The Daily Grind - Chapter 172 (Patreon)

There will be another post, for everyone, later today, but in brief; I'm taking a short break after this one, for personal health reasons.  Didn't wanna leave anyone on a cliff hanger though.  So, here ya go!

_____

“You’re all clear, kid!  Now let’s blow this thing and go home!” - Han Solo, Star Wars Episode IV -

_____

“Hey.”  A soft voice whispered to James, as his brain spun itself out of sleep.  It was accompanied by a shaking of his shoulder, a soft rocking that was far too gentle to be either of his partners.  Alanna would just tackle him, Anesh would be more firm.  His first thought as he woke up was to recognize that someone unknown was kneeling over him.

Fortunately, James’ brain also caught up to the fact that he was on the cracked concrete floor of an abandoned dorm building several miles or so up the side of a mountain that was itself a dungeon.  And so he neither panicked, nor made any overt yelps as he cracked his eyes open and groggily tried to figure out if it was Alex or Nik waking him up.

It was Alex.  And she was wearing a worried look on her face.  James shook off the pale haze of dreamland as forcefully as he could and pushed himself up onto an elbow.  “Mmrs’goin on?”  He asked.  “My watch shift?”  He added, clearing his throat and getting a little more coherent.

“It’s not supposed to be.”  Alex muttered.  “There’s a problem.”

Now James was *really* awake.  “Okay, what’s up?”  He looked around.  The fire was mostly embers now, the room having kept the heat they’d pumped in fairly well.  Alanna and Nik were sleeping on the other padded mats they’d brought, while the others kept an eye out.  Everything seemed fine.  The unbroken plate glass windows facing outside still had snow packed up against them, showing off their semi-underground status.  The camp lanterns were still going, casting a low white glow over everything.  In the distance, James could hear wind howling, which was the same sound that had echoed him to sleep not too much earlier.

“It’s supposed to be your shift.”  Alex muttered.  “But that’s not what we planned.  And I don’t know why.”

“Okay, explain.”  James was rolling to his feet now, muscles stiff from the persistent cold even though he’d slept in a pretty good sleeping bag.  He started pulling on armor pieces that he’d arranged nearby, grateful that the exercise recover potion seemed to have kept the worst of the soreness away.

“It’s my Sewer power.”  Alex muttered, still looking like she wasn’t sure if she should have woken James up at all.  “It’s timing, right?  Well, if we had even split watch shifts, *now* is when I should be waking you up.  But… uh… it’s not? So I woke you up.”

“I do not wake up coherent enough for this.”  James grumbled.  “So, you should have woken me earlier? We messed up the math or something?”

“No, no.  We should have woken you up *later*.  I’m waking you up early, because Timing says it’s your shift.  But, uh… I don’t know why.”

James thought about it for a second.  His brain turned up nothing.  “Powers usually don’t screw up.  Something’s probably going on.  Where’s Arrush?”  Alex just pointed over to a spot near the crumbled metal of a pair of drinking fountains where the ratroach had claimed a perch to silently watch as many of the hallways into this room as possible.  “Okay.  Anesh?”

“He’s off with Ben, watching upstairs.”  Alex’s voice was concerned, but also apologetic.  “I’m really sorry, I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t think waking Alanna…”

“Oh, yeah, Alanna wakes up all flaily.”  James nodded at Alex’s wisdom.  “Here, pull this strap for me.”  He shifted and let the girl tug at his armor.  “I’m gonna go check on the others.  Watch these two.  You slept, right?”

Alex winced.  “Yeah, sorta.  Kinda hard to, you know?”

“Heh.  Yeah.”  James nodded and stood, bracing himself against one of the broken couches as he tried to put his boots on while they were still damp; the fire hadn’t done much to dry out the persistent wet of the no longer frozen snow.  “Well.  Now’s as good a time as any to get up.  Get some food out for everyone, kay?”   Alex just nodded, and James returned the nod with what he hoped was less nervousness while he walked off to check on the others.

When he approached the nearest watcher, Arrush inclined his head the way he’d seen the humans do to James. This had the unfortunate side effect of causing a thin line of blue drool to roll down the corner of his mouth, splattering to the wetsuit the ratroach wore under his climbing harness.  It sizzled, slightly, eating away at the material before Arrush whisked it off.

It was a little strange, the line between Arrush’s black fur and grey-brown chitin that adorned his neck and head, and the smooth monochrome black of the wetsuit.  The contrast was startling, for all they were close to the same color.  But now that James looked… he noticed a handful of small holes in Arrush’s suit where the fur was poking through.

“Hey.”  He greeted the ratroach.  “You doing alright? Get some sleep?”

“Yes.”  Arrush rasped back.  “Fine.  Warmer here.  I am… no, nothing.”

James frowned at him with his whole face.  “If I tell you what’s wrong with me, will you tell me what’s wrong with you?”

“Probably… no.”  Arrush admitted.  “You share weaknesses… to easily.”  He was still having trouble speaking in long bursts.  But at least he was speaking.

“I’ve heard that.  But also, complaining about how the cold makes my bones hurt is a time honored tradition among my people.”  James said. Then, realizing what he’d just done, corrected a bit by saying, “That’s mostly a joke.  My grandpa used to say that, and I’m exaggerating to make a joke.  But I just realized that you don’t have the context.  There is not tradition of complaining.  But you still can if you want.”  He faltered through his speech more than Arrush had, though for different reasons.

