Dungeon Item Shop - Chapter 360: Contract negotiations (Patreon)

Soft starlight shines in through the dusty windows of the library. Despite their best efforts to keep the house free of pollen and particulate, it seems to be an impossible task to master. Even with the magical feather-duster that they use on a daily basis, by the same time tomorrow, it’s as if all the dust and pollen had never been removed. As if it all was just as a foundational part of their connection to the dungeon as the plant-matter and the giant, twisted roots of the world-tree themselves.

Fresh stands in the library, in the back by the window and flips through the pages of a book. For whatever reason, she has an old tune stuck in her head, some melody from her old life and so, she’s here, humming to herself and flipping through the pages of the tome.

The others are asleep upstairs and the spriggans are down in the basement, doing whatever it is that spriggans do when nobody is watching them and so, alone in the witching hour, Fresh does what it is that she does when nobody is watching her.

…Reading?

She blinks, staring at the book in her hands. Squinting her eyes, she tries to make heads or tails of it, but she notices that the letters are all indistinguishable. They’re a jumbled mess.

- This isn’t real writing. This isn’t even a real book.

Water collects around her ankles as the upstairs library begins to flood. She sets the book back into the shelf, looking through the gap to the other side that is full of water, up towards the ceiling. Somehow, the bookshelf seems to keep the flood locked on the other side of the room, as impossible as that is.

And there in the darkness of that murky abyss, there, balled together in the rays of black-water, catching the shine of fake starlight, floats a creature, an entity, a thing, huddled together into a ball.

The spirit of the fountain.

This is just another dream.

“What do you want?” asks Fresh.

“You’re so annoying,” sighs the fountain, its voice carrying through the murky ocean. “Is that any way to talk to your benefactor?”

Fresh narrows her eyes, leaning into the bookshelf. “We’re done. We’re even,” she says. “I got what I wanted, you got what you wanted. We’re through. I’m not doing this anymore,” she says to it, setting the stage for their conversation.

The current on the other side of the bookshelf rages, the water churning and spinning, flowing around the shadowy entity that is always just on the most distant edge of her vision. “You’re through when I say you are,” says the fountain. “Or if you’ve changed your mind, then let’s just bring you back home, okay?” it asks. Its voice carries around the shelves, coming out of the water towards her as it were creeping her way from both sides of the library at once. “Back to your old life, back to where you belong.”

Fresh lets out a long exhalation, planting her feet firmly in the muck beneath herself. “No. This is where I belong.” The fountain lifts its gaze. Fresh realizes something, something obvious. She realizes that this is a ‘Jubilee moment’. “You need me here, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“Is that so?” asks the voice, clearly becoming angry.

“Yeah,” says Fresh. “It is. You never brought me here to help me. You brought me here to help you.”

“And what about your friends?” asks the fountain. “I might need you, for now, but I don’t need them,” it states. “How about we just cut a few cords and see what happens?” suggests the entity. “Maybe you’ll remember your place then.”

Fresh shakes her head. “No. If you mess with them, I’m not going to help you anymore.”

The water rises, the bookshelves groaning from the pressure pushing against them. “There seems to be a miscommunication happening here,” says the fountain. It’s voice hissing around the library. The water of the black-ocean begins to church and to bubble. “You work for me,” it says. “You do what I say, when I say it and if you don’t -”

“- No,” says Fresh, cutting it off. “I told you, we’re through,” says Fresh. “I don’t care what you want with the world. I’ll finish our deal, but you’re going to leave me and my friends out of it after that,” says Fresh.

“Or what?” asks the fountain. The body in the distance moves. Two inky hands grip the shelves on the other side, a featureless face pressing itself towards her. “What are you going to do about it?” it asks.

“Whatever I want to,” replies Fresh, closing the book in her hands and setting it back into the shelf, blocking off the face on the other side. “It’s my life.”

____________________________________________________________

Fresh opens her eyes, staring at the ceiling of their bedroom. The bedding she’s laying on is wet down at her feet.

An arm is slung over her front, Jubilee’s. Their breath pushes into her ear as they sleep. Basil is flopped over sideways, laying over Shamrock’s chest like a sack of grains.

Blinking, she subtly slides herself down out of bed, doing her best not to wake anyone up, making a note to change the sheets today.

Going out and then downstairs, she waves to the spriggans who are doing a dance in the rays of the morning sunlight that shine in through the windows. As she gets ready for her day, Fresh can’t help but think about her encounter with the fountain.

The fountain needs her. Sure, it holds a power over her. But this power is only applicable if she accepts it to be so. Sure, the fountain can control her actions and make her do things that she doesn’t want to do. But at the same time, it needs her to cooperate, since it apparently can’t control her one-hundred percent of the time forever.

She isn’t sure what made her realize this all of a sudden, perhaps it was their dungeoneering last night, perhaps her slowly raising stats, but the power of their relationship isn’t just in the fountain’s hands, as it would have liked for her to believe forever. Half of it, a deciding half of a vote, is also in her own.

Is the world still ending?

Probably.

But that’s not her concern, in all honesty. Perhaps that’s horrible and terrible and awful and all manner of things of that nature. Countless people will suffer cruel fates that they and their beloved ones are entirely undeserving of.

However, as Fresh sits down in the bath, scrubbing herself with some soap and humming a happy song, all she can think about is how excited she is to make breakfast for her friends today.

Maybe some eggs?

Today feels like the day.