The Daily Grind - Chapter 361 (Patreon)

"Well yeah, you're at thinly veiled sexual metaphor.  Things are a little tougher in the dating scene for a fishman." -Three Panel Soul, The Shape Of Water-

_____

James was in the driver’s seat of Sarah’s car, in the empty parking lot of a dentist about a half hour drive from the Lair.  The entire drive had reminded him in very direct ways what the problem with structuring an entire world around the automobile was.  The early dark that the winter brought with it and the streets slick with rain combined with exactly as many people as would be here under better conditions, all heading home, heading to work, heading to the grocery store, heading somewhere with urgency and irritation and a complete unwillingness to use turn signals.

He’d felt like he was in more danger here than he had during the majority of his fights in Oklahoma - and also parts of Texas - that had ended with one side dead.  The thought of how bad the drivers around here might get if it snowed was enough to make James feel like he should have taken A Hood And Cowl from the Horizon.

In truth, he was still pretty sure he’d need a little  fire on demand more than he’d need a passive buff to his driving.  But that was only if he could keep teleporting everywhere.

One place James couldn’t teleport, exactly, was to where his demiplane opened its slips.

Not for any magical reason, it was just that, while he had a vague impression of distance and direction, he didn’t really have an address.  And if he was going to be searching for a hole in space, he wanted to do it sitting down and dry.  It rained a lot here in December.  James loved this state, and was happy to call it home, but he also felt like Oregon wouldn’t mind if he went out of his way to avoid being damp.

Both of the slips from his Compiled Wastes delve were open now.  James just hadn’t gone into either yet, because he’d been a little busy, and because the timer on them apparently kept rolling anyway.  According to Tylor, each slip was single use - once in and once out, they wouldn’t just seal you in the void - but each floor of the Wastes cleared gave you another source of slips.  They could just pile up over time, with no known downside.  If James just waited a year, he’d have another twenty four portals lurking around in places, about twelve from each of his.

This slip was the one that had formed while he was back at the Lair for a few hours during the Oklahoma invasive species thing, and it was supposed to be at a ‘close by concentration of birds’.  It didn’t feel close, or like there were birds here, but hell, maybe there had been birds when it had formed.  The mental image of the dentist’s office blanketed in staring crows, silently watching someone arrive for a root canal, made him chuckle.

His other slip was in Townton.  Or, technically, in Townton’s yellow zone.  James felt like he’d rather use the inconvenient ones first, just because that was how his brain worked for stuff like this.

Now that he was here, though, with Zhu happily puffing out the healthy layer of glowing orange down that covered about half of James at this point, it was pretty easy to find the portal.  Zhu couldn’t see it, and for safety the navigator was in the process of retreating into James’ head instead of staying manifested while James got out of the car and beat a quick track to where a row of half-dead shrubs disguised a fenced off dumpster.

“Alright, hold on to… my brain, I guess.”  James said as he faced the spot that looked perfectly ordinary but that he knew was a slice of space waiting for him to walk through.  Getting a pulse of assent and an urge for motion from Zhu, bunkered down in his subconscious, James grinned and stepped forward.

And into nothingness.

That was his first thought as the world slid back around him.  A void so empty it wasn’t even really black, but was close enough for his brain to interpret it that way.  Light that wasn’t light illuminating the small splash of matter here in the otherwise empty nowhere.  It wasn’t even vast, because that would imply that there was nothing out there, and that was wrong; there was no ‘out there’.  There was only here.

Here, as it happened, was a thin wooden path.  Bamboo, actually, which James thought was neat.  Two feet across and twenty feet long, his slip had dropped him neatly at the end of it, and he could feel the portal waiting for him to return through it.  Cautiously, James took a breath of the air here, and found it… plain.  No scent of rain or car exhaust or pine trees.  No scent at all.  It wasn’t bad, but he did know it was limited.

He chanced a look over the ‘edge’ of the floor.  Even though it didn’t feel like there was anything below him, fooling his sense of vertigo, he still wanted to see what was ‘down’ there.

Jubilance’s words of advice blared in his head.  “Don’t fucking fall off.”  She’d said.  “Just… trust us on this one, okay?  Don’t fall off.”

James stopped looking down, moving with muscles that felt like they were perhaps a little strained, and decided pointedly not to fall off.

The rest of his demiplane was, by the nature of how the dungeon’s strange reward worked, kind of small.  The bamboo walkway had a disc of gravel attached to it at the midway point, and while James hadn’t initially questioned how the path itself was supporting his weight, he did kind of wonder if loose gravel would do the same.  But in the middle of that gravel was a rock column, sitting like a plinth, with… a snowball on it.

”Alright that’s just weird.”  James said, pointing at it, mostly for his own amusement.  “I’m not hitting anyone with that until I know it’s not going to turn them into an ice sculpture.”

The snowball was almost iconically round; not a perfect sphere, but a perfect snowball.  And since James was here to figure out a few things about his demiplane, he took the time to test the stability of the gravel with one toe before walking out toward the presented icy orb.

The gravel crunched under his feet.  James was pretty sure it shouldn’t do that if it wasn’t actually shifting against a lower softer dirt substance or something.  At least, not like this.  This sounded like a normal crunch, not muffled at all by the demiplane space.

The snowball itself got tested a few ways before he even got close to touching it.  Just to make sure it wasn’t a weapon that would trigger when he touched it.  But when he did get close, James had a sense that it was not only benign, but helpful.  That was new.  Normally he barely even knew if things were magic at all, but this little snowball felt pretty friendly.

He touched it.  Nothing happened, except that James was now confident that he was inextricably paired with it.  At least, until it melted.  But aside from that he didn’t feel any different.

He also couldn’t take it off its little plinth, so that was neat.  And working through a couple of Climb spells just to see if it was some kind of metamagic revealed no action on that end, so James was kind of out of easy ideas.  Maybe it would show up in his moment of need and prevent him from getting heat stroke or something.

Shaking his head, James forced himself to stay on task and not get sidetracked by the single thing he was absolutely the most excited by.  He had another test to do first.

The green orb in his coat pocket was one of the smaller ones that came from things like the 2.0s.  Dangerous and puppeted by the dungeon, but not actually its heavy hitters.  Because the Order still hadn’t really found what they would call ‘size-one’ green orbs, this was the one with the smallest effect, just in case this went horribly wrong.

”But really,” James said, “what…” he stopped talking, staring at the orb in his fingers, then up at the blank nothingness that surrounded the disc of gravel floating in an endless void.

Maybe something could go wrong.  Maybe he didn’t need to tempt whatever passed for fate.  Maybe he should just crack the orb and see what happened.

[Local Area Shift : Production Output - Circuits - Integrated +8%]

The notification came along with a sharp burning sting on James’ neck.  A second later, the smell of his own skin cooking reached his nose as something added to his demiplane tattoo with a sharp and painful brand.  He yelped, clapping a hand onto his neck in momentary panic, but the pain was gone in a few seconds, leaving only a dull ache and what felt like a scar interlaced with where he knew the tattoo was.

“Haaaaah!”  James breathed out a shaky laugh as he prodded his marred skin.  “Okay ow!  That’s rude!”  He felt fine now, but he suddenly had a lot more anxiety about testing the other orb.  Which he knew would only get worse as a feeling the longer he waited, since he wasn’t dead, he just popped it and endured another sharp burn.