The ratroach snorted something that sounded like a wet sigh.  Then, looking back up at James, said, “Elbows.”

“What?”

“The cold.  My elbows ache.”  Arrush said.  “I am complaining.”

James blinked, then slowly let a grin spread across his face.  “You’re really adaptable, huh?”  He mused.  “Anyway.  We’re gonna get ready to face the day soon.  I’m gonna go collect Anesh.”

The ratroach tipped his head again, this time careful not to leak on his gear.

James ascended the right side staircase, boots clomping on cold concrete as he did so.  Aside from his steps, the whole place was silent.  The kind of quiet that comes from a blanket of muffling snow, but also mixed with the kind of quiet that comes from a place that’s waiting for people to return to it.  The building had that kind of feeling, despite the disrepair; like it was just slumbering, and not ruined.

Part of him wondered if it *was* put here for them.  It had a working fireplace, even.

He found Anesh a short way down one of the upstairs hallways.  One of the ones that led farther into the building, away from where they’d breached through the front second floor window.  Ben was with his partner, standing nearby while Anesh used a piece of old wood to turn through a pile of rotting cloth on the ground.

“Hey.”  James greeted his boyfriend.  “What’cha got there?”

“A stick.”  Anesh sighed.  “You’re up early.  Couldn’t sleep?”

“Eh.  Something like that.”  James shrugged.  “So, no secrets of the dungeon revealed?”

“Well, I’m obviously not going to stray too far when I’m supposed to be nearby to spot danger.”  Anesh rolled his eyes, tossing the stick into the pile of detritus.  “So no, nothing in these first handful of rooms.  This place is strange, James.”

“Strange how? Also come on, we’re gonna do a breakfast when everyone wakes up.”  James tipped his head back toward the main room.  “Also… isn’t the existence of this place strange in the first place?  Like, I don’t wanna judge a dungeon I haven’t really gotten to know yet, but I was prepare to encounter exactly two types of building up a mountain, and this is neither of them.”

Anesh carefully stepped back over their tripwire, strung across the mouth of the hallway, and caught up to James to walk next to him as they circled back around the stairs.  “Well, it’s the lack of… sorry, *two*?  Ski lodge, obviously, but what’s the other?”

“James Bond villain lair.”

“That was one movie.”  Anesh rolled his eyes.

“That was *four* movies.”  James corrected him.  “Five if you count… uh… Die Another Day?  The one with the ice hotel and the space laser.”

“Goldeneye.”

“The *other* Bond movie space laser, and... this is not important.  Tell me about the dungeon.”  James tried to sound stern but could only manage a slightly restrained chuckle as they descended the stairs.

They paused a little bit away from the camp so they could talk without waking Alanna and Nik just yet.  “Well, like I said, it’s kind of empty.  And I suppose I’m just thinking that, compared to Officium Mundi or even Route Horizon, there’s *nothing here*.  No trinkets, no resources, nothing.  The furniture is falling apart, there’s only some scraps of torn clothing or waterlogged paper.  The vending machines are shattered and empty.  So’s the fountains.”  He gestured over to near where Arrush was trying to stifle a yawn.  “The most we’ve found by way of… I guess the best way I can think to say for now it would be ‘natural rewards’... would be the weird berries you and Arrush found.  But that’s kind of it.”

“I’ve noticed that, yeah.”  James sighed out.  “I’m actually worried that this is gonna be something like the map scraps from El’s home turf, you know? Where if we don’t actually solve the puzzle, we’re not gonna get anything out of it.”

Anesh nodded at his partner, sharing the sigh.  “Well, not much we can do about it.  We’re not here to set up a research station, just to scout as much as we can.”

“On that note, I’m awake enough now to inflict it on others.”  James commented smarmily.  “Let’s go get Alanna and Nik up, and get today moving.”  He rolled his arm, stretching out his shoulder, as he started walking over to the embers of their fire.

Nik woke up abruptly when James poked him, jerking sideways and sending an awkward punch toward his dreamed assistant.  James didn’t take it personally, but did still dodge it.

Alanna woke up groggily.  James *knew* she’d woken up, but his partner was stubbornly refusing to open her eyes.  “Come on, up up.”  James whispered to her.  “Time for adventure.”  He planted a kiss on her lips, which she started to lean into before pulling away suddenly.

“Augh!”  Alanna brought up her hands to wipe at the cool air in front of her face.  “You have morning breath!”

James laughed.  “Well, sorry I didn’t remember to pack a toothbrush for our hike up Terror Mountain.”  He swatted at her butt through the padding of the sleeping bag.  “Come on, let’s get this morning started.”  He cajoled her out of bed while Alex tried to smother a snickering laugh behind them.

Half an hour later, the seven adventurers were more or less ready to go.

They’d had breakfast, double checked every piece of gear they had, gotten dressed, and found a derelict bathroom that was still ‘usable enough’ to relieve themselves.  They’d patched some small holes in armor and one big hole in Alanna’s backpack.  They replaced missing protective equipment, and took stock of their abilities.

