Before we could leave to go and meet Emma, Gilded pulled us aside.
He looked loose after his glass of wine, which didn't bode too well for how he was going to fare later at the pub, but I guess this was none of our business.
"Since you were so eager to thank me," he said. "I need you to tell me about that Dungeon you went into."
What? Wait…
Did he mean the pirate one?! Like hell!
"Not happening," Llewellyn said. "Shouldn't you know already, since you were the one who modded it?"
Gilded waved his hand.
"I told you it wasn't done. I cannot see inside the Dungeon while I'm working on it. I can only make an educated guess based on the Magic I can sense coming from it. Like with the artifact here. I knew it had some sort of flying or hovering qualities and I could sense whether it was dangerous or not, but I couldn't know what it did exactly without trying it on. So tell me what you found in there. I need to know if my modifications worked."
Llewellyn crossed his arms. "No."
"What do you mean no," Gilded said, annoyed. "Didn't you want to thank me? This is what I want. I need feedback."
"You want us to be your unpaid testers?"
"Well, you volunteered for the role by going in," Gilded said. "I just need you to answer some questions. Did the ships hold together? Were the NPCs coherent? Did anything feel unstable? But I will take you up on the offer of becoming testers, thank you. That's exactly why I offered to hire Ryo in the first place."
"We're not becoming your testers," Llewellyn said. "And you're not sending Ryo inside your unsafe Dungeons!"
"They're not unsafe!" Gilded said. "That's the whole point! They're not supposed to include any fighting at all!"
"There's more than one way for Dungeons to be unsafe," Llewellyn said. "Besides, we already gave you crystals. We're even."
"Wow," Gilded said dramatically. "Is that all Ryo's life is worth to you?"
Really, now.
Through the bond, I could feel Llewellyn getting murderous.
"You're the one who wants to send him to die!" Llewellyn said.
"I'm not sending him to die," Gilded said. "Why would I send him to die! I saved his life twice! I told you my Dungeons are not dangerous! I know what I'm doing."
These two. I rubbed my forehead.
"Let's just give him a very basic, abridged version," I told Llewellyn through the bond. "Besides, we can use the opportunity to find out more about what he does. If he keeps modding Dungeons and they become a problem, at least we're not completely in the dark."
I watched Llewellyn's hands clench and unclench.
"Fine," he said through gritted teeth. "You can ask us questions about the Dungeon we went in, but that's it. After that, we're done with this. Understood?"
"So you speak for Ryo too now?"
Looked like I had to put a stop to this before they started dueling here.
"Do you want feedback or not?" I cut in. "The offer expires in five… four… three…"
"Fine, fine!" Gilded said, looking annoyed.
They stared at each other, shooting daggers.
"Tiernan," Llewellyn called. "Is there a room we can use to go through some data with Gilded?"
***
We ended up in the entertainment room, flopped down on some bean bags, trying to balance properly.
Gilded huffed. He got up, dragged his bean bag closer and fluffed it up before sitting down again, balancing forward.
"So," he said, taking out his notebook and a pen. "Start talking. Did the ships hold together? Were the NPCs coherent? Did anything feel unstable?"
Llewellyn was still glaring so I started.
"The ships held together," I confirmed. "The whole setting looked great. The NPCs were… coherent. Alberan was dressed as a pirate, but—"
"But?" Gilded asked.
"The old lady at the Kiosk said he'd scammed her."
Gilded's hand stopped. "Scammed her?"
"The actual words had been something like, 'And if you see Alberan, tell him he owes me eight silvers from the last dice game. Cheating bastard.'"
Gilded looked baffled.
"That's weird," he said. "Alberan's personality template is as fixed as it gets. He shouldn't have been affected." He started scribbling. "What else? What about the other characters?"
How to talk around this.
"They were… um. Loud. And opinionated."
Gilded's expression smoothed out. "Excellent! So the personality tweaks overall worked. I wasn't sure I could pull that off. But I must have overdone it if they affected Alberan too. That needs calibrating. What about the quests? Were they engaging?"
Llewellyn started coughing.
"They were… uh… very engaging," I said, keeping my voice neutral.
Gilded eyed us both.
"What are you not telling me?" he said.
"What kinds of quests did you mean to set up?" Llewellyn asked.
"Nothing in particular," Gilded said. "As I said, it wasn't done. The current iteration should have just brought the overall difficulty of the dungeon down." He flipped back through his notebook, but he didn't seem to find what he was looking for. "So, tell me what you got," he said.
"Um," I said. "We got Cannonball Bowling, a Knot Tying challenge, and… uh, a challenge where we had to hide one of the Dungeon's tokens."
"Right," Gilded said, noting those down. "Did they feel fair? Did the tutorials work? Anything that felt— Okay, why are you both red?"
"We're not," Llewellyn said. "Just ask your questions."
"You're definitely red," Gilded said. "Why would— OH." He eyed us then leaned all the way back on the bean bag and started laughing.
What? What was that now?
"I don't normally expect anyone else to go into my Dungeons," he said after a moment, eyes full of mirth. "So I've been adding something."
"What is that?" Llewellyn asked.