[Local Area Shift : +1 Seating Area]

The whole demiplane seemed to ripple as it was altered.  James couldn’t see any difference, but, when he stepped back onto the bamboo path to look around, he suddenly became aware of a small alcove with a metal and glass coffee table, and a pair of chairs surrounding it.  It was also an alcove, with a coffee colored wall surrounding it.  A wall that definitely didn’t exist from any angle in his demiplane.  That was… difficult to parse, and James felt like that might be the least safe thing in here.

The interesting thing was, those greens were copies with generally known effects.  The first one slowly repaired personal electronic devices in a space, and the other upgraded the value of chairs by about a thousand dollars.  Tests at various sites showed they mostly kept to that pattern, with higher or lower numbers.

Here, in a place that was nothing yet, it seemed like the green orbs were free to go all out, if they wanted to.  Time would tell if this was a good way to learn the ‘pure’ use for an orb, or if James had already tainted them by having too much gravel or something.

It was, in general interesting.  But.

That wasn’t what he was most interested in though.  Because the last thing here, was a door.

Sitting at the end of the bamboo path, with a little circle of floor in the same material in front of it.  It just looked like a normal wood panel interior door, like it could have come out of any school or insurance office or dentist in the country.

James walked toward it slowly.  He knew the demiplane rewards were often weird; Tylor and Jubilance had talked about having some honestly bizarre stuff in theirs, even by magic standards.  And when he’d momentarily been defenestrated out of reality into Terror’s demiplane, he’d seen firsthand how the spaces were often radically disparate materials connected together at the edges like Lego scenes being stacked together.

But a freestanding door in the middle of a space?  James might be a dumbass on a fairly regular basis, but he wasn’t an idiot.  That was an approach with caution kind of thing.

He still wanted to know what it did though.  He was pretty sure he knew, because he wasn’t the first one of the initial Order party to check out their demiplane, but still, there was always the chance that something was different; the secondary thing was different for everything else, so this could be too.  It was absolutely worth checking.  So he did open it, he just did it slowly, in case it tried to kill him.  And he had telepads ready to get him back out if it went wrong too, plus a skulljack note for the address where he’d parked Sarah’s car.  James was pretty sure Sarah loved him enough that she’d forgive him for abandoning her car five miles away from their home and away from an easy bus route, but he didn’t really need to test their friendship that way.

He put that thought away as the door swung open with mild resistance.  It was a challenge for his monkey brain to parse the visual of it, because as it opened, it revealed stuff on the other side.  In an inverse of the slip peeling back reality to replace it with nothing, this was revealing something inside the big emptiness.

The thing was, it was very familiar stuff.  James froze as the door swung the rest of the way open, staring out at a cramped two by two pod of cubicles, a blackened floor-to-ceiling window, and the smell of stale ash.

He stepped forward through the gap almost out of pure curious reflex, and nodded at the obvious fact that the door did not exist behind him.  “This is the fucking dungeon.”  James said, confirming the fact that he should have probably said out loud before stepping into it.  Not that he didn't have a little forewarning.  “The question now is… which floor?”

The answer was actually pretty easy.  While the layout had rearranged itself, and the hole they’d tunneled into the wall was sealed up, this was definitely the first floor of the dungeon.  The size and threat level of it made that pretty clear to him.  So the magical backdoor wasn’t going to do him any favors and let him skip over what he’d already been through.

But still.  The implications of having an on demand access to a dungeon that was one of the ones that kept itself sealed via time-bullshit most of the week?  That was insane.  If it had been a portal to the Pylon or the other Office, it would be even better, but this was still the kind of thing that could shake up a delving schedule.  Especially once James got access to a slip he could bring other people through.

For the moment, though, he needed to get to the exit elevator.  Which was actually pretty simple; the Compiled Wastes, despite putting forward a really unpleasant front, wasn’t really that hostile to visitors to the first floor.  At least, not to a degree that James couldn’t have handled on his own even if he hadn’t been equipped with his now-usual package of personal leveler gear, available spells, and handgun.

Of course while he was maybe being a little reckless in his sheer eagerness to check out the weird thing in his demiplane, James had still lived through too many attempts to murder him to not have those things.  Also he couldn’t forget his spells on the bedside table anyway.  So rapidly making his way through the first floor of the Compiled Wastes was easy; he didn’t even kill anything, making an effort to peacefully shift the ambulatory cardboard box that kept bumping into his ankles to a safer position before he left.

This still left him in Saskatoon, once he got out.  So if nothing else, this would be a cool way to teleport to a very specific place if he ever ran out of telepads and logisticors and whatever other vastly better options there were.

But he had a telepad, so he got back in a few moments.  It took longer to drive Sarah’s car back to their apartment parking lot than it took him to clear the dungeon’s floor.

Once back home, James logged what his demiplane had, confirming two things about the Compiled Wastes.  One; they had a consistent way to get people a door into it, probably by finding the secret room on the first floor.  And two; they had no fucking idea what it was about the second floor that influenced any of their gains.

James had gravel and a snowball presented like a national treasure - and he really did want to know what that did - while Alanna had a window that showed her the space outside the slip she’d taken in, Sarah had a white painted wire rack with a few flower pots on it, and Arrush had what seemed like it was just mundane terrain in the form of two hundred feet of dirt footpath forming an outer perimeter.  There was no obvious connection between what they had or hadn’t done in the dungeon.  Maybe more combat gave more mass, but unique achievements gave the potential for magic items?  Maybe it was random, unless you hit something specific like the door?  Maybe it was something that was going to require deep analysis of hundreds of delves over the course of years to start to determine the real method.

That last one seemed most likely.  And it kind of sucked, because it meant that James wasn’t going to get to plan anything around his demiplane.  Because he was going to be one of the forerunners, logging his whole delves in minute detail, along with his rewards.  Blazing a trail that the next generation could use as a map for their own futures.

”Damn, that’s a thought that’s hard to ignore.”  Zhu said as he flowed out of James, orange light taking shape and glowing majestically for a moment before dipping back to his normal luminescence.  “Did it work?”

”More or less.”  James answered as he finished being disappointed in the contents of a spreadsheet.  “Also you might wanna keep napping, because I’m off to consult on a planning meeting.”

”Oh!  I’m not going with you, I’m gonna go hang out with Hidden.”  Zhu said cheerfully.  “Her human is in a garage band!”

”…well that’s…” James thought for a second.  “Exactly what I should have expected from Ava.”  He finished.  “It’s weird to think that her rebellious teenager phase is probably going to be the most normal thing in the Lair for a while.”

”I refuse to know what that means, okay bye!”  Zhu stretched out the last word as he flickered and blurred, feathers and eyes melting away from James to form a simple moving spear of orange light that bounced away, Zhu tracing along walls and floors and out a bedroom window under his own power.

James stood.  Stretched.  And laughed to himself as he wondered if Zhu would regret taking the long way around after he found out that James had beaten him back to the Lair by just teleporting.

_____

“Sit your asses down.”  Nate said as he entered the room, precisely on time, and absolutely uncaring that everyone present was already seated where they were supposed to be.  “No more wasting time.”

”Is that allowed?”  Knife-In-Fangs asked.  “I do not think we can waste time.”

One of Planner’s tentacles twisted at a ninety degree angle to run along the edge of the white rectangle at the front of the briefing warehouse zone that currently was waiting for something to be projected on it.  “You can.  My powers are not yet capable of rewriting reality.”  The infomorph said.

