The Daily Grind - Chapter 146 (Patreon)

This ended up being longer than I expected.  Also, maybe no chapter next week.  I have a lot of work to do that isn't writing, unfortunately.  I'll try, but I'm warning everyone now.

_____

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do good now!  Walk justly now!  No one is expected to finish the work, but neither may anyone desist from it.”  - Rabbi Tarfan, Ethics of the Fathers

“Hey El.”  Momo answered her phone without looking at it.  “Long time no see.  You know, since you just fucking left in the middle of the night without telling anyone.”

“...How did you know it was me?”  El asked, sounding legitimately shaken.  “How do people keep doing that?!”

“Oh, I have a totem that lets me sense inbound phone calls.  I’ve been figuring out how to dial it down to a really small radius so it’s basically just perfectly useful caller ID.  It also gives me an address if it’s from a business, so I can order surgical strikes against phone scammers.”  Momo sounded weirdly distracted for someone talking about solving one of the three great problems facing modern civilization.  “So.  You wanna come back, or what?”

“Nice try with the shame, but I’ve built up a tolerance to it from talking to my mom all week.”  El replied, a very wry sort of cheer to her words.

“Uh huh.”  Momo still sounded like she was focusing on something aside from the phone call.

El blinked, then took a deep breath and continued.  “No, I don’t want to come back.  Yet.  Maybe I won’t ever, I don’t know.  But I’ve got something else I want to talk about.”

The reply came through distant, like Momo had set her phone down.  “Uh huh.”  She said again.

“Are you… ignoring me out of spite?”  Eleanor felt that all too quick flare of anger in her chest.  The kind that kept getting her into trouble.  “Come on, I’m trying to be nice.  I had to borrow my mom’s phone to call you!”

“What? Oh.  I’m just working on a thing.”  Momo said.  “Computer stuff.  Whatever.”

“Alright, I’m smart enough to admit you might have been the wrong person to call.”  El grudgingly spoke, more to herself than anyone else.

“Yeah, hang on.  I’ll get James.”  Momo said

“Wait no-!” El started to protest, but there was already a slight clattering as the phone was tossed onto a desk, and a couple seconds later, the sound of a heavy door opening and Momo shouting something down the hallway.  “Mo… no.  I didn’t want to talk to James…” She muttered to herself.

“Oooh, James?”  El’s mom said as she passed by the living room couch that El was splayed out on.  The condition of borrowing the phone had been using it in the living room, and El still hadn’t built up enough shame tolerance to make this okay.  “Who’s that, honey? A boyfriend of yours?  Did you travel so far just to see him and he broke your heart? Just say the word, and I’ll fight him for you.”

“Mom, please don’t.  Partially because you’re just super wrong, but also because he’d probably let you win and it’d just be embarrassing.”  El sighed.  “Momo, are you there?”  She said into the cell phone.  “Please?”

“Momo is not within standard human hearing range of the device in this moment.”  A distant voice answered El.  It sounded simultaneously lightly synthesized, like the words were all being spoken individually, and also quite a lot like a kid.  A girl, probably, on the edge of being a teenager.  But the language… didn’t come across as how a kid talked.  At all.

“Sorry, who’s this?”

“I do not have a name yet.  Who are you?  Are you here?  Are you this device? What senses do you posess?  What information do you process?”

There was a sudden break in the questions.  El slowly moved the phone away from her head and stared at it with a wide eyed, concerned frown.

“If you make that face forever, it’ll stick that way.”  Her mother said, passing by again.

El growled at her, and put the phone back to her ear.  “Uh… okay, in what I think is the right order of answers, I’m El, no, no, most of them I guess?  And I mostly spend my time thinking about the chain of mistakes that brought me to this point in my life.”

“You are human!”  The voice sounded distantly happy to have made that conclusion.  “Is that correct?”

“And you aren’t.”  El deduced.  “Well that sure is… something.”

And then, either mercifully or the opposite, James’ voice cut in.  “Hey currently-nameless.  Hey El.”  He said the last bit much clearer, killing the speakerphone and picking up the receiver on his end. “What’s up?”

“Are you gonna try to weaponize guilt against me too?”  She asked, a bit bitter.

“Nah.  I’m busy.”  James replied, sounding like he was eating something.  “Besides, I’ve met you.  You can do it fine without my help.”

El winced.  “Ow, dude.”  She said.

“My bad.  Not trying to actually be mean.  So, what’s up?”

“I…” El didn’t know how to phrase this.  Formal, or casual? Pleading, or transactional?  Then realized that of everyone in the world, the one person who would least like her to play social games would be James.  So, “I think there’s something weird going on in my hometown.  And I want to ask for help.  If-“

“Okay.  Got an address?”

El faltered.  “Just like…?  Yeah, no, of course.  You didn’t even let me finish, dude.”

“I don’t need to sleep anyway, I can add another project to the pile.  Plus I can teleport.”

“Okay…” El paused.  “About that.  I was… I wanted to ask if any of you, like… the you guys that I met and kinda like, not just random members of your guild-order… if you wanted to visit the road dungeon with me?”

“Absolutely.”  James answered.  “Oh!  So, like, bring cars along? I mean, we could just teleport there and then buy cars…” There was a hum, like he was buying time to think.  “Or… or I could take a vacation road trip…” James muttered, mostly to himself.  “Can I bring Anesh along?”  He asked El.

“Sure, he seems smart.”  She acquiesced.  “Sarah or Alanna or Momo, too.  I don’t… really know anyone else,  guess.  So maybe one or two of whoever you think matters?”

“We… we can’t find Alanna.”  James said, with no small amount of pain.  Then he shook it off.  “We’re looking though.  Maybe we’ll randomly stumble across her on a road trip.  Who knows.  Also, can I name your dungeon?”

“Too late.”  El gave a victorious grin.  “I already have.”

“Damn!”  James snapped his fingers loudly enough El could hear it through the phone.  “Ah well.  But yes, we can be out there in a week or so.  Just gotta make sure everything here is working and stable, yeah?”

“Yeah, no rush.”  El said, lying.  She felt like there was a lot of pressure, because she wasn’t sure if everything was falling apart, or if she’d just changed so much she didn’t recognize home anymore. “Oh, also, do you know how someone would identify anyone who has magic?”  She asked.

“You can do that, can’t you?”  James asked.  “You’ve got a spell for it.  I don’t think any of us do.  So you’re the expert.”

“...Oh my fucking god.”  El set the phone down, covered her face with one of the couch cushions, and screamed.  Then picked the phone back up.

“...forgot or something.  That’d be hilarious, and-“

She put the phone down again.  Hung up on James.  Set her mom’s phone on the tile counter surrounding the kitchen. Considered screaming into the couch again.  But instead, called to her mom that she was going out for a few hours.

El still had a few bucks to her name.  And there were a few preparations she had to make, if she was gonna hit the road again.

_____

“I am starting to get worried that this is almost routine.”  James said, cursing everything about the night’s delve.

Rick looked around worriedly, the new guy seeming a little confused as the other four people in their harvest team groaned in exasperation.

“Okay,” The tough old laborer and ex-idealist said, “this is my first time in here, and I get that you kids have already set up a schedule.  But there was a whole debate going on as to whether this place uses story logic, so isn’t it kind of stupid to say *that*?”  He pointed a meaty, scarred finger at James.

“It’s an ongoing problem.”  Sarah admitted.

There were five of them, moving through head high cubicle walls.  They’d learned mostly by accident that the walls here were made of a sort of soft crumbling stone on the inside of their thin carpeted exteriors.  Which made it all too easy to be ambushed by things lurking just inside the small rooms all around them.

Still, they pressed on.  Minor skirmishes with shellaxies and potted plants made it just tense enough that no one could really relax, despite James’ occasional bits of banter.  The near constant wave of small traps was almost predictable at this point, but that didn’t make it any less scary.

