The Daily Grind - Chapter 171 (Patreon)

There was supposed to be something clever here but I've forgotten what I was going to say.  I'm sure it's fine.  Enjoy the chapter!

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“I’ve been playing at // I’ve been playing at self worth again // ain’t it nice to play pretend?” - The Seattle Garages, Needs Of The Many -

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James cautiously tested the mound of snow in front of them with a pole, eyeing the pile with suspicious thoughts. So far, this area around the lake had been empty of anything hostile, or even moving aside from them.  But there was always time for a mobile snow bank to take a shot at him, and so, he poked first and investigated second.

“Seems okay.”  He spoke in a voice muffled by his face covering to Arrush, who had come with him on this short scavenging trip.  The others were back at their little rest spot, though Alanna and Alex had already taken a turn to do a sweep along the cliff wall that they’d stopped against.  None of them were venturing out too far, so backup was always within easy reach if they needed it, but they were also taking a chance to rest.  After all, they’d covered several uphill miles so far over the hours they’d been in-and-or-on the mountainous dungeon.

Arrush didn’t reply to James with words, just gave a rattling hiss and moved forward, the boots Sarah had refitted for him crunching against the powdery snow.  The ratroach would move forward, then sweep his gaze around, before signaling it was okay and letting James make the same leapfrog motion as well.  Both of them were trying to do this without looking too closely at the ice crystal hovering suspended above the shattered frozen lake.

So far, they’d found nothing, and they’d probably been at this for almost an hour.  James was prepared to call it, and go sit for a bit before they started trying to climb again.  Though there wasn’t really anything around here to hide secrets that they wanted to approach too closely.  They could have checked out the lake shore, or tried to wedge deeper into one of the small cracks in the rock of the cliff edge.  But that seemed pointlessly risky.  Instead, James was mostly just trying to stay alert for dungeon nonsense while focusing as little as possible on how the cold was starting to creep in and he was pretty sure that there was snow inside his boot making it squish when he walked.  The wetsuit made it not a huge problem, but I t was *annoying*.

So instead, James took the chance to try to start up some conversation.

“You doing okay?”  He asked the ratroach he’d come out scavenging with.

Arrush didn’t look over at him, instead keeping his head moving like a sentry turret, sweeping the empty landscape.  “Fine.”  The big creature rumbled.

“Okay.  I just ask, because I worry, you know?”  James said, shrugging.  “We haven’t talked much.  And since we’re mostly finding ice and dirt, I figured I’d see how you were doing.”

“Cold.”  The ratroach said.  “Colder than ever been.  And it smells like where I am from.  Like home.”

James grimaced.  “I know it’s not really my place to say this, but you don’t have to call the Sewer home, you know?  Home isn’t… I mean, people might use the word differently sometimes, but to us?  Home isn’t where you’re from.  It’s where you go back to.”

“Then where I came from.  My origin.”  Arrush corrected with the closest thing the ratroach had to a neutral voice.  He still didn’t look at James.

“Sorry, I’m… bad at this.”  James sighed, and pulled his face cover down to wipe at his mouth and nose.  “We haven’t really talked much, and I understand if you don’t want to.  I think we’ve tried to stab each other more than we’ve tried to have a conversation.  So I guess I don’t know what to say.  Do I ask you how you’re enjoying being back in a dungeon? That seems kinda shitty.  Do I ask you how your partner’s doing? Are we that close?”

Arrush was halfway through a lunge for James’ throat before James noticed he was moving, and had frozen before James jerked back.  One of his left hands was outstretched, the extra joint in the elbow unfolding, claws trying to stab through the glove he was wearing from the inside.  Arrush’s face, even with nonhuman eyes and a covered muzzle, betrayed a riot of conflicting emotion, starting with anger and fear, and ending with shame.  Wordlessly, he closed his hand, and pulled back, shifting to face away, shoulders slumping so far that he lost a half foot of height.  “I… sorry.”  He rasped out.  “I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck?”  James whispered.  He’d been startled, but far from being truly afraid, concern took over, and he stepped after Arrush, raising a hand but not quite feeling confident in setting it on the ratroach’s shoulder.  “What was that?”  He asked, voice steady.

“Failure.”  Arrush growled.  “Again.”

“No, that’s not an explanation.”  James pushed.  “I don’t need all your secrets, but… I’d like you to be able to tell me what’s going on.  We’re going to be in more danger as we go up, and this seems like something that shouldn’t fester.”

Arrush started to say something, but the edge of one of his jutting fangs caught on the balaclava he was wearing.  With angry, frustrated motions that probably took more energy than was needed, he swiped a trio of hands over his face, ripping off the covering and balling it up in an angry fist.  “Bad memories.”  He said to James, voice clearer now.  “A bad… life.”  The ratroach heaved a breath.  “You don’t care.  About Keeka.  You don’t… understand what that means.”  His words were still staggered despite the language knowledge, and he had to pant for breath to talk at length, but it was important enough to keep going.  “Below?  If someone knew?  Would kill him… to hurt me.  Or tell the Beautiful One, to hurt us both.  A weakness.  To exploit.  Anything to crawl over the corpses.”  He snarled.  “I *forget* you are different.  And am sorry.”

“Okay.  No worries.”  James said quietly.  He stepped back, and sighed.  “I forget that you’re not… I dunno, socialized?  That sounds stupid and colonialist, but whatever.  You’re not used to us.”  He shrugged as Arrush turned to him.  “Things will get better.  I mean, *people* suck sometimes, I’m not gonna lie.  But at least in the Order, we’re not about the corpse-ladder thing.  We pull each other up.  And that means you too, if you want to be with us.”

Arrush stared at James’ face for a minute, wiping away the blue acidic drool that spilled from the corner of his muzzle.  “I… do.  We do.  Keeka is doing well.”  He answered the earlier question.

“Good!  Now, let’s get back an- *AWK*” James’ words turned into a yelp as his foot snagged on something under the snow and he tumbled forward to slam into the ground.  The impact was lessened by the snow, but his knees still stung.