James narrowed his eyes and considered challenging that point, but thought better of it.  “It’s good to have you back Plan.”  He said instead.

”Yes.” Knife-In-Fangs agreed.  “Being late to things was unpleasant.”  The camraconda knight stated.  “I appreciate your presence.”

”…thank you.”  Planner said with the quiet sound of a pen hesitating to mark a page.  They knew, in theory, that they were improving things.  But not everyone wanted their specific improvement all the time, and it was… reassuring… to hear that someone had noticed, and liked it.  “Now, we are done wasting time.  Let us proceed.”

Nate looked up from where he was palming his face in a rough hand.  “Great.”  He muttered, taking a long breath and wishing he still smoked.  A cigarette would have prepared him for dealing with this.  “I’m making Cam do this next time.  Okay!”  Nate raised his voice.  “Who wants to give an after action report first?” He said, feeling for all the world like a teacher asking who wanted to present their homework to the class.

James spoke up, the assembled group of about twenty knights deferring to him, most people already having quieted down as Nate entered anyway.  “Big picture?  We achieved our primary goal, in a way that we were not prepared for.”  He said bluntly.  “‘On site procurement’ is supposed to be for supplies, not people.  If our plan for every dungeon spill and long term crisis going forward is putting together a branch of the Order in the area, then we’re going to need to make more direct plans for that specifically.  We probably should have those plans anyway, because I’m sure this will come up again later.”  James started out.  “But aside from that… my report is ‘everyone did their jobs’.  Our biggest point of failure was knight teams overtaxing themselves.  If we’re going to be doing this - and we are - then we need more people, and more ability to commit to any given long term deployment.”  He tapped at the wood panel of the little desk-chair combo thing that someone had filled this briefing zone with.  “No single dungeon creation for this one was a threat to us, either.  Not really.  I mean, they all could have killed any of us a dozen different ways, but… well…”

”Our training is working.”  Knife-In-Fangs filled in.  “We have practice fighting together, and adapting to different forms of conflict.  Live applications of different magics has also given us unfair advantages.”  The camraconda hissed in mean amusement.  “Being unfair to our foes is satisfying.”

”And effective.”  Ann added from next to him, getting a bobbing nod from her teammate.

James snapped and pointed at them in acknowledgment.  “Yeah, that’s a big deal.”  He said.  “We had answers.  Not like, ‘we saw the future’ answers, but we had magic that we could apply directly to basically every situation we hit.  And we did.  And we won every fight.”

”Well, we didn’t lose any fights.”  Ishah corrected, the ratroach sitting at attention with the starfish form of Moon splashed out around his upper shoulder.

”Good point.  But still.”  James ticked off examples on his fingers.  “Scythe rabbits?  Easily baited by people using ghost potion and handled in dense packs.  Mimic snakes?  Dangerous if they can get you while you’re confused, but completely incapable of interfering with skulljack comms.  Blast spiders?  A single powerful strike doesn’t actually work on us because of shield bracers and Kiki’s charms.  Though I admit, the fact that they are the weight, durability, and strength of a bear is kind of an issue after that point.  Unicorn?  Terrified of fire.  Which we have options for.”  He looked up at Nate.  “Also, all those horns and blades and stuff are bone, and the original stolen leveler gloves can cut right through that stuff.  I’m not saying we had a button that solved every problem for us, but our collection of tricks really pulled some weight these last couple weeks.”

Giving a nod, Nate looked up at the rest of this batch.  ”Anyone have anything to add to the big picture?”  Nate asked, after James had finished.

There were a few things that different people had to bring up, each of them listened to attentively by Nate and Planner as the voices of various knights spoke in turn.

”Drone scouts helped, but we don’t have any program for sharing views.”  Feeling-Of-Home brought up.  “It was not dangerous, but we could maybe reduce how many knights we need by improving that task.”

”Drones also don’t help for clearing buildings.”  Ishah added.  “And…” the ratroach looked away for a moment to take a steadying breath before he continued, “I don’t know how to deal with humans that see me as… a threat.  Or a...” he stopped before uttering the word 'monster'.

”Having resupply available there without teleporting was probably safer, but we didn’t have great options for longer hunts.”  One of the shield team members - James thought her name was Rada? - brought up.  “The dragons helped, but there was a lot of sitting on our asses when we didn’t need to.”  She added.

”Speaking of resupply, the reverse was also a pain in the ass.”  Evans added to his teammate’s comment.  “Half the work was harvesting orbs and corpses, and hauling them back.  I get that we can’t just leave a couple thousand bodies out in the open, but it really slowed us down.”

The debrief continued like that for a while.  Which was the point, really.  People started talking about the things that had been annoying or problematic while they were going through the deployment to Oklahoma, Planner would make sure to record it, and Nate would listen and then ask a series of bluntly intelligent questions about the details.  Then, the suggestions would come, often from the people who had noticed the problems in the first place, but also from everyone around them who might have different perspectives - or sometimes wholly different magic - and equally often from Nate himself, who would steal logistics and communication ideas from his time in the navy and twist them to the Order’s needs.

Then it went down farther, into details.  How did the ad hoc teams perform?  How well did the knight roster program work for this situation?  How did their gear work, including a lot of close looks at images taken of downed dungeon life, prompting thoughts and discussions about appropriate levels of damage.

What magic worked best, and what would have worked better if they’d had it?  What could they do to prepare for next time?  What Stacks figurines had proven to be kind of low-impact versus the ones that had reshaped whole swaths of farmland?  What Climb spells should they be loading into ‘wands’ by the hundreds of casts to be applied?  What temporary buff coffee was most valuable, and why, impossibly, was it the one that made someone a more charming talker, and not the one that made someone faster than a human was supposed to react?

Then terrain.  How had they handled open ground, farmland with obstructing crops, rural standalone structures, neighborhoods, highways, hills, trees, everywhere they’d fought the knights gave an account of how it had either worked in their favor or fucked over their confidence.

Then, the interpersonal.  How did you get a bunch of people who lived in an environment of racist background radiation to accept a ratroach as a person?  They were prioritizing lives and the immediate threat over ideology right now, because that was their ideology, but it was critical to get in early on discussing methods to avoid funnelling magical superpowers into the worst kinds of people.

Nate handled it with practice, both because he had practice in his military days, and because was one of the people who’d written the Order’s process for this, and also because this was the third debriefing he’d done today.  It would not be the last.  Planner’s help in organizing and sorting information was useful, but even Planner was here to learn about what could be improved, to be done better next time.

After the hours of reports and light discussion were done, they had more information to work with.  Later, probably tomorrow, there would be another smaller meeting to discuss how to turn these problem points into solutions.  New strategies would be drawn up, new plans made, and a new round of training and drills for the Order’s knights and shield teams and even responders would take into account how to be better.

To James, it felt just a hint strange.  For him, adaptation was personal; at most, he’d talk to the three other paladins and split up who was troubleshooting what.  But the Order wasn’t just four paladins.  It was hundreds of people, using a dozen different sources of magic, many of which required supply lines.  They weren’t as fast as they had been at the start, in terms of how quickly they could point at something and say ‘do it this way now’.

But they were still pretty fucking fast, compared to any other organization their size.

Heavy use of interlinked technology, heavier use of infomorph support from people like Planner, and a general atmosphere of collectivism that straight up rejected secrecy wherever possible, all combined to make the Order pretty nimble despite its growing population and more spread out list of projects.

