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Chapter Text

The dirt-paved road leading up to Mithrun’s small cottage was muddy with the onslaught of rain pouring down from the dreary grey sky, splashing onto Kabru’s boots as he bolted the short distance from the castle to Mithrun’s home. He and Mithrun had plans to meet for dinner after work, as they did several days a week. Mithrun had picked up cooking as a new hobby in recent months, noting that Kabru’s terrible cooking skills in the dungeon spoke volumes about how Kabru fed himself outside of the castle, and decided that one of them needed to learn how to cook properly. After that, having Kabru over for dinner had become a regular occurrence, spending their evenings together discussing how to better improve Mithrun’s cooking, letting Kabru vent about his busy days at the castle as the Prime Minister’s assistant and the King’s most trusted advisor, and coming up with new things to try as part of Mithrun’s ongoing search for new desires.

But tonight, Kabru’s last meeting had run late, and he was feeling guilty about making Mithrun wait. And now it felt like the weather was punishing him, too.

The warm glow of candlelight and the comforting smell of dinner greeted Kabru as he made it to Mithrun’s door. The door opened on Kabru’s third hurried knock, revealing Mithrun wearing a pair of overly large oven mitts and a handmade apron with walking mushroom patterns sewn into it, and an oversized kitchen towel was thrown over his shoulder. Despite his thoroughly soaked and freezing state, Kabru couldn’t help but smile. On one of their weekend trips to the marketplace, he had caught Mithrun stalled at a clothing merchant’s stand, staring at this particular apron longer than usual, so Kabru had returned later in the week to purchase it for his birthday last month. Mithrun had worn it for every dinner he made for Kabru since. Despite Kabru's distaste for monsters, the benign-looking little walking mushrooms reminded him of their first meeting, which felt so long ago now.

“Kabru, don’t just stand there, come inside and dry off.”

Kabru blinked. He had been lost in thought while still standing on the cold porch. He mumbled an apology as he gingerly made his way in, grimacing at the muddy footprints he was trekking onto the clean floors of the foyer. Once he had hung his soaked navy-blue coat on the coat rack and taken off his shoes, he stilled by the door and took a deep breath. The rich, spicy scent of lamb curry hung in the air, welcoming and warm. It smelled like home.

Mithrun grabbed Kabru’s wrist and led him towards the warmth of the fireplace. Taking the kitchen towel from his shoulder, he reached up and wiped the water from Kabru’s face, noting dryly, “You didn’t need to come in a thunderstorm. We could have postponed.”

Kabru smiled. “I’ve been looking forward to this all day, Captain. Besides, who would've helped you get to sleep tonight if I didn't come?”

Mithrun scoffed lightly. “It's been two years, I can manage some nights on my own. Take off your clothes. I'll fetch your spare night clothes.”

Turning on his heels, Mithrun marched off to his bedroom, leaving Kabru standing awkwardly in the middle of his small, cozy living room dripping onto the rug. Kabru flushed slightly as he stripped down to his smallclothes and hung his wet clothes on the wooden chairs that stood by the fireplace. There was no reason to be embarrassed—he and Mithrun had both undressed in front of each other plenty of times in the Dungeon—but he felt indecently exposed, standing in the middle of Mithrun's home nearly naked and shriveled with cold.

When Mithrun returned with a tallman-sized cotton tunic and loose-fitting pants, he found Kabru thoroughly chilled and shivering, huddled on the couch wrapped in the blanket that he normally slept in when he stayed the night at Mithrun's.

Since Laios had taken the crown and taken Kabru with him to the castle as his advisor, Kabru had moved from the tavern basement into his own room at the castle. But he had continued to make it a point to visit Mithrun as often as he could, most days of the week if he could manage it, before bedtime to help him sleep. On the surface, Mithrun had been doing better establishing a routine for himself, but his sleep was never quite as good as it was after one of Kabru's massages. On several occasions, Mithrun had woken up the next morning to find Kabru collapsed on his couch, apparently having been too exhausted after his long day at work and staying up late to help Mithrun to sleep to make it back to the castle. After that, he had instructed Kabru to bring a set of sleeping clothes and something to wear in court to keep at Mithrun's house, in case he needed to stay the night again. He had ended up needing those spare clothes more than once, and he was grateful for them now.

Mithrun let Kabru change into the clean, dry clothes as he went into the kitchen to prepare them each a plate of lamb curry and a cup of steaming hot tea. As he ladled the curry over rice, he heard Kabru come up behind him, close enough to feel his breath tickling the back of his neck. Mithrun felt Kabru loosen the blue ribbon tying back his messily gathered hair, combing his fingers gently through the soft silver locks and brushing back the stray strands from his face before re-tying the ribbon for him.

“I’ve seen you almost eat your hair by accident before, Captain. That’s better.”

Kabru helped Mithrun carry the plates to the table, a vase with beautiful blue azaleas decorating the center. Pattadol must have visited earlier. She liked to leave Mithrun with flowers each time she came by, insisting they brightened up the home.

“I do have something important to discuss with you today.”

Straight to the point, as always. Kabru had grown so very fond of that. His days now were full of political maneuvering, choosing his words carefully and dissecting the meaning in other people’s words. It was thrilling. He knew the dance well and excelled at it, but when he went home, dropping the masks with someone he trusted to have no such pretenses felt like a relief.

“What is it?”

“Pattadol came to see me today with news from Headquarters. Now that the Demon’s presence has not been detected for some time, the Queen has decided it is time to unseal the dungeon in Utaya. If there is no sign of the Demon, we will properly destroy the dungeon and ensure there are no monsters left. Utaya could be rebuilt after that.”

Kabru was stunned. He never thought his former village would be added back to the map; he’d assumed that, over time, Utaya would fade into history as a footnote, remembered only as the site of the last Demon-related tragedy. He certainly hadn’t thought that the Elven Queen would have any reason to send the Canaries back to a dungeon that had been sealed for the last seventeen years. There must be plans to strengthen elven influence on the continent through rebuilding Utaya.

His thoughts stilled for a moment when he caught on to one thing Mithrun had said.

“We?”

Mithrun nodded. “I elected to join the group assigned to the investigation. A ship leaves for Utaya in the next two days. I’ve instructed Pattadol and the others in my squad to stay here in Melini with you to protect the capital while I’m gone. I will return as soon as I can.”

Kabru’s heart dropped. He understood why Mithrun had a desire to go. It was the same reason he had elected to stay in Melini after the events of the Dungeon—he wanted to look for signs of the Demon’s return. And if the Canaries wanted to unseal the dungeon where the Demon last reached the surface before the near-catastrophe that occurred on the Island, it would only be natural that Mithrun wanted to be there.

“Take me with you.”

The words left Kabru’s mouth before he fully realized what he was saying. Why did he say it? The pain and loneliness that came with his memories of Utaya had softened somewhat after Melini became his second home, but the dread that fills him now at the thought of returning to his first homeland was fresh. He had never wanted to return to his hometown after all this time, scared of what the memories would trigger. But he owed it to his mother. He owed it to her memory to see her resting place one more time, and to play a part in rebuilding Utaya. With Mithrun at his side now, he may finally be strong enough to face it.

Mithrun was silent for some time, studying Kabru’s face with a stoic expression. “Are you sure you wish to come?”

Kabru’s grip tightened around his spoon, curry left forgotten. “Yes. I’ll let the court know tomorrow.”

Kabru woke with a panicked gasp in the middle of the night, the crashing thunder outside jolting him from his nightmare. He sat up on Mithrun’s couch, trying to calm his breathing while his pulse pounded in his ears. The storm had worsened after dinner, so Mithrun had insisted that Kabru stay the night after his nighttime massage. He had lain awake long after the embers of the fire in the fireplace had died out, eventually falling asleep to the intrusive memories of Utaya. The sound of thunder clapping overhead and the wind howling outside had made its way into his dreams, blending into the roars and screams of the monsters pouring out of the dungeon as he dreamt of the day Utaya fell.

He groaned as he leaned forward, knees tucked up and fingers pressing into the bridge of his nose. If he were in his own room at the castle, he would have grabbed a bottle of wine and poured himself a glass or two to help him get back to sleep. If he and Mithrun were leaving Melini in two days, he would have too much to do tomorrow. He couldn’t afford to go without sleep the rest of the night. But Mithrun didn’t keep alcohol in his home, citing it as one of his vices in the past.

Grabbing his blanket from the couch, Kabru padded softly down the hall to Mithrun’s bedroom. Mithrun always left the door open when Kabru was staying over, so Kabru made no noise as he came up to Mithrun’s sleeping form, gazing at his vulnerable face with fondness. He could feel his nerves already calming as he sat down on the floor by Mithrun’s bed. Leaning his back against the bedframe, he closed his eyes and listened to the elf’s steady breathing, synchronizing it with his own.

With a deep sigh, Kabru laid down on the ground next to Mithrun’s bed, pulling the blanket around him tightly.

“Kabru, what are you doing?”

Kabru bolted upright for the second time that night, startled by the low murmur of Mithrun’s voice above him. Mithrun’s tousled head appeared, one dark eye sleepily peering at him. A moment passed as Kabru awkwardly tried to think of an explanation as to why he was curled up on Mithrun’s floor like a scared child, before he heard Mithrun shifting in the bed.

“Come up here.”

A little confused, Kabru pushed himself up and sat down on the edge of Mithrun’s bed. “I’m sorry I woke you, Captain,” he said quietly, tucking Mithrun’s blankets back around his shoulders. “I’ll massage you back to sleep before I head back to the couch.”

Mithrun shook his head and lifted the edge of the blanket closest to Kabru. His voice was clear despite the lidded, bleary look in his eye.

“Stay. Sleep here. I assume you couldn't sleep because you were thinking about Utaya?”

Kabru couldn’t help the weary smile that crept onto his face. The captain had always been more observant than he let on. Or maybe he wasn't as good at hiding things when it came to Mithrun as he was with other people.

Sliding under the blanket next to Mithrun, he felt the tension seep from his muscles as the warmth from Mithrun's body enveloped him. Something about the situation felt so familiar. Kabru’s mind drifted back to the time when they were trapped in the Dungeon together. Even if he had never fallen asleep next to Mithrun like this back then, knowing the formidable elf was nearby as he slept had been a comfort. The pull of sleep now came faster than expected. His eyelids drooped as the heavy fog of sleep settled over him, and he wasn't sure if he actually heard the next words or if he dreamt them.

“I will make sure you are safe this time.”

Chapter Text

The salt-laden flecks of sea foam in the wind whipped against Kabru’s face as he stood at the back of the ship, leaning on the guardrail and watching the kingdom of Melini drift further into the distance. The last two days had passed in a blur. He had been so busy making preparations for the trip, finding Yaad enough help in the court during his absence, and ensuring that Laios was adequately prepared for the several diplomatic meetings that would take place in Kabru’s absence, that he hadn’t had any time to reflect on how he felt about his decision to accompany Mithrun to the Western Continent. He dropped his head onto his arms folded on the wooden railing with an uneasy sigh. Now that he was on the ship bound for Utaya, he had three weeks to dwell on it with not much else to do in the meantime to distract him.

At least he had stashed away several bottles of wine in his bags to help with the sleeping problem he was bound to start having again.

Kabru glanced over his shoulder when he heard light footsteps approaching from behind him, already knowing who it was. There were very few elves on this ship leaving from Melini, and none of the other tallmen sailors and merchants had Mithrun’s slight build.

Mithrun had a stick of something gnarled and brown covered in a hard, honey-colored glaze in his hands. Kabru’s gut churned as his mind went to the sugar-glazed mandrakes Laios had once described, unprompted and in nauseating detail, during a nostalgic tangent in the middle of one of their work meetings. Mithrun looked up at Kabru curiously and held up the knobbly abomination to Kabru’s pale face.

“You don’t look so good. Senshi told me candied ginger works well for seasickness.”

Kabru blinked, then sagged in relief. “Thank the gods, Captain. I thought that was a mandrake.”

He smiled at the elf, whose wind-swept hair was flying every which way and sticking to the shiny surface of the ginger. After pulling Mithrun’s hand down and plucking off the stray gray hairs stubbornly attached to the glaze, Kabru guided the elf back to their sleeping quarters.

“Let’s get out of the wind and tie up your hair.”

Kabru awoke in the middle of the night again on their first night at sea. The pale glow of moonlight streamed in from the narrow window at the end of the small cabin that he shared with Mithrun, illuminating the room just enough for Kabru to see that the shadows of monsters looming over the mutilated bodies of his fellow villagers weren’t actually there. His stomach was in a knot, threatening to eject the contents of his supper of dried meats and bread mixing uneasily with the alcohol he had snuck on board.

Earlier that night, when Mithrun was in their shared restroom cleaning up for bed, Kabru had quietly downed a glass of dwarven wine before changing into his night clothes. He appreciated the dwarves’ taste for strong liquor when it came to using alcohol as a sleep aid. He knew Mithrun would not judge him—he never did—but he hid the drinking from him anyway. In light of all the good habits and routines Kabru had been trying to encourage in Mithrun, he felt like a hypocrite, telling his friend not to rely on potions to sleep when he himself relied on alcohol to do the same.

Kabru sighed, staring up at the bottom of the bunk above him where Mithrun was sleeping. He was surprised by the sudden urge that came over him to seek closeness again, remembering how safe and comfortable he felt in Mithrun’s bed several nights ago.

No… What was he thinking? The line between platonic affection and a deeper emotional attachment was already becoming too blurred for Kabru when it came to the elf, and it wouldn’t be right to take advantage of the fact that Mithrun didn't have a desire to set those kinds of boundaries with those he trusted. He sat up with a huff of frustration, mostly at himself. He needed air.

He pulled the thick, slightly scratchy woolen blanket from his bottom bunk and wrapped it around him before he quietly snuck out of the cabin, taking care to step around the creakiest parts of the wooden floor to avoid waking his companion.

The chilly wind lifted Kabru’s thick curls as he stepped out onto the deck, filling his lungs with a pleasant burn and clearing his mind. The expanse of stars lighting up the night sky was even more beautiful here in the quiet solitude of the ocean, away from the bustle and noise of the castle. Still, it felt somewhat lonely. Even if he had always had a hard time letting people get too close, Kabru had never grown used to being alone.

“You’re up late.”

Mithrun. He hadn’t been in his bunk after all.

Kabru walked over to the small figure sitting at the end of the upper deck hugging his knees to his chest and sat down next to his friend.

“You couldn’t sleep either?”

Mithrun nodded. “I’ve grown used to routine on the surface, so it will take time for me to adjust. The last time I was on a ship for a voyage this long, I was sailing from the Northern Central Continent to the Island. You and I met soon after that.”

Kabru smiled. “It feels like such a long time ago, doesn’t it?”

Mithrun turned his face up to the clear night sky, the sea of stars reflecting in his dark eye like a mirror to the cosmos. “It truly does. Before I came to the Island, I never would have imagined my life the way it is now. I had no capacity to imagine anything for myself resembling peace. To want anything for myself other than revenge and closure. No one in the thirty-five years since the beginning of my recovery had faith that I could, either. Not until I met you.”

Kabru felt a strange tightness in his chest. He opened his mouth to say something, but he found he couldn't quite form the words. Words for the anger he felt at the people who were supposed to help Mithrun all those years that gave up on him, the sorrow he felt that it had taken decades for Mithrun to realize he had worth outside of being a weapon and a soldier… He heard none of those emotions in Mithrun's voice. He had no desire to be treated with the basic decency and compassion any person should be deserving of.

Instead, he got up to move behind Mithrun and sat back down on the deck with his bent legs stretched forward to bracket the smaller man between them. He opened the blanket that was still draped around his shoulders and leaned forward to pull Mithrun close, wrapping his arms loosely around the elf’s cold upper torso as he enclosed them both in the warmth of the heavy fabric.

“I hope this is alright, Captain. You're freezing up here, and the blanket isn't very big.”

He saw Mithrun tilt his head curiously toward him in the periphery of his vision, but Kabru kept his eyes trained on the silvery reflection of the moon in the water in front of them, constantly changing in the parting waters left in the ship’s wake.

“I don't mind.”

“Did you choose to join this dungeon investigation because you're still looking for closure with the Demon?”

Mithrun turned his gaze forward again to the glittering ripples of the sea. His body relaxed, leaning slightly backwards into Kabru’s chest, perhaps subconsciously seeking the heat of Kabru's warmer tallman body.

“In a way, yes. But not for revenge. For… redemption, perhaps. Had I worked harder at my recovery after the rescue from my dungeon, I could have rejoined the Canaries sooner and prevented the tragedy of Utaya. So many lives were senselessly lost because I wasn’t strong enough to stand back up until after the fact.

When Pattadol told me about the mission, I realized that I had developed a new desire. It won't erase the failures of my past, but I want to see the place that inspired my recovery and to ensure that the dungeon is fully destroyed, so that Utaya never has to experience the same tragedy again.”

Kabru’s arms tightened around Mithrun before he caught himself, suppressing the conflicting emotions warring inside him. Considering the last nearly four decades of complete and utter apathy outside of his single-minded pursuit of the Demon, Mithrun's growth had been exponential in the last two years in comparison. The little desires that have taken root quietly but steadily in this time—such as his desire to grow his own vegetables, to clean out the remaining dungeons in Melini of dangerous monsters, to avoid Kabru’s attempts at cooking—filled Kabru with pride. But Mithrun’s budding desires were still in their infancy, and more often than not, Kabru had to spell out the hints of want he saw in Mithrun's actions or choices before the elf could recognize the presence of desire in himself.

Kabru, on the other hand, had no such limitations on his ability to desire. A strange bond, filled with mutual respect and care for each other, had formed between them during the six days they spent alone in the depths of the Dungeon together, and over the next two years, Kabru had found himself looking for more and more reasons to spend time with the former captain. The day he realized Mithrun was always the person he wanted to see most at the end of a long day at the castle, he was forced to acknowledge the possibility that what he felt for Mithrun was more than just friendship. It was becoming harder to ignore the twinges of longing he felt for the man, but this was something he could not and would not push onto Mithrun until he knew for a fact that his own desires would not influence Mithrun's feelings.

He would not tell Mithrun that one of the reasons he had made the choice to go to Utaya with him, despite having refused to go anywhere near a dungeon since the Demon fell, was that he had already lost the most important person in his life to Utaya’s dungeon once. Now that someone else was slowly becoming the most important person in his life, he wasn't going to let Utaya take that person away from him, too.

An elegant ship decorated with a golden skylark figurehead was already docked in the harbor when Kabru and Mithrun's passenger ship reached the shoreline of the Western Continent. Reaching Utaya’s dungeon containment site took another half day by wagon. The land where Kabru’s hometown once stood was unrecognizable. The Utaya of Kabru’s childhood had been vibrant, colorful, full of life. The memories of the friendly street vendors and noisy taverns that used to line the main road they were traveling down haunted Kabru's thoughts as he took in the now barren landscape.

The sun was already high in the sky by the time Kabru and Mithrun arrived at the site of the sealed dungeon, where Flamela’s team had gathered waiting for them to begin. After they unloaded their gear from the wagon, Mithrun strode toward his former Vice Captain, who was standing with her arms crossed at the edge of the makeshift campsite containing several Canary squads’ worth of soldiers.

“Captain Flamela. Thank you for waiting.”

Flamela scowled as she turned to face him. “Captain Mithrun. Pattadol mentioned you wouldn't be bringing your old crew. A decision I couldn’t begin to understand, but why is the tallman here?” Her red eyes narrowed as she took a closer look at Kabru. “Isn’t this the tallman adventurer I had to pull you off of back on the Island?”

Kabru coughed into his hand, poorly disguising his surprised snort. He couldn’t believe Flamela remembered that. Mithrun slapping the sense back into him in the final confrontation against the Demon was just what he needed at the time. He was surprisingly effective at pulling Kabru out of his spirals, something even his former adventuring team hadn’t been able to do well despite knowing him much longer.

“I am no longer captain. It’s just Mithrun now. And this is Kabru, the lone survivor of Utaya,” Mithrun said. “He is here at my request. He kept me alive in the dungeon on the Island when I was separated from my squad.”

Flamela’s scowl deepened. “Only after he pushed you in. Regardless, bringing your geomancer would’ve been more prudent. Another squad with a geomancer was meant to be here as well, but they’ve run into some delays finishing up their dungeon investigation in the Southern Central Continent. They’re expected to land in a week, but many of the squads here have been on consecutive assignments and want to go home sooner.”

“A geomancer would certainly be valuable,” Mithrun conceded. “But given that the current seal is a magical barrier, we should be able to manage without one until after we’ve emptied the dungeon and are ready to collapse the entrance.”

Flamela considered this a moment, looking over the dozen elves she had at her disposal. “Considering the number of monsters that must’ve escaped to the surface to result in the number of casualties faced in the Utaya incident, the dungeon should have been reasonably empty by the time the barrier was put in place. We should be able to begin the mission with our numbers here.”

Mithrun nodded his head. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Gesturing for Kabru to follow, Mithrun walked away from the elven camp and out of earshot of the nearby soldiers before he spoke again. “Kabru, do you still want to enter the dungeon with us?”

Kabru looked toward the center of the containment site, where a large, pearlescent silver barrier shimmered under the heat of the midday sun. The seal must be covering a very large hole in the ground, where the dungeon had breached the surface and released monsters large enough to destroy an entire village. He swallowed thickly and straightened his back, his blazing blue eyes holding Mithrun's gaze steadily. “Yes, I do.”

“Then stay near me or Flamela at all times, unless I tell you otherwise. The dungeon may be near empty as Flamela suspected, but dungeons are unpredictable. And there will be no resurrection magic in this dungeon, so do not engage larger monsters on your own.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Mithrun’s tone softened a bit, losing that edge of quiet commanding authority it held in front of Flamela. “You also know full well that I am no longer a captain. You may address me how you like at home, but for this mission, it will cause Flamela less confusion if you address me by name.”

Within the hour, Flamela had delegated all roles for the mission to her charges, and the barrier mages were in their places surrounding the seal. A barrier of this size required substantial mana to create and to take down, and each of the five elves standing around the perimeter with staff in hand was closely flanked by another elf chosen for their combat abilities. Two beastmen prowled the outer edge of the perimeter, and Kabru and Mithrun stood a short distance behind.

On Flamela’s command, the mages began to chant in unison. The barrier began to flicker and shift, and as the spell strengthened, the edges slowly dissolved inward like a flame licking into the edges of a piece of parchment. Just beneath the haziness of the disintegrating barrier lay the gaping maw in the earth where the dungeon once breached the surface.

The frontline elves stepped back with noses wrinkled as stagnant air wafted out from the depths of the dungeon below, and even Kabru, the weakest magic user present within a half-mile radius, could feel the powerful wave of mana pouring out onto the surface with it.

Kabru placed a hand on his scabbard and looked to Mithrun, forcing a falsely confident brightness onto his face. “Ready to make some new dungeon memories together, Capt—-ah, Mithrun?”

Mithrun’s lips curved upwards in an amused smile before the ground shook with a deafening roar.

Kabru’s mind froze in a panicked daze. Mithrun's voice, sounding so far away now through the fog clouding his mind, was yelling something about moving away from the edge of the dungeon's opening. The shouts of the other elves were unintelligible against the sudden sound of high-pitched screeches and cackles piercing the air, accompanied by the gusts of multiple pairs of flapping wings rushing past him. A large flock of harpies had emerged from the dungeon’s entrance, one sinking its talons into a nearby soldier’s shoulder and lifting him bodily into the air. A moment later, the elf was falling through the sky with a yelp after one of Flamela’s magic daggers shot through the air and pierced the monster through the heart, his fall broken by a werewolf waiting below.

