The Daily Grind - Chapter 383 (Patreon)

First of two chapters for this week. Enjoy the bonus!

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"Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong." -Transformers, universal greeting-

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JP had started to really like London.

The city was a lot.  He’d grown up in and around Portland, which wasn’t exactly small, but London was dense beyond anything else.  Every single street corner had a view of fifty points of interest, every alleyway went to a dozen homes and two more businesses plus at least one secret business, and every parking structure doubled as a museum.  That last one didn’t seem to be hyperbole either; there were multiple places where preserved Roman construction was just overlain on top of the living world, alongside ten year old towers and four hundred year old pubs.

It was a trick to navigate unseen, though.  Not that he was being watched at every moment, but more that, with the number of cameras that were around, he could be being watched at any moment.  And since JP had no intention of leaving until his job was done, there was an impulse to make anyone that was trying to trace his route back through the city actually work for it.

The problem was, this was actually a really well-made panopticon.  Not on purpose, he could tell it was the kind of patchwork that emerged over time and not anything planned.  But there were CCTV cameras in so many overlapping positions that it had to be a result of someone irritated filling in blind spots.  Year after year.  Adding to the expense of the whole thing, and probably making indexing footage a real nightmare too, but also meaning that JP was never fully sure if he was being watched.

And to his deep annoyance, the earring he was wearing didn’t seem to actually deflect hostile attention from his recordings.

It did let him turn invisible though!

James, being the kind of person that JP knew he would never stop being, would often say that the earrings felt like cheating.  As if the Order hadn’t worked hard enough for invisibility or something.  JP thought the earrings felt like a victory condition that he could wear to a formal gathering, and he also thought the emulation of James’ voice in his head could shut the fuck up.

JP appeared visually in one of the few places that was out of sight of anything, and kept walking like nothing was even slightly weird.  If anyone tracked his path back to here, they would find footage of him that dead-ended at a wall made of bricks that were older than his grandparents.  JP felt bad for that wall, covered in bad graffiti.  It seemed like he had more respect for the weight of time and history that had settled over every facet of this city.  Or maybe the locals had the right of it, and the whole point was that things should last so long that a little spray paint was no big deal.  Like the building version of a temporary tattoo.

He rolled his eyes at himself as he took measured strides through the rain.  Maybe he liked London, but it was doing a number on his cool detached vibe.

The other thing he liked about London wasn’t the weather.  The weather sucked.  The rain always felt like it clung, in a way that it just didn’t back home.  Like the water itself was a different material.  A less convenient material.  A worse material.  No, the thing JP liked was that London had a lot of interesting stuff going on, even when it was raining.  Especially these days.

The interesting thing he was in the process of tailing came to a stop ahead of him, fusing seamlessly with the small crowd outside a venue.  At four PM, it was the perfect time to get in line to wait to buy overpriced alcohol, apparently.  Though JP knew damn well his target wasn’t here for a drink.  It would have been strange to see people lining up like this, acting like everything was normal, if he hadn’t been here a few days and knew everything was shockingly normal.

He also didn’t join the queue himself, instead walking past on the other side of the street with a few other pedestrians, dodging a cyclist, nearly being run over by two different drivers as he crossed down the block, then passing through a gated area behind the club.

That part was trickiest.  He needed to stick his hand through the gate, nudging the ghost potion to effect, and then let his fingers materialize on the other side to flip the latch in a smooth motion that made it look like he wasn’t some common criminal breaking in.  JP did not like the feeling of part of himself being material on the other side of an object.  It felt like he was about to lose a finger, and he needed those, for a variety of reasons.

From there, it was simple enough to move past the parked van full of sound equipment that was being unloaded, helpfully hold the door for the roadie of tonight’s live band, and let himself into the back of the house.

It was like stepping into another world.  Which was another perk of London; every single building was another world.  JP was never as much into the dungeons as James was; he thought the magic was great but the places were a little too chaotic.  Here, though, it was all bespoke.  Even this cramped back hallway had a wooden floor that thudded and thumped with footsteps and wheeled carts as JP searched through the building for his target’s target.

He found it upstairs - it had an upstairs!  He loved this place and its silly balcony - in a storage room that had a card table and three folding chairs in it.  Just barely enough space for a few people to sit and chat, a concession to the modern need for a break room in a building that was constructed before labor laws had been conceived of.

”Micky’s late.”  One of the two people in the room was whining at his friend.

The woman he was talking to made a derisive tsk, just barely audible over the growing swell of sound from people filing in downstairs.  “Micky’s always almost late.”  She said.  “More worried about Yuss.”

”He’s at the bar.”

”What?  They wouldn’t even give me a beer!  Said they weren’t open, and it was the law!”  She laughed sardonically.

”I didn’t say he was drinking, I said he was at the bar.  I think he’s waiting for the bell.”  The man replied.

JP passed the door at a casual pace, noticing no drop in the charges on his earring, and then softened his steps to turn back and lean against the wall, firing off an invisibility charge when he verified no one was watching.  He had nine charges left, and at level four, that meant five minutes a charge.  Over half an hour was plenty of time.

”Yuss is a shit Muslim, isn’t he?”

”Don’t ask me that Mel, you know I don’t know.”

The woman snorted again.  “Knob.”  She commented.  “You gonna be alright to play tonight?”

”Yeh, yeh.”  The man replied quietly.  “Feels a bit shit is all.  Our last show should be more than this.  Especially…”

”You said you wouldn’t talk about it.”  Mel’s voice held no room for comment or argument.  JP smirked to himself at the firmness.  Apparently she’d been breaking some of her own rules, if her bandmate was saying things like that.

As JP listened in on the two of them, he kept his eyes peeled for anyone moving through the hall here.  This wasn’t exactly a place patrons would be walking, unless they were looking for a bathroom, so he mostly just got to see a couple of the staff that looked like they were having a normal day.  At least one of them was definitely just taking a break they weren’t supposed to, which he approved of.  JP needed to take more breaks himself.

”You’d get bored so fast.”  Sartori hummed in his thoughts.

”I’d find ways to amuse myself.”  JP shot back.  “As opposed to now, where I have company to amuse.”  He added, spotting his prey ascending the stairs to the balcony area and playing it cool as he headed toward the hall JP was lurking in.

Inside the room, the two were going through the time honored tradition of complaining about their bandmates before a show, as the man JP was stalking slipped away from the crowd and into sight.  Heading toward the rogue, he pressed a finger to his ear and muttered something out loud, which was a problem.  If he was communicating, then JP would need Sartori to cut that off, and the two silently divided up the duties as their man paused almost an inch from JP’s face and listened in on the two in the room himself.

”I’ve got her.”  The man said in the low tone of someone that knew exactly how to not be overheard.  “One bystander in there.” There was a pause, and then an added “Understood.”

The guy pulled the handgun out of his concealed holster, the silencer on it something that would be pretty useless in this close environment.  He took a second to steady himself, check over his shoulder like a skittish newbie, and then lean forward around the door with his gun leveled at the woman inside.

JP kind of wished he could see her expression, but he was busy.  His palm slapped into the agent’s cheek, fingers curling around the man’s face as eyes widened in alarm for a split second, before JP unleashed the maximum amount of electrical discharge that his arcanely modified body produced now.  Sartori’s manifestation unfurled from JP’s wrist, ethereal green tinted tentacles similarly wrapping around the head JP had a grip on, going for the communication line as the young assignment grabbed hold of the information associated with this whole operation and cracked it in half.

The agent’s form spasmed as a high pitched whine escaped his throat, before he suddenly dropped like a sack of potatoes, JP turning visible as he plucked the pistol from the man’s hand and stepping over the now-unconscious form.  He didn’t even look up at first, watching as Sartori rolled herself back up under his jacket cuff, and casually unloading the gun with practiced motions, racking the slide and catching the bullet before putting it and the removed magazine into his back pockets.