Piece by piece, the knights who had spent two weeks fighting across miles of Oklahoma farmland dissected what had worked exceptionally well, and what could be better.  And somewhere, either in the Lair or somewhere connected to it, the Order’s accounting team collectively shuddered at the approaching spectre of needing a new budget.

_____

The annoying thing about testing green orbs was, you couldn’t actually test them fully off-site of wherever you actually wanted to deploy them.

At least, that was the incredibly petty complaint that James had when it came to applying otherworldly power to the building that he used as a home base.  He had, perhaps, gotten spoiled by the copying ritual.  The Order was up to almost twenty copies a week now, and while that would never be enough on a global scale, right now, to him, it felt practically decadent.

When it came to green orbs, that modified a space, there was a burgeoning tradition of having new recruits use an unknown copy in the Lair.  Leaving their own random mark on the place that would be their own too as they joined the Order.  But the thing was, greens weren’t neutral like yellows were.

A skill rank was a skill rank, no matter who used it.  It was actually pretty confusing for camracondas to learn how to drive, but… they did learn how to drive, just as a camraconda.  But if a human cracked a purple orb that improved their finger flexibility, a camraconda wasn’t getting free fingers to go with that.  Instead, they’d get something else, probably about dexterity for the tail end of their body.  Ratroaches were closer, but many purples tended to give them growth rates in various biological parts, whether they wanted them or not.

Greens were like that.  One that improved food preparation speed when used in a building with a commercial kitchen might just make microwave ovens more effective if used in an office that just had a break room.  One that added time for general reading gave a boost to reading comprehension when used on a school, and just generated books from nothing when used on a library.

Basically, the green orbs had opinions on what kind of building they wanted to be used on.  And the Lair, as cool as it was, was kind of a dozen different things all at once.  So the greens were a little scattershot and a little underpowered, but that was fine, because all of them contributed to making the place more than it would have been otherwise.

The new loot drop, which James had several fresh copies of, was so much more irritating.  Which was probably the point, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.  But also he was probably going to like it despite himself.  It was magic.  It was too easy to forget that, when scrolling through lists of copied greens to find the best ones to make batches of for Townton.  That made it look like a boring job, and not what it really was; reshaping the fabric of reality itself to forge a better environment for the people he loved.

What could that be, if not magic?

So James found himself smiling at the six cubes on the dining area table in front of him.  Two sets of three each.  They looked like faceted crystal, like the other orb loot drops from the Oklahoma creatures.  Clear but with glittering flashes of color as they caught the light.  It was sort of known what they did, and it actually seemed like it could be detrimental just like the orbs.  “Focus” was great, if you actually wanted to focus on something, but less great when you needed a well rounded improvement.

Which was why he had three of each.  Because being slightly better in the whole category had no downsides, and that was kind of a big deal if they were doing this in the Lair.

“If one of these makes another basement, no one gets to blame me.”  James said out loud before using the first of the batch.

The crystal cube broke into a floating pattern of shimmering colored light around his hand, with three smaller cubes of red, yellow, and blue splitting off and hovering around his hand as if waiting for him to waste time so they could do their own thing.  James, however, was aware of how these things tried to fuck with people, and moved quickly to tap the yellow one first.  Then he repeated it with the other two copied loot drops, selecting blue and then red in turn for those.

And he was rewarded with three very similar outputs.

[+1 Zone Rank - Alacrity : Engineering - Design - Vehicle]

[+1 Zone Rank - Frugality : Engineering - Design - Vehicle]

[+1 Zone Rank - Security : Engineering - Design - Vehicle]

Fast, cheap, or safe.  Pick two.  That was how the saying went, anyway.  James had no interest in choosing however; not when the Order could have all three.

Research had gotten an entire new team of people to analyze the effects of different facets of the new magic.  Sociologists and mathematicians and just people whose whole job was to investigate using their specific life experience and look for changes.  Twenty people, mostly human, who were entirely set on finding what the limits of this new bullshit were.

So far they had a few answers.  Though none of them were to the question of does this work on a demiplane, which meant James had done his daily tasks in the wrong order.  Still.

The zone cubes wouldn’t add or remove material on a large scale, like green orbs could.

They focused on behaviors within their influence, mostly professional ones but not always.

They could overlap with green orb improvements and seemed to magnify their effects, though never more than about ten percent or so.

They didn’t cut anyone’s pay or fabricate money for the cost focus.  Instead, they seemed to bend reality in other ways; slightly increasing stockpiles of material or reducing expensive problems.  Some people had reported not needing to eat as much while working in the zone, which might mean they were saving on food costs in a roundabout way.

It was also suspected that they had direct specific effects.  Like, for example, if one was feeding people to reduce costs, it might only be doing that.  But unlike green orbs, they weren’t telling on themselves.  Which made an extra layer of challenge that hadn’t been sorted out, especially since they’d only had a week and a half dozen test cases.

They definitely negatively impacted whatever focus wasn’t taken.  Security would make something visibly safer for everyone involved, but it also slowed things down.  As in, it made people feel like they were working against physical resistance.

And perhaps most importantly, the zones were not structural.  They were zones.  Physical areas with a boundary, that did not care about walls.  Which was why James was doing this in the dining area, where it overlapped the most parts of the Lair possible.

All in all, they were an exceptionally esoteric magic.  Much like the Pylon’s ability levels, it obviously did something, but the changes that the zone cubes affected were so granular that it was hard to pinpoint what was being done, exactly.  

It made using them on the Lair as part of testing what each one did a generally good idea.  Because even if it wasn’t something that was going to be a mainline operation of the Order, it didn’t seem capable of hurting anything.  As long as they were careful to use all three options in sequence.

This was clearly a magic that was designed to mess with those who used it, made less fucky by the copying ritual.  James did honestly hope that if there was a dungeon afterlife, the one from Oklahoma was looking on at their actions, and giving a lightly frustrated but genuinely amused “Sure I guess!” at him.

That thought made James smile, and offer up the next cube to the open air in a toast to that lost dungeon, before he worked through the second set.

[+1 Zone Rank - Alacrity : Culinary - Preparation - Indonesian]

[+1 Zone Rank - Frugality : Culinary - Preparation - Indonesian]

[+1 Zone Rank - Security : Culinary - Preparation - Indonesian]

James looked over toward the kitchens as the sparkling light faded away and the arcane alteration sank into the building.  His gaze unfocused as he looked not up or over or anywhere that wasn’t ’out there’.  ”Hey.”  He told the spirit of the dungeon.  “That’s really cool.  Thanks.”

It was sad that they’d never get to meet.  That he’d never get to find any more secrets than what had fled from the dungeon when it had collapsed.  That the Order wouldn’t have the time to explore and tease out the personality of the strange living space.

But at least what was left, they could appreciate, and love, and put to good use.

And that would have to be enough.

_____

“Good to see you’re alive!”  Reed told James with a weak wave of one of his smaller arm.

James eyed the apparently-permanently-a-ratroach Research lead suspiciously.  “Why would I not be alive?”  He asked slowly.

”You… walked out of reality today?”  Reed replied, as if James’ concern for his own mortality was equally confusing.  “I saw your log for it.  Also you touched the ominous cubes?  Probably something else, too, that might have killed you.”

”Those are both dungeon rewards. They don’t kill people.”  James pointed out.

Reed leveled that small claw at James, his eyes still focused on the computer he was typing on with his other hands.  Paws.  Whatever.  “They haven’t killed people yet.  I think the Sewer is trying.  And some of the purples might have long term health consequences.”

