The Daily Grind - Chapter 362 (Patreon)

"I have managed to accumulate considerable possessions over the course of my lifetime, almost entirely against my will. That, I suppose, is the nature of dragons, to acquire and accumulate physical representations of our long memories and pasts. We are sentimental creatures at heart; I have yet to know a dragon who can simply throw away anything possessing even the smallest amount of meaning to him." -Shadowrun, Portfolio of a Dragon: Dunkelzahn's Secrets-

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The thing about Pylon Motoric that always got James was just how fucking big it was.  He’d had this thought before, probably every time he came in here and looked out the gaps in the concrete walls.  Every time he saw the neighboring spires, some so tall he couldn’t spot the tops, and every one of them with their depths obscured by other packed in structures or the haze of smog.  That smog also kept him from seeing out past a few layers of structure; this whole place could be the size of New York City, or it could be the size of New York state, and until they found a way to safely fly in here it wasn’t going to reveal its true shape to them.

The Office was big too, but it was big in a way where you could kind of see at all times the immensity of its fake horizon, same with the Route though its horizon was more honest.  The Climb was big in the way that you felt like a tiny spot on the hide of a massive beast.  But the Pylon was big in the way that it felt like it was a maze designed to cage someone forever without them ever getting to see the shape of the walls.

The view James was enjoying was upside down at the moment, because he was dangling halfway over a skybridge between two parking structures, and the skybridge had been designed by someone who had a vendetta against OSHA.  Concrete towers that were all ramps and parked fake cars loomed out of the smog, though James thought he could see an orange glow through the gloom; either a structure fire or a distant mimicry of a low hanging sun.

His view was suddenly blocked by the flailing metal legs and wheeled hooves of one of the dungeons caribou flying over his head, upside down even to his flipped orientation.  The beast’s horn-like call of alarm sounding as it plummeted downward.  There was a tiny moment when James felt something tugging on a part of himself that wasn’t physical; the dungeon construct attempting to hijack some of his magic.  He didn’t know what it wanted, but he didn’t want to be halfway over a ledge when it happened, so he tapped one of his prepared casts of Appointed Arrival and ‘stepped’ up onto the safer flat walkway.  The attempt to steal a spell - possibly that spell - vanishing as he got a little distance, and James’ stomach lurching as he found himself rotated ninety degrees on two different axes.

”Good fucking throw!”  James said appreciatively to Simon, who was panting with exertion, the man’s whole armored body leaning forward where he’d just grabbed something the size of an elk and pitched it away from James.  “You okay?”

”Am I okay?!”  Simon yelled, voice bouncing off the concrete before being swallowed by the smog.  “You got hit by a fucking moose!”

”It’s a caribou, please.”  James delighted in placing emphasis on the ‘car’ part.  He looked down over the edge toward where the lone ambushing creature had vanished into the smog.  But, importantly he looked down without moving a single inch closer to that ledge.  “Damn.”  James said, tongue tripping over the word as he felt himself start shaking like he often did after nearly dying.  “Okay.  Keep moving.  Get across.  I’m gonna be useless for a minute.”

”Got it.”  Simon flexed his hand and winced, the green plated armor of his authority pulsing with something almost organic as it went to work repairing the damage he’d just done to himself.  “Arrush, with your boyfriend.  Vishir, Robb, Misha, take point for a bit.  Keeka, Rho, stay with our friends.  I’ll cover.”  The paladin moved toward the rear of their formation, careful not to bump anyone as he went to retrieve his uniquely magic sledgehammer.

The others listened to him as he took charge for a minute from James, delvers passing by quickly with the three newest among their ranks quickly jogging or rapidly slithering to the door on the far side of the bridge and clearing it for the rest to follow.  James let Arrush push him along, moving stiffly with the cluster of almost a dozen black furred rat-shaped figures that had joined the delve group about an hour and a half ago.

The rat goblins were in every way contrary to how the Mormon delvers had described them, which was absolutely not a surprise at all.  Their ambush tactics and willingness to open with violence was mostly because every time they didn’t, someone from the Church would shoot them in the head for bonus points.  Once they’d established that the Order was different, mostly by the presence of ratroaches and camracondas that acted like friends and not organic weaponry, it had been easier to finally open a dialogue.

The dialogue was limited, though.  And it wasn’t clear if it was a built in limitation on their intelligence, or more of an issue with the lack of education available in a parking structure.  Or if they were just holding back, still reserving their judgment for later.  Somehow, James figured it was a mix.  The oil-based shapeshifters didn’t seem to have a problem mimicking human behavior, and they had the same material conditions as the ratlings.  Still, the little rat goblins seemed emotionally stable and perfectly capable of understanding a few complex concepts like factionalism and friendship, and it hadn’t taken long for this entire pack to fall in with the delve team.

The shifters might like their home enough to want to feed it actively, but for the rat goblins, it was a different story.  The more they understood about their options, the more they fucking hated this place.  So James got to make another mental tally for the number of species Townton was going to be housing.  Physically, they were close in stature to the stuff animals, so there were at least planned accommodations already in the works.  Though it was weird that despite being rat-shaped, with most of them covered in black or dark brown fur, their faces were sort of flattened.  Less openly animal, but also still not human.  It gave James something to think about while he avoided pondering having nearly fallen off a ledge.

“Oh hey there.”  James said to Arrush as the ratroach kept a concerned paw clamped around James’ arm.  “Having fun?”

”Y-you nearly died.”  Arrush said in a quiet rasp of a voice, stress pulling his words down into old speech habits as they followed the others into the next massive structure of the Pylon.  “D-don’t… joke.”

”I’m okay.”  James reassured his heavily armored boyfriend.  “Really.  Feeling better already.  How’re you!”

Arrush tried to glare at James the way he often saw Alanna do, when she needed to remind their mutual romantic partner that he was a fucking idiot.  He wasn’t sure if it worked, but the human did duck his head slightly, so maybe Arrush was getting the hang of it.  “Starting to get tired.”  Arrush answered honestly.  “It’s hard to breathe here.”

The filter mask he was wearing was a custom fit; it had to be, even among ratroaches his body wasn’t a standard shape.  But it still didn’t make this place easy.  The smoke and fumes, Arrush could taste on a constant level on his tongue, no matter how much the muzzle blocked them out.

”At least it’ll be better inside.  I hope.”  James said with a grimace.  His mask was more comfortable, but probably less effective, and he was struggling too.  “And we’re on the way out, right?”

”Right.”  Arrush nodded, main paws gripping the surprisingly effective sword he’d brought along, while his smaller paws adjusted and clutched at his pack.  “A-and we can get more milestones.”

”Possibly.”  James said, starting to calm down a lot faster as the humans and camraconda at their lead made a watchful semi-circle around the door off the skybridge for everyone else to move into.  Feeling like he had ground around him relaxed James more than he even realized.  “This place is weird.  And I know I’m getting to the point where I can exit and get nothing.”

They’d done a few loops so far today, mostly getting new people their obligatory breathing, blinking, or speaking levels.  But because they were staying near the entrance, and only one interesting thing had come up, James had only managed to pick up the milestone for wrestling one of the barricade snakes.  The… boacades?  Barricondas?  He couldn’t remember at the moment.

The point was he’d put the level into running, because he hadn’t planned to get anything like some other people had.

(Running : +1 level, 3 levels total)

“This is worth something.”  Arrush said next to James, looking at the rest of the delve team.

”Oh, probably!”  James agreed as he watched Simon make a mark with an imbued felt tipped pen on the door to the skybridge.  The mark itself would be instantly noticeable, up until the moment that it vanished entirely in a couple hours.  No need to let the local church know that the Order was in here, after all.  “I wish we’d found an overlap though!  Those things look cool, and you could have gotten more points for your whittling.”  He nudged Arrush, the motion mostly unfelt through the armor.

