The Daily Grind - Chapter 403 (Patreon)

"Nothing is supernatural." -Rudolph Wernicke, Outlast-

_____

“Library has a pillar in it.”  James muttered, half asleep.  Endurance was done, uninterested in keeping him going when where he’d been going was a ten hour long sleep in his own bed.  His Energy, similarly, didn’t seem to be that thrilled to wake him up like it often did.  So when James had finally heard a voice directly address him, and some part of him that wasn’t quite thinking had decided he could maybe wake up, he hadn’t exactly leapt out of bed.

Instead, he’d rolled onto his front, and pushed himself upward.  His hands sinking into his pillow as his arms held a debate on whether or not he was going to collapse back to the mattress’s warmth in a few seconds.  And then he’d mumbled what he’d thought was an answer to whatever he’d been asked. 

“I left you alone for a day.”  Alanna sounded indignant.  “One.  Not even one day!  More like eight hours!”

”…I work fast.”  James blinked, his vision swimming as the biocomputer that most people called brains hadn’t quite reconciled his two different types of eye into one single view of the world.  “Why’re you here?”  He was pretty sure Alanna was supposed to be somewhere… not here.  James blinked again and didn’t open his eyes this time.  Maybe he was still asleep, he’d figure it out on the way back down to the bed.

A stuffed animal impacted him on the back.  “I live here dumbass.  And your new boyfriend took my spot in bed.”  There was another plush thump from nearby James, followed by the sensation of blankets being twisted and pulled, and then a much louder thump of a camraconda rolling off the edge of the bed with a frantic hiss.

James breathed in cooler air as the blankets were whisked away from his face by TQ’s departure.  ”Our downstairs neighbors must love us.”  He said as he actually started to wake up.

”Our downstairs neighbors love Anesh.”  Alanna said.  “Because they get all his leftover soup.  And they love me, since I helped patch that mysterious hole in their ceiling.  I don’t think they know you’re here.”

For a moment, James wondered why his partners were apparently on friendly terms with random neighbors.  But then he remembered that there was no real rule that said you could only do community building in Townton, and sharing food and helping with home projects was kind of an evergreen tactic for making connections.

Then he remembered exactly what the mystery hole in the downstairs apartment’s ceiling would be, and he choked on a laugh, hurting his throat as he inadvertently snorted sharply.

Someone hissed near his head, and James looked over the edge of the bed to see TQ staring at him.  From around the dressers, Alanna spoke up.  “He’ll be fine, if he were dying there’d be more flailing.”  There was a rustle, and then, “Oh shit, sorry TQ.  I didn’t really think this through.”  A hiss answered her, and James rolled and sat up to see Alanna undressed, holding a barely folded shirt over herself as she realized she’d just stripped in front of someone.  “Yeah, I know you’ve seen me in the baths, this feels different.  Also I interrupted you guys!”  TQ energetically hissed back at her again, and Alanna rolled her eyes and flipped the shirt in one hand to unfurl it.  “Alright, fine then!”  She declared, turning back around and giving James an excellent view of one of his favorite people as she went back to getting dressed.

”Hey, am I the only one that doesn’t speak camraconda?”  James asked.

He got a sarcastic hiss from TQ at that.

”No, it’s not just this, I’ve seen Alex do it too.  Like people just understand you guys and I don’t think I do.”

TQ hissed again in exasperation, before signaling with his snout toward James’ desk.

”Oh, yeah, I gotcha.”  James said, grabbing the small speakers and helping TQ by carefully strapping them to his body and then gently plugging the setup into the camraconda’s skulljack.

”You are indescribable.”  TQ told him as his voice came back online.

”I say that a lot after hearing James snore too!”  Alanna piped up, hopping on one foot and balancing against the wall as she put on her socks before her pants like some kind of space alien.

James didn’t bother to defend himself, and instead went on the offensive.  “Everyone in this room snores worse than me, including myself.”  He announced.  “I need water.”  He mumbled.

”Actually you need to tell me what’s up with the library pillar!”  Alanna told him.

”Well, incarnation, not pillar specifically.”  James admitted.  “And I can’t prove it.  I’m just immensely suspicious given what we know about…” he gestured widely, as if to indicate the whole situation with one powerful sweep of his arms.  “And it would fit with why Blitz keeps fucking around over there, if she actually does have some kind of tiny black speck of compassion in her armor penetrating heart.”

“God that sounds so fucking cool.”  Alanna bemoaned.  “Can I have an armor penetrating heart?”

”I assumed yours was made of depleted uranium and was self sharpening on impact with social situations.”  James told her.

Alanna stared at him with a smile that cratered her cheeks from how wide it was.  “I love it when you write me poetry.”  She told him.

TQ leaned over to flick his tongue on James’ cheek.  “It is a redeeming quality.”  He said.

”Hey, wait, what do I need to be redeemed for?”  James laughed, pushing the camraconda away at the tickling gesture.

”I have been compiling a list.”  “We can think of something.”  TQ and Alanna said at the same time with different levels of threatening.

”Polyamory was a mistake.”  James happily lied as he swung his legs out of bed.  “Okay.  Gotta go get yelled at by Nate for finding a new problem.  Gotta go see what needs me to cause problems for our enemies.  Gotta…” James stopped as he looked at the screen of the phone he’d reflexively picked up.  “Gotta go… do an interview?  Hey, Spire wants me to do some kind of interview for her in Saskatoon, is there any way I can put my paladin through public relations training?”

TQ made an amused noise gently into James’ side.  “For Spire?”  He asked.

”Yeah good luck buddy.”  Alanna told him.  “Okay, good news though, you get to be on the news?”

”…I am pretty sure Spire’s dodging this because it’s an interview with that one girl who tried to ask me if Spire was a cannibal alien when we were leaving Saskatoon last time…” James said, checking his mental spreadsheet of people.  “Callie.  Callie DuGaul, Saskatoon Underworld.  She ran a cryptid zein.”

Alanna calmly walked over to the side of the bed, knelt down, wrapped her hands around a mildly indignant TQ, and then stood with a smooth motion to fling the camraconda onto James where he was sitting, sprawling him back into the mattress.  “Go back to bed!”  She ordered him.  “You’ll thank me later!”

”I have an appointment!”  TQ protested.

”So do I, apparently.”  James muttered, taking the opportunity to hug the camraconda as Alanna prowled out of the room with her eternally put-upon laugh echoing through the apartment’s hallway.  “Hey.”  James said to the cabled serpent face that was right above his own, TQ’s body mostly flattened against him with the snake’s tail hanging off the edge of the bed between his legs.

”Hey as well.”  TQ said, before twisting to look away.  “I…”

James laid his head back and smiled.  ”You know it’s weird, I never thought I’d get good at recognizing emotions in a completely nonhuman species?  Especially not the apparently omnipresent emotion of trepidation.”  He said smoothly.  “You don’t need to panic.  Everything’s fine, I had fun yesterday, and, you know what?”

”What indeed?”  TQ asked, pulling upward and arching his body to stare down at James’ face.

”I actually do like you.”  James said, trying not to laugh at the view of a camraconda snout from head on.  “You’re fun to be around and I’m getting more comfortable with you, so don’t feel like you’re bullying me into a relationship.”

TQ leaned down, his mostly healed lens irising as he looked like he was trying to stare into James’ thoughts.  “How do you know what I am thinking?  Is the telepathy magic that strong already?”

”TQ, I had you clocked as someone eerily like me from before you had a name.  I am inside your head.”  James informed the camraconda.

”Oh I assumed that was a third date activity.”  TQ said with such perfect timing that it was hard to believe he had at any point felt anything other than the rich desire to set up the ideal comedic precision strikes.

”Get off of me, I have a cryptid hunter to go endure.”  James said after he’d finished nearly dying of laughter.

_____

James arrived to the Lair to find JP almost patiently standing in the front lobby next to a woman around his age who was staring around at everything that moved and most things that didn’t.

Recognizing the Tyranny’s court musician was the easy part.  Reconciling her presence in his fucking home base took a little more work.  Tamping down the impulse to start the conversation by dive tackling JP, James instead approached with his frown temporarily restrained.

”JP.  Mel, who is in my clubhouse, inexplicably.”  James said curtly to the woman he was pretty sure was a high enough level in her Rank that she would be exceedingly hard to stop if she decided to threaten the people here.  “Care to fix that?”

”What, by fucking off?”  The woman’s deep accent mixed with her cheery tone made the words sound incredibly lighthearted.  “Or by explaining?”

James didn’t have an immediate preference.  ”Either or.”

Deciding to cut through the nonsense, JP made one of those hand gestures he liked that drew James’ attention cleanly his direction.  “She’s not actually here.”  He said.  “With all the airports still closed, Tyrants apparently not teleporting well, and our delightful homegrown gestapo zealously rounding people up for the camps-“

”Right, I need to shoot some people about that.”

JP ignored James’ interruption.  “-it was easier to just send a representative like this.”  He waved his hand through Mel, her body wavering like a rather sticky hologram as JP stuck his limb through her torso.  “Apparently.  Seems useful, maybe they’ll share if you don’t antagonize anyone too much.”  He told James.