”So I was gonna ask what Research was up to these days, but I guess that answers that in a terrifying way.”  James said, taking the chair opposite Reed in the Researcher’s cramped office.

Or… no.  It had been a cramped office, but as James paid closer attention to what his eyes were telling him, he realized that what had once been a supply closet Reed had tried to hide a desk in was less claustrophobic, and more cozy.  It was still cluttered as shit, and one whole wall was paneled in whiteboard so that Reed could make notes to himself.  Currently, that wall looked like a conspiracy board and seemed to largely be about pillar behavior.  The desk was similarly blanketed in reports, proposals, and various magical doodads.  Including what looked like a wire frame replica of the leveler crown, for some reason.

But the room wasn’t so tight that it felt suffocating.  There was elbow room, and air flow, and even a potted plant that James was pretty sure wasn’t planning to murder him.

Reed had taken his time while James puzzled over the changed space to finish what he was typing, before looking up with his segmented insectile eyes.  “That’s not what we’re up to.”  He said.  “We’re ‘up to’ a lot of things.  What do you want to know?”

”I feel like a dialogue tree just popped up.”  James said with a stunned chuckle.  “If I ask you if you’ve heard any rumors, do I get a new quest line?”

”Rumors?  Sure.  People are saying that basement five is haunted by something.  Also Follower-Of-Horizon’s scout team is coming up with a lot of great stories tracking people who try to sell magic online, because it’s never real.  Oh!  And we think Ethan is dating someone, but he won’t tell anyone who.”  Reed’s claws drummed on the desk, neatly fitting into the tiny divots where his excited motion had been repeated a few hundred times over the days spent down here.  “Is that what you were hoping for?”

James stared at him blankly.  “I don’t think I was hoping for anything, man.  I think I was joking, and your reply essentially nuked my train of thought.”

”Oh.  Cool.”  Reed nodded, his brightly glowing line of a grin showing stretching against the chitin plates of his face before it faltered slightly.  “Uh… can you not ‘man’ me though?”

”Sure.  Any particular reason?”  James asked in a more casually friendly way, suspecting the answer but not wanting to bulldoze over Reed’s feelings.

The ratroach gave a light shrug, though it was a stiff one.  “I kind of… like this body.”  She said nervously, one claw picking at the seam of chitin and hide on the opposite arm.  “All of it.  You know?”

“That’s cool!”  James smiled at Reed, and seeing the ratroach slump in relief that might not even be noticed.  He had an impulse to say something about how it wasn’t a big deal, but even though he counted Reed as a friend, or at least someone friend-adjacent, James did know how fucking difficult it could be to be truly vulnerable with another person like that.  “Let me know if you pick a different name or something.”

”Sure.  Anyway, you didn’t actually want rumors?”

James shook his head.  “Reed, I am thirsty for Research rumors.  I didn’t expect that to work, and I’m baffled that you just have that mental list ready to go, and when you say basement five is haunted I think I want to be in basement five more than I want to be anywhere else right now.  But, I’ve gotta keep up on the actual advancements, so… any Research progress that isn’t… about… actually what the fuck do you mean Ethan is dating someone?”

”I’m as surprised as you are.”  Reed said with a nod that was best described as sassy coming from her small ratroach frame.  “But I assume you want a summary, so you know what reports to actually read?”

James nodded back at him.  “Yeah, the highlights, if you please.”

Reed took a second to compose her thoughts, then started rattling off information from memory.  “Well.  We’re working on the ‘language’ of the Ceaseless Stacks pretty intently.  The generators are weird, but weird in a similar way to orange totems.  You can take matter away from them, but each orb has a finite amount of it.  Though it’s more than a generator can project.  Like, a lot more.  So mostly we’re asking the tablet for examples, and then figuring out a vocabulary so that we can start making our own, in the same way that Momo sort of intuited the Office’s language for red totems.”

”Question.”  James raised a hand.  “And I don’t mean to disparage you.  But.”

”Yeah?”

”Why not just ask the Stacks tablet to tell you how to make a thing to translate?”  He asked.

Reed stared at James, her mammalian set of eyes narrowing.  “Are you fucking with me?”  She asked him.

”Not… currently?”  James lowered his hand slowly.  “Is this a thing that I should know about?”

Shifting in her chair and swearing in a very familiar way at how her tail got in the fucking way, Reed gave an irate answer.  “The first thing from the tablet was instructions on how to make another tablet.”

James remembered that.  “Yeah.  It was utterly incomprehensible.”

”Right.  So after a few more tests on more mundane stuff, we asked for something to translate.”  Reed said.  “But it always gives instructions on how to manufacture what you ask for as best as has been made before.  No innovation, as far as we can tell.  That’s why the generator plans don’t include… like… blueprints?  For generator-making machines?  Does this make sense?”  It looked like James was keeping up, so Reed continued.  “Okay, right, so a translation machine was on the list.  And… uh…”

It was fascinating that James could tell that Reed wasn’t a native born ratroach, because the look of sheepish embarrassment in her body language and on her face was very human.  “The translation device was written in dungeon language, wasn’t it.”  James said with his own growing sense of exasperation.

”Ah… heh.  Yeah.  That’s actually where we lost about a month and a half of tablet time.  Between that and the antimemetics division incident, we kinda haven’t been getting full use out of the thing at all.”

”And now we’re doing more generator things?”  James asked curiously.  “Did we never even try for Office yellow totems or something?”

”Oh, no one ever made one.”  Reed waved a paw dismissively.  “If the Office didn’t make one, there’s no plan for it.  They might be real, but there’s no plan to copy, so it does nothing.  We tried with stuff like theoretical starship ion engines too, just to check!  Nothing.”

”Oh.  Kinda disappointing.  Generators are cool though.” 

Reed nodded, looking over James’ shoulder as a pair of Researchers dipped by the door to the office, then kept walking when they saw there was someone else in there.  “Very.  We’re going to start testing purples soon.  Tool ranks.  If they work the same way, it might be useful for manufacturing.  But… uh… every time Karen makes me take a logistics or fabrication or business orb, I feel like I can come up with more reasons it’s not a replacement for ‘a big factory somewhere’.”

The wince James gave was sympathetic to Reed’s plight.  “With you there.”  He said, leaning back and bracing his knees on the back of the desk, testing the weight of the piece of furniture that was definitely bigger than it appeared to be.  “But that doesn’t make it useless, just challenging to apply.  Though I’m super interested to see what happens if we start spawning, like, centrifuges.”  James listed off what wasn’t even the weirdest of the Library tool ranks that he’d gotten.  “Okay.  What else?”

”Skulljack braid improvements are sort of an ongoing project for that team.  I’m making them put out a ‘stable’ model every couple months though, from now on.  Camraconda armatures are a little trickier.  We’ve been trying to find a way to trick the Thermodynamic Tunnel spell into moving so that we can have portable thermovoltaic power sources for the things, but it just isn’t working.  I know, I know, don’t look at me like that.”

If James had been looking ‘like’ something, he wasn’t sure how it had appeared.  ”Like… what?”

”Like everyone does when I complain about not having infinite portable electricity.”

”Oh.  Yeah, okay, I should have a look for that.”  James tried furrowing his brow.  “How’s this?”

”Bad.”

”Great.  So arm packs?”