The big ratroach shook his head.  It was true, he was trying to get the dungeon to give him levels for carving or carpentry or something.  Not because he found it fun, but because he had a Lesson for the human academic class of ‘wood shop’, and he would like anything that let him learn less about types of screws to get the same effect.  It was so useful though.  Given the choice the first time he’d progressed in it between Strength, Solidity, or Utility, Arrush felt like he’d taken far too long for some reason to decide.  Eventually, he’d settled on Utility, and now felt… the same.  Completely normal.  Except for the fact that his mind now sprang to life to offer suggestions for the correct tools for a task, or alternate ways to improvise.  It was strange to think differently and to realize it, and stranger still to feel like it wasn’t a threat, and instead just part of who he was.

It was also largely irrelevant to what he’d been trying to convey to James.  “I- I meant… for them.”  The small arm extending from his back that always required the most irritating armor modifications to cover pointed a paw toward the rat-goblins.  “Everyone else too.  E-everyone should be stronger.”  A choked clicking filled his throat as he tried and mostly succeeded in not succumbing to the flavor of the air that was increasing creeping into his lungs.

”Oh!  Yes.”  James agreed with him instantly, drawing some attention from the waist-height rats as he spoke up.  “Sorry, yeah, my brain was on the wrong track.”  He smiled, and looked at the group of delvers fondly.  “But also, milestones.”

He really wanted more of what the Pylon offered, and every milestone uncovered was something they could add to the list of things that any given member of the Order could seek out for extra AP.  The fact that the Pylon had… essentially a tech tree for the milestones, where lesser bonuses tended to have a higher priority, and where better ones required multiple things to already be gained, was kind of frustrating but also a fascinating puzzle.

How, for example, did you most easily get people the milestone for visiting another parking structure tower than the one you entered the dungeon in?  What was the minimum number of delves needed?  It wasn’t one, that was for sure, because everyone’s first delve was always the milestone for their first delve.  Couldn’t be five either, for the same reason.  If you wanted it to be the second delve, you had to make sure you did it without fighting or negotiating your way past anything, or without passively observing a mid-size or larger dungeon life, or without touching one of the cars, or probably without accidentally solving one of the graffiti puzzles, or without it being your birthday.

James didn’t have that milestone, and it was arguably one of the simplest actual achievements to get.

Hopefully some of the delvers today got it for this one, since it was definitely their last Pylon run.  He didn’t think that would happen though; there’d been too much else going on.  Still, the AP they’d racked up for this group was valuable, and their choices on what to do with it were fascinating.  Only four or five AP per person actually got spent on things that weren’t the ‘default’ levels, which James was pretty sure was the dungeon screwing with people, but still.  Misha had gotten levels in reading, the camraconda happily focusing on a book they had the instant they’d crossed over each time.  Vishir, proud fan of the game that he was, had managed several levels in soccer, which was both weirdly specific and weirdly broad.  Simon just kept focusing on things useful for the hazardous parts of being a paladin, like Route Horizon spellcasting, which apparently worked now.  And Keeka, acting on impulse the first time, had gotten a level in massage from being playfully physical with Arrush, and then focused all his efforts on making that better every subsequent delve.

It was such a weird mix, James loved it.

He also loved this new tower they were in.  It was modern, on the inside.  Or, no, not modern.  Futuristic.  A fiction.  A kind of thing that James had never seen a human city actually manifest, so far, though he hadn’t been to a fraction of the cities out there.  Maybe it was just Japanese.

The space was huge, of course; too big to be real.  But the center of the garage was open air itself; the spiral ramp of the outside was lined with cars and painted lines and a column of nothing cut through the middle, offering a view of the other side.  Of a hundred other sides.

The floor was still some kind of concrete, but it was smooth and dull white.  Through the interior gaps, cool air breathed in on them; semi-filtered from the smog.  Possibly because dangling from those concrete lines and shapes, there were plants.

Once they were sure the space was clear, Simon gave more commands to the delve team.  He, Misha, Rho, and Robb would be heading off with about half the ratlings - the ones that were physically healthier, specifically - to go locate the rest of their pack that was sheltering in this tower.  Everyone else, especially the paladin that had just been nearly thrown into the depths of a dungeon, would be staying in this area.  Explore and loot within a loop of the white concrete spiral, but keep close to the door they’d be leaving through.  Or just rest, if that’s what they needed.  It shouldn’t be too long either way.

While Keeka took the opportunity to open up his hefty backpack and start sharing food and water to everyone who needed it, James took the opportunity to go check out the greenery.

Carefully, because he wasn’t an idiot.  But also, he was aware, the ratlings were less comfortable around the human delvers than the ratroaches, and so he gave them a little space.

Looking over the edge of the parking garage still gave James vertigo, even if this time he had a thick wall that came up to his shoulders between him and the void.  The sight was almost an optical illusion; layer after layer after layer after layer of identical structural loops, a corkscrew of wide strips of driveway and parking spots going up so far that he couldn’t make out the top.  The plants that had looked like vines turned out to be some kind of fuzzy moss.  A quick check with Rot Eyes informed James that it was technically a fungus, and also surprisingly harmless, though it was fast growing when it was in contact with concrete and also legally speaking edible.  He did not test that last part.

The moss also ran in streamers between the floors of the structure.  Lines of green like sinew stretched back and forth.  Never enough to make it look like it was intentional, or something ominous.  But it added up, floor by floor, to create the impression that he was looking at something living and organic.

James watched the moss sway in the sharp breeze that flowed down the tower from the top, air pressure doing something fucky here to keep up the constant motion of cool air.  This place was almost pleasant, compared to the rest of the Pylon, and he felt a bit meditative just enjoying his ability to pick out details in the greenery.  He also picked out Simon’s party circling lower, just for a moment before they were blocked off by the profile of a truck that covered a huge part of the gap.

He considered waving, but then, out of the corner of the eye he’d borrowed the biological pattern for from the noble eagle, James noticed something much more important.

Someone noticing him.

A pair of eyes looking back from through a broken gap in the white stone, maybe two levels up, and at an oblique angle from where he was.  Human-ish, but clearly not expecting to be seen, and still in the process of putting on a disguise.  One of the oil slick shapeshifters, keeping an eye on him.

James froze, and then moved slowly, not wanting to startle them, made eye contact and raised his hand to wave.  The oil shifter froze themself, before slowly sliding back from the edge and out of sight.  “Well that’s concerning.”  James said, turning to move back to the others, letting the alert group know.

”Are they friendly?”  Keeka asked, more curious than afraid.  An attitude he’d been showing basically this whole delve, even after the incident with the traffic cone.  “We could make even more friends!”

”Perhaps do not announce us quite so much.”  Vishir suggested, the middle-aged Indian man nervously eying the ramp upward.  Along with Arrush, the two picked out pieces of cover behind a false four door sedan and an extended knee-high wall of concrete.  Just in case.

”Oily?”  One of the rats asked James, bold enough to extend a stubby arm to tug at his belt.

James nodded, taking a lower position on one knee so he wasn’t towering over the people he was talking to.  “Yeah.  You know much about them?”  He asked back.

”Mean.”  The rat said, their whole body twisting back and forth.  “Bad!”  The other handful of ‘goblins’ around echoed it, their stubby faces and dark fur shaking as they chorused disapproval of the living oil.  Their voices held a strange pitch, coming across almost as squeaks, but refusing to echo off the concrete around them.

James pursed his lips.  “Okay.  Well, if they come down, let’s not antagonize them right away, okay?”  He said, getting some confused looks from the dungeon life that really was best described as ‘giant rats but slightly upright’.  “Let me talk to them.”  He clarified.  “Don’t just eat them.”

”They’d probably taste awful.”  Keeka mused, the ratroach tapping his paws together, his own black fur hidden by his light armor.  “I’d know!”  He added with a grin under the mask that hid its glow.  “Sludge always tastes bad!”

”I like to think I’d taste a little better than sludge.”  A voice said from behind James.  He rose in a smooth motion as the rats scattered to hide under cars and trucks in the area, pivoting on the ball of one foot to place himself in a low stance ready to draw a weapon if needed.  Keeka’s chitter of surprise and Vishir’s loud swearing showed that they were also shocked by the arrival of the ‘oily’ that had apparently slipped down from one of the upper levels.