Then he raised his gaze up to the woman who had flung her bandmate behind herself, flipping the card table like it would make a lick of difference.  The redhead had one tattooed hand held out in a very deliberate pattern of fingers, and JP just raised an eyebrow at her.  “Very good reaction time.”  He complimented Mel with his best charmer voice.  “Have you considered a career in international espionage?  I’m hiring.”

”Tha fuck are you?!”  She yelled at him, definitely drawing attention from outside the room.  “Where’d you come from!?”

”I’ve been standing here for about ten minutes.”  JP jerked his thumb around the corner of the door.  “Waiting for him, believe it or not.”  He toed the unconscious man.

Mel’s eyes flicked to the familiar guitar leaning by the door, and JP followed her gaze, before stepping away from the ‘instrument’.  “American?”  She asked him.

”He is.  I like to think of myself as slightly more independent.”

”So you’re American.”

”America would love to have me.”  JP deflected again.

Sartori unfurled again slightly, poking her eyes out from around his jacket.  “Just say yes!  You can just say yes, and it will speed things up!  You can make James explain later!”  The infomorph ordered him openly, getting an exasperated sigh from JP.

Mel and her bandmate stared at the assignment that had been growing toward the squid or maybe jellyfish side of things lately, wide eyed.  “Oh shit.”  Mel said.  “You’re…”

”Like you, yes.”  JP said, holding control of the conversation as he noticed someone approaching, and cleared his throat.  “Excuse me.”  He told them, pointedly turning his back on the two as he knelt down to drag the unconscious agent into the storeroom, rolling him over under a shelf.  “Now, I’m sure you have questions.”

”The fuck do you want with her?”  The man demanded, before Mel could silence him.

”Oh, that’s easy!”  JP said with what he knew sounded like a calm and honest laugh. He’d practiced that laugh a lot.  And along with it, he extended a hand over the flipped table.  “Good afternoon, Mel, Court Musician of the Three Tyrannies Of Europe.”  He said with a sudden serious drop to his tone.  “It’s a shame the CIA has us meeting under the circumstances of an attempted assassination-and-or-kidnapping, but it’s a pleasure to meet you.  My name is JP, rogue, of the Order of Endless Rooms.”  He gave her a pleasant smile, keeping control of the momentum of the moment.  “I’d like to have a conversation.”  He said, and then kept her off guard as she started to actually accept the handshake.  “Should I stick around for after your show, or is now a good time?”

She laughed at him.  But she didn’t cut him in half with her guitar.  Which JP figured was a great sign that this was going smoothly.

_____

Ben was getting sick of being a living bookmark.

It was going to happen eventually that the Order would get overwhelmed by the scope of things.  Too many new targets entering their eyeline, and not enough new people.  Training took time, even with skulljacks, and not everyone wanted a skulljack.  Arguably they were a major liability for rogues that were supposed to be inconspicuous, but no one had told JP that.  They had told Myles, and Myles was probably their best operative period at this point, but Myles was one person.

The thing that Ben hadn’t expected was that, as the people who were best for a task became unavailable for that task, those tasks would filter down through their roster.  And when there really wasn’t anyone that was on active duty, but something was still important, someone would ask the person that was supposed to be running their rapid reporting system to take care of it.

So Ben had gone to Oslo.

It had been cold.  He hadn’t liked it.  It hadn’t been hard though.

The hard part came afterward, when Ben was back in the Lair, his new acquisitions had been given time to settle, he had gotten back into his focused working state, and his self-loathing had receded a little.  Because the hard part was when everyone was again off doing stupid shit that was probably meaningful and important, but it left Ben in charge of a dozen rogues in training and another dozen rogues that were tracking down places where gunfights had resulted in deaths but no corpses.

And also, everything that filtered down.

Ben’s idea of a debrief was to snap out a list of questions at a person and then vanish before they asked if he wanted to hang out later.  A tactic that most of the rogues were used to by now, which made it annoying that they kept asking if he wanted to hang out, and more annoying when they displayed actual concern for him by telling him to fuck off.  But it was also a tactic that didn’t exactly work on new people, and the Floridian delver team that Ben had ‘captured’ was, out of everyone, definitely new people.

”Explain the sun.”  He’d opened with.

One of them, a fat woman with hair like an ongoing industrial explosion, gave him a delighted grin.  “Now, I know what you’re talking about, but I actually worked at an observatory for a few years, so if you wanna know really cool facts about the sun, I can…”

Ben turned to the stone faced man next to her.  “Explain the sun but you know what I mean.”  He said.

He actually got a single chuckle, which Ben would take as progress.  The man, sitting uncomfortably on one of the camraconda chairs in the briefing warehouse, leaned back and looked up at the webwork of cords and pipes on the ceiling.  “So not that ya aren’t a good friend for bailing us out and giving us a place to lay low, but…”

”I’m going to cut you off there.”  Ben sighed.  “I am not your friend.  You just think I am, because of a persistent and uncontrollable effect from my species.  Telling you won’t stop it, but hopefully you can refrain from…”

”Oh, we know!”  The big woman told him happily.  Ben just stared at her as the other two nodded.  “Sorry, are we not supposed to know?  We know!  Don’t worry about it!”

Ben pursed his lips in confusion.  This wasn’t how this normally went.  Well, it was with the rest of the Order, but usually new people took longer.  “Alright…” He said slowly.  “So the sun thing?”

”Right!  Why should we tell you?”  The man asked, still relaxing.

Looking at the third member of their group, who was currently staring at her phone and not paying attention to Ben at all, he decided he might prefer people his magic worked on.  Turning back to the first woman, he raised his eyebrows and she just shrugged.  “It’s a good question!”  She told him.

Ben felt like he understood why JP gave so many dramatic sighs.  But he soldiered on.  “On a practical level, it’s a good idea to tell us so we know you aren’t some kind of malicious cabal that’re planning to ransom the world’s sunlight back to it.”

”Oh that wouldn’t work, don’t worry.”  The woman told him authoritatively.

”I am not assuaged.”  He assured her, standing from his chair and stretching the body he had been built into that was, unfortunately, capable of getting stiff if he sat too long.  “But let’s go point by point.  Why don’t you want to tell us?”

”You might be evil.”  The girl on her phone said without looking up, her friends wincing at the bluntness.

Ben appreciated it though.  He rubbed a hand over his possibly ontological goatee as he answered.  “Valid point.  I could tell you we aren’t, but that’s hard to trust.  And I am passively mind controlling you, so I’d understand hesitation.  What can I do to help with that?”  Directness deserved directness in return, he figured.

”You could… let us go?”  The large woman asked nicely.

”You aren’t actually prisoners, so either I can’t do that, or have already done that.”  Ben sighed and rubbed his hand over his face.  “Have you been staying in the Lair for the last week because you thought we’d stop you from leaving?”

”…Nooooo…”

”Yes.”  The girl on her phone said.  Ben should really learn their names at some point.  “So we can go?”

He nodded.  “Yes.”

”Great.”  She stood up and walked off, her two teammates watching her go with different levels of concern, but still concern either way.  “See ya!”  She called back, forcing the Climb team she was walking through to part around her as she kept her head down and focused on her screen.

Ben sighed again.  “What if I just bribe you.  Would that speed this up, so I can stop talking to people today?”

”Wow, this really makes you uncomfortable, huh?”  The woman asked him, idly playing with her hair.  “That’s such a shame!  I hope ya at least have some upside to the situation!”

”I get a discount on services from a wildly irresponsible mercenary company.”  Ben said with a dead exhaustion, assuming this was her answer to the bribery question.  He turned to the reclining man.  “How about you?  Bribery?”

The guy sighed himself.  “Nah, I’ll just tell you.”  He said, and Ben sagged in relief.  “Something crawled out of a fracture somewhere in the park.  We haven’t found it, but it wasn’t from ours, I’ll tell you that much.  Hunted the fucker down before it ate too many people, but it was still bad.  Except then, the damn thing got back up.  Eventually we got tired of fighting the same beastie every week, so we found something it was allergic to, and buried it in that.”

