The Daily Grind - Chapter 154 (Patreon)

Road trip!

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“I‘m not in denial, I’m just selective about the reality I accept” -Bill Watterson-

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The contrast between the roadways of the Midwest and the alien landscape of Route Predation were just as stark the second time as on James’ first excursion here.

Twin suns hung overhead, having shifted only slightly from their previous positions, pulling apart from each other and drifting toward opposing horizons.  If yesterday, they’d been able to spend half a day here to only minutes outside, then the days and nights here in subjective time must last for years.  A cycle stretched so far it would be more like seasons than days to anyone inside it.

Around them, the sands stretched as eternally as ever.  James tried to spot the splotches of metal burrs that El said were scattered out there, but the shimmering heat of the suns and the way the desert sands blended into each other made that impossible.  Instead, he caught glimpses of the occasional scrub brush, the odd jutting rock formation, and sometimes, small movements from the landscape.

While the fauna of this place was aggressive and alien in a very harsh way, the vegetation was almost comical.  Because James *recognized* it.  It was the same plant life he’d been watching out the windshield for a week of travel to get here; yellow and purple flowered weeds and tangled low branches and grass with a level of determined resilience that mocked the gods themselves.  And he’d taken the time to check when they’d had a chance earlier; it wasn’t some kind of weird dungeon replica, it was just eternally defiant Earth weeds, digging roots through alien asphalt and otherworldly sand, refusing to give up.

James thought it was beautiful.  The creatures of his world weren’t so easily turned away by something as small as “relentlessly hostile conditions”.

And yet, the rest of it, everything else aside from those familiar plants, was so deep in the uncanny valley that the contrast to his recent road trip was forever in the front of his mind.

There was no music playing, because they needed to be able to hear anything approaching or whatever El called over the radio.  James and Anesh were still making conversation, especially on the longer stretches of nothing, but it was less a relaxed way to pass the time and more nervous thoughts and observations.  And when the world outside the window looked weird, it wasn’t a sign that they’d taken a corner and opened up some new vista.  It was a sign that there was a potential threat incoming.

James’ checked the odometer.  They’d crossed the point where the gas station they’d encountered yesterday should have been, and nothing but flat terrain and a slight bend in the road awaited them.

“Wasn’t there something here?”  He asked Anesh.

“James, everything looks the same.”  Anesh had learned from his uncomfortable position yesterday, and had flattened the back seat and passenger's chair down into the most open space possible.  He was sitting with his back propped up against a rear wheel well, with a field of vision that encompassed a huge swath of the desert out their windows.  “Was there something here?”

“Shoulda been a gas station.”  James said.  “Did it move?”

“Ask El.”

“I don’t wanna talk to El.  She’s… El.”

“That’s very tautological of you.”

“Sorry, sorry.”  James wrung his hands on the wheel.  “I’m stressed out.  The farther in we get, the more I start to think that we should be back home, solving real problems, instead of… I mean, shit, we basically *are* on vacation.”

“Yes.  That’s what a vacation is.”  Anesh said.  “The part where we trust the hundred other competent people who are with us to handle the crises.  And get to do what we want, for a bit.”

James snorted.  “Fine, fine.  But what if I don’t wanna talk to El?”

“Then you have to assume that buildings sometimes go away.”  Anesh told him.

James pursed his lips and thought for a second.  “Nah.”  He settled on, and poked the radio where it was clipped to the dashboard.  “Hey El, why do the buildings here sometimes just go away? Over.”  He asked.

The radio crackled to life as El’s response came through.  “Oh yeah, stuff rearranges.  Maps don’t work here, sorry, shoulda told you!”

“What the fuck does…” James scowled at the radio before hitting the talk button again, ignoring Anesh trying to smother a laugh behind him.  “El, how the hell do you find your way around then?  Over.”

“There’s patterns, dumbass.”  El sounded like she was exasperated with him, even through the radio’s imperfect sound quality.  “You take certain turns, you get to denser locations.  That sorta thing.  If there’s no building here, that means we look for a building at the fork of the next split, and if there’s nothing there, we can go right and get to a hotel, or left and go somewhere random.”

There was a quiet stretch.  “She didn’t say over.”  Anesh noted.

“No she didn’t.  How long do you think it would take to learn this stuff?”  James asked.

“Not too long.  I could do it in a couple runs.”  Anesh said, failing to point out that his pattern recognition skills were actually Skills, and he was sort of cheating.  “But yeah, she’s been here a lot.  I wonder how she’s survived this long? It feels like a lot of the guard life here is very… um…”

James filled in the end.  “All or nothing?”

“Yeah.”

“The Office isn’t far off from that, though.”  He mused.

“Ehhhhhhh…” Anesh started.

James shook his head.  “Okay, okay, I thought about it for a second.”  He gave a nervous laugh, double checking his wing mirrors.  “But seriously, the first thing most people are gonna see coming into Officium Mundi is a pissed off stapler.  I did, after all.  And that’s a *problem*, but it’s imminently survivable.  Here? What would have happened if one of those speed bumps caught your foot?”

“I’d be dead, repeatedly.”  Anesh confirmed tartly.  “Because they’re unkillable flesh grinders.”

“I mean, let’s reserve judgement on ‘unkillable’ for now.”

“Sure.  But I do get your point.  I guess I’m just thinking about things like camracondas.  The great filter of if you brought a friend along.”

James perked up.  “Oh, tangent!  So, you know how Deb and Frequency are dating?”

“Everyone knows.”  Anesh’s voice was dry as he shook his head.  “Everyone thinks it’s adorable, and I find that *very* uncomfortable.  But yes, they are dating.”

