The Daily Grind - Chapter 123 (Patreon)

Hey, I know this is probably the audience that has already done exactly this, but if anyone hasn't rated the story over on RoyalRoad, I'd really appreciate if everyone could do that.  Being higher up the rankings leads to a wider audience, and expanding readership at this point is how I make a living, so it's a big help to have that little extra boost.  If you've already done so, then thank you!  You guys are cool.

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Order Of Endless Rooms, Operations Manual

Part 1 Section 8, Chain of Command

As the Order grows, the flow of authority and responsibility becomes less clear and requires more written guidelines.  This has the benefit of making it easier for individuals to understand where the lines are, but it also has the downside of making those lines seem inviolable.  So, this is the mandate of the Order that you should follow above all else.

Embrace responsibility, and share authority.  If you are needed, and feel competent enough to act, then step forward and act.  If you need help, ask.  If a decision seems to big for you, collaborate.  We are all in this together.

That is the spirit of our organization.  And while you may report to someone, or have a clean spot on the chart of authority somewhere, the real world gets messy sometimes.  So remember that we’re all in this together.

The Order doesn’t have blanket tiers of management or authority.  Instead, what we have are positions that reflect our membership.  We are a collection of specialists, and though what we specialize in may change from day to day, the things we choose to focus on have leadership roles attached.

For example. Someone who considers themselves a part of Research may also work with the support group, and participate in delves.  But when they want to run an experiment to see if a blue orb can be used to create a sentient motorcycle, there’s someone with authority in the Research division who they draft a request to.  But when on a delve, they answer to their team leader, and if a combat situation arises, they follow orders through the delver’s chain of command.  When checking up on survivors, a leader from Support will provide them with a schedule and the phone numbers to call.  Or, if they’ve taken on more responsibility, maybe they’ll be the one drawing the schedule and dividing the checkups.

There is no one clear chain of command.  There is no one who is in charge - no, not even me - and no one who has ultimate authority.  We all have responsibilities to certain facets of our operation, and fundamentally, we have to trust each other.

In the event that trust breaks down, or you believe authority is being abused, the following list contains the positions to contact, in order from first to last…

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James ducked under the attempt by the stuffed shirt to grab him.  The dungeon employee lurching off balance in stumbling steps past him as James landed rapid stabs into its side.  Blunt force trauma wasn’t especially effective against these things, seeing as they were still fundamentally made of paper, but hitting them always had the opportunity to open rips in their skin.  James wasn’t hitting it with his fist, though; he was using a short blade, which had a *very* high chance to open holes.

The first time he’d faced off against one of these things, James had only barely made it out alive, and that was mostly because Anesh had bailed him out.  He’d been empowered by dexterity coffee, freshly equipped with martial arts skills, and fighting for something important, and he’d still gotten the *crap* kicked out of him.

It was amazing what actual combat experience changed.

It wasn’t just the combat experience, obviously, though that was important.  The main lesson was that you had to get over your body’s desire to *not* put your full strength into strikes.  Even when you were actively trying to hurt something, the human brain would still subconsciously pull punches, and getting past that was the work of a hundred small fights and hours of training.  That, and knowing the patterns and motions of different dungeon Life; the tricks they could pull, the amount of damage they could do if you weren’t careful.  But in addition to all that, there was just… more to the delvers than there was back then.  More teammates, more tactics, more powers snapped up from various orbs or books, more old  secrets, more new Secrets.  And, in James’ case in particular, a new sword.

The stuffed shirts weren’t all uniform, either.  Which complicated things, to say the least.  Some of them were strong enough to crush bones and fling humans through walls.  Some of them were *strong*, but the kind of strong that just surprised you a bit, instead of surprised you to death.  Some of them wore masks, and it was basically impossible to tell which until they threw their faces at you.  Some of them carried purple orbs, and would use them to create infomorphic Life as a form of ‘cursing’ delvers.

That last one was happening now, behind James.  Which was a shame, because they were trying to get the orb before it could be used. But also because he wasn’t watching as the third stuffed shirt transformed the orb into a living idea, which Anesh dodged, and which James was caught in the crossfire of.

All of a sudden, there was an almost manic compulsion running through James’ mind.  An idea that was insidious, because it was his own mind thinking it. It wasn’t some alien invader that he could have some epic mental duel with; he simply now had an idea in his head, that had its own agenda, and that he’d be thinking, because it thought itself with his brain cells.

It was a schedule.  A strict timeline of when he was to be at work, at the gym, in bed, even how long to take brushing his teeth.  And it made James falter for a brief second.

In that second, Alanna and Anesh, with support from Ganesh and Secret, fell on and finished off the damaged paper pusher they were fighting.  And also in that second, the one that James had taken his eyes off, that was leaking dust and shredded paper from a pair of nasty gashes, hit him in the side hard enough that it knocked him back, over one of the desks that were just standing out in this field of carpet like wooden boulders.

James sprawled on the ground, staring up at the strange pattern of fluorescent lights overhead.  The bars of white light were positioned at strange angles to each other; almost, but never quite, a perfect right angle.  They chased each other in strange lines across the false ceiling, jagged scars of light that were at the same time haphazard, and mesmerizing.

It wasn’t a memetic effect; James had just thunked his head onto the floor as he’d fallen, and between that and having the wind knocked out of him, part of his brain felt like just staring at the ceiling was a good plan.

When the paper pusher tried to follow up the strike by lashing a kick toward James’ prone head, he processed that information about two seconds too late.

Fortunately, the fake dress shoe never made it to him.  Alanna slid forward in a rushed motion, and managed to smash her warhammer into the thing’s knee just before it made it to James’ face; while at the same time, Ganesh strafed it with his mounted laser, setting a line of fire down its back.  The paper pusher howled in its fake human voice as it toppled over, overcommitted to its attack.  As it hit the ground, crushing the long carpet under it, Anesh caught up to his partners, and neatly stabbed down at the thing’s head with the long spear he was carrying.  He missed the first one, but after Alanna kicked it back out of its roll, Anesh’s spear found the thing’s vital bits, and the remainder of the shredded paper that stuffed the creature’s insides spilled out to the ground.

“Ow.”  James said, as Alanna offered him a gloved hand, and hauled him up.  He’d meant to say ‘thank you’, but instead, he just kind of managed a grunt of sore pain.

“You’ve gotta be more… Anesh, put out that fire… careful next time!”  Alanna chided him.  “What happened?”

