The Daily Grind - Chapter 363 (Patreon)

Hey, small content warning for this one. At least one of the characters in this chapter references sexual assault and abuse. It's not explicit, and it's a past trauma not a present event, but just so everyone knows.

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“The living seasons come to grow, to burn, to wither, and to freeze.  As natural as it is for the Calamity Beasts to live, it is just as natural for them to die.” -Repel Calamity, Magic the Gathering-

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Ishah was experiencing an emotion that was, day by day, becoming less novel to him.

Annoyance.

As a ratroach that wasn’t one of the two luckiest members of their species currently imaginable, Ishah had what he now considered to be an almost tediously common tragic history.  Spawned directly by the dungeon, and rapidly grown to maturity.  Implanted with barely enough knowledge so as to understand that cruelty being inflicted on a daily basis.  Eventually used as a prize for a more obedient ratroach and as part-toy-part-tool in order to breed more weapons, which was, somewhat importantly, an unsurvivable situation for an unmodified ratroach.  An ongoing violation of the body and mind that hadn’t really stopped until someone who still didn’t even know the extent of what they were doing at the time had slit Ishah’s owner’s throat in one of the far caves.  And then, after all that, rescued by the Order, with Ishah’s main distinction being that he was rescued somewhat more last minute than most.

This history came with a few problems.  A lingering terror regarding childbearing was a minor one, as was a persistent aggressive preference for vegetarian food.  Needing to catch up to even the dumbest human adult in terms of cultural understanding and language skills was more frustrating, but Ishah had no intention of faltering now.

No, the biggest problem was probably that a lot of emotions were brand new, even in similar situations.  Maybe it was because he was approaching them as someone who considered himself an adult, and not gradually picking up the experience as a child, but Ishah felt like he had a deep appreciation for the difference in the texture of even simple emotions.  There were so many shades of combative aggression, of scenic serenity, of companionable trust, and such a varied panoply of colors of love that it was quickly apparent why humans wrote poetry instead of making up new words.

This was, in short, distracting.  He kept finding new ways to feel while in inopportune situations.  In Oklahoma, there were two different forms of victory, a new way of feeling social satisfaction, and an equally new way of feeling like a social outsider who was hated by people he had never met but already had opinions about him.  All of these happened while Ishah was holding a shotgun and engaging ravenously hungry dungeon life, so perhaps not the best time.

But when was there going to be a better time?  Ishah had a calendar in his room that marked the first and last days where it was possible for the ominous pillar-given warning about the end of civilization to occur.  And while he didn’t think that would be the end of him, it was still something to keep in mind.  Moon said marking the dates to the end of the world wasn’t healthy, but Moon had never had his world end, so Ishah figured he was more afraid of it than he needed to be.  He saw the therapy infomorph less and less these days, relying on his friend less often to speak up about his needs or advocate for his ideas.  But even as they both moved on, he knew he would never forget Moon and his help.

It was another emotion that was best savored now, while there was time for it.

Moon also said that Ishah’s tactic of acting like Camille or Nate, and applying a performative stoicism to his knight side, was overcompensating.  But the more Ishah did it, the more he learned, he kind of just liked managing his emotional expression.  It didn’t mean he never got to be open or vulnerable, just that it was always his choice to make.  And that made him feel a sense of power, of control over himself, that he hadn’t felt… ever.  Not once before.  But hopefully more from now on. 

The emotion that Ishah kept feeling, though, that he’d grown somewhat bored with, was being irate.

”Please lay still.”  Mercy told him, the pacifist infomorph curling around the hospital bed that Ishah was awkwardly reclined on.  Beds weren’t really made for people with tails to lay on their back on, so he was currently slightly crushing the sensitive extension underneath his legs as he got examined.  “Do not worry!  I have seen much worse cases, you will be fine.”  She reassured him as the pink and white tendrils that fanned off her back like a sea anemone probed at the arm Ishah had held out to her.

”I wasn’t… worried about it?”  Ishah abandoned being irate at being stuck in the hospital in favor of being curious about her apparent attempt to reassure him.  “I know it’s fine.”

Mercy’s slender eel body arched upward, a mile long length of coiling pink and white glow wrapping in rings as her head leveled with Ishah’s muzzle.  “Oh.  I apologize, I have used the wrong reassurance!”  She said.  “I made a foolish assumption about the patient.  Who is you!  May I try again?”

”O-okay.”  Ishah flushed slightly and turned his furless face away.  Assignments, much like camracondas, were often so openly communicative that it could shatter the careful emotional constructs he was working with.  He was getting better, but it was something that threw humans off too, so Ishah didn’t hold this against himself.

”Excellent.”  Mercy’s whiskers settled Ishah’s upper arm back to his side, careful to keep it off the bed or his shirt.  “Please do not move, your injury has the potential to become far worse than it currently is, and I do not wish you to hurt yourself.  Aaron will be here shortly to help me patch you up and make sure your blood stays inside your body, which is important!  You require that, or you will die, which is why if you move too much I will be making you forget you have legs until your stitches are done!”

Ishah’s slight flush turned into a full deep green blush around his eyes.  When he’d reshaped himself, with extensive help from Deb and the rest of the medical team, he had mostly chosen what was becoming a standard ‘repaired’ ratroach form.  Evenly spaced arms, upper and lower set.  Bifurcated tail.  Between four and eight eyes in pairs.  Smooth bridges between chitin and fur.  The way his people should have been made.  Ishah’s own body was slightly different; it would be hard to tell, ratroaches didn’t really have secondary sexual characteristics, but he’d kept the ability to have children some day if he ever wanted to.  For some reason.  He also had armored his chitin more densely, packed his musculature tighter.  He’d also shed more fur than most, keeping only the best parts of his hide that gave him flexibility.  A body that required more nutrition and care, but was better for what he needed it for, in small ways.

Now, he wished he’d removed the lucent green aura of embarrassment.  Hindsight was, apparently, an emotion shared by every species.  That was a nice grounding emotion.

”It isn’t that bad.”  He tried to defend himself.

”Your chitin is splintered along your forearm so badly that it has created secondary lacerations.”  Mercy told him with clinical precision.  “The bruising I can see forming is only explainable by a purple orb having prevented your entire radius from snapping on impact.  You are only lucid because I am filtering your sense of pain to keep you calm.  Please do not move.”

”I can…” Ishah stopped.  He had been about to say something very stupid about his ability to withstand pain.  Muzzle snapping shut, he centered himself, listening to Mercy’s command and holding his arm as still as he could until he opened the eyes he’d pressed closed one pair at a time, the world resolving back into bright lines and clean colors.  “Thank you.”  He said, chittering softly.

Mercy examined him, her koi-form face twisting to peer out of the small but neatly organized room for a moment, before swinging back to Ishah.  “Would you like to talk about what happened?”  She asked gently, voice washing over him like the sound of distant waves.

“Just an accident.”  Ishah said, examining the series of locks on the supply cabinets.  It was such an interesting thing.  Who would steal from their medical rooms?  Why were the locks there?  He focused on that, more than on telling Mercy that things were okay.  “No one hurt me.”  Ishah said, reassuring himself as much as her.

”Accidents often have stories attached!”  Mercy told him, the infomorph swirling her body around the bed to the point that Ishah felt like he was being ensconced.  “Was this one particularly horrific?”

Ishah burst out with a chitter of laughter.  ”Nno!”  He answered, starting to relax.  “I made a mistake.”  He said, voice slipping for a moment.  “Fffell off the mobility practice… thing.  Course.”

”This is a serious laceration for a fall.”  Mercy probed softly.

”I was moving very fast.”  Ishah clarified.  “And… didn’t drop my… blade in time.”  Mercy stared at him silently, and Ishah felt like his embarrassment was creeping back in.  “And then I fell again.”  He said.

Whatever the nurse infomorph had been about to say was stifled as she twisted her whole long body around, rolling like some kind of organic factory machine while still peering at him.  “Again?”  She asked.

”W-well I didn’t fall off the course all the way.”  Ishah said.  “A-and I wanted to finish it.  But then I fell.”  He looked sideways, eyes locking onto the bloody ruin of his limb.  “Onto my arm.”  He clarified unhelpfully.

“Ishah!”  Mercy seemed affronted.  That was an interesting emotion that Ishah locked onto as she stared at him, letting himself feel the shade of satisfaction that came from pressing through something that should have stopped him but failed to do so.  He liked that particular feeling.  He less liked the look in Mercy’s many eyes as she looked up from where some of her tendrils were examining the room’s nursing screen.  “This is the third time you’ve been in here this month, for something like this!”  She said suddenly.

“Nnnnnno.”  Ishah shook his head, that wasn’t right.  “Not this month.”  The great thing about months was, when a new one started, your count of bad decisions reset.  Somehow.  He was pretty clear on how that wasn’t really the case, but it was a great sentence to keep in his back pocket in case he needed to baffle a human into agreeing with him.

”You’re getting hurt far too regularly.”  The assignment corrected herself, glowing with a diffuse white aura.  “This will require something else to fix.”  She added.

”No!”  Ishah’s response was too quick.  Too sharp.  An emotion that he wasn’t used to or prepared for, again, drawing the word out.  “No, it’s okay.”  He quickly added.

”No it is not!  Your well being matters.”

“My… it’s safer this way.”  He told Mercy.  “If… I get hurt practicing, then I know how to not get hurt later.”  The ratroach caught his breath, and forced himself to not scratch at the makeshift bandage pressed into his arm.  Mercy could stop the pain but not the itching apparently.  When he spoke next, it was steadier.  The tone he used when he was presenting a report or commanding a delve team.  “Everything I do is dangerous.”  Ishah told her with the gentle click from his throat that meant he was measuring his words carefully.  “I need to test myself when things are safe, so that when I have to do something risky, I know what I am doing.  Like Oklahoma.”