”So slim odds then.”  James nodded sagely as a group of presumably younger dungeon life, mostly crocamaws and ratlings, flowed around the decor of the lobby between the route to the dining area and the briefing warehouse, all of them carrying boxed meals.  He was pretty sure that a lot of people were eating on the roof these days, which meant the roof was no longer the quiet and isolated place that Watcher-Of-Birds used it as.

Actually, the Lair was just too full these days; the same problem as when they had first collectively adopted all the camracondas coming back in force.  They could add more basements, fold apartments into spatial pockets, and use a dozen little tricks to make things nicer, but the fundamental truth was that over the last month they’d added about two hundred new people to this building.  And you just couldn’t get away with that.  People did actually want to go outside sometimes, hallways had a finite flow rate for pedestrians, and while they’d definitely prioritized community over ‘business professionalism’ it was kind of a smart idea to not have packs of curious kids around the armory or the Incredibly Dangerous Magic Item Testing Chamber.

“You have a real stick up your ass, huh?”  Mel asked James.

James wasn’t really prepared for her presence in the first place, and he’d made the mistake of letting his mind wander to something more interesting, so he was really unprepared for the barbed words.  Unfortunately, he had too many overlapping etiquette skill orbs to reflexively scowl at her, buried knowledge from a few different ranks poking him to school his scowl into something passive as he redirected his attention to the bard.

”I have an inherent dislike for anyone operating a government without the consent of the governed.”  He said bluntly, before looking over at JPs wincing visage.  “How diplomatic am-“

”Oh come on!”  Mel cut him off, the projection of the woman rolling amber eyes that had a soft glow to them, either a barely noticeable effect of the magic that had put this version of her here, or maybe she was just like that.  “Don’t tell me you’d just sit around and let it all go to hell if you could make the world better!”

”No, you’re right.  I just wouldn’t do what you guys did.  I think you’re fucking up in a spectacular way, and that when this specific mistake finally turns out to be a mistake, you’re going to leave a crater.”  James let some of his anger vent out.  “I’m actually shocked your declaration that you were going to dominate Europe hasn’t gotten you, personally, nuked into a radioactive hole.”  He informed Mel pointedly.

“Yeah, and everyone knows they’d get it back double.”  She snapped back.  “It’s a MAD fucking world, don’tcha know?”

”Reassuring.”  James said with an unimpressed snort.

”People needed us.”  Mel said, suddenly serious, though still with a bubbling fury in her voice.  “Or they needed someone.  Do it some other way?  Nice fuckin’ sentiment from someone with options who isn’t even using them.  We had what we had, and we’re making it work.  What are you doing?”

James glowered back, but there was something in him that uncomfortably pointed out that Mel wasn’t wrong exactly.  He was doing stuff, but… couldn’t he be doing more?  The Order was supposed to do good recklessly, so why were they dragging their heels so often?  That said, he felt a sudden tugging that didn’t feel quite natural as he acknowledged that feeling of bitterness; an old red orb rank helping him process his true feelings highlighting the small points in the mess where the feelings were maybe a little too prompted.

It dawned on him that maybe getting in an argument with a bard was a bad idea.  But James did enjoy a challenge, so he let himself smile sharply as he replied.  “If we gave you everything we had, would you drop the mind control?”  He asked.  “Will you ever drop it?  When your goals are met, when you’ve built your better world, where’s your team going to sit in the hierarchy?”

”You won’t give us shit and you know it.”  Mel said.  “I think even trying to trade with you is a bad idea.  But Ettie…” she snapped off her words, looking away from him.

”I would though.”  James told her, using the juxtaposition of a softer tone to make his point.  “What would it take, to make you stop mindfucking people?  Free electricity?  Teleportation?  Two free steps up the cybernetics tech tree?  What?”

Mel blinked at him.  “You have all that and you don’t own this continent?”

”It’s a work in progress.”

”It’s a work in you sucking off the status quo!”  She barked at him.

James closed his eyes and breathed.  There was no way for her to know what that meant to him.  She didn’t mean it as a harsh thing.  Well, she did, but not like that.  “You’re doing a lot of work to avoid talking about the mindfucking.”  He pointed out with his own brand of hostility.

”Oh like you wouldn’t do the same thing.”

James considered it.  ”Offensively?  Absolutely.  I work with people who could eat your memories of even having this conversation.  And we’ve used that to infiltrate, steal, even kill when needed.  As a pact?  I’m one of the people in this fucking outfit that lobbied for using our mental conditioning magic as part of a badge of office.  I love mind control, probably because I lack so much control over my own mind.”  James admitted, with a brief concern that he was oversharing, before frisson from his red orbs reminded him that he was still talking to a bard.  “But if it’s not either military action or totally consensual, I’m not a fan.  You’re in the deep end of anti-ethics, and you fucking know it.”

”But it’s working!”  Mel pointed out.  “Doesn’t matter who’s pissy about it.  It’s working, and the more it works, the less we need!”

Opening his mouth, James cocked his head as he realized what she was saying.  “That’s… a shockingly weird point.”  He admitted.  “I’ll acknowledge that you have a point, but it’s not actually a point against the fact that you’ve eradicated the very possibility for consent from millions and millions of people.”

Mel had her teeth bared as she prepared to fire back her own response, before JP calmly cleared his throat and stepped between them, arms extended to each party.  Mel just walked through his arm, presumably to assert dominance, and James really wished he had a ghost juice capsule on him so he could do the same thing just to see what her expression would be.  “Please, ladies, let’s not fight in front of the children.”  He said.

”…Are you insulting him or is he trans and I’m the bellend here?”  Mel asked, scrunching up her face at James.

”It’s complicated.”  James and JP said at the same time, before James continued, “But it’s a safe bet anytime JP is talking to me it’s either a declaration of pure friendship, or an insult, or both.  No other options.”

Mel stared at him, something in her eyes softening as she watched JP backhand James’ shoulder.  She did want to argue for her friends, but it was kind of hard to when she was arguing with people who she found painfully, achingly familiar.  “Fuck it.”  She said, shaking her head as she realized that the escalating volume of her argument with the paladin had drawn a discrete crowd.  A bunch of the weird furred bugs and the crocodile-faced lizards and a couple other things in addition to the humans that were doing the thing where they tried really hard to not look like they were listening in.  “I’m not here to brawl.  I’m here with an offer.”

And to look around.  Not spy on them, that was shitty.  Mel wasn’t a spy.  She was here to ask a lot of questions, because she had a lot of questions, and she really wanted to know what was up with the big shadow guys that were half crab half hands.

Before James could say anything, JP nodded and tried to interpose himself between the two.  “And we’d love to hear it.”  He said diplomatically.

”We know what you can do.”  Mel said, and then clarified in light of what James had casually dropped on her.  “We know you can duplicate enchanted baubles.  Our enchanted baubles.”

JP nodded.  ”And you want us to make more for you.”

”There’s… a whole mess of… conditions.”  Mel said with a strained grimace.  “On how it works, and on what we’re doing.”

James held up a hand.  “The crystals are either impossible to identify before using or they take a huge amount of effort, and then they’re single use so you can’t take advantage of knowing what one of them is more than once.  And then if you stack them, there’s probably some other issues that we don’t even know about, because there always are.  I’m guessing more effort to advance, which means less power for the same actions.”  He laid it all out plainly.  “You want us to copy things, probably rank crystals, that you did identify somehow, so that you can try to lower your organization’s bus factor.”

”…Yeh.  How…  Yeah, to all of that, except the last part.”

”A bus factor is how many people have to get hit by a bus to totally sink a project.”  JP filled in helpfully.

Mel clicked her tongue, that particular sound coming through her projection in a slightly off way.  “I don’t think that’d stop me anymore.”  She said with a mean grin.  “So you see what you get out of this, yeah?”  Mel prompted.

”Oh, we do.”  JP agreed easily.  Too easily.  “What are you really offering?”

”Excuse me?”  Mel’s indignant reply was almost a squawk.

James gave her an inclination of his chin.  “You’re excused."  He almost smirked at the ancient bit of banter.  “What my friend and negotiator here means is, we don’t need your magic.”  James told her with a confidence that he wasn’t quite faking.  At least, not all the way.  “I’m not going to give you a list, because… well, all those things I said earlier about your nation-sized fuckup mean I do not trust you, but suffice it to say that we don’t need another thing to copy.”  He shrugged casually.  “In fact, even if we do have the option to siphon off a single crystal and make our own copies at will without impacting your own return at all, we’re still having to spend our own resource - copier time - on something we don’t need.  So, the question then…” James motioned back to JP.

”Is, what’s your real offer?”  JP’s smile was almost predatory.  “The Tyrannies own a country.  A continent if you’re not full of yourselves.  Surely you can do better than just asking us to waste our time on your behalf, when the paladin here has already made his… distaste… clear.”  JP chuckled as he watched Mel start to realize that she was probably going to have to do more than just dangle something shiny and mystic in front of them.