Unsure of what was going on, he thrashed his feet, trying to kick off whatever was on him.  A second later, Arrush was at his side, grabbing him and hauling upward, shocking James with the casual strength the ratroach displayed.  Most of his species, in James' experience, were… not ‘weak’, really, but somewhat fragile.  Either way, he was pulled out of the snow with a wet snap as his boot tugged through something.

Arrush set him off to the side, while James brushed snow out of his coat, the two of them shuffling away from the spot that was now a human-sized crater in the snow.  “Ow.”  He wheezed.  “And thanks.”

“We lift each other up.”  Arrush said simply.

James snorted a laugh as the tension left him. “Okay, that was stupid.  What got me?”  He asked.

Nothing moved as they watched the spot.  Eventually, James caught Arrush’s eye, and gave a small nod, moving forward in a low crouch while his scavenging partner watched his back.  When he got to where the snow had been packed down from his impact and all the stepping around he and Arrush had done, the culprit was a bit obvious.

“It’s a vine!”  He called back.  “Looks like a blackberry, actually.”  He told Arrush as he approached.

The two ends of the plant poked out of the ground from where the natural snare had grabbed around James’ boot.  It looked *a little* like a blackberry, but James couldn’t ignore the skill orb knowledge in the back of his head that was shaming him for not recognizing that the thorns were too long, and there was what looked like some kind of pale blue veins of liquid running through the middle.  That sap, whatever it was, was now dripping out onto the ground.

James knelt down, looking for a closer peek.  He watched a drop of the blue fluid touch the ground, and instantly puff out into a small pile of… fresh snow?

“Is this some kind of… coolant?”  He looked up, perplexed.  “It’s making more snow.”  He told Arrush.

“Something had... to make the snow.”  The ratroach rasped back.

“...Okay, I’m not…” James pinched the bridge of his nose with gloved fingers.  “I don’t know if I need to explain snow to you, or if you’re making a joke.  But also I guess this is a dungeon, so something *did* have to make the snow.”  He sighed, and stood, dusting more snow off his knees.   “Do you see.. hmm… there.”  He turned and followed the rough direction the vine stretched with his eyes, pointing out a patch of raised snow to Arrush.  “Want to see if there’s fruit on that?”  He asked.

The ratroach shook his head, but James just questioned his spirit of adventure, and shortly they found themselves having cleared some of the covering white powder off of what turned out to be a several meter diameter patch of thorny vines and cool blue leaves.  It was actually colder here, near this plant, than anywhere they’d been so far, and it was as James was picking a handful of translucent blue berries off a vine that he realized they were sapping the heat out of his hand right through the glove.

They didn’t linger long, but did grab a small bag full of the fruit before James admitted they probably weren’t going to uncover any magical powers aside from the ingredients to the easiest smoothie ever.

As the two of them headed back to the camp to rest before the group moved on, he realized he hadn’t asked Arrush the actual important question.

“Hey, what did you mean when you said this place smelled like your birthplace?”

Arrush shook his head.  “Not this place.  The smell is… here.  Not from here.”  James raised an eyebrow and made a ‘please elaborate’ gesture.  “It is Nikhail.  He smells… wrong.”

“That’s *worrying*.  Why didn’t you… oh, because you didn’t know if speaking up would get you hurt, yeah, okay, I get that.”  James sighed.  “Okay.  Okay, that’s… I’m gonna talk to him when we get back then.  Is it because he has a Lesson? No, that doesn’t make sense.  I’ve got one and I… wait, do *I* smell?”  He was suddenly self conscious.  “You have to tell me if I smell.”

“You?  Smell like… books.  And quiet fear.  And some chemicals.”

“Oh, that’s my deodorant.  Okay.  I’m fine then.”  James sighed.  “Alright.  Let’s get back.  My legs are starting to hurt from high stepping to avoid vines.”

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“It’s cute that James gets these bonding moments with people.”  Alanna commented with a small amount of snark as she and Anesh watched Arrush haul James out of the snow a couple hundred meters away.  The two of them let the tension drain as they saw James was okay, and that his swearing at the ground wasn’t active combat they needed to come intervene in.  “Hey, quick question though, while he’s gone.  Are both the ratroaches named Arrush?  Is that a species name, and I didn’t notice?”

Anesh let out a slow breath, glancing away from watching the steam dance in the chill air to raise eyebrows at Alanna.  “What?  No, this is Arrush.  The other one is… uh… not… Arrush.  He has a name, though.  Why do you ask?”

“I mean, if this is the same guy, isn’t he missing arms?”  Alanna said.  Then, with considerably more worry in her voice, “Wait, *is* he missing arms? Did something happen?  They’re staying in Townton, is this JP’s fault? I’ll break his arms if he let something happen to our precious new kids.”

“First off, pump the brakes a bit.”  Anesh told her, lightly leaning against the cold stone outcrop.  Behind them, a small fire was dying out, the smell of wood smoke seeping into the fur of his coat.  “You know, you can just ask him these things, right?  But yeh, it’s not JP’s fault for once.  Arrush’s other two arms are… eh… vestigial?  Or at least, not super useful.  So Sarah put pockets inside his suit that he can slip them into.  Probably more comfortable, certainly safer.”

“That’s gonna make the armor awkward, huh?”  Alanna hummed.  “Wait, did Sarah’s refit power work on armor? I thought she said it was clothing only.”

“It is.  He’s not wearing armor.”

Alanna’s mouth puckered like she’d just taken a bite of the angriest lemon.  “‘Scuse me?  The fuck?  That’s not okay!”

Anesh sighed.  “I don’t think they have the best outlook on self preservation.”  He admitted.  “Also, they’re heading back.  You wanna gather up the-“ He stopped, interrupted by a small tug in the back of his mind.

He could leave if he wanted to.

