Lumel, the Dimensional Mage they’d met back in the ancient library, blinked at him, clearly just as surprised as he was. “Vin?” She asked, hiccupping and wiping her runny nose on her cloak. “How… What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same thing!” Vin laughed, grinning at the shocked pulmon. Despite the fact that she had abandoned their plan and fled when she realized she couldn’t teleport the golem they were trying to steal, Vin didn’t hold that against her. Just from her expression and how she'd reacted when the golems charged them it had been obvious she wasn't used to combat. And seeing as the golems were resistant to dimensional magic, she probably wouldn't have been much help even if she had stayed. “Is everything okay? I mean, dumb question, clearly not based on the fact that you’re crying, but you know what I mean.”

  “I…” Lumel seemed to be having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that Vin was standing here before her. Her mouth moved, but no words came out, and for a few seconds she could do nothing but blink in confusion. Vin noted how even her eyelids were translucent, and he briefly wondered how her people actually got any sleep before she finally spoke.

  “You really did survive!” She exclaimed, giving him a teary smile and sobbing once more as she tried to catch her breath. “Drintus caught up to me and told me you all got out okay, but I was afraid he was just lying to try and make me feel better about what I did. I am so sorry I ran away like that!”

  “It’s alright,” Vin smiled, knowing how much her fleeing must have weighed on her based on the shame written all over her face. “All’s well that ends well. We managed to get out with the golem, and we even got our friend bound it and everything, so there’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  “Well, that’s one good thing at least,” Lumel hiccupped, only just now realizing her hood had fallen off. Eyes widening, she instantly went to grab and yank it over her head when she paused, watching Vin cautiously. “You… you don’t mind my face?”

  Now, Vin hadn’t exactly had all that much experience dealing with the fairer sex. But even he knew there was really only one right answer when a woman asked you a question such as that. The only problem was…

  In all honesty, Lumel’s face was the most horrifying thing he’d ever seen.

  The pulmon’s skin was completely see through, meaning Vin was basically talking to a ball of muscle and blood, complete with bare eyeballs. It was like chatting with a living science class mannequin, except for the fact that with every word she spoke he got to witness the muscles pulling and shifting in her face, not to mention the blood pulsing through her veins. She didn’t have a single strand of hair on her head either, meaning there was nothing to hide behind when her hood was pulled back.

  Choosing his words carefully, Vin answered her gently. “Lumel, I’ve seen a lot of strange things I never thought I would ever encounter since coming to Edregon. It’s going to take more than a crying woman to scare me.”

  Sniffling, she gave him a quivering smile as she wiped her nose again. Half laughing, half sobbing, she shook her head. “How are you even here anyway?”

  “I accidently stumbled upon this place while exploring a dungeon,” Vin explained. “I assume your story is somewhat similar?”

  “Dungeon?” She sniffed, giving him a strange look. “Is that what this is?”

  “Wait, you don’t have the Dungeoneering skill?” Vin asked, all the theories he’d been working on going up in smoke in an instant. “How did you find your way down here?”

  “I’m a Dimensional Mage,” she chuckled, as if that was all the answer she needed. “I sensed a strange shift in the fabric of reality and went to investigate. Peeling it back revealed a weird corridor, and the rest is history. I’ve been using this place to travel around Edregon for a couple of weeks now, but I had no idea others had discovered it as well.”

  Huh, Vin thought, staring at Lumel as she seemed to finally collect herself. Maybe my theories aren’t wrong, and she just brute forced her way into wherever we are because of her class?

  “You, me, and at least one capillan based on what I’ve heard,” he said, getting another strange look. “Capillan? Big, loud guys covered from head to toe in way too much hair? Guessing you haven’t met Forpurt yet then?”

  “No, not yet,” she confirmed. “So hold on, you gained access to this place because of a skill? Dungeoneering you said?”

  “That’s the one,” he nodded. “Though from what I’ve seen it seems somewhat different from the other skills. I can’t really put my finger on why that is though.”