Mel sighed, an expression that was so pitiable for her impossibly hard situation that half the people sneakily listening in started to shift to join in on the conversation in her defense.

James elbowed JP as he noticed the emotional burr.  “Hey.”  He jerked his head toward Mel.  “Bard.”

”Oh look, more mind control.”  JP said with a sudden unhappiness that would have frozen most people solid but just got a childish smirk from Mel.  “Good news for you, you get to see more of the Lair.  Bad news, you’ll be seeing one of our pleasantly appointed meeting rooms for guests, and very little else.”  He sighed as he looked back at James.  “Do you want in on this?”

”Nah, just try to get them to cede us territory.”  James said, ignoring Mel’s second indignant squawk of the conversation.  “I want a third city.”

”We barely have one city.”

”Yeah, and imagine what we could do if someone gave us the Isle of Man!”  James clapped JP on the back, before giving Mel one last long stare.  “We’ll talk later.”  He told her.  “I’m sure.”

”Yeah it’d suck if you only got to be a self-righteous asshole once a week.”  She shot back.

JP closed his eyes and wished he could drag the projection of the Tyrant bard away.  “Come along my good lady.”  He told her instead, using charm where brute force failed.  “Let’s find a place to hash out some difficult questions, where you won’t accidentally make life worse for a group of traumatized kids who might have suicidal reactions to being brainwashed.”  JP was a lot of things, but he wasn’t an idiot.  And right now, he felt Ike letting even a ghost version of Mel be anywhere near a crocamaw or ratling or canisugi was a recipe for a traumatic trigger.  And no one needed that today.  Also, if she did feel shame, he was going to weaponize that against her.

Especially since he was hoping to end this conversation with an ally in the UN, and a box full of superpowers.

Whether that was actually going to happen was down to things mostly outside his control, but at least James had given him a thumbs up, which was an excellent sign.  That never happened before things exploded or caught fire.

JP sighed on the elevator ride to the basement, enduring Mel’s questions about why they had an elevator.  At this point he felt like he’d take it as good luck if he got through the day with the Lair still standing.

_____

James had questions about pillars.

The whole Order had questions about them, really.  Pillars, incarnations, dungeons, these things seemed inextricably linked to the destiny of the world, if such a thing existed.  And if it didn’t, there was a high likelihood there was a pillar named Self Fulfilling Prophecy or something equally horrifying out there.

He wanted to know where dungeons came from.  Years and years ago, back in what was becoming the true history of the Order of Endless Rooms, a sentient memeplex named Curios had told James that dungeons were what happened when an idea of a place crystallized into a place itself.  And that was a fine poetic thing to believe, or even to understand, about dungeons.  But she’d left out something of mild importance.

What the fuck started that process?

Crystallization didn’t just occur.  And James had to assume that it wasn’t just some spontaneous process for dungeons either, or else the world would be littered with them far more than it was now.  It couldn’t be age, or something more mystical like significance, because there were so many offices that were older and absolutely more important than the one he’d worked in, or the empty and architecturally suspect business park the Compiled Wastes grew out of.  But knowing what a thing wasn’t didn’t help them know what it was.

Pillars were in largely the same boat.  Having Kiki around to talk to - and James did delight in talking to Kiki, even if she was spending more time back in Oklahoma these days - helped immensely in understanding what incarnations could do.  And every time the Research team thought of a new angle of approach, a new way to try to make use of the name Kiki had, they found that the limits on an incarnation were, in fact, farther away than they’d expected.  And yet paradoxically rigid, even as powerful as they were.

She could heal, but it turned out that Kiki could only heal physical and psychic wounds at the same time.  If someone didn’t have inner turmoil and past trauma for her to hold up to the cleansing light of her kindness, she just couldn’t fix them.  She could make charms that stopped injury, but only out of weapons, and the charms own power were proportional to the emotional value of the weapon used.  She could make weapons out of dark thoughts that were incapable of wounding but could slice concepts out of the world, and she could make bottled wounds out of grudges held against her, though they’d ferment over time into something she’d never been brave enough to uncork.  She could observe at a distance, but only important moments she could find through a network of kindness, and she needed the extra boost of someone being changed by that kindness to stretch it farther and farther.

Also she could jump across continents and talk to dungeons.  Well.  One dungeon.  But it was a pretty important one.

The frustrating thing was, while Clutter Ascent was a precious smol bean that most of the Order was willing to go to war for, she was also very new.  She barely had a personality, in a lot of ways, though what was there was worth nurturing as the dungeon grew.  What Clutter Ascent had to offer, mostly, was a safe place for those that needed it, a magic that encouraged a high-trust community environment, and a series of hot springs scattered through the swamp she was growing that were great party games.

What the dungeon did not have to offer was answers.

Neither did Kiki, really.  She could barely explain her own magic, though an amount of that came down to not having the language for it as opposed to it being indescribable.  Kiki was a woman who’d grown up in a different era, and who had, somehow, not known that Dungeons and Dragons existed until after meeting James.  She had some vocab to catch up on.

But even as she got better at defining herself, and her Research team started to suspect that defining her magic strengthened her magic, she still lacked one thing James really needed to know.

Anything about the pillars.

The Pact of Pillars wasn’t a natural phenomenon, like Kiki herself was.  She didn’t know how she’d ended up this way, but it didn’t seem like it was done to her on purpose.  Pillars though, as far as James knew, were incarnations like Kiki that were working together.  Supposedly they wanted to save the world.  Or at least stop it from dying.  Noble enough.

But Kiki had never been a pillar, and the only thing James knew about them was that they kept showing up like natural disasters at the worst possible moment.

Pillars had plans.  Pillars had schemes.  They were also, annoyingly, still people.  Even the worst of them still seem to have opinions, feelings, relationships.  And while James imagined that the interpersonal web between beings that feel like exceptionally fickle hurricanes must be toxic as hell, it wasn’t worth denying that the web exists.

So all James had to go on was a list of names.  Capital Letter Names, at least.  That, and a record of interactions, a single weird monument to a dead pillar found in the Russian north, and all the circumstantial evidence pulled out of a lobotomized-dungeon-turned-bunker.

The Last Line Of Defense.  That one was easy; the guy was compelled by hopeless situations in a way James really empathized with.  If only he didn’t keep acquiring ‘daughters’ to fight his battles for him.  On that note, James needed to talk to Cam now that they were both out of quarantine.

The Long Arm Of The Law.  More complicated.  No one had ever seen him, but he seemed to be literally everywhere that there was law enforcement.  Capable of puppeting police officers, at least, which was an ethical nightmare.  James suspected he was responsible for the bubbles of anti-teleportation around police stations too.

A Necessary Evil.  Actually named in Japanese, but the translation was almost one-to-one and he didn’t seem to mind.  Racist.  As in, James had negotiated a peaceful resolution with him only because he believed all dungeon species were intrinsically evil.  So racist he made himself easily manipulated.  Possibly the lowest threat, though Karen thought she might have found his office.

The Right Person At The Right Moment.  James liked calling him - them? - Nick.  Of all the pillars, Nick was the most helpful, and that was not saying a lot.  They had reached out to James and Anesh once, and begged for help, which was… terrifying.  It wasn’t clear what Nick could do, compared to the others, but with a Name like that, and knowing what had happened in the past, either teleportation or time travel were likely candidates.  They also shapeshifted more thoroughly than the others.

Walkabout.  James hadn’t met them.  He really wanted to.  No information.

The Chain Breaker.  Possibly the most far gone of all the pillars.  Her name, like all of them, compelled action.  And that action wasn’t discerning or considered, it just was.  Which was at odds with the human mind trapped and screaming behind the scenes, and, with all incarnations, was the thing that led to their sanity eroding over time.  Her name, her human name, was Rhonda, but as a pillar she’d been willing to kill a lot of prisoners just to remove them as prisoners in a very ‘well technically’ expression of what her title indicated.

And then Blitzkrieg.  The first one.  The one they’d been impossibly lucky to even walk away from.  She was where they’d learned a couple critical things.  Pillars were allergic to dungeons, and that lingered even in a dead or vacated one.  Pillars were also basically impossible to kill, even in a dead or vacated dungeon.  And that pillar was a giant asshole.

But Blitz was also the one who’d set up Rhonda with a lobotomized dungeon that she could take breaks in.  Blitz had been willing to kill the Akashic Sewer, and while the Order had needed to stop her, maybe her goal of taking out one of the shittiest dungeons they’d met wasn’t pure evil.  Blitz had also been around Texas, a lot, specifically looking like she was constantly checking in on the Library dungeon.

Blitzkrieg was, to James’ endless irritation, a person.  Hell, they even had a very one-sided conversation one of the Rogues had gotten out of her that implied that she was just as frustrated with her Name And Role as anyone else.  Though, part of being a person meant she was capable of being shitty, and her frustration seemed to be that she didn’t get to shoot enough people, so there was that.