James kept his hand off his gun though, instead just facing the human-looking woman that had fallen in a crouch by the gap in the stone that led to the inner open space.  He also noticed the edges of someone’s feet dangling nearby, a second one that was clinging to either the moss or the rock itself overhead, waiting.  Holding out a hand to the two delvers that had been watching the ramp up, James offered a diplomatic smile.  “Honestly probably.”  He told the shapeshifter.  “If you’d seen what Keeka used to have to eat, you’d understand.”

”My condolences.”  She said, nodding at the ratroach.  “So.  I’m guessing we’re not on a mission from God here, huh?”

”…is that a Blues Brothers reference?”  James asked, too shocked at the cadence they’d used to give a straight answer.

”Yes!”

”Okay, that’s…” He relaxed, moving out of the stance where he was prepared for a fight.  “I’m used to dungeon life being in the dark about movies, this is new to me.”  He shrugged.  “Also no, to the question.  We’re not with any church.”

The shapeshifter, similarly, sighed and relaxed.  “Ninety, get down here.”  She called upward, and a second later, the other shapeshifter that had been hanging onto the wall dropped down, deformed around the concrete barricade that kept people and cars from falling to their death, and landed in a roll next to the first one.  This one, James noted, was holding a shotgun, and it did not look like it was decorative or part of the shifter’s body.  “Look!  Something new and bizarre!”  She motioned at the Order team.

”That’s mean, or maybe thank you?”  Keeka said, voice muffled by his mask.

”Hi.”  James said, rolling his eyes.  “I’m James, of the Order of Endless Rooms.  How’s it going?”  He felt like he was saying that a lot today.

”Hey.  I’m Three-oh-Six.  This is Ninety.”  She jerked a thumb at the the shifter with the gun that was only half-pretending to be human.  Hands and face more a blur of black liquid, rippling but holding shape.  “You’re in our territory.  Why?”

The question was a little sharper than the friendly attitude had been leaning, and James saw Arrush and Vishir tense out of the corner of his eye.  “We’re picking up the rest of a group of the ratlings who want to come with us, and then leaving.”  James said.  “Normally I’d ask to make sure you were okay with that at this point, but since they all seem to hate it in here, I’m treating them as refugees and so I’m just sort of telling you this.”  He nodded, lips pursed, trying to make it sound lighthearted.

Ninety’s oil slick head tilted sideways.  “Is that it?”  He asked, voice coming out paradoxically human.

”Yup!  Why, did you want to come out with us too?”  James asked.  “We’ve got room.  Obviously.”

”No, this is our territory.”  306 said with a wry twist of a grin.  “What are you offering for a ticket?”

James raised his eyebrows.  “I’m not even sure what I could offer you.  I already know you guys don’t eat the food we have, and I didn’t bring a quart of motor oil to toast with.  Also you can’t have my gun?”  He noticed Arrush shifting to ‘hide’ his own sword behind his back, and smiled.  Actually Arrush was large enough that might actually work, especially since he could grip it in his arm that could flip which way it was jointed.  “I could say we could be friends?”

”Friends?”  306 raised her eyebrows, brow furrowing in surprise so fast that part of her face lost cohesion and showed the black oil underneath the disguise for a second.  Then she looked at Keeka and Arrush, before giving a sardonic laugh.  “You’re serious.”

”That’s new.”  90 said.  “To me at least.”

James raised a hand.  “Ah, hi, sorry.  I don’t wanna assume anything, but if you’re named a lower number, wouldn’t you be older?”

306 waved a hand as she leaned back on the concrete wall.  “Our names are where we were spawned.  Abbreviated, because duh.  No one wants to call me Spot 306 Floor 120 Tower Trevistet.”  She gave James a quick glare.  “Also don’t call me that.”

”I have a computer plugged into my brain and even then I’m pretty sure I won’t remember that correctly.”  James told her, lying for comedic effect.

”Why do you…” 90 started to ask, before stifling his curiosity.  “Nevermind.  If you want to go through our territory, you pay, somehow.  Friendship doesn’t count.”  He paused.  “I think.”

”No, you’re right.”  306 reassured him with a nod.  “It doesn’t have to be something huge, but it has to be something.  Those are the home-rules.  And you guys might actually know how important those are.”

James didn’t, but he kind of caught the edge of something important she was sharing with them.  The oil people, after all, were the first group that seemed like they worked with their dungeon, without openly worshipping it as a murder-god.  He really, really wanted to have a long talk with them at some point.  “Actually.”  He said, making a snap decision to take a huge risk.  “How about something of use to people who might have to determine if someone comes in here as part of a religious crusade?”

”I’m listening.”  306 said, trying to hide her interest.

James slung his backpack to the floor, kneeling to pull a hard plastic case out of it and spotting a half dozen rats hiding under cars and watching him with beady eyes.  He smiled in their direction as he stood back up, casually approaching 306 to hand it over to her.  “Affiliation glasses.”  He said.  “Tells you the name, and group identity, of whoever you’re looking at.  Limited, and very fragile, but you might find this handy.”

”…this is way too pricy.”  She said, fitting the glasses on her nose and peering at James.  “Paladin?”  She asked.

”A joke that got out of hand.”  James said with solemn self-mockery.

”You don’t just want passage.”  She intuited.

”I want intelligence.  And local guides.  And allies.  And also maybe friends.”  James said, pointing at the case as she snapped it closed around the glasses, pocketing them in cargo pants that probably weren’t just made of her own body.  “That’s the start.  I want to work together, because I know you guys can work together with people.”

306 gave him a frown for the first time, crossing her arms and glancing at 90 and receiving only a rippling black liquid shrug in response.  “We’ll see.”  She said.  “When are you going to be back?”

”Here?  Let’s say… a week from now?”  James asked.  “Is that enough time?”

”Maybe.  We’ll at least be here to talk.”  She said, waving to her partner, and moving along the wall to head up the ramp.  Arrush and Vishir both moved back to let them pass unobstructed, while Keeka just waved happily after the shifters.  “Are you going in now?”  She asked.

”What?”  James blinked.  “Oh!  No, our second team is almost back.”  He’d heard the footsteps on concrete a minute ago, but hadn’t wanted to interrupt.  “We’re on the way out.”

“Right.  Rats.”  306 gave a sour look at their group, before shrugging as she looked closer at Arrush.  “Whatever.  Guess you guys know what you’re doing.  See you in a week, if they don’t eat you.”

The two oilers took the safer way up the ramp, keeping their human forms at least until they were out of sight.  And just as soon as they were gone, Simon brought the rest of his group back up from below, this time trailing about thirty of the things that the Mormons kept calling garage goblins.  “Diplomacy?”  Simon asked.

”New friends!”  Keeka declared happily as he collected the discarded bottles and snack bar wrappers from the food he’d been distributing.

”New… tsundere?”  Vishir offered.  “Am I using that word right?”

”Unfortunately probably yes.”  Rho told the human.  “We should leave now.  There were sounds below.”  The dog-shaped inhabitor offered, before beginning to take on the role of a sheepdog, gently herding the ratlings together with their chittering cheerful brethren and starting to get the whole blob of them moving.

The others helped, James included, who was feeling a lot better now.  Nothing like a good conversation and some weird new information to make him forget a life-or-death situation.  He made sure to get a sample of the moss before following the others too.  Rufus would probably like this stuff.

Thirty minutes later, they were funneling ratlings in clusters into the elevator out.  Ten minutes after that difficult process, the last of the delve team made their way through the breach and back to mainline Earth themselves.  And not a single one of them got the milestone for reaching another tower.  Which surprised no one.

What everyone did get was scattered.  Half of them earning the fifth delve milestone, and some being sent back in to get the bonus milestone for multiple milestones in a day.  Some of them who’d been here before, though, like Simon and Arrush, got something new.  Initiation Exodus was worth two points, and, critically, it was different from a milestone they knew about from their tenuous treaty with the Mormons.