The fire called to him.  Sung a song of freedom, escape.  All he had to do was take it, and he could leave.  Next to him, Alanna whipped her head around to stare at their vampire, and he saw Nik and Alex perking up too, Nik looking up from the journal he was writing in, Alex’s eyes snapping open from where she was trying to pretend she was cool by napping in a dungeon.

Anesh shook his head, and pushed it away.

“Okay.”  He said.  “Mark time.”  Anesh checked the timer on the copied smartphone he’d brought.  “Five hours eighteen minutes in the dungeon.  Alanna?”

“Exactly one hour at camp.  Wait, but Alex and I left for a bit.  So…?”

James and Arrush took that moment to step back into the covered space, the shelter from the light wind welcome.  “Hey.  What’re you all up to?”  He asked.

“Did you get the exit prompt?”  Anesh asked him.

“Nope.  Did you?”

Anesh nodded.  “Okay.  We all did, but not you.  So.  The one constant is the fire itself.  That means if we do want to escape, we need to build a fire, keep it going, and be at it when the one hour mark ticks over.  Nothing else matters?”

“Oh, I’m sure something else matters.”  Nik commented.  “But will it be enough to kill us?”

“Probably.”  James admitted.  “Which is why we’re big ol cheaters who brought telepads along.”  He sighed.  “Okay.  So. I’m gonna sit for a bit, and then, cliff things?”

“Yeah.  Farther up!  We’ve only had one thing try to kill us so far, and I’m kinda disappointed!”  Alanna announced, drawing a wince from her boyfriends.  “I wanna have a fight, you guys!  Come on, don’t tell me you don’t!”

James opened his mouth to answer, then closed it and shook his head.  He kind of got where she was coming from, but also… he didn’t really want a fight?  He mostly just felt like poking around and seeing what secrets this place had.  But if it was gonna try to kill him, he wasn’t going to just say no.

“Well.  Our girlfriend’s bloodlust aside, do we have any details for the plan?” Anesh asked.

James shrugged, settling to a dry spot on the floor.  Protective gear or not, he still didn’t need to be any damper than he already was.  “I didn’t see any particularly good spots for the climb.  Did you two?”  He asked Alex and Alanna.

It was Alex who answered as she rose to a kneeling position, unzipping one of the large packs they’d brought.  “There’s a kind of… I dunno what to call it, like a chunky part of the cliff?  It’s got little bits sticking out, that we could probably step on.  We could try there?”  She asked, pulling a set of pitons out of the pack.

“Alright.  Everyone with an A-name, you wanna go get started on that?  Nik and I will catch up in a minute.”  James said, nodding at the group from his seated spot.

“We will?”  Nikhail paused in shouldering his own pack.

“We will.”  James said firmly, as the others started moving.  In short order, they were packed up and had the needed tools out, with the fire left to smoulder and cast increasingly thin heat into the air.  The group chattered lightly as they moved out, with Alanna boisterously trying to see if she could get Arrush to laugh as they headed the hundred feet or so to the part of the cliff that was the least problematic.

And then James shifted to look at Nik, propping an elbow up on his knee and trying to relax while sitting on a freezing cold patch of rock.  “So hey.”  James started.

“Did I… do something wrong?” Nik asked.  “I thought things were going okay?”  He sounded like he was that variety of nervous that James remembered being when he was called into an authority figure’s office back in high school.

James sighed.  “You’re probably not in trouble, and the delve has been going fine.  You need to work on not freezing up when something unexpected happens, but that’s a matter of experience.  Also not what we’re talking about.”  He shifted, trying in vain to get comfortable.  “Arrush says you smell like the Sewer.”

“That’s kinda mean.”  Nik’s voice came out angry.  “And we’ve been hiking!  We’re all probably sweaty and gross under the-!”

“Nik.”  James cut him off with a hand held up.  “You smell like the *Sewer*.”  James didn’t look away as he saw Nikhail flinch.  “And you obviously know why.  Can you just tell me?”

There was a silence where James was pretty sure that Nik was deciding whether or not to just lie.  But, to the kid’s credit, he kept his mouth shut until he’d decided.  James could remember all too well the feeling of tripping over himself to make some bullshit up, when he could have just paused and then answered normally, and he was glad Nik didn’t try that.

The answer still unsettled him.  “The shaper substance.”  Nik said quietly, turning to scuff his boots over to the edge of their little overhang, thumping his shoulder into the rock where the wind started to whip past his face.  “I’ve been dosed with the shaper substance.”

James had already started to nod, but then froze as he realized what Nik was saying.  “The… highly radioactive fluid?”  He asked, voice rising an octave.

“What? No.  No!  It’s the other stuff.  The goo you and Anesh brought out of the Sewer.”  Nik grimaced.  “It’s how the ratroaches remake themselves.  It’s how the two with us rebuilt their speech ability, with Deb’s help.  Deb and Reed have been trying to figure out a way to make it less painful, and we’ve got a bunch of it from the samples you brought back.”

James cut in, stopping Nik’s erratic rambling.  “Okay, yeah, I know what you’re talking about.  Did you get exposed to it by accident during the… oh, wow, you look *so guilty* holy shit.”  James couldn’t help himself.  “Does Reed have any idea about this?”

“No.”  Came the meek reply.

“Did Deb’s idea about reducing the pain get results?”  James asked, a little annoyed.

“Not really.”  Nik answered.

“I feel like I know the answer to this but *fucking why*?!”  James snapped out the last two words, going from calm to irritated speech mid sentence.  “Why in the *world* would you think that was a good idea?  *Especially* since you’re wearing the last time you did something reckless and stupid as a glove?”  James jabbed a finger at Aidimy, the nascent Authority wrapped around Nik’s arm.

It was the wrong thing to say, probably.  And Nik instantly got defensive. “I just wanted my own body!”  He yelled back, voice cracking.  “Are you gonna be mad at me for not being cisgender now?!”  He snapped at James.

