The Daily Grind - Chapter 150 (Patreon)

You know, the road dungeon was, like, the first one I brainstormed after the Office?  It's actually been hinted at existing since before they even met El, and it's one I thought would be one of my favorites.  And now that we're *here*, well past when I expected to have gotten around to it, I find that I don't really know how to write it.  It's like I'm writing a different story entirely, and it feels... weird, I guess.  Awkward.

Anyway, here's a chapter.

_____

“If you obey all the rules, you’ll miss all the fun.”  - Katharine Hepburn -

Last night, James had dreamed.

It wasn’t really much of a dream, as far as he was concerned.  It was just himself, sitting with Anesh in their motel room, playing some kind of board game.  It was dark out, and the lights of passing cars and streetlights cut lines through the faded orange curtains of the street facing window.  The AC unit was humming a metal song.  And everything was perfectly ordinary.

There was a small coffee table that had been moved to the foot of the bed.  Varnished dark wood, marred with the strikes and marks of a lifetime in a motel where people didn’t care about the furuniture.  Two chairs, newer, with coarse green cushions and wicker arms, sat on opposite sides.

The fact that he’d found himself concerned, and not awake, was what really caught him off guard.

“Your play.”  Anesh said.

James kept his mind on the rudder of the dream logic.  He’d really gotten good at it, but he didn’t have room to be smug here.  Dreaming was like...like a really old laptop, trying to run a dozen programs at once.  There was limited space, and you had to pick what emotions and thoughts mattered.

So he let the dream flow, and made his move.

“Go.”  He told Anesh.

“Strange.”  Anesh tilted its head.  “Why that move?”

James made another play, adjusting a pawn on the board.  Putting it somewhere it would be able to grow better.  The space they were in was too crowded, there was no room for them to shine there.

“You’re playing the wrong game.”  Anesh said.

“I’m playing the game that matters.”  James told the thing sitting across from him.  He tried to focus on the board.  There was a piece in play that he wasn’t allowed to know about, which was frustrating.  If he knew what it was, though, he could use it better.  Make the other pieces better. He narrowed his dreaming eyes.  It was *right there*, he could just…

“You’ve gotta let that one go.”  Anesh told him.

James glanced up sharply.  Sharper than he should have been able to, in a dream. With a hard gaze, he tried to figure out what about Anesh had changed.

“You see so much.”  Not Anesh muttered. “It’s not a power, it’s just you.  How, I wonder?”

James didn’t answer. He went back to trying to look at his missing piece.

“Stop.”  The interloper told him.  And with the word, its side of the dream shifted to sorrow.  Dimmer lights and a pitying expression greeted James as he looked up.  “You don’t want to do that.”  It said.

“Why not?”  James asked.  “It’s one of mine.  I can feel it.”

“Hm.”  Anesh’s face looked strange with that gaze of dark consideration on it.  “How aware are you, really?”  The stranger asked.  “Enough, perhaps.”  It tapped the game board with a long, weary finger.  “Taken you long enough.”

James had questions.  He was waking up.  But the dream wasn’t breaking.  His eyes weren’t opening.  He was waking up, and he was still in *this* motel room.  He turned dream eyes on the door, but knew there was nothing beyond it, before looking back to what was here with him.  “Who are you?”  He asked.

“The Right Person.”  It said.  “At The Right Moment.”  The words echoed with a style of truth to them, a kind of ontological certainty that was etched onto the fabric of all things.  It would have been, James figured, impossible for this thing to lie about its name.

“That’s not actually an answer.”  James told it.  Because, dream or not, mouthing off to authority figures was just sort of an otological truth of his own at this point.

The Right Person, At The Right Moment laughed softly at the narrative.   “Ware.”  It told him.  “You might not like it if *that* defines you forever.”  It said.  It was still wearing Anesh’s eyes, but they went on for miles and miles, years and years, of tired trials.

James turned away from it.  The game was still in progress.  He could think more about it now, but his eyes drifted back to that one piece that he couldn’t know.  “What happened to them?”  He asked.

“They did the right thing.”  It said, shaking its head.  “Idiot.  Picked it up from someone they met once.”  And then, in that quieter sad echo, they added, “You know why you can’t think about them?”

Thoughts ticked in James’ head.  His physical mind was still a limit, and how fast time was working here was up in the air.  But his physical mind was still pushed well beyond human normal, and it didn’t take him more than a few subjective days to make the connection.  “Because they’re an infomorph.”  He said.  “I can almost remember them.  Wouldn’t that… bring them back?”

“Yes.”  The Right Person, At The Right Moment said.  “And you are so, so close.  Now.  Ask the next question that I’m thinking.”

“Back from where?”  James whispered.

“From a next life.  From a sister that loves her.  From a new start.”

It was a cruel truth, James couldn’t help but to sob at it.  Whoever it had been, whatever they had meant, was gone.  And they could come back; whole and remade, as if nothing had ever changed at all.  All it would take… was a small sacrifice.

And everyone in this facade of a room knew what choice he’d never make.

James cried for a long time, in this dream space.  And the entity waited, patiently.  Only occasionally stealing moves in their game.  But as with all grief, eventually, the worst of the venom was drained away, and James was left wishing that he could sleep.  He felt exhausted, and empty.  But still, he rolled off the uncomfortable motel mattress, dried his eyes, and got up.

There were still questions and answers.  The dream would have ended if he was no longer needed in it.

“You gave me a lock once, didn’t you?”  James asked.

A languid nod, another little affectation that didn’t belong on Anesh.  “I did.”  The other said.  “It was something you needed.  Not quite sure why, but that’s the way it goes more often than not.”

“I’ve been wondering about that.”  James was curious about the details.  “I could have made it without the weapon.  Unless I used it wrong? Or at the wrong time?  I don’t understand why that, why then.”

A truck rumbled past outside, past the door that went nowhere, out in an imagined street that didn’t exist.  “You could have made it.”  It nodded at him.  “I never have all my own answers, you know.  All I know is that you needed it.  Since the knots worked out, that means you used it well.  That’s all that matters.  Sometimes, it’s something small.  One extra bullet, plus or minus, can tip the scales.”