”And that thing was sunlight.”  Ben said, following along, getting a clipped nod from the man.  “So… how long is that going to last?”  He asked.

”Oh, should be a hundred years or so.”  The woman said, with a hint of sadness in her voice.  “Long enough that someone else can deal with it.  We hope!”

Ben was impressed.  ”That is… a very long time.  Most of our magic is a lot more transitory.”

”It comes from how our fracture works.”  The man said.  “Oh, don’t think we didn’t figure it out, by the way.  We know you’re working with more than one of the things.”  He pointed at Ben.  “A good friend would tell us about that.”

Ben grinned without humor.  ”Too bad I’m a shit friend.  But yes, you’re right.  We call them dungeons, ourselves.  We have a number of them in active use and a few more we know about.  I’m familiar with the process of frustratingly specific magic systems.”  He glanced sideways at a tentacle coiling into reality over his shoulder, several eyes placed in the golden ratio watching from around it as Planner manifested.  “Yeah?”  Ben asked.

”Apologies for intruding.”  Planner turned their focus on the two delvers that were watching with both curiosity and a little fear.  “Your friend has attempted to steal several things from our kitchen, and is currently wandering the Response floor for what I presume to be similar purpose.”

”…Yeah that’s… that checks out, yeah…” The guy sighed.  “Me or you this time?”  He asked his partner.

She patted him on the knee.  “It’s your turn.”  She told him without much remorse.

”Thank you, follow me please.”  Planner said, tentacles unfolding around the man’s shoulders.

Ben wondered if maybe he should have just told her she was a prisoner.  It could have saved time.  “So.  Your magic is apparently flexible, if you can power it up like that.  How inconvenient is it?”  He asked, getting back on track.

The woman winced and propped one of her legs up on the abandoned chair next to her own seat.  “Well.  Ya build up power from losing things we care about.”  She said.  “It happens a little over time, just from living.  But only a little.  You need tools you can feed important things to if you want more.  And we needed a lot.” She looked at Ben like she was trying to decided if they were close enough friends to open up to him, and then winced and looked away as she saw the professional neutrality on his face.  “We didn’t kill anyone.  Those ones… we break those ones.  But the one we had to use, well, I don’t think any of our old friends will be remembering us much.”

Ben’s stare softened.  “Shit.”  He muttered, sitting back down and putting himself at the woman’s level.  “All that to stop one dungeon monster?”

”It was a big monster.”  She told him.  “And it already killed one person that mattered to us.  Better minor amnesia than death, right?”

”I don’t know.  I don’t think about that question too much if I can help it.”  Ben admitted with a shrug.  “Okay.  Well, we’ll be looking into things, just to make sure you aren’t lying to my face.  But honestly, you seem like the kind of people they recruit here, so if you want to fight monsters without having to vaporize your interpersonal relationships, you could probably get hired pretty easily.  If not, we’re still willing to trade some of our less abusable magic for access to your dungeon, fracture, or whatever else you might call it.  You can talk to your team and give an answer later.  In the meantime, you can stay here as long as you need, and I need to go call a guy who thinks you’re a sun cult.”

She looked offended.  “I’m not in a cult!”  She insisted.  “I just like the sun!  I don’t even like the sun, I just… we didn’t have a non-sun option!  No one would sell us a laser!”

”Talk to Anesh.”  Ben idly told her.  “Now.  Thank you for your time, get out of my workspace.  I have a lot to do today.”

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Keeka and Arrush arrived in Townton via the logisticor line, to find that there was a new wall around the arrival plaza.

Well, it wasn’t a wall wall.  It was more like a dune.  If that dune was significantly more green and also fruit.  And also it only covered about a fifth of the plaza’s circular zone in a somewhat flattened arc.

”We’re being invaded!”  Keeka told Arrush, lying, of course, but using it as an excuse to crawl up his boyfriend’s back.

Arrush didn’t mind, and in fact, couldn’t stop smiling at his partner’s antics.  He’d only been away for about two days, but it was nice to be back to being able to be at Keeka’s side all day.  Or, in this case, cradling his boyfriend with the arms that were more rear-oriented, feeling Keeka’s more patterned limbs wrapping around his chest.

He refrained, however, from sneaking one of those paws up under Keeka’s skirt.  The two of them had been politely informed, early on, that they weren’t as stealthy as they might assume.  And while the fear of being punished had faded, it had been replaced by simply not wanting to make anyone else on the teleporter platform uncomfortable.

”I don’t think they’re moving.”  Arrush told his black furred boyfriend, while he examined the pile that had been amassed nearby.  “What… is it?”

”Bananas.”  A human with more fur than Arrush told them, overhearing their conversation as he dragged a cable around the teleport zone.  One of the humans that hadn’t known about magic a month ago, who was getting practice on logisticor safety regulations before beginning work more openly in the world sometime soon.

Arrush didn’t exactly have eyebrows to raise, but he still tilted his head in the universal gesture of asking for clarification.  “They’re the wrong color?” He did know what bananas looked like.  He could see these things as bananas, but they were green.  And also there were several billion of them.

”They’ll ripen!”  Keeka filled in as the teleport worker shrugged and passed by.  The lithe ratroach was already connected to the city’s network, pulling information from the internet with his skulljack.  “They get picked and shipped underripe so they’re ready when they arrive!  Cool!”  Then he leaned forward, his muzzle settling on Arrush’s shoulder as his bigger boyfriend carried them down the ramp to start walking into Townton.  “But why are they here?”

A figure currently shaped like a human and lounging on a nearby bench answered the overheard question.  “Blame Spire.”  Either Prince or Ruby said.  Neither ratroach was good at telling them apart, only spotting their mimic nature.  “Whatever adventure she had last week, some of the people she saved wanted to send a gift.”

”And those people… had bananas.”  Arrush surmised, coming to a stop in front of the bench and adjusting Keeka’s position on his back.  He wondered what banana farming looked like.  There were big chunks of them that looked like smooth huge pinecones, did they grow on trees?  “And now we have bananas?”

”I don’t think they knew that Townton only has a couple thousand people in it.”  The mimic nodded sagely.  “We’re all gonna need to get used to banana bread.”

”I could eat banana bread!”  Keeka insisted gleefully.

Arrush chittered out a laugh.  “Or just bananas?  How many bananas do we all have to eat?”  He asked as a mostly rhetorical question.

The mimic - probably Prince - had an answer anyway.  “About twenty.”  He said.  “If my math is right.”

”I could eat twenty bananas.”  Keeka declared confidently.  “Arrush, how many bananas will you eat?”

Arrush wasn’t sure, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like bananas as much by the time he was done.  “Less.”  He said with a sad shake of his head, getting a hearty laugh from Prince as the mimic waved the two off.

”Maybe Miette can make you like bananas more.”  Keeka suggested, shifting himself off of Arrush and dropping to land at his boyfriend’s side, exchanging arms holding him for paws linked together as the two of them fearlessly walked into the strange city.  “It’s strange.”  He said after a block of walking hand in hand.

”Bananas?”  Arrush was starting to feel like that wasn’t a real word.

”No.  Yes.”  Keeka gave a chittering giggle.  “I’m just used to them, us, saving people, and then those people move in.”  He said with a content smile on his muzzle.  “Spire saved so much of their lives that they gave us a gift.”

Arrush’s sudden and less controlled laugh surprised Keeka, his boyfriend looking up at his face with concern as Arrush shook and waved one paw to try to signal that he was okay.  When he caught his breath, sucking in air over his uneven fangs, he gave one last chuckle, before explaining.  ”We’re getting better!”  At Keeka’s puzzled look, Arrush leaned down, and, out in the open under the winter sun, kissed his boyfriend.  “It’s not just us.”  He explained in a whisper.  “It’s not just us two, it’s us, everyone.  Bigger things that us get meaner and harder, and the Order just gets better.  We don’t just save some people who need a new home, we save the homes.  I like it.”

