The Daily Grind - Chapter 258 (Patreon)

“There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’ ‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’ ‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”  -Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum-

_____

Winter’s Climb offered, as a reward for facing its challenges and surviving intact and with a little bit of the right loot, a pretty wide variety of magic.

Granted, James admitted to himself, that magic could kill you to use if you weren’t careful.  Draining the heat from your blood and the air from your lungs, which seemed really unfair since it sorta siphoned off both of those things to create the Breath mana that it used in the first place.  But if you could handle that - and the Order had tools for exactly that - then you could pull from a pretty decent library of spells.

His personal favorite, which he sadly didn’t have himself yet, was the one that let you negate friction between an object, and a surface.  The definitions of both terms were kinda hard to pin down, as a lot of dungeon magic was, but when it worked, it worked.

It was also practically anti-useful when trying to pull cargo sleds uphill.  A fact he was becoming rapidly familiar with as he helped hold one of the treated wood and fiberglass beasts in place until the caster could remove the effect.

He didn’t blame them for the error, though.  It had been a long day of following the bank of a frozen river through a winding narrow valley, and repeated casts of the magic were the main way that they’d managed to keep everyone from exhaustion so far.  The small incidents of running into the hypnotic frozen splashes of ice crystals in the river hadn’t really slowed the expedition down much, even with the unfortunate realization that no one had prepared for Rufus to be here.  But despite lacking goggles and unshielded from the effect, the stapler being put into a relaxed trance and willing to simply lay down and freeze to death wasn’t much of a problem when he was already riding one of the paper drakes away from the source of the mental attack.

Maybe that counted for one of the harmless errors that Pathfinder had seen for them ahead when she plotted them a path to a good point to start climbing.  James grunted as he felt something shift behind him, and he let one of his boots slip across the packed snow to get a better grip as he planted his shoulder on the sled that was threatening to zip back down the hillside they’d been climbing the last hour.  Maybe this was also a harmless error.  He hoped so, because he didn’t feel like getting run over by the expedition’s medical supplies.  That, James was certain, was ironic enough to count as misadventure, and none of those were scheduled.

“Okay, got it!”  Ethan’s voice called to him, and James sighed as he felt the weight pull off him.

Next to him, Alanna did the same, straightening up and cracking her joints underneath the heavy armor and thermal gear.  “You okay?”  She asked James.

“Yeah, yeah.  I’m good.”  He said.  “Zhu helped me catch it, so I didn’t even have to rip my shoulders out of their sockets.”

“I’m very powerful.”  Zhu confirmed with a smug scrunch of his eye manifested on James’ breastplate.

“I could be powerful too…” James added wistfully.

Alanna snorted a muffled laugh as she slapped bits of stuck snow off of James’ ass.  Or at least, that was her excuse.  “Yeah yeah, you’re both hot.  Should we get moving again?”

James hesitated.  Standing here, his legs tensed to keep him upright on the almost forty degree incline, he had an excellent view of how far they’d come.

Sometimes Winter’s Climb messed with the space inside of it.  If it had a source, like the orange orb totems in the Office, they hadn’t found it yet.  But it did mean that any path could take you away from wherever you were, and plant you somewhere new.  Everything was connected, but there was always a chance that you couldn’t exactly tell how.

Here, though, nothing had messed with their forward progress.  And now that he had a chance to look back, James saw that valley spreading out below them.  It looked so small from up here, the river of shattered ice, the hypnotic crystals that dotted it every quarter mile.  On the side of the valley across from them, snowy trees crawled like fuzzy hair up the distant slope, while the valley itself wound its way steadily toward the slowly advancing grey wall of an approaching blizzard.

The scent of fresh snow and crushed pine needles filled his senses as James took in a deep breath, feeling his lungs stretch slightly as he took in the vista.  From here, he could see the spot where a group of stickbugs had tried to ambush them this morning.  He could see a few distant tiny circles of yellow and green light where inorganic traffic signals mixed into the distant trees.  He could see motion from things that were too far to make out except as distant blurs, even with his enhanced eye.  And he could feel in his bones that there was a shift in the weather coming, though that seemed like a normal sensation for Winter’s Climb.

“Yeah.  I’m good.”  He told Alanna.  Already, Ethan and Keeka had pulled the sled back into position behind them, and the group was reforming to prepare to move into their own forested area.  There had been trees in small clusters coming up, but now they faced a root-filled ground where the thick snow hid a thousand tripping hazards, and the trees kept them from holding their perimeter formation.

James wasn’t looking forward to seeing what tried to kill them here.  He expected more of the stick creatures.  And while every member of the expedition had been set up with enough of the resistance programs to give them a flat ten percent immunity to both wood and venom, that wasn’t actually enough to make anyone want to get bit by the things that injected you with something that turned your flesh into bark.

Maybe he’d be surprised.  Maybe they’d get ambushed by something new.

_____

Camille the Azure walked through snow that lightly reflected a sky the color of her name.

The storm kept approaching from down the valley, and approaching with a visible line in the snow at that, in a way that Earth storms rarely did.  But despite that, the sky overhead was a blue deeper than anything she’d ever seen.  Glimpsed through the green pine boughs they were trekking through, the only thing that broke up the majesty of the sky were small black specks high overhead.

Her danger sense did not trigger on them, which was good.  It meant they were unlikely to be relevant today.  Though she was aware that her sense was insufficient when it wasn’t used on someone else.  Very little was dangerous to her, even if she was the weakest of her sisters.

Camille turned her head sideways just enough to see Morgan helping to pull one of the sleds.  With some consideration, she held back on letting her senses envelop him; there was always the possibility that she would actually be called upon this time, and not simply left to walk and wait in silence.  She couldn’t risk wasting the energy.

“Uh… hi?”  Morgan was looking at her.  The teenager’s face scrunched up, skin reddening from the cold where he’d pulled his ski mask off for a breath of fresh air.  Camille realized she could be taken as having been staring at him, something that she was normally better at avoiding.

She kept panning her vision like she was sweeping the terrain, hoping that would cover the motion.  Usually that worked; most people that weren’t on their guard would easily assume someone’s actions were innocuous.  But he’d also spoken directly to her, so not replying wouldn’t be enough.  And also, ‘scanning the terrain’ didn’t work especially well when they were walking through the trunks of trees that were becoming closer and closer in their placement, and there wasn’t much range to her sight.

“Hello.”  Camille said, turning back to lock eyes with Morgan before looking forward again.  That usually discouraged further…

“Are you doing alright?”  The teenager asked her.