James took a minute to take a deep breath, pulled his goggles up to his forehead, pulled his gloves off, and slowly rubbed at his eyes.  “Oh my god.”  He muttered.  “You absolute dumbass.  I’m so not mad about that, I literally almost forgot you were trans.  I’m *mad* because you *spiked yourself with weird experimental dungeon serum* that *causes crippling pain*!”  He was on his feet now, pacing back and forth by the remains of the fire in the tight confines of their shelter.  “What would have happened if something went wrong? Did you even *tell anyone*?  You could have *died*!  Again!”

“But I didn’t!”

“I know!  It’s really bad confirmation bias!”  James said, and then huffed out something that was half laugh, half groan.  “You think this isn’t something we were planning to do anyway?”  He asked, voice suddenly soft.  “You think we’d just… leave you out like that?  Alanna and I were talking about literally this thirty near-death experiences ago.  The shaper substance is some of the most important magic we’ve found.  I’m not mad that you want to change yourself, I’m mad that you did it alone.  I’m… not even mad.”  James sighed.  “I’m not mad, I just wish you’d asked for help.”

“I was worried someone would say no.”  Nik said quietly.

“Dude.”  James snorted.  “Have you met us?  I say yes to so many crazy ideas, it’s a miracle I’m still alive.”  He shook his head, and stopped pacing.  “Okay.  Everything is fine, assuming you’re okay? Like, not in pain or anything?”

“Uh…”

“Nik.”  James frowned.  “Nik, really?”

“It’s not that bad.”  Nikhail threw his hands up defensively.  “I’m okay!”

“I absolutely don’t believe you.”  He said.  “But.  I’m not gonna send you home *yet*.  If anything changes, you’re telepading out instantly, though, got it?”  James waited for a sheepish nod before continuing.  “And when we get back, Deb and Lua are going to give you a barrage of tests to make sure you’re stable. And I’m *certain* Deb will have some words for you.  Words like ‘why’ and ‘the’ and ‘fuck’.  Probably in that order.”

“You really like saying things that way, don’t you?”  Nik asked, kicking idly at the snow.  “But yeah, okay.  And… thanks.  And I’m sorry.”

“People keep saying that to me today.  You know, I came here to explore, not to dive headfirst into interpersonal drama.”  James mock scowled.  “Alright.  Let’s go.  Looks like Alanna’s ten feet off the ground already, and I don’t wanna be left behind.”  He paused.  “Would you like a hug?  I’m trying to get better about this.”

Nik paused.  “I… uh… yes?  Yeah, I would.  But maybe when we aren’t wearing forty pounds of gear?”

“Fair.  Okay.  Let’s get moving.”

_____

The others hadn’t gone too far ahead.  Alanna was just setting pitons into the stone, using a well balanced hammer and an inhuman amount of strength to drive the metal spikes into cracks in the rock.  She was maybe three or four ‘steps’ up already, though the term step was kind of a misnomer.

They were roughly triangular shapes with a surface that was just barely flat enough for someone to feel like they could set their for on it.  Like someone had reached into the rock, and pulled chunks out on hidden hinges.  And then ruined them for anyone who might want to try climbing up.

And yet, it was still probably easier than scaling the cliff without the help.

Cliff wasn’t even the right term, really.  It wasn’t like the wall in front of them was forming a perfect ninety degree angle with the ground.  It sloped back, if only barely.  Enough that James figured he could have gotten up with a little determination and a lot of upper body strength.

It wasn’t even their only option to keep moving, really.  They could have tried doubling back, or circling around - though the ridge did extend for at least a couple miles - or simply going a different direction.

But those options didn’t actually accomplish what they were here for.

The only thing they knew about this dungeon and the magic it granted was this.  The higher up you got, the better.  Maybe there were more secrets to uncover, but this was what they had as a guiding focus.

Farther up.  And if they learned more along the way, so much the better.

James went up last, waiting at the bottom and keeping an eye out for anything dangerous while everyone else went first. Alex had the hardest time, with a couple of close calls as her boots slipped on the icy rock, but ultimately the cliff wasn’t impossible for people like them who were both augmented and in decent shape.

For James, it was even easier.  Once the first couple of them were at the top, Alanna threw down a rope, wrapped and tied off around a claw-like rock protrusion.  And after securing it to his climbing harness, it took James half the time as it took the vanguard to make his way up.  Probably with far less stress since he was in less danger of falling.

Ideally, Alanna could have gone first alone, and then gotten the rest of them up easy, but there was no way of knowing if they were at risk of being ambushed from either side.  So they moved in groups, and played it safe.

When James brought up the rear and pulled himself over the edge of the ridge, it was with a sigh of relief as his aching fingers no longer had to maintain a tight grip.  “Hey, do you think the exercise potion works on sore fingers?”  He asked, flexing his hands and trying to get blood flowing properly again.

“Maybe.”  Anesh said, eyes closed as he tried to get a good look at where they were going through a skulljacked drone camera.  “But we have three more of these to go.  So maybe we save them.”

“Super.”  James grumbled.

It was only about thirty feet to the next cliff.  James went first this time, Alanna and Arrush behind him while the other three kept watch below.  And it *was* more stressful, knowing he could fall.

Cold wind whipped around his head, small specks of flying ice briefly flicking against his goggles as the occasional plume of the frozen crystals was kicked off the ledge above them by the wind.  The wind was getting faster, and the temperature was getting lower.

His heart nearly exploded in his chest when he grabbed a handhold, a small indentation in the rock, and the shadow inside *moved*.  James assumed for a second he was seeing things, but then he felt the teeth clamp down on his fingers.

And deflect, like his skin was made of iron.

But he could *feel* how bad it was.  Razor sharp fangs, like some kind of organic wood chipper, frantically gnawing his hand.  On reflex, James jerked backward, swinging out and losing half his footing, barely hanging on with his other hand in a death grip. Flinging his right arm wide, he flicked his hand, and sent the small ball of shadows and teeth flying out into the open air.

He didn’t see where it landed, and he hoped the wind covered up the squeal he made when it surprised him.

