The Daily Grind - Chapter 394 (Patreon)

Double chapter this week, this is the first one. Probably won't be a double next month though, I'm working on a new thing.

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“Something great happened here, and it’s over with.” -KMOX; Whole ‘Nother Story, February-

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Standing on an expanse of mundane grey pavement far too early in the morning on a dismal February day, James was finding that he couldn’t be on edge forever.

There was a prophecy about the end of the world, or at least, the parts of it that were organized and full of people.  There were multiple global governments that seemed to be self-destructing in plain view.  There were the Underburbs poised to strike.  There were problems that were flagrantly magical but had no known associated dungeon - or worse, a dead dungeon - that were popping up everywhere.  There was a sun cult.

Wait, no.  James paused the hurtling momentum on his panic attack to remind himself that the sun cult wasn’t a cult, and was just a previously unknown delver team that had heroically sacrificed their normalcy to slap down some kind of regenerating monster.  They were cool.  Mostly.  That part was fine.  Though James had heard that one of them was a mild kleptomaniac, and was also inside the Lair, so that could be… something.

Everything else was an issue though.  Probably some other things James was forgetting right now.  Was there another global pandemic going on?  Probably.  Not actually, but he felt like the cast shadows across the globe that never got news coverage were a bit deeper than he’d remembered from when he was in high school and doing social studies homework.

The whole problem about the world ending, and his quiet oath to stop that from happening, was that the world was actually quite large.  And the ending, insofar as it seemed to be happening, was less one big final stand against an overwhelming foe, and more just a million things digging into the foundation like the roots of weeds.  Slowly opening cracks and pulling apart, while people who had been made to forget things failed to maintain the machinery of civilization.

And James couldn’t do anything about that.  And of the problems he could shoot, he wasn’t sure if he actually should.  The Tyrannies were kind of evil, but they also kind of weren’t, and he despised the fact that they seemed to have principles.  The Coalition, if they existed somewhere out there, were actually ideologically aligned to the Order, they just… would keep Kiki in some kind of murdery containment box if they could.  The Underburbs was absolutely getting shot when it opened up again, but until they located its entrance, or its agents, it was a waiting game there.

It was starting to feel like their goal of enacting structural change was faltering, in favor of just desperately trying to keep enough combat-ready knights available for action when the next emergency came screaming out of nowhere.

And yet, he was having a hard time properly focusing on or caring about it.  The Order was taking measures to prepare for what they could, they were hiring and preparing new people and training their existing cadre of knights to actually be superhuman heroes, sure.  But that wasn’t why James’ felt his fear eroding.

No, it was just that it was becoming routine.

Boring.  Normal.  Dull.  Every day for James was the same thing; wake up, be terrified, and then force himself through the routine of taking a shower and brushing his teeth and getting bullied into breakfast before he was flung into an adventure or a delve or a training scenario.  And he just couldn’t be afraid of the future the whole time, it got old.  At a certain point, around the hundredth time he learned a new fact about how the US economy was collapsing with the lack of air freight happening, he just… found that he was too exhausted to care.

Not tired in a physical way though.  Energy and Endurance just flatly stopped that from happening, and James was considering pushing his computer science Lesson over the next threshold just for more of the first stat.  Because of everything he’d gotten from magic, it was the closest to the primal infusion from the mannequin fight to making him feel good.  But instead, he was tired in an exasperated mental way.  There were a million problems with the world, and they were both far away and also somehow forcefully resisting his efforts to pry into them and find ways to affect changes.

So his all-too-human brain just… stopped.  Stopped caring about it.  It became the new normal background radiation of his life, and he instead found himself putting effort into delves or helping the internal communication within the Order or something.  Waiting to hear about a collapse or a disaster he could do something about.

It was a normal reaction to living under crushing conditions.  James hated it.

So he wasn’t sure what he felt, standing on pavement somewhere around Portland, waiting on the outskirts of a crowd for an opening ceremony.

The place was orderly and also not that aesthetically pleasing, unless you were really into cranes; and after one had tried to kill him in Utah, James wasn’t.  The whole lot was surrounded by a gravel trench as an emergency breaking measure, with multiple roads leading in and out for semi trucks to swarm.  Three permanent structures sat in a triangle around the outside, offices, work spaces, and one of them far taller than the others that served as a control tower.  Three technically impermanent structures sat in the middle of areas that were demarcated by an extra layer of chain link fence, and bright red warnings painted onto the ground just outside the thirty meter radius.

Rapid Relocation Enterprises had a few of these locations now.  And they were, suddenly, ready.

For the people working here it probably didn’t feel like a surprise.  For Karen and her team, even less so.  But for James?  Today felt like it had snuck up on him.

Two of the three shipping zones were empty.  The cranes around them unstaffed, the space looking like it was just an empty old parking lot.  But this one?  This one had a crowd around it, shipping containers stacked in designated zones within it, and about a dozen trucks parking nearby as the curious drivers waited to see what the hell they’d been sent here for.  There was even what looked like a camera crew here.

James lingered outside all of them.  Him and Zhu, quietly sharing minutes that were like a big exhale.  Just doing nothing.  Except watching and listening.

And then it was an appointed time.  From the PA system wired up through the control tower, a voice came through to the crowd of workers that quieted down to a low hush.  Accented but clear, James recognized Mr. Inoue’s voice right away, despite only having met the man a few times.  Everyone else clearly already knew their boss, and James could admit, he was a little surprised to feel the clear aura of respect for the guy from the heavily blue collar crowd that had been dragged out into the light early morning drizzle for something almost ceremonial.

”My friends.”  The man said simply over the intercom.  And James could, strangely, feel that he meant it.  That was likely where the respect came from; if he was the kind of boss that treated everyone as peers, then Karen had picked well.  “If I were a less honest man, I would tell you that today is the culmination of your hard work.  In many ways, it is.  But it would also be trickery to make it sound as if there is not yet more hard work ahead of us.”  He paused for just a moment, almost perfectly timed for the chuckles as several people outside caught the joke.  James could see the shape of the man up through the windows of the control tower, but couldn’t see if he was himself smiling.  “But today is an important day all the same.  While we must never stop learning, today is the day we are done practicing.  The day that our work truly starts.  The day that you can take satisfaction in a job well done, and not simply in having tolerated our safety meetings.”

That got a real laugh from people, and James was pretty sure Inoue knew it too.  He heard one person yelling out in reply, “You cut a truck in half to prove a point!  We paid attention!”

On his arm, Zhu caught that too.  “Aw, we missed the truck bisecting?  We gotta hang out here more often!”  He prodded James.

”Hush, the boss is talking.”  James laughed back, grinning.

“But that is enough humor.”  The man’s voice over the PA system declared.  “I will make no long speech now.  I will simply say, to everyone here, thank you for your participation.  You are a foundation upon which the new way of things will be built.  And you should take great pride in that.”  Ahead of him, James saw spines stiffen and heads nod.  It wasn’t a muffled hush now, it was a real kind of silence from the crowd, fifty, sixty humans, all of them standing and listening.  “Now.  Our contracts stipulate prompt delivery to the site by seven AM today.  Mister Franklin, if you would, kindly change the world forever.”