Despite the onslaught of aerial attacks around him, Kabru remained frozen in place by the edge of the dungeon. The roar he heard earlier had chilled him to the bone, bringing back unwanted memories of the first thing he heard before the monsters attacked the village in his childhood. He could not tear his eyes away from the depths of the darkness below, where a pair of yellow reptilian eyes with narrowed pupils stared back at him in hunger.

A column of fire burst from the bowels of the dungeon, taking a handful of harpies out of the air like moths caught in a flame. Kabru fell back with a horrified gasp, scrambling out of the way as a full-grown, angry Green Dragon clawed its way out of the dungeon's opening, dark smoke trailing from its flared nostrils. It wasn’t until his leg gave out under him a short distance later that he noticed the searing pain in his lower leg. He instinctively reached down for the steel plate armor on his shins and yanked his hand back with a sharp hiss when he realized it was burning hot. Some of the licking flames must have gotten too close.

“Kabru, watch out!”

Kabru looked up just in time to see Mithrun appear out of thin air in front of him with brows furrowed and lips pulled tight. A slender hand grabbed his shoulder roughly with surprising strength, and a dizzying moment later, Kabru found himself and Mithrun tumbling to the ground several yards to the side of the dragon’s haunches, just out of its line of sight as razor sharp teeth snapped down on the spot where Kabru had been moments ago.

Finding nothing in its jaws, the enormous lizard-like monster snarled as it turned its attention towards the Canaries, the ground seemingly about to crack under its weight as it continued to advance. Massive wings tipped with a deadly claw unfurled, blocking out the sun, as it roared its challenge at the group of elves before it.

“Why is a dragon so close to the surface?” Kabru panted, ripping off the leather straps hugging his calves to remove the plate armor. Mithrun dropped to one knee next to him and reached out to lay a hand over the shiny, reddened skin underneath, and muttered a healing spell before he responded.

“The dungeon’s usual layout was likely altered or destroyed all those years ago when the Demon nearly broke out of the dungeon, allowing the monsters to escape to the surface. The monsters left in the dungeon may not be found in places you would normally expect. The Green Dragon must have been drawn to the silver tint of the barrier’s magic, especially when the sunlight shone through it from above, and built its nest nearby. And harpies often lurk around the lairs of larger monsters, trying to feed off the carcasses of their prey.”

Kabru’s nose wrinkled. “You know, sometimes you remind me a bit of Laios.”

Mithrun looked up at the towering beast in front of them, explosion spells and Flamela’s daggers deflecting off its armor-like scales as it whipped its long, muscular tail across the ground, flinging elves in all directions on impact like bowling pins. “Green Dragons have extremely high magic and weapon resistance, and they are particularly agile. Laios’s knowledge of monsters is something he has over the Canaries, despite our experience.”

Reaching across Kabru’s waist and grabbing the hilt of his sword, Mithrun stood and raised the blade in front of him with his eye pinned on the underside of the dragon’s chin, waiting for an opening once the beast was still enough to aim a killing blow. But before he had a chance to teleport away Kabru’s primary weapon far out of reach, the ground shifted again.

The next few moments seemed to pass in front of Kabru like the events of a half-forgotten dream.

The commotion on the surface had caught the attention of the inhabitants of the dungeon below. The influx of fresh air and fresh sources of mana, the first instance of such in nearly two decades, must have drawn in and invigorated the beasts closest to the dungeon’s seal. Kabru’s eyes widened in abject horror as several giant centipedes made their way onto the surface, clearly agitated and appearing to be escaping from something. The onslaught of attacks from the increasingly overwhelmed Canaries seemed to further provoke them, and their pincer-like jaws opened to spit caustic acid that ate through spider-silk armor like it was nothing more than mere paper.

The cries of pain that accompanied the sickly, acrid smell of corrosive poison and damaged flesh brought Kabru back to one of the last memories of his mother. She and Kabru had been trying to flee the village after monsters emerged from the ground when they ran into one of these horribly overgrown, mutated arthropods, staring at them with its small, milky grey eyes. Little Kabru had been too terrified to continue running, so she had wrapped herself protectively around her only child’s crouched, shaking form, shielding him from the same acid that burned through her back.

Kabru’s teeth clenched and he blinked hard, willing away the tears that blurred the edges of his vision. He wasn’t going to stand there, helpless and of no use to anyone, like he did before. Despite his aversion to monster trivia, he had once asked Milsiril how to kill a giant centipede, wondering how that moment in Utaya could have gone differently if he had been a bit stronger and braver. Looking at the centipede reared up in front of him now, he could see the soft, fleshy spot on the underside of its belly where the hard chitin of its exoskeleton left an area exposed for detecting temperature and moisture levels on the ground. Mithrun had left Kabru’s sword on the ground next to him, already having teleported away and was standing on another centipede’s back, untying his cape and sending it deep into the segmented body of the monster, partially severing its long body in two. Picking up his sword and drawing it back, Kabru braced himself to rush forward for the monster's weak spot.

Before he could, the centipede made a frantic clicking sound with its mandibles and turned to flee. Stunned, Kabru lowered his sword slightly. Was standing his ground against this monster all it would have taken to save his mother?

Another bellowing roar from the Green Dragon shook him out of that train of thought. The beast had turned from the army of Canaries still relentlessly striking at its thick hide to look back towards the entrance of the dungeon, where another massive, elongated reptilian monster had pulled itself onto the surface. The dark scales covering the wurm’s entire body made it difficult to distinguish its eyes, set deep above its rounded snout and dimly glinting in the sunlight. Its vision was clearly weak, similar to the centipedes it was hunting, but the sounds of the fight above the dungeon had been enough to follow its prey to the surface. On the other hand, the Green Dragon’s vision was quite sharp, and the sight of another dragon in its territory enraged the apex predator. Already thoroughly aggravated by the sudden disappearance of its nest’s beloved silver rooftop and the harassment from the elven pests at its feet, the Green Dragon opened its jaws and let forth another stream of fire.

The wurm recoiled at the oncoming searing heat and light of the Green Dragon’s attack, and it opened its mouth to release a breath of poisonous gas in defense. Kabru caught sight of Mithrun—his good eye widened in fear—some distance away crouched on the carcass of a fallen centipede, just before the flames ignited the toxic dark smoke on contact, detonating in a thunderous explosion.

Kabru's vision went white, blinded by the fiery brightness of the explosion. He could hear nothing but a painful high-pitched ringing in his ears as he felt the ground crumble and give way beneath him under the force of the blast. His stomach lurched into his throat before his mind caught up with the fact that he was falling. Adrenaline wiped every rational thought from his mind, leaving only the memory of falling into the depths of the Dungeon with Mithrun in his arms two years ago, his body recognizing the same powerless sensation as gravity pulled him down into the darkness below.

Chapter Text

Kabru woke to the sound of his name and a hand gently patting his cheek. The voice sounded familiar, but so muffled and far away. His body ached all over, and the sharp rubble underneath him poked painfully into his back, but… he was alive.

Blinking sluggishly, his eyes began to focus on the blurry face hovering over him, the features gradually sharpening until he realized he was looking into Mithrun's face. His eyebrows were drawn, and his mouth was moving—Kabru could hear him trying to ask him something—but the words were muted, overshadowed by the ringing in his ears. Kabru shook his head and touched his hand to his ear, and Mithrun's face cleared in understanding. Reaching out to cup the sides of Kabru's face, he closed his eyes and murmured something, and the cool tickle of healing magic washed away the symptoms of the partial hearing loss caused by the blast.

“Is that better?”

Mithrun's voice held a note of relief, but Kabru could only focus on the lines under his dark eyes, the exhaustion evident on his pale face.

“Mithrun, you fell in too? How many others—?”

Grunting from the soreness in his shoulders, he pushed himself up on his elbows to look around. Darkness stretched around them in the dimly lit dungeon, illuminated only by Mithrun's hovering mage lights. Further above, Kabru could see the crumbled chunks of earth and rocks caved in over the opening to the surface. It was eerily quiet.

“Are we alone?”

Mithrun nodded. “The others were further away from the entrance of the dungeon, so I doubt anyone else fell in with us. I teleported to you right before the explosion and cast a barrier spell. Defensive magic is not my specialty, and it doesn't compare to Pattadol’s barrier magic or that of the other barrier mages here in Utaya, but it bought us a couple moments before the ground collapsed. Falling into the dungeon was what allowed us to survive the explosion.”

Kabru felt ashamed. This was the second time he had put Mithrun's life at risk and trapped him in a dungeon, even if it hadn't been intentional this time.

“I'm sorry. If I had stayed near you or Flamela as you asked, we wouldn't be the only ones trapped down here. This is my fault.”

Mithrun laid his hand lightly on Kabru's knee. “I don't know yet if the others survived the explosion or the monster attacks. Of the soldiers here, my fairy only has an established connection with Flamela’s, and she hadn't responded to my earlier calls. The battle against the monsters must not have concluded yet.”

Mithrun made a gesturing motion against his neck with a quiet tch tch sound, and a small fairy appeared from behind his silver hair.

The little homunculus flew in a wide loop around Kabru’s head with a cheerful jingling noise before settling on Mithrun’s shoulder, leaning against the elf’s face and gazing up at him affectionately with large, blue eyes.

Kabru tried to stifle the heat he felt rising in his face. The little traitor, airing his feelings like that without shame. When he was first educated about fairies and how they take on the physical and personality traits of their makers, he had not taken into account that a fairy made in his image would also be inexplicably drawn to a particular dispassionate elf. Though to be fair, he himself had not been aware of his growing feelings at the time.

He remembered the day Pattadol came up to him in the castle, face pink and flustered, begging for his help to make Mithrun a new fairy. The multiple standard issue fairies that Canary Headquarters had granted Mithrun had been all damaged or lost due to the captain’s carelessness, and now that he was no longer working solely under the Elven Queen’s orders, he was not allowed to request any more. Pattadol hadn’t provided Kabru any information about how exactly he could help, so one night, when Kabru was over at Mithrun’s place massaging his feet before bed, he had rather innocently asked Mithrun what he needed from him to help him make a new fairy. Mithrun had reached over to his nightstand, handed him a flask and a small bottle of lubricant as casually as he had handed Kabru his plate of roasted pork belly earlier at dinner, and sat on his bed waiting for Kabru to produce.

Once the process of fairy creation had been explained in detail to Kabru, he had pushed Mithrun out the door of his own bedroom to collect his mortified thoughts in privacy. He had stood self-consciously by the bed with his belt loosened and flask in hand, wondering how volunteering to be a middle-aged elf’s caretaker had led to this. Sitting on Mithrun's bed with his pants down felt disrespectful, but standing felt awkward, and he was already finding it impossible to imagine how he would get hard knowing Mithrun was still standing just outside the door, having no desire to go anywhere or acknowledge other people's desire for privacy.

Kabru emerged from Mithrun's room twenty long minutes later, his face the shade of an overripe tomato and holding an adequately filled flask. He had thrust the flask into Mithrun's arms without making eye contact, muttering a curt promise to return the next day to feed it blood and to properly finish his massage, and fled back to the castle.

He had cornered Pattadol inside her office the next day, asking why she had asked him of all people to provide the human ingredients for Mithrun's fairy. It had taken quite a bit of prodding before she sheepishly admitted, “I hoped that if the fairy reminded him of someone who meant something to him, he'd be more likely to take better care of it.” Which had sounded hopelessly naive at the time, but to her credit, Mithrun has not needed a new fairy since.

“Captain Flamela. Are you there?”

Kabru pulled himself back to the present, watching the fairy's facial features go slack before taking on Flamela’s stern expression.

“Mithrun! You're alive. We couldn't find you or that tallman up here after the monsters were all taken down. What happened, where are you?”

“We fell into the dungeon. We're alright, but the opening to the surface caved in from the explosion.”

There was a pause on the other end before they heard Flamela speak again. “Unfortunately, we were also forced to reseal the dungeons entrance with magic. Our forces cannot afford to face another round of monsters for now. There have been no fatalities yet, but many are badly injured. Once the geomancer arrives with the other squad and the wounded have had time to recuperate, we should be able to remove the debris at the dungeon's entrance.”

Mithrun nodded. “Understood. In the meantime, Kabru and I will continue the dungeon investigation as planned and will report our findings through the fairy.”

Kabru was suddenly distracted by a glint of light reflecting from something further behind them in the shadows. After Flamela ended the call, Kabru scrambled down from their bed of rubble and gestured for Mithrun to follow him over to a large, crater-like collection of rocks just beyond the perimeter of the area illuminated by mage lights. In the middle of the ring rested a single egg, coming up to Kabru’s knee in height and covered in many small scales that shimmered in the soft light like iridescent precious metals. Mithrun had been right, after all. The Green Dragon had really made its nest below the barrier.

The egg was even heavier than it looked. It would make for a sufficiently filling and nutritious meal for Mithrun, who clearly needed rest and food to recuperate his mana. After nearly throwing his back out trying to pick it up, Kabru decided to roll it along the ground and push it carefully over the rocky perimeter of the nest to Mithrun, who had been investigating something along the outside of the nest. As Kabru approached, Mithrun knelt down and picked up an adventurer's pack, complete with a bedroll and a cooking pot tied to the outside. Adventurer gear found so close to a dragon’s nest most likely meant that the original owner had been eaten or killed. Kabru was grateful that they had not been trapped in the dungeon with that particular beast, at least.

“Let’s find somewhere more secluded to rest and make you something to eat.”

The cavernous tunnel leading out of the portion of the dungeon containing the dragon’s nest quickly opened into an expansive floor containing a beautiful ecosystem that Kabru had not expected to find in a sealed dungeon no longer powered by the Demon's infinite magic. A large lake stretched in front of them, lit from above by luminescent bulb-like flowers blooming from vines stretched across the stone ceiling. The soft white glow of the orbs dotting across the cavern reflected off the still surface of the lake, twinkling like stars.

Kabru watched with curiosity as a treasure insect flitted against a florescent bulb directly above their heads, attracted to the only natural light sources in the room. Curiosity turned to slightly disgusted surprise when the petals of the bulb opened wide, and a barbed tentacle shot forward and pulled the unsuspecting insect into the center of the flower to be digested. He reached up and grabbed Mithrun's fairy (whom he affectionately called “Little Kabru”) out of the air above them, placing him carefully on his shoulder away from reach of the carnivorous plants.

They settled on a small room tucked into the stone walls of the dungeon near the lake to set up camp for the next several hours. At least they would be out of direct sight of most monsters nearby, and the walls would keep the heat of their campfire in. Despite the dungeon having its own source of light deep underground, no access to sunlight made the dungeon environment quite chilly.

Camping near a water source also had the added benefit of attracting unsuspecting monsters to add to their dinner menu. Kabru ran into a walking mushroom while filling a waterskin at the lake and skewered it onto his sword to bring it back to Mithrun, who had used his cape and teleportation magic to remove the top of the dragon egg’s shell and was stirring the contents inside with—to Kabru's chagrin—the scabbard of Kabru's sword.

Nausea bubbled in Kabru's gut at the thought of having to eat monsters again to survive, but he reminded himself that he had kept Mithrun alive once this way. And as disgusting as Kabru’s roasted walking mushroom had been back in their first Dungeon, watching Mithrun properly cut up the mushroom this time and cook it over the fire with scrambled dragon egg brought back fond memories for Kabru of the first meal he ever shared with the former Captain.

“If you burn it just a bit, it'll be just like old times.”

“I may lack the desire to eat good food, but I do still have my taste buds,” Mithrun chided lightly as he handed Kabru a bowl and a fork. Despite their situation, they found themselves reminiscing fondly about their last dungeon adventure over the warm meal by the fire.

“Do you remember the time we ran into the Changelings?” Mithrun asked.

“Of course I do. I can’t remember the last time I saw a tallman quite that rugged.”

“You got upset with me that I didn’t wash off all the spores at the time. I think it was because I didn’t mind being a tallman.”

“I had figured that much. You didn’t mind the idea of turning into a mushroom, either.”

“It wasn’t just that. I had spent my whole life before my dungeon trying to be the perfect elf, the perfect son my family wanted me to be. After my dungeon, I was never fully accepted back into elven society. My shortcomings and my undesirable appearance… all of it made me less of a person. But among tallmen, I thought maybe all of that might matter less.”

“Your lack of desires and appearance have never made you less of a person, Mithrun. Never. Anyone who treated you that way never deserved you. And I guarantee you would’ve turned many heads in Melini if people had seen your tallman form on the surface. But to me—well, I’ve always thought you were beautiful, just as you are now.”

Mithrun gazed at Kabru steadily, as if trying to discern any hint of dishonesty in his expression. When he found none, his face relaxed into a small smile. “I was wrong. Tallmen aren’t necessarily more tolerant than elves. I had assumed such because the first tallman I had spent any significant time with was the one person who accepted me just as I am, who treated me as his equal without expecting anything in return. But that kindness and understanding is something uniquely you, Kabru. I am grateful for it.”

Kabru, suddenly feeling shy at the unexpected compliment, didn’t know what to say. He hoped he hadn’t already said too much.

“And just so you know, you would’ve been quite popular back on the Northern Central Continent as an elf, too,” Mithrun casually added. “My cousin Thelvyn would have propositioned you for certain if he had laid eyes on you.”

After dinner, Kabru cleaned up the cookware in the lake and unrolled their single bedroll, insisting on taking first watch to let Mithrun recuperate his mana. But despite employing every technique he knew to relax Mithrun's stiff muscles, Mithrun remained tense, and his feet were still cold to the touch.

After checking to make sure Mithrun was fully tucked in, Kabru asked, “Are you still cold? I can light the campfire again to warm up the room a bit.”

Mithrun murmured, “No, leave the fire out. A source of light is more likely to attract monsters. Sharing body heat is a safer way to maintain body temperature in a dungeon. When a dungeon is as cold as this one, Lycion would sometimes change into his werewolf form and curl up around the rest of the squad to keep us warm when we sleep.”

Kabru paused, then slowly unbuckled his armor. “There's not a lot of space in the bedroll for both of us, though…”

“Get inside the bedroll, Kabru. It'll warm you up, too.”

Kabru obediently slid into the bedroll and settled behind Mithrun, pulling the elf into his chest. The top of his silver head tucked comfortably under Kabru's chin on their lumpy pillow, and Kabru could feel Mithrun's body becoming pliant as his subtle shivering slowed. The shared warmth was working too well to relax Kabru as well. It was going to be difficult to stay awake to remain on watch if Mithrun didn't fall asleep soon so he could detach himself.

As Kabru mulled over his predicament, he felt Mithrun shift closer in his arms, and he had to stifle a groan as Mithrun's ass pushed up against his groin. Dear gods, why.

Kabru closed his eyes and recited Laios’s list of favorite monsters to himself in order of size, willing his mind away from the inappropriate response rising in his body. If there was any confusion left in his heart about the exact nature of his feelings for the elf in his arms, there was not much to question now. Kabru feared Mithrun would come to the same realization—despite Mithrun's lack of interest in analyzing social cues, he definitely picked up on them, and Kabru's earlier admission of attraction certainly wouldn't help plead his case.

To his relief, Mithrun's steady breathing began to slow, and Kabru knew that he had finally fallen asleep. Sighing, he peeled himself away from Mithrun to sit upright and leaned his back against the wall behind the pillow, leaving his legs resting in the bedroll to continue providing Mithrun with a bit of body heat while he kept watch. Little Kabru, whom Mithrun still had not recalled, yawned sweetly and looked up at him with bright, curious eyes from its spot on the bedroll under Mithrun's chin. Kabru’s heart swelled with fondness when he saw a little piece of red cloth wrapped around the fairy's neck like a scarf. Mithrun must have torn off a piece of the old handkerchief they found in the adventurer pack, trying to make sure Little Kabru stayed warm. Maybe Pattadol had been right about Mithrun, after all.

As he watched Little Kabru nuzzle back into the hollow of Mithrun's neck, Kabru thought to himself: perhaps someday he would come clean and tell Mithrun how he felt. While he was terrified of complicating the close relationship they had now, he hated hiding things from him. But now was not the time—being trapped in a dungeon together meant that Kabru would not be able to give Mithrun space if he needed it. For now, he was content with the way things were.

Chapter Text

Kabru awoke with a start and almost smacked the back of his head against the stone wall he was leaning against. He must've dozed off for a bit while on watch. Little Kabru was sitting upright on the bedroll and looking towards the room's entrance, seemingly alerted to something outside.

“Did you hear something, Little Kabru?” Kabru whispered to his mini doppelganger. The fairy nodded and flew over to Kabru to perch on his shoulder.

Just as Kabru was sliding his legs out of the bedroll to get up and look around, he heard a snuffling noise just outside the walls of their doorless room. Better to wake Mithrun, just in case. He reached out and gently shook Mithrun's shoulder.

Mithrun took longer than usual to rouse, grunting quietly as he blinked the sleep out of his eyes. Had Kabru underestimated how low Mithrun's mana levels had gotten earlier? When he was conscious enough to recognize Kabru's form leaning over him, Kabru grabbed his sheathed sword and raised a finger to his lips to indicate silently to Mithrun to stay quiet. However, instead of seeing acknowledgement in his face, Mithrun's dark eyes narrowed and flicked towards the door. Before Kabru could do anything at all, a slender hand reached out of the bedroll and touched his chest. One blink later, Kabru found himself suddenly teleported outside the room past the open entrance, reappearing right next to something big, white, and furry.

A loud yelp at his waist told Kabru that the shapeshifter he had nearly been teleported into had also been caught by surprise. Sputtering, he fumbled for his sword, but the spooked monster had already turned tail and fled before he had a chance to draw his weapon. The confrontation was over before it had even started. Kabru's arms dropped limply to his side with relief when it was clear the monster wasn't coming back. Mithrun hadn’t been this dangerously impulsive in a long time, but maybe he hadn't fully woken up yet. At least there had been no harm done. As Kabru started back toward camp, he called out in exasperation, “Mithrun, what was that? I thought I made it clear the day we met that humans shouldn't be used as projectiles!”

When he returned to their campsite, he found an exact copy of himself standing next to two Mithruns, complete with an illusion of Little Kabru flitting around Fake Kabru's head. This imposter had his hand on one Mithrun’s shoulder, and when Kabru entered the room, his copy stepped in front of the smaller man (whom Kabru mentally dubbed Mithrun A) protectively and placed a hand on his sword. “Be careful, Captain. That copy is an illusion created by the shapeshifter.”

Before Kabru could respond, Mithrun A placed a hand on the illusion’s back, and it vanished, appearing a second later half-imbedded in the dungeon wall before it collapsed into a pile of leaves that fluttered to the ground. Kabru was flabbergasted. How did Mithrun know which was the fake so quickly?

The other Mithrun (now relegated to Mithrun B) spoke, reading Kabru’s bewildered face correctly. “When I woke up and saw you leaning over me, there was another Kabru standing right behind you. One of you had to be a monster, so when I noticed movement nearby, I sent the closest one into the shapeshifter outside the room. If I teleported the real one, the shapeshifter would be scared off. If I sent the fake, the illusion would dissipate.”

Kabru had to admit, that was impressively clever on Mithrun’s part, but part of him still bristled at the reckless plan. “That’s so risky! What if you had been wrong and left me suffocating in a wall?”

Mithrun A shrugged. “I’ve dealt with shapeshifters this way before, the method works.”

Kabru looked back and forth between the two elves. They were perfect carbon copies of the other, as expected, and both had said things the real Mithrun would say. He knew Mithrun far too well at this point in their friendship. Every line of Mithrun’s face, the manner in which he held himself, the cadence of his speech… all of it had long been committed to Kabru’s memory. If one of them said something unexpected, something that Kabru couldn't imagine Mithrun saying, that would be the real one. But how would he get Mithrun to say or do something that would be outside his imagination? He had seen Mithrun naked already, so that wouldn’t work.

As Kabru fretted over the right question to ask, Mithrun A approached him, looked him dead in the eye, and said in a bored voice, “Kabru, I want you to take me to bed and remind me what desire feels like.”

