"You," Felna said, making her proclamation from the giant stone throne Tannyr had made in Penelope's boss room, "are far too involved in this." The stone under her was warm from where a small mana array fueled a fire spell. It was literally made to lounge on, and lounging was what felines did best.

Penelope shifted the heap of gold a little with one foreleg, spreading it artfully over so that the huge sword leaned to that side. "No. I read about this in one of Trav's books. It's called feng shui, and it means to arrange your things in a way that is pleasing to a dragon." From the corner of her eye she saw the expression on Felna's face. "Don't laugh."

"His world doesn't even have dragons. What would they know about what pleases them?"

"I don't know. He said he never really looked into it. There's a lot of stuff that he only heard a few things about, but this feels— Here! Right here! Perfect!" As Penelope carefully took her claw away from the blade, though, it tilted further and fell down. "Nooooo!"

Sitting up and doing her level best not to antagonize Penelope, Felna asked, "What if we soften some gold with fire and then you stick the tip of the sword into it at the angle you want?"

"No. It needs to balance there." Now Penelope heard Felna laugh and, before she lost her cool with the cat, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It just needs to. That's part of it."

Narrowing her eyes, Felna jumped down from the dragon-sized throne and carefully picked her path through the gold. She paused a single moment to remind herself what she was doing, then shrugged and continued. "Let me take a look at it."

Penelope didn't move, instead making Felna have to intrude on her personal space. To be fair to Felna, even Penelope admitted that a dragon's personal space was excessive. When Felna's purring stopped, Penelope leaned her head down beside Felna's and asked. "See what I mean?"

"It needs to be at this angle, with a mound of coins around it." Crouching to make sure she got the mound just right, Felna ignored Penelope's giggling so she could get a good pile of gold in place. "Then, the crown jewel." She drew the heavy sword. Despite the incredible size, she could still hold it in one hand—but there was no way she could use it to fight. Sweeping it around behind her, and keeping a good grip with both hands, she arced it up and over her head before delivering it into the stack of gold and a good way into the floor below.

Purring with pride, Felna turned around to beam at Penelope. "That's how you—" Her moment of ultimate victory was utterly destroyed by the sound, behind her, of a sword landing on a pile of gold. She spun around and spat several very cursed words in the direction of the blade.

"If only he'd had it made from adamantine, then I would be able to shove it into the stone firmly enough to stay there." Penelope picked the weapon up by its hilt, pinched between two talons on her right forelimb, and set about getting a bigger pile of gold to stack around it.

Calm again, Felna asked, "Is the throne at least in the right place?"

"Yes. It seems dwarven sensibility helps align you with feng shui." Trying to balance the sword in a considerably larger stack of gold worked out well, and Penelope finally got it to sit at the right angle. With a satisfied sigh, she walked closer to Felna and picked her up.

"Hey! What are— You wouldn't!"

Smoothing out a different pile of gold, Penelope set Felna down atop it, then adjusted the laughing feline while muttering under her breath about having "everything in the correct spot."

Laughing and squirming, Felna certainly had no desire to be anywhere but playing fun games with her lover. The thought reminded her that one of the two lunatics she loved (who must be so since they seemed to love her back) was missing. "I hope we never have to do this again."

"What?!" Penelope jerked back as if stung.

"I—" Felna shook her head. "No. Not this⁠-this. I mean Travis missing. It was hard enough all those weeks without you, but he was there every waking moment."

Calming down, Penelope flopped to her belly and used a wing-claw to rake patterns into the gold beside her. "He's the most dependable guy in the kingdom. Normally, it's kinda his thing not to go anywhere. He has nightmares, you know, when he's like this. I hope he's doing okay."

The news wrenched at Felna's heart. "This was part of my fear of commitment. It's worse for adventurers, but finding out he's hurting and I can't help? It's— Oh. Right. You were an adventurer too." She groaned and leaned into Penelope's claw when it stroked along her cheek. "I'm a mess, and he might still be another week yet."

Stroking and petting Felna like she was a pet feline, Penelope pressed her head against Felna's side and closed her eyes. "So we get to learn how he feels when we leave him here."

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

A soft rumble coaxed a purr from Felna. She felt Penelope tense up, though, and realized it wasn't her that was purring. "Is the dungeon—?"

"A new floor! He'll be back soon!" Penelope sat up closed her eyes, her senses glued to the motion of the surrounding dungeon. It swelled, grew, and then began to abate. The final shake was accompanied by a loud clang as a certain sword was unbalanced and fell from its precarious stance. "Crap!"

Wild jerked up from his crouch to a stance, eyes looking around. The movement of the dungeon had broken him from his focus. "Travis will be back soon."

Ludmiller covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. "Of course he will, sweetie. We can't afford to end our vigil early, though." She patted the floor beside her.