”What about our origin?”  Keeka asked, suddenly struck by the thought.  “We can’t save that.”

Arrush nodded.  “But if James said we were going to try, I’d still help.”  He said, and Keeka stared at him, before widening his eyes and nodding along.  “I wonder if we’ll ever stop changing.”  He said quietly as they started walking again.

”I hope not.”  Keeka said.  “That sounds boring.  Also every time we change we meet new people.  Or the other way around?  One of those things!  And I want to meet more chanters!”

”Even the small one that bit you?”  Arrush prodded Keeka through his hoodie.

”Yes!”  Keeka laughed.  “I bit people once!  And look at me now!”  He slid ahead of Arrush on graceful limbs, holding all four arms wide and spinning around before offering a slight bow, the smooth antenna on his head bobbing in the air.

The exposed hide around Arrush’s eyes tinged ever so slightly green.  “I do like looking at you.”  He said simply, evoking the same look from Keeka as his love stared back at him.

The two ratroaches, changed irrevocably from what they once were, laughed together as they went to steal time together before one or both of them ran off to throw themselves into a dangerous adventure again.

_____

Duke Miller, third man in his family to be named that, woke up slowly in a bed that felt hospital-y.  He’d been in beds like this a few times.  Broken bones as a kid, alcohol poisoning as a… slightly older kid… stuff like that.  Normally, though, he knew how he’d gotten there.

Now, he wasn’t sure.  Though he did hear voices.

”-and be more careful next time!”  A woman’s voice, upbeat and happy, but with an edge of real concern to it, came from probably just outside the door to whatever room he was in.

”Apologies ma’am.”  The reply sounded like a guy who could have been one of his neighbors growing up.  Good old Alabama drawl, hidden but never gone.  Or so Duke had been told.  He wasn’t old enough to legally drink, he didn’t fucking know about accents, he just knew what his grampa told him.  “It’ll happen again.”  The man continued with a slyness to his words that was hard to miss.

There was a scoff.  “I know you have to take the risk.”  Her voice dropped in tone.  “But that doesn’t mean I can’t want you to be safe anyway.  And don’t call me ma’am!”

”We’ll be fine.  Unless it counts contingency plans and backup, and then we’re fucked.  Uh… sorry.”  The guy laughed.

”I don’t swear.  You can swear all you want.”  She laughed, and Duke dared to crack an eye, wondering if he could see who was talking.  “Oh, also he’s awake!”  Apparently they knew anyway, so opening his eyes seemed riskless now.  “Want to hang out while we talk?”

There was a pause, and Duke saw the outline of someone on the other side of the half-closed frosted glass door of the hospital room hesitate.  “I need to check on Rada.”  The guy said.  “And listen to her bitch about getting a splinter.”  That was weirdly sarcastic.

”Tell her I said hi!”  The girl he could see patted her conversation partner on the shoulder.  “Thanks Evans.  And I’m glad you’re not dead!” He waved over his shoulder as his silhouette turned and walked off.  Then the figure turned and slipped into Duke’s hospital room like she was used to being in places like this.

”Ma’am.”  Was the first word out of his mouth, even if she wasn’t in uniform.  He somehow knew exactly how to recognize officer behavior.

She rolled her eyes at him.  “Not you too.”  She sighed loudly, cupping her cheek with a hand heavily tattooed with little circles.  “I bet you have some questions?”  She prompted.

Duke tried to nod and realized that was a bad idea.  His whole body hurt.  “Where am I?  Why can’t I move?  Who are you?  Uh… what happened to me?”  That last one was probably the most important piece of the puzzle.

The girl nodded, hooking a wheeled stool with her foot and dropping onto it in a single motion that made it look like she could move if she wanted to.  “Well, you can’t move because you’re strapped to the bed.  Just in case.”  She said, and Duke realized that his arms weren’t just heavy, they were tied down.  “And I’m Sarah.  I won’t be the first person to talk to you, but a lot of us are busy today and it seemed like you might need someone friendly.”

”Why am I… am I a prisoner?”  Duke didn’t understand.  “Wait, what’s wrong with my voice?”  He hadn’t noticed, but he sounded… wrong.

If Sarah knew, she did a good job hiding it.  Her confusion was evident on her face as she glanced at the whiteboard on the wall of his hospital room.  “Your throat should be fine?  I’ll make sure to ask on the way out, don’t worry!  And you’re… not a prisoner, but you’re also not not a prisoner.  You’re more like… a guest who just happens to be tied to their bed.  In a non-kink way!”

She smiled so brightly that Duke was already half-smiling back before he caught up to that.  “Wait, so I am a prisoner.”

”Yes.  But no.  Maybe!”  She crossed one leg, sitting with perfect poise on the padded stool.  “Now, other questions; you’re in the medical wing of the Order of Endless Rooms.  Do you… recognize that name?”

”No.” Should he?  It sounded kinda stupid.

Sarah nodded.  “Well, you were hurt.  And our magical doctor fixed up part of you, but it was the easy part.  And we don’t know exactly what happened to you.  Can you tell me what the last thing you remember is?”

”Yeah.  Lunch.”  Duke laughed at her raised eyebrows before he flushed bright red, overtaken by an unfamiliar sense of discomfort at not giving a direct answer.  “Sorry ma’am.  I mean, I remember going to the mess.  The drill sergeant had us moving sandbags all day, so I was pretty hungry.”  He tipped his head down as if to look at his chest.  “I guess I’m still hungry?”  He said.

Sarah hummed.  “So you were… military?”

”Army, ma’am.”  He told her.  “Almost.  One more week of basic.”  Duke frowned.  “That doesn’t sound right, does it?”  He said to himself, turning and giving a flash of a frown as the straps on his arms stopped him.

”No, it doesn’t.”  Sarah said.  “Do you know about the Coalition?”

”I thought you were an order?”

”…No, they’re different.  They were the group you were with when we… met you.”  She told him.

Duke shook his head against the surprisingly nice hospital pillow.  “Never heard of ‘em.”  He said.

”Cassleton?  Or perhaps have you ever been in Minneapolis?”  She pressed, clearly concerned.

”No, ma’am.  Why?  What happened?”  What happened to him, he wanted to ask.

Sarah just looked at him with something that Duke didn’t like realizing was pity.  “This is going to sound strange,” she said, which was very funny given that everything else sounded stranger already, “but what year is it?”

”Twenty twenty two.”  He answered, already knowing that he fucking hated where this was going.

”It’s… it.. oh dear.”  Sarah’s whole posture changed as she gave him the saddest look Duke had ever seen.  “Right now, it’s January.  Twenty twenty five.”

”No.” He replied instantly.  “No way.”

”I’m sorry.  I think, whatever was done to you, it closed off or took away a lot of your memories.”  Sarah said, like that was a reasonable and normal thing for a person to say.  “We can check, of course.  See if we can help.  But… you wanted to know what happened?  Are you sure?  You might not like it.”

Duke jerked one of his arms against the bond holding him down.  “What the fuck is going on?”  He demanded.  “Course I want to know!”  Another flash of discomfort at his own words.  What was wrong with him?

”You were part of an eight person team that attacked us in a place called Cassleton, North Dakota.”  Sarah said with the forced speech of someone who didn’t want to sound cold, but didn’t know how to be casual about a serious topic.  Her fingers curled on the edges of her seat.  “You were also the only survivor, because of… because of how you were injured.”  She motioned to his side, and while Duke couldn’t see under the blanket, he definitely felt something on his flank that itched like hell.  “Until then, you… acted… like you didn’t have any emotions at all.”  She skipped that the Order knew he didn’t have any emotions.  “And you fired into a building full of civilians.”

”I’ve never…!  No!”  He shouted, pulling himself up to as much of a sitting position as he could.  “I haven’t even been in combat!”  Duke yelled.

Sarah shook her head.  “I believe you.”  She said out loud.

