His academic curiosity satisfied, Al decided it was time to move on to what he'd really wanted to come for.

  "Thanks for letting me watch that," he told Rachel, "but I think I should hurry up and get to work trying to copy down that arcane formation we found on that last room, before you get around to consecrating it. Uh... you wouldn't happen to have an extra candle or two that I could borrow, do you? I seem to be down to my last torch. I can pay for replacements when we get back to Hell's Bathtub."

  Al tried not to look embarrassed at his oversight as Rachel offered him several candles from her pack with a smirk.

  "Thank you," Al said as casually as he could manage. "Uh, some of us should probably stay with the crew here while they work in case of any unexpected danger, but I wouldn't mind having someone with me for backup for the same reason. Anybody want to come with me instead of waiting here with Cleodora and ..."

  Gruntle was already moving, taking a wide path around where Cleodora's spirit hovered to stand next to Al.

  "Well...okay then," Al said, surprised but realizing in hindsight that he probably shouldn't be. "We'll head straight there, so you'll all know where to find us if you need us."

  Al commanded one of the candles to light itself and stuffed the others into a pocket in his robes. Then he turned to head down the hallway, and Gruntle moved ahead to take his customary position in front without being asked. Originally this had been a matter of keeping a dangerous demonic bestial thing where Al could watch him. Al realized now that this wasn't something he worried about anymore, as irrational as it seemed. In just a few weeks, this had somehow become normal. He watched the back of the tall gnoll stalking quietly ahead, hunting anything that might be a threat, or maybe just edible and too slow to get away.

  Why do I even trust him? I'm not even sure why he's a 'him' rather than an 'it'. I really don't even know what's going on in his obviously inhuman mind. He can't be as simple as he seems, can he? What really motivates him?

  "Hey, Gruntle," Al asked, "What do you want out of all of this?"

  The gnoll stopped and turned to look back. He was silent for a long moment of consideration before he answered.

  "Fight. Win. Eat. Rest," he grumbled, head tilted as if confused by the question.

  "Right, obviously," Al returned, "but I don't mean right now, I mean bigger things, in the future."

  Gruntle's head slowly tilted the other way. Then, he grunted in agreement.

  "Fight bigger things. Kill. Eat them. Rest."

  "Really? You don't want wealth, or power or something?"

  With a questioning noise, Gruntle's head tilted further to the side.

  "Wealth is for eating and rest. Power is for fighting and killing and making safe for rest."

  "Don't you want, I don't know, love or respect or friendship or honor or anything like that?"

  "Got a clan."

  "That's really all you want?"

  Grunt. "You?"

  "Oh! Uh...," Al stuttered at the unexpected interest, "It's... probably kind of complicated."

  Gruntle huffed and turned stiffly back to continue down the hall.

  "I mean," Al continued as he followed, "I guess what I'm mostly after is learning. Experience and knowledge."

  "Why?"

  "It's practical. For example, I want to learn more about demons so if we ever run into them again we'll be better able to defend ourselves from them. Also, valuable knowledge and experience will get us better jobs with better pay."

  Al wondered why Gruntle seemed to relax after he said this.

  "Knowledge for shaman stuff to kill demons and get gold for eating and rest," Gruntle interpreted, neatly fitting Al's statement into a comprehensible gnollish worldview as he continued on, taking the stairs leading to the room they'd found the drunken goblins in. They found it in pristine condition other than a slight lingering odor of brandy and goblin, with the chairs meticulously arranged at their tables and all of the staining and broken glass cleaned up.

  "It's more than that!" Al objected, "It's for understanding the fundamental nature of reality! Like right now, we're going to study the arcane pattern someone put around the door that seemed to be keeping that spider-thing and the zombies inside. Whoever made that understood something profound about supernatural reality, so if I study it, eventually I'll understand it, too."

  "Why?"

  "What do you mean why? It's practical information! That kind of knowledge could be useful!"

  "Why?" repeated the gnoll, like the world's most violently dangerous toddler.

  "Well, obviously if there are secrets to controlling the undead locked away in that pattern, if we are ever threatened by undead things again they might help us protect ourselves from them."

