This Quest is Bullshit - Chapter 146

Chapter 146 - Save the Date

“What’s going on?” Eve asked audibly knowing full well the trellac was going to tell them anyway.

The door changed, Art relayed. Lumy watched it. One second it was a normal Burendian side door, now it’s something else. There was a puff of smoke and everything.

“Alright, let’s take a look,” Preston said, ushering Art, Eve, and Wes out of the throne room. He didn’t bother asking the trellac to share what Lumy saw directly given that they’d finished searching the throne room anyway.

Eve stepped back into the entry hall to find Reginald crouched down to stare at one of the side doors. Lumy floated just above his nose, blinking in confusion. Eve didn’t, of course, know that the particular pattern in which the phantasmal remnant’s lights blinked represented confusion, but given the context it seemed the best conclusion.

“What do we have?” Preston asked as the party approached.

Eve scanned the strange door. The bare wood had none of the fancy carvings so prevalent in Burendian interior design, it’s surface smooth and flat other than a basic shape carved at eye height. It depicted some kind of upright cylinder with horizontal lines wrapped around it at regular intervals, as well as what was clearly meant to be some kind of liquid dripping down the sides.

“Any idea what this is supposed to be?” Wes wondered aloud.

Eve shrugged. “Only one way to find out.” She reached for the handle.

“Hold on!” Preston interrupted. “We should at least take some level of precaution before we go haphazardly opening magical doors that appeared out of nowhere.” He turned to Art. “Can you sense anyone behind it?”

Nope!

“That’s enough precautions for me,” Eve said, leaning in to pull the door open before Preston could stop her. She stepped into a tight space with a bar and four stools and just a few feet of space in which to walk between them and the wall. A small cooking area and a door to some backroom sat behind the bar, but Eve didn’t pay them any heed. Her attention was occupied by the lone cook standing there smiling at her.

“Hi, welcome to—Eve!”

Eve could only freeze, eyes taking in the smiling man with his chef’s hat and pristine apron. An open grin spread across her face. “Hi, Alvin.”

“Alvin!” Preston’s eyes bulged as he stepped around Eve to enter the small space. “It’s so good to see you!” He stepped up to the counter, squeeing between two barstools to lean over and give the former cultist a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“Well,” Alvin explained, “Lina did a bit of market research, and found out that most monsters don’t have the time to leave their dungeons in the morning, so we came up with this as an extension of the lungeon.”

Eve craned her neck to read the sign above Alvin’s head. “The Interdungeonal House of Pancakes?”

“Isn’t it great?” Alvin beamed. “Yssifiroth came up with the name. Space here is at a bit of a premium, so capacity is low, but apparently the witch that used to live where the lungeon is had this weird extra-dimensional space that could latch on to anywhere with high enough ambient Mana. It’s a bit random, but every morning we connect to a door in a dungeon somewhere and serve breakfast to the locals. It’s not much of a moneymaker, but it’s a great way to meet new people.”

Wes scowled. “Wait, so you just… teleport to a new dungeon every morning?”

“Not exactly,” Alvin explained. “Technically, you’re the ones who teleported. The door just appears in a new place at random.”

Eve furrowed her brow. “And how often do you actually get customers? I imagine most random dungeons don’t have much traffic.”

Alvin shrugged. “We get visitors most days. Every once in a while we’ll hit a dud location, but it’s not often enough to stop me.”

“Hold on,” Preston said, “so if we were to spend the full day in here, we could walk out into a different dungeon?”

But what about Reginald? Art asked, offense clear in his tone. He can’t fit through the door!

Preston sighed, patting the back of Art’s feathered head. “We’re not going anywhere; I’m just curious.”

Alvin shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that. When you leave it spits you out through the same door you came in from, even if its not attached anymore.” He nodded to the door. “If I went through there I’d wind up back at the lungeon.”

“This all seems like a lot of effort to serve pancakes to a few monsters a day,” Eve commented.

“It varies,” Alvin said. “Some days we get a line out the door, though I guess that speaks more to how little space we have than how many customers we get, but I count four stools and four of you.” With a grin, he clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “So, what can I get you?”

Pancakes! Art ordered with enthusiasm as he climbed up onto a barstool as tall as he was. With syrup!

Alvin smiled down at the sheer cuteness before him. He snapped his fingers. “One stack of pancakes, coming right up.”

The griddle was set up in an L-shape along the side and back wall, allowing Alvin to cook and chat with the guests at the same time. As he poured the readymade batter into expertly formed circles, Eve, Wes, and Preston took seats of their own.

“So, other than pancakes, what all do you have?” Eve asked, hoping for one particular item.

“Space is the main limitation,” Alvin explained as he flipped a pancake the size of his head. “I have a kettle for boiling water and this griddle, and that’s about it. I can do pancakes, eggs, hash browns, sausage—if I can cook it on a griddle, I can serve it.”

Wes let out a laugh, patting Eve on the back in an insincere show of offering comfort. “No scones for you.”

