The Daily Grind - Chapter 118 (Patreon)

I'm actually not sure I like this one very much.  Let me know how ya'll feel; I might actually redo it entirely if it doesn't hold up.

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James drove the van, doing his best impression of someone who had left traffic laws far behind, while in the rear compartment, Sarah did her best to recap the briefing for everyone who hadn’t read it.

“The school dungeon, which we’re tagging as the Akashic Sewer…”

“Are we?”  James muttered quietly enough not to interrupt her shouted words.  He liked the ring of it, and he wasn’t so petty that he couldn’t admit when someone beat him to coming up with a cool name for things.

“...Is awful.”  Sarah finished her sentence over James’ thoughts.  “Almost no light, seemingly intentionally dirty, possibly dangerously so, and the majority of Life has been bug- or rat-based.”  She rattled off points like she’d memorized them, and James idly wondered if she was reading the operations manual off her phone.  “The breach removes certain items from people, suspected things that aren’t allowed in schools, blah blah blah, we already did this part…”

He almost laughed from up in the driver’s seat.  They *had* already done that part; James had listed things that had been removed from them, and it was gratifying to have everyone sort of blandly repeat, “so, things you can’t take into school.  Got it.”  Even though he’d avoided saying those exact words.

They didn’t know if that was true, exactly, and making assumptions about a place as obviously hostile as this one seemed like a potentially lethal plan. But so far, it seemed to be the way this worked.  

They’d grabbed anything that might make it past the filter and could be used to keep them alive.  Keys were a big one, they know those worked, along with the little keychain lights on them which was now a standard feature for members of the Order.  They’d kinda had to accept that eventually, they were gonna end up somewhere dark and horrible, so having backup light sources was a given.  Sporting equipment; there were a couple baseball bats in the Lair, though James made a note to get more if this worked.  They had a few dangerous office supplies adapted as best as possible to weapons; the pen that vaporized things, a pad of sticky notes that paralyzed things they were attached to, a compass that could trip people.  Nothing serious.  Nothing nearly on the level of just having a gun. 

They also had a laptop that should be suitable for school use.  They’d even uninstalled minesweeper off it.

“The Sewer has eight current known attempted victims!”  Sarah was saying as James took them down the side street that led to the school’s rear parking lot.  “Our goal is to get in, kill *anything* that doesn’t instantly identify as passive, and get out!”  There was a wave of concerned voices from the back, organic and digital, at that statement.

Alanna’s voice cut through.  “The doors are gated by kills.”  She said.  “If any of you missed the first briefing, that’s how the dungeon coerces students into killing each other to escape.”  Silence followed that statement.  “Yeah.  So kill everything that moves and isn’t a person.  And if possible, actually focus killing hits into as few people as possible.  We need our own exit.”

“We’re here.”  James shouted back from the passenger seat as he slowed them down to take the turn. They weren’t in such a rush that he needed to bruise his whole coterie before they even got there.  “Everyone ready?”

They absolutely were not.  Neither this group, nor the followup squad in the second van behind them, felt ready.  They’d felt more ready going to fight actual humans with guns.  Here, they didn’t even have body armor.  Just leather coats.

A couple of the camracondas had their armor on, just in case that worked.  But most of them actually also had ‘jackets’ on.  They were an emergent fashion statement that came out of the fact that a lot of the camracondas were artists, a lot of them were *bored*, and the Order had a comically large stash of coats in the basement.  Usually they had the arms cut away, but some of them used the sleeves with notches in them to secure the garments.  They were an awkward design, made for creatures without arms or shoulders, and intended to be able to be put on without too much help.  Some of them were quite stylish.  Whether they were going to hold up in battle was up in the air.

“Cops.”  Alanna said, pointing as she poking her head up through the gap between the cargo space in the back and the two upholstered seats in the front.

“I see ‘em.”  James grimly acknowledged.  Two police cars, both with the lights on, both at an angle, blocking off the road to the parking lot and the rest of the building.  Farther up, near the roundabout in front of the school, a pair of yellow school busses idled their engines, and a third police SUV was flipped over onto its side.  “Well shit.” There were a pair of uniformed officers standing behind the barricading cars, watching the school, one speaking into a radio.  “Let’s get this over with.”  He sighed, slowing the vehicle to a stop.

The officers had already turned and had their hands on the grips of their sidearms as James pulled the van up.  One of them was walking toward them, hand held up in a clear ‘stop’ gesture, which James mostly ignored.  He threw the vehicle into park, and with a quick motion, hopped out of the driver’s side door.

“Sir, get out of here!”  The officer was saying.  Yelling, really.  “Get back in your fucking vehicle!”

“No!”  James yelled back cheerfully.  “We need to get through!  Please move!”