“Okay, first point, it *is* adorable.”  James countered.  “But that’s not like, some kind of xenophilia thing.  I dunno if you’ve noticed, but people in the Order are just generally kind of giddy whenever *anyone* starts dating? We made an atmosphere that’s open enough that people don’t feel weird about it, and I kinda like that.  People think *we’re* cute, and that’s a hell of a shock to my low-self-esteem ass.  But no, what I was gonna say was-“

“Car!”  Anesh’s voice cut him off halfway through his point.

And all of a sudden, James was snapped back to the present.  He’d almost lost himself in that road trip vibe of thin time and casual chatter, and forgotten the second sun and the supernaturally aggressive drivers.

The incoming vehicle was a bulbous little sedan, cutting toward them at what looked like a thirty degree angle with the road, coming in from their left.  James tossed the radio back to Anesh, who started signaling to El, while he focused on keeping the wheel under control as he pushed the car to accelerate.

There was nothing nearby.  Not even a fork or a curve in the road.  The closest thing to terrain was a vertical rock outcrop to their right that was already receding into the rear view, and a few patches of determined dry grass on the sides of the road.  James couldn’t even see a possible destination ahead of them except more road.

Nowhere to hide.

“El’s freaking out.”  Anesh said calmly.  He’d moved to a kneeling position in the middle of the car, wobbling slightly with the occasional speed changes.  “Here.”  He passed James a pair of earplugs.  “Nowhere to hide.”

“Alright.”  James shakily took a hand off the wheel to put the ear protection in.  He was going a hundred and ten, El was pulling ahead of them at even faster than that, and still, the incoming car was on a vector to intercept them.  “Ready?”  He asked, voice loud to hear himself through the earplugs.

Anesh checked the magazine on his P90.  “Ready.”  He confirmed.

James hit the buttons on his side console to roll the windows down, clearing Anesh’s line of fire and letting in the scorching dry air.  The cool interior of the car turning burning in a heartbeat.  And then, he put his hands back on the wheel, trusted to his partner, and pushed the gas pedal as far down as it could go.

He could see the incoming vehicle in the wing mirror now.  And it was all of a sudden apparent that this thing wasn’t any human made car at all.  There were strange seams down its outside that flexed organically in the whipping hundred mile an hour wind as it closed in.  The headlights twitched back and forth, strangely living metal eyes tracking prey.  And its front hood was studded with small rough bumps, nodes that had clearly grown in a pattern, but were grown nonetheless.

James didn’t have time to think much about that, though.  He had one goal right now; maximize contact time.

In his mind, he ran through the factors at play.  El was ahead of them, and didn’t have a way to help anyway.  She was out of play.  The car coming at them would be coming in at an angle, and at these speeds, James was confident he couldn’t outrun it.  So, he needed to give Anesh the most time possible to shoot it before it hit them. Because if it hit them, they were dead.

But he also couldn’t slow down.  Because then it would just hit them when they had less defenses.

James urged as much speed out of the car as he possibly could.  A hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty, every scrap slowing how quickly their enemy was closing on them.  He moved them into the farthest possible lane, wheels a half inch away from the metal death trap that was the highway’s shoulder.  At these speeds, it took only the barest flick of the wheel for less than a second; his driving skill ranks pulling their weight and helping him correct without panic or failure.

As a last resort, James tried to tune his bracer to ‘vehicle impact’.  It might be too vague, but it might be enough.

“Contact!”  Anesh shouted from the back seat.  And the inside of the car got a lot louder, real quick.

Anesh fired out the back seat window in small bursts at first, just making sure he was actually connecting with the incoming vehicle.  The noise, cracking discharge of the ammunition and then a high coppery *ting* as the gun cycled, overwhelmed everything else.  The engine, the tires on the road, the thoughts in James’ head; earplugs would keep him from bleeding out his ears, but it didn’t exactly make the situation *quiet*.

And then, in the maybe three seconds they had before the oncoming creature hit them, Anesh jammed the gun as hard as he could into the crook of his shoulder, pulled the trigger, and held it down.

Impact sites dotted the car-shaped thing that was rushing them, tiny craters beginning to pepper its outside.  The windshield and a couple of its side windows cracked, spiderwebbed, and then shattered to jagged shards.  Anesh tried to keep the full auto stream of bullets focused on the hood of their attacker, aiming to shred the engine that probably worked as its heart.  He’d considered going for the tires, but he would have had to shift forward too far to avoid shooting their own interior, and also the thing had just plowed over the strip of spined metal on the side of the road like it was nothing, so that probably wouldn’t be super effective.

It was almost on them when James grabbed out at the world with his absorbed blue, and yanked a waist high wall of road up, inches in front of their enemy.  He did it relying on instinct to time it right, and only got maybe thirty feet of distance.  *Something* grabbed back at the road, ripping it from his command a split second later.  But it was enough to fumble the vector of their attacker, and force it to jerk wildly back, wobbling across the highway as it steadied out parallel to them.  He bought them four more seconds of contact time.

Anesh didn’t waste it.  He lashed out with his own blue, [Separate Alloy] rending away chunks of the component parts of some of the metal pieces of the creature, its armor shedding away and clattering to the pavement in the rapidly fading distance.  Then a trigger of [Munitions Dump] as the magazine ran dry, the gun bracelet restoring him to operational status as a backseat turret.

The bullets started finding their mark easier.  A headlight eye shattered, and the impacts on the hood weren’t shedding sparks anymore but puffs of rapidly aerosolized liquid.

Then, as it whipped back toward them, the raised mounds on the hood and sides all puffed outward with some kind of steam, and the other car returned fire.

