The Daily Grind - Chapter 404 (Patreon)

"I've spent my whole life stickin' it to the man. If I do this, I'll be the man. I don't think I can be the man." -Jack O’Neill, Stargate SG-1-

_____

Under normal circumstances, which were circumstances that basically didn’t exist in this timeline, James wouldn’t even consider wandering into a brand new dungeon without at least a little preparation.

The Order was getting marginally better about new dungeons, at least.  After the Bank had turned out to be way more hostile than anyone had expected, and with memories of the near-disaster of the Climb, someone who had more foresight than James did had codified their protocol for the situation.  All simple stuff, really, but things that it was too easy to forget, especially if there was something making a person forget.  Things like sending non-living drones in first, just in case the dungeon was extra lethal, or getting an authority or assignment to throw up a protective shell around anyone with relevant information so they could share it without dancing through hoops.

That last one didn’t always work, but they were getting better at least.  Extra time to peel apart the memeplexes around places like the Orphaned Recesses or even Route Horizon had let their most experienced delvers share more comprehensive information with the Order.

El was particularly pissed about this, because by the time a combined team of Speaker, Moon, and a newer assignment named Rapport had found a way to cut through Route Horizon’s annoyance field, she wasn’t the expert anymore.  The Order had long surpassed all the information she had to offer about the Velocity gears, the hitchhikers, the distant trains, even the moose.  The only thing left for her to brag about was having survived driving through one of the ‘city’ spaces, and while it was good to know that those places didn’t have roads, just endlessly interconnected alleyways and parking lots and shortcuts barely big enough to wedge a car through, it wasn’t like El had ever gotten out of her own vehicle while passing through.  Because, she at least got the satisfaction of telling them, of how the whole place rearranged itself to trap and kill you.  So stopping was bad.

Useful to know, but it would have been nice to know a lot more a lot sooner.  And hopefully with a new protocol in place, one that the various infomorphs and more resistant members of the Order were aware of, they could get to this step sooner in the future.

The other part of the prep for a new dungeon was putting together the team for it.  Again, using the Bank as an example - Charlie’s team had so far failed to name it, apparently Dance was being held at bay - the original poke in had been overly risky, only happened because the door had kind of surprised them, and the team had gotten out of there pretty quickly.  Then they’d come back for a second recon delve that had included almost thirty people.

Recon in force, essentially.  Though as the Order of Endless Rooms discovered more dungeons, they’d need to either up their recruiting - they always needed to do that anyway - or maybe recon in slightly less force.

And all that preparation was out the window right now.  James wasn’t with his normal coterie, of Spire’s three coteriers two of them weren’t really combatants and James had never actually seen Riho fight anyone so he didn’t know what she could do, they were generally underequipped for action, and the dungeon’s door had a material component to open it in the form of specifically human blood which seemed like it could become a very targeted problem in the future.  And yet.  Here he was, standing in a building that used to be a Canada Post, prepared to walk through a door to a dungeon under those conditions.

“I am not really sure what I was expecting.”  Noct told them.  The woman was short for an umbral, which meant she was James’ height and absolutely towered over Spire.  The blue rings of her eyes slid across her skin like trapped winter shadows as she appraised the group Spire had shown up with.  “Suppose at this point it’s my own bloody fault for expecting anything at all, isn’t it?”

”Why does she sound a little British?”  Karl asked in a whisper, the youngest human in the Order’s group leaning over to James.

James answered back in a conversational tone.  “I actually kind of wonder that too.  Noct, were you implanted with that kind of language when you were spawned, or is this something you picked up?”

”Okay, first cultural lesson, don’t say spawned.”  Noct’s voice crackled with light static.

Next to her, a human with elaborately braided hair laid close on her head held up the back of her hand to her mouth so she could fake whisper to James.  “She really likes Monty Python.”

”Second cultural lesson, don’t listen to Jasmine.”  Noct ordered them with a sigh of cool air emanating from her whole body.

“I refuse to believe that.”  James said, extending a hand to shake for whichever of their two guides decided to take it first.  “Hi.  I’m James.”

”I know who you are.”  Noct said, sounding like she was very deliberately trying to figure out how to not sound a little British as her friend shook James’ hand anyway.

”Jasmine.  This is Noct.  Hi.”  The human said, before turning to the people behind James, one of whom was currently poking at a potted plant with a long asphalt talon, and the other who was standing like she was one black suit and earbud away from being James’ personal secret service bodyguard.  “Uh… what’s with the…” she motioned to Cam and her necroad friend.

Cam looked back at the asphalt creation that she’d taken the time to help pad the ‘feet’ of.  “Oh.  If a living creature with a skeleton dies within the boundary of a dungeon, it is possible to enact a ritual to bind their bones to certain materials.  This one was the result of a catastrophe that was not its own fault, and their particular kind have been slowly coming to awareness and learning how to communicate on their own.”