Because it was not Initiation Abduction, which they had been told was for taking life out of the dungeon.  Which meant that intent mattered.  Or at least, emotion mattered.  And that was something very, very interesting indeed.

James didn’t even get that, though.  Instead, his milestone was a bit unique, and and the levels he managed to snag took deliberate focus and effort.  But at least he didn’t get another level in blinking.

(Milestone - Slick Rhetoric Resolution : +3 AP)

(Spellcasting - Winter’s Climb : +1 level, 4 levels total)

(Spellcasting - Route Horizon : +1 level, 1 levels total)

(Boxing : +1 level, 6 levels total, [Breaking Forge])

(3 AP spent, 0 AP remains)

Every bit helped.  But every bit was starting to feel more and more powerful as the level of his boxing ability climbed.  James wasn’t sure what he was doing to make the Winter’s Climb spells register as improving or taking more effort, but he was also wondering when he’d start feeling a similar sense from them of better results somehow.

No matter what though, their milestone map expanded by a half dozen entires that day.  And James still had the option later to sprint for another tower and back, if he ever needed quick new points.

_____

There was some time, in between delves.  Because while the small secluded entrance to the twinned phenomena of the Pylon and the Venture never wasted time, always allowing delvers into one of the spaces, those delvers were mortal and needed a little rest.

James could have kept going, but Endurance was bad to rely on if he didn’t have to.  And some of the others needed a break, and time for the exercise potion to rejuvenate them away from danger.  Or, they needed to be escorted back to the Lair in groups, to be quarantined and checked over by the growing professional medical staff that were the closest thing Earth had to xenobiologists these days.

The ratlings were kind of a weird species.  James wasn’t sure exactly where they’d fit in, with everyone else.  He generally hoped that every species they met could rise to the same heights with enough education - after all, even Auberdeen had proven weirdly intelligent after just a few orbs - so it was uncomfortable to see a species that looked like it was kept dumb on purpose.  So it was a good thing then that the dumbness was an illusion that James had fallen for.

Linguistically, they were a little behind.  But almost every one of the rats had a complicated and seeming automatic knowledge of physics and calculus, which complimented their preferred fighting style.  The dungeon seemed to have made them specifically to be trap makers, and their own secret innate magic backed that up.  Because they could, to varying degrees depending on age and strength, all add to the potential energy of a mechanical system.

The reason their traps, cobbled together from break springs and engine parts, worked so well was that the ratlings were turning them into magically accelerated ballistas.

Which was cool.  And James hoped that they all enjoyed Townton, or the Lair, or wherever they decided to settle.

Physically, there was going to need to be some adapting, though.  Because they were, as a species, short.  Capping out at a tiny bit over three feet, the ratlings also kind of didn’t have great limb placement.  Their arms were short, and while their textured pink and grey hands were dexterous and nimble, they couldn’t really reach that far.  They worked together on building stuff when they were using larger parts, for exactly that reason.  With their flattened faces and long tails, and the way they often defaulted to a standing position that was more like resting on their haunches, they really did look like normal very large rats that had been squished around.  Just a tad.

James figured the Order could handle it.  The ones that had started talking more with their single word expressions as they’d gotten closer to the exit, and then out of the dungeon, all seemed like eager and excited explorers.  They’d fit right in.  And for everyone else, well, good food and a lot of pillows fixed a lot of problems.

All of it was fascinating, and James just wanted… he wanted a year in Townton.  A decade.  He wanted to live there forever, and see what happened with everything that kept being poured into that regrowing civic center.  Umbral and ratlings, chanters and camracondas, humans of a dozen shades of fucked up who all needed a place to heal and learn.  Cam.  Just a million pieces all mixing it up and making something new.

For now though, he was watching Arrush and Keeka enjoy the ‘fresh air’ of a normal parking garage in the middle of a city that was mostly road and only had three bus routes.  He was keeping an eye on Simon, who was doing some kind of breathing exercise and poking at the Sewer parasite on his wrist.  He was amused that Robb, who was kind of the newest delver in the entire Order, had already gotten in the habit of using one of his equipped casts of Informal Pagoda to flip through a ‘newspaper’ of local rumors while he had downtime.  And, most importantly, James himself was reading a report.

James had thought he read reports like nobody’s business.  But the truth was, he only read at an inhuman pace when he was drinking the unhealthy sludge of reading potion, and in his apartment that Anesh had maybe-accidentially modified with green orbs to make the process a blur.  Every other time, he had to just be pretty good at it.

And there was a lot he needed to keep up on.  Eventually, James knew, there would be a day when he couldn’t know everything the Order was doing.  When he’d have to trust that what they’d built could stand on its own, that they had successfully made a good system, where the default action was good.  But today, he had twenty minutes while everyone let their muscles recover and breath come easier, and he could definitely know what the hell was going on in Oklahoma with that much time.

Not with the wildlife.  That was… never going to stop being a problem.  But he could know about the other dungeon that Charlie’s team had found.

Or refound.  The second dungeon Kiki had located and the Grandparents Society had been delving.

They were so weird, in a way.  They mirrored James and Anesh in those early days; they saw dungeons as a path to wonder and magic, but not on a scale that could change anything.  Their clubhouse was full of small bits of awe; a smart cat, a fishtank full of creatures from outside reality, pillows made of dungeon fur and furniture made of dungeon wood, tiny bits of dungeontech just around even if they didn’t know it.

The newest-oldest dungeon was the one they’d explored the most, but that hadn’t stopped them forgetting it when the other dungeon died and unleashed problems.  And yet, finding it again with Charlie’s scout team, a lot of things had come back quickly.

Charlie’s report didn’t talk about the emotional core of the Society, or the way they applied dungeons to their lives, or how without Kiki as their friend they’d probably all be dead, or even the potential applications for the new magic.  Instead, it was clinical, precise, and detailed to the extent that James was tempted to skim some parts.

The dungeon existed in what was a bank when it had probably come into being, but was currently a pet store, after having spent a brief amount of time as a vegan bakery before lack of business and vandalism had driven that off.  How that was going to influence it, long term, was anyone’s guess.  The dungeon itself was definitely mirroring bank energy though.

Charlie’s description of the initial space was one of marble floors, brass stanchions, and potted plants that were specifically not plastic.  And James had to try to figure out what Charlie meant when he said that the entry biome could be categorized as ‘homogenous, expansive’.  Whatever it was, the dungeon was clearly old enough to be big, though where it fell on the scale of known dungeons was anyone’s guess for now.

The report went on to talk about initial explorations, though James kind of picked up on Charlie’s hesitation to go deeper than maybe a hundred feet in with the rest of his team with him.  And that was fair.  They were scouts, and also even with his brief contact with them, he’d seen an obvious parental protectiveness for their camraconda and crocamaw members from the two older humans.

Still, for only taking a look at the entrance area, there was a lot in the report.  Descriptions of three different life forms, including a different kind of stapler that was definitely a spider analog.  Photos of a sprawling waiting area, and another of a fountain that was choked with coins.  Also a photo of… nothing… and an attached comment that said they had found a thing that was indescribable.  That felt like it was Dance fucking with him, and not Charlie’s work.  Notes on general threat level - Charlie described it as ‘medium hazardous’ and James was going to have a talk with that man about using better descriptive terms - also included speculation on what the deeper areas might be like.  And in that speculation there was the information that ‘medium hazardous’ meant potential injury to a trained and armed delve team that wasn’t on full alert.

So the bank was a problem.  Though it seemed like it was a static one; one of those dungeons content to stay in its own zone.  James wasn’t going to assume on that front though.  The Office still tried - and sometimes succeeded - in sneaking agents out for its own purposes.  The bank dungeon could be up to all kinds of bullshit behind the scenes.

As far as rewards went, the dungeon was another in the mana category.  With help from the returning memories of the Society delvers, a picture was put together of the ecosystem in the dungeon as it related to the magic.  The whole thing was quite clever, James thought.