The noise was a screeching metallic rattle, like the world’s angriest rain, as impacts struck the side of their car.  The rear view mirror, far to close to James’ head for comfort, jerked sideways with a cracking noise as a long organic needle barely missed his face and jammed into it.  He kept his hands on the wheel, and *begged* the engine for more speed in his head, trying not to think about the fact that the plastic strut holding the mirror in place was *rotting* at the impact point.

And then it almost hit them.  Except, mercifully, James’ shield bracer *worked*.  A glowing dome of light, painfully bright even against the double suns overhead.  And the monster deflected, physics defied.  It didn’t seem even remotely shaken by the strike, though; bouncing off and then whipping back toward them, pulling up without attempting to ram again.

James barely, *barely* had time for his brain to register that the thing was insectile, all the lines and shapes of it echoing the aesthetic of ‘bug’.

Now, as their pursuer pulled along side them with a speed that still came too easily despite all the bullets in it, it opened its doors.

Which is to say, the passenger side doors irised out like hostile fanged apartures, revealing fully the inside of the car, and the lifeless human skeleton in the driver’s seat; seatbelts growing through it’s ribs like vines.

Those same seatbelts were alive and thrashing in the other seats.  Pouring out toward them, pulled backward by the whipping wind but still reaching for their car, reaching for purchase.

Anesh fired into them, shutting down multiple attempts.  But there were hundreds of them, all with tiny fanged grippers on the end.  And one gun wasn’t enough to kill it.

So he changed tactics, reached out with his own asphalt manipulation, grabbed the road under his target, and yanked it upward in the sharpest spike he could manage.  No finesse, no focus, just a desperate attack lobbed off.

The car dodged.  It *dodged*.  Jerking away at the last second, looping around the jutting spire of asphalt like it knew it was coming.  Which, it honestly might have.

James noticed, out of the corner of his eye.  James made the connection, mental enhancements on full burn, his perception pushed so far beyond human limits it was painful.

“Anesh!”  He bellowed over the continuing gunfire.  His partner shifted slightly; he’d heard.  “Spike!  Left side!  Three!  Two! One!”

And then, in place of saying ‘zero’, James used his own power to form a spike to the right of the car, driving up toward its hood and right side tires, while Anesh, catching on almost right away, did the same on the opposite side.

“Dodge this.” They declared in unison at their enemy.

It *almost* did.  They weren’t perfectly in sync, and at speeds of over a hundred miles an hour, that meant that a split second was still fifty feet of distance.  But the other car was going just as fast.  And while it slid smoothly past the first spike, taking only a small scratch to its hull, the second one caught it inside the wheel well.

The asphalt, rapidly jerked out of their control, had already done its job.  The tire shredded, the chunk of rocky matter punched deep into the inside of the car, digging a furrow in the metal of its chassis before it got caught, and yanked the vehicle downward at a strange point before the asphalt itself snapped.

The enemy car, from an outside perspective, exploded shrapnel outward from its side, pitched forward at high speed, and then, teetering forward, gave into physics and toppled onto its roof, rolling over and over, shedding shell and metal and shattered glass behind it across a mile long stretch of road.

James and Anesh howled defiantly relieved laughter as James brought the car to a reasonably safe stop, taking shaking hands off the wheel to slump back in his seat.  A long, drawn out mix of a sigh and scream.

And then he opened the door, stumbled out on unsteady feet, sweat already dripping off his forehead from the heat, and flipped off the shattered corpse behind them on the burning road.

The total time of the fight was under a minute.

_____

It was fifteen minutes later that El rejoined them.

James and Anesh, after taking a minute to breathe, have some water, and pick the flood of shell casings out of the back seat of their subaru, had headed back toward the crash site to assess their foe.

James had parked the car about fifty feet away, just to give them a little distance in case it exploded or something, but it didn’t look like it was going to.  Anesh had approached the overturned vehicle, while James was examining their own car.

The spines that had riddled the driver’s side were bad news.  Wherever they hit, it seemed like they penetrated, and where they were stuck in his car, they radiated sprawling organic lines of decay and corruption.  Not exactly rust; his precious new road trip car was *rotting*, the metal and plastic and paint of its structure turning to a slimy goo that dripped slightly in the sun.

But.

Parts of it were already self repairing.  The gas in their tank, a healing potion for cars, was already doing its work in the short time they’d taken to drive back here.  James had initially been annoyed they’d found a health potion for a vehicle before a human, after all this time, but he wasn’t going to complain as he yanked the spines out and let the idling engine slowly purge the corruption.

Then he practically jumped out of his own shoes as gunfire rang out behind him.  James spun to see Anesh, standing over the crashed car, having fired a burst directly into the engine.

“Sorry!”  Anesh called back, as James placed a hand on his heart and tried to pretend he hadn’t stopped breathing for a second.    “It twitched!”

“Yeah, so did I!” James yelled back, heading over to join Anesh and popping his earplugs out.  “Fuck, this thing is creepy up close too.”

It really was, with bulging protrusions across parts of its chassis, and half the metal stripped away when Anesh had separated the steel in its frame.  It was hard to tell if the organic looking spurs of material were from an attack or from its natural growth.  The inside was dripping liquid, thickly humid even under the dry suns, and the oily blood from the crater Anesh had just carved into its hood, along with all the other wounds, coated the road around it.

“I wanna call it a Dune Buggy.”  James said.  “Any objections?”

“I was thinking Monster Truck, but that might be too limiting.”  Anesh shrugged, slinging his gun back to his shoulder to kneel down and examine the buggy’s tires up close.