  "Hunting knowledge for shaman stuff to make safer to fight them," Gruntle simplified as they left the room and headed down the hallway towards the privies.

  "Not just that, there'll be more useful knowledge in there besides that, I just won't know what it will be until I understand it all myself."

  "Don't know how good knowledge you hunt tastes until you kill and eat it," Gruntle restated.

  "Is literally everything about violence, food, and sleep for you?"

  "Nah. Just important things."

  The shuffling, scrabbling sound from the privy-holes interrupted the discussion and Gruntle swiftly turned with a vicious grin to meet it, flail in hand. Al's own reflexes barely got a warding spell up in time to deflect the leaping spider off course, just as large as the last ones they'd fought here the first time. It dodged away from Al's reflexive kick only to be splattered across the floor - and Al - by the heavy flail of a violence-crazed gnoll. Al groaned in disgust but then stifled it as more noise came from the holes. He rushed closer and looked down. Seeing and hearing movement down in the darkness besides flowing water, he pulled as much of the arcane concept of fire as he could through his mind and sent a burst of magical flame down to fill the space. A terrible burnt smell and a few splashes came from inside, and then there was just the sound of running water again.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Gruntle calmed down reluctantly, huffing at how little violence had been available. Al waited for his heart rate to settle and watched down the now smoke-filled hole for any further threat.

  "I guess we know how they're getting in here now, at least," Al muttered. He set the candle on the floor and took a few minutes to magic the bits of dead giant spider away from his clothes while Gruntle poked his head hopefully into the toilet-holes looking for anything else that might need killing.

  "Anything else in there?" he asked when he finished cleaning himself up, and got another annoyed huff back in reply as Gruntle stood back up. "Well, feel free to kill any more that show up, it's obvious they keep coming in through there. I'm going to conjure up a spirit to hold the light for me and then I can get to work in the next room."

  In the time it took for Al to go through the slow, ritualized conjuration of his invisible helper, Gruntle had poked his nose into every obvious place in the room and then in every adjoining room, hoping to find something that needed killing. Disappointed, the gnoll settled himself down next to the open door of the steamy caldarium to wait lazily.

  With the doors left open since the last time they'd been here, the caldarium was bearably warm instead of uncomfortably hot, though still humid. Al led his candle-bearing spirit inside and took out his paper and inks to begin the work of copying the spiraling pattern of symbols that had held the magic before being broken by their opening of the door. Al tuned out the regular hissing sound of water splashing against the magically-heated stone as he carefully drew out the shape of the overall pattern and then copied down the individual patterns of repeating symbol-motifs in greater detail for later review.

  He shook his head and sighed when Wikwocket's voice became audible through the open doorway to the gallery as she dramatized their initial meeting of Cleodora in the room with the baths for the surveyors, but didn't let it distract him. By the time he heard Wikwocket in the bar-room later describing their fight with the goblins while the surveyors worked, Al had managed to satisfy himself that his copies of the pattern and the symbols that made it up were as good as he could make them. He turned his attention to the physical properties of the carved and painted markings themselves. The carving was smooth with no obvious sign of tool-marks, and painted with a deep black substance containing fine silvery flakes.

  Maybe I've been spending too much time around a gnoll,, he thought, as he looked back to make sure nobody was watching and then leaned close to sniff at the carved pattern. The faint scent was more like an aromatic medicinal balm than ink or paint. He took his knife from his belt and shaved away a few pieces of the painted carved wood for later analysis, pressing them between the pages in his book of wizardry notes.

  "...and then down at the end of this hallway," came Wikwocket's voice as she drew nearer, "well, spiders in the privies isn't a special thing, but you should hope you don't have to deal with any like we found! Horrible things as big as I am, able to leap all the way across the room to sink venomous fangs into you! Our magical sword hero fried most of them with a blast of magic fire from his fingers, you can still smell the smoke even now! Hey, that one looks freshly smashed, gross! No fair having excitement without me!"

  "Came from down there," Gruntle said. "Shaman burned the rest. No more now."