Secure containers - locked cabinets, tills, vaults, things of that nature - would regularly spawn obviously non-physical diamond constructs.  These acted as food for dungeon life, and so, these places were oases for the locals, with stronger packs holding exclusive control over their larger feeding grounds.  For everyone else, though, using them like an orb granted an errand.

Whether that terminology was Charlie’s doing, or the dungeon, was unclear.  Either way, errands required the acquisition of an amount of material, to be ‘owned by’ the holder before the timer ran out.  If they succeeded, the material - often stuff with market value - vanished, and the holder of the errand was rewarded with Wealth.  That one was a dungeon term, like Breath.  Then the errand refreshed, but with higher requirements.  If you ever failed, it just vanished.  Also there was no way to check the timer or your progress, you just had to remember.

Wealth was the dungeon’s mana, and Charlie’s report noted that the name changed depending on the primary language of the user, which was neat and meant it wasn’t one of those linguistically tricky things like Office blue orbs.  Charlie also described it as a ‘fluid’ kind of mana; it was seemingly intended to be used to power dungeontech from the bank, but it could also be spent to just open doors.  Any doors.  Dungeon or not.  That felt annoyingly metaphorical.

It quickly became clear how the Society had so easily forgotten the dungeon, too.  They’d had errands, and Wealth to power their fun magic items, and then when there had been a memetic detonation from the other dungeon, they’d forgotten.  And forgotten for long enough that every errand lapsed, leaving them without the magic to power their dungeontech, even by accident.  With no reminders of what once was, it had taken only a few weeks for the buried memories to be covered up and stuck under a layer of what seemed normal.  Memetic damage that could have been recovered from without any serious consequences, instead turned into a scar they didn’t even know they should investigate.

James wanted to delve there.  Obviously.  But the dungeon also seemed to have a timer that operated on a scale of monthly, if that, and working out the edges of that doorway was going to take long enough that the world might end before he got the chance.  But he would, absolutely, go when he could.  Even if the magic system just seemed pretty useless to him now, it probably wouldn’t be forever.  Or maybe this was it.  Maybe this was the first dungeon where James wasn’t involved, and it was someone else’s time to gain mastery and specialization and obtuse arcane tricks that solved more problems than they should.

He kind of hoped it wasn’t.  But he also kind of hoped it was.  And wasn’t that a wondrous position to be in all on its own.

_____

In contrast to the Pylon delve, visiting the Verdigris Venture was pretty uneventful.  Which was disappointing, to James at least, because they’d come in here with some objectives that were definitely not served by uneventful.

The first objective was finding more the people of some of one of the species that the Order had among its numbers now.  But even with Zhu helping out though, they couldn’t find a path to get to the segment of the Garden dungeon that held the crocamaws.  It was, according to the navigator, definitely out there.  But something about the dungeon obfuscated attempts to path through it.  So it was down to exploring and mapping the mundane way.

It was difficult, because the Mormons that they still had terse diplomatic contact with were adamant about telling them fucking nothing about this dungeon, choosing to pretend the Order still hadn’t found a way into it, which was… just a wild way to approach cooperation, even their limited form of it.  But it was increasingly clear that they were still planning on or actively using the Bell By Midnight spell to kidnap dungeon life to use as weapons on their other delves.  Or just in general.  And for some reason, they favored the crocamaws for long term abuse.

Actually James knew the reason.  The crocamaws were intelligent, and could be conditioned to obey a lot easier than the other species, which saved on the time budget for equipping the spell.  Also they had hands, and could be given weapons or tools, and again, the intelligence let them obey more complex orders.  It was all disgusting, and if the Order ever found evidence that they were still doing it, then James was going to just start punching people without concern for the consequences.

Compared to that, their other objectives seemed kind of lame.  More spellbooks, more coins, try to find a level three or four coin if possible.

They didn’t, over the course of three hours of delving.  They got a handful of smaller coins, including a modified level two, which would be passed off for copying and testing before they assuredly found out that it was a problem or something.  James grumbled about it for a while after their party had crawled out of a massive root structure tunnel network, covered in dirt and bug guts with only that to show for it.  It had been Keeka who had poked him and tried to tell him that he was being weirdly pessimistic, which had caught James off guard enough that he’d tried to improve his mood after that.

Which had worked a little.  Approaching the delve as something that could be fun and not just a failure of a task list did make everyone perform a little less stiffly, especially the new guys.  Collectively, they solved a puzzle carved into a bronze gate between zones, fought a feline beast that was made of moss and yellow flower petals and blended into the tall grass of the area like it was just a placid dandelion right up until it lunged, scaled a towering tree to find a small cloth bag with a reward at the top but also to scout ahead and see the way that light split and shifted color as the sky splashed different times of day across different segmented zones.

They made friends with a pillboar to the point that it let them pass without attacking; the creatures were absurdly violent when they wanted to be, but once they decided someone was cool, they kind of just let that stay true forever, which was fun.  They found a segment that had a raised hill in the middle with a ring of a brick courtyard on it, and wrought iron furniture with afternoon tea set out and still hot.  They got ambushed by a brilliantly colored sidewalk chalk creature that was best described as some sort of beast, the thing creeping off the stone wall and into the third dimension to try to initiate a game of full contact tag, but ultimately being too playful to really be considered violent.

By the end of it all, James, Arrush, and Misha were covered in dirt, chalk dust, bits of grass or other plant matter, and for the species where it was possible, sweat.  The other delvers were, annoyingly, smart enough to somehow remain mostly clean.  James felt this was unfair, but in a way that made him laugh.

They got out with twenty level one coins, two with potential modifiers.  Eight level twos, one modified.  And seven spellbooks.  Four of them were copies of things the Order already had, but that was never a bad thing; it saved copier ritual space if they ever needed them.  But also, two of them were different.  So now the Order had an audiospellbook version of Saint’s Wrap, and a braille version of Jester’s Sip.

One of the new spells was very cool and novel, too.  Linger In Moonrise.  Level three, forty eight minutes of study time, and in exchange, it made someone photosynthetic.  Just for twenty minutes or so, but… well, every Garden spell could be made better.  How far could this one go?  How much did it take to make that permanent, or something more?  That one felt like a game changer, somehow.

The other two of the new spells weren’t.  They were just deeply familiar despite being new.  Languid Pool Transformation turned a bird into a different kind of bird.  And God’s Braid made rope.  Seven minutes for that one, and it was, James could confirm, bad rope.  He assumed it would get stupidly potent with more advancements.  He also assumed he would not be doing that himself.

Okay, maybe once.  The more he thought about it, the more having backup rope seemed smart.

_____

The meeting in the Lair’s briefing warehouse was great, from James’ perspective, because it was the first one where he was in charge.  Not that he didn’t love learning new stuff when he was on the other side of the room, but it was kind of cool to feel…

Well, on top of things.  Not just that people thought he knew what he was doing, but like he did know what he was doing and he was confident that he was giving the right tasks to the right people.

”Alright, normally, you guys kind of do your own thing,” he told the assembled representatives of the Order’s growing list of scout teams, “but with one team finishing up their search,” he nodded toward Alice, “and another kind of on downtime,” this time James pointed to Follower-Of-Horizons, “it seemed like a good time to let all of you organize for who wants what instead of just who’s available.”

”I resent that characterization.”  Followed-Of-Horizons said, the flatheaded camraconda rising up in his bowl seat.  “We are exploring the networked web of human technology.”

”…okay…” James wasn’t sure how to respond to that.  “Is that… would you rather keep doing that?”

”No.  It is frustrating and our goals are not met.”  Follower-Of-Horizons complained.  “But it is not downtime.”

James let out a small sound of understanding.  “Ah, got it.”  He said.  “Okay.  So.”  He looked at the five people in the room.  Three humans, one camraconda, and one navigator that was currently hanging out with one of the humans for convenience but was actually their own scout team leader.  “I come bearing gifts.”

