PW Chapter 290: Farewell Dinners (End of Book 5) (Patreon)

Thinking I might have a little blog-ish post reminiscing coming later.

Drinks flowed freely after Astrid started the official party. They asked for some of the stronger stuff, and when Astrid heard the prices for Mithril tier alcohol, she started to reevaluate her confidence in being able to find herself a room without issue. Then, she shook her head and got over herself. Obviously, the prices for extremely valuable, rare alcohol were going to be inflated compared to the regular stuff.

“I’m not trying to make an ass of myself,” Benedict said as he set his glass down, “but isn’t this way worse than what Michel gave us?”

“Not way worse,” Astrid chuckled.

“If even you notice the difference, it isn’t a small difference between them,” he replied.

“I’m just not picky like some of you are,” she laughed. “Plus, given that Philip has invited everybody to come drink on his coin later, there’s no reason for me to get hammered already.”

“Get hammered?” Benedict asked, raising his eyebrows. He started to chuckle as Astrid shook her head in disbelief.

“I guess I’ll allow you your pun. The next one's not free, though.”

“How was it?” Skandr asked as he shifted the conversation away from the drinks.

“How was what?” Astrid asked. “Telling my dad what happened?”

He nodded, and the rest of the party looked at her for the story.

“Hard. But it was good to be with him. We told each other stories, talked, and he basically kicked me out when I said I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep hanging around for a while longer.”

“You were thinking of staying there?” Skandr asked. Astrid couldn’t help but note the emotions that tinged his question. Obviously, he continued to consider her possibly staying with him. Instead of giving him any false hope, she shook her head.

“Not really. I mean, I didn’t quite have my head on straight. It feels—no, it felt wrong to keep doing what I wanted to do when my mom died. He just told me to stop just sitting in my grief. She’d be mad at me for wasting her sacrifice anyways.”

He nodded slowly in understanding, putting a smile on his face as he did so. Some of that vain hope that he seemed to have allowed himself to entertain for the briefest moment disappeared. Instead, her friend sat there with a conflicted look on his face.

“Muti,” Astrid said, pulling everybody’s attention away. When the Barbarian looked at her, she asked, “What’s your plan? How long are you and Felix going to stick around?”

“We will make our decision fully within the next three days,” she answered, looking at Felix.

“We’ve decided we need to officially determine who’s in charge here,” he said as he narrowed his eyes at his lover. “Muti came back from Stahlstadt with… a whole lot of energy, I think you could call it.”

Before Astrid or anybody could ask clarifying questions, Muti grinned widely, her eyes flashing. “I will have my children.”

Astrid choked on her drink a little at that, and Felix could only shrug helplessly. She hadn’t wanted to hear about their sex life at all, and that was decidedly too much information. Instead of focusing on the unwelcome possibility of learning more, though, she smiled. “Baby Brighid caught your eye?”

“You know. You witnessed me when in her presence.”

“I suppose I did,” Astrid nodded. “But before you’re willing to get pregnant, you need to know who’s in charge?”

“Yes. The duel will be held privately in two days’ time.”

Muti didn’t elaborate, and Astrid let her retain the details of whatever that was. Evidently, for the first time in history, Muti didn’t want to talk about a fight.

“How will things change if Felix wins?” Benedict asked, picking up a battered and fried strip of meat Astrid didn’t quite recognize. She thought it was fish, but she had barely eaten fish, so she didn’t know. It was flaky and tasty, though.

“He will be in charge,” Muti said simply. “The victor will be the leader, able to take in another mate if they so desire. If he is the victor, I will follow his commands. If I win, he will do the same.”

“So if you win,” Benedict asked, narrowing his eyes, “you’re going to find more men to be your mate as well?”

“Perhaps. If the desire strikes me and I am capable of capturing one’s attentions, then yes, I will grow my harem.”

“Good luck,” Benedict said, raising his eyebrows at Felix. The other man nodded severely, and Astrid shook her head.

“How about you, Benedict? Do you have your bar all planned out?”

He blew out a breath, his lips flapping as he waved his head back and forth. “That was my thought, but I also don’t want to just leave Vera high and dry without me.”

“I don’t think she’s going to die of loneliness anytime soon,” Astrid chuckled.

“She just barely let me into her heart around the time that we were leaving. If I’m gone for too long, I’ll lose what little progress we made. I won’t lose that.”

“Yes, going back is an option,” Astrid hedged.