“Is that what you do?”  James questioned.

“Tip the scales.”  It nodded.  “Little things.  It matters more than you’d think.  Big picture stuff here.”

“Are you on our side?”

“You barely have a side.”

“Not an answer.”

“I don’t have one side.”

“How many sides are you on?”

“Two hundred and eighty eight.  Eighty seven, if today ends badly.”

“They’re… all like me?”

“No one’s like you.  You’re something new.  Even I don’t know what that means yet.  But yeah, you’re one of the sides I’m pulling for.”

“There’s something you’re not letting me… ask.”  James felt a pressure in the back of his head.  His actual, physical head, not this projection in the dream.  “What are you doing here?”

“I came here to help you let go.”

“That was before.  Why are you still here?”

“Waiting to see if you can do it.”

“Do what?”

“Ask.”

Could he?  James didn’t know.  He had the words.  He had the curiosity, the desire to know.  But something was holding him back.  There was a feeling like a hand clawed around his wrist, holding him back from reaching out, except it was around his whole mind, nails sinking into his soul.

But this thing was here for a reason.  It had made this dream and slipped on his boyfriend’s form to accomplish something.  And James couldn’t just let it go without knowing.

So he struggled.  But all that did was cause the tension to increase.  Brute force, just trying to think through the fog, wasn’t working.  It was like trying to outsmart a rampart.

Something else then.  Memory tricks, creative tools, discipline aids, nothing let him slip out of the increasing tightness.  The more he struggled, the worse it got.  It wasn’t something he could fight, it was an immutable law of this dream, like trying to run from an explosion during a nightmare; it was never going to happen.

James looked down at the game board.  He made a play.  Moved a paladin into the same space as another.

Then he waited.

It took a bit.  But James had been having nightmares for a while now.  And the first time he thrashed so much he woke Anesh up, his partner had found there was one perfect way to offer comfort to him.

Anesh stepped into the dream through the skulljack link, wide eyed, instantly aware of the dream logic that was going on, and *furious* to see an intruder wearing his face, holding James’ spirit by the throat.

“*What do you want*?”  Anesh demanded of it.

The Right Person, At The Right Moment could have cried, or laughed, in equal measure.

It grinned, a wild, manic smile that split the false face it was wearing.  Around them, the dream was coming apart.  The walls of the motel were just *gone* when no one was watching.  Chunks of things and conceptual objects vanishing without focus as the two partners began to truly wake up.  “For the first time in four hundred years...” it gasped the words as the dream dissolved, “I can say… that I want you… to...” it stumbled to its feet as the last of the furniture departed, leaving the three of them standing in a circle of white light in the middle of eternity, “*help me*.”  The last words came out in a hiss of panic, as it reached out for James, a pleading look in those old tired eyes.

And then it was gone.

James woke up.

Anesh didn’t.  He just rolled over into a different dream, tugging James back down with an awkward yelp by the cord connecting them that he’d sleepily plugged into their skulljacks.

They’d talk about what happened later.

_____

The car slid through a mirage like a curtain of silk, heat distortions dancing before and around them like the road was two hundred degrees on a summer day. Which would have been impossible, it being two AM on a Sunday.

The ripples in reality lapped at the wing mirrors, tugged their way through open windows, and shimmered around them in the night, the dark road growing thick with distortion as James put the pedal down and followed the now barely visible red specks of El’s tail lights.

The field was looking for something.  For a sense of adventure, he might have called it.  But what El had said was much closer.  It was looking for him to be running *away*.

Wasn’t hard to slide into that mindset.  James was on vacation, after all.  And also there was a pretty strong desire to get away from whatever this stuff was that looked like it was trying to eat his car.  Next to him in the passenger seat, James noticed Anesh clenching his teeth and gripping tight to the armrest as he watched one of the ripples getting closer to his head.

And then, the distortions flared to even greater heights, heat waves in the dark of night, before they parted like a veil and fell away.

James and Anesh whooped as the world around them lit up.  They’d made it.  And were also partially blind while their eyes adjusted.

“El could have maybe warned us about the *bloody sun*.”  Anesh had an arm in front of his face as he yelled.  James had no such luxury, just trying to keep his watering eyes open enough to stay on the road.  He wanted to respond that he suspected this dungeon had a softer form of antimeme, which was why El couldn’t explain that much.  But when he tried to form words, it just came out as a pained growly noise.

When both of them could finally see, the sight of the space they’d cut into was something else, though.

The road stretched away from them, so far that it melded with the horizon.  Gone were the trees and scrub brush.  In its place, only flat dusty sand and gouts of red rock jutting out of the ground surrounded them.  Ahead, El was slowing her car to a stop in the middle of the road, pointedly avoiding the gravel shoulder, and from his vantage point Anesh could see that it wasn’t gravel, but thousands of dull metal burrs on the side of the road.

Weeds grew up from that pile of metal.  Plants of greens and yellows so bright against the dull sand that they almost hurt to look at.  A few years ago, before having seen a little of how weird the real world could be, James would have thought them dungeon constructs.  Now, though, he just recognized the mullein plants as the kind of things that grew in the natural world, and just looked bizarre if you ever stopped to take a closer peek at them.

Overhead, a pair of suns that looked far too close for anything to live under them cast down angry rays, baking the road and the sand around them.  One red, one yellow, side by side in the sky like they were in a close race to see which one got past noon faster.

In the distance, James could see a small curve where the road forked.  In the crook of the fork, maybe five miles away, was a tiny little speck of a structure that James couldn’t quite make out, even with his upgraded eye.

He let the car roll to a stop behind El, softly applying the brakes to shed speed.  He’d cracked his door and was about to step out, when Anesh called a warning.

“Something in the road!”  His partner shouted at him, and James jerked his foot back, looking down to see a small bulge in the asphalt darting in swooping circles around his driver’s side door.  It wasn’t the only one, either; there were maybe ten or twenty of the things, slowly circling their cars like mobile speed bumps.