Camille felt a twinge of internal annoyance that her estimation of how people were supposed to behave didn’t match up to how anyone in the Order of Endless Rooms acted.  “I am well.”  She answered, voice coming clearly through the scarf she was told she should probably wear.  Her body didn’t mind the temperatures, which had just dropped below freezing and would be plummeting when the storm and the night reached them, but the others insisted on her comfort.  “I am keeping watch.”  She tried to explain.  Not that she was needed.  Bill, Lacey, Keeka, and Mars were all focused on pulling the sleds along, but the others were alert.  Deb’s eyes watched the trees with paranoia, while Nikhail’s did so with excitement, but they were simply the inner core of the formation.  Others surrounded them, alert and attentive, and even the drakes had a razor sharp sense of hearing.  Camille was not required here.

“Oh.  Okay.”  Morgan shrugged.  “Uh… if you’re worried, keep an eye out for snow piles where there’s small rocks on top but they haven’t sunk in?  Those things are usually alive.”

“Yes.  I read the documents on this… dungeon.”  The word tasted odd to her.  Dungeon.  A place to keep prisoners and treasure.  And that might literally be true, but no, it wasn’t that.  It was, to many of these people, something of a joke.  A reference to an entire genre that Camille was of course familiar with from her life as an azure, but that she never would have thought to apply to something like this.

Morgan, perhaps not seeing her hidden mix of confusion and consternation, perked up.  “Oh, cool.  I actually helped write a couple of those with James.”

He stumbled over the man’s name, and Camille’s training kicked in.  She found herself speaking before considering it, searching for information on a reflex she had spent weeks trying to repress.  “He sent you into this place?”

Morgan pulled his face covering back up, perhaps to hide.  His answer was stalled slightly as he was called forward by Bill to help them get one of the sleds over a protruding root formation.  As the slow but steady hike up the slope stalled, sounds rang out from the left flank, and Camille forced herself to stay in position and ready to respond as she listened to the others repel a probing strike from some of this place’s fodder.

They moved on, heading toward the cliff the party intended to scale to make better elevation progress.  It was out of sight by now, the snow-dusted green of the trees coming together overhead in a true forest.  The trunks were warped with protrusions like salt crystals, and their branches spread dozens of meters outward, far beyond what a normal Earth tree could have supported.  But for all that, their needles were just needles, their pinecones just pinecones.

When Morgan fell back to try to restart their conversation, they were distracted again by the expedition passing a street lamp.  An iron pylon with a glowing white glass globe at its top.  They steered clear of it, but the teenager pulled his gloves off to fumble a phone out and snap a photo of the thing.  He was joined by a pair of the delvers from their right flank, a man and woman that Camille had been briefly introduced to as Charlie and Alice, who bickered in a way that she suspected was friendly as they took more professional and measured snapshots.

After a few minutes he actually did get a chance to talk to Camille again.  She wasn’t sure why he was trying so hard, but she had nothing better to do.  “Uh… so…” He started awkwardly.  “You asked…”

“Why you were used as a scout, yes.”  She reiterated.

“Right.”  Morgan nodded, more confident when he had something fresh to answer.  “He didn’t.  I sorta fell in?  Everyone knew there was a dungeon around here, and Liz and Dawn and I came along because… I dunno.”  He shrugged.  “I think it was supposed to be something fun, like a summer field trip.  Then we found out how the entrance worked.  And got to name it!  Though Liz mostly picked the name.”

Camille didn’t show any outward reaction, but she did begin to reevaluate the young man as her mind put facts together to create a map of events.  They had been searching for ‘a dungeon’, but not the Climb specifically.  They had been searching Australia in summer.   His friends were likely his age, which meant that unprepared teenagers, likely wearing sunscreen and tee shirts, had ended up in the cold, wind, and snow of the Winter’s Climb, and had lived.

“And you came back.”  Camille said, letting her voice make it a question.

Morgan shrugged again.  “I kinda want magic?”  He said sheepishly.  As if he were embarrassed that he wanted to follow the human desire for power.  “Also it’s easier with real pants.  And I don’t have to carry Dawn this time.  Didn’t you agree to come so you could get a spell slot too?”

“I… did not.”  Camille said.  “I didn’t think I… would be…” She trailed off.  She had assumed that the actually spells would be restricted from her, even if she would be allowed to follow up the Mountain and open up the potential.  Why had she assumed that?  “Why did I…”

“I’m gonna get the cat.”  Morgan said, drawing her attention back as he used his hands to pull himself over a barrier of roots, some wood, some iron, and dropped with an “Oof” to the other side.  Camille stopped letting herself be complacent, and swept her attention around them.  All was still, and she needed to follow quickly so that she was still centered in the formation, so she hopped the roots, landing with a shifting crunch of snow as her heavy armor and body compressed it down.  Morgan kept talking like her motion was normal to him.  “The snow cat spell, I mean.  It sounds really cute, and I’m not gonna be a delver, I think.”

“What utility does it provide?”  Camille idly asked as she cocked her head sideways, watching Keeka carefully as the multilimbed creature paused to pick a blue stemmed flower out of the snow near the base of a trunk.

“It’s… it’s cool?”  Morgan shrugged.  “There’s about thirty pages of research on it that I haven’t read, but I just think it’s cool to have a pet made of snow.  I could get a sno cone machine to feed it!  And I bet James would cover the cost!”

He stumbled on the name again.  There was something there that Camille didn’t quite see.  A tether between the two that she didn’t know how to place in relation to her training.  They weren’t in a chain of command, they weren’t enemies or tactical assets to each other.  She wasn’t blind to human emotion, but this felt different than any of the cultural expressions she’d been trained on.

The only part of that sentence Camille truly didn’t understand though was what a sno cone machine was.

Before she had a chance to ask, one of the noncombatants made a sound.  “Huh.”  Mars said.  “Why’re there pinecones on the lamp?”

The pinecones, the kind that were six inches in diameter and spread open with tiny needle points on the end of each of their tips, the kind that grew in deep forests and on old trees, were growing off the edge of the crossbeam of one of the iron streetlamps.  A trio of them nestled together on the edge of a bar that might have been meant to hang flags or planters on, but was bare of anything except some icicles and the pinecones.

“That is weird.”  Morgan said.  The teenager was halfway through pulling his phone out of one of his pouches when Camille stepped up next to him and placed an immovable hand on his wrist, stopping the motion.  “What?”  He jolted, trying to jerk away on instinct.