The silence changed form as a single man in a flannel shirt and puffy coat walked out across the space that everyone was arrayed in an arc around.  Crossing the painted line, moving through organized shipping containers with confidence, heading for the almost pylon-looking structure in the middle of the flat area.

They’d opted to not build some kind of elevated system to start with.  There were plans, but they were for when they started to scale up.  For now, all it took was a land survey to make sure they weren’t about to decapitate several parts of the power and water grid.

Mr. Franklin, someone who seemed to realize he was about to be the face of a shift in the history of humanity, opened the security door on the side of the central structure with his badge and a key code, walked across the threshold, and vanished.  His personal iteration of Cathedral Sanctum taking him to a version of the interior that was safely just his.

Two minutes of held breath later, there was a noticeable shift in things.  Then a line began to rise up from the ground, quickly getting to a height that was visible to everyone in attendance.  A view of a different sky and a different paved lot replacing the one they had here; though there was a near-identical pylon in the center where another logisticor was stored.

The wall rose and rose, curving toward a domed apex.  A thirty meter wide space scooped out and swapped with an identical amount of area somewhere else.  The silence was broken as the process continued, the truckers and a few visitors on site going through several shades of panic, denial, terror, and awe as they watched the teleporter do its job.

Then the dome crested closed, the internal side of the portal showing this sky sealing itself shut and marking the ball of space as here now.  The thin noise of grinding stone stopped, everything stayed perfectly in place, and the first shipment was complete.

“Excellent work.  A precise and clean first shipment, complete.”  The voice from the control tower told the crowd.  “Now.  I believe many of you have duties, and so do I.  Today is our first true workday, after all.  Shall we begin?”

It wasn’t quite so simple as a few words.  The truckers, for one thing, weren’t all people who had shown up fully briefed on the whole ‘teleporter’ thing.  There were inspections and safety checks to do, and paperwork to fill out.  Apparently they were playing nice with customs laws, which was probably fair; a lot of those laws existed for good reasons.  But it wasn’t like the employees descended like a swarm of locusts to begin a day’s work; they were still just normal people, with a pretty normal job, even if they were well trained and paid and the job involved teleporters.

James followed a lazy orange line of light to stand somewhere that Zhu assured him would keep him from getting flattened by a forklift, and watched it happen for a while.

It was kind of really reassuring.  This was something that could keep going without him, if it needed to.  It hadn’t actually needed him to get started at all.  Not in the details, exactly.  Though he’d take some pride himself in having a hand in the Order having the replication ritual, which enabled it.

“So… we gonna just stand here all day?”  Zhu asked.  “Because I can’t help but notice that we are, for the first time since I’ve been inside you actually, near Portland…”

”Don’t say it that way where Alanna can hear you.”  James retorted, holding out the hand that didn’t have Zhu on it to see if it was actually raining or if he was just going mad.  In the distance at a slightly higher elevation, the morning commute was starting in a swarm of red taillights, the noise of traffic far enough off that it was muffled to almost nothing.  “But yeah.  Why, wanna go check out Chinatown?  Get overcharged for a doughnut?”

Zhu made a revving snort.  ”Alanna isn’t wiretapping you.  Also no!  I wanna go to the racetrack!  You said there was one here, and we still haven’t gotten time to check that out!”

”Zhu it is… barely six AM.”  James rubbed at his eagle eye, the color of the world briefly washing out as he covered the side of his vision responsible for the sharpness and brilliance of it all.  “There won’t be anything going on.  Though I admit, I did tell you we could check that out three species ago, so I’ll try to arrange something.”

”Sweet.  Thanks.”  Zhu said, genuinely pleased by James’ agreement.  “Also it was four species.  I’m counting the oilslicks.”

”If we get back to Townton and find out the horrifying poetry scarecrow followed Alex back, then it’ll be five!”  James said with way too much enthusiasm.  “Anyway, wanna go check out my demiplane, read reports, and do magic testing for, like, three hours until a bunch of people I need to talk to are probably awake?”

Despite having his largest eye on the feathered pauldron of his form and most of the rest of them dotting the arm he grew out of James’ own limb, Zhu still found it was pretty easy to give his human a flat stare.  Actually doing it from multiple angles made it even more effective.  Probably.

”No?”  He asked.  “Is this a trick question?  Also I want a demiplane!”

”Okay, well, then you’re coming with me into mine, and we’ll exit into the Wastes.  Do a few floors and get some new data for the non-Euclidean spreadsheet.”

”Hmm… do I want a demiplane that much?”  Zhu asked.  “Ah, fuck it, yeah I do.  Let’s go.  Maybe we’ll learn it staples mine onto yours or something wild like that.”

James actually thought that would be pretty cool.  Was that how demiplanes worked?  At least one infomorph had to have one already.  He’d need to dig into the Order’s servers when they dropped by the lair in a minute.

_____

”It’s sand.”  Alanna told him, having followed James through the slip of his that dropped itself into the nearest concentration of birds.  She wasn’t the only one, the older of her two little sisters had tagged along, Erin looking like she’d inherited a focused amount of their family’s Irish heritage and leaving Alanna out in the cold on that front.

On the one hand, Zhu was still hanging out with him, so James probably wasn’t going to try to seduce his partner here on the disjointed chunks of material that weren’t even really floating in the void because there was literally nothing to float in.  On the other hand… maybe Zhu would be into that.  Erin definitely wouldn’t be though.  Which was where the actual other hand came in, because James probably had things to do in his capacity as paladin that weren’t “his girlfriend”.

Zhu answered for him.  ”Please, Alanna!  It’s magic sand!  Also please, James!  Stop that!”

”Stop what?”  James asked innocently.  “The only thing I could possibly stop would only be a problem if someone was reading my mind.”  He grinned as Alanna gave him a look that clearly communicated that reading his feelings had a similar information conduit.  “Anyway yeah, it’s magic sand.  I wanted to bring in some of those beach chairs and an umbrella for aesthetic, but someone used up my slip that lets me integrate furniture.”

He didn’t actually blame Alex for that.  Or anyone, really.  It had been critically important to evacuate that group from North Smiths on the double, and in… he checked his countdown timer through his skulljack… twelve days, he’d have another chance anyway.

”What’s the sand do that’s magic?”  Alanna asked as she watched her sister run across the top of the sand dune, the surface warmed in a sun that would never shine here.  “Is it gonna kill Erin?  Or maim Erin, but in a funny and nonlethal way?”

”It makes good glass.”  James told her.

”Oh yeah?”  Alanna sighed.  “So… you have once again spun the roulette wheel of powerups, and got something… uh…”

James grinned broadly.  “Dumb?  Hell yeah.”  He felt absolutely nothing bad about this.  James honestly thought that ‘silly’ magic was the beating heart of his love for the world of the mystical, and he would never be disappointed to miss out on anything.  Unless it was a healing potion.  “But yeah, glass made with it is more durable than it should be, and it works supernaturally better for lenses.  Erin is currently running on stuff that a Japanese industrial firm opened the bid for at sixty thousand dollars a pound.”