Mercy shuddered, her anemone hair flattening back as her eyes seemed to scatter to different points around the room.  “The Oklahoma situation also saw people hurt.”  She said.

”But not me.”  Ishah told her with a defiant stare.

The nurse gave him a look that indicated that this logic was annoying to her, but Ishah knew, for a fact, that the work he put in to make himself effective did do what he wanted.  He was prepared, more prepared than even many people in the Order, for things to turn dangerous.

Or maybe Mercy did see that, and she just didn’t like that he’d hurt himself anyway.  “Please don’t push yourself so hard.”  She asked of him.

”But it makes me more useful.”  Ishah pointed out.

“Ishah!”  Mercy’s form of a gasp of indignation was her entire body rippling and drifting out like a cloud of scales and tendrils.  Still a solid manifestation, just using her impossible size to display a kind of puffing out of her shape.  “Your value is more than your utility!”

”I know?”  He looked at her with blinking eyes.  Incorporating the lessons of the Order had taken Ishah a long time, longer than learning anything else really.  And he still, in the darker moments of his thoughts when he blinked too long and forgot the nightmare was over, had trouble truly feeling like he was worth anything at all.  But he also knew a secret truth; that those moments of doubt and pain were also injuries, and that, ultimately, he could heal from anything if he didn’t let it kill him.  “Is that why you were worried?” Ishah asked.  The question wasn’t rhetorical or mocking, he had been failing to understand exactly why Mercy was this concerned about him.

”It… is a common sentiment, among many people that I see.”  Mercy said slowly, pulling her body back into a closer and smaller loop of the bed as she spoke more evenly to Ishah, clearly relieved.  “It is not my place to say who, exactly.  But the belief that utility is the only source of importance in life is one that is… unfortunately prevalent."

“I’ve also met James.”  Ishah said, the line of his open muzzle forming a glowing blue grin.

”It is not just James!”  Mercy declared with her own outburst.  “It is so many humans!  Many dungeon peoples see their own worth as derived from being… property.”  She said sadly, and Ishah had to freeze for a moment lest he throw up, which Mercy absolutely noticed.  “Many others think it comes from what they produce.  But it is saddest with the humans, who have spent so much longer than any of us, living with those same poison thoughts.  Too common.  I do not wish to see you paint yourself with the same brush, Ishah.  You are more than your material skills.”

He nodded at her slowly, swallowing his reflexive disgust.  It was easier every time.  “Yyeees.”  He agreed slowly.  “But.  I like my material skills.”  The ratroach pointed out.

Mercy’s eyes twitched as she stared at him.  “Ishah.”  She said sternly.

”You also like your material skills.”  He added, gaining momentum as he spoke.  “Do you do more than your work?”

”Actually yes!”  Mercy’s warmth flooded back in as she answered him eagerly.  “Growing up with Deborah as my primary host, and several others who have worked in mundane Earth hospitals as well, I have a strong understanding and appreciation for the value of personal time.  My role in medical is not irreplaceable, and I find a great deal of enjoyment in a variety of things.  Weaving, wood carving, recently I have begun studying glass blowing as well, alongside several friends.  Documentaries are of special interest to me!”  She peered at him with several lines of grins along her body.  “Now what hobbies do you have, Ishah?”

He had fallen for her trap.  Ishah clicked loudly, and then met Mercy’s eyes.  “Parkour.”  He said with direct confidence.

”Oh?”

”Yes.”  Ishah nodded.  “I like… jumping.”

”And friends to share it with?”

”No one keeps up.”

”Ishah.”  She said with a hint of a laugh.

”I actually do like it.”  He said, letting his facade of self-seriousness drop.  “I like my body, and what it can do.  I like moving.  I think… even if I weren’t doing it for a reason, I might still get myself hurt sometimes.”  His uninjured paw tugged at his antenna as he made that realization.  “I’m sorry.”  He whispered.  “I know that’s not good.”

Mercy affected a sigh that she definitely did not need to make, being a species that Ishah knew didn’t breathe.  “Well.”  She said.  “It could be worse.  At least you aren’t jumping out of dragons in flight.”

”No, I don’t have the wing spell yet.”  Ishah said, and then grinned at her in the way he’d mastered that meant he was both joking and not joking at the same time.  And he kept that smile even as Mercy examined him.  “I promise not to fall out of a dragon when I do.”  He told her.

”Reassuring.”  Mercy sighed, her colors shifting like ink in water, as her attention moved to the room’s open door.  “Ah, good, Aaron is here.  Shall we make sure this injury is not critical?”

”Sounds like a plan.”  Aaron said, the human wheeling in a cart with sterilized tools and fresh bandages.

Ishah forced himself not to sigh, or look at the very sharp tools that he was becoming intimately familiar with.  “Thank you.”  He told them, holding his arm out farther at Aaron’s prompting, eager to be repaired so he could get out of here.

It wasn’t that he hated the medical floor, or even that Mercy’s questions were intrusive and unwelcome.  He loved the Order, specifically because they had things like clean places for healing and people who asked questions.

But he also had things to do today.

The emotion that he least wished to engage with was the feeling that he was irate, because he was short on time and too full on things he wanted to do.

And so he welcomed Mercy’s distraction, which he realized was to keep him from worrying about his injury.  Because it made him feel something special, instead of simply being annoyed.

He should do something nice for her later.  And make sure she knew that he knew that he wasn’t only liked because he was useful.

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Prince met up with Ruby at Townton’s premier cafe.  It was, so far, its only cafe, abusing the heck out of a couple different spells to make what had once been a parking lot into a surprisingly comfortable space.  Their coffee was… fine.  At least in Prince’s expert opinion.  He’d traveled too widely and sampled too much to think that this place was anything special.

So this place was fine.  It also had people working there who would, Prince was confident, make it more than fine in short enough order.  There was a special strain of person who loved the experience of the cafe.  Coffee, tea, flavors and vibes, the hiss of a steam wand and the transient art of making shapes in foam.  It wasn’t him.  It couldn’t be him, at this point.  But Prince recognized when those people were the ones in charge, and here, it was the whole staff.

The fact that no one in Townton actually needed to work, meant that the people who did work here did so because they felt like it.  It also meant they would have no qualms about bodily flinging him out of the bubble of warm air if he was a belligerent customer, which he’d only see happen once to someone else, and had no intent to test on his own.  The young woman behind the counter might look like she was too heavy to move with any grace, but that was a lie, and Prince’s habit of people watching had him convinced she had multiple overlapping strength modifications from some magic or another.

All of that aside, he got himself a decidedly adequate latte, and a scone that came from… somewhere… and went to sit with his last surviving sister.  And also whoever she had at the table with her.

”Had I known I’d be interrupting your date, I would have made more of a scene.”  Prince said as he sat down, the salvaged chair expertly repositioned on the unnaturally smoothed asphalt.

The human man on the other side of the table arched an aged eyebrow.  One corner of his mouth twitched upward, pulling his salt and pepper goatee with it, but the miniscule smile held comparatively far more warmth than Prince saw on some people who gave much grander smiles.  ”Had I known I was on a date, I would have worn a nicer shirt.”  The man said in a comfortably roguish tone, his age only barely noticeable aside from giving his words a little depth.

Prince almost froze.  Something was wrong with this person.  But he didn’t know what, and Ruby wasn’t sending him any signals of distress, so he decided to play along.  “Your shirt costs more than my entire wardrobe.”  Prince pointed out to the liar.

His sister snorted into the unseemly oversized hot chocolate she had, her face - borrowed from someone they met once a long time ago who would have found the situation funny - twisting into a sharper grin.  “Your wardrobe cost ten minutes in the mirror.”  She reminded him.

”It’s the principle of the thing.”  Prince shot back, tugging at a cuff of the light jacket that he wasn’t actually wearing, but instead was busy being.  Then his composure split, and he ave a more genuine smile to Ruby.  “How’ve you been?  And who’s this extra?”

”I’ve been making friends.  This is one of them.”  Ruby said, rolling her eyes at him.  “You’d know if you ever stopped brooding for longer than one weekly chat.”

”I’m not brooding, I’m contemplating my place in this new world, and also sometimes putting myself in life or death situations.” Prince retorted, flicking his eyes to the newcomer.  “Also who is he.”  He reiterated.

The human man just chuckled kindly at the blunt rudeness, leaning forward to offer a hand for Prince to shake.  “Columbia.  A pleasure to meet you.”  Prince begrudgingly took it and offered his own name, before the man sat back like he was the picture of casual relaxation.  “And I’m afraid I have to agree with your brother, sometimes brooding is good for the soul.”

”Now hang on.”  Ruby said, glaring over her hot chocolate.

Prince made a quick decision.  There was something wrong with this guy, but if he was willing to help Prince needle his sister, that was enough to bond over.  “See, he understands.”  He told her.  “A poetic soul needs poetic situations.  Long walks at night, gothic loneliness, fights to the death with strange beasts, that kind of thing.”  Prince’s eyes drifted to the table near theirs, where a pair of ratroaches were quietly talking about the smell of the winter air, while keeping a obvious sharp eye out for anyone approaching them.  “Okay, sad beasts.”  He corrected.

”You’re impossible.”  Ruby grumbled.  “I thought we decided, you were the designated cynic.  Aren’t you supposed to be suspicious of everything and annoyed at everyone?”

”I assumed we switched back!”  Prince cheerfully declared, seeing Columbia’s eyes flick between them as they spoke.

”We’re not supposed to assume, we’re supposed to talk, asshole.”

”Well, we were supposed to have roles when it was suitable.”  Prince pointed out.  “And it…” his words stopped, the flow of banter stopped, the warmth held inside the space suddenly felt stifling.  “Well.”  Prince finished, weakly.