A good twenty minutes after that was spent quietly going over the previous day, now that they had some breathing room.  A breakdown of what went well, and what could go better.  How to improve, as a team.

Then, they took stock of injuries.  James had the worst of it; his hand still ached from where he’d had to scrape bare skin against frozen rock to haul himself up when his glove got eaten.  And also, the hole in his arm wasn’t that great either.  There was a feeling like ripping off a scab when Nik’s Authority had pulled back from the wound, leaving behind a patch of pink scar tissue, but no hole.

“You still lost blood.”  Nik told him.  “So don’t push it.  Or get stabbed again.  I’m not actually sure if it’ll be more or less of a problem at higher elevation.”

“Oh, that.”  Alex cut in.  “I brought a couple things to check with; the air isn’t getting thinner or anything.  Pressure’s the same up here as it was at the start.”

“Well that’s kind of insulting.  We haven’t got up enough to matter?”  Alanna asked, sullenly.

“Uh, no.  It’s just not something that’s happening.”  Alex shrugged.  “We’ve absolutely gone high enough that it should matter.”

“Air gets… thinner?”  Arrush asked.

James made that small ‘ah’ noise that he’d been getting too familiar with making every time he forgot that the ratroach didn’t have a college education.  “Yes, generally.  Normally, the higher up you go, the harder it can be to breathe like usual.  That’s a huge simplification, but yeah, thinner air.”

“What a strange world.”  Arrush rasped.

“It’s big enough to have a lot of weird in it, yeah.”  James agreed.  “Okay.  So.  I’m not dead, we’re all packed up, everyone’s fed and warm…”

“I am not warm!”  Anesh reminded him with folded arms.  “Every meter away from the fireplace it drops two degrees!”

“...everyone’s warm *enough*.  So.”  James clapped his gloved hands together, the mismatched fabric feeling like a second skin as he smiled at the group.  “Let’s get moving.”

Together, the seven of them made for the stairs.

Today’s plan was simple.  Not easy, but simple.

They were going to keep going up.

But first, it was worth scouting the rest of this building to see if there were any secrets hidden within.

By the time they made it to the third floor, most of the windows were unblocked.  At least, on the side facing where they’d come from.  The windows on the ‘rear’ of the building were all blocked off by the solid rock of the cliff it was embedded in.

It was like the whole structure had been slapped into place, the stone flowing around it to create a cradle for the piece of misplaced architecture.

None of the dorm rooms on the third floor had anything in them of note.  More splintered wood and cracked plastic of old furniture.  One of them had its bare concrete covered in shards of a broken mirror, the frame of which instantly put James on edge as they searched the rest of the room.  But nothing jumped out, either of the frame or the broken pieces.

It was just quiet, inside.

Outside, the storm was still going.  Not at the violent scream that the wind had been whipped up to when they’d taken shelter yesterday, but still something powerful.  It was hitting the building from the side, and every time they checked a room with a window that faced the front, they could see a frantic curtain of snowflakes flying past.  Building up miniature drifts in the corners of broken windows.  No spikes of ice rained down death, so at least there was that.

On the fourth floor, there was a rec room.  The group paused at the door, James and Nik glancing at each other from either side of the portal.  The door itself was missing, the frame cracked and crumbling, but the building didn’t appear unstable.  Both of them had their sidearms out; just because the building *looked* empty didn’t mean anyone in the group wanted to get ambushed.

A slight nod, and James stepped through, sweeping the left side of the room, while Nik took the right.  Their movements weren’t perfect, but they were professional and trained.  Nothing moved on them, and they called out an initial clear status, while the others moved in behind them, Alanna staying behind and crouching to watch the door.

The rec room had windows of its own that faced the right side of the building.  The space was easily five or six times the size of any individual dorm they’d searched so far, and James counted them lucky that the windows faced *away* from the direction of the storm.

There was a shattered big screen TV against one wall, the communal electronic cleaved through the middle with a gash that went halfway down its face.  What looked like a demolished IKEA shelf had toppled over next to it, spilling board games and books into a pile of rotting cardboard and soaked ink.

There was a pile of snow along the wall under the windows, where previous storms had stacked up the frozen substance, and the ambient tempature of “cold” had not seen fit to melt it away.

And off to the side, a billiard table.  Broken, of course, two of its legs snapped and the body cracked down the middle.  Pool cues scattered where their rank had been similarly broken, the balls having rolled to carpet the room.  The ones that weren’t crushed to fragments, that is.

“Who *built* this place?”  Alex muttered.

“Wrong question.”  Alanna said from her lookout post.  “We know who built it.  The dungeon did.  The better question is…”

“*Why* did the dungeon make a dorm?”  Alex filled in.

James nodded, bolstering his pistol.  “Good question.”  He acknowledged, eyes sweeping the pattern of cracks on the ceiling over the middle of the room.  “College dorm doesn’t feel very mountainous.  But… well, not much we can do about that.  This room has way more stuff than anything else, though.  So, maybe something worth something here.”

They split up, something that wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it would have been if they’d done it outside of the same room, and started poking around the various objects.

The TV was a complete wreck, and James had a hard time assuming anything of value was hidden there.  Anesh and Nik kind of zeroed in on trying to sort out the old textbooks for anything readable.  And Arrush… sniffed the air, with his twisted snout, before cocking his head and shifting toward the pool table.

