The Daily Grind - Chapter 397 (Patreon)

"The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off." -Gloria Steinem-

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[Killer : Low : +1 Skill Point]

[Watcher : Low : +1 Skill Point]

[Killer : Tidal : +4 Skill Points]

[Killer : Low : +1 Skill Point]

Firing out the window of a moving jeep was uncomfortable at best.  It was taking all of James’ enhanced Aim to compensate for Arrush’s driving, which meant that his shots were merely good and not pinpoint lethal all the time.

Those weren’t the only skill points rolling in though, unfortunately.

[Survivor : Low : +1 Skill Point]

“Oh, guess I caught something.”  James tried to sound casual, almost flippant, as they made their way back to the rendezvous point.

It didn’t work.  Though the survivor notification did probably explain why it had felt like one of his boots was squishing when he walked.  There was no ache or stinging pain or anything, but he was pretty sure that he’d been bleeding out from under his toenails.  Which was gross, and awful, and he was going to have to throw out this pair of socks.

Zhu being right about things also wasn’t helping.  “Hey, good news, it’s foot related.”  The navigator declared to the car.  “That means that the coolest people in here are immune.”

”I could have feet if I wanted.”  Watcher-Under-Stone said, the camraconda crammed in the cargo space with one of the survivors, her firing system braced on the open back windshield so she could fire on anything that tried chasing them.

One of the new humans crammed in the car, coated in a thin sheen of green from Alanna and Watcher’s authorities, looked like she was about to throw up.  But her nausea wasn’t enough to stop her asking the question.  “What are you?”

”Footless.  Currently.”  Watcher-Under-Stone replied.  “I am many things.  A camraconda, is the answer to your question.  But it is one of the least important.”

”…what else are you?”  The woman whispered, hoarse voice that had been damaged by days of screaming and at least one deliberately inflicted infection barely carrying over the engine as Arrush took them on a slightly more stable path back the way they’d come.  They were trying to avoid as many threats as possible, but the Underburbs was a lot more aggressive now than it had been on the way in.

All those killer notifications weren’t coming from nothing.  And they really wanted to get out of here before anything bigger swam up from the deeper parts to crush them.

Watcher-Under-Stone kept talking in her smoothly natural digital voice as she kept watch, giving the rescued humans something to focus on that wasn’t outside the vehicle.  They’d been told to keep their eyes down, and why, but that didn’t do anything for a mood that was equal parts fear and curiosity.  So a distraction was nice.  “I have been, in the past, a historian of sorts.  A priestess of another sort.  There was some overlap there.  Now, I am other things.  An explorer, a mother, a knight.  I suspect many of those words I am using differently than you might, but that does not make them less true to who I am.”  She paused and hissed into her sealed camraconda-custom mask.  “I wonder what I will be next?”  The human she was talking to went quiet too, looking down at hands clutching an empty water bottle in a stiff grip, lulled by the camraconda’s words.

Someone annoying broke the silence.  “Dead, if we’re not careful.”  Watcher replied to the camraconda that shared his name.  James hated that.  It was going to get confusing in this car.  The man in the bloodstained dress shirt ignored the way the other passengers, knights and survivors alike, bristled at him.  “This is a very dangerous loci we’re facing, and I don’t fancy our chances.”  He looked over the back of the seat at James’ head.  “You shouldn’t have antagonized it.”

”We should antagonize it more!”  Zhu said with dark glee.  “Let’s ask Terror for more firebombs and just lob ‘em off the edge!  See what happens!”  The navigator, back on James’ frame and bristling with glowing feathers like knives, fluttered every part of his manifestation in anticipation.

”Let’s not.”  James said smoothly as they cut around a corner, avoiding a manhole cover with a bump as the jeep’s wheels negotiated the curb without much complaint.  “At least not yet.  We’re out of here in ten miles, then if things went well, our teams outside will have already stopped the large-scale breach.  The Underburbs can be as antagonized as it wants then, inside its own borders.”

It was a form of defensive sarcasm, yes, but it was also mostly true.  It didn’t matter if there was some kind of fleshy terror with too many teeth and skin like flaking rust running at their convoy every other house they passed.  All they had to do was get out.  The one thing they’d actually mostly confirmed about the Underburbs was that it needed human agents to act on Earth, because its own created life withered, popped, and died if it was separated from the dungeon.

So all they had to do was leave.  A thing the dungeon was making harder and harder.  That thought of James’ was punctuated by the sound of radio static closing in from behind them, getting louder and louder before there was a calm announcement of “Cover your ears please”, followed by the repeated crack of Watcher-Under-Stone’s rifle shortly before the static faded.  Not cut off, just falling back.

In the car to their right, Alanna shot them a thumbs up, their box formation on the way out keeping them closer together so they had more overlapping fire.  Zhu returned the motion, while James just jerked his thumb toward the trunk with a grin, giving credit to who earned it.

It was also good Watcher-Under-Stone was handling that because James was low on ammo, and this gun wasn’t bound to one of the bracelets.

”What happens next?”  The woman who had been talking to the camraconda asked.

”After we get you out?”  James wasn’t really asking.  “For you guys, a lot.  Our Recovery division will make sure you’re taken care of while they locate your homes and families, and then we’ve got some funds in place to make sure you can get back on your feet and heal from this without also worrying about something as pedestrian as rent.”

A smaller voice from the kid spoke up before James could keep going.  “Are we in trouble for having magic?”

”The skill points?”  James asked, noting that Watcher was keeping a very careful ear on the conversation even if the man looked like he was pretending to be napping.  “That’s not magic on its own.”  He told the kid.  “It becomes magic when you use it with one of the crystals to get skills.  We’ve got some of those, probably more after tonight, and since they don’t come from…” he didn’t want to finish that thought.  “Since they’re safe, we’ll let you use all your points to learn some cool stuff, yeah?  And you’re not in trouble.”  James reassured the kid.  “All you gotta do is focus on getting through this and getting better, okay?”  He told the pale-faced human who was very likely still infected with some kind of unknown Underburbs thing.

”Kay.”  The kid said quietly, making himself dizzy by nodding.

”And what are you planning to do with me?”  Watcher asked, feigning a casual tone.