When the other officer turned, and both of them actually drew their weapons, James realized he probably could have phrased that better.  When other people started hopping out of the back of the van, the cops got *really* edgy, backing up against their cars, one of the screaming into the radio for backup.

“Guys, we just need to get through.  I’m with…” James started to say.

He was cut off by another uniformed officer rapidly cutting across the front lawn from where it looked like another  police car was blocking the parking lot’s exit.  James recognized him quickly as not-detective-anymore Madden, as the man opened dialogue by shouting, “You!” At the top of his lungs at James.

“Sergeant, we’re in a hurry…” Alanna started to say in a polite, low-pitched tone.  The kind that James recognized as what you’d use for a wounded animal.

Ex-Detective Dave Madden started shooting.  Mostly at James, but it was kind of a moot point after the other two officers, operating on twitch reflexes, did the same.

The standard police issue Glock 22 held fifteen rounds, and could fire those rounds about as fast as someone could pull the trigger.  It took roughly five seconds for all three cops to unload their weapons in James’ direction, and a few seconds to start fumbling for reloads.

James stood there, luminous grid of argent light burning lines into the retinas of anyone looking directly at him, as the bullets slammed into the bracer shield projected around him and surrendered their kinetic energy to whatever bullshit blood magic powered the thing.

Halfway through pulling out a fresh magazine, one of the officers that *wasn’t* Madden noticed.  Jaw hanging half open, he elbowed the second man at his side, who was already staring, gun held loosely in his hands.

“Look.”  James said, rubbing a finger behind his ringing ear.  He looked around, trying to appear as casual as possible as he assessed how many bullets had just hit the windshield of his brand new used van. “We’re in a hurry.  If you could...”

“What the fuck…” Came from one of the cops.

“This is your fault!”  He caught the words, bellowed by Madden, who had slammed a full load of bullets back into his gun and was now leveling it at James’ head from maybe ten feet away.  Behind the van, the few knights who had gotten out already stayed where they were, waiting for either the situation to diffuse, or for Alanna to start putting the police in headlocks.  “I knew it!  You did this!”  Madden fired again, just a single bullet this time, like he needed to test it.

It didn’t work; the bracer’s shield was absurdly potent against whatever it was set to, and 9mm rounds were never going to make it through.  They did deplete the charges, though, which James mentally eyed with some worry.

James vaguely wondered why more cops hadn’t shown up in response to the shooting as he eyed Madden.  “Look.”  He said.  “I tried to tell you.  I tried to point you in the right direction.  You didn’t fucking believe me.  Stop fucking shooting at me, you asshole.”  He turned to the other two officers, who were still looking on the fence about whether they should try shooting again.  Though the blatant display of magic kind of had them tilted toward maybe not, and James could see the hesitation they had.  “Hi.  Let’s try this again.”  James said, stepping forward, and internally snorting as the cops took a step back from him.  “James Lyle.  *FBI*.  We need to get into the building.”

“He’s lying!”  Madden screamed, face bright red, eyes wild.  He still held his gun, and was starting to turn toward his fellow officers.  “He knows!  He did this!  Shoot him!”

Alanna put him in a headlock.  

James did his best to pretend that wasn’t happening, projecting calm and control at the cops who were now *definitely* considering shooting someone again.  “One of you tell me what’s going on here.”  He didn’t make it a question; JP’s lessons kicking into action.  “Also your colleague will be fine.  Eventually.”

”Um…” One of the officers, the one who’d lowered his weapon more fully, kept shooting his gaze between James, and where Alanna was chokeing out a flailing, shouting Madden.  “Is that… Byrne’s kid?”  He asked.

“Alanna?”  James raised his eyebrows.  “Yes.  She works for us now.  Didn’t you know?”  It was his favorite kind of statement.  Not really a lie, but not exactly useful either.

The cop made a choice.  Holstered his weapon, and motioned his partner to do the same.  “I remember her.  Her father…?”  The other cop, a slightly older man, nodded, and put his own gun back in the holster.  “Okay.  What do you need?”  He still looked like he had reservations about Sergeant Dave, who was now pinned into the grass and losing consciousness, but he wasn’t shooting and that was something.

“We need to get into the building.”  James said.  “And we need to know why you’re out here, too.  What’s going on?”

“You wouldn’t believe us.  Um… sir?”  The younger cop said.

James slashed his hand.  “No.  Not sir.”

Old Cop cut in.  “You just watched him block bullets.  Don’t tell him he won’t believe shit.”  He turned toward James.  “We’ve received multiple dispatch calls from the building over the last hour.  Thought they were hoaxes at first, but now it’s a suspected active shooter. Backup’s on the way.  But when we tried to approach the building, whoever’s driving the bus struck the approaching officer.”

