Chapter Text
Kabru’s stomach gurgles irritably at him, complaining that he hasn’t filled it in too long, and he ignores it.
They haven’t encountered anything to eat since waking up and setting out for the day, and they finished the last rubbery, crunchy, burnt remnants of what he is generously calling the griffin egg “quiche” while packing up their meager and stolen belongings after the latest of their brief semi-sleepless nights.
There’s nothing else to eat until they come across another monster down here, so it’s pointless to entertain thoughts about how it’s probably time to eat.
Kabru isn’t sure what time it is, anyway, when it comes to morning, noon, or night. Or even which day it is.
He had tried keeping track at the start, when he and the captain had first fallen into the pit and ended up on what the other Canaries had assumed was the sixth floor of the dungeon based only on Mithrun’s description of the temperature and whatever prior research they’d had of the place’s general layout.
And how terrifying had that been? Finding himself on the sixth floor with a single, largely unknown companion when he’d regularly wiped out on milder floors with a full party of compatible adventurers around him. Knowing that he didn’t have what it took to survive against monsters on lower levels. Not even knowing what kinds of monsters he’d be facing on these levels. And with the knowledge that the Canaries held metaphorical daggers to his friends’ throats the whole time.
Kabru had done what he could to manage the chaos in his thoughts when he was first presented with his predicament. He’d arranged all of the knowns in order and weighed them against the unknowns. He’d formulated plans and counterplans. He’d come up with contingencies against every possible outcome that he could conceive of.
He was on a floor of the dungeon several times beyond his skill level… but he had a Canary captain with him who was presumably an expert at dungeon crawls and who at least didn’t have any intention of doing him harm. (And if it was borderline insulting that Mithrun had no intentions toward him whatsoever despite Kabru’s earlier actions, well, Kabru would take whatever he could get out of the situation.)
He had no idea what monsters were lurking down here… but Mithrun knew not only what to expect but also how to get around those threats. (And if Mithrun’s first notion of how to get around those threats was to launch Kabru at them like a human projectile, well, that was less than ideal, but also temporary. The captain hadn’t repeated the move, and had since taken to putting himself in between Kabru and any monsters they encountered, instead.)
His friends were being held hostage… but for all intents and purposes, didn’t Kabru also have a hostage of his own down here? (Though, it was less and less like a hostage situation between himself and Mithrun as time went on and more and more like a situation where they needed each other to the point of near-certain catastrophic failure if either of them were removed from the picture. Kabru didn’t like his chances down here without Mithrun, and without someone to keep track of his needs, Mithrun wasn’t likely to do much better on his own.)
And it was only for a week, at most, he’d told himself while following Mithrun down that first corridor. All he had to do was survive for a week and see to Mithrun’s needs, and hope that in that week’s time, Laios and the others managed to reach the heart of the dungeon and defeat the lunatic magician.
A week. He had told himself he could manage a week. And he’d set about trying to do exactly that.
He’d tried keeping track of their meals—how much they ate, how often they ate. That they ate. (Not what they ate. Kabru tries not to think about what they’re eating, even now, several days in.)
He’d tried keeping track of their sleep, too—making sure the captain got at least four hours of sleep when they intentionally made camp for the evening, and that the elf slept until he woke up naturally if they ended up being forced to make camp on the fly just because the captain had collapsed again.
But keeping time without daylight to measure it with is a challenge, and Kabru’s own circadian rhythm is becoming increasingly skewed by the constant glow of Mithrun’s mage lights, the sporadic sleep schedule they’re keeping, the even more sporadic meals they’re managing, and… And by Mithrun himself, if Kabru’s going to point an honest finger at the problem.
One of the benefits to having a full party with routine needs they all acknowledge is that everyone in the party tends to agree that they’re hungry or tired or thirsty at roughly the same intervals. But down here, with just Mithrun and his relentless forward charge into the dungeon, Kabru is having a harder time than he likes to admit when it comes to peer pressuring the elf into paying attention to various physical needs.
More often than not, the peer pressure goes the other way around, with Mithrun’s single-mindedness becoming contagious. Kabru is uncomfortably aware, after all, that he’d rather starve to death in a dungeon than consume monsters. And if it were solely his own life on the line…
But it isn’t. It’s Kabru’s life, and also Mithrun’s life, and also Kabru’s friends’ lives. Possibly also the lives of Laios and his party and everyone in the dungeon and on the Island, too.
He’d like to think that it’s getting better, or easier, to manage Mithrun’s needs as time goes on. That he’s getting used to regularly winding up the clockwork gears of sleeping, eating, and all the rest that keep them both going day in and day out. But the truth is that, even with so much on the line, Kabru sometimes doesn’t notice his own exhaustion until the captain is swaying on his feet.