Then the pinecones opened themselves up, the seed scales linking together to form sweeping wings, the stems turning to spines with rows of dull green eyes looking downward.  First the ones on the lamp, then more of them, higher up in the trees around the expedition.  Twenty, fifty, a hundred.  The dropped from their perches and fell toward the snowy forest floor to be greeted by surprised shouts and rapidly recovered tactical orders.

One of them bounced off Camille’s leg as she moved to try to intercept them.  But despite the clear armaments of the monster forms, it didn’t attempt to grapple or stab her, instead dazedly pulling itself out of the snow and launching back upward with rapid flaps.  When she went to crush it, this time it was Morgan who stopped her.  “Wait!”  The teenager said as he grabbed at her.

Before she could complete her stomp, the pine bat thing was back in the air, keeping low to the ground like the dozens of others.  The flock of them swarmed around the sleds and delvers, causing no small amount of chaos and a few shouts where they rammed or raked the unprepared explorers.  But after what couldn’t have been more than half a minute, every one of them took wing back to the sky, perching in clusters on the high trees, their forms half open and their eyes watching warily.

Camille watched the branches overhead with open ire as the pinecones watched back.  After regrouping and moving ahead twenty meters, out from under the bulk of their numbers, the delvers checked for serious injuries or missing supplies.  Aside from a few scratches or tears on the outer layers of everyone’s equipment, nothing was amiss.  That, and a layer of irritatingly sticky sap that had been left behind in blobs by the things.

One of the camracondas had managed to freeze one of them.  Alice held it in her hands tightly as it was let go from the effect, and while it started thrashing right away, it calmed down as she kept a firm but gentle grasp on it.  A few others clustered around to examine the wing structure and test the sharpness of its wingtip claws.  But then they let it go, not wanting to cause it distress.

“I don’t understand.”  Camille had said, mostly to herself, as Alice let the living pinecone go from an outstretched hand.

“It didn’t try to kill us.”  Morgan explained.

She looked back at him as he put his phone away, having taken a video of the creature up close.  “But it’s dangerous.”

“So are you.”  He shrugged.  “So what?  They didn’t hurt anyone except whoever has to clean the sap off the tarps and… aw, fuck, that’s me isn’t it?  I’m gonna have to do that laterrrrr.”  Morgan’s brief brush with wisdom drifted away on the wind as he realized that even in a dungeon he couldn’t escape some form of doing chores.

Camille fell silent as they continued on, passing over thicker and thicker roots of wood and iron, the trees and streetlamps becoming more even in ratio.  Her mind spun thoughts out as she connected words and actions.  None of this was surprising, exactly; it lined up with what her violet sister had told her of these people.  It was why she had felt… not safe, exactly, but as if they were an option with potential.  But it was different to see it in action.  Again.

A different set of individuals than in the Ceaseless Stacks, but still, they shared the same core beliefs.  Calm attempts at understanding, prioritization of life over everything else, a willingness to risk themselves to learn more… The woman named Ann was even now trying to feed one of them a granola bar now, attempting to entice the flying pinecones back down from their perches.

“Oh.”  Camille whispered as she made a new connection, information clicking into place about the people she had chosen to shelter with.  “You’re all so much more dangerous than I am.”  The words were swallowed by a sudden burst of wind whistling through the branches, the pinecones fluttering overhead as they steeled themselves against the gust.

The realization caused something that Camille hadn’t experienced before.  Not in the span of her life that she could remember, at least.  Certainly not in the past several weeks of constantly fearing her father’s retribution.

As the expedition made it to where the trees and lamp posts grew up against the towering rock wall, the obtuse angle of the snowdrift and buried dirt promising a challenging start to their climb, she found herself relaxing.  When scouts split off or launched drones to make sure there were no surprises in the area, no rockfalls waiting to happen or creatures lurking nearby, she found herself achieving not just calm, but an almost eager excitement.

And when something broke inside her, and the emotions she’d been holding back for almost a month crashed through, she understood suddenly why it was that Morgan had such a hard time finding his place relative to James.  It was because the young man was trying to emulate someone he didn’t fully think he could.  And, to Camille, the terrifying thing was, even in barely getting close, Morgan still casually captured the thing that made these people something her father had been concerned with.

_____

For the better part of two days of delving, the expedition had managed to avoid having to actually climb anything.

Winter’s Climb was cold, it got colder as you ascended, it snowed and shot ice at you seemingly at random, and most of the things in it were hostile.  But, if you had the time to look, you could find an ‘easy’ way forward from every major terrain obstacle.  Often times they would be winding or looping trails that had an exhausting incline the whole way through, and just as often they would have some other problem like a snow beast lying in wait or patches of buried ice that threatened to crack if you put too much weight on them.

But you could keep going without having to scale any of the grey and white rock ledges.  And your only restriction was your own stamina and how many supplies you packed.

Or, like today, time.  Because if you wanted to lay claim to a rectangular red brick building that seemed to be more than two thirds buried, both so you could have its secrets, and also so you could have shelter before the storm and the artificial night collapsed on you, then you needed to take shortcuts.

The method was something overland expeditions had used for a large part of human history, just with better technology.  First, someone would actually climb up, because simple and easy were different things.  Attaching pitons and sweeping for gear eaters or whatever other surprise the dungeon wanted to throw at them as they went, they would set up at the top and start bringing other delvers up with proper harnesses.  They’d also pull up the materials needed to clear the snow near the top of the ledge, and set up a heavier pulley system.

And then, one by one, the cargo sleds would get hauled up, and then finally the whole thing would be broken down again once everyone was at the top.  The drakes could also ride the platform too, if they wanted, but the creatures could climb just fine and Rudger at least seemed to really enjoy clawing his way upward on the frozen rocks.

The process took a while though.  So while the others secured the area, took a break, pulled chrome hubcaps out of the snow against the cliff, or watched Alanna free climb a rock wall that did actually have a solid number of handholds and ledges, some of the group split off to check something out.

The cave was only visible if you had actually made it up the hill to the rock, and only then if you decided to check carefully and wondered why it looked like there was a black line in the distance.  That line was actually what it looked like when the rock had a hole in it, but the hole just led to more rock; a doorway that led into the cliff instead of over it.

James followed Alice and Charlie as the duo struggled to push aside a tangled mass of brownish green vines.  The plant was absolutely riddled with thorns, and the clusters of amber berries on it probably had even odds of being stupendously poisonous.  It also didn’t move easily; too many overlapping vines or branches woven into a mess that resisted being pulled from its rock nest.

“See?”  Alice said as she ripped the vines loose enough to push them away from the cave entrance.  “Sub-dungeon!  A dungeon within a dungeon!”