Kabru’s jaw dropped. His brain short-circuited as the blood in his body rushed south, but the moment he regained his senses, his sword came down on the shoulder of Mithrun B, dissolving the illusion.

Even in his most debauched subconscious thoughts, Kabru would never have allowed himself to imagine Mithrun saying that to him. Now he knew why Mithrun had been appointed captain of the Canaries as soon as he was able to rejoin their forces. The man was brilliant.

Oblivious to the fact that he had nearly brought Kabru to his knees, Mithrun casually said, “Let’s pack up camp and prepare to continue investigating the dungeon. I will let Flamela know there are still monsters inside and that we’re headed further in.”

Mithrun raised his hand to the side of his neck, making that tch tch noise. He was trying to summon his fairy—oh no. Little Kabru! It was on Kabru’s shoulder when he woke Mithrun earlier, so it must’ve been teleported to the shapeshifter along with him. When the fairy did not appear with Mithrun’s magic, Kabru turned on his heel and raced back to the spot where the monster was last seen. When Mithrun rejoined him, Kabru was squatting on the floor, holding a small, red strip of cloth in his hand. The image of Mithrun’s former fairy, found half-eaten in their first dungeon, flashed in Kabru’s mind, and the sudden lump in his throat made it hard to speak.

“I think… the shapeshifter might’ve eaten your fairy, Mithrun.”

The temperature in the tunnel leading away from the lake felt gradually warmer as they walked deeper into the depths of the dungeon. Small salamanders, glowing a gentle orange, skittered across their path as the tunnel widened, and they could see light filtering in from the floor ahead. When the tunnel opened onto the next level, they were greeted by a grassy field dotted with flowers. Beautiful, deceptively normal-looking flowers, but Kabru knew better than to expect normal flora and fauna in a dungeon.

“Be careful where you step,” Mithrun warned. “The pollen produced by these flowers target a person’s limbic system. Certain types are hallucinogenic, some cause temporary amnesia, and others cause uncontrollable arousal or aggression.”

Kabru nodded in understanding. Any of those effects would leave them extremely vulnerable, especially if both of them were affected at the same time. He pulled out the red handkerchief from his pack and tied it around Mithrun’s face, covering his nose and mouth with the cloth. “It’s not perfect, but hopefully it will limit your exposure if we accidentally run into anything. You’re a lot more powerful than I am, so between the two of us, it would be far more dangerous for you to be affected.”

The two slowly picked their way through the field, keeping an eye out for monsters in the area while avoiding the flower beds at their feet. Kabru perked up as he spotted a familiar plant in the distance: thick stalks decorated with frond-like leaves, each topped with a sheep-shaped fruit. The memory of barometz stew surfaced in Kabru’s mind, and his stomach growled as he realized it was time for him to feed Mithrun again. Perfect timing.

As Kabru took his next step, he failed to notice the brown salamander that had been resting, still as a rock, in front of him. When he accidentally stepped onto the creature, it dissolved into an angry ball of flames, setting fire to his leather boot. Kabru cursed under his breath—he had forgotten fire spirits sometimes took the form of salamanders.

He instinctively yanked his foot back, but the sudden movement caused him to lose his balance. He tripped backward in his haste to get away and landed hard on his backside in a patch of ruby-red flowers that resembled oversized tulip buds. A cloud of yellow pollen burst into the air around him, making his eyes water in irritation. Kabru mentally kicked himself for not paying more attention as he scrambled to his feet, holding his breath and trying to get away from the cloud of pollen as quickly as possible.

Kabru turned when he heard a sneeze behind him. Mithrun was standing off to the side of the settling pollen, rubbing his squinted eyes and tearing the handkerchief away from his face as his breathing grew deeper and more ragged. A flush was creeping across his face, and a thin sheen of sweat was building on his forehead. Was he being affected by the pollen? Kabru was feeling slightly agitated but otherwise unaffected, and he had definitely been exposed to more pollen than Mithrun had. Was it possible that repeated exposure to this kind of allergen after initial sensitization led to stronger reactions over time?

Kabru had thankfully never run into these flowers in his past adventuring days. Rin had always been good with herbs and plant life, having spent much of her time when not in dungeons training with a medicinal horticulturist, and she had always steered the party away from these types of monsters. However, Mithrun had been exploring dungeons for decades longer than Kabru, and with his carelessness, there was no telling how many times he might have been exposed before.

Mithrun’s steely, dark eye—which had taken on a feral look—locked with Kabru’s terrified ones. The elf’s teeth were clenched, his muscles rigid and coiled tight. Oh shit. Without hesitating to think, Kabru dropped his pack and turned to flee towards the babbling creek cutting through the meadow. Maybe if he could get both of them into the water to wash off the pollen before it took full effect…

Mithrun vanished from sight and reappeared in front of him a moment later, sweeping Kabru’s feet out from under him and sending him crashing to the ground. As Kabru blinked through the sharp pain in his jaw, Mithrun lunged, shoving him onto his back and straddling his waist with bruising intensity. Before Kabru could react, Mithrun’s hands closed around his neck, cutting off his air.

Kabru gasped, grabbing Mithrun’s forearm with one hand and reaching for his right boot with the other, trying to pull him off balance. His fingers closed around the thin hilt of the knife he kept hidden in the sole of his boot, and he threw Mithrun off him with a grunt. He didn’t let go of Mithrun’s arm as he rolled over him, pinning it to the ground once he had the elf beneath him. The knife in his other hand drove through Mithrun’s Canary cloak by his shoulder, anchoring him temporarily to the ground.

Unfortunately, Mithrun still had one hand free. With a forceful push against Kabru’s chest, he teleported Kabru several feet away, dropping him onto his back with a painful thud. Mithrun yanked the knot loose at the front of his cloak to free himself from the cloth staked to the ground, then rose to his feet and strode toward Kabru, his eye still glazed over with animalistic aggression. They resumed their hand to hand fight on the ground, with Kabru trying to get away from Mithrun at every opportunity, tumbling through more flowerbeds as Kabru gradually wrestled the elf towards the creek.

Kabru was trapped on his stomach beneath Mithrun in a headlock when the fragrant scent of pollen filled his nose again. Suddenly, his pants tightened as heat pooled between his legs, and his face burned when he felt the unmistakable sensation of Mithrun’s erection pressing into his lower back. On top of the hostility, it seemed Mithrun was now also experiencing the effects of arousal-inducing pollen. Kabru realized with mortification that the compound effect of two different types of pollen was about to make this fight a lot harder. Self-denial and impulse control were second nature to him, but if he was honest with himself, he wasn't sure how long he would be able to hold up if he was faced with a very horny Mithrun aggressively trying to get into his pants.

When Kabru felt his pants teleport away to gods-knows-where, he knew his situation was dire. He struggled to his feet, Mithrun still hanging from his back with an arm obstinately wrapped around his neck, and bolted for the creek.

He flung them both into the water when he reached the creek’s edge, aquatic monsters be damned. The creek wasn’t very wide, but it was deep enough to submerge them completely. Kabru felt Mithrun’s chokehold loosen as they sank deeper, allowing him to twist around and wrap his arm securely around Mithrun’s waist. With a powerful kick, Kabru propelled them both back to the surface, both men gasping for air and sputtering as their heads broke through the water.

Kabru pushed Mithrun onto the bank and pulled himself up next to him, panting as he leaned over the limp and sodden elf. “Mithrun, are you okay?”

Mithrun coughed, the haze in his eyes clearing as the pollen’s effects seemed to ebb away as quickly as they had set in. “Yes. That was quick thinking, Kabru. And you did well to keep up with your training despite not being an adventurer anymore.”

Kabru and Mithrun set up camp temporarily in a clearing not too far away from the creek, shivering in their smallclothes as their wet clothes and rinsed-off backpack dried over a fire. Luckily, this floor was naturally warm, thanks to the abundance of fire spirits that roamed this section of the dungeon.

Mithrun had been unusually quiet since the events by the creek. He sat by the fire with his chin resting on his knees, and the tips of his ragged ears, now visible through the dripping strands of his hair, were tilted slightly down. Something was on his mind, but it wasn't like him to be anything but direct.

Kabru pulled the now-dry bedroll from their makeshift drying rack constructed from branches stuck into the dirt floor and spread it out next to Mithrun. He sat down on top of it and patted the soft surface of the bedroll, encouraging Mithrun to join him.

“Is something wrong, Captain? You've been quiet for a while.”

Mithrun obediently scooted closer and leaned his bare back against Kabru’s warm, broader one, allowing them to keep a lookout in both directions as they talked.

“I could have very seriously hurt you today. I’m sorry for putting you in danger like that, and for my unwanted advances.”

Kabru was surprised. “It was my fault that we were exposed to the pollen in the first place. Besides, you could’ve easily killed me anytime in that fight, and you didn’t. I know you weren’t in control of your mind after the pollen took effect, but I somehow got the feeling you were holding back.”

For some reason, Mithrun had limited himself to physical blows and grappling when attacking Kabru, a larger opponent who could usually physically overpower the elf as long as magic and the element of surprise were off the table. It didn’t make sense to Kabru; in any other circumstance, Mithrun would have been more deadly and efficient in his attacks.

Mithrun gazed thoughtfully into the dancing flames, the shadows from the warm light highlighting the fatigue on his face. “The pollen stimulates the body’s nervous system directly, but it also draws out emotions from a person’s memories to heighten its effects. In past dungeon investigations, when I was exposed to this type of pollen, I would lose myself in a blind rage that stemmed from my hatred for the Demon. My squad at the time almost suffered permanent casualties from such encounters. This time felt different. Perhaps my anger has subsided to some degree since the disappearance of the Demon. I doubt it will ever fully go away, but I was able to retain some control over my mind this time.”

It didn't slip Kabru's notice that Mithrun had been avoiding eye contact with him, and it was making him uneasy. There was an uncertainty in Mithrun’s voice when he continued.

“I also did not anticipate my reaction to the other type of pollen. In the past, it would trigger a physical response of arousal, but my mind would remain clear—there were no existing desires to amplify. But I lost control today, and I haven’t been able to understand why.”

Kabru’s breath caught in his throat. Was Mithrun suggesting he might have regained the ability to feel sexual desire without realizing it?

Swallowing hard, Kabru willed himself to quash the hope rising in his chest. The change in Mithrun’s response to the aggression-stimulating pollen was clear evidence that he was making significant strides in his recovery, in his ability to find peace after the Demon. Kabru longed to reassure Mithrun that, had he been in his right mind, his advances would've been the complete opposite of unwanted. But he knew that if Mithrun was regaining his ability to desire intimacy—physical or emotional—he deserved the chance to discover who he wanted to share that intimacy with on his own, free of Kabru’s influence.

“You have nothing to apologize for, Mithrun. You've never been unwanted, not to me,” Kabru said instead. “We'll figure out these new changes in you together, but for now, let's get some food in you.” He leaned forward to turn Mithrun’s white uniform tunic over on the drying rack. The cloth was drying quickly, which was a relief. He couldn’t have Mithrun catching a cold down here.

“Do you remember the barometz stew I made for you back in our original Dungeon?”

“Of course I do. It was quite good, considering everything else we ate at that time.”

Kabru grinned. He knew Mithrun meant no harm by the barbed comment about his cooking skills. “It was, wasn’t it? I saw a couple barometz plants close by earlier. It would be nice to have that stew with you again. I know it doesn’t actually taste like lamb, but it seems fitting to eat it here, back in Utaya.”

Mithrun smiled at him. “Yes, that does sound nice.”

After their clothes had mostly dried, the two headed toward the barometz. Kabru was on high alert, remembering the dire wolves that had attacked them out of nowhere the last time they tried to harvest the fruit, but the area was suspiciously clear of carnivorous monsters as they approached the harmless plant. No ripe fruit were left on the larger stalks, despite Kabru having seen at least one or two sheep in the distance earlier before their pollen encounter. So there were very likely predators out here, and they were stealthy. It would be best to harvest quickly and not linger.

There were still a few unripe, massive tomato-like fruits still left, however. Kabru pondered what the barometz would taste like at this stage as he stood on his tip-toes trying to cut down the fruit at the base of the stalk, which stood over half a foot above his head.

“If I boost you up on my shoulders, Captain, do you think you could teleport the barometz down?”

Kabru lifted Mithrun easily onto his shoulders, keeping a firm grip on the elf’s sinewy legs to steady him as he mused aloud, “I wonder if there are any normal vegetables growing this deep underground without sunlight that we could add to the stew.” Mithrun reached out and teleported the barometz directly into his arms as he replied, “Laios once mentioned the rind of the unripe barometz fruit tastes a bit like tomato. We could probably recreate the dish from before with just this harvest.”

Kabru’s nose scrunched in disgust. He was just about to ask Mithrun not to compare his favorite food to the flesh of an underdeveloped monster when a sharp screech pierced the air above them. The large barometz fruit cradled in Mithrun’s arms was blocking Kabru’s view of the sky, so he was caught by surprise when a wyvern suddenly swooped down, scruffed Mithrun by the cape like a wet cat, and took off into the air with him in its claws. Mithrun’s thighs instinctively clamped around Kabru’s neck, nearly choking the poor man once again. Kabru latched onto Mithrun's legs in panic and ended up getting lifted into the air with him, with Mithrun still stubbornly holding on to the barometz.

Kabru watched the grassy meadow fall away as the wyvern struggled to carry its unexpectedly hefty haul to its nest. He distantly heard Mithrun yell over the beating sounds of flapping wings, “Prepare yourself!” And before he could properly ponder what on earth he was supposed to be preparing for, he felt the dizzying pull of teleportation magic in his gut.

A moment later, the two were tumbling over each other onto the cold, hard ground, kicking up a cloud of dust on impact. Thank the gods they hadn't landed in another flower bed.

Untangling himself from the heap of limbs and the only slightly squashed barometz fruit, Kabru straightened his sore back with a groan and took in the unexpectedly frigid landscape. Mithrun had teleported them out of the wyvern’s grasp just as it passed over a deep ravine, and the warm meadow teeming with plant life was nowhere to be seen now. It was much darker here, and a dense fog made it difficult to see their surroundings clearly.

“The fire spirits were likely the ones keeping the temperature warm enough to sustain life on the floor above,” Mithrun muttered through chattering teeth. Kabru could see the vapor of his breath hanging in the icy air. “Perhaps they don't come down to this level.”

Kabru detached their rolled up blanket from the top of his pack and wrapped it tightly around the shaking elf. Mithrun’s mage lights were hardly effective in illuminating their way through the fog as they moved forward, looking for any form of shelter to warm up in. The eerie silence permeating this section of the dungeon made the sound of their footsteps uncomfortably noticeable, and Kabru couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching them. He prayed the silence meant they were alone.

He was forced to a stop when Mithrun threw out his arm suddenly in front of him, catching him in the chest. “Watch your step, Kabru. These are likely changeling mushrooms.”

Kabru bent down to study the flat-topped mushrooms arranged in a large circle on the floor in front of them. Given the fact that they had been running for their lives from a griffin the last time they ran into changeling mushrooms in a dungeon, he couldn’t honestly say he knew what they were supposed to look like. He trusted Mithrun’s experience, though.

“Think these are safe to eat? It might be nice to add to the barometz stew if they aren’t poisonous.” He would rather eat more plant-type monsters if that meant not having to stomach eating carnivorous ones for now.

Mithrun nodded. “Changeling mushrooms are a safe species to eat, and their spores cannot survive in the digestive tract. But there are many varieties of mushrooms in a dungeon that are dangerous when ingested and can look similar. Let's test it out. Hand me your sword.”

Kabru hesitated before handing the sheathed sword to Mithrun. “Okay, but… You're not going to put the sword in the changeling circle, right? It's the only actual weapon we have.”

Mithrun snorted. “Of course not.” He laid the barometz down on the ground before closing his hand over the hilt of Kabru's sword and drawing the blade in one smooth motion. With a wide swing above his head, he brought the blade down onto the round fruit and split it down the middle, revealing the lamb-like center of the fruit. Before Kabru could ask what Mithrun was planning on doing with their only real food source, Mithrun reached out a hand to touch the center of the fruit and sent it into the fairy ring.

After the puff of spore dust accompanying the transformation process settled, Kabru leaned forward to squint at the lamb. “It looks the same, Captain.”

Mithrun kneeled down on the ground and leaned forward to poke the lamb’s flesh. “Unripe barometz and lamb look deceptively similar before cleaning out the insides, yes. But after learning how to cook real lamb, I realized that barometz cannot imitate the texture of true muscle.” Mithrun looked up at Kabru then with a small self-satisfied smile.

“Let's make you a real lamb stew this time.”

The two men ended up finding refuge in a deserted cave carved into the stone cliffside of the ravine. The small space warmed quickly with the heat of the crackling fire and the rich aroma of the stew simmering over it. Mithrun was tasting the broth to check if it was ready when he heard the faint sound of an unfamiliar melody behind him. He turned to see Kabru wiping down the cutting board, quietly humming to himself.

“I've never heard you sing before.”

Kabru’s blue eyes widened slightly as he snapped out of his reverie, a faint blush dusting his cheeks as if he’d just been caught doing something embarrassing. “Oh—um, it’s a song my mother used to sing. Utaya used to get very cold in the winters, just like this, and she’d often make lamb stew to warm us up. She would sing this song while I watched her cook.”

Mithrun ladled a heaping portion of the chunky lamb stew into a bowl and handed it to Kabru.

“What was the song about?”

Kabru smiled wistfully. “It’s about love and acceptance. It’s about a lonely boy who tried so hard to be what other people wanted him to be, but he never felt whole until he found someone who saw past all that and accepted him for who he was.”

Kabru swallowed a spoonful of the savory broth, his eyes shining with emotion as the taste brought forth bittersweet memories of his childhood. “I realized when I was older that she must’ve made up that song just for me. She wanted me to find happiness with people who wouldn’t treat me differently because of the color of my eyes.”

Mithrun’s hand stilled over his own bowl as he felt the sting of an old wound—one so long scarred over, he had believed it could never reopen. He, too, had been that boy once, hadn’t he? Was it still possible for him to feel whole one day, despite all he had lacked back then, and all the more he lacked now?

Both of them were running on fumes after the minimal sleep they’d gotten since arriving on the continent, so they agreed to forgo a watch that night in favor of getting proper rest. Mithrun drew a line in the dirt at the cave’s entrance and activated a warding spell. If anything crossed the threshold into the cave, it would wake them with just enough time to teleport away.

Kabru had no qualms about climbing into their shared bedroll behind Mithrun this time. In this cold, it was a matter of survival. His muscles and joints ached, and a dull throbbing nagged at his temples. Mithrun must be equally exhausted, if not more so. The elf had changed into a cotton tallman tunic they found among their borrowed gear, which was much more comfortable to sleep in than Canary armor that dug uncomfortably into the skin. Kabru hugged him tightly under the covers, burying his face in Mithrun's soft silver hair. The familiar scent and warmth steadied him, soothing him in a way alcohol never could on difficult nights. With a weary sigh, he closed his eyes and drifted into a restless sleep.

Chapter Text

The walls of the cave faded in and out of Kabru’s fever dreams as his delirious mind conjured vivid visions of the stone melting and pressing in from all directions while a pack of dire wolves closed in on them in the cave. His chest felt constricted as if in a vice, and he tossed and turned in his sleep, sweat soaking through his long-sleeved turtleneck that was suddenly feeling much too tight. He fumbled blindly for the collar of the shirt and pulled it roughly over his head, tossing it aside. With a soft grunt, he instinctively reached out for Mithrun and drew his cold, frail body close before slipping back into the dark oblivion of dreamless sleep.

Hours later, Kabru woke to find Mithrun lying on top of him, nestled against his bare chest with Kabru’s arms still snugly wrapped around him, his face partially hidden by a curtain of wavy silver hair. Smiling groggily, Kabru lifted a hand to brush Mithrun’s hair from his face, then froze as he realized his hands were suddenly so large he could palm Mithrun’s head like a small grapefruit.

Slowly, Kabru ran his hand down Mithrun’s back. His already slender form felt even smaller than usual, and he was now positively swimming in the baggy tunic he had worn to bed.

“Whaa—!” Kabru jolted upright on the bedroll, causing Mithrun to slide down his torso and puddle into his lap. Still half asleep, Mithrun pushed himself up against Kabru’s washboard abdomen, rubbing one eye with a fist lost inside an oversized sleeve as he mumbled grumpily, “What’s wrong, Kabru?”

“Mithrun, you’ve shrunk! You’re—” Kabru reached out and hesitated a moment before gently tucking Mithrun’s hair behind his ear. The tip was still ragged, but it was now rounded and larger at the base instead of elegantly slender. “Oh… you've turned into a half-foot. I thought changelings were safe to eat?”

Mithrun, now fully awake, stared up at Kabru, his good eye locked on a spot above Kabru's eyebrows. “They are. We must've walked through a changeling ring without noticing in the fog. Or maybe we landed in the middle of one when we escaped from the wyvern. Changelings grow best in the cold, and they would thrive in an environment with low visibility such as this floor.”

Now that the shock was wearing off, Kabru began to shift uncomfortably on the floor, suddenly very aware that his pants were unbearably tight. He wasn't sure he could be blamed for this one, though. Only Mithrun could manage straddling someone's waist first thing in the morning while prattling off monster facts without being visibly affected.

“Um—Mithrun, would you mind getting off my lap, please?”

Only after Mithrun obediently climbed off Kabru's legs could Kabru finally see that his pants were actually now much too short and about to burst at the seams. His massive torso, now generously endowed with chiseled abdominal and pectoral muscles, looked like something straight out of one of Rin’s romance books—the ones she kept hidden under her bed and would fry Kabru for knowing about. And upon standing, he realized that Mithrun was now eye level with his navel.

Mithrun looked up at Kabru’s towering form from his barely three-foot height, his adorably round eye now taking up a third of his face as he continued to stare with his mouth slightly open.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ogre before.”

Kabru bent down to pick up his turtleneck from the floor, wincing at how small it looked as he held it up in front of him. It might rip if he tried to force himself into it now, and he didn’t have a spare. “You have, there was one in Shuro’s party when we fought the Demon.”

“Which one was Shuro?”

Kabru sighed. Of course he hadn’t noticed.

Given the size of the tunic Mithrun was wearing, which was now hanging past his knees, the adventurer whose gear they had adopted had likely been taller than Laios. The shirt would be a tight fit on Kabru now, but it might hold up better than Kabru’s own clothes made for his slightly smaller-than-average tallman build. Mithrun could wear his turtleneck for now, and Kabru would insist he wear his chainmail shirt over it for protection since he was now a lot less durable. Neither of them would be able to fit into their own armor in their current form, aside from Kabru's shin guards.

Kabru thought back to the time his own adventuring party had lost their lockpick for a day—Mickbell had been the only one to escape a party wipe-out from the basilisk attack that led to Kabru's first dungeon death, thanks to his tendency to flee and hide at the first sight of danger. Holm had been incapacitated from his injuries, but Mickbell had been able to heal Holm just enough to get him back on his feet to revive the others. After that, Kuro had to carry around the nauseated half-foot for the remainder of the day as he suffered from mana sickness-induced hallucinations—at least, until the party walked into a trap on the third floor and got wiped out again.

He would have to make sure Mithrun wasn't his usual careless self with his teleportation magic. And they would need to find somewhere to wash off the spores soon.

As Mithrun packed up camp, Kabru left him in the safety of the cave while he went to fill their water flasks alone. He had found a trickling stream of water, likely runoff from something frozen and slowly melting in a colder section of this floor, not far from the cave when scouting for a water source last night. Kabru had barely managed to get away from a pack of direwolves waiting in ambush nearby, and half-foot Mithrun would be too easy for a direwolf to carry off.