(And frankly, Kabru doesn’t want to pay attention to his own hunger because of the horror involved in satiating that hunger.)
Even with his own party, before—and when there’d been travel rations and not monsters—it had been others who sounded the need for a break. Mickbell or Rin insisting that they were hungry. Holm pointing out that he needed time to rest and meditate before they moved on. Daya organizing their sleep schedule to ensure that everyone was properly rested while they rotated who was keeping watch.
And now, with a party of two, one of whom can’t register his own body’s needs and both of whom tend toward forging on ahead despite those needs whenever allowed to do so…
Kabru sighs.
There’s a fountain up ahead at the end of this hallway. It’s the same fountain as before, and while they could and probably should stop for water and a rest, he knows that they’ll be taking a side corridor instead of approaching the fountain, just like the other times the hallways have led to this fountain. The captain isn’t starting to flag at all, and it’s not worth the argument until they do get to that point.
Kabru’s been doing his best with the situation presented to him, and that’s all there is to it. His friends’ lives are on the line, after all, if Cithis is to be believed. (He’s not sure she is.)
He doesn’t think the Canaries would actually harm his friends—not directly. They’re far more likely to simply hold onto his friends until well after they’re satisfied with the outcomes in this dungeon. It’s just that that satisfaction might not come for decades, even if they manage to seal the dungeon in a matter of days, and Kabru doesn’t want the lot of them to end up in the West living out their years as curiosities.
Far better that he does an outstanding job seeing to the captain’s needs and manages to secure his friends’ freedom from the whole situation before anyone gets any ideas about further questioning in the West.
While he might not be managing an outstanding job, Kabru would like to think he’s doing an adequate job. He has been able to ensure they eat at least three times a day, just like Cithis had stipulated. He is just having to make some assumptions about how long their days are, is all. They keep a schedule, of a sort—eating three times during a “day” and then sleeping for however long they can manage it before waking up to do it all again.
They might not be eating well by any stretch of the word, but they are eating. They might not be sleeping full nights, but they are sleeping.
Kabru gives the mental math of timekeeping another try as he follows Mithrun through yet another side corridor. They’ve been going in circles since they set out this morning as far as Kabru can tell, repeatedly coming across the same fountain surrounded by greenery and stone lions and repeatedly backing away from it rather than approach.
It’s as though every hallway they try loops around onto the same courtyard, but Mithrun refuses to cooperate with the shifting layout and just accept that they are going to explore the courtyard the dungeon is presenting them with. Kabru would ask about it—the courtyard with the fountain doesn’t seem dangerous enough to go to all this effort to avoid—but there’s plenty of time to be curious after Mithrun runs out of steam, which he’s bound to eventually do given the pace he’s set for them.
So. The first night, or what Kabru is calling a night because there was sleep involved, they spent five hours waiting for Kabru to finish having a nightmare he doesn’t remember the details of after eating the walking mushroom. Then there was the night after they found the Touden party’s packs in the snow and Mithrun collapsed. Then the night they ate the barometz stew. Then the night at the base of that column with the spiral staircase inside it. Then—
Kabru misses a step as the ground in front of him suddenly ceases to be magically lit stone corridor and becomes instead pitch dark… grass? Something softer underfoot, anyway, and then Mithrun’s globe lights flicker into existence above him, revealing that yes, they’re now in a thoroughly overgrown garden.
Without a water feature that Kabru can see or hear.
So far, every garden or similarly grassy area they’ve come across in this level of the dungeon has had a pond or fountain of some sort. The lack of running water sets Kabru’s nerves on high alert. In this dungeon, even stone hallways that would have no logical reason for it often have running water coursing through lion head fountains. For a garden to be without one…
Despite his ire at the unannounced teleportation, Kabru doesn’t bother to shake off the captain’s hand on his bicep as he looks around at the tangled vines and leggy plants that criss-cross what was once a neat flagstone path to the right. If there’s any need to teleport them both out of the area, he doesn’t want to cause a delay by being out of reach—or worse, end up left behind.
The garden is too quiet. He doesn’t like it.
He likes it even less when his traitorous stomach growls again, possibly alerting whatever monsters lurk in the garden to their presence.
“No need to worry. They won’t come here,” Mithrun murmurs, sounding satisfied as he steps away.
For all that the captain seems at ease, Kabru doesn’t relax one bit.
“ What won’t come here?” he asks, dreading the answer.
“The succubi.”
“Succubi?!”