He saw Ruby also hit by the sudden reminder, though not quite so badly.  “Yeah.  Well.”  She said.

Columbia clearly noticed their distress, and, as too many people in the Order did in Prince’s opinion, he opted not to pretend nothing was wrong or cover it up with noise, but instead to be emotionally vulnerable and offer support.  “It seems something has made you uncomfortable, though I can’t say I know what.”  He said kindly.  “Is it a story worth sharing?”

”Hah.  No.”  Prince tried to deflect.

Ruby, though, maybe because she was a little more familiar with him, gave a real answer.  “There were a couple kids that we came here with.”  She said.  “Humans, you know.  People we were supposed to protect.  Take care of.”

”We didn’t do our best work there.”  Prince tried to make it a joke, but it didn’t work.  He stared down at the latte art, a cat rendered in foam on the table in front of him.  He kind of hated it in the moment, but didn’t feel like drinking it enough to destroy the icon.  “They’re fine.  The ones that survived.  They’re fine now.  But they don’t want us around.”

”So, no more roles.”  Ruby volunteered the fact.  “We change a lot, mix things up a lot.  It’s easy to forget who’s who, especially when we’re acting.  So we picked things to be.  Not, like, bodies, we shuffle those around all the time.  I mean we picked people to be.  So the kids would know who we were.”

”And now they’re gone, and what’s the point?”  Prince asked.  Asked Ruby.  Asked anyone listening.  Asked himself.  “Anyway, since I don’t have an assignment, I’ve been brooding.”

”I fucking knew it was brooding.”  Ruby muttered, her vocal strength coming back to her as Prince’s did too.

Somehow, it didn’t feel so bad anymore.  Telling the story wasn’t the same thing as feeling hurt.  And having someone listen, well, even if it was just another random human, Prince kind of liked the validation of it as Columbia nodded at him.

The human man offered them a look of almost total sympathy.  “I understand a little of the pain.”  He told Prince with a shake of his head, one hand resting on the edge of the table as if he were idly considering the grain of the wood.  “It is difficult, to feel separated from those who you think might still need you.  Harder still to feel like you don’t know where the mask ends and you begin.”

Prince scoffed, coming back to the comfortable blend of reality that grounded him in the present and not his own memories.  ”I appreciate the sentiment, mister Columbia, but I think you might not understand our perspective quite as much as you think.”

”Well, losing family is a little universal.”  Ruby defended the man that was apparently her friend.  “And we did lose Rise.  Oh, by the way, I met the chanter you gave her name to, you twit.  He’s nice.  Complete mismatch of personality.  No points to you.”

”I’m wounded, I thought she’d find it hilariously ironic.”

”She would, that’s why you get no points.”  Ruby shot back.  “Anyway… actually no, I’m gonna see how this goes.”  She leaned back, gulping at her extra-American-sized hot chocolate.

Prince squinted at her, then looked back at Columbia, who was giving him a gesture of spread hands and an understanding nod.  “Right… well, look.  You’re in that human age range where you’ve most probably lost some people.  Parents, probably?  Kids maybe.  Friends.  Whatever.  But I don’t think you can understand what it’s like for us.  We aren’t… we weren’t people before we were made to be.”

Ruby raised her eyebrows.  “Not supposed to just say that.”  She reminded him with one finger raised off her wide ceramic mug.

”Well we’re people now so I have the privilege of disobedience.”  Prince smirked, and sipped his latte.  A little late for the right temperature, but not bad.  “So, because of what made us who we are, it’s somewhat different to lose that thing.  Oliver and Faye, those kids, they’re the only thing that matters.  And they don’t want to see us.  And that’s… well, it’s the end of the world, in a way.”

Columbia smiled at him placidly, his kind voice answering like that wasn’t a revelation at all, just a normal little chat.  “I think you’ll find most parents think that way about losing a child.  Or friends about a close companion.  Or even the far less deadly loss that comes from those you feel responsible for not wanting to ever see your face again, borrowed or otherwise.  I don’t mean to say your pain isn’t real, for being less unique, only that it is something that I can understand.”  His smile did something strange that Prince only barely noticed, before he added, “Especially the search for a true self that comes afterward.”

”Humans do seem to enjoy a good search for a true self.”  Prince conceded, before shooting his own concerned look at Ruby as his sister made a choking cough.

”That they do.”  Columbia said.  “Some of them might even find something in it.”

Prince paused mid-sip of his drink.  “Now that is an interesting way to phrase that.”  He said, suddenly putting several pieces together.  Lowering the simple white cup to the table, he looked closer at Columbia.

And for a moment, the man’s whole being changed.  Or perhaps changed was the wrong word.  Revealed itself, would be a better way to say it.  Posture, expression, idle motion, even just the feeling of a slightly mischievous but friendly old grandpa, all of it was gone.  In its place, there was a figure that was shaped like a human, looked like a human, but was missing something vital.  “Interesting.”  The thing said.  And then Columbia was back, drumming his fingers on the table.  “Interesting indeed.”  He told Prince with a little quirk of his lips.

Prince refused to let himself be intimidated.  Not here, not in this city of all places.  “Ah.”  He said, as if he were talking about the weather, pointedly ignoring Ruby’s glittering eyed sarcastic stare.  “You know, the other inhabitor I’ve met doesn’t… that.”  He said, motioning with one hand.

”The others don’t, no.”  Columbia said, back to pretending to be human in full.  “They’re all such kind children, whether they can see it or not.  Out of respect for those they took, they leave those lives alone.  Let them rest, as it were.”

”Not you?”

”Not me.”  Columbia said with a coy smile.  “Columbia - the real Columbia - well, I think he’d find it funny.”  He said, giving a distant look out across the street toward the row of strangely repaired buildings on the other side of this little pocket of Townton.  “Which means that I can find it funny.  There’s a little irony, yes, but also, I think this is how he would have found himself respected.”

Prince gave his own sympathetic look back.  “I’ve never really felt like I was respecting anyone I copied.”  He said.  “Well, anyone human.”  Columbia gave him a raised eyebrow, and Prince held one hand out like he was inspecting his form.  “Not even this one!  Actually especially not this one; he was a fed.  If he’d done his job right, maybe our humans would still be safe and untraumatized.”

”Hardly their job.”  Ruby said.  “Of course, there isn’t anyone with the right job.  So sure, let’s blame the FBI.  Hell, let’s blame everyone.  The whole fucking world dropped the ball and left a pair of misanthropic blobs to clean up their mess.”  She paused, and then gave a concession of a nod.  “And all these idiot knights.  And JP.  Who is also a misanthropic blob, but in a different way.”

”How is he, by the way?”  Prince asked.  “Break your heart yet?”

”I’ve got spares.”  Ruby reminded him with a grin.  “I’ll find the right one eventually.”  

Prince arched a stolen eyebrow.  “I almost thought you’d have copied him, just to get his attention.”

Trailing a hand across the table, Ruby gave a tempestuous grin.  “You know what?  He might be into that!  I’ll give you an update later.”

”Ah, a new fear has been discovered.”  Prince waggled his eyebrows back at her.

Columbia’s smile blended something old and new, into a look that was very real.  “I both pity and respect that man.”  He said.

”Hey!”

Prince ignored Ruby’s indignant outburst.  “So how do you deal with it?”  He asked Columbia.  “Being a mask, I mean.  I know you can stop, but I don’t know if that’s even an option for us.  How do you handle feeling like you’re pretending at everything?”  He needed to know.  He knew Ruby didn’t have an answer for him.  No one else in the Order did either.  None of the people having a nice afternoon coffee around him, with their real conversations and real personalities, they didn’t get it.  It didn’t matter that half of them were ratroaches or chanters or stuff animals or whatever the fuck the new globs of moving darkness were.  They weren’t like him.

But maybe Columbia was.

The man didn’t offer him an easy out though.  Just a shrug and a kind reassurance.  “The longer it goes on… well, if I’m being honest, the longer I am honest, the less I find it to be a mask at all.”  He said.  “Columbia is gone.  But maybe he isn’t.  Or maybe this is something new.  At the end, I don’t think it truly matters.  I think…” the human guise slipped away.  The inhabitor underneath making clear their own presence, and their intent to speak the words themself.  And yet… the words weren’t dull dead things.  They were the same.  “I think you find the mask you want to wear, you love it properly, and you find that it’s just like putting on your shoes and coat.  Not something you need all the time, but something that follows you where you need to go.”  He smiled, and Prince couldn’t tell if it was a lie or not, and that might have been the point.  “So what mask do you wear?”  The man asked him.

”Dog, about half the time.”  Prince said irreverently.

Columbia’s laugh was genuinely surprised, but he didn’t seem at all offended.  “People do like dogs.”  He said.

”Hey, yeah, did you pick that one because it’s easy to get people to like you?”  Ruby suddenly asked, pushing through her own sense of longing for the life that Columbia’s words promised was possible.  “You went with a golden retriever, and you left me with a pit bull!  Hey, hang on!”

”People love pit bulls!”  Prince defended what was absolutely a selfish action on his part, sometime in their distant past.

Ruby scowled. “Not the one I copied.”  She reminded him.

”There are plenty of good dogs down here, just steal a new one.”  Prince rolled his eyes, shaking his head toward Columbia as if to express that his sister was unbelievably short sighted.

”I’m not gonna confuse a fuckin’ dog.  I’ll get one from somewhere else.”  She muttered, starting to stand up.  “Hey.  Keep going.”  She told Prince, as the mimic stretched her arms out and adjusted the form of her clothes to look more natural while she grabbed her empty mug off the table.