They pulled two carts with them.  The first heavy canvas camping tool filled with a spare medkit, a few extra pieces of kit they might need, a few dozen small yellow orbs, and one friendly shellaxy that had climbed into the cart while they weren’t looking and made Windows startup dings at them when they tried to move it.  Sarah had named it Dark Chocolate Mocha.  It was eating the orbs when no one was looking.

The second cart was carrying a plastic bin full of bags of magical ritual coffee, and about two hundred pounds of refined silver.  It was the one no one wanted to be in charge of hauling, and it was the one James had ended up in charge of hauling, the braced cloth base sagging under the weight of their loot from the first water cooler cave they’d visited.

It wasn’t all they’d be stacking into the cart.  They were on their way to another cave that had been scouted out last week, hoping to add to their pile of raw resources that would allow the Order to continue to grow.  To hire more people, do more good, make a bigger impact.

Buy a tank, maybe.

James had gotten an orb for [+1 Skill Rank : Drive - Tank - Panther], and now all he wanted was to try it out.  Not that he hadn’t always wanted to drive a tank *anyway*, but now it was far less theoretical.  It wasn’t even a military fantasy, it was just that it seemed like it would be a unique experience.

They had more people in here tonight; to the point that they were starting to run up against the limit of how many people they could funnel through the door before the time dilation and ‘eight hour’ limit became an issue.  Experienced and new delvers alike.  Here to explore, learn, and exploit the hell out of this space.

A lot of people were acting as just straight up scouts today, too.  Looking for new biomes within their safe travel range of a few miles.  Searching for sources of wealth and prosperity.

Wealth, material resources, new tools of creation and happiness, life to befriend, anything that would bring the Order closer to stability, closer to accomplishing more good in the world, closer to their goal of a utopia.

James joked about it being routine, but a routine that built a better world was a pretty good routine.  To him, anyway.

And soon, that routine was gonna get shaken up.  He didn’t know what to think of that.  A new dungeon, a new frontier.  New potential tools, new potential lethal mistakes.  James felt more than a little apprehensive about El’s request.  He’d arranged a meeting with everyone in a couple days to set up his upcoming absence; he was gonna go.  But for some reason, he was more nervous than excited.

At least here he knew what the lethal mistakes were, and how to mostly avoid them.

“Sh!”  He hissed out, holding up a hand and stopping the procession.  There, on the edge of his enhanced awareness, there was a rattling noise and a hiss much more menacing than his own.  “Tumblefeed, ahead and to the left.”  He spoke in a low tone to the group.  “Could be an open space.  Rick, with me.  Alex, get a firebomb ready if we need it.  Let’s check it out.”

He felt his blood start to sing as his heart pumped, and a small grin made its way to his lips.  Yes, maybe he was nervous.  And yes, maybe the future was a little uncertain.  But in moments like this…

There was something angry and dangerous, between their group and a new sliver of something magical.

And that was a special feeling indeed.

_____

“Momo?!”  Anesh called into the basement.  He’d only just stepped off the elevator, he was almost positive he was in the wrong one, and all the lights were off and the hallways were empty.

It was, more than the dungeons even, spooky.  The dungeons were a lot of things, but subtle wasn’t one of them.  Officium Mundi and the Akashic Sewer didn’t seem capable of going more than half an hour without a monster attack, even if one of those two places showed radically more restraint than the other.  Clutter Ascent, too, didn’t really hesitate to let things get *weird*.  There was no thought, as you stood at the top of that attic’s little staircase, that you had stepped into a place of magic and wonder.  After all, there were three different skylights showing different skies, all right there.

The basement, though?  The basement wasn’t actually that weird.  It didn’t have monsters, probably.  It didn’t have traps that weren’t just OSHA violations.  It didn’t have any unnatural effects that they hadn’t put there on purpose.

It was just *creepy*.  Basements were creepy!  Anesh felt less like he was admitting that to himself, and more like he was mentally throwing up his arms and proclaiming it.  He refused to back down on this point; he would stroll into an obvious paper pusher ambush with more enthusiasm than he’d walk through an unlit concrete basement hallway.

“Momo, are you down here?!”  His voice squeaked a little bit.  “I’m not sticking around if this is an early Halloween thing!”

No reply.  In the distance, down the hall to his left, Anesh could hear some kind of noise.  Music, maybe?  He strained his ears.

And was so distracted that he nearly jumped out of his skin when the voice next to his elbow hissed out a long, sinuous, “Helloooooo.”

Anesh made a noise somewhere between a screech and a howl, tripped over his own feet as he tried to spin around, and toppled onto his ass on the hard ground with a painful thump.

He found himself face to snout with a camraconda.  One of the ones that was wearing one of those motorized arm sets, long metal limbs splaying out from its back in a menacing way.  A green blinking light on its camera eye appraised him carefully, before the snake creature pulled back and tipped its head up.  “Sorry, sorry.”  It said, its digital voice clearly modulated to draw out the words more than normal, in addition to having a feminine tint to it.  “This way.  Follow, follow.”

It offered a pair of limbs to help Anesh up, but he pulled his ass off the floor using the wall instead.  Not out of spite, just that he’d calmed down a little bit, and the rational part of his brain knew that those arm sets couldn’t move nearly as much weight as a human could. Yet.

He followed the camraconda down the unlit hall, amusement replacing the heart-wrenching terror he’d felt only seconds ago as the snake gingerly extracted a pair of heavy flashlights and clicked them on with awkward motions.  It turned out, giving a species that had lived its whole life without arms a sudden influx of limbs didn’t make them proficient overnight.

“Sorry, for no lights.”  The camraconda hummed at him as they walked.  “Construction occurring.  Small light?”  She offered Anesh one of the flashlights.

“Why didn’t you have these on when you came to get me, instead of just creeping out of the blackness like some kind of shadow creature?”  Anesh asked, channeling a bit of his boyfriend into his words.

“Can see in dark.”  The camraconda replied without hesitation.

Anesh gave the snake an exasperated sigh, and followed the rest of the way in quiet.

It didn’t take long to get to where Momo had set up shop.  Or rather, been assigned to set up shop.  People were getting tired of her totem experiments causing headaches, even if she had found other pursuits lately.

“Anesh, you’re here!”  James called over.  “Great!  Come look at this!”

Anesh walked in, the camraconda trailing off to join a group of Order aspirants who were going through a box of dungeontech no one had found a use for.  Momo and James were standing in the middle of the warehouse space, James with a hand on his hip as he looked over something on a clipboard, and Momo popping her joints with arms stretched wide over her head, leaning back and staring up at the thing James had started them working on.

“Alright.”  Anesh started.  “I have… so many problems here.”

“Okay. But first, touch this.”  James held up the clipboard, a circle drawn on one side in sharpie.  Anesh poked it.  “No, like, hold your finger there, you dork.”  James rolled his eyes.

Anesh did so, and then jumped as James ran his fingers across Anesh’s.  No, across the other side of the clipboard.  But it felt… real.

“What is *this*?”  He asked.  “Magic clipboard?  Cool, but I don’t see how it helps us.  Also, you’re sidetracking me.”

“Magic sharpie, actually.”  James grinned.  “Circles drawn on opposite sides of material seem to ‘conduct’ tactile sensation.  But, like, as one big nerve ending.  I’ve been taking John Green’s artistic advice, and drawing lots of small circles in weird patterns, trying to make something cool work.”  James looked, Anesh realized then, strangely *content*.  “It’s a good day.”  He nodded at his boyfriend.

“James a chunk of the parking lot is missing.”  Anesh looked at their project, squeezed his eyes shut, and then opened them again.  Yup.  Still there.  “James you stole a chunk of the parking lot.”

James didn’t even have the good grace to look sheepish.  “Is the parking lot *really* that important?” He asked.  Rhetorically.