”You… but you just said-!”

”I believe that you haven’t been in combat.”  Sarah clarified.  “But your body, has.”  She said, as if that made any fucking sense.  “Hey, deep breath.  It’s gonna be okay, we can figure this out!”  She inhaled deeply, and to his own annoyance, Duke found himself following along.  “I’d like to call a friend in to take a look at you.  Is that okay?”

”I thought I was a prisoner.”  He said bitterly.

Sarah smiled peacefully at him.  “It’s still nice to ask.  And she’s a little weird, so I wanted to warn you.”  He shrugged at her as best he could, and she gave him a little nod, before just looking up into the air over her head.  “Okay.  Mercy?”  Sarah said.  “If you have a moment.”

Duke had no fucking idea what she was doing, but he sure as hell knew that he didn’t like it when a giant floating pink and white sea monster slithered through the door to his room a minute later.  “What the hell is-?!”  He stopped himself from jerking backward on his bed, seeing Sarah had already seen the hallucination and was talking to it quietly.  “What the fuck.”  He muttered.  “What the fuck is happening?!”

”You were mind controlled.”  The monster told him with a voice that somehow reminded him of cough syrup but without the bitter flavor.  “Which must be very unpleasant.”

”It’s not great!”  Duke said on impulse.  Then, suddenly, he realized something and looked down at his own arms and the flexible straps holding him in place.  “Wait, holy shit, I’m ripped.  When the hell did…” he grunted out a sigh, and rolled his eyes as he saw Sarah shaking her head.  “Twenty twenty five?”

The sea serpent with too many eyes pulled itself - herself? - up next to his bed.  “A fringe benefit at least.  If that is the body type you desire, at least.  If not, we have options for you.”

”Thanks?  I guess?”

”You are welcome.  Now, may I have permission to examine your mind?”

Sarah pointed at the creature.  “Mercy’s an infomorph.  If you say it’s okay, she can take a look for anything you’ve been made to forget, and hopefully get it back for you.”

”…and she’s…” He felt that spike of distaste again, and Duke turned to address Mercy directly.  “And you’re not going to mess with me?”  He asked.

”I would not need your permission to mess with you.”  Mercy said with several smiles.  “I am asking because I am a medical professional.”

That was more than Duke had ever gotten from an Army doc.  “Go for it.”  He said, before he could change his mind.

Mercy’s glowing form slithered forward quickly, part of her wrapping around his head.  Or maybe into his head, he couldn’t exactly see.  But her voice was still clear.  “Oh.  This is a two part disaster.”  She informed Sarah.  “There is a block on one day’s worth of memories from some time ago, but there is something strange for… an amount of time.  An unclear amount.  There are connections.  Conditioning I would say.  Mental and physical.  This body remembers its training, but there is no intellect behind it.  There is nothing to retrieve.”

”Is that why I’m answering you?”  Duke said, his tongue feeling heavy.  “Why I feel… wrong?”

”Likely.”  Marcy said.  “You have been trained to follow orders, and obey your officers.  You have misidentified Sarah and myself as those officers, but that is a current emotional response that I will not tamper with unless you ask me to.  Even then I would be uncomfortable with that.  I can, however, open up the older block.  Would you like me to do so?”

”Uh… yes?  Why wouldn’t I?”

”It may contain information you wish to keep secret, and if I do so, you may report it to us regardless.”  Mercy said.  “We are not interrogating you, mister Miller.  We are here to restore you to health, in every way we can.”

”Then I should tell you everything.”  He said, and this time, he knew that was coming from him.  “Never lie to your doctor, no matter what you just took.”  He repeated the old line his dad had drilled into him.  Tell the cops nothing and the paramedics everything.  He almost smiled at the memory.

Mercy laughed, a soft musical noise that filled the hospital room with sound and Duke’s thoughts with comfort.  “Your father was wise in that regard.”  She told him, answering half a conversation that wasn’t spoken.  “Very well.  This is not a strong or well made barrier, it should be as simple as… this.”

And Duke remembered earlier that day.  Or… years ago.  But it felt like a few hours ago.

”There were two of them.”  He said, staring at the far wall.  “Two men, I dunno, thirties?  They came to the barracks and the sarge had us all line up.  One of them… one guy said they were going to make us into great soldiers, and the other one said our contract had been handed over.  And then…” Duke groaned, his head pounding.  “Ow.  Uh… ow.  Then they… fuck, this hurts… they took everyone through a… hole door?  And then… and then I guess that’s it.”

”That… answers one question.”  Sarah said as Mercy uncurled herself from Duke’s head and began making notes on the whiteboard, somehow deftly maneuvering the dry erase pen.  “But it’s a very big question we’ve been having to ask more and more lately.”

”What’s that, ma’am?”  Duke asked, defaulting to the form of address, even if he was starting to learn that these people weren’t anywhere close to his chain of command.

Sarah sighed.  “Where the army went.”  She told him as she started to stand up.  “Mercy, can you go get Evans for me?  I need someone to talk to my new friend here while I go find James and scream incoherently at him.”

”Certainly.  Will the screaming be happening outside of the medical wing?  I would be remiss if I did not remind you that is not allowed here.” The glowing assignment told her.

Hearing Duke chuckle at the words, Sarah turned back to him.  “I’ll be right back, okay?”  She told him.  “Everything is going to be fine.  Just… a little complicated.”

”You’re telling me.”  He said bitterly.  “No.  Wait!  If it’s twenty twenty five, that means I can buy my own vodka!”

The look Sarah gave him made Duke think he’d chosen exactly the wrong words for his attempt at a joke.  Like he’d somehow just torn a part of her heart out by talking.  “Y-yeah.”  Sarah said, turning away.  “You can… you can talk to Evans about it while I go handle a few things, okay?  I have to go!”  Sarah rushed out of the room.

”…What did I do?”  Duke asked the glowing apparition that was haunting his room.

Mercy gave him a sad look with all the eyes on one side of her body.  “Mister Miller…” she said like she was trying to break the news to him softly, “…you are a child that was weaponized against your will, and sent against us almost entirely unprepared.”  Before he could snap back that he wasn’t just a kid, especially not anymore, Mercy turned away from him and closed all her glowing eyes, sighing from multiple points along her body that seemed to stretch far longer than the room itself.  “And by happenstance alone you are the only one that survived.”

”…Oh.”  Duke said.  There wasn’t really anything good to say to that at all, was there?  “That… sucks.”

”It does.  But if we are lucky, you can help us understand how to prevent it from ever happening again.”  Mercy said as she slithered away to find someone else to watch over him.

”Yeah, I’m pretty fucking pissed too.”  He said to himself.  Duke looked down at the strap on his wrist again.  He guessed he was still a prisoner.  Or something prisoner adjacent.  But he was also really tired, and his head hurt, and it was hard to care.

And Mercy was pretty nice for a floating sea monster.

Duke was asleep again before his next interrogator came in.

_____

Spire-Cast-Behind was annoyed by Canada.

”Okay, you gotta stop being pissy about cities.”  Riho cut her off before she could really get too deep into her own head.

”Allowing you a Lesson with Empathy as an option was a mistake.”  Spire hissed placidly as they left the lobby of the apartment tower that the Order was renting basically a whole floor of.  “You could have followed your fellow coterier’s path, and made yourself stronger, or tougher, or faster.  But no.  You chose hostility.”

Riho gave an indignant squawk at her.  “I fuckin’ did not!  Hostility was the one thing I don’t need from a business Lesson!  And Utility is cool.  Arrush makes it sound really cool, yeah.  But… hey, I suck at people, you know?  Now I suck less.”  She lightly kicked Spire in the flank, leaving a mark on her cloak.  “And stop whining to yourself about Saskatoon.”

”I was whining to myself about Canada in general.”  Spire replied almost petulantly, before she gave a heavy huff of air, pressing her lens closed.  “I am already tired of the attitude of this place.”

