6. Chapter 6 The Haul #2
The room settled. Bjorna had a way of shifting the energy without raising her voice. She stood at the head of the table with her arms at her sides and looked at each of us in turn.
"I overheard two parties talking at the staging area this morning while we were waiting for registration. Tomorrow night is a full moon."
Sif sat up straighter. Nott's sorting hands paused over the remaining materials. Liv's ears rotated forward.
"It is," Sif said. The flirty energy dropped out of her voice. "Which changes things."
"What does a full moon do, besides making an EMS shift much busier?" I asked.
Sif raised a brow. “Huh? Oh, that must be Earth talk.”
Bjorna looked at me. "Dungeons respond to the lunar cycle. On a full moon night, the entire system intensifies. Creatures are more aggressive. They spawn faster. Bosses hit harder and the deeper depths get nastier. It's the hardest a dungeon gets on any given cycle."
"That sounds terrible."
"I’m not finished." Bjorna sat forward. "A full moon also improves the loot.
Better drops, rarer materials, higher coin yields.
The dungeon gives more because it asks more.
Most experienced parties plan their runs around the lunar cycle.
A full moon run at Cold Hollow could double what we pulled today. "
"Double this?" I pointed at the table where the remnants of our haul still sat.
"Or close to it," Nott said. She'd set her crystal down and was giving the conversation her full attention. "The loot scaling on a full moon is well documented. The risk scaling is also well documented."
"So we'd be going back into Cold Hollow tomorrow night, on the hardest setting, the day after we barely survived the regular version."
"We didn't ‘barely survive,’" Sif said. "We won."
"You hit a wall and almost died."
"Don’t exaggerate. I broke some bones and then I got better. That's the whole point of having a healer. And what a cute healer we have."
Bjorna cut in before I could respond. "I'm not making this decision alone. We vote. That's how we handle runs that carry real risk. Everyone gets a say and we go with the majority."
Nobody said anything for a few seconds. Sif watched me. Liv's eyes went to Bjorna. Nott had turned back to the crystals in their sorted rows.
"I want to say something before we vote," I said.
"Go ahead. After your performance today, you’ve earned that right a million times over," Bjorna said.
"I watched Sif take a hit today that broke her ribs, broke her arm, and caused internal bleeding.
" I looked at Sif. She was watching me with her blue eyes steady, no performance in them.
"She's fine now. I healed everything. But if a full moon means harder hits and faster spawns and more pressure on everyone?
I'm not saying no. I'm saying I need the group to understand that I'm concerned about what happens if someone goes down like that again when the dungeon is dialed up. "
Sif didn't look away from me. "You're worried about me."
"I'm worried about all of you."
"But mostly me, because I'm the one who ate a wall today."
"You did eat a wall today. Yes."
Sif uncrossed her arms and leaned forward in her chair.
"Daniel, I went down because I was mid-step between sac clusters with my weight wrong.
That was positioning, not power. The Mother caught me because I was in a bad spot, not because we couldn't handle her.
We did handle her. We killed her. Bjorna put a sword through her chest and we walked out with the best loot we've seen in a long time. "
"She's right," Bjorna said. "What happened to Sif was a positioning mistake in a tight chamber. The party adapted, you reached her, and we finished the fight. I'm not saying a full moon run carries no risk. I'm saying we proved today that we can handle risk and recover from it."
"The loot would fund us for weeks," Nott said. Her voice was quiet. Nott didn't speak up unless she meant it. "We could take time off between runs. Restock properly. Buy materials I need for better casting."
Liv spoke from the bench. "I vote yes. We handled a boss today. I trust us to handle a harder version. If the dungeon is too intense, we just open a portal scroll and leave."
Sif spread her hands. "Obviously I vote yes. I'm not going to let a bruise keep me out of the best payday we've ever had."
I exhaled. "It was more than a bruise."
"Daniel. Did a goblin shove a staff up your ass? It must be removed so I can keep my sanity."
"Fine. More than a bruise—technically internal bleeding—but point taken. There is nothing up my ass—at least the last time I checked."
Nott nodded once. "Yes from me."
Bjorna looked at me. "That's four yes votes if you include my own vote and one hasn't voted."
I sat with it for a second. They weren't wrong.