”Keep going.”  Prince said back to her.  It wasn’t an old ritual between them.  But it was becoming an important one.  As Ruby left, he cast an eye at Columbia, who was still sitting comfortably.  “Did you not come here with her?”  He asked.

The inhabitor shook his head.  “Your sister annexed my table and informed me that it was my fault for taking too long.”  He said with a fond smile.

”That… yeah.  Okay.  That sounds true, as little as I want it to be.”  Even after all this time, Prince found, his sister could still make him feel like an idiot with practically no effort at all

Perhaps, he thought, as he sipped his latte with no intention of leaving the table that was now also his, that was just what having a sibling was like.

______

Townton was not large enough to have districts currently.  Despite a population quickly soaring into the thousands, and the restoration and construction teams doing some truly impressive work to make the housing for that growth available, it just didn’’t take up that much physical space.

To a human who had visited a major city, the population density probably wouldn’t seem like anything at all.  Yes, a few apartment complexes were a little more complex than normal, and that row of townhomes that had been nearing completion when Townton had been ruined had a little more depth to it than anyone would expect.  But so what?  Cities that weren’t even that big could have a single hotel that could house half the population here, even if several hundred of them were chanters.

To Rise, the population density was provocative from two directions.  Not confusing, or worrying, though it was both of those things to the chanter to some degree.  One thing it couldn’t be though was strange.

He had never expected to live this long.  Every single day was full of experiences that he had no context for, sounds and flavors he could not have imagined.  Everything was strange.  Population numbers were, legitimately, one of the least strange things.  Because he felt like he understood them at least a little bit.

But they did provoke a thought.  Several thoughts.  From one direction, there were a lot of people.  So many people.  More people than there had ever been chanters.  Which was difficult to grapple with; there were children now, but none of the chanters or the more educated members of the Order knew how quickly the made more children, if they ever wanted to.  Their participation in Townton might never grow beyond the three and a half extra wide city blocks that made up their park, while others might need the city to be built again just to hold them.

And yet, Rise loved it when new people arrived.  Some of the chanters didn’t quite.  Even and Pia and Miette, kind as they were, brave as they were, would often bother him with a low-chant of worry about lines of escape, about being outnumbered, about being hopelessly trapped again.  But those were low feelings, never held in their high-chant voices, so he forgave them.  Understood them.

Especially because every new person was an opportunity.  A new picture of elsewhere that the chanters could learn from.  And they could learn now!  Learning required knowledge, which was frustrating, and so that initial knowledge was hard fought to acquire.  But now that they had a little of it, many of his people had taken to learning like they had when they were first offered real food, or clear water, or kind touches.

And Rise saw learning everywhere.  He saw it in the chance to take in the strange orbs, in the digital connection his skulljack offered, in the new-chant and the communication with everyone around them, in the other places he was allowed and invited  to explore - both dungeons and simply other parts of this world - and, of course, in the study of people.

Every new person that filled Townton’s buildings, that walked its streets together, was a chance for Rise to see a way of being that maybe the chanters would want to make their own.

From the other direction, though, every new person was another unknown.  Another thing that must be learned.  Another worry.  Another fear.

Rise liked Townton when it was not so full of life that it had been crowded.  And it still was not crowded, but it was livelier.  Faster.  Harder to think within, especially as the high-chant grew stronger and stronger as the real fears were pushed back.  And so, sometimes, he left.

Not to go visit a dungeon or another home.  But simply to wander, on his own volition.  Walking out the gates that were never closed to him, exchanging words of security with those who watched for threats.  Taking meandering paths through a place that the humans still called Townton, but was… not.

Townton-That-Was was a good place to wander.  It was a corpse of a city.  But Rise had seen death, over and over, and this shadow of Townton wasn’t like any of it.  It was… dead, but also alive.

Plants swarmed the ruined bodies of houses and businesses.  Some of them dulled for the winter, some a steady green, some the bumps and pods of fungus that often sprung up where corpses of the living and not the structure had fallen.  Rise wandered through streets he knew the shape of, passing cars that were not yet retrieved and revived, and watching with his tall oval eyes places where rainwater spilled over tilted rooftops, and steam rose up from overgrown sewer grates.

And of course, there were people here too.

The Order didn’t know exactly what to do with the necroads.  Many of them had wandered into Townton’s restoration zone, floating with passive explorations as they sometimes picked individuals to follow for a time.  And they were alive.  Rise had heard that, from Indira; they could be spoken to with a special kind of chant.  Or language, really; no chanting involved.

People who would speak casually while moving through the park, or people who would speak directly to Rise, had said that the necroads didn’t appear to think very much at all.  That they learned, but very slowly.  And that their aggression was still so random outside of the intentional visitors that it was going to be the work of years to speak to all of them.

Rise wasn’t so sure.

And that was strange.  There were so many new thoughts, so many new experiences, and yet one thing had been constant ever since he and his people were freed.  The people here could be trusted.  Trust wasn’t even really the right word or chant.  They said things, and then those things happened.  Their reasons were explained, and even if context was lacking, the context could be explained.

So when they said the necroads were difficult to communicate with, Rise felt almost guilty for questioning them.  His low-chant echoed it, and the new-chant allowed him to express that to his closest people.  People who had told him that, if he was not sure, that he should follow their new way of learning, and experiment.

And now he was out here, in the old Townton.  Not just to stretch his increasingly strengthening legs, either.

The first necroads Rise found were in their own kind of pentad formation.  His delver training kicked in, telling him that this was a risk he could not afford to take.  Never, he remembered Karen telling them all, wager anything you cannot lose.  His life mattered now.  So he did not wager it.

The second time, he could tell they were aggressive.  Or at least dangerous.  The hovering claws of textured black stone were in the process of assaulting a wooden telephone pole, quickly turning it into shredded chips of wood for no reason that Rise could detect.  Maybe it had hurt them.  Maybe it was in their way.  Either way, this wasn’t a good idea either.

Keeping his profile low and his shell behind some kind of large green metal box, he moved on.

Down streets pitted by holes made from old strikes and risen living stones, past a building taller than anything Rise had ever seen that was half collapsed in on itself, and eventually, to a small parking lot where there were two necroads simply… waiting.

Waiting for Rise, perhaps.

If they weren’t before, they would be now.  He took the opportunity, and approached.  Slowly, openly, letting the tips of his legs tap against the street almost painfully as he stepped into what should be their view.  Rise didn’t know exactly what they saw with; they were, after all, simply five different floating black stones.  Their own individual pentads, with something concealed inside their bodies that kept them moving.  Their claws weren’t like his legs and hands; they were interchangeable.  But the central stone was just a cone that listed in the middle of their selves, unconnected and seemingly unconcerned with direction.

They turned toward him, passive, but alert.  Curious, perhaps.  And when he saw he had their attention, Rise tried something new.

He tried chanting.

There was something that all the necroads in Townton, the peaceful ones, the talkative ones, had in common.  All of them were, already, inside the range of the high-chant.  The chant didn’t stop at the fence, or the markers that showed dangerous areas.  It stopped where it stopped, and that was far enough away that many of the necroads would have heard it.

And some of them followed it.  And listened.

Rise didn’t turn himself into a singer in the high-chant; he was a little far from the others anyway, even if he was stronger and stronger with every day of healing.  Instead, he called out on his own, chanting curiosity, and wonder.  Pushing with the voice that every chanter had been beaten into nearly forgetting, which meant that part of what he chanted was the ever-lingering fear.  But the pair of necroads didn’t attack, or scatter, or strike.

Instead, claws touched down on asphalt, as one of them slowly mimicked the motions of walking, pulling its central core over a strip of gravel that was now more weeds than rock.  Advancing slowly, but deliberately, toward Rise.

These chanters couldn’t speak the yet further new language that Rise had started to learn.  There were no motions with his hands that would tell them things clearly.  All he had was a strange hope, and his low-chant.  One carrying the other as he kept his voice spilling out, covering the whole area.  All the broken brickwork and wrecked cars and scattered garbage that had piled up into packed mud by the curbs, all of it heard what he had to chant.

Curiosity, fear, worry, placid comfort.  But also, hope.  And also, the form of satisfaction that meant that he was prepared for any outcome of this situation.  To another chanter, this would have meant, simply put, hello.

To the necroads, Rise thought, as the one that had advanced came to a stop in front of him and began turning its floating asphalt claws.  Not to strike; not fearing his own death didn’t mean that Rise would just stand and let them hit him.  But instead, the motions were more like curious prods.  Like it was waiting and asking permission to poke him.

Rise held still as the necroad prodded long spread lines of sharpened stone against his shell, though he pushed them aside when they moved to his less hardened pieces, and the necroad allowed it.  The other one joined the first shortly, and he tried to chant something more complex than his kith ever used the high-chant for.

This way is something better.  Rise tried to say.  It was so simple, in the newer speech.  Such a compact idea in compact spoken words.  But to say it with just a feeling was hard.  There was so much weaving back and forth with motion and meaning, just to try to get them to follow him.

And getting them to follow him was his real goal.  Because, Rise had discovered, he liked it every time someone new walked through the streets of Townton and added their own voice to the secret-chant.  The one that the others knew about, but didn’t seem to hear.  The one that, once you learned it, was a continual song.  An endlessly repeated echo from all the people who looked different and moved different and spoke different but were just like him.

The words to that song went something like, “There is going to be a tomorrow, and it is going to be better.”

It took a long time to say that to the necroads.  And maybe Rise had pronounced it wrong.  Maybe they didn’t really understand.  Maybe they needed to learn their own new chant.

But at least they would have the chance now.  And there would be two new voices in Townton’s secret song.