While he did that, James moved over to the driver’s side and kicked away some of the shattered glass still in the window.  It seemed to be real glass, and not some sticky organic facsimile that he expected, which was strange, but at least less messy.  Kneeling down, James peered into the crumpled interior at the skeleton that was still sitting lashed to the chair.

Half its bones had been pulverized in the crash.  But the skull was still intact, along with some of the spine and legs.  Scraps of fabric that weren’t the I entwined seatbelts stuck out, old decayed clothing making James suspect this had once been a real person and wasn’t just a dungeon construct.

He reached in, carefully trying to avoid slashing his arm open on any of the jagged pieces of metal or bone, and grabbed what used to be a jacket pocket.  The material was so close to falling apart that the front of it practically crumbled under his touch.  James snagged what fell out with the tips of his fingers, and pulled his arm out of the car.

“Map fragments.”  He muttered.  “This was a delver.”

“Hey, come check this out.”  Anesh called from the other side of the wreckage.

“What’s up?”  James asked, circling around as he pocketed the slips of indestructible map.

Anesh held up a ball of something black and smooth, wiping a dirty hand on his pants as he did so.  “Look at this.”

“An orb!”  James grinned.

“No.”

“Well, I tried.”  He poked the bowling ball sized lump, and jerked back slightly as it rippled out from around the contact point of his finger.  “What is this?”

“What remains of one of the tires.  It folded up into this when I cut it away.  I’m gonna harvest the others, can you help?”

James jogged back to their car with a wordless grin, and then jogged back, carrying the shortsword that had been tucked under the driver’s seat.  “Yes!”  He enthusiastically exclaimed.

“I feel like you’ll be really disappointed when that doesn’t work the way you want it to.”  Anesh told him.  But he couldn’t hide his own grin.

It didn’t work the way James wanted it to.  It also didn’t work the way Anesh wanted it to, and no amount of hacking or sawing from either of them seemed capable of getting the other tires to detach from their wheels.  The two of them were still working on the problem when the sound of an engine reached them, and they wordlessly abandoned their project to take cover behind the wreck.

They didn’t need to bother, though, because the car that approached from down the highway was a familiar bright red convertible.  And as El pulled up next to their car and got out, shotgun in hand and looking scared but determined, James decided to stop peeking over the crumpled undercarriage and cut her a break.

“Yo!”  He called out.  “Over here!  We’re not dead!”

“Oh fuck!”  El exclaimed, jogging over with no regard for trigger discipline.  “Are you guys okay?!  What happened?!  Fuck, I’m so sorry, I didn’t… I don’t… what happened?” She repeated.

“We won.”  James told her.  “Also, seriously? Don’t worry about it.  Normally, I’d be mad about you abandoning us to die,” El winced, “but in this case?  Right call.  The panic is something we should work on, but it was tactically correct.  You didn’t have firepower to add, and if you’d been in the area we might have hit you, which would have been bad.  So, no guilt, kay?”

El nodded, shoulders sagging in relief.  “I still feel like shit.  And I did screw up; I wasted Velocity running, instead of keeping it so I could use Engine if I needed to.  So I *was* wrong, and so are you.”

“Really can’t get through one conversation without-”

Anesh cut James off.  “Hey, instead of all this, can you do me a favor? Hit the tire with one of the earring charges.”

“Perfected Strike?  Okay, could work.  I don’t have full charges on it though, so I’m only gonna try once.”  James turned away from El, putting his annoyance on hold as he leveled his sword again, and took a few practice motions.  He actually wasn’t trained in using this particular weapon, it was just something he could focus the earring through.  Which he did now; mentally opening the menu of the Status Quo item and asking it politely for one use of Perfected Strike.

His arms shifted, his blade moved, and James felt the calm pearl of emotion that was “I have done this *exactly* right” as he hit the rubber of the tire at the one spot, the one angle, with the perfect amount of force, to slice neatly through it and carve it away from the rest of the wreck.

It promptly curled up into a semi-liquid ball, which Anesh rolled over with a foot and swept up.  “That looked stellar, and also thanks.  I’m gonna go stash these.”  He said, heading back to their car and popping the back door to roll the rubber orb in.

“So, you ever kill one of these before?”  He asked El, trying to restart conversation in a way that didn’t annoy him,

“No way.”  She shook her head.  “Shit, I wouldn’t even know how.  You two are kinda scary, you know?”

James looked after Anesh as his boyfriend waddled over to their car while trying to hold two oversized lumps of material.  “Oh yeah, terrifying.”  He felt the happy grin on his face.  “Heh.  So, no insight into what we should look for?  Like, loot drops or anything?”

“Nothing that I remember.”  El shrugged, looking down at the front of the overturned car.  “Huh.  Uh, hang on.”  She knelt down, setting her shotgun over to the side as she grabbed the frame of the car and shimmied herself across the road so she could look into the hood.  “What’s this?”  She asked James from her position under the wreck, looking up at the thinly glowing projection that had caught her attention as she had looked at the dead dune bug.

James dropped to his knees and bent down to look at what she was looking at.  There, through a gap in the torn hood, was some kind of floating visual projection.  James couldn’t exactly describe it, but it was two things.  One was very familiar, for some reason, and the other was ‘a map’.  He knew it was a map.  It was shaped like a map, in a way that was inescapable.

“Weirrrrd.”  He said, rolling his armored shoulders onto the asphalt to slide in next to El.  “I’m gonna touch it.”  He said.  ‘If I go insane, shoot me and tell Anesh I died doing something stupid.”

“Sure.”  El nodded without hesitation.

“*Excuse me*!?”  Anesh said, standing right next to the wreck.