James closed one eye, focusing on the vision enhancement on his good side.  “There’s no one in the bus.”  James sighed with resignation.  “Fuck.”

“They left?”  The cop spun around.  “If there’s no one outside…”

“No.”  James corrected him.  “There was never anyone in the bus.  Okay.  We’re wasting time.”  He ignored the questions and weird looks from the cops.  Now that it was established that he was ‘on their side’, they probably wouldn’t shoot him.  “Handcuff Madden.”  James ordered, as that thought woke up in the back of his head.  “We’re going to move in.  You can support, or stay here.  But stay out of our way.”

“You can’t just…” One of them yelled at James as he started walking back to the van.

“Shut up!”  James barked.  “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you just shot at me!  Sit down and shut up, or start helping!  I don’t care, but you’re done making decisions here!”  He fumed, a dire scowl on his face as he walked past the van toward the back door, slapping a hand on the side with a hollow thud.

“Situation?”  Sarah asked as he rounded the back.  Several people here had guns out of their own, ready to start shooting on his command.

“Leave the weapons.  We’re going in fast.  On foot, though; the busses are hitting cars that get too close.”

“Shit.  Dungeon?”  Nate queried.

“Probably.”  James nodded.  “This is bad.  What’s it *doing*?”

“Nothing we like.  Let’s go stop it.”  Sarah offered.

James nodded and looked around at the people here.  “Okay.”  He said.  “This is a public op.  Last chance to back out.”  He mostly directed this at the camracondas.  But they were already flowing out the back of the van and onto the pavement.

Behind them, the second van was also unloading as they saw the first group mobilizing.  JP hopping out of the driver’s seat as Other James and Simon led a group of lifeforms out of the back.  They were both plugged in, but not connected yet, since there wasn’t any wifi to piggyback on, and it turned out human souls used kind of a lot of bandwidth.

When the first camraconda moved out from behind the van, James was worried one of the cops was going to start shooting again.  He cut them off with a glare that could melt steel, and made eye contact until they broke off and took their hands off their guns.  It turned out, no matter how much authority or legal right to shoot people you had, someone you thought had a job description of Federal Wizard was intimidating.

Alanna joined him on the lawn as their group assembled behind him.  James was standing with his hand shading his eyes, staring at the two long yellowed busses idling in the roundabout.  He was trying to project authority and calm, even while inside he was starting to get worried about the increasing number of cars piling up on the street.  Mostly police, but a few people who were clearly panicked parents, and also a news van he spotted coming down the road.  This was becoming… problematic.

“Everyone’s ready.”  Alanna said.  “Also Madden’s down for the count.”

“Yeah, holy shit.  I didn’t think he’d just start shooting.  I shoulda had Secret wipe his memory.”  James let out a shuddering breath.  “That was so fucked up.  One week earlier and we would have just been murdered by the police.”

“Yeah…”  Alanna trailed off.  “So, what’s the play here?”

“For the police?”

“The school.”

“Oh.”   James turned away from his observation of the hostile vehicles and the overturned police SUV.  “Okay.  Looks like one of them hit that cop car hard enough to flip it into the flagpole.  That’s a problem.  Also no one’s moving in there, so I hope they got out.  Clearly the things can move.  Let’s see if one of the camracondas can lock them down.”

They called up a camraconda wearing hard formed plastic plate, this one unnamed but adorned with a pair of carved pencils through it’s ‘hair’ like a bow.  It focused on one of the busses in the distance, and then shook its head side to side.

“Large.  Pushes back.”  It said.  “Could stop.  Hurts.  Need less momentum.”

“Hm.”  James glanced back at the vans where the group of about dozen Order members were milling around, eying both the increasing pile of traffic behind them and also the police who were shooting them an equal number of shifty glares.  “Okay.  We’ve got that paperweight, right?  The one that doesn’t move in the direction it’s pointed?  Bring me that.  And get everyone formed up.  We’ll make a run for the front door, and sort it out from there.”

Alanna saluted him, and started moving, while James went back to scowling.  The problem, he realized, was that they had no idea what was going on.  The police were here, for *some reason*.  The front doors were also shut, but that wasn’t a problem.  James’ mental list of who had what blue power had a couple options for that in their little crew.  No, the big issue was they just didn’t know what was going on.  And for that, they needed to reconnect with Secret and Lua, who were… well, inside.

James turned to address the humans and camracondas approaching. Their core group was here, along with Other James and Simon.  Nate, Deb, Frequency-Of-Sunlight, and the mongausse.  Even Virgil had jumped when asked to come along when he heard what was going on.  Sarah stood at the back, idly flipping the pencil James had given her in her fingers.  Reed and Nikhail from Research were here, too, along with a couple concerned looking members of Sarah’s support group.  It was getting harder for James to keep track of everyone.  It was also weird to see everyone in street clothes and not armor, weird to be going into this like it was a huge fight and not just a rescue op, weird that the dungeon had shifted behavior to something *insane*.

