Dwarves. Dwarves in the nude. Dwarves in hot tubs. Dwarves singing and dancing. In the nude. There were a lot of dwarves in this longhouse, and they were all naked and Dee was also naked.

  He sat alone in one of the hot tubs carved into the stony ground. The stone, heated by magic or engineering, made the water exceedingly hot. It was almost too hot, but it meant he could do nothing but relax. Hot vapour rising up made it a bit hard to breathe, but it did feel like his sinuses and lungs were getting cleaned out.

  Arjelica was in a huge tub filled with dwarves, sharing stories or jokes that were making them all laugh. Dee was grateful that she was the centre of attention, because his paranoia was telling him that all the dwarves were staring at him. But of course, why would they be doing that? He wasn’t even an adventurer.

  And everybody was naked. The moment they entered the off-shift longhouse, Dama had stripped naked and ran for a hot tub. So had the girls. None of them seemed to have any embarrassment about getting naked with a bunch of mixed sex dwarves. Tianna had shot him a suspicious glare as she stripped, assuming he was thinking some kind of dirty ‘human’ thoughts.

  What is her problem with humans? Is it because I called her a halfling? Or is she just racist? Who knows what racism means in a world where elves speak Dwarvish and onis speak Frogite.

  But apart from that the adventurers were all quite happy to strip off. He had tried not to stare. Not in an obvious way.

  Arjelica was toned, she had a really fine body. But across her stomach and side was that long scar, like a wild beast had clawed at her. She had marched up to the central tub and shouted something in Dwarvish, drawing her hand across the scar. They had cheered and shouted, and then she had divebombed into the tub.

  Yuri was… Yuri was Yuri. She had stripped off, showing of her long legs and arms, leaving her hat till last. Then she had thrown it at Dee, as a tease. He had politely hung it up on a hook.

  Emizra had done the Emizra thing of stripping off without him noticing, and then appearing somewhere else he had not expected. She was currently chatting with some dwarves in another tub. For a six-foot something oni, she was amazingly good at not being seen.

  And when Tianna had finished undressing and carefully hung up her clothes. She had thrown a haughty look at him, spanked her own butt, and then skipped off into a pool.

  Was that a minnikin insult? What is wrong with her?

  She had the most surprising body. Pretty and pert, and muscled like a rock climber. That could be the hefty mace she was carrying around. Or her constant anxiety.

  A dwarf sunk into the pool with Dee. He smiled, his hair was slick against his head and his face was flushed read with the heat. Dee smiled back awkwardly and the Dwarf nodded, then closed his eyes and spread his arms out on the stone lip of the tub.

  Dee took a deep breath and sunk beneath the water. It was kind of amazing. His initial embarrassment had faded a bit. Nobody cares. Everybody is just naked and enjoying the water and nobody cares about what everyone else is doing. I’ve just seen more dwarf dick than I have natural twenties.

  He came back up to see that another dwarf had joined them. She had a loofah in her hands. She smiled at him and waved the loofah. Panic passed through him.

  “No, no, no thank you.” He shook his head. If had been possible for his face to get redder it would have.

  She simply smiled and tapped the other dwarf on the chest. He opened his eyes, nodded and turned around. She started scrubbing his back with the loofah. He sighed with relief.

  That does look satisfying. I’m not really ready to get loofahed by a dwarf though.

  Dee’s back started itching in sympathy as he watched the other guy get his back scratched. He put his hand behind his back and tried to scratch it without showing that he really needed a back scrub. Why am I so awkward? She’s not going to loofah me against my will.

  No use thinking about those things. All he should do was enjoy the heat of the water, so warm against his skin it was alive. He closed his eyes and gave into the heat.

  Eddies of heat rose and caressed his body, like a cat would nuzzle against you. His breath slowed, his heart pumped, his blood flowed. It was impossible to be stressed out whilst his heart beat slow like a booming drum. It reverberated through his whole body. He was nothing but a heat pump, trying to survive by venting heat from his red-blushed skin. He imagined he was a spacecraft, or a mech in a tactics game, overheating and venting infrared energy into space. I’m such a nerd. But I’m a nerd in a sauna, that’s an upgrade.

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  He sighed and let his arms float on the surface of the water. The hot steamy air of the lodge still felt cool compared to the heat-filled water he was in. This should be a requirement after every adventure, a nice soak in a hot-tub.

  Arjelica appeared over the edge of the tub, naked, dripping in water and with a bottle in her hand. Fine mist rose from the bottle. She dropped into the water, like a crocodile, stealthy and almost silent. She pushed the bottle towards Dee.

  “Drink,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “Ice wine. Drink.” She pushed it towards him again and he took a swig from it.

  The glass was ice cold, he thought it might stick to his lips. And the wine was like an icicle poured down his throat. Cold menthol vapour shot up his nose and made his eyes water. But his head cleared and he felt awake like never before.

  “Nice,” he gasped. Crystal snowflakes glittered from his breath for mere moments in the steam around them.