"When I go in," Gilded said, "the Dungeon is supposed to pick up on my preferences and wishes, and interact with the modded environment to create the perfect quests for me based on what I'm feeling like doing."
Wait…
"But I wasn't the one going in this time," Gilded said, "and you two are… how can I say… well known for making out in hotel closets and going around covered in hickeys."
…Kill me now.
"So I'm guessing you got something along those lines. Am I correct?"
Maybe Llewellyn had been right and we shouldn't have agreed to talk to him at all.
"You're free to draw your own conclusions," Llewellyn said, crossing his arms.
Gilded snorted. "That's enough confirmation for me." He scribbled something down. "Wait. Did you molest my NPCs?!"
…What even?!
"We didn't molest anyone!" I said.
Well, except for each other, I suppose.
"So only each other," Gilded said, taking more notes. Why was he so annoyingly perceptive?
I covered my eyes with one hand. "Please let's get this over with."
"What about Dungeon items?" Gilded said.
At least we were back on safer ground.
"We bought several," I said. I opened my inventory and started going through them—Sea-Blessed Boots, Lantern of the Ever-North, Charm of the Sea Dog, Merrow's Shellphone…
Gilded looked intrigued. "Are these boots the ones you used in that last Distorted Realm video to run over the lake?" he asked, picking them up. "Interesting…"
He started running his hand over everything, checking the Magic and noting things down.
That reminded me.
"I took some pictures," I said, reaching for my phone. I hadn't taken that many photos, unfortunately, but I had Penguin in his little pirate hat and the pirate town seen from a distance.
Gilded looked excited at the sight.
"This looks much better than I anticipated!" he said, taking more notes. "Did you buy anything else?"
Through the bond, I could suddenly feel Llewellyn scheming something. Uh?
A moment later, he took a green something out from his inventory.
What the—
"GET 'IM UP AGAINST THE RAIL—SQUAWK—LET'S SEE HOW LONG HE LASTS!"
"HAUL 'IM IN!—SQUAWK—TIE 'IM UP NICE AN' TIGHT!"
"PUT YOUR MOUTH ON IT—SQUAWK—ALL THE WAY DOWN!"
"…"
I was speechless.
"You bought the parrot companion?!" I asked, baffled.
It was a good thing we left Penguin in the other room with Roan, or he would have attacked the parrot immediately.
"PIN 'IM TO THE MAST!—SQUAWK—LICK THE SALT OFF!"
"START AT THE NECK, WORK DOWN!"
"STRADDLE 'IM PROPER—SQUAWK—RIDE THAT SWELL!"
Gilded was just staring at the parrot with his pen halted mid-air—looking at a loss for words.
I tried not to laugh, but his expression was hilarious.
I was also surprised. I'd assumed that if Llewellyn had actually purchased it, he would have used it in his modded training room, or whatever that was, but… apparently not.
"Let me get this right," said Gilded, just as the parrot said, "LAY 'IM FLAT!—SQUAWK—SEE IF HE TAKES IT DEEP!"
"Did all the NPCs talk like—?"
The door suddenly opened.
"What's going on here?" Jihoon said, poking his head in. "We keep hearing strange nois—"
"BITE 'IS NECK!—SQUAWK—DRAG YER TEETH DOWN!"
"PUSH 'IM AGAINST THE WALL! NOW USE YER MOUTH!"
"TAKE 'IS TROUSERS OFF!—SQUAWK—KISS 'IM SWEET!"
"…"
"…"
"…"
"…"
We all stared at each other.
"I didn't hear anything!" Jihoon said, retreating at once. "I've just discovered I'm completely unable to hear! Better go see a doctor!" And he closed the door behind him.
The parrot squawked on.
"FILL 'IS HOLD!—SQUAWK—ALL THE WAY TO THE BRIM!"
"Please put that thing away," Gilded said, facepalming over his notebook.
***
After we wrapped up the conversation with Gilded and made plans with TAPESTRY to meet at the Rusty Chalice in a few hours, we went back to Llewellyn's place to meet Emma.
She was already waiting outside with a concealment artifact on, a laptop bag, and several folders. Llewellyn let her in as soon as we teleported back.
"Oh, good," she said. "I was going to ask you to come to mine, but with my toddler, it's impossible to get anything done. Okay, let's get to this."
She strode toward the kitchen, dumped everything on the table, then looked startled when Penguin flapped his flippers madly to get onto the table, demanding to be petted.
"Well, would you look at you," she said, startled, scratching under his chin. "Aren't you growing up fast!"
Penguin chirped, delighted, and nuzzled her hand.
"I'll put the kettle on," Llewellyn said, while she gave Lumos some attention too.
Once we were all sitting at the table, Emma started pulling out paper after paper.
"This person," she said, distributing two copies of the same text, one to me and one to Llewellyn. "Do you know her?"
We both picked up the papers, confused. The photo of a middle-aged woman stared at me from the page. The text was some sort of profile sheet about someone called Sheila Thompson. She had brown hair, soft eyes, and was smiling brightly in front of a running track.
"Never seen her," Llewellyn said, frowning. "Who's she?"
I tried to jog my memory, but… I'd never seen her before either.
"Well," Emma said, turning toward me. "You definitely know her username. Online, she goes by RightSideofHistory."