“You cannot possibly have enough information to make that claim.”  Charlie’s voice was more muffled than her’s, as the man seemed resistant enough to the thought of getting cold that he’d layered on face coverings.  James could barely hear him over the wind whistling off the rocks overhead.

James grinned into his mask, shaking his head lightly.  He hadn’t really dealt with two delvers much, but the way they bantered with each other seemed… not familiar, but recognizable.  They had their own thing going on.  It was amusing to watch.

He went first into the breach in the rock, holding an electric lantern up that was powerful enough to throw back the pitch black interior.  James had been in a place like this before, and the small caves were a known factor in the Climb, but it never hurt to have a look around.

There was a rustle from behind him as the others followed, letting the bramble drop back into place.  The flashlights on their armor’s webbing clicked on one after the other, after Alice took a second to pull an inch long thorn out of one of her gloves.  The beams joined the lantern James had brought from the supply, illuminating rough walls and an uneven stone floor.

“Goes back a ways.”  Charlie commented idly, seeming to be completely at ease in the dungeon.

“Well, we’ve got time.”  James said.  “It’ll be half an hour at least before stuff is set up and moving, so we might as well.  If you two want to, that is.”

“Oh heck yeah.”  Alice pulled her scarf down.  “Whoof.  Kinda warm in here without the wind going on.”

Charlie checked something on his wrist.  “Entirely wrong.  It’s two degrees in here.”

James snorted, but also pulled his mask away from his face to enjoy the cool air on his skin.  “Yeah, it’s not too bad without wind chill.  Maybe it’s just cause I’ve been getting my exercise in for the day.  Okay, let’s check this out.”

He started moving forward, stepping carefully and kicking aside loose rocks the size of fists that littered the ground.  The cave was wide enough for one person to comfortably walk and turn around in, but he wouldn’t have been able to stretch his arms out, which made the place rather claustrophobic.  James tried to not focus on how pinned in he was, and how the two people behind him would block him from running for the exit if it got to be too much, and instead focused on carefully placing steps ahead of himself.

“I did not think this would be a problem for me.”  He muttered.

“You okay?”  Alice asked almost instantly, along with a questioning grunt from her partner.

“Oh, yeah, I’m just learning I might be claustrophobic.”  James’ voice cracked, which would have embarrassed him in any other circumstance.  “This isn’t even that bad!  What the shit, brain?!”

Charlie’s flashlight shifted in his view as the man standing behind him lagged by a few steps.  “Better?”  He asked.

James glanced over his shoulder, feeling like even that twisting motion was limited by the rock around him.  The others had fallen back, giving him more personal space.  He’d still have to push past to leave, but… “Weirdly? Yes.”  James said.  As he turned back to keep walking, something caught his eye.  “Oh hey, check this out… uh… when you go past.”  He tapped the cave wall with his free hand.

The cave curved left, and it wasn’t more than twenty steps before the vine concealed entrance was completely out of sight.  Behind him, James heard a pair of different emotionally flavored “Huh”s as the duo he was with passed the Canadian dollar coin embedded in the rock.  He still felt like he was being trapped and lightly choked by the environment, but he kept walking forward, pressing his shoulder to the smooth corner of the cave as he squeezed past a boulder blocking the way.  Another pair of coins in the rock caught his eye.  And then more after the turn.

Scattered round dots of silver and copper in the wall turned into something more coherent.  A line of metal, coins placed with what seemed like deliberate intent.  Alice squeezed through behind James, and he stopped staring to hop down over a lip of raised rock to land in a bubble of space.  It wasn’t a cavern or anything, but it was wider here, and the floor was smoothed out.  Something tapped his head, then did so again, and James looked up just in time to get a drop of freezing water on the eye of his goggles.  Overhead, stalactites hung like bony fangs, dripping cold water endlessly onto the floor, eroding it down.  He didn’t know where the water went after, but the cave was dry to walk on.

“This is so fucking cool.”  Alice muttered.

“I’ll watch the stalactites.”  Charlie commented.  “Keep an eye on the shadows.”

“Stop being so paranoid and enjoy this!”  She shot back at him.

James interrupted.  “You think something’s up with the ceiling?”

“I think anything that’s in the Monster Manual is fair game, and I don’t want to find out when it drops on my head.”  Charlie said, playing his flashlight off the hanging spires of porous white stone.

That was, James figured, fair enough.  He didn’t let himself get paranoid, but he did make sure not to step under any of the spots where the drops of water were coming faster as he crossed the floor to where the cave continued.

“Hey, how do you two remember if they’re stalactites or mites?”  Alice asked as she swept her own flashlight over the opposite wall, following an arc of pennies as it wove like a snake toward where the cave turned ever deeper into shadowy darkness.

“Stalagmites might hang from the ceiling.”  James told her.  “But they don’t.”

There was silence except for the dripping of water receding behind them and their steps on the once again rough stone.  After mercifully learning that the cave here was widening and not narrowing, James felt his breath coming easier.  And then Alice spoke up.  “Was that it?”

“Huh?   Oh.  Yeah, that’s it.  It’s kinda stupid, and it’s how I remember.”  James told her.  “Anyway, it’s… uh… it’s…” he stopped talking as they rounded the final corner.  It was hard to figure out what to say about what was ahead of them.

The coins embedded in the walls, everything from pesos to dimes to more currencies James didn’t recognize, had stopped being subtle.  There were four lines of them, placed in curved waves, two on each wall, one high, one low.  And here, where the cave came to an end, so too did the lines of markings.

All the lines of coins converged on what could only be described as a mural.  Or maybe a mosaic, James didn’t know the exact terminology.  Coins arranged and layered on each other forming a shockingly detailed series of images that spread out in a ring around a central spiral.

At the top, there were people - maybe humans - either fighting or worshiping some kind creature implied by the gap in the rock.  Around the spiral from that, there was a city in ruin.  Then at the bottom, rows of people, maybe marching, maybe waiting, maybe something else.  And finally, the leftmost image showed those same people rebuilding their city, raising it up toward an identical gap in the rock, the dark shadows implying something less monstrous than the top image, but it was exactly the same, right down to where the extra cracks were.

“What the fuck…” James breathed out as he held his lantern up to take in the scene of the cave art that stretched across all fifteen feet of the back wall.

Next to him, Charlie started recording, taking a video as he panned over the whole thing, while Alice stepped forward to run a hand across the frozen metal coins.  “Is this… what is this?”  Alice’s voice sounded small in the open rear of the cave.  They hadn’t come very far, but James still felt like there should be an echo or something in here.  Instead, sound felt like it died without getting very far at all.