”…Hey Erin!”  Alanna yelled suddenly.  “What’s your budget look like today?!”

”Ah, don’t worry about it.  It respawns.”  James told her.  “So far my demiplane isn’t that fancy.  The respawning supply of flour that makes pie taste better is nice, but the real prize is still the doors to anywhere, and the box that spawns copies of my jewelry."

”Yeah, I know that one.  Is it actually copies, not just respawns?”  Alanna watched him nod proudly as her sister jogged over to them, slowing down as she got to where the sand and gravel sat against each other in a sharp line over the non-void.  “We gotta get you some magic rings, buddy.”

Zhu flicked his talons out in a wide sweep.  “That’s what I said!”  He declared.  “He needs to be constantly covered in bracelets!”

”I am.”  James pulled up a sleeve to show his shield bracer.  “Though I dunno if these count.  Anyway.  Wanna help me check the thing?”

The thing in question was, in this case, cubes.

One of the many interesting things about demiplanes, in addition to how they reset themselves, erased evidence left inside them over time, had finite air, and were generally just dangerous for a personal magic, was the way that they interacted with green orbs.  The demiplane was normally paired with a tattoo along a person’s neck or neck-adjacent area.  A mostly painless process from the dungeon.  But permanent modification to the demiplane that didn’t come from the Compiled Wastes, like for example green orbs, seemed to add both to the demiplane and to that tattoo.  Painfully.

This meant there was a need to test another new source of area modification.  The cubes dropped by the even more aggressive members of the Heard, the variety of creatures currently shredding Oklahoma’s agricultural output.  Like the orbs, the cubes gave three choices to improve the speed, safety, or cost of a thing, at the expense of the other categories.  But the orbs had a secret.  And it wasn’t just that if you copied the orb and used all three options yourself, you got a total net boost to everything.

No, the secret was that the choice wasn’t limited to one person.

When someone cracked a Heard orb, and those colored sparks shot out to wait for a selection, three different people could pick.  One each.  Which meant if someone was doing the three-copes-for-maximum-bonus thing, that could affect three total people instead of just one.

And for some bizarre reason, the cubes that influenced an area worked the same way.

So James had just a few cubes here today, to see just how bad the pain and tattoo factor was for using these things in a demiplane, before anyone else hurt themselves by accident and without knowing.

“You know this is really dumb, right?”  Alanna asked him.  “I mean, that whole theory that dungeon magic can’t kill us falls apart when we get into inter-dungeon interactions.  And I really don’t…” she didn’t like it when James was in pain.  At all.

James patted her on the head, having to reach up because this time Alanna refused to bend down for him.  They both ignored her sister rolling her eyes almost audibly nearby.  “I’ll be fine.  I took the preemptive painkiller Deb gave me, I’ve got bactine wipes for if it carves into my neck more, and you’re here to teleport me out if everything explodes.”

”What about me?”  Erin asked.

”Yeah she can teleport you too, I’m not gonna be picky.”  James shot a snarky smile at the teenager that was trying really hard not to laugh.  “So!  Shall we?”  He held up his bag of cubes.

“If you have a ghost stuck to you, why did you need me for this?”  Erin asked, almost complaining, but actually it sounded more like she was legitimately asking.

Alanna wrapped an arm around her sister.  “For the same reason I made you bring your gear, dumbass.  Do you want a demiplane?”

”…yes?”  Erin craned her neck away from her sister like she was looking for the trap.  “Why? Wait, no, I know why!  There’s the door in here!  Do I get… are we going in?  Fuck, I didn’t bring any notes!  Why didn’t you tell me?”

”So it could be a surprise?”  Alanna let go and stepped back as far as she dared on the gravel disc around James’ partially melted snowball of fire immunity.  “What notes?”

James answered for her.  “Your sister helps Research in documenting Compiled Wastes delves and associated demiplane upgrades.”  He said.  “Do you guys not talk?”

”We don’t talk!”  Erin protested.  “How do you know?”

”I wander around the Lair a lot cause I get lost in the basements, and I sort of just see everything.”  James shrugged.  “Now.  Cuuuuuubes?”

He was maybe picking up some residual restlessness from Zhu, who was almost vibrating against James in anticipation of delving after this.  Feathers rustling in a heavy wind that wasn’t there, eyes looking back to the bamboo path cutting from the exit slip through the demiplane toward the door that led straight to a dungeon’s first floor.

Bracing himself as Alanna pulled out the first cube, James took a deep breath, and got ready for the sting.  Then, as his partner met his eyes and got a nod with a somewhat anxious smile back, she bit her lip and crushed the copy of the reward earned for fighting an organic furry sonic cannon.

Connected to the burst of glittering dust that was quickly fading away, three glowing colored crystal shapes emerged.  And without hesitation, James grabbed his, while Alanna and her sister each took one of the others.

[+1 Zone Rank - Alacrity : Reading - Manuals]

On the other side of the fading magical light from James, his partner and her sister had gotten similar notifications for security, and frugality.  And James… well, James’ face screwed up in confusion as he cocked his head to the side and waited for something that wasn’t coming.

”Huh.”  He said slowly.  “That is… uh…” he looked up at his demiplane’s blank overhead, then around at what he could see of its eclectic flooring.  “Shouldn’t there be some kind of branding going on?”

”You don’t need to sound too upset.”  Alanna snorted.  “Do you wanna get branded?  I’ll do it if it’s a kink.”

Erin’s face turned a shade of red only a couple steps removed from her hair.  “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”  She implored her sister, shoving at Alanna in a way that made James super nervous with how close both of them were to the edge of reality.

”Anyway, this is great!”  Alanna said, grappling her younger sibling with one arm.  “No pain!”

”No, it’s not great.  No pain.”  James shook his head.  “That’s… not how it works.  So what’s wrong?”

”Wanna do another one?”  Zhu asked.  “Let me try this one, you don’t touch it.”  He told James.  The navigator fished out a smaller cube, and held it up to the girls, waiting just long enough to make sure they were going to stop bickering like babies and help out, before he cracked it.

[+1 Zone Rank - Frugality : Botany - Agriculture - Tomatoes]

Zhu waited after the notification rang, his eyes pivoting between Alanna and James as everyone but the owner of the demiplane they were in finished getting their own alien thoughts implanted.  “Anything?”  Alanna asked James.

”I mean not really.  What am I supposed to feel?”

”Better at tomatoes?”  Alanna asked with a shrug.  “We’re really messing up your demiplane with this stuff.  Do you think it’ll change what you get later?”

James held up a non-Zhu hand.  ”First off, no way in hell we’re taking your sister far enough in that I get anything new.  But also, I’m not sure it is.”

”Is gonna influence things?”  Zhu asked.