When Kabru returned to camp, he found Mithrun at the mouth of the cave, crouched in a fighting stance with his cape clenched in his fist, facing… A pure white, fluffy cotton ball of a bunny.

Kabru couldn't help but laugh as he walked up to Mithrun. “Aww, what's this? I didn't know regular animals lived down here in dungeons.”

Mithrun didn't take his eyes off his opponent. “They don't. This is a dungeon rabbit. It looks like a snow hare, but don't let your guard down. They're extremely dangerous. I just don't understand why it's here; they're usually prey animals that attack when they feel their burrows or their colony are threatened. They normally don't approach larger animals without provocation.”

Kabru stepped in front of Mithrun and reached for his scabbard, attempting to poke the rabbit away without angering it. “Well, there's only one, I'm sure we could just scare it off—WOAH HEY!”

The rabbit had sized him up with one beady blood-red eye while he was talking, then leapt at him at an alarming speed without warning. Kabru felt the sting of a deep slash cut across one shoulder before he caught sight of the blade sticking out of the rabbit’s hind leg. That was too close to the carotid artery to be coincidence. Stumbling backwards in shock, he grabbed Mithrun around the waist without thinking and threw him over his other shoulder like a small sack of potatoes and tried to make a run for it.

But just past the dungeon's entrance, a half dozen more rabbits suddenly emerged from behind boulders and wizened, half-dead shrubbery, surrounding them from all sides. Something about their calculated movements reminded Kabru of the direwolf ambush yesterday. These weren't prey animals defending their territory.

Their attacks came from all sides and at terrifying speeds. Mithrun, who had climbed further up to sit on Kabru's shoulders, leaned over to grab the cooking pot from Kabru's backpack and began batting incoming rabbits away with it like a metal club. Kabru quickly gave up on his sword, focusing instead on wrapping their bedroll around his shoulders to protect the vulnerable flesh of his neck and Mithrun's legs, and punted the murderous creatures out of his way with his armored shins as he ran through them. None of them had landed a lethal strike yet—perhaps his current height was an advantage—but Kabru's body was taking a beating as the rabbits began taking a different approach, slashing any area they could reach to gradually take him down.

“Kabru, over there!”

A deep chasm split the ground ahead of them, the mouth of another large tunnel leading into another portion of the dungeon visible on the other side. White steam—or could it be some kind of poisonous gas?—rose from the depths of the chasm below. It didn't matter, Kabru would have to make a jump for it if they wanted to escape the pursuit of the dungeon rabbits. The rabbits likely wouldn't be able to jump far enough to follow them over. Grabbing Mithrun from his shoulders and securely tucking him under his arm, he held on tight and broke into a sprint.

Kabru pushed off the edge of the chasm with a powerful leap, propelling them into the air over the wide fissure in the ground. His heart sank as he realized, a bit too late, that he had misjudged how wide this chasm really was in the low visibility of the steam. They were going to fall a couple feet short of reaching the other side.

Just as a panicked cry left his throat, the inky blackness of the abyss vanished beneath him, and he was suddenly thrown onto solid ground, skidding on his side across the stone floor as he clutched Mithrun protectively to his chest.

When he was sure the rabbits had not followed them, Kabru released his hold on Mithrun. “Thank you for getting us over that rift. I wasn’t sure if you had enough mana for teleportation.”

Mithrun rolled onto his hands and knees with a groan, his face tinged a queasy shade of green. “Ugh, this is worse than when I was a tallman. I’ve never experienced mana sickness this quickly before.”

Kabru got to his feet and held up the bedroll that had somehow survived the jump. It was tattered and leaking stuffing in a few places, but they could sew it up later. The important thing was that they were alive.

Seeing Mithrun wobble unsteadily, Kabru slid one hand beneath his knees and the other behind his back and scooped him up. He let Mithrun rest his dizzy head against his sturdy body as he walked into the tunnel, drawn to the heat emanating from the darkness ahead.

“I've never seen an omnivorous dungeon rabbit before, but those rabbits were hunting us.” Mithrun mumbled from his arms. “I suppose that would make sense as a natural adaptation on this floor where not much plant life grows other than changeling mushrooms. I should've teleported us away sooner, but I didn't think they would chase us as far as they did.”

Kabru shuddered as the morbid image of a pure white bunny with blood dripping down its fuzzy chest crossed his mind. How horrifying. There had been a moment when he wished they had snagged a rabbit or two to save for their next meal, as they had been the most normal-looking creatures he’d seen in the dungeon so far. But knowing now that they hunted people, he was glad they’d left them far behind.

The stagnant air in the tunnel gradually became more humid as they walked, and soon the tunnel opened up into a cavern with several geothermal pools, each radiating a soft blue light from something luminescent underneath the surface of the water. Kabru approached one pool cautiously and peered in, but no monsters lurked under the surface—only gently rippling seaweed-like plants that glowed a bright cerulean blue. The steam rising from the hot water warmed their chilled insides, and as the adrenaline began to ebb, Kabru became aware of the burning pain from the gashes scattered across his body.

Putting Mithrun down and helping him out of his chainmail shirt, Kabru said, “Let’s wash off the spores in the pool, and then we can rest and find something to eat to replenish your mana.”

He joined Mithrun in the hot water with a towel in hand, ready to scrub the spores from every part of the half-foot’s body himself this time to make sure no areas were missed. Mithrun obediently closed his eyes as Kabru dipped his head back into the water and gently massaged his scalp. Looking down at Mithrun's peaceful expression and his silvery hair fanned out like a halo against the ethereal blue of the water, Kabru felt a raw, instinctive urge stir in his gut to keep him safe and close. For all Mithrun’s remarkable strength, there was a softness to him that Kabru fiercely wanted to protect—something delicate, unguarded, and almost innocent.

As he lifted Mithrun's head out of the water and began scrubbing his back, he noticed he was starting to feel lightheaded—and Mithrun was growing increasingly lethargic beneath his hands as well. At first, he attributed it to the soothing hot water and sauna-like heat relaxing their muscles, but he soon recognized the sensation. It was the kind of fatigue that usually came from overusing basic spells in his tallman form.

He could tell his ogre body had a low magical energy limit at baseline, but what little he had seemed to be draining out of him quickly without having used any magic. He glanced down at the water and noticed the thin trails of blood seeping from his open wounds. As the wisps of red touched the leaves of the plants surrounding them, the luminescent blue of the plants glowed brighter.

The plants must feed on mana, slowly leeching magical energy from anything in the water. Kabru was suddenly reminded of the time Holm fondly described his beloved undine Marillier’s diet of monster blood and human bodily fluids—and how undines are rich in magical energy because of it. A suspicion unfurled in his mind: maybe this monster plant also held a high concentration of magical energy within it.

Kabru pulled the plants out by the roots and got out of the pool. Keeping one eye on Mithrun to make sure he kept scrubbing and didn’t fall over into the water, he chopped up the ribbon-like leaves and put them into the cooking pot with the remainder of the lamb stock he had saved. Lighting a fire was a bit of a struggle in the moist air, but once the pot began to heat up, the rubbery leaves softened in the simmering soup, gradually resembling the soup he had once seen Shuro’s retainer prepare in the Island’s Dungeon.

Kabru took a first cautious bite of the cooked seaweed to make sure the plant wasn’t poisonous. It tasted like regular seaweed, but without the briny taste of a true saltwater plant. Once he deemed it safe, he brought a blanket to Mithrun to dry him off, and they shared the mana seaweed soup by the edge of the water. Judging by the color returning to Mithrun’s face, his suspicion had been right—the seaweed was essentially an aquatic mana herb.

Kabru felt Mithrun's heavy gaze comb over his body once his eye regained its focus, and for the first time since they got into the pool, Kabru was suddenly very aware that he was still dripping wet and naked.

“You look terrible.”

Ouch. He knew elves viewed slender, graceful bodies as the standard of beauty, but still…

Mithrun moved closer and placed a small hand on a deep wound over Kabru's flank, beginning a healing spell. “You're bruised and cut everywhere,” he said softly. “Let me look you over.”

Kabru sat on his heels in front of Mithrun, shyly averting his eyes as Mithrun’s hands trailed across his body, inspecting every injury and healing the more severe ones as he went. “I won't be able to heal most of it with the limited magic this body is capable of, but I can stop the bleeding on the bigger wounds for now.”

But even as he said this, he continued to pour his mana into Kabru's body, long after the actively bleeding wounds had sealed. Kabru finally looked up to see Mithrun's peaked face hovering near his, tracing the partially healed gash on his shoulder with a slightly shaking hand.

“Mithrun, you should stop. Leave the rest, I'm not in pain or bleeding anymore.”

“You're going to scar, though.”

Kabru opened his mouth in protest, about to ask why that should matter at all, when it struck him. Mithrun's many crisscrossing scars were on full display in front of him, the scars he normally tried to keep hidden under clothing with high collars and long sleeves. The scars that made him feel undesirable and disfigured.

Mithrun didn't want Kabru to feel the same way.

Kabru reached up and gently clasped Mithrun's hand in his. “Let them scar, then. In another thirty years, when I’m too old to go on these adventures with you, they'll remind me of the times we stood side by side, protecting each other.”

After the spores had been washed off, they reverted back to their original forms several hours later. Mithrun had to admit, Kabru’s raw power in his ogre form had been impressive. Watching him singlehandedly wrestle and take down an angry bicorn even after taking several direct hoof strikes to the torso had stirred something unrecognizable in his gut. As a society, elves rarely expressed open admiration for brute strength, but there was an unspoken fascination among many—and, in some cases, repressed sexual curiosity—for the kind of well-defined, powerfully built bodies their own physiology could never attain.

But as he watched Kabru, now back in his tallman form, struggle to cut the large chunks of bicorn sirloin meat into thinner, bite-size slices, he found himself thinking that he preferred Kabru this way. This body suited him best.

“I feel kind of guilty,” Kabru admitted as the tantalizing smell of bicorn bacon wafted from the pot. “When I was an ogre, I was so hungry I felt like I could eat a whole bicorn without a problem, but now that we’re back to our usual selves, this is far too much meat for us to finish.”

Mithrun hummed, recalling the lessons Senshi had taught him about food preservation and minimizing waste, lessons he had made use of more than once in the recent past on dungeon investigations with his squad. The Canaries hadn’t exactly been enthusiastic about Mithrun’s monster cooking experiments, but Laios had been beside himself with delight when Mithrun once brought him back dried flying pig meat from a dungeon trip. Kabru had been genuinely confused when Laios seemed disappointed to learn that flying pigs tasted like bacon. What else did he think flying pigs were going to taste like?

“We can dry thin slices of the meat over a fire and make bicorn jerky out of them. It would hold up well as a food source in case we don’t run into anything edible deeper in the dungeon.”

So after a hearty meal, Mithrun kept a low fire going under slices of tenderloin and ribeye meat, sizzling on a make-shift grate made from the bicorn’s rib bones, and they lay down to rest for a couple hours as they waited for the meat to dehydrate.

Mithrun woke with a sudden chill. The heat of the fire had died down in the room, and Kabru was no longer beside him in the bedroll. Based on the appearance of the dried meat, at least several hours had passed, and there was no telling how long Kabru had been gone for. All of their gear, including Kabru’s armor, was still in the room with Mithrun. Swearing quietly under his breath, Mithrun got up to look outside. Kabru would have known better than to wander off on his own, even if it was just to use the restroom—and even then, he would have at least donned his armor. One day, he’d have to prioritize making the man a fairy of his own.

Outside of the door lay the crumbling stone ruins of the dungeon proper. They seemed to be getting close to the heart of the dungeon, where the last dungeon lord had most likely made their home. The room they had chosen was one of several that branched off from a central atrium. Kabru was nowhere to be seen, and there was no sign of which way he had gone. Mithrun packed up camp and left the remaining uncooked bicorn in the room, leaving the door open as he began his search for his companion. If there were any monsters hiding on this floor, the smell of fresh meat would hopefully distract them from hunting him and Kabru.

Determining which door Kabru went through was a simple task. Two of the three doors attached to this atrium had metal handles covered in a thick, even layer of dust. Only one handle bore the signs of recent use. Without even taking the time to listen against the door first for hints of what lay in wait on the other side, Mithrun impatiently flung the door open and strode inside.

The room was still and dark. A full-length ornate mirror was propped against the far wall, and Kabru's crumpled body lay at the foot of the dusty glass.

Mithrun’s blood ran cold. He quickly kneeled next to Kabru and placed two fingers under the curve of his jaw to feel for his pulse. Once he confirmed that Kabru was still alive, just unconscious, he released his bated breath in a sigh of relief and straightened to face the mirror, staring into the eyes of his own reflection.

He had recognized this mirror for what it was the moment he entered the room. After all, it was through a magic mirror that the Demon had once manipulated him into breaking its seal, and, by extension, into becoming a dungeon lord. A monster that had the ability to show you your greatest desire, or an irresistibly enchanting vision of what your life could have been—and once you were drawn in, the mirror would trap and ultimately consume your soul.

Mithrun felt the mirror’s subtle, almost irresistible pull as a sardonic yet genuine curiosity took hold of him: what could a magic mirror possibly show a man whose desires had been taken from him? As if in a trance, he heard himself say to the mirror, “Show me my greatest desire.”

His reflection dissolved into the image of Melini’s capital. Mithrun saw himself walking through the halls of the castle, decorated with a simple elegance that spoke of royalty without pretentiousness—so unlike the gaudy opulence of the family estate he’d grown up in. At the end of the hallway, Laios stood from his throne and stepped forward to greet him, placing his large hand on Mithrun’s slender shoulder with a smile. “I heard your dungeon investigation assignment went very well. The people are grateful for all you've been doing to keep this country safe from monsters, as am I. You will always have a place here in Melini.”

Mithrun turned to find his squad standing behind him, with Pattadol at the forefront, grinning and calling him to join them at the local tavern for drinks after his report.

But something was missing. He kept walking through another hallway until he reached a heavy wooden door not far from the throne room. Pushing it open, he was met with the sound of Kabru's voice begging Yaad for the twelfth of the month off. When the older man caught sight of Mithrun at the door, he looked between Kabru and Mithrun’s faces in quiet understanding and decided to excuse himself from the room. The edge of his mustache lifted in a gentle smile as he passed Mithrun, and his head dipped in greeting as he said in a low voice, “It’s good to see you, Captain Mithrun. Let Kabru know he has the rest of the afternoon off, as well as the twelfth of May.”

Kabru stood by his large office window, bathed in the golden afternoon sunlight. His bright blue eyes shone with surprise and affection as he crossed the room to pull the elf into an intimately familiar embrace. “I’m glad you’re back, Captain,” Kabru said into his shoulder. “I was getting worried... you were away for too long this time hunting the aboleth. Pattadol was starting to get annoyed with me for interrupting her work to ask for updates from your squad.”

Mithrun—the real one—leaned forward to grasp the edges of the magic mirror. He didn’t understand. This was just a memory of the events following his most recent dungeon expedition last month. Was the mirror unable to show anything but memories if its victim had no desires to reveal?

No, that wasn’t right. He wasn’t the same man he was two years ago. Kabru had helped him realize a number of new desires in that time, as difficult as it had been at times to recognize them. His gaze fixed on the mirror’s image of Kabru, now running toward his cottage in the rain.

It was love and acceptance, wasn’t it? His deepest desire before the Demon had been for love and acceptance, to be chosen and valued for who he was. To not be given up on or be left behind. His parents had given up on him, sending him to the Canaries in his family's name. The Demon had given up on consuming him completely, finding the meal not even worth finishing. His caretakers had given up on him, believing him to be emptied of all that once made him human. Perhaps such a fundamental human desire could be regrown even after being consumed by the Demon, after all.

The mirror could not tempt him with visions of his greatest desire, because everything he had reclaimed the ability to want thus far, he had already found fulfilled in Melini. In his squad, in the people that surrounded him. And in Kabru. Kabru had never once given up on him, and he never let Mithrun give up on himself, either. Kabru chose him time and time again, when he had never felt chosen or seen before the days of the Demon.

But why him?

Kabru.

He still needed to save Kabru. His confidence in his monster knowledge nearly caused him to underestimate the mirror’s captivating power, and he had almost lost focus. Shaking his head in self-reproach, Mithrun tucked the bedroll around Kabru’s body before he stepped back and swung his pot at the mirror, shattering it.

Mithrun cleared the ground around Kabru’s body of the broken glass shards and waited for his soul to return to his body. When Kabru began to stir, Mithrun couldn’t bring himself to admonish him for not recognizing a monster he should have known about after listening to Mithrun’s story back in their original Dungeon. He, of all people, had no right to criticize.

Instead, he helped Kabru sit up and handed him a flask of water, rubbing his back soothingly as Kabru held his throbbing head. “How did you end up in this room by yourself, Kabru?”

A look of relief washed over Kabru’s face for a moment—had he been expecting a different question? Or to be scolded? After taking a long swig of water, Kabru turned to look at Mithrun, his jaw set and his eyebrows knitted in a grim expression.

“I heard my mother singing,” he said. “You know that song I was singing when we were preparing the lamb stew, the one you asked me about? I woke up to the sound of her voice, singing that same song, outside the room we were camped in. I was so shocked, I wasn’t thinking straight—I tried to follow her voice, but I couldn’t see where it was coming from. I thought it was coming from inside this room, but I found the mirror instead.”

Mithrun frowned. Magic mirrors were not capable of luring in people who weren’t in direct view of the mirror. Could there be mermaids nearby? But they had not passed by any bodies of water large enough for mermaids to survive in anywhere near this floor.

“We’ll have to be more careful moving forward. We may be entering the territory of succubi and sirens. We cannot get separated again.”

Chapter Text

The bright rays of sunlight filtering through the trees of the forest above gently stirred Kabru awake from a groggy sleep. The sound of birds chirping in the branches and the scent of the spring breeze ruffling his hair slowly registered in his mind. Pushing himself off the lukewarm forest floor to sit up, it took him a disoriented moment to realize he was back on the surface.

How did he get here? Kabru wracked his brain, trying to remember the last thing he was doing, where he had last been, before he fell asleep. Hadn't he just been running away from a dullahan not too long ago?

As he began to aimlessly walk through the forest, the fog in his mind began to clear, memories of the events leading up to this moment trickling in bit by bit.

The dullahan had found their partially eaten bicorn body—because of course it had—and the two of them had come at Kabru with a bit more personal vengeance than a typical dullahan encounter would involve.

Of course, Mithrun had dealt with the threat the way he dealt with everything—he teleported both rider and reanimated horse to some far corner of the dungeon. Mithrun had shrugged dismissively when Kabru had asked him if he knew any exorcism spells, saying that there hadn’t been a point in learning magic for dealing with the undead when his only goal had always been to defeat something that could never die in the first place.

After a long day of wandering the relatively deserted appearing dungeon floor, the two had stumbled upon a large greenhouse overgrown with herbs, bushes dotted with berries of various colors, and large, creeping vines. They knew better than to touch any of the strange plants they didn’t recognize; there was no need to take the risk when they still had the bicorn jerky to sustain them for now. The inside of the greenhouse was pleasantly warm, illuminated by the warm glow of many firefly-like creatures that drifted peacefully throughout the enclosure. The surprisingly serene space had felt like a welcoming place to rest.

Kabru had brought Mithrun’s cold foot into his lap and leaned against the glass of the greenhouse, massaging the knots out of the sole as he asked, “Are these fireflies monsters, too? Are they safe to be around?”

Mithrun let out a soft hum, responding sleepily, “These monsters are sometimes called Soul Eaters, but they’re not dangerous as the name implies. They cause no harm to the living. After death, Soul Eaters pluck the souls from the bodies of the recently departed. Legends say that Soul Eaters weigh the light against the darkness within a soul and judge whether it deserves to find eternal peace. If the soul is found worthy, the Soul Eater will guide it to rest in the afterlife. But if darkness prevails, the Soul Eater will consume the soul instead.”

Kabru closed his eyes, thinking of all his fellow villagers whose blood had been spilled on this land. He prayed that, if any of these monsters had made their way to the surface on the day Utaya fell, their souls had been deemed worthy and had found their way to the afterlife. And most of all, he desperately hoped his mother’s soul had been among them.

Mithrun had drifted off to sleep soon after, while Kabru watched over him in the softly twinkling lights of the Soul Eaters.

It was coming back to him now. Mithrun had slept peacefully for a couple of hours before Kabru noticed him starting to stir restlessly in the bedroll. A quiet, broken sound escaped him as he twisted beneath the covers, damp with sweat, his forehead creased as if in pain.

Holm had once taught Kabru how to enter another person’s dreams, when Rin had been suffering from several consecutive days of nightmares. Her lack of proper sleep had begun to endanger them all in battle, and her lightning strikes had gone off target more than once during monster fights. So the party collectively decided that Kabru, being the least likely to suffer permanent damage from Rin’s fury over the invasion of her privacy, should be the one to intervene. Kabru had turned out to be just the right person to soothe the emotional wounds that had reopened as she dreamt of the day her parents were killed and she was taken away from her home by the Canaries.

So that's how he had ended up here. He had gone into Mithrun's dream. Something about the place felt so familiar, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what this place reminded him of. If only he could think of it, maybe it would give him a clue where Mithrun was.

A harsh caw sounded close by, pulling him out of his thoughts. He looked up to find a black crow perched on a branch above him, tilting its head to stare at him with one piercing eye before it spread its wings and took to the air. No words had been said, but somehow Kabru understood he was meant to follow.

The crow led him to a clearing between the trees, and as it landed on the shoulder of the man he’d been searching for, Kabru was struck by the sudden realization of where they were.

Mithrun sat slumped against the base of a tree, arms dropped lifelessly at his sides and gazing down at his outstretched legs with a vacant look in his eye. The tips of his ragged ears were barely visible in the disheveled silver waves of his hair, drooped low toward his shoulders. He didn't move a muscle to acknowledge Kabru's arrival or the crow's affectionate—though maybe a touch too insistent—head pecking, as if the will to live had left him completely.

Kabru remembered this day with aching clarity. He could have easily walked away from Mithrun that day like Laios had. After all, Mithrun was a Canary and essentially a stranger, someone he had no further use for now that he had learned the truth about demons. He would have lost nothing. But he had chosen to stay. He had chosen not to let Mithrun give up on life, because he expected more from the capable elf. And though he had tried to convince himself that their strange bond in the Dungeon had been nothing more than a temporary alliance born of necessity and survival, he had begun to see Mithrun as something like a friend.

Kabru approached the motionless elf and knelt down on the soft forest floor in front of him.

“Captain, it’s me,” he said, his voice gentler than the last time, trying to meet Mithrun’s lowered gaze. “The Demon is gone for good. It can’t take anything from you anymore.”

Mithrun’s ears twitched, and he finally raised a dull, dark eye to take in the man before him.

“It’s you,” he breathed. His voice was hoarse, as if it had been unused for quite some time. “You look exactly as you did the day we first met.”

A tear welled up in the corner of Mithrun’s good eye, and Kabru was reminded of the time Mithrun admitted to him, standing atop Falin’s frozen chimera body, that his true remaining desire was to be consumed completely. He knew he could help Mithrun get up again—he had done so before, after knowing him for only six days—but it still hurt to see him so broken, to be reminded of how devoid of hope he had once been.

Kabru reached out a hand to cup Mithrun’s face, attempting to brush away the tear from his cheek with the pad of his thumb, when he finally noticed the state of his own body. His hand was ghostly transparent, and his thumb passed through Mithrun’s cheekbone without any resistance, leaving an icy film of frost on his delicate, pale skin where Kabru had tried to touch him.

Confused, Kabru looked down at himself and realized that while his body was whole, it lacked solid form, resembling that of the spirits he had seen in the dungeon.