_____

“It should be conscious soon, and… oh well that’s a right pain, it did it again.  Moon, can you do a parasite sweep?”  The voice of the human woman that was the cage warden for the Beautiful One filtered into her consciousness.  The woman’s name was Holly.  Because humans had stupid names that didn’t describe anything, and that they hadn’t earned for themselves.  And she had more tricks than the Beautiful One had puzzled out yet, keeping the ratroach here.

The Beautiful One didn’t move as she began to have thoughts again.  Everything was still so clouded and distant.  Her limbs felt like they were straining against an impossible weight, just to lift them out of the nest.  Her thoughts ran similarly sluggish, with her barely able to acknowledge that she was having trouble thinking before she found herself thinking in circles.  Chasing prey she couldn’t understand.

There were only a few things she could hold onto.  She sorted the thoughts like treasures, so she wouldn’t forget.

One, she was a prisoner.  Two, she was not dead.  Three, she was broken.

Broken from the pain god that she had devoted herself to.  Broken from the inside in her own weapon forged body.  Broken in her strength.  She had no more sharp things, no more toys, no more anything.

She couldn’t even hold onto any more thoughts.  That was as far as she could get before it all started slipping away and she fell back into dreamless sleep.

And now she was waking up again.  Hearing the voice of one of the acolytes of an enemy god, whining about something meaningless.  It didn’t matter.  The Beautiful One could use this time to listen when no one was watching.  If they moved away, she could struggle her eyes open and try to see if she could find a way out.  If they got close, she could rip her way free and slaughter one of them.  It hadn’t worked yet, but she didn’t have any better ideas.

She never would, either, unless something changed.

”Good morning.”  A too-precise voice said near the prison nest they’d tied her to.  The Beautiful One didn’t move, trying and failing to gauge the distance to her potential target.  It was still so hard to think through the mental fog, and she couldn’t even really fully understand that she was being held back.  She waited for the annoying voice to move on.  “I am aware you are awake.”  The voice said.  To her.

Another potential ambush failed.  The Beautiful One was coming to hate the endless flavor of failure in the bile at the back of her throat.  Still, she cracked an eye open to see… one of the snake things.  The ones made of the fake flesh.  And none of the other torturers around them.

”Whaaat?”  She asked, looking at the greyish green thing.  The Beautiful One was learning one thing at least - if she spoke to them, they would go away faster.  If she’d known the word paradox she would have applied it here.

“Hello.”  The voice came from the creature that didn’t move its mouth to speak, instead pulling its lower half into a circle that it settled an upright body onto.  “My name is Texture-Of-Barkdust.  I am here to speak with you for a short time.”

The Beautiful One didn’t close all her eyes; she would not be cut while she slept.  But she did shut many of them, struggling to split the motion with her head still swimming. ”Why?”  She asked, unaware that her voice came out clearer than it ever had before.  It was hard to notice the lack of pain because of the unfortunate side effects of the painkillers themselves.

”Many reasons.”  Texture-Of-Barkdust answered.  “But some of them are too much for you right now.  So I will only say, we will be speaking more over the coming days.  I am suited for it, and I would like us to be friends.”

”Nnnnaho.”  The titanic ratroach gasped out the word, trying to flick a paw at the ghost of a snake.  “Nno ssaaaach thinng.”  She knew that word.  It was one of the words the god had made her understand were anathema.  Traps.  Lies.

There was a hissing sound from the camraconda.  Echoing around the old converted barn and its smoothed floors and sealed walls.  The Beautiful One flinched, but it wasn’t the kind of hiss that precipitated an attack.  Just a small note of interest.  “Then to be civil with each other.”  Texture-Of-Barkdust said, unbothered.  “As we are not enemies.”

”Lhhhhyar.”  She gurgled out the word.

”You will see.”  Texture-Of-Barkdust said, her voice shifting to something the Beautiful One had never really heard before.  The medical staff would have described it as kindly reassuring, but the ratroach in their care heard only another deception.  “Sleep now.  Your recovery is coming along well.  We will speak again soon.”

The Beautiful One faded from consciousness slowly, just barely hearing fragments of a conversation about stealing away her factal parasites again before she returned to sleep.

”Good morning.”  The voice said the next time she woke.  “How are you feeling today?”

”…Whhhy?”  She asked when she had the strength.

Texture-Of-Barkdust, less grey today, her pelt covering missing, gave another of her slow hisses.  “We want you to heal.”  She said.  “Asking how someone is feeling is a good way to let them talk about themself.  To uncover problems that are hidden, or share the triumph of recovery.”

The Beautiful One stared at her, the fog in her skull thinner today, but still overwhelmed by the words.  “Khyyyoo want to khill me.”  She said, starting to notice her voice was different.

”If I did, it would be very easy.  So it is good that I do not.”  The camraconda spoke with blunt honesty.  “Do you want me to kill you?”

The question took the ratroach by surprise.  And her grasp on her treasured known things slipped, as her thoughts spun away.  Did she want to die?  It would be what she deserved. It would be easier.  It would be painful forever then.  That would be how things should be.  But…

”Nnno.”  She whimpered.

Texture-Of-Barkdust showed no aggressive reaction to the pitiful admission of weakness.  Instead just shifting her body like she was trying to say something with her motion.  “That is good.”  She said simply.  And the Beautiful One felt the first crack inside her heart as something came loose.  “We will make sure you do not die.”  She continued speaking, before twisting her angular head to the side and giving another of those bobbing motions.  “Ah.  You will need further sedatives.  Sleep well, we will speak soon.”

She’d started to recognize some of those words.  Sedatives made her sleep.  But every time she was waking up, she felt the weakness recede.  And her limbs moved slightly more, even against the bonds.  Soon she would be deadly again.

But for now, she slept.

”Good morning.”  The voice called her out of the darkness.  “How are you feeling today?”

The Beautiful One didn’t know.  “Broken.”  She said.  And the word sounded wrong.  It was so easy to say it she almost bit her own tongue off.  “Wh-what…”

”A modification.”  Texture-Of-Barkdust told her.  “Your body cannot be reshaped again, so we needed to find ways to heal you that would restore you over time.  Many of our shell upgrades apply that way to your species.”

”Talking… shouldn’t… beeeee this.”  Easy.  Not this easy.  Not like this.  The Beautiful One saw her vision blur as she stared up at the barn’s ceiling.  This was wrong.  She was wrong.  She was supposed to be broken.  “Kill me.”  She whispered.  Whispered.  She wasn’t supposed to be able to whisper.

Texture-Of-Barkdust slithered closer, and the Beautiful One had a moment of wondering if it was too late to lash out.  The camraconda stopped close by her head, just inside the Beautiful One’s massive range of vision.  “This is how speaking was always supposed to be.”  She said quietly.  “Your origin has hurt you.”  Deliberately, intentionally, maliciously, she did not say, or need to say.  “We are going to undo that damage.”

The ratroach tried to jerk away, but couldn’t.  The bindings that kept her from hurting herself or others held her in place, her pale fur and gleaming chitin serving no purpose but to be a show prize.  “I am supposed to be broken.”  She said.  Not properly, she said the words with too much emphasis and too quickly and she did bite the side of her tongue, tasting her own luminous blood.  But she said it.  And she heard her own warped words echo.  “I deserve… it.”

”What you deserve does not matter.”  The camraconda told her kindly.  “And broken things can be repaired.  You are no different.”  She hissed softly, and the Beautiful One locked onto that sound as her heavy breathing and hammering hearts tugged her down into unconsciousness again.  “Sleep.  We will speak again soon.”

She collapsed.  Slept.  Did not dream.

Over and over, the Beautiful One woke to the words.  “Good morning.”  Texture-Of-Barkdust would say.  “How are you feeling?”

She struggled to answer.  But she had to answer, somehow.  For reasons she felt but didn’t understand, she tried to answer.  And then the questions changed.  Treacherously as Texture-Of-Barkdust altered her words.

”Why do you feel that way?”

Easier to answer at least.  Because she had to.  She was ordered to by the god.  It was what kept her alive and made her strong.  It was easier.  She didn’t want to be a toy, or killed.  She explained.  Or tried to.  Her voice changing while every waking cycle she felt her limbs coming back to life, her hide mending, her body working.

But for every answer, Texture-Of-Barkdust had something to tell her.  Not that she was wrong, but that she was incorrect now.  That the world here was different.  That the god was not here.  That she was changing, and could keep changing.  That she was strong, and could survive this, too.

Of course she was strong, the Beautiful One thought as she drifted off.  She had been perfect.  For a while.

”Good morning.”

”Why?”

”Why is it a good morning?”

”Yes.”

Texture-Of-Barkdust went silent so long that the Beautiful One wondered if she had found a good way to break one of her things.  But she spoke soon enough.  “Partly, saying good morning is a way to greet someone, and signal that you intend to not damage their experience.”  She said.  “It is polite.  And also friendly.  It does with words what I do when I visit you without weaponry.”

”Sstupid.”

”Perhaps.  But also, I am telling you about myself, and opening you to do the same.  My mornings are good.  I wake and spend time with someone I value, and I have many projects and objectives I make satisfying progress toward.”  She told the Beautiful One.  “I find joy in building things.”

”I am not being bhhilt.”

”You are.”  Texture-Of-Barkdust said bluntly.  “And when you speak, like this, you participate in that building.”

The Beautiful One went quiet.  That sounded… almost… like she was in control.  But she was still here, in this false nest, with needles in her arms and a constant ache in her body and tender stinging pain across her front.  “You are doing… thistome.”  She still fought her own voice.

”We are.  Because you are worth it.  Because you can be better than your god.  Because you deserve to live properly.”

The words did something wrong to her.  They hurt.  But a kind of pain that wasn’t the same as what was fading every time she woke.  Instead it made her vision blur and her throat close and her paws shake.  Another crack in her heart, every beat feeling like icy pain now.  And it was almost a mercy that she fell back asleep.