Below him, Alanna yelled a question over the wind.  James, frantically trying not to fall, triggered the Status Quo glove on his left hand and dug his fingers into the rock he was tightly gripping, burning one of the charges to make a new, much easier handhold.  The glove was still new, so that charge wouldn’t come back for a couple days, but it felt worth it to pull himself back up.

When he reached for the next handhold, he realized the glove on his right hand was just *gone* as bare fingers tried to close on frozen rock.  He winced as the pain of the cold invaded his body down to the bone almost instantly, but he didn’t let go.  They had a backup glove, and twenty feet over the ground was no place to stop.

He hauled himself up.  Kept moving.

James was entirely unsurprised when he pulled himself over the edge, and had to roll through the frozen shell of iced over snow to dodge a slamming strike from a pile of snow that was both not frozen, and *very mobile*.  He was shocked, sure.  Startled.  But not actually *surprised*.

Two beady onyx eyes of stone stared down at him from a rounded ‘face’.  The whole creature, a different shade of white than the snow around it, was curves and sloped lines.  Momo hadn’t been kidding, it really was just a pile of snow that sometimes grew pillar-like arms and tried to punch you.

Then the thing opened its mouth, like a seam splitting apart, and revealed a maw full of jagged obsidian chunks.

James rolled sideways over his own backpack, kicked himself to his feet on the edge of the cliff, and awkwardly slammed his left hand into one of its eyes, firing off another glove charge and detonating the chunk of stone like a grenade.

By the time Alanna pulled herself up after him, the snow monster’s body had started to melt into liquid that James suspected was just water.  And then started to freeze again, forming a lump of ice that he had to awkwardly circumvent with the rope for the followup group.  Alanna kicked at it as she stood, shattering a chunk off and nearly slipping as it crumbled easily.  “You okay?”  She asked him loudly.  “I heard you scream.  Twice.”

“It’s one of those days.”  James yelled back over the rising wind, frozen fingers fumbling to make a decent knot.  “Can you grab me a backup glove from my pack?”  He asked, turning to present his back to her while Arrush pulled himself up behind them.  “Arrush, keep an eye out.  The mountain’s trying to kill us now.”  The ratroach nodded, and stepped past them to keep a lookout, casually drawing one of the blades strapped to his climbing harness and holding it in a casual side grip.

“What happened to your glove?”  Alanna asked as she passed him one of the backups.

James grinned as he took it from her, the tactile sensation transmitted through the circles he’d drawn on all of these things with the weird Officium Mundi pen letting it feel like they’d just brushed their hands together in truth.  “Oh, shadow thing ate it. Uh… not me, though?”  He held up his bare hand, turning it back and forth to check for marks as he stripped off the destroyed remains of the original glove.  No damage, even though he *knew* he’d felt deadly sharp teeth on his skin like knives.  But it had left not so much as a nick.

“Maybe it just eats gloves?”  Alanna asked.

“That’s actually *really bad*.”  James pointed out, fumbling his now-wet-and-frozen hand into the new glove and then pointing at his other hand, with one of the Status Quo gloves on it. “Some of our gloves are worth *way* more than others.”

They were going to have to keep a sharper eye out for those things lurking on cliffs in the future.  If that was even their only environment.  After a quick discussion, Alanna pulled one of their flares out of James’ pack before resealing it just as the others made it to the top behind them.

The next cliff passed without incident.  The light of the flare scared the gear eaters away, their shadows flowing like liquid out of their holes as the team passed.

The wind picked up.

Everyone but Alanna downed exercise potions.  They did work, easing the pain on sore ligaments and aching muscles.  Arrush had to be prodded into taking one, the ratroach seeming standoffish at first, until James pressed him with questions.  He’d been trying to avoid showing weakness again, without thinking about it.  James was zero percent interested in putting up with that today, though, when it could get one or more of them killed.

The cold got worse.

“Hey, check this out!”  Alex called as they began to prepare for the last cliff.  She was holding up something that she’d found wedged up against the rock.  “Guys!”

James checked behind them.  There was no grey mass bearing down on them like he’d worried, no wall of clouds and wind.  Instead there was just more snow falling, thicker and thicker black specks dotting the sky.  The clear hours were fading, fast.  But he had time to see what Alex had found.  “Whatcha got?”  He yelled back.

She started to run back to the group, but faltered, and then took much more determined and stable steps, which James appreciated.  No risky movements here, not when they only had ten feet of clear space between them and a fall.  And no wandering off alone anymore, not when there were hostile things afoot.  Anesh was keeping up a drone watch every time they made it over an edge, and everyone was taking turns to stand watch.

When Alex did make it back to where Alanna had started hammering a couple pitons into the rock, she held up something James absolutely wasn’t expecting.  “I found this in that little nook over there!”  She called over the wind.

And handed James a hubcap.

It was still covered in ice, though a large chunk had broken off when Alex had picked it up.  James tapped it a few times, then applied pressure and broke away the frozen covering.  The ice glittered as it fell to the ground in the fading grey light, but the hubcap didn’t break.  He turned it over a couple times.  Metal, kinda heavy, with a little warping and a bunch of scratches.  Like it had been in a crash, maybe?  But… why?

“What?”  Anesh said incredulously as he alighted his drone on his outstretched hand and unplugged from it.  “Where the bloody hell did that come from?”

“I just found it.”  Alex said.  “Do we… what do we do?”

“I don’t think we wanna be carrying this.  Kinda heavy.”  James looked around, at the last thirty feet of rock to climb, at the plumes of snow being kicked around their legs.  “Nah.  This is weird, and I don’t wanna realize two days from now that this would have been important.  In my pack.”  He turned, giving Alex access to his bag, pressing up against the cliff where the wind would be at least a little less horrible.  A few seconds of fumbling with a zipper later, a weight was added to his burden, and James stood and readjusted.  “Okay.  We ready to keep going?”

“We should build a railgun for this!”  Alanna said, putting her weight on one of the pitons to test it.

“I’ll consider it.  Alright, get moving!  We’ll cover you!”  He yelled back.