Mithrun's face was heavy with a sorrow Kabru had never seen on him before. It wasn’t quite the same listless emptiness he thought he had recognized. The elf's fists were clenched between his parted legs, and he leaned forward slightly, continuing to stare at Kabru as if transfixed. “I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”

Thoroughly bewildered now, Kabru asked, “What do you mean, Mithrun? Did you really think I would never talk to you again after we rejoined everyone on the surface?”

Mithrun’s face twisted, and his gaze dropped again, flitting to something behind Kabru. Following his line of sight, Kabru turned and saw that Mithrun was sitting in front of a gravestone, engraved with an epitaph he never imagined he’d see in his lifetime.

KABRU OF UTAYA
Year 492 – 577
Prime Minister of Melini and Beloved Friend
He guided a nation from its infancy to greatness with virtue and compassion
To the very end, he gave more to others than he ever asked for himself

Kabru’s heart sank. He had gotten it wrong—Mithrun wasn’t reliving the memory of losing his chance to fulfill his only remaining desire. His nightmare was about a future in which he loses Kabru.

“How long have I been gone?” Kabru heard himself ask.

Mithrun responded in a hollow voice, not meeting Kabru’s eyes now. “We laid you to rest a week ago.”

“How often do you come here?”

Silence. Then, as if deciding there was no point in hiding it, Mithrun admitted, “I’ve been here every day since. I haven't been able to find the desire to do anything else. The others have given up on trying to distract me from this place. They only come at night to cast sleeping spells and bring me home. I return in the morning, when the spells wear off.”

Kabru's chest ached. The thought of Mithrun giving up and wasting away after his death, after everything they’ve been through together, had never even crossed his mind as a possibility until now.

Quietly, he said, “Mithrun, how can you say that? In those first years after we met, you worked so hard to find new desires. In my lifetime, did we not continue discovering more together? Didn’t I help you find wants and desires that brought you joy, that gave your life meaning and purpose?”

Mithrun’s hands slowly unclenched as he stared down at them in his lap, blinking rapidly.

“You did, Kabru. You spent your life helping me discover my wants, and I think I grew to rely on you too much. I started to tie those wants to you, to associate finding new desires with making you happy. I wanted so much to make you happy, because you showed me that I still could find real happiness—possibly for the first time—in Melini, despite my limitations. And now that you’re gone, all of it feels empty without you.”

Mithrun drew in a trembling breath, a touch of bitterness entering his tone as he gritted out, “What was the point of finding new desires, if losing them hurts more than never having them at all?”

For a moment, Kabru couldn’t speak through the grief that tightened his throat. He hadn’t realized just how deeply Mithrun cared for him, or how much he truly meant to him. The tenderness of that realization filled his heart with a mix of bittersweet emotions, but this wasn't what he wanted it to look like.

Kabru crawled to Mithrun's side and sat against the base of the tree, leaning his head back to stare up at the patches of sunlight peeking through the leaves.

“Do you ever regret having met me, then?” he asked softly.

Mithrun turned to look at him in surprise, pain etched across his face. “No, I don’t. I’ll never regret that. It’s just… for several decades, you filled the hole in my heart left by the Demon with your love and kindness, and in that time, I almost forgot what that emptiness felt like. But losing you left a hole greater than the one left by the Demon, and I don’t know how I will ever fill it again.”

“I'm relieved to hear you say that. It sounds like you lived a good life for many years. And you will for many more. There are others in your life that love and care for you too, Mithrun.”

Kabru smiled sadly and tilted his head to look into Mithrun's haunted eye.

“I once came across a magic mirror in a dungeon we explored together. The image I saw in it was of you, Mithrun. I hadn't fully realized it until that moment, but my greatest desire was to see you safe and happy, surrounded by people who love you. I'm so glad I got to witness you finding that happiness in my lifetime, and that I had the chance to share it with you. But I want that for you for the rest of your life, not just for the rest of mine. I never would've wanted to see you like this.”

The memory of his mother’s smile, her laugh that used to make the tiny room she rented for them in the basement of the tavern where she worked seem larger and warmer, surfaced in Kabru’s mind, and he closed his eyes against the suddenly deafening silence in the clearing. “The pain of loss is just as much a part of being human as the need for love and connection in all its forms. None of us can know true happiness without also knowing the emptiness that comes when it’s gone. The fact that it hurts to lose something you cared about is proof that what you had was real, that it mattered. And that is always worth it.”

Kabru heard the faint sound of fabric rustling and opened his eyes to see Mithrun shifting on the ground to move closer to him. The elf leaned slightly toward him to rest his head against a shoulder he couldn’t feel, but it seemed to bring him comfort anyway.

“I shouldn't have waited so long to tell you how much you meant to me.”

Kabru's voice was kind. “It's okay, Mithrun. I think I always knew.”

“Will you stay for a while?”

“As long as you want me to. And I’ll be with you when you wake up. I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but we’re in your dream right now. I hope I still have many years left by your side. And in that time, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you find reasons to keep living long after I’m gone.”

Kabru finally took a closer look at the gravestone in front of them and noticed he had passed at the age of eighty-five. He smiled to himself—Mithrun still hadn’t quite grasped the average lifespan of the short-lived.

“Also, when you asked me how long tallmen live, I mentioned the average lifespan was sixty years. Not that I had another sixty years to live. I’d be lucky to make it to eighty-five.”

Mithrun’s ears drooped again. “Even with healthy home-cooked dinners most days of the week?”

Had that been the reason for all those meals?

Mithrun frowned at Kabru’s silence. “Then you’ll have to come over more often,” he decided firmly. “I know how often you tend to skip meals when you’re busy with work. And the alcohol will have to go.”

When Mithrun finally awoke, he saw Kabru's large, anxious blue eyes gazing up at him, his head a comforting weight where it lay on Mithrun's stomach.

“Good morning, Captain,” Kabru murmured, a slight hesitation audible in his voice. “How did you sleep?”

He was testing him.

When performed correctly, the spell to enter another's nightmares should leave the dreamer unaware of the intrusion and of the wounds reopened in the dream. However, despite his good intentions, Kabru's magical ability was passable at best. Mithrun remembered everything—in vivid detail.

But for the first time, he wasn't sure he was ready to talk about it. At least, not yet.

Instead, he sat up and shook several Nightmares out of his pillow, and after some foraging in the garden, the two men shared a pot of Nightmares boiled with crushed tomatoes and basil leaves for breakfast in uncharacteristic silence.

Kabru's mouth dropped open in surprise as a mirage of Mithrun’s dream appeared in the steam rising from the cooking Nightmares. After Ghost Kabru coaxed Mithrun out from under the tree, he stayed by the elf’s side, following him around Melini for the rest of his days. He reminded him to eat and sleep, encouraged him to visit Pattadol and Marcille when he wasn't off on monster hunts with his squad, and sat beside him in bed at night, telling him stories to help him fall asleep.

While Kabru hadn’t been entirely successful at dispelling his nightmare, Mithrun did have to admit that the dream had been a lot less painful after Kabru stepped in. He always did manage to give Mithrun hope, even if he wasn't always ready to believe in himself the way Kabru always seemed to believe in him.

Mithrun gathered the empty pot and bowls and stepped away to wash the dishware at the well just outside of the greenhouse. Staring at his reflection in the still water, he pondered everything he had learned about himself over the past few days.

The unexpected vulnerability to the pollen. His deepest desire, revealed in the magic mirror. The emotional wounds the Nightmares fed on that hadn’t even happened yet, born from subconscious fears about the future.

When had he grown so attached? Mithrun couldn't remember a time when he had ever experienced such an intimate bond with another. Before the Demon, it had been impossible; he had been too paranoid and insecure to allow himself any real connection with others. But even after that pride and ugliness had been stripped away, he hadn't known he was capable of caring about someone like this. Of letting someone in so completely that losing them would feel like losing a part of himself.

Was this an unhealthy level of dependence—an extension of the way he relied on others to remind him of his needs, only now entirely centered on one individual who understood him better than anyone else? Or was this… a new desire?

He was now painfully aware that he couldn't afford to take sixty—or rather, forty—years to figure it out.

Lost in thought, Mithrun didn’t hear Kabru quietly approaching from behind until his voice broke the silence.

“Mithrun, can we talk?”

Mithrun turned to find Kabru standing so close, he could feel the warmth radiating from his body. The weight of something unspoken pressed in around them, and his familiar, grounding scent stilled Mithrun’s restless mind. Kabru still hadn’t donned his armor yet, and Mithrun found his gaze lingering on the defined muscles of his broad shoulders visible beneath the thin cloth of his turtleneck sweater. There was a softness in his clear blue eyes, shining like the surface of a sunlit lake, as he looked at Mithrun with an expression of inhibited affection and trust. He raised one hand to lightly graze Mithrun’s jawline with his fingertips, tipping his head up to hold his gaze, while the other rested on his hip, subtly drawing him closer.

“As long as we care for each other the way we do, the difference in our lifespans means that whatever we have will always end in inevitable heartache," Kabru said, his voice husky with emotion. "But I still want to spend the rest of my years with you, Mithrun. Just as you are, if you're willing to have me.”

Mithrun's breath hitched, sharp and shallow, as Kabru dipped his face closer, his thumb lightly brushing the curve of the elf’s pale cheek. Something unsteady fluttered in Mithrun's chest, and his lips parted instinctively at the warmth of Kabru’s breath ghosting over his mouth. He had no desire to pull away, which came as no surprise. What did surprise him was how easily he leaned into the unexpectedly intimate touch, drawn in by the sudden intensity in Kabru's darkened eyes.

“You’re the only thing that truly matters to me.”

Mithrun froze, his eyes widening in suspicion. Kabru cared too much—about everything and everyone. It was one of the things about him that Mithrun never quite understood, but that compassion was also something that made him one of the most intriguing, and sometimes frustrating, people Mithrun had ever met. Mithrun would never be the only thing that mattered to him.

Kabru’s lips met his with a sharp sting, jolting Mithrun out of his stunned breathlessness and flooding his senses with a wave of pleasure he hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Now he had to add succubi to the list of monsters he was no longer immune to. Having desires was turning out to be far more troublesome than he’d expected. And his succubus taking Kabru’s form was… well, that was pretty damning evidence of his blossoming desires.

Kabru pushed open the greenhouse door just in time to see Mithrun teleport his look-alike headfirst into the well, leaving its partially engorged body wedged between the narrow stone walls.

“Mithrun, is everything okay out there?”

As Kabru peeked his head around the glass, Mithrun could immediately tell that this version was the real one. His face had lost all its usual boyish charm, now lumpy and swollen with angry insect stings. And from the sound of his garbled voice, his tongue was starting to swell too from a pretty bad allergic reaction.

Mithrun let out a slow breath, steadying his scattered thoughts, and turned back for the greenhouse. Upon reaching Kabru, he reached up and cupped the taller man’s face in his hands, channeling a healing spell into the welts that marked his exposed skin. “How did you manage to get away from so many succubi if they got close enough to do this?”

Kabru’s voice became clearer as the healing spell pulled him back from the brink of anaphylaxis. “These were from bees. I accidentally walked into a hive while looking for mandrake leaves to add to our supplies. Was that a succubus in the well?”

Now that Mithrun was beginning to understand his feelings, he no longer felt a desire to hide them. Not that he had the option—within the hour, his lips would be as swollen as Kabru's face, and it would be painfully obvious what type of succubus encounter he'd fallen prey to.

But more pressingly, his dream had reminded him of the stark reality that one day, he would lose Kabru, one way or another, and that he would regret not speaking up when he had the chance. And if Kabru remembered the nightmare as clearly as he did, then he already understood that Mithrun’s feelings for him ran deeper than common companionship. What made their bond so special was the way they could be their most honest selves with each other. If their connection was truly built on acceptance, then maybe Kabru could accept this part of him too.

“It was. And it took your form.”

Kabru's striking blue eyes suddenly reminded Mithrun of the ones he'd seen on the succubus. But these were filled with hope and joy, laced with the quiet tenderness that Kabru reserved for the moments they were alone, when all of his masks came down. The tension from Kabru's shoulders fell away, and his fingers twitched at his sides as if he were fighting back the urge to pull the elf into a tight embrace.

Slowly, hesitantly, Kabru leaned his cheek into one of Mithrun’s hands still cradling his face, drawing closer until only a breath separated them. The golden lights of the Soul Eaters drifted through the air around them, softening the lines of an expression heavy with unspoken questions and worn from a restless night.

Kabru’s heart pounded in his chest as he stared down at Mithrun’s face, open and vulnerable inches away from his. His voice caught slightly when he finally spoke.

“Mithrun… what is it that you want? Do you know?”

Mithrun’s gaze lowered as he weighed his thoughts, one hand sliding down to rest lightly on Kabru’s chest and letting the other drop to his side.

“I wasn’t sure at first. For a long time, I hadn’t been sure how to distinguish my wants from my needs, if I could recognize them at all. I still don’t know what I want most of the time. But when it comes to you… I think maybe I do know.”

Slender fingers tightened slightly on Kabru’s shirt as Mithrun looked back up with a flicker of resolve. “May I try something?”

Mithrun so rarely asked for anything that Kabru found it hard to deny him whenever he did, so long as it wasn’t dangerous or detrimental to his wellbeing, or anyone else’s.

Kabru nodded. “You never have to ask.”

Mithrun searched his face, looking for something Kabru couldn’t place, then said softly, “Then stop me if you don’t want this.”

He tugged Kabru down by the shirt, closing the distance between them, and tilted his head to press his lips to Kabru’s. For a long, measured moment, Mithrun remained still. Then his body softened into Kabru's, and his cool fingers slipped into the soft curls at the nape of Kabru’s neck, sending a shiver down his spine.

The kiss was tender—gentle and slow, a warm caress of lips that spoke wordlessly of a longing just beginning to take form. There was no uncertainty in it, but Kabru could sense something tentative in Mithrun's touch. Something almost cautious—as if he were waiting, giving Kabru the space to pull away. For once, Mithrun wasn't throwing himself impulsively forward. He was testing the current, feeling his way through something unfamiliar within himself, as something shifted in the intimacy they shared.

Kabru's eyes opened when he felt the soft warmth pull away just slightly, the moment ending too soon. A shaky exhale escaped his lips as he gathered his courage to ask:

“And…?”

Mithrun’s eye met his, Kabru's blue reflected in shining silver. “Now I know.”

Chapter Text

The dirt path outside the greenhouse led to a modest, homey cottage, standing in the midst of a field overgrown with dungeon vegetation. Looking at the unremarkable one-story home that couldn't have housed more than one small family, Kabru was reminded of the time he and Mithrun's squad confronted Laios’s party in the deepest level of the Island’s Dungeon in front of the Mad Mage’s home. It seemed the former lord of this dungeon had not used the power of the Demon for material comforts any more than Thistle had. If this truly was the last dungeon lord’s residence, then they had reached the heart of the dungeon.

“This floor seems relatively quiet in terms of monster activity, and this place might be the safest shelter we've come across. It could be a good place to rest for a day or two before heading back to the entrance to meet with Flamela and the rescue team,” Kabru said hopefully as he wiped the dust from the window near the front door to peer inside.

Mithrun nodded. “Agreed. It took less time to map the dungeon floors than I expected. Their geomancer should be arriving in a day or two. This will be a safe place to wait in the meantime.”

The inside of the house was dark and appeared abandoned, so Kabru cautiously swung open the unlocked front door. A thin veil of dust kicked up from the wooden floor at the sudden movement, making him sneeze. It was clear that no one had been home in a very long time. Keeping his sword drawn in front of him, Kabru stepped into the house in front of Mithrun, and the two men combed through each room to ensure nothing dangerous had made a home there before letting their guard down. The air was stale and musty with the smell of old wood and neglect, but a shelter with solid walls, a kitchen, and a bed was a welcome reprieve.

Finding nothing of the monster variety lurking in the dark corners of the home, the two turned back and made their way down the hallway toward the kitchen, discussing what they could sustain themselves on while on this floor.

“Succubus milk is very nutritious, Kabru,” Mithrun was insisting. “If we find more Nightmares and dig up some mandrakes from the greenhouse, I could use the milk I drained from the succubus that attacked me earlier to make clam chowder for dinner.”

“Captain, you know I think your cooking skills are incredible now, but that sounds disgusting. That fluid was made from the vital essences the succubus drained from you, and you want us to eat it?”

Mithrun tilted his head. “It’s the fastest way to regain that lost energy.”

Kabru sighed, hiding a grimace behind his hand. He couldn’t wait to get back to the surface.

As they walked, one of the paintings on the wall caught his eye. At first glance, the scene was nothing out of the ordinary: a couple cradling their newborn at the mother’s bedside. However, when Kabru paused to take a closer look, he realized the man in the painting looked strikingly like him. Blue eyes framed by long, dark lashes stared back at him, and his dark curls looked ruffled, as if he’d been running his hands through them repeatedly. The man had a slightly stronger jawline and cheekbones that lent a kind of gravitas Kabru couldn’t help but envy… but the resemblance was uncanny.

Who was this person? Kabru stepped forward, drawn in by a strange sense of familiarity, when the image in the painting began to warp. Dazed, he rubbed his eyes, thinking the lack of sleep might be finally getting to him, when he felt Mithrun tugging sharply on his arm. He barely registered the words, “Get back, that's a Living Paint—!” before a sickening pressure settled over him, followed by the lurching sensation of free-falling as he was yanked into the dizzying swirl of color on the wall.

The falling sensation lasted several seconds before he landed facedown on a hard, cool surface. Wherever he was, it was dark and cramped, and his limbs were bent at uncomfortable angles pushed up against the walls. He pushed himself onto his knees, taking a deep breath to refill his flattened lungs, and—

Thud. Kabru's back nearly gave out when Mithrun's body dropped out of nowhere and landed on top of him.

“Mmmph!” Kabru’s pained grunt was muffled by Mithrun’s hand suddenly covering his mouth, silently urging him to keep quiet.

Mithrun leaned in, his gruff voice a low whisper in Kabru’s ear. “Living paintings pull you into a world that can interact with you just like in the real world. We need to stay hidden and not draw attention to ourselves until we know where we are.”

A long, narrow sliver of light cut through the darkness in front of them, suggesting that they had landed in a small, dark enclosure with closed doors. Kabru reached out and pressed his hand lightly against the wall in front of him, and it creaked open just slightly, giving them a better view of the room beyond. Mithrun got onto his hands and knees above Kabru, hovering over him as Kabru was forced to remain lying on his stomach so they could both peek one eye through the door.

The man Kabru had seen earlier was sitting beside a large bed, leaning toward a beautiful woman sitting propped up against pillows on the bed. Her long, straight, raven-black hair fell in a curtain past her shoulders, and her white nightgown clung to her skin, damp with sweat. Though her face was drawn and pale with fatigue, her dark eyes shone with a radiant love as she gazed down at the tiny baby bundled in her arms.

“She looks just like you, Ivora,” the man breathed, reaching out to gently stroke the baby’s cheek with a finger. “She’s perfect.”

The woman laughed softly. “She has my nose, but she has your hair. So thick and curly already… and look,” she smiled, gently nudging down the edge of the blanket swaddling the baby, “she has a birthmark that looks like a heart.”

“And…” the man hesitated, as if reconsidering his next words. “I’m glad she doesn’t have my eyes.”

The woman fell silent for a moment, gently rocking the baby as she slept peacefully in her arms. “Mother and Father will be relieved, yes. They still believe it’s a sign that you’re the child of a demon, and I fear that if she had inherited those eyes, they might not accept her.”

The man grimaced. “They may not accept her regardless, if they still think I have demon blood in me. They wouldn’t even let me marry you. I’m afraid of how they will treat her after this.”

“Give them time, Rajan,” Ivora said quietly. “We’ve never met anyone with blue eyes who otherwise looks like us before. I don’t plan to accept any of the marriage proposals my parents have been trying to push on me. Eventually, they’ll see that their beliefs about you are wrong.”

Rajan leaned in and pressed his lips reverently to her forehead. “Thank you, my love. As long as I have the two of you... it’s enough. Have you decided on a name?”

Ivora closed her eyes at the tender touch and smiled.

“Yes. Her name will be Anavi.”

Kabru stiffened in recognition from his hiding place—he had realized some time ago that they had fallen into this couple’s wardrobe.

Anavi was his mother’s name, and he remembered clearly the heart-shaped birthmark on her collarbone. She had once told him it appeared when he was born, a physical mark of the love she carried for him. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, not after seeing himself so clearly in Rajan. But why would the birth of his mother be depicted in a Living Painting in this dungeon…?

Before he could share this with Mithrun, raised voices cut through the quiet peace of the birthing room. A man and a woman were having a heated argument in the hallway just outside the room, making no effort to keep their voices down or avoid being overheard.

“The man only walked into our village a year ago, and he dared to father our daughter’s child out of wedlock after knowing her for only a few months?! How could you let this happen while I was away on business?”

“Our village had been plagued by vengeful spirits for weeks, something you would have known if you had been here!” the woman’s voice snapped back. “We needed someone to perform an exorcism, and he happened to be a cleric passing through. We have no one else who can commune with the dead. I’m not saying we should trust him, but we had no choice at the time.”

“Don’t be naive, Amala. Clerics are no better than witches. Did it not occur to you that a person of demon heritage would naturally be adept at dealing with demonic spirits? He doesn’t even have a village to call home. A respectable cleric wouldn’t wander the continent like a vagabond.”

The woman's voice was stiff in resignation. “I’ve talked to Ivora about this many times. She’s in love, Zahim—reason won’t reach her. Our family is respected in this community, and whoever joins it will reflect on our reputation. I sent many suitors her way before she began to show, but she turned them all down. And once it was clear she was with child, no one was willing to make an offer.”

“Regardless,” Amala sighed, “she needs rest now. We can discuss this with her another time, but not right after childbirth. Go.”

Kabru looked up at Mithrun and saw that he was staring unblinkingly at Rajan.

“Kabru… Do you recognize this man?”

Kabru turned to look into the room again, trying to memorize the face of the infant who would eventually grow up to be his mother.

“I think I'm figuring it out,” he whispered. “If you know how to get us out of a Living Painting, do it now. I'll tell you when we're somewhere safe.”

“I'll try. Teleporting without a visible target location is risky at best, but it's our only option. At least my chances of getting this right are as good as anyone else's in this situation.”

An image of the two of them embedded within the walls of a dungeon lord's home for the rest of time flashed across Kabru’s mind, and he winced at the irony of having escaped Utaya’s destruction only to face the possibility that he might end up a permanent fixture of its dungeon’s landscape years later. A surge of magic thrummed through the cool hand on Kabru’s shoulder, and with a much-too-late sputter of “Wait—!” the darkness of the wardrobe disappeared in the blink of an eye. They reappeared crumpled on the floor in the hallway of the cottage, whole and unharmed.

Mithrun got to his feet first and offered his hand to Kabru to help him up. “This man, Rajan. He looks so much like you. Who is he?” He glanced up at the other paintings lining the walls as Kabru stretched his cramped legs and sore back. “He appears in all of the other Living Paintings on this wall.”

Kabru moved to Mithrun’s side, following his gaze to the Living Painting beside the one they had entered. This one depicted the new father, Rajan, holding Anavi in his arms, his expression taut with worry as he stepped back to allow a doctor to tend to his beloved. Ivora lay in the same bed from the first painting, her face now strained and ashen with fever.

“I think the baby in these paintings was my mother,” Kabru said slowly, still struggling to believe the words even as he spoke them. “Which would make these two people my maternal grandparents. But my mother told me that no one in the family, or in the village where I was born, had blue eyes.”

He frowned as he sifted through the cobwebs of his past memories. “Come to think of it, she never mentioned anything about her parents. Her grandparents raised her until they married her off to my father.”

Mithrun grew quiet. Kabru could see the gears turning in his mind, an unspoken suspicion taking shape in the silence, and Kabru was certain they were coming to the same realization.