“Whoops.”  James said, sticking his hand out and poking the ‘map’ hovering just over the dead heart-engine of the dune bug.

_____

James was somewhere else.  And yet, he hadn’t moved.  He was suddenly painfully aware that he was not moving.  Moving was *important*, dammit, and every second he wasn’t moving was a second he wasn’t following the proper route.

He had a proper route now.  He knew the landmarks to pass, the archetypes of adventure he would encounter, and the prize at the end.  A prize beyond any other; the prize of something that would make him *happy*.

James would have frowned, if he had a body here, in this elsewhere space.

Happy?  *Make* him happy?  Change him, give him exactly what he wanted?

He’d heard this before.

He pushed back.

The map shifted.  Okay, he didn’t want happiness.  What about something else? Wealth? Power?  Fame?  It could chart a route there.

No.  James didn’t want those.  Wealth was toxic, power was a responsibility he already had, and fame… Fame sounded exhausting, honestly.

Where was he? He was in his own mind.  He could feel it around him, his thoughts, along with all the modifications to his soul that the dungeontech had made over the last few years.  A starfield of yellow, purple, and red orbs.  Glittering machinery of absorbed blues and oranges.  Foundational bedrock libraries of the Lessons.  And winding trails that led to other souls, connections to Sarah and Anesh, gifted by the attic.

The connections fascinated the map that was trying to find a route for him. It stopped offering him things he didn’t want when James let his attention pass over them.  What were they?  Where did they go?  Why could the map go anywhere, but not there?

James tried to explain.  They were links to his friends.  Bonds.  Roads he had already traveled, and walked down every day.  Part routine, part adventure.

The map didn’t understand.

That was okay, James told it.  Maybe he could show the map, if it wanted.  The map did want, but it wasn’t bound here.  It was already falling apart, without a route.

James understood.  It needed to show him somewhere to go.

Alright, he asked it, take me somewhere that has really good burgers.  I feel like I want a good burger.

The map rustled contentment, and relief, and folded itself into James’ mind.

He opened his eyes.

_____

“Ow.”  James said, realizing his head hurt.

“Are you okay?!”  Anesh demanded of him.  “Don’t move, you hit your head.”

James moved anyway, bringing a hand up to feel the lump on the back of his skull.  His hand also ached, and he saw a bandage wrapped around it, red with blood.  He must have sliced it open on something when he touched the map.  “Oooof.”  He groaned.  “Yeah, I’m fine.  Except for all the physical stuff.”

“Can you sit up?”  Anesh and El had dragged him over to lay in the thin shade next to his car, and he pushed himself up off the hot asphalt with his good hand.  “Water?”

James took the offered bottle from Anesh and drank greedy gulps.  “Ahhh.  Thanks.”

“So?”  El asked

“So what?

“So what was it?  A trap?”

James took a breath of hot air.  “Ah.  No, it’s… well, maybe.”  He opened and closed his fingers a couple times.  “I might need some time to think about this.  And it *might* be a trap. I think… I think it’s one of those tricks the dungeons pull.  I think it folded a trap into a reward.”

“What happened to you when you passed out?”  Anesh asked quietly.  “And do we need to telepad back so Planner and Path can clear it out?”

“No no.”  James waved him off, rolling to a kneeling position.  “We worked it out.  It’s a map.  It… fuck, I just realized something!”  He looked around, throwing his arms wide.  “*This* is where Pathfinder came from!”  James announced.  “Remember?  She wasn’t an Office construct!  She started as a *map*, that a different dungeon broadcast in!  This is her home!”  He looked at Anesh and met his boyfriend’s eyes.  “And I just got something like that.”

“You said it was a trap?”  Anesh looked suspicious.

“I think it’s meant to be both.”  James said.  “It offered me happiness.  It offered to take me to anything I wanted.  I think… it’s meant to be a loot drop, for the most dangerous delvers.  So that they *leave*.  Because I can feel where it’s guiding me, and it *isn’t* in the dungeon; it’s on Earth.”

“Oh that’s *clever*.”  Anesh drawled out the last word.  “That’s *smart*.  Give people exactly what they want, that will make them piss off.”

“Exactly.”

“Are you two gonna explain any of this?”  El asked, standing off to the side and leaning against his hood.

“Yeah, sure.”  James said, pushing himself to his feet and offering Anesh a hand up too.  “Once we’re back on the road.  I vote we cut this one short, if that’s okay?”

“That’s fine.  Though we’re gonna pass a gas station on the way out.  Wanna stop for one small poke through?”  El asked.

“Sounds good to me.”  James agreed.  “We can explain over the radio as we go.”

The three of them climbed into their respective cars, and James clicked his seatbelt into place, readjusting the healed rear view mirror as he prepared to pull around the crumbling wreckage of the dune bug.

“Hey, where’s the map in your head leading, anyway?”  Anesh asked from the back, rolling the windows up to let the AC do its work anew.  “You said it offered you happiness?”

“Ah, I turned that down.  Made a deal with it.  It’s gonna take me somewhere way more likely to make me happy than any kind of magical effect. Somewhere with good food.”

Anesh blinked, then let out a single chuckle.  Yeah, that made sense for James “And this restaurant is…?”

“A diner called Dak’s Daycare, which, I have a feeling, serves bacon burgers.”

“You’re buying.” Anesh told him

James laughed.  “Uh, yeah.  That’s the nature of being friends with me.  Ready to move?”

“All set.  Let’s get going.”

_____

It was shocking, James mused quietly, just how *easily* he forgot where they were again and tried to slip back into road trip mode.