“This is fascinating.”  Charlie spoke up, his voice shaking slightly.  “But why is it here?”

“It’s a story.”  Alice said.

“You cannot know that.”  Charlie’s reply was automatic, like he didn’t believe his own words.

James shook his head.  “No, we can.  Even if it’s just gibberish, this is emulating a storytelling style.  This is meant to be read as a story.  The question is… what’s it saying?”

“It’s a warning, right?”  Alice said.  “This could be a warning explicitly at us.  Mess with a dungeon too much, get your civilization wrecked.”

“Where are you starting on the ring?”  Charlie asked, and Alice tapped the left image.  He nodded, still taking closerer pictures of each part of the mosaic. “What if you start on the right?  Does the story change?”

Tracing a gloved finger over the line of where a series of tiny single yen coins made up a crumbling tower, James hummed in thought.  “Wherever you start on this, you get a different take.  A civilization in ruin strikes out and takes a risk on a dungeon, then gets too greedy.  Or a dungeon shows up and people fight back and lose and have to become nomads.  Or a group of wanderers find a dungeon and… actually we’re all assuming the breach is a dungeon, right? Not just some monster?”

“Yeah.”  “For the sake of argument, yes.”

“Cool.  But it’s all a cycle.  No matter where you start, it keeps happening.  That’s kinda bleak.”  James didn’t really like stories about time like this.

“What if…” Alice suggested slowly.  “What if this isn’t a warning at all?”

“Hm.  Interesting idea.”  Charlie said as he finished his photography.  “You think this is a record?  Something that already happened.  It wouldn’t have to be cyclical, that could just be an artistic choice.”

“Yeah.  Do we know how old the Climb is?”  She said with an anxious glance back at the cave they’d crawled through to get here.

James laughed suddenly, getting a cocked eyebrow from Charlie and a jolted stare from Alice.  “Sorry!”  He said.  “I just realized, we’re interpreting this like it’s real.”  He said, looking at the two of them with a grin.  “But look at it!  None of the money here is older than, like, 1950?  Who would have made this, except the dungeon itself?”

“That’s sorta why I’m worried, man!”  Alice gave her own nervous laugh.

“Oh, I see.”  Charlie snapped his fingers.  “The dungeon that has been trying to kill us this whole time.  That dungeon.”

James nodded, setting the lantern down so he could try to pry a coin out of the wall and utterly failing.  “Exactly.  This is about as useful as a book from the Stacks.  Which is to say, it isn’t.  It’s just decoration.  We can’t trust any kind of mythology or culture we find in a dungeon, because they can make up whatever they want and there’s no way for us to verify it.  Have whole cycles of civilization fallen to dungeon influence before?   I dunno!  Humanity has been around for hundreds of thousands of years and only writing stuff down for two of those thousands!  But I’m not gonna trust nickel-based cave art to tell me the truth.”  He stepped back, looking over the ring of images again.  “Still looks awesome though.”

“Dance would have loved this.”  Alice agreed.  “And it’s pretty cool, even if it is still terrifying.”  She crossed her arms at it, shifting to adjust to the unfamiliar armor and cold weather gear.  “I thought roaming around Missouri was terrifying.  Psh.  I hadn’t seen this yet.”

“No, I agree with James.  The simplest solution is it isn’t real.”  Charlie said with unflappable confidence.  “Also, we should head back.  If there’s nothing to collect, we shouldn’t spend too much time here.”  He thought for a second.  “Also you’re right about the kid.  Shame camracondas have trouble here.”

James wasn’t especially a fan of the mercenary attitude, but he didn’t see anything like a puzzle to solve that would open a secret compartment.  So he nodded, and they started making their way out.

“So.”  He asked, making small talk as they escaped the cave.  “How’s Missouri been anyway?”

“Cold, wet, dark, and devoid of any sign of the dungeon.”  Alice complained.

“Not bad.”  Charlie said, as if he hadn’t heard her.

James pulled his mask up to hide his smirk as the two of them got into something resembling an argument about road conditions.  Maybe they hadn’t found any magic, but he felt like this side adventure had been worth it.

_____

Winter’s Climb - Long Delve - Day 2 Report - Structure #5

Five floors, estimated ten thousand square feet a floor.  Brick and rebar construction, with interior walls and supports being made of wood.  On the verge of collapse from damage from the cold and wet environment.

Lower three floors were completely buried in the snow, leading to a hypothesis that the lower levels would be more intact.  Exploration began with two teams of four each.

Structure thematically identified as some form of archival building.  Rooms full of old boxes of documents, most completely unreadable or rotting.  Furniture was almost completely destroyed or unusable.  No central rooms on the top floors.

Lower floors were dark and partially collapsed.  First delve team encountered a gravity trap that caused two moderate injuries.  Second team encountered a pipe trap that soaked all of them with freezing water.  Exploration halted after both incidents, and the majority of one floor collapsed into the floor below it.

A functioning wall clock, six metal pens with silver inlay, and an unidentified charging cable were recovered.

Location marked on map, expedition moving on to find shelter before the storm overtakes us.

_____

Deb had been pretty exhausted the last couple days.  She wasn’t built for hiking, and the exercise potions did nothing for mental fatigue or stress.  Which meant that her thought process was a little delayed, though she did eventually make a connection she should have hours ago. “Hey wait, brown bears aren’t even close to native to Australia.”

“Honestly?”  Simon looked up at her from where he was seated on a sled to get the gash on his arm treated.  “I assumed it was some kind of magic.”

“Magic bear?”  Deb’s face scrunched up as she cleaned the wound, then pressed a piece of gauze down to staunch the bleeding before Simon leaked all over the snow.

“Magic bear.”  He bit out the words, trying to make a joke around the pain.

Deb sighed as she wrapped his arm with professional precision, before helping him get his damaged gear back on. Duct tape would only patch the hole for so long in the plummeting temperatures, so he’d need to swap to a replacement when they camped.  “Sure.”  She said, defeated.  “Magic bear. Why not.”

_____

They’d had to rush on the second day to find a place to shelter, and it had ended up being a cramped set of caves and not a structure.  But they’d done it, and they hadn’t even lost anything from their cargo.  Though they did have to dig themselves out the next day.

On the third day, though, the going had been slower, and harder.

The wind didn’t let up.  At any given point it was snowing on them, though whether that was occasional fat fluffy flakes, or aggressive tiny ice crystals driven into their faces, was mostly up to the whims of the weather.