El had cracked the door to her own car and was standing in the footwell of the driver’s seat, arms over the roof as she called back to them.  “Oh yeah!  Watch out for those!”  She yelled.  “They don’t jump or anything, just don’t let ‘em get your toes!”

“How the fuck did you ever survive this place?!”  James yelled back.

“Charm and good luck!”  El replied.

Anesh by this point had put his seat back and crawled into the back seat, getting a good look around them at the small pavement creatures.  “She must have a lot of good luck.”  He muttered as he watched the school of speed bumps move.  They didn’t look like much; just moving blisters of asphalt.  Maybe the side of a particularly thick arm.  But the way the moved really did remind him of fish, and so far, he hadn’t seen any of them try to break the surface.

“So, what now?”  James called over to El.  He stole a quick glance behind them, and noticed that the road that led back to reality seemed almost *flagrantly* boring.  Like the dungeon knew what it had to offer, and was making the real world look as unappealing as possible.  But it made the exit easy to spot, which was nice.

“Now we go find something.”  She said.  “It’s safer during the day, so we’re in luck!  If we stick to the side roads, we should be able to explore without anything serious trying to jump us.”

“Sorry, side roads?”  James looked down the two lane highway again.  “What, exactly…”

“Can’t tell you exactly.”  El shrugged, seeming to not even notice that she wasn’t kidding when she said ‘can’t’.  “There’s usually a lot of space between stuff though.  This is normal.  Normal for this place.”  She corrected.  “We’ll need to raid a gas station at some point.  But it’s fine.  Time passes differently here, so there’s no real pressure.”

“Differently *how*?!”  James demanded.  “Wait, don’t tell me.  You can’t tell me.”  He sighed.  The memeplex around this place was suddenly feeling a lot more dangerous, he realized.  Why had they come in here without doing more questioning, more preparation?  “Alright.  Let’s get moving.  We’ll follow you.”

“Okay!  Keep an eye out for secret roads!”  El yelled back.  She seemed to be in good spirits, which was suddenly infuriating to James, who felt like he’d almost been tricked into a dangerous situation.  Partially by El, partially by the dungeon itself.

“Long distances, eh?”  He grumbled under his breath as he looked down the shimmering road.  Behind him, there was a grinding noise, and he turned to see Anesh tossing chunks of a ham sandwich onto the street, the little bulges in the asphalt quickly swarming them and splitting open into rows of grinding gears that snapped shut around the morsels of food and pulverized them.  “Making friends?”

“I wanted to see what they looked like inside.”  Anesh shook his head with pursed lips.  “I don’t like it.”

“So, El’s absolutely under some memetic effect.”  James said as they got moving.  Anesh stayed in the back seat, crouched in the middle of the car so that he could react quickly to anything.  They’d planned out their general engagement strategy, at least.  “And I think we might be too.  Why didn’t we prepare more?”

“We’re pretty well armed.”  Anesh pointed out.

“Yeah, but no extra gas cans.”  James said.  “And we’re always pretty well armed.”

Standard body armor, slightly incredibly illegal P90s, shield bracers, and well sharpened short swords apiece.  James was wearing the earring that let him turn invisible and perfect a strike, and Anesh had that weird binder that turned kinetic energy into paperwork worn as a buckler.  They both had two blue orbs ready to go.  Eight uses of [Shape Asphalt] apiece, with James also having forty or so [Refine Gas] charges, and Anesh getting luckier with [Separate Alloy].

They were more or less prepared for anything that they would have a chance against anyway.

“She said to keep an eye out for secret roads.”  James told Anesh as they started driving again, quickly picking up to speed behind El.  She wasn’t being shy about opening up the throttle, so James trusted her experience, and kept up.  “Not sure how we’re supposed to do that going seventy.”

“Looks like we’ve got time to figure it out.”  Anesh sighed.  “I think I see another road across the desert.”  He was looking out the driver’s side back window at what looked like a distant grey river maybe a mile or two off in the distance.  “So… is now a good time to talk?”

James gave an unseen shrug.  “Probably.  I dunno what to say.”

“Well the Old Gun made it clear she wasn’t allowed into dungeons.”  Anesh settled back, resting his arm against the headrests of the back seat.  “So at least we’re *pretty sure* we won’t be overheard here.”

“It was in my head.”  James said quietly, hands tightening on the wheel in a motion that had nothing to do with his driving.  “How long has it been there?”  He wondered.  “It knew about… fuck, it knew about everything.  I could feel it.  It’s like *her*.”

Her being the Old Gun.  Something that looked human, but no one who saw it thought that was anything but a nostalgic affectation.  And the Right Person, At The Right Moment, was like that.

“You remember how we decided a while back that it was generally more efficient to spread dungeon power around, and build an organization using those tools, that could do good even without the magic?”  Anesh commented, seemingly going off on a tangent.

“Yeah?”  James relaxed slightly, even if only out of confusion.  “Why?”

“Well, I feel like this is a really good post hoc argument for why we were right all along about that.”  Anesh said dryly.  “Both of them are obviously tied to the dungeons, and both of them are *absurdly* powerful.  I think this is just a little more evidence into the basket for the theory that they used to be human, and pushed that a little too far.”

“Yeah…” James sighed again.  “What do we do about it?”

“About this one?  Don’t give me that look, I’m not saying it’s name every time.  I think we do nothing.“ Anesh gave his own sigh.  “What are we supposed to *do*, anyway?  Help it?  How? Fight it? *Why*?”  No, we treat them the way we’re treating the government.  Keep going, keep our eyes open, and hope we don’t get too much notice before we’re ready to handle it properly.”

“Bah.”  James waved a hand in the air, only barely paying attention to the road.  “You’re right, but bah.”  He slumped back into his seat.  “See any secret roads yet?”  He asked.

“Nothing.”  Anesh shook his head, alternating to the other side of the car.

“Are the speed bumps still chasing us?”  He asked.