Alice raised her hand, a defiant smile on her face.  “Is ‘gifts’ code for ‘I’m gonna get Alice thrown out a window again’?”  She asked happily.  “Because I hated that the last time it happened!  So did Dance!  And Manon!”  The woman paused and looked to the side, one finger coming up to tap at her lips.  “Actually Charlie never had that happen to him.  Okay, carry on.”

James continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted.  “My gifts carry a non-zero risk of defenestration, yes.  That’s part of being in the Order.  Also I got thrown out a way worse window than you, so don’t complain to me about it.”  He said with his own smile back, deploying his ultimate one-upmanship gambit.  “Anyway, yes.  Between your hard work, and that of the Rogues and Recovery, we’ve compiled a short list of things that are ‘big maybes’, and now seems like a great time to get all of you more field experience.  Things I don’t want to just throw JP or Cam at.”

“Why them?”  The navigator, Amelia, asked curiously.  Her voice was a vibrantly youthful prop engine, and since she was one of the older navigators that also got raised by older humans, it was in an eclectic way that experience and novelty blended in her personality.

James shrugged, pulling his hand back from where he was starting to flip through his notes.  “I fling Cam - or Alex now I guess - at anything large and lethal that needs to stop being one of those things.  I fling JP at seemingly small problems that turn out to be big problems and then he handles it and pretends it was fine the whole time and I only hear about it later.  Two approaches to the same results.”

”…Is JP a paladin?”  Follower-Of-Horizons asked.  “I do not think I have ever spoken to him.”

”No, JP’s too busy pretending he’s just a lil guy to be a paladin.”  James answered smoothly.  “Now.  Who wants to hear our list?”

One of the human scouts raised his hand and didn’t wait to start asking his own question.  “What’s the time look like for these jobs?”  Harrison was, in contrast to Amelia, the oldest person here.  One of the few actual military veterans the Order had pulled in, he’d gotten hired initially to help with training, and then after his initial run, had started seeking out what he called little side projects.  His accent was extra sloppy scouse, and his personal opinions were equally sloppy idealism.

James was pretty sure the man was only here because he’d gotten bored getting in bar fights in Liverpool.  But he was also one of those people who was thirsty for the world to get weird, so he fit right in.  “I’m gonna say probably between a few days to a couple weeks?”  James said.  “In a perfect world, you show up, and within two hours someone who knows everything tells you the whole story.  But reasonably, allocate two weeks.  Now, can I start listing options?”  He asked.

The man just gave him an unashamed smirk, while the other scouts nodded or motioned for him to go on in Amelia’s case.

“Alright.  First thing.”  James just started going through his list.  “There’s a few weird posts online about a magical mannequin down in Sacramento.  Now, these got blanked pretty quick, either by some shadowy government agency, or general memeplex fuckery, but still, if there’s either dungeon life or tech out and about, I’d like someone to make contact and-“

”Not it.”  Follower-Of-Horizons declared.

Alice tilted her head at the camraconda.  “Because it’s in Cali, or because it’s a mannequin actually nevermind I kinda answered my own question.”

”Moving on.”  James ignored their joking, hoping to finish this briefing sometime this year.  “Karen found some unexplained trends in Singapore’s shipping output that might indicate a dungeon.  Might be plant based?  It’s unclear.”  He handed a packet of pictures over to the collected group.  “Everything from pictures and stuff looks normal, so I’d just like someone to go on vacation, basically, and check it out.”

”Could be one of those hypnoplants you have on that factory down south.”  Harrison pointed out.  “Gotta be careful with that.”

”We’ll take it.”  The last human scout, Andrea, offered.  She’d replaced the last team lead for her group after he’d gotten tired of finding a lot of nothing, and had switched back to Recovery work.  But Andrea was never demoralized, and seemed to love the weirder searches more than she needed to find anything.  Her team, James was vaguely aware, was much the same.

”Okay.  Uh… there’s other online stuff, either messages or posts from people in, in no particular order, Quito, Chicago, and London.  All of them about something creepy and impossible, so any of them could be dungeons, or could be people making stuff up.  Which apparently happens a lot.”  James didn’t pontificate about the nature of the internet as a massive lie generator.

Alice tipped her hand up.  “We can handle those in some particular order.”  She offered.  “As long as none of them are urgent?  Hey, didn’t we meet Vad that way?”

”Yes.  Though his was slightly more urgent.”  James pointed out.

”Right!  Right, the venom and the bleeding.  I forgot about that part.”  Alice had actually been working in Response back then, and now James wondered if she’d been the one to meet Vadik in the first place.

”We can pitch in, too with the globetrotting.  Split the work, unless there’s more?”  Harrison inquired.

James gave Alice a finger gun point of affirmation while also nodding at Harrison.  “One more.  Last actual job.  There’s something matching the way the Climb shows up that got noticed in Siberia.  About a million miles north of Novosibirsk.”

”Really?”

”No, like, eighty.”

Follower-Of-Horizons hissed and flattened himself down.  “I changed my mind I’ll take the mannequin.  I hate the cold.”  The camraconda informed them.

”My team would be delighted to take a northern Siberian road trip.”  Amelia said, voice vibrating in excitement in a way that made James think that her team might be disappointed with the assignment they were signing on for without knowing.  “Also I recently became strong enough to cut through Climb baffling, so this will be simpler.”

Simpler.  Not easier, and certainly not simple.  But a resounding ‘this could be worse’.

”That would leave me the odd man out.”  Harrison said.  “The kids’ll cry about being left in the cold, so I suppose we really are going on vacation with Alice.”  He mused with a casual smirk.

“I’ve still got work for everyone, so don’t get too excited.”  James laughed as he got to the last thing on his list that was sort of a different category of option.  “Any team that runs out of things to do, link up with the Rogues.  Pretty much all their effort right now is going into tracking every hint online, every media mention, and every whispered rumor about anything called a ‘second dawn’ or ‘second sunrise’.  Trying to find something solid to work from based off the Chain Breaker’s nightmare fuel of environmental storytelling.”

”And they need someone to send out to get jumped in an alley somewhere?”

”No, I think they’ve got that handled themselves.  But they could use extra eyes.”  James said.  “Whether they give them back in good condition is anyone’s guess.”

Harrison gave a hefty guffaw of laughter, tilting his head back as he rolled his shoulder.  “Sounds like a fun time.  Happy to lend an eyeball.”

James nodded, and looked at the five of them, his gaze lingering longer on Amelia and Follower-Of-Horizons.  He gave a small sigh, holding himself back and not wanting to look dejected in front of the people he was assigning jobs to.  But he did have one thing to add.  “Also… just in case I need to say it… be safe out there.  It’s cool when we find new dungeons and new friends, but if you think you need to, it’s okay to bail.  Especially if you feel like you’re being targeted for being an outsider of some kind, human or otherwise.  I just got back from a place where I had to stop at least three dumbasses from shooting at camracondas for ‘looking weird’.  Don’t stick around if anyone starts to get violent, okay?  Yes, even you, Harrison.  I know it can be easy to miss, since a lot of us spend our lives in our own spaces and also sometimes dungeons, but the broad social vibe is getting progressively more tense, and I’d rather eat the telepad cost than hear that one of you got stabbed for being the wrong shape or color or amount of Irish, okay?”

It didn’t look like most of them were happy with that assessment, or that broad command in general.  But they still agreed, each in their own way, to at least keep themselves alive.

“Great.”  James said, hopping down off the small briefing stage.  “Now go find something cool.  I’ve gotta get back into one of those dungeons I spend my life in.”

_____

Sometimes when James went on a dungeon delve, he went with his closest friends.  Sometimes, with a larger expedition of dozens of people equipped for days of travel.  Sometimes, just to escort and guide new delvers and help them get a feel for the flow of adventure.

It had been a while since James had been on a delve with what he would call a strike team.