“You teleport to work you wanker!”  Anesh bit back.  “Momo, help me out… no, you aren’t going to care.  *Does anyone in this room drive to this building?!*” Anesh called out.

One person who lived in the building, two people who teleported everywhere, four camracondas, three high schoolers who got rides from their parents or took the bus, one man who flew a dragon everywhere, and an environmentally conscious engineer who biked instead of driving, all looked at Anesh with silent expressions, before turning back to what they were doing before he interrupted them.

“We can replace the asphalt.”  James said.  “Now, check this out…” He turned and swept his arms out, gazing up at their creation

“I have been unable to avoid checking it out this whole time.”  Anesh said.  “James, I love you, but *why*.”

“Joke answer; because I’m tired of Dave having the only mech.”  James couldn’t hold back a wild, cheerful grin.  He really was having a great day.  “Also, here’s a weird thing I’m learning.  Those startlingly specific architecture skill orbs actually do have broader practical uses, it’s just that they don’t have them by default.  Takes a lot of effort to, like, pick out small answers to big questions.”

Anesh gave up on complaining, or being contrary, or trying to argue.  He just walked up next to James, thumped his head down on his boyfriend’s shoulder, and gave a single chuckle.  If nothing else, just happy to see James smiling.  “Alright.”  He said.  “What’s going on.”

In front of them, dominating the warehouse space, was what had started the day as a pile of plundered asphalt.

Over the last twenty hours, working with input from what felt like half the Order in some way, James and Momo had taken chunks of asphalt stolen from the parking lot above, as well as from a few construction sites around the city’s road network, and abused the hell out of the blue orb from the telepads.

[+24 Activations - Manipulate Asphalt]

Blue orbs, it turned out, did not have diminishing returns when absorbed, if you’d already used up the original power.  You got the exact same power, again, at the same strength.

Beginning with a rough outline and an end goal, and slowly incorporating more outside help and actual planning as they went along, the growing team had turned disparate chunks of rough black material into a humanoid shape.  It stood twenty five feet tall, and didn’t look remotely human in its proportions.  Legs that were too thick and short compared to arms that were far too long and perfectly smooth.  No need for muscle definition when you weren’t planning to use muscles.

“We built a mech.”  James answered Anesh.

“I get that.  But *why*?  Also how, but mostly why.”

James laughed.  “Well, I gave you the joke answer.  The real answer is, carry capacity.  Because I am *pretty sure* that, if we do this right? We can use this with a telepad to move heavy cargo.  Fast.”

“And the how, which I’m becoming increasingly curious about?”  Anesh asked.

James explained.

Their first thought had just been to make it human shaped enough, and try from there.  But that instantly presented problems.  Actually using the blue orbs took a lot of focus, which conflicted with the needed level of disassociation to actually see their growing colossus as a ‘body’. So, they’d started poking around the stockpile of magic items and effects they had on offer.

The first few were easy.  The pen that connected tactile sensation.  A coat that regulated body temperature.  A few vision options, with the one they settled on starting with being a pair of glasses that gave you a sense of everything moving above a certain speed within a radius around you.

Then they’d started to get questions about what they were working on, and from there, help.

A blue orb from someone with a handful of charges left that shifted an object to being frictionless.  They’d reshaped the ‘joints’ of their creation into perfectly, literally perfectly, smooth spheres.  And from there, using manipulate asphalt to control the limbs of their project became infinitely easier.

A pair of hiking boots someone had found in the office that couldn’t fall over.  They’d shaped the base of the feet of their mech around them; the legs would snap in half before the thing lost balance now.

To prevent that snapping, a reinforced rebar frame, with tungsten rods summoned from an orange job making up the fine ‘bones’ of the massive fingers.

Pencils and pens, fused into the structure, inactive so long as the thing wasn’t a ‘body’, but after it was?  One that changed color, one that projected writing, one that always landed upright when thrown, one that self sharpened.

Mundane technologies.  The interior of the creation was hollow.  It had no head, just a smooth body with two slots inside meant to hold humans.  Oxygen tanks, reserve stockpiles of telepad blue orb.  Telepads.  Rations and medical supplies.  Antennas reaching through the skin of the mech to stay in contact with the drone swarm that could provide extra vision outside.

They’d already tested it in part; the LSD trick totally worked.  Someone could, without too much work, mistake this thing for their own body.  Purple orbs shifted to it, albeit not at a perfect one to one ratio to a human body.  It wasn’t a human shell, after all.  But enough of them lined up.

The problem was, that person could barely do anything with it, before losing that connection.  They’d solved that with someone who’d picked up four ranks in hypnotism from a large yellow.  Putting a pilot into a trance, where all they had to focus on was using blues to move their new body, let someone take much more fluid control.

It hadn’t been enough to be functional, though.  So, James, who had watched Pacific Rim roughly eight thousand times, suggested this solution.  A second pilot, skulljack plugged into the first.  Not gestated, just close enough to give mental nudges on what to do.  One mind making tactical choices, one mind executing them without distraction.  They hadn’t tested that yet; in fact, they’d just finished securing a connecting skulljack cable to an automatic cable winder embedded inside the heart of their creation when Anesh had arrived.  Well, that, and the extra oxygen tank.  Just in case.  Safety first.

“And then you showed up.”  James finished breathlessly explaining to Anesh.  “Actually, we should test this.  We’re basically drift compatible, yeah?”

“And you’re not putting some kind of dungeontech weapons platform in it?”  Anesh asked, probably for the fourth or fifth time.

James shrugged. “I mean, why?  We’re not taking it into a dungeon, we don’t plan to actually fight armies, and even if we did, this thing probably won’t stand up to an antimaterial rifle. It’s literally just to cheese the telepad restriction.”

“So...you destroyed our parking lot.  Dragged twenty people away from what they were working on…”

“They were excited!”

“...haven’t slept or eaten a real meal for way too long.  And probably dumped a not insignificant chunk of our limited budget, into - and correct me if I’m wrong here - an overengineered forklift?”

There was a long pause.  Momo cleared her throat, looked like she was going to say something.  Then closed her mouth, and quietly backed away, before circling around behind the asphalt colossus to hide.

“Yes?”  James eventually replied.  “In my defense, it’s really cool.  Also we just had a lot of this stuff lying around.  Especially the parking lot.”  Anesh gave his partner a long suffering look.  “Oh, best part?”  James quipped, seeing the expression his boyfriend was giving him.  “A copy of you was down here earlier helping out, so I *know* you think this is awesome.  You can’t fool me with that cute frown.”

Anesh sputtered a bit, turning to cover his flushed face.  “Alright, *maybe*.  Anyway, I came down here for a reason.  Momo!”  Anesh called the girl out from behind the leg of the humanoid golem they’d been building.  “Your program child wants to talk to you.  Something about a confirmed intersection?”

“Shit!”  Momo yelped, turning and rolling under a folding table.

“Is that bad?”  James asked in an unconcerned voice, glancing around the room.  “Is that worse?”

“Worse than what?”  The engineer who’d been trying desperately to build a document for this project while Momo and James and everyone else just plowed ahead asked.  Mars, that was his name.  James had a hard time forgetting that one.

“Worse than an unconfirmed, I guess?”

“It means it found a dungeon!”  Momo said, bursting up from the other side now wearing the coat that she’d thrown under there while the group was working and the poorly ventilated basement storage space had heated up.  “Come on, let’s go!”

“Oh, neat.”  James said, showing way less enthusiasm than Anesh expected from him.

“You don’t seem… excited or concerned?”  Anesh asked as the two of them strolled after Momo, the rest of the construction crew either taking a break, or finally catching up on documentation.  “I figured you’d be all over this.”

“I think I’m experiencing a form of burnout.”  James casually expressed his worst fear.  “Like, there’s just so much magic going on all the time, I can’t process everything, so my brain has stopped getting super into new things.  That said, finally having a dungeon detector will be neat, assuming it works.”