It would be too easy to hate her, was the point.  But it also meant that when she did repeat a behavior, like, for example, poking around the sidewalks near the Ceaseless Stacks, it probably wasn’t random.  She also did it passively, stripping herself of all the momentum and protections that were afforded her when she was on the offensive.  Visiting the place likely cost her, in a way that was damaging to the sanity of incarnations, which meant it was important to her.

Which brought James around to what he wanted, needed, answers about.

Was there, in fact, something going on with the Ceaseless Stacks?  Obviously yes, but the question was if it was something that was going on, or had gone on.  Vad’s speculation on his boss could be just that; wild theorizing.  James had worked with enough people who were capable of making a quick getaway to know that just because Vad never saw the guy leave, didn’t mean Shoemaker was fusing with the walls.  But even if he was, the next question was… was that it?

The Order had been delving the Stacks ever since Vad found it and made contact.  Over a year at this point, possibly more, James had no sense of time anymore because he spent his life in dungeons, whatever.  But in all that time, the most contact they’d had with the elusive head librarian was a couple conversations, and the sense that he wanted them to leave the dungeon alone.  Because he told them, directly, that they should leave the dungeon alone.

That wasn’t pillar behavior.  Clear directions and no overwhelming threat of violence?  Pillars didn’t do that.  Though maybe other incarnations would.

The thing was, there was a very easy way to solve this problem, technically.  Though James had mentally cackled to himself for a good five minutes upon thinking of it.

They could just… ask the dungeon.

Kiki was settling into a routine of being a living person again and not a tool to an abstract concept, so she was spending a lot of time over in Oklahoma with the grandparents she’d known for several decades.  But she still helped them out with a lot, especially talking to Clutter Ascent.  And while the Attic dungeon didn’t have much to say, yet, it did help keep Kiki grounded.  Keep her as a human, a person, who just happened to have an insane depth of power.  As opposed to what happened to all incarnations eventually.

James wasn’t sure exactly what it was that did happen to them.  But he had a suspicion.

He was pretty sure the ones that ‘died’ didn’t really.  If he had to give a word for what happened, James would use transformed instead.  Because the supposed ‘dead’ pillars they knew about partially lined up with, by sheer coincidence, ‘natural magic’ that didn’t come from a dungeon or need any weirdly shaped orbs or scrolls or pens to work.

James was pretty sure the way you killed an incarnation was by ablating their personality.  Forcing or baiting them to behave contrary to their Big Name so much that the power in them scoured anything person-shaped out of the body.  And then, after that… well, maybe the person just let go of the magic, and let it loose into the world.

So what if an incarnation, and a pillar specifically, didn’t want that?  What were their options?  Hanging on by their fingernails was one, and it seemed like a lot of them were taking that route as far as it could go.  But what if you didn’t want whatever magic was inside of you to spread like radiation, or some kind of contagion, once you finally broke?

It was theory and conjecture.  But considering how dungeons, which James knew from a few different incarnations were supposedly ‘containment methods’, were also capable of just dissolving any incarnation that went into them?  It sure felt like they were made of the same stuff.

This of course made the process of asking an unfamiliar dungeon anything a preposterously dangerous task.  Asking Kiki to go poke the barrier between worlds, when the world on the other side was essentially a meat grinder calibrated to her specifically was rude at best.  In an ideal situation, she could be training with Clutter to learn how to defend herself, but the young dungeon was themself terrified to learn that their reflexive desire to get closer to Kiki was something that could shred the woman if Clutter wasn’t careful.  And using a kid as a live-fire test subject felt… ethically bad.  To put it lightly.

So any contact would be dangerous.  But of course, if Shoemaker was a pillar, or even better, some kind of dungeon avatar, then contact already existed.

They didn’t need Kiki at all for this.  Not really.

James had apparently needed to sleep on it, and rattle the handful of nickels in his brain with a diplomatic argument in the lobby, to reach his conclusion.  But he had a thing he was going to pitch to everyone now.  A thing that felt like a terrible, risky, insane plan.  But a thing that, if it worked, would give him answers he yearned for.

Essentially, walking up to the guy that might be a chained demigod, announcing himself, and laying all his cards on the table, was the perfect paladin maneuver.

The only problem was that Vad was right, and while Shoemaker never left the building, he also wasn’t always in the building.  So it might be a day or two before there was the appropriate window of engagement.

Though James wasn’t above making an appointment.

He really wanted to know what was going on down with that dungeon.

_____

Cam met up with James on the logisticor platform.  Which really meant, she’d been waiting for him, having come along when the more personal transit line the Order had set up had transitioned from a lost city in Tennessee to part of a normal operational city in Oregon.

”Yo!”  The human called up to her and her companion amid the bustle of activity after a successful teleport.  Repaired cars rolled off to be sent to their new homes, a refurbished school bus full of Greenway’s afternoon class pulled gently out into traffic, and members of the Order that were coming or going for various reasons took advantage of the way that the mass teleporter made an impossible commute as easy as a short walk.

The Order’s logisticor line had three stops.  Townton, the Lair, and a park in the south part of Saskatoon.  It didn’t go to the Canadian city as often, that took infomorph coordination for reasons, but it did have a scheduled stop there so that umbral could come and go at will.

Cam wasn’t going north, as far as she knew.  Instead, she was here looking for James, and this just happened to save her time.  “Yo.”  She replied in turn, her voice making the single syllable sound classier than it really was.  Next to her, the necroad with a double slash of yellow painted lines across its main body raised a floating claw and rotated its digits in a simple sign.  “He says yo as well.”

Vanishing from sight under the raised pedestrian platform, James appeared a minute later next to them, falling into position leaning on the metal railing beside Cam with his back to the edge of the logisticor’s radius.  “So, Daniel tells me you two are reenacting Akira now.”

”If either of us pretend we know what that means, will it shortcut part of this conversation?”  Cam asked with a tight voice, ignoring the necroad next to her that somehow did seem to know what that meant, his asphalt talons dancing in reply to James.

James nodded at the necroad with a quick smile on his face.  “We should talk about anime.”  He told the necromantic construct that apparently had opinions.  “But later.  Because Cam seems upset.”

The necroad signed something back, and James nodded across Cam, who was now almost scowling out across the parking log, her wings tightly wrapped around herself as a second layer over the long coat she was wearing.

”Yeah, it’s tricky.”  James answered the signed question.  “There’s a lot of little things you can look for though.  Vocal tone is a big one, if someone sounds different than normal it can mean they’re stressed or angry, especially if they’re talking with more force than they usually do.  Also… sorry Cam, I swear I’m not ignoring you, but I am gonna use you as an example… so if you look at Cam here, you see how she’s compact?  That’s a thing almost every species we know does when they’re feeling defensive or anxious.  Wings in, shoulders up, head down, that kind of thing.  But yeah, you usually have to know a person to actually be sure.  Or at least I do.”  James paused, and then raised a finger.  “Also you can just ask.”  He added.  “Hey, Cam, you doing okay?”

The girl-shaped superweapon kept scowling at the parking lot in an open display of emotion that warmed James’ heart.  “If you aren’t careful I’m going to let Terror convince me that you really are too naive for your own good.”  She said.  But there wasn’t any bitterness there, just a weak stab at a joke as she shook her head let go of the railing.  “I was coming to ask you for help.”  She told James.

”Right.”  James sucked in breath through his teeth.  “Shit, I forgot, I’m so sorry.”

Cam gave an economical shake of her head.  “It has been a busy week.”  She excused things with the world’s most absurd understatement.  “And even now, I don’t know if the time is worth the-“

”Cam.”  James gently interrupted her, pushing off the rail and straightening his back so he could cross his arms at her properly.  “Cam, come on.  It’s… it’s important.  It’s your family.”

She snorted at him in the most abruptly rude laugh she could remember making in her life.  “You learned your family was alive, and then told people that you were relieved they couldn’t remember you.”  She pointed out to James.

”Well yeah but I knew who they were, and got to make that choice.”  James paused for comedic effect.  “And they suck.  Your family might not suck!  Roll the dice!”  He encouraged her with a sweep of his arms.

They had the platform to themselves for a bit, the next teleport wasn’t for a while and they were the only passengers up here.  So he felt comfortable with emotive flailing for the time being.  Plus it helped keep his body temperature up.

Cam let her wings unfurl behind her, blue scaled leathery membranes stretching out to their normal resting position as she relaxed.  It hadn’t really hit her just how much she’d been worried about any given answer from James.  Social trepidation was still a relatively new experience to Cam, and she could confidently say she didn’t like it.  “Well.  I still wouldn’t allocate too many resources to this.  My sisters and Nate are all still investigating why there was an antimeme in our apartment.  And there were enough injuries from the Underburbs that I don’t feel comfortable requesting too much for a personal project.  But…”

”But if I’m willing to sacrifice my free time, it’s cool?”  James grinned at her as he took a seat on one of the benches up here so he could rest his elbows on his knees and stare up the person he was normally a head taller than.  He didn’t get that far.  The bench was freezing, and James was back to standing in a flash before half his body turned to ice.