  "I told him that'd be useful magic to learn! Speaking of which," Wikwocket said, walking into the caldarium, "hey, Al, have you unlocked the mystical secrets of necromancy in here yet so you can get me a pet dead guy?"

  No further dangers presented themselves the rest of the day. The surveyors finished making their more precise maps and estimates of the repairs required. Rachel, Livia, Cleodora, and Bote caught up to them some time later as Al, Wikwocket, Gruntle, and the workers rested in the bar-room.

  "If we stay overnight, we will probably finish the consecration of the whole site today," Rachel said, "we brought supplies to stay here comfortably enough, and once every way in is a part of Balnea Infernala's domain we should be safe enough, especially if Larry and Sally are here for protection. Would you be willing to escort the surveyors back? If you leave soon, you should be back in Hell's Bathtub in time for dinner."

  "I did what I needed to do," Al answered, "so as long as nobody else has anything they still need to do or wants to camp out here overnight for some reason, I don't think any of us would object to being back in time for a real dinner."

  "I already got to retell our whole exciting adventure here for the surveyors, I'm good!" Wikwocket agreed.

  "I have witnessed what I ought to," Bote chimed in, "so there is no longer a need for me to stay either."

  Gruntle was already subtly shuffling back towards the stairs, still avoiding Cleodora. The ghost was busying herself inspecting the room for cleanliness, with her face a mask of determination, still occasionally reminding herself aloud that she was Cleodora and that she was cleaning.

  "How are things going with her?" Al asked Rachel and Livia with a not towards Cleodora.

  "It's strange," Livia answered, "she either can't or doesn't want to go into the spaces that have been consecrated so far. Each time, the bone of hers that had been left there burns away to nothing in holy fire. But, still, she insists on continuing to help. I feel a little bad about what might happen when Balnea Infernala claims the last part of this place, I hope it doesn't hurt Cleodora."

  "I think maybe once the whole of the Lavatio is under divine protection, she knows it will be restored. That's ultimately what keeps her here, isn't it? So, she'll be able to move on to her rest once it's done."

  "That is plausible," Bote admitted, "but I am not certain it is so simple. Still, I feel she understands the situation fully and is committed to seeing it through regardless. Probably things will work out."

  "Well, then, we should probably start heading back. The sooner we leave, the more daylight we'll have to travel in," Al said, standing and putting his notes back in his pack.

  Cleodora drifted down the hallway towards the privies. The exclamation of annoyance at finding a new mess that needed to be cleaned up spurred Gruntle to grab his pack and rush down the stairs out of the room.

  The trip back was pleasantly uneventful for everyone but Gruntle, who was a bit disappointed in there not being any need for violence. The guard at the gate gave only a cursory look over the paperwork the surveyors carried since it was obvious who they were, and they were all let back in. The surveyors thanked the adventurers for their help and left to report their findings to the magistrate. The adventurers in turn left to report their hunger to the food-vendors on the street. The evening passed peacefully, and slumber came easily.

  Until sometime after midnight.

  "I am Cleodora. I clean," a familiar voice called out happily, startling Al into an unpleasantly rapid wakefulness as he sat up quickly to see the room flickering with golden light. He heard Gruntle under the bed quietly pulling himself deeper into the shadows. Wikwocket yawned and blinked in confusion.

  "What...how are you here? Is this a dream? I can understand what you're saying now," Al asked.

  "The goddess gifts me language. The goddess validates my purpose, and makes it holy," Cleodora said, her shining golden face euphoric. Al realized, though, that most of the glow lighting the room wasn't coming from Cleodora herself, but from his pack which appeared to be engulfed in golden flames. A moment of panic over his valuable wizardry research and books passed once he realized the flames didn't seem to be doing any harm.

  "Your bones. I forgot, I still have some of your bones in my pack," Al groaned.

  "That is good, it let me find you so that I can thank you all. Something wonderful happens. Visit my Lavatio again sometime. Until then, be well, and thank you."

  Cleodora and the golden flames disappeared, plunging the room back into darkness.