The Daily Grind - Chapter 391 (Patreon)

“in the day few hours old you stand solid and full // of other people's love for each other // spilling over, warm leftovers.” -Sue Hyon Bae, After The Threesome They Both Drive You Home-

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“So that’s where we are!  Kind of a mess!”  James reclined on his couch, his apartment smelling like meaty soup and warm sourdough.  He didn’t recline too much, because his apartment was running out of seating, and the couch contained multiple other people that all needed elbow room to eat.  It was, disappointingly, difficult to use a spoon and cuddle at the same time.

With all four Anesh home in various places, Sarah helping in the kitchen, Alanna and Arrush looming nearby and talking about something they’d both gotten excited over that James hadn’t caught the start of the conversation about, Keeka laying on the couch using Auberdeen as a pillow, TQ having been gifted the entire love seat as a throne, and Cheha using one of their spare chairs?  It was crowded in here.  Even Zhu took up a non-negligible amount of space, manifested across James’ body in a sprawl of orange feathers and limbs.  Though there was a notable absence of a certain strider, Rufus having turned down soup day in favor of…

Whatever Rufus did when James wasn’t looking.  Probably something concerning.

As long as everyone was sitting down, or in some kind of semi-permanent place, it was fine, but James knew that if they all tried to line up to get food from the kitchen, it would be a mess of bumping into each other and not having the space to navigate through that narrow gap around the corner of the kitchen counter by the door.  Which was why Anesh, genius that James’ boyfriend was, had set up a chain of himself to pass serving dishes from the kitchen to the big table in their living room.

TQ hissed at James’ concluded explanation, the noise not at all just an excuse for him to taste the air and the hot food that was slowly making its way onto the table.  “I have made a mistake.”  He said cheerfully.

”Oh yeah?”  James raised his eyebrows at the camraconda.  TQ was still technically blind, but he had a small digital camera on his head like a hat, his skulljack letting him ‘see’, even if he had already spent quite some time complaining about the resolution.  “I cannot wait to hear-“

”Leaving you unsupervised has resulted in further chaos!”  TQ declared.  “If only this could have been prevented somehow.  Clearly I need a suit of armor I can control from a distance.”  He said, head held high as the camraconda resisted nodding.

James smiled as he watched Cheha wrap several of her paws around her muzzle in the physical manifestation of a sigh.  He appreciated that she wasn’t actually mad at him, or anyone, for what had happened to TQ.  But while the ratroach was absolutely anxious about everything, including her partner’s injury, it was clear that the days helping TQ navigate the apartment he was temporarially quarantined to while he was partially blinded had led to her converting anxiety to exasperation.  “Whyyyyy.”  She chittered at him like she had a deep familiarity with this particular line of questioning, even if she’d only really known TQ for a little under a year.

”An autonomous self would be very useful!”  TQ said with practiced ease, even if the way he tilted his head did cause him to hiss sharply in pain before he corrected.  “I could accomplish tasks, while never leaving your side.  It would sharply increase the radiant beauty in my life.”  He posited.

”And your idea for having a camraconda drone would be to, what, make sure I don’t start more trouble?”  James asked with a laugh as he took a tray of small sandwiches from a smiling Anesh and set them on the table amid the rest of the food.

Anesh kissed James on the cheek before retreating.  “I like that idea.  Maybe I should get some autonomous units myself.”

”You don’t need any more help being everywhere at once!”  James laughed.  “TQ, when you say ‘armor you can control’, what are you thinking exactly?”  He asked.  “Like, putting aside all the engineering challenges in making a moving form like that, what shape do you even want?”

“Oh, I never plan that far ahead.”  TQ’s brass fangs glinted in a smile.  It wasn’t really a default camraconda expression, but he liked stealing things from humans.  And also it was easier than moving his head right now, what with the ongoing gnawing pain.  The camraconda relaxed back in the soft seat he’d conquered, refusing to answer James any further.

James eyed him until he was certain there was no more nonsense incoming.  His camraconda friend was looking better, but it was still so unnerving seeing him with what amounted to a heavy eyepatch covering the chunk of his head that had been taken off by a railgun shot.  That damage was also added to by the strange effect of his cable color slowly shifting.  Much like the Anesh that had first tested one of the Clutter Ascent hot springs, whose green dye was now mostly down to just the bottom third of his hair, TQ was slowly shifting back to his ‘natural’ color.  But camraconda settlement didn’t grow from the top down, it really was more like skin.  So the sunset explosion of vermillion and scarlet was, in spots and patches, crumbling away to blue and grey.  If it were just a slight shade different it would look like night falling in slow motion across his body.

James stopped staring as people started sitting down.  Or, in Keeka’s case, sitting up, letting Auberdeen join them at the table in a posture most dogs wouldn’t have the patience for.  “Well.”  He told the camraconda.  “I’d miss you if you were just piloting a drone all the time.”

”I had not considered that others would be impacted!”  TQ said with a small chime from his natural voice.  “Depriving you would be tragic.  We must offset this somehow.”

”Yeah!”  Alanna said as she dropped into the chair next to Cheha, the old reliable piece of furniture that had followed James for almost his whole life serving his current home well.  “You two need to kiss!”  She declared with a wild grin.

”What!”  Keeka squeaked.  “Why didn’t I know this?!  I could have been helping!”

TQ pivoted slightly so his artificial camera eye faced Keeka.  “Helping how?”  He asked, getting a reinforcing nod and point from James.

”The most fun way!”  Keeka declared, his smaller paws curling around the edge of the table while he gave a glowing grin to everyone else.  Across the table from him, Arrush covered the end of his more angular muzzle with one paw, holding back a laugh.

James rolled his eyes as he started filling a bowl with soup for Auberdeen, the dog silently indicating what she wanted for dinner by staring at James with huge eyes until he acquiesced.  “Okay, so, I love this, don’t get me wrong.  And I love all of you too - yes, even you Cheha.”  The ratroach in question, who James did love though more in the sense that he was fond of her and less that he was romantically interested like he was with TQ, or even Keeka, made a high pitched squeak and covered her face again.  “But I’ve gotta know.  Why are we talking about who I’m kissing, and not… uh… the dungeon asking for a diplomatic relationship?!”

”Diplomatic is less sexy.”  Alanna told him while selecting tiny sandwiches to add to her plate, phrasing it like the answer was obvious.  “I can’t have that much fun imagining you in some kind of professional meeting with official representatives.  But you and this dumbass?”  She jerked her thumb toward TQ, who hissed as his face stretched into another proud grin.

“I am appealing to picture.”  TQ stated as he started unfolding his mechanical arms to eat, the informal dinner not really needed some grand declaration to begin.  Mostly the signal was that various Anesh were now sitting down and the kitchen was empty of everything except a few softly simmering pots full of extra food.