Anesh grimaced and tried to give James a hug as they walked.  “Sounds like innovation fatigue.”  He said sympathetically.  “It’s probably especially bad for you, considering you don’t really have a specialty here, huh?  You’re involved in basically everything.”

“And I want to be!”  James assured him.  “I just… don’t want to. I want to not not want to.”  He sighed.  “I am so tired.  And Sarah dumping naps into me every time she sees me is not helping.  And *yeah*, it’s a good day, and I feel good, but I’m just not feeling excited for more arcane problems.”

“What a weird sentence.”

“It is kind of great.”  James said sadly.  “Which is why I feel bad for not appreciating it more.  Anesh, *magic*.”

There was a pause while they stepped into the elevator, neither of them really comfortable having this conversation with three other people right next to them.  It gave Anesh time to think, to work out what to say.  Though it was hard; James’ depression wasn’t something that ever went away, it was always there waiting to take all the fun out of stuff.  And the worst part was, Anesh knew that there wasn’t much he really could say to fix it.  The physical symptoms of feeling disconnected from special things and constantly exhausted by a life that should be content weren’t things that you really *could* fix with just words.  So instead, Anesh just tried to be as supportive as possible, and knew he’d be there to be excited along with James when the feeling faded.

“Well hey.”  Anesh said as the elevator reached the surface and Momo hit the button to take them back down to a different basement while a few people got off on the ground floor.  “Think of it this way.  You’ve got skills, potions, magic items that level up, and stat point upgrades.  Maybe this dungeon finally gives you actual magic spells.  Then you can fill in that empty space on your character sheet.”  The joke was said in a subdued tone, but he said it with a smile, and got a grin out of James.

“I can finally use my resume that lists my occupation as sorcerer!”  James declared as they followed Momo out of the elevator and through the twisting halls to where she’d built her AI.  The other girl dashing ahead of them, not bothering to hide her nervous energy.

“Why haven’t you been?”  Anesh asked him.  “Do you not ‘count’ as a wizard yet?”  He smirked.

James put on his best wizened old man voice.  “A wizard with one spell is no wizard at all.”  He grumbled, before switching back to his normal tone.  “Though seriously, the asphalt thing is cool.  I feel like we should be doing more with the blue absorb copy thing.  Finding the best ones, abusing them.”

“We’re already trying to abuse the copier as much as possible.”  Anesh reminded him.  “There’s a waiting list.  There’s a *long* waiting list, and it keeps growing.”

“We’ll get there.”  James sighed wistfully as the two of them came to the door of Momo’s computer lab, the metal barrier hanging open in the hallway.  “Alright, what’s up?”  He asked, strolling in.

Momo glanced up from where she was leaning over the desk, elbows resting on space hastily cleared among the random collection of things that had accrued here while she’d been using the room.  She had been looking at one of the monitors, and now stepped back to let James and Anesh see.

It was a mess of numbers James didn’t know the purpose of.  To Anesh, it made a little more sense; he’d tried something like this himself a while back.  Weather patterns, budget reports, missing persons statistics.  But this had more.  So much more.  Vehicle emissions and average credit card purchases and traffic patterns sourced from local camera networks and every statistic that could be gathered, legally or not.

The thing Momo had accidentally created thrived in the ocean of data.  If you asked it how it found something, it would be able to tell you eventually, but the process wasn’t quite like a human.  There was no “oh, I *get it* now” moment that set it on the trail.  It just looked for patterns, compared them, found averages, found outliers, identified strange behaviors and where they were focused.

It was an almost horrifying tool of intelligence gathering.  The only consolation to the Order members that were maybe a *little* concerned about its existence was that it didn’t seem capable of caring about individual persons.  In theory, it could know basically everything about a person.  But it wasn’t really interested, or perhaps even able, to focus on that person separate from their place in the greater patterns.

And now, after weeks of number crunching, it had identified something.  Somehow.  Tracking a hundred different things.  Comparing, contrasting, collating data.

There was no grand reveal.  And no precise entrance location.  But both the AI and Momo seemed entirely confident in the result.

Alice Springs, Australia.

High projected fatality rate.

“This does not fill me with a sense of magic.” James glared at the screen.

“Welp.”  Anesh said.  “Tomorrow’s meeting just got a lot more complicated.”

_____

James passed through the house that contained Clutter Ascent politely.  Actual humans lived here now; caretakers of the dungeon’s external shell, who were in turn kept safe by the dungeon itself.  So he went through the process of knocking, removing his shoes, saying hi to the group watching TV, and trying one of the cookies that were clearly a passionate first attempt at baking, before finally heading upstairs to visit the attic.

There was probably someone here, but for the first time in a while, James wasn’t here to visit Sarah.

He was here to talk.  Mostly.

To talk, to sit, to take some time and experience something magical just for the sake of the magic.

Also to say hi to Fredrick.  He’d brought the strange shadow creature a bag of cashews.  James had only really encountered the thing once, but Sarah had encouraged people to drop in and say hi.  Apparently, the little guy was fond of snacks, and also some kind of game that *looked* like chess, but absolutely was not chess.  He’d been challenging people to games when they’d walked through the corridors of forgotten boxes in the attic, and while he didn’t extract any price for a loss, he certainly didn’t have any inclination to actually explain the rules either.

James wandered the space under the rafters for a while, smiling as he realized that there was a part of the designated path where it felt like the ceiling was constantly getting closer, even though it never met the floor.  Like that one noise from Star Trek that gave the illusion of going up in pitch forever, only somewhat more claustrophobic.  He wasn’t looking for anything, really, or here with any real goal in mind.  He was just wandering and looking around this safe, strange space.

He found himself, at one point, in one of those empty dark spaces of the mind.  He’d tried to open a cupboard, more out of curiosity than anything else, and realized only after being transported here that it was one of the attic’s treasure chests.  Half an hour later, he put the finishing touches on the mental image key he’d put together.  Piece by piece, building the feeling of a cold coffee shop in early June, the hiss of the espresso machine and the chatter of the patrons overlapping in a pleasant background noise, just before the lock clicked open and he found himself back in reality.

James pocketed the little bond stick that the cupboard held, wishing that they could recreate that effect on purpose and for fun.  Those mental puzzles were actually really satisfying to solve.  Like a combination of a coloring book and a sudoku.

Fredrick never materialized, and half an hour later, James found himself sitting in a far off corner of the attic, leaning against a rolled up comforter and staring up at the brilliant gold and purple light pouring through a skylight.

“I feel like I’m missing something.”  He sighed to no one in particular.  Or, perhaps, to the dungeon in particular.  Clutter Ascent was a good listener.

“I wish…” James started, then took a minute to put his runaway thoughts together.  “I think I wish I could be like you.”  He admitted.  “A dungeon.  A space.  You’re only responsible for yourself, and you create all this.  You just… make stuff.  And people come in and experience it.  That really speaks to the part of me that never stops thinking about running another RPG.  You know, when the free time starts again.”

He chuckled in the mostly still air, watching spiral fractals of dust motes dance in the sunbeams.  “I say that as if free time is some kind of fungible resources, and all we have to do is turn on the time faucet and I’ll have more of it.  Which, I mean… I’m not gonna pretend that’s not an option these days.”

Anything was possible, after all.  That kind of made it a little unsurprising when the next impossible thing came up, but there were always curveballs anyway.

There was an awkward moment before James figured out what was bothering him.  “I just realized,” he partially interrupted himself, “that I’m piling my personal mental health problems on you, and that’s super not fair of me.  I know Sarah said you like it when people come and talk to you, and you like to take care of everyone.  But… this feels like I’m asking for something you can’t give me.”

James closed his eyes, shifted his back a little as he pushed his head into the blanket behind him.  “Magic is becoming normal to me.”  He said, voice as neutral as he could get.  “I don’t know… I don’t know if that’s bad.  I like it when life feels special, I guess.  I don’t want things to be normal.  And I know it’s not normal, I get reminded every time I go to a restaurant or… um.”  James thought for a second, cracking one eye open as he did so.  “I guess restaurants are basically the only place I go these days.  And dungeons.  Still.”