There were no more easy routes.  James wasn’t sure how high they’d climbed, since all the measuring instruments that Mars had brought didn’t seem to register properly in here.  They’d absolutely gone up, but the atmospheric pressure was the same as it had been.  Small mercies, perhaps.

But however high they’d come, it was past the point that the Climb felt like letting them take it easy.  Every path was either a steep incline dotted with threats, or a wall to climb.  Which was probably also filled with threats.

James knew it was going to be a harsh day when they’d launched a scout drone to check over the thirty foot wall of snow and loose dirt dotted with boulders that they’d come up to, and the drone was just gone.  Rising up one second, and the next, it tilted sideways and was disappearing into the clouds and the swarm of black dots that was the incoming snow.  Nothing more than a glint in the sky, and even that was gone in a blink.

“I did not expect the Team Rocket maneuver.”  Alanna yelled against the wind from next to him, staring up at where they’d just lost their hardware.

“If I wasn’t pissed off, this would be hilarious.”  James agreed, shouting back.

James and Camille ended up climbing the cliff themselves, leaving a line of pitons behind in the more stable boulders.  This particular obstacle had a lot of loosely packed dirt in it, and while it was easy enough to get a foothold in the stuff, James worried he was kicking down a lot of debris onto the expedition below.

The climb itself wasn’t too hard, though.  With Zhu’s help, and aid from his extra ice limb courtesy of the Mountain’s own magic, James was able to never overexert himself as he moved from handhold to handhold, slowly making progress upward.  His closest call was jerking back and having to pull himself up, feet windmilling wildly against the cliff, as a blot of fuzzy shadow tried to bite through his boot.  The gear eater got about three toes in before James kicked it off and then scrambled to right himself.

He got to the top, panting, foot screaming in pain at the cold of the rock and the rough rock he’d been scraping it against, just in time to get rushed by a sleek mass of snow.  The creature loomed over the rest of the white expanse that capped the field up here, but despite being nine feet tall and staring down at James with glinting coal eyes, it was almost thin compared to the rest of the snow beasts they’d been finding.

That didn’t stop it from trying to slam itself sideways into James, threatening to carry him off the cliff.

James was having none of that.  Tired and hurt was basically when he did his best work.  As the snow beast came in, whipping its tubular body at him, he dove over it, landing flatly in the hardened snow behind the creature.  A rapid twist, flailing in the loose white powder, made a larger hold from where he’d landed and got him turned back around just in time to see it lunging again.

So James mentally triggered his Route Horizon spell, and [Pave]d one of its eyes.  The strike wasn’t strong enough to break the rock away, not strong enough to kill it, but it did cause it to jolt back in pain.  Roaring with a mouth that opened to show off a maw of razor sharp icicles.

All he needed was a distraction.  At his side, Zhu drew James’ pistol and brought their hands together, the navigator stabilizing him while James wrapped his fingers around the grip and took aim.  But before he could pull the trigger, Camille leapt into the fray.

Camille just punched it.  Once.  Her fist, wrapped in one of the Status Quo gloves, impacted the rock of the snow beast’s right eye in a tight probing jab.  And the rock exploded.  Shattering with a crack like a gunshot, shards of what was left leaving briefly visible trails behind in the air as they sliced through the snowfall.

James lowered his gun as the woman stood over the collapsed corpse of the mobile snow bank, looking down like she was confused.  “Tharrgl.” He said.  Or something like that.  James tried to offer thanks, or check on her, but all that came out was a wheeze.  Also his throat hurt. A lot.  He touched his neck and his glove came away slicked in blood.  “Ow.”

Camille turned to him, offering a hand up, and James saw that her face was dripping blood from a hole in her cheek.  Wide eyed, he pointed at her injury, then at his own neck.  Cam touched her own face with the smallest wince, then tilted her head at him.

“Stay calm.”  Zhu’s voice ordered James.  “Get the climbing hooks and rope set up.  I’m going to go get Nik.  Keep pressure on your injury.”  James nodded, pressing his fingers against the hole he’d gotten when Cam had set off a rock like a fucking grenade.  Zhu’s feathers and supporting tail vanished, peeling away from him as the navigator shot away in an arrow of light.  Over the edge, then down at a right angle.

James directed Cam, using his free hand and bonus ice claw as best he could to get stuff set up.  Camille had to do a lot of the work, but she only had to be shown something once before she took to it easily, and she’d learned this before even coming in to the dungeon.

The next person up over the edge was Alanna, hauling a panting Nikhail behind her.  She yelled something that the wind ate, and James waved her off, sitting in the snow while Nik’s authority bloomed out in a flare of green light and slender probing digits.  They needed to keep moving, which meant getting everyone else up.

Alanna was snarling under her goggles and mask, but she got to work anyway.  While James had a piece of stone shrapnel pulled out of his neck, the hole filled in with something that stung, and his missing blood replaced by Nik’s own Climb magic, Alanna was hauling people upward as fast as she could.

Bill and Lacey came first.  The big man panting as he collapsed over the edge, and the new girl stumbling up behind him like her arms were made out of jelly.  The next pack up wasn’t people, but the stuff they needed to set up the pulley system for the sleds.  They’d gotten faster and faster at setup with every wall the last few days, and they’d need all of that now to get the expedition moving before they got buried in the storm.

Then a cannonball of an ice ball crashed into a swell of snow about fifty feet away, and James pushed Nik away to yell at Alanna, his voice hurting but functional.  “Get a fucking camraconda up here!”  She shot him a thumbs up.  James struggled to get his face covering back up, his skin already feeling like it was going to crack from the frigid air.  “Nik, go help Cam.  I’m good.”  The medic didn’t look like he believed him, but Cam wasn’t invincible, and she was still bleeding.

James stood and looked out over the field ahead of them.  Snowdrifts as tall as him dotted the plain, but no trees or rocks that he could see.  Only a handful of traffic lights, flickering between yellow and green.  There wasn’t a pattern to them, they weren’t on a grid or anything familiar.  They just stood out in the darkening gloom, casting glowing auras onto the pure white snow around their metal bases.

In the distance, he could see the corner of a structure.  A building that showed flashes of itself through the blizzard that was rapidly growing in strength around them.  James couldn’t tell how tall it was or if it was intact, but if they didn’t find shelter soon, they’d need to telepad everyone out.  And with the wind coming in at his back, there would be no safety just huddling at the bottom of the cliff this time.