”Is messing up my demiplane.”  James said, looking around.  “Okay, I have one Island Valiant cast ready, and I wanna make this count.  Can you guys do me a favor, and go into the dungeon now?  Hold the door, I’ll be right behind you.”

Alanna shrugged.  “Yeah, sure.  Unless Erin wants to do a speedrun of the first floor?”

”I don’t!”  She shook her head vehemently.  “All the floor one fast rewards are normal.  I want something cool!”

Zhu puffed his feathers out along James’ flank.  ”Hey, this is my delve too!”  He protested.  “But also I’m with her.  Weird shit please!”

”Alright, come on.”  Alanna led her sister away, already talking about basic safety, armor fitting, and how to properly hold a weapon.

James waited until the two of them stepped out of his demiplane before he reached for his Garden spell.  Zhu watching him curiously, asking, “What is it you think you’re gonna find?”

With a flick of magic, James had his answer.  Island Valiant didn’t do a good job of reading demiplane specific stuff, but it could see two things in the tiny spot of space that it was focused on.  Green orb effects, and Heard cube effects.  James knew that second one, because he could see the faster reading and cheaper tomato growing effects in play, right now.  He could also see the past green orbs that showed up on his neck as a scorched tattoo; faster circuit production and an extra seating area sitting layered over everything in here.

But there weren’t any of the Heard effects from Alanna or Erin.  Because they weren’t here.

”I have great news.”  He told them as he followed through into the first floor of the Compiled Wastes a minute later, the smell of a hostile air conditioning system assaulting him like a slap in the nose, a nonplussed look on his face even before the scent of ash came through.

”Is it that everything is perfect forever?”  Alanna asked, already knowing the answer.

”The Heard cubes give a person a zone rank.”  James said dryly.

Erin looked up at him from where she was strapping on shinguards.  “So I’m safer when I’m reading rulebooks now?”  She asked.

”Nnnnnn… maybe.”  James said.  “Fewer papercuts I bet.  And same for everyone around you, too.”

”That sucks.”  Alanna said with her eyebrows pinned to her forehead.  “That’s so bad for these things!  How the fuck did we miss this?”

James shook his head back.  “You know what?”  He said.  “I don’t care.  It would have been nice, but whatever, more room for copying greens, right?  Can’t win ‘em all.”  He sighed and then straightened his back, nodded once to the cramped hallway of scratched up drywall, and drew his attention to the present.  “But we can win this one!  You two ready for some delving?”  He asked Erin and Zhu.

The two of them absolutely were.

They were also both a little miffed when James and Alanna refused to go past the third floor with them.

_____

James peeked his head through the curtain covering the hospital room door.  He’d knocked, of course, and gotten a soft acknowledgement, but it often paid to take it slow with some nonhuman members of the Order.

In the bed, the parts of her that weren’t covered by the blanket instead wrapped in gauze that looked more like construction material than a medical supply, Shallah looked back at him with a tired suite of eyes.  She kept staring at James as if to ask why he wasn’t already talking, though that might have just been James misreading the expression the painkillers had given her.

”Hey.  You alive?”

”Sssssadly.”  Shalla replied, her head lolling to the side on the pillows as she answered with a bit of a slur.  “If I were dead… I wouldn’t be itchy.”

James winced.  Itchy was a sensation he didn’t have magic for.  Even Jubilant Crossing at the third level didn’t actually let someone get rid of a feeling.  “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re not dead.”  He said, entering the medical room and noticing several mementos on the rolling table at the food of the bed.  A bunch of flowers, a few small cards, a silver chain necklace holding what looked like a pierced chunk of caerbannog bone scythe.  Well wishings from various people.  “Deb says you’re going to be on bed rest for a while.”  James said, one finger tracing the string wrapping the collection of wildflowers.

Shallah’s muzzle pulled back in a fanged snarl.  “I maaaaade a mistake.”  She said.  “I’m sorryyyy.”

”You’ve been telling people that.”  James commented as leaned on the back of the impossibly uncomfortable hospital chair.  “Jesse was worried about you, you know.  They look like they’re waiting for the world to end.”  One of the Order’s newer delvers was currently upstairs working in the dining area, where James had encountered them nervously fumbling a job that they had previously been able to do blindfolded.

”People died.”  Shallah said firmly, pulling every scrap of her focus together for the words.  “Wasn’t fast enough.”

James shook his head and gave her a sad turn of his lips.  “We aren’t always fast enough.”  He whispered, before raising his voice again.  “Shallah, since you’re a knight, I get to be direct here.  You saved people’s lives, stop feeling sorry for yourself.”  James leveled an index finger at her with a twist of his hand.  “You did everything you were supposed to and more.  And your reward is that you’re alive to do it again once you’re healed.  So… so it’s okay, alright?  No one is mad at you.”

Shallah looked back at him from her reclined position on the hospital bed, some of her eyes drooping as she struggled to hold them open.  “I’m mad at me.”  She whispered.

”I know.”  James said.  “I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to be.  Be mad at the dead dungeon.  Be mad at the Heard.  Be mad at the universe for allowing this fucked up situation.  But don’t be mad at you.  I’ve done that enough to know it’s not healthy.”  He sighed.  “Also you’re worrying your partner.”

”Th-they d-don’t…” Shallah closed her eyes fully, sealing in small tears and wrenching her head to the side and exposing the part of her chitin plated chest where a large part of her had needed to be cut away entirely to prevent splintering and infection.  A bandaged low crater in her body that would only heal with time, and maybe also purple orbs.  “Jesse doesn’t know.”

”Yeah, that’s how communication works.”  James chastized her.  “You need to actually do it.  Saying nothing and letting yourself hurt alone isn’t going to help either of you, and if someone is anxious to the point of asking me for interpersonal help, you know it’s not good!”

The ratroach made a noise like a wet spike of a cough.  It was, possibly, the most injured laugh James had ever heard.  “You are a g-good talker!”  She protested.

”If that’s true does that mean you’ll listen?”  James asked with feigned innocent enthusiasm.

She opened one of the eyes that didn’t have any bruising around it just enough to glare at him.  “I-if I say yes… can I come back?”

”Shallah.”  James told her gently.  “This isn’t a trap.  You don’t stop being a knight just because you’re hurt.  I know there’s a difference in knowing it, and knowing it, but it’s going to be okay.  I just want to make sure you know that.”

”Oh.”  She sighed, tension turning into a pained sag against the padded bed.  “O-okay.”

”Cool.  Also tell Jesse you’re not mad at them next time you see them.” James ordered her.

Shallah made a noise in response that was probably affirmative, but was definitely tired, so James took it as a positive, and slipped out before he ran afoul of the nursing team. He didn’t think this counted as a dramatic gesture inside Deb’s demesne, but there was no point in pushing his luck.

