The three of us sat around the base of what I’d dubbed Mount Calefactor, recounting the events of the dungeon. The stoat was curiously wandering around the boss room, likely looking for snacks or secret loot of some sort. We were currently discussing the second floor. Juniper was telling us about everything she’d seen and learned during her time inside the crystal with Therin when a stray memory hit me – something I had thought to ask at the time but was sidetracked by the chaos of the dungeon.
“How did you happen to have a crystal to store Therin? You told me to grab it from your pocket, but you never told me why you had it in the first place.”
Juniper looked a bit sheepish and flickered, faintly.
“I picked it up off the floor of the mineshaft on the first floor,” she said. “They were sticking out of the walls all over the place so I thought that nobody would miss just one if it was already laying on the ground anyway.”
“Why would you pick up a random empty crystal, though?” Shrek asked.
Juniper flickered again and a small blush lit up her cheeks.
“I…thought it was pretty,” she said, looking away from us. I wanted to smile but didn’t from fear of her interpreting it as patronizing.
“That’s ok, June. It worked out perfectly, to be honest. We’ll have to stop by the mines on the way out and see about grabbing you another one. The one Therin’s in is pretty small. I bet if we find him a bigger one, he’d be happy to swap out and let you have the original one you picked until we find him a body.”
Juniper turned her face up to meet my eyes, gauging whether I was teasing her or being serious. I must have passed her internal assessment, because she lit up and nodded enthusiastically. The girl was weird. She was the strongest of us in almost every metric, but she was still just a simple prairie eidolon at heart, wanting to hoard pretty rocks. Maybe that was part of why I liked her so much. She could be insanely powerful one moment and ridiculously naïve and sweet the next. Juniper was Forrest Gump’s chocolate box given flesh. Or ectoplasm? I was still shaky on the specifics of Eidolon physiology.
“Great! So…can we skip the rest of the chit chat about today’s events? It’s cool that we were able to go over what happened the last few days, but I don’t think we need to rehash stuff we literally just lived through, do we?”
“He wants to find out what he got for rewards,” Shrek huffed in Juniper’s direction.
“Well, yeah,” I said, as though it should have been obvious. The only logical inconsistency as far as I was concerned was that they weren’t itching to get their loot as badly as I was to get mine.
Juniper rolled her eyes.
“Fine. You go first, Rocky. The adults can wait to open their gifts.”
“Your sarcasm has been noted,” I said as I opened my UI screen. I looked first at my achievements panel, and there were multiple. The one with the most notable reward was the dungeon completion achievement:
I had no idea who Carl was, but I did know I had a fresh new piece of gear to check out and so that’s exactly what I did.
Now that was the kind of loot I’d been hoping for. It wouldn’t do me much good in a fight unless I was about to lose, but that was probably likely to happen more often than not considering how much stronger than me everyone in this world seemed to be. I would never complain about gear that decreased my chances of dying and that’s exactly what this coat was made for. I equipped it immediately and noted with satisfaction that it fit comfortably over my beloved LL Bean fleece. I might need to ditch the button up under the fleece, though. I felt like I’d overheat in all these layers sooner rather than later.
Aside from that, the only real notification of note was the “Father of the Year” achievement I’d received from using one of my Supreme Vials of Healing on Shrek. I had high hopes for that one, but the only rewards listed on that notification were “the power of friendship” and a note about how The System would let Jasmine give me the actual reward, this time. I definitely would approve, if that were the case but I had an inkling that The System was just using that as a justification to stiff me and not part ways with that sweet, sweet loot.
I did a little fashion show for the stoat and Juniper while Shrek took his turn checking notifications and loot drops. The stoat was more impressed with the Duster than Juniper was. It was almost giddy with how many new pockets and hiding spots my newest equipment offered it. Juniper liked the look of it and the effects it would give me, but she wasn’t exactly clambering up inside of it like stoat was…which, honestly, was not the least bit surprising. I’m just saying, Juniper had a normal reaction whereas the stoat was perhaps a touch over enthusiastic.
“I got a new axe from beating the Calefactor, a signet for defeating all three champions in the gauntlet solo,” he looked at me a bit sheepishly. “I’d dispute that one if I could.”
“Don’t worry about it. All I did was lend you my weapon and give you a little cheerleading from the sidelines. That fight was all you.”