Yes, there were all these obvious contrasts.  And the cut on his hand and second sun overhead and Anesh checking and rechecking his gun in the back seat were all obvious, comically blatant reminders that he wasn’t just on I-5 or something, but he’d been driving for an hour now, with basically nothing to focus on, and his brain was rebelling against the boredom.

They’d already filled El in, they’d already figured out where they were going and about how far they had to travel.  He and Anesh had even had lunch, going through the last of the tupperware containers of beef stew that they’d stored in the bottom of the lunchbox of specifically-holding-lunch.  So he was left without much to do as he kept the car going straight and his eyes peeled for any more incoming murderous cars.

“You there?”  He thought to the map embedded in his subconscious.  But there was no response.  James spent a little while trying to come up with what they’d call this style of infomorph, but eventually gave up when the light and heat and bruise on his head combined into a truly distracting headache.  Maybe they’d just ask Pathfinder what she wanted to name her people.

Ten minutes of driving later, he tried a different tactic.  “I’m borrrrrred.” He announced to Anesh.

“Well you can’t be that, you’re the driver.”  Anesh replied.  “Also, checking in; you still feeling okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.  I can feel the map as separate from my own thoughts, it’s not… like… trying to be stealthy or intrusive.  It’s just there, if I ask.”  James sighed.  “Honestly?  I’m really thinking this is the dungeon being all tricksy.  And it’s a little more clever than you said, even.”

“How so?”

“Okay, so, someone comes in here, right?  Where the ‘easiest’ monster is a lump of metal and stone that wants to eat your feet, and then the rest of you.  And they start poking around.  What happens?”

“They probably get eaten.”  Anesh offered, shifting his position to double check the empty stretch of desert on the other side of the car.

James grinned unseen as Anesh fell for his trap.  “Ah, but see, they have a car, yes?  So they at least survive for a little while.  And that’s not really a huge problem for this place, which seems to use size and distance as a defense.  But what if someone gets in, pokes around a bit, and then comes back better prepared?  Like, say, *every delver ever*?”

“Then... “ Anesh trailed off.  “I’m not sure I see where you’re going with this.”  He admitted.

“People come in, probably survive if they don’t go too far or stay too long, and then they leave, and come back later, and *eventually*, they’re going to score a kill.  Or at least, a good chunk of them will.”  James thought back to the feeling of the map mark in his hand.  The feeling of the object itself, *before* he’d reflexively cracked it like he would an orb, and let the infomorph into his head.  “And they’re going to find a map, and probably use it.  Maybe find more than one, and take some out.  And what then?”

“Don’t you Socratic method me.”  Anesh jokingly admonished.

“Then they *leave*.”  James said firmly.  “Because why the fuck would you come back into the hell road, when you could go on a normal vacation on Earth, and end up making your way to buried pirate gold or something?  Most people don’t know how dungeons function; they’re gonna think they got what the place has to offer, and they’re gonna go for it.  And… and… it’s a trap, and a reward, all at once.  Everyone wins; the delvers get rich or happy or something, and the dungeon gets everyone to *leave*.”

“I have a question.”  Anesh asked quietly, putting his thoughts together.  He took a second, letting the machinery of his brain connect the pieces and line up his words.  “What are the odds… that the reason so many people are leaving this city…”

“Ah.”  James hummed.  “*Ah*.  Well.  That would be… wait, that’s, what, eight to ten thousand people?  How many people have *found* this place?”

“Or have been made to find this place.”  Anesh pointed out.  “How many abandoned cars are there in the city?”

“Why would there be abandoned cars if people who found this place were driving in?”

“I… do not have a good answer for that.  I’m sure when I learn the answer to that, I will hate it.  So, thanks for prepping me for that.”  Anesh shook his head.  “Maybe, oh, I dunno, maybe it’s people teaming up and the ones that die - because that *was* a human skeleton, yes? - they come in with a few people in one car, and then leave the other cars outside in reality?  Hm.”

“Could also be that, if there is some kind of thing drawing people in, that not everyone comes in a car.  Which, um… would be bad.”  James winced.

“I think the word you’re searching for is ‘murder’, perhaps.”  Anesh filled in.

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Car.”  Anesh’s voice turned sharp, and James tensed up, hands gripping the wheel hard as once again, the casual conversation shattered in an instant and was replaced by the anxiety of imminent combat and potential death.  And then, just as James was getting ready to bring their speed back up to irresponsible levels, Anesh added, “It’s moving parallel to us.  How far to the garage?”

James clicked the radio again.  “El.  Another car to our side.  How far, do you reckon?  Are we fighting again?  Over.”

He’d barely gotten the last word out when she replied.  “It’s just up ahead.  I don’t think he’s seen us, so we’ll just park and let it pass, yeah?”

“Yeah.  *Over*.”  James stressed the last word, shaking his head and ignoring Anesh’s quiet laugh in the back.  “Alright.  A few more miles.  Keep an eye on it.”

Anesh snorted.  “Well yeah.”  He said, rolling the window down and keeping his gun up, ruining all the air conditioning’s hard work again.

It was a stressful five minutes, not knowing if they were going to have to engage in vehicle to vehicle combat again, but in the end, it worked out okay.  The gas station, with its boxy little convenience store brick structure, appeared over the horizon and closed the distance to them rapidly as the two cars cut a straight line at high speed through the desert.

When they pulled off, with James nerves at an all time high as they had to slow to about thirty, and then even lower than that to cut through the thin strip of safe driveway that wasn’t made of caltrops, he felt like they were just begging to be ambushed.