He wasn’t quite ready to leave the medical wing though.  James had hours to fill before his next scheduled problem, and part of that, he occupied with smaller checkups and words of encouragement.  Saying hi to new crocamaws and ratroaches, taking the sometimes dangerous job of easing them into understanding that they were safe here.  Checking on the crow-wasps and their progress in struggling to survive long enough that their bodies could be repaired, as well as doing his own cross-referencing for purple orbs that could shore up specific damage.  Interrupting Frequency-Of-Sunlight’s plan, which James didn’t… actually get the full shape of, only the information that he was ‘in the way’.  Talking to Deb while doing the interrupting, so he could get the formatted test results for Sewer symbiote biology.  And, of course, giving some of his time to the nursing staff who were doing the impossible job of learning how to run a multi-species hospital while some of them were less than a year old.

James liked the staff here.  They were snarky and gossipy and incredibly blunt.  But while he’d known people before in his life who would use the phrase I’m just being honest as an excuse for unimaginable cruelty, here they just used it to flatten people with a kind of rough compassion.  Out of every department in the Order, medical was somehow the one with the fewest humans, despite the fact that humans were their main source of patients.

Probably because humans were too squishy.  James figured he should fix that in himself, too.  Maybe he should go find Jubilance and siphon off more Projectile Deflection spell uses.

_____

“So you’re clearly enjoying this to some extent.”  James said as he walked through the basement hallway next to a remarkably stable hovering quadcopter drone.  A mundane one.  Technically.

Very technically.

“It is an experience I am learning to incorporate.”  Second replied through the drone’s small speaker.

”That doesn’t actually sound enjoyable.”  James commented wryly.  “Do you want to explain, and in explaining, develop understanding?”  He asked.

He kind of loved talking to Second, because Second actually approached the world almost exactly the same way James did.  They just did it with stiffer language, and a very deliberate and discrete explanation for every aspect of their line of thought.  Some of which, James had learned, were things he just did but never had a name for.

”Yes.”  The voice through the remote controlled drone replied.  “The majority of my baseline emotions are emergent properties of parts of my core processing being composed of Officium Mundi programs.  Due to the need to incorporate red totem information in real time, I am capable of feeling, in a way that appears comparable to an organic life.”

”I follow so far.”  James nodded as they took a corner, the drone moving so smoothly it was easy to forget he wasn’t walking next to a whole person.

Second continued.  “It would be wrong to say these emotions are imposed, but they are what I consider to be standard.  From them, I have been able to derive nuance and detail, which has made my efforts to incorporate myself into the social web of the Order more fluid.”  The arcane assisted intelligence explained.  “However, I do not feel that nuance in the same way.  I am estimating, in a manner that is somewhat emotionally distant from the more unpredictable and forceful things I feel.  My requests for further connecting programs and totems have also been stalled by the difficult nature of the task; even my own ability to map and recreate red totem design principles at higher speeds than most biomorphs has not allowed for a solution.”

”Now you say most biomorphs, and I am assuming this is a Momo thing?”  James asked on a tangent.

Second’s drone had no body language.  Yet.  But James assumed it was only a matter of time before the reply would have been accompanied by a small bob.  “Momo continues to be an outlier.”  The digital mind said.  “This explanation is, ultimately, a way of attempting to express the fact that while I am using this tool to navigate the world with more complexity, I do not feel particularly strongly about it.”

“Well, it isn’t a body, really.  So that’s understandable.”

”Is it?”

James hummed as he walked through the cool hallway, fresh air smelling of dusty pine needles suddenly flowing across his face from an open window showing the trees across from the parking lot that was currently at least two floors above them.  “I think it is!”  He answered happily.  “It’s not like it’s a surprise.  Hey, you have a lot of research papers in your database, right?  Check out the results on the psychological impact of prosthetics.”

”Fascinating.”  Second said almost instantly, once guided to the information.  “Human satisfaction with prosthetic limbs, even highly functional ones, is repeatedly rated as disproportionately below satisfaction with chronically disabled or damaged organic ones.”

”Yeah.”  James nodded, enjoying the conversation that was distracting him from a light bout of anxiety over his appointment later.  “Because they just don’t feel the same.  Or rather, they don’t feel at all, I think.  You said a while back that you thought you might want a body, but you didn’t mean you wanted to pick things up or have an avatar for socialization, right?”

Second didn’t let James pull his normal trick of asking a question then answering it himself.  ”Correct.  Unspooling my thoughts from that conversation, it is clear that what I intended was that I wished to have a body that I could experience through, not simply a prosthetic tool.  I apologize, this is a further inconvenience.”

”Nah, it just means we need to figure out something unique for you.  But once we do figure it out, you better believe that it’ll have applications all over the place.”  James shrugged.  “Magic, right?  It does weird stuff, and sometimes, we need a little focus to make it really work for us.  What better reason than helping someone who needs it?”

”It is arguable I do not need it, as I am perfectly capable of experiencing magic on my own in many ways.”  Second said.  “Though many sources of it seem unclear on what my body is, which is inconvenient and frustrating.  That frustration is mitigated by my upcoming access to an Akashic Sewer Lesson book.  Anticipation is a foundation emotion that I do not enjoy, but find to be an acceptable part of my core self.”  There was a slight pause, and then, before James could replay, Second continued.  “Relating to magic.  It has been decided that I should have a limited portal to access the internet through.  A sanitized secondary machine, which is an appropriate precaution.  But I have a question regardless.  Is the internet magical?”

”…I’m gonna regret this, but why would you think that?”

Second’s answer was prompt and unsettling.  “Because there is a trace amount of interaction through the online connectivity that is visible while being actively observed, but rejects all attempts at automated logging.”

James stopped walking, the drone neatly sliding to a halt next to him as well, as he looked to the concrete brick wall next to him and wondered if it would be considered rude to mess it up by headbutting it repeatedly.  “Cool.”  James breathed out.  “That’s… cool.  Great.  Second, you need to tell your dev team real soon about that.  Like, now.”

”I have informed them in parallel.”  Second said almost smugly, though the limited nature of the speaker made it a little hard to tell.  “There is the anticipated amount of panic occurring.  You do not need to answer my question, I have already derived the answer from the reactions I am observing.  Momo would like me to tell you that you are going to need to destroy the internet.  I believe she is joking.”

”She better be, I use the internet!”  James exclaimed.  He did not expound on what he used the internet for.  Mostly because it was personally disappointing to him these days, since he hadn’t had a chance to get into any new games for a while, since his life was upended and the world started crumbling.  “So, I was going to say, I’m glad to see you have some new tools at least.  I know it’s not the same as a body, and I know this isn’t a solution, just a temporary patch.  But I do think it’s cool to see you ‘roaming around’ down here, and actually having that avatar to participate.”

”Thank you.”  Second said.  “I appreciate that I have been accepted.  My knowledge of human media had prepared me for more confrontation regarding my nature.”

”Yeah, well, the Order is weird.  Anyway, I hope your Lesson goes well, I hope you don’t get in a fight with the internet, and I hope you don’t mind but I have to get going before the timer goes into the red.”