”Hey, I know I’m nominally here for shenningans…” Zhu said with a revving cough that James knew was entirely faked for drama.  “But, uh… can we talk about the dungeon?”  He asked.  “I mean… come on, right?  I live in most of your heads, I know how horny you all are for each other, so I get that I’m asking a lot here!  But there’s a dungeon!  That wants!  To!  Hang out!”  He declared with a sweep of his arm off of James’ own which perfectly intercepted James’ attempt to pick up some kind of curry in pita that Anesh had prepared, the bite sized piece of dinner vanishing into Zhu’s feathered maw.

James looked at his suddenly empty hand.  “I…” he snorted in amusement at his meal being pilfered before just taking another one from the plate.  “I take mild offense at that, but Zhu’s right.  The Pylon…”

”It makes sense.”  Anesh offered, one of him speaking while two others took hearty spoonfuls of the soup he’d put hours of work into and sighed in satisfaction.  “You keep making a visible mess of things around it, and the Order keeps delving it in a way that makes us look quite a bit more respectable than any other option.  You keep… James you keep being yourself so aggressively that these things just happen.”

Keeka leaned away from Auberdeen and into James’ side with a soft bump, disrupting Zhu’s attempt to steal another chunk of food as he did so.  “But it means we don’t have anything to say!”  He said.

Speaking around a mouthful of sandwich that was roughly one entire finger sandwich, Alanna pointed across the table at James.  “Mmph!  Yeah!  What are we supposed to do, buddy?  There’s way too much absurd shit in our lives now for us to waste time being surprised at every event.  This is cool, and you offering to let the Pylon join the Order?  Chef’s kiss.  Love it.  Very you.”

Arrush set down the bowl that he was cradling up to his muzzle to sip out of.  “I want to see it do Response training.”  He said with a canny smile.

”Okay, also hilarious.”  Alanna rolled her neck to nod at the ratroach next to her.  “Actually we can talk about this!  Let’s make a list of Order things that sound insane when it’s a dungeon doing them!  Here’s one; a dungeon joining the body exploration club!”

Cheha suddenly chittered out a surprised laugh that drew eyes to her.  Ducking her head nervously, she still spoke the thought she’d had.  “D-dungeon therapy.”  She said, getting a mirror of her own laugh back from Keeka along with a bright smile from the other ratroach.

Anesh raised a hand.  ”Dungeon taking a Sewer Lesson and suddenly becoming hyperfixated on a new subject.”

Across from that one of him, TQ gave a quick hiss as he pulled away from his dinner.  “I am aware that it is a strange tradition, but at some point a dungeon in the Order will likely become part of this polycule.”

”Holy shit that’s such a good point.”  Alanna gasped out.  “TQ you’re a genius.  James, help me fuck a dungeon!”

”…No?”  James stared at her, spoon halfway to his mouth frozen in the air.  “I mean… yeah?  Sure?  I support you but have no idea how to… Sarah help me out here.”

”I can help by pivoting!”  Sarah happily declared.  “Dungeon on a pluralist ball team!”

Alanna gave Zhu an apologetic look.  “Hey, sorry, I’m gonna pivot too.”  She said.

”Alanna no, I trusted you!”  Zhu bemoaned.  “You have to know this is insane!”

”Sure.  Whatever.  So, you guys know how there’s that pluralist ball league starting up soon, right?”  She asked.  “Well, that’s, like… next week.  So if we want to put a team on the listing…”  Next to her, Arrush gave a surprisingly eager nod of affirmation, looking around at the rest of the group at the big table.

James really, really wanted to let himself be sidetracked by that.

But there was a dungeon.  Talking to them.  It was a big deal, right?  This was supposed to be something momentous that changed the shape of the Order forever, and upended how they organized their small fragment of a society, and introduced whole new vectors for development and magical application.  It also meant a massive shift in how they approached the whole gang war thing happening in Utah, as well as a sudden need to reprioritize Townton for an influx of some new species.

And… as he thought over all that, James realized something.

Everything he’d just said was wrong.  Or, not wrong, but… not new.  The Attic had talked to them first through Kiki.  Hell, the Route talked to them first, technically.  Twice!  Once just to be an asshole to its daughter!  And the Order of Endless Rooms was already delving the Pylon, already applying its magic, already mixed up in Utah’s weird theocratic political landscape, and, for unrelated reasons, already structuring Townton as a place capable of absorbing large groups of new people.  The main thing that Pylon Motoric brought to the table that was actually legitimately new was the fact that it wanted to ally with them, as a faction in its own right that operated at a scale larger than a few dozen people.  And that made it unique among the groups the Order had encountered so far.

The thing that made it special was that it was significantly less committed to the bit than anyone else.  And that was kinda underwhelming.

James took a deep breath of the warm air of his apartment, savoring the flavor of the dinner his beautiful boyfriend had prepared for everyone, and looked down at the glowing orange eyes on his shoulder and arm.  “Zhu I’m really sorry.”  He said.

”No!  Not you too!”

”Alanna, there is no way in hell I can be on a pluralist ball team.”  James told his partner, abandoning the dungeon thing entirely.  “There’s too much going on.  I’m going to another continent in, like, two days.  I’m always in dungeons or injured from being in dungeons.  But I will absolutely one thousand percent support the team you do end up forming.”

Alanna tipped her head to the side.  “You know most of us tend to get into those dangerous situations with you, right?  The whole ‘coterie’ thing sounded like one of those James-flavored jokes at first but I’m kinda into being on call to be heroic, just in general.”

”Yeah and somehow you all have more free time than me.”

”Touche.”  Alanna accepted that easily.

It was a little weird.  She never really stopped doing things, they were just a lot more personal in terms of what category they fell into than what her boyfriend got up to.  Alanna spent a lot of her time doing a ‘day job’ now, working in Response, mostly with Smoke-And-Ember and Marlea.  She had a schedule to her life that included a sculpted workout and an RPG group that had miraculously not missed a session yet.  She had free time, obviously, but she used it for personal projects like trying to get elected to the local school board or messing around with Garden spells.  Or this.  Spending time with her partners, in various ways.  Alanna was getting really good at losing at bowling, and she did still love dungeon delves.

But she didn’t really do the James thing of having negative four minutes between every crisis.  And she hadn’t even joined him on his last horrible adventure.

Some coterier she was, Alanna thought to herself.

”Anyway I can’t be on your team, but I’m deeply interested in this splort.”  James told her, shaking Alanna back to the present.

”Right!”  Alanna threw herself back into it.  “So we need five people.  Arrush already said yes, and that just means three more!  The adult league is a little more structured than the kid version, and we get a team rule, but I wanna see who’s in first before that.”