“Well…that’s likely what I’ll use for the proving quest. The council would really have to go out of their way to try to deny this as a suitable replacement. Then, I also got a set of tusk caps for the overall dungeon completion reward.”
“Nice! That’s quite a hefty haul,” I said, as he slid the bronze caps over his pointy tusks.
“Stylish, too,” Juniper added. “What do they do?”
“They make him look like a badass, is what,” I replied, helpfully.
Shrek snorted.
“He’s not wrong, actually. A major part of their function is to boost the Intimidation factor of my Charisma. It also amplifies damage done with head butts.”
“What about the axe?” I asked.
Instead of answering, he just shared his item screen with us.
Woah. The System notes for Shrek were a lot darker than the ones I was used to. I guess it made sense that they’d be personalized but still. That was more than a little disturbing.
“That’s uh…really cool, Shrek. So, Juniper! What did you get?” I asked, turning to her enthusiastically, trying to sell my interest as anything other than the blatant subject change that it was.
“I got a jar of ink,” she said. Eliciting a “What?” from both Shrek and me simultaneously. She read the card to us, rather than showing it.
“It’s called Soulbound Inkwell. It lets me create pacts with almost anyone including animals, other spirits, and elementals. Anyone I can talk to and negotiate with, I can sign a pact with.”
“That’s going to be really convenient on a bunch of different levels. The town, your Talons…all sorts of stuff.”
“Yeah, I was sort of wondering how I was going to go about getting elementals to power my gauntlet. I guess this answers that question, at least. Plus, it’s pretty cute. Look.”
She pulled it out of her inventory and it was indeed reasonably cute. It was a hand carved quartz jar with antique copper plating on the front that read “Soulbound to Juniper, Eidolonic Shaman”. There was a black, iridescent feather quill jutting up out of the pot’s opening.
“How do you know when to refill it? The quartz isn’t exactly see-through…and what do you refill it with? Regular ink?”
“It never needs refilling,” she said. “The ink never dries inside the inkwell and it never gets depleted no matter how much I write.”
“That would be nice. Like an axe that never dulls,” Shrek said.
“It’s the gift that keeps on giving,” I said, with a smile. That phrase actually reminded me of something I’d been meaning to do and I shot a quick message to Urz with a request and then another to Jasmine, letting her know that we’d completed the dungeon and that everyone was alive and well. She, of course, appreciated the gesture and was more than a little excited to hear that her son had completed his first dungeon. I promised we would tell her all about it when we got back to the Plains.
“What about you, stoat, what did you get?” Juniper asked.
The little beast poked its head out of my jacket, and its eyes glowed for a moment. It let out a series of squeaks and there was a giant goddamn sun-like fireball hovering just off the floor maybe fifty feet away from us. I put my arms up to block the heat as I could feel my skin starting to roast.
“Put it out! Put it out!”
The fireball disappeared and the stoat let out a disappointed little chirp.
“It’s ok, buddy. You’ve never used it before. You’ll be more careful next time, I’m sure. Right guys?” I looked back for a little support but both Shrek and Juniper were looking at me with shit eating grins on their faces. I got a sinking feeling in my chest. They didn’t smile like that at me, ever.
“What?” I asked, nervously.
“Nothing,” they both replied. Juniper hid her smile behind one hand.
“Seriously, guys…what?”
The two of them turned to each other, shook their heads, then walked side by side toward the boss room door. They…they were going to just leave me there, after laughing in my face and not telling me what was so funny. This affront could not stand. I stormed after them.
“Hey! Come on. What’s so funny?”
“You’ll figure it out,” Juniper called back over her shoulder.
“Eventually,” Shrek added.
Then, the two of them stepped through the doorway and disappeared into the previous room. I stopped and stood there in disbelief. The gall. The unmitigated audacity of it all. The stoat looked up at me. I looked down at it. And I swear, for the briefest of moments it stifled a laugh.
“Et tu, you little weasel?”
The stoat chirped defiantly and slid back into my duster’s inside pocket. I sighed, defeated, and stepped through the boss room door to rejoin my party. They might have been jerks, but they were my jerks. And I was determined to out-jerk the both of them. They’d see. Soon enough, revenge would be mine. But in the meantime, we had a defeated dungeon to hike through. A little sightseeing and some crystal thievery on the way out would have to suffice. For now, at least.