He shrugged.

“I just feel like I’m back where I started, but with more money.  Like, yes, things weren’t bad.  I have my friends, people I care about.  I’ve got a home.  And now, it’s got a lot of very real, very beautiful magic to it.  There is no other word.  Magic.”  He sighed, again.  “And I feel like an asshole for feeling discontent, I guess.  I’m going on ‘vacation’ in a week or so, and I’m confused as to why I don’t feel some kind of electric thrill to go explore a mystic hostile eternal highway.  That seems like it should be, you know… perfect.”

James felt tired.  A bone deep weariness that had been pulling at him all week.  He’d had good days, he’d had some sleep, but nothing was letting him shake the feeling of lethargy perusing him.  Like he just wanted to curl up and take a ten year long nap.

“Why,” he asked the warm air around him, “is it not just enough to have friends, share food with them, and play some board games?”  James didn’t really have an answer.  Didn’t know why he always felt like he had to do more, even as he equally felt like doing more wasn’t doing *anything*.

There was no answer.  Not right away.  And James didn’t know what else he needed to say; to himself, or to the space around him.  Didn’t know if putting his thoughts into words helped anyway.  But, if nothing else, he found the spot he’d chosen was basically perfect for a nap.

When he woke up, he felt better.  Better in a way he couldn’t qualify, better in a subtle, bone deep way.  Like he’d slept for a decade, and it had been *enough*.

Also Fredrick was there, halfway through chowing through the bag of cashews that had been stealthily extracted from James’ pocket.

The creature didn’t notice James waking up, and for the first time, he got a good look at it.  Or a better look, anyway.  It had blurred edges, like a shadow.  Some deep blue scale patterns on its stomach, like a midnight salamander, and also shiny black fur that ran down its limbs and back.  It had a muzzle somewhere between a gecko and a raccoon, and the way it was eating was *very* raccoon-adjacent.  Rolling the nuts it was chowing down on over in its small hands repeatedly before nibbling them to nothing.

It had more hands than James had realized.  Six of them, in fact.  Its body and legs were, in no uncertain terms, arachnid.  And suddenly, James figured he realized why it kept hiding from people.

“You know,” He spoke softly, and Fredrick froze mid-cashew, “we’ve got snakes and staplers and a half dozen tentacle monster computer things on the roster.”  James said, watching the knee-high critter nervously fold his extra arms behind his small frame, hiding them out of sight.  “What I’m saying is, you don’t need to be nervous just because you’re half spider, okay?”

The amalgamation of ideas from living creatures stared at James with sparkling sapphire eyes.  And then, as James shifted to sit up, before his legs fell asleep harder than he had, Fredrick bolted into the shadows of the junk around them.

James sighed.  So much for making friends, he started to think.

But then, a rustling from a pile of clear plastic tubs of Halloween decorations to his left.  One of them on the bottom shifted aside to make a small tunnel, out of which Fredrick wriggled backward, dragging something with him.

The little creation turned to regard James, still keeping four of his limbs pinned back and concealed.  But with more comfortable consideration than panic.  With a small nudge from his snout, he pushed forward a polished wooden box with a chess board painted on top of it.

James smiled.  Passed over the rest of the cashews.

A good nap.  Some magic.  Food.  Board games with friends.

Maybe Clutter Ascent could give him exactly what he needed after all.

_____

Myles was having an awkward day.

It had started normally.  He was shadowing the woman that the Old Gun had made contact with a couple weeks ago.  Trying to figure out what she had been tasked with, or why the supposedly ancient and deadly creature was interested in her to begin with.

He’d been tailing her for a couple weeks.  Her name was Susan Halliston, she worked for a company called Dow Chemicals in Bayton Texas, and she owned two dogs.  Well, her husband owned two dogs.  She didn’t like dogs, near as Myles could tell.  And ever since he’d gotten a moment alone with her cell phone and had turned it into an always-on audio bug, he’d had a firsthand look at just how bitter a person in the late forties could be.

Susan Halliston did not like dogs, the weather, other drivers, her husband, her eldest and only daughter, the employees at any given drive thru, her job, or, it would seem, herself.

Myles didn’t really like her either, after a week of listening to her constant whining when she thought no one was listening.

She was also a workaholic, and spent most of her time on site at the chemical plant she did safety oversight for.  She didn’t like the look of the series of structures, all the walking, her coworkers…

It was exhausting.

Myles had a map of the property, and had compared it to reality just to make sure.  It was mostly, as far as he could tell, pipes.  Though he didn’t know much about chemical refinement, so maybe pipes was normal.

The thing that was making today awkward was twofold.  The first thing was that he’d had to get a backup car on short notice.  Another rogue, a girl named Lin that he’d never met, but had known the passphrases that Myles had been given, had teleported into his hotel, and commandeered his rental car for something.  She hadn’t said what, and Myles got the impression he was actually still being simultaneously tested and trained by Nate and JP.  So, he’d wasted an hour today getting another car, and getting back to his stakeout.

The second thing was that he’d noticed something.  Specifically, he’d noticed, a little too late as someone was getting out of the vehicle, that the van parked streetside behind him was the exact same one that had been there the last three days.  And so was the red sedan in front of him.  And while part of his brain was trying to rationalize why someone would repeatedly park on a stretch of road with nothing of value nearby except line of sight to a chemical plant, the rest of his brain was focused on the man approaching and drawing a handgun from a sharp black holster under his coat.

Myles was a lot of things.  Myles was sneaky, smart, and some third S word that meant generally a good choice for  espionage.  Myles was also, in his own opinion, pretty damn cute.  But for all the spycraft training he’d had jammed into the last two months, and even with the marginal upgrades from the weird magic stuff, Myles was not a trained fighter.

So he froze, as the man approached his car in a slight crouch, handgun held in a two handed grip as his eyes swept the area.

There were no other cars around on the road, no one to save him.  Myles realized he only had seconds to act, forgot entirely that he owned a telepad, and reached for the keys still in the ignition.

The man passed his car by.

And approached the sedan about twenty feet past his front bumper, raising his gun and yelling at the person still in the driver’s seat there to get out of the vehicle even as that car’s engine rumbled to life.

She absolutely didn’t get out, and instead floored it.  The man on the road started firing, pops of gunfire sounding loud even through the windshield, the smell of gunpowder added to the hot Texas air.

Myles could hear the man on the street swearing, even though he could no longer see him.  He’d chosen the stealth option, and had sunk down in his seat to the point that he shouldn’t be visible from the road.  To his right, he heard the van’s tires squeal as it pulled onto the road, and then a yelled ‘get in!’ and a door slamming, followed by more engine roaring.

And then it was quiet again.

Myles peeked over the dashboard.  The street was empty.  He reached for his phone, then grumbled as he realized it was in a different cupholder than he was used to.  Then his brain made the connection.

The same cars, three days in a row.  He was in a different car.  Because Lin had taken his.

Holy shit, he’d gotten lucky.

So.  At least two other people or groups were here, in this place where the literal only thing to do was run a stakeout on this one specific chemical processing facility.  Cool.

His heart was still pounding.  And so, he was alert and on edge when Susan arrived at work.  He was paying attention when he realized that she’d been unusually silent today.  When he noticed that she brought with her a hard shell black case that could only ever hold a pistol of some kind.  The security at the gate didn’t react, so either this was normal, or something was up.

Myles listened intently to the stolen audio.  There was some background noise, so the bug was working.  Susan just wasn’t saying *anything* today.  A massive shift from the woman that hadn’t shut up about things she hated for the last twelve days.

By this point, he had her routine and the associated sound effects down to the point that he knew what it sounded like when she walked into her office.  Knew what it sounded like for her to flick the lights on, push her chair into position, and sit down.