“I’m on point.  I’ll stall the bus pointed to the right, then I need every camera eye on it.  Alanna; board and disable.  Everyone else, run for the door.  Reed, you’ve got ‘Remove Entrance’, right?  Use it.”

“That’ll just make a wall.”  The Research member said, confused.

James blinked at him.  “What?  No.  It’s… there’s doors there, but there’s something weird about them on the other side that I can’t quite see.  So remove them.”

“Yeah.  That just turns it into a wall.”  Reed argued.

“Your power says ‘remove entrance’, not ‘remodel building’!”  James snapped, one hand in a claw on his forehead.  “I am one hundred percent sure it can do this.  Remove the doors, leave a hole!  You can figure it out.”  His voice softened.  “Let’s move.  And be sharp; something’s clearly wrong.”

“Um…”  Anesh raised a hand.  “We’re not gonna get shot from behind, are we?”

“You, you, and you.”  James pointed at people wearing bracers as Alanna jogged back and slapped a metal weight into his hand.  “Set for nine mil, keep to the rear.”

“James, that’s not an answer.”  Anesh spoke with high pitched concern as JP and Nate flicked their eyes to the mental displays of their Items, and shifted to the back of the pack.

“It’s a solution though.  Just hope these things don’t break the dress code.  Alright.  Follow in five seconds.”  James announced, and then set his feet in the grass, and kicked off so hard he left divots of dirt spraying up into the air.

He cleared the lawn going faster than most humans could manage.  The acceleration orb didn’t make him an olympian, and he knew there were a lot of people who could outpace him, but the way it took away a lot of the energy cost of actually getting to these absurd speeds was kind of huge.  And despite having to manage carrying an object that wouldn’t move in one direction, he still flew across the distance.

James’ legs pumped as his shoes slapped down onto asphalt.  And as soon as he did, the roar of an old diesel engine flared into his ears.  One of the busses, the one facing his direction, jerked forward into motion, lunging toward James like a metal predator.

He planted his feet, instead of trying to dodge.  The thing was moving fast.  Faster than a bus should be able to spring forward.  Not that he could judge, given what he’d just done.  James whipped his arm out in front of him, rotating the paperweight so that its front face pointed toward the bus, then pulling his fingers as far back as he could around its edge.

It hit going maybe twenty miles an hour.  And if they hadn’t tried to stop it this early, had they let it build up speed, James could easily see how it could have gone faster.  Not fast enough to fold the whole bus around the object though, but enough to make a hell of a dent and arrest its foreward momentum.  It also locked the paperweight into place, and James jerked his hand back as fast as he could.  He tried to roll backward, but he wasn’t quite fast enough, and the upper half of the bus slammed into his shoulder as it tried to overwhelm the tiny object holding it back.

James went sprawling down to the pavement, just in time to watch the partially stuck bus freeze, its rear wheels a foot off the ground.  Feet flashed by him, and a hand reached down.  He grabbed it, and was jerked up and running again as the camracondas slithered past; the group of them keeping their eyes locked on the bus, though James could see them straining.

Then Alanna, sweeping in behind, planted her hands on the tilted front hood of the bus, swung herself up and slammed a metal baseball bat at high velocity into the windshield.  Not waiting for a second swing, she shoved herself feet first through the cracked glass, ignoring the sharp edges that would have turned a normal human into a Jackson Pollock painting.  The mongausse, trailing her like a rainbow afterimage, just plowed through the closed door of the bus.

James didn’t see what she did, but he did see the whole line of the bus shudder, falter, and then fountain out a spray of red sparks that quickly vacuumed back into the cab.  A minute later, while the mongausse exploded out the driver’s window, Alanna crawled back out the hole she’d made on the way in, vaulted off the hood of the dead vehicle, and headed to join the others.  The other bus, facing away but still somehow aware of them, was already peeling around, driving over the lawn and leaving deep tire furrows as it looped around to close in on the delvers.

“Look!”  Sarah panted, pointing up at the school’s front facade as they ran.  “Look!”  James cast his eyes up as he launched himself up the curb toward the front doors.  He saw, in multiple windows, students.  They were watching him, watching the Order closing in.  But they didn’t look amused or confused or anything he expected.  Instead, he saw them banging their fists on the windows, mouths open like they were screaming.  They looked panicked.

They approached the door, Simon and Other James hitting it first, followed by everyone else as they moved in an only barely organized mob.  Some Order members jumping over the concrete benches to make room for the camracondas to slither up the front path, many people kneeling down to catch their breath.  James saw the front doors, but they weren’t like he remembered them.