Two Anesh traded plates with each other without looking while one of him looked at Alanna.  “Remind most of me how this… James did you say splort?… works?”

”James laments the death of Blaseball ignore him.”  Alanna dashed James’ dreams with a quick burst of words.  “So, teams of five, rectangle of a field, get the ball over the goal line for a point.  Get tagged while in control of the ball, you’re out for the play.  No murdering people, no resource investment.  Oh!”  She grinned like a crocamaw.  “And at the start of each game, each team submits a rule, gets to hear both rules together, then submits another rule!  So each game is stupid.”

”A-and fun.”  Arrush agreed.

Anesh gave them a curious look.  “So how do you plan for anything?”  He asked. “No, I suppose that’s rather the point, isn’t it?  You practice for rules you want to add, and improvise.  I’m assuming there’s some various restrictions on throwing fireballs around?”  He asked, though he already suspected the answer. 

”And what’s a team rule?”  James asked more seriously.

”A curse imposed upon a team by their rivals?”  TQ suggested.  “Oh!  Curses!  How many curses can I apply?”

Alanna deliberately avoided looking at the camraconda.  “Ignoring that.”  She declared.  “Also nah, it’s a rule that follows the team.  Your ‘home field’ kinda!”

”You cannot tell me this isn’t Blaseball.” James challenged her across the food spread over the table.

TQ indignantly twisted - slowly - to face James.  “Ask her about curses.”  He ordered the human.

”Hey Alanna!”

”Okay, fine, jesus!  You can’t make a rule that excludes someone from playing.  And there’s a kind of over-rule that the whole point is to have fun so if you’re just coming up with rules to be a dick, the ref is allowed to exile you to the phantom zone.”  Alanna explained.  “So what I’m thinking, since we’ve got three humans and two ratroaches, is-“

Anesh raised a hand.  “Hi, sorry, I didn’t say…” all of him, in slightly offset motions, looked over at Keeka giving him pleading puppy eyes.  Then Anesh sighed.  “…what position am I playing then?”  He asked, and half the room made amused sounds as Keeka clapped each set of his paws together, the chitin lines making a crisp click of excitement through the fur.  “Wait, three.  James isn’t going to be able to join us in this madness and we all know it.  Sarah?”

“I also didn’t say yes but I’m in!”  She declared.  “Oh!  Can we magnetize the ball?”  Sarah asked with wide eyes.  “Because I have a great idea!”

”Yes!  That’s what I’m talking about!”  Alanna pumped a fist in the air.  “That!  And before anyone asks it’s not unfair because everyone’s gonna be doing the same kind of crap right back to us!”

James had a revelation.  ”Games of pluralist ball are either going to be over in a few minutes, or take six years to conclude, aren’t they?”

Arrush casually gnawed on the crust of a sandwich, grinning around his food at James.  ”There’s still time to make your own team.”  He told his boyfriend.

”…Hey Zhu…”

”Yeah, yeah, I’ll play splorts with you.”  The navigator sighed.  “Since I guess that’s more important than the dungeon thing now.”  He smoothed out his feathers with one of his talons, his manifestation relaxing a little.  “Also you guys are sorta selling me on this.  So, like, how do you handle camracondas?  Can they freeze people?”  TQ started to hiss before answering and Zhu’s eyes pivoted over to him in advance.  “Freeze people in the game!  I know you’re… oh, shit, sorry.”

TQ magnanimously didn’t take offense.  “I am perfectly capable of stunning with conversation.”  He offered.

”T-that’s true!”  Cheha nodded. “He confuses me all the time.”  She chittered, a noise that warmed James’ heart as much as Anesh’s soup did.

Cheha was from the third or fourth batch of ratroaches that had been plucked from the Sewer, and she was… well, normal, for that group.  Perfectly ordinary, in the ways that her trauma and pain had affected her.  An entirely reasonable collection of mental and emotional and physical wounds, many of which were still in the process of being healed.

It was easy for James to understand why TQ liked her; she was kind and clever and she was making a fumbling but genuine attempt to understand the world and find a place in it.  But Cheha was also terrified all the time.  James knew it took a toll on Alanna, though his girlfriend would never tell anyone that.  Especially not Cheha.  But a lot of ratroaches were just like that; subconsciously waiting for the trap to close, even months or years after their rescue.

Only time really solved that.  Time, and patience.  And maybe soup.  And so seeing Cheha starting to relax around his apartment, starting to open up beyond just taking shelter in TQ’s social shadow or quietly talking with Auberdeen about books?  It was nice.  It was a sign things were getting better for her.

Not that James expected to see her throwing herself into dungeon delves anytime soon.  That just wasn’t who Cheha was.  But it was who she was in a way that was safer and happier, and that was all that mattered.

James didn’t say any of that though.  Instead, he said something a little snarky with a smile of his own. ”Yeah, talking to TQ requires a battle plan and a belt full of potions for all the status effects.”  He teased the camraconda.

”Yes!  Now come closer and I can inflict at least one of those effects on you!”  TQ hissed in amusement, arrowhead pen nib fangs poking out from the tightly coiled cables of his mouth.

“No biting!”  Auberdeen barked, looking up from her own meal, muzzle coated in soup residue, any attempt to eat with her authority’s help abandoned early on.  She was getting better at not making a mess when she split dinner with them and didn’t just snack on the kibble she still liked, but that only really extended to the table and not herself.  “Biting is wrong!”  She chastized TQ.

”You know you’re in trouble when Auberdeen has more manners than you do.”  Alanna said solemnly, getting a bark from the dog that was still learning how to be indignant.

”I am not impolite, I am flirting!”  TQ said with clear offense.  “And I am exceptional at it!”

”It’s true, I kinda want to let him bite me.”  James said as he stood up, wishing that he had another hour to hang out here in the warm apartment with a full stomach and bunch of people he liked.  “Alas… duty calls.”

Zhu rolled his central eye.  “Your idea of duty is boring!”

James nodded energetically.  ”I’m going to Research to talk to them about a tree!”  He said happily.  And then, filling in for Arrush and Keeka who both looked curious about that, added, “There’s a new Climb spell that makes a sort of tree thing?  It’s a lot like the snow cat - oh shit I need to resummon my cat - except it’s a tree.  Uh… yeah.”

Keeka’s paw shot into the air, a motion he’d learned from some of the students that lived in the Lair’s basement, as well as just James himself.  “Is it a magic tree?”  He asked, all his eyes widening in anticipation.

”As far as I know?  It’s a tree that… uh… does what you order it to.”  James cleared his throat.  “Which sounds useless, but I guess it’s also capable of using leveler gear?  Which is wild!  So I’m gonna go - yes Zhu you can stay here.”  James snorted a huff as his navigator friend kept struggling like he was trying to unpeel from James’s skin.  “Keeka, you’re closest, you get this dingus.”  He said, holding his arm out to the ratroach.