She didn’t sit down today.  Instead, there was a heavy thump of plastic on wood.  Two snaps of clasps being unlatched.  And then, a long, heavy sigh.  It was the kind of resigned noise that Myles was familiar with from fiction, but had never heard a human make.

And then, the first words she’d spoken all day.  “Friday.  Today’s it, huh?”  It sounded dead.  No emotion.

And then, in a mechanical, almost rehearsed tone, Susan added, “I hate my life and want it to end.”

Myles tensed up, every part of him suddenly horrified that he was about to bear witness to this woman’s suicide.

But instead of a gunshot, there was the sound of a door handle rattling.

And then, his phone exploded.

Not in the metaphorical sense, where a slew of texts came in at once.  No, Myles’ phone *detonated*.  Not all at once, either.  He could see the shockwave that rippled through it almost in slow motion, propagating from the direction of the chemical plant, and blasting the device to shrapnel in a cone that accelerated in an unpredictable, rapid jerk forward that left him screaming in shocked pain as a part of what used to be his touchscreen carved through his cheek.  Other chunks of debris fired so fast they embedded themselves in the driver’s side window and pylon, the sound of the impacts mixed with the electric hiss of a battery discharging as it was rent apart.

Then everything was quiet, except for Myles swearing.

He didn’t even have his first aid kit in this car; it was in his other rental, who knew how far away.

A quick check showed the chemical refinery was still standing; whatever had blown up his phone hadn’t hit the building.  Or his car, which was good.  Probably.

He held a pile of McDonald’s napkins against the bleeding hole in his face as he drove back to the hotel with shaking hands.  No phone and something insane happening meant exactly one thing.  Time to make use of his telepad back, and fill in Nate on how his life was about to get way more complicated.

_____

The Akashic Sewer was about as disgusting as ever.

There was clearly a pattern to when and why it opened.  Or at least, there was that weird fuzzy logic in the back of James’ head that screamed that there was some unknown criteria at play here.  Anesh thought there was a much more overt logic, but he hadn’t actually found anything linking it all together.  So, for now, they just had Lua keeping an eye out, and sent in a team every time the door was there.  It came out to about once or twice a week, and the door tended to vanish when unobserved after a delve was finished.

They were here on kinda late notice, with James already packed for his planned vacation after the short meeting with the rest of the pillars of the Order tomorrow.  But he’d largely given up sleeping anyway, and so he’d had little trouble joining an Anesh with some free time and a messed up sleep schedule, and an overly excited Ethan who was not being shy about letting James know how cool it was to be teamed up again.

Putting aside that one main distraction, the process was getting more clear.  The Sewer was gross, awful, and in many cases probably toxic.  They all wore thick filter masks, but James had asked Nate to find them some actual military grade gas masks.  Nate had muttered something about not putting up with ordering from anything except Sysco, and had delegated it, but James was pretty sure it would get done.

The wildlife here hadn’t improved any, either.  The scream balls of rat skulls woven together with sinew and dripping wet rope were still around, flinging themselves down hallways with no real regard for hunting.  Though James acknowledged, especially with how Ethan froze up after the first one, that they were probably a great way to sweep away inexperienced students that got trapped here.  Those arm-vines were more prevalent, too.  Growing around the pipes in the walls like they were giving them a hug, only with more bulging pus sacks than any hug should ever have.

The team had plenty of time to examine the wildlife as they moved, as they were not making good time.  Because the biggest change was that the dungeon had warped itself to have more than just straight corridors with the occasional intersection.

Dark pipe filled hallways led to miniature mazes, the walls and floors shifting abruptly to decayed wood and a layer of mud.  There was, so far, nothing living here that they hadn’t seen so far.  But the hallways suddenly twisted in sharp corners and slight inclines and drops.  The two mazes they’d been through so far were simple enough that a toddler could have passed them if they were drawn on paper.  But the fact that they were seeing something new grow like this at all was worrying.

The mazes also had a couple of those overly hostile academic questions scrawled on the walls.  The group answered them, after explaining to Ethan that they tried to funnel the sparks to a single person so they’d have the most flexibility with the chests at the end. The second maze had another weird feature, too.  A small alcove jutting away from one of the side corridors, within which there was a bright blue ring of moss on the floor that glowed like it was radioactive, and a rotting wooden lectern in the middle of it.  Though Anesh confirmed the moss wasn’t actually radioactive with the Geiger counter he’d brought along.  There was a handprint on the lectern, like they were invited to step forward and touch it.

They did not step forward and touch it.

They passed a dozen or so rooms, declining to enter any of the ones locked with red sparks.  They hadn’t been fighting enough to be comfortable spending points they might need to get out later.  One room wasn’t actually locked, but did contain *hundreds* of the little wet rat things that normally lurked up in the pipes and drank the dripping blue slime.  They were stacked in their, floor to ceiling, and when the door opened the entire collective began screaming, clawing at each other to breach out and rip and tear at the intruders.

Ethan had been almost swept away by the matted fur tide before James and Anesh got the door slammed shut.  The little monsters were blinded by the powerful lights they all had strapped to their armor, but that didn’t stop them from shoving forward anyway.  The two of them had to hold the door there, leaving Ethan the disgusting task of splattering the shambling critters that had already poured out before they could compose themselves, and then getting him to help them wedge a piece of broken pipe under the handle to seal the door shut before they could let go.

They stopped checking doors after that.

There was also a weird moment when Anesh’s Geiger counter actually did go off.  It wasn’t exactly surprising; James had always figured they should be coming down here in hazmat suits.  What was surprising was that the actual range of the radiation seemed to drop off exponentially.  It came from one of those gurgling columns of thick liquid that poured out of a breached pipe and down into the floor.  And it was *very* radioactive.  If you were within a half inch of it, that is.  If you were an inch away, it was a little radioactive.  If you were beyond that, it was… well, ‘safe’ was a word that got thrown around a lot and probably didn’t apply here.  But it wouldn’t cause telomere decay.  It would cause nausea, though; even through the mask, James could smell this one, and it smelled like the worst lemon.  Overpowering and rotten.

Anesh had wanted to take a sample, even if just to hand off to a physicist somewhere.  But they hadn’t brought any way to carry it, except for a jar in the duffle bag that had shattered during the whole ‘wave of rats’ thing.  So they made a note, and figured they’d come back.

An hour and a half of exploration later - and it did feel like exploration a bit more now, instead of just walking in a straight line - the trio came to the end of a long bend in the hallway, and saw fifty feet away the mouth of the tunnel.  James and Ethan flicked off their flashlights while Anesh, watching their backs, waited a bit more distance before joining them.

“Check your armor.”  James instructed Ethan, as he and Anesh gave their own black shelled forms a once over.  They were waiting about twenty feet away from the angry orange light pouring in through the breach in the pipes.

“Why?”  Ethan asked, voice muffled by the mask.  “I’d know if I’d been stabbed.”

“Because it’s a good habit.”  James said.  And he didn’t really need to say more; the kid was already moving to copy him without having to be told twice.  But this was the Sewer, and screwing around here was a bad idea.  “Also, there’s these maggot things here that can burrow into you and you don’t feel it. Or if there’s any rapid mushroom growths, that’s a problem we’ll need to burn off.  Now turn around so I can check your back.”

Ethan didn’t complain after that, just doubled his efforts with wide eyes.

After they’d cleared themselves and made sure their weapons, such as they were, were intact, they moved forward.  James and Ethan were carrying quarterstaves, which were, as far as the door into this place was concerned, *absolutely just brooms*.  Anesh had brought that binder from the Office that turned impacts into paper, and then also a long ruler that was vector-locked once it was moving at a certain speed.

“So, we’re gonna meet your friend?”  Ethan asked.

“I promise you she is not my friend.”  James replied, shaking his head at the excitement the younger man displayed.