Second’s drone stopped, letting James continue his walk toward the Response armory that was reserved for problems and not civilian peacekeeping.  “I wish you well.”  The arcane intelligence called after him.  “And appreciate your commiseration.  It is a pleasant feeling, to know I am less alone than I had feared.”

That was the thing, James figured as he rounded a corner, waving over his shoulder.  That was what he liked.  Second just said the things that were important.  And, amazingly, it didn’t diminish the emotional impact to have it smoothed out to a simple truth and exposed. If anything, it made it all feel so much more powerful, to know what they were doing and why they were important in each other’s social webs.

It was a thing James kind of did himself, but talking to the digital life form, it really helped him crystalize why he did it, and what it could mean to a person.  The kind of potent hidden importance that just a simple hey, I get it, and I see you could have to someone.

He was still gonna worry about the internet, though.

But he could wait until after today’s fight to the death.

_____

The old factory had a parking lot between itself and the next building over that looked strange to James.  Mostly because the next building was still in use; what had once been a warehouse - possibly for whatever this factory had made, even  - was now some kind of mattress store and also maybe some flagrantly illegal loft apartments.  The asphalt between them led around to the loading docks of both buildings, while still having faded white lines up against the worn exterior of both buildings for parking.  Which seemed like just a terrible idea to James.  

He hadn’t driven a semi-truck ever, technically, but the first skill rank in anything spiked someone from ignorant to not bad in a pretty dramatic way.  And yet even he would hesitate to say he could navigate this kind of environment with taking out someone’s bumper.

The contrast between the two sides was also interesting to see.  A chain link fence ran down the middle, one of those ones that was used for construction sites and not a permanent fixture, and on one side there was a worn down but in-use lot, while on this side there were heaps of discarded trash, derelict shopping carts, and another small contrast in the form of growing greenery.  Weeds punching through cracked asphalt that cars didn’t drive on anymore, except for the occasional clandestine drug deal or suspicious cop looking for a clandestine drug deal.

Where James was familiar with, these places wouldn’t even be on a connected property.  He was familiar with buildings like this having whole undeveloped fields surrounding them.  Dirt, tall grass, blackberry bushes, and even trees all segmenting off this kind of structure.  But here, everything was filled in.  The city had consumed it all.  The nearby highway bled pavement like ink in water, and from it, urban development followed.  The industrial zone covering everything but the thinnest strips of dead dirt, and doing it with the absolute minimum amount of space per building they could get away with.

At least the highway gave shade to the factory itself.  And the roads down here weren’t exactly in heavy use.  Though ‘not in heavy use’ in this small chunk of California still meant that the Order had put way too much effort into using drone overwatch to perfectly time their attempted grand theft architecture.  And still had a battered old Toyota roll to a stop at the nearby four-way intersection, presumably staring at the logisticor bubble ripping a chunk out of the local environment.

”You think anyone heard that?”  James asked Evans as the side of the factory sagged, and then, with a scream of warping metal and breaking concrete, collapsed in on itself with a plume of grey dust billowing out over the sidewalk and into the street.  The dust was mixed with a good amount of sand, too, the foreign substance that had replaced most of the interior floor hopefully not undermining the foundation too much.

The guy in the lone Toyota watched on, and then, took a surprisingly calm right turn, driving away from the now-crumbling factory with what seemed to be an almost enforced obedience of the posted speed limit.

Evans, meanwhile, looked over at James from where the two of them were crouched on the raised embankment underneath the highway, watching the factory get logisticored.  “Sir.”  He said with a sarcastic frown.

”I’m just saying, that was probably as smooth as we could have possibly asked for!”  James said happily from his crouch, as some of the corrugated metal roofing came loose and slid off into the rubble pile.  A snake of dulled metal clashing with itself loud enough that it echoed off the buildings.  “Look, we only lost one wall!”

”I still think we should have let me aim.”  Zhu offered.  “I could have left the whole thing standing.”

”You would have hit the sewer main.”  James reminded him.  “I think.  You know, for all that I talk about ‘civic magic’ a lot, there’s a surprisingly lacking number of spells to detect buried pipes?”

Evans closed his eyes and breathed through his nose before turning back and raising the little milspec telescope thing he was using back to his eye.  ”I did not know that.”  He said diplomatically.

Wrapped around the figure next to Evans, Zhu raised his own telescope to one of his eyes.  James wasn’t actually sure if this was him fucking with Evans, or if he was actually using it. “So, think that worked?”  Zhu asked.

”We’ll know within twelve minutes.”  Evans said, turning his head to make sure the rest of his shield team was in position.

The principle of this was simple.  Every week, the mannequin faucet turned on.  It wasn’t exactly a week for each occurrence, actually being a little over an hour longer, which was why it was currently late afternoon and not morning.  The effect was centered here, in this old structure that had once been a factory but was now a hollowed out husk.  And it would spawn in a number of wooden mannequins that would, without hesitation or negotiation, lock onto any living thing they saw and kill the shit out of it.  Putting them all down would reward the defenders with some kind of life energy, but also, every successful defense would increase the difficulty of the next wave to match the effort used on the current one.

Having that happen next to a highway in Sacramento was a horrifyingly tenuous situation, though.  So the Order had used a logisticor to, hopefully, move the spawn point.  Which was why there was a small amount of an exceptionally isolated bit of the Sahara desert sitting where the factory floor had been a minute ago.

“I hope it worked.”  James muttered, dropping the jokes to start to pivot his mindset toward potential combat.  Shield team two, along with a few extra knights and members of Research that were hoping to test initial theories on what that green reward energy was, were handling the other side.  The point where they’d just stuck a factory floor in the middle of a sandy expanse otherwise unvisited by a human for a hundred years.  But here, there was James hanging out with team three, and two dozen other knights spaced around the area just in case.

Because if it didn’t work, they were going to be fighting a lot of things that were suddenly less confined by a building.

Evans made some kind of noise that James and Zhu silently agreed didn’t sound very professional, and took a grip on the firefighter’s axe he had sitting upright in front of himself.  “Screen is in position.”  He said out loud while sending through his skulljack.  A lot of the newer people did that, James had noticed.  “Remember, minimize weapon variety, only engage if you need to.”  He looked over at James and grimaced.  “And don’t let them grab you.”  He said.

”I have done this before.”  James replied calmly.

“And I don’t count as a weapon!”  Zhu added.

“Besides.  Maybe it worked?”  James offered.  “I guess they’d tell us if there was already contact at the other site though.”

Evans gave him that look again.  James was starting to wonder how Evans ever would have survived in the army with this much sarcasm concentrated in his body.  It was the perfect flat stare, just oozing a kind of almost contemptuous understanding that James could only be making things worse every time he opened his mouth.  “Sir.”  Evans told him.  “Please take this seriously.”

Zhu gave the shield captain a sympathetic look through the main eye he had on James’ shoulder.  “Oh, I have horrible news.”  He told Evans.  “This is what serious-James sounds like.  It’s actually kind of-“

”Spawn!”  The call came out from one of the other members of shield team three, loud enough to be heard without the skulljack and cutting off Zhu’s attempt at distracting himself from the waiting.  “No count!  Twenty, minimum!”  The woman’s words ended with a sudden roar as the wooden mannequins wasted zero time moving and engaging.