“Why have you set your heart on her when you will be here in your homeland and surrounded by people closer to your own age?” Muti’s words smashed into Benedict with an almost physical weight. “It would be more favorable for you  to find someone who will be closer to you in age, I believe. That way your children will be more likely to form correctly in the womb.”

“She’s amazing, and because I like her, that’s why,” he scowled. “I’m not going to just line people up because of who I think will be the most likely to bear me children.”

“She is also at least thirty or forty years your senior. It is most likely that the difference between your ages is even greater than that,” Muti blazed on. “It does not seem to be in your best interests to entirely throw off your other prospects because of the first woman you ever met.”

“She’s not the first woman I’ve ever met. And, you know what, I’m going to have the freedom to pursue a relationship however I want, because I’m young, will have time and money, and can travel there and back without issue,” he snapped back. “So if I’m making a mistake, let me make the mistake by myself.”

“If that is your desire, then do so with my blessing,” Muti shrugged. “If that is the case, do you no longer hold any hope to establish a bar and train young delvers?”

“Honestly, that’s the problem,” Benedict said, leaning back against his soft chair. He picked out something between his teeth as he explained, “I want to do that, but I also want to pursue Vera. I can’t really do both at the same time, though, because she’s been exiled from this country. Can’t come in or she’ll get killed by somebody from the council, and we’ve already seen how good they are at that.”

The Wanderers all nodded in agreement as they remembered how easily somebody much stronger than Vera had been killed. Or maybe abducted.

“So I’m thinking of maybe looking at a couple different places where I might buy a bar, at least get it started with some initial money,” he continued, reaching out to grab his drink and look at the deep maroon wine as he swirled it. “We have no idea how the Guild is doing, or even if they’re going to continue to exist. If they are, maybe I won’t be able to, but if it falls apart and they even lose some of the people, then I could probably take a couple of the better Guild representatives, hire them, and then spend part of my time in the Sanctuary, part of my time here.”

“Not a bad option,” Skandr nodded. “Closest thing to the best of both worlds that I can think of off the top of my head.”

“Thank you. I thought for a long time about it.”

Astrid shook her head at the dumb joke, but didn’t comment further. As far as Benedict’s goals went, it seemed like a feasible enough option. Instead of trying to pick it apart, she was more than happy to let him find out what did and didn’t work there. After all, after tonight, he was just her friend, not a member of her party. She turned to Skandr and raised her eyebrows as she brought her own drink to her mouth.

“What?”

“I mentioned to the Duchess that she could talk to you about maybe becoming her court Wizard or something. I don’t know if she’s talked to you about it yet, though.”

“There’ve been some discussions,” he chuckled. “I’m not willing to just post up in the capital and hang around doing my research, which is what she wanted. Frankly, it’s not a great place for me to do that. The weather here is predictable and mild. It’s not like I could create a bunch of calamitous storms here to research. Anything that I want to do a lot of digging into would be, at the very least, destructive to the buildings around here.”

Astrid chuckled, nodding her head in acknowledgment. Then, she asked, “So what kind of agreement have you come to with her, then? I know that you were wanting to create your tower somewhere that it could reach underground. Even so, more than going underground, you probably wanted to be over an entrance to the Dungeon proper or a branch. I can’t imagine that it would be a particularly easy thing to find one of those that the country will turn over to your safekeeping, even if you said please.”

“That’s where you’d be wrong,” he shook his head. “If you can imagine an entrance to the Dungeon proper where there are constant storms, dangerous enough to catch my attention, do you think that people want to be delving there?”

“Fair point. Even though the environments continue to get more hostile, the more mana there is, the monsters are enough of an enemy without counting an explosive mana storm or something.” After saying that, Astrid narrowed her eyes. “Have you seen your new home’s location yet?”

“Yes,” he smiled. “Since it’s an entrance to the Dungeon proper, there’s no worries of a surge, so it’s basically been left abandoned. The mana that emanates out, though, is disruptive to the weather there. Nobody wants to live there, even though it’s only a hundred kilometers or so from here.”

“Wait, Thunder Gorge?” Benedict asked, leaning over the table. As Skandr nodded his head in affirmation, Astrid furrowed her brow in confusion.

“What is that?” Muti asked the same question that Astrid wanted to.

“It’s a place northwest of here,” Benedict answered before turning his attention back towards Skandr. “The weather is always terrible there, lots of storms, but very little rain. I hear there are earthquakes every once in a while too, but I don’t know how true that is.”