Wordlessly, they turned their attention to the next painting, which showed Rajan on his knees before a gravestone bearing Ivora’s name. Kabru immediately noticed that the year of death inscribed was the same year of his mother’s birth. Rajan’s face was hidden, but the way his body crumpled forward, hands pressed into the dirt as if trying to hold himself together, made it clear they were looking at a man broken in spirit. There were others in the painting, all dressed in mourning, but they stood a distance away from the blue-eyed outsider, some whispering to each other with sidelong glances at the man grieving alone in front of his partner's grave.

“The others in this painting… they're avoiding him.” Kabru heard himself grit out.

Mithrun shot him a furtive glance. “How do you know they're not just giving him space to grieve in privacy?”

Kabru shook his head, something dark and bitter coiling in his gut. He recognized the looks, the careful distance people kept. After everything they overheard in the first painting, he was willing to bet anything that the villagers believed her death was tied to the fact that she had birthed the child of a demon.

They arrived at the last painting on the wall. Unlike the others, this one was covered with a drape, as if the original owner couldn't bear to look at it yet didn't have the heart to take it down. Kabru reached out and pulled the dust-covered cloth away, revealing a painting of two men viciously beating a third curled on the ground outside a cottage identical to the one they were in now. An elderly couple stood in the doorway, a look of horror and fury palpable on their faces as the woman clutched baby Anavi tightly against her chest.

“I need to go into this one,” Kabru said. “I need to know what happened to my grandfather. I want to know why he wasn't around when my mother left our home village. If he had been, no one would’ve thought twice about the color of my eyes.”

Kabru hadn’t even finished his last sentence before he felt Mithrun’s hand slip into his. It seemed Mithrun wanted to know as well, or at least knew that Kabru would have wanted to. Mithrun looked up at him and gave him a subtle nod, and with a reassuring squeeze, stepped forward toward the painting.

The pull of magic landed them in a room Kabru recognized from earlier in the day when they were investigating each room of the cottage for monsters. They were in the bedroom, but this version of the cottage was clean and airy. A summer breeze, carrying the sweet scent of dew-kissed grass, wafted in through the partially open window, setting the veil-like curtains adrift. A cradle sat by the empty bed, and the room—the whole house—was still and quiet.

Kabru crept closer to the cracked open door, looking out into the hallway that led to the dining room. A man with curly dark brown hair lay slumped over a table, deeply asleep with his head nestled in the crook of his folded arms. His soft, steady snores filled the room with a fragile calm, a peace broken too soon by a sharp rapping on the front door.

The front door swung open with a creak soon after, startling the man awake, as an older couple let themselves into the cottage without waiting for an invitation. His piercing blue eyes seemed to lock onto Kabru’s when they opened, just for a second, before a booming voice interrupted the moment and dragged Rajan’s attention to the door.

“Sleeping again, boy?”

A man with greying hair and a full, well-groomed beard emerged from the foyer. He hadn't bothered removing his shoes as he entered the house, an open defiance of the village custom of showing respect and cleanliness in another’s home. He jabbed his simple but elegantly made cane in Rajan’s direction as he said with thinly veiled disdain, “Late for her feeding again, I see. I warned you, if you can't prove you are fit to raise our granddaughter, she’ll have to come live with us. She’s frail enough as it is without a mother’s milk to keep her strong, and she is only growing weaker under your care.”

Kabru saw Rajan’s fist clench on the table, but his voice was controlled and respectful when he responded.

“I understand, sir. I’m sorry. I was up all night with Anavi, she didn’t sleep well and was too weak to feed.” He opened his palm, revealing a thin, glass vial filled with a golden, viscous substance. “I was warming up the honey you instructed me to mix into her milk.”

A woman bustled in, holding a basket with a jar of milk and two loaves of bread. “Let’s see her. Fresh cow’s milk will do her stomach some good.”

Rajan nodded and got out of his chair, seemingly eager to get away from the older couple. With a panicked look at the cradle in the corner, Kabru wordlessly grabbed Mithrun and stuffed him under the bed before crawling in after him, shielding him from view with his body as he wedged himself under the portion of the bed closest to the door.

As Rajan’s footsteps approached, Kabru heard the woman mutter to her husband, “Zahim, she’s been given honey every four hours according to the shaman’s instructions for a week now. She said that the honey's nourishment and spiritual protection should work within days—and if it didn’t, it would mean there is a greater evil in this house that needs to be purged.”

There was a hint of venom in Zahim’s response that made Kabru’s skin crawl. “I know, Amala. That’s why I asked our sons to wait outside for us. He’s already taken our daughter from us. If Anavi is any worse today, we will take her. By force, if needed.”

Kabru held his breath as Rajan drew closer to the bed. A heavy moment of silence hung above them as he waited for Rajan to leave the room with Anavi, waited for the cries of an agitated baby woken from sleep, but the silence stretched on. Then he heard a choked, horrified gasp, followed by Rajan’s breathless whimpers.

“No… no. She’s not breathing.”

Rajan gathered Anavi into his arms and began stroking her cheek and rubbing her tiny hand between his fingers, desperately trying to wake her. Kabru caught sight of Anavi’s small limbs hanging limply from where she lay cradled in her father’s arms before Rajan bolted from the room, begging his in-laws for help. Amala’s anguished screams rose from the next room, and the sharp sound of hand meeting flesh echoed down the hall.

Forgetting himself, Kabru wiggled out from under the bed and ran down the hallway. He was met with an empty living room when he arrived at the end of the hall, but the commotion outside the open front door told him the confrontation had escalated.

Amala was holding a slightly blue Anavi against her bosom, her body turned protectively away from Rajan, who was being aggressively pushed away from the home by two well-built men wielding knives. Rajan was fighting with reckless abandon to get back to his daughter, a red mark blooming on his tear-streaked face marking the spot where Amala had struck him, but the two men threw him to the ground and began raining blows on him. Neighbors were starting to come out of their homes, concerned by the noise, but they soon joined the efforts to chase Rajan out of the village when they heard Amala’s cries that the demon had taken the life of her grandchild.

Kabru's hand twitched on the hilt of his sword. It took everything in him not to run out there to defend this man who had done nothing but love his daughter, who was being villainized and ostracized for no other reason than uneducated superstition. He knew intervening inside a Living Painting, an illusion of a memory long past, would be meaningless. At best, it would change nothing, and at worst it could put him in danger. But the bile bubbling up in his throat burned as fiercely as the urge rising inside him to run out there and—

Mithrun's hand closed around his. Blinking, Kabru looked down to his right—when had Mithrun joined him?—and found himself looking into the elf’s upturned face, softened with understanding and compassion, his good eye alight with a familiar fire he hadn’t seen since their days in the Island’s Dungeon.

“If you need this, Kabru, I’ll go with you. But it won’t change what happened, and it won’t take away the anger left by the injustices you've endured.”

Swallowing hard, Kabru forced himself to take a deep breath, closing his eyes to keep from burning holes into the backs of his great-grandparents' skulls with his glare. He knew in his heart that they had only meant well for Anavi, but had it not been for their misguided thinking, he could have had a family, and his mother would never have needed to run away to Utaya.

Kabru let his hand fall from his sword, loosely threading his fingers through Mithrun’s instead. “You’re right. Let’s go back.”

Mithrun's fingers tightened, and they reappeared in the darkness of the dungeon’s version of the cottage, the cold and quiet stillness a welcome relief after the suffocating tension they left behind. But even after the last traces of teleportation magic faded, Mithrun's fingers remained entwined with Kabru's.

“Kabru, if this is the heart of the dungeon, and these Living Painting hold the memories of the last dungeon lord, then Rajan—”

“He was the last dungeon lord of this place before Utaya was destroyed.”

The hair on Kabru's neck stood on end. The female voice they had just heard—it was impossible. He spun around to face the voice he had dreamed about for years, one he could barely remember now but recognized with painful clarity the moment he heard it—

—and came face to face with the ghost of his mother, staring at them from a distance down the hallway, her transparent hand rising to cover her mouth as her eyes widened in stunned recognition.

“Kabru…? Is that really you?”

Kabru felt his legs give out, his knees hitting the floor with a jarring pain he barely registered. His eyes stung with the sudden well of tears that refused to spill, and a sudden chill clenched his insides, wringing the air from his lungs until it escaped in a shaky whisper.

“Mom?”

Chapter Text

After all these years, Kabru had grown accustomed to—and had become good at—wielding the story of his mother’s death like a double-edged sword. It was a powerfully relatable topic that cut through emotional walls, garnered sympathy and trust, and created the illusion of kinship with others through a common thread of loss. But once he reached adulthood, he only called upon those memories in the rare moments when they could be used to manipulate a social situation to his advantage. Outside of those times, he kept those treasured, fading memories locked up tight in the dark recesses of his mind. Because the other side of that blade carried the sharp sting of guilt—and an aching loneliness he had spent years trying to soothe with carefully calibrated connections, each one knowing only the version of him they were meant to see.

None of them were meant to know this side of him, the side of him that had never fully come to terms with the loss of his mother and all that came with it.

He wasn't ready for Mithrun to see him come apart, either.

“Kabru, breathe. Focus on my voice.”

Kabru vaguely registered Mithrun lowering himself onto his knees in front of him. Slender hands gripped his shoulders with a steadying, anchoring pressure, a tether to reality in his dissociating state of mind. Warmth radiated quietly from the point where their bodies touched, slowly loosening the numbing grip that had held him captive in his own body.

Kabru’s voice caught in his dry throat as he struggled to speak. “Mithrun… is there any illusion or monster that could be doing this?”

He knew the answer without Mithrun having to give it. Only ghosts could drop the temperature of their surroundings, and the ice in Kabru's veins could only be partially attributed to his emotional state. The pale hand that slid up to wipe away the wetness at the corner of his eye, patient and kind, told Kabru everything he needed to know. If there had been any chance this ghost was an imitation created by another monster, Mithrun would have already thrown himself—or something else—at it.

His mother’s spirit had remained bound to the realm of the living, still searching for the peace she deserved, nearly two decades after her death. A premature death, preceded by a life of hardship—one weighed down by a son whose very existence cost her a home and a family.

Had she been alone all this time? How was it possible that her spirit had lingered for so long, when they had seen no other ghosts in this dungeon so far? Why did she appear whole—just incorporeal—looking just as beautiful as the day he lost her, without the appearance of having rotted flesh like ghosts typically did?

There were so many other, more pressing things that he wanted to ask, to say. Kabru would finally have a chance to say all the things he wished he had told her when she was still alive.

But now, he couldn’t seem to find the words to adequately express how much he had missed her over the past seventeen years. How he wished his life had turned out differently, that she could have been there to see him grow into a man—and how sorry he was that she lost that chance, because he was the reason she ended up in Utaya in the first place.

Kabru’s spiraling thoughts faltered as Mithrun leaned in and lightly pressed their foreheads together, his nose just barely grazing Kabru’s as he took a slow, steady breath, as if reminding Kabru to do the same. He did so, and as he closed his eyes, the noise in his mind dulled at the warmth of Mithrun’s breath brushing against his face, reminding him of the kiss they had shared earlier that day.

When Mithrun spoke again, his voice was low, his words just for Kabru to hear.

“Do you want me to stay, or do you want a moment alone?”

Kabru shook his head, trying to suppress the frantic energy behind the motion. He still couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and he desperately needed Mithrun to ground him while he questioned his sanity. “Don’t go. Please. I want—I need you here.”

After Mithrun gave him a nod, Kabru finally straightened and looked up at his mother. She had moved a little further back from where he’d first seen her, having noticed the chilling discomfort her presence caused the two men. She looked just as speechless as he felt, her shining eyes wide as they took in every detail of the son who had once fit in her arms—now taller, hardened by life, yet still unmistakably the same boy who once looked at her like she was his everything.

As his blue eyes met hers, something seemed to awaken in her. Her face softened into the same smile Kabru had treasured as a child, even as tears spilled down her cheeks. “My beautiful boy... you’ve been alive all these years. I can’t tell you how much I’ve longed to see you again. You’ve grown so much. You really do look like your grandfather. Your face is softer, though. Kinder.”

“Mom—how? How are you here? Did everyone in the village end up trapped in the dungeon as spirits?”

Anavi drifted to the floor, taking a kneeling position to bring herself to eye level with Kabru and Mithrun. She probably didn’t want to spend the first moments of their reunion recounting the details of her death, but he needed to know. He needed time to understand how this was even possible before he could bring himself to speak of the things he truly wanted to talk about.

“Not everyone. When the monsters spilled onto the surface in Utaya, the Demon’s magic within the dungeon poured out as well, and that magic affected everyone who died that day.

After the dungeon was resealed, my soul reawakened here in the dungeon. I found your grandfather here during my search for you. He had been completely consumed by the Demon before it left for the surface. I had never known my father until that day, but when I looked into his eyes… I saw you, Kabru. I stayed by his side until the end, and when he learned who I was, he told me everything.

Your grandfather lived a difficult life. He traveled as a cleric, performing exorcisms and burial rites, moving from village to village because people feared him for his eyes. It was always hard to convince people he could help, because they often feared he was the very type of demon they sought protection from. But he had a deep affinity for spiritual magic, and he always got the job done.

When he passed through my home village, he fell in love with my mother, and he made a home with her when they found she was pregnant with me. But she died from complications of childbirth soon after I was born. My grandparents raised me after that, and they never spoke of my father other than to say he was a traveling nobody who impregnated my mother, then left her to raise me alone.”

Kabru felt a familiar gnawing fury in his stomach as he thought back to the couple who had treated his grandfather with such hostility. Not only did these people knowingly tear apart a family, but their actions also indirectly led to the destruction of an entire town.

“So they lied to you… That's why you never knew my eye color was genetic.”

Anavi nodded, her lips thinning with unspoken bitterness. “My grandparents were proud people. They had a reputation to maintain in our village, and superstition held more power over people then.

After your grandfather was forced out of the village, he found Utaya and was hired as a cleric for an adventuring team in this dungeon. That's when he was pulled in by the Demon, tempted by promises of seeing his lost love and his daughter again. He built a home in the dungeon that mirrored the one he had on the surface, and the Demon created images of my mother and me for him to create a life with down here. But he was never fully satisfied, knowing in his heart that his false family within the dungeon wasn't his real one.”

Mithrun spoke from next to Kabru, still positioned slightly in front of him protectively. His empathy for those who had also once been pulled in by the Demon's manipulation bled through his voice when he asked, “What kept him in the dungeon after? What did the Demon promise him?”

Anavi looked to Mithrun with a curious, perceptive gaze before quietly saying, “He stayed in the dungeon because he had no other home to return to. His mind slowly unraveled with grief over time, and he poured his compassion into the adventurers who perished in the dungeon instead. He asked the Demon for a way to bring the dead back to life. Maybe he held onto the hope that he would learn of a way for him to bring his family back to life on the surface. The Demon’s magic couldn’t grant him this, of course, so the dungeon twisted his wish and fulfilled it by finding a host for the human soul within a monster’s body.

Souls of adventurers who died in the dungeon would not be taken to the afterlife by the Soul Eaters, as they normally would. Some were guided into the body of a monster, creating chimeras who had both a monster soul and a human soul. Other souls were allowed to linger on as ghosts, ones more whole in mind and appearance than those untouched by Demon magic. But as long as the spirit clung to regret, the Soul Eaters would not guide them to the afterlife, and they remained bound to the dungeon.”

“That explains how the villagers killed by monsters from the Utaya dungeon turned into monsters themselves,” Mithrun said quietly. “I’ve never encountered that phenomenon in any other dungeon in my years with the Canaries.”

Kabru paled.

“Wait… If the dungeon's magic bound human souls to monster bodies, does that mean that some of the monsters in this dungeon now were once human? Does—” Oh gods. A wave of nausea rolled over him as a sickening thought crossed his mind.

“Does that mean we could've eaten monsters with a human soul while we've been down here?”

He had just barely managed to do his part in helping to eat Falin’s dragon parts during the feast after the defeat of the Demon back then. He’d been able to keep things down only because he hadn't known Falin personally, and because he knew ahead of time what he was eating and had disassociated from the experience by repeating to himself that he was helping to bring someone back to life. Watching over Mithrun back on the surface and helping him find his motivation to do his part in the feast had helped to distract him, too. That experience would be nothing like eating monsters with a human soul here though, if these had been souls of the people he once knew.

Anavi shook her head, and Kabru nearly cried with relief.

“Sadly, chimeras made from forcing a human soul into a living monster have unstable lifespans. Their human and monster halves were always at war, fighting for control of the body, and most did not live as long as the dungeon lord had hoped. The last of them died out years ago.

I'm the only soul from our village still bound to the dungeon. All others who turned into spirits—everyone who lost a loved one in Utaya—found closure with time, because everyone they’d known and loved had passed away too. Once their souls were at peace, the Soul Eaters allowed them to move on. But I was the only one who never found the body or spirit of the person I lost. I never knew what happened to you, Kabru.

All these years, I held on to the desperate hope that you had survived—that somehow, you’d been spared the fate that claimed the rest of the village. And now, you're here and…”

She swallowed, wiping the tears from her wet cheeks with the back of her hand.

“There’s so much I want to know about you, I don’t know where to start.”

Mithrun got to his feet. “I’ll give you some time to talk, just the two of you.” He leaned down to rest a hand briefly on Kabru’s shoulder. “I’ll be back soon—I’m just going to the greenhouse for a minute. If you need me, call for me outside and I will return.”

After Mithrun left, Kabru’s mother looked at her son with a curious smile on her face.

“Who’s your companion?”

Kabru started. He hadn’t expected that to be the first thing his mother asked him, but his social graces had gone out the window with his shock, and he had completely forgotten to introduce Mithrun to his mother.

“His name is Mithrun. He’s a former Canary of the Northern elves. I was saved by the Canaries that day in Utaya, and I was taken to their continent and raised by elves. But I never forgot what happened here, what happened to you. I became an adventurer when I was old enough, and I moved east to explore dungeons to make a living and to learn how and why events like Utaya happen. I met Mithrun on one of my adventuring trips into a dungeon, and he played a vital part in preventing another catastrophe that would've been worse than Utaya. Since then, he's become... he's the one person I feel safest with. He’s my most trusted friend.”

Anavi’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Is that all he is to you?”

Kabru blinked. His mother had seen them together for less than half an hour, and she had already seen through him as if she'd known him his whole life. Or maybe the nature of their relationship was clearer to everyone else but the two of them.

Or maybe his mother still remembered the tells in his face, in his body language, that betrayed him whenever he tried to slip something by her in his youth. He had always been a kind and thoughtful child, but he'd been a manipulative one even then.

The corners of his mother's mouth twitched in amusement, as though she were holding back a knowing grin. “His lips were a little swollen, there.”

Kabru let out the breath he’d been holding with a weak, slightly sheepish laugh.

“That wasn’t me, he ran into a succubus. But you're right. He's… he means more to me than anyone, after you. I’ve known for a long time that he’s special to me, and I think he's picked up on that. But I’ve never let anyone get this close before, and I’m not really sure what he’ll want once we’re back on the surface. We haven’t really talked about what we are yet.”

Anavi drifted closer, reaching out instinctively before pulling back, knowing they shouldn’t make contact. She stared regretfully at her translucent hands before looking up at Kabru, fondness clear on her face as she watched him squirm with self-doubt.

“It sounds like you’ve fallen for him.”

Kabru’s hands fidgeted in his lap, but his blue eyes glowed brighter as he gathered the courage to admit his feelings freely. The words bubbled out of him in a rush, like a confession that had been bottled up and building pressure for too long.

“I have, mom. I didn’t realize how deeply I’d fallen for him until I looked into a Magic Mirror in this dungeon. I knew what it was, but I so badly wanted to see your face that I looked anyway. Being here in Utaya, hearing your voice just before I found the mirror… I was so sure it would show me my greatest desire of being reunited with you, in a world where Utaya was never destroyed.”

His eyes dropped, unwilling to meet her eyes now as he continued in a low voice heavy with guilt. He knew it wasn't wrong to have found contentment, even happiness, in the life he built after her passing. He knew that, and yet it still felt wrong to admit it, even to himself.

“Instead, it showed me a life spent at Mithrun’s side. But more than that, it revealed that what I wanted most was for Mithrun to find happiness with me. After everything he’s gone through, he deserves to be happy more than anyone else I know, and I should be supporting him full-heartedly in pursuing whatever he discovers a desire for. Even if they’re things that will take him further away from me, like his desire to hunt monsters, or things that may take him away from me entirely. But selfishly, I want to wake up every morning to his smile, and I want to lie down beside him every night after I help him fall asleep at the end of a fulfilling day.”

Anavi’s smile was shining now, her face suddenly looking many years younger as the weary lines of her face seemed to fade. She opened her mouth to reply, but in that moment, Mithrun reappeared in the hallway, making her jump in surprise with his unexpectedly quick return. He was carrying a large lantern crammed with as many Soul Eaters as it could hold, and as he approached, Kabru could feel the temperature of the room grow warmer.

“I'm going back to the greenhouse to collect ingredients for dinner. I just wanted to drop this off first. Given that Soul Eaters are a bridge between the world of the living and the spiritual realm, I wondered if their presence would make it easier for ghosts to exist in closer proximity to the living.”

Mithrun set the lantern down between Kabru and his mother, and Kabru watched in awe as the flickering lights cast a warm glow upon her face, her form almost appearing solid in the light. He knew he still wouldn't be able to throw himself into her arms the way he so desperately wanted. But as he drew closer, close enough to imagine the warmth of her embrace, he realized he felt no coldness at all.

Kabru spent the rest of the day curled up on the couch next to his mother, hugging a pillow as he told her everything about his life—the joys, the hardships, and everything in between—while Mithrun worked only a few steps away in the kitchen, preparing the Nightmare mandrake chowder he promised Kabru earlier in the day. He had even found herbs like parsley and thyme to season the soup with, as well as sprigs of mint, which he made into a refreshing mint tea mixed with the honey he collected from the hive Kabru found in the greenhouse. Unfortunately, teleporting a rock into the beehive in exchange for a piece of honeycomb hadn’t been Mithrun’s most clearly thought-out idea. Kabru had not been pleased to strip Mithrun nearly naked in front of his mother to pluck stingers from various parts of the elf’s body. But Anavi had only laughed and shared the story of the time young Kabru poked a beehive with a stick on a dare. He’d ended up stuck like a pincushion, and he had definitely lost the bet that he could outrun an angry swarm of bees.

Dinner was hearty and surprisingly filling, with the succubus milk lending a sweetness to the chowder that Kabru hadn’t expected. It felt strange, enjoying a homemade meal in the company of the only two people who he felt completely at home with—the two people he never thought would have the chance to meet.

They lingered on the couch long after dinner, unwilling to let the conversation end for the sake of sleep. A deep contentment settled over Kabru as he heard Mithrun ask his mother for her lamb stew recipe so that he could make it for Kabru on the surface once they had the proper ingredients. He tried so hard to stay awake, to commit every word and the sound of their voices to his memory. But the day had been filled to bursting with revelations about his family history, and the emotional whiplash of it all had left him utterly spent. The weight of his eyelids eventually overtook his will, and his head sank against Mithrun’s shoulder as he drifted into a dreamless sleep.

*****

Anavi gazed at her sleeping son with an expression that made Mithrun’s heart ache. He couldn’t remember his mother ever looking at him like that, and soon, Kabru would lose it again, too.

“You should sleep soon too, Mithrun. The bed will be a bit dusty, but it should be more comfortable than the sofa.”

With gentle hands, Mithrun guided Kabru’s lolling head into his lap and lifted his legs onto the couch cushion. When Kabru didn't stir, Mithrun began to run his fingers through his dark hair in slow, soothing strokes.

“I'll let him sleep a bit longer before moving him. He's too heavy for me to carry into the bedroom without risking waking him, and he has a hard enough time falling asleep when he has too much on his mind.” Mithrun huffed out a faint chuckle. “Which is most of the time. Kabru has a hard time letting things go.”

