Late in the night, I received a message from Sophia that an emergency teleport was coming in from Athir. Emilia and Willow were already in bed, and I had been sitting comfortably with my wife, happy to be without drama for any amount of time.

  Alas, such moments were never meant to be. It was nice while it lasted, but I left Tabitha’s warm embrace for the cold of the city, making my way to the Top where I sat on a bench just outside of the Mage’s Guild tower. I stared up at the stars, a sight I couldn’t see from home, and waited. It wasn’t long before someone escorted a Forest Elf out of the guild and closed the doors behind her.

  I didn’t say anything as Ferrisdae walked towards me, her footsteps soft against the ground. She was back in her usual spellcasting outfit, though now she had a red wood staff in her hand and was using it like a walking stick. I wasn’t sure how to take that, and I didn’t say anything as she sat next to me.

  “I am such an idiot,” the Elf said, following my gaze to look at the stars. She placed her staff on her lap with both hands gripping it.

  “I’d say that’s wrong, but I’ll hear what you have to say first,” I replied. “What about this time?”

  “I talked to my mother just like you said I should,” she started. “After I explained everything, she sent the family to make sure everyone was all right and to tell the guards, the Consortium... everyone needed to keep order after what had happened.”

  “If anything, your mother sure knows how to get things done,” I remarked, not sure where this was going.

  Ferrisdae nodded. “I was going to help, but I got pulled into a long discussion about what was going on. Not about the Endless Moment, but with me. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I told her everything. From the excitement of the first day with Krad, manhandling Sevensleg, to the Dungeon Master and what he did to me.”

  That was technically classified information, but I didn’t say that. What she told her mother was her own business.

  “It all culminated in this huge rant about how my family shouldn’t be sending money to the place I work to get me into better positions,” she continued, staring absently at the sky. “I really let her have it. It was almost like that time when you were scolding me for inviting Cojisto. On the way to Ori’s dungeon, remember?”

  “How could I possibly forget?” I asked sarcastically. “He’s fine, by the way, but he and Moose slunk off without so much as a goodbye.”

  Hesitantly, she nodded. “Cojisto reached out to me on my Stone. They’re going to be gone for a while, but they promise to come back. He sounded… wrong, but he did say to apologize to you and the family for not saying bye.”

  “Some things change a man,” was all I said on that topic. “What about your mother?”

  “I have sap for brains,” Ferrisdae immediately replied, bringing her hands up to cover her face. She screamed into them, kicking her legs, and I was about to be concerned for a moment when she looked down at me. “I come in with the most heated speech I have ever flung her way, and my mother hugs me. She hugged me!”

  “She is your mother and you have been through a lot?” I asked more than said, not sure why that was such a big deal.

  “She was so calm about it!” Ferrisdae exclaimed. “She took me to her office, saying she had some things to explain, and brought out the family finances for the last two hundred and fifty years.”

  I pursed my lips, feeling like I knew exactly where this story was going.

  “The Anne Runelaras donating to the Department of Dungeons isn’t something that happened when I showed interest, Badger, they’ve been doing it for centuries. And not just them! The Consortium gets donations, the Mage’s Guild gets donations, even the schools and museums do! Here I am, having heard one thing from my father who I know is a terrible listener and I start having a, what? An early life crisis?”

  “To be fair, you Elves are the kings and queens of miscommunication,” I joked, trying to cheer her up. “You all can sulk about something for decades before everything comes to a head and it turns out everything was a big misunderstanding. It’s one of the curses of a long life.”

  “You are not doing this to me right now,” she deadpanned.

  I shrugged. “I’m just saying. This could have been cleared up with one conversation.”

  “Do not.”

  “I mean, it was cleared up with one conversation.”

  Ferrisdae smacked me on the shoulder with the back of her hand, trying to hold a firm expression but failing. “Stop teasing me,” she whined.

  “Fine, fine. I’ll stop trying to cheer up my junior,” I said, waving a hand. “I am glad, though. That you’ve reconciled with your mother, that you have your spirit back, everything. Is spellcasting easier for you now?”

  “Yeah. I don’t have to struggle with my wellspring anymore. It’s much clearer than it was.”

  “That’s what happens when you solve a crisis of self-confidence,” I told her before waving my hand. “Keep going, then. What happened next?”

  The Elf nodded and sighed. “It wasn’t all good news,” she replied. “Mother did know about your time as the Nameless and wanted me to get paired up with you. She had a long chain of letters both to and from Brack about it. You’d probably like her method, but she always writes a letter twice. One to send, and another to keep.”

  “I do the same,” I said, nodding approvingly. “It’s easy to forget things you wrote about, especially if it’s sent to someone who would take their sweet time with a response.”

  “That’s what she’s always said, too,” Ferrisdae stated. “But she let me read them. Mother never once demanded that I be accepted into the Department of Dungeons. She didn’t demand that I become a Dungeon Inspector or a Junior Dungeon Inspector instead of someone in the background. There was only one request after she heard the good news.”

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  “Where she wanted me to be your mentor?” I asked.

  She nodded. “And it was a request, not a demand. I don’t know if she outed you to Brack as the Nameless or she thought he already knew, but she called you that right out in the letter.”

  I grunted. “He knows, but still. Don’t like that.”

  “I figured,” she said, offering me an apologetic smile. “But Mother went on to lay out the reasons for the request. She had nothing but good things to say about your track record, talking about how I would be the one to meet your demands as an apprentice. It was an appeal to challenge me more than anything else. Like she wanted to make my job harder by sending me to you.”

  Thinking about that for a moment, it made sense. The Anne Runelaras were an adventuring family, and adversity was their bread and butter. They sought it out, assessed it, and overcame it. By sending Ferrisdae to me, Durendrelle was raising the bar for her daughter’s success as high as she could.