“How have I never heard of this?” Astrid asked.

“It isn’t like it’s public knowledge that there’s an entrance to the Dungeon proper there,” Skandr shrugged. “Every one of us knows that the only reason why you learned any geography was so you could know where the next Dungeon branch was.”

Unable to refute that, Astrid raised both hands in surrender and gestured for Skandr to continue.

“Like Benedict said,” the Wizard explained, “it’s called Thunder Gorge. The name’s pretty self-explanatory; it’s a gorge that constantly has a thunderstorm over it. As near as I can tell, just from glancing at it, the entrance to the Dungeon proper was underground, maybe in a small cave. As the mana continued to emanate from it, it made the earth split until the entrance was under the sky. There’s an interconnected web of canyons all around, and it’s always cloudy. Thunder rumbles basically constantly as well, and I’m super interested in seeing how it all works.”

“If you have that tower built to stretch up and into the Dungeon proper, that seems like a pretty perfect place,” Astrid nodded. “What kind of stuff is on the other side of the entrance?”

“Death lizards and stink clouds,” Benedict jokingly guessed. “All of them at least level 100.”

Muti didn’t say anything, simply ripping a crust off of her bread and hucking it at his face. The bread hit him between the eyes, and the Bard laughed as he raised both hands in surrender.

“The weather is more dangerous than the monsters there,” Skandr said, not paying any attention to Benedict. “The spawns there don’t get higher than level 60, and all of them are more made for surviving the area than hunting or killing. The weather… I can only call it frozen lightning that falls there. Each shard is maybe four or five centimeters long, and only as wide across as my pinky nail. Sometimes, when they land, they hold together before melting harmlessly over the course of a minute or two. Most of the time, though, whatever the lightning falls on makes the frozen coating burst, and it explodes in a burst that could still hurt me, though only a little bit.”

“So it wouldn’t be deadly for you, but if you were to be unconscious and in the thunderfall, it might actually kill you?” Astrid asked.

“Thunderfall? Good word, I’ll keep it,” Skandr grinned as he looked at her. “And that’s about right. If I was completely unwounded, it would take a while before the thunderfall could kill me, but each one that fell on me would give me a small burn. For anybody whose Fortitude is under 200, I’d say don’t even try to come in. A few unlucky strikes of the thunderfall could kill them. However, basically any party that wants to start hunting around there will have people whose attributes aren’t high enough to survive being around there. That being the case, people just don’t come around.”

“Becoming a reclusive Wizard hidden in their tower already,” Astrid smiled at him.

“Ehh, it’ll be a while. The Duchess has said that in return for my political support, she’ll front the costs for a lot of the actual construction on the Stormcatcher. Yes, I’m going to name it what we all joked about. Anyways, all the people who can do it are busy taking care of repairs around here. So, it’ll probably be a month or two before she can actually send them to get started on construction there.”

“So you’ll just be sticking around here, researching?” Astrid asked, leaning over into him with a smile.

“You know it. Now, how about you? What’re your plans?”

“I…” Astrid trailed off, finally smiling as she said what she’d been thinking. “I think I’m actually going to be a wanderer. That’s what our party name was, but we didn’t really do much wandering while we had it.”

“Just went to a different country,” Benedict smiled. “But there really wasn’t much wandering around, was there?”

“Nope. I want to see who I can help. Visit more countries. See what there is to see.”

“Not a bad idea,” Skandr said with a smile. “And if we want to come back together, you’ll be our messenger.”

“Ha ha,” Astrid rolled her eyes, but she liked the thought of seeing her friends every so often. 

They all continued talking more as they finished the meal, and, when they finished, it was obvious that that there would be enough time for them to go and be a part of Philip’s party. 

Astrid couldn’t say that she remembered the night in detail. Instead, it was impressions. Laughter. Jokes. Stories. Tears. Though she’d never imagined a farewell party to split a party, this was what she wanted it to be. With the Adamantium tiers who’d participated in the war, the Wanderers, for the last time, let loose. As the environment got to her much more than the alcohol could, Astrid took Skandr to her room that night. 

A final night spent together, different from all the rest they’d had until then. And when the morning came, Astrid awkwardly kissed him goodbye and made her way out of the inn. Muti, Felix, and Benedict said their goodbyes, and the Wanderers were no more. If Astrid was going to visit the Duchess or leave straight away, she didn’t know. All that she could say was that there were adventures still waiting.