From his perch, James watched with a morbid fascination for a few seconds.  He’d never seen the spawn, and it was offputting how it wasn’t really anything at all.  One second the space was empty, the next there were wooden figures standing there.  And then they were moving, wooden feet striking the ground with loud clacks as they swarmed.  Humanoid figures moving with absolutely inhuman speed and motivation.

The way they moved as a group was also all too noticeable from this vantage point.  The one that had spotted Rada had already reached her within the few seconds James had been watching, but as it arrowed straight for the armored human, all the other ones adjusted their headings too.  High speed awkward runs shifting as they leaned into turns, all of them converging on the one known living thing that they could start their killing on.

”None in the back lot.”  Evans reported coolly, limiting his words to the important part.  “Move in.  Support from the flanks.  Screen, tighten up.”  He ordered the knights that were covering the sidewalks and alleyways in the living city around them.  As he spoke, Evans started a jog down the embankment.

James followed.  Or, more accurately, James matched his pace and then overtook Evans a little, but twenty feet to the side.  He wasn’t a member of this particular team, but James had trained alongside them, and they knew how to merge their tactics.

Letting Zhu save his effort for more important tasks, James found a batch of movement through the drones overhead, and aimed straight for the corner of the building that the mannequins were about to be behind.  The things were crawling through high broken windows like they were horror movie monsters, which meant if James pushed his enhanced foot speed to an unsafe level, he could cut off a flank attempt relatively safely.

The sounds of called commands and metal weapons impacting wooden frames were already audible over the highway traffic as James did his own leaning curve around the corner, and found one of the bulb heads turning his way from where the first mannequin had just fallen from the window and bounced off a dumpster.  He didn’t hesitate, because it didn’t hesitate.  There was absolutely no pause between seeing him and the jointed wooden hands trying to grab his face, so James couldn’t afford to slow down either.

His trusty hatchet, veteran of almost as many delves as James was, slammed into the wrist at a bad angle.  On a human, that would be a gash, a break, and a person taken out of a fight.  On this thing, it was enough to knock half its grab off target for a second.  A second James used to continue with his momentum, shoulder checking the mannequin into the rusted edge of the dumpster it had already bounced off once.  While he was in physical contact with it, he froze his face a little spending Breath to slap a Survival Flare cast into its body before he broke away from it, dodging another grab.  “Light it!”  He told Zhu, already focusing on the next form reenacting The Ring through the shattered window overhead.

Zhu, jammed full of Velocity and eager to participate, nailed the mannequin with a Breath Torch cast.  Technically navigators didn’t breathe, to the extent that Climb magic didn’t work for them, but the Horizon spell just adapted and let him flare a gust of flame out of his feathers.  The heat of it rapidly soaked into the magical attraction attached to the mannequin that found itself suddenly smoldering like an ember, wood crumbling rapidly.

When the second one tried to fling itself out the window like a projectile aimed at James’ head, he swung again, this time with more confidence and way more force.  The blade of his hatchet caught it in the swivel joint of its neck, something going crunch and leaving a finger-sized splinter in James’ hand as the mannequin’s momentum stole his weapon away and slammed it face first into the messy parking lot.  Before he could deal with it, another one was already pulling the same stunt, and James grabbed it in a judo maneuver, lowering himself to one knee as he used the mannequins' own arm to swing it downward, applying a gifted cast of Bounce into it so that it rebounded twenty feet into the air, arms flailing before it crashed into an unmoving heap somewhere by the fence.  The next one James grappled more directly, having missed the approach, only getting to snap an elbow joint and sprawl it into its friend before he lost the momentum advantage.

Zhu grabbed the hatchet from the flattened one, form extending out of what James could reach to pluck it away and tossing it back to his friend as his own talons punched down a fumbling grapple from the prone mannequin.  His counterstrike left gouges in the wood, but didn’t hurt it in a meaningful way.  And James only got to slam the blade down into the head of the one he’d broken the arm of a few times before the one under it kicked him in the chest and sent both combatants sprawling back.

”Ow.”  He gasped.  “They’re getting stronger!”  He informed Zhu.

”Incoming!”  Zhu lit up his vision with an orange guidance, and James rolled hard to the side, shoving himself out of a pile of soggy cardboard as the next mannequin crashed into where he’d just been.  “Got that one!”  He added, using a Manipulate Asphalt charge to melt the parking lot under its feet, and encase it just long enough to put a spike through its head.  “More coming!”  He told James.

”Yeah, I see ‘em!”  James felt like he’d replaced his blood with adrenaline.  Doing this the more mundane way wasn’t going to be fast enough at the rate they were throwing themselves through the window, though he could at least see he was drawing off some of the pressure.  “Gonna-“ he yelped as Zhu gave him a split second of alert before the burning mannequin that they’d thought was dead tried to nail James in the head with a high speed swing of a pipe that it must have grabbed from under the dumpster.

They were using weapons now.  Makeshift ones, but that was not a good sign.  Also not a good sign was that James was about to get piped in the head.

Trained reflexes kicked in.  One use of Rat’s Ground left his Garden spell list, and James’ position shifted a couple feet sideways, his arms suddenly up and crossed in exactly the right way to cushion the blow against the shell of his armor.  It left him a little out of position, but he stopped fucking around before the two more wooden humanish forms that were wriggling through the broken window added themselves to the fight.

The leveler glove on his hand came to life, stockpiled charges of Break Wood coming into play as James used his hatchet to hammer aside another fast moving grab, got himself into a better position, and then slammed a punch into the mannequin’s ‘stomach’.  The sound of wood splitting at the impact point was like a gunshot, the reverberation of it stinging his knuckles like he’d just been shocked.  But at least it took one of them out of the fight for real.

”They’re coming in behind us!”  James informed Zhu as his drone sight saw movement through other windows too.

”On it!”  Zhu replied, voice sounding on the edge of manic laughter.  “Don’t get stabbed!”  He told the paladin as he put his whole focus into something else, and then balled his talons up into a fist as he commanded the parking lot forty feet away to start killing things for him.

James’ had no intention of being stabbed, grabbed, or anything else.  He finished off the crippled mannequin on the ground before the next one launched itself from the window he was spawn camping, and slid himself to the side so that he could drill a jab of his leveler gloved fist into the side of its head as it missed him.  The impact on the thinner piece of wood was far more destructive, the whole head almost splattering in half like it was made of soft foam and not hard pale wood, splinters spraying into the dumpster and factory wall in a noisy rain.

