As they walked to the next room, Tress’ insistence on Roc being able to make magic items returned to Reece’s mind. It wasn’t an unreasonable belief, but the closest thing to hard evidence was various accounts of how great mages were which reeked of propaganda Reece and mostly just, the modern definition of the word “mage.” The theory he preferred was that magic items have existed since the dawn of time, and the mages claimed responsibility for them for political reasons, it felt more believable to him. More grounded. Of course, it doesn’t explain a lot of the weirdly specific magic items
[1]
Reece had heard of a watch that made whoever wears it grow rabbit features and make rabbit puns. It’s difficult to hear stuff like that and not feel like some magic items were made exclusively for a joke you’ve no context for., so he wouldn’t claim it's certainly true, but he wondered what had made Tress so confident...
When Reece snapped out of his thoughts and actually looked around once more, he found that the two of them had entered a café.
Just, a straight up café.
There were some design differences between this and a modern café, such as the tables being in isolated rooms made of clear glass rather than all being in one room, and it was more sparsely decorated than he’s used to, but the fresh coffee and desserts on the nearest table made it unmistakably a café. The change in scenery was so unexpected that it took Reece a moment to notice how weird it was that there was fresh coffee and desserts on the nearest table in this ancient ruin.
“Penultimate trial! Downtime Discussion!” Roc’s shouted, with a level of excitement that clashed horribly with the universally timeless café atmosphere. “It’s, probably self-explanatory! Enjoy some treats and refreshments and just, have a chat! About anything! For several minutes. It’s simple, but it’s probably the second most important trial, behind the final trial, so take it seriously! But mostly, enjoy yourselves.”
Reece and Tress glanced at each other, and after a moment of silence, Tress shrugged and sat down at the table, followed by Reece. After several more seconds of silence, Tress ventured to start. “So, uh, I guess it has been a while since we’ve seen each other; how have you been?”
“Fine.” Reece stated, feeling this sufficiently answered the question.
“Cool, cool…” Tress looked at the plate of food in front of her. She wasn’t really hungry, but she also hadn’t eaten recently either, so if there was food… She picked up a cookie and took a bite. “Huh. This is actually decent,” she said with a mouthful.
Reece, seeing that the cookie didn’t instantly and violently poison Tress, decided that was enough evidence for him to trust the food and took a sip of the coffee. “It’s coffee,” he conclusively decided. It was about as much he could say, too. He wasn’t really a fan of coffee, but he’d drink it to be polite in social situations like this. Any intricacies of how it was brewed, what was put into it, and everything else was lost on him. He woke up early enough on his own anyway, so he never saw the need for caffeine himself.
“So, did you get up to anything after I graduated?” Tress tried rewording her question in case it actually led to conversation this time.
“I just worked towards my degree, eventually graduated, got a job at the museum thanks to my old roommate – erm, other roommate. Really, nothing much exciting, and, uh, wait.” Reece took a second mental pass of the question Tress asked, just to make sure he was understanding her correctly. “Sorry, what do you mean ‘after you graduated’? You disappeared after a single semester!”
“Uh, yeah? Isn’t that normally what people do after graduating?” She chuckled. “I admit I was surprised to graduate first, you always seemed like the smarter of the two of us. How long did it end up taking you, anyway? A year?”
The absurdity of what Tress was saying fully distracted Reece from noticing the compliment. “Uh, 4 years? Like normal?”
“O-oh,” Tress said sheepishly, “sorry. I didn’t realize you had run into so much trouble with it…” Tress placed a claw sympathetically next to Reece’s hand. Reece was thankful she didn’t go for on his hand so he didn’t reflexively brush it aside.
Reece took a long, long sip of coffee to restrain himself from interrogating what the heck Tress thinks college is. Eventually, having taken a sip for as long as could put up with the taste, he decided it’d be best to change the subject. “So, what have you been doing since you left college?”