Keeka took James’ hand like he wasn’t really considering what that meant, instead just enjoying the physical contact with the human.  When the dusty orange light of Zhu’s body frayed and melted away from James, and began to creep up Keeka’s arm in a slow crawl of feathers that ended with a crater on his upper shoulder opening a wide eye, Keeka made a small chitter of curiosity as he felt the presence of someone settle into his thoughts.  “O-oh.  Hi?”

”Hey.  Wow, you’re restless.”  Zhu commented, absolutely no social filter active, as was his normal operating mode.

”I… I am not!”  Keeka protested.  “I’m fine!  Everything is fine!”

”Keeka?”  Anesh questioned softly, the word carrying a lot of concern as he shared a look with a similarly worried Arrush.

Keeka started trying to grapple with the navigator that was now on him, which made it a bit of a spectacle that threatened to spill what was left of the soup on the table.  “Nnnno!”  Keeka chittered, the rings around his rows of eyes an almost fluorescent green.  “S-Sarah!  Distract them!”

Sarah was also worried about Keeka now, and she also didn’t have a good distraction lined up.  Looking to Alanna, the larger woman shrugged and offered the latest tidbit she’d heard from the Order’s basement dwelling Research cadre.  “I hear there’s a new level three coin, which is mostly James and Arrush’s faults.  Anyone wanna talk about that one?”

”No, it’s stupid, and it only casts the spell when you fall unconscious.  And then it casts the spell.  No matter what.”  James said, wondering if he should help Keeka bully Zhu for a little.  “Keeka, are you okay?  Want me to take him back?”

”I’m not a baton!”  Zhu declared.  “Now quick, before he figures out where my mouths are!  Someone take Keeka on a walk!”

Auberdeen’s head whipped around, her nature as an increasingly intelligent dog not having stopped her own love of long treks through the trails and sidewalks around the apartment. ”Oh!  Yes, a walk!  I will get you a leash!”

”I don’t need a leash!”  Keeka protested, somehow blushing an even more radioactive shade of green.  “Arrush help!”

”I… think she meant a leash for her.  Do you want me to get your leash?”  Arrush asked with feigned innocence, which did absolutely nothing to help Keeka.

James really, really didn’t want to leave.  He wanted to be here forever.  But he also knew if he didn’t head out he’d end up missing the people he was supposed to talk to, and besides… “You guys have fun on your walk.”  He said, nudging Keeka as he slipped out from behind the table.  “I’m leaving before TQ asks why I don’t have a leash.”

”Oh, a good question!”  The camraconda started to say before he moved too fast again and hissed in pain.  “Oh.  Ow.  I dislike this.  I will… refrain from walking.”

”I can stay-“ Cheha started to say, but TQ gently poked at the back of one of her paws with a mechanical arm.

”I will survive.  Go.  There is a pond nearby they enjoy walking to.  With ducks!  Strange beasts from another world!  Isn’t that something worth seeing?”  He said with obvious affection for the ratroach.

James really, really wanted to follow up on that.  But if he did, he knew he really would stick around forever.  So he made his way down the side of the table, hand softly brushing the back of Anesh’s necks in turn before he leaned over to kiss Arrush goodbye.  No one else got affection, because Anesh was still eating, and every other person he would have kissed was separated by the cramped quarters of cramming eleven people and a table into the living room of an apartment that they - for some reason - hadn’t just doubled in size with a totem yet.

But he was confident they knew.  That he loved them.  That he wanted to spend his life with them.  And that he was definitely being a little selfish in how he was determined to drag the Order’s collective understanding of magic forward by leaps and bounds so that he could share it all with them personally.

He was confident because he told them before he left.  Or tried to, until Auberdeen knocked over a lamp having a tussle with James’ snow cat, and Sarah just gave him a reassuring hug that his dramatic speech would be remembered in their hearts as he intended it, and not as it was interrupted.

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The magical ice tree ended up being the least interesting thing the Research catchup briefing had for James.

It wasn’t useless, not by a long shot.  But the Researchers who’d been working on it also only had initial trials and known data.  They weren’t idiots or anything, but James knew for a fact that most of Research these days was made up of people who didn’t really go into dungeons that much.  Whether that was because they weren’t actually that interested in heeding the call of adventure, or because they were newly hired specialists that just weren’t delvers, or because they had required a lot of effort to leave a dungeon in the first place and had no desire to ever go back, well, that was up to the individual.

But it did mean that there wasn’t as much focus on how a magic could be used.  Research was getting into the flow of being good at figuring stuff out, and then shopping that stuff around to Recovery or Response or some other department - James was mortified to learn the collective Townton construction project was being called Repair - and letting them figure out what they wanted to do with it.

Which wasn’t to say they were dumb.  John and Davis had already figured out that the tree made by a cast of Pale Hoar Lurker was an excellent tool for keeping leveler items growing without having to go through the process of doing it manually.  At four Breath to cast and one more per hour to keep it going, the average Researcher could sustain maybe three of them before serious discomfort set in.  And the things had enough branches to hang shield bracers on that it was feasible to cover one of the icy trees, tell it to activate every ability constantly, and then come back in three months when the bracers were ‘ready’.

James had instantly started wondering what the tactical applications were.  And then abruptly learned that his estimation of Research was kind of wrong.  Because they genuinely had asked those same questions he had started to pull on the thread of, and the answer was just ‘not much’, which was why they hadn’t told him about it.

The tree didn’t see or hear or any other sense.  You could give it mental orders to follow, but it also couldn’t move, so… those orders were limited to things it could activate with intent alone.  It also wasn’t alive in any way that registered, so the attempt to take one through a Climb delve to get it its own Breath supply had failed.  Same thing with Pylon levels.  You couldn’t even body swap to one.

”Why.”  James asked flatly.  “Did you try.”

”Because worst case scenario we have to be a tree for three minutes?”  Nik asked back, like that was obvious.  “Even if it doesn’t know how to breathe, I drank an oxygen potion first, so it would have been okay.”

James didn’t know what to say to that.  Well, that was a lie, he knew what he wanted to say, but he also didn’t want to swear at Nik a lot in front of the man’s peers.

The point of it was, using the tree as some kind of autonomous sentry or area denial tool during the next Underburbs attack probably wasn’t going to work.  

The next thing was both more relieving and also more concerning.  “So as you are aware,”  Reed said, making direct eye contact with James, the one human in the room that she was questioning the awareness of, “the vote on the crown settled on the brooch.  Right?”

”Reed I do know… Reed I ran that vote!”  James protested.  “Yes, I know!”