Alex, though, went over to try to take a look out the windows.  And as soon as her path across the middle of the room took her under the cracks on the ceiling, there was a snapping sound.

Everyone froze.  Even Alex, whose eyes went wide as she heard the sound from above her.  For a second, the whole room went still, the people nearest to the sound tensing up more than the others as they prepared to move.  Alex shifted *slightly*, and the noise intensified; the cracking and grinding of stone and wood coming apart filling the air.

Then, the girl took a deep breath, nodded to herself on a beat like a metronome, and then flung herself backward just as the ceiling overhead came apart.

The others also flung themselves away from where the rubble would be coming down.  But it *didn’t*.  Instead, it ‘fell’ upward, the shattered remains of the ceiling and the floor of the floor overhead tumbling in defiance of gravity to smash into the ceiling one floor up, breaking through that too, before coming to a cacophonous stop after ‘falling’ twenty feet or so.

Alex had almost completely gotten out of the way, but not *entirely*.  And the girl had, when the reverse pit trap on the ceiling had begun breaking, been sucked upward along with several pieces of broken couch and shelf under the hole.  Her leg had slammed into the ceiling, and she’d started sliding upward across the intact ceiling of the rec room toward the hole, before Alanna had reacted and jumped to grab Alex’s outstretched arm, dragging her back to the floor.  An act that required a shocking amount of force, as the reversed gravity didn’t seem to fade until she was planted firmly back on the floor away from the break.

“Fuck!”  Was all James could think to say.

“Holy shit.  Aaaah.  Wow.  Aaaahahahahaha!”  Alex’s voice turned into a babble of words as she crouched on the floor clutching her chest.  “What the *shit*?!  That’s not fair!”  She jutted a shaking hand toward the hole, where even now they could all see the dust and splinters of the collapse falling the wrong direction.  “Fuck that!”

“Everyone okay?”  James called out, and got a chorus of affirmations back from everyone.  Even Alex, who had almost been flung upward two stories, wasn’t actually hurt.  “Okay!  Keep an eye out for *that*, now, too, I guess!  This place obviously isn’t as neutral as we thought.”

With that grim reminder that they were still in a dungeon in mind, they went back about their search.

“This smells… familiar.”  Arrush said a minute or two, stalking back around the hole in the ceiling with his uneven gait to hand James a pool cue.  It was old and worn, but still intact, unlike most of everything else here.  “Not like home… but… I cannot explain.”  The ratroach looked concerned, even now, that his words were unwelcome.

“Hm.”  James said, eying the piece of wood in his hands.  He tried to pull on that extra bit of sensory information he’d sometimes have in Officium Mundi that could *maybe* point out dungeontech to him, but nothing came to life.  “Well, I’m not gonna hit anything with it, just in case.”  He said.  “We’ll take it with us, though.”  He looked up and met Arrush’s eyes.  “If it’s nothing, no worries.  If it’s something, good nose.  What *does* it smell like, actually?  Office stuff sometimes smells like hot salt to me.”

“Like… like…” The ratroach tried to clear his throat, the dry air leaving his voice pained and raspier than normal.  James offered him some water, which Arrush took, but did not drink.  “Smells like cold air.”  Arrush said, looking down at the water bottle in his hand.  “Should not share this with me.”  He muttered.

“What? No, just, drink the… oh.”  James’ mouth twisted into a sad frown as he realized why Arrush was saying that, eyes flicking to the glowing saliva on the edges of the ratroach’s mouth.  “Uh… okay, well, that one’s yours then.  Don’t worry about it.  And *drink something*.   I’ve. talked to Deb!  I know hydration is important for you!”

“...Gracias.”  Arrush hissed out.

James shook his head, and slung his backpack off to break down the pool cue and zip-tie the pieces together.  Fortunately, even with its worn age, the screws weren’t rusted, and shortly he had a much more portable potential magic item.  That done, he went over to bother the last two people still searching the room.

Nik and Anesh were trying to read books.  Which was alternating between the two of them tossing books - mostly textbooks from the looks of it - to the side if they were too damaged to read, or stacking them in a pile between where they were crouched if they met some strange criteria.  The two boys talked in excited tones, perking up as James got closer.

“James!”  Anesh exclaimed.  “There’s something wrong with these!”

“Oh good.  I was worried this was going to be an easy day.”  James deadpanned.

Anesh rolled his eyes.  “Wanker.  No, it’s that they won’t… book.”

“You can’t just say that.”  Nik cut in.  “It’s more that they don’t… uh…book.  Fuck dammit, okay.  Fine.”  He sighed.  “You can’t read them, but they’re intact and functional.  Here, look at this one.”  He took the top book off their ‘intact’ pile and handed it to James.

James opened it, looked at the words inside, figured out what subject it was, and then realized that he hadn’t opened the textbook at all and had, in fact, read no words.  “Trippy.”  He commented.  “What use are these?”

“Well, they’re weird for one thing.”  Anesh said.  “Some of them are more damaged than others, and you can tell.  But… I dunno, this feels important.”

“Okay.  Pack ‘em up.”  James said.

“What, really?  All of those?”  Alanna asked as she joined them.  “That’s gonna weigh so much.  You’ve been to college, you *know* how heavy textbooks get!”  She chided James.