“Top’s clear, but there’s too much storm to see far!”  Anesh added.  “We need to get to cover soon!”

Alanna just nodded, and started climbing hand over hand, pulling herself up easily with her enhanced strength.  Alanna had been well muscled before, and multiple types of magic had only made her even more physically impressive.  But this was starting to get to the limits of what she could do; a climb requiring precise movements in the most hostile weather imaginable was a lot different than her preferred environment of a chaotic brawl.

But she made it up anyway.

The snow up here rose up in a great sweeping slope ahead of the cliff.  Quickly getting so tall Alanna couldn’t see past it; though the lack of a visible mountain behind it through the storm probably meant there was something at least approaching flat ground on the other side.  The storm was picking up in earnest now, visibility dropping as the whirling snow and ice in the air made it feel more like being inside a snow globe than being outside.

Finding no convenient rock to tie off their length of rope to, Alanna leaned over the edge to give Alex a hand up, the girl flinching slightly as her face swung past the flare wedged into one of the upper handholds.  Hauling the younger girl up, Alanna crouched again, braced her feet on the most stable ground she could find under snow that came up to her knees, and hauled up Arrush as well.

Then, needing to get the other three up here as fast as possible, she took the next logical path, and looped the rope around herself, clipping it to her harness before throwing it down.

“Hold this!”  Alanna said, passing Arrush their end of it.  “And hold on!”  She planted her feet again, jerking slightly in a trio of small movements as she felt James, and then Aneshs, and then Nik put their weight on the rope and start the process of ascending.

Her arms strained, and she felt her boots crunch deeper into the packed snow, but between herself and the over-armed tank of a person behind her, it wasn’t a challenge to hold on long enough for James and the others to surmount the edge.  Alanna pulled the rope up after them, leaving it on her harness and holding it in a loose coil at her side.  “Storm’s getting louder!”  She called.

James nodded.  It was getting harder and harder to hear everyone else, and there was a sharp tapping sound that it took him a minute to realize was the increasingly icy snowfall rapping off the exposed plastic parts of their armor.  “Let’s cover that hill!”  He yelled, pointing.  “If we need to, we can burrow into it, but let’s see if there’s an easier option!”

“Alright!  Everyone line up!”  Alanna yelled, passing the rope to all of them to clip through their harnesses.  With the ability to see farther than twenty feet starting to become a problem, no one wanted to be the one who took a slight pause and ended up missing.  “Ready?”

“No!”  Alex yelled back.  “Can we take a coffee break or something?”

James was pretty sure she was joking, but he could feel the exposed parts of his skin starting to crystallize in the cold, and was uninterested in banter right now.  “Move out!”  He called, and fell into the end of the line, with Alanna taking them forward.

The snowy hill ate their boots, the loose white ground swallowing them up past the waist as they walked, forcing the group to trudge forward at an agonizing pace as they carved a trench behind them.  For James, it was almost easy, following everyone’s path so cleanly.  Even though his feet were still sinking a foot into the ground with each step.

He should have known better than to think that.  In reality, it had been five minutes of pushing themselves forward, but in James’ head, it felt like only a blink of a chilled eye between thinking ‘this isn’t too bad’ and the snowy crunch of something heavy hitting the ground nearby.

Then another crunch.  The noise of wet snow smashed down to a hard packed form, the kind of sound you got when the first car took the risk and pulled out of a driveway on a snow day.  Except sudden, and violent.

The snow changed.  James felt it as, mixed in with the thick flakes and icy rivets, heavy finger-thick shards of ice started falling too.  They mostly bounced off his coat, but when one cracked into his goggles hard enough that  he felt his skull rattle, he knew it was starting to get serious.  Then, another crunch, but this one *close*.  Right next to him, in fact, where an armchair sized spiked urchin of glittering blue ice had slammed down into the ground, leaving its upper half to rapidly start being swallowed by the snow, while the grim threat remained obvious.

In front of him, James saw Nik’s head whip around at the impact site.  He shared a look with James, but neither of them paused in their movements.  The sooner out of this storm, the better.  The line ahead of him sped up, and James increased his own speed to match, no one wanting to be stuck here any longer than needed.

Alanna and Arrush were out of his sight now, swallowed by the driving snow that came in great plumes and threatened to overwhelm anyone that stood still for more than a minute or two.  But the line was still pulling, and James had faith in them.  He was entirely unsurprised when he passed by the rapidly freezing corpse of one of the snow beasts, shards of shattered eye scattered across the path.

He was more surprised when the line started to get some slack, and he caught up to everyone else.  Anesh catching his eye and waving him and Nik over as they approached.  He yelled something over the wind, and pointed at the thing they had stopped by.  An out of place pylon, sticking up through the middle of the snowy hill, defiantly casting a strange yellow werlight onto the surrounding canvas of white.

“What the fuck is this?!”  James yelled, voice consumed by the wind.

No one answered him, partially because no one heard, but also because it was hard to explain why a working traffic light was sitting here on the hill, stuck on yellow.

But they didn’t have time to sit around and examine it.  So far, it hadn’t tried to kill any of them, and so they kept moving, just a few dozen steps away from cresting the hill.  Two heavy spiked ice impacts nearby urging them on.

When they did, James was treated to the sight of a small valley, slightly protected from the driving snow, and so he could see just enough to see the crescent of cliffs that outlined their momentary salvation.  The hill they’d just covered right at the mouth of the valley, James made a note to come back and check for an easier way up when the storm died down.

For now, they pressed forward, the wind lessening somewhat as the party crossed the threshold of the cliffs.  The snow and ice kept going though, and James moved himself to the middle of the group, keeping his reflexes dialed up to maximum as he watched the sky for any incoming projectiles.

They passed a few trees, which they steered clear of, unsure if the bare branches hid more stick monsters.  They passed another street light, too, this one flickering a green left turn signal.  Moving with cautious steps, they started skirting the outside wall, looking for a good place to set down and make camp - a cave or alcove or *something* they could hide from the storm in.  It was better here, yes, but it was still getting worse by the minute.