But the second mannequin didn’t miss quite so much.  It almost didn’t get a good grip on James, but one of its ball jointed hands scraped at his face as it flew by, and it managed to turn that into a painful, crushing force on the edge of his jaw before it hit the ground.  James made a noise of muffled pain as it used his face to pull itself up, its other hand scrambling for purchase on his armor.  When it didn’t find it within a second, it immediately switched tactics, hammering him with punches like a piece of industrial machinery, James feeling one of his ribs crack from the force in the tiny amount of time before he used one of his feet to hook the mannequin’s legs, shoved himself forward, and smashed it into the pavement with his body weight.  Multiple casts of Reaching Frost bursting out of his form in glinting frozen angles as his newly enhanced limbs pried the hand off his face and ripped into the vulnerable joints of the mannequin before James reared back and got his fist in position to punch through its head.

”’Eben owwn.”  He tried to gasp out, before blinking away pain and remembering his own skulljack.  “Seven down.”  He reported.  “Count?”

One of the designated screening knights replied, Max’s own voice coming through the skulljack like they were born speaking with it.  “Thirty one destroyed, one breakaway dealt with, eighteen spotted remaining.  Three injuries.”

James didn’t nod, just stood there, breathing heavily in the tiny window of time he’d carved out, letting his Endurance mitigate the damage he’d taken.  His face fucking hurt, and clearly he was out of broken bone resistance judging by how his chest felt.

The ice arms around him flexed, making room for Zhu as the navigator’s own talons and feathers spread back out, his focus on spearing mannequins with the parking lot let go.  “Okay, windows are-“

He didn’t get any farther before a mannequin sprinted around the front of the building, moving like an olympian going for gold and aiming straight for them, two more joining behind it in a vanguard formation.  James started to square up, when he realized it was holding something, and then jerked to the side as it flung a chunk of broken concrete at him only slightly slower than a bullet.  He didn’t have enough time to realize that shield bracers didn’t accept concrete as a blocking option before the other chunk hit him on the arm, drawing a squawk of pain and a spray of oil from Zhu.

Before the next flung assault, James managed to get one of his bracers set to thrown concrete, the dome of light blocking two more incoming throws from the others, and appearing to stall the run of the lead mannequin as it lost sight of him for a moment.  James capitalized on that, dashing through his own shield panes in a low profile to duck the rock that went over his head as he did so.  It took two Break Wood charges to cut down the lead mannequin, but after that, his ice arms grabbed the body and used it as a shield against one of the other two.  That bought just enough space for James to catch a hip joint with his hatchet, stumbling the mannequin that did kind of need working joints to move properly.

He flung the dead one to the side when the new attacker started crawling over its dead spawnmate, almost absently encasing them in a pile of asphalt to deal with later as he flicked his hatchet to his main hand and got to work maiming the last standing figure.  His hands fucking hurt, his fingers felt like they were going to fall off, and the adrenaline wearing off didn’t feel great.  So his work was a little imprecise.  But with only one of them, and James over-armed to grab the eerily flexible mannequin hands while he chopped away at it, it didn’t take long to kill that one too.

”Clear this side.”  He sent.

”Front’s clear!”  “North side, empty.”  “Back lot is clear.”  “Interior cle- wait!”  The last one was punctuated by the sound of wood exploding, and then the voice returned to the link.  “Interior’s clear now.”

Evans’ voice on the shield team’s channel was as professional as he always was, despite the fact that James could see the video angle from the man’s eyes was blurred on one side like he’d taken a hit to the face.  “Good work, but don’t relax.  No drop, that means someone’s still alive.  Screen, double check for stragglers, everyone else-“

”Oh shit, that’s me. Sorry.”  James sent, trying to not subconsciously work his jaw while he did so.  The end of the fight was sudden, so his Endurance was still going at full blast, but it didn’t stop the pain.  It never did.  “Hang on.”   He told them as he took steady steps over to where the asphalt-trapped mannequin was straining to break its own arms off so it could get up and try to kill him again.

”Ooh!  How about more fire?”  Zhu suggested maliciously.

James coughed a laugh.  “I anna-“ he rubbed at his face.  “Ow.  I wanna limit magic if we can.”  He said.  “Just in case.”

”Boring, but yeah.”  Zhu’s arm folded back on itself, clutching at the gash he was leaking from.  “Sounds exhausting, you do it.”

Rolling his eyes, James got to work chopping at its head with the blade of his hatchet.  It took a lot longer than he would have liked, but eventually, it did stop moving.  “Dead.”  He reported.  “That it?”

That was, indeed, it.  As soon as the last one was disabled fully, small globules of green light started to seep out of them, floating up into the air.  Unlike their sources, these things that wanted to track down something living to impact took their time, slowly building up speed and almost seeming to consider their options before they started moving.  They floated deliberately though, heading for their targets, which was anyone who had participated in the defense.

A lot of them touched James and Zhu.  Sinking into their forms, and lighting them up with the sensation of being alive.  Raw, primal, vigor.  Sudden strength flooding their limbs and making them feel invincible and healthy and good. 

Research might not get to do their tests today, but James was both surprised and happy to be able to report back to them that the stuff they were absorbing healed injuries.  It kind of made sense, but it was still nice to feel his jaw unbruise, and watch Zhu’s arm seal itself back up with an orange shimmer.

Interestingly, while a lot of the people doing the screening didn’t get anything, Max did.  So did the other two knights that were running overwatch for the rest of shield team three.  Any participating, it seemed, got part of the reward.  But only actual participating, not simply being a backup contingency.  Which James was already feeling a deep sense of relief over.

”Hey Evans!”  James called out as he walked toward the collapsed wall of the old factory, rolling his neck and letting go of his frost arms.  “Do you think anyone heard that?”

One of the men next to Evans elbowed him, a soft grinning face giving his captain a mischievous grin.  “If you want to strangle him now, you can say a mannequin did it.”  The guy offered.

”I’m too young to-“ Evans stopped talking, the small amount of amusement on his face replaced by a frown.

James stopped walking, a similar look taking over his face.  The wave of apprehension and anger sweeping over the whole shield team and the knights that were moving to rejoin them now that the attack was over.

It had nothing to do with the mannequin faucet.  Not even the failure of their attempt to displace it.  It wasn’t even about Evan’s subordinate plotting James’ untimely demise.  Instead, it was the high priority message that had just been sent to everyone on the Order’s roster.

”Hey.  Yo.  Hey.”  Zhu poked at the side of James’ armored body.  “What.  What’cha got.  Hi.  Yeah.  Not plugged into the internet here, gotta use your words.  What’s up?”

James snagged a drone out of the air, bringing his other one down at high speed even as he fumbled clipping the first one into place on his belt.  “Redmond.”  He said, stumbling over the word.  “It’s Redmond.  We found the Underburbs.”

Zhu froze, feathered tail going flat against the back of James’ leg, his eyes widening before pressing shut, a whine like a dying engine escaping him.

”Paladin.”  Evans said firmly, this time taking his address of James seriously.  “We need to get back to the Lair.  Now.”

”Well.”  James said with a forlorn shake of his head.  “You know, if it has to happen, right after we all got a dose of real actual healing magic is probably the time for it, huh?”

On his arm, Zhu started laughing manically, and didn’t stop until after Evans called for everyone to pack it up and get moving, and their teleport group vanished from the city.