She wasn’t wrong, exactly.  But, their packs were lightened by what they’d used up to get this far, and with seven people, it wasn’t too hard to distribute them so that no one was *too* weighed down.

It amused James that at this point, his pack included a pool cue, a hubcap, and a couple textbooks.  If he was on his way to college, it was a hell of a weird one.

They did one last sweep of the rec room, but found nothing else, aside from the strange pull of reversed gravity still ‘under’ the hole in the ceiling.  So they moved up.

Using the stairs.  No one liked James’ suggestion of dropping up the pit trap.

The next floor was dorm rooms.  The most interesting thing they found was the communal bathroom, where it looked like every pipe and faucet had exploded, the water freezing after a second or two of flowing.  The whole place was frozen, literally, in a moment of chaos.

They didn’t explore that one, leaving the dark room alone.  Instead, they just kept heading up when it became clear there was no threat or treasure here either, again skirting the column of warped gravity.

The next floor was the last one in the dorm.  It was also just empty rooms, dust, and broken fragments of lives that were never lived here.

James found half a poster taped to the rough brick wall of one of the rooms, that appeared to be a tour poster for a band called Tyrannosaurus Wrecks.  At least, if he was guessing the name properly, from where it was torn down the middle.

He added it to his pack, already mentally ranking it as the coolest thing they’d found so far.

And then, there was nothing left to search.

“Is it just me, or was this place *really* empty?”  Alex asked as they collected themselves and took a five minute break by the door to the top floor’s balcony.  The balcony - or was it a patio?  James could never keep those straight - stretched out the back of the building, and merged seamlessly with the frozen snowy hills that continued up and up and up.  They were so high up now, they scraped the cloudline, even if there was still a lot of climbing before they really got past it.

“It was empty.”  Anesh acknowledged Alex’s question.  “Which, yes, is strange.  It felt to me like there was more outside than in here.  And outside is mostly snow.”

“Ehhhh, that might just be because it was harder to walk out there.”  Alanna suggested with a shrug.  “Anyway.  Ready to get back to the wind and stuff?”

“No.”  Anesh said dejectedly, at the same time that James gave an excited “Yup!”

Anesh was overruled.  Even Arrush gave a tentative nod along with them.

And so, they pulled open the back doors to the patio, the sliding doors grinding on what seemed like a century of grit and ice buildup.  They had to be careful, even with the heavy gloves, to not accidentally grab the shattered parts of the glass.

And then, pulling goggles down and masks up, the team moved on.  The six of them climbing the railing and taking their first steps of the day out of their shelter.

The wind and snow whistled around them, but didn’t cut off their vision or threaten to fling them around like puppets like it had yesterday.  Instead, it was just cold, snowy, and walking required an effort, especially uphill.

Just another day in the dungeon.

Their boots crunched into snow as they made their way up the hill, the dorm and the cliffs behind them soon so far back that it was hard for an individual human-scale person to tell that they were elevated at all.

They still had a rope connecting them, just in case, but it was a much more relaxed pace than when they were trying to outrace an ice blizzard.

Twenty minutes later, when they were ‘ambushed’ by a snow pile that must have thought it was being sneaky, Alanna slammed into its back with an overeager tackle, hauling herself up to its head with a cackling laugh to shatter one of the creature’s black stone eyes using one of her glove’s charges.  The others were ready to help, but let her have her fun.

They kept climbing.  Pausing briefly to take shelter behind a boulder when the wind did pick up again.  It didn’t last for long, though a few razor sharp discs of ice got flung down the mountain.  Their resting spot kept them from injury though, and it was more than big enough for all of them.

James did get another glove eaten when he leaned on one of the rock’s shadows though, without thinking about it.

“God dammit.”  He muttered, letting Anesh pull their last spare out of his pack and fumbling a rapidly numbing hand into it.   The cold was *not* something they could screw around with anymore, their little thermostat reading it at negative twenty out here.  “Where are the flares? There’s another boulder coming up, we should have a flare ready.”  He called over the wind

“They’re in Ben’s pack!”  Alex shouted back.

James paused.  Everyone paused, actually.  All of them feeling something unhook in their memories.

Looking around, James counted heads.  There were six of them.  Obviously.  Because that was how many people a telepad could move.

He rattled off names, and was pretty sure the others were doing something similar.

“Oh bloody hell!”  Anesh yelled.  “How did no one notice that!  He took one of our bedrolls!”

“And all the flares, and a bunch of rope, and the spare wetsuit…” Nik did a quick inventory.  “Aw, a whole thermos of coffee!”

Arrush mimed eating, voice not able to carry over the wind but wanting to remind them of the food Ben had consumed, too.

“Shit.”  James uttered.  “Okay.  Gonna have to be on the lookout for that in the future.  Typical college student; ate all our food then bounced.”  He tried to make it into a joke.  “Are we still good to keep going?”

“Oh, for now, sure.”  Anesh told him.  “But if we were planning to keep going tomorrow, I think we probably shouldn’t.”

“Okay, let’s move on.  When we get to a campsite, we’ll evaluate.”  James got a round of nods from them.  Shortly after, the wind relaxed, and they kept climbing.