All it really took was one look at the ever-growing pile of fluffy pancakes on Art’s plate and the choices between maple, raspberry, and huckleberry syrup to convince all three of the remaining adventurers to follow in his footsteps. It was, after all, hard to justify entering the Interdungeonal House of Pancakes and not ordering the pancakes.

“So,” Eve eventually said through a mouthful of delicious carbs, “how are things back at the lungeon? How’s Lina?”

“She’s thriving,” Alvin said. “She’s taken to the restaurant business like a… well, like a fish to water. Oh, that reminds me!” He dug into the pockets of his apron, pulling out what had once been a gorgeously designed piece of card stock decorated in gold leaf with floral patterns. Judging by the near-crumpled state of the thing, it’d been sitting in his pocket for some time. He handed it to Preston. “You’re all invited.”

“Oh my gods, Alvin!” Preston cooed. “Congratulations!”

Eve had to lean in to peer past Wes at the invitation in Preston’s hand, though she figured she already had a pretty good idea of what it said.

Alvin + Lina, together forever.

Join us for a ceremony followed by a reception at the lungeon to celebrate the eternal bond of love between Alvin and Lina. RSVP on the back with any dietary or environmental accommodations you require. We can’t wait to see you!

“Alvin!” Wes said with the widest of smiles upon his face. “You’re getting married! I’m so happy for you!”

Eve squinted. “What’s an environmental accommodation?”

“When rusalka are young, they can’t actually leave the water,” Alvin explained. “We’re providing a pool for them at the venue so Lina’s little cousins can come. Stuff like that. I’ve got some vampire friends that’ll need shade, for example.”

Eve shuddered as she remembered the vampires they’d fought back at the haunted mansion before realizing that if they were friends of Alvin, they couldn’t be that bad. Then again, those cultists that had tried to murder Preston to summon a demon had been friends of Alvin. She shook the thoughts from her head. “Congratulations.”

“I-um…” Alvin scratched the back of his head. “I’m actually really glad I ran into you.” He turned to Preston. “I was-um… I was wondering if you would officiate. You’re the only Priestess Lina or I know that isn’t a part of a cult, and you know how I feel about—”

Preston practically jumped from his seat, completely ignoring the fact Alvin had just called him a Priestess. “Of course! Alvin, I would love to.” He turned to Wes and Eve. “We’ll be there.”

Art looked up to Wes. Why are they getting married before you? Didn’t you and Preston get together first?

Wes coughed. Preston blushed.

“Hey Art,” Alvin said, sliding the biggest plate of pancakes yet across the counter, “why don’t you bring these out to Reginald? I’m sure he’d love some.”

Okay! the trellac chimed, grabbing the plate with both talons and hopping off the stool. Syrup dripped and sloshed onto the floor as he did, but Art didn’t seem to notice.

Once he was gone, Alvin addressed the couple. “You don’t have to answer that question. Not to us.”

“We’ll get there eventually,” Preston said, placing a hand over Wes’s. “We’ve just had so much other shit going on it’s been hard to think about things like that.”

Alvin leaned in. “You obviously shouldn’t do anything you don’t both feel ready for, but I’d advise you not to let the rest of the world stop you.” He nodded up at the door. “It’s too easy to let all the shit out there distract you from what matters.”

“There’s no rush,” Eve said as she set her fork down. “As long as I get to plan the bachelor party.”

“Eve!” Alvin hissed. “They aren’t even engaged.”

“Do um…” Wes said, his face red as it’d ever been, “Do you want to be?”

Preston froze. “Are… are you…”

“I think I am.”

Silence hung in the air. Eve and Alvin shared a look of shock. A tear welled in Preston’s eye.

“Ayla fucking damnit, Wes,” he yelled.

Wes stared, paralyzed.

Preston reached into his pocket and slammed something onto the counter. “I had a whole speech prepared and everything.”

All eyes turned to the counter to see what Preston had set there.

It was a silver ring.

Wes’s breath hitched. His eyes flitted back and forth between the ring on the counter and the Paragon sitting next to him. Eve could practically hear his heart pounding. “Are we doing this?”

Tears streamed down Preston’s face as he smiled the biggest, purest, most beautiful smile the world had ever seen. “We’re fucking doing this.”

Wes leapt from his seat, snatching Preston up into a great big hug. He held the healer close as he laughed and cried and cursed and whispered love into his ears. Preston, perhaps robbed of his speech, still managed to speak the words themselves.

“Wesley Rollund, will you marry me?”

“I will.”

For some time they stayed there, too wrapped up in their emotions and each others arms to even entertain the thought of being anywhere else. Nothing else mattered. For those precious moments, standing at the counter of Alvin’s IHOP, there were no proxy wars, no evil plots, no apocalyptic entities trying to escape into their reality. There was only Wes and Preston and the sheer unbridled joy there is to be found in the arms of a loved one. That’s all they’d ever needed.

The couple pulled away as the door swung open to admit a certain trellac clutching an empty plate in his talons. Art, of course, didn’t need to see the four sets of eyes streaming tears to know the density of emotions flowing through the room. He looked up at Alvin.

Reginald wants more pancakes.

Alvin dried his eyes on his apron as he smiled at the group of adventurers. He sniffled. “More pancakes, coming right up.”

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