Anesh peeked out the window, the rush of air at high speed tugging at his hair.  “I think they gave up a couple miles ago.”  He said when he ducked back into the car.  “This place is weird.”

“Yeah…”

They kept driving, kept following El’s car ahead of them.  It was a strange feeling, because they’d literally just been doing this same thing for a week.  In theory, they had practice at it. But now, it was all so different.

James knew they were in a dungeon.  He could *feel* it. Anesh could too, though not quite as strongly.  It was a feeling of electric salt on the tip of his nose, that there was something about the very air around them that wasn’t possible, wasn’t *real*.  And that feeling made it functionally impossible to just zone out and let the desert roll by.

This wasn’t a relaxing road trip.  This wasn’t him and his boyfriend taking a drive across the country.

This was a delve.

“Contact right.”  Anesh’s voice was calm, but sharp, and it was almost with *relief* that James finally had something to focus his tension on.

To the right of the road they were driving, maybe two or three hundred feet away, there was the clear shilloutette of another car, driving parallel to them in the sand.  It wasn’t kicking up any dust, though, which was why James hadn’t spotted it.  It also wasn’t getting closer; just keeping pace with them as they drove.

“We’re coming up on what looks like a gas station.”  James said, eyes on a rapid rotation between the side windows, his mirrors and the road.  “Radio El, ask her what the plan is.”

He heard his partner talking through the two-way in the backseat while he kept the car on the roadway, and a minute later, Anesh relayed back to him the conversation with El.  “She says there’s a break in the caltrops around buildings.  Pull around behind the garage, and kill the engine.  The other car should pass us.”

James gave a quick “Aye”, and started to let the car drift down from its considerable speed so that he could make the turn off easily.  El didn’t bother slowing as her own vehicle jerked in what seemed like a wild, heart stopping motion, through the gap in the metal spikes on the roadside, whipping around behind the simple brick structure of the gas station they’d come up on rather abruptly.  James didn’t know why she was in such a hurry, but since nothing was trying to kill them, he decided to take it easy and not flip the car over.

He pulled alongside El’s bright red convertible just as she hopped out of it. To their left, the solid brick wall of the little gas station, to their right, only more desert. They were positioned such that whatever that car driving next to them was, there was a good chance it would miss them in the shade of the structure. “Come on!”  She shouted, waving a hand to them.

James shrugged and killed the engine, both him and Anesh checking the pavement before hopping out and following El as she dashed around to the corner of the building.

“What,” James hissed at her as he and Anesh stacked up behind her, Anesh keeping a watch on their rear while James tried to peek at whatever El was looking for, “are you doing?!”

“Avoiding the other drivers.  Duh.”  El said.

“*Why*!?” James asked.  “I get that this is hard for you, but *come on*.  At least tell us what’s going on *right now*.”  He demanded.

El blinked.  Glanced back at him, blinked again.  Then she straightened up, planting her back against the corner of the wall, leaning against a drainpipe, and sighed.  “Shit.  It’s in my head, isn’t it?”

“Just for this place, I think.”  James said.  “Let’s try a different approach.  Boy, that car sure is chasing us!”  He stated with exaggerated enthusiasm.

El gave a small, unimpressed frown at him for a few seconds, before she processed what he was saying.  “I get what you’re trying to do, but I still feel like I’m not supposed to tell you anything you haven’t figured out.”

“El I explore dungeons for a living.”  James reminded her.  “I am a professional whatever-this-is.  You can safely assume I know things.”

They all tensed up as the other car that had been shadowing them flew past, a couple hundred feet out in the rocky sand.  It was moving a little slower than before, maybe looking for them.  But it either didn’t spot them, or didn’t care now that they were parked.  Anesh kept his gun sighted on it while it rolled past, just to be safe.

“Good point.  Doesn’t work.”  El shook her head.

“Damn, I was hoping.”  James snapped his fingers.  “Okay.  So, you’re clearly worried about the other cars.  And since we’re standing here, I’m guessing parking lots are safe.  You can give us *advice*, since you told us to kill the engine, and I’m guessing that’s what they’re after?  So.  Do we check out the inside of the building now?”

“There’s some cool stuff in them sometimes.”  El said.  And then, realizing what she’d just said, she shivered, and added, “And I… can’t explain what.  Holy shit, now that you point this out, it’s everywhere, isn’t it?  I hate this!”

“Welcome to memetic warfare.”  James blew out a long breath.  “It’ll be fine.  We’re working on some countermeasures.  Also, you survived in here without our help.  We’ll be okay tonight.  Just do what you can, and we’ll pick up the slack.”

“Fine.  Got it.  Okay.  Let’s go, and stay quiet.”  El didn’t look fine.  It looked like she was clawing at her own hands in frustration.  But James didn’t want to say anything and make it worse.

“You left your gun in the car.”  Anesh quietly informed El.

She made a farting noise with her cheeks.  “I never shoot anything anyway.”  She admitted.  “I mostly sneak around and outrun anything hostile.  I had to shoot one of the mechanics once, and it just attracted a flock of these weird ass vulture things.”

Anesh cleared his throat.  “Sorry, did you say ‘culture things’?  What the hell…”

“No, *vulture*.  They’re like big feathery birds.”  El corrected him.

“Guys.”  James cut them off.  “As fun as it is to watch you figure out the lines of how little information El can give us, can we go check out the building?”

“Oh, sure.  You’re gonna be disappointed with what’s inside though!”  El cheerfully informed him.  “These fringe bits are never that cool.”

Inside, it turned out, was… well, it wasn’t like El was *lying*.  James was a little disappointed.  But the style of disappointment was a bit different than what El might have expected.

Inside was a maze of store shelves and wet floor signs.  Literally.  Literally a maze.  It took the experienced eyes of James and Anesh exactly two and a half seconds apiece to realize that the inside was larger than the outside; a fact they’d just grown to accept probably applied to more structures than it didn’t.