It wasn’t long before James, leading their procession, noticed something of interest.  To the left of the hill they were climbing, if they were to dip back down fifty feet or so, in among a small copse of trees, there was the familiar green glow of a traffic light reflecting off of the flat plane of white snow.

On its own, that wasn’t too strange.  Or rather, relative to the dungeon so far, it wasn’t too strange.  They’d seen a traffic light standing in the middle of nowhere before.  But from their vantage point, James could see, slightly farther away, another one.  And then a distant third, little more than a point of dim light shining through the snow.

He paused, and pointed, making sure everyone else saw what he saw.

Their line shifted.  Together, they agreed.  They should check that out.

Descending a snowy slope was actually way harder than going up one.  Unable to see where they were stepping, each movement had to be carefully probed out, lest it turn into a fall.  They moved slowly, in pairs side by side.  More than once, one of them had to steady or catch another.

But they made it.  And as they reached the foot of the hill they’d just spent so long getting up, the wind even died down a little to congratulate them.  The snowfall turning into just a thin dusting of flakes.

“There’s another one over there.”  Nik pointed in the opposite direction of where James had seen the other two traffic lights, as they stood near the base of the first one.  It was still surreal, the metal pole jutting out of the snow at a slight angle, the light stuck on green, an unblinking and solid glow.  “And I think another farther back?”

“Oh yeah, I see it.”  Alanna said, squinting into the distance.  “Looks like they kinda curve around.  Wait, hang on…”

“This is a circle!”  Anesh declared.  “The angles all match up!  I mean, or it’s just a line.  But I think it’s probably a circle!”

James frowned at that.  “Okay, worrying.”

“Why?”  Arrush had to lean in to hoarsely ask his question.  “Are circles… bad?”

“Huh?  Oh.  Normally, no.  But basically anything that’s a pattern in a dungeon is deliberate, right?  So, if it’s a ring of traffic lights, then… well…”

“What’s it marking off?”  Alex finished.  James glanced over at her, noticed that she already had her weapon out.  That was a good thought, James approved.

He looked around at everyone.  “Alright.  Arm up.  Anesh, break out the coffee.  We’re gonna take this steady, and be ready for anything.  Including anything from these trees dropping on us when we cross the line.”

The group collectively unsheathed weaponry, and passed around their remaining two thermoses of reflex coffee.  It was, having been reheated in the fire, still warm enough to trigger the speed bonus.  And also to have enough caffeine to perk James up just a little bit.  Arrush took the coffee last, sipping at it before making a face that could only be described as disgust, even on his inhuman face.

“Don’t like coffee?”  James asked.

Arrush just made a wet noise, that was *probably* something rude, before gulping down the rest of the brew.

Ready to go, they moved forward, Alanna and James taking point.

They got three steps into the trees before there was a *twang*, and something whipped toward them.  But *this time*, Alanna was ready for it.  Planting her feet and getting her arms up, she took the hit from the fast moving brach head on, and the wood exploded into painters as it hit her and failed to swat her aside.

The stick creatures overhead hadn’t waited to make sure their tripline trap actually worked, and were already dropping into a charge against the party.  But this time, the delvers were ready, energized, and had spotted at least a few of the hiding places ahead of time.

James and Alanna hunkered down while the others opened fire on the group of ambushers.  By the time the stick things reached them, the two that lunged for them had far less backup than they probably expected, and James jolted forward to hack into the one coming for him with his axe with a vigor.  And then, after a brief burst of violence, it was quiet again.

Without the tactics of their traps and surprise on their side, the stick things weren’t much of a threat to an armed team.  Even their lack of vital points didn’t stop a well placed bullet from taking one out entirely.

They reloaded, while James wiped green blood off his axe.  Anesh swearing a lot more when he learned that they’d apparently given up a portion of their extra ammo, too.  It was starting to almost seem worth it to go back and try to track down ‘Ben’ to get their stuff back.  Maybe they’d spend another night in the dorm after all.

But for now, they pressed on into the center of the ring of traffic lights.

The snow here was thinner on the ground.  And they all walked a little easier as they realized that there was some kind of pavement underneath their feet.  The ground much, *much* more stable to walk on than dirt and rocks.

Around them, the landscape began to change.  Plants that were obviously trimmed hedges, covered in snow but still showing some green, lined the edges of the brick walking paths.  A few metal poles stuck out of the snow, not traffic lights but just normal lamps.  In a large expanse pressed up against a boulder, what looked like a half buried riding lawnmower languished in disrepair.

And at the center of the formation, what was almost comically the center of the traffic light ring, there was a bookshelf.

A nice brown oak, the worn look of a loved antique.  Also, encased in a clear block of ice that didn’t seem to have done any damage to the object itself, or the single book sitting on its center shelf.

“Is this a trap?”  Alex asked tentatively.

“I was gonna ask the same thing.”  Nik said, while Arrush just growled softly at the back of their lineup.

James and his partners all found themselves nodding appreciatively.  “Good call.”  James said.  “That’s good delver instincts right there.”

“Stuff like this is *usually* a trap.”  Alanna told them.  “But also, usually treasure of some kind?  So, we stay alert, and we…”

She didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence before the thing that James had assumed was a lawnmower stood up in an explosion of motion.  Snow shook off in clumps as the creature rose, unfurling like a mechanical flower.  It was made of grey stone and steel gears, liquid water dripping off it to freeze instantly as it touched the ground.