In the Office, life was silence, and careful observation.  You moved quietly, you kept your eyes open, and if anything went wrong, there were fifteen ways to break line of sight within a few steps of you.  Small bursts of motion, ambushes, and above all, *patience*, would win you your battles there.  Here, though?  Out on the Route?  There was almost nowhere to hide, nowhere to run even.  The road was perfect for high speeds, but you couldn’t *shake* anything that was after you, not really.  So, James had quickly caught on, your defense was speed.  The ability to control the engagement envelope, to let the boyfriend in the back seat lay down fire on anything that came after you until it gave up or died.

And yeah, sure, inside the buildings, where the interiors of normal looking structures had been turned into labyrinthine clusters of material that didn’t make sense and were often full of hostile non-car entities, *then* you had similar rules to Officium Mundi.  But here, now, behind the wheel?  Slowing down felt *wrong*.

It didn’t get him killed, this time.  But that didn’t change the fact that his foot was itching for the gas pedal as he pulled past the single spire of a lamp post in the middle of the parking lot here and brought the car to a stop.

The three of them hid in the shadow of the gas pumps and their sheet metal awning until the car tailing them out in the sand passed by.  While they waited, James idly asked El if mixing different magic gasoline flavors gave cars superpowers, El admitted she didn’t actually know, and Anesh decided they weren’t going to find out today just in case their cars exploded.

They slipped into the brick building through the back door, the employee entrance next to an unnaturally clean dumpster being the only way in that actually worked.  James had tried the front door, but it wasn’t real.  The glass and metal push bars and everything were there, yes, but it was all one fused lump, and it didn’t move at all.

Inside was just as weird as the first time.  Shelves, stacked and turned like tetris blocks all the way to the ceiling, forming thin paths forward and sharp lined shadows from the light still flooding in from outside.  They crawled and climbed their way through, James finding himself blinking away sudden changes in light multiple times as they’d go from near darkness, to back in a beam of light from the suns coming through the window.

Just like the first time, the inside was devoid of anything living.  At least, anything living that decided to take a shot at the three confident looking and well armed people using their shelf-homes as maneuvering points.  And just like the first time, when they found themselves dropping down behind the front counter from an overhanging tan metal shelf, James rolled his eyes as the front door was *obviously* sitting propped open and ready to walk out.

“Travel brochure here.  Oh, a lighter.  Are these magic?”  He asked El, shaking the small black plastic tube next to his head and listening to it.

“Uh… I’ve never found one, so maybe?”  El asked.  “Point it away from me you shit!”  She yelped as James clicked the lighter a couple times and sparked a flame.

“I know, I know.”  He waved her off as he examined the normal looking fire.  “This is, believe it or not, *not* the first thing I’ve handled that could potentially incinerate someone.  Though I suppose the last serious time it was Alanna almost setting *me* on fire.”  James gave a small smile, and glanced over at Anesh.  “Now we have *protocols* for that sort of thing!”

“Heh.”  Anesh shook his head.  “That was so long ago.  We should bring Alanna here when we find her again.  I think she’d like it more than me.”

“Aw, not having fun?”  James ribbed, searching through the empty drawers under the cash register while Anesh kept an eye out.

“Oh, it’s just too hot.  This is about one and a half more suns than you see on average where I’m from.  And then I spent five years in *your* state, where it’s not really much better except in the summer.”  Anesh wiped the back of a hand on his neck.  “I am sweating so much, and it’s awful.”

Behind them, El chirped up.  “Oh hey, smokes!”  She said, standing up with a half full pack of cigarettes, white and red packaging proudly labeling them as “Dire Stars”.

“There’s no way those are safe.”  James said with a snort.

“Hey, what?  No!  It’s like the food in your dungeon.  These are always fine, they just have weird names and flavors.”  El pulled one out.  “Gimmie the lighter.”

James passed it over.  “I meant because they’re gonna give you cancer.”  He told her.  “Also please don’t light that in here.  I hate the smell of those, and I refuse to put up with that shit from you.”

She flipped him off, but pocketed the lighter anyway, leaving the cigarette between her teeth.  “So, anything else here?  Or are we heading out already?  Kind of a small one, huh?”

“I mean, we got a few map chunks.  We can do a once over when we get out.  Tomorrow, Anesh and I’ll spend some time starting to dig into what’s going on here.  See if we can’t verify the map thing, you know?”  James said, pulling himself up and sliding his ass over the counter with an easy hop.

El shouldered past him in what she probably thought was a playful motion, turning to face him and Anesh as she walked backward out the door.  “I’m thinking of just leaving.”  She said.  “Like, Tontown in general.  I… I only came back for my mom, you know?”  El said as she ducked out into the hot sun.  “And my car.  But mostly mom.  And now I’m here and she’s just… bleh.”

“I getchya.  But we *should* still figure out where three fourths of the town’s population went, yeah?”  James wanted to either say the words with a laugh, or a lecture, and he couldn’t tell which, so he split the difference and went for dry amusement instead.  “It just seems a smidge important.”  James paused suddenly, quirking his head to the side.  He’d felt… something.  Something different.

He turned to look at Anesh, and as he did so, El suddenly lurched forward, grabbed onto Anesh’s shoulder and lashed out a leg at James, connecting with his stomach and sending him sprawling backward onto the pavement.

James had a moment of shock, that never really got the chance to manifest into a feeling of betrayal, because as soon as he hit the pavement, wind knocked out of him like he’d put up a no vacancy sign on his lungs, he saw the vulture.  It had perched atop the lamp post, in plain sight; the thing must have flown in while they were inside.  It had three heads, all of them grim boxy security cameras, all of them triangulating down on him.  And it was diving toward him.