Then Alanna, alternating sharing perception with Anesh as they swept different sides of the party, spotted it, and with a muffled shout and a pointed finger, directed their attention forward and left, to the cliff at the end of the valley.

The cliff that had a lot of strange dark rectangular holes in it.  And columns near the base that looked strangely artificial.  And…

“Is that a goddamn apartment building?”  James yelled, voice finally carrying over a lull in the wind.

It was.  Frozen over, with snow packed up to the second floor, but it was.  In fact, it looked like the entire cliff face might be a buried structure.  Dark and cold, but also… not outside.

James was about to get them moving, when something twinged in his awareness.  The confluence of a half dozen different powers and skills came together in an instant, as his brain warned him about something with barely enough time to do anything about it.  Without thinking, he ripped as much speed from Anesh as he could, feeding it into his Agility-enhanced legs, threw himself sideways, and crashed into Nik.  Nik went sprawling, crashing into a new divot in the unblemished snow.  Unharmed, though, armor taking most of the impact.

James did *not* hit the snow.  Instead, the snow hit him.  A spike of ice, screaming out of the sky at high velocity, cut through where Nik’s head had been a split second ago.  Fortunately, James was still moving, following Nik down to the ground, so his head wasn’t there instead.  But the razor-sharp spine of ice caught him on the arm, and went straight through his coat.  And armor.  And arm.

And out the other side, painting the snow with a splatter of red.

James and Nik both screamed, for different reasons, James collapsing to the snow face-first as his arm gave out when he tried to prop himself up without thinking.  Nik was already moving, rolling him over and holding up a hand, the vibrant green of his Authority unfolding as he gave it orders.  Repair the internal damage, set the bone, seal the wound, hold in place.  None of which did much for the pain, and James was suddenly struggling to keep his focus long enough to turn *down* the purple orb that dialed up his sensory input.  The pain overwhelmed him, and he caught the next part in flashes.

People freaking out, Anesh staying calm as he reclaimed his speed.  More ice coming down, some near misses.  A set of simple objectives; get into cover.  Alanna slung him over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and *ran* through the snow, with Nik keeping close to maintain Aidamy’s hold on his injury.  They reached the apartment structure just as the ice storm was intensifying to almost certain lethality.

Arrush loped up the drift of snow to the second floor window, running on every limb he had as he took point and smashed through the remainder of the broken glass shoulder first.  Anesh and Alex were right behind him, guns out, ready to put down any hostile resistance.

When Alanna passed him through the window, James staggered to his feet, regaining some of his ability as a foreign presence in his self reached into the metaphysical control board for his different powers and started adjusting things.  Dialing back his pain receptors, linking his Endurance and blood production and clotting.  Soon, he could stand, even if he was still sweating and grinding his teeth from what pain he did still feel.

The six of them stopped in the bedroom they’d crashed into, heaving for breath.  Alex recovered first, turning to look outside at the devastation the storm was raining down.  Arm length spikes of ice falling, two or three a second scattered across the landscape.   A screaming high pitched tone where the wind was catching on the window, frozen scraps of ancient cloth fluttering wildly against the wall.

“Ow.”  James gasped out. “Everyone okay?”

Alanna turned to present her back to them.  “Is there…” She asked, twisting to see what was behind her.

Alex gently reached up and plucked the icicle out of her backpack.  It had dug deep, and probably ruined something important.  “Yeah.”  She said, throwing the frozen spear out the window behind them.

“Unharmed” Arrush said simply, crouching near the shattered, rotted wood of the bedroom’s door.

“I’m good.”  Anesh said.  “Froze up there for a second, sorry.”

“My… bad.”  James’ words were more like gasps of air than his normal smooth tone.  “Had to take some speed.”

“Th..thanks.”  Nik stammered out.  “I’m good too.  Where are we?”

“Bedroom, looks like.”  Alanna said, slinging her pack off to make sure nothing was going to spill out. “Okay, the window makes this a bad place to stay.  Let’s get farther in.  Everyone get ready; this place seems great for an ambush.”

James nodded.  “Let’s go down.  Check the lobby.  Should be insulated, sealed by the snow.”  He started to try to draw his sidearm, but Anesh stopped him, a pressed hand holding James’ arm to his side.  “What?”

“You’re gonna bring up the rear.”  Anesh said simply.  “Alex, with me.  Arrush and Alanna, cover.”  He double checked his own gun, tactile enhancement on the gloves making it a lot less problematic to handle, and stepped up to the door.  “Ready?”

Alex nodded at him nervously, and Anesh leaned forward to rattle the handle, shoving the door open with a frozen crack as the old ice split away and took some of the wood with it.

The inside of the apartment structure was bizarre.  Concrete halls, rotted hard carpet, ice dripping from every surface.  Small piles of snow here and there.  No signs of any life; there was old furniture, sure, but no skeletons, no footprints, nothing.  Scraps of what were once coats, small clumps of crumpled paper or takeout containers frozen into abstract sculptures, but nothing that made this place look like anyone had been here for a very *very* long time.

It didn’t take James long to realize something.  “This is a dorm.”  He said suddenly, and a little too loudly.  Anesh glanced back at him, and James elaborated, keeping his voice down now that he didn’t have to fight with the wind to be heard.  “Look.  The rooms are just bedrooms, or sometimes two-room apartments.  This isn’t an apartment, this is a college dorm.”

“So the lobby…”

“Might have vending machines.”  James finished for Alanna.

“Not what I was thinking, but okay.”  His girlfriend rolled her eyes at him.

Ahead of them, Anesh and Alex checked another door, making sure nothing was going to jump out at them.  But then, beyond that, the hallway opened up into an open space.  They were on the second floor, and the rough concrete hall floor turned into a balcony that wrapped around open air over the common area.  There were five other hallways leading into the dorms, and two stairways on either side of the lobby that made this upper walkway into a kind of horseshoe shape.