Tress’ eyes sparkled upon hearing the question. “Oh, gosh, I’ve done so many things, I’m not really sure where to start. Okay, well, I had done some hobbyist treasure hunting even as a child before college, you know this, but it was after graduating that I really started hunting in earnest. I was so excited that I explored five whole different ruins in the week after graduation. I mostly do like two a week normally, no use rushing it. But god, do I remember that set fondly. Honestly, it’s mostly just nostalgia, but that set has some of my favorite ruins I’ve explored. Oh, except for the fourth one, that one sucked. Literally the only ruin ever that I didn’t bother to explore the entirety of. Whoever designed that ruin thought it was a good idea to lock literally everything with a slide puzzle. I swear, nothing else I’ve seen was that bad, but…”
Reece generally found he got uncomfortable talking to other archeologists about work. It always felt like they were talking about two entirely different things. Everyone he had talked to mostly just wanted an excuse to talk about what kinds of magic items they’ve found, or how much money they’d made. And they spoke with such certain terms about the purpose of everything, as if there was no point to anything but the treasure. Yet, as he half-listened to Tress’ stories, he realized her stories weren’t exactly the same. Sure, he had to roll his eyes at her own long descriptions of the shiny gems and cool magic items she found, but she gave just as much description of the ruins she had to go through. She saw the ruins more as a series of traps or puzzles put together by someone rather than a place that served a purpose in the ancient past, but that’s still a perspective! At least she was aware they were designed at all. At least she believed the ruins deserved consideration. At least he wasn’t the only one.
When he noticed she’d finished her story, Reece bolted to attention as he realized he’d gotten lost in thought and barely remembered any concrete details. She seemed to be expecting some sort of follow-up from him too, so unable to come up with anything better, he asked what he’d expect any treasure hunter would like to be asked. “I wager you’ve probably made a nice fortune for yourself with the stuff you found right?”
Tress gave Reece a blank stare. “Come again?”
Reece restated his question, making sure he was enunciating this time, but the blank stare Tress was giving him didn’t go away.
“I… what would I have found that’d make me rich? The only stuff you find in ruins is cool jewelry and the occasional magic toy. You aren’t finding any money on the ground of the ruins you go to, are you?”
Reece found himself copying Tress’ blank stare. The amount of money you get for even a single “magic toy” as she put it would last anyone a year, to his knowledge, and if she’d found multiple, how could she not be rich? …He could hazard a guess, but it equal parts baffled and worried him.
“Do you… just hang on to everything you find? No selling or donating or…?”
Tress burst into laughter and Reece’s question. “What are you talking about? What would I even sell, those gems I find? It’s not worth the hassle I figure, I get more joy from them directly than the two or three coins someone would bother paying for a rock.”
The level of confidence Tress displayed when being wrong by that many orders of magnitude on the price of a gemstone threw Reece mentally off balance. He nearly felt compelled to go off on a full lecture about trade, supply and demand, the economy, and the controversial yet generally agreed upon value of gemstones, but he managed to force himself to take another long sip of the coffee to reign himself in. Keep it together, this is supposed to be a friendly conversation, you don’t need to ruin it by going on a lecture about capitalism, he told himself.
Tress looked at Reece funny as he drank excessive amounts of coffee for a second time. Out of curiosity, she took a sip of her own coffee, and resisted all of her instincts telling her to spit it out. He’s clearly not drinking it for the taste, that’s for sure, she thought. She’d stick to the cookies.
After a few moments of silence, Roc’s voice suddenly boomed out once, causing Reece to spill the last few ounces of his coffee in surprise. “Okay, time’s up! No need to rush, but once you’ve finished with your conversation (and finished eating those nice treats I made for you), feel free to move on to the next and final trial!” A door opened, opposite of the side they came in.
Not feeling particularly inclined to listen to the instruction to not rush, Tress stuffed the remaining few cookies into her mouth and stood up, motioning to Reece to come along. Reece took a look at the coffee he spilled, lamented not having anything to clean it up, and followed after.
Reece was relieved that the upcoming trial was the last one. Nothing that had happened was specifically distasteful, but he still didn’t comfortable with the vibe of this place. Everything was uncomfortably focused on what felt like an alien version of friendship to him. How is any of this stuff supposed to be about friendship? He supposed a lot of this stuff was what friends did together (abstractly, at least), but is this really how you judge a friendship? Just do some fun stuff together, talk a bit, and you’re friends? …Reece couldn’t actually find a reason to doubt this logic, but it still felt scarily presumptuous.
He turned to look at Tress, see if he could figure out what was on her mind, and he could tell from her smile alone that she was loving every minute of this. At least one of us seems to be having a decent time, he thought to himself. Reece shook his head as the two of them entered the room the final trial was to be held in.