Reed nodded.  “Right.  We’re getting better at building them is my point.  Also, at just prosthetics for humans!  It’s kind of all the same tech base, though it isn’t my specialty.  Motors and joints and stuff.  The biggest issue doing it with mundane gear has always been ordering it around and the skulljack ignores that entirely.  I was going to ask for approval to start… you know… sharing it I guess?”

”Ah.”  James didn’t have another word to use.  Any other words to use.  They were going to have to take the plunge eventually; skulljacks were going to spread to humanity and there was nothing that anyone could really do to stop that.  It was kind of a fucking marvel they hadn’t already.  Maybe it would soften the gyre of change if it came packaged with one of the best mobility tools the Order could offer that didn’t involve magically enhancing muscle tissue.  “I’ll talk to some people about it.”  He promised.

”I’m already doing that, but thanks.”  Reed said, sharing James’ concern though maybe not for the same reasons.  “What else… uh… we moved one of the ritual projectors out of the Office, and it stopped working.”

”Fuck!”  James barked out.

Reed jerked in shock at the sudden word, her body reacting violently before her brain did.  Sucking in a sudden breath, and hearing James starting to rapidly apologize, Reed once again started drilling filed down claws on the edge of the desk, this time with more nervous energy.  “It’s not that bad.”  She said once she caught her breath.  “It was just the email one, and it started working once we took it back in.  It’s just that it seems to require the cubicle towers, like we already knew.  John and Davis think it needs a ‘high magic zone’ and want to try building their own wizard tower, which is stupid, because-“

”Wait doesn’t magic fail entirely once it hits the ionosphere?”  James asked.

Reed tried to snap her fingers and failed miserably.  “Yes.”  She said, glaring at the offending paw.  “That.  Because of that.  Good, you know.  And it’s actually a variable amount into the ionosphere; recent tests have gotten farther, so it might be some kind of ‘tide’.  Anyway.”  Reed made the very human gesture of trying to roll her eyes, before blinking rapidly as it failed and the attempt clearly caused the ratroach body some problems.  There was an annoyed click from her chest before she spoke quickly to cover up the issue.  “What else.  New orbs are annoying, but you know that.  We have so many copies flooding in, and I don’t care, and we should stop copying them.  The cubes are okay but the orbs are just… irritating?  Not worth it?  I guess it’s not my call but it’s a waste when we’re waiting on so many other projects.”  Reed sighed, reaching for a mug on the desk that James hadn’t actually spotted until a paw wrapped around it.  “I think that’s it for the big stuff.  Oh, the absorbed red orb trick to lower Garden spell study time caps at twenty percent.”  She added, as if that were a small detail.

Reed sat the mug back down, and as soon as her paw pulled away, James lost track of it in the stacks of papers and models and electronic hardware on the desk’s surface.

”Reed how magical is your desk?”  James asked bluntly.

”Pretty magical.”

”Okay.  Can you… magic up my desk?”

”I’ll get Bea on it.  But I’ll also ask Rufus first.”  Reed said wisely.  “And I guess Alex, who lives in your office now?  Most people try to get a private office.  You’re weird.”

”Thanks!”  James said happily, replying with one word to multiple statements.  “So, any other big things I need to know about?”

”Not really?”  Reed shrugged.  “I know you read most of our reports, I don’t actually know why you’re here?  Most of what I’ve been doing today has been putting our medical purple tests into a spreadsheet for the final study that we’re using to show people that we can actually cure cancer and stuff.”  She said, already looking back at the laptop.  “And there’s probably a thousand things going on down here that no one tells me about.”

That sounded a little grumpy.  James raised an eyebrow.  “I think they don’t want to bother you until you’re feeling better.”  He said.  “Are you, like, on the list for shaper surgery.”

”Yes.”  Reed said.  “I’m not like you, I like medical technology.”

”Okay ow.”

”That’s what I say every day.”  Reed replied, like she’d fucking rehersed that line.  Which she had.  “Look, being in pain doesn’t mean I don’t keep track of all our spellbooks and iLipedes and the new zoo we’re building I guess.  When you go out there can you maybe tell everyone to stop babying me?”  Reed asked, most of her mind now fully back on task and assuming James was actively leaving.

James took that as a dismissal, though a pretty friendly one.

Standing and stretching, James paused in the doorway, and looked out over the low hum of activity that the central Research bubble existed in when it wasn’t three AM or in the middle of a major deployment that pulled people away.  Leaning one hand on the frame, he cleared his throat, and then projected his voice outward.

”Hey everybody!”  James said, and a muffled hush quickly fell over the assorted conversations and projects.  “Reed’s bored and needs something to do, if anyone has extra work!”

”Oh you fucker.”  James heard from behind himself as he bit down on a huge grin and slunk away, while half the Researchers eagerly and sympathetically sprung up to go try to rope Reed into helping with whatever they were currently doing.

That was why James liked getting his reports in person.

_____

James was disappointed to learn that basement five was not haunted.

He did get to have a fun chat with one of the HVACnids though.  They were intense, by James’ measure.  Only one of the two lived in the Lair, but both of their presences with the Order was one of curious learning.  In a way, they were kind of on their own knight errancy; taking the opportunity to grow their skills, develop an alliance with the Order, and collect supplies to take home when they decided they were ready to return.

For the one that had followed James and the rest of his temporary team home from a delve, returning home was a simple task on a simple time limit.  They would be returning next week, in fact.  For the other one, who had been with them and healing since falling from the ceiling during the long expedition delve, it wasn’t so simple.  His ‘kingdom’ was one governed by harsh conditions, and he didn’t plan to go back until he could do something about that.  Though notably, he did want to go back.

For the HVACnids, with their looped cable faces and whirring internal fans, the ceilings of Officium Mundi were home.  Exploring the world was fun, but they had somewhere to return to.

James saw why some camracondas were a little jealous of them for that.

Still.  He was certain that as things progressed, and they established better communications and contact, more than a few of them would be migrating on a permanent basis.  It was really only a matter of time.

He did ask them to stop jump scaring people by running across the raised ventilation pipes though.  If James was gonna be getting rumors about hauntings, he wanted them to involve more ghosts next time.

_____

It had been a while since Nik had figured out how to imbue a piece of mechanical pencil graphite.  Well, it had been ‘a while’ by Order magical development standards, which meant it had been a few weeks and they’d rapidly run into a dozen problems and also changed everything forever.

The imbuement itself was kind of dumb.  Using the graphite to trace or even just broadly mark existing text would rearrange the written text as if it were precisely typed.  There was actually a really cool application of it for decoding bad handwriting or even partially cut off letters if a page had been damaged, but it too had dumb problems.  For example, if you used it on a digital image of something, it would ‘work’ in a technical sense, but ‘working’ meant that the corrected blocky text would now be permanently marked into the screen you were using.  So.  Not a highlight.  Also, of course, it was a blue item, so too much damage meant it broke, and that meant you got about twenty to thirty words worth of use before it decided you’d used enough graphite.

Now, this did solve a logistical hurdle.  Mechanical pencil graphite was actually quite small, and being able to make sixteen hundred copies of a blue orb with a single ritual essentially solved their shortage problem for a while.

Before, they had needed to ration who got blue orbs for imbuing experiments, for emergency kits, and for absorbing.  Now, that first part at least was off the leash.  The orbs were only size one, so there were definitely limits, but if anyone wanted to try making a small magic item, they basically could.  And that freed up the other orbs that were useful for more practical things on their own to be used more liberally.