”Just checking!”  The ratroach waved half of one arm at him from her place in front of a projection screen where various people in this catchup meeting had been giving presentations.  “So using the praxis infusion ability, and some, if I can brag, very convoluted and impressive dungeon time dilation exploitation, we’re about three years ‘ahead’ on a single brooch.”  She didn’t actually have a presentation going, but Reed kept turning to the screen like she was waiting for her next slide.  “And I have good news!”

“It isn’t going to kill anyone?”  James ventured.  Several Researchers laughed.  He really wished they didn’t, that was the concern for the brooches.  For once, he wasn’t making a joke or being funny, they legitimately were supposed to be determining if it was murderous.

Reed gave a blue glowing smile too.  “Correct!”  She declared.  “Well, mostly.  Okay, no, ours kills people.”

”Reed for fucks sake…”

”No no, it’s okay!”  She immediately protested.  “Purify Food and Bind Processor don’t cause any problems after three years of nonstop leveling!  In real life terms, Recovery estimates that’ll be… four to six years, real time?  One full Star Wars trilogy worth of time, and we don’t know for certain that it wouldn’t keep being fine afterward.”

Red looked up from the tablet computer she was holding with a sharp look in her weathered eyes.  “And the other two abilities?”  She questioned.

”Right, yes, the alchemy department has been using the potassium, right?”  Reed asked with a friendly smile, but just got an unmoving steel stare from Red that didn’t falter or blink until she answered the question, leaving Reed withering slightly.  “Right.  Uh… at level five of both Bind Processor and Extract Potassium, it modifies Extract Potassium to allow it to elementally ‘upgrade’ the potassium it produces.”  Every hand, tendril, or sign held in a camraconda’s fangs went up in the air.  “Into rubidium.”  Reed clarified.  The questioning limbs stayed up.

”Reed!”  James called over the growing murmuration.  “Rubidium explodes question mark?”

”Yeah, it does.”  Reed nodded, a tiny smile peeking out of the end of her muzzle.  “Fortunately we didn’t lose the brooch during testing, though I do owe the kitchens a new blender.”

Nik nodded.  “Nate’s made some comments.”

”R-right…” Reed seemed actually unsettled by that.  “Well that’s the summary.  If anyone has any other ideas for testing we can try some things before I submit the report to Recovery, but… I think it’s safe?  No one out there is going to have blue orbs laying around to imbue a piece of local infrastructure.  I think.  So at least four years worth of safe time if we start distribution.  Which is good news!  And better news, we can start using the crown for other things now!”

That was better news, because apparently Research had all kinds of ideas for what they wanted to accelerate next.  James tried to not ask too many questions since he really was just sitting in on this meeting, but he did pick up that they were pretty sure the crown’s second ability increased Climb wand capacity too, which was also a big deal.

So far, the Order hadn’t figured out how to reliably make Climb wands that weren’t either small capacity cast-on-impact tools, or deep reservoir slow cast wands that were, for reasons unbeknownst to anyone, all exceptionally large and unwieldy objects.  All the really interesting metamagic belonged to the Climb itself, in much the same way that the truly silly dungeontech from Officium Mundi all came from Officium Mundi.

Then there was a quick list of new Climb wands they had figured out.  Or old ones they’d finally puzzled through.  Usually the things were pretty obvious in what they did, but a couple had been real pains in that regard.  Like in this case, a heavy ceramic mug that, when a spell was cast from it, would leave the spell ‘hovering’ at its location.  Invisible, intangible, and inactive until there wasn’t anyone alive within ten feet.  Then it would be active, and the next person to touch it would get to cast the spell.  An enormous pain to set up, but it did cut the casting cost of most spells by almost forty percent.

The other one was a belt, which meant the Order finally had a magic belt, just the wrong one.  It would instantly drain Breath put into it to cast the spell, but do nothing.  And then exactly twenty four hours later, whoever was touching it at the time would get to cast that spell for real.  If they remembered.

James often had a lot of questions for Research regarding the phrase ‘what the hell were you thinking’.  But these days, it was becoming more a statement of stunned awe and less a confusion about how they’d survived this long with no safety guidelines.

Other things were presented with the kind of casual tone of people who were definitely aware they were about to change the world, but maybe didn’t realize how much work it was going to be.

The world’s first ratroach programmer from the skulljack team told everyone that they’d figured out how to install a firewall on a brain.  Though only a human brain so far, which was disappointing.  But they had confidence the tool could be expanded well before the dungeon cybernetic spread to the whole world and caused a breakdown of civilization.  Probably.

Bea informed them that with Momo’s help, she had managed to iterate on a Library generator design and they could now produce arthropods if they had the orbs for it.  On a less terrifying wave-of-bugs note, she also dully told everyone that while the material generators were still imprecise, they could shape them well enough to make less wasteful molds now.  Making the generated material permanent was as simple as putting the right orb in, then teleporting away with the generator - preferably to somewhere that you didn’t mind more material showing up - and leaving behind the previous batch.  Generators only recovered their mass if you disabled them by removing the orb while the mass was nearby, or if they were moved away from their generated mass manually, apparently.

And Red told everyone that the alchemy department had made a potion that caused addictions.  She hadn’t really elaborated on that one, and James really, really needed to track her down afterward because he’d missed his window of questioning as the woman continued, adding that they’d also safety tested potions that increased bone and skin durability while purging the body of dopamine, that improved the ability to remember faces and personal information while also reducing social anxiety, and that improved external organ function.  Everyone had waited for the ‘but’ or ‘while’ on that last one, but it turned out it just wasn’t especially effective.  The better flavor on the recipe for the exercise potion was much more important.

And that was the weekly Research meeting.  Which felt bizarrely clipped to James.  They had new tools for safety, for therapy, for construction, for combat, for everything.  And the people here just shared what they’d found and then let the others know if they needed more help or resources, like this was just what a Thursday was for them.

But then he’d gotten caught up in a twenty minute conversation with Nik about how they were using the FAQ producing truck that had been gently extracted from the Pylon.  It had a much higher cooldown on its use out here than it had in the dungeon, which made an amount of intrinsic sense to James, but it was still absurdly useful for identifying orbs before their use so that the Order could save copier ritual space.  And in that conversation, James realized that everyone was deeply interested in talking for eight hours about the potential applications of every single purple orb.  They just… didn’t have time.

Only they did have time for this gathering, thanks to a new green orb a new recruit had used, that gave this particular Lair basement an extra forty one minutes a week for group meetings.

“I love this place.”  James said.  “And my head hurts.  So I’m going to escape while I still have my sanity.”

”Good idea!  Try to level up sanity next time you go through the Pylon, let us know how it goes!”  Nik suggested.

James was pretty sure that was a joke.  And he really wanted to start leveling up Officium Mundi spellcasting instead.  But he’d make an attempt, since Nik had asked so… well not nicely but he’d at least asked this time.