“Yet.”  Anesh added in a wry voice.

James looked over at him, narrowing his eyes, as if to say, “Yeah, but like… really?”

Anesh didn’t respond except to tilt his head and cock his own eyebrows with a shrug that communicated “I mean, yeah?  Who do you think you are, mister ‘friends with a stapler’, huh?”

“Okay,” Ethan said out loud, breaking the spell, “so, I don’t really remember what these things are like, and I kinda forgot to read the manual…”

James sighed.  “Ratroaches are basically humanoid, almost always hostile, and smell awful.  Their weak points are organs, because they aren’t very well put together.  Literally.  You can sometimes see vital points through their skin.  Aim for those.  Or go for disarms; the pseudo-shoulder joint on their extra arm is *very* brittle, and you can snap that off with a good kick.  Don’t let them cut you with their knives; they’re almost always infected with something.”  He glanced over at Ethan, the kid looking a little sick.

“That’s… uh…”

“I know.”  James said.  “Or, well, I shouldn’t assume I know what you’re gonna say.  But if it’s ‘that’s either brutal or disgusting’, then yes.”

“Yeah, what the fuck.  And they’re going to try to kill us?”  Ethan asked.  Like he hadn’t just been going through a dungeon.

“Is that a surprise?”  Anesh muttered.

“But if they look like people…”

James snorted, and restrained himself from slapping the back of Ethan’s head.  “The camracondas don’t look like people, but they are.  The ratroaches look people-adjacent, but they aren’t.  Except for maybe one or two.  We’ll see.” He rolled his shoulder, and stepped forward toward the end of the tunnel. “Ready?”

“Ready.”  “Sure.”  Came back.

The light was from a source this time, instead of just being omnipresent.  A massive burning orb hung above the black gravel rectangle that dominated the center of the arena space.  Flickering shadows rolled around the walls and ground, cast by the wire fence, the red stone pillars, and the pack of ratroaches standing in the space.

As always, there was a crowd.  Fifty, maybe sixty of the creatures, packed close together, many of them pressed against the wire fence around the ‘court’ in a way that made their fur and skin bulge outward.  They did not speak, did not utter any sounds, but they made a rattling noise anyway, slamming their weapons against the fence, the floor, and each other, to create the entrance music for the trio.  Many of them still wore scraps of human clothing; taken, James knew, from those who had fallen here.

Standing at mid court, there were three ratroaches.  Two looked about as ravenous as the rest of the crowd, slavering pink drool dripping from the corners of their misaligned maws.  But they stood behind and deferred to the one at the point of their van.

“So, I’ve been wondering!”  James called across the court, their team stopping just before setting foot on the gravel.  “Do you just hang out here all day waiting for someone to drop in? Because I can get you a Switch if you want!  Jam some Animal Crossing instead of just lurking here with your arms crossed?  Eh?”

She did not look how James remembered, exactly.  Again.

Pale cream fur marked with patches of ridged chitin or exposed skin, as well as pockets of redcapped mushrooms growing out of her flesh.  A head with a rat’s muzzle sloping backward into a more rounded skull, with a single uneven antenna coming out of it.  She had four eyes, two very small insectile ones up front and two larger, more mammalian ones farther up her face.  Uneven with each other, of course.  Two arms jutting out of her right side, a third from the left.  And digitigrade legs that ended in clawed feet that already dripped blood on the gravel from where they had been torn up.

A mismatched creature.  A failure of design.  And yet…

She was taller than before.  No, not exactly taller.  Her back was straighter.  Her extra arm more independent, supporting her grip on her spear instead of just flailing with it.  The patterns of chitin and fur less raw and angrily infected where they met skin.  Her eyes were focused on him.  All of them.

And when she spoke, this time, it wasn’t mangled.

“You are baaahk.”  She gurgled, and the crowd went silent.  Still flawed, but far more intelligeable.  “More taunts?  Afrhaaid to fight?”

“James.”  Anesh nudged him quietly and tilted his head at the ratroach behind the leader.  James glanced at it, and realized that it too had been modified.  It was more sleak, like a sprinter.  The other one had more muscle attached.  But neither of them came close to how much she’d changed.  They still looked like broken prototypes.

“Love what you’ve done with yourself.”  James said.  “New skincare routine?  Divine intervention, maybe?”  He prompted.

The ratroach shook her head in a gesture that was a blatant misunderstanding of human body language, small blue droplets of spittle sizzling on the ground as she did so.  “I rheemake myshelf!”  She called out.  “To offer ouhr god a better praayer.  Over and ohver again, uhntil victory, or death. Now come, or they will get hhhungry.”  The ratroache waved her spear at the crowd around them.

James shrugged, and stepped forward.  “Your god seems like a dick.”  He said.

And a split second later, slapped aside the spear aimed at his chest.

Beside him, Ethan and Anesh engaged the other two, swapping once they realized they had different strengths and weaknesses.  But James stuck to his dance partner.

It was almost disappointing, but she hadn’t really changed that much, and he still wildly outclassed her.  So, he got a little cocky and started throwing taunts as he ducked her stabs.  “So hey,” he asked, “does it count as a prayer if you keep losing?”  He kicked her leg out and backed off as she spun her claws out to recover, hissing in response.  “I mean, if I were some kind of weird decay and violence god, I’d be kinda mad if my followers kept losing.”

She screamed, and lunged, and James took the chance to catch her spear, yank it out of her weaker hands, and fling it sideways to trip up the ratroach Ethan was struggling with.

“You’re going to have to talk to me eventually.”  He told his opponent, as she tried to vomit in his eyes.  “Come on.  We literally do not have to do this.”  He said, as she tried to tear his throat out.

And then, with a sigh, he snapped a kick into her midsection so hard she coughed up blood and bile.  “I know you’re smarter than this.”  He whispered to her as she lay on the ground.  “Your god didn’t even build you to last.  Come on.  Just… just come with me.  Your friends can come too.  We can find a way to heal you.”  His taunting was gone now, replaced by just a sad resignation.  “Please?”  James asked.

“Ah… ah…” the ratroach panted.  “Ahnd trade… one slaver god… for ahnother?”  She muttered, a horrifying toothy grin on her maw as she held herself up off the ground, vomit and blood dripping onto the black gravel.  “Lose muh.. ma… mhy value?”

James knelt in front of her. Finally, she was at least talking.  “I can’t… I can’t promise you anything in a way that would be believable, I guess.  You’d just have to trust me that… well, that I can help you.”  He held out a hand to the girl bleeding on the ground in front of him, staring up with confused and pained eyes.

The ratroach reached out.  Took his hand.

And then screamed a laugh as she yanked him forward and drove a knife into his chest.  James windmilling his arms as she tackled him backward, losing a grip on the blade now stuck in his chest, but slamming him into the ground regardless.  “Weak!”  She screamed at him.  “Khind and *weak*!”  She raised a hand, pulling another buried knife out of the gravel, and grinned down at him.

Then Ethan hit her in the side of the head with his staff, swinging like he was going for a grand slam.  Something cracked, and something snapped, and James was pretty sure that the solid wooden stick wasn’t the thing that had just lost the most durability.  The ratroach toppled off him, skidding sideways and rolling up in a screaming ball of fur and beetle shell pressed up against the fallen form of one of her teammates.  A pair of feet came into James’ vision as Anesh took up a guard position between him and the still moving ratroach.

“Holy shit, are you okay?!”  Ethan asked in a panicked voice.

“Yeah, you good?”  Anesh echoed, much calmer.

James stood, taking a deep breath.  His chest hurt, but…

He grabbed the dagger, the hilt wrapped in what was probably just ratroach hide from an unlucky casualty of this place.  And with a quick jerk, he pulled it out.  The pain stopped almost right away, as did the bleeding.

The ratroach was still letting out pained laughs.  “Got you… got you… you… die… a good prayer… got you…” she was muttering.