Anavi floated closer to Mithrun's other side so she could remain heard as she dropped her voice to a low murmur.

“What do you mean?”

Mithrun pulled a woolen blanket from the back of the couch over Kabru's sleeping form, wrapping the thin, slightly stiff fabric around his shoulders as he mulled over his response. Everyone in court knew about Kabru's work ethic. It was easy to attribute his workaholic nature to ambition and caring too much, but Mithrun had watched him closely over the last two years. While Kabru never spoke directly of it, and Mithrun never confronted him with his theories, he knew better.

“He burdens himself with too much, and he never lets himself rest. He has been living under the weight of survivor's guilt for as long as I've known him, and I know he has shouldered that for far longer. I think he pushes himself so hard because he believes he indirectly caused your death, and he doesn’t want your death to have been in vain. Even after achieving his goal of ridding this world of the Demon, he continues to overwork, obsessing about the safety and prosperity of Melini, because he wants your life to have amounted to something.”

Anavi pressed a hand to Mithrun’s, the one that rested on the couch beside him. Though her touch passed through him without warmth or weight, Mithrun could still feel the warmth of her intent.

“What happened in Utaya, to me, is not for him to bear. In the end, I'm glad things turned out the way they did,” she said. “If Utaya hadn't happened, Kabru wouldn't have the life he has now. He has scars that will take a long time to heal, but his gifts would've been wasted in a small town like Utaya. He never would've had the chance to shape a developing kingdom alongside a king, and he never would've met you.”

Mithrun’s eyes seemed to look past the walls of the room, lost in some distant place, while his fingers continued to sift through Kabru’s hair.

“You’re right. Kabru is invaluable in Melini. The country needs him. No one cares more for its people or their future, and their King depends on him more than he realizes. And I... I need him most of all. But he doesn’t need me.”

“He cares for you deeply, you know.”

Mithrun nodded, his voice quiet. “More than anyone ever has, I think.”

Her voice was gentle and encouraging. Probing, but not pushing. “Does he know?”

Mithrun looked at her, a wordless question on his lips.

Anavi smiled at his genuinely confused expression. “Does he know you love him?”

Mithrun’s hand faltered in its gentle motion through Kabru’s hair. How did she know the name of the nebulous but quickly blossoming feeling he’d only just begun to understand when he kissed Kabru that morning? Was Kabru’s uncanny ability to read people something he’d actually inherited from this woman?

“It’s not hard to see how much you care for my son. Whether it's romantic love or a devotion that transcends romance, only you can know. But if your feelings for him run as deep as they seem, hold on to that. Treasure it. This kind of bond may only come once in a lifetime, at least for the short-lived, so don’t wait too long.”

Mithrun looked down at Kabru, watching the shadows flicker and shift across his face, the curves of his cheek kissed with gold in the lantern’s light. A rare peace had settled over his features, smoothing the perpetual ridge between his brows, and Mithrun was reminded of how young Kabru really was. His maturity beyond his years, his wisdom when it came to people, often made Mithrun forget that Kabru’s life so far, and the time he had left, would be as brief as the blink of a firefly’s light compared to his own. And if Kabru’s paternal relatives had succeeded in killing him when he was a baby, Mithrun would’ve never known how deeply his own life could be changed.

In that moment, he realized he had truly come to understand Kabru’s grandfather and the desperation that had driven him to become the lord of this dungeon.

“Can you do something for me, Mithrun?”

Mithrun finally looked back up at Anavi and felt a twist in his stomach when he saw that her form had started to fade. Looking at the lantern sitting on the table in front of the couch, he realized the moving shadows on Kabru’s face were caused by the increased activity of the Soul Eaters, who had begun to pass through the lantern’s glass walls as if they had never been there at all.

“Will you look after Kabru for me? Help him look to the future, instead of living in the past?”

Panic rose in Mithrun's chest as he realized the Soul Eaters were making their way toward Kabru’s mother, drawn by something only they could sense. Her soul had finally found peace, and she was ready to move on.

“Wait! Let me wake Kabru, he needs to say goodbye—”

“It's alright, Mithrun. A son shouldn't have to say goodbye to his mother twice in a lifetime. I don't want my last memory of Kabru to be of him holding back tears for me. And I want him to remember me as happy as I’ve been these past few hours, here with both of you.”

She bent down to press a tender kiss to Kabru’s forehead, whispering in his ear just before the faint lines of her ethereal form were swallowed by the coalescing pool of light of the Soul Eaters surrounding her:

“I love you, my darling. I'm so proud of the man you've become. Live well, and don’t be afraid to be happy. When the time comes for us to be together again, I’ll be waiting for you.”

Chapter Text

Kabru slowly stirred. The heaviness of sleep tugged at his weary body, insistent and irresistible like the pull of gravity. It took him several moments to realize he was lying on a warm, soft surface, tucked beneath a downy comforter, and he felt… full. More whole than he had felt in a long time.

When Kabru’s eyes finally fluttered open, he found himself in the bedroom of the cottage. Mithrun was curled up on the bed under the blanket beside him, his dark circles more pronounced than usual as their eyes met.

“Did you sleep well?”

Kabru stretched out his aching muscles and joints, cramped from camping in a flimsy bedroll for days on end, as he said, “That was the best night of sleep I’ve had since we’ve been down here. But Mithrun, did you not sleep at all? You look exhausted.”

Mithrun shook his head. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Kabru felt a pang of guilt. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep, leaving Mithrun alone in his mother’s company and forgetting his foot massage for the night. At least they still had time before they planned to head back to the entrance. As long as Kabru kept an eye on the house, Mithrun could rest as long as he needed to.

“I’m sorry, I wish you had woken me. Let me help you relax, you need the sleep. I’ll take care of the meals today.”

Kabru started to sit up, reaching for Mithrun’s legs, but Mithrun reached out and caught his wrist. For several moments, he didn’t say a word, just held on with a steadiness that told Kabru he wanted something. He had never quite broken the habit of grabbing Kabru when he wanted to show him something, or when he wanted him to stay while he found his words, but Kabru couldn’t say he minded his touch. After all, Mithrun’s actions often spoke louder than his words did when it came to his subconscious and conscious desires.

“Kabru… your mother’s spirit has moved on. The Soul Eaters knew it was time.”

Kabru froze.

He had known, from the moment he saw his mother’s face again, that their time together would be limited. It was time he never imagined he’d have with her again, and though he was grateful for it, he hadn’t been prepared to lose her again so soon.

Mithrun didn’t let go of Kabru’s wrist as he guided him back down to lay beside him.

“She wanted you to know how proud of you she was. You achieved what the Canaries couldn’t—you identified the one person who was able to rid the world of the Demon, and you helped him prevent an event like Utaya from happening to anyone ever again. You’ve done more than enough. You deserve to let yourself be happy. She wanted you to live your life to the fullest, without letting the past consume you.”

Hot tears welled behind Kabru’s eyes. He ducked his head, blinking down at their joined hands on the bed without really seeing them. Repressing facets of his pain or burying them entirely behind a smiling mask was all he’d ever known since childhood. Even when he finally saw his mother again, he had held back his emotions and his tears the whole time, keeping himself together and not letting her see him cry. But now that she was gone again, something weakened in that resolve, and the grief he had long kept walled off within his heart was beginning to seep through the cracks.

Mithrun continued, his voice gentle. “You do know that none of it was your fault, don’t you?”

A strangled laugh broke free from Kabru’s throat.

“Of course I know. I know I only survived Utaya because the Canaries saved my life, and that I can’t make up for something I had no control over. But I’m not really sure I know how to let go. This guilt has been a part of me for so long, and it shaped me into the person I am. If I let those feelings go… it would feel like I’m letting go of her, too.”

Mithrun’s good eye cast downward to his fingers around Kabru’s wrist.

“I understand. The decisions of my past self in the Northern Central Continent still haunt me to this day. I still cannot forget the Canaries in my unit that lost their lives as a result of my decision to accept an offer from the Demon, when I should have known better. And then Utaya happened, and I wasn’t there when I should’ve been. I still struggle with the thought that maybe the Demon chose me because it knew how weak I was inside, and that I wasn’t good enough to stop it. But Marcille and other former dungeon lords in our support group have been helping me understand that what happened to me could have happened to anyone, and they tell me that I shouldn’t feel obligated to live out my life in a new country to protect it from monsters just because I couldn’t protect Utaya from the Demon.”

Something tightened deep in Kabru’s chest, a mix of dread and pained resignation that made it hard to breathe. If that was truly the reason Mithrun had chosen to remain in Melini, then he couldn’t ask him to stay.

“Is that the only reason you stayed in Melini all this time?”

Mithrun guided Kabru’s hand to his chest, letting him feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath the soft fabric of the tallman tunic he had worn to bed.

“Only at first. Back in the dungeon, you told me you explored dungeons to find the truth of why Utaya happened and to protect others from the same fate. After you encouraged me to keep living after the Demon, I thought about what you said for a long time. It was a desire far more worthy than any of mine had been in the past, and realizing that helped me develop my first true desire after the Demon—to stay in Melini to do the same. But I continued to stay because of you. You’ve helped make Melini feel more like home than the Northern Central Continent ever did.

However, the fact that my decision to continue protecting Melini no longer hinges on guilt does not diminish what I am doing for its people. Nor does it diminish the memory of how my former squad and those in Utaya pushed me forward in my recovery. Your mother’s memory will not be diminished if you allow yourself to stop questioning why you were the only one who walked out of Utaya alive.”

Kabru couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so seen. The ease with which Mithrun saw through him had once made him feel exposed and uneasy, knowing that he held none of his usual power in deciding how Mithrun’s perception of him would develop. But now, he realized that Mithrun understood him better than anyone ever had. And he was still here, in spite of it.

“Mithrun…” he said, his fingers curling slightly into the loose folds of Mithrun’s tallman tunic, “thank you for everything. For wanting to join this mission, for allowing me to come with you. And for staying with me through everything yesterday. Until now, I had believed that my unresolved feelings about Utaya—my unanswered questions about the family I never got to know, the memories of my mother’s last moments—would continue festering inside me for the rest of my life, eating away at me on quiet, sleepless nights. Now, my last memory of my mother has completely changed, and that means more to me than you’ll ever know.”

Mithrun cocked his head slightly, the side of his lip lifting in a small smile. “You changed my life some time ago, Kabru. It was about time I was able to do something for you.”

He pressed forward, releasing Kabru’s hand to cup his face as he kissed him with a tenderness that held none of the restraint of their first kiss, seeking and parting Kabru’s lips with his own in a demonstration of unquestionable desire.

Kabru gasped into the kiss, caught off guard by the initiative shown by the emotionally oblivious elf who normally couldn’t tell desire from indigestion. His body responded before his mind could catch up, his hands finding their way to Mithrun’s slender waist and pulling the elf’s battle-hardened body into his. Eagerly, he returned the kiss, losing himself in the sensation of Mithrun’s chapped—yet surprisingly soft—lips against his own. He only pulled back when he remembered that Mithrun would have no desire to stop what he was doing to respond to his body’s need for oxygen. Giving him a moment to catch his breath, Kabru shifted to trailing slow kisses along his browline, nuzzling against the soft base of his ear when he reached the side of Mithrun’s face—an intimate gesture of deep affection among elves, usually reserved for very close family members or lovers.

Mithrun’s fingers tangled in Kabru’s hair as he leaned into the touch. His actions were those of a man chasing closeness, even if he didn’t yet have the words for it, and that realization sent a shiver down Kabru’s spine. A sudden impulse seized him, and with an uncharacteristic lack of forethought, he acted on instinct, nipping the torn edge of Mithrun’s ear with just enough pressure to leave a mark without drawing blood.

A low, startled sound slipped from Mithrun’s throat. Before Kabru could apologize for crossing a line Mithrun hadn’t drawn, Mithrun climbed on top of him, breaking away from Kabru’s arms only long enough to straddle his hips before leaning down to meet his parted lips in a fierce kiss.

Kabru snapped back to reality at the sudden shift in Mithrun’s body language, his eyes widening with mortification as his mind finally caught up to what he had done. He had never been with an elf before, but he knew from his years on the Northern Central Continent that elven ears were sensitive things, and that biting them, even lightly, was considered a crude yet unmistakable act of laying claim to another.

And Mithrun had responded in kind. His actions may speak louder of his desires than his words, but Kabru needed to hear the words this time before this went any further.

With great difficulty, he pried himself away from Mithrun’s warmth, struggling to clear his mind of the confused excitement that clouded his thoughts. He looked up into Mithrun’s face, cheeks pink with the beginnings of a flush, as he brushed a lock of hair behind his ear.

“You’ve only just started discovering your wants when it comes to me. I don’t want to push this too far if you’re only doing this to comfort me. Just having you here is enough.”

Mithrun shook his head, his grip tightening on the sheets on either side of Kabru’s shoulders.

“I spent all night thinking about what I want. Your mother wanted you to look to the future, and it made me realize how much I need to be a part of yours, no matter what form that takes. I want a future with you, Kabru.”

Kabru’s heart stuttered to a stop at the conviction in Mithrun’s voice. He rose to meet Mithrun’s lips with as much love as he could muster, intending to lay his heart bare for the man he couldn’t imagine a future without.

“I’ve wanted you for a while, Mithrun. More than I thought I could want anyone.”

Mithrun’s gaze burned into his, as if daring him to prove his sincerity. “Then show me.”

Wordlessly, Kabru surged up on one propped elbow to press a kiss to the side of Mithrun’s jaw. His lips found Mithrun’s pulse point, latching on to the sensitive skin of his neck just below his ear, while he let his other hand slide under Mithrun’s shirt to travel up his waist, lovingly tracing the scars he knew by heart as he explored his torso.

Kabru smiled into Mithrun’s neck when he heard Mithrun’s breath catch. Their pollen experience had all but proven that Mithrun could experience arousal, but it was a relief to know that he could respond to Kabru’s touch. He slowly ran his fingers along the dips and lines of Mithrun’s sturdy back, feeling the muscles tensing beneath his skin, before drawing Mithrun’s tunic up and over his head and tossing it aside, letting his eyes rake over every inch of Mithrun’s bare torso on top of him.

A shudder passed through Mithrun’s body at the sudden rush of cool air, though Kabru sensed the anticipation hanging thick between them also had something to do with it. Kabru’s hands found their way to Mithrun’s hips and held him with a steadying grip as he shifted their weight, rolling them over in a controlled move to reverse their positions until he was on his hands and knees above Mithrun, pinning him against the bed.

If Mithrun hadn’t done anything like this in forty years, Kabru wasn’t about to let him potentially hurt himself trying to take charge.

Kabru dipped his head, brushing his lips along the torn edge of Mithrun’s ear as he breathed, “Are you sure you still want to do this?”

Mithrun, momentarily rendered mute by the sudden show of dominance, snapped back to himself with a huff of impatience. His hand dipped down to his own tight uniform pants, teleporting them away in an instant. He then reached for Kabru’s pants and scrabbled at the clasp to undo them, grunting with irritation at the inefficiency. Kabru couldn’t help the grin spreading across his face as he watched him fumble to pull down his pants. He guessed Mithrun remembered his terror at finding his pants teleported off back in the meadow and was doing his best not to upset him again.

When Kabru’s clothes finally dropped to the floor by the bed, Mithrun’s good eye immediately lowered to Kabru’s crotch. Following his gaze, Kabru was slightly flustered to find that he had already begun to grow hard as he hovered over Mithrun’s hips. But if his eagerness was in any way off-putting, Mithrun’s face did not show it. Pale fingers, slippery with a lubrication spell, wrapped around his erection and began slowly stroking its length, drawing a choked sound from Kabru’s breathless lungs.

As Mithrun’s pace steadily increased, Kabru slapped a hand over his mouth to stifle the moans escaping him, each stroke tightening the pressure around the sensitive head. He buried his face in Mithrun’s shoulder, trying to muffle the involuntary sounds of pleasure against his neck, his mind numb with disbelief at what was happening.

He was so distracted by the heat pooling in his core that he almost missed Mithrun guiding Kabru’s cock toward his entrance, ever impulsive and reckless.

“Hold on, Mithrun! Slow down a minute, you’re not even prepared yet.”

Mithrun looked up at him with such a doleful look of defiance that Kabru had to bite the inside of his cheek to refrain from laughing. Mithrun could sometimes get bratty like this when he wanted something, and as much as Kabru was internally gnawing at his leash to oblige him, there were some things he would not budge on. They would do this without hurting him, or not at all.

But Mithrun was making it really, really hard. And not just in a figurative way.

Kabru pulled Mithrun’s hand away from his erection, already beading with pent-up arousal, and tried to keep the pleading out of his voice as he said, “Let me loosen you up properly first. After that, you can do whatever you like with me.”

He was met with disgruntled silence for several moments. But at last Mithrun conceded, letting his hand fall limply to the bed as he waited for Kabru to proceed.

With a sigh of relief, Kabru lowered himself to bring his face between Mithrun’s bent legs. He needed time to calm himself down, to focus on taking care of Mithrun. As much as it excited him, there was a desperate edge to Mithrun’s advances that hinted at something deeper—and now that Mithrun had finally backed off long enough for the blood to return to his brain, Kabru knew he needed to find out what it was.

Mithrun’s expression was resigned as he lay staring at the ceiling, but when Kabru gently gripped his thighs to ease them further apart and brushed his parted lips over the base of Mithrun’s half-hard cock, a subtle flinch and the reflexive tightening of his abdomen betrayed the discomfort building beneath his stoic exterior.

“What’s wrong?”

Mithrun’s eyes squeezed shut, his brow furrowing in frustration. “I was just reminded of the Demon. But this… this isn’t the same. I know it’s not.”

Kabru let go of Mithrun’s legs and slid back up to hover over him again, searching Mithrun’s face with anxious blue eyes.

“Mithrun… will you look at me? Please.”

After a moment of hesitation, Mithrun obeyed, opening his narrowed eyes to meet his partner’s. Bright, shining blue eyes—endless in their depth—looked back at him with such care, offering more than he’d ever thought he deserved while asking nothing in return. So different from the yellow, slitted eyes that had once stared down at him hungrily as his desires were violently devoured.

This isn’t the same.

“I’m okay,” Mithrun murmured. “I trust you. Just—don’t look away.”

The rare vulnerability in Mithrun’s voice caught Kabru off guard, and in that moment, it occurred to Kabru that if their physical relationship never progressed beyond this, he would accept that.

“We shouldn’t continue if it’s too hard. You don’t need to force yourself to do this.”

“No, I want to do this. And I… I want to know you desire me.”

Kabru’s face softened in understanding. “Mithrun, I will always desire you, no matter if we do this or not. You never need to give parts of yourself to me that you aren’t ready to give, just to get me to stay.”

Tears pricked at the edges of Mithrun’s eyes. Over his nearly two centuries of life, he had learned that love didn’t come freely. Love was earned. Love came with conditions, and if he was of no use to anyone, there wasn’t a place for him. But here, in Kabru’s arms, he realized he was wanted—not for what he could offer, but simply for who he was. And for the first time, the quiet self-doubt and sense of unworthiness that had long haunted him began to crumble.

“I’m ready, Kabru.”

Kabru lifted one of Mithrun’s legs slowly over his shoulder, pressing soft kisses to the supple skin of his inner thigh. When Mithrun made no move to push him away, Kabru carefully shifted his weight forward, easing up toward Mithrun’s eye level as far as he could without causing him strain. Bracing himself with one arm, he pressed down on him with his chest. The pleasurable burn in Mithrun’s thigh distracted him as Kabru reached down to soften Mithrun to his touch, slowly running his fingers along the delicate, smooth skin around the base of his shaft and dipping down to caress his balls. He watched for every hitched breath, every quiver of discomfort that crossed Mithrun’s face, before he allowed himself to drift lower to carefully massage the rim of Mithrun’s tight entrance with gentle, coaxing strokes.

When he sensed the last of Mithrun’s hesitation leave his increasingly relaxed body, Kabru summoned a lubrication spell, slicking his fingers thoroughly. He hadn’t been with anyone since Fleki and Lycion goaded him into learning the spell for their own entertainment, having already fallen for Mithrun by then. At the time, Kabru never would’ve guessed he’d be lucky enough to use it with their captain. Well, joke’s on them now.

“I’ll go slow, okay?”

Kabru kissed the side of Mithrun’s knee as he slid a finger inside him, drawing a sharp hiss from between Mithrun’s gritted teeth. After giving him a moment to adjust, Kabru eased his finger deeper inside, searching for a spot he knew he’d found when Mithrun’s leg tightened on his shoulder, hips rising to push into him as the muscles around his finger began to relax. Kabru felt his pulse quicken at the way Mithrun’s body bucked under him as he began increasing the pace, rhythmically working him open.

By the third finger, Mithrun’s eye had glazed over, his jaw slack as he panted unintelligible things between deep, steady thrusts. Every time Kabru’s fingers curled against his prostate, a guttural cry tore from his throat. It wouldn’t take long to make him come like this.

Suddenly, Mithrun’s hand shot up from the bed and grabbed Kabru’s chin. It wasn’t to direct Kabru’s gaze toward him—he had kept his eyes pinned on Mithrun as he asked—but to get his attention. Kabru had been lost in a haze of lust, drinking in the sight of Mithrun’s flushed face and the wrecked sounds spilling from his parted lips as he fucked into him.

“Enough of this,” Mithrun growled. “Get inside me, Kabru.”

Mithrun’s commanding tone, the way his name sounded in that low voice strained with shameless want, would have brought Kabru to his knees if he hadn’t already been on them.

Obediently, Kabru positioned himself over his partner, his eyes never leaving Mithrun’s face. He pressed his hard, aching tip against Mithrun’s slick entrance and slowly leaned into him, gradually breaching the tight ring of muscle that stretched around the swollen head. When he finally felt the tension give, he bore his weight down and sank into the pulsing heat of Mithrun’s body.

Mithrun’s hands fisted the sheets with a pained groan as Kabru pushed deeper into him. Kabru fought to keep his thoughts focused, to keep his movements slow even as Mithrun’s body clamped around him like a vice, squeezing the breath from his lungs in a ragged gasp. The sensation was overwhelming, and it took everything in him not to lose control right then.

Once he was buried to the hilt, he lowered himself onto his forearms to meet Mithrun’s lips in a deep, heated kiss. He poured all of his desire into this kiss—he wanted Mithrun to know that he desired not just his physical body, but all of him, including the parts Mithrun couldn’t bring himself to love.

When Mithrun began grinding his hips up into Kabru, trying to take more of him inside, Kabru’s resolve finally snapped.

Kabru’s first thrust drove deeper than he intended, wrenching a strangled moan from Mithrun as his back arched off the bed. He cursed himself under his breath and began to pull back, but Mithrun’s hand closed tightly over his wrist with a blazing look in his eye. No words had to be said aloud for Kabru to understand the message: Keep going.

Kabru wasn’t sure what remained of his self-control after that. A primal, possessive instinct took over him, driving him deeper inside Mithrun to fill the hollow spaces left behind by the Demon with everything he had to offer. Not to take from him, but to give—to leave him feeling full, cherished, and loved. He needed to show Mithrun he wasn’t something to be used and discarded. So long as he lived, he would never let anyone tear into him again the way the Demon had, taking what it wanted and casting him aside like the scraps of a half-eaten meal.

Mithrun’s shoulders pressed into the bed with every thrust of Kabru’s hips, the rhythm growing increasingly relentless. Each time Kabru drove into him at just the right angle to slam into his prostate, Mithrun’s body arched into him, head thrown back and fingers digging into his wrist. The broken cries that escaped him, begging him not to stop, darkened Kabru’s eyes with hunger, and he leaned further into Mithrun’s body, pushing his lifted leg back and widening the angle of his pelvis to pound deeper into him. The closeness, the tightness, the unbridled trust—it was dizzying. Intoxicating.

