Kazue’s worried gaze followed Mordecai and then switched to Moriko. “Love, could you go be with him? He’s doing well enough to not be dispersing his avatar at least, but I think I o things up here.”

  Moriko nodded with a slight smile. “I take care of him.” They kissed briefly, and then the monk turo follow their husband.

  With a soft sigh, Kazue turned back to look over the prisoners while her man tending to the ones ihis situation made her feel depressed in so many ways she didn’t even know how to unta. “I, I don’t know your stories. And I think I agree with my husband that I don’t really want tht now. But while I uand why the version of events you know has led you here today, you are making the same mistake that he made before he got sealed away so long ago. My name is Kazue, I was born a kitsune in the Azeria before my untimely death got me reinated as a living dungeon. Moriko is our wife, she was born nearby. This is my mother and my father, and my smen, and my friends.” She gestured to include Brongrim, Nainvil, and all of the bunkin and rabkin.

  “We are the people you were willing to murder for your cept of justice. But it’s not even a personal grudge for you. You do not know a single person who Mordecai harmed, not even ily. But you were willing to be sent off to assassinate us all for whatever your cause is.” She couldn’t stop her eyes from watering. “You made me hurt some of you to defend the people I love. I am just gd I didn’t have to kill anyone. But you are all assassins and would-be murderers. I ot uand how you could be driven to kill for su a grudge.” There was no disguising the disgust in her void she just couldn’t take these people anymore.

  She turned her back to them and spoke to her father and friends. “Dad, I want to talk with you and Mom as soon as she is free. Everyone else, feel free to joiher delvers in the feast hall.”

  Kazue let the others leave first, then followed after, leaving Ricardo to keep Akahana pany for the moment. She forced a brief smile as she passed through the feast hall and waved at the quiet gathering, then made her way to the war room to wait. She wao let herself cry too, but she’d already let herself have a bit of that and o hold it together long enough to expin the rest of the pn to her parents.

  It would be ideal for Mordecai to hahis, it was mostly his idea, but she could feel him struggling with his emotions and Moriko f him. He was normally very in trol of his emotions, and even without this particur issue Kazue suspected he preferred being this way, so she could imagine how hard it was for him to have his feelings rampaging like this.

  Oh. Oh my. Kazue blushed at a sudden shift iions, and realized that Moriko had decided to use a differehod of f him. Well, distrag him that way should certainly work, but Kazue decided to wall off her awareness of them for now, until after she’d talked with her mom and dad. But she did feel a little better knowing Mordecai was being taken care of.

  Her rabbit friends were taking care of things for her in both the feast hall and the war room, which made Kazue feel a little guilty, but she had to remind herself that while she and Mordecai were in charge this was, in the end, a partnership. And the ganthro s were generally as social as she was, so it wasn’t a real burden for them.

  By the time her parents had arrived, Kazue had entirely regained her posure, though she didn’t try to hide her emotional exhaustion. For a long while the three of them just hugged and held each other, feeling the warm security of knowing that all of them were safe.

  Eventually, they separated and took seats around a small table while some of the bunkin served drinks. For a rarity, Kazue took some wine instead of tea. “Well, Mordecai didn’t have a ce to cover all of our pns with you, partly because we decided to yer who knows what. Mother, remember hoere talking previously about enviroal dungeons? Well, we’ve decided to do that and grow out and up at least once, and possibly again iure. Setting up the trading post through w with Dad creates the narrative we want, because we do not io tell anyone else that we’ve grown out that way. By appearance, we’ll look to be one floor smaller thaually are, which might help throw people off who mean us ill.” Her lips quirked. “Okay, mostly they mean Mordecai ill. But the three of us are a package deal. And it also means we’ll be able to watch people whehink they are not in our territory yet.”

  Her parents sidered the thought for a moment, and Ricardo spoke first. “Part of me says that sounds a little paranoid, but given what happened earlier today, I’m good with that. I don’t uand the whole situation, but from what your mother has said, it sounds like what I thought were just random idiots with strange ideas are actually a fellowship of some sort.”

  Akahana sighed. “This is one of the few things you never listeo me about before. They’ve always been there, and the keeps track of rumors involving their activities in the kingdom. It’s not a lot of activity, but there are always a few people trying to recruit. Even a couple of the noble houses harbor sympathizers, though I don’t know of ahat it’s a popur opinion. They aren’t just harmless kooks though, and they quietly support the activities of the bigger groups in the empire.”

  Kazue frowned. “Does that mean they have imperial bag?”