Arrush replied even as he took them through a curve with enough speed that it smushed the people in the already-crowded back seat even closer together.  “You can talk to Recovery too, if you need help.  Lots of people don’t have therapy, but we do, and you n-need it.  You can talk to Connie.  Connie is helpful.”  He said the words with complete honesty.  Because, after all, who could possibly need therapy any more than the guy who had once ordered Arrush’s favorite older human killed, over and over, and who had decided to hurt a lot of scared people because he thought it was right?  People didn’t do that if they were okay.  They did that when they were broken.

Watcher was smaller than Arrush’s old warlord, but when the ratroach looked at the man in his back seat, he couldn’t help but see someone who was just a slightly better intentioned Beautiful One.

One of Arrush’s antenna twitched as he drove, the tense conversations fading as he ignored Watcher’s response and focused his eyes on the mirrors.  The wing mirror that gave him instant understanding of his perspective through it was helpful, but didn’t show anything.  And yet he felt like there was something wrong.  Wrong beyond just the constant attacks from every roused dungeon monster that was coming for them when they got in range.  Wrong beyond being here, in this dungeon that had nearly killed one of his loves.

Arrush tapped James once on his boyfriend’s armored thigh with one of his smaller arms, alerting the human while he focused.  The purple orbs he’d acquired last month for more sensitive hearing weren’t as useful here as the one that let him hold his breath; the sound of his own inhalations under his mask pausing as he tried to put every bit of himself into figuring out what unseen threat he was feeling but not noticing.

It was, Arrush would bitterly admit to himself only later, his Sewer Lesson that likely gave him the edge he needed when the moment came.  Wood Shop had the normal three choices for powers, but Arrush had eschewed Strength and Solidity to instead take two tiers worth of Utility.  The simple little modification to how he thought about the world, how he approached tools and small tasks, expanding with its second tier to how he approached places as well.  A seamless improvement to how he saw the world in terms of looking for shortcuts, for signs, for anything that eased his passage through life.

Which was likely why he noticed the point ahead of them where the high fences between two yards had a gap in them.  A walking path, his augmented thoughts filled in, and a wide one too.  The fact that they were in a dungeon not dissuading the quick acknowledgement of a suburban shortcut.

It was the rest of his brain, the part that was a fighter, and a delver, that made the connection that the path was too wide.  Which was why Arrush was already accelerating when the twisted beetle form of an organically plated RV burst out of the mouth of the little walking path, ‘lunging’ forward toward one of the lead vehicles from Ishah’s team.

The insectile mobile home, its own splayed out array of ominously orange headlight eyestalks gleaming in the gloom, was almost perfectly positioned to bite down with its grinding grill maw on the hood of the lead car.  And while someone else in the Order who was more poetic about fights might have felt bad for ruining its attack, Arrush barely had a second to think before he rammed the jeep’s bumper into the creature’s hind wheels.

The crash of metal on something that was too organic to be fully metal itself stole all control of the vehicle from him.  The interception had been a split-second decision, and Arrush didn’t have time to second guess if it had been right, only to know that there was no way that Ishah could dodge it, but some way he could foul the attack.  But now, the windshield shattered with a spray of safety glass shards, the passengers flung against seatbelts, or, in Watcher-Under-Stone’s case, slammed hard against the back of the cargo space.  The wheel bucked in Arrush’s paws, metal squealing in protest as his own safety belt arrested his forward momentum out the broken windshield hard enough to pulp all his internal organs if the car hadn’t been running on the fuel that preserved the health of anyone riding in it.

That didn’t mean it didn’t fucking hurt though.

And on top of that sudden impact, the sound of claws on asphalt suddenly poured in like an ocean.  Dozens, maybe over a hundred of the small grey childlike figures with their bloody teeth and bulging heads flowing out from behind the mobile home and rushing the vehicles that had stalled when one of their own’s momentum had been arrested.  In the mixed darkness, taller red-hooded figures stumbled along in their midst, concealed fleshy things that used human forms like fingers, fascinating life that was charging at them all the same.

The other three cars were stopping.  But they couldn’t.  Against these numbers?  They might win the fight but it was too much of an opportunity for someone to get hurt, and the giant bug of a living space was sure to kill someone if they didn’t move.  There was a lesson taught on the roads and sands of Route Horizon that applied here too, right now; speed was a sword and a shield and if you were unarmed you were dead.

James had a brief flash of Alanna’s horrified expression, he wheezed out a gasp, blood flowing from his mouth where he’d bitten his tongue.  “Zh-hhhu.  Go.  Tell them to keep going!”  He struggled for breath.  “We’re right behind you!”

”I can’t make that jump!”

”You can fucking make that jump.”  James said, winging his arm out the shattered side window like he was pitching the navigator forward, complete confidence as Zhu transitioned from feathers into an orange bolt of light that slipped under the rearing form of the mobile home before racing after the cars that were making the mistake of slowing down.  “Everyone ali-“ James’ call to the others in the jeep cut off with a sharp hurk as Arrush flipped them into reverse and peeled away from the creature he’d rammed, tires screeching as he pulled a quick semi-circle, bumper splattering multiple children with gory sounds of bone snapping.

It also gave James the perfect view of the man in some kind of black and red armor, a fucking cape of all things coming off one of his shoulders, rolling himself to a kneeling position on top of the massive boxy beetle of a mobile home as the creature reeled and keened.

”Well that’s not fair!”  Watcher-Under-Stone proclaimed.  “That is meant to be our cultural trait!”

James didn’t reply, he just shot the guy.  The first few bullets ricochetted off the armor of the dungeon construct, but the next few hit the real enemy’s armor, whatever material it was deflecting a few shots and getting jagged holes punched through in other places.  The figure jerked at the impacts, but didn’t fall, instead getting a hand up to screen his face while James emptied the rest of his half-used magazine into him.

The problem with carrying the gun that was perfect for tearing apart the constant waves of smaller fleshier fodder creatures, was that James didn’t have much to use against armor.  And his side was the only one facing the enemy.

That changed as Arrush accelerated hard enough to slam him into the door, someone in the back seat throwing up as the jeep was swung in the sharpest turn it had ever made so that the ratroach could drive them down the path that their enemy had come out of.  The already trampled manicured shrubbery on either side of the black strip of asphalt getting further flattened as Arrush nearly took out a fence before gaining full control.  But at least it got them away from the sound of fingers scrambling along the sides of their vehicle, the body of the horde of smaller monsters unable to keep up.

