It wasn’t supposed to happen.
“That isn’t in any records,” I said, my tone careful.I’d scoured through every file on her I could find—and there hadn’t been much—but nothing had hinted at anything like that.
“There haven’t been many cases of guides inside dungeons,” Kenyon offered.“The few that happened, the guide was killed almost immediately.If she’d been inside one, there’d be a record of it.”
“Her history since turning into a guide is well documented.She was found in The Pitt ruins, living there alone, and taken to the Guild for training,” I said.
“I saw it in her memories.She was in a high-level dungeon and a monster attacked her.”Shear spoke with his usual confidence, the sort that said he knew his skills and trusted them.
“If she was attacked by a monster, she wouldn’tbehere.Certainly not in one piece.”
“And yet she was.As I’ve said before, I can’t explain how something happened, but I can tell you it happened.”
I frowned as I tried to piece together the things I knew.I didn’t doubt Shear—I knew him well enough to believe that if he said it, no matter how unlikely, it was true.That didn’t mean everything, though.
If I accepted that she had been inside a dungeon at some point, and further acknowledged that it wasn’t feasible for it to have happened after she joined the Guild, it had to be before she turned into a guide, right?
“The Guild keeps track of civilians rescued from dungeons,” Ingram said, as though he followed along with my line of thoughts.“So if she’d gotten rescued, it would have been recorded.They offer them therapy and run blood work on ’em.No fucking way that could happen and there wouldn’t be a paper trail.”
“What if a rogue saved her?”Kenyon asked.
“Rogues aren’t known for being that helpful.”
Rogues were espers who refused to join the Guild, often ones who hid their skills to fly under the radar.Some worked odd jobs, using the skills for personal gain, while others tried to fit in with humans.
Either way, they weren’t the type to rush in and try to save trapped civilians.The cowards left that to us.
“Still, it’s the only thing that makes any sense.Civilians don’t just escape dungeons on their own.The only logical way that happens is if an esper clears the way and helps them out.If it were someone from the Guild, they’d report it, but there’s nothing in her history.”
“It was a high-level dungeon.At least A, if not S.”
I tapped my finger against the glass of the beer bottle, trying to work that out in a way that made sense.
Dungeons sprang up all the time, but few were high level.Some opened and collapsed so fast that no one ever noticed them.
That had to be it, right?
A small, higher-level dungeon opened, trapped her, and a rogue esper got her out?
It sounded absurd, but still less crazy than any other option.No worthwhile esper would fail to report a rescued civilian, not when we knew what could happen with them.Many took their own lives eventually, both due to corruption infection and because of what they saw and experienced.Human minds weren’t designed to come back from that sort of thing, not without extensive help.
“So what does that mean?”Kenyon asked.“We still don’t know anything about her, really, so what do we do?”
I wanted to tell them an exact plan, wanted to say that I knew what we needed to do, how to resolve this, but I just didn’t have enough information.
“We figure out the truth,” I said, hating how vague it was.“Having her around is good for us, right?Well, in that case, we’d do well to get her to admit to whatever happened.It would help us interact with her better and increase the odds that she decides to stick with us.”
“With the joint Guild events coming up…” Ingram said.
I waved him off.“I know.Now’s not the best time to be trying to work through this, but it’s not like we can just ask The Pitt not to open.It’s going to happen no matter what we do, and we’re not going to be able to just sit it out this time.It means it’s best that we get this handledbeforethat happens, so we aren’t pulled in too many directions.”
I turned my gaze to Shear, expecting him to be paying attention to me—he usually was—but instead found his gaze locked elsewhere.
Yun.
He stared at the large glass sliding door to her room, up on the second floor, the night sky reflecting off the sheer surface.I didn’t know what went on in his head, but I suspected it was similar to my own, to the chaos there, the desire for a clear understanding, for some sort of path forward among so many unanswered questions.
I told myself we’d been through worse, that we’d handle this as we had so many other things, but I wasn’t sure if I actually believed it.