Cam and Spire-Cast-Behind were two people James would describe as forgettably dangerous.  At least, for him. He was pretty sure there were people out there who would always see camracondas or girls with dragon wings as a threat of some kind, but James mostly saw them as friends who had been hurt in the past and deserved his compassion and support.  As people who were, at their core, some of the softest individuals he knew.  And if he said that, Anesh or Alanna or someone else would casually mention that Spire had torn through at least a half dozen Status Quo soldiers, and Cam had once been thrown through a car.

James didn’t think that was special.  He’d been thrown through a truck.  That didn’t make him dangerous.

He hoped.

Incidentally, Cam and Spire were the two people James had entered the Compiled Wastes with today, too.  A three person squad, equipped to achieve one specific goal, and then to punch as deep as they felt they safely could as quickly as possible.  Beginning to test the effects of time on the rewards.  Zhu had opted not to come, and James again got the feeling the navigator didn’t like this city for some reason, but no one was gonna force him to be a delver if he didn’t want to, and the Wastes floors were small enough that James didn’t think the team would have trouble.

A few people had tried to convince James that he should wait until the dungeon’s magic was better mapped, but he’d talked them down in turn.  There might not be time to sculpt a perfect build for himself for this one, and something was better than nothing when it came to having more magic tricks to work with.

Spire and Cam were of similar opinions, and had free time, and so James was back here again to be an advance scout.  And really, he kind of loved it.  The randomness of new magic was so much more explosively fun than mapping out a tactical build, even if that was smarter.

The three of them had passed by a mixed umbral-human delve team that was leaving the mundane office park when they’d come in.  The others, looking exhausted and more than a little dusty, had been amusingly shocked to see the trio.  James had just offered them a pleasant hello, waving as he stopped to try to chat about the dungeon.  Asking about it like he was talking about the weather - which was also how he learned the dungeon could have weather - and in turn learning that Saskatoon was starting to see more and more interaction between the new umbral and the old humans.  Especially in the western part of the city, where there were more tightly packed apartments and commercial spaces.

The feeling that things were going to be okay had nearly brought James to tears, though he hadn’t really felt the full impact until he’d had some breathing room once they were inside the dungeon and tunneling into the wall.

The tunneling was because the Order did know one surefire way to get one magic from this dungeon, and it was the door back into the dungeon.  Something that was kind of a high priority just for utility, and to turn every single slip into a guaranteed escape route.  The tunneling was also made significantly easier by the circular saw, heavy bolt cutters, shop vac, and clean room suits that they’d brought.  Carving a line through drywall and fiberglass insulation was practically a breeze.  Though it did take long enough and was safe enough that James felt comfortable making conversation during it, while they widened the gap enough for Cam to fit her wings through.

”So how’s Uruguay?”  He asked Spire.

The camraconda forced herself to refrain from hissing, having been forewarned just how fucking awful it was to get a single fiberglass thread stuck on a camracodna tongue.  “It has been surprisingly good.”  She said, glad for her digital voice.  “The people are enthusiastic, though not always kind.  The officials I am speaking with accept me as a person, and treat me and my coterie politely.  Though that may be because they know what I can offer them.”

”Hey, something is something.”  James said.  “Everyone starts somewhere.”

”If only they would start somewhere less mercenary.”  Spire almost hissed a laugh as the sound of drywall being ripped apart by a buzzsaw came from the end of the tunnel ahead of them where Cam was finishing their task.  “But no.  It is pleasant.  Exploring Montevideo is pleasant.  I have academic knowledge of architectural styles, but there is something different in seeing a different way of building a city in person.  Small things, in how the roads connect, or where the doors lead.  And it is very warm, and green too.  Not to the extent of Townton, but impressive because it is so large.”

James as he finished cutting away a problematic wire. ”You know that it’s actually summer there, not winter, right?  I mean, it’s close to the equator, but still.  Everything in the southern hemisphere has flipped seasons.  Because of… axial tilt?  I think?”

”This planet is stupid.”  Spire declared, irising her lens shut in a heavy motion.  “I am going to live in a dungeon forever.  Dungeons do not have seasons.”

”That we know of!”  James happily ruined her plans.

The camraconda just shook her head, and continued.  “I am returning within days, if I do not die here.  I have no plans to die, so I suppose I plan to return.  Their government seems increasingly threatened by their geographic neighbor, and I believe I can negotiate what we wanted in the first place.”

”Recognition?”  James asked as he stepped back and observed the hole, planning to keep watch while Spire headed through, since he didn’t need to.

”More than that.”  Spire-Cast-Behind said with a powerful confidence.  “Acceptance.  Their people are no strangers to revolutionary changes.  And they may be willing to try to take in many different peoples.  Even if the government would only agree because of the economic benefits of near-free electricity and shipping and any other quiet upheavals you wish to share.”

James let out a long breath.  “That’d be something.”  He said.  “Especially since no one else is talking to us.  What do you think the odds are that Brazil is actually literally planning a land war?”

”Higher than anyone wants them to be.”  Spire said as she folded her arms against her back and began slithering down the tunnel, following Cam’s call from the other end.  “I will be back in a moment.”

James was feeling a little anxious about that as he watched Spire head down the hall, only to return with Cam in tow, holding the circular saw like it had all the weight of a plastic toy.  “Any problems?”  He asked over his shoulder, watching the tight quarters of the hallway they’d been working from.

”If there were I would have spotted them with my breacher sense.”  Cam said, pulling the plastic film off her wings and shaking them like they itched anyway, while James helped Spire out of her own anti-fiberglass layer.  “I had almost started to think I wouldn’t need that one again, but here we are, with you asking me to punch holes in walls.”

”…Wait.”  James said, looking up from his kneeling position on the rough hard packed grey carpet .  “Does that mean that you could do this to any drywall that needed holes punched in it?  Between that and the Ochre demolition sense, are you and your sisters secretly a full construction crew waiting to happen?”

”How do you think a Crimson’s victim sense would apply to this.”  Cam asked, somewhere split between trying to banter with James and actually wondering if he had an answer.

James perked up.  “That one’s easy!  OSHA compliance officer!”

”Oddity sense?”

”…more of a challenge, I don’t know what that one actually does.”  James admitted.

”Senses oddities.”  Spire-Cast-Behind offered as she unfurled her mechanical arms and double checked their movements.  “Irregularities in reality versus blueprints, perhaps?  Cam, would you be open to kidnapping more of your sisters to test this?”

”Yes.  No.  I mean…” Cam faltered.  “Sometimes I don’t know how to talk to any of you.”  She said suddenly.

James patted her on the shoulder.  “Me neither.”  He admitted.  “I just kind of guess and it works sometimes.”

”I changed my mind, I know how to talk to you.”  Cam said suddenly.  “It involves warning you that Alanna gave me permission to gag you if you keep self-deprecating.”

”If you have time for this, you have time to know what conversation is.”  Spire told them both as the team readied themselves, heading to the floor exit past the ash-blackened windows to the false outside.  “Are we prepared?”  She asked, triple checking the hand crossbow she had bound to one of the imbued leveler bracelets.

”I’m ready!”  James said, excited to see what was deeper in the dungeon, and what they’d all get from it.  He didn’t fidget with his weapons, but he did repeatedly clench his hands into fists before forcing his fingers to relax, hopping slightly on the balls of his feet.  “Think we’ll find anything potentially friendly?”

”The box was friendly.”  Cam said, which was a lie.  The scuttling cardboard box had been terrified, and hadn’t attacked in favor of pretending to be a stationary object.  “My worry is that we will find opponents who are both unfriendly, and smart.”

”You say that with every dungeon.”  James pointed out.

”I don’t really change what I worry about.”  Cam reported with a small shrug of her armored shoulders.  She was wearing standard Order delver armor today, not her own kit, which was good because many of the halls here were tight enough already.  “Unless someone gives me another existential crisis.”

”No idea who you’re talking about.”  James lied back as the elevator doors opened and let them out onto the second floor down.  “Okay, let’s do this.”