This time, she dreamed.  Old ghosts and acrid fear, with the sound of nearby voices that weren’t in her head talking about orbs and psychology skills and therapy.  She dreamed of Texture-Of-Barkdust in place of the first thing she had been told to kill, and failed to scream with a voice she had not had but should have.  She dreamed of holes in the tunnels where toys made their hiding nests, but found them lined with needles and tubes and beeping machines.  She dreamed that she had never killed enough to have a name, while the ear she had out for threats brought her a murmured conversation about intrusive infomorph landmines.  She dreamed of someone telling her that he understood and offering her a way out, and for a moment, she dreamed of a world where she had said yes. Then she dreamed that he ripped her throat out with his teeth, and turned her into a trophy, and she woke screaming wetly, sizzling tears splattering from her eyes to the nest around her.

”Good morning.”  Texture-Of-Barkdust said, voice as civil as ever.

”G-good… morning.”  The ratroach that had once been the Beautiful One lied into the ritual.

”You did not sleep well.”  The camraconda stated.

The ratroach shuddered, and tried to curl up, but the bindings… did not restrict her.  They were still there, but loosened.  Vastly loosened.  “No.” She whimpered.

”There was something in your mind.”  Texture-Of-Barkdust informed her from close to the side of her nest.  “We have removed it.  I will not lie and tell you that you will have only good dreams now, but nothing will force the nightmares.”

”Whhhhy.”  The ratroach tugged an arm against her chest, the IV offering no resistance, just moving with her.  “Why did it… why me.  Why.  Why?”

”There are many reasons.  When you are ready, we will explain.  But for now, you are, as completely as we can make you, safe.”  She said.

The ratroach who had lost her name peeled her heavy head, almost as large as Texture-Of-Barkdust on its own, off the foam of the nest to look directly at the camraconda.  She was so close.  It would be possible now, to just… bite her.  Even if it wouldn’t matter, she could do what she was supposed to.  She could be what the one true god demanded.  “Safe?”  She said instead, already knowing what it meant, not sure why she asked, chest contracting in the first of many sobs that she was never going to be able to hold back.

”Safe.  No one is going to hurt you.”  Texture-Of-Barkdust said, as the ratroach flattened herself into the foam in front of her, silently soaking herself and her blankets through with glowing blue tears that were a biohazard to most of the Order.  “Now.  I believe you will be able to rest without unconsciousness, but we do not wish for you to become bored.  I require breakfast, would you like to share with me while we speak?”

The nameless ratroach didn’t have an answer for a long time.  But when she was done crying, and done getting used to the warring feelings she had no control over, she still said yes.

And she still didn’t know why she did that.

_____

Spire-Cast-Behind raised a mechanical arm, sighted down it with her lens, and applied proper pressure to the trigger.  A stubby carbon composite crossbow bolt leapt from her weapon with no more noise than the mechanical thwap of the string.  And fifty feet away - about the maximum effective range for the small version of the weapon she used - that bolt punctured two inches into the wood of her target.

”It irritates you do that easy.”  The digital voice next to her said as she ran the automated routine for her mechanical arm to reload the hand crossbow from the harness she was wearing.

Spire adjusted her camera head to the side, looking at the trio of loops of hefty cable with dully glowing LEDs in their centers that made up the face of the vent spider next to her.  He had his own crossbow, but the arm pack he was wearing was a borrowed early prototype version.  Though better equipment wouldn’t compensate for the fact that he was just not listening to her advice.

”I have practiced.  Extensively.”  Spire spent a lot of time mastering her various tools.  This was only one of them, but she had needed to extrapolate her skill orb ranks into her body and mechanical upgrades.

The HVACnid sighted down his own crossbow, but took long enough to pull the trigger that Spire wondered if he was having difficulty with the fine manipulators.  When he did fire, the bolt went wildly off target, skittering across the asphalt of what had once been one of Townton’s loading docks, and vanishing into the dune of dirt and fallen leaves pressed up against a chain link fence.

”Annoying!”  Her fellow Officium Mundi life form declared.  “This not feeling.  Difficult.”

”The proprioception issue was a struggle for me too.”  Spire tried to share his struggle a little, but her patience wasn’t stockpiled at the moment.  “Being able to repeat motions exactly helps, but you must practice with the sights.”

The vent spider stepped sideways with his boxy body, moving with metal legs that Spire was pretty sure had their own magic to them to silence their steps.  He looked so similar in silhouette to the chanters, for a creature that was wholly different from them.  Taking his time to aim again, the vent spider completely failed to follow her advice, and she could see the exact moment where he made the unintentional decision to miss his target again.

Spire considered pointing out her own method’s functionality by putting another bolt into the bullseye, but instead held herself in more polite observation.  “Why did you ask to join me for practice today?”  She asked bluntly.

There was a rhythm to talking with humans that Spire liked.  A flow to the conversation, segues and leads and tangents.  But she knew, from the newer camracondas stolen from her old prison, that Officium Mundi life often needed a complete lack of the diplomatic.  It was such a sharp change, especially since she was here in Townton on a one-day ‘vacation’ from doing actual diplomacy in Uruguay; just stopping in for a bit to let one of her slips form in the city and check in on some umbral acquaintances before she was off again.

“You can make me stronger.”  The HVACnid said directly, reloading his crossbow and maybe actually applying what Spire had told him.  “I need that.”

”To return to your home.”  Spire prompted.

”Yes!”  His bolt hit the upper corner of the target, which was arguably far worse in terms of making the projectile retrievable at a later day, since it deflected off somewhere.  Spire was glad this whole area of the city was empty of anyone who could be hurt by a rogue crossbow bolt.  “Our home!”

”Your home.”  Spire-Cast-Behind hissed in irritation at her own clipped response.  She loved her voice, and her ever-expanding command of language.  She needed to not slip back into old habits just because she was talking to someone who spoke like she used to.  “My own home is a communal nest apartment in the Lair’s living quarters.” One she didn’t go back to.  One that was too empty.  One that - Spire crushed her line of thought before it ran away again.

”No.  Real home.”  The spider said, and Spire considered throwing him off the loading dock.  Nonlethally of course.  Probably.  “When strong, return, and make better.”

Spire-Cast-Behind could at least understand that part.  “I would, personally, find it more valuable to exfiltrate your people.”  She said.  “Townton has space for you, if your estimates of population numbers are accurate.”

The vent spider took another shot with his crossbow, this one missing more conventionally.  “Then would not be my people.”  He said, his borrowed digital voice somehow sounding smug to Spire.

She hissed in frustration, looking up at the cool grey sky overhead.  The ripples in the clouds here always looked like there was a distant storm, even on a day without rain like today, and they calmed her to stare at.  “Your education, perhaps, should not start with weapons training.”  Spire said.

”How else to win a place in my people?”  The spider asked.

Spire closed her lens, still keeping her head pointed upward, enjoying the ache of stretching herself out this way.  “Words and support worked well enough for my own kind.”  She said.  And kidnapping, for new members of Earth’s camraconda population.  But that was true of many dungeon life forms.  “It seems you would benefit most immediately from a study of politics, ethics, and civics.”

”Will not make me strong.”  He told her, like she was an idiot.

”Strength is circumstantial.” Spire said.  She decided to demonstrate, not looking down as her mechanical puppet arm snapped her crossbow up and planted a bolt dead center of the target.  She heard the satisfying thunk, and then a repeat as she reloaded and did it again, and again, before finally opening her lens and arching herself down to look at her work.  “Interesting.”  She said, examining the cluster of bolts that were pressed against each other in the wood.  “Does this mean I would be a good leader of your people?”  She asked.

”Wrong shape.”  The HVACnid said.  “But yes!  You are powerful.”

Spire gave a full body heave of a sigh, and remembered she had to be direct.  “Being able to fight will not make you a king, no matter how much of a prince in exile you are.”  She flatly told him, her synthesized voice affecting a flat sarcasm.  “If your leadership is validated by combat, then you will lead only until someone better at combat decides they want your job.”

”But!  You make me strong, then I won’t lose!”

“I’m sorry, why do you wish to lead your people at all?”  Spire asked, half-listening to the sound of a small engine nearby.  A motorcycle, if she recognized it properly.  Likely Kirk. No one else here appreciated unarmored vehicles when leaving the safe zone.  “If growing and learning is all you want, then you can do that for its own sake in the Order.  If the betterment of your people is your goal, then your idea is childish.  So what do you even want?  You won’t even name yourself, how can you expect to guide those who struggle for base survival?”

The HVACnid rasped its rear metal legs together as it tilted its head toward her, the fans sunk into its body whirring on undisturbed.  “Names belong to winners.”

”That sounds like something my sister says a particularly dangerous monster keeps trying to claim.”  Spire mused.  “Also it does not answer my question.”  She reloaded, fired again.  Began a steady rhythm as she spoke, just to drive home a point.  “You do not find this fun or satisfying.  You could be somewhere else.  So what do you want?”

“Prove I am capable!”  The spider declared. “Show value as ally.”  He continued, pointing a leg at her as his LED eyes began to show more contrast in the fading evening light. 

“As in… you wish for me to help you?  To return to your home and conquer it?”  Spire hissed a laugh as she got a rapid shaking nod from her fellow Office refugee.  “Absolutely not.”  She didn’t bother trying to be polite.  “I am not a warlord.  I am a paladin. I serve people, and find peace and joy in that service.  That is not ancillary to who I am, it is the source of my strength.”

The spider made a whirring sound, air filtering through its machine body at high speed before it found its voice again through the relatively new skulljack port. “Ok. Will follow.”

“What.”

“To see your strength.”

