Dauven’s team was as successful as Keylynn’s was. The local office only keeps the most recent files on hand while storing the remainder in the quest’s head office. What they did find agreed with her team's findings: the storymancer was cutting costs wherever possible.

  Trokan Horse Island lacks all infrastructure for overnight accommodations, leaving them the only option to camp with whatever spare adventuring gear was in the lost and found. Keylynn was delighted to be camping again. It was one of the few things she liked about being an accidental adventurer.

  Dauven did try to reason with the staff to let them sleep in the staff barracks on Ithika, but they didn’t have authorization from the primary stormancer or primary HR representative.

  “You two used to do this every night?” Tsunami asked Keylynn as he took a seat on her other side.

  “We did, yes. It was much colder then. The ground felt the same, frozen and void of life,” she answered and shivered from the memory. Their campsite wasn’t all that different from the one back then. Barnibus and BEEG had set up three old battered tents around their small campfire. Keylynn made several large mounds of dirt covered in soft moss positioned between the fire and the tents. Sitting on her dirt mounds was far more comfortable than sitting on the rocky ground or mounds of snow and ice. Zukyov was attempting to craft a meal with the abysmal supplies they had on hand. All Keylynn could see was his back as he crouched by the fire.

  “How did your mushrooms survive that?” Inferno asked, sitting on Dauven’s other side.

  Keylynn and Dauven’s eyes met, and they both chuckled. Her fungal colonies fell dormant, reducing her sight to nothing more than a monochrome view of living and nonliving. She didn't know how to explain it; it felt like her magic and her eyes were no longer working together, giving her a limited view of the world. In the ceaseless snowstorm she was basically blind, unable to see anything. She walked right into Dauven, his magic completely encasing him, making him invisible to her.

  “Not well,” she stated simply. “As you can imagine, my forest fungi and a frigid unending winter do not mix well.”

  “I’ll say,” Dauven snorted. “Your very minimal understanding of the common tongue didn’t help.”

  “Oh, so there was a time when she was worse?” Ragna asked curiously. “Do tell.”

  “There isn’t that much to tell. I was still learning the tongue. I knew less than I know now,” Keylynn stated, giving Dauven a withering glare. They don’t need to know there was a time she didn’t know what snow was. Or the word for stew.

  “I wouldn’t mock her too much. I’ve seen her terrify fearless giant kin warriors,” Dauven teased them.

  “You make it seem as if I meant to scare Zara, when I had no intention. It was, as they say, a happy coincidence. I found cold-resistant fungi and winter lichen and cultivated them as rapidly as I could manage.”

  “You crawled out of your tent one morning covered head to toe in an amalgamation of mushrooms, slime, and lichen,” Dauven countered in a monotone. Everyone’s laughter was contagious.

  “Zara refused to speak to or stand near me for weeks after that. I think she thought I was contagious somehow.”

  “Can you blame her?” Demetra asked gingerly, taking a seat on a mound facing them. “Speaking of, your seats won’t grow anything on me, will they?”

  “Only if you ask nicely,” she answered with a sweet smile.

  Demetra stiffened. “Oh haha, so funny,” she scoffed. She looked torn between not worrying about the potential and standing up. “What did you do without your matrix tablets or comms? Mine are all dead.”

  “We talked mostly. At the end of a long day of struggling to walk through deep snow and slippery ice and fending off foul-breathed giants or angry manticores, sitting around a warm fire pretending to be warm was enough. Talking was a good distraction,” she answered, remembering all the long cold nights wishing to glimpse the moon to convince herself she was still under the same sky. It was through those talks that she and Dauven became friends. While he helped her master the common tongue, she taught him about fungi.

  “Could be worse. There could be bugs and stinking corpses,” Inferno said with a casual shrug.

  When the campsite filled with smells of stewed meat, Zukyov stood up and handed out bowls of his stew. “It’s not much, but a warm meal is better than what it was,” he said when Demetra gave the stew a suspicious look.

  Keylynn sampled a spoonful of the stew hesitantly because adventure rations tend to have layers of spells that prevent them from spoiling regardless of the environment they are stored in. For what it was, the stew was extraordinary. The broth wasn’t as salty as she was expecting, and the bread wasn’t a soggy mess, making a sickening texture in her mouth. He even found a collection of dried vegetables to add to the stew. Unfortunately the preservation spells tickled her throat and itched the roof of her mouth.

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  She cleared her throat before setting the bowl down beside her. “This is delightful, thank you. I can safely say on my accidental adventures we didn’t eat half as well.” She meant it. She was torn between eating more of his stew and risking the spells harming her fungal colonies.

  While everyone ate their fill, she fed her small mimic. At first, it was unsure what to make of the spoon in her hand. After she mimed how to eat from the spoon a couple of times, it understood. Then it was cautious of the stew itself; she assumed it hadn't had warm food before. It took a few minutes for her mimic to grow brave enough to reach its long tongue out and grasp a chunk of meat off the spoon. After that, it ate ravenously from the spoon until her bowl was empty.