_____

The voting on Pylon Motoric hadn’t exactly concluded by the time James made it to Nate’s secret office.  The Order’s version of democracy was fast, but it wasn’t instantaneous, and it took longer than about thirty hours for everyone to chime in.  Add to that the fact that the people who did vote early tended to be… well… people who agreed with James.

The people with skulljacks, mental enhancements, free time to keep up on any alerts, and a hot desire to be on top of any of the Order’s voting initiatives.  Which wasn’t to say that everyone else formed a totally oppositional power bloc or anything; those people were often also swayed by various arguments or just agreed already with certain positions.  But there was an environment where it wasn’t a good idea to call a vote early just because late voters both could change the outcome, and still mattered to the process.

That said, the voting was basically done.

For single important issues like this, the Order of Endless Rooms actually had a consensus based decision making process.  The people who were in leadership positions discussed, and came to a decision.  However, the open vote existed to get an idea of what the average member - or ‘citizen’ even - wanted, as well as to help educate anyone who had questions.  If everyone voted to bomb the Pylon, the Order just… wouldn’t do that?  There was no requirement to entertain bad ideas.  But it was generally important to be tracking whether or not anyone making decisions constantly went against the voters, and especially if doing so got bad results.

In this case, going off the ranked choice votes that had come in, about ninety percent of the Order supported making Pylon Motoric a member, whatever that ended up meaning.  Seventy percent supported a diplomatic alliance in some form, and it was surprising how many of the people who didn’t want the dungeon to join the Order were cool with negotiating with it.

It was good guidance.  And honestly, if everyone had voted no, James probably would have gone along with that?  The Pylon wasn’t adversarial to the Order, exactly, but it was… a problem.  It clearly had its own set of biases and caused its own spreadsheet of harms, and unfucking that mess was going to be a ton of work at a time when the Order was very much shorthanded.  Just saying “no”, even in the form of “no not now ask again after we figure out how compromised the US government is or maybe when the Underburbs are dead”, would have been entirely understandable.

But they’d said yes.  And now it was time to figure out how to turn that yes into action.

Which was why James was navigating the halls of one of the Lair’s basements, looking for Nate’s secret office.

It wasn’t an office, really.  It also wasn’t secret.  More like a mildly obscure den than anything else.  But he was having a hell of a hard time finding the place.  And it wasn’t until James passed by a part of the basement he was familiar with, where he knew there used to be doors to small bedrooms where he had once slept before the first time he’d gone on a mission to kill another human, that he realized something was really different.

The doors were still there, they were just separated.  By about thirty feet of smooth stone floor in a semicircle extending away from the hall.  A three tiered concrete fountain sat in the middle, pleasantly burbling, while the arc of the new wall on the other side of it had long windows in it that showed what was on the other side of some new doors.  Rooms that almost looked like classrooms, containing multiple rows of desks with computers.  There were a few people in one of them, and James did a double take as he recognized one of Alanna’s younger sisters; headphones in, a focused look as she stared at the screen she was leaned back from with narrowed eyes, tapping a pencil on her lips.

”Right.”  James said with a sigh.  “So it’s this then.”

He updated the map he had loaded on his skulljack braid, and lamented leaving Zhu with Keeka.  To be fair, he didn’t want Keeka to get lost anywhere either, but he was pretty sure that a walk around the normal town near his apartment was a lot less chaotic than this.

Before finding his destination, James encountered a new set of vending machines in an alcove that hadn’t been there before, a carpeted hall that cut through to the other side of the basement in a straight line that should have dropped him into the Research vault but didn’t, and a place where the hall widened so that it could go around a square hole in the floor, a sturdy iron and wood railing blocking off the gap that looked down into the basement below them as if that was normal.  None of this had been here last week, which James actually realized made perfect sense.

They’d brought a new batch of people into the Order a few days ago.  Not him giving the speech this time, which he regretted.  But the tradition of having everyone crack a green orb as a way to test new greens and also let them leave a mark on the Lair - or wherever else they started their journey in the Order - meant that the building had undergone some improvements.

Eventually, he did find the right door, arriving to the secluded room Nate had set up in and kept bringing people to at about the same time as a semi-familiar face.

”Evans.”  He greeted the shield team captain.  “Fancy meeting you here.”

”Yes si-… paladin.”  Evans stopped himself.  Barely.  “I was told to be here to hear about a new security risk?”

James rolled his eyes and opened the door without knocking.  “Nate!”  He called into the room as he entered.  “Stop calling our new member a security risk!”  He paused as he looked around the dark room, his vision good but not actually enhanced enough to see in the dark with only the glow of blue rectangle from the coffee maker.  “Oh.”  James flipped the light on and took one of the couches, sighing as he sat.  “Come on in, take some of Nate’s beer.”

”That doesn’t seem like a good idea.”  Evans said tentatively.  But he did come in at least.

“You’re probably right.”  He admitted with a grin.  James felt like the man was still a little nervous around him.  But he could understand that, in part.  He hadn’t really talked to Evans much as a person, just as a subordinate.  Which was weird when it came to the Order’s general structure.  “So.  Anything earth shattering happen lately?  I haven’t really seen you since the last training exercise.”

Evans didn’t completely relax, but he did smile with the kind of expression people used when they had a secret joke going on.  “I got a pet bird.”  He told James.

”Very cool.  What kind of bird?”

”Well, it isn’t really a pet.  Or a bird exactly.  It’s a camcondor that hangs out on my porch.”  Evans said like that was normal.

James sometimes had this impression that other people were better adapted to the world of magic than he was.  Like right now, where he was wondering if Evans would make a better paladin than he would.  James couldn’t have said that with a straight face.  No chance in hell.

“Uh huh.”  He said with open suspicion.

”It likes my cat.”

”You have a cat?”  James perked up.  “Keeka really wants a cat, he’s been taking a lot about it lately.  What ki- wait, no, this is a trap, isn’t it?”  He narrowed his eyes again.

”Nah, normal cat.  His name’s Killbot.”

”Evans, why aren’t we friends?”  James asked.  “I feel like you’d fit into my social circle unnervingly well.”

Evans did smile this time.  “Thanks, but I have a social life.”  He only partly lied.  “Also.” he started to say something and then quickly stopped talking.

James raised his eyebrows.  “Also?”  He asked from the couch.

”Also my job isn’t safe.”  Evans said.  “It’s hard to be friends with people when you might die every Wednesday.”

”You guys ended up on the mannequin faucet, eh?”  James asked.  He chose not to contest the point with the fact that he, too, was incredibly vulnerably mortal and that he had managed to have friends and lovers.   “How was that?  Yesterday, right?”