”Wow!  That’s not even close to what I was asking!”

Noct was just more direct about it.  ”Why do you have wings?”  The umbral bluntly questioned, shifting her legs around so she could lean back against the remnants of the lobby counter without unfolding her heavy limbs.  “No, wait, no, I don’t care, what was that about bones that-“

The smile Cam gave in reply was one that felt like a hunter watching a trap perfectly close.  “My wings come from a spell from another dungeon we have access to.  While it can be dangerous for most people, my physiology means I can use it with only the initial pain of the growth, though it limits my other casting options slightly.  Still, I keep them for personal reasons.  A reminder that I am myself, I suppose.”

The umbral version of a sigh, James was starting to get familiar with, often involved their whole body seeming to ripple as they took in air and puffed it up their form in a band.  Almost like a human inflating their cheeks before letting out a gust of breath, but… cooler.  Most species got to be cooler than humans, in James’ experience.  He was grinning for that reason, and not anything Cam had said, when the umbral shifted to look at him.  “Is she doing this on purpose?”  Noct asked.

”Probably.”  James shrugged.  “Those are answers though!  And honestly I’m kinda happy to ramble about the deeper background for a while if you want, though I’m not gonna lie, I’m excited to check this place out.”

”Of course you are.”  Noct examined him.  “But… wait, that is very strange.”  One of her eyes thinned in an emotional expression James didn’t know yet.  “What do you mean when you say that?”

Spire cut in.  “I had assumed we were done with the process of interrogating our intentions?”  The camraconda somewhat impatiently put forth.

James got such a powerful vibe of a familiar group dynamic as Tyrone and Riho slapped their hands over their faces at the exact same moment, followed only a split second later by Karl who was clearly imitating them even if the teenager didn’t know exactly why yet.  “Uh… don’t mind her, she’s been dealing with some stuff.”  James awkwardly gave Spire a ‘please stop antagonizing the people inviting us to a dungeon’ look.  “Anyway, I mean I’m excited to see a new dungeon.  Like, these places are always so cool, even the smaller ones, you know?  Or… maybe you don’t.  Right, uh, so I spent my entire life in a world where everything exists in generally set patterns.  And then the dungeons take those patterns, and mix them up, make art out of them, and provide an adventure I can’t replicate anywhere else while they do it.  I love poking around, exploring, seeing what parts come from different sources, figuring out if something is intentional or just random, even just seeing the dungeon in general is always a treat because they always look so cool.  That’s what I mean.”

”The paladin is one of those people that would be here even if there were no reward at all.”  Cam added.

Noct’s upper tendrils curled down in front of her body, and it looked like she was chewing on one of them like a human would subconsciously do with a strand of hair.  “I’m getting that, yeah.”  She said, before turning her eyes toward her own companion.  “Jas, what do you think?”

”I mean hey, you let me in and nothing went wrong!  And they seem a lot more… uh… professional?”

Tyrone winced at the word.  ”Ouch.”  He said.  “I mean I get it, but damn.”

James patted the other human on the shoulder.  “It happens to all of us.  You do this long enough and people start to think you know what you’re doing.  It’s scary, but we can get through it together.”

Jasmine turned back to Noct.  “Okay nevermind.”  She joked.  “But seriously, we keep doing this.  You already know they’re cool, just go for it.  What’s the worst that could happen?”

”Oh don’t say that.”  James and Noct said at the same time.  Even Spire gave a sharp hiss at the words.  Noct continued though, her voice lighter than before.  “I suppose… well, the entire point is that your arguments are correct.  This place has an astounding amount of wealth and power in it, but the majority of it isn’t for us unless we gift it away first.  It is just difficult to trust anyone.  Not just because humanity proved what it is capable of before we met any of you, but because we really only have one shot.”

Cam brushed the sleeve of her coat down, as if the perfectly arranged garment had somehow ended up a millimeter out of position.  “And yet you can trust us.  There is nothing else to say, and we must start somewhere.”

”Wow, she means that.”  Jasmine laughed.  There was no indication that she’d cast a spell, but James had the impression that one had happened anyway.  Some kind of informative working that he’d love to have himself.

Noct examined Cam closely.  “Impressive.”  She said from her perch against the old mail center counter that had a few stray bullet holes in it from what must have been an early fight with the local Status Quo before their untimely demise-and-or-imprisonment.  “I am sorry, Ms. Spire.  I am wasting time, double and triple checking when we have already agreed to terms.  But this isn’t just my home, it is… well it isn’t my home at all, really.  It is something vulnerable though, and you are all…” she paused, the seam along her body where the massive hands that made up her form splitting as she unfurled and shrugged.  “I don’t think I could stop any of you, could I?  Could any of us?  If it was my whole Wastes team in here, and two villages of umbral behind me, would we be able to keep you out?”