We'd handled the Brood Mother. We'd adapted when Sif went down and we'd killed the boss and walked out with a haul that was sitting on this table in front of us.
I knew they were capable. I'd watched them prove it all day.
The hesitation came from watching someone I cared about get hurt and not wanting to put any of them in that position again when the stakes were higher.
But that was the job. And they were asking me to trust them.
"Yes," I said. "I'm in.”
Bjorna nodded. "Unanimous. We run Cold Hollow on the full moon. I'll figure out the timing and we'll decide whether we enter tomorrow evening or early the following morning. Get rest tonight."
"So Cold Hollow… again?" Sif said.
"Cold Hollow again. Unless someone has a reason to go somewhere else," Bjorna replied.
"I have a reason. Cold Hollow smells like the inside of a body and I hate it. I’m a yes to doing a dungeon on the full moon, but can we consider other locations?"
"It’s a full moon and will be a much different instance. I doubt it will smell the same, so you’re in luck. We're going to Cold Hollow." Bjorna sat down. That was it.
***
The room loosened after the vote. Sif went into her room and came back without her armor, wearing a loose shirt that hung off one shoulder.
Nott returned to cataloguing the remaining materials with the quiet focus that meant she'd be at it until someone physically moved her.
Bjorna started cleaning her sword at the table with a rag and a small tin of oil.
Liv caught my eye from the bench and tilted her head toward the door.
"I need arrows," she said. "I burned through most of my supply on the Mother and my bow took heavy use. I should get to the fletcher before they close for the evening."
"I'll go with you. I could use some fresh air anyway," I said.
"I was hoping you'd say that." Her ears went up and the tips curved toward each other, the shape they made when she was happy about something.
Sif looked up from where she was examining a small nick on one of her daggers. "Have fun shopping. Try to keep your hands to yourselves in public."
"I'll do my best," I said.
"I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to Liv. She’s the little whore."
Liv blew a raspberry at Sif on the way past. Sif blew her a kiss. Nott just shook her head as we passed.
The stairs down to the avenue were bright with late afternoon light.
The sun had dropped lower, throwing long shadows across the cobblestones and turning the smoke from the chimneys gold against the gray sky.
People were finishing their business and shutters had started to close on a few of the shops at the far end of the street.
Liv walked beside me with her bow slung across her back and her quiver hanging light on her hip. The quiver was nearly empty. She'd put everything she had into the Brood Mother fight, and it showed.
"Thank you for coming with me," she said.
"Of course. I like spending time with you. We've been with the whole group all day and it's nice to have you to myself for a minute."
She bumped her shoulder against my arm. Her ears were high and relaxed, swiveling lazily as she tracked the sounds of the avenue. Her long brown hair caught the light and the cream streaks in it turned gold.
"You were really good today," she said. "In the dungeon. When Sif went down, you didn't hesitate. You just went."
"That's what I'm there for. I would do the same for any of you."
"It's more than that and you know it. Most healers wouldn't have crossed that chamber."
"Most healers aren't bonded to a gorgeous rabbit-kin woman who would've killed me if I'd let her friend die."
She laughed, bright and real. "That's true. I would have killed you. Slowly."
"See? Self-preservation."
We turned off the avenue onto a side street that Liv seemed to know. The shops here were smaller, tucked between residential buildings, and the foot traffic thinned out. A sign with a drawn bow and arrow hung above a door halfway down the block.
Liv stopped walking.
She wasn't looking at the sign. She was looking at me, her rabbit ears locked forward and her eyes focused and warm.
"Come here," she said.
She grabbed my wrist and pulled me sideways off the street, behind a stack of crates at the mouth of an alley between two buildings. The crates blocked the view from the street. The alley was narrow and shadowed and smelled like old wood and cold stone.
She pushed me against the wall and kissed me before I could say anything. Her hands went to my chest and her body pressed against mine as she kissed me hungrily, nothing gentle about it. She'd been waiting for this.
I kissed her back. I pulled her closer by the waist and she pressed into me and made a low sound against my mouth.
She pulled back just far enough to look at me. Her ears were flat against her head, which meant she was done being patient.
"I've been thinking about this since depth two," she said.
"Depth two? That was hours ago."
"I know. I'm very sexually frustrated."
She dropped to her knees right there on the cold stone.