Chapter 12: 12: A Portion of Extortion

“Nope,” said Wren.

Tim cut himself off mid-word with a painful-sounding strangled sort of noise. “What do you mean, nope?”

Wren shook her head. “I’m sure it’s fascinating and all, but I just wrapped up hearing another extensive tale of intrigue and mystery and curiosity and…”

“And intrigue,” Tim supplied morosely.

“That. Look, I’m sure I’ll find out from someone else. Or come back tomorrow and I’ll be happy to hear it.”

If I’m here tomorrow, she reminded herself, but it didn’t seem worth saying. I know, I know, I don’t want to let myself forget that I’m going to be moving on, but there’s no point explaining.

“Hm,” said Tim. “Well… alright, but if you do hear it from someone else, make sure to let me give you the full and best version too.”

“It’s a promise.” Wren extended her hand; Tim tiptoed over to her until he was just about close enough to reach it - by leaning and keeping one foot planted as far from her as was practical - and shook it, then skipped a few steps back again. “So, Tim of the Cotton Mossford Dungeoneers, you were going to tell me what you needed?”

“Ah,” said Tim. “Yes.” He withdrew a rolled-up sheet of paper from a pocket and let it unfurl; at its full length, with its top held at Tim’s chest height, the sheet managed to nearly touch the floor of the Hilarious Misunderstanding.

“Please tell me that’s not just your shopping list,” said Wren.

“Oh, no,” Tim said idly, head bobbing up and down as he scanned the document. “Most of these are just words I want to get in a crossword at some point, then some are things I need to buy but not from here… then here I’ve just written ‘what if bears were currency?’ and I don’t remember what I meant by that but I must’ve thought it was important… that’s a reminder to make something for the community café this weekend, and - oh, here we go.” He peered over the top of the sheet, eyes scanning the mishmash of bits and bobs that was the Hilarious Misunderstanding. “Things for escaping.”

Wren waited for additional context, but apparently there was none. “Things for escaping,” she repeated.

“Hm.”

“For escaping… anything in particular?”

“Oh, we never quite know,” said Tim, “not since the…” He trailed off. “Oh, but you didn’t want to hear the story.”

Wren groaned. “Give me the bullet points.”

“Well,” said Tim, glancing around as if to check nobody else was listening, “have you heard of Grafredun?”

“Graf…” The name rang a bell, though more of a distant handbell than the clear peals of the Saint Auspicious ringers. “Let’s pretend I don’t know what that is.”

“The Gradian Guild of Freelance Dungeoneers,” Tim practically whispered (for reasons known only to him, since there was in fact nobody else around and what he was saying was hardly classified information at any rate).

“Oh,” said Wren, the full name having not helped at all.

“It’s a band of high-level dungeon divers,” Tim said, “who go around triggering dungeons in rural spots where there aren’t many…” His cheeks suddenly flushed red. “I mean, look, the Cotton Mossford Dungeoneers are a great bunch, but… well, we’re out here in the countryside. We’re all hobbyists. We don’t have the resources of, of, of, you know, a more professional group.”

“Of course,” said Wren, trying to sound sincerely reassuring.

Tim either took it as it was intended or didn’t really notice, ploughing on. “Anyway, they go in and trigger an instance, which is much too challenging for the locals to clear themselves.”

“Sorry,” said Wren. “Not really up with dungeon terminology. An instance?”

“Oh, right.” Tim nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again. “It’s, um, so… if they’re just left to their own devices, dungeons don’t do anything. Right?”

Wren nodded, having been vaguely aware of the notion.

“When someone goes into an inactive dungeon, it triggers something we call an instance,” Tim went on, making odd gestures involving his hands moving rapidly around each other, fingers opening and closing, and various other things that Wren thought were probably supposed to be helping with the explanation. “It spawns fifteen floors, all packed with creatures and traps and treasures and all sorts of things, and how dangerous it is to go in there - and how good the loot is - that’s all based on the strength of the people going in. Their level, dungeoneers call it. Some people even like to try to put a number on it, although nobody knows exactly how a dungeon decides what level any given person is. But it’s pretty obvious that stronger people trigger stronger instances, which means stronger monsters. And better treasure.”

Wren listened attentively. I must have learned all this when I was a kid, she thought, what with dungeons being as big a deal as they are to so many people. I just never spent much time thinking about them, I guess.

