Dungeon Item Shop

Fresh slides the tarot card out of the stack, setting it carefully down onto the spot it belongs at on the table. She stares at the card’s back for a moment, before lifting her eyes towards the customer.

“Are you sure?” she asks. “It could be bad.”

They nod in return, wide eyes nervously staring her way. Fresh nods back, flipping over the first card.

- The fool.

“You’ve made a mistake somewhere along the way,” she says, looking at the drawing of a suspiciously familiar looking girl on the card. “But being a fool also has its upsides, you have the right attitude towards life, even if everyone around you doesn’t always recognize that.” She lifts her hand to the next card. “It also signals a new start. When starting something new, we’re always a fool at that thing.” Fresh places down the next card, flipping it over.

- Death.

The card is covered in skulls, the grin of each of the depictions laughing as wildly as the face of the girl on the last card. “P- pakew…?” asks the healer-spriggan nervously, its stubby hands covering its mouth.

“The card of death doesn’t mean you’re going to die,” says Fresh. “It means that something will die. An old feeling, a lost memory, a lost chance,” she explains. “But remember, that death isn’t the end.”

The healer-spriggan kicks its legs nervously.

Fresh moves her hand to the third and last card, flipping it over.

“The sun,” she says, tapping against the card which has a depiction of a sun at the top of it, shadowing over the silhouette of a man in regal armor. She slides it towards the death-card, placing them together and then moving the two of them beneath the fool-card. She stares at them for a second, piecing the puzzle together in her mind.

“The things that have brought you here, they have come to an end,” she explains, pointing at the first two cards. “But with the ending of that night, a new sun arises, a new day.” She nods in relief. “You’re going to be fine.”

“Pakew?” asks the healer-spriggan.

Fresh nods. “You were a jerk. Do better next time, okay?” she asks. “Then everything is going to be okay somehow.”

“Pakew…” nods the healer-spriggan, getting up. It places a spriggan-seed in front of her as payment and then wobbles off, apparently lost in thought.

Fresh stares around the room for a moment, checking that she’s alone, before pulling the fourth and last card of the reading from the top of the stack.

- The hanged man.

She gasps, quickly setting it back into the stack and shuffling the cards around. It’ll be fine. None of this is real anyways according to Jubilee, right?

“It’s a rock, Basil,” sighs Jubilee.

Basil sits at the table, holding onto the peridot stone that Fresh had gifted her while she was sick a few weeks ago. “It helped me feel better,” says the priestess. “Don’t just throw away every possibility just because you’re small-minded.”

Jubilee places their hands together in front of themselves. “Basil. It’s a rock.”

“- And you’re just meat,” counters Basil. “But here you are, making a fuss before sunrise.”

Jubilee lifts a hand, pointing at her. “I’m not making a fuss. I’m calling you stupid.”

“I don’t care what you have to say,” replies the priestess. “It helped me feel better. Stop always tarnishing everything that I believe in.”

“You believe in the dumbest shit though,” says Jubilee, lifting an eyebrow.

“Yes,” replies Basil. “Like believing you could ever be a nice person.”

“See?” asks Jubilee. “Dumbest shit.”

“Jubilee!” scolds Fresh. “Don’t bully Basil. I’m going to cry if she leaves because you’re being mean,” she says, turning a nervous look towards the springan, which is basking by the window.

Jubilee turns towards her. “In the last year, I don’t think there hasn’t been a day you didn’t cry.” Fresh puffs out her cheek in a display of dominance as retaliation, but Jubilee doesn’t seem to be impressed. She forgot that that only works with Shamrock. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him scooting his chair back a few inches.

A rattling sound comes from the stove as their water begins to boil, shaking the lid on the pot. “Don’t worry,” says Basil. “I’m not going anywhere,” she says, getting up and walking towards the kitchen. Moving around the table, she stops by Jubilee, bends down and plants a kiss on their forehead, before walking off to the kitchen.

Fresh blinks, looking at Shamrock for guidance for a second, before turning back towards the two of them.

“What the fuck was that?” asks Jubilee, wiping their forehead with their arm.

Basil rattles around with the cups, pulling out their morning tea. “I just wanted to show you that I care,” says the priestess. “Even if you are a jerk.”

“Aww~” Fresh clasps her hands together, feeling a little jealous.

Jubilee lets out a disgusted noise. “It’s bad enough that I have to deal with you peoples’ constant touching and hugging every day,” they say. “But this is a step too far. I’m drawing a line here.”

“Jubilee!” says Fresh excitedly. “Can I kiss your forehead too?”

“No,” they snap.

Shamrock lifts a hand.

“No!” barks Jubilee, pointing at him next.

Shamrock lowers his hand.

“Stick to your rocks, you degenerates! And leave me out of it,” says Jubilee, rolling their eyes and leaning back on their chair. “Fuck’s sake.”

Fresh frowns, looking at the peridot stone Basil left lying on the table. She reaches over and picks it up, examining it, trying to remember what the salesman had told her about it.

She gets an idea.

Fresh stares at the bottle of sunwater in her hands as she swirls it around, catching the rays of the morning light in the suspended liquid.

A pair of heavy, metal boots make their way downstairs. Shamrock. She turns her gaze towards him.

“Here,” says the man, having returned from the errand she asked him to go on. He holds out his hand, dropping a small, green rock into hers. More peridot.

“Thank you, Shamrock,” beams Fresh. She didn’t want to use Basil’s for this, so she asked Shamrock to go to town to buy a new one somewhere. “So, you don’t think this is weird, right?” she asks, showing him the sunwater. As a member of the witches’ sect, he, like herself, holds the moon to be a more potent symbol than the sun, which itself is more of a subject of veneration for the holy church.

“No,” exhales the giant man, his chestplate lurching. He points at the sunwater and then towards the moonwater. “Two hands. One body,” he explains, striking against his chest. Fresh nods, supposing that she feels this way too. The moon and the sun are different, but they belong together.

She drops the bright-green stone into a mortar and then smashes it with the pestle, grinding it up into a fine powder, which she then pours into the sunwater. Fresh corks the bottle and then gives it a good shake.

Fresh stares at the potion for a second. That’s a pretty high price to pay, an attribute change? That’s basically changing your class, but not even to something general like holy-magic. Rather, it changes it down to a sub-attribute branch of holy magic.

Will the red-wizard want to drink this? Even if it means perhaps saving herself? Fresh isn’t sure. She doesn’t even know what kind of magic the red-wizard has, now that she thinks about it.

It’s neat though. The healing is almost secondary, compared to the concept of a class-changing potion.

“And this?” asks Shamrock. He pulls out another rock, a black onyx.

Fresh blinks, staring at him for a second, before looking at the water. Is this another one of those bad ideas that she shouldn’t be looking too deeply into?

“Let’s find out,” says Fresh, grabbing the rock from Shamrock and taking a new bottle of sunwater.

Don't mind me, just reminding you that you can listen to this story on Audible for 'free', if you have credits. =)

Razmatazz

Don't mind me, just reminding you that you can listen to this story on Audible for 'free', if you have credits. =)