His paws and blood sung with magic.  A couple tricky-to-earn levels in Driving from the Pylon, and a cast of A Hood And Cowl from the Horizon, skill and supernatural augmentation letting him operate perfectly through the pain and the high speed in tight quarters.  Kill notifications streamed in as the soft bodies of the screaming child creatures that were still rushing them down the path met the damaged armor of the jeep and lost that fight, up until the cluster of the things just stopped and they were in the clear.  One of his free paws swept chunks of safety glass off his armor and onto the floor by his feet as they burst out of the fenced area that wound between fake houses, and onto a wide open slope of dead grass and a single bumpy footpath.  And, ahead of them, the end.

The end of the world, it looked like.  But really just the end of this hunk of dirt that the Underburbs built itself on.  Darkness ahead, not even any of the glowing mist out over the edge, but the distant lights of other platforms far off, giving Arrush an outline that his low-light adapted eyes could trace.  He ruined Watcher-Under-Stone’s return fire at the massive bug vehicle that was chasing them by whipping the car into another left turn, overshooting the path and skittering along the grass with exactly enough control that they didn’t go off the edge.  Though that didn’t stop the screaming from the passengers.

”If you want to die then get out and do it on your own and let me drive!”  Watcher’s nauseated voice shouted from behind Arrush.  He ignored the man.  He was busy.

Busy keeping them from going over the edge as he coaxed the damaged engine to maneuver out of range of the next charge of the thing chasing them.  It outmassed the jeep by a lot, and the armor wasn’t designed to keep a head-on collision from damaging something important, but they were still running and so Arrush was still dodging.  He’d hoped the mobile home would go over the edge, but its scuttling legs and spinning wheels that ripped up the dead dirt behind it unfortunately caught its momentum before it took the plunge.

”Aim for the underside!”  James yelled back to Watcher-Under-Stone, the camraconda barely hearing his advice over the cries of the other humans crammed into the car, and even when she did process it, it wasn’t helpful.  Though trying to shoot out the eyes wasn’t working so maybe she could try to bounce a salvo of rifle rounds into its undercarriage.

The camraconda did not believe that would be happening.  So she kept up her steady rate of fire mostly aimed at the rider, up until the thing put on a burst of speed and overtook their vehicle, thundering up alongside and slamming its flank against their starboard side with a scream of metal on metal, and more screams from their rescues.

Arrush kept his grip on the wheel, eyes split between the dirt they were steadily shredding through and the creature that was pulling away for another ram.  The jeep was ten meters away from the edge that he was driving parallel to, racing up the hill as something tried to turn that ten into a zero.  Ten meters was a long distance, on foot.  In a car moving this fast, though, it was a flick of the wheels in just the wrong way, and would only be a second worth of realization before they were all surely dead.  So when the mobile home lurched sideways, Arrush was watching and met it with a strike of his own.

”You should have found my fucking gun!”  Watcher bellowed, shoulder braced on the door he was squeezed against as if he could hold the creature back or keep the window from breaking by sheer force of pressure.

James’ own weapon rattled in his hands as he emptied a magazine up at the mobile home’s rider, leaning out his window and feeling every divot in the dead dirt that Arrush was hitting.  He jerked back when it hit them again, and didn’t risk shooting into the metal plated body that his bullets would just bounce off of, though as he steadily reloaded while he waited, he did paint one of the monster’s eyes with a series of Paves.  James was getting better at shooting those off without gesturing, and at the speed his boyfriend drove, he’d have the Velocity back in no time.  Though all it seemed to do was crack something, not blow up his target, so that wasn’t great.

On the third hit that forced them marginally closer to the edge and ripped something hopefully not important off the side of their jeep, two things happened at once.  First, and less important, was the man on the mobile home laughing.  A sound that was far, far too loud to be natural, his voice slipping into their car like he was right there with them and the engine noise and crashing metal wasn’t an issue.  “Meat!”  He yelled in the most Boston accent James had ever heard in his fucking life.  “Not bad not bad!  But I’m gonna kill you all, and you may as well give up before this stops being fun!”

”Are you having fun?!”  James asked Arrush with instinctive banter and a higher pitched voice than normal, his heart beating in double time.

Arrush didn’t answer though.  Because Arrush had seen what was below them.  Actually below them, not just the edge of their chunk of terrain.

Another island, yes.  Floating or just suspended by something unseen, it didn’t matter.  But it was close to this one, in terms of verticality.  Not so close they’d survive the fall, but close enough that Arrush could see the light bathing a large portion of it.

Not the mist, not the sparks of artificial orange street lamps.  Sunlight.  Carving out a semicircle where it came through a hole in this world and back into another one.  And there was a lot of it.  Which made sense, because Arrush could also see motion.  Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of bodies.  Pressed so tightly together they might as well have been a single mass; too far for even his upgraded eyes to differentiate what he was looking at, but it didn’t matter.  Because they were already flooding through the breach.

And the breach was huge because it apparently had to accommodate the massive towering metal giants that were stalking toward it.  Ponderous steps so infrequent that Arrush only saw them take one before his attention was forced back to driving.  But unfortunately, his attention lingered long enough to be noticed.

The tower of metal and cable lines and transformer bushings saw Arrush spotting him.  Not for very long, not more than a tiny glimpse, but this wasn’t some idle sleeping giant like James had encountered.  This was an Underburbs titan on the warpath, and it struck out at him instantly.  A curving almost coiling arch of electrical discharge coming out of almost nowhere to crackle along Arrush’s face; the bright blue flare of light in the car as well as the pain of something branding one of his eyes slightly distracting him from his control of the vehicle.

James noticed in a flash, leaning across the driver’s seat and slamming his arm into the warped metal of the door next to Arrush, the shield bracer he’d gotten into position and already toggled to exactly this thing flaring to life and intercepting the rest of the attack.  The golden dome outside the jeep cutting off the blue burn inside, and giving Arrush a half a second to jerk the wheel before they were hit again.

”I am not having fun!”  His voice sounded wrong as he answered James.  It had been a long time since he’d felt this much pain, he supposed.  But he wasn’t going to let it stop him now.