  “No no,” Akahana said with a shake of her head. “At least, not official bag. But they are more vocal and have entire houses bag them in one way or another, even if the imperial family isn’t involved.” Now it was her turn to frown. “Mordecai is right about ohing for sure. The group they sent wasn’t fodder. The stro of them sat between me and Takehiko, and all of them were individually strohan Shizoku, Brongrim, or Nainvil. None of them would have survived for a long while partially drawn into Zushi’s void. It’s probably part of why there weren’t more of them, though maybe there was a sed reparing if I hadn’t dispelled the sg sensor. It’s a lot harder to teleport without accurate coordinates, and a dungeon’s internal area is sort of fuzzy iion to the rest of the world.”

  She grinned. “I have to admit, I started to practice to see how close I could get here in a hurry if I o. If the space betweeside and the inside was normal, I should be able to step into a tree out there and step out from a tree of my choi here, but I ’t even sehem. At least, not individually. I kind of tell there are some trees in the right dire, but I ’t pick them out and I ’t tell how far they actually are. Trying to tree stride into your dungeo like a good way to stride out of a dozen trees at once. And I’d rather not scatter my body into a smear across one of your floors. But I see how having a direct scry on a particur tree might help me focus, so I assume it works simirly for teleportation.”

  Kazue had called up a notebook to write in when her mom started talking about her experiments. The stro dimensioed spells she’d practice with Mordecai would let her open a door-like shortcut for a limited distanake her body flicker between transitive pnes and the physical world without actually moving her. Not that she actually o take physiotes, but it felt better this way. “I never really thought about druid spells. Mordecai said that my talents would make learning more esoteric spells easier, but make learning some of the more traditional are spells harder. I don’t know how much that overps with nature magic.”

  “Esoteric…” Akahana wrinkled her nose. “Wait, you mean the same sort of spells bards are skilled with?”

  “Er, sort of? I mean, not the musid singing stuff obviously, but Mordecai talked about how imagination and creativity py a part in the way my magiifests. Like the way I sort of create ons when I o, but they aren’t really there. But they still hit things. Or let my daydreams start to spill out into illusions nearby.” Kazue giggled. “That one is kind of weird and fun, and it's super easy now that I know how.” Reality started to fuzz around her, blurring with dream-like qualities as random flits of fancy maed into short-lived figments that shimmered on the edge of being real before vanishing aing the edges of reality bee sharp and clear once more. “It’s not super useful, but it’s enough to fuse someone’s senses briefly if I .”

  Akahana’s eyes shoh curiosity, but Ricardo cut in before she could ask a question. “I’m sure the two most wonderful women in my life share notes about magic tricks ter, but maybe we get back to the pns for the dungeon?”

  “ht! Sorry Dad. Um, so, the idea is you teach the bunkin how to set up shop outside, then the caravan moves on to Riverbridge so that no one is around when we cim the territory. Um, we were pnning on waiting anyway. You see, we aren’t certain what would happen if we cimed an area with people in it, and that wasn’t an experiment we wao try. Anyway, that gives a cover story for how they are strug buildings outside of the dungeon since dungeon magic wouldn’t be able to help them. We’re going to have to make some adjustments to everything before we make another floor, but we’ll start growing the ‘normal’ way again. For a little while at least. One floor outside doesn’t look like it will mess with anything, but we aren’t certain h to grow up from there will look if we want to still keep that as our starting area. So we’re going to hold off until we have a better idea of what will happen.”

  Kazue grinned. “Oh, a of all! I’ll be able to fully inate my avatar. So I’ll be able to walk around outside our territory as well! We’ve been w on some travel pns for Moriko and me.” And that brought a sigh from her. “Unfortunately, Mordecai won’t be able to inate his avatar yet. I wao wait until he could be with us, but then we had a talk about personal growth and experiend stuff instead of relying on him, but I’m still gonna miss him and being here and stuff.”

  Akahana tilted her head. “Won’t you still be able to talk to him with your mental link?”

  The younger woman couldn’t keep herself from pouting. “No, and it kind of sucks. The link isn’t tied to our minds, it ties to our souls. And my soul will be remaining right here with my core. So Moriko gets to talk with Mordecai, ao talk to my core-self, but from what Mordecai said, when my avatar isn’t in the duhe e with my core will be too thin to have that sort of unication with myself. I’ll kind of have two selves. I mean, it feels a little like that sometimes already, but my thoughts flow freely between my core and brain. So it’s just that I have two brains that are better at different things. And my ind do dungeon magid my avatar-mind do spell magic.”

  And that started off a whole versation about how exactly the avatars worked. her of her parents was entirely fortable with the thought that their ‘real’ daughter was actually in a crystal nearby, or at least her soul was. It sounded a lot like a lich’s soul cage when described that way.

  Zagaroth