On the way out, once we're sure the monsters aren't respawning immediately, we chat. The dungeon didn't helpfully give us a shortcut out so we have to retrace our steps through several floors of maze. At least [Mapping Step] is getting a workout.

"Copper," Drake says. "Tell me about the Game."

"You don't know?" Copper asks.

Drake shakes his head. "My other self blocked off most of my memories. I can understand why, but I'm left with questions he won't give me a straight answer to."

"You have a strange relationship with your other self," Copper chuckles. "Ingmar never truly understood the Game, but still happily joined in."

"He chose to 'play'?"

"Of course. We all chose to play the Game of the Gods. You don't remember? I suppose you did the same thing I did. Ingmar deliberately suppressed his memories in order to make the world feel new again. Copper didn't, but there was enough of not wanting to see my family die again and I guess it didn't get disabled."

Crystal gives him a reassuring smile. "We'll try not to die horribly!"

I don't think the aether cores are gods, but figure they're close enough for the purposes of the physical realm that it's not worth quibbling about. There are true gods in the depths of the astral plane, but we don't go there and I'm not telling Drake about them.

Drake thinks, Why would you hide that we play the Game voluntarily? Here I'd been trying not to freak out by the thought of being enslaved by space demons for eternity!

I lightly poke Drake in the [Self-Delusion].

… oh, Drake gives a sheepish mental sigh. I guess I did it to myself, didn't I.

[Was it fun to think that?] I ask.

Not really, Drake admits. Let's get rid of that. We know how.

Inspiration flaring, we direct [Salubrity] to the malignant skill lingering in our aura. Drake couldn't do this by himself, since its very nature was to keep him from thinking about removing it or even realizing what it was doing to him. But from the other side of the veil, I can tell.

Skills removed: Discipline (Self-Delusion)

The essence from the skill shifts, and several more benign skills collect it instead. The effort is enough to make the [Ghostly Watcher] spell fail, and two become one again jarringly. I stagger, blinking, and put my hand to my head.

"Are you alright, Drake?" Basalt asks.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I say. "Just not used to that spell yet and now I'm remembering this whole dungeon from two different perspectives."

The entire experience was disorienting on many levels, but I have to admit that it helped a lot with keeping track of all the things going on on the battlefield. I don't know how to hide the conspicuous glowing eyes effect (why does the spell even have that?) and see no need to keep it up while in town. It was just so useful that I will probably do it again anytime I'm in a dungeon, so I suppose I should get used to it.

A goblin-drawn flier is posted on the wall of the Splott Lakeside Inn, with some unidentifiable crudely drawn images and words written in Common: Come one, come all, to the First Annual Great Oak Brew Festival, May 15th, 739. At the bottom, there's a line in Goblin: Come up to big tree and drink!

"Usually there's a Beer Festival at Nefern, but it looks like they're doing something different this year," Anise says. "So long as there's still beer, I'm not going to complain."

We stay the night at the subterranean inn and head out to the surface come morning. We emerge from the tunnel to the Underswamps at the surface. Overhead, the canopy of leaves from the Great Oak veils the sky in dappled shades of green, from the leaves to the light beyond it. The sky had been azure when we went down, but today is the first day of the green season, and the green light of Tiganna over the northwest edge indicates that it's between 9 am and noon.

It's early and some things are still being set up, but there are already a great many people here. Food and drink stands have been scattered across the grounds, ramshackle goblin vendors setting up amid human ones that have their boards straight. Colored paper decorations flutter in the spring wind.

"Whoa," Anise breathes. "This is way bigger than the usual Beer Festival. Did everyone in Amroth come?"

"This is a fine way to ring in a new life!" Copper declares. "You folks know how to treat a dwarf good."

Although this is a booze festival, we kids are invited to the other thing people do with wheat: bread products. Trays covered in little honey buns tempt Rowan into getting three.

"You're going to fill up on those when there's so many things to try," Basalt laughs, and he and Copper head off to one of the beer stands.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"I'd be an adult by now if I hadn't died that one time," Milo grumbles.

I turn to the tiny goblin. "How much of this were you involved in, Milo?"

"I put a few balls into motion," Milo says, tilting his head to the canopy and taking a deep breath. "You smell that?"

I sniff the air and take in the mingled scents of sweet and savory pastries, fried chicken and fish. My stomach rumbles as I consider where to start.

"Hey, guys!" Colt's voice calls, and I spot him waving from one of the stands. Being grounded didn't stop his family from having him make pancakes for festival-goers.

"Oh, those smell great," I say. "Get me three of those, would you? How are you doing, Colt?"

"Great! Look what I can do." He twirls a finger, and three pancakes deposit themselves onto a plate slowly, one at a time, as Colt awkwardly keeps twirling trying to get them to land in the right spot. "This looks cooler when my Aunt Flora does it…"

"Do I pay you here, or…?"

Colt shakes his head. "Nope, the food's free. Somebody already paid for everything. Enjoy!"

Milo brightens and points off to one of the stands. "Look! Bagels! They actually made bagels!"

Both the Ardent Pathfinders and the Daring Edgewalkers are here, seated across from one another at a long table. They wave to me and gesture to the chair at the end of the table, where I sit down to eat my pancakes.

