Dungeon Life

Nova

Nova listlessly glides through the rock near the border to the volcanic area, trying more to gather her thoughts than to hunt the fire elementals that try to sneak into Thedeim. She feels a little guilty about that, about letting the other wyrms handle the brunt of the work there, but… well, it’s complicated.

It’s not that she feels bad for the elementals. She’s seen what happens if one catches one of the spiders or other denizens that aren’t able to take the heat. Yeah, she has no problem eating them after seeing that, and they honestly taste pretty good. Her feelings get complicated when she tries to link her purpose to stopping them.

She’s not going to get the power to rival stars by just eating fire elementals. While she’s not even sure she wants that kind of terrible strength her name implies, she’s getting more and more sure she wants more than to just deal with invaders.

She’d like to do something with the delvers, but that’s a whole different kind of complicated. She’s seen the grass smolder when she visits the surface, so it’s not difficult to imagine she’d have a similar effect on the delvers as the fire elementals have on the other denizens. Even without Guide Thedeim not wanting to hurt the delvers, Nova wouldn’t want to do something like that to them. She actually likes a lot of them.

She’s just bad at showing it. Like those two that got separated. She wanted to try to interact with them, but she surfaced right in front of the heat sensor and trapped them. That was just embarrassing, even if the Guide found it amusing.

She sighs as her thoughts settle on what’s really bothering her: she doesn’t know what she should do. She’s been trying to follow the advice of the other scions, to just get settled and try to get used to everything, but she feels like she’s letting Thedeim down by not pursuing a goal yet.

Just because she knows that’s silly, doesn’t stop her from feeling that way. It’s difficult to imagine Coda feeling lost like she does sometimes, considering how busy he always is. But she’s heard the others say he used to worry if he did something wrong to make the Guide abandon him. Does she just need to be patient? Probably… but can she?

She grinds her mandibles at the thought, then sighs and rolls over, trying to get comfortable. She should try talking to Coda about it. If he really was like her for a long time, maybe he’ll have suggestions for how to handle it? If nothing else, it’ll give her something to focus on.

She wallows in whatever it is she’s wallowing in for a few more seconds, before pulling on her big-girl pants and tunneling to the labyrinth. It’s well past dusk, and Coda should be working on the mechanical traps by now. She’s pretty sure he was working on the rotating T-intersection near the crucible ants last night, and she can’t imagine something like that is a one-night job.

She takes the direct route there, though she goes a bit slower than one might expect. She’s just making sure she doesn’t leave obvious marks in the tunnels when she dives up through them. She’s not trying to delay, nor does she have a sense of dread to overcome. He’s a fellow scion, not someone she should be nervous around.

She even mostly believes that by the time she pokes her head through the floor. When she spots Jello there as well, she almost slips back under, but her gelatinous friend burbles a happy greeting before she can pretend she was never there.

“Friend Nova! How’re you doing? Did you want to watch Friend Coda work? Jello has been helping make parts!”

That at least explains the pieces of metal floating around inside her. After a moment’s hesitation, Nova nods and slides out of her hole.

“Yes… er, no I didn’t come to watch him work. It looks so complicated, and I wouldn’t want to warp anything by getting too close.”

“Nothing to worry about there, Nova,” explains Coda as he motions her forward with a wingclaw. “Jello is keeping her parts at a stable temperature, and even once she gives them to me, they should be fine as long as you don’t try to melt through the floor too close.”

“What did you come for?” follows up Jello with a happy squelch.

“Well, uh… I wanted to ask him…” Nova trails off as she feels the attention of both of them on her, and it’s all she can do to not dive into the floor. Not only would that not solve her problem, she also might mess up Coda’s work. He very specifically asked her to not do something like that.

“Ask me what?” asks Coda as he sends a pulse of sound into the wall, triggering the switch to open the access panel for the complex mechanism.

“Well… I heard you used to, uh… struggle? With um… purpose?”

“Ah,” says Coda as he turns to face her properly, then gives her a gentle smile. “Yeah, I did. You’re having the same problem?” Nova nods, so he continues. “Well, I would say you have to be patient, but that didn’t help the feeling go away for me.”