James rolled his eyes, and his shoulder, trying to somehow magically fix the bruised muscle under the hard armor.  “New infomorph.”  He sighed.  “This one has me scheduled to be ‘at work’ right now, which is good, because…” James swept an arm around them at the ‘office’ they were inside.  “But yeah.  Secret, do you mind…?”  He left the question unspoken.

Secret, in his half-ethereal form, coiled around James’ legs as he raised himself up to speak.  “Hmm.  Yes.  I do not mind.”  The infomorphic serpent said.  “Be careful while I am elsewhere.”  He spoke, before lunging forward, and tunneling his ghostly body through James’ chest.  He didn’t emerge out the other side, and James sighed again as he resigned himself to some weird dreams later tonight.

“I’ve got a question.”  Anesh asked, kneeling down by the dead paper pusher, and ripping away a hole so he could stick his hand inside it and pull out the yellow orb within.

Alanna and James spoke at the same time.  “Shoot.”  They shot each other smirks.

Rising back to his feet, and dusting off his free hand, Anesh held up the orb.  “Why the hell do some of these require ameture butchery to get to?”  He turned it over in his hand, noting that it was quite a bit smaller than some of the orbs they’d gotten from paper pushers before.  It wasn’t a surprise, though; the only reason they’d tried to ambush this group was because the trio all had a feeling about the relative strength of the Life they were facing.  If any of these paper pushers had been Puppets, they would have run, no question.

“It’s actually professional butchery.”  James said, slipping the bottle of water he’d cleared his throat with back into his bag.  “Since we get paid for this.”

“Do we get paid for this?”  Alanna asked, her eyebrows brought down in concentration, mouth a straight line in thought.   “I mean, there’s a reward, certainly, but are we salaried?”

“Yes.”  James said.  “JP and Karen set up actual pay rates.  It’s direct deposit, off of our loot here and also the investments from said loot.”

“Are we… James did we turn into capitalism at some point?”  Alanna demanded.  “This can’t be right.”

James patted her on an armored shoulder, leaving behind a dusty handprint.  “I promise it’s temporary until the revolution.”

“Guys, focus.  The orbs.”  Anesh cut into their banter, as Ganesh settled on his shoulder.

“Honestly, I think it’s just because they’re sorta hollow.”  James shrugged.  “So there’s a space inside.  Unlike with, like, striders or whatever, where the orb doesn’t have a place to go, so it just pops out on the surface.”

“Good enough theory for me.”  Anesh nodded.  “Anyone want an orb?” He offered the mid-grade yellow to his partners.

James quirked an eyebrow at him.  “What, no copying it for abusable powers?”  He asked.

Ever since they’d gained the repeatable - and absolutely abusable - ability to duplicate things, even magical things, the rate at which people actually used orbs had gone way down.  Small yellows, sure.  And ones they’d already copied.  Or just blues that had been absorbed to fill slots.  But for stuff like larger specimens, or purples or greens? The delver ranks of the Order had kind of stalled out; everyone waiting for an analysis or a copy-test, just to make *totally sure* that they weren’t going to regret it later.

It actually made James draw a connection between how they were behaving, and the actions of someone playing a particularly long JRPG, holding onto those max-heal potions until *well after* the final boss, *just in case* you needed them eventually.

Which, when he shared that thought, had led to a discussion about whether or not the copy-paste ritual was actually some kind of insidious psychological weapon that Officium Mundi had deployed against them, instead of a reward of sorts.

“No, we’re not copying the mixed orbs.”  Anesh told him.  “It’s just… okay, first off, it’s a pain in the ass to actually get the optimum space use for each ritual, and I’ve already got the box with the foam insert for smaller orbs.  So that’s me being lazy.  And in further laziness, it complicates our upgrade kit build.  But also?  Between testing on greens, keeping our telepad supply up, and also trying to develop a stockpile of Status Quo gear? We just don’t have the time or coffee to fuck around that much.”

“Wait, we’re short on coffee?”  James asked.

“Always.”  Anesh informed him.  “But also, the ritual takes *time*, and until we start leaving people posted in here ‘overnight’, we’re starting to hit a wall in terms of how many shots we get a week.”

James clicked his tongue.  “Huh.  Well.  Good to know, I guess.”  He felt that anxiety in the back of his skull again, like he should be solving this problem in some way, but he didn’t know where to find a foothold.  “Anyway, I’ll take an orb, if the guy with zero percent contribution to this fight is included.”

“You stabbed a guy.”  Alanna told him reassuringly, tossing him one of the yellows.  “And you have a new brain friend!”

James rolled his eyes as he cracked the orb, hoping that Secret ate his new brain friend before it became too much of a problem.

[+2 Skill Ranks : Acrobatics - Flips]

[+.7 Skill Rank : Knife - Carving]

[+1 Skill Rank : Math - Probability]

[+1 Emotional Resonance Rank : Relaxation]

[Problem Solved : Snack acquired]

[Certification Added : FSSAI Central License]

“Does anyone know what the FSSAI is?”  James asked the others as he sorted through the information that he’d just acquired.

“Are they the people who made Shadowrun?”  Alanna asked idly as she looked through her own orb effects.  “Also, score.  Three ranks in *fishing*.”

“Score?”  James questioned her sanity.

“You’re thinking of FASA.”  Anesh corrected.  “And what kind of fishing? Maybe we could arm you with a fishing rod and really lean into James’ anime fantasies.”

“Is that an anime thing?”  Alanna shot back.  “It seems… hm… no, now I can see it.  Fishing rod with some kinda weighted end, just absolutely destroying a bunch of idiot teenagers trying to mug me.  Yeah, okay, that’s anime.”

Anesh slowly turned away from Alanna and the mental path he’d set her on.  “Sooooo annnnyway…” He said to James.  “We’ll look that up when we get back.  And I got a point in astrometrics!  So that’s pretty cool.”

“Oh yeah, I got math points too!”  James high fived his boyfriend.  “You know, eventually, you’ll need to find something to do with all this math knowledge.”

“I’m thinking of getting into space travel.”  Anesh replied, earnest excitement on his face.

“Shotgun the first dungeon on Mars.”  Alanna cut in.

“Dammit!”  James snapped his fingers.  “She beat me to it.”  He told a confused Anesh, shaking his head wistfully.  “Alright.  We all good here?  We’ve still got a ton of this place to comb over.”

His partners nodded, ready to go.

They were out far from the door today.  Miles out, farther than most delvers went, *way* beyond the safe limits for new members.

Out in the wild places, where the geometry twisted to a surreal blend of the natural and the artificial, where they had to adopt safety protocols in case of hypnotic screensavers or camracondas.  Where there weren’t even the rudimentary sketched maps, or guides to the Life and landscape already written.  It was a frontier where dangers that could one-shot an entire party could be lurking under any random patch of carpet, right alongside new rewards, new treasures, and brand new sights to see.