Of course, the process of imbuing an item kind of scrambled whatever the orb in it was, so there was no way to ensure they got a really good blue that could be useful for all three options unless they just kept rolling the dice until something great came up.  And, it turned out, it was fucking hard to imbue mechanical pencil graphite.  There had been two successes so far, both from Nik, over the course of months of trying.  And both output blues were kind of mediocre.  The one they’d settled on was the most useful, and it cleaned a single article of clothing, starting with shirts and working out from there.  Not bad, but not an emergency lifesaver.  The absorb for it was for Collect Acid, a spell that should have had some cool niche applications, and probably did if it could be used on an industrial scale, but was just not as good as Move Person or even the more similar Collect Moisture that was used for building refurbishment in Townton.

And of course, every imbued item had one hit point.  So even as a whole wave of people gained access to being able to design their own semi-permanent magic, it was still the kind of thing that the Order could not rely on for hazardous situations.

But still.  It meant that there was just so much more leeway for fucking around.  Also no more pouring random pencils and binders into a woodchipper to see how many blue orbs fell out.

And part of that access, that surplus for the time being, meant that James could waste a lot of blue orbs repeatedly trying something that had never worked before, but might work if he could bend his will in the right shape.

Which was why, while he sat on one of the stone benches in the pleasant greenery of the basement bamboo garden, James got to multitask.  On the one hand, he was waiting for Arrush and Keeka.  But on the other hand, he was looking down at a Sewer book, the Lesson for what had been identified by iLipede as something history-related sitting in his lap, menacingly.

Or maybe James was trying to menace it.  Could go either way, he figured.

He had no plans to actually open the book.  The last thing he needed was another Lesson, especially with how each one made every other one harder and harder to level up.  Instead, he had a pile of blue orbs, some yellows to match as a power supply, and a terrible idea.

[Problem Solved : Shirt Cleaned]

[+.1 Skill Ranks : Cooking - Recipe - Pie - Cherry]

”Okay, not that one.”  James muttered.

He needed a new terrible idea.

The plan was to imbue a Lesson.  To make it enhanced in some way.  James had a checklist of potential variants, and was trying them out up to five failures each for now.  Currently he was working on ‘a Lesson you could drop out of later’, which was, predictably, not working.  He was starting to think the Sewer didn’t really think of these as by-the-book classroom style teaching tools.  Shocking.

Already he was to the point that he had four ranks in how to make cherry pie, and the diminishing returns were going to drop below what the magic would even tell him about soon enough.  The orbs kept laundering his shirts though, which made him feel a little insulted.  He did laundry, he knew most of his shirts were clean at home!

James changed tracks and started focusing on his next approach.  A Sewer book that told you what the Lesson was when you picked it up.  Simple.  Essentially he was making a self-identifying magic item. And, yeah, they could already kind of do this with the iLipedes they had, but why overtax the lil bugs’ collective time?

[Problem Solved : Shirt Cleaned]

Okay, it didn’t work coming at it directly like that.  “What if…” James muttered as someone else walked into the little clearing he was using, “…blood?”  The Sewer liked blood.  Or maybe just abstractly pain.  What if you had to prick your finger or some kind of classic ritualism to make it work?  He tried feeding that into the intent, stacking on the fact that this was sort of implicitly racist because it wouldn’t work for a camraconda.

[Problem Solved : Shirt Cleaned]

“Bring back my pie knowledge.”  James complained, before looking up at the figure that had occupied a nearby bench on the inner curve of one of the rows of bamboo.  He had figured it might have been Keeka sneaking in while he was staring with laser focus at his work, but instead, James found himself looking with mild surprise at a crocamaw who was watching him with the end of their long mouth resting on the bench next to where they had their legs crossed underneath themself.  “Oh.  Hi there.”  James said, setting the Lesson book aside so he didn’t fiddle with it by accident.  “How’s it going?”  He asked the young dungeon life with a smile.

The crocamaw just shuffled, both silently and nervously, one of his hands bringing part of a granola bar up to munch with the edge of his mouth.  James watched with his own quiet patience, noting the shade of green scales and the cream colored stripe that ran up the underside of the kid’s maw.  He was really bad at telling people apart sometimes - including humans - but he was pretty sure he knew this crocamaw specifically.

”Lavant, right?”  James asked, getting a flipping hand motion in response that he was pretty sure meant ‘yes’.  “Good to see you again!  Just hanging out down here?”

Again, a small gesture.  Then, Lavant spoke, part of his mouth opening while the other side kept chewing on his granola bar.  “Breakfast.”  He said slowly, before pulling out another granola bar from one of his pockets.  “Do… you want one?”

”I’m good, thanks though.”  James nodded in appreciation.  “How’ve you been, though?  Things going okay?  Anything fun going on?”

”School.”  The crocamaw answered slowly.  “I’m learning how to… everything.”  The end of his maw peeled back into a toothy smile.  “Like talking to people.”  He shuffled around on his own stone bench, shoving his claw with the granola bar back into its assigned pocket.  “And learning how to be here.”  He added.

”How’s that going?”  James asked softly, knowing the answer wouldn’t be easy.

Lavant’s smile rippled down his mouth, teeth flashing in a wave as bitter amusement came and went.  “No one yells.  No one makes me do anything.  No one ever… it is better.”  He said bluntly.  “Miss the… I miss the reward treat feeling.  But it’s worth it!”  The statement was made with a flare of volume; not the kind of thing where someone was trying to convince themselves they’d made an okay trade, but the sort where it was an overpowering emotion taking the reins for a moment.  The crocamaw twisted a little, running a claw down his maw in slight embarrassment, before adding as if it were an afterthought,  “And there’s a… a holiday?  Soon?”

There was, though James had almost forgotten himself.  The Order had, with prompting from a few different people, decided that they were going to try for the winter solstice as a new tradition to establish for themselves.  There were several advantages to this choice.  It was tied to a mundane calendar date, for one.  And it wasn’t a day that was exclusively an existing religion’s holiday, which avoided preferencing any group of humans that were part of the people gradually filling up Townton, and prevented having to explain the tangled web of faith to new camracondas.  At least, not out of nowhere.  Of course, there were people who celebrated the solstice, but James had checked, and found that they were generally willing to share.

And it did feel important, to have a dedicated day of celebration.  A place to put new rituals and traditions, and also to just be a moment where everyone could breathe.  It had been a long road, and it wasn’t like the journey was going to stop, but people needed dedicated moments to reflect and be hopeful.

James had no idea what they were doing for the celebration, not exactly.  He’d been busy.  But, that said… “I understand that Sarah has some plans.”  He told Lavant.  “Which, if anyone else said that to me, I’d be a little concerned, but it’s Sarah, soooo…”

”Everyone likes Sarah.”  Lavant twisted his hand, raised eyes locked on James with a solemn understanding that Sarah was an immutable force of nature.  “She is powerful.”

”I feel like Sarah being powerful is a side effect of everyone liking her.”  James said with a small laugh, tossing the bag of blue orbs he was using on top of the Lesson book since he felt like he was going to just relax his mind and let this conversation take over his focus for a few minutes.  “But yeah, solstice celebration!  Are you looking forward to it?”

The answer came out almost frantic.  “I think…” Lavant started, before he forced closed his eyes, setting aside his breakfast to slowly close and open his claws.  Watching the crocamaw, James recognized pretty quickly a basic breathing exercise that he’d learned from his own therapist.  He was about to ask Lavant if he was okay, when their eyes reopened with a more deliberate motion.  The crocamaw spoke with slow, carefully placed words.  “I think I want to feel good again.”  Lavant said.  “And I know I won’t.  But I want to, and I want to… hope… that it will happen for solstice.”