The sharp beige metal shelving units, all of them dotted with holes to slot signs or hooks into, rose up to the ceiling in most places.  In the few spots where they didn’t, it was clearly because climbing through the raised holes was the only way to progress.

Similarly, when the signs said ‘wet floor’, they *meant it*.  James was still dragging around a gallon of water in his soaked pant leg from where he’d tried to step over one and misjudged the distance.

Nothing ambushed them.  There were no traps.  Just a particularly unsafe jungle gym to roam through.  Once, they heard a truck rumbling by outside, but El informed them that that just happened sometimes.  There were never any other cars that made noise, just sound effects.

When they reached the front counter after about twenty minutes of light exercise, and basic maze solving abilities, all there was to be found was a dusty cash register, sitting open with nothing in it, a broken glass case that probably once held cigarette, and a cork board against the back wall with half a safety notice, and a scrap of a travel brochure.

“I am disappointed.”  James said, crossing his arms and staring out the plate glass window at the pair of old gas pumps between them and the road.

“I figured you might be.”  El said.  “But hey!  Scrap of a map!”  She plucked the thumbtack off the board and held up the two inch square of travel advertisement.

“El… we don’t know what that means.”  James tiredly shook his head.  “You know what bothers me most?”

“That you haven’t gotten to fight a car yet?”  El asked.

“No, I’m fine not fighting.  Thought I do wish if I was going to be clambering up shelves that I’d worn shorts or something.  It is so hot here.”  James wiped at his forehead.  “No, it’s just so… empty!  There’s nothing in here!  No weird dungeon snacks or anything!”  He looked back out the cracked window pane.  “Actually, this whole place seems empty.  It’s a bit… forlorn?”

“There’s always something on the horizon to get to.”  El said quietly.  “But it never gets that much denser, if that’s what you mean.  Lots of wide open spaces.”

“Does the petrol work?”  Anesh asked, looking under the counter for the buttons that turned on the gas pumps.  He found them, and it didn’t take long for him to click them into the active position.  “I guess we can find out.”

“Holy shit.  That’s why they only work sometimes.”  El’s mouth hung open as she leaned an elbow on the solid part of the counter and half slapped herself on the forehead.  “I’m a fucking moron!”

“Have you ever worked at a gas station that wasn’t remodeled after nineteen eighty?”  James asked.  “Because that’s the only way you’d know that.  I’m not even sure how Anesh knows that.”

“Youtube.”  He answered simply.

“So, what’s the map do?”  James asked, pointing to the scrap in El’s hand.

She looked at it, eyes narrowed like she was focusing.

Nothing happened.

“Nothing, in this one.”  El shrugged.  “You want it?”

James took the offered bit of map.  “I’m confused.  Do the maps sometimes do something?  Are they magic?  Is this where your spells come from? Am I asking too many questions you can’t answer?  Is-“

“Yes.”  El angrily burst out an answer to his last question.  “Thanks, jackass!  God, you know I can’t say anything, why are you reminding me?”

“I’m kind of an idiot.”  James admitted, apologizing.  “Sorry.  I’ll try to be better.”  He pocketed the piece of map - about ten square miles of the Yukon from the looks of it - and shrugged.  “So, back the way we came?  On to the next place?”

“Oh, we can just go out the front door now.”  El pointed, and sure enough, there was a painfully obvious route straight to the front door which absolutely had not been there when they’d come in.  “Also we should gas up first.”  She said, cleaning her throat, “For reasons I cannot say.”

“I’m glad you’re finding workarounds for this stupid antimeme.”  James complimented her as El stormed out of the building.

“We’re coming back here sometime and dismantling this entire building with a backhoe until we find this place’s version of an orange orb.”  Anesh whispered to James as they followed El back out into the sun.

_____

James still wasn’t clear on exactly what the magic gas did, exactly. He hoped it was a health potion for his car, though.  He and Anesh had spent a good five minutes coming up with the ways different classic D&D potions could interact with a car.

They’d had a lot of time.  And you could only stay on high alert for so long before it started to fray the nerves and dull the senses.

They had a working theory on a part of this dungeon, so far.

Ever since experiencing the heart of the Akashic Sewer, the Order had been attempting to figure out if that was something present in every dungeon.  It wasn’t a good idea to make a judgement based on just one point of data, but there was fringe evidence to support the fact that dungeons had something akin to a central vital point.  Evidence like the existence of defenses; defenses that were frequently balanced out with prizes, but even then, the existence of the prizes could be a sort of evolutionary solution to getting delvers to keep a dungeon alive rather than kill it.

Their working assumption was that dungeons *were*, in some way, physical.  Which meant, in some way, vulnerable.  Which made the different layouts, life forms, and dangers of every dungeon very interesting, because it meant that in some way, anything could be a defense of that vulnerability.

This dungeon, this winding set of desert roads, had turned boredom and distance into weapons.

“We have been driving for four hours.”  Anesh informed James.  “Is there just nothing *here*?!”  He was laying in the back seat with an arm over his eyes, not bothering to watch the desert around them for a few minutes.

“There’s a parking structure coming up.”  James told him.  “But then, it’s been coming up for the last five miles.  So.”  He trailed off, biting his lip as he steered the car one lane over, whipping past a line of traffic cones at high speed.  “Make any progress with the map?”

“Nothing.”  Anesh sighed.  “I appreciate El pointing it out to us, but… what the hell is it supposed to do?  We know she’s got spells and a mana pool, she didn’t have any problem sharing *that* with us a year ago.  So this has gotta be part of that, right?”

James eased his foot onto the brakes, matching El’s speed as they rolled past a speed trap that he had to assume was going to be literal in some way, before El shot away from them again.  He shook his head; that girl was a little too into the acceleration her car could put out.  Once they were back in the clear, he spoke again to Anesh, “I remember her saying something about finding an artifact in here that upped her mana pool, so the map probably isn’t that.”