James, though, didn’t answer.  Instead, he was looking through the window out at the same thing Arrush had said.  Shield bracer pulsing as it caught two more shots from the looming electrical towers down below that dwarfed every other scurrying monster from the Underburbs.  ‘They’re starting already.”  He said with a cold despair in his voice.  “They’re-“ he choked on his words as the mobile home rammed them again, the jeep lurching as Arrush steered them up over the top of the hill and they caught a little air just after the impact.

Ahead of them, the walking path came to an end at a row of weathered and splintered fences enclosing a wall of backyards.  Though what had weathered and splintered them was anyone’s guess.  And above them, part of the jeep suddenly vanished.

Well, no, it didn’t do that.  Instead, unnaturally elongated human fingers punched through the comparatively lighter roof over Watcher’s head, and then yanked in a way where the whole vehicle was being pulled upward.  The roof gave before they got lifted upward, the nightmare beetle next to them that their attacker was braced against lurching away as its resistance was suddenly overcompensation.  But there was now a long hole in the car’s top with a strip of upholstered metal flapping against the back and getting in Watcher-Under-Stone’s face.

”Oh look!  Ya’ve even got a kid in that can for me!”  The man who was trying to rip their car apart with his bare hands shouted in that annoyingly pervasive voice.  “Are you supposed to be new competition?  Or do you think you’re some kind of heroes?  Bet it’s that one!  You seem lame like that!”

James shoved himself off the ratroach driver, one of his hands fumbling for an object off Arrush’s armor webbing as he rocked back into his own seat.  ”Arrush.”  James said seriously, looking out the window at where the armored man standing with his arms crossed on top of the mobile home and laughing like he was having the time of his life.  “I love you.  I’ll catch up later, get them out of here.”  He said.  “Get us ahead of that thing.”  His voice rose as he pointed at the insectile mobile home with one of the cylinders in his hand, his other hand’s fingers unclipping his empty SMG and letting it fall to the jeep’s floorboard before fumbling for and finding a specific button on his alchemy mask, rapid breaths sucking down aerosolized potion of his chosen variety.

Arrush’s eyes flicked over to James, two of them clouds and surrounded by a smoking Lichtenberg burn pattern.  He could feel the bad idea radiating off the human.  But there was maybe five seconds of free time, and he could either choose to ruin the bad plan, or he could trust James, trust his paladin, and do what was needed.

Arrush floored it, racing toward the end of their free space, wheels protesting as he swerved sideways and up onto the footpath for a moment to get better traction.  Watcher-Under-Stone kept shooting as he got them ahead of the creature, heavy caliber bullets putting small holes in it and even shattering some eyes, but not stopping its chase.  The jeep’s engine suddenly screamed in protest, and there was only a moment before they were going to be overtaken and hit from behind way too hard to not crush the vehicle beyond usability.

Which was when James casually popped his door open and rolled out.  Landing on his feet like he did this every day, the momentum of the vehicle he’d just left not just going away and in fact about to slam him into the ground with all the force that only uncaring physics could produce.  He got a really good look at the swaying headlight eyes of the mobile home and the grinding bladed grill of its maw as it charged forward heedless of his idiot self.

James never felt the impact of tumbling backward through the dead grass and hard dirt.  Because James didn’t do that.  Instead, the second he felt his feet touch the ground, James crossed his arms with his hands balled into fists around his borrowed thermite grenade, and cast Mountain Of The Self.  The Breath-hungry Climb spell taking less than a second to drain his lungs of air and his blood fo warmth.  The oxygenation potion he was still trying to suck down did a good job keeping him from dying instantly, but it was still so cold.  Even alchemically protected, he could hold the spell for five or six seconds at most.

Too bad for the mobile home that it was moving so fast, it only took it one second to slam into James.  A maneuver that was, mercifully for the Underburbs creature, instantly lethal to it.  Metal, bone, and flesh met James’ unmovable form and failed to move it.  The blades of the creature’s maw bent and snapped, and it had no time to realize its mistake before the body behind those parts hit the impervious human at a hundred miles an hour.  James dug a furrow through its internals, getting brief glances of the inside of its body where furniture grew like tumors through the beam of his armor’s flashlight before he ripped through a couch, several lamps, and an oven, and then was suddenly surrounded by a spray of liquid as one of the heavy tanks underneath the beast ruptured and fountained out whatever nightmare goo it was carrying.

James held Mountain Of The Self in place for a good three seconds after the impact.  He was waist deep in rent metal and shredded gore from the fleshy parts of the creature he’d just gone through.  And he was pretty sure that if it had a brain, he was wearing it.  So he endured the creeping chill that was turning his lips blue, and let the multi-ton corpse settle around him, before he braced himself and dropped the magic.  And then immediately used a precious Move Person cast to flick himself up ten feet to land on its back.

The man who had been standing there wasn’t anymore.  Instead, he seemed to have carved his own furrow through the dirt about a hundred feet ahead of where his ride had come to an abrupt stop.  If James wasn’t planning to fucking kill him, it would have been really funny how the armored figure was curved with his feet sticking over his prone form, his cape caught on one of his legs, arms splayed out to the sides.  His armor seemed to be in good condition, though, and he was still moving.

So James slapped the thermite trigger of that grenade against his thigh and pitched the thing right onto the asshole’s back.

The reaction was pretty quick.  The crumpled figure started swearing uncreatively as he rolled over, one hand trying to grab the liquifying metal on his spine and failing as that arm was apparently broken.  He got it before it carved a hole through his body, unfortunately for James, and whipped the hissing sparking thermite away as he stumbled to his feet.

”Alright, got some bite in you, don’tcha?”  He laughed in James’ direction, good hand brushing dirt off his armor as his Boston accent bounced around James’ head uninvited.  “Bloodthirsty, dangerous, freaked out my little sunshine to see you, you must be a paladin!”

James answered the unpleasant grin by flinging the other grenade, which bounced off the man’s armor as he backpedaled, but didn’t ignite.  He’d started to make a biting comment when the flashbang went off, James already having his eyes closed and jaw relaxed but his target having no such preparation.  The ringing pop of pressure and light was followed up by James opening fire with his personal sidearm, the Walther barking as he put several bullets into the enemy’s head.  A few of them even opened up small bloody wounds, though none pierced too deep.

”Bastahd!”  The Underburbs minion was still laughing as he stepped out of the crater he’d left, starting a headlong rush toward James across the open field.