Another smooth chunk of ice crashed to the ground like a meteorite from the heavens.  They seemed to be falling across the flat expanse between the little ridge he found himself on, and the safety of the building.  It wasn’t the first time a seemingly safe spot was surrounded by falling projectiles, James wondered if this place intentionally did this; set up killzones around the buildings with the storms if you weren’t fast enough.  If anyone did end up as an ‘experienced’ delver here, that kind of knowledge would push you to move faster.  And, with this kind of terrain, moving faster meant mistakes.

Meant injuries.  Or worse.

Then James had to stop worry about that, because he realized something about the snow banks.  “Cam!”  He yelled back, causing the woman to turn and get a swear out of Nik as his attempt to patch her up was interrupted.  “Cam get up here!”

She strode through the snow like it wasn’t there, leaving a parallel trail to where James had walked.  “I will accept my punishment for injuring you.”  She spoke just loud enough to be heard, her voice slightly slurring from the blood filling her mouth.

“No.  What?  No.”  James realized he wasn’t talking loud enough as he stared at her.  So he just shook his head as Zhu rejoined him, and pointed with an arm out to the street lights and their green and yellow glow.

The snow was moving.  Every one of those dozens of snowdrifts, like dunes in the cold expanse, was another one of the creatures they’d just killed.  And they were waking up, adding their hunting roars to the wind as they began to shamble toward the ridge.

Next to him, Camille tensed up, one hand dropping to the mace she had hanging at her side.  Behind them, Spire-Cast-Behind slithered awkwardly through the rough trench Camille had left, their digital voice barely able to be heard yelling about how the others were on the way up as fast as they could go.

“Cover me!”  James ordered Cam, as he sighted down his gun at the closest creature.

James was sitting at the second level of Aim, and probably wouldn’t get any more for a very long time.  Which was a shame, because he could have really used it, and he regretted splitting one of his level ups into Agility right now.

As he drew a bead on his target, his ongoing marksmanship training kicked in.  Then his skill ranks filled in gaps and amplified what he already knew and had learned himself.  Then his lesson added information and instincts he never had on top; projected target movements, wind speed, recoil, the odds that one of those ice spheres would intercept his shot.  James didn’t consciously process most of this; instead, he let it all flow through him, and did what he’d practiced a thousand times, and hit the target.

Or at least he tried to.  James was really good, but sniping a fist sized rock out of a moving mass of snow during a building blizzard was a little beyond him.

He got it on the third hit, the first one going wide and the second blowing a puff of snow out to join the rest of the snowflakes being shoved around by the wind.  The creature screamed like the sound of cracking glass fed through an amplifier, stopping its shambling forward motion to fling itself back and forth.  But it wasn’t the end, others kept moving to take its place, and James kept firing.

Spire-Cast-Behind started freezing targets, which made his job easier, but there were at least a hundred of the things.  James was burning through reload charges on the bracelet tucked under his armor, but he knew if he could stall them long enough, the others could reinforce him.  And that was soon proven right, as the people Alanna was pulling up brought with them the heavier weapons the Order had packed, and added themselves to the firing line.

Rifle shots took chunks out of the creatures, and while shattering their eyes was a good way to end them, enough damage to their mass would do it just as well.  As the sky darkened and the storm rolled over, someone lit off some of their flares and launched them out onto the field, red chemical fire joining the yellow and green of the traffic lights.  When Momo joined them, she laughed loud enough to be heard over the howl of the gale and the bark of gunfire, and simply started pointing like a conductor, her targets collapsing every time she made a motion.

Then a thirty pound ball of ice hit her in the leg, and she folded with a scream and a wet crunch.  Nik and Deb got to her fast, but it was hard to focus when the sky was trying to kill you.

Still, she’d done her damage, and the horde was greatly diminished.  Enough so that the rest of them seemed hesitant to keep up their charge across an open killing field.  James raised a hand to halt the shooting as the survivors broke away, fleeing back out of the glow of the scattered lights.

There was even a pause in the wind.  Not the snow, which was still coming down like it wanted to drown them, but the wind briefly stopped.  And the world was silent except for the yells of the expedition pulling up the cargo sleds.

Within half an hour, the wind was back, but they’d safely gotten everyone up.  Momo, given some kind of powerful painkiller by Deb, was loaded onto Rudger’s back and watched over by Rufus.  James took her place helping to pull on of the sleds, and they followed Ethan’s advice to loop their forward path around the street lights that were stuck on green.

Not for any particular reason, it just seemed like the kind of thing the dungeon was watching.

With a pair of camracondas dozed with reflex coffee keeping sharp watch, and everyone pushing themselves to exhaustion knowing there was safety ahead, they made it across the half mile of open snow in under an hour.  The building, still standing and with most of the first floor buried in the snow that swept against its walls like cold spiderwebs, was accessed by circling to the courtyard that was obscured from sight by the direction they’d approached, and getting in through a shattered window on the ground floor.

It was dark, damp, still below freezing, had icicles hanging from doorways, smelled like mildew and rot, and it seemed like every surface that could possibly give you tetanus was jagged or sharp.

But the wind couldn’t get in, and the roof held up to the first dozen massive ice spheres that hit it, so James thought it was the perfect place to make camp.

_____

The humans said the building was a dormitory.

While the others secured the ground floor and the balconies around the common room that they were setting up camp in, Keeka started a fire.  The ratroach liked fire, quite a lot.  It was ephemeral, it ate whatever it could, it would kill you if you weren’t careful, and it had somehow been the basis for all of the civilizations that weren’t built in a place like his origin.  It was also beautiful, in its own way.  Violently ugly, but dressed up in pretty colors.

It made him feel comfortable in himself, because it reminded him that he could be the opposite.

“First we make sure the wood is dry.”  He instructed the other ratroach helping him.  Keeka wasn’t the best at Office magic, but he had managed to absorb a blue orb that let him [Modulate Humidity], and that translated to letting him pull the water from firewood they’d been stocking up on.  He had an unfolding metal camp pot to move the drained water into, sort of.  He wasn’t good with the spell yet.  “Then we need kindling.”   The other ratroach watched him carefully as he added firestarter pellets, and then handfuls of shredded paper and dry grass from a pouch on his own gear.  “Airflow makes it burn hotter, so the wood catches.”  Keeka added as he stacked smaller pieces of wood in a cone, before adding larger pieces around the outside.  Then he pulled back from the fireplace that they’d cleared out.  “And then…” he flicked the lighter he had been given as a gift before embarking here, needing a few tries with fingers he still wasn’t used to in order to get the spark to catch.

But when he held the flame to his creation, it caught quickly.  And as he carefully tended to it, the fire began to burn the larger pieces of wood.  Soon, the heat in the room would be more tolerable than the negative forty centigrade that it was now.