  “Well for starters, I’d guess that’s because it's utterly brand new,” Lumel said, her face scrunching up in thought. “I grew up studying all the skills my people had records of, and I’ve certainly never heard of it.”

  “That would explain why my friends had never heard of it before either,” Vin muttered, remembering their confused faces when he’d asked them about it. “I suppose if the skill has to do with this strange place that was built alongside Edregon, it makes sense it didn’t exist before Edregon did.”

  “How curious,” Lumel said, summoning a notebook in a flash of purple that Vin instantly recognized as her Dimensional Pocket spell. As she jotted down some notes about his skill, Vin decided to try asking about the elephant in the room.

  “So… You want to tell me why you’re sitting here crying in front of this dungeon entrance?”

  Lumel acted as if he’d pulled out a knife and threatened to gut her, freezing mid quill stroke. After a few tense seconds where Vin half expected her to teleport away again, she sighed, putting her notebook away with another flash of purple and shaking her head.

  “It’s… It’s complicated. Family stuff.”

  “Family stuff?” Vin blinked, glancing at the empty corridor. “Wait, do you live in this fragment? The one that’s entirely water?”

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  “Yepp,” she said, her voice wavering slightly. “Or… I did.”

  For a moment, Vin was afraid she was about to break down crying again. Thankfully, Lumel took a deep breath, managing to cut off her tears before they began. Once she was sure she wasn’t going to start crying, she spoke.

  “I’m uh… Well, I’m sort of my people’s version of royalty, I suppose.”

  “I’m gonna stop you right there,” Vin said, holding up a hand. “Are you telling me you’re a goddamn undersea princess?”

  “Well our kingdom is actually at the bottom of a gigantic lake, but yeah, underlake princess I suppose,” she giggled. “Though I’m only royalty by a technicality. I’m a bastard.”

  “Ah, I see,” Vin nodded, wondering if he should pretend he knew why she was insulting herself so harshly. Thankfully, Lumel clearly picked up on the fact he didn’t understand because she rolled her eyes.

  “A bastard is another term for an illegitimate child,” she explained. “My father is the king, but my mother is one of the court mages. So while I’m technically royalty, I’m not in line for the throne or anything like that. Not unless about three dozen people end up dying before me. I’m pretty certain the royal chef is technically in line to inherit the throne before I would, if that gives you any idea of how far down I am on the totem pole.”

  “Okay… So why the crying?”

  “My royal blood has only caused me trouble my whole life,” Lumel sighed, looking longingly at the empty corridor stretching off into the distance. “While it’s frowned upon, it’s not technically illegal for our people to leave the water and venture out onto land. The main reason most don’t is that our bodies don’t fare well on dry land, so without a few choice passives or spells it’s pretty much a death sentence. However, that doesn’t stop everyone…”

  She sighed again, looking wistful as she lost herself in her memories. “When I was little, my favorite thing to do was listen to the Airwalkers when they returned to the kingdom and spoke of their incredible journeys to my father. Getting to hear their stories before the public was one of the few perks of being royalty I actually enjoyed, and I dreamed of following in their footsteps one day. The only problem with that, is that it actually is illegal for those of us with royal blood to leave the water.”

  “And I’m guessing your royal blood isn’t something you can just willingly give up?” Vin ventured.

  “No. Despite making my desires known and my father being all for letting me go out and explore, the queen forbade it. No doubt solely to punish me for her husband’s infidelity. In order for an exception to be made to one of our founding tenants, I needed permission from both of them. Barring that, I was trapped.”

  “Even though I ended up taking after my mother and discovered I had a knack for magic pretty early on, at first I didn’t really care one way or another for becoming a mage,” she explained, holding up a hand and summoning a small purple sphere with a flick of her wrist. “But after it became clear I’d never be allowed to leave the kingdom on my own, I became a Dimensional Mage with the sole intention of figuring out a way to teleport myself past the many guards surrounding our kingdom’s borders.”