  It wasn’t that she was being overprotective, she was just raising the stakes. I wasn’t sure I liked that any more than thinking Ferrisdae got a free pass, but I didn’t have to like it to accept it.

  “And it didn’t even matter,” the Elf said. “I read Brack’s reply to that letter. Do you know what it said?”

  “No?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t even two paragraphs,” Ferrisdae laughed. “It was, by far, the most bureaucratically passive message I had ever seen. I wasn’t even sure if it said anything at all, to be honest. Mother hadn’t, either, and sent a follow up letter. The next one, though, was thoroughly embarrassing.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “In what way?”

  “In that… the Chief definitely had a lot of positive things to say about me,” she said hesitantly. The Elf looked back down at her staff, a smile on her face as she fidgeted with her robe. “I knew he approved of my work ethic and everything, but reading about how I was a credit to the Anne Runelara family and he was looking forward to seeing how well I did was… something else.”

  “Brack doesn’t get the chance to wax poetic very often, but from one head of a huge family to another, he probably thought the praise was well deserved,” I told her. “But how he thinks of you isn’t anything new. I told you in your own home how impressed he was by you.”

  “Yeah, you did,” she sighed. “The whole thing is just a huge weight off my chest. I’m really sorry about how it affected me.”

  I held up my hand, not wanting to hear any more of that. “If you really want to be sorry, I have something else you can apologize for.”

  Blinking in surprise, Ferrisdae turned to face me. “What do I need to apologize for?”

  “First, what we did with Abara is being counted as a subjugation, so we have a week off before I have to deal with it.”

  “Okay, I can see that. Deal with what?” she asked, clearly worried.

  “Second, apparently Brackenhorst is considering your apprenticeship with me a success,” I said.

  Ferrisdae gasped. “Am I going to be a full Dungeon Inspector? Already?” she asked, voice shrill from excitement.

  “No, you’re way off,” I said, trying not to laugh at how excitable she was. “You know the rules.”

  “A junior must be a junior for at least a year,” she stated as if she was reading straight from the rule book, deflating some.

  “These are some dark times, but not so dark that we aren’t following the rules,” I chuckled. “No. Thanks to you, I got saddled with a second junior.”

  She sat up straighter. “You did? Who? Do I know them?”

  “Yeah, you know them. Apparently, they volunteered and were hired on the spot,” I said, trying to sound sour.

  “Who?” she demanded.

  “Dalsarel.”

  “Really?” Ferrisdae asked, eyes wide. “Then I apologize most vehemently. She helps out a little bit and Brackenhorst throws her to you? I studied my ass off to get accepted into the Department of Dungeons, and all she did was grow up in one! What’s her qualifications? Tell me.”

  I arched an eyebrow at the Forest Elf’s stated vehemence. “She grew up as the sole heir of one the most successful dungeon owners on record. Noble upbringing, great education, and she stuck by us when it mattered most. She’s not so different from you, Ferrisdae, so I’m going to need you to calm down.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, and then took a breath. “Wow, yeah, I do, don’t I?” she asked, chuckling nervously. “I think you’re going to have your own little Badger and Sophia on your hands. At least, until we can actually get along. Sorry. I promise it’ll get better. I got along well with Kaelmourn when I met him, this should be easy.”

  “It better be. Though, are you the Badger or the Sophia in this little situation? Because I don’t want to deal with either of them together.”

  “I’m not going to answer that,” Ferrisdae said, shaking her head. “Neither one is flattering, and I’m not going to be stuck choosing one or the other.”

  “Good choice,” I said, looking back up at the stars. “You’re alright, though?”

  The Elf took a moment to answer, considering the question. “I think… I am,” she admitted. “I feel guilty thinking that I came out of this in a better place than I was when it started, what with everyone who didn’t, but I’m not going to lie about it either.”

  “I’m not asking you for anything more than the truth,” I said. “So if you’re alright, then that’s good. We can do what we need to in order to make sure that everyone gets the chance to do the same.”

  “For what little time we have, anyway,” Ferrisdae replied. “Sophia said we might be going to war soon.”

  I cast my eyes towards the Mage’s Guild tower before nodding. “No might about it, we will be. Three months, four, doesn’t make a difference. We’ll be setting sail south.”

  “That’s not a lot of notice.”

  “We’re lucky to have gotten any kind of notice at all,” I snorted. “That’s life. Whether through sheer coincidence or divine contrivance, the world keeps moving despite any workings against it.”

  “Yeah. Does Cheroske have anything to say about it?” she asked.

  “Just that this war needs to be done, and that I’m going to be called to action whether I like it or not,” I answered.

  “As a paladin? Or as a Dungeon Inspector?”

  I glanced her way, seeing the worry on her face. Ferrisdae’s real question was clear to see. “As a Dungeon Inspector, which means you’ll be by my side.”

  Relief flooded her face. “Okay, good.”

  “Along with Dalsarel,” I continued.

  “Great, fantastic,” she continued.

  Smiling, I stood up and stretched, motioning for her to do the same. “You know, it’s a good thing I didn’t allow Tabitha to adopt you the last time you came to visit,” I said.

  “What? Why?” she asked, taking a moment to stretch as well.

  “Because I’d never let my kids go to the Southern Continental Dungeon whether I was with them or not,” I answered. “And because you reconciled with Durendrelle.”

  “Well, it’s not like you put my adult adoption back on the table just because I was having a spat with my mother or anything,” she giggled. I gave her a look, and she tilted her head. “It’s still off the table, right?”

  I said nothing, looking ahead as we walked.

  “Liam,” she whispered, barely a hiss. “It’s not still on the table, right?”

  “Come on, kid,” I snorted, my neutral face finally breaking as I started walking away. “Let’s go home.”

  I'm going to use it as a cover once it's done.