Chapter 175 — Report and Reunion

Chapter 175: Chapter 175 — Report and Reunion

He found Ilyana’s team at their usual corner of the Sundered Rest, the tavern’s evening noise settling comfortably around them, and Kess spotted him before he’d properly crossed the room.

"Look who finally remembered we exist," she said, dragging a spare chair over with her foot. "Weeks, Arlen. We’d started a wager on whether you’d actually surface again before winter."

"I surfaced plenty," Arlen said, settling into the offered seat. "Just not near any of you."

"Wounding, honestly." Kess grinned, entirely unbothered. "Sit. Eat something. Tell us everything, and don’t leave out the part where you apparently nearly died at least twice, since Osric’s already heard rumors and won’t stop looking smug about being right to worry."

"I wasn’t smug," Osric said, without looking up from his own meal. "I was correctly concerned."

"That’s smug with extra steps."

Arlen recounted it properly once the table had settled — the solo dives through Floors Four, Five, and Six, the pit trap and its lingering, unresolved mystery, the two fusions, and finally, in more careful detail than he’d offered Yveth, the Rotwood Treant and the sleeping shape of something considerably larger that he’d had the good sense not to disturb.

Ilyana listened without interruption, her composed expression sharpening at the mention of the Guardian. "You’re certain of the rank estimate?"

"Fairly certain. Guild’s expedition registry seemed to think so too, once I described it properly."

"Rank Seven, unflagged on any survey I’ve seen." Ilyana exchanged a glance with Osric, something serious passing between them. "That’s not a small thing, Arlen. Floor Seven’s routes shift constantly — collapsed passages, new ones opening, nobody walking the exact same ground twice. You could easily have found something nobody else has properly seen in years."

"That’s rather the shape of the whole upper Depths, though, isn’t it," Kess said. "Different roads, different sights. Explains why the guild’s maps stay perpetually out of date no matter how often someone bothers updating them."

"Explains a great deal, actually," Osric said, setting down his fork. "Including why you found that pit trap nobody’s flagged either. Different route, different hazards. Whoever built it might never cross paths with anyone taking the more common ways down."

Grennig, quiet until now, grunted his own assessment. "Good instinct, reporting both properly instead of just the kill. Guild needs to know what’s actually down there, not just what’s convenient to survey."

Arlen felt a small, genuine satisfaction settle into him at that — not flattery, simply the plain acknowledgment of a job done properly.

"So," Ilyana said, once the conversation had settled, "solo work’s clearly served you well. Fifteen floors’ worth of lessons in a handful of weeks, by the sound of it. I’d say you’ve more than earned a proper deeper push, if you’re interested."

"Past Floor Ten?" Arlen asked.

"Past Floor Ten," Ilyana confirmed. "We’ve business of our own down there regardless — the Crystal Caverns expedition wrapped weeks ago, and we’ve been meaning to push further into Region Three properly since. Be a good test, bringing you along this time rather than letting you keep discovering everything the hard way, alone."

"I’d like that," Arlen said, and found he meant it entirely — not because solo work had worn thin, but because the accumulated weight of the Treant fight had left him genuinely curious what the same danger might feel like with capable people at his back rather than nobody at all.

"Good." Kess raised her cup in a small, informal toast. "Try not to nearly die quite so often once we’re the ones responsible for hauling you out of whatever hole you find next."

"No promises," Arlen said, and found the table’s easy laughter settling into him with genuine warmth.

"When do we leave?" he asked, once the moment had passed.

"Three days," Ilyana said. "Gives you proper time to rest, and gives us time to finish squaring away our own reports. Floor Ten first — we’ll resupply properly there before pushing further. You’ve not seen it yet, I take it."

"Not yet."

"You’re in for something, then," Osric said, something almost fond in his weathered expression. "Everyone remembers their first look at it. Nothing quite prepares you properly, no matter how much you’ve heard secondhand."

"That’s not ominous at all," Arlen said.

"Wasn’t meant to be. Just honest." Osric returned to his meal, unbothered. "You’ll understand once you’ve walked it yourself. Words don’t do it much justice."

The conversation drifted easier after that, Kess recounting some minor disaster from the Crystal Caverns expedition involving a resonance trap and considerably more noise than the situation had strictly called for, Grennig offering dry, understated corrections whenever her account grew too embellished, and Arlen found himself, sitting among people who’d become, across a handful of shared dives and considerably more shared conversation, something close to genuine trusted company, settling into the evening with a comfort he hadn’t quite realized he’d been missing during his weeks of solitary work.

"You’ve changed since Floor Three," Ilyana observed at one point, studying him with the same evaluating attention she’d shown him during their very first dive together. "Steadier. More settled into whatever you’re actually capable of."

"Solo work does that, I think," Arlen said, echoing something close to what he’d told Elira weeks earlier. "Or maybe it’s just time. Everything settles eventually."

"Realm’s shifted too, unless I’m misreading you," Osric said, glancing over with the same casual, unbothered precision he’d shown reading Arlen’s first breakthrough weeks ago. "Middle Novice, now. Recent, by the feel of it."

Arlen felt a small flicker of surprise, though considerably less than the first time Osric had read him this way. "Yesterday, actually."

"Fast," Ilyana said, something genuinely impressed beneath her composed exterior. "Most people sit at Early Novice considerably longer than you apparently have."

"I’ve had unusual teachers," Arlen said, which was, in its own careful way, entirely true.

They finalized the practical details before the evening wound to its close — supplies to gather, the meeting point at the checkpoint archway three mornings hence, Kess’s insistence that Arlen bring "something better than whatever sad rations you’ve apparently been surviving on alone this whole time."

He walked back toward the Foxglove afterward with the particular, settled satisfaction of an evening that had given him exactly what he hadn’t known he needed — not just the practical shape of his next dive, but the genuine, easy warmth of people who’d trusted him enough to simply welcome him back without demanding he prove anything first.

He found Yveth behind the counter when he arrived, and she glanced up with her usual sharp, evaluating attention.

"Good evening?" she asked.

"Good evening," Arlen confirmed. "Diving again in three days. Properly this time — with company, past Floor Ten."

"Floor Ten." Something flickered behind her expression, curious rather than concerned. "Never been myself, obviously, but I’ve heard the stories. Strange place, from what people say."

"That’s what Osric told me too. Everyone seems very committed to being vague about it."

"Maybe it’s one of those things words just don’t manage properly." Yveth studied him a moment longer, something warm settling into her sharp, familiar expression. "Three days. I expect you to actually rest properly this time, not just tell me you will."

"I’ll try."

"See that you do." She turned back toward her ledger, though her attention lingered a beat longer than the work strictly required, and Arlen made his way upstairs not long after, already looking forward, with quiet and genuine anticipation, to whatever the deeper Depths — and Floor Ten’s long-promised, stubbornly undescribed strangeness — still had waiting for him.