“What did?” asks Nova, trying to keep the pleading tone out of her voice.

“Finding a purpose,” he says simply, and grins at Nova’s groan. “Yeah, also not a great help, is it?”

Nova sighs. “Not really, no.”

“I do understand how you feel, at least. I might have even had it worse than you, if you can believe it.” Nova sputters at that, but Coda doesn’t let her interrupt. “I wasn’t always a Civil Artificer. In fact, the Foreman first tasked me with tending the garden and the herbalism nodes on the surface. I did, but the bats didn’t really need much guidance on that, and Queen is much better at nurturing that kind of growth. Not to mention she actually has specific things she wants grown.

“Then I was asked to direct the expeditions underground. The Foreman hoped to ease some of Poe’s burden, but I knew I was nowhere near as good at directing the expeditions. At first, I asked Poe for help, and slowly, everyone just went to him, instead of me.”

Nova’s mandibles hang slack as she listens, trying to imagine that. Not one, but two jobs from the Guide, and Coda couldn’t find his purpose in them?

“Yeah, you can imagine I wasn’t too happy with myself about that. Maybe the worst part was that Thedeim wasn’t upset with me. I just wanted to do something to show his faith in me wasn’t misplaced. I actually tried to get back into those two jobs, but they really were already handled.” Coda smiles as he remembers what came next.

“Then he needed some digging done. Not just any digging, either. He wanted to build. The access shaft to the caverns, then Rocky’s arena, then the bypass between the swamps and aquifer lakes…” he trails off at that. “They never did take that tunnel, did they? Ah well. Anyway, I found my purpose in building. And now I have more work than I know what to do with!” he ends with a chuckle.

Nova is a bit less jovial about it. “So I really do just need to wait for him to need something that calls to me?”

“Not really,” burbles Jello, earning a surprised look from both Coda and Nova.

“What do you mean?” they ask as one.

“Well, Voice Thedeim doesn’t always know what he actually needs. Like with Friend Queen.”

“Queen?” echoes Nova, and Coda looks just as lost.

“Oh yes, Jello and Friend Queen talk a lot, and she admitted he didn’t actually plan for her to be an Alchemist. He wanted her to be his new Guardian, since Friend Tiny kinda outgrew the sanctum. But she became an Alchemist instead on accident.”

“Huh,” muses Coda

“I… I don’t have to wait?” whispers Nova, trying to wrap her head around the idea.

“Nope!” confirms Jello, and Nova just sits there for a good minute. The other two watch her with patience, letting her try to parse what she’s just learned, and to see what she’ll do with that knowledge.

“I…” she starts, and the two others lean in, eager to hear what she has to say. “I… I still don’t know what to do,” she starts, but she sounds more determined as she continues. “But I know I want to go to the Southwood, to help fight!”

“Then I hope you’re all packed, Nova. The Boss wants us to move out in the morning,” comes the unexpected voice of the Voice, and Nova almost leaps through the ceiling in surprise.

“Voice Teemo! I, uh…”

He waves her off. “Just Teemo, Nova. If you want to go, the Boss is happy to let you. He’s been giving you space so you can figure yourself out. If you want to go help fight, you can go help fight.”

“Oh, can Jello come, too!”

Teemo gives the cube of slime a sideways look. “I mean, sure, but I thought you were having fun with the metalworking.”

Jello starts to melt a little as she seriously thinks, before her shape snaps back into focus. “Yes, Jello does like the metalworking. If they were undead, she might go fight instead, but that dungeon doesn’t sound very tasty. Sorry, Friend Nova.”

Teemo smiles at that, then turns his attention to Coda. “How about you? You wanna go fight?”

“Nope. I have enough on my plate already, thank you.” With that, the bat scion starts digging around in the mechanisms of the wall section. He calls back to Jello for parts as he works, which she dutifully hands over. Teemo smiles before focusing back on Nova.

“If you want to go, you should head to the caverns for now. Fluffles will be coming along to relieve Rocky, and he and Leo are sparring and comparing notes in there right now. Once the dawn comes, we’ll grab Honey and head out with whatever adventurers want to come help scout. That sound good?”

It does. It really does.