  “Damn, you studied magic just to escape from your parents?” Vin asked, looking at Lumel with newfound respect. If he’d had that option growing up, he knew without a shadow of a doubt he would have done the same thing.

  “Not exactly, and that’s the whole problem,” she said, dismissing the floating purple sphere and looking longingly at the dungeon entrance once more. “While things are a bit hard between my dad and I, and my mom is often busier with work than I’d like, I still love my parents. If I’d just wanted to run away from home and never come back, that would have been easy. But I wanted to return home, to tell them at the very least all the amazing things I’d seen on my journeys. While I was still training and working on growing strong enough to teleport far enough past our borders that I wouldn’t be spotted, our kingdom was taken to Edregon.”

  “Ouch… I can’t imagine it was easy having all your hard work stripped away from you like that.”

  “Truthfully, it was good for me,” Lumel shrugged. “Sure I was back at level 1, but so were the kingdom’s elite guards set to watch the border. No longer did I need to sneak past entire squadrons of pulmon that had been leveling longer than I’d been alive. I threw myself into my studies once again with renewed vigor, and I regained much of what I’d lost rather quickly. This time around however, shortly after prestiging back into Dimensional mage, I ended up discovering a strange perforation in the fabric of reality on the edge of our kingdom.”

  “The dungeon entrance?”

  “Exactly. Even with the System reset, I’d thought I needed at least another couple of months of training before I was confident enough in my ability to leave and come back unnoticed. So when I suddenly stumbled upon a seemingly preexisting set of passageways that only I could access, I dove right in. I didn’t care about how or why they existed, I just thanked the Gods for providing them for me.”

  “For a few weeks, things were amazing. Using these strange corridors, I explored a number of the surrounding fragments and met all sorts of strange people, such as Drintus. I stayed away from the fragments immediately surrounding my own as I feared I might run into one of our Airwalkers, but I also couldn’t go too far as I was only able to disappear for a few hours at a time. Even so, I got to see all sorts of amazing places, like that floating library where we met one another. These last few weeks were the best of my entire life.”

  “But seeing as you’re here telling me all this instead of relaxing at home… I’m guessing someone finally noticed what you were up to?” Vin guessed, earning a sorrowful nod.

  “About an hour ago I tried to return home like I had so many times… Only to be met by the queen and a few of our Royal Guards waiting outside of the dungeon entrance. She must have had someone skilled following me these past few weeks, because I was sure I’d managed to give any tails the slip before I left. I tried to play it off like I was just exploring a cave I found, but somehow, she knew the truth. Without ceremony, without talking to my father first, she banished me, right then and there. Not knowing where else to go, I immediately turned around and swam back into the cave, returning to these corridors in a panic.”

  “And that brings us to now,” she sniffed, running a hand along the stone frame of the corridor that led to her home. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Even if I were to return home, the queen would have me executed on the spot. It’s what she’s always wanted after all.”

  “But your dad’s the king, right?” Vin asked, his heart breaking at the sight of the pulmon staring longingly down the seemingly endless corridor. “Surely he could fix this somehow?”

  “That’s not how it works,” she sighed. “Only one of them is needed to carry out the founding tenants, but both are needed to make an exception. The queen’s verdict was entirely just. I broke the rules set in place by my ancestors, and now I have to pay the price.”

  The two of them stood there in silence for a moment, Lumel wallowing under the consequences of her actions, and Vin wracking his brain for some way to help the Dimensional Mage. As a fellow lover of exploration, the whole situation just didn’t sit right to him. Lumel didn’t even want to be royalty. Why should she suffer just because she had a certain heritage she wanted nothing to do with?

  After struggling for a few seconds to come up with something he could do, he realized with a start there was at least one thing. Clearing his throat, he waited for Lumel to glance at him with teary-eyes before he grinned.

  “Any chance you want to come with us?”

  decades of experience on her. Without the Great Reset placing them all on an even playing field, she basically never would have stood a chance.

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