Spire was pretty sure that she hadn’t invited this person to anything at all; neither this practice nor her ongoing paladin role.  “No?”  She ventured.  “No.  I am busy.”  Then she had a thought. “I will send you to Simon.  He has no one to occupy his time.”

“Strong?”

“The strongest human I know.”  Spire said honestly as she slithered off the loading dock to retrieve all her bolts.

Maybe, if they were lucky, Simon would be strong enough to hammer some sense into this dumbass.

Either way, though, Spire needed to let people know about this mindset.  She found it likely that others in the Order were making an overly generous assumption about the HVACnid’s priorities, and someone should really put a stop to their foolishness before they had acquired a dozen levels in things and an equal number of spell slots.

Just as they weren’t keen on giving unvetted humans a leg up to amplify their own bigotries and bad ideas, the Order needed to be mindful that not everyone from a dungeon was going to instantly understand their method of good, or their commitment to utopia.  Being a person, sadly, meant being capable of being quite unpleasant at times.  Though at least Spire could get a head start on this one before it got out of her grip.

Maybe she should talk to the other HVACnid.  That one seemed like they were just an adventurer.  It would be interesting to find their species’ version of Alex, and see what they had to say about their home.

Maybe when she had some extra time.

_____

Terror did not know what to do.

With his time.  With the Order.  With himself.  There were, suddenly, far fewer questions, while at the same time, there was more information, and none of that actually helped the umbral understand what happened next.

He didn’t want to go back to Saskatoon.  He couldn’t.  Ever.  If he did, he was absolutely certain that he would burn that wretched mass of human decay to the ground, one building at a time if needed.  It didn’t matter that a thousand of his people had been bluntly shoved into the population; Terror knew that it would only be weeks or a month at most before the novelty and confusion wore off and the tension and human bigotry crept in.

Townton was, and it annoyed him to admit it, better.  It was technically correct that humans were the majority here, but it did often feel like they were trying to undo that themselves.  There were three hundred adult chanters, and an even greater supply of umbral now, with ratroaches catching up to that number over time too.  A lot of people, packed into what shouldn’t have been enough space at all.  But the Order’s expanded living buildings were, for now, enough.  And it was equally annoying that they both had a solution to seemingly every problem, and also were aggravatingly pleasant.

It almost made him want to go somewhere else.  Anywhere else.  Though he knew there would be no place in this human world for a lone umbral, but in the slight amount of time he had been here, Townton had felt like a cage twice as often as it felt like a potential home.

But no.  Leaving would be fleeing.  There had to be someone here that cared about the umbral, as a species.  Not that simply pitied them, or romanticized them, or whatever new demeaning method was waiting in the future.

And yet that was the future.  A future that was uncertain at best, and that he didn’t understand.  In the present, right now, he didn’t know what to actually do.  He had not been one of the umbral that had been folded into the community leadership or civil safety programs, for obvious reasons.  He was still dangerous, as far as everyone knew, but his rewarded demiplane from the non-home hell zone only had a few entrances around here, and most of the empowerments weren’t exactly that useful for mass violence.  He also wasn’t exactly liked by the other umbral, which was understandable given that he had been wrong about too many details to be trusted.  But it didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

And still.  No matter how much Townton annoyed him some days, he didn’t want it destroyed.  The emotional static didn’t change what he knew to be true, what he forced himself to accept as real; that this was going to be somewhere, and that his people were going to be part of it.  All he had to do was refrain from arson for a little while.

So Terror knew what he wasn’t doing, but not what he was.

Which was why he engaged in what was an honored tradition of the lost and wary since long before he had first opened his eyes in a dark cave that danced with the light of unseen torches, and went to a bar.

Townton had one bar, which was actually one more than Terror expected.  Unlike the apartment buildings, however, it had not been twisted and wrapped around itself on the inside, and so the booths and tables could only sustain so many bodies.  Which was unfortunate, because as soon as he walked through the doors, having been sarcastically asked for his ID by the human bouncer, Terror realized that he was not the only one to have this idea on the cold and lonely evening.

It wasn’t quite max occupancy, but the tables were packed with people of a dozen shapes, laughing and chatting.  The booths were similarly in use, even the shadowy ones in the corners that Terror had - without really thinking it - planned on occupying himself for sulking purposes.  At least there was floor space; this wasn’t some uncontrolled mass of humans having a party, just a building that was surprisingly full.  And equally surprisingly, while it was loud, it was also clear in the soundscape.  The music was pleasantly audible, and the conversations and words of speakers failed to congeal into just noise.  There was the magic.

Terror forced his body to move, legs moving in the slowest form of a scuttle that let him still give the appearance of moving smoothly, while he approached the bar itself.  The barstools were clearly not the original fixtures for this place, and of that he was glad, because the one that had been left empty was the largest, and was enough to accommodate him settling his body onto it.  One of the bartenders gave him a nod, showing that she’d seen him, and would get to him eventually, which was the kind of distantly impersonal but polite behavior that Terror was actually most put at ease by.  There was just something comforting in a person treating you like a person while not giving a shit about you as a person.

He should have brought a book.  Now he had to be patient, which was difficult, when he was sitting in a row with other people who all seemed to be even worse at waiting than he was.

The human next to him on his right looked familiar, until he realized that she was probably the sister or maybe disappointing daughter of the winged knight that had been one of the ones to unofficially greet his people to Townton.  She, at least, seemed engaged talking to a more pleasantly colored human farther down the bar that was wearing some kind of headscarf.  On his other side was one of the twisted bug and rodent combination creatures, though this one had a deep purple fur that overlapped strangely with her chitin parts that were a dull teal.

Both of them looked like they were nervous and upset.

Terror, patiently, looked in the direction of the bartender and found that he was perhaps the twentieth living person in this building in line for her attention.  So he sighed out, a chill summer breeze emanating from his body as he opened one of the eye bands on his left side, and took advantage of the clarity that conversations here carried.  “You seem upset.”  Terror told the ratroach sitting next to him.  “Is something wrong?”

The creature looked up at him like their neck was spring-loaded, flinching back from Terror.  He didn’t really like that reaction, he was surprised to find.  It caught him so off guard that it crashed through the structure of thoughts he’d been slowly building up since moving here; that this was the first time someone had looked at him like he was a monster.  The only other person who had done so had been a different ratroach, that he had unintentionally startled when the paladin had brought his group here to negotiate.

But no one else had.  And Ink’s words came back to him from that same night; they just gave him what he had wanted.  It had been so easy, maybe he hadn’t noticed how much he had wanted it until he saw an example of something not working.

”I apologize.”  His lightly static voice came out, causing the ratroach to freeze as she looked up at him.  Terror moved to stand up.  “I did not mean to scare you.”

”Y-you didn’t.”  The whispered words were still perfectly audible.  “Y-ou don’t have t-to go.  I… I… am alright.”

He turned so more of his colored eyes could focus on the ratroach next to him, and slowly settled back onto the stool.  “You do not seem alright.”  He said as placatingly as he could manage, now curious.

”T-they let her out.”  The ratroach whispered, turning her head down to the bar again, shoulders slumping as she scraped smoothed claws across the chitin of her own arms.

“I do not know…” Terror started, before being cut off by a human hand placed palm down on the flat surface of the bar in front of him.  He didn’t turn, simply opening an eye on one of his arms to look at the woman on the other side of himself that had moved to interrupt him.  “Yes?”

“The correct thing to say, I have learned from my sister,” she said, and Terror filed that relationship away for later, “is ‘would you like to talk about it’.”

Terror flicked some of his sharper upper tendrils at her in annoyance.  “No matter what some people think, I’m not entirely incapable of social interaction.”

”If you say so.”  The human girl shifted back, and watched him openly.  She was, Terror realized, exceptionally dangerous.  There was no hint of hesitation or shame in her, just the honest appraisal of him as a target.  Brutal honesty in the form of a stare, which he almost appreciated.  He less appreciated that the ring of candles in his demiplane, the ones that marked people who were of the greatest threat, put her above the majority of the city.

Terror tried to follow her advice as she went back to her own conversation.  The much less threatening human woman returning to an emotional outpouring that was half laugh half breakdown.  Something about leaving her home country.  Terror ignored them, and made sure the ratroach could tell he was looking at her.  “Would you like to talk about what is bothering you?”  The words were stilted, but he at least managed to not sound sarcastic.  “I will be waiting for a while.”

”N-no.”  The ratroach whispered, looking away, then back at him, one of her paws clutching an empty glass so hard Terror wondered if she was going to shatter it.  “Y-yes.”

He legitimately felt some concern for the ratroach; she looked… uncomposed.  It was also strange to see anyone here that seemed to be in distress, especially a nonhuman.  Which was worrying.  “Go ahead, I will listen.”  He tried to make it sound less aloof than he knew he could come across.

”They let… let her out.”  The purple furred ratroach repeated.  “The Beautiful One.”

”Is that…” Terror’s own gap in his words was because of confusion, not a terrified stammer, “a name?”  He paused.  “Do you have a name?”  That was a simple question, maybe it would help.

”Smoke.”  She said.  “And it was her… her title?  Her crown.”  Terror settled onto his stool, letting it take more of his weight, tendrils stilling as he listened.  The ratroach, Smoke, still spoke quietly but it seemed like putting her thoughts into words was helping her focus at least.  “She was my owner.”

”What.”  The umbral’s single word of anger crackled through the air of the bar.  Smoke flinched back, and he saw the human next to him on the other side flicker in motion as she turned away from her own conversation.  “No, no, this was in the past.  I am… reacting badly.  Was?”

“Was.”  Smoke nodded, her antenna softly waving in the low light.  “I’m here now.  It’s okay now.”  She echoed the words like a refrain as the bartender passed them by on the other side of the counter, carrying some kind of spiked fruit and a knife.  “Sh-she.  Was the strongest.  The god liked her.  So she did whatever she wanted.  She made me-“ Smoke choked off the words.