The second floor offered practically no resistance to the team, aside from bad vibes and tight quarters.  They got used to moving together, covering approaches and hitting hostile targets with overwhelming but mostly nonlethal force.  And James was reminded again that while the other dungeon felt like an office turned into wilderness, this place felt like the feeling of actually working turned into a trap.

The third floor was the first one that was new to James.  And it was where it became clear that the dungeon was the kind of place that could easily just swallow someone up and never bother spitting out a corpse.  One of the cramped rooms hosted a desk that had been hollowed out like a termite nest, which spilled hundreds of thumbtack ants out to harass them as they tried to get past.  A hall had a PowerPoint spectre that didn’t just cause headaches but full-body stinging pain when it slid over someone.  And the size of the floor had spiked by about fifty percent too, making finding the exit more of a challenge, in addition to looking for potential secondary objectives.

Clearing it, James got a new slip timer that would spawn on - and move with - a nearby aircraft.  Every eleven days, which was great, but kind of annoying considering those aircraft would probably be taking his slips away from him.

The fourth floor upped the stakes further.  The smell of ash and acrid fire filled most of the narrow halls, and in place of cubical pods, there were instead manager’s offices with doors far sturdier than anything James had ever encountered in real life.  They blocked passage at key points, and while Spire quickly found that there were vents down by the floor wide enough to crawl through, and Cam’s breacher sense gave her advice on what parts of the wall to just bulldoze through to get by far easier, it still slowed them down while smoke swirled around their ankles and slowly rose.  That same smoke blocked their view of the insects composed of fan blades, here no longer pretending to be anything but mobile weapons.  And it was with great satisfaction that James located the overhead vent that the smoke was pouring out of, nailing its purposefully badly placed levers with Pave casts to seal it off and let them take a little more time here without suffocating.

Floor cleared, they descended further.  James’ new slip was one that spawned near social hubs within eight-ish kilometers, whatever that meant.  Nine days.  Excellent time.  Spire and Cam both got a different slip that spawned in basements every fourteen days instead, and since the main difference in what they’d done this floor was in shutting off the smoke, James marked that as a potential focus point for further checking.

Floor five.  It was becoming clear that Tylor and Jubilance had been delving this with both a full party, and also taking their time.  The walls would sometimes close in to maybe two feet wide, a catacomb off hallways and thin passages that spread out in what the team determined was about a half mile in diameter, though not focused on the entrance.  Sometimes the lights in the rooms would shut off, and any light source would attract a screaming ghoulish form out of the inky blackness.  The first time it had happened, James had gotten to see Cam get jumpscared for the first time, as she splattered the creature across the floor and wall with reckless strength.  When the lights flickered back to life, there was no sign of the gore, even on Cam’s gloved hands, though they checked later and found that the blood and meat did exist under dark enough conditions.  James started puffing out fireballs into those rooms to attract the ghouls before the group slipped by.

And that wasn’t even close to the end of it.  Maybe it was because they were moving too fast, but the threats came on rapidly.  Mantises made out of wire and glass lurked on walls and could lunge toward motion seemingly at random.  Doors that had been unlocked or even broken down would reseal themselves behind the team if left unobserved, turning potential fallback points into their own kind of traps.  In one four hundred foot long aisle through low and cramped cubicles, The PowerPoint ghosts swirled like the special effects at a Pink Floyd show, an open declaration that this area was not okay to enter unless you were prepared to pay the price in pain.

But they made it through.  Mostly because all three of them were incredibly dangerous and hard to kill in their own right.  And when they descended, and their neck tattoos expanded again, a little more dungeon magic got added on.  For all three of them, a slip on a twenty day timer that could be placed.  Not… very well.  But when they had the option, they could pick a direction and have it appear a third of a mile - give or take - that way.  Possibly the most useful, since if they wanted to set up entrances for emergencies in places like the Lair or Townton, they could preemptively go the right distance away, and then fire it off where they needed it.

And then, floor six.

Which was… quiet.

Still hostile, still cramped.  Stained off-white walls with ancient bulletin boards and fictional notices about legal codes.  Overhead lights that burned too brightly to be comfortable and yet seemed to not know how to provide enough illumination.  Small creatures that tested their luck attacking the delve team, and everywhere, the scent of ash and neglect.

But it was like being back on the first floor again.  Except with everything they’d encountered so far to be found somewhere.  The tack ants, the ghosts, the desk fans, the doors with all kinds of problem, the smoke, the sudden darkness and lurking ghouls, all of it was here.

It was just not that overwhelming.  And it was also very spread out.

After the last floor, the hallways only being three feet wide felt like it was practically pastoral in terms of space to operate, and they went so long without an attack that James managed to get in conversations with the others about everything from getting Spire to agree to come to the upcoming solstice celebration to probing Cam about her latest hobby of secretly adding more and more plants to the pillboar’s jazz garden in Townton when no one was watching.

The thing about floor six was, it was just… huge.  While the size of each floor had been growing as they’d descended, this was something entirely different.  This, more than anything, felt like being in Officium Mundi.  Where there was no indication of where the boundaries even were, if they existed at all.  Though they did find the edge, it was just that they’d gone from a sprawling catacomb of halls and rooms to something that had relaxed a little, but was four miles across.

And four miles wasn’t a huge distance; James could jog that without getting winded.  But the four miles wasn’t a straight line.  It was twists and turns and bottlenecks and dead ends and ambushes and potential secrets everywhere, and it quickly became clear that they were not speedrunning this one.

So they took their time, looted what they could knowing that the Compiled Wastes regenerated itself far faster than most dungeons they’d met, poked through every room they encountered, worked on honing tactics against individual threats, and worked out what equipment would be most effective to bring in the future.

It took them longer than the other floors put together to find the exit, and this time, they chose to leave.

But it still left its mark.  A new line on the circuit diagram of their tattoos, and for James at least, a slip that showed up every eighteen days, somewhere near a ‘close by’ thoroughfare, which he could take a single piece of furniture through.

“That is… so specifically weird, I am now suspicious.”  He told the others.

”Oh, that’s it?  That’s the line?”  Cam asked, raising her eyebrows.  “That’s good to know.  If I can get away with anything up to that point before you become suspicious, I can get away with almost anything.”

Spire hissed in amusement, looking up at the slim girl as the elevator took them back to reality.  “James likes you, you could just ask him to be an accomplice.”

”James likes everyone.”  Cam retorted.  “That isn’t special.”

”Nnnnnno.”  James shook his head.  “No I do not.  As I’ve been reminded of regularly lately, there’s a lot of people who annoy me.  You don’t annoy me, and I like to think we’re friends.”  He told Cam, who blinked at him before looking away suddenly and silently.  “Anyway!  I’m exhausted and covered in dungeon particles.  Anyone wanna teleport to the baths with me?  Either one.”

Spire thought about it for a second before agreeing.  “Yes.  But I cannot dwell.  I am needed for a meeting with someone regionally important tomorrow.” She looked back up at Cam.  “Will you join us?”

”If I say no, will you make me feel guilty?”  Cam asked.

”Absolutely not!”  James reassured her as he stepped out in the real world, spying an umbral seemingly waiting at the end of the much more comfortable open air hall of the building the dungeon’s entrance was in.  “Instead I’ll just entice you with offering to help clean ash off your wings, because I bet that’s a massive pain to do yourself.”

Cam’s face scrunched up in a frown.  “It… is.”  She admitted.  “I barely fit in a shower.  And I keep ripping my sleeping shirts.”

”You are not required to have the wings.”  Spire told her, voice modulated softly.

”No I like them.”  Cam said far too quickly for that to be something she hadn’t thought about a lot.

James nodded, waving at the pair of umbral that were now watching their group as he got a telepad ready and made sure they were all carrying the heavy packs full of stuff they’d swiped from the Wastes.  “I’m gonna ask so many questions about that.”  He warned her.

”I knew that as soon as I began speaking.”  Cam said with a sigh.  “I’ll live.  Should we get out of their way?”

”Yeah, yeah.  Let’s get out of here.  And hey, great delve everyone.  No one died.  A+ grade for all of us.”