”Well…”

”I am joking.“  James informed her politely.

Cam winced.  “I have… been spending a large amount of my time in Townton working with chanters.”  She said, seeming to take them on a tangent.  “I’ve gotten accustomed to emotions being a public part of conversation.”

”Would it, and I am serious here, help if I announced the tone that I’m trying for?”  James asked, kind of doing what he was talking about in that very sentence.

”Yes.”  Cam answered confidently.  “But only short term.  I need to acquire several copies of the emotional broadcast purple orb for a long term solution.”

”…doesn’t that only work one way?  Wouldn’t you need an empathy power?”

Cam raised her eyebrows.  “Not if I use them on people I am talking to.”  She said.

”Okayyyyy, someone’s been learning too much from Momo!”  James laughed as even the necroad gave Cam a gentle nudge with one of the blunt parts of his talons.  “Also how are the chanters?  No, wait, we should hash out what we’re doing on your thing before time runs out.”

The necroad signed an inquiry about their time budget, and Cam, somehow without looking back at him, answered.  “The logisticor does not run nonstop, but there will be another translocation soon.  I assume that is what the paladin is talking about, but I believe we are both returning to Townton?”  They weren’t, but before James could bring that up, Cam was answering his other question.  “The chanters are strengthening.  I know there is complexity to my own relationship with their species, but I find it challenging to express just how impactful it is to see so many of them develop themselves.  Become individuals, become specifically curious, become conversant.”

A quick poke and a series of signs from the necroad got a laugh out of James.  “Just the chanters?”  He asked, pointing at the floating mass of asphalt and bone with raised eyebrows.

Cam rolled her eyes in a geometric flick of her pupils.  “The chanters do not harass me.”  She watched the signed retort out of the corner of her eye, before pursing her lips in consideration.  “No, I do not think riding a chanter would be good for any of them.”

”Depending on how that word’s being used.”  James muttered before he could stop himself, then clearing his throat and moving on before Cam could say anything about it.  “How’re the kids doing?”

”Well.  I believe.”  Cam’s smile this time touched her eyes in a way that her face normally didn’t when she was making dry jokes and trying to match the rogues and paladins she spent time around.  “Childcare, human or otherwise, requires a time commitment that I… cannot give.”  She admitted.  “I check in.  I watch.  But I’m not one of the people close to them.”  She looked up at the sky, still smiling.  “I still feel them though.  All of Townton does sometimes.  They don’t have the same strength in their chanting that the adults do, but sometimes it comes in these bursts, and everyone within a few thousand feet feels… feels whatever that chant was, really.  I would have thought they’d be like human babies, always tired or hungry, calling out their needs, but no.  Their needs get taken care of, because they can communicate them.  So when they touch the chanting, it’s just to amplify it.  Make it louder.”  Cam chuckled and ducked her head back down, looking at James almost sheepishly.  “Nate says he can’t sleep through it, but I like it.  I like knowing that I can be so thoroughly wrong about the world, being reminded of it.”

James nodded slowly, fully understanding where Cam was coming from there.  “There’s a kind of deep magic in feeling like you can always learn something new, or find something unexpected in places you thought were normal.” He agreed.

”A charitable interpretation.”  Cam replied with one of those dry grins.

He laughed as he shrugged.  “Seriously, though!  Every time it happens, the world opens up.  A dungeon, and then more dungeons.  Dungeon life being people.  Dungeons as people.  Every time I think I have the answers, the world surprises me.”  He stretched his arms over his head, still trying to shake out the tightness in his muscles from sleeping weird.  “At a certain point you just get conditioned to believe that there’s always more little wonders hiding around the next corner.  It makes things exciting!”

Cam huffed, but didn’t disagree.  “It would be hard to argue that we know everything.”  She admitted.  “I’m not sure how I feel about being surprised though.  Especially when the next thing we learn could kill us.”

”Touche.”  James sighed.  “Well, that’s what they keep us around for, right?”  He quipped, before looking over her shoulder at the necroad that was questioningly pointing back at himself.  “Yeah, probably you too now.”  He nodded.  “Can’t get away with fighting against the Underburbs and not being some kind of hero.”  He told the animate mass of asphalt.

”Well.”  Cam said quietly, voice just audible over the sound of the return bus to Townton rolling in from the street and around to the backside of the Lair’s parking lot where they kept their definitely secret mass spatial dislocator.  Though the bus stopped before it actually parked inside the designated lines.  “Maybe being a hero isn’t so bad.”  She laughed softly to herself, before shaking out of her daze as people in ones and twos started to climb up to the pedestrian platform, a high percentage of umbral on this particular trip.  “Oh, I never asked, what business do you have in Townton today?”  Cam asked.  “Or is this more of your complex interpersonal relationship that I will inevitably hear about?”

”It would be that latter one!”  James happily admitted.  “Probably going to hang out at the pillboar’s garden?  Though it’s kinda cold for that.  But no, that’s a big if, because I’m not going to Townton.”

”Oh.”  Cam paused.  “This platform is going to Saskatoon.”  She deduced quickly.

”Yeah, sorry, I thought I said that out loud but I realize now I forgot.”  James winced.  “I’ve got a day or two of stuff to do there, helping Spire out and maybe checking out a new dungeon.  Do you want to come along?  Afterward, assuming we’re still alive, we can just pivot straight to your thing.”

Cam nodded slowly.  “The sisters that we have been tracking were mostly lost during the Underburbs interruption anyway.”  She said.  “And the one that hasn’t… well, she is still in New York.  And I do not know why, but locating her isn’t difficult.  I would not mind approaching her slightly better equipped.  Nor do I mind assisting our camraconda paladin.”

Cam actually really liked Spire, she was goal-oriented in a way that Cam found familiar, but those goals were all pointed outward in a very compassionate way.  At one time, Cam had struggled to explain why this affected her so strongly, and in doing so eventually realized that what she was feeling when she saw the camraconda was proof that she could be better.  That being a powerful and effective individual who was most comfortable when she had a task to complete didn’t mean that she had to be evil.

”Alright.  Well, I’m glad you agreed, because I think they already started the process.”  James said, looking past Cam and the necroad to where the wall of reality was being repainted.

”That isn’t much of an issue for me.”  Cam reminded him.  “Also are we not waiting for your own coterie?”

”Well.”  James tried really hard not to let the heat creep into his cheeks as he experienced a rush of embarrassment.  “That thing you said about my messy web of interpersonal relationships is mostly true, and since those interpersonal relationships and I just spent several days locked in the same quarantine box together, we’re taking a few days of break from each other before one of us goes mad.”

Cam caught the necroad’s talons as he started to sign something, instead inserting her own question to James.  “Paladin Lyle.”  She said, which made him feel even more like he should be escaping this conversation.  “There is an open question currently, of if you are the peak or the absolute nadir of romance within the Order.  And every time you open your mouth, I am reminded of why the question is ongoing.”

”Yeah I feel that way a lot too.”  James nodded enthusiastically, trying to hold back a laugh.  “But Alanna hasn’t defenestrated me yet so I must be doing something right!”

”I am never going to be able to ask you for romantic advice.”  Cam sighed as the teleport whisked them away.

_____

Spire-Cast-Behind had a predicament.  A problem, even.  An issue.

Actually she had several.

One was that there was a group of professional racists forming in Saskatoon.

With the city itself subject to some kind of dungeon-centered memeplex, it was sort of an island of information regarding the magical events within it, as well as a non-zero amount of the mundane events too.  Information could come in just fine, but any information that left the boundary in regards to certain topics would stop propagating.  Documents would auto-erase or go missing, digital systems would refuse to send files, people would forget to mention details or forget them if they were told.  It required a workaround in the form of infomorph support to circumvent, and it had apparently been a scheduling nightmare to move as many umbral to Townton as had wanted to migrate.  The memeplex didn’t touch anyone inside the city, but it was strangely fickle in some ways.  Google’s map app in particular was affected strongly, with only about a third of the business information being up to date.

This led to a situation where the umbral were sort of safe.  There were thousands of them, currently about five percent of the city’s population, which made them a firm minority but also one that wasn’t exactly possible to ignore.  Saskatoonians knew they existed.  And thanks to a sustained information campaign, many of them knew the circumstances, and had a favorable or sympathetic view of the living shadows.  Which was good, because the city was the only place that mattered.  Exactly two entities knew about the umbral’s mass exodus, and they were the collective Saskatoon, and the Order.  No interference from the hundreds of millions of other humans in the politically affiliated territory.

It was almost perfect.  The slow integration of a dungeon species into a controlled area, the gradual preparation of an already developed world to accept magic with… minimal… disruptions and cataclysms.  Spire would like Saskatoon, if it weren’t for her constant quiet irritation with it.

The problem of course was that not everyone likes people who look different.  Not everyone was willing to simply accept their lives getting measurably better.  Not everyone was prepared to be kind and courteous.  And not everyone was peaceful about the new conditions.

