Phaedra gnced down at Calliope. The mousefolk’s calm smile was a bit unsettling considering how they had found her but Phaedra was gd she wasn’t wallowing in self-loathing. She had never met someone that was smuggled or even a smuggler but everyone in Neos knew of smuggling. It was one of the most pressing problems in recent history.

  Phaedra had heard several of her father’s friends talk about the stricter travel requirements for going to Evelncarth. The council was working even harder to curb the issue but the dungeons were an unmanageable pce and having to fight off factions of insurrectionists was stretching them thin.

  Phaedra seriously hoped her father wasn’t stupid enough to join his friends in trying to dethrone the council. His fantasies of nobility were becoming very dangerous if he was speaking with the likes of Rasmond Gold.

  “Elysi—”

  Phaedra gnced up at Isran and Elysi in front of them. The couple were arguing… well Elysi was upset and Isran was trying to change that.

  “That was stupid and inconsiderate.”

  “I was being considerate of your wellbeing, of all of your well beings.”

  “And what about yours?”

  “Bab—”

  Phaedra had never seen them argue and even as they disagreed with each other, she could tell that they weren’t truly upset. Elysi seemed more scared and worried. She sounded like she was scolding her girlfriend while on the other hand, Isran was trying and failing to expin her reasoning.

  “Do they always argue about things like this?”

  Phaedra was always thrown off by Calliope’s voice. She was most definitely a bard. Her speech a song and her wording poetry... sometimes.

  Phaedra shook her head. “I haven’t been with them that long but they have never fought in front of me before…”

  Phaedra wondered if Elysi’s concern was because her girlfriend had almost died. Isran wasn’t the most skilled adventurer and taking on enemies in the dungeon alone could almost always go downhill. But they weren’t suited to aid her in combat, as good as Elysi was with the bow she didn’t have a combat css, not yet anyway. Isran protecting her would be standard. But then again it wasn’t her pce to judge, she wasn’t a part of their retionship.

  Phaedra blushed lightly at that line of thought. There was no reason to… after all the two clearly loved each other. Being a third wheel would be embarrassing. Though she wondered if Isran was a multiple women type of person… or multiple men.

  Phaedra shook her head and patted her cheeks. She barely knew the adventurer. And sure Isran was very attractive, strong, and cute at times… that didn’t mean she liked her enough to want anything. Of course not…

  They had left the dungeon a few hours prior. Unfortunately, they had moved very far into the Baren Wastends and would have to camp in the dungeons for a few days before they could get to Thalbrin.

  As traumatizing and fucked up as her experience had been she didn’t completely hate it. She had even gained a level after healing Isran which was a good reward. She didn’t do that much healing in her father’s compound so level gaining had been quite slow over the st few years.

  It was always nice to get a level-up notification.

  “Don’t say anything to me if it’s not to apologise.”

  “I’m not apologising for keeping you saf—”

  Phaedra enjoyed her dungeon trip. Getting attacked and not showering every day sucked but the feeling of walking through uncharted territory, taking note of strange things that could only be seen in the dungeon and nowhere else, and sometimes even the satisfaction of seeing Isran sy monsters trumped those things.

  Sure, danger sucked and the fact that anything bad could happen to her in the dungeons was an ever-looming threat, but Phaedra had never felt so alive. She had lived her whole life pleasing her father, working for him, living in his house, doing what he wanted. She was twenty-one and she still felt like that fourteen-year-old girl she once was, cooped up in her room and dreaming about the wonders of Evelncarth.

  Books had been her escape, the only thing that her father had allowed her to get herself. The only thing he had not policed and she had thought that was the only life for her.

  The dungeons were her enemy because her father had made them that. But he wasn’t there with her. Not as she trekked the Barren Wastends, not as she healed her companions. Not as she survived. Not as she thrived.

  Fuck her father. She was an adult and was finally going to do what she wanted, discover what she wanted. And she hoped that she could continue to do that by Isran’s side.

  “Baby—Elysi don’t walk aw—it’s dangerous to stray from the group!”

  “Oh really? I didn’t know that. Maybe next time I’ll try locking the group out of one of the dungeon floors and taking on a horde of monsters by myself. That will most definitely be safer than straying from the group.”

  “It wasn’t a horde—”

  Calliope giggled beside her and Phaedra couldn’t help but giggle as well.