It opened its mouth, and a sound like a tornado siren started to wail as if from a mile away, slowly building.

Then El yanked Anesh’s gun up, and sprayed the thing with bullets.  The bullpup’s 5.7 ammo, easily capable of punching holes in a car, was more than able to tear holes in the vulture.  Black feathers and shards of plastic and bone sprayed into the air, along with splatters of blood that darkened the scorching pavement with a hiss of steam as it came down like rain.

A second later, El stopped firing as the vulture’s corpos slammed into the ground next to James’ head.

“Fuck *me* this thing is loud.”  She yelled, working her jaw and rubbing at her ear as she handed the gun back to Anesh, who stepped back from the girl who’d just taken his weapon away and eyed her suspiciously, even as he acknowledged the dead monster on the pavement.

James groaned as he pulled himself up.  “Ow.”  He said.  “Oooow.  My lunch.  Oh, ugh, that feels awful.  Whyyyyyyy.”  He moaned, clutching his stomach.

“Sorry dude, I had to go way back for one specific thing, and I didn’t have much leeway to get you out of the way.”  El was still talking too loudly, gunfire having deafened her a bit.  “You okay?”

“Please explain.”  Anesh asked her in a too-polite voice, hands keeping a steady grip on his gun even if it wasn’t in a firing position.

“She’s a time wizard.”  James told his partner.

“I’m a… dammit.”  El looked dejected.  “I… have a spell that lets me tweak stuff.  In the past.  So that there’s always a way forward for me.  And it’s not super flexible, but uh, it works.  You know?”

“What did you tweak this time?”  James asked.  “Kicking me?”

“Oh, no.  I… ah…” El shook her head, spraying drops of blood from her nose that she didn’t seem to have noticed.  “I had to change two things.  I don’t think the spell liked one of them.”

“Kicking me was one of them.”  James stated.

“Yeah, the other one was getting Anesh to forget to turn his safety back on.”  El said.  “I had to go all the way back to yesterday for that.  But it’s the kick that messed me up.  Turns out exploiting my personal ass-saving ability to keep other people from getting their guts ripped out isn’t easy.  And I am now way more okay with us leaving today.”

James blinked.  “Oh.”  He said.  “I died a second ago?”

“Well *no*, because I fixed it.”  El said, spitting out the cigarette that she’d accidentally ground into a mushy lump with her teeth while she was shooting.  “Anyway.  You okay?  I kicked you kinda hard.”

“I’m good.”  James said.  “Let’s get out of here.”

Anesh slid past him, laying a hand on James’ shoulder.  “One second.”  He said.  “I want the map from this one, too, if it has one.  It could be important.  And if not, it’s good to know if they drop them.”  He knelt next to the vulture corpse and turned it over.  And there, glowing light that wasn’t on the visible spectrum, was a map marker.  He picked it up, and carefully did *not* activate it as he slid it into one of the pouches on his armor.  “Alright.  *Now* let’s go.”

Back in their cars.  Back on the road.  Back toward the breach and into the real world again.

And as they slid back to reality, and Anesh and James took some time to put the seats back, stow the various little pieces of loot they’d collected, and strip their armor off and feel cool air again on their skin that was like a priceless balm, they spoke quietly to each other.  El had already headed home, and the two of them were parked off to the side of the road by the dungeon entrance, stretching their legs outside of the car for a bit before they went back to the cramped room of the motel.

“She saved my life.”  James said.

“Looks that way.”

“I… damn.”  He shook his head.  “I feel weird now.”

“Because you were prepared to write her off?”

“I guess.  But maybe not.  Or, okay, no.  Yeah.  I was prepared to just sit back and think of El as an asshole, and myself as the good guy.  But it’s not that simple here is it?  She’s not actually a bad person.  Just kind of a dick sometimes.”

Anesh let out a single huff of breath.  “Oh, that’s familiar.”

“I’m not sure *who* you mean,” James said, coy, “but that *could* be half the people we know.”

“Just invite her to join the Order, and be done with it.”

“She… mh.”  James stopped himself.

“You were going to say she wouldn’t fit in?”  Anesh asked.

“None of us do though.  Do we?  Does anyone ‘fit’?”

“We all do, with each other, yes.”  His partner answered.  “That’s sort of the point.  We made a group that’s inclusive of anyone who’s willing to step up and solve problems in a way that helps people, and that includes assholes.  We work with *JP* for Christ’s sake.”

James started laughing, and found that it made him feel a lot better, letting the stress of the delve wash off him as he just calmed down, and reacted to Anesh’s joke.  Well, half joke.  “Oh, yeah, we dooooo.”  He admitted.  “I guess if we can tolerate him, we can take El in, huh?”  He said, mostly to himself.  “Alright.  Let’s…”

He broke off as the bushes to the side of the road rustled behind them.

Anesh jumped, but James turned with a grin on his face.  He’d spent so long living in the suburbs that this place, with all the forested area butting up against the ‘civilized’ spaces, was something quite novel.  And the number of raccoons and deer he’d seen on this trip hadn’t yet been enough to make him bored of it yet.

Though it was a bit of an uncomfortable surprised when, off the gravel shoulder of the road, a small asphalt lump in the ground shuffled forward like a thick slug, merging with the freeway like it belonged there and slithering off down the road toward the city.

“Was that…”

“Yes.”

“Fuck.”

“Well, good news.”  Anesh told him, worriedly checking around his feet for more of the creatures before hopping into the car.  “You were right.  There *is* a reason this place has the dungeon feel to it.”

James got in and slammed his door shut.  “I’ll be honest,” he said, “I wouldn’t have really minded if I’d been wrong.”