“Ow.”  James said, loudly and clearly.  Then he tossed the knife onto the ground in front of her, cutting off her mutterings as she saw him stand, eyes widening in disbelief.  “So, yeah,” James addressed Ethan, “I’m gonna say ‘not friends’.  Also, holy shit, a single point of endurance does a *lot*!  Anesh, check this out!  Stab me!”

“No!”  Anesh gave him an incredulous wide eyed stare, looking around the room as his concern over James being stabbed faded.  “Can we leave now?  Please?”

“Yeah.  Get the door, you’ve got more sparks than me.”  The ratroaches around them had gone silent now, even if they were still staring at the victors on the field.   Which was perfect, because James had more to say.  “I’m going on vacation!”  He announced to the room.  And mostly the one who had stabbed him.  And then, in a quieter voice, just to her, he added more.  “I’m gonna say it again, because I think you need to hear it.  I don’t hate you.  And my offer is real.  And kindness is not weakness.”  He stood over her prone form, keeping a slightly more cautious distance this time. “But here’s the bitter part.  It won’t last forever.  I’m offering you a way out, I’m offering you a hand up.  But I am not responsible for you.  And if you keep knifing people, some day, you’re just going to get added to the long list of monsters that haven’t survived contact with me.”

“Yo!  I got books, let’s go!”  Ethan called from over at the exit door.  “They’re all still looking at me and I wanna leave!”

James waved him off, asking for just another minute.  Then he sighed.  “I see you,” he said to the unresponsive ratroach, “and I see a lot of who I used to be.  And I want to help you, because… because I know how much it sucks to be angry and full of hate all the time.  And maybe you don’t agree.  But I dunno.  Remake yourself again, and again, as many times as you need to, but remember that you’re on your own until you get help.”

“James!”  Anesh yelled, holding the rusted portcullis open.  “Come on!  I’m not gonna stand here all day.”

“Coming!”  James answered back.  And then, to his not-friend, he said a goodbye.  “See you when I’m back from vacation.  I’ll bring you some pictures of mountains.”

_____

What was original supposed to be a short meeting between James and Anesh, and the other main figures in the Order, had rapidly spiraled out of control.

Everyone was here, because everything was suddenly a lot more urgent than expected.  There was more to do than anyone had expected.

“Maybe…” James had started, and Karen of all people had cut him off.

“You’re going on vacation.”  She said.  “You haven’t taken a day off in…” Karen trailed off and didn’t finish the sentence.  “And also, I suspect you’re not sleeping.  You need time off, to prevent burnout.  Everyone else, eventually.”

There was a group of people here James didn’t recognize.  Mostly young, athletic looking men and women, keeping to themselves off to the side of the room.  A number of different yellow orb skills flared when he looked at them, nudging his brain to notice how they watched things, how they were all armed.  When JP swept by and handed them all packets of paper, James realized what he was looking at.  Rogues.

He’d go say hi in a bit.  JP could hire who he wanted, but James would be damned if he didn’t immerse them in the Order’s culture.

Then, the discussion had started.  And the planning had gotten so long winded, that Nate had found the time to sneak away and prepare a buffet dinner.

Three dungeons.  One was a sort of known factor, James and Anesh would be tackling that, under the guise of a road trip.  Or maybe the other way around.  The other two were going to require investigation, and exploration, in new and potentially deadly spaces.

The teams had come together in the end, but there was *fierce* competition to actually be part of them.  Especially from the newer members.  In the end, it was decided to send two people to each region the old fashioned way, secure a hotel or other space, and then telepad in the rest.  Fourteen person crews for each dungeon.  Each one containing experienced combatants, members of Research, at least one rogue, and two or three new members of the Order to avoid monopolization of power, and also to get the people who were most excited some field experience.

They would not be holding back on equipment, and they would not be sparing any cost.  Money was less important than a safe first delve.  Even the Office, after all, had things like the camracondas; things that were functionally auto-kills on any delver that didn’t get lucky enough or wasn’t prepared for it.

Also, while this was going on, the FBI had requested the Order’s help on another missing person’s case.  This time not a missing employee, but a cold case that they’d decided to use the Order’s expertise to work though the backlog of.  JP and DeKay were on that, bringing with them another pair of the agents in training.

Which would have left a power vacuum in the Lair, if that was the way they operated.  But it really wasn’t.  Harvey would continue running the Response program, and while he wasn’t happy with James choosing a slower than desired speed, he had been given the green light to reach out to local advocates for police reform, and make contact.  The Response crews would be understrength with so many people out, so local dungeon activity was being dialed down until they could recruit enough to resume normal operations.  Sarah and the group she was working with for the Clutter Ascent would remain active as normal, which was at this point the main group seeing to the mental health needs of the Order.   And Karen wasn’t going, having fully transitioned into being a combination dispute resolution machine and budget master.  So there’d be someone on hand to solve most problems of that nature.

As it stood, it was strange, but since their main activity was simply delving known dungeons, it didn’t disrupt the whole Order that much to transition to exploring potential new dungeons.  Even if their supposed leader was on vacation.  It made James feel both comforted, and mildly dejected.

But only mildly.

While everyone was around, people took the opportunity to discuss the different magics that were running rampant.  Reed handed out the new shield bracers to everyone who’d be heading out that didn’t already have one of the more developed Status Quo versions.  People talked about yellow or blue orbs they’d found, sometimes that they wished they’d been able to copy, sometimes that they were glad they hadn’t.  Someone had gotten two ranks of ‘glaive’ from a yellow, and one of the new girls, Mars, had practically jumped at the chance to fabricate something in the basement that would trigger the skill.  One rank in a weird weapon skill still almost always made it more worth it to use that than anything a person had only been training with for a month or two.

Some people had triggered their bonds, gained from the Clutter Ascent sticks.  It wasn’t just James and Anesh; the templating had changed on all of them.  James and Anesh took the time to test their sharing of speed, too, and found that it thankfully wouldn’t kill them if they used it in a car.  It was *their* speed, not the car’s speed.  And it was kind of a silly definition of the word, too.  They could dial it up or down, how much they were pouring into the other person, and it basically just made the partner faster.  Or slower.  You *could* take, instead of give, without asking.  The bonds were a massive trust exercise.  Especially since no one knew if they could ‘break’.  The other people who’d gotten bonds could share vision, and rhetoric, and both of those were really fun to see in action.

Also, the Order’s first improvised theater group had made their first collective level up.  They all had a vague impression of having to choose together, and needing to reach a consensus about their choice before it stuck.  They were all now one point higher up on ‘motivation’.  And it showed.  Dramatically.  Pun mostly not intended.

And everyone, practically *everyone*, who had any kind of even remotely physical role, had been abusing the exercise potions like they were water in the desert.  Push yourself to the point of near breaking, down one of those, *feel* as your muscles rebuilt themselves stronger and harder, and then do it all again.  With a properly designed regimen, someone who had spent most of their life out of the gym could cram two year’s worth of strength training into about a *week*.

So it was that the Order mobilized.  With spirited debate over who should go where, over what to do about the AI in the basement, over whether or not Dave should keep flying Pendragon without filing flight plans with the FAA.  But ultimately, with excitement and eagerness to see just how weird the world really was.

It was infectious, even to James.  There was, as one of the interns put it, “a lot of misinformation about how normal everything is”, and everyone here had seen just enough to know that the normal was a disguise.  That there was more behind the curtain.  And yeah, not everyone was going out to peek.  Some of them were staying here, content to continue forming a private peacekeeping force, or learning how to duplicate buildings.  Those poor souls, so stuck in their boring, grey routines.

But just being around, being close to where the secrets were being collected like coins in a dragon’s horde?

It was electrifying.  Like the rooms behind the hidden doors truly were endless.

Almost made James regret going on vacation in the middle of it, until he remembered where he was headed in the first place.