And then he was bigger.  His body bulging and stretching, clothing seeming pre-shredded from exactly this, armor actually showing off thick cabling that held the whole thing together even as it exposed gaps in its coverage.  The delver doubled in height as he raced toward James, his speed unnaturally swift as his good hand crossed his body to pull a blade out of a hidden sheath that looked like a knife in his giant hand, but was more like a broadsword to someone that wasn’t busy being twelve feet tall.

James didn’t bother trying to block or deflect.  Instead, he snarled under his mask as he took a couple steps along the shattered metal back of the mobile home, and then flicked an Appointed Arrival cast to land on the shoulder of the charging man whose sword smashed down like a meteor where James had been standing a second later.  He noticed James instantly, the weight of the armored paladin not exactly inconspicuous.  But James had already lost his footing and was rolling off his back, landing in the dirt and kicking to send himself spinning so that he could shoot out the back of the enemy delver’s knees.  When the man whipped around with too much agility and the shots ricochetted off one of his plated greaves, James got himself into a crouch so he could make another step and another Appointed Arrival just in time to dodge a stomp.

”Stay still you little fuck!”  The man yelled at him.

There was a moment where James considered answering him.  Some kind of why the hell would I do that shot back as a fake perplexed question.  But saying nothing seemed to be doing a better job of annoying this guy, so he stayed quiet, used the short range teleport again, and then used his heavily advanced Copper Craft cast to grab a knife out of nowhere and sink it into the inside of the giant’s thigh through one of the armor gaps.  Leaving behind the spellmade blade as he was suddenly grabbed and flung out of pained panic, his attacker making the stupid mistake of not just trying to crush him to death.

James rolled to the side and dodged another sword swing that plunged the oversized knife into the dirt, and as his enemy yanked it back out, he caught James on the backswing.  James didn’t know why it didn’t hurt that much, but he would have guessed one of Kiki’s charms just kept him from getting biseceted, if he had time for it.  He didn’t have time though, so instead he popped up, flipped the man off, and teleported between his legs again to grab the handle of his knife and rip it out, getting painted in an arterial spray as he severed something very important.

The mule kick that took him in the arm still hurt like shit though, and James was slammed back into the mobile home corpse next to the hole he’d left in it.  The bleeding man, yelling about how he was going to eat James or something that the paladin wasn’t really listening to, charged again, this time flicking his broken hand to send what looked like a handful of marbles he’d pulled out of his armor at James like a shotgun blast.  He mentally toggled a bracer to automatic, got hit once in the chest in a way that would have killed him if he weren’t wearing armor, and then watched the rest of the baseball sized metal orbs scatter off his shield like deadly rain.

When the guy swept his sword this time, James dodged backward, scrambling up the dead monster as best as he could, so that he had the right angle to pull his Appointed Arrival trick again and land on the shoulder of the bastard with the spell.  They were both moving too much for this to be anything but temporary, but it was temporary enough for James to drop his own thermite grenade down the back of the plated collar of the man’s armor.  And as he tumbled off in a more controlled roll, one of his hands grazed the enemy’s neck, a cast of Survival Flare taking more of his body heat and barely scratching his temporarily infinite supply of oxygen as he ensured that all the heat from that thermite went where he wanted it to.

”You… little shit…” The man panted, face pale as he rounded on James again.  He dropped his sword, hand clamping over his bleeding leg, not having realized that James had done something else yet.  “You’d make a good hunter, wouldn’t you?”  He said, fingers making quick motions along his flesh in a way that seemed to be bubbling and shaping his own flesh.  “Looks like you… get to walk away this time.”

“And looks like you don’t.”  James said with a death glare as the molten sparks of the thermite started to spray from the Order’s oldest tool for dealing with oversized beasts.

The enemy delver’s eyes widened as he realized, and he let go of his still-gushing thigh wound to try to rip his armor off.  But he was far, far too late.  The thermite was already pouring heat into him from where James had cast the spell, the proximity making it all too easy for Survival Flare to suck in the thermal energy, using it to boil blood, melt flesh, and, in short order, simply do too much damage to even a giant and enhanced human body for anything to survive it.

The supposed predator of the Underburbs died with his hand weakly scrambling to grab the thing that killed him.  Body curling sideways with a high volume wheezing scream, the sharpness of it abruptly cutting out before the actual wail did as the man’s magic collapsed shortly before he did.

James, panting from exertion and adrenaline, looked over his shoulder to where Arrush had plowed through a specific section of fence, the jeep already out of sight and rejoining the others on the way out.  They were so close to the exit here, his boyfriend would be fine.  He just had to get out himself.

It was a little ironic that in this fight where he hadn’t ever thought he’d needed it, every single one of his emergency telepads had survived.  It made sense, kind of.  If he was getting the shit kicked out of him there was a higher likelihood one of them was breaking, obviously.  But as James grabbed the dropped Underburbs crystals from the corpse and from every piece of furniture he’d shredded inside the mobile home, and then teleported himself out, he couldn’t help but think that he’d like it a little more if they only broke when he didn’t need them.

Well, he thought that a little.

Mostly what he was thinking was that he was going to hate how it felt to teleport out of the Underburbs, and more than that, he was thinking that he really, really hoped he was in time to figure out how to stop the rest of the dungeon from invading his planet.

_____

James got back before Arrush’s driving did, but only by virtue of having a teleporter.  And, shockingly, he didn’t immediately die from it.  In fact, he didn’t feel worse at all.

The first time through the Underburbs, the number of people who had died right away had been so high in large part because everyone who had been teleported in there had some kind of shock to their immune system that left them uniquely vulnerable to the dungeon.  The fact that it was apparently some kind of aftereffects of the specific kind of destructive teleport that launched them there, and not just from teleporting across the boundary in the first place, was a relief.

James still got swarmed by the Response team helping with quarantine and decon protocols when he arrived at the designated telepad platform.  The process of having multiple different authorities strip both his gear and his skin of any foreign contaminants was, if he were being polite about the situation, mildly abrasive.  James did not want to be polite about the situation.  But he held his tongue as he was scoured, and also as a camraconda from medical provided him with a disturbingly hefty spread of pills to swallow.  Vitamins, anti-inflamatories, what he was told was a mild steroid, and for reasons he didn’t ask about, caffeine.