“So it’s a spell in some way then.  Or we’re wildly off base.  But let’s assume.”  Anesh turned the small square over in his hands again.  “Is it a puzzle?  Do we need to go here in the real world?”  He hummed in thought.  “No, that’s not how El phrased it.  Ugh.  I dunno.”  He folded the paper up and awkwardly shoved it in his pocket, before rolling back to a sitting position and checking the windows around them.  “I don’t think I like this place.”  Anesh settled on.

James was hard pressed to argue with that.  This place was, more than anything else, a test of endurance, and patience.  And yes, he had skill orbs for driving that made it easier to find the perfect posture, which was cool.  And he had a lesson from the sewer that made that endurance test almost trivial.  And *yes*, they had enough food and water for two weeks in a lunchbox in the back seat.  But… well.

It was the patience part James was having trouble with.

Officium Mundi had a similar defensive doctrine, in terms of just being huge and difficult to navigate.  But in Officium Mundi, James had never once had an opportunity to be *bored*.  Every corner could reveal a new world within that secret world.  A new life form, a new hidden treasure, *anything* was possible.  But here? He’d been driving for four hours, as Anesh had pointed out *so helpfully*, and what had they actually done?

He’d been imagining speeding away from packs of hunter-killer motorcycles, puzzling out the warped spaces of Escher loop on ramps, and pillaging arcane mechanics for car parts that broke reality.  Massive highway structures like monuments to the gods, traffic that went on forever.

Instead, the map Anesh was keeping of this place showed exactly five forks in the road, and even though they were weird and in non-languages, there *were* still signs every now and then to help them find their way out.  Instead, the closest thing to a highway rising toward divinity was the road they were on now having four lanes instead of two.  Instead, they’d pillaged a gas station, and the biggest danger was heatstroke from the duel suns overhead.

Okay, the suns were cool, James would concede that much.

He grabbed the two-way out of the passenger seat and radioed ahead to El.  “Hey!”  He opened.  “Are we stopping at the parking garage obelisk coming up?  Or is that another thing we avoid?”  James was a smidge bitter; El had made them skip a roadside coffee stand, for reasons she couldn’t explain but sounded serious.

“Alright, I’ve got this shit figured out!”  El’s voice came back, and James had to push down a laugh that he felt might be a little mean given her current status as ‘cursed’.  She’d been trying all day to find ways around her language barrier.  “I’ve got a *good feeling* about the parking structure.”  El pronounced the words with deliberate, snarky emphasis.  “My mood board for parking structures includes environmental disasters in the Gulf of Mexico, pictures of birds, the police and, David Bowie’s crotch.  Also more stuff I haven’t been able to figure out yet!”  El sounded positively smug about that.

Anesh snatched the radio out of James’ hand and brought it to his mouth with an exasperated look.  “Neither of us know what any of that means!”  He complained.

“I know what some of that means.”  James said.

Anesh hit the radio button again.  “Nevermind!  Apparently James speaks your weird code language!  See you when we stop, I guess!”

James barked out a bout of laughter.  “Okay, so, some kind of problem with oil, some kind of bird thing, and ‘the police’ could mean anything, but it’s probably not the band, so it probably means this dungeon’s version of puppet life.”

“And the last bit?”

“The David Bowie thing?  It’s a reference to the movie Labyrinth.  It means there’s another maze in there.  Which I’m guessing is every building here.”  James thought about it for a second as they approached the building that was looking taller and taller by the minute.  The parking structure was easily twenty stories tall, all cold grey concrete and harsh lines.  “Actually, I’m wondering if El could just say ‘labyrinth’, since that’s not an accurate description of the things.”

“They’re mazes.”  Anesh nodded.

James smiled at him.  “Exactly.  So, is the memeplex here based on your own perception of what you’re giving away, or is it just censoring keywords?”

“I mean, she’s giving us a ‘mood board’, whatever that is.  So I’m guessing the keyword thing.”  Anesh shrugged, stretching his legs out in the back seat and getting ready to jump out of the car when they parked.  “Wonder if we can just use a substitution cypher to get around it.”

“It’s an art thing.”  James said.  Then, as Anesh raised eyebrows at him, he followed up, “A mood board.  It’s… like, a bunch of stuff that’s meant to give you a vibe for a project.  You know that thing you do for our D&D games where you send everyone a playlist to listen to during character creation? It’s that.”

“Oh!  Fun.”  Anesh gave a small nod out the side window.  “Looks like El’s stopped in the middle of the road.”  He noted.  “Are we… no, of course we’re not parking in the parking garage.  Obviously.  What am I saying.”  He shook his head to himself, not even really complaining to James.

They stopped again, and hopped out, taking a minute to reattach gear and weapons to their belts and armor rigging.  James noted a couple of those little mobile speed bumps on the right side of the asphalt surrounding the parking structure like a pool of smooth black in the middle of the sand, but the creatures weren’t homing in on them, so he kept an eye open and didn’t antagonize the little monsters.

“So, what’s the plan?”  He asked El.  They were just stopped in the middle of the oncoming lane.  There were a few curved paths that led into the lot surrounding the massive structure, but they hadn’t taken any of them.

“Well, we’re gonna need to sneak in.”  She said.  In sharp contrast to the boys, El was mostly unarmed.  She had a knife up her sleeve, and a can of spray paint overfilling her jacket pocket, and that was about it.  “You know how banks have security on the front door?”  She asked pointedly.

“Okay, I feel like you’re gonna get really good at metaphor by the time this is over.”  James snorted a laughing breath at her words.  “So, up the side, climb in the second floor gap?”

“Yup!”  El cheerfully commented.  “I brought a grappling hook!”

“Okay, I’m a little envious.”  James hadn’t stopped grinning.  *This* was more his speed for dungeon delving.  On foot, and slow, and *fun*.

They circled around the left side of the building, saying out of view of the shaded ramp leading to the interior.  It took two tries for El to hook the grapple that she’d clearly bought off the internet onto a stable perch, and three minutes for the trio to climb it using the concrete wall of the parking structure to brace against.

“Now *this*,” James was grinning wildly as they stood up on the second floor of the garage, “*this* is what I’m here for.”