“You know the rule of five, though, right?” Tim continued.

Wren stared blankly.

“Make it through five, get out alive? That one?”

She gave him the tiniest of head-shakes.

“Well,” said Tim, “you can leave the dungeon from the first floor whenever you like. Run in, run out, no problem. But once you go down to the second floor, you’re locked in. No going back up the way you came. If you make it to the fifth floor, there’s a warp point where you can leave with whatever you’ve gathered while you’re inside. Same on the tenth. Get to the fifteenth, there’ll be one final encounter and the best treasure in the whole place. Beat that, and the instance is cleared: the dungeon goes back to being inactive until the next group comes along.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Some of this did sound vaguely familiar, and Wren did at least remember the fundamental fact of dungeoneering that a person killed inside the dungeon simply reappeared at the entrance holding a single looted treasure. It was still just as unpleasant as dying for real, from what she understood.

“So this freelance group,” she said.

“Grafredun,” Tim offered, pronouncing the word as if it were the name of a very unfriendly, very hairy spider who had said something deeply offensive while stealing his lunch.

“Them,” Wren agreed. “They come out to rural spots and trigger the local dungeons at a higher level than the locals can manage, and then they… what, just leave?”

Tim did his nod-shake-nod thing again. “It means we can only get any treasures we can grab from the first floor. Beyond that, we have to be willing to get ourselves killed in there and come back with only a single item to show for it, and it’s not as if any of us can get very far to find anything decent anyway.”

“That’s why you were talking about things for escaping,” Wren surmised. “Because going in there, if they’ve triggered a really dangerous instance, is mostly about surviving.”

“That’s about it, yeah.” Tim puffed up his cheeks and blew air out through tightly pursed lips, making a noise that was almost as effective at expressing his frustration as it was irritating for anyone who happened to hear it. “They want us to pay them to go in and collect treasure for us,” he said. “On a per-item basis. Or an absolutely huge sum to clear the whole instance and reset it, but they know we could never afford it - and they could just trigger it again anyway.”

“Dickheads,” said Wren.

Tim let out a bark of surprised laughter. “That is… exactly right, yeah. And being a small town with a relatively big dungeon - ‘cos, you know, it always spawns fifteen floors, but the size and layout and how much is in there differs from place to place - point is, it wasn’t a bad bit of extra income for the town when we could more easily get treasure to sell. Any one person or group can only go in once a week, obviously, but still, we could get a decent amount of stuff each time.”

“I hate these people,” said Wren flatly.

It was true. From what Tim was saying of them, she did hate them. But she wasn’t surprised. All over Gradia - all over the world - if people with some small amount of power saw a way to use it for their own ends, even (especially, perhaps) if it came at the cost of others, they’d do it. In Din, where there were a lot of people wielding variously small, medium, and large amounts of power, she’d seen enough of that sort of thing to last her a lifetime. She’d hoped that out here, there’d be less of it, but… well, it made sense. These so-called freelance dungeoneers weren’t strong enough to hack it where they could be really challenged, so they came out where they knew there wouldn’t be as much chance of people standing up to them.

Not that people in Din are inherently stronger or anything, Wren reminded herself. It’s just that there are more of them, so more of a chance that some of them’ll be on the same level as this Grafredun lot. And because ambitious people think Din is the sort of place they ought to go, for some reason. Comfortable people stay where they are, which is a beautiful thing, and Grafredun are preying on it.

“So,” she said, suddenly snapping out of her reflective state with a clap of her hands, “what do we do about it?”

Tim blinked at her. “Hm?”

“What are our options?” Wren wondered, asking the question more because she had a sudden urge to rant aloud than because she expected Tim to answer. “If we’ve got no chance of clearing the dungeon with the people who are already here, can we outsource it…?”

“What,” said Tim, “like, pay someone to come and clear it for us? That’s just the same as giving into Grafredun’s demands, except that the money goes to someone who might be a bit less horrible, but still - we don’t have that money, that’s the main problem.”

“This can’t be legal,” Wren went on, only half-hearing Tim’s response. “The police, or maybe the deaconry?”

Tim snorted. “You really aren’t from around here, are you?”

“None taken,” muttered Wren.