He would have been annoyed at it.  Except, six minutes later, he got one of the intrusive thoughts of a survivor notification, adding another two skill points to his tally that he was pretty sure was currently in the mid five hundreds.  In the absence of a full spreadsheet of symptoms and cures for low-level Underburbs bullshit, medical had just crafted a collection of mostly harmless medication that anyone could cram down and handle a good eighty percent of the known problems.  Except ratroaches, who couldn’t have acetaminophen, which was suddenly a massive weakness here.

He got that notification as he was walking into the local command tent.  Locally set up, instead of having logisticored a hole in the ground to move a prefab quarantine building.  That was an option, but they were planning to save the property damage for if it was needed.  James found it amusing that the flap of the command tent was flanked by the hovering asphalt form of a necroad; the creature floating like it was either a guard or just waiting for someone to come out.  He was pretty sure he recognized this one; the diagonal double yellow line ‘sash’ across its central body was the same pattern as the one that followed Cam around a lot, and James awkwardly twisted his gloved fingers into the signs for a quick greeting as he passed, getting a similar gesture in return.

Inside the command tent, multiple people were relaying incoming reports and adjusting a big map of the area in the closest thing to a real time strategy setup that James had ever seen.  Nate was one of them, though he wasn’t the one in overall command.  Planner was.  The infomorph manifested in dozens of stiffly geometric tentacles, eyes all watching everything carefully as they used their connection to the Order to turn reports into real time repositioning of knights in the field.  No one left abandoned or forgotten with Planner literally riding along with them.

James wasn’t the first hunter to return, though, despite beating back his own team.  Cam was standing with her wings folded tight and her hands awkwardly at her side, reporting to Nate as the man looked like he currently wanted to be hit in the head until unconscious rather than be here.

”-off and evaded our rearguard team.”  Cam was saying in a clipped voice that James hadn’t heard from her in what felt like a very, very long time.  “Their group worked together better than expected, showing real cohesion, which was unexpected.  Our ambush failed to account for that, and for the potency of some of their powers.  We don’t know how many survived, or what they did following the attack.  Minimum six escaped.”

”Six.  Shit.”  Nate muttered, wiping a tattooed hand across his chin.  “No one dead?  Us, not them.”

”No deaths.”  Cam paused for just long enough that James could feel the girl at war with herself over whether she went with total disclosure in her quick little report.  “There were several injuries.”

”Who?”

”JP and Sartori took weapons fire and sustained minor injuries, though I still don’t understand how assignment manifestations are… that is unimportant.  One of Marlea’s bodies was hit by shrapnel.  Kirk sustained a series of minor claw wounds that became infected with an Underburbs disease, and he is in medical’s care now, likely out of the fight.”

Nate looked back at Cam, catching the hesitation.  “And?”  He barked out.

”I was also injured in hand to hand combat attempting to subdue an Underburbs operative for questioning.”  Cam said.

”And?”  Nate reiterated with a glare.

”I have already regrown my wings, I am fine.”  Cam said, with the kind of almost disassociated voice that made James’ stomach turn as she described what must have been a maiming of herself.

Nate didn’t say anything.  He just stared at her, his gaze flicking across the battered military body armor she was wearing and onto the joints of her dull blue wingspan.  The only one who got wings like that in the Order, leather and scales marking Cam as something different from all the rest of them, her wings were in pristine condition.

Which meant that she’d lost the last set, and mid-operation had gone through the painful process of recasting Altitude Adept to sprout replacements.

”I’m-“ Cam started to say, her voice uncertain.

Nate cut her off, not looking at her anymore.  “Report heard.  Get to the regroup point.  We’ll need you out there again soon.”  He didn’t sound like that was a maybe so much as a grim certainty.

”Nate…” Cam said, but the big man had already turned his back on her and was working on yelling at a Rogue who had the misfortune of reporting in that the local police had tried to arrest him instead of listening to anything about the impending doom.  Cam’s composure fractured just the tiniest amount as she stood in place, watching, before she realized Nate had actually dismissed her and she turned to face James.  “Oh.”  Cam said in a strange mixup of her professional and personal voices.

”Hey.  You good?”  James asked her.

”I don’t know.  My back hurts.”  Cam said with a kind of honesty that James tended to unintentionally tug out of her.  “I can still fight though.”

He nodded to her, clapping a hand on her shoulder and then jerking back as he felt an electric current running through Cam’s body.  His own purple orb power let him sort of slide around it without getting shocked, but he hadn’t been expecting that.  “Cam what the fuck.”  James laughed.

She tapped her chest, the military plate carrier she was wearing as part of what must have been an incredibly bulky set of armor making a muted tink noise.  “I’ve been imbuing the armored plates with blue orbs.”  She said.  “They are designed to break anyway.  It only marginally reduces their effectiveness, and since I am my armor, or close enough to it for the magic, I can cheat.”

”It’s not cheating if it works.”  James spoke on the reflex of someone who had played enough D&D to need that defense ready to go for when Anesh’s eyes started to narrow his direction.  “Your armor has holes in it though.”

”Yes.  It is good I didn’t wear my nice coat.  Liz would kill me.”  Cam said as they lingered by the entrance to the tent.  She took a deep breath, and looked back at Nate for a moment.  “I don’t know how to do this.”  Cam told him.

”He’s worried about you, and he’s bad at that.  No getting around it though.”  James shook his head.  “Alanna and I have had to work through that a few times.  The only cure is to just never die.”

Cam gave him a nonplussed look.  ”I’ll work on that.”  She said with dry inflection.  “You know, not even an hour before this, I was trying to find you?”

”Ominous.”  James chuckled.  “Why?”

”I needed to ask you a favor.”  Cam said, shifting her boots on the ground.  “But it all seems so small now.  We are trying to do, with just us, what took the Last Line to do with orders of magnitude more power.  And I don’t know why I thought my own issues even got near this in terms of priority.” She laughed herself, before catching the look James now gave her.  “I wanted to ask for your help in approaching a sister.  The one you previously… encountered.”

James nodded politely, before holding up an index finger extended to the sky in a halting gesture.  “The one who there might have been a mutual murder attempt with?”  He asked.

”Yes.”

”Cam, you’re doing a phenomenal job in adapting to a social environment and interlinked community…” James started to say.