  Arjelica took a swig from it and gasped in satisfaction. The hot steam of the tub crystallised into more short-lived snowflakes as she let out a long breath. She knew how to drink, clearly. She pushed her wet-slick hair away from her face, it clung to her neck and shoulders like a scarf of wet golden silk.

  “We fought together, we ate together, and now we’ve drunk together. We’re companions now,” she said in a straightforward manner.

  “I didn’t do any fighting.”

  “You threw yourself into the enemy as a distraction. That’s brave.”

  “It was kind of stupid.”

  “Stupid and brave.”

  “I was scared the whole time,” he couldn’t help confess his weakness.

  She frowned and stared at him for a second. She was a fearless warrior that he could never try to emulate. Her compliments made him feel embarrassed and ashamed. And her frustration made him realise he was just arguing against her opinion.

  “Courage is not ‘no fear’. It’s fighting in the grip of fear,” she said. “What you did was brave. Stupid is ignoring that.”

  “Thanks,” Dee said. The words still bounced off him, but he didn’t want to argue any more.

  Arjelica took another swig from the bottle. Up close Dee saw how pretty she was, in the elegant elf way he had only read in books. Fierce and piercing eyes and fine features that should have been described by a poet. Every turn of her face and glance revealed an elegant detail he had not noticed before. The small smirk at the corner of her mouth, the pointed ears lurking in the tangle of her wet hair, the thin ring of hazel around her green eyes.

  She offered the bottle to the two dwarves with them, who both took deep draughts of it and made snowflakes in the air with their breaths. There was a skill to it. The woman curled her lips and made a snowflake ring float through the air.

  Arjelica smiled at them, and then at Dee. Steam from the hot tub wafted up between them. I should say something.

  “Is this what it’s like in the Steam Jungle?” Dee asked.

  “What do you know about the Steam Jungle?” Her eyes narrowed, she was back to being a hunter, guarded and alert.

  “Nothing. I just heard you came from there.”

  “From Yuri? She talks too much.” Her face went serious for a moment; Dee felt like a mouse cornered by a cat. “What do you want with Yuri?”

  “Me! Nothing. I mean, I’m glad she’s decided to… adopt me. I’m just trying to survive. That’s all we can do, right? Survive and hope that tomorrow is a better day. I think—” he shut his mouth as he realised he was blabbering.

  “Why are you so scared of me?” She moved a little closer to him, floating in the centre of the tub.

  “I’m not! I mean I am a little bit, but that’s a compliment…” Dee sank down into the tub. Hot water engulfed him and he held his breath under the water. Maybe she would get bored and leave him be. When he came up, Arjelica was still there, but she had a little smirk on her face. It was not unkind.

  “You’re afraid of being afraid. That’s going to kill you.” She was tired of talking to him, he could tell. She stood up onto the lip of the tub. For a moment, she was a golden statue of elf beauty, caressed by water that flowed down her. Dee’s breath caught. She took another swig of wine.

  “Slowly, which is the worst way to die,” she said over her shoulder. Then she walked off, chilled bottle of ice wine dangling casually in her grasp.

  It was true. Most days Dee felt like he was being gnawed apart from the inside. Afraid of being afraid, he had never heard it said like that. But that was easy for her to say, she could leap through the air, cut down foes with her flying axes. He was afraid of saying the wrong thing, getting hurt, getting caught by some horrible monster. Afraid of getting loofahed. How do you stop being afraid?

  Ah, it was too much. He sank down into the water to cut out the sounds and return to the floating bliss of supporting water.

  When he came back up, a song started from another hot tub. Resonant Dwarvish voices rolled around the lodge. The two dwarves by Dee perked up and joined in.

  Dama stood up in the centre of the lodge and started leading the song. It was sung in rounds, verses followed by the same word chanted again and again. “Zapda, zapda”. Dama clapped his hands together and led another verse, again followed by “Zapda, zapda”.

  Dama stamped his feet and clapped his hands above his head as he turned around. He had butt-cheeks like cannonballs. Even naked he looked like he could charge a rhino and win.

  More dwarves stood up, singing loudly. Pretty soon the whole lodge was standing and roaring out the song. The two dwarves with Dee joined in, jumping up to the side of their tub and stamping their feet whilst singing. Dee sank a bit lower into the water. It was all getting a bit much for him.

  Arjelica appeared again. She grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the tub. “No time to hide now! It’s time for zapda!” she shouted.

  He almost fell over, but she held him upright with ease. Light glistened on her wet, muscled arms, water dripped down her toned stomach. Embarrassment rose from his stomach.

  “What is Zapda?” Dee shouted over the din.

  The lodge doors were thrown open. Cold mist curled in through the bottom of the doorway.

  “Snow!” Arjelica cried. She grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the lodge door.

  “Zapda!” shouted the dwarves.

  Dee was pulled out into the snow by Arjelica, in the midst of the naked dwarf mob.