"She's right." Katelyn picked out a card from her hand and set it down on the floor, atop the others. "Your turn."

Crouching back down, Wild looked at the two cards in his hand and carefully selected one. Setting it down and looking at Ludmiller, he said, "Draw four, and Uno."

Ludmiller groaned and rolled her head back. "I retract everything nice I have ever said about you." She drew her four cards. "What color?"

"Yellow," Wild said, knowing that they'd all collectively played more yellow cards than any other. When Ludmiller glared at him and drew a card, he smiled back at her.

Noticing the staring contest between the pair, Katelyn decided it was time for a little chaos. "You know, I thought those war crimes Axel and Tinpot cooked up were the worst things Travis would be able to give to us, but I think this game is more deadly. Draw two, Wild."

Not letting anger take him, Wild calmly drew two cards, then placed one number card on the stack. When Ludmiller reversed back to him, he played another reverse. "Uno."

"Draw four. Green," Ludmiller said, noticing that Katelyn's eyes flashed with flames. When Katelyn had a reverse for her, Ludmiller put another draw four on it and gave her husband the sweetest and most innocent look ever. "Green, still."

There weren't enough cards left in the deck for him to draw eight, so Wild took the top card off the stack in the middle, shuffled the rest, and drew his cards from the deck. "There's mana flowing."

"Yeah. It's only a trickle, though." Katelyn looked at Wild with a raised eyebrow. She'd never heard him talk about mana flows before. "You can feel that?"

"Not feel; see. If you look closely, the mana sight we have lets you spot the streams of mana moving in the air. Once you know what to look for, and what his mana looks like, you can tell when it's missing." Katelyn's look surprised Wild. "What's wrong?"

It was Katelyn's turn, and tossing out a green five she replied, "Annoyed with myself for not taking more note of the talented people around me. If you'd ever like to learn more about seeing mana, even discerning what types it is and ways to manipulate it, feel free to ask. I sometimes get too wrapped up in my work."

Playing a skip, Ludmiller said, "That's one way of putting it. I don't think we see you for weeks on end, only for you to stagger out of your workshop with some fancy magic box you've made, and then you sleep for three days."

"You're checking up on me?" It surprised Katelyn.

Ludmiller crossed her arms before her chest. "Someone needs to. You're still part of this boss room, and that means we stick together."

Wild nodded. "We stick together. We were the first, remember?" When Katelyn reversed it back to him, he put down a draw two and beamed at his wife. "We also test each other's skills and encourage each other to do better."

Poking her tongue out, Ludmiller placed a reverse. "That goes both ways."

A surge of mana rushing into and through the boss room stole Wild and Katelyn's focus, though, and put Ludmiller on edge.

For Travis, his mana was his life, but it felt more like breath. He inhaled the mana from all his shrines, passed it through his heart and its mana collectors, then exhaled it into his dungeon. His vision was once again myriad, eyes everywhere in the dungeon and three cities beyond. A lot of those eyes froze as he gazed through them anew, with some shifting their view to the center of his dungeon—facing his heart. "Hi. I'm back."

The voices all came at once. Everyone in the dungeon called out to him, and he even heard Northridge, Home, and Polfay greet him. It took him a moment to direct his thanks at the warm welcome to the various groups, but finally he focused on Honor. "I need to speak with Stewart and yourself privately. Thank you for guarding me."

"You're welcome, but I need to go let Stewart know and"—Honor paused to smell herself—"stop smelling like wyvern."

"When I first saw you in here, you were literally asleep with those two on each side of you and with their wings hiding you completely." Travis made no attempt to hide his mirth at the duality. "You realize if you keep doing that, you'll always smell like a wyvern?"

"Yes, I know that. They're so cozy, though." Honor picked up her gear and waved to Fife. "Now it's back under control, I have some work to take care of. Hey, none of the exits moved."

Fife, packing up her cards, nodded. "It seems we are simply down an extra floor. Can you let Stewart know we'll have the miners back in within a day or two?"

"Got it. Don't forget to tell Breath of Spring she can visit again. You two make a cute couple." Not sure if she caught Fife blushing or not, Honor led her two companions out into the capital's streets. She quickly noticed the King's Guard outside and told them, "The dungeon's back in business. Were there much in the way of shakes?"

"The ground bucked and rolled a bit, ma'am, but it was nothing to worry about. We can let the merchants back in now? What about the miners?"

"The merchants will be fine. Wait until you have the all-clear to let the miners in. I'll need an escort to the gate." The walk back to the keep, with two guards splitting off once she was inside the heavily fortified walls, let Honor clear her head a little and think. Whatever it was Travis needed to share, it sounded like he'd learned it while asleep. That didn't make sense to her, she mused, unless he hadn't been sleeping at all.

Available at: https://www.royalroad.com/profile/220350/fictions

This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.