”Boss.”  The single member of her group walking alongside her down the sidewalk gave Spire a deeply sarcastic smile.  “We’ve been here six hours.”

”And I tire of it.”  Spire griped.

Riho made eye contact with a cluster of people waiting at a bus stop as they passed, giving them a friendly nod that got returned.  Someone muttered one of those generic ‘good day’ greetings.  It didn’t suck.  She kept her eyes forward as she talked to Spire while they continued.  “People seem nice?”

“The people are polite enough.”  Spire replied.  “But I will never forget that this is the city that houses the people who kept many umbral as harvestable resources.  Would they have done the same to my kind?  Would the chanters have been freed by these polite people?  I do not feel charitable today.”

Riho winced.  “Yeah, I can fuckin’ tell.”  She muttered to herself.  “Right at this intersection, then we’re there, by the way.”  She told the camraconda.  “And look.  I get it.  I’m a vaguely un-white girl from America, I get it.  But this time, and only this time, the average dumbass on the streets gets a pass.”

Spire-Cast-Behind arced her neck as she slithered to look at the dumbass on the streets next to her.  “I cannot wait to hear this logic.”  She said, not yet spying their destination and wanting to fill the pedestrian journey with something aside from infinitely reviewing her self-imposed schedule in her head.  “Elaborate.”

”I’m just saying!  The average dumbass?”  Riho jerked a thumb at a bearded man walking his dog past them, who gave a huge smile and a thumbs up as he briefly overheard.  “Didn’t do anything.  More important, though, they didn’t even know.  Part of the whole ‘reparations’ conversation is that half the east coast was built by people that didn’t get paid for it, and then their kids and grandkids and on and on forever had to grow up in a world where someone else’s family had been making money off that property for a century.  But here, it’s… what, selfish cops gone mad with power?”

”Firefighters and parks staff as well.”  Spire clarified as they passed under the skeletal branches of trees that would, later in the year, turn this stretch of sidewalk into a verdant tunnel.  “Though…”

”Yeah sorta hard to bitch about actual heroes getting better at their jobs.”  Riho shrugged.  “It sucks, yeah.  But it sucks in an unfuckable way - a way that can be unfucked - and the suck didn’t last long enough for most of the people around us to be culpable.”

”You have been reading too many books.”  Spire-Cast-Behind told her companion, with a complete lack of seriousness.

”Fuck yeah I have!  Do you know how cool it is to be able to understand a whole political text in, like, twenty minutes?  No excuse for living in the Lair and not being a scholar!”

“That is all too reasonable.”  Spire chirped in an abbreviated laugh.  “And… I am perhaps being unfair to the people who had no idea this secret injustice was happening.  Though I maintain my complaint that everything is too distributed.”

Riho grinned at her, stretching her arms behind her head.  “You’re too used to Townton.”

”I am precisely as used to Townton as I wish to be.”  The camraconda corrected.  “Are you sure we are in the right area?  I have seen very few umbral.”

The knight with her looked around, a flickering puff of orange feathers behind her ear expanding like a radial dish for a moment before Riho shrugged.  “Yeah?  I dunno, it’s 2 PM on a Wednesday, I figure a lot of people have shit to do.  All the humans we went by were probably just here for college.  Besides, there’s umbral right there!”  She pointed ahead of them to where several of the shadowy figures were visible through the corner of a plate glass window that dominated the upcoming corner of the sidewalk.

The building rose above the upward sloping street, which put the interior area in a spot that was both on display and given a great view of the surrounding area.  The fact that the surrounding area was a series of old businesses and a car lot, and the fact that the plate glass windows led into a Starbucks, were only incidental conditions.

The umbral were also there specifically to meet with them.  The Order had a public office, and they used it to mediate interspecies interactions here in Saskatoon, since the city seemed to be a strange eye of the storm without any local memeplexes making things murky.  But for the meeting today, Spire had felt that a neutral third location was preferable.  She had not picked a Starbucks, and, if pressed, would have chosen almost anywhere else, short of the truck dealership across the street.

For all that she was annoyed that she was here, and not helping her compatriots with something more serious, Spire still composed herself as she ascended the sidewalk, rounded the building, and made for the door to the mass produced cafe.  By pure chance, someone was leaving as she was entering, so Spire simply froze the door with her gaze, which was helpful to the woman pushing a stroller out anyway, and then slithered past the human that gave her a wide eyed blink.

It was a little gratifying, though, to see through Riho’s point of view as the woman simply shrugged after Spire passed, and moved on.

The city was undeniably a human place.  But it wasn’t incapable of change.  And while almost no one knew the full extent of the Order of Endless Rooms, it was a little fun, Spire would admit, to see how many humans went from ‘oh my goodness there are other strange life forms here’ to ‘oh, must be a new one, okay, gotta get home and do laundry’.

”Go back to being annoyed.”  Riho told her as they entered the overly warm and loud building.  “I don’t even know what emotion that is, but it’s itchy.”  

Spire-Cast-Behind didn’t answer.  Instead, she poised herself professionally, and turned toward the collection of tables surrounded by mostly umbral and a couple humans, speaking sideways to Riho.  “If you could get us drinks, I would appreciate it.”

”If you downgrade me to intern I’m not taking a pay cut.”  Riho said, though she still headed to the counter.

Spire, meanwhile, headed to the people who were all watching her, mostly with eyes like looping bands of primary colors suspended against the shadows of a summer day.  “Good afternoon.”  She greeted them.

”You aren’t Simon.”  One of them replied before any of the others could, tendrils of the umbral flattening against the upper part of their form.

The comment was so deliberately foolish that Spire almost treated it like a joke.  But no, that would compromise her diplomatic efforts.  “Simon is currently working with another of our paladins to resolve a situation elsewhere.”  She told them.  “Do not worry, I am not here to replace him.”

Not that she would want to.  Or could, even.  Simon was better with people than Spire would ever be, no matter what species those people were.

“You asked for a meeting.”  One of the humans said, with a voice like he wasn’t asking.

”Simon had asked, yes.”  Spire nodded as Riho came over and quietly joined them.  The human got a chair.  Spire just raised herself over the edge of the table.  She hated Starbucks; none of them ever had places for her to sit.  Tim Hortons had been better as a meeting place, and that was scathing.  “But he cannot easily be replaced where he is, and so I am here to talk instead.  Hello.  My name is Spire-Cast-Behind.”

One of the smaller umbral leaned back.  “We know of you.”  They said with a lilting voice.  “You were there on the Last Night.”

Spire didn’t like assigning historic names to events she’d been part of.  It felt too aggrandizing for what had mostly just been panicked fighting.  “I was.”  She answered.

”Then we will listen.”  The umbral stated, leaving no room for argument, and the others relaxed slightly.  “I am Noct, this is Midnight, Jasmine, Luna, and Cameron.”  They motioned at the others, and then, gave an electrically charged breeze of a laugh as Spire irised her lens at them.  “Yes, in order.”  The umbral insisted, having pointed at another umbral first, then the two humans, then the other umbral.

”I understand.  Our Order has three people named Misha and they are all different species.”  Spire commiserated, earning another laugh from Noct.  “Would you like to-“ she paused as the barista behind the counter yelled out a name that Spire had never heard before, and Riho got up to get their drinks.  When her friend returned, she looked up at the human who was setting a mug in front of her.  “Why are you like this?”  Spire asked.

”Rogue training!”  Riho said happily, leaving her own drink untouched to cool and taking a bite of some kind of lemon cake.  She did not elaborate further.

”We can skip to the important part of this.”  Midnight said, the larger umbral sitting with his arms unfurled, but then crossed again in a very odd mix of human and umbral gestures.  “Our answer is no.”

”Ah, good, you do know what this meeting was for.”  Spire nodded with a bob.  “I have several good points prepared as counterarguments.  If we are going in reverse order, I could simply begin listing them?”