This school had a sort of airlock design to the front entrance.  Two big sets of double doors, and then two single doors on the outside; all of them leading into a kind of central room that had a fancy floor emblem, and all the school’s trophy cases and stuff, before leading to the second set of doors that led into the building proper.  There was also doors off the sides of that interior entryway that led to the office, on the left, or the library, on the right.  It was cramped, and inefficient, and James disliked it immensely.

Right now, he disliked it because the doors were *dripping* with some kind of black sludge that ran through the cracks and pooled near their base, and he could see inside that the liquid rose up to about knee height.  Also, the handles for the doors on both sides appeared to be organically separating into something that looked like barbed wire; plant-like strands with ferocious metal burrs on them.

“Reed.”  James said, surprised to realize that he wasn’t out of breath.  All those morning jogs were paying off.  “Remove this entrance.”  He ordered.

The curly haired researcher slapped his hands against the side of the building.  A grimace crossed his face, but this time, he didn’t question James.  He’d seen the students inside; everyone had.  Also, there was a bus bearing down on them, and they really only had a minute at most before it got around the corpse of its fellow.  “Not a wall.”  He muttered to himself.  “Just go… away!”

A muffled whomp noise sounded.  And then, the doors were gone.  The vaulted ceiling was gone.  The lights were gone.  There was just exposed wiring and pipes, rough gravel foundation, and a gaping, cavernous hole in the front of the school.

There was no more entryway.  At *all*.  Reed’s head reeled back, blood flowing from his nose and eyes as he pitched backward.  “Nate!  Grab him!”  James commanded, as everyone rose into motion.

There would absolutely be time to be concerned about this later.  Right now, as everyone surrounded Nate while he threw an arm under Reed’s shoulder and carried him through the gap, they were mostly concerned with getting away from the bus that roared by the entrance, nearly clipping a camraconda’s tail before they slithered the last inch forward just in time.

The group burst through the space where the entrance used to be, and into a place that James didn’t quite recognize.

The floor was a bowl, indented in the front lobby. The stairs to the second floor had been copied, and placed half-jutting out of the wall of what once was the administration office.  The stairs, both the original and the new set, were elongated to inhuman proportions.  The area looked like what would happen if someone had fed the school into a machine learning algorithm, told it to generate another school, and then just taken the first distorted result that came out.

“What the hell is this?”  Deb’s voice summed up the wide eyed confusion of the group as they stalled to a halt.  

“This looks like…” James started to say, running a hand along an irrational pipe that jutted out of the ground.

“...like dungeon geometry.”  Anesh finished.

The lobby sat silent, but for the distant dripping of what James hoped was only water.

“Doesn’t change anything.”  James decided, voicing what was almost certainly an inaccurate statement.  “We still need to get Lua and Secret.  Second floor, her office.  Let’s go.”

“Where are all the students?”  Alanna asked as they headed to the base of the stairs.

James pivoted around the stairs, laid a hand on the railing, and started motioning people up.  The camracondas were startling adept at adapting to steps in general, but here, they needed a little extra help when the stairs started getting to two or three feet in height.

It was as Deb was two ledges up, reaching down to help Frequency-Of-Sunlight up to join her, that the sounds of dripping were interrupted by a scream.  Deb’s yell echoed raggedly against warped stone as a clawed, brown-furred paw, the size of a baseball mitt, jutted out from the gap between the stairs and bit into her leg, straight through the jeans she was wearing.

Simon and Other James were already moving.  Even unconnected, the two of them were easily in sync and rounded the corner under the stairwell in seconds, while Frequency-Of-Sunlight panickedly froze Deb in mid-fall before she could be easily dragged backward and through the gap.

The thing let go before anyone got to it.  All James saw of the thing was a flash of fluid brown fur and molding scales, as a creature the size of a small horse made curving bounds across the small open space and through the door of a dark classroom on the ground level.

“What the shit was that!”  He yelled.  But no one had an answer for him.

They scrambled up the stairs faster after that.  Thoughts plaguing James that they’d come completely unprepared.  He had been so sure that this group could handle the dungeon, and they probably could.  He just hadn’t expected the dungeon to be the whole building all of a sudden.

When the surmounted the top of the overly lengthened staircase, they group settled into a nervous circle.  While Nate cut away the leg of Deb’s pants, matted with blood, and started preforming first aid, Deb checked on Reed who had been sat down in a sitting position against what used to be a bench, eyes blank, head rolling.

“He’s not dead.”  Deb said, getting a sigh of relief from James.  On the balcony hallway opposite them, overhead, one of the lights *cracked*, black lines suddenly running through the light itself.  “Looks like overextension.  We’ve seen this a few times; he’ll be okay, but he’s going to have a headache that could kill God when he wakes up.”