“There’s nowhere to lay their eggs, and the spiderwebs would tangle up their wings.”
Kabru doesn’t see any spiderwebs. He’s not sure whether that should be a comfort, though, because any spider big enough to be setting traps for a succubus could just as easily be hunting them . And if he misses the signs, maybe gets caught up in a web…
“There were succubi?”
He didn’t see any succubi. Weren’t those supposed to actively approach their victims and lure them to their deaths? If they were there, why hadn’t they made themselves known?
“In the fountain, yes. Their larvae. That courtyard would have been swarmed with the adults if we’d been noticed, but we didn’t get close enough.”
A lone succubus would be formidable for an unwary adventurer. Taking on an irresistible form and rendering even the most strong-willed victims putty in its grasp… And a swarm of them?
Kabru isn’t sure what form a succubus would take for him. A beautiful woman, maybe? That was said to be the norm. Whatever his “ideal” was, whatever would make him weak in the knees and helpless to put up a fight as he was drained dry. Would it be someone he knew, or just a beautiful stranger? Which would be worse?
And would it even be possible for a succubus to find a form someone like Mithrun would respond to, with his missing desire? Kabru can’t quite see how that would work, or what the captain would see if accosted by a succubus.
But even if Mithrun didn’t find himself lulled and seduced in an encounter with the monsters the way any ordinary adventurer with intact desires would be, he could probably be overwhelmed by sheer numbers if there were a swarm, and Kabru himself wouldn’t have been of any help in the situation.
He can see why Mithrun had opted to flee those hallways when it was clear they were being funneled toward the courtyard despite his best efforts and had instead chosen to confront the possibility of giant spiders. At least Kabru stands a chance against a giant spider.
Though… if they end up battling a giant spider, they’ll end up eating that giant spider, and—
Kabru puts the entire thought out of his mind before he ends up dry retching over it.
“Why don’t we see if there’s a room off of this garden where we can rest a bit, Captain. Maybe it’ll have running water, or—”
“You’re wanting things again.” Mithrun levels a disapproving look at him.
“Sure,” Kabru says with a smile. “I want to avoid eating spiders, and I want to fill up our waterskin without getting sucked dry by a succubus, and I—”
Mithrun shakes his head, picks a direction, and starts walking.
He’s unsurprised that Mithrun doesn’t see—or perhaps simply doesn’t care for—the joke in his words, and he’s equally unsurprised when it turns out that the joke is on him, instead.
Because within the span of an hour, they have found a room just on the other side of this overgrown garden festooned with vines, they have found a place in that room where they can rest for a bit, they have found some running water courtesy of yet another ubiquitous lion head fountain in that room…
And they have found and dispatched three distressingly plump giant spiders with hairy legs as thick around as Mithrun’s wrists, glistening pincers in vivid hues of pearlescent green and blue, and shimmering black eyes that wouldn’t stop following Kabru’s every move even long after the spiders themselves were dead, courtesy of well-aimed rocks teleported somewhere inside of their bulbous spidery bodies.
Which means they have found dinner. Or breakfast. Or something in between, depending on what time of day it actually ends up being when they’re finished butchering the spiders for meat.
Kabru’s stomach gives another gurgle as he glances at the pile of leg segments to the side of the makeshift stone ring he’s trying to light a fire inside of. It’s a gurgle of hunger, sure, but it’s also a gurgle of protest.
At least the non-edible parts of the giant spiders are piled up outside in the garden where Kabru doesn’t have to look at them and they can’t look at Kabru. At least there was a consensus that only the legs were edible and Kabru didn’t have to face the prospect of digging through the soup of spider innards looking for something to pour into a cookpot.
He’s not sure there are enough cities in the entire world—let alone that he has memorized—to get him through trying to eat boiled spider goop.
“Are you going to stare at the spiders, or are you going to start a fire?”
Kabru tears his eyes away from their revolting raw ingredients and resumes striking flint and stone. Maybe his attempts to start a fire will fail and they will just have to go hungry, after all. Oh no, so sad.
Except, he would rather eat cooked giant spider legs than raw ones, if those are his choices, and they are. (Why, why are those his choices?)
“What do you think they’ll taste like?” Kabru asks before blowing gently on a bit of fluffy dried grass to encourage the sparks to take.
Mithrun is quiet for a moment, maybe pondering the question, maybe ignoring him. It can be hard to tell sometimes.
“Bad,” Mithrun finally answers.
Kabru nods in mournful agreement and starts stacking up a loose bed of dry branches over the top of the budding flames to serve as a grill to buffer the spider legs from the fire. This way, even if the meat inside is disgusting, it won’t also be charred. He hopes.