James’ smile didn’t just slip, it practically vanished.  “Ah.”  He said sadly.  The crocamaws, those that had been held captive by their Mormon handlers for a long time and used as delving companions-slash-weapons, had all been conditioned to obedience by some kind of spell that was clearly addicting.  Mentally, not physically.  If it were a physical addiction, Mesa Oasis could have purged it.  But instead, those like Lavant, who were very heavily used as combatants, were left yearning for a physical sensation that the Order didn’t have a spellbook for, and wouldn’t give them anyway even if they did.  “I’m gonna be honest with you.  That’s… not really an option.”  He told Lavant.

”Kn… I know.”  Lavant made a small snarl with part of his maw, constantly annoyed at how easy it was to forget the personal pronoun while speaking.  “I know.”  He added again, struggling with his breathing, and also his anger.  “It was wrong.  They hurt me.  It’s their fault.  And they’re gone now!”  He said with a dark splash of hate in his words.  “So why does it still hurt?  That’s stupid.  I don’t like it.”

”Oh, buddy, I’m right there with you.”  James said with a nod of agreement.  “What should happen is that the monsters go away and the problems are solved forever, right?”  Lavant jerked his head in a short nod, moving his heavy maw off the bench as he replicated the more human motion.  “It’s so stupid when the problems stick around.”  He said, looking at the crocamaw with sympathy.  “And I wish I had a magical solution for you, I swear I do.  Maybe we can find one, hopefully soon.”

Lavant’s sharpened teeth at the upper part of his maw revealed themselves in what looked like a coy grin.  “Magic caused this problem.”  He said with bitterness that James felt was deeply recognizable as similar to how most human teenagers would experience the emotion.

”Magic also caused you.”  James pointed out gently.  “And you know what?  I kinda think you’re cool!”

”Myeh.”  Lavant’s contrary noise was also a perfectly teenager sound, and James felt his grin coming back.

James reached over to grab the cloth pouch that his dwindling pile of blue orbs was in.  “But yeah, I also know that doesn’t fix anything.”  He said more seriously.  “I know that everyone’s asking you to be strong, and that it’s hard.  I don’t know if it gets easier.  And I’m sorry this was done to you.”  He told Lavant.  “But also… I can see your life getting better, and I bet it’ll keep doing that, and isn’t that cool too?”

”It is.”  Lavant admitted.  “I haven’t hurt anyone in… a long time.  I am not a monster.”  He said, as if that had been a question for him.  And, James knew, that for most of the crocamaws it was a very difficult question.  “I’m being stupid.”

”You’re being a kid.”  James laughed.  “Which is okay.  I was also a kid once, and I was very stupid for much worse reasons than you have.”  He leaned back, forgetting for a moment that the bench he was on had no back, his head brushing the bamboo stalks as he nearly toppled over.  “Oh good, I can still be stupid now.”  He added, watching the moving ripple of a smile on Lavant’s face at his unintended physical comedy.

If Lavant was going to reply to him, then the words were interrupted by the arrival of new people to the little concealed garden courtyard.  The sound of a camraconda on the textured concrete coming in concert with the light impact of two pairs of sandaled paws.  An orange and white camraconda leading the way ahead of Arrush and Keeka as all three came around the bend of the path and into the more secluded area from the Lair’s apartments.

”Excellent!  I have located you!”  Watcher-Under-Stone declared happily upon spotting Lavant.

”…Wasn’t hiding.”  Lavant said with the kind of defensive sheepishness that also felt familiar to James.  That was the kind of thing you couldn’t talk someone out of; a person, magical dungeon construct or not, really just had to grow out of that.  All anyone could do was help them along.

“I was though.”  James chimed in with a coy wink toward Lavant.  “I’m pretty sure I distracted you from breakfast, too.  My bad.  Also hi Arrush, hi Keeka!”  The two ratroaches lit up as the slid around Watcher-Under-Stone, Arrush pacing past James to balance on the tips of his feet while he idly waited, Keeka just circling behind the bench and flopping onto James’ head.

Watcher-Under-Stone looped her head around, giving a happy hiss.  “Distracting my child.  You are terrible.”  She said, before gently nudging her snout into Lavant’s side.  “Are you prepared for the day?”  The camraconda’s digital voice asked with her own kind of gentle compassion.  “You have the things you need for school?” She got a gesture of confirmation from Lavant, and bobbed her head in a nod.  “Good, good.  We have time but should not dawdle.”

”Okay.”  Lavant said, like he was trying not to smile at the camraconda fussing over him.  Looking over at James, his eyes swiveling in a way that James found vaguely similar to Zhu’s movements, Lavant’s smile retreated to just the side of his maw facing Watcher-Under-Stone.  “Th… thank you.”  He told James, before hopping off the bench and scampering away through the bamboo lined paths.

”It is good I do not have hands, or they would be full.”  Watcher-Under-Stone said with a happy hiss.

”I think every part of this is good.”  James told her as she turned to follow Lavant.  “You’re a good parent, if he’s anything to go off of.”

Watcher-Under-Stone burst out a staccato string of hisses as a sustained laugh, head tipped back to look upward at the basement’s skylight.  “I am many things!”  She declared.  “To be a caretaker is the most satisfying so far.  Perhaps I shall do it many times!  I have not come this far to only come this far, after all.”  She swung her head down and focused her lens on James.  “He remembers you, you know.  And what you did for all of them.  Please visit sometime, he would like that, I think.”  The striped camraconda added before she followed Lavant out of the park.

”Yes, visit more!”  Keeka said, still laying on James’ head.

”You visit me!”  James protested.  “You’re at my apartment all the time!”

Arrush nodded.  “Yeeees…” he said slowly.  “But you could be at our apartment.”  He offered, the skin around his eyes tinting neon green as he looked away.  “You can show me how to use a vacuum…” Arrush chittered so quietly that James almost didn’t hear it.

”I was expecting something very different from… yeah, okay.”  He laughed, ducking away from Keeka’s capturing hug, and standing up, dusting himself off as he put the magical items he’d failed to properly combine into a satchel that he would need to return to the allocation desk before leaving.  “So, apartment cleaning needs aside, are you two ready to go?”  James asked.  Arrush and Keeka both gave him eager nods, antenna bobbing on their heads as they fell in behind him, the trio heading toward the elevator and the rest of their party for the day that was probably half-assembled upstairs by now, assuming everyone had woken up on time.  “Alright!  Onward to the Pylons!”  James declared cheerfully.  “Time to go find ratlings and oily bois and keep adding to our list of dungeon traumas that we know how to help with!”

Arrush cracked his muzzle open, his paws hovering around each other with spread claws in idle shapes.  There was something about what James had said that sounded like it was wrong, but he couldn’t quite figure out what.  Before he could say anything, his love opened his own muzzle next to him.  “You make it sound as bad as possible!  Stop that!”  Keeka commanded James.

When James laughed, Arrush found himself joining in, much to Keeka’s adorable frustration.  He was looking forward to seeing how wrong James really was though; and if he made it sound as bad as possible now, it could only be a pleasant surprise in reality.  Arrush appreciated that.

It also meant that he had a warm calm in his chest the whole way to the dungeon.  Though that might have just been the company.