  As the sky darkened, their group shrank as more and more of them retreated to their tents. Gwen would rather sleep than sit around in the dark watching a fire and sharing stories, and Riv needed time to think about the latest hiccup he found in his quest to travel back in time. Keylynn didn’t understand what he meant by the paradox problem, but it sounded like a big one.

  She wrapped up her little mimic in an old scrap of a cloak while the sleeping infant hugged the spoon tightly.

  “Before you say anything, I followed protocol, it harmed no one, and I’m obligated to remove it, not to terminate,” she stated, wrapping her arms around the bundle. She doesn’t fault anyone for their distaste for mimics; they are impeccable predators. They change their forms, which lulls their prey into a false sense of safety. Mimics are known to eat anything and everything, especially adventurers.

  Dauven chuckled. “I know better than to get between you and your new pet. From your liberated polar bears to your giant scorpion eggs. This really is similar to the FrostMaiden days.”

  “It is, although the sky above is false. Back then we had the real stars.” She looked up, and all she saw was an endless dark expanse. She missed the stars. “I have to say I find the temperature much more pleasing. It was so cold back then that my breath froze. I feared I would never feel my toes or fingers again.” She shivered, remembering the nights she shivered even in her sleep.

  Dauven nodded. “Let’s just hope the ground is softer than ice.” He complained about being too old to sleep on the ground every morning back then. Keylynn didn’t understand how his back made him too old for anything. “Do you have a copy of the quest novelization?” He asked, changing the subject.

  “I do. Hold on,” she said and reached into her bag. She forgot that she purchased a copy and read it on her way to help Silas. She dug through her bag, pulling out what felt like every book she had before she found the right one and handed it to Dauven. “It feels strangely familiar.”

  “Thank you.” He flipped through the book. “Inferno incessantly pointed out all the differences between the book and the quest blueprints. There was something familiar to his ramblings.”

  “Tell me what your friend says about it,” she said before looking up at the blank night sky. The stars were absent. “Get some sleep, Dauven.”

  “You as well.”

  Night gave way to day all at once. The quest's illusionists didn’t need to design natural mornings when no one was meant to spend their night on the island. In a pre-coffee haze, they packed up their camp wordlessly. Keylynn hoped slime Eugene would have made himself known, but they didn’t.

  Dauven muttered about being too old to sleep on the ground as he started to brew coffee for everyone. Luckily the docks were a very short walk away from their campsite.

  “Fuck the gods. You’re my god now.” Demetra muttered as she brought the mug to her lips.

  “Don’t let that go to your head. She said the same thing at Starcups the other day.” Ragna grinned as he reached for his own cup.

  Demetra elbowed him in the ribs. “Not all of us can afford a gnomish coffee machine.”

  Ragna drank from his mug. “This classic crisp coffee, thank you Dauven.”

  “You’re welcome,” Dauven said, handing out coffee cups to Riv and Gwen.

  “Demi darling, if you wanted a coffee machine, I can easily give you one. All you have to do is ask,” Ragna said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “What good is having my family’s money if I can’t spoil my friends?”

  “Get off,” Demi grumbled, removing Ragna’s arm. “If I wanted to live off of a trust fund, I’d have my own.”

  “If she doesn’t want your charity, we will take it.” Tsunami squeezed himself beside Ragna while Inferno stood beside Demetra. They each had a coffee in their hands.

  “You two don’t need my charity. Demi and Zukyov do, and the latter refuses to accept it,” Ragna answered before taking another sip of his coffee. “Mmm, Dauven, are you doing refills?”

  Dauven let out a sigh. “Let me finish my first cup, then ask,” he grumbled as his nostrils flared slightly.

  “I don’t need you to buy me a job,” Zukyov grumbled.

  “How is he the only one living his best life among us?” Tsunami asked before pouring the rest of his coffee in Ragna’s mug.

  Ragna raised his mug. “Thank you, my friend. I’ll think of you when the holidays come around.”

  “We get it. You are all spoiled rich kids. Now shut it, or else one of you can donate to my lab. Actually, do that last one,” Barnibus grumbled into his mug.

  “My apologies, I had not known that you were children. I will adjust my perceptions of you for the future,” Keylynn said after a sip of her coffee. She reached out with her magic to ask if slime Eugene would like some coffee. They silently declined her offer. She let out a sigh; maybe taking them on a job was a mistake.

  That was the wrong thing to say to her team; they all exploded in protests at her.

  “We aren’t children. haven’t been for a while.”

  “My last birthday party definitely wasn’t appropriate for children.”

  “Do I look like a stupid, snot-nosed, sticky-fingered brat to you?”

  Keylynn raised her hands in defeat. “My apologies, I did not mean to insult.”

  “No, Keylynn,” Barnibus said with a hand on her arm. “Never apologize for thinking they were children. They are. They are nepo babies, if the office rumours are true. Anyways, they need it.”

  “That term is offensive, you know,” Demetra hissed.

  “May I ask what is a nepo baby?” She asked, hoping they don’t yell at her again. It’s far too early and bright to deal with so many people talking loudly all at once.

  “Cut the small talk, work chat only,” Dauven ordered, gesturing towards the bright horizon at the end of the dock. “I’ll tell you on the ferry.” Dauven leaned in and whispered in her ear.