“Maybe it’ll be like crab,” Kabru suggests. “Or lobster.”
“It won’t be.”
“You never know. The barometz tasted like crab, and it was a sheep.”
“It was a barometz.”
Kabru sighs. So much for wishful thinking. He’s not sure why he thought the captain would be interested in pretending this meal would be anything other than disgusting. There wasn’t much evidence to support that sort of fantasy, anyway.
Especially not once the first few leg fragments are balanced on the makeshift grill and the acrid stench of singed hair fills the room.
Maybe they should have done this outside in the garden and saved the room itself for eating and sleeping. But then they’d have been exposed to whatever other predators were out in the garden, and there’d have been piles of spider bodies right there to draw attention.
Well, too late now.
He’s not sure how long to leave the first batch of spider legs on the fire, but Kabru errs on the side of overdone, waiting until the shells are charred and then turning them to get the other side equally cooked before flicking them off to the floor to cool down enough to handle.
Since the result is essentially an impenetrable tube of burned chitin that presumably has some edible meat inside, he opts to smash one open with a rock rather than risk their stolen kitchen knife’s blade.
And it… does taste bad. Mithrun was right. The meat is stringy and tough, and it sticks to the inside of the shell and has to be ripped out in clumps. There’s a greasy quality to it, also. Not like something that was badly fried, but like something that produces its own oil with every chew, except that the oil is rancid.
It’s a struggle to get the first bite down, and an even fiercer struggle to keep it down, what with his imagination insisting that the spider is trying to crawl up his esophagus between every compulsive swallow.
Maybe the captain won’t notice if Kabru simply doesn’t eat any more of this. There’s a chance, right? Mithrun doesn’t care about him, after all, has no plans concerning him, couldn’t even supply the bare minimum of detail needed for that shapeshifter earlier… Kabru can simply hold the spider leg and Mithrun will ignore him long enough for him to pretend that he’s finished it and toss it out with the rest…
But no, Kabru is not so lucky.
Mithrun is dutifully chewing his own meal, but he’s also watching Kabru’s efforts with interest. It’s an unfortunate development as their time traveling together has worn on. Mithrun isn’t able to tell when he’s hungry and relies on Kabru to manage that for him, but he’s taken to managing Kabru in turn.
If Mithrun has to stop and eat something, then Kabru does, too. If Kabru tries to go without, Mithrun will dig his heels in and refuse to cooperate until Kabru relents and joins him. Sure, sometimes Mithrun gets lost in his thoughts or distracted by something and doesn’t pick up on how little Kabru eats during a meal, but this is not one of those times.
Kabru reluctantly ferries another wad of greasy spider gristle into his mouth and begins the arduous task of chewing it into submission. Maybe the next batch of spider legs should cook for less time on each side. It’s worth a try.
“How much longer do you think that familiar will take to find us?” Kabru asks as he passes another segment of spider leg over to Mithrun.
The elf sets the segment on the ground and braces it with a foot before starting the process of smashing it open with a half-brick. It’s the first of the second batch, and while cooking it less doesn’t make it any easier to get into, it does make it more prone to splattering when the exoskeleton finally does give way.
Mithrun doesn’t seem to mind the mess, but Kabru gags on his behalf and then passes him a cloth from their stolen supplies all the same.
“They said a week,” Mithrun says as he dabs at his uniform, unconcerned.
“It’s been a week.”
“Has it?”
Kabru shrugs. “Near enough. The sooner your squad picks us up, the sooner we can eat something that hasn’t tried to kill us.”
“Mm.”
“Maybe you’re not looking forward to eating real food again, Captain, but aren’t you at least tired of eating monsters?”
“I don’t mind. Though field rations are quicker.”
Right, because the speed with which a meal can be completed is the important factor.
Kabru thinks back to the last meal he had that could be rightly considered a meal. A full spread at the tavern, with the rest of his party. Good, high-quality ingredients, prepared well, served fresh, eaten in comfort, without a thought spared for the likelihood of intestinal trauma to come.
Hadn’t he said something about how they should enjoy it while they still could before going back into the dungeon?
And now he’s choking down monsters just to survive.
Kabru stares at the half-empty spider leg segment in his hands. Surely there was a decision he could have made differently somewhere along the path that led him here, but whenever he goes chasing down that decision in his mind, all he comes up with are the reasons he stands by the decisions he’s made.
Even though he loathes everything about his current predicament, if he had it all to do over again, he’d end up here all the same.
Maybe he’d have stashed some salt in his pockets, though. He doubts a bit of seasoning would save any of the monster meals they’ve had, but it definitely couldn’t have hurt.