It had a long neck, ending in a face with an extended maw that split open four ways to show off multiple rows of teeth.  It stood on four legs like an unnatural cat, a sinuous tail of flexing stone whipping behind it with a long stinger on the end.  Off its back, two sheet metal wings whirred as they flexed mechanical gears.  Woven throughout its body, wooden branches and spurts of green leaves revealed themselves, the topiary either part of it, or so symbiotic it didn’t matter.

“Dragon!”  James howled.

Before he was even done with the word, the creature - and it *was* a dragon - roared a challenge in return.  Neck rearing back as it sucked in a deep breath, it whipped its head forward as the group just started to get their guns up, and screamed a burst of light at them.

The beam swept over the delvers, James’ vision going white as it hit him.  He saw Alanna try to twist away, and Alex got a few shots off, but he was still fumbling for his own gun, and the goggles did absolutely nothing to stop the onslaught against his eyes.

And then, it was gone, and he was fine.  Actually, he was better than fine.  He was somewhere incredible.  Around him, the snow fell in crystalline fractal patterns.  The wind brought perfectly chilled fresh air across his lips.  Everything felt so perfect. He could barely contain his laugh as he sunk to his knees, marveling at the sound that snow made when you crunched it flat.  The whole world felt like to was moving in slow motion, a sense of perfect awe filling him entirely.

There was a car-sized dragon made of stone and wood and metal charging at him.  The pale grey light seemed to glitter off the ice droplets it left behind as it loped forward.  Its violence was majestic in its purity.  James smiled up at it as it slid forward on its hind legs, raising a claw like a work of art into the air.

Arrush took the claw on his flank.

The humans had seen something, been affected by something, that he didn’t understand.  They were all laughing, or crying, dropped to their knees and staring blankly forward.  The dragon hadn’t paused, though, and had moved in for a kill without reservation.

And so had Arrush.

He was the last one standing.  And, a feeling he didn’t fully understand sparked to life in his gut as he watched the monster bear down on James.  The knowledge that he had to act, because no one else would.  A feral desire to throw back the creature that wanted to kill his… friend?

He would analyze that later.

The dragon’s claw slammed into Arrush’s flank, metal tipped stone talons shredding through his climbing harness and wetsuit, splattering dark green ichor across the snow and sending Arrush flying sideways.  He slid across the ground, his fourth arm freed from its secure confines frantically snagging Alex’s pistol as he rolled past her.  Arrush had no firearms training, but he had seen enough.  And like James had said; he was *very* adaptable.

Noticing the figure that was still moving, the Dragon turned its attention on him, another howl like the wind of a storm blowing a curtain of light over his eyes.  He charged through it, straight into the monster’s maw that snapped closed when he was still ten feet away.  The dragon looked almost surprised, leafy eyes regarding him oddly as it swept another claw his way.

Arrush took it on a raised arm, the talons digging into his flesh with a spurt of pain and ichor.   Then, with his other two good arms, he grabbed on, and swung his feet off the ground.  Wrapping his injured arm as tightly as he could around the dragon’s own limb, Arrush experimentally hammered a series of strikes down at the first joint he found.  Nothing gave, so he pulled himself further up, aiming to grab onto the creature’s flank, as it realized what he was doing and started thrashing.

That lotus maw snapped toward him, and Arrush shot it, the bullet eliciting a scream from the dragon, and breaking one of his manipulators from the recoil.  But the bite never arrived as the dragon jerked backward, so he kept climbing, and shot it again.  His own claws dug into soft wood, and he tore and tore, trying to rend something valuable apart.

One of the dragon’s wings dipped, just enough warning for him, as it slammed itself sideways to try to crush the ratroach on its back.  Snow and grass and dirt went flying as the dragon tore up the frozen sod, but Arrush had already pulled himself up to its back, and rolled to the flank, dodging an incoming sting from the razor tipped tail.

The dragon thrashed as he shot it repeatedly, bullets ricocheting away from the stone of its body, mostly, but one or two cracking into the joints he hit with it.  Then, the magazine emptied, and the gun clicked.  Arrush threw it into the dragon’s fanged maw as it tried to twist to bite him again.  His wetsuit tore as he pulled himself up the dragon’s back, fridgid air working in concert with blood loss to continue rapidly sucking away the life sustaining heat of his body.  But he had enough time.

The ratroach grabbed onto the base of the dragon’s neck with both his weaker hands.  Then two of his stronger arms pulled him up.  Hand over hand, keeping a grip even as his limbs threatened to betray him to the cold, he hauled himself up to where a row of leaf covered acorn eyes stared at him, the animal instinct of the dragon sending it into a feral panic as he closed in.

The dragon contorted, and Arrush felt something stab into his leg.  But it was too late.  Using his last free hand, he ripped what was left of his scarf away, the burned cloth fluttering away in the wind.  He flexed his stomach, and a new feeling joined the protective urge in his chest.  A much less pleasant feeling.

Then he vomited directly into the dragon’s face.