"I thought you guys were doing dungeon runs," I say.

"We'll be heading back to Hush after, but we couldn't miss out on the Beer Festival!" Uncle Falcon exclaims. "Or Brew Festival, whatever they're calling it now."

"No one is flying drunk, I promise," Belladonna says.

"Why did your parties immediately go to Hush after reaching Epic?" I wonder. "What dungeon there is such a draw?"

"There's a dungeon that repeatedly plays out an entire storyline over and over," Uncle Falcon replies. "There's several different ways it can go depending on what choices you make, so you can get a lot of experience from it over and over. Monsters running on complicated scripts, like actors in a play. They'll forget you and repeat their lines again if you do the same thing on your next run."

"It's an excellent way to hone your skills at Epic rank, but it's not recommended to try at Heroic," Belladonna says. "We might have eventually tried it anyway. We would have almost certainly ranked up if we survived. At Epic, you can grind it without too much risk."

Anise leans in with a beer in hand at an improbable angle from [Uncanny Balance]. She says conspiratorily, "Drake's scared of the Void. He spent the whole trip back paying so much attention to the boat."

"I was trying to repair it," I protest. "And the Void is scary. Everyone should be scared of it."

"I had some success with your request," Tosko the halfling alchemist says, pulling a liter of green fluid from his pocket. "Place eight drops per day in a circle around the edges of the drip line. The tree should become stronger and more malleable. I filtered out the other aspects, so it won't turn into a mushroom or put anyone to sleep."

"Thank you," I say. "Best put that away so someone doesn't accidentally drink it." I take it and shove it into my bag of holding. I left behind most of my tools in Hebron so I'd have more room, fortunately.

I finish my pancakes, bid them good day, and go off to wander the festival grounds.

A powerful aura draws my attention to a red-haired foreign woman approaching Rowan and Jade. If it weren't for [Aura Sight], I wouldn't have even noticed there was anything noteworthy about her, but her aura is more stronger than any I've seen before.

Rank: Mythical. I've never seen one in person. Just a handful of Legendaries. There's only a single person in this Age of Corwen's history who reached Mythical, Verbena the [Witch Hunter]. Tendrils from her aura reach into the air, not the same spell I used but some other skill that lets you watch things from a distance. Curious, I head over and start listening in to the conversation.

"I'm the Headmaster of Crux Academy," she says.

"Really?" Rowan asks. "Shouldn't you be there, then?"

The Headmaster laughs. "I try to be there only for special occasions. None of the teachers are over Heroic rank, to make sure the students get as much experience as they can.

Jade's eyes widen. "Could we go? We just reached Elite. I never imagined I'd actually be able to go. Isn't it expensive?"

"It's 50 gold per term, if you pass the entrance tests," the Headmaster says.

They both wince at that.

"And no, you can't join in the middle of the term," the Headmaster goes on. "You'd be starting next year. Use that time to improve yourselves and tie off any outstanding sidequests." She turns to me, noticing me loitering there. "And no, you can't go until you're 14. You can attend Dolwen Preparatory School in the meantime."

"I'm 15!" Jade says.

"I'm almost 16," Rowan says. "Would us not having magical Apprentice classes be a problem?"

The Headmaster shakes her head. "Not at all. The teachers can work with whatever your classes are. That's their job."

I didn't catch her name, and the only thing I can glean from [Naming] is 'Golden', which is probably her domain name. She's not from Tiganna, that much I'm sure of.

"How did you found the school?" I wonder. "Was it a dungeon you conquered?"

"Oh, yes. It was around five hundred years ago now, and the three of us were only Heroic rank at the time. It was full of flying books trying to eat us, gargoyles that came to life and tried to pummel us, animated suits of armor, even the staircases were trying to kill us. Ah, good times. Enjoy the low levels while you can, kids."

The festival comes and goes, and we're flying back to Corwen to deliver my tree growth solution and introduce Copper and Crystal to whichever members of my family weren't at the Brew Festival. Although it was clear for the festival, now clouds have started to roll in, half-shrouding the green sky in gray.

Along the way home, we pass by the Festival Grounds north of Corwen. There was a large oak tree there, too, not quite as giant but more the normal sort of large. And now it's dead, a lightning-charred husk.

"Tempest takes its price," Rowan says quietly.

I think back to the days spent with my friends and family under this huge oak tree. But now we have a bigger tree, with more friends and family. I will be very cross if I think that Tempest zorched this tree to be symbolic of growing up or something.

What's the difference between a life and a story? A life does not have a plot. It just has things that happen. Although those things make sense from continuity and causality, there's no greater plot or purpose to them. Things just continue to keep happening. There's no neat resolution. Except, perhaps, for parties and homecomings.

I bring the skyboat in for a landing in Corwen's village green. As we're disembarking, my little sister Juniper comes up and says, "Welcome home. Have you killed anyone lately?"

"I made someone exist," I say, gesturing to Copper, who is already making friends.

"That's good too."

"Why is that the first thing you ask me, anyway?!" I wonder with a touch of amused exasperation.

Juniper shrugs. "I found a cool bug. Wanna see?"

"Of course."

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