It looked like a scene from a post apocalypse movie.  Cars had been thrown against each other, covering the space like a mechanical barricade.  Only it wasn’t just across the aisles; cars were parked in some of the spaces as well, only stacked two or three vehicles high.  There were places, Anesh quickly spotted, where the obstacles weren’t even entire cars.  Just a windshield, or a single door, unconnected to any frame.  It was the perfect cluttered puzzle; offering just enough information to frustrate without any indication of where you were supposed to *go*.

Except they already knew where they were going.  Up.

The alcove they’d landed in was one of several against the outer wall, and El quickly ducked down as they heard a rattling noise from around a corner.  James and Anesh followed her lead, and moved forward in a low walk to peek through a gap in the press of machinery.

“Okay.”  El whispered to them, winding up the rope for the grapple she’d retrieved.  “The ramp up is over there.”  She pointed.  “I think we can get there through the floor; it’s not cluttered over here that bad.  Or we could just climb up and slip through the pipes.  But something might see us.”

“I’m good being sneaky for as long as we can.”  James was still feeling excited as he took in the maze of metal and glass.  “Have you been here before?”  He asked.

“Not in this one.”  El said.  “They change a lot.  Also, watch out for anything with the hood popped.”  She added as she slipped forward into the gap between half a sedan and the sideways bed of a pickup truck.

“Why, will they try to eat me?”  James asked.  El said nothing.  After a beat, he added, “Or do they explode?”

“I cannot say.”  El said, answering that question.

“Great.  It wouldn’t be a dungeon without something normal that exploded.”  Anesh muttered, bringing up the rear.

They kept moving, sneaking through the press of stacked car pieces and concrete pylons.  Pausing every time they heard a noise nearby.  El insisted, in the limited language she was building as they went, that there were creatures in here, and they were absolutely hostile most of the time.  So they tried to keep quiet as best they could.

It was just before they reached the ramp up to the third level that they ran into a little trouble.  There was a clearing in the area ahead of them, a small ring of open space maybe twenty feet across.  James spotted it through a tinted windshield that formed a wall at head level as they crouch-walked under an upside down Prius.  A quick double check showed that it was where they’d be turning into in a minute if they kept going.

But in the middle of that open ring was a battered concrete pillar, yellow paint flaked off in scraps that littered the ground around it.  And on top of that pylon sat something both weird and familiar all at once.

It had matted and filthy black feathers and a puffed out chest that was larger than you’d see on all but the largest natural birds.  Claws of steel cable cut into the concrete below it, grinding away at the rock and leaving pockmarks around the top of the things perch.  It looked like an overly large vulture, only with a few tweaks to its anatomy.

Like the fact that in place of a normal vulture’s face, it had the boxy metal and glass of an old model security camera.

“Well *that’s* something you see everyday.”  James quipped.

The bird’s view rotated as it twisted its head back and forth.  It hadn’t heard them, but it was still keeping an eye on the main path up the stairs.  “We should circle back and climb the pipes.”  Anesh suggested.

“It’s fine.”  El waved him off.  “They can hear, but only barely.  If we blind it, it won’t react, and we can just slip past.”  She’d pulled the can of spray paint out of her pocket and was shaking it with a rattling ‘clack clack’.

“That’s the most comprehensive answer you’ve given all day!”

“Yeah, I think the bullshit turns off when there’s something nearby that might kill us.”  El looked at the low gap she’d have to slide through.  “Can one of you watch from the glass back there and tell me when it’s facing away?”

“On it.”  Anesh slid backward.

“Wait, go back to the pressing danger?”  James asked, but was ignored by the other two.

“Three, two…” Anesh counted down, holding up fingers for El to watch.  “Go!”  He whispered loudly at her.

El darted forward, James following closely and Anesh moving behind them.  She didn’t hesitate to rush the concrete pillar in the middle of the open space, and with an almost casual motion, reached around at an angle and blasted pink spray paint into the ‘eye’ of the vulture perched there.

James had been tensed for a fight.  He’d preemptively set his bracer’s block target to ‘bird claws’, the closest he could get to just saying ‘birds’, and his hand was on the hilt of the sword on his belt.  But El hadn’t been kidding about the lack of reaction.  As she pulled back and the creature’s sweeping gaze passed back and forth over them, it’s vision completely blotted out, it didn’t even twitch except to rustle its wings a bit.  He wanted to say something, either about how that was insane, or disappointingly easy, or something.  But then he remembered they were still meer feet away from something that could easily cause some serious problems if it heard them, so he kept his mouth shut as they moved on.

The third floor was more maze.  The biggest threat was sharp edges, and that wasn’t meant to discount just how sharp some of the edges got.

The fourth floor had the first car that threatened to detonate on them.  James spotted it ahead of them, something about it giving him a bad feeling, and they took the path of climbing over the stacked cars rather than pass by it.  Up close to the ceiling, pressed against the roof of a truck as they slithered toward the lines of piles that separated them from the ramp up, James could see cobwebs and grimy oil stains, and he wondered how both of them had gotten there.

On the fifth floor, the top of the ramp was blocked by an RV that could never have actually fit inside the structure, no matter how much bigger it was on the inside.  They had options to get around it, but the increasingly loud metallic scratching sound pushed them to duck inside the camper, waiting for whatever was patrolling around to pass.  While they were there, James took the opportunity to peek into the cupboards, turning up a bag of open potato chips that looked like oil spills made solid, and also half a page out of an atlas, showing the top half of the city of Johannesburg.

“More map stuff.”  He said to El.  “This one isn’t giving me magic either.”   James joked.

“Hang onto it.  I’ve got some reference material at home.”  She cryptically responded. “Also I hate this mind magic bullshit.  I dunno if I’ve said this a lot, but until you guys showed up, I never had to deal with this crap.”

“Wait, *us*?!”  Anesh demanded.  “What did we do?!”

“Well, probably nothing.“ El conceded, ear pressed against the door to the camper as the noise outside receded.  “But I didn’t notice until now.   So fuck ya’ll, I guess.”