Terror abruptly realized that he had subconsciously opened up one of his arms, the long fingers of his hand moving around Smoke without him thinking about it.  Without really noticing, he had internally begun thinking of her the same way he would about one of his own kind who were coming back from their ‘assignment’ to be an abused captive of some human oligarch or enforcer.  “Would you-“ He started to say, when Smoke saw what he was doing, and started frantically nodding at him, her antenna dully impacting the back of her sweater.  Terror took that as permission, and settled his hand around her back.  And most of her body.  She was much smaller than the umbral he was used to trying to comfort.  “I apologize for pressing.”  He said, using his own familiar words.

”‘S’okay.”  Smoke whispered, perfectly still on her own stool.  “She’s why I’m this color.”  She said, making a clicking sound in her chest as she sniffed in a deep steadying breath of the warm air in the bar.

”This ‘Beautiful One’ made you purple?”  Terror asked.

Smoke burst out a giggle, before she stilled again against his resting hand.  “No.”  She whispered, looking down and away.  “She m-made me change myself.  I was w-white furred, when I was rescued.  And the kind of milky white plate.  The rainbowy color.  Opal.”

”You changed again?”  Terror asked, pushing the conversation somewhere safe.  “Why purple?”

”Karen.”  Smoke said, her muzzle curving in a small smile.

”…I don’t know who that is.  A human?”

Smoke nodded slowly.  “Probably. I t-think she reads minds.”  She said.  “She stopped me t-taking out my fur, a long time ago.  Helped me dye it.  Purple was the only color she had at home.  She said she didn’t need it but I think her daughter wanted it and Karen is silly sometimes, but she doesn’t want anyone to know that.”  Smoke’s muscles slowly relaxed, the feeling of holding herself in an attack posture fading as she kept talking.  “I liked it.  It made me different.  I wasn’t spare parts anymore, I looked like… like me.  So when I reshaped, I kept it.”

Terror locked on to the phrase spare parts like a hateful missile, but fought back the urge to question it.  “Would that all humans were that kind.”

”I don’t know many humans.”  Smoke admitted in a nervous whisper.  “I know…” she trailed off and looked up, twisting her muzzle over Terror’s arm to look behind them at the rest of the crowded and noisy bar.  “I know I’m lucky.”  She said.

”You…” Terror’s tendrils slumped as he felt a heavy sorrow take over.  ‘You are.  Humans mostly disappoint me when I meet them.”  That sounded good.  That wasn’t technically a lie.

”When James talks about humans, he talks like you.”  Smoke told him with a grin.

Terror slowly pulled his arm back, folding it into his body while the bands of his eyes pulled upward to look over the heads of everyone around him.  “Most people wait until they know me better or we’re trying to kill each other to start insulting me like that.”

Smoke examined him closely, her fear of the towering umbral having faded away now that her nerves were settled.  “James talks like that when he’s making secret jokes too.”

”I am going to throw him out of a window again.”  Terror’s voice buzzed with a higher pitch of static.

”Please don’t.”  The voice from the girl on his other side drew his attention.  “He’s annoying when he brags to my sister about it.”

Terror turned to look at her, and her steady, fearless stare.  “…not because I shouldn’t try to kill him?”

”Cam says that’s his hobby.”  She said, before turning away him again, returning to her friend who was now bubbling with laughter that might have something to do with what she was drinking.

"Did you also hurt James by a-accident?"  Smoke asked Terror as he shivered his way out of looking at the strange woman on his left.  "I did.  W-when I first met him."  She gave a far too sad look at her claws.

He made a breezy huff of exasperation.  "No accident about it.  I meant to kill him, it just didn't work."  Terror eyed the ratroach again and put on a fond affectation to his staticky words.  "At least injuring him seems to be a cultural touchstone here."

”You don’t like him.”  Smoke whispered, maybe as a question.

”I…” Terror tried to think of a diplomatic answer, and then just gave up, letting his tendrils sway in animated chops of the air.  “No.”  He said.  “I don’t.  He’s naive.  He thinks he can solve every problem by talking and being nice.”  Terror twisted his less sharp tendrils down to tap against the smooth wood of the bar.  “And it annoys me that it has either worked for him, or failed to kill him.  If I had tried that…”

His static-laced voice splintered as he flattened the colored oval loops of his eyes.

If he had tried that, would he be dead?  Or would it have worked?  And which one was worse, really.  Should he be jealous that James kept succeeding where he would have failed, or should he hate himself because he might not have failed if only he had held the same conviction?

“He's my paladin."  Smoke said in the loudest voice she'd managed so far.  The words came with a defiant upturned muzzle, and Smoke staring at Terror with all her eyes focused on what she probably thought was his head.

There was, he wasn't too socially inept to notice, quite a lot packed into those words.  When Smoke said the human's name, she wasn't talking in the abstract about a distant figure in her organization.  She was talking about a hero.  Her hero.  Not someone to look up to, but someone who had probably done something impossible just to keep her alive, and didn't even think much of it.

That was a hard level of fanaticism for Terror to grapple with.  Especially since his own hero was already dead, and he wasn't going to be looking for any kind of replacement.  Still, he tread carefully with his next words.  "Still.  You don't seem happy with your paladin."  He gently plucked at Smoke's anxiety, twisting to look down the length of the bar.

"He let her out.”  Smoke whispered again, drawing his attention back to her.  Terror looked back to see the lithe purple and teal ratroach looking down at the set of her paws that were ticking claws against each other on the bar.  More composed, but still thinking deeply.  It was a true magic of this place that her voice reached him at all.  “I know… I don’t need to be afraid.  I’m s-so angry.  She was going to kill me.  For fun.  For my parts.”

“She was a prisoner?”  Terror asked, grateful for the distraction from his own thoughts.

”In t-the Akashic Sewer.  She was a warlord.”  Smoke had learned that word recently and found it very fun to say.  “They rescued her, just like me.  He did.”

Terror shifted his tendrils around.  “Oh, I doubt it was very much like you.”  He said, realizing what the shape of things was.  “But I have been finding, annoyingly, that they will rescue anyone, won’t they?  The paladin has a deeply irritating habit of not killing people.”

”Yeah.”  Smoke breathed out the word.  “I’m angry.” She looked up at him, a neon green flush around the lower set of her eyes.  “But.”

”But that insufferable idiot keeps having his plans work.”  Terror complained.  “I suppose it does explain why you are here drinking.”  He told her.

Smoke’s eyes shifted as her expression changed.  “W-what… why does that explain?”  She asked.

“…Humans use - well, umbral too - drink alcohol to make the world seem easier to manage.”  Terror told her.  “Does your species not manage that?”

”Oh!”  Smoke looked down at her empty cup with a thick metal straw in it.  “Th-this was mango juice.”  She spoke awkwardly, as if raising her voice over a whisper was novel to her.  “Alcohol smells bad.”

The bartender took that moment to appear.  “Alright, sorry for the wait.  What’cha want?”  Her voice was crisp and blunt, but unhurried.  This place had a pathological aversion to putting people under pressure.

The human woman’s neck held tattoos that Terror swept his sight over, making sure they weren’t demiplane marks just in case.  “A stout.”  He said.  “Whatever is on tap.  Triple the normal amount.”

”Umbral sized, got it.  Anything for you hon?”  The bartender’s voice was notably warmer for Smoke.

The purple furred ratroach looked quickly between Terror and the bartender, before chittering out an answer.  “Th-the same!”

”You sure?”  The bartender asked, and from her voice, it was clear that she was actually asking just how bad of an idea this was.

”Maybe not the same amount.”  Terror offered.

”Yeah no shit man.”  The human rolled her eyes at him.  A motion Terror was annoyed he couldn’t replicate, so he coiled and flicked a tendril in a similar sarcastic gesture back.

Smoke’s smile was a razor-thin edge of a blue glow.  “I w-want to try it.”  She said.

”I am going to tell you now, you will not enjoy it.”  Terror warned her.

“Then why are you drinking it?!”  Smoke chittered at him with the most animation he’d seen from the ratroach since sitting down.

Terror watched the counter in front of him as the bartender performed the ancient ritual that spanned across species of sliding full glasses with a dramatic flourish so they stopped in front of him, one after the other.  A fourth mug, definitely smaller all on its own and with a clean straw poking out of the edge, settled in front of Smoke, who leaned forward to sniff it, her muzzle pulling back in something almost like a snarl.  “I think I might just be bad at not being human.”  Terror admitted as he looked at his collective drink, a tendril with textured cilia gripping the first of the glasses.  “But that is talk for after I have finished at least two of these.”

Next to him, Smoke sipped her lager, and twisted her face so quickly that Terror almost worried if she was going to crack her chitin.

Terror was reasonably certain this was going to end poorly.

But at least for a little bit, he knew what he was doing with his time.  And that, along with the lightly alcoholic drink, was a kind of comfort.  And it was, he admitted to himself, satisfying to again be someone who could listen to another’s pain and tell them they were right to feel it.  He had stopped doing that for his fellow umbral a long time ago, and the memory of it stung when he touched on it.

But here, in this bar full of salvaged furniture and bizarre people, he felt like time was passing without hurting too badly.  Though he made a mistake of asking Smoke when they were both halfway through their drinks what she did in Townton, and learned in excruciating detail that her job apparently involved cost management for the city’s ‘necessity distribution center’.

Terror had named himself something as a signal that he was done being the one who was afraid.  He had beaten down his own fear of pain, of death, of anything that could hurt him.

But an eighty pound ratroach defiantly annihilating her first beer and talking about spreadsheets like they were divine icons?  Terror didn’t have a defense against that.

And yet, he found it was still better than drinking alone again.