It was *perfect*.

Right now, the three of them were in a great grassland.  The walls of the cubicles had fallen away, bit by bit, as they’d approached the prairie.  And when the last one had dwindled to nothing more than a small lip to step over, they’d been there.

The carpet here was no flat, hard thing.  It was waist high, swaying in the breeze of the air conditioning units.  The hum of the machines, normally inaudible in the muffled expanse of the dungeon, was loudly present, along with the swishing of the long carpet.  There were no walls, though every now and then they’d come across a line where the carpet had been packed down; like there’d been something sitting on it for months or years, like a cubicle had once stood here but been removed long ago.  Those lines formed game trails through the grassland, and sometimes made for opportunistic biking paths.  There was still furniture, though; desks stood at strange angles, jutting out of the ground like boulders.  Sometimes perfectly flat surfaces, other times their hard wooden or metal corners poking up into the air as half of the object was buried in the floor.  And the wildlife of Officium Mundi, always there in ones and twos or small clusters or nests, was much more exposed out here in the open.

The paper pushers prowled the plains in packs of two or three.  They roamed both on their feet, and all fours, their limbs always morphed into inhuman configurations to help them clamber forward over desks or pluck things off the ground.  Ironically, despite being in groups, the delve team was finding them remarkably easy to ambush; the false employees spent most of their time facing each other, not watching their surroundings.

Striders here made burrows in the carpet, finding shelter under the overhang of the desks alongside other small Lifeforms.  They hadn’t seen any iLipedes yet, but there were a handful of other creatures that shared the little nests.  Small collections of unlikely allies, waiting to scavenge off whatever came their way, or perhaps to ambush a larger creation. 

There was one other larger creation they’d seen.  It looked like someone had taken a full bushel of pens and pencils, and turned them into a porcupine.  Dozens of layers of *very* sharp implements fanning over its back like a series of coats, rattling and rustling as it waddled across the carpetgrass.  They’d not tried to engage the things - which James wanted to call pencupines and which Anesh said lacked originality - mostly because at one point they’d seen one of them rear up and lunge forward to snap a strider out of a burrow with alarming speed.  The motion had revealed a sinuous body, a bare skeletal structure made up of flexible desk lamps, with the coats of quills looking more like manes as it rose up.  One big plastic cone and the light bulb inside served as the face.  But it didn’t emit much light; instead the bulb just cracked open along a zig-zag line, and glowing teeth had scythed through the shell of the unaware stapler.

“You know how the pencils in here are always, like, unfairly sharp?”  James had asked his partners as they stood on a ridge fifty feet away, watching the thing compress itself back down to a dome shape and waddle back into the taller carpet.

Alanna lowered the pair of binoculars she’d brought.  From outside, this time.  “We’ve been through the same traps, yes.”

“I vote for not touching those.”  Anesh chimed in.  “Even if we find a friendly one.  We just feed it from a distance, and then run before it tries to hug us.”

“Good plan.”  James and Alanna agreed quietly.

Their exploration of the grassland continued.

Despite the fact that the entire area was very open, with no walls to hide anything, the prairie held more secrets than they were expecting.  The desks, visible when they cut away or rose up over the carpet around them, were troves of curiosities; assuming they could avoid pissing off the residents.  It was here, with their bikes parked in one of those small clearings, that Alanna finally found what she’d wanted from day one.

“It’s a wallet of holding!”  She announced dramatically, holding the folded leather out like a badge to show off to James and Anesh as she yanked a four inch stack of dollar bills out of it, the paper appearing from seemingly nowhere.  “Behold!  Finally!  The *one thing* this stupid place never helps us with, within our grasp!”

James bit his lip, and shot a nervous glance at Anesh.  His boyfriend stepped back, hands held up.  “Oh hell no.”  Anesh told him.  “You crush her dreams.  I’m just over here on lookout.”

“What?  Heresy!”  Alanna declared, pulling out twenty clearly fake drivers licenses and scattering them across the desk.  “This is exactly what I’ve wanted!  I’m so happy, James.”

Ah, hell.  She looked so happy, with a big goofy smile on her normally serious face.  It killed James a bit to ask the question that Alanna hadn’t gotten to yet.  “Um… so, not to rain on your parade of holding.  But did you actually check that it can store things that aren’t… wallet things?”  He spread his hands in a peacemaking gesture.  “I’m not saying it’s not cool!  If nothing else, it’ll make it easy to deal with the briefcases, assuming we can even find… but yeah, can it store a gun?  Or just money and ID?”

Alanna looked at him, the expression of glee freezing on her face before crumbling away.  She muttered something, flipping the wallet back over as she plucked the p09 out of her holster.  Holding the wallet open with a couple fingers and still grumbling, she settled the butt of the pistol into the bill slot.

And with a triumphant, wide eyed look, she watched as the gun slid neatly into the leather rectangle.

“I am so fucking happy right now, I could cry.”  Alanna announced, shoving the entire wallet into her pocket.

“Well bugger me.”  Anesh commented.  “That’s pretty cool.”

James, meanwhile, let out a strangled *hurk* noise, a riotously worried expression on his face.  “Alanna!”  He gasped out, clawing at his hair in panic.  “No!”

“What?  What’s wrong?”

“You just fucking folded a gun in half!”  He shouted.  “Why!  What?!  How!  *What?!*”

Anesh glanced around them.  “Quieter, mates.”  He hissed in a hushed voice, catching his partners’ attention.  “Something’s moving.”  He turned, sweeping his gaze across the landscape, as Alanna and James ceased bickering in an instant.  It was all fun and games, until they actually needed to be serious; and in those moments, they snapped away from childish behavior in an instant.

Their heads were on swivels, scanning across the grass around them.  James could hear it too, now.  It was something like a low humming, a whirr that rose above the noise of the unseen fans in the distance.  Mechanical, surely.  He wiped sweat off his forehead as he tried to spot it; the armor was hot enough, but the lights here felt like the beating sun.

James looked across the carpetgrass, to where he could see far in the distance the cubicle city. His eyes swept the landscape.  There were a few more desks nearby, there was something probably a half mile away that looked like a tree that they were heading toward, there was carpet swaying in the fake wind.  He could *hear* the sound around them, but he couldn’t see anything.  

“There.”  Alanna hissed, pointing.  The others followed her finger, and with a slight mental nudge from Anesh, Ganesh and their one dummy drone launched into the air to get eyes on it.