For just a moment, the glare she sent his way made James feel like he was being stared down not by Cam, but by Camille the Azure.  Just for a second.  “Don’t patronize me.”  She ordered him.

”I’m just saying, maybe pick someone who didn’t get her thrown out of a window.”  James said.

”She threw herself out of a window.  It was a perfectly reasonable escape vector.  She won’t hold it against you.”

He closed his eyes and tipped his head back.  ”Now see, the terrifying thing is, you might actually mean that.  And worse, you might be right.”  James shook his head.  “We’ll talk later.  There’s a million things to do, but, Cam… yeah, you need my help?  You got it.  Let’s just get through this first.  You can pay me back by going on a deep delve sometime.”

”I would do that anyway.”  Cam said, way too fast for it to be just casual support.  When James raised his eyebrows, she shrugged back.  “I have found… why is this so hard to say?  It has been on dungeon delves that I have found every single part of myself that matters now.  Also some of them are beautiful to see.  Why wouldn’t I want to go as deep as we can, those of us that are the most able to press forward?”

”…okay, fair enough.”  James nodded, keeping an eye on where the people he was waiting to report to were still busy.  He had a little time.  “Guess I’m sorta the same.”  He sighed.  “So, how’d your hunting trip go?  I heard you had problems.”

”Two kills, the rest scattered.  I worry we may have accelerated their plans.”

James realized that he’d been chatting with Cam when he didn’t know if anyone else knew that those plans were not only accelerated, but going on right now.  His eyes widened as he caught his massive fuckup, and he pushed past her to stride toward the command team, Cam giving him space as she caught his vibe instantly.  “Hey!”  James announced, getting the attention of Planner and Ben.  “Six kills, the others are on the way back with rescued civilian captives, one of the captives is a Coalition member, specifically the one I killed who doesn’t seem to remember or hold a grudge so don’t blow that secret just yet, the Coalition is landing a few thousand troops near here either now or soon, and I think the Underburbs is already making its move through a different breach than the one we’re guarding!”  James rattled off.

Silence filled the tent for a moment.  The chatter about their new countermeasures for visual hazards and the street patrols that were evacuating as many civilians as they could going quiet at James’ words.   Then Ben took a deep breath, and looked down at the tentacles framing their war map.  “Planner, kill him for me.”

”No there is no time and I am can only multitask so much.”  Planner replied.  “How did this happen?”

James answered the rhetorical.  “I think the ones that got away from Cam triggered whatever they were doing early.  We saw an active breach on the way back, a different one on a different island, lots of hostiles going through.  The enemy must have a way of moving between islands inside the Underburbs, or they’re in communication with other cells.”

”We don’t know how many they are.”  Ben said idly as he tapped something on a tablet.  “Coalition?  More information please?”  He asked sarcastically.

”Nothing, sorry.”  James shook his head.  “I don’t even know where the other breach landed.”  He winced as he remembered the quantity of Underburbs life.

”No, James, the Coalition is here.  What did you get on them?  You said Watcher is back.”  Ben’s words got one of the camracondas in the tent to look his way, before determining they weren’t the one being spoken to.

”Yeah, not much.  Just that he said they were bringing in an army.  But… the way he talked, it was like he wasn’t expecting the Underburbs?  He seemed fucking shaken up by the whole ‘getting kidnapped’ thing.”  James felt like it was taking a lot of effort to sort his thoughts out.  His tongue stinging from where he’d bitten into it didn’t help, but it was mostly the crash from having just been in yet another duel to the death, and even if it wasn’t his death, that still got to him.  “Which doesn’t make sense, actually.”  He said as he started to pull a few threads together.

”You think?”  Ben asked with blunt sarcasm.

Planner made an angry sharp hiss in an assignment mimicry of the common camraconda expression.  “They are here because of the Underburbs.”  They said with a dire kind of conviction.

”…We just said…” Ben shook his head.  “Whatever, what do you have Plan?”

Several of the assignment’s tentacles curled up over the edge of the table to make quick taps on the space around the map.  “The Underburbs is one of the most visible hostile actions we’ve encountered.  And it is exactly the style of thing that attracts multiple known embodiments.  Pillars, specifically.”

“Ah fuck.”  James sighed out.  “They’re after the Last Line.  At least.  They plan on burying him in bodies, don’t they?”

”Could be others.  Long showed up last time.”  Ben pointed out.  And then retracted that before anyone could argue.  “Where the fuck is Watcher?”  He called out, mostly focused on Anesh and Alanna.

The two looked at each other, then back to Ben.  “Hospital?”  Anesh asked cautiously.  “He was getting tortured same as all of them.”

”Are you sure?”  Ben asked.  Not quite rhetorically, because he was already double checking through his skulljack.  “You’re not sure.  He’s not there.”

No one liked what that implied.  “We can’t count on reinforcements then.”  Planner stated.  “And our opportunity to establish a strong initial impression is going to be lost if we interfere with their own attempts.  Any aid will be incidental."

”We could just help them shoot Lloyd.”  James pointed out, and noticed that Nate’s reaction to that was one of optimistic interest.  “Or undermine him somehow oh fuck me undermining the Line means letting the dungeon break out okay nevermind fuck that.  Let’s hope they’re after someone else?  Or legitimately here to save lives?”  He didn’t believe it.  No one helping with coordination in this tent believed it.

Ben offered a lifeline.  “Long showed up at the end last time, I remember.  Could be him.  Hey!  Raindrops-And-Gloom!  What’s going on with the fire department?”  Ben called suddenly to one of the camracondas, reminded of their ongoing attempts.

The answer came back quickly in a warbling digital voice.  “Contact has been established.  There is enough recognition of the Order that they are behaving accordingly.  Stations are folding into Harvey’s command and assisting in evacuation.”  He paused and then added.  “They are asking if the world is ending.”  The camraconda told the room, drawing winces from a few people.  “I have deflected.”

”Dang, that’s different.”  James muttered.  “No police though?”

”You’d know if there was.”  Nate grumbled.  “This fucking place changed its tactic.”  He continued, his own thought jumping in and cutting off the other scattered conversation.  “The Underburbs.  It was doing a spread from one breach point.  We’ve even found evidence of it in one of the last places it hit.  But this time, we’ve got two breaches, maybe more.  It’s splitting up.”