Down below, there was cold brick and concrete.  A trio of old couches tried to pretend the place was homey or comfortable, and failed.  A dead fireplace sat embedded in a central brick pillar.  James could see more hallways leading to more dorm rooms, as well as a small door with a frosted glass window that was probably the main office.

Nothing moved.

He and Anesh shared a suspicious glance.  Anesh leaned over the balcony, and called down.  “Anyone home?”

Nothing moved.

“This seems like as good as we’re gonna get.”  James sighed.  “Nik, how’s my arm doing?”  He asked.

“Uh… there’s a hole in it.”  Nik replied, like that was obvious.

“Thanks.  Cool.  I mean, how powerful is your healing nonsense?”

Nik jerked upright.  “Oh!  Uh, you’ll be okay, I guess?  Aidemy keeps infection out, and is staving off frostbite, and you… uh, you heal *fast* actually.  She’s just kinda helping it along.  Should be good in, like, three or four hours?  If you can get warm.”  The answer actually surprised James, who had kind of assumed he at least would need to telepad out for safety.

“Okay.  This seems like the place to camp then.”  James said.  “Let’s get some tripwires up on these halls, and then get a fire going, yeah?”  His suggestion was met with overwhelming agreement.

Twenty minutes later, after rigging up what were essentially cans on strings to all the hallways mouths as makeshift alarms, the lobby was starting to warm up.  Slightly.  A roaring fire cast orange light over the couches they’d dragged over, after making sure they weren’t mimics or bombs or something worse.

Alanna was feeding a few chunks of oddly bent wood from the wallet of holding into the blaze, letting the fire that roared up from the ignited copy of Pony Things take its natural course.  The infinite magazine, which James gave a rude grin at, was finally serving an actual purpose.

“Okay.”  He said around a mouthful of cold ravioli.  “Good progress for the first day, I think.  How’s everyone doing?”  Everyone being those of them who weren’t actively keeping guard right now.

“Exhausted.”  Anesh said.  “We should have brought more exercise potions.  We only have two left each now, and I could have used all of them today.”

Nik nodded as he set up a couple bedrolls from their packs onto the floor.  “Yeah, I’m so tired. And I barely did anything.”

“Oh, that reminds me!”  James said, trying and failing to snap his fingers.  “Nik, are you okay with me explaining to Arrush the thing?”

“The th… oh.  Uh.  Sort of?”  Nik seemed to shrink slightly under James’ gaze.

“Then I will sort of explain.”  James turned to the ratroach, who had, not unintentionally, set himself up on the opposite side of their camp space from Nik.  “He’s been using the shaper substance to fix his body.  Nothing to worry about.  Can’t do much about the smell though.”

Arrush blinked his eyes at James in a circular sequence of surprise.  Like he hadn’t actually expected a follow up on that, and certainly not a real answer.  He hissed out a breath, then turned to face Nik directly for the first time, voice rough and pained from the cold on top of his flawed biology.  “Do… you require help?”  Arrush said.  “I can show… some tricks.”  He had to pause between words, both for breath, and to consider what he was saying.  But he still said it.

“Uh… I mean, if Reed doesn’t get *super* mad about this and ban me from it forever.  Yes? Yeah.  Yeah!  That sounds like… I’d like that.  I didn’t think to ask.”  Nik stumbled through something approaching real conversation.

James just smirked and shook his head.  “Alanna, Ben, Alex, how’re you all doing?”  He called to the remainder of the group.

“Hungry!”  Alanna called back.  “What do we have to eat in this place anyway?”

James looked down at the hand made ravioli that Nate had packed for them.  Which he was, like some kind of monster, eating without actually reheating.  “Uh… some pretty good stuff, actually.  Can I just say, I think the infinite lunchbox is kind of my favorite thing?”  He rose to his feet, wincing as he put a little too much weight on his damaged arm, and started unpacking a sealed plastic container of food for Alanna.

“Yeah, though I’m now super conscious of just how bad it would be for one of those little shadowy eater things to get into one of our backpacks.  Or worse!  Get one of the Status Quo gun bracelets!”  Anesh shook his head, ramming his eyes shut like he could will the idea away.

“So, we’re gonna keep going?”  Alex asked as she walked past, taking a minute to enjoy the heat of the fire, even while she stayed standing and watching the hall.  The orange yellow light flickering off the solid wall of white behind them where the snow had buried the front of the building and packed down to a monocolored sheet.  “We could get out in, what, half an hour? We’re already way farther in than the others got.  And James is hurt.”

“I mean, we could.  But I think we’ve mostly got this?  So far.  *So far*!”  James clarified as Anesh glared at him.  “We can always fall back if we need to!”  He handed the pasta and a camp utensil to Alanna, shaking his head at her smirk as he walked back to the fire. “Why, are you tired?”  He asked Alex.

“Pff!  No!”  She lied as she blew a strand of hair out of her face. “But look!  Poor Ben and Nik are just *so exhausted*!   Can we really make them go on?”

The two boys gave her incredulous looks.  “I’m going to bed.”  Nik announced, stretching out under a thermal blanket, harness and armor removed but undersuit still on.  “I will be fine.  And sore.  But also fine.  And like James said, we can always fall back.  We’ve got time to rest anyway; I doubt anything can make it through...”

“Oh god please stop.”  James said.

“...the storm anyway.  What?”  Nik finished, giving a confused look.

Anesh answered.  “That kind of thing is basically an invitation for a dramatic problem to occur.” He said, looking up at the ceiling of the dorm’s common area like he was waiting for something to smash through the window.  Everyone went silent, watching him, and the room.  For a few minutes with no sound but the crackling of the fire.  “Hm.  Normally.”  Anesh broke the spell.

James laughed, the sound infectious to the others, who joined in.

Outside, a storm raged.  But here, in this empty, cold, dead building, they had a fire, food, and a little safety.  They had time to rest up, sleep properly, and double check their gear.  And to plan for tomorrow, to see how high they could reach, together.

When the pull came from the fire, none of them left.

The seven of them were eager to see what was next.