Evans gave a short nod, his reply coming more in the form of a report than a conversation now.  “It’s getting worse, but not by much.  Thirty two targets this week.  We’re handling it with melee weapons and limited magic, which seems to keep them from escalating as much.  The biggest problem is that a few spawned outside the factory this time and didn’t engage us.”

”What happened?”

”They picked a straight line to the nearest moving thing they could find and started running for it.  Almost killed a dog walker.  And one tried to throw itself into traffic on the highway.”

”Yikes.” James sucked in a breath.  “You got ‘em though?”

Evans nodded.  “We got ‘em.  But next week might be a little worse.  We had help from the perimeter team this time, which means more people were involved.  Not like we know what the formula is though.”

”At least you get to level up from it.”  James pointed out.  Evans’ mouth quirked upward as he looked down at one of his hands, flexing his fingers like he was trying to figure out exactly what had changed about himself.  James understood, because he’d experienced that same feeling when he’d dealt with the mannequin faucet - a term he was never giving up - for the first time.  Some kind of almost primal energy, that didn’t do anything particularly specific or noticeable, but somehow sank to the bone and left him feeling just that much more alive.  And he’d done it once, against twenty-ish of the things.  Shield team three had been fighting them for three weeks and the enemy had been escalating every time.  Evans must feel great.

Before either human could say anything else, the door swung open and Nate’s hefty hand slapped the already-on lightswitch by the door.  “Why the hell are you in here?”  He asked them both without missing a beat as he walked in like he owned the place.  Which, well, he kind of did.

“Sorry sir.”  Evans said on reflex.  Though even he felt like he didn’t fully mean it.

”I sometimes just wander into random rooms and see what it’s like to sit in them.”  James answered, channeling TQ a little bit in the camraconda’s absence.  “Also you wanted to talk about the Pylon?”  He prompted.

The tiny hiss of a bottlecap being popped off with some kind of bizarrely shaped tool on Nate’s keyring was the only indication that the man had retrieved something from his personal minifridge.  James liked to imagine he’d needed to open it a specific way to disarm the booby traps.  “I know what it wants.”  He told James.

James raised his eyebrows, sitting forward and cutting out the casual behavior.  “From an alliance?”

”From any contact with us.”  Nate grunted.  “Everyone has this idea that it’s seen us being heroic and respects that.  And, hey, maybe it does.  But it’s also seen us getting in a lot of fights, and most importantly, fights with what it obviously considers the biggest threat to itself in the state.”

”The Mormons.”  Evans said with masked distaste.

”The straight up Mormons that make up the bulk of their local church presence are actually the Pylon’s biggest supporters.”  James pointed out.  “They might not know it, and they treat the oilslicks and other life like demons, but their ark project feeds the dungeon and their whole soldier-of-God thing keeps actual delvers moving through there.”  James drummed fingers on the back of his hand.  “Though.  Given what Three Oh Six just told me about how the Pylon treats the oilslicks… it might actually be prioritizing them over anything else.  So maybe it is mad at the church.”

Nate set the otherwise untouched open bottle on the coffee table with a sharp thunk as he sat himself down.  “You’re dancing around the point.”  He said.  “It’s asking for something specific, even if the shifter doesn’t see it.”  He rubbed a hand over his face.  “It wants Utah.”

”What?”  James asked, puzzled.

”You’re thinking of it like you.  But it’s not, and not just because it’s a dungeon.  Half of what we know about this thing paints a picture of a creature that’s aware, powerful, and intelligent.  It schemes.”

”…I do love a good scheme.”  James said quietly.

Nate ignored that.  ”It sends out agents, but it’s not like the Office that just tries to snipe priority targets, or the Underburbs using wave tactics.  It has people - loyal people - that get missions.  It’s not a wild animal or an alien machine, this dungeon is smart, and if you know how to look?  It’s ambitious.”

Evans asked a question.  “You said it wants Utah.  Why?”

”That’s where it is.”  Nate shrugged.  “It’s a dungeon.  It can’t move.  We know one dungeon that moves and it’s already pissed off people who are considering nuking it.”  James started to raise a finger up, his mouth open in an annoyed look while he sorted out how exactly he wanted to complain that Nate had told him to not steal a nuclear weapon.  “Metaphorically.”  He added gruffly, and James put his hand down.  “The Pylon - maybe the Garden too - don’t want to be surrounded by people that feel that way about them.  There’s a fucking gang war spilling into the streets down there, and your paladin is winning it.  The Pylon wants what a smart person wants when they see that situation.”

”To be friends with whoever comes out on top.”  James muttered.  “That’s… okay, there’s no way to know if that’s exactly true.”  He said, though it wasn’t much of a challenge.  “But you’re thinking it’s more than that, right?  It’s going to ask us for protection, and that protection means…”

”Taking the city.”  Nate said.  “Conquering a part of the United States and adding it to our little kingdom.”

”Technically I already own part of North Dakota.”  James said unhelpfully.

Nate scowled.  “Shut the fuck up.”  He said around the mouth of his beer bottle, taking a sip and letting James have that time to enact the process of shutting the fuck up.  “I’m telling you this because your idea, your absolutely batshit insane idea to invite a fucking dungeon to join the Order is, inexfuckingsplicably, the smartest thing you could do here.”  He told James.

Evans cleared his throat.  “How would a dungeon be part of the Order?”  He asked.  “At all?”

”Doesn’t matter.  What matters is, whatever you do, you need to press for that next time you talk to Three Oh Six.”  Nate ordered James with a pointed index finger.  “The dungeon as a knight is a weird and fucked up mess that’ll throw everything out the window.  The dungeon as a political or military ally?  That’s worse.  Because even if we know what it’s doing, it’s still going to try to manipulate us into taking out its enemies.  And I’d rather see you do the Thing to it before that gets a lot of people killed.”

”The thing?”  Evans questioned.

James flapped his hand over the back of the couch.  ”He means the thing where people in the Order are steadily pushed toward more prosocial and compassion-based ideas about how to live their lives and interact with others.”  He said.  “Also Cheha says we should get the dungeon therapy and I know she said it as a joke buuuut…”

”No idea who Cheha is but she’s smart.”  Nate gave a begrudging grunt of acknowledgment.  “The Pylon is going to want something from us.  So we should know what we want from it, too.  And that’s for it to be stable, informative, and accessible.  Therapy helps with at least part of that.”  He looked down at his fancy local craft beer and almost sighed.  “I’d be fuckin’ shocked if any dungeon doesn’t seriously need it.”  He added.

”Okay.”  James nodded.  “I can keep that in mind.  Three Oh Six is still musing over my offer in Townton, it’ll be a few days before the news even gets back to the dungeon and it cycles in a new prophet with an answer.  But honestly?  It’s in our best interests to keep it safe.  Because it’s a massive source of personal magic for everyone, right?  I mean, come on Nate, tell me you don’t like having some skill levels.”