”Doesn’t line up.”  James shook his head as he noticed Alanna and Anesh push into the command tent and sag in relief on seeing him.  He nodded their way with a thin smile, but kept going; he’d say hi to them when there was time.  “There was no army on our island.  Things were empty on the way to the target, and I mean, there weren’t even that many things like the neighbors.  If they were going to try to annex from multiple points there’d be… more.  Right?”

”Could be relying on local spawns.”  Ben pointed out.  “But we’ve seen dungeons try that.  It’s too slow for this.  I think.  Maybe?  Fuck we need better dungeon science.”

”Agreed.”  James and Planner said in unison, the assignment continuing on their own.  “But there is a simple answer.  Cam’s report did not indicate hostages.”  They framed James with a drifting tentacle.  “Yours did.  Cam’s targets were situated near an access point to another island, and showed high cohesion.  Paladin Lyle faced neither of those traits.  The conclusion is simple.  The lower ranking Underburbs predators were given the less desirable work of harvesting civilians for power crystals, while the others prepared their invasion.  We have simply mistaken which breach we are at.”

”That makes a horrifying amount of sense.”  James admitted.  “But it doesn’t solve the big problem!”  His voice rose in pitch as he started to feel a frantic pressure to do something.  “We don’t know where the real breach is!”

Quiet fell over the command tent from everyone listening who wasn’t in the middle of something.  Which wasn’t actually that many people; they all had stuff to do.  But Nate and Ben and even Planner all looked like they didn’t have a solid idea of what their next step was.  They could probably assume that this was the general geographic area of the Underburbs attempt, but none of the sweeper teams had found any of the pylons that were used to draw the dungeon into Earth’s space.  None of them had found a predator delver outside of the dungeon.  And none of them had spotted any of the thing’s monsters, spawned locally or from inside, anywhere.

And there was only so much that could be done to search an area that might be twenty miles across.  Or more.  It wasn’t something James’ was naturally good at conceptualizing; he knew how long it took to go a mile, but his brain insisted that if you had one square mile, it should take maybe twice as long to search, which was… incorrect.  It was more like twenty, fifty, a hundred times more effort to scour that much space.  Especially for the acuity they needed to check with.  And that, then, was multiplied out by a few hundred times to cover a twenty square mile area that might not have what they were looking for in it anyway.

James often felt a kind of abstract helplessness at the scale of a lot of global problems.  He couldn’t, for example, just punch away a lack of a robust education system, or a culture of child abuse, or the entire grim ediface of climate change.  So he tackled problems, using the Order, by carving toeholds into what felt like immovable walls, and slowly expanding.  Response was one of those.  So was Townton.  Every time he went on a delve he was hoping to find, striving to find, something that would be another game changer.  And that was satisfying and also brought real progress.

And that was great and all, but the Underburbs was here, now, probably killing people, now, and James wasn’t fighting back, now.

“We need to start-“ Ben began to say, when he was cut off by one of the rogues.

“Hey!”  Yin’s voice sliced through the tense atmosphere.  “Found it!  Also my head fucking hurts!”

Ben set a hand on the side of his face, fingers tracing the line of his goatee with rough pressure.  ”What?”

“Yeah man, I just threw some observation drones up.  Two things about that, actually!  The big titan towers?  They can lightning bolt a camera drone but not the operator, so that’s good.  And-“

”Planner, kill Yin.”  Ben told the infomorph.

”Not yet, let her finish first.”

Yin kept talking as if that hadn’t happened.  “-there’s something that’s giving me watcher skill points that just gives a bigger and bigger headache the longer you look at it.  So I’m not dead, and I found it, and I want a raise!”  She realized she hadn’t given the location, and quickly corrected that.  “Six-ish miles east!  Across the lake, north part of the city there, by the highway!”

“Sammamish.”  Planner filled in.  “Traffic cameras acquired.  Oh dear.  There are driver casualties.  The titan towers are active.  Take note; they are limited to one target at a… ah, that is several traffic cameras now lost.  One target at a time, but they notice and pivot quickly.”  The assignment pivoted a hundred eyes to Nate and Ben.  “Testing… yes, it has begun.  Teleporting to the affected area will be challenging.  It may be faster to simply take the highway.  But either way, we need those towers neutralized, and we need to mobilize.”

“Ben.”  Nate pointed at his friend.  “Get Yin to the medics.”

”I’m fine!”

”You.”  Nate pointed at James, and by association, Cam, Anesh, and Alanna, who were having a quiet conversation near the entrance.  “Kill.”

James wasn’t quite sure what Nate wanted from him.  But he found, to his amazement, that he kind of had an answer.  He just wished it was an answer where the risk fell on him and not someone else.

Still, he let his skulljack open back up, connected to his phone that was stored somewhere safe, ignored the three missed calls and forcibly hung up on the fourth from Malcom McHarn that James felt like he could guess the contents of, and called someone else instead.

And in about two minutes, the Order of Endless Rooms would get to learn whether or not their air force was up to a terrifying and oversized challenge.

James, meanwhile, had just enough time to tightly hug Anesh and be told by Alanna that Watcher had fucked off somehwere, before he was assigned by Planner to one of the dozens of vehicles that the Order was piling into so they could clear this street and get to the one where they were needed.  And he was harrowed to learn they’d given Arrush a new and less crippled car to drive.

”Don’t kill us this time!”  James requested as he got in, having taken just enough time to rearm from the supply station that was already being packed up, his supposedly nicer but much less ergonomic rifle clipped into place on a chest strap, magazines of ammo shoved into pouches as he tried to quickly throw the ones of the wrong bullets into the back seat.

”Never us.”  Arrush laughed as he started the engine.

Things were looking bad.  Things were looking dire.  But, James couldn’t deny the simple fact that things were looking like something at all; and simply being able to see the problem gave him a bit of confidence that the problem could be stopped.

Now, all they had to do, was the simplest thing imaginable.

Kill at least six enemy delvers, thus shutting down the Underburb’s predator minions, then fight through every toxic monster and weird cognitohazard to destroy the tethers it had up, which would kick it off the planet and back into its own pocket dimension.

Also maybe throw some more of Terror’s firebombs in after it as it fled.

Simple.

Too bad simple never seemed to mean easy.