“How about you?  Can you move?”  James asked.  Deb just shook her head, frowning down at the leg she couldn’t easily put weight on.  “Okay.”  James rose to a low crouch and nodded to himself.  “Anesh, Dave, Nate, um… you two... and Cold-Wind-Friction.” you stay here with them and keep watch.  The rest of us, we’re moving forward.”  The designated people nodded and started moving to places where they could keep watch.

“Yeah, how hard could it be to cross two hallways and one office door?”  Alanna said, voice oozing sarcasm.

James growled.  “You know what? Next time I have to go anywhere near a school, I’m bringing an assault rifle.  This is insane.”

“I’m pretty sure I have to report that to someone.”  Nate sniped back dryly, and it took James a second to realize the gruff man had made a joke.

He laughed as he pulled the doomsday pen out of his pocket, flipped it over, and offered it hilt-first to Nate.  Nate, though, pushed it back.  “I’ve got a gun.”  He said, simply.

“I thought we left the guns in the van?”  James asked.  Nate shrugged.  It wasn’t contempt for James in particular, just that he’d kept a handgun mostly by reflex.  “Alright.  Well.  Let’s go.  And keep an eye out for survivors.  You guys setup here, we’ll send anyone back your way.  Evac by telepad if you need to, or when you have clusters of six.”

“Got it.”  Dave nodded, saluting without a trace of irony.  “Good luck.”

The reduced group rose and moved forward.  There was a fire door nearby that led back to a cluster of classrooms, and James knew there was another one on the other side of the school.  This one was shut tight, its handles displaying the same barbed security as the front door, and he suspected it would be locked tight too.  He cursed at Reed already having KO’d himself; not that it hadn’t been dramatic to carve ten tonnes of rock and metal out of existence, but it sure was inconvenient that their best lockpick was unconscious.

“We can cut through that classroom.”  Simon said.  “If the building’s the same.”

“You used to go here, right?”  James asked him.  “Was it always this dark?”

“No.”  Simon grimaced.  “And look.”  He pointed up.  Some of the lights overhead had those strange black cracks through their luminosity.  There were more of them growing on the lights farther away, though the ones overhead seemed still for now.

It was spreading.  They didn’t have time to check everything, they needed to pick up their allies, and get to the heart of this, *now*.

James wordlessly nodded at the door, and watched the dark classroom through the panel of windows as Simon moved up and pulled it open, keeping out of the way behind the wooden surface as he had to pull *hard* to scrape it across the floor.

.

Almost instantly, there was a sick screaming from inside.  James had been worried about students, but this was clearly something inhuman.  It was a screech he’d heard once before, though, and when he saw Alanna tense up, he knew she’d heard it too.

When the first ratroach dove out of the liquid darkness and tried to knife Sarah, Alanna was already moving.  Her fist struck it like the wrath of a vengeful god, and it folded sideways as chitin and bones cracked under the blow.  The shiv made from the leg of a desk chair went clattering sideways, and Simon rolled out from behind the door, snatched it up, and brought it down through the thing’s throat.

“What the fuck was that?!”  Virgil barked, falling back on his ass as green blood and red sparks painted the carpet.

“Ratroach.”  James started to say, eyes wide.  “They shouldn’t be…”

But then the next one rushed them.  And the next.  And the next.

James, Simon, Other James, and Alanna formed a semicircle around the door after they’d killed the next two.  The things could only come through so fast, as they jostled with each other to push through the door.  A pair of camracondas behind them flickering momentum off of their enemies made them easy prey, but they couldn’t keep this up forever.

Especially since the bodies were stacking up.

“How many of these fucking things are there?”  James asked as he crushed the throat of a ratroach holding a splintered club.  This one had half of a rat’s muzzle, the rest of its face exposed bone and muscle surrounded by a ring of ichor-dripping chitin.  It was repulsive to look at, but it didn’t keep it alive any longer, as he flipped the stunned thing to the side to have any extra life crushed out  by Sarah’s boot.  “Could they even fit this many in the classroom?”

“Sure.”  Simon said.  “But listen? There aren’t more in there.”

James strained his ears over the sound of crunching chitin.  Simon was right; there were screaming battle cries starting up just before they plunged forward to their deaths, but before that, nothing.

“We need to get in there.”  He said.

Alanna nodded.  “Okay.  After the next one, let’s rush it.”  She barked out a countdown, guessing roughly at when the next ratroach was going to spill forth.  On the count of one, just a little bit early, one of their screaming faces started to emerge from the curtain of darkness leading into the classroom.  It froze almost right away, and Simon and Other James grabbed it, jerked sideways hard enough to snap its neck, and pulled it back to the growing pile of corpses.