”I’d like it more if one of them wasn’t ‘spatulaworking’.”  Nate retorted.

”That…” James looked back at Evans, who was now doing his best impression of a man trying to not crack up at something his commanding officer had just said.  “That is… a thing you’ve just shared with us, yes.”  He slowly exhaled the words.

”Get out of my personal lair.”  Nate told him.  “You’re high on the list of possible diplomats for this one, so I wanted you to know first.  But if you don’t see anything wrong with my logic, I’ll be filling the others in too.  You want us to be blunt about this one too?”

James nodded.  “If it comes up.  Just tell the Pylon we think it’s doing that, and see how it reacts.  Not that we can read body language on a world, but… you know what I mean.”

”Fuck it, it’s worked so far.”  Nate said as James got up and made to leave.  Behind him, he heard the chef change tracks.  “Alright.  Evans, mannequin faucet.  Let’s hear it.  And then tell me why half your team keeps trying to trick me into making buffalo wings out of you?”

”Ah.”  James heard Evans utter the universal note of someone who was being thrown under a bus by their friends.

And he considered catching the door and sticking around to hear that answer himself, but, well, James always had more to do.  And he was supposed to have his office hours really soon here, followed by a training scenario after night fell in Townton.  He didn’t have the wiggle room to linger just to figure out why shield team three was resorting to cannibalism.

Nate probably had it handled.

_____

Momo stuck her head into James’ office.  “Hey!”  She addressed him, neck poking out of the wall next to the desk James and Rufus shared.  “You got a minute?”

James took a second to evaluate his life choices as Momo walked the rest of the way through his wall and then flopped into the pair of beanbag chairs off to the side of his desk that he kept for more comfortable chats with the younger and more traumatized visitors.  Her bathrobe, midnight black with little haphazardly shaped stars sewn onto it, getting tangled in her legs as she shifted into something approaching a comfortable position.

”Did the door offend you?”  He asked.  “Also sure, come in Momo, so glad to see you Momo, no no!  No need to knock Momo, we’re definitely close enough for that!” James intoned.

“Oh!  Yeah, you can just barge into my lab whenever too, I’m cool with that!”  Momo smiled, immune to his sarcasm today.  “Oh man, since when do you have the good beanbags?  This is so nice!  Can I steal thes-“

”No.” James would defend those beanbags with every option open to him as a paladin.  Including being socially direct, which was a harrowing experience.

”Fiiiiine.  Anyway, I’m just messing with you a little.”  Momo told him, arms stretching over her head.  “I just wanted to tell you I got the totem working.”

”What totem?”  James asked, racking his memories for information.  “The math one?”

Momo’s grin shifted her whole face into a visage of someone who knew they’d just cracked the world open.  “It’s not math anymore.”  She told him.  “It’s more of a visual-based comprehension thing.  And it’s got enough space for four chairs, or, like, thirty people if they’re all into planking and have a kink about being stacked on each other!”

”…You’re talking about the red totem that has a pointer to it, right?”  James asked.  “Stand next to it, and it puts the answer to any math problem at the target into your head?  Except… you got it working the way you wanted.”

”Yeah!  It took some attempts!  Did you know there’s an iLipede that gives you the odds of failure for a medical procedure, and it totally works if Planner schedules my totem tests as surgery?  Way safer.  My brain’s never felt less damaged.  I swear!”  Momo didn’t stop smiling.

Visual-based comprehension thing.  The words bounced around James’ skull.  A moment ago, he’d felt overwhelmed and exhausted.  He was reading national news about how public airport shutdowns had cratered the economy and how the US was already plunging into a recession that was closing in on depression.  He was skimming articles from British political and environmental agencies that looked far too normal for places that included the phrase ‘as directed by the Three Tyrannies’ casually in the text.  And he was recovering from the emotional double punch of first a group of chanters coming in to officially ask to join the Order, followed by a subdued conversation with one of the new labratoads that had been kidnapped from the Sewer about how his new life was going to look and how things were going to get better.

And now he was thinking about what Momo had initially been trying to do with that totem.

”It can equip Garden spells.”  He breathed out.

”Sure can!”  Momo declared.  “Praise me!  I already got El to do it but I wanna get the good stuff!”

James had no intention of playing into that sentence.  Instead, he had a question that pinged off something he’d learned earlier in the day.  “What if someone can’t see?”  He asked.  “Like, eyes closed, or blind, or anything on that scale?”

”Still works!  Puts the stuff straight in your brain.  No optic nerve required, bay-bee!”  Momo’s grin somehow got even wider.  “Get shot in the eye as much as you want!  I’ll be here to get you more fireballs!  Oh!  And!  It is impossible to ignore it!  Or at least, if you’re doing other stuff while you’re sitting in my Terrible Grim Machine, it doesn’t stop the process.  I’ve been testing it playing a lot of Balatro and it’s still putting the spells in.  Though now I have, like, eighty copies of Dire Prune I need to dump.”

”…we have that book?”  James focused on the wrong thing.  “Wait, we lost that book.  You stole that book!”  He put the pieces together, before realizing how little he gave a shit.  “Okay, congrats on ‘finding’ a lost spellbook, and also.”  James had stood and was pacing back and forth by the window that overlooked a California metropolis.  “Also.  Momo.  I know you’re probably tired, and spent all day on this.  Probably longer.  Probably a lot of days.  But go back downstairs and find someone with the Climb spell Pale Hoar Lurker ready to go.”

”What?  Why?”  Momo asked him.

”Because it makes a tree that follows orders.”  James told her.  And saw the girl’s eyes widen in an instant as she caught up to him.

Momo didn’t need any explanation.   ”And you want to know if we can make spell factories.  Fuck yes!  I am on it.”  She rolled off the beanbags and sank halfway into the floor as she forgot to focus on resisting the wraith potion she’d drank.  It only took her a moment to struggle out of the carpet and brush her bathrobe off.  “What’s it like to be this smart?”  She asked James.

”I wouldn’t know.”  He told her.  “I mostly let other people do the smart work, I’m just here to be the guy who asks silly questions.”  He said as she flexed her fingers and carefully opened the door, apparently not willing to risk getting stuck in the wall as the potion began wearing off just for a joke.  “Oh, Momo?”  James called after her.

She stuck her head back around the corner.  “Yeah boss?”  She asked.

”Good fucking work.”  James said, sketching out a short bow to her.

The look on her face was worth so much to James that he considered having it framed and hung on the wall.  Probably in Momo’s lab, both because she needed a good reminder of her own progress, and, importantly, because James thought it would be really funny.

And if he was really, really lucky?

She’d just given them a force multiplier that wasn’t just effective, but would be ready to go before the next big alarm sounded.

He didn’t think that part too loud though.  Just in case the universe was waiting.