The building had holes in it.  But the construction team were setting up tarps to seal off the doors into this area.  And James and Bill were wandering around to the gaps where heat was leaking out of the building, and applying [Thermodynamic Tunnel]s liberally, pulling the warmth back inside as soon as it tried to escape, plugging the leaks.  The two of them looked miserable doing it, and Keeka felt quite bad for James who had said that he could taste the oxygenation potion that he’d needed to drink to use that much Breath at a time and not die.

He’d still rather that James not die.  Keeka liked James.  A lot.

The other ratroach near him shifted, and Keeka smiled, the toothy grin stretching across his muzzle without pain or dripping corrosion, which he still reveled in even having had this new body for months now.  “This looks good.”  He said of the fire.  “Now!  While they clear rubble, we set up food.”

Many of the delvers, despite being bone dead tired, were clearing the floor of the main hall.  Hauling off decaying couches and rotting armchairs, piling the scrap in what might have once been a janitor’s closet.  Keeka found it very suspect that there was still a leather couch that was in near perfect condition, save for some snow piled against it where it had helped block a shattered window, as well as a desk in the small office that was practically pristine compared to the rusted ruin of a computer sitting on it.  But he would take what was offered, suspicion or not.

Nearby, Deb had Momo laid out on a folding cot, inspecting the girl’s leg while Momo giggled at something that Keeka didn’t quite understand.  Nik had said it was because of the painkiller, which didn’t make sense to the ratroach, but he trusted the medics to know their field.  He trusted everyone here, really.  Even his new friend.

“Bring the frame from the sled.”  He told the other ratroach.  “Now we set the pot over the fire, and let it heat up.”  It was so strange giving someone instructions.  Keeka didn’t know when he’d become his own odd little expert.  But he knew that no one here wanted to eat a cold meal, today of all days.  And unfortunately, the lunchbox of holding lunch didn’t take kindly to keeping things warm.  So he dug through and pulled out container after container of soup, preparing to heat them up the old fashioned way and have something pleasant to serve.

Knife-In-Fangs joined Keeka as the camp began to take shape around them, with the cargo sleds being unpacked.  The camraconda helping to set up their serving area, and bring out side dishes and drinks for the ravenous crowd of delvers.  The two of them worked quietly together, the camraconda humming out a little song to himself as they did so, with the new ratroach watching carefully.  “Do you think it’s going to get harder?”  Knife-In-Fangs asked as Keeka stirred the soup pot.

“Climbing?”  The ratroach asked, pulling off his outer coat as the fire began to do its job and the mostly sealed room heated up.  “Yes.”

“I don’t like being a passenger.”  Knife-In-Fangs grumbled.  Keeka gave an airy giggle at the irony of the statement, and the camraconda rolled his head around in a loop at him.  “You laugh, but you have legs!  I want legs.”

“Really?”  Keeka asked, curious.  He’d talked to Knife-In-Fangs before a few times in their shared support group, but this was different from how he thought of the pale orange and white camraconda.

Knife-In-Fangs twisted abruptly to stare up at the upper floor balcony, zeroing in on a sudden sound.  But he relaxed when calm voices carried on, and an all clear was called down.  “No.”  He answered Keeka.  “I am complaining.  You are meant to commiserate with me.”

“I… I could do that…” Keeka felt a wave of uncertainty.  “But… also we could… get you legs?”

Giving the ratroach a tilted look with his narrow camera head, Knife-In-Fangs irised his eye at Keeka.  “That seems as if it would make me odder than I already am.”

Keeka shrugged with his lower set of arms.  “You have arms.”  He pointed out.  Though he knew the mechanical packs the camracondas were wearing were not doing well at these temperatures.

“I will consider legs.”  Knife-In-Fangs said.  “I am going to unpack the serving dishes.  Everyone is hungry.”  The casual statement of intent and information was characteristic of how a lot of camracondas spoke, and Keeka found it comfortably refreshing compared to the less vulnerable way humans often were.

James often told him that it was okay to be vulnerable.  That being scared wasn’t uncommon, and that if they could all trust each other, it would all work out.  But James himself was so hesitant to show that same vulnerability.  Sometimes he was okay, but…

Keeka had spent three years fighting for his life, and the trauma from that would, his therapist said, probably never leave him.  There would always be scars, and marks, and pain.  And he accepted that.  It did hurt, but he could keep growing anyway, especially with people like Arrush and James and Anesh in his life.  But James had spent thirty years living in a world that punished vulnerability.  Not as bad as Keeka’s world had, but badly enough that he could see the scars in the man he was attracted to.  Not always, again, but sometimes.

Keeka sighed to himself, the rush of air helping him focus.  He was getting distracted in his thoughts, and he could do that later when he lay down to sleep.  “Here.”  He said, scooping the first bowl of soup and handing it to the other ratroach.  “There is plenty for everyone, so you can eat as much as you want.  We made extra for if anyone like you showed up.”

The other ratroach stiffened, claws stretching out as it reached for the bowl.  Its eyes glinted like it was trying to decide if it should fight or run.  But Keeka didn’t react, instead just offering the soup, and the ratroach slowly kept reaching out to take the dish from him, yanking back and spilling some of it to the cold concrete floor that they’d already stripped the rotting carpet off.

It didn’t eat, instead just staring at Keeka, eventually tilting its head in a questioning stare.

“How?”  Keeka asked, and the new friend nodded slowly.  “You look like me.”  He said, sorrow creeping into his voice.  “I’m glad!  Really.  But… none of them… look like me.”  Keeka shrugged with both sets of arms, the chitin and fur on his body rippling as he rolled his limbs.  And then, he acted with vulnerability, pushing away his fear as best he could.  “You guessed wrong, that’s all.  But it’s okay.  We brought extra food.  And we’ll find a place for you to sleep if you want!”  Keeka tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed the delvers that were very carefully watching the confrontation, just in case the new friend decided to do something stupid.

The new ratroach split the difference.  Not accepting, but also, not staying.  There was a pulse of something that shoved at all the infomorphs manifested in the space, pushing and deforming them slightly in a shockwave that originated from near Keeka.  And then there was one less person in their group.

Keeka had the feeling he had been talking to someone, but couldn’t quite remember what about.  But he felt sad, for some reason.

His sadness was set aside as he got back to the much more important job of making sure Alanna got served hot soup and bread and a container of salad before she made good on her promise to eat one of her fellow delvers.  If it was important, Keeka was sure he’d remember later.  For now, he was going to make himself useful.