James noted where she was pointing.  There was something bowing the grass as it moved, a tunnel being carved through the thick carpet.  But whatever it was, the thing was low enough to the ground that it was practically invisible to them.  It was making a wavy line as it plowed ahead, but weirdly, the carpet wasn’t staying trampled behind it.  Instead the material was springing back to full height, almost as soon as the thing was past.

“Oh, shit.”  Anesh murmured, his eyes closed as he watched through the drone’s camera via skulljack link.  “Um… it’s turning this way.  Probably a hundred feet away.”  He stepped backward, opening his eyes as he turned, and started climbing up onto the desk.

“What the hell is it?”  James asked him, following without questioning why they were kicking paperweights and pens down onto the floor.

“You’ll hate this.”  Anesh told him.  “It’s a carpet cleaner.  Like a roomba.”

Alanna snorted, and instantly relaxed.  “Okay, that’s not nearly as bad as I was think… wait, why are you guys on the desk?”  Her eyes narrowed again as she looked back over the waves of carpet.

“Because it just sheared through the back half of one of those quill dogs!”  Anesh hissed.  “Get on the damn desk and hope they can’t climb!”

“Quills.  Of course.”  James patted Anesh on the shoulder.  “That’s perfect.  Cause they’re porcupine quills, and writing quills.  Genius.”  Anesh didn’t bother to correct his boyfriend on the unintentional nature of the pun.  He just took the compliment, and focused on their new mortal peril.

With slightly more forethought than the boys, Alanna also started dragging their bikes over to near the desk with rapid movements, plucking the metal frames and their stock of extra gear off the ground and repositioning them like it took her almost no effort to quickly move a couple hundred pounds of stuff.  With the bikes near their desk rock, they could drag them up if they really needed to, assuming the thing got near.

The whirring noise intensified as the unseen creature closed in on them.  Anesh kept his shared vision with Ganesh on it, but even from overhead, it was heavily cloaked by the density of the carpet.  The three humans on the desk just watched, and held their breath, as the thing got closer and closer.

When it came near them, it didn’t breach through the tall wall of carpet strands and into their little clearing.  Instead, it skirted the outside.  James caught a glimpse of a glittering silver body, like a beetle’s shell.  Thin gossamer wings, just barely cocked up over its back, caught the hot light from above.  It was flat, keeping itself *very* low to the ground, but even from here they could see the way the grinding roller of teeth and bristles on its front brought down the carpet strands in front of it as it passed by.  And it was *big*.  James placed it at maybe three, four feet across.  It might have been flat, but it had a lot of mass, and it had this feeling of something heavy.  Tough.  The whirring from it sounded far less mechanical when it was this close; more like the singing of crickets than the engine of a vacuum; but as it passed by, and got farther into the distance, the noise went back to sounding more and more like the distant attentions of janitorial staff.

They waited another few minutes until Anesh confirmed that it was gone.

“Well dang.  That was weird.”  James offered.  He took in the rolled eyes and derisive snorts the others gave him, and brushed them off.  “I mean, yeah, even compared to what we normally see here.  Look, even the little guys around here all curled up under the desk again.”  He motioned to the cluster of striders, now huddled in their burrow.  They’d been getting more familiar with the delvers, and as they hadn’t tried to staple anyone, the group had let them be.  Now, though, they cowered in a terrified cluster.  “Do you think those things just roam around here?”  He asked, deciding not to try to poke at the scared staplers.

“They must.”  Anesh mused, speaking as he thought through it.  “They clearly do something to the carpet.  Maybe it’s a kind of hunting ground maintenance thing.”

“They keep the carpet tall and clean so things live in it so they can eat those things?”

Anesh shuddered as Ganesh landed back on his shoulder and they retrieved their secondary drone.  “Yeah, I mean… guys, it just kinda *melted* the quill-thing.  I do not want to fight one of these.”

James let out a hum of his own, while Alanna took a minute to pick up the scattered stack of bills that she’d flippantly thrown out of the wallet earlier.  “Do we want to head back?”  He asked.  “We’re getting to the point where I’m having trouble keeping track of which part of the walls we came from.  Might not hurt to call it here, and just see if we can find a decision tree to trade with on the way back.”

“Ugggh.”  Alanna tilted her head back as she groaned.  “I was really hoping we could find out where the paper pushers get their purple orbs from.”  She stopped, then shook her head.  “What a weird sentence.  James, this place is making us weird.”

“We know.”  James and Anesh said together.

Alanna continued unabated.  “Also we haven’t even gotten to the other side yet!  Just think what could be over there!”

“More quillbeasts?”  James asked.  “For real, though.  We’ve been in three fights so far, I don’t wanna deal with a carpet cleaner, this armor is *stiflingly* hot, and also it turns out broken bones stay sore for a long time?  Did no one want to tell me that?”

Anesh gave James a blank look.  “You bloody *insisted* on…”

“So yeah, I can get behind heading back.  Especially since we’ve already kind of got a nice trail we can follow on the bikes, and not have to walk them through the tall grass.”  James shrugged.  “And we’ve still got time.  So while I sit and mope about not being able to keep going, you guys can head back out with one of the other teams.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”  Alanna said as they started to head back.  “Like you said, we’re miles in.  It’s been a long day, and you’re still hurt.”  Her voice softened rapidly as she spoke, realizing that James was doing that thing where he pushed himself well beyond what was a good idea.

Not one to be left out, Anesh added his own thoughts.  “Also you’ve been riding a bike with a broken hand.  And fighting with a broken hand.  And *not taking painkillers with a broken hand.*  Don’t think I’ve forgotten that!”

It had been a mild argument the other day.  James didn’t like painkillers in general.  Anesh didn’t like him martyring himself.  They’d agreed to disagree.

They quieted down as they biked, not wanting to yell to be heard over the wind, and risk attracting anything with too many teeth and spikes.  The threads of the carpet around their little trail slapped at the armored shells on their legs as they pedaled past, the grassy stuff whipping around their bikes and dragging at the handlebars and the milk crates full of stuff mounted on the rear parts of their vehicles.  As they crested one of the small sloping hills that dotted this massive field, they saw a pair of the strange porcupine creatures loping parallel to them lower down, the creatures occasionally looking up toward the delvers with their strange lamp faces, but not approaching as they followed their own game trail.  They passed a couple more desks, too.  One they’d looted on the way in, one they hadn’t gone near just because of the number of desk lamps that were almost certainly explosive that were attached to it.  It would have been possible to disarm the flashbulbs of course, but that tended to require coffee, and they’d been saving that.  Rightly so, too, as they’d needed it for the fight with the paper pushers shortly after.