So Spire-Cast-Behind had become aware of a group of racists.  Less a group, really, and more of a constant source of propaganda, recruitment attempts, and stochastic terrorism.  For all she knew it was two people and a sticker printer wasting too much time.  But she also knew that the murderer Simon had his own run in with a couple months ago wasn’t isolated.

That hunt was much more serious than just finding some bitter human who felt pathetically helpless in the face of change.

This dovetailed into problem number two.  Spire-Cast-Behind, the Order’s least diplomatic paladin, had somehow actually convinced what passed for an inner-dungeon government of the umbral to allow them access.

The umbral didn’t have a real government, really.  They had a robust tribal system of nomadic behavior between ‘village’ points, moving as the dungeon environment required.  Their more experienced members were deferred to, as newly spawned umbral had an almost pathological need to find someone to take orders from.  Which explained… too much, actually.

Spire had been at the Lair for under six hours the last time she had checked in to fetch her paladin upgrades, provide a report confirmation to Jim and Ben, nap in her own bed, and then escape before existential dread could creep in.  And in that time, she had met Aurora twice.  The new umbral - the absurdly new umbral, Spire shouldn’t be three hundred times anyone’s age - was friendly, compassionate, and enthusiastic about his odds of being a knight.  It was jarring, even to her.  And the knowledge that the Order was probably going to have to deal with that situation much more in the future was deeply concerning.

But it also wasn’t her problem.  Thankfully.

Her problem was that she needed to be ready for a delve in two days, which meant that problem number three didn’t have the excuse of I’m sorry I was outside of this reality.  Fortunately, Spire could solve two problems at once, as her genius coterire pointed out to her.  If James was here, then James could be wrangled into joining them on a delve, which was a net positive for the Order as a whole.  James was no longer their champion, exactly.  When danger and mystery called, there were more and more of them capable of answering.  But James meant a lot to many of them, as a person and as a symbol, and Spire did believe that cramming more power into his frail human flesh was a good idea.  Also, if she got him here tomorrow, then he could manage the interview with Ms. DuGaul, and Spire was prepared to bribe the other paladin with an exciting dungeon delve to make that happen.

Her third problem was that she was supposed to be the Order’s liaison to the local press.

There were two local newspapers, as well as several radio stations and one television news program that wasn’t so heavily interdicted by the memeplex that it became pointless.  And Spire-Cast-Behind had engaged with all of them.  Politely even.  Though sometimes she sent Riho or Tyrone to do it, and at all times she prevented Karl from being interviewed because she was aware of the state of things when it came to human teenagers.

The problem was that there was also one other source of news in Saskatoon that had gotten radically popular almost overnight, thanks to the fact that it was seen as credible for ‘knowing’ that magic was real before the events the Order had cratered into.  The Saskatoon Underworld, a now biweekly publication with surprising print quality, was awash with misinformation, speculation, and very human madness.  It was also headed by a young woman who, despite being several times Spire’s age, asked incredibly rude questions and had seemingly no sense of reality.

The only consolation Spire had was that Callie DuGaul seemed equally confused as to how she’d ended up as the person in charge of a local publication that about twenty thousand people read.  Even if Spire was convinced that many of them only did so to learn what facts about mothman were absolutely false.

”I feel like,” James told Spire after she finished venting to him, “you shouldn’t assume that she’s wrong about mothman.  Look at our lives, things get weird, right?  Mothman could be real.”

”I do not dismiss the potential presence of large moth people.”  Spire told the fourth problem she had invited into her life.  She didn’t bring up that she was still TQ’s sibling, and that camracondas weren’t immune to gossip.  If moth people didn’t exist, then sooner or later, James would be required to invent them.  “But if Ms. DuGaul presciently wrote about camracondas, she would have done so with three articles about our specialized bathroom facilities.”

”…Camracondas don’t… produce waste?”  James wasn’t really asking.  It was one of the big camraconda perks along with not being able to get heartburn, as far as he knew.

”I am aware.  I am saying she would be wrong.”  Spire retorted.

James sighed over the restaurant table they were sharing, trying not to get too distracted by the simple delight of feeling like Spire could be out in public here without it being abnormal.  “Isn’t the point of doing regular interviews so that people are less wrong about… yeah?”  He stopped talking as he noticed Tyrone shaking his head like an industrial machine designed to produce negativity.

”Yeah sorry dude, we’ve told her.”  Tyrone said with a depressed sigh.  “She just doesn’t like Callie.”

Spire hissed so sharply a light digital ping sounded from her throat.  “She asked me if I ate people!”  She snapped.  “And when I said no, the article with my interview questioned my authenticity!” 

”I’ll talk to her.” James promised.

”I know!  That is why I lured you here!”  Spire rounded on him.  “Wait.  Too angry.  Pretend I said that with a more calm tone.”  She acknowledged James giving her a thumbs up, and then hissed a sigh again.  “Oh.  Did you come alone?  I was serious about the umbral inviting us to visit the dungeon, and your anthropology fixation would be an asset in our approach to their loose governmental structure.  I would prefer a larger team though, as it is unclear what the threat level is.  I have tentatively set it at a five until we can properly scout the dungeon.”

James looked around the restaurant.  “Well.”  He said.  “I came here with Cam and… a necroad that I suppose probably has a name that I should learn.  But…”

”Oh.  We will be fine then.  Perhaps I will allow Karl to attend after all.”

”Where is Karl anyway?”  James asked.  He’d only met the young human a few times, tagging along with Spire.

Before the camraconda could answer, Tyrone got to it.  “Little dude’s in the hotel room playing video games.”  He said.  “Spire thinks it’s a problem, I think he’s nineteen.”

James pursed his lips, eyebrows drawing together.  “Spire, do you not like video games?”  He asked.

”They are a distraction.”

”Spire, no!”  James gasped, clipping his hand on the table and swearing as he tried to bring it up over his chest.  “Video games are a part of our culture!”

She opened her lens to glower at him.  “They are unrealistic.”

”I don’t know what to say to that.”  James gaped at her.  “I really don’t.  I am speechless.  I’m buying you a copy of Starcraft.”

”Oh, is that one realistic?”

”No, it’s just cool.”  James returned the glower.

Tyrone looked like he wanted to jettison himself from this conversation.  Fortunately for him, he had an out.  “Oh hey, it’s Callie, that means we can leave now!”  He declared, seeing the woman enter the restaurant and waving her down.

”Wait, you lured me here for the interview now?”  James asked.  “I assumed I’d have at least… no, nevermind, this is fine.”  James didn’t bother getting upset; at least this way he didn’t have time to psych himself out.

“Correct.”  Spire slid out of the booth, slithering past the panting young woman as she headed for the exit.  “Excuse me.”  She said as she headed for the door, getting stares from patrons and staff that might be people adapting to a new world but still weren’t used to that world including camracondas.  Tyrone hurried after her, giving James a sympathetic look and exchanging a few words with Callie before he was out the door behind his paladin, moving with a kind of casualness that James couldn’t help but see as calculated.

“Is she going to come back?”  Callie DuGaul asked as she squeaked her way across the booth to sit opposite James.

He gave her a sympathetic look.  “I kinda doubt it.”  James said with a tenuous smile.

”I don’t think she likes me!”  Callie declared.

”It does seem that way.”  James agreed.  “I’d rather not gossip though.”  A flagrant lie; he’d love to gossip, just not to someone he didn’t really know.  “Unless it is the gossip of your interview questions!  Which Spire has tagged me in for.”

Callie nodded, rummaging through her satchel to pull out a little notebook and a mechanical pencil, before adding a voice recorder that James tried not to react to with shock.

The thing was magic.  James still didn’t know why he could sense magic items as well as he did, and he also wasn’t sure why it was mostly limited to stuff from the Office, but it was a really handy trick.  The voice recorder looked like it tasted like fire, which was kind of unpleasant, and it reminded him of Terror’s little portable napalm bomb thing after it had been unleashed in the Underburbs.  James had assumed that was a function of the fire part, but maybe it was just a Compiled Wastes thing.

”Is it okay if I record?”  Callie asked him.

”My consent is contingent on that thing not capturing my soul or something.”  James told her bluntly, and the look on her face of being caught doing something sneaky was deeply satisfying.  But also didn’t tell him that the soul stealing was off the table.  “Feel free to tell me that’s not an option anytime.”  James said with flat annoyance.

Her face was bright red as she stammered out an answer.  “N-no!  It’s just a recorder!”

”That is not true.”  James retorted.  His initial meeting with Callie had been rushed and he’d been riding the high at the time of having liberated a whole species and then getting to go dungeon delving with his girlfriend.  Today, in light of multiple unpleasant things happening in close succession in his life, her attitude was less funny.  “Since you won’t tell me what that does, no, you can’t record me.”  James almost nudged the device away, but thought better about touching a random magic item with his hands.

”It’s not evil!  It just lets me save the conversation and replay it!”  Callie exclaimed.

”…that is what recorders do…” James almost smiled.

”No, I mean… I can relive all this.  And sometimes ask different questions?  But I don’t learn anything new, just get different wording!”  She raced to cover over what she’d said.  “It’s not dangerous or painful or anything!”