James and Alanna put their shoulders down and rushed forward, James with his keys dug out of his pocket and folded between his fingers, thumb on the button for his mini flashlight.

When they cleared the threshold into the dark interior, Alanna’s hand found his shoulder, and he almost instantly rammed his shin into a desk.  Flicking the light on, he was mildly surprised that it worked in what he assumed would be unnatural darkness.  The sounds of fighting, of bug monsters screaming, cut away to nothing.  And all James saw was…

“Nothing?”

He swept the light around, while Alanna watched his back.  Desks, a couple computers, backpacks on the floor.  His heart lurched as he saw not one, but two bodies.  One of an older bald man, glasses askew on his face.  He was sitting in the chair behind the teacher’s desk, a spear driven through his chest.  Another was a student, just a facedown lump of what used to be a person, bleeding out on the tile floor.

There was nothing else here.

“Is it a coincidence that they stopped coming out as soon as we stepped in here?”  Alanna muttered.

“Fuck I hope so.”  James said.  “Actually… we need to know.”  He turned back toward the door and called out; “We’re coming back!”  Before sliding out the door.

“Anything?”  Sarah asked him, eyes watering from the smell of the corpses and their caustic blood.

A scream answered her, and a second later, another ratroach breached out into the light.  James delivered it a quick one-two, letting Alanna catch its arm, rip the knife out of it, stab it, and send it flailing back into the dark.  “Back inside!”  James ordered, and Alanna followed him without question.

The rest of the rescue team filtered in after them, bumping into each other and some of the desks in the darkness as they left behind the growing barricade of corpses.

“What’s going on?”  Simon asked in James’ direcion, as the humans who had both thumbs and flashlights started casting light beams around the room, revealing the trashed classroom with its overturned furniture and blood splatters.

“It’s spawning new monsters.”  James said grimly.  “Doesn’t work if we’re in here, or maybe if there’s light.  I dunno.”  He groaned.  “Shit, if there’s more rooms like this… we can’t move forward if this is behind us pumping out these fucking things.  Why is it even *doing this*?!”  James shouted, waving an arm outward at the empty room.

He stepped over to the windows.  He could see out, just fine, though the hallway was starting to darken too, slowly.  The classroom’s second door still led past the barricaded fire door, though from here he could see there were another pair of student bodies lying in blood puddles.  What were their options?  Telepad out and come back with guns?  Would they even be able to?

Nate had brought a pistol in, though largely by accident, so maybe the domain didn’t extend this far into what used to be the real world.  It *felt* like a dungeon, James realized suddenly.  The atmosphere, something about it, it prickled at his skin and tugged at the thread in his mind.

He had changed, since that first time he’d set foot in Officium Mundi. Not just that his calves had solidified into actual muscles, or that he’d learned sixteen ways to punch anything vaguely human-shaped to death.  But something inside; something vital.  There was a part of James now, perhaps developed in time with his toughening body, that was constantly aware of *where he was*.  Whether the bed he woke up in was in Reality or Dungeon, whether this door led to somewhere normal or Somewhere Else.  He’d only brought it up a few times, mostly to Anesh and Alanna, and both of them confirmed the feeling.  Hell, he and Alanna almost had the ability to sense magic items at this point.  At the very least, they had a keen eye for when something was just that little bit off from normality.

This space, James decided, was warped.  It wasn’t a dungeon, but something was going on with it.  It was like it was being dragged under the waves.  Which further invited the metaphor that the mainland of reality was being flooded with the oceans of the warped spaces beyond.

“It’s not spawning while we’re in here.”  Alanna said, cutting the silence like a knife.

“No.”  James agreed.  “Which means that it probably can’t dump spawns on us while we’re walking.  Or on the rooms we saw the other kids in.”  He turned, holding up one hand to try to gauge direction.  “They were upstairs, front of the school.  So, there should be at least one around that way, and another on the other side of the building.  Minimum.  We should focus on evacuation first.”  He looked around.  “Okay.  Alanna, Sarah, and Frequency, with me.  Everyone else, we’ll clear the one across the hall and you can split across to get to the classroom.  Wish we weren’t in a hurry here, but we are.”

“Frequency is not here.”  One of the camracondas spoke up, and James realized it was Cold-Wind-Friction.  “Stayed.  I came.”

“Wait, what?  Why?”  James asked, confused.

“With Deb.  They two together.”  The camraconda answered, like that explained anything.

James clapped his palms together in front of his mouth, nodding.  “Okay.  I have a *lot* of questions about that.  Later!  Doesn’t matter, same plan.  Let’s get moving.”

“What about this one?”  Alanna asked.  “Maybe it’s the dark; do we have lights we can leave here?”