By the time they’d made their way all the way back to the door, they’d gotten lost once, ambushed twice, marked off a half dozen spots on their growing map that were traps, windows, or potted plant hunting grounds, and almost set on fire more than a few times by a particularly vicious 2.0 that James would have sworn was stalking them.

He’d pocketed the green from that one, once they’d hunted it down, for use back at the Lair.  Anesh glumly kept the blue from the presumably magical button up shirt that the laser had carved in half.  And James and Alanna split the remaining yellows from the small swarm that had converged on their fight as they were trying to catch and murder the shellaxy.

[+1 Skill Rank : History - Baseball]

[+1 Skill Rank : Music - Contemporary - Theremin]

[+1 Skill Rank : Kung Fu]

[+1 Skill Rank : Manufacturing - Bottling - Drinks]

“You know, I’m wondering if maybe I should be holding off on these while Secret is still hunting rogue thoughts in my head.”  James mused as they walked their bikes back through the outer wall around the home base tower.  “Like, do you think that’ll cause problems for him?”

“Can you,” Anesh asked slowly, “imagine Secret *not* taking the opportunity to be snarky about you causing problems?”

James paused, thought about it for a good ten seconds.  “Nnnnnno.  No.”  He settled on.

“Exactly.  You’re fine.”  Anesh said.  “Do you guys mind restocking my gear for me?  I need to go meet up with myself and see how the rituals are going tonight.”

“Go for it.”  Alanna sent him on his way with a small kiss.  “Have fun with the stairs!”  She called after their retreating boyfriend.

The two of them fell into an easy routine of unpacking the bikes, unclipping armor, filling the now-neatly-labeled boxes in the ground floor of their occupied tower with orbs and potentially magic items, and helping each other sort through backpacks filled with leftover equipment and the spoils of a few hours in this bizarre realm.  It didn’t take long for other people to notice that James was back, though, and the trio were far from the only delvers here tonight.

Daniel was just getting back with his team.  They’d been out pillaging the lower floors of another tower for more of the magical coffee needed to fuel the duplication ritual.  He stopped for a bit to exchange some words with James, mostly complaining that the other towers always seemed either empty, or were *very* heavily guarded halfway up, and tended to force caution from the explorers.  He’d found them a good seven of the spires so far, if you counted the time that he and his companion infomorph Pathfinder independently rediscovered the bathroom.  They were a lot like James, honestly; they wanted to be finding new things, seeing new sights.  He got that.

The next person who approached him was Karen, who was basically the opposite.  It wasn’t that she hated scenic vistas, it was just that she highly valued reliability.  The middle aged woman, looking strangely out of place in the half-set of armor that she was wearing, was in charge of exactly the thing that Daniel hated.  Combing over known respawn sites, and, for lack of a better term, harvesting from them.  Her group, which included several of the survivors that hadn’t initially had any interest in delving, was becoming expert at knowing patterns and tactics for each specific tower on their route.  Right now, she just wanted to check in with James, and inform him that she was developing a better system for sorting collected orbs.  He nodded politely, and thanked her for her help.

Nate was way easier to deal with.  He was just here to keep an eye on Randall.  And also to serve lunch.  As near as they could tell, their FBI liaison legitimately did not know that Nate had previously been part of the FBI.  He knew that someone from the Order had contacted them, and his superiors would probably have that information, but for now, it didn’t make sense to let him know more than was absolutely needed.  Which was why Nate was here sorting through the lunchbag of holding, handing out packaged containers of still-hot curry to people.  Nate had discovered the container preserved food, and his chef instincts had kicked in.  Not enough to override his job, which was watching Randall and also guarding the base.  But enough that he took two minutes to gush about it to James when he handed over lunch.  It was the most emotion the bald chef had ever displayed.

Randall caught James before he could find a seat, and demanded to know why the Order didn’t make use of camracondas in this hostile environment.  It was because the Office might still be able to puppet them, which James told him pretty bluntly, and then ignored the honestly creepy way the man started talking about efficient hunting strategies to wander off and eat.

By the time he made it to one of the makeshift lunch tables, two other people had stopped him to say hi and one other delver had mistaken him for the other James, as they were wearing glasses that let them see names.

When James finally sat down, and felt the tension ease out of his legs, it was the best feeling in the world.

Then, forkful of rice and curry halfway to his mouth, JP sat down across from him and started talking about distribution of yellow orbs, and James wondered where he’d gone wrong in life.

_____

Order of Endless Rooms, Operations Manual

Part 10, Section 1 - Response Protocols

At present, there are three confirmed and two suspected dungeons.  At minimum, one of them is hostile to human life in a way that actively seeks to harm or kill humans.  Dungeons are also now known to breach their own borders and begin to interfere with the mundane world directly.  And finally, there is a constant possibility of action from a hostile, or ideologically incompatible, human organization.

This requires a planned response pattern in the event of emergencies.

While every member of the Order is a potential champion during a crisis, we currently maintain two ‘on-call’ teams, to respond to emergencies in any circumstance.  

During an event, the team leader of the active response team has command.  Any available member of the Order that is both willing and cleared for action is considered ‘deputized’.

In the case of an event that poses a direct risk to human life, that the Order is positioned to prevent, the following actions will be taken:

First, the leader of the scheduled on-call response team makes a judgement call about the threat level and scale of the emergency.  This determines if they respond immediately with the team on hand, or wait for reinforcements from the rest of the Order.

Second, if a rapid response is chosen, the on-call team equips themselves, and heads to the event site.  Unless there is a reason to bring vehicles (cargo, evacuees, etc), the response teams are cleared to use telepads for transport.  Equipment is to prioritize effectiveness over subtly.  Equipment should also follow guidelines for any dungeons involved (see Section x, part x-x, The Akashic Sewer Restricted Items)

Third, the response team prioritizes the evacuation and medical aid of civilians on site, followed by the elimination of the threat. 

This is kept vague not out of a desire to confuse people, but because the breadth of threats that we may face, combined with our constantly shifting capabilities, makes structured training and planning very difficult.  While response teams train together, it’s basically impossible to cover all the possible situations we may find ourselves in.

The important guideline to stick to is to remember that we aren’t a conspiracy (See section x part x, We Are Not A Conspiracy).  We have several incredibly powerful tools to bring to bear against most situations, including the camracondas, the ability to teleport, skulljacks, and the backing of the government.  Use every one of them in a response.