To James, this had the same vibe as the Nokia that made uncomfortably temporary duplicates of people.  “Then I really don’t consent, for personal reasons.  But you can use a normal recorder if you want?  Like a phone?”

”What if my phone is also magic?”  She asked.

”It’s not.  Also is this the interview?”  James tried to get things back to something more lighthearted.

“Oh, no!  I have a list of questions!”  Callie flipped open her notebook to a page that looked a little less organized than the average Garden spellbook.  “A lot of them were for the camraconda though!”

James tried not to frown.  “Actually, before we start… about that.  Is there a reason you’re so hostile to Spire specifically, and anyone nonhuman in general?  I’ve been getting caught up on the human-supremacist thing up here, and I don’t think you’re in with them, but I’ve also read some of your articles and you use similar language.”

”W-what?!”  Callie’s stammer this time was more insulted, verging on furious.  “I’m just asking important questions about things!”  She yelled, drawing some looks from the otherwise quiet restaurant.

James had come unfortunately prepared for this.  “You don’t even use Spire’s name in the interviews you did with her.”  He said.  “I checked the first one you put out after we met, too, you’ve done this the whole time.  You call my friends things like ‘the creature’.  So.  What the fuck?”

”I thought I was supposed to interview you.”  She pouted, and it took a second for James to realize that she actually expected him to feel bad about his comments.

”I’d be happy to do that, after you tell me what’s up.”  James tried to project his best disappointed parent voice.

Amazingly, it worked.  Callie seemed to wither on the other side of the table.  “I am just asking questions though.”  She said weakly.

”Yeah, but you’re writing about people, not monsters.”  James told her.  “And you’re using really cruel language to do it.  You called Spire a cannibal!”

”I only implied it!”

”The fact that you know that makes it worse, because it means you did it on purpose!”  James shot back.  “I let Spire lure me here because she wanted to avoid talking to you, but I’m actually here to bluntly exercise my power by telling you that if you keep doing this we’re going to just stop talking to you.”  He informed the reporter.

Callie looked aghast.  “You can’t do that!  I’ve got freedom of expression!”

”I’m not shutting down your printing - a thing I absolutely don’t have the authority to do, I’m only even a Canadian citizen a few evenings out of the week - I’m telling you we just don’t want to put up with you.” James said with a shrug.  “Look, the news up here seems… well, they’re interested in asking about local problems.  The numbers of business and taxes, the public interest stories about people making friends or comical nemeses.  You showed up first because you care about the cool part.  The magic and fun new species and shit.  Right?”

”…Right…?”  Callie looked like she was aware that she was walking into a trap.

She wasn’t though, James was trying to lure her in with an offer that was what she actually wanted.  And then use that to mildly influence her.  “The Order of Endless Rooms is currently the most eclectic single source of weirdness on this continent.”  That he knew of.  “I’m not saying you need to do what we say, I’m just saying… why are you treating one of our most beloved members like a monster?  Because it’s hard to feel like it’d be a good idea to introduce you to any of the other species or spells we have, if you’re gonna be like that, you know?”

”But I’m not being unfair!”  Callie protested again, regaining some of her momentum.  “I actually am asking questions!  Wouldn’t you want to know if the giant crab thing that moved in next door would eat you given the chance?”

James stared at her blankly.  ”I am astounded that you can say that, and not hear how racist it sounds.”  He spoke calmly.  “Also no?  I’d want to know what their diet is so I know what an appropriate housewarming gift is.”

“It’s not racist, I think I’m perfectly justified in asking if the people there’s no information about are secret infiltrators or predators that eat human flesh!” She stopped, and there was a brief, shining moment, where James saw a flash of an epiphany on her face.  And then it was gone.  “Also I’m not being unfair!  I never print what people don’t say in interviews!  And you don’t live around a thousand aliens, so you don’t get to talk!”

As Callie puffed herself up, getting into the argument, James just sighed and shook his head.  “See, if you were asking more curious questions, you’d know that I do.”  He said.

”You do what?”

”Live around a thousand nonhumans.”  James clarified.  “That’s kind of the thing, Callie.  You’re asking questions about made up danger, and it’s like you aren’t interested in all the cool parts.”

She blinked owlishly at him.  “I didn’t even think of that!”  She admitted.  “And, okay, I’m not stupid.  I see what you’re saying!  But how am I supposed to know?  I can’t just guess on questions when I’m talking to people!”  She pointed out, not completely inaccurately.

James could admit that was fair.  To him, it didn’t seem like a wild leap to assume that a given cryptid might know about other species, but he shouldn’t just assume everyone thought the way he did.  And yet, he had an answer for this, too.  “You know, Spire might have told you.”  He said conversationally, with a casual little shrug.  “If you didn’t spend your multiple interviews and articles antagonizing her.  I’m not saying to softball it, I’m saying, you’re a half step away from getting sued for libel and you’re asking why people aren’t friendly because of it, you know?”

“Waiting for other people to tell me things isn’t a great way to uncover secrets to write about.”  Callie pointed out.

”I’m not totally disagreeing.  Like, you did track us down on our last day here; I get that you need to put in the legwork, and you’ve clearly got some skill there.”  James almost smiled at the way the other human preened under the praise.  “I am just suggesting, politely, that you maybe don’t write about unconfirmed hypothetical threats that make you look like you’re on the same team as the serial killer that was stalking umbral for a few weeks.”

”That actually happened?”  Callie’s face paled.

James used that to drive his point home.  “Yeah.  And you might have known, if the umbral didn’t think you were on that guy’s side.”

“Oh, wait, this is just building rapport.  Networking.”  She said it like a dirty word.

James tapped his knuckles on the table with a sympathetic smile.  “I don’t like it either, but hey, I can make it easier on you!  Put out your next issue without implying that your new neighbors are invaders, and I’ll do this interview with you and maybe offer up some bonus info.”

”They’re not invaders, I never said that!”  She said loudly.  “I’m not one of those weirdos that panics about foreigners taking away jobs!  I just want to know if they have mind control powers, and now that I say that out loud, I realize I sound exactly like those weirdos, fuck!”  Her voice did not dip in volume through the entire paragraph of self-understanding.  She covered her mouth with her hand, face bright red again before she looked back to James.  “You’ll actually still do the interview?”  She asked.

”It is nominally why I was lured here.”  James assured her.  “Do you need a minute to look over your questions?”

Without looking, Callie balled her hand into a fist on the notebook page she had open, ripping it out and crumpling it into a ball.  “No I probably fucked these up.”  She declared bitterly.  It was the kind of anger that James hadn’t really seen that often; it sounded like it was personal, but it was directed outward.  Like she was hoping he’d apologize for pointing out the problem to her.

James didn’t like it.  But incremental progress was still progress!  “Well, just go for it anyway, what do you wanna know?”

Callie grabbed at her pen and set her hand over her notebook, looking like a mix of irritate and determined.  ”Okay.  I know how this one sounds, but you said you’re not Canadian?”

The laugh that got out of James was a product of the biggest bit of emotional whiplash he’d experienced in a while.  “No, I’m not.  Technically, I’m American, but there’s a weird personal magic that makes it so sometimes I show up as a Canadian citizen.  Even then, I wouldn’t call myself ‘Canadian’.”

”Okay.  So you don’t work for any government then?”  That felt like more of an idle question as she wrote with surprising speed to record James’ answer.

“No normal one!”  James smiled, getting into the flow of this.  “Technically, there’s a small town government that is… under our umbrella?  But the hierarchy is really flat, I don’t ’work for’ anyone.  And I’m not a secret agent or anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”

”Have you ever met a secret agent?”  Callie perked up, the impulse to chase after the stuff that was more like conspiracy theories than real stories still strong, even if she was planning to try to be less rude to Spire, at least.  “Like, for a world superpower I mean.”

”Oh.  No, not really.”  James shook his head.  “Oh wait, no, I did meet a CIA agent once.  Briefly.  Didn’t have much of a chance to talk to him, he wasn’t having a great day.  The thing is, if that kind of James Bond figure is real, then they’re probably just a lot better at covering their tracks than I am at finding them, you know?”

”Wait, what’s your last name?”

”It’s not Bond, don’t worry.”  James laughed.

“Okay… So…” she took a second to collect herself.  “What do you think about the shadow people?” Callie asked him.  “Personally!”

James leaned back in the booth and hummed as she watched him, ready to go back to scribbling notes.  He decided before he started talking to not mention Terror nearly killing him, but aside from that, this was kind of a cool question to dive into.  “The umbral are kind of a fascinating species.”  He started.  “Honestly, you should try to talk to some of them about various biology and lifestyle things.  But what do I think?  I think I feel really protective of them.”  He saw Callie pause, glancing up like she was about to ask something before James answered preemptively.  “A lot of the ones who’ve moved into Saskatoon proper were being kept as slaves, you know?  And now they’re living alongside humans that are still in positions of power, who were the people that did that to them.  I’m glad that most of the city is working their asses off to fix things, but I’m still nervous about it.  I’m not saying I feel like I’m responsible for the umbral as a whole; they are their own people.  But it’s one of those things where I’m available to help if they need it, you know?”