“I’ve got a lighter.”  Other James offered, flicking the small flame to life.  “We could set it on fire.”

“Tempting, but this is our way out.”  James said.  “Maybe we move the wounded up.  Yeah, actually.  Go get Nate.  I’m claiming this room as our forward base.”

Something shifted, as James spoke.  Something he felt rumbling in his ribs like an earthquake, only it was all around him and not under his feet.

Overhead, black flakes poured off the light fixtures like coiled vines, hissing smoke and dropping to the floor to burn away.  On the walls, small holes that had been dripping black sludge sealed up behind ordered concrete and drywall.  And all around, the feeling of *wrongness* snapped off like a switch had been thrown.  The darkness banished in an instant as the overhead lights beamed perfectly mundane fluorescent rays through the classroom.

“Noooooo.”  James held up a finger as he drawled out the word.  “Naw.  No.”  He glanced at the shocked faces of Alanna and the others.  “Can’t be that easy, right?  No.”

Alanna rapped her knuckles on one of the walls.  “It feels like it changed.”  She cocked her head.  “Oh man, do you hear that?”  No one else did, so she tapped at an ear.  “In the distance.  Something screaming.  James, I think you pissed it off.”

“Alright!”  James strode over to the slain teacher, and gave a soft “Sorry, sir.” as he pulled the spear out of the man’s chest.  “Now we’re *really* in it.”  He slammed the butt of the spear - really just a mop handle with a shard of glass hammered into the tip - into the floor.  “Get the others up here.  It’s time to move.”

They should have brought guns.  Outside the windows, on the other side of the closed interior door, James could see the scrambling form of some kind of rat-thing.  It had six clawed legs, and it scratched furiously at the floor in places before flinging itself forward in bursts of movement to a new spot.  It sniffed at the bodies of the dead high schoolers.  It took a bite of soft flesh with jagged, infected teeth.  James wanted to shoot it.  James wanted to shoot it out of a cannon, into the fucking sun.  But it moved on, and he was left feeling relieved, rather than anxious or vengeful.

He tried dialing Lua’s number again, but got no answer, or cell service, unsurprisingly.  He tried focusing Secret into existence, but got similar results.

They should have brought an army.  But instead, he had seven knights, three of whom were camracondas, one of which was a dog made of magnets.  James wanted to scream.  But instead, he just turned back to face everyone, fingers tight on the haft of his weapon.

The dungeon was reaching out into reality.  He briefly thought back to what JP had said earlier; that things like this must have happened, so why didn’t they make it into the books?  And he realized that Status Quo, or someone like them, should have been here already, shooting everything and blowing up the building, calling it a gas leak and a tragedy.

What happened when Officium Mundi did this?  What happened if they didn’t stop it here?  Did it just keep spreading?  Taking territory, until the Earth belonged to the rats and the bugs and the dripping black?

James tapped the spear into the ground.  Or maybe, they’d brought exactly what they needed.

The wounded were moved up.  James shot Deb and Frequency-Of-Sunlight a look as the camraconda slithered in at full reared up height so she could support the limping nurse.  He’d talk to them later.  Or maybe he’d just remain pleasantly confused forever.

“Okay!”  James said.  “Here’s the deal!  As long as we hold this room, the sewer can’t spawn more rats in it.  So when we leave, barricade the doors, and hold it.  If we find more problems, we’ll come back and check in.”  He tapped his foot.  “We’re out of time now.  Let’s go.”

James kicked the door open, slammed the spearpoint into the weird rat thing that was trying to jolt by, shook the corpse off in a spray of red sparks, and started striding forward into the hall.  Pipes had started sprouting from the wall in bismuth patterns, and that black mossy stuff hung from the ceiling, darkening the whole interior.  He stepped to the side, and let Simon take the lead as they rushed the door on the other side of the hallway.

They struck down the patchwork ratroach that lunged for them rapidly.  Something about these newly spawned ones made them weak, or maybe just disoriented.  They were naked, showing off their matted and rotting fur unlike the ones from the Sewer itself that had been scrounging the scraps from slain students, carrying only their makeshift weapons.  And they were so, so fragile, James thought as he jammed his knuckles through this ones’ eye before ushering the second team through the door.

They claimed it, just like he had, and the room snapped back to something resembling bright, ordered reality.

This was where they split up.

“Ready?”  James asked Sarah and Cold-Wind-Friction, assuming correctly that asking that of Alanna would be obvious, especially as she was adding another backup ratroach knife to her belt.

“Ready.”  Both of them said together.

He hardened his eyes into a glare as he led the quartet down the hallway toward Lua’s office.  James liked to think that he was a reasonable person, but right now, well…  Anything that got in there way probably shouldn’t be too attached to the mortal coil.