“It’s just… oh, hells and demons.” Tim spent a few moments stammering, as if trying and momentarily failing not to slip back into his earlier nervous demeanour, then recovered. “Sorry. It’s just that, well, there are police around, of course, and guards and things, but it’s difficult to charge them with an actual crime. In Din and other big cities, dungeon use is more regulated - more competitive, though, so issues generally sort themselves out. Nobody really cares what’s going on out here, especially not the deaconry.”

“But… there is a Deacon for the area, right? Or some other agent of the Twin Crown?”

“Oh, yeah, there’s a Deacon,” said Tim, sniffing. “He’s… let’s just say it’s never good news if we see one of his representatives. Even worse if it’s a Juror, and worst of all if it’s Deacon Adelman himself.”

Wren huffed thoughtfully. She’d never realised how much she’d taken for granted the way things were in Din, where the government was constantly active in keeping everything monitored and regulated. It had been stifling at times, and there were plenty who were deeply unhappy about it, but it at least had the effect of providing a level of security, a certainty that things couldn’t possibly change too drastically in too abrupt of a shift.

“Surely, though,” Wren said, “they don’t want another Acorton on their hands. Right? If a dungeon’s just left - what was it you called it, if there’s a dangerous instance that isn’t cleared for a long time, doesn’t that make it risky?”

“Grafredun’s careful,” said Tim wryly. “They go in and prune the monsters every so often, keep it manageable. And besides, Acorton was… well. It’d take more than Grafredun triggering an instance to create one on that sort of scale.”

“Then,” mused Wren, “the best we can do for now is just… try to make it possible for you and your group to grab the best single item they can at a time before getting killed?”

Tim nodded. “That’s about the extent of it.”

Wren rubbed the back of her neck, letting out a discordantly dissatisfied hum. “Not great,” she summarised.

“Not great,” Tim agreed. “But then, not much around here is lately.”

Wren folded her arms and waited for him to elaborate.

“Well, I don’t know whether you’ve looked around much,” said Tim, taking the hint, “but the town’s not in great shape. The last few years, we’ve taken a few hits, a few… odd things have happened, and that’s on top of just being a bit run down anyway. We don’t get a lot of people coming through, and… well, I don’t really understand economics or whatever, but when there’s only a small population in a town and the money’s just changing hands endlessly between them, I don’t think that works all that well for long. So we try to trade things with other places, but we’re not having great luck with that.”

At that moment, the door opened a crack and the familiar head of Mercie Beiceuse popped into the shop once more. “Oh, ‘allo,” she said. “It’s me, Mercie Beiceuse.”

“I see that,” said Wren.

“Ah-bah-Mer-it-hello-um,” said Tim.

“I am just wanting to be asking Miz Mason if she is happening to need anything else for the delivering elsewhere or indeed the collecting elsewhere and then delivering here,” Mercie rattled off, “but as it is ever so clear to see, she has not come back from her dilly-dally wanders elsewhere, no?”

“She’s still out,” Wren confirmed. “She’s only been out for, like, fifteen minutes.”

“Ah, yes,” said Mercie, “and this is the question we must all ask ourselves, is it not, of how strange a thing it is to be a little part of the passing of time, tick-tock-tick-tock and on and on and on, yes?”

Wren rolled her eyes. “Come back later,” she said, trying with what she thought was mixed success to stifle a laugh; Tim, who was staring frozen at Mercie, didn’t seem to notice.

“Ah, but I am so very grateful to you for saying so!” declared Mercie. “Thanks and thanks and so many thanks that you are scarcely knowing what to do with them, hm?”

And with that, she was gone again.

Tim let out a huge breath. It sounded as if he’d been holding it for the entire duration of Mercie’s brief pop-in.

Wren considered teasing him again, but decided against it. “She could connect this town to other places, couldn’t she?” she wondered.

“Well, um, yes,” said Tim slightly breathlessly, “but she’s just one person. Not, um, what’s the word, scalable.” He shook his head and blinked a few times.

“Well, then,” said Wren, “one problem at a time. Let’s see if we can’t help you at least grab a few treasures, even if it’s less than ideal.”

Tim glanced at the paper in his hand as if he’d forgotten he’d been holding it. “Oh, yeah.”

Wren stepped out from behind her table. “Show me what you’re after…”