”You don’t think they’re asking too much out of nowhere?”  Callie asked.

That got a snort from James.  “I think you’re lucky a lot of them asked us to let things settle down so they could build lives here, because I was fully prepared to start defenestrating every one of your cops that farmed them for magical power.”  He said.

”I don’t think you can say that.”

”They can try to arrest me.  It didn’t work for them the last time.”  James said with a peaceful smile.

”O-oookay.  So what do the umbral want?  Just to live here?”

”Pretty much!”  James happily answered.  “I mean, I’m sure some of them have ambitions.  The thing you’ve gotta remember is, they’re pretty much just people who are shaped different.  Mostly.  Like I said, get a group of umbral together and ask about their specific lives, you’ll learn a lot.  But yeah, I’m sure some of them want to run for local government, or get rich, or start a rock band, or something.  But if you’re asking what their species wants?  They’re really, really not unified in the way you’re thinking.  It’s not even a factional thing, they’re just not organized as a species.  I’m sure that’ll change as they have more access to things like cell phones now, but they aren’t ‘the umbral’, they’re ’several thousand umbral’, if that makes sense.”

”Doesn’t that pose a problem, if there’s no central authority that can manage them when there are problems?”  That question veered a little close to the hostile territory, but James had told her she didn’t have to only ask easy questions.

”The ones living in Saskatoon technically do have a central authority though.”  He replied.  “It’s… the local government.  You guys have a mayor and a police force and stuff.  And while it’s a special process we’ve worked out, the umbral do get IDs and stuff.  You’re basically asking if you can trust your own government."

”Can we trust the government?”  Callie asked him with narrowed eyes.

James didn’t like that he’d walked into that one.  “Your last mayor seemed like a good dude.  I don’t know the specifics of if there’s a city council or something, but… well, you’re a local, you’d know more than me.  I’d say that, the way the world is going, you’ll need to trust your local government more than any bigger entity, but you’re really the only one who can answer the question of if you think they’re doing a good job.”

”If they tried to pass laws specifically about umbral, would you support that, just because they’re the government?”

”No.  Though I might support it if the laws make sense.  But, and this is critical, when I say ‘make sense’, I mean laws that protect rights and enable freedoms.  A law that’s just redlining again is gonna annoy me.  But something that secures a given umbral’s right to not be exploited for species-specific reasons?  That’s more understandable.”

”Okay…” Callie took a minute to write, before meeting James’ eyes again.  “From what you’ve said, and what I’ve seen, the umbral aren’t the only cryptids out there, are they?”

James huffed a laugh.  ”I don’t know if cryptid is the right word, but sure.  They aren’t.”

”How many are there?”

”That’s… tricky.”  James smiled anyway.  “I know of… let me count actually.”  He ran through his mental list of people he talked to around the Lair.  “A dozen?  More than a dozen.  That I know.  That I live with, or work with, or have some kind of relationship with.”

”Romantic relationship?”  Callie perked up again, and James nodded at her.  “Do you think people will ever find that normal?”

”Callie, I’m bisexual and polyamorous, I don’t think I can live in a world where I give a single shit about what other people think is normal.  I’d get tired.”  James admitted.

”Cool.  That’s cool!  But all those other cryptids, do you think they’ll ever move here?  Is it just umbral, or do we need to worry about even more?”  She saw James start to frown, and reworded her question.  “I don’t mean worry in a mean way, I mean… I mean, okay, camracondas!  If they move into the city, then a landlord can’t just rent to them without some accommodation, right?  So that’s work, and changes, and a lot of people are going to get confused and it’ll be messy.  It doesn’t have to be bad, but it is work, right?”

That, at least, James could understand.  “It is work, yeah.”  He agreed.  “Though like you alluded to, it’s worth it.  I don’t think any of the people that live with us want to migrate here, specifically.  I’m sure you’ve noticed, but a lot of the umbral actually want to leave, you know?  And I can’t blame them.”

”Saskatoon isn’t that bad!”

”Slavery.”  James stabbed back.  “Anyway, I guess I have my own question as part of my answer.  Isn’t it just kind of cool to live in a world with all these different people?  The world is so big and fun and messy, and yeah, sometimes you need to remodel the counter height to match the ratling that’s only three feet tall, but… my point is that it’s cool.  This is cool.  Diversity is cool.”

Callie paused in her writing for a second before finishing and flipping her notebook page, reading off her next question there that she hadn’t ripped out without thinking about it.  “Are you worried about being replaced?”

”Kind of grim, but not really.”  James shrugged as she grimaced.  “I think what’s cool about civilization is that we built it, not that it’s full of humans specifically.  This was always the old sci-fi question, right?  ‘What if an AI takes over and then humans vanish and it’s just AI’, that kind of thing.  But… I dunno, as someone who probably won’t have my own kids, that still sounds a lot like having a collective child, you know?  I think it’s more important that someone inherits our best work and coolest ideas, not that the someone doing it look like us.”

“What if you lost your job though?” She asked curiously.  “Like if there were too many umbral and not enough jobs for everyone else.”

”First off, that’s… not how economies work.  Not healthy ones anyway.  If you add more people, then those people need goods and services, so they participate in the economy, which means there’s more jobs.  The only problem is when an influx of people is locked into a single kind of job, like if umbral were only allowed to work in factories, it would disproportionally skew the impact on factory workers.  Or, like we see in the US a lot with immigrant populations, when business owners exploit them for their labor by underpaying them and not hiring anyone who actually knows their rights.”  James pointed out.  “As for my personal job, Callie, I’m a paladin.  My job involves getting shot and bitten a lot.  No one is trying to steal my job.”

”…W-wait.”  She held up her pen like a baton.  “Wait, what!  What does a paladin do?  I thought you guys were just arrogant public relations!”

”That’s a good question!”  James was surprised she’d never asked before.  Or, apparently, that no one here had ever asked.  “A lot of what I do is communications, yeah.  I also explore the places that people like umbral come from, which are often intensely hostile environments.  Sometimes I deal with cases of human or nonhuman trafficking, or the kind of comic book megalomaniacs that are willing to sacrifice civilians to attain godhood.  That sort of thing.” James shrugged.  “Generally paladins are invested with a lot of power, and a lot of trust.  And I try my best, every day, to live up to that.  People are counting on me, you know?  Even people I haven’t met yet, or that might not look quite like me.”

”And you’ve been shot?”  She asked in a hushed voice.  “Wait, but, Spire… has Spire-Cast-Behind been shot?”

”You’re pretty fixated on the ‘getting shot’ part…” James said with a joking amount of suspicion that Callie clearly didn’t think was funny.  “Okay, I don’t think so.  She’s been wounded before in her role as paladin though.  Mostly by humans, though I think that there was an umbral that punched her through a wall the first time we were here?  Or… no, that was also a human.  Sorry, it’s hard to keep a lot of this straight.”  James apologized.  “You should ask her, she’d know better.”

”I will…” Callie said, taking a breath.  “I should apologize to her, probably.”  She looked down at her notebook, grimacing at the other questions she had written.  “I didn’t really think about a lot of this.”  She said quietly.  “This was easier when it was… was…” Callie gave James an embarrassed grin.  “A game?  Fun?”

He gave her a small shrug again.  “Having fun is generally good, but yeah, it’s different when it’s real people’s lives.”  He said.  “And it probably looked different in the early days, might still look different, huh?  Like, ‘are the umbral here to stay’ is a real question, isn’t it?  Or are they just here for a moment before they vanish?  Will this be life from now on?  And I don’t really have great answers.”

”Good questions though!  Do you want a job as a reporter?”  Callie asked suddenly.  “Because too many people keep subscribing and I think I need help!”

”…Are you doing… all of the whole Saskatoon Underworld publication thing… yourself?”

”Well I have a print shop that runs off copies, but…” She rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly.

James nodded.  “Okay.  Since I’ve got a little more time before I have to do…” he decided to maybe talk about the dungeons with her later, “…my next errand here, how about I put you in touch with our own news person?  Sarah’s friendly, and she might overwhelm you, but she can probably give you some advice.  And also I think this is probably enough for you to work with, for now, huh?”

”I don’t know!”  Callie exclaimed.  “What am I doing?”

”I ask that every day.”  James said, already pulling out his phone and looking for Sarah’s number.

His friend could thank him later for giving her a new person to talk to.  Or at least, that was what he told himself, lying in his own head.

James didn’t really know what had happened in his life, that this felt like it was more pressure than the dungeon delve he was supposed to represent the Order on tomorrow.  But he hoped that he’d at least done okay.  And if not, Spire could bite him later too.

He tried not to worry about how many my friend might be mad at me tallies he was racking up.

Especially not with a whole new dungeon to be excited about.  Though he was really, really glad he had a little time to get his head back to normal so he could appreciate the upcoming delve properly.

It would be rude to still be tired and confused when he went to visit someone else’s home