The second guideline is tied to the fact that, as our intelligence network grows, we are going to learn about more and more mundane situations where our intervention would be useful.  Response to these is at the discretion of the team leader.  We are, as far as we know, the only group operational in the area that can respond to another situation like the School Day.  And if we take casualties during a risky operation, that’s less of a safety net from the weird that everyone has.  So be especially careful evaluating risk on these.

Response team compositions are to include at least one camraconda, one drone operator, two members with weapon skills, and two members with medical skills.  Every member is required to have at least one blue slotted.

Response team kit is partially standardized.  Team leaders have a budget for personalized gear.

There are designated times for response team tactical training.  Non-members are welcome to participate.

_____

“So, tell me about this plan of yours.”  James said to Sarah as she held the door of the house they were walking into open for him.

The house was pretty nice.  Robin’s egg blue paint, creaking wooded steps up to a well-used front porch.  The door was old, but well oiled, and the key Sarah opened it with worked without complaint.

It used to belong to a guy named Fredrick.  Then his attic got haunted, he’d asked them for help, and before they could really figure out what to do about the situation properly, he’d cut his losses and moved.

James had initially thought he’d been eaten by the attic; a newborn dungeon that Sarah referred to these days as ‘Clutter Ascent’.  But then Harvey, who actually somehow managed to keep in touch with old friends from his college fraternity days, had corrected James.  Fredrick had moved to a new house, and as far as he knew, was still both alive, and incredibly eager to forget that time when his attic was also alive.

The two of them ascended the creaking, slightly too narrow stairs, up to the second floor.  Sarah, after she’d told James to take his shoes off at the door, told him of her plan.

“So, the thing is, we’ve only seen dungeons that are already kind of tainted.”  She said.  “Like, your office?  The… um… the weird one.  The *first* weird one.”  She rolled her eyes at James, reading too far into his small grin.  “Anyway.  It’s full of people who hate their jobs, and things that aren’t fun to be around.  It’s clearly not evil, but it doesn’t have an interest in anything more than… well, a business relationship.”

“I’ll buy that, sure.”  James said with a nod.  “So, the school is… what, the literal toxic behavior of the school system, buried underneath the peaceful facade?  Does it get to be that metaphorical?”

Sarah’s shoulders drooped a bit.  “I.. I dunno, buddy.”  She said.  “But the history of schools isn’t a pretty one.  And there’s still a lot of abuse that happens in high schools, especially.  It’s possible the Sewer is just eating all that packed down hatred and resentment, and giving back what it’s getting.”

That made a kind of sense to James, though obviously it wasn’t something they could easily confirm.  “So, your theory, and the reason we’re here…”

“Is to tell the attic a bedtime story, and give it some happier memories to work with.”  She confirmed with a toothy grin, giving James a twirl and a stiff bow at the top of the stairs.

He smiled back, feeling an ancient tug in his heart as the new memories of the person that was his oldest friend triggered a reaction.  James wasn’t sure if Sarah’s idea would actually work, but if she’d smile like that more, he’d read bedtime stories to tumblefeeds.

“And you’ve been doing this for a while, huh?”  He asked as they turned down the upstairs hallway toward the attic’s entrance.

“Since...well, since I could walk again.”  She said, her casual voice barely stumbling on the words.  “Alex, Deb, and Frequency were doing it before that.  It’s only partly my theory, and it’s their plan.  But yeah, you’ve got the outline of it.  We just want to encourage it to grow into a friendlier place.”

“Is it working?”  James asked, legitimately very curious.

Sarah just shot him a smile in reply, as she led him toward the stairs.

Halfway down the hallway, James slowed down.  The staircase to the attic was already lowered in front of them, standing out even more than normal in the otherwise totally empty house.  He didn’t really want to get near it; even though he knew the emotional field it put off wasn’t ‘real’, it was still terrifying, and his heart remembered that sensation.

But Sarah just tugged him forward by his good hand, pulling him into what should have been an aura of overwhelming terror.

Except it wasn’t.

Instead, there was something new.  The feeling of fear, yes.  But less overwhelming.  More cautious.  And there was something else underneath it all.  A little excitement, an undercurrent of expectation.  Nothing powerful, but James could feel it; and the little hints of something else echoed off the pillars left by the red orbs he’d cracked over the last year.

Then Sarah pulled him through, socked feet taking the stairs slowly, but confidently.

The attic was warmer than he remembered.  Though maybe that was just because it was summer outside, and this place seemed to constantly be timelocked at sunset.

Rays of golden orange sunshine beamed in through three separate and identical circular windows, giving a comforting and peaceful light to the floorspace.  And what was up here had changed, too.

Someone had cleaned up.  Furniture and boxes and loose clutter had been moved around, the floor swept and cleared of the dust and loose screws and nails, the windows cleaned of cobwebs.  James realized suddenly that he’d seen the cobwebs, and never acknowledged them, until they were suddenly absent.

And off to the side, propped up between two dressers and an armoire, someone had taken what looked like every one of the mothballed blankets and bedsheets, combined them with four couches worth of pillow cushions, and built a fort.

James was twenty eight.  He was well into that age of being “an adult”, when people were discouraged from trick-or-treating, or having water balloon fights in the park.  As a result, he hadn’t actually seen a blanket fort in over a decade.  But there was something about this one that seemed… perfect… to him.  It looked cozy, inviting, but also almost iconic in how it stood out.  Sheets propped up at angles caught the filtered rays of evening sunlight and lit up with an inner glow.  Pillows were arranged in almost hypnotic mandala patterns.  It was like he was seeing every pillow fort he’d ever made as a kid, all rolled together, and stuck here in this attic.

“Who… made this?”  He asked Sarah, hushed reverence in his voice.

“Deb and Frequency did, at first.”  Sarah said, stiffly dropping down to her knees to crawl under the overhanging blanket in the front.  “Come on in!”  She called back, sticking one hand out through the gap to motion at James.  He followed, trying to minimize weight put on his leg as he crawled after her, and minding that he didn’t knock anything down by carelessly headbutting it.  From ahead, Sarah’s voice came to him.  “Alex helped them, after they’d had some time up here.  And then I started adding stuff to it too!”

“Adding…?”  James pushed aside a hanging blanket with the cast on his right hand, and inched forward.  And there, he got an answer.  Seated on a throne of thick green and white striped couch cushions, Sarah spread an arm at her little kingdom from where she reclined.  The inside of the fort was almost as wide as his living room, though the ‘ceiling’ was much lower.  Electric camp lanterns and flashlights lit up the area, a floor of heavy blankets and quilts made the entire place seem soft and comforting.

“Adding!”  Sarah cheerfully stated.