They’d moved on after that, deciding collectively to argue about who’s fault everything was later.

The sixth floor had almost no obstacles at all.  In fact, it looked like a normal human parking garage, with a handful of scattered cars taking up parking spaces, and nothing else. It also had a light on in a small security office, a sharp white glow coming through the windows.  They’d spotted it next to the doors to an elevator as they turned the corner from the ramp up.  No one brought up the elevator; every one of them so suspicious of any convenience in a dungeon that they already had a gut instinct to avoid it.

There was something in the office.  El made it as explicit she could that it was something hostile, but slow.  But also, that getting into the office would be a good idea.

“Okay, so, it’s security, right?”  Anesh asked.  “I’ll circle around the other side, set off a car alarm, and you two slip in.”

So James and El crouched down behind the hood of a boxy brown delivery van, watching the door to the office while Anesh crept away.  A minute later, the whooping siren of a car that had just been kicked in the front bumper rang out, echoing painfully loud against the naked concrete around them.

Instantly, the thing in the office moved, and as it scuttled out from the room, James’ heart leapt into his throat and he hoped Anesh had found a *really* good hiding spot.

It was four thick metal limbs, like girders with joints in them, jutting out from a body that was suspended a few feet over the ground and looked like a ball of black and silver gears, all turning and grinding against each other with every step.  The legs went up from its form at forty five degrees, before sharply angling downward to where they met the ground with a trio of dull spikes.  On the sides of its legs, exposed gears and belts connected to its main body held up thick wheels, which it could presumably use if it were to flatten itself to the ground. Wires trailing spark plugs dangled beneath it’s main body, rattling against each other with an electric hiss of cracked casings.

It was, James realized with an uncomfortable gulp, wearing a shredded blue jacket and hard billed cap, in a mockery of a uniform.

With jerky motions and the echoing noise of metal striking smooth concrete over and over, it darted around the corner, climbing *over* one of the parked cars with a grinding screech as it hunted after the car alarm still blaring.

James and El sprinted for the office door as soon as it was gone.

It was a running joke with James at this point that he’d given up being surprised a long time ago.  But he was still a little caught off guard when the monstrous thing’s office was just… normal? A desk, a coatrack, a monitor for watching security cameras.  This could have been in a regular parking garage anywhere on Earth.

The only thing that stood out was the simple iron gear, hovering five feet off the ground and humming like a well tuned engine, just at the back of the room.

El grabbed it, while James swept the desk and snagged a copy of “Big World Travel Magazine” with most of its pages removed.  And then, as the gear’s humming snapped to nothing, they turned and bolted back out of the room.

They met Anesh as he was rounding the corner, legs pumping as he dashed toward them.  “Run!”  He shouted, and James knew then that his hiding spot hadn’t been good enough.

James didn’t run.  He slid into a shooter’s stance, brought his little bullpup rifle up, and flicked the safety off as Anesh saw what he was doing and turned his run into a sliding roll out of James’ line of fire that landed him next to his partner.  When the sentry rounded the corner behind him, momentum coming to a complete halt to manually turn toward them, he sent a swarm of bullets downrange with a series of metallic ‘tang’ noises with every shot.

Sparks flew from the gears of the creature’s body and the metal of its legs.  And the high velocity impacts didn’t seem to do more than annoy it.

“Okay, run!”  James yelled, grabbing Anesh’s arm and hauling him up.

El, being smarter than either of them in this once case, had already booked it down the ramp.  As James and Anesh awkwardly tried to sprint at a downward angle and the sentry thundered its way toward them, El waved from a gap in the cars below them.  “This way!”  She yelled, turning around and vanishing between the bumpers of a couple cars that weren’t quite fully pressed together.

James and Anesh had to squeeze a bit more than she did, with the armor they were wearing, but they thing closing in on them was a good motivation to move quickly.  When they got through, it was into one of those alcoves they’d initially landed in, and El had wedged the hook of her grapple as best she could into the front bumper of a pickup truck.

“Go!”  James yelled at her, as if she needed the encouragement.  El was already rolling over the edge of the concrete, hands on the rope as she let herself slide down in a barely arrested fall.

James shoved Anesh forward and helped his partner make the hop to the ledge before he also vanished out of sight.  Pulling himself up the concrete barrier, not thinking about how close the thing chasing them might be, and *especially* not thinking about how much rope El had actually brought, James thanked every ounce of experience that had led to him being here with gloves on, and let himself fall.

The rope made a buzzing noise against his gloves as he held onto it.  And then, suddenly, there was no more rope, and he fell the last story to slam into the hard pavement.  El was there, yelling something and helping him and Anesh up, and with stumbling, painful steps, James found himself running for his car, his head reeling from the impact.

Behind them, the sentry slammed into the ground in a brutal mess of metal shrapnel.  And as James fumbled to start his engine, he saw the broken thing on the pavement in the shade of the parking structure stand up anyway, and begin taking stumbling steps toward them.

He made sure Anesh was alive in the back seat, before slamming on the gas, and getting them out of there.  Taking the lead this time, as by mutual silent agreement, the two of them and El decided that was enough dungeon delving for the day.

After a few miles, James felt the adrenaline wearing off.  His legs started hurting with a dull throbbing pain, and he started to worry that he’d broken something in the fall.  A part of him, as they headed back to the breach to reality, felt a little cheated.  Five hours, and more still to go to actually leave this place, and what did they have to show for it? A few pieces of maps that might be magic, a weird humming gear, and a more bruises than they’d started?  He could see why this dungeon’s defense worked; he wasn’t feeling particularly motivated to come back.

But then again…

Dotted around this place, there were mazes and monsters, and the kind of adventure that he lived for.

And James found himself smiling without thinking about it.  He would have come out here and helped El out no matter what, offer of the dungeon or no.  But as long as it was *right there*...

Well, maybe he’d find the time to see what was down just one more road.

“I think I need new bones.”  Anesh groaned from the back seat.

Okay, one more road, *next time*, and with a little less recklessness.  Maybe.