”I admit, I’m curious!”  Noct said, passing her own uncapped drink cup up to one of her tendrils so that she could tip it slightly into the line of a mouth that umbral tended to have around where most people would think was a ‘head’.  “Simon has offered us a window into your people, but he is a somewhat normal human.  Your own perspective should prove interesting.”

Spire and Riho gave a shared laugh.  “You think Simon’s normal?”  Riho asked.

Tapping her coterier with her tail, Spire twisted her head side to side.  “They have no way to know, and you know he does not talk about his condition.  And if he won’t, neither will I, out of respect.”  She said.  Then, addressing the rest of the table, she got to her own point.  “You are fools.”  Spire led with.

”Great start.”  Cameron’s static-laced voice covered up the sharp breath of amusement from the human next to him.

”Let her speak.”  Noct ordered, and the other umbral obeyed with a deference that Spire noted as something more than just companionship.  “Continue.”  She said, voice more suited for one of the Order’s planning sessions than the environment of a loud cafe where the human patrons quickly got over the presence of the umbral and went back to having their own excessive volume conversations.

Spire nodded politely.  “Your situation is tenuous.”  She spoke openly, not bothering to hold back, even having just met these people.  “You do not need me to tell you that.  But your approach to the Order has been almost hostile.  It feels, in many ways, as if you are testing us.”  She said, and while the people around the other side of the tables didn’t seem to react, Riho did, with just the slightest intakes of breath.  “You seem to believe that the wealth of your home should belong to you.  I agree.  You seem to believe that the humans of this world have failed you and hurt you.  I agree again.”

”But we are fools?”  Noct asked, tendrils swaying gently, voice curious.

“You are.  Because your actions are counterproductive to your beliefs.”  The camraconda had worn an armature pack today, but she didn’t want to turn it on just to tick off points on her ‘fingers’.  “You are distancing yourselves from many of your potential human allies.  You are either willfully dismissing or mistakenly ignoring that humans exist in different factional groups.  And you are, most importantly, wasting your own wealth.”

One of the humans raised an eyebrow, leaning forward on the table.  “But they aren’t.  We aren’t!” Luna insisted.  “You might not know, but…” she glanced to Noct, who gave her an affirming motion, “but we have groups that explore the nightmare office.  We aren’t wasting anything!”

”And here we encounter a new problem.”  Spire decided she didn’t care about whatever secrets they were keeping.  “There are two dungeons in this city, that we know of.  The umbral’s home is not the same as the Compiled Wastes - your nightmare office - which we do know about the delving of.”

”Oh.”  Luna frowned.  “That’s a better name, too.”

”Thank you, we pride ourselves on creativity.”  Spire gave a brass fanged smile.  And on drama, she didn’t add out loud.  Nor did she tell them that they stole that name from Tylor and Jessica.  “Now.  Many of your human members may have noticed already, but sometimes you will acquire spells that are separate from your demiplanes.”

Noct and the other umbral realized where this was going.  “Wait-“

”No.  Those magics come from the umbral.  And their home dungeon as well.”  Spire explained, before pausing and then looking to Noct with a flat stare.  “And I can tell from your human companions’ reaction that they already knew this.”

Jasmine and Luna nodded slowly.  “We didn’t want to freak you out.”  One of them said sadly.

Spire hissed with irritation.  “There, that is one barrier broken.  Now.  Moving on.  The wealth of your homeworld.”  She stared with open annoyance among the umbral.  “Your fear is not unreasonable.  However if you had communicated with us more clearly, you would know by now that the spells can be shared.  More importantly, they can be shared back to umbral.  While you cannot ‘earn’ your own dungeon’s magic, you can be handed it willingly.”

”We… we what?”  Noct looked shocked, her tendrils stiffening as she straightened up in her seat, the other umbral making similar stunned motions.  “No.  We would know.”

”You would know if you had responded to our requests for a meeting sooner.”  Spire told them bluntly.  “But this is how you are fools.  If you wanted to truly make use of the wealth of your home, even if you wish to continue living there, then the optimal case is to develop the dungeon’s interior and allow non-umbral residence.  Or, at the very least, temporary stays as individuals gain magical advancements.  Your price?  Money, perhaps.  Resources.  The Order in particular is prepared to offer you quite a lot of both.  But most importantly, you can simply ask for the magic back.”

Riho chimed in helpfully.  “Yeah, no one ever uses every daily cast of anything.”  She said confidently.  “We’re still trying to figure out the best way to spread it all around, but…” the human shrugged.

”But it can be done.”  Midnight mused.  “We could have our own magic.”

“As many of your people have learned, living with us.” Spire confirmed.

”So you want to be let in.”  Noct said with a polite kind of challenge.  “You know, Simon was more diplomatic about this.”

Spire hissed again, the sound drowned out by the similar noise of a steam wand in the background.   “Simon’s focus has been on making all umbral feel safe within Saskatoon.  My focus is on strengthening the Order so we can continue to make people safe.”  Especially against whatever was on the horizon.  She shook her head and looked around the table.  “Of course we want to be let in.  It is an easy way to accrue abilities that can become part of civic life.  And we know already that your home is not so pleasant as many of you pretend out here, which means we can perform our own role as delvers as a way of offering you aid.  The fact that you have turned down multiple iterations of our offer of mutual aid is frustrating.”

”Perhaps we just don’t trust the people that are harboring killers.”  Cameron mentioned almost casually.

”Perhaps.”  Spire said, directing her stare his way.  “What would you have us do?  Execute everyone who has ever killed?  No.  That is childish.  We have better options.  And you would not like to know how many people in your own ranks may qualify.”

”Then why bother helping us?”  He challenged back.

Spire leaned over the table, nearly knocking her drink aside.  “Because we are the Order of Endless Rooms.”  She said, raising her voice’s volume.  “Because while understanding good in all its forms may be the work of a lifetime, it is the work of the moment to pick up the pieces and get to fixing things.  You have been wronged.  You have been hurt.  You have been unjustly thrown into a world that is not kind enough or fun enough or free enough.  And now I have arrived to this place that does not have enough public transit to spend my Wednesday telling you that you do not have to settle for this!”  She snapped out the last words, punctuated with a bite in the air, fangs tapping together.

“Also because magic is cool.”  Riho added, annihilating the gravitas.

”Yes thank you.”

”You know, in case you needed someone to tell you that, since you’re all kind of dumbasses.”  She continued.

Spire irised her lens closed, wondering if she could concuss herself against the table and forget this happened.  “Yes thank you Riho.”

”I’m just saying!”

A breezing sigh from Noct interrupted them.  Turning to the two human women with the group, she asked the question that had been planted.  “You knew?”

Luna nodded with an anxious twist on her face.  “It’s… hard to not know?  At first… maybe it was because we only talked around adventures.  But yeah, once it happened in the middle of a month where we didn’t even go into the office, I figured it out.  And other people know too.”

”And you didn’t tell us.”

Jasmine scowled back at the umbral.  “Yeah, we didn’t want you to kick us out of your lives.”  She said, pointing over at Riho.  “She’s being shitty but she’s right.  You’re supposed to… to be our friends.  I guess we’re supposed to be your friends too, though.  And we’ve all been lying to each other.”

The human and umbral stared at each other for a long moment, the rest of the group going quiet, except for Spire trying to drink her lukewarm coffee.  And then, Noct looked away, her own eyes wavering.  “I am sorry.”  She said.  “I have reasons.  But they do not make me a better friend.”

”Yeah, well, I’m sorry too.”  Jasmine retorted hotly.  “So what now?”

”An excellent question.”  Spire interceded in the personal drama.  “I am aware that none of you are ‘in charge’, as it were.  But I would ask that you carry our offer to your respective groups within your dungeon.  And actually hear it out this time.”

Noct shifted, one arm unfurling to hold a wide hand palm up, motioning for Spire to talk.  “That, at least, we will do.”