“What the hell…”  James looked around, craning his neck to see where they’d used yardsticks and gardening tools to brace blankets up, or seeing hanging trinkets clipped into the overhead blankets.  “Is this place a spatial warp?”  He asked.

Sarah stuck her tongue out slightly.  “Nah.”  She told him.  “It just goes back a ways, and it’s hard to see how bit it is from the front, cause we’ve got that big cabinet thing up there.  Nice, right?”  She twisted a bit and pulled back a cushion next to her, revealing a hidden space with a cardboard box in it.  “Want a snack?”

“Yes.”  James answered instantly.  “How does all of this *stay up*?  I could never get my blanket forts to do this.”  He settled back onto a pillow, not leaning back too hard in case he could topple the whole thing with his weight.  Before he was fully settled, he had to snatch a bag of cookies out of the air that Sarah lobbed his way.

Opening her own snack with an ancient sound of crumpling packaging, Sarah popped a tiny cookie into her mouth and answered around the food.  “Magic.”  She said, voice garbled until she finished her treat.  “Ahem.  Yeah, magic.  And also Alex has four or five skill orbs for structural engineering.  But also also, we’re pretty sure the attic helps hold it up.”

“Why?”  James asked softly.

“I mean, I like to think it’s because it likes us.”  Sarah answered him.  “We’ve been keeping it clean.  And giving it stories!”

“Okay, yeah, so, you said that.  What does that mean?”

Sarah reached into the bag she’d brought, and pulled out a worn paperback.  “Well, we come here every day or two.  Either alone, or together, and we just… spend time here.  Do a little cleanup, explore a bit, and then sit and relax together.  Share time.  And spend some time reading a book out loud.” She tilted her eyes upward, though didn’t bend her neck back.  “And it’s just felt *better* lately.  This whole place.  So I think it likes it!”

There was a pause while James thought about it, rolling over the concept in his head.  “So we’re treating it like… hm.  Not a kid, exactly, but someone who needs care?”

“Yeah.  And doesn’t it feel like someone who needs a friend?”  Sarah asked, her eyes sad as she looked at James.  “I don’t know if the dungeons really map to human thoughts and feelings, but if they did, then they’re all hurting.  That fear zone at the stairs?  People don’t… James, you can’t make something like that to keep people away unless you’ve *very* scared yourself.”

“But we don’t know if the dungeons are people.”  He countered.  “I’m not saying you’re wrong.  I’m just saying we don’t know what kind of life they are.  Like, a fungus is alive, but it doesn’t experience the world the same way as a human, or a dog, or even a fish.”

Sarah nodded.  “I do get that.  But so far, we’re seeing results, yeah?  Like, smell the air.”  James gave her a concerned look.  “Smellll iiiit!” Sarah urged him, grinning madly.

With more trepidation than he was prepared to admit to, James took an intentional sniff of the attic’s air.  He paused for a second, for the first time since he’d climbed the stairs consciously thinking about the scents in this place.  Then he took a much longer breath.

“Cinnamon.  And fresh cut grass?”  He lost himself in thought for a second, eyes cast down to the blanketed floor.  Memories of a thousand childhood moments compressed down into those faint scents hanging in the still air.  “Why?”  He asked.

“We don’t know.”  Sarah admitted with a sympathetic tone.  “We only know that it’s changing.  It’s a little better lit, a little less likely to spawn rusted metal.  And I can’t tell you if it’s because it likes us, or because we’re poisoning it with kindness and cookies.  But it’s happening either way.”  She sighed.  “I worry that we’re hurting it.  We can’t really talk, you know? Either because there’s no easy way for it to communicate to us, or because we’re operating on different wavelengths like you said, or just because it doesn’t talk to it’s food.  So it’s just a lot of guesses.”

James watched her for a second as she made herself comfortable on the pillows, his reclaimed childhood friend trying very hard to look like she was confident and in control, all while slowly burying herself in a comforter that was probably larger than James’ whole bed by itself.

“And it’s a great secret fort.”  He finally said, smiling at her.

“Oh dang, it is *such* a secret fort!”  She announced.  “Secret would love this place, wouldn’t he? Or would he love it if.. we.. kept it secret?  He’s confusing.”

James laughed.  “Honestly, I don’t know half the time.  I think he feeds off the concept of secrets.  But, like, he can also just straight up eat information.  All infomorphs can do that one.”

“Creepy!  But also cool?”  Sarah held her hands out like she was balancing the two options.

“I’ll invite him sometime, when he’s not busy dealing with *other* hostile informorphs in my brain.”  James flopped back against the edge of a structural support couch on the other side of the blanket wall.  “So, storytime?”  He asked, tossing his coat into the corner and reaching for the cookies that Sarah had thrown him earlier.

“Storytime!”  She announced, holding up the battered paperback she’d brought with her.  “And also apologize to the nice dungeon for being rude to it.  And then, after storytime, we can go find some mysterious furniture and do mind art at it until we get more connection sticks.”

“God I love our lives.”  James chuckled to himself as he settled into a comfortable position.  “And I’m sorry, sentient attic.  I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t have a right to exist.  Now, what’re you reading today?”

“The Lies of Locke Lamora.”

“Uh… really?”  James blinked, looking over at Sarah.  “I’ll be honest, I kind of assumed you had a collection of fairy tales or something.”

“Did that!  I think the dungeon liked it since there’s fairy rings around her now.  But also I like this book and that’s what we’re on now.”  Sarah stated it like she was defying James to argue.

He didn’t really have to consider it long.  “Alright.”  He said.  “I mean, I love this book too.  Let’s go.”

“Of course you do.  This is your copy!”  Sarah said it like a joke, but a second later, she looked away from James, training her eyes anywhere but where he could see.  There was still a lot of hidden sadness there; little memories or moments that James had forgotten.  Had been made to forget.

James didn’t fail to notice.  He didn’t really know what to say; he wanted to tell Sarah it’d be okay, that they were getting better.  But those words didn’t feel quite enough for that all the time.  So instead, he just reached across the blanket fort with his healing foot, and poked her in the ankle.

“I’ve been looking for that book!”  He said instead.  “You bandit!”

“What?!”  Sarah snapped out of her sorrow.  “You said you had three copies!”

“I did!”  James protested.  “Now I have two!  This is a crime of the highest order.”

Sarah smiled, wiping away the corners of her eyes.  “Alright.”  She agreed.  “What if I read part of it?  Would that make it up to you?”

“I accept your offer.”  James let his head drop back onto the pillow.  “The secret for really does help, too.”