Watching Mithrun unravel beneath him was unspooling Kabru’s restraint faster than physical pleasure ever could, and each thrust dragged him closer to the edge. The pressure was coiling tight and hot inside him, threatening to spill, but he didn’t want to fall without Mithrun. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to slow down, to wait—but Mithrun’s voice, the way he gasped out Kabru’s name when a particularly powerful thrust sent a tremor rippling through his body, shattered something inside Kabru.

A blinding wave of pleasure crashed over him, pulling him under as his body convulsed with release. He felt Mithrun’s body clench around him in response, pulling him in deeper as he followed him over the edge with a hoarse cry.

When the white spots finally faded from his vision and Kabru came back to himself, he realized that everything he’d felt for Mithrun in the height of his passion minutes before still remained. He had suspected it for some time, but now he knew for certain that what he had harbored all this time wasn’t just pent-up infatuation or sexual desire, but something far more enduring.

His arms trembled as he carefully lowered Mithrun’s leg from his shoulder and gently eased out of his spent body. Mithrun’s eyes were half open and dazed, and his blissfully sore body lay limp as Kabru used the discarded tunic at the foot of the bed to wipe off the milky seed splattered across his abdomen. But as soon as Kabru tossed the shirt aside, Mithrun reached up, pulled him back down to the bed, and buried his face into Kabru’s neck, arms wrapping loosely around him without a word.

They lay in the comfort of each other’s presence in contented silence, tucked into each other like softened clay pressed into its mold. Words would have only fallen short after so much had already been said without speaking. Kabru closed his eyes as his ever busy, always overthinking mind settled into a welcome stillness, focusing instead on the rise and fall of his chest and the thrum of his heartbeat falling into rhythm with Mithrun’s.

Just when he started to think Mithrun had fallen asleep in his arms, the faintest hum of an off-key melody rose from somewhere beneath his chin. Warmth bubbled up in his chest as recognition sank in: it was his mother’s song. He hid the fond smile creeping onto his face by pressing a kiss into Mithrun’s silver hair, his hand tracing slow, soothing circles over Mithrun’s lower back.

“How do you feel?”

Mithrun fell quiet for a moment. Finally, he tilted his head up to look at Kabru with a small smile on his lips.

“Whole.”

Chapter Text

Kabru woke to find Mithrun still wrapped in his arms, the skin between them slightly tacky with dried sweat. He last remembered stroking Mithrun’s hair until he felt the elf go fully limp, the exhaustion from their lovemaking and his inadequate sleep the last two days finally catching up to him.

The slow, steady breaths ghosting across his bare chest let him know that Mithrun was still deeply asleep, his unruly silver hair creeping up Kabru’s nose from where Mithrun’s head rested on his forearm. Kabru’s thumb absently stroked the curved lines of his shoulder as his mind drifted, finding comfort in the familiar soft skin punctuated with the rough lines of his many scars. He was torn between the responsible choice of slipping out from under Mithrun to find something for him to eat—his body would be hungry when he woke up, even if he still couldn’t feel the desire for food—and staying right where he was for as long as Mithrun needed the sleep. After today, and maybe tomorrow, it would be some time before they could share this kind of uninterrupted, peaceful intimacy again, free from the pressures of dungeon dangers and the prying eyes of others. Kabru wanted to enjoy every moment of it while it still felt real, while he didn’t yet have to think about how a romantic future with a former Canary soldier with ties to the Elven Queen might look, given his political position in the kingdom—

Tap tap.

Kabru startled, and his hand reached instinctively for the dagger in his boot—which, of course, wasn’t attached to him. It was sitting out of reach at the foot of the bed, where Mithrun had pulled off his boots before tucking him into bed the night before. His head whipped around to look over his shoulder at the window on the far side of the room, framed by the same airy, white curtains they saw in the Living Painting.

To his horror, he saw a small crowd of Canaries pressed up against the glass, blinking at his naked backside in shock—with Lycion at its center, his green eyes alight with amusement as he called out with a wave, “Hey Kabru~ Where’s the Captain?”

Panicked, Kabru threw his body over Mithrun’s, praying they wouldn’t be able to see his smaller form from the window. They had fallen asleep on top of the blankets, so he couldn’t even pull a sheet over him to hide him properly. Mithrun wasn’t officially a Canary anymore, but everyone in the unit knew him. And Lycion would probably come after his hide if he found out that some grubby tallman had slept with his former captain.

“Lycion! What are you doing here—nevermind, can you give me a couple minutes to get dressed? The Captain’s fine, he’s just—”

“Nngh. Lycion’s here?”

Mithrun’s bedraggled head appeared over Kabru’s shoulder, eyes bleary and squinting at the noise, completely unbothered by the row of wide-eyed soldiers gawking at him through the window.

“Oh, they’re early.”

Fleki’s muffled voice was heard next through the window.

“Oi! What are you guys looking at over there? Hey, Lycion, check out these cool mushrooms I found in the greenhouse, I’ve never seen ones like these before!”

Fleki’s small frame finally appeared, shoving past the wall of Canaries and waving a fistful of suspiciously colorful mushrooms. She reached up to tug at Lycion’s ponytail, then froze as she followed his gaze into the house. Her wild purple eyes met Mithrun’s indifferent one, staring back at her from behind Kabru’s bare back—which was curled in on itself like he was trying to disappear—and a huge grin broke out on her face.

“OTTA, YOU GOTTA SEE THIS!!”

Before long, Cithis was smirking at them through the glass with a knowing arch in her brow as she held back a beet-red Pattadol, muffling her indignant sputtering with a hand calmly clamped over her mouth. Otta was cheering, hollering something along the lines of “About damn time!” while Flamela looked like she’d just seen something multi-legged and hairy crawl out of her field rations.

Kabru groaned and buried his face in his hands. “They’re going to kill me, Captain.”

The little cottage was filled to near bursting by the time Kabru and Mithun had thrown their clothes back on and emerged from the bedroom. Canary soldiers crowded the kitchen and living room, sprawled across every comfortable surface they could find and casually squabbling over the pitcher of mint and honey tea.

Fleki bounded to Mithrun’s side first, throwing her thin arms around him in a crushing hug. “Captain, I’m so happy you’re alive! We were worried when we heard you got trapped in a dungeon again without the others!”

Cithis’s painted lips quirked with amusement as she sidled up beside them. “She was more worried about being shipped back to prison if something happened to her sponsor,” she said in her mischievous drawl, her half-lidded golden gaze sweeping over Mithrun in a casual assessment. “It’s a good thing Kabru looked after you well, Captain. You look healthier than we’ve ever seen you in a dungeon.”

Kabru barely registered the compliment through the dread that washed over him when he heard his name shouted from across the room. Otta was trying, and failing, to hold back a furiously scandalized Pattadol, while Lycion stalked toward them with suspicion written all over his face.

It took quite a bit of explaining to convince Lycion and Pattadol that what they saw earlier wasn’t Kabru taking advantage of someone who lacked the desire to protect himself from the wants of others. Kabru’s feelings—which, apparently, all of them had suspected at one point or another—were no longer lost in the face of Mithrun’s oblivious denial, born of the misguided belief that he wasn’t capable of being loved. The fact that Kabru had begun to change that deeply ingrained belief in such a short time was a shock to the elves who had known their captain much longer. But Mithrun had not yet regained his desire to lie, and they knew he spoke the truth when he told them that those feelings were returned.

As the squad continued to pepper Mithrun with questions, some a little too personal for Kabru's liking, Kabru noticed that some of the wardens nearby looked uneasy, listening in with a mixture of disdain and pity to hear an elf from a noble family speak so openly of his desire for a tallman. He caught more than one dirty look from some of the Canaries who had seen him with Mithrun through the window earlier, and it was clear they found it inappropriate for a scion of the House of Kerensil to be involved with someone of a short-lived race. Kabru knew Mithrun noticed too, but he didn’t care what they thought; he was used to other elves speaking about him in hushed judgement as though he weren’t present. Before today, Kabru had never witnessed the way Mithrun was treated amongst other elves outside of his usual squad. Now he saw it—not worthy enough to be respected as an equal outside of the battlefield, yet too good to be seen sharing intimacy with a tallman. Such blatant hypocrisy.

Once things had settled down, Otta went to the front of the house to retrieve something she had dropped in her haste to slow Pattadol’s protective rampage. She returned with a nest the size of a foot basin with a half-dozen large, gold-speckled eggs nestled inside.

“Fleki’s familiar flew too close to a phoenix nest earlier and accidentally provoked it. I had to trap the thing in a stone cage so it wouldn’t keep coming after us after it revived. Have you had anything to eat today?”

And so, the morning was spent in good, if somewhat chaotic, company. Mithrun poached the eggs and laid them over the field rations his squad carried and added the last of the rehydrated bicorn jerky on top. Although the Canaries balked at the strange dish at first, they had to admit that the runny eggs and savory meat did make the rations less dry and a bit more palatable.

As they ate, Pattadol explained how they had ended up joining Flamela's crew into the dungeon. Only days after Kabru and Mithrun's departure from Melini, the squad had approached Pattadol in the castle, begging and pestering for permission to follow them to Utaya. She had resisted at first, having made a promise to Mithrun to keep the country safe in his absence. But concern for her former captain’s safety quickly won out, and they caught a passenger ship to the Western Continent soon after. Otta’s arrival in Utaya allowed Flamela’s team to begin the evacuation sooner, and Fleki’s familiar followed the trail of campsites down to the heart of the dungeon.

“Deciding to go without us was kind of insane, you know,” Otta chided, shaking her fork in Mithrun's direction. “When was the last time you went into a dungeon without us?”

“We've been doing this together for years. Honestly, we were pretty upset you left us behind and took Kabru instead,” Lycion said, poking at his soggy rations with a sullen look on his face.

Mithrun frowned unapologetically. “The Queen sent enough troops for the task assigned. The terms of your service in Melini does not require you to join me on personal missions. I do not need protection.”

“Melini has Laios,” Cithis interjected. Her voice was dignified and refined as always, but for once it lacked the usual veneer of smug coyness. “We only have you, Captain.”

Though she'd never say anything more sentimental aloud, Kabru understood what Mithrun meant to her and the others. Respect for his abilities aside, their former captain vouching for his squad to remain in Melini with him had been the only thing that spared them from rotting away with boredom in prison back home, an inevitable future after a term serving in the dwindling Canary forces that remained as the Queen's dungeon clean-up crew. Kabru could see the distaste in Cithis's eyes as she surveyed the room, her gaze lingering with contempt on the wardens in particular. There was no telling what kind of trouble she'd stir up if she had to serve under another self-important noble again, always demanding her respect without ever having earned it.

Fleki suddenly looked up from her mouthful of phoenix Eggs Benedict with an excited look on her face. “Oh I just remembered, guess what else I found on patrol?”

She plunged her hand into the hood of Pattadol’s cloak without warning and fished something out of it, ignoring Pattadol’s yelp of protest as she dropped her fork in surprise. Reaching across the table, she waited for Mithrun to hold out his hands before dropping something small and ruffled looking into his palms. Mithrun’s eye widened in surprise, and Kabru scooted closer next to him to peer into his cupped hands.

Little Kabru stared back at them, blue eyes round and transfixed on Mithrun’s face. After a moment, it jumped up in Mithrun’s palm, squeezing its eyes shut and balling its little fists in concentrated effort, but Kabru had no idea what it was trying to do.

“It was wandering around the floor with the meadow,” Fleki explained. “I followed it to a clearing where one of your fires had been put out. Dunno where you guys lost it, but it looks like it had been trying to find you on foot until it ran out of mana.”

That’s what it was. He was so surprised to see Little Kabru alive that he had completely missed the fact that the fairy’s wings had been torn clean off. The shapeshifter must have snatched it out of the air by its wings, and it had managed to escape at the cost of losing its ability to fly. Would it be able to join Mithrun on future missions, crippled like this?

“I’ll help you make another one when we get back,” Kabru said quietly. “Maybe this one can stay with me in the castle, so I can talk to you when you’re away on your dungeon investigation trips.”

Mithrun shook his head. “No. We will make you a fairy too, Kabru, but this one will stay with me. It can be summoned just for when it’s needed.” A wry smile appeared on his lips as he watched Little Kabru wrap its tiny arms around his thumb.

“Just because it’s not physically whole anymore doesn’t mean it’s any less valuable.”

After breakfast, the Canary troops began preparing to move out as Mithrun and Flamela finished comparing notes on each floor of the dungeon they had passed through. Flamela’s team had combed through each level more thoroughly than Kabru and Mithrun had been able to, searching for signs of the Demon and clearing it of monsters as they went. Thankfully, it seemed that most of the largest and deadliest monsters had been the first to escape when the dungeon’s seal was dismantled, and the remaining monsters had been relatively easy to take down one by one as the soldiers advanced through the dungeon.

After Flamela was satisfied that their investigation was complete, she summoned a teleportation scroll and rolled it out against the inside of the front door. Several of the more severely injured soldiers had been left behind on the surface to recover after their first battle, tasked with watching over the other half of the teleportation scroll as the rest of the team completed the mission. When the teleportation spell activated, Kabru could see the familiar backdrop of bright blue sky through the small window, and the Canaries began to step through the portal, disappearing through the door one by one.

As the crowd of soldiers began to thin out, Mithrun found Kabru standing alone in the hallway, silently gazing up at the painting of his mother’s birth.

“There’s no way to remove an illusion spell from Living Paintings, is there, Mithrun?”

Mithrun drew closer to stand beside him, tilting his head up to look at the painting as well and letting the back of his hand lightly brush against Kabru’s.

“No. I’ve already asked Cithis. There’s a possibility that the mana outside the dungeon isn’t concentrated enough to activate the powerful illusion spells placed on Living Paintings, but it’s too high a risk to take.”

“It feels wrong to leave all this behind,” Kabru murmured. “Outside of my fading memories, there’s nothing left of my mother that remains on the surface.”

“Let’s go, Kabru!” Otta called from the front door, one leg already halfway through the portal. “C’mon Captain. Time to go home.”

The nearly empty room felt lonely once more in the silence left behind. The laughter and warmth of the morning had brought the home to life for the first time in years. And yet, the comfortable stillness that settled over the house now felt different somehow from the lifeless emptiness that had seeped into its corners for nearly two decades.

Mithrun’s cool fingers slid between Kabru’s.

“You are the greatest thing she left behind, Kabru. And she’ll live on in my memories now, too.”

Permanently sealing off the dungeon was a monumental effort that took the combined magic of Otta and the other geomancer that had arrived on the continent by then. They terraformed the surrounding dry, rocky landscape to close off the entrance with a stone barrier dozens of feet deep, supported by a network of stone columns beneath that would support the weight of a town rebuilt on the surface. With a solid barrier in place, the Canaries would no longer need to be sent to the site every so often to replenish the mana barrier.

When the entrance to the dungeon finally closed, disappearing into the rocky terrain, Kabru finally felt a chapter of his life close in a way he had never allowed before.

He thought of the cottage—the recreation of the home his mother once shared with her loving father, and the memories of his grandfather’s beloved family immortalized in the paintings within—entombed in the depths of the dungeon while new life one day takes root on the surface above. Kabru had always believed in the resilience of people. Utaya will rise again, and children will one day run across the land where so much blood had once been shed. And though he wouldn’t always be there to see it, he found comfort in knowing that a part of his family’s legacy would rest undisturbed beneath it as a reminder of what came before.

As Kabru thought of his grandfather, he found himself wishing Rajan could have lived to see the eventual rebirth of Utaya too. He couldn't imagine the pain his grandfather must have felt when he realized in his last moments that the one desire that had kept his dungeon alive was the very thing that ultimately led to his daughter’s death years later. Kabru knew now, after witnessing all his grandfather had endured, that his own life might have turned out very differently if he had never left the Western Continent. Milsiril had given him a new lease on life the day she took him in, and while his feelings about that remained a guilty, confusing tangle of emotions he hadn't yet fully come to terms with, he knew his grandfather would've wanted him to live the life he has now. It would only be right that Milsiril knew that. Maybe he would write to her on the trip home.

It would probably take him many more years to heal from the trauma of his past. Even then, perhaps the magnitude of his losses in his formative years could never be fully erased. But the answers he had found here, as painful as they were, marked the beginning of something he hoped would one day resemble closure.

“Laios, please pay attention. The delegation from Izganda arrives tomorrow, and while Senshi will be there to act as a mediator, you have to be able to talk about the trade issues that Kahka Brud has been causing. We can’t let them think we’re taking sides—we rely on imports from both countries.”

Kabru was standing over Laios, who was slumped in his chair in his office looking morosely at a very long piece of parchment detailing their current trade agreement with neighboring countries. Kabru leaned over his shoulder, pointing out a section of the agreement that he wanted Laios to commit to memory. “This is the section we’ll push to amend, to prevent Kahka Brud from leveraging our shared borders as a means to control or restrict trade with others.”

“I got it, Kabru,” Laios groaned. “It’s getting late, didn’t you have dinner plans? We can go over this one more time tomorrow morning before they get here.”

“Yes, but I’d rest easier tonight if we just—ah, I’m getting a call…”

Laios grinned. “Must be Mithrun. You’d better get going.”

Kabru sighed and summoned his fairy. A tiny likeness of Mithrun materialized at Kabru’s shoulder, bright silver eyes blinking expectantly at him as a jingling noise emanated from its body. The little fairy had taken on Mithrun’s pre-Demon appearance but had the mannerisms of the current Mithrun. Kabru found it hopelessly endearing.

He let it plop down into his open palm with its little legs sticking straight out before gently tapping it on the head. One eye closed, and a deadpan look settled over its face as Mithrun’s call came through.

“Kabru, dinner is ready. The stew is getting cold.”

Laios beamed up at him, knowing he was going to be a free man soon. Kabru sighed, stifling the intrusive thought that the King was starting to look a little too much like his new hunting pup, a boisterously friendly little thing that had been an unexpected gift from the Touden siblings’ father.

“Don’t worry Kabru, I’ll review it with Marcille later tonight, okay? And we can talk again at breakfast.”

Mithrun’s voice spoke again through the fairy. “Better plan for after breakfast.”

Kabru laughed. “I guess I’ll be staying over at Mithrun’s tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow, Laios. Mithrun, I’m sorry for running late, I’m heading out now.”

He could hear a smile in Mithrun’s voice as the fairy said, “I’ll be waiting.”

Kabru set out for Mithrun's cottage with a change of clothes for the next day. Six months had passed since their return from Utaya, and Kabru and Mithrun had settled back into the familiar rhythm of life in Melini. Mithrun had just returned from a month-long dungeon investigation at the border of Kahka Brud earlier this week, and Kabru had missed him dearly. They had spoken often via fairy, with Little Kabru sometimes stashed in a belt pouch at Mithrun's waist during calls made on the move, but Kabru never stopped worrying until his elf came back home to him. Mithrun continued to discover new hobbies between his trips, his most recent ones involving painting and noodle making, but nothing seemed to drive him as intensely as his desire to keep Kabru safe from monsters.

To an acquaintance or a casual neighbor looking in, not much seemed to have changed between them; they had always been unusually close in ways that often blurred the line between friendship and something more. But in recent months, the line had begun to blur in ways that were harder to ignore—especially for those in the community with watchful eyes. One such person was Mithrun's neighbor, an elderly half-foot with a fondness for other people’s business. When she and her retired carpenter husband moved in next door, Kabru quickly learned that Mrs. Maes had an uncanny ability to appear whenever he turned the corner onto Mithrun’s front yard. The elf often found Kabru on his porch holding a casserole or some fruit pie that she had shoved into his arms when he arrived for dinner, or for Mithrun's nighttime massage. Since their relationship began, Mrs. Maes had spotted Kabru emerging from Mithrun’s place in the mornings with increasing frequency, looking slightly disheveled and carrying a packed lunch, and had begun dropping hints that her husband could help them expand the cottage a bit if needed.

But for now, only the inner court, Mithrun’s squad, and apparently Mrs. Maes knew for certain about their blossoming relationship. Everyone else was left to their own speculation. Aside from a subtle brush of lips against an ear in greeting when Mithrun returned from a monster-hunting trip, and the way their gazes always met the moment one entered a room the other was in, the two kept their courtship out of the public eye. Kabru wanted Mithrun to have the space to explore his new wants without pressure or expectations, even if Mithrun found the discretion unnecessary.

Kabru arrived at Mithrun’s door just as the sun began to set on the horizon, painting the sky a rich orange-red. The scent wafting from the open windows stopped him in his tracks on the porch, his hand frozen on the doorknob Mithrun had left unlocked for him. The memory of his mother’s lamb stew hit with the full weight of the emotions he’d felt in her presence six months ago. Mithrun had finally gotten the recipe just right.

Mithrun was standing by the stove, wearing his walking mushroom apron and stirring a pot keeping warm over the fire. Kabru padded across the room and wrapped his arms around Mithrun’s body, leaning into his back and pressing a kiss to the side of his head. He always felt some of the tension ease from his shoulders when he went to Mithrun’s after work. It was hard to stop himself from working late into the night when he spent his evenings in his room at the castle, but here—here, Mithrun made sure he remembered that Melini’s future wasn’t the only one he was trying to build.

Over dinner, Kabru shared with Mithrun the letters he had been exchanging with some of the local leaders on the Western Continent. With so few habitable areas remaining in the region, news of the dungeon’s permanent sealing had spread quickly to neighboring villages. Many families had already begun migrating from Kabru’s mother’s hometown, as well as from other smaller local villages, onto Utayan land. Rebuilding was a slow process, and tensions sometimes ran hot as different cultures began to mix, but Kabru saw it as a good thing. Just as Melini was a melting pot of different races and cultures, Utaya would be reborn as a completely new place when the town was reestablished. It would not be the same Utaya that once stood on that land, but it would be all the more beautiful for the cultural richness it would hold. Laios and Yaad had also agreed to send resources overseas to aid in the rebuilding, with the hope that they would one day see Melini as a trusted ally among the short-lived races.

As Kabru savored the last spoonfuls of the stew his mother had taught Mithrun how to make, he asked, “How have your painting classes been going? Do you think you’re going to stick with it?”

Mithrun stood, his chair scraping against the wooden floor as he pushed back from the table. “That’s actually why I called you over for dinner tonight. Wait here.”

He disappeared into his bedroom for several moments, and when he returned, he was holding a large canvas wrapped neatly in brown paper. “I finally finished this earlier today. I’d like you to have it.”

Kabru watched Mithrun curiously as he pulled off the wrapping. He hadn’t yet seen any of Mithrun’s work from his new hobby, and he was eager to see how Mithrun chose to express himself through this pursuit of new desires.

When the paper fell away, Kabru’s eyes widened, and a lump rose in his throat. A painting of him and his mother stood before him, framed in elegant mahogany. They sat side by side in front of the lake they had seen by the dragon’s lair in the dungeon, their solid forms and the light of the Soul Eaters that surrounded them beautifully reflected in the water below. His mother’s arms were wrapped around her bent knees, her long dress fluttering in a gentle breeze around her feet, and a smile graced her face as she rested her head against her grown son's shoulder. Kabru was gazing in fascination at a Soul Eater held in his open palm, its glowing orb softening his features as his blue eyes shone with the radiance of moonlight.

As Kabru stood staring, completely lost for words in the face of the most thoughtful gift he had ever received, Mithrun said, “I can bring this to the castle for you later this week. I thought you might like to have it in your room.”

Kabru finally regained his ability to speak. “Would it be okay with you if we leave it here? Your place feels more like home than my room at the castle, and I spend more nights here now when you’re not away hunting monsters.”

Mithrun smiled. “If it brings you here more often, then yes.”

Kabru stepped forward, gently taking the painting from Mithrun’s hands and laying it against the wall before pulling him into a kiss.

“Thank you so much.”