It *screamed*, a wail like a dying machine, as Arrush followed up the corrosive bile with strike after strike from his balled fists. The stone melted under his assault, the creature’s eyes popped like blown fuses.  It thrashed, slamming its head into the ground to try to throw him.  But all it did was let him use the momentum to hit it harder, one last punch crushing through a rusting metal skull and into something fluid and important.

Arrush ripped out what he could.  The dragon twitched, and then pitched sideways, its whole body crushing a swath of snow as it died instantly.

He rolled off before it hit the ground.  Took two steps.  Then collapsed to his knees as one of his legs gave out.

Alanna caught him before he fell, Nik’s Authority coiling around the deepest of his wounds.  Arrush heard shouting as the humans rose and surrounded him, but all he could hear was his own heartbeats.  But at least he felt warm now.  Then he closed his eyes, and let the darkness take over.

“Shit, he’s going into shock.”  Nik barked.  “We need to get him out of here.  Now.”

“What the *fuck* was that!”  Alanna bellowed, clutching her side where an errant strike had torn open her suit and flesh alike.  “What… what was…”

“All I felt was… fuck… wonder?”  James could barely breathe.  “What… happened?  What do we do?”

Anesh took over as half their party had some reasonable panic.  “James!  Get the book!  Alex, go with him, watch for traps!  Alanna!  Telepad out, now!  Nik, keep him stable for a minute longer!”

That last command was redundant.  Nik and Aidemy were already doing all they could.  And, it turned out, orders didn’t boost Authorities that much compared to just having a proper position.

James and Alex sprinted for the bookshelf, where the ice was already cracking away with the death of its guardian.  Alex watched his back while James broke off the rest of the ice.  “The book is blank.”  He exhaled a curse as he reached for the text anyway.

“What?”

“Like, no title, no cover.  It’s just…” James hand made contact with the textbook, and suddenly, he wasn’t there anymore.  He wasn’t anywhere, really.  He was where choices were made.

[What has brought you to this point?]

It echoed in his head, and all around him.  A simple question.  What brought you here?  He didn’t even have to decide himself; it was multiple choice.

Three answers surfaced through the swirling everything of thought.  Was it his hiking ability?  His skill at climbing?  Or perhaps his prowess with the axe?  Any of these were valid, all of these were choices.  He should choose what this book would become, what this text would hold.  From these thr-

There was another choice.  Unbidden, outside the pattern of this non-place, it hovered just within James’ reach.  On reflex, his mind quested for it, just to see what it was.  And another thought entered his head.

[Templating - Phone Book - New York]

His first Skill.  It was here, too.  And there, nearby, [Origami].  [Recipe - Pancakes].  One by one, coming into view like a constellation of sparks.  They flooded the field of options, laid out for him not by the guiding hand of the mysterious magical self-writing textbook, but by his own magic.  From the very beginning to his latest Skill acquisition, all of his shell upgrades, all of his emotional resonances.  And then, larger blots of choice above them; Aim, Agility, Endurance.  The Lessons from the Sewer.  And drifting away from here, spiraling out in streamers of concept, the two links he had to Anesh and Sarah.  And his one Route Horizon spell.  All of it.

James wasn’t really here.  He couldn’t grin, exactly.  But he felt a deep satisfaction as he reached out and nudged at his second tier of Endurance.

It had taken him so far.  So many other potential fun options, sure.  But who could say no to the ability to just… keep going?

He was back, holding the book on [Endurance II].  The title was twisted and written in a language he couldn’t understand but was instantly recognizable.  James had a moment of worry that *maybe* he shouldn’t have done that.  But they weren’t here to waste time dawdling around.

Turning around, he let Alex shove the book into his backpack, and the two of them sprinted as best they could through the thin snow back to where the others were waiting.

“Telepad’s ready!”  Alanna called, already linking arms with Anesh and Nik.  James and Alex stepped up behind them, laying firm grips on their companion’s shoulders, while Nik held on tightly to Arrush, who was still laying on the ground, unconscious but still breathing.

“We got the thing!”  James informed them.  “Let’s go!”

Alanna didn’t hesitate.  She tore the page, and the team vanished from the mountain, snapping into place in the same instant thousands of miles away.

And as the occupants of the Lair scrambled to mobilize medical aid for the bleeding delvers, all six of them observe the same message freeze itself through their minds.

[Cowardice.  Deception.  Murderers.

Ascension : 1,982 ft.

Bestowal : +11 Breath Storage, +1 Available Learning]

James sagged in relief as a camraconda locked Arrush down, keeping him alive until real help could be brought to bear.  Pulling down his mask and fumbling his goggles off, he helped a drained Anesh off the telepad, the two of them slinging their backpacks down onto the floor against the wall

Around them, the Lair was going through a normal day.  Though a lot of people had paused what they were doing to watch.  James took a deep breath, and let the warmth of the real world seep back into his lungs, doing his best to ignore that his nose instantly started leaking with the temperature change.

It was abrupt.  But they were back.  And they had lived.  Hopefully.

He took another breath.  Leaned on Anesh.  Closed his eyes and waited for the pumping adrenaline of nearly having died again to fade away.

Then, after getting his heart rate under control, James nodded to himself, and followed after the direction that Alanna and Arrush had been taken to be patched up.  Time to make sure everything was alright.

They’d see what the magic was tomorrow.