And after they finished laughing together, Sarah cracked the book open, plucked the bookmark out, and began to read.

_____

Order of Endless Rooms, Operations Manual

Section 6, Part 7 - High Powered Individual Threats

Most dungeons do not have an upper bound on at least one of the rewards they offer.  It is a known fact that there are other delvers out there.  Statistically, many of them will have had far more time than we have with the ability to harvest power from one or more dungeons.  Also, there is an entire potential space for non-human entities of worrying levels of threat.

The conclusion to draw from this is that there are entities out there, possibly human, possibly not, that are more than capable of killing every member of the Order in a stand up all-of-us-against-them fight.  Assuming they can actually think, it gets way worse for us.

To date, the only fatalities we have sustained have been from such an entity.

If you suspect you are up against an entity such as that, your first objective is survival.  The second is information security, and your third is information gathering.  By nature of the problem, victory is not considered an option.

When facing such an entity that is hostile to humanity, there are no rules of engagement.  Take the ethics guidebook, and throw it in the trash.  There is no tactic that is unacceptable, there is no level of collateral damage too high.  Someone or something like that, if it chooses to start trying to kill everyone, is an existential threat that must be answered as immediately as possible.

Use every tool in our arsenal.  Then cheat, and use them again.  Do not stop cheating.  Do not try for containment, or capture.  Don’t even really try for a kill.  Do what needs doing, and run, and hope they get bored enough to not follow.

_____

James pivoted his feet on the blacktop, shifting his weight a little more than he was comfortable on his bad leg.  Pushing suddenly off the ground, he looped around Anesh before his boyfriend could respond, and took off at an angle toward the basketball hoop at the end of the parking lot.

Behind him, he heard Anesh’s footsteps catching up fast.  So he turned, got a good grip on the basketball he was bouncing as he ran, and passed to Simon.

Other James caught it instead, intercepting it right before it got to Simon.  He started to break away toward the other hoop, but then paused, turned, and passed *back* to Simon.  Then, with an annoyed expression on his face, he dashed back after the ball he’d just thrown.

Simon caught it, approached the hoop, got surrounded by his James and Anesh, bounced the ball around Anesh to James who scooped it up, and lobbed it in a lay up into the hoop.

“Points!”  He announced throwing his arms into the air as Anesh and the others panted for breath.

“God dammit!”  Other James gasped out.  “Using the link is cheating!”  He accused Simon.

Simon dusted himself off, and tried to compose himself to look as impervious to criticism as possible.  “There is no rule in basketball that says…”

With a bellowing laugh, James cut him off.  “Okay, okay, no!  I know you scored us points, but you can’t use the Air Bud clause to justify mind control.  Also, why are you guys linked up for this anyway?”

“Practice.”  The two of them said in unison.

“Alright.”  James sighed.  “Anyone wanna keep going?”  He looked around in the Friday night twilight at the makeshift basketball court they’d made. Alanna and Sarah were sitting on the sidelines along with a handful of camracondas, eating popcorn and watching the boys play basketball.  The wind lightly swayed the trees between them and the parking lot next door, and the smell of barkdust and hot car fumes filled the air.  “Alanna? Frequency?  Want in on this?”

“How am I to play?”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight asked, the most recent version of the voice modulation program letting the light sarcasm come across perfectly.  “I am of a snake.”

“Good point.”  James tilted his head back and yelled up at the roof.  “Dave!  You want in on this?!”  He bellowed.

A second later, Dave’s head poked over the ledge.  “I’m busy.  Ask Daniel.”

“We did.  He was busy too.”  Anesh called back, before turning back to James.  “Why am I getting involved in this?  I’m out anyway.  You lot are exhausting.”

“Oh sure, blame us.”  James ribbed him as they all headed over to where a pile of water bottles sat waiting.  “Well, thanks for that anyway.  It was fun.”

Anesh nodded.  “Yeah!  We should do this more often.  How’s your lesson going, anyway?”

“I need to check my Syllabus.”  James intoned the last word with the mental stomp needed to bring up the information he was looking for.

[Lesson - Basketball : 48/200]

Not bad progress, all things considered.  At this rate, it’d be a month or so before he earned another upgrade.  And they really were upgrades; James had come to appreciate what was probably the most straightforward reward of any dungeon.  The lessons basically just handed out stat points, and while they were often for ‘stats’ that you wouldn’t find in your average RPG, they were still incredibly powerful in what they let a baseline human do.

It was a good way to end the week.  And while for James, there wasn’t really a set weekend, he felt like he’d started to get back to a position where he was comfortable with the Order, and himself, after his injury and coma.

His casts were off, his body was healing.  He was mostly caught up on what was going on around here.  There’s been discussions and plans about the future, about how they wanted to grow, and why. And for once, James felt like he was ready to take action on his own agency, rather than just responding to the newest crisis.

To be fair, he was aware that merely thinking that was often enough to summon a crisis on its own.  But that wasn’t his fault; he was incapable of not taunting fate.

And yeah, there were problems.  There was still a lingering feeling of anxiety around the Lair from the loss of Virgil and Cold-Wind-Friction.  Even when everyone was having fun together, it was hard to totally shake the knowledge of something so much bigger than all of them, looming out there somewhere.

Also, Randall was still working here.  And while the FBI hadn’t actually asked anything of them, or interfered in their operations, James still wanted to preemptively end their relationship before it got out of hand.  Or played into their hands.

There was also the endless search for other dungeons.  Anesh had gotten back into that, in a big way, and a few other people had joined him.  They *knew*, now, that they were out there.  Hidden, hiding, locked off, or just obscure.  But they were *real*.  Officium Mundi wasn’t a fluke, and they wanted to meet the next one on *their* terms.

It was part of a change that was happening lately.  And James liked how it was going, even if it did leave him feeling uncertain sometimes.  They weren’t just scrambling to catch up anymore.  They were the ones hunting.  Or building new things.  Planning and being proactive.  It wasn’t his style.  But maybe it would have to be, if he ever wanted to save the world.

And that was the goal, wasn’t it?  Save the world?  Because holy shit, the world needed it.  And every bit of good that the Order of Endless Rooms could put out into it was worth something.  And these days, more and more, they had the ability and the *power* to output a lot more good than you’d expect from a group of about a hundred random people, some of whom were snakes.

James snapped his fingers as they walked toward the Lair’s back door.  He needed to look into hiring some new people.

He made a mental note.  That was for tomorrow.  Tonight, they were gonna watch a movie, not get in any fights, and take a very deserved rest.  He was looking forward to seeing if he could get a camraconda to argue with a member of Research about Star Wars.