”Thank you.  Our offer is that the Order will aid in improving the habitability of your home towns within the dungeon, both for yourselves, and anyone who wishes to move there.  We will invest a flat percentage of our resources into this endeavor, which is not insubstantial.  In exchange, you allow our people to be active in this process, in order to take advantage of being deeper within your dungeon.  Following that, we will allocate a lower amount for maintenance, and assist in the legal and social process of accepting outside residents, maximizing local magic use, and protecting your home.  In exchange, we ask only to be allowed to send delve teams deeper into the parts of the dungeon you do not use, while using designated places in your towns as staging areas.”

”And the umbral?” Noct asked.

”What about them?”  Spire asked back.  “This deal is about the umbral.  Your people are the crux of it.”

The umbral flattened her tendrils and leaned her exposed arm on the table, nearly tipping it toward herself with her bulk.  “You know so much of us.  But that means you know best how to exploit us.”

”Oh.  Yes.  Of course we do.”  Spire hissed in derision.  “It is inefficient.”

”Excuse me?”  Midnight exclaimed, arms uncrossing so one heavy fist could thump into their shared tables, loud voice drawing the silence and attention of the rest of the cafe.  “Is that the only reason?!”

Riho slapped a hand onto the flat of Spire’s camera head.  “What my paladin means, but is too pissy to say right, is that we’re not maximizing for our own level ups.”  She pointed her other hand at Midnight as Spire shook her off.  “The Order’s whole fuckin’ deal is that we’re maximizing for freedom and happiness and good vibes.  Keeping slaves is inefficient because - news flash! - no one likes being a slave.”  She glanced at Luna, eyeing the dog collar the human girl had on and raising an eyebrow.  “Well.  You know what I mean.” She said smugly as the other human flipped her off and buried her head under her arms.

“So it’s all a utilitarian calculation to you?”  Noct asked.

”We are not free,” Spire intoned, “until all of us are free.  We do not know the final shape of utopia, because utopia cannot have a final shape.  We will always be getting better.  This is not a threat or a trap.  This is an invitation to join us on the path.”

Noct and Cameron froze, and their human friends did a moment later.  When Midnight inflated in preparation to say something else, Noct’s hand layered itself onto the membrane of his shadow form, stilling him as his eyes looked to her in confusion.  “You don’t just mean to form a contract with you.”  She said.

”Of course not.”  Spire said, looking down at her coffee and wondering how something that was so good most of the time could taste so bland and unpleasant at the same time.  “This is a way to connect us.  To begin to build bonds.  You have been welcome to join the Order from the moment we knew you were here.  Hundreds of umbral have taken that offer, and you are welcome to speak to any of them too, should you wish.  Visiting Townton, I am told, has an effect on your people.”  She looked back up at Noct.  “Simon danced around the subject too much.  We want you to join what we are building as full partners.  We want your dungeon, but this is not a one-sided exchange.  We want to share with you every magic we have as well.  And see what we can discover, together.”

”Oh my god.”  Jasmine said with a breath of wonder.  “She’s not… incorrect.”  She looked to Noct.  “Spell says she’s not incorrect.  And I don’t think there’s any way that can be a lie.  So…”

”So you are what you have been this whole time.”  Noct said, dropping her hand from her fellow umbral’s shoulder, and folding her body back up as she stood on oddly jointed legs.  “So we are fools.”

”It would seem so.”  Spire said calmly.

Noct looked down at the camraconda, and then back to the others around the table.  Or maybe just looked away from Spire.  “That… is something we should fix.”  She said.  “I suppose I should thank you.  For seeing a way forward, when we have done so much to close it off.”

”You may thank me by listening in the future.”  Spire said.  “And I will tell my fellow paladin to be less diplomatic.  It would save time.”

Noct gave a warm laugh as the others began to stand and prepare to leave, the meeting coming to a close as the reason for it was resolved.  “You said he had something to do.  What is our favorite strange human up to?”

Spire and Riho shared a pained look.  “…Ah.  Well…”

_____

The convenience store hadn’t been restocked in about a week.  Every employee that had worked here had either been taken into the Pylon to join the ark thing, or they’d wisely stolen everything they could carry and bailed.  But the shelves still had a enough stuff on them, whether it was bags of chips or bottles of overpriced soda, that when the machine gun fire raked through the space it created a colorful bouquet of chaos.

”I hate this and I hate you!”  Ink-And-Key screamed at Alex as he slithered with his body flat against the dirty linoleum floor, wide form clipping one of the shelves repeatedly and scattering a hundred rolls of lifesavers over himself.

”No you don’t!  Now slither faster!”  Alex shouted back, gripping tight to the webbing on her knight’s armor and letting herself be dragged in his wake as she rolled so that her shoulder was being ablated against the floor.  As Ink-And-Key whipped around the end of the short aisle, Alex leveled the confiscated uzi she’d been keeping her other hand on, and sprayed down whatever was left of the store’s plate glass window.  Not even aiming for their attackers, just emptying whatever bullets were left in their general direction.

It was enough to shut down the incoming fire for a tiny window, at least.  Most people didn’t have the same survivability that the average battlefield terror from the Order did, or the training to use it, and so when they heard gunfire that wasn’t theirs and bullets came whipping through the air in their direction, they tended to run for cover rather than keep up a sustained assault.

Alex used the brief reprieve, and a curl of Ink-And-Key’s tail, to launch herself to her feet and dash forward, abandoning the gun among the pooling sugary liquid and scraps of snack food behind her to slam her shoulder into the emergency exit and let the afternoon light of the cramped back parking lot in.  “Move your tail!”  She yelled back at Ink-And-Key, who was already whipping past her at high speed and leaving a sticky trail of soda.  Alex slammed the heavy metal door shut two seconds before the gunfire resumed, a few bullets hitting her barrier and causing it to vibrate under her hand.

Ahead of them, the pickup truck Simon had commandeered - they’d been commandeering a lot this time - screeched to a halt.  ”Get in!”  The other paladin needlessly called from the driver’s seat, the crocamaw next to him pressed forward as far as she could go with her arms over her head.  In the back bed, Mark reached shadowy tendrils down to grab Alex’s arm and haul her up, while Ink-And-Key just skipped the hard part and flicked himself forward with one of his Appointed Arrival casts to land heavily against the back of the truck’s cab.  “And hold on!”  Simon said as he floored it, nearly sending Alex sliding out the back of the truck.

”Oh hey Mark.”  She said as the umbral holding her caught his legs in the gap between the gate and the bed and caught Alex with one unfurled hand, cupping her whole body with ease.  “Wait, where’s Drak?”  Alex asked over the thumping of tires going over multiple curbs as she did a headcount.

”Either wasting his time being amorous toward Liette, or doing something stupid but ultimately survivable I assume.”  The umbral reassured her.  A crash sounded from behind them, followed by heavy shouts as the gunfire cut off.  “Hm.  Something stupid at least.”  The umbral corrected as Simon whipped them around a corner so fast that everyone in the back nearly tipped over the side, no matter how stable their bodies made the process of riding in the back side of a pickup.

”Where’s the lizard?”  Ink-And-Key asked, pressing himself down and trying not to throw up.

”She looks fine!”  Alex told him, peering through the window into the cab.  “What now?!”  She asked.

The question had a lot of answers, and Alex kind of already knew them anyway.  Now, they needed to disappear for a little.  Now they needed to regroup.  Now they needed to figure out where their opposition were hiding all their heavy weapons.  Now they needed to update the conspiracy board of just how many fucking factions were in play.  Now they needed to pick another prison camp to hit.  Now they needed to make this very public mess much more public.  Now they needed to be loud, and bold, and courageous.

Now, there were more people that needed them.  And now might be when they should be calling for backup.

Maybe.  Or maybe they had it under control.

Somehow.

Alex would reevaluate after their clandestine midnight meeting with a pack of oilslicks later tonight.  That was plenty of time to figure out if things were getting better, or about to go nightmarishly wrong.  Or at least, that was what she’d learned so far by watching James do this.