'd expected, to climb up a hillside that grew steeper then easier and then looser then firmer with an entire kobold tied to his back.
He counted himself lucky when he found a trickle of water, surrounded by moss, flowing down a short cliffside after only an hour of climbing. He carefully untied the ropes holding Taaku onto his back, and put the kobold down leaned against the wall of stone. Then he used his hands to catch some of the water, which was numbingly cold, and trickled it, drop by drop, into his pet's mouth.
"Please work," he said, mostly to himself. "I hate it when I waste my time, and if this thing dies here and now, I'll have definitely wasted my time."
Long after Greyex had lost all feeling in both of his hands, Taaku's eyes flickered behind their closed lids. He directed the kobold's face to the trickle of water by gripping the sides of its head and physically moving it until its nose touched wet stone. It started to lick the rock, and Greyex finally was able to get up, stretch, and get to work.
First, he organized what he had. Ropes coiled, stacked here, then baskets and bags went there, and finally - he had nothing else. He tied a bag to his waist and went poking around to see what he could find.
He found a lot. Here were some likely looking rocks, and there were some scrubby plants and long grasses, and that was a big scorpion, and if he just - crunch - perfect.
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He ate half the scorpion himself, and brought the other half back to Taaku, who swallowed it without comment or complaint and went back to licking water off the mountain stone. Greyex got back to foraging for food and materials. He wanted to get some sort of shelter set up before the sun went down - even if it was just some bedding to keep him off the cold ground.
---
Taaku had no idea where he was, who was taking care of him, or why it was so cold, but none of those things mattered. He was thirsty, and there was water.
The water was on a wall, and it was really bright, but those details didn't matter. There was water, and he was thirsty, so he drank.
---
Alan jerked awake to booming knocks and a blinding headache.
"Aargh - what?" he asked.
"Ugh, door," Flora grunted from the floor.
"Why you on floor?" Alan asked.
The door boomed again.
"Head, noise, ow," Flora answered.
Alan nodded, then regretted nodding.
Luke opened the door.
"Team Low Flow?" a far-too-loud voice asked.
"Yes, that's us," Luke said, blessedly softly.
"Orders," the loud man said.
The door closed and heavy footsteps faded away down the hall.
"You two drank too much," Luke announced. "Again."
"Didn't have that much," Flora complained. "Alan had more."
Alan, overwhelmed by the pain in his head, didn't notice the churning in his stomach until he threw up all over the floor (and his own bare feet).
"Yuck," he observed.
"Why aren't you sick?" Flora asked Luke. Her voice was sharp.
Alan lay back down on the bed and tried to shake the stuff off of his feet. Some of it was between his toes, slimy chunks that squished around before coming loose.
"I had half a mug of ale, then drank out of my waterskin the rest of the night," Luke said smugly. "I recall you two made fun of me for it."
"So, the ale was really bad," Flora said slowly. "I'm not cleaning that up," she added.
"You talking about me?" Alan moaned.
"I'll get a bucket of water and a rag," Luke said. "Flora, get some light in here; we've got orders from the Adventurers' Guild, and I'd like to see what they are. Alan, stay there and if you have to hurl again, do it on the floor, not on yourself."
The door opened and closed, and cursing and clicking from the other side of the room was followed by a candle's light revealing the extent of the mess on the floor.
"You look like shit," said Flora, who looked like shit.
Alan made a rude gesture at her, rather than risk opening his mouth.
She smiled a little, but didn't laugh.
The door opened and closed again, and a cold, wet cloth swiped at Alan's feet, making him jump.
"Relax and let me clean you off," Luke ordered. "I don't think you want this crap in your shoes."
"Shoes?" Alan croaked at the same time as Flora.
"We're leaving," Luke said, "just as soon as we know where we're going. The innkeeper lied to my face about the ale, refused to give us a refund, and tried to charge me extra for the mess."
Alan lay back and let rage and nausea stew together in his belly while Luke finished cleaning him up. Flora got herself dressed and, by the time Alan was ready to go, was checking over her weapons and giving her armor a fresh coat of oil.
Luke pulled an envelope from his pocket, broke the wax seal stamped with the sign of the Adventurers' Guild, and began to read. Quietly.
Alan waited. Flora finished taking care of her weapons and armor and started taking care of his weapons. Luke read the letter again.
Alan tapped his toes in his boots. Flora honed and polished his knives for him, then put them away in his pack. Luke read the letter a third time, scowling hard enough to make his face nearly unrecognizable.
"Are you going to share with the rest of us, or not?" Alan snapped.
"We've been given the honor of traveling to Surveillance Tower Twenty-Seven, out on the eastern border, to investigate a possible new dungeon. We are to base ourselves at Surveillance Tower Twenty-Seven until the potential new dungeon issue is resolved to the Guild's satisfaction." Luke pulled a ridiculous "yuck" face, scrunching his nose comically and sticking out his tongue.
"Does it come with a bonus?" Flora asked.
"Doesn't say," Luke grumbled. "Flora, you carry Alan's things; I'll carry Alan."
Alan opened his mouth to say that he could walk, leaned over the side of the bed, and hurled all over the floor. Again.
He didn't fight it when Luke levered him up, slung him over his shoulder, and sidled out the door. He didn't even complain when his teammate bumped his head against the door frame, unless dry heaving counted as complaining, in which case he complained a lot.
Hanging upside down over another man's shoulder was neither an easy place to watch the world from, nor an unfamiliar one. The handful of people in the tavern's main room stared shamelessly at them - Flora, burdened with two people's worth of gear, and Luke, burdened with an entire person - before going back to their lumpy, tasteless porridge and mugs of sour, tainted ale.
"Your friend doesn't look so good," the innkeeper said idly. "You sure you want to hit the road like that?"
"I think," Luke said loftily, "that sleeping in the dirt might be better for him than sleeping in your... establishment."
Flora opened the door and stood aside so that Luke could sweep out, gracefully crouching down and twisting so that he didn't bump his head on the top of the door frame or Alan's head on the side of it. Flora followed them out, turning to make some gesture Alan couldn't make out because her broad back was in the way but that prompted angry shouting that cut off when she closed the door.
"Hate being carried," Alan grumbled as his team speed walked out of town.
"Stop drinking so much bad ale then," Flora said, before pausing to puke in the bushes.
"Both of you stop drinking bad ale," Luke said, "and Flora, I can't carry you both, so you're forbidden from getting sicker."
Flora made a crude gesture and a cruder suggestion involving Luke's mother and a goat, then straightened up and walked faster. Alan closed his eyes and tried to get some rest. Maybe if he got to sleep, he wouldn't have to be carried when he woke up.