”No.” Cam said before anyone else could try to be diplomatic.

”Yeah, and that’s terrifying!”  Noct pointed at her, seemingly not offended.  “So I’m wasting time!”

”…Can umbral have anxiety attacks?”  James asked slowly, looking at her with concern.

”No.” Noct said.

”Yes.”  Jasmine informed him, trying to hug the umbral having an anxiety attack from the side and getting brushed away on the first two attempts.  “Don’t look at me like that you moron, you absolutely can.”

Cam raised a hand.  “If it helps?”  She offered.  “We won’t go through you if you say no.”  James and even Spire nodded, though the camraconda felt like she was trying to suppress annoyance.  “But additionally… the more you trust us, the easier it is for us to stand with you should someone else attempt to take advantage of that vulnerability.  The majority of modern protections against things like invasion or annexation come from defense in depth; a simple numbers game of having too many problems for an enemy to deal with and still profit.  And we represent an increase to that depth.”

”That’s more than what this one keeps talking about.”  Jasmine jerked a thumb toward Spire.

”I am taking a shortcut.”  Cam said with such a dry tone it almost sounded haughty.  The truth was, she was trying to get them moving, because while she did often find dungeon exploration to be something more enjoyable than she’d ever expected, she did have her own goal she wanted to hurry along to.

Noct laughed abruptly.  “Okay, okay.  Yes.  Sure.”  She pulled a small glass vial out of a pouch that was belted around one of her arms - James wondered how that could possibly be comfortable - and turned to start walking up the rubber-coated employee stairs behind the counter.  “Come on.  Let’s go before I break down again and we need to get someone else to be your tour guide.”  Her voice carried back to them.  “The first few chambers are always pretty safe, so I’ll fill you in on things as we go, okay?”  The umbral called back.

Rubbing his palms together, James followed after her, the others coming after in a line, with Cam at the very end helping the necroad squeeze through a stairwell that just wasn’t built with his bulk in mind.

Upstairs had more umbral, and even a few humans.  Spire apparently recognized at least a few of them, from both species, and was recognized in turn by many others.  But it was a bit tempering to James’ excitement to see how many were suspicious as Noct dabbed a bit of blood from her vial on the door that needed it to toggle where it led.

He’d need to make an effort to make friends later.  Maybe some kind of casual magic bribes.  That’d work on him, so he assumed it would cross species lines.  Actually he knew it would, he just felt like he should have planned better.

But that could come after stepping through a door that should have led to something like a stockroom for paper supplies, that instead took them into a cobblestone chamber with a tall ceiling, orange torchlight making a hundred shadows dance along the stone walls.

It wasn’t an ever distant horizon.  It wasn’t insurmountable geography.  It wasn’t even a normal part of civilization warped to strange extremes.

And maybe because it was different from every other dungeon so far, James was so excited to see more of it.

_____

It was the most surreal experience James had ever had.

A civics and history class.  But while he was trying to take in the carved stone walls and the geography of the space lit under torchlight.  Information delivered by a tour guide that had walked all this space before, seen all this before a thousand times, and treated the journey from the ‘edge’ of the dungeon like a driver would treat a highway off-ramp.

”So a tribe is usually at least fifty people.”  Noct was saying as James tried to figure out if the carvings on the sandstone arch they were passing under were real words or not.  He was still listening though.  “It can go up to a few hundred though.  Tribes aren’t really divided by ideology, it’s more about how there’s not enough space or resources, so we split up.”

”Resources?”  Spire asked curiously.  She was keeping a watch around them, the dungeon’s flickering orange light and dancing shadows on every surface put her on edge, but so far nothing had ambushed them in the first few chambers.  “Of what variety?”

Noct hesitated to reply, almost like she was weighing whether this was sensitive information.  “A few things.  New umbral is one, because… well, it’s not always safe in here.  Space.  And the thickest shadows, where we can actually grow tougher.  They’re not just regular shadows but dark, I mean it’s this stuff that’s kind of sticky, and most of the things in here can absorb it with enough time.”

Stroking his chin, Tyrone double checked the ceiling overhead for spiders as they walked.  ”So I’m guessing that new umbral don’t have much variance then, and the people we’ve met that could suplex Cam are the ones that ate breakfast?”

”Normal food is something we don’t actually need.”  Noct admitted.  “Though… life gets worse without it, now that I’ve had it.  It’s not like I get hungry, I just get tired easier and my tips ache.”  The umbral shrugged with one of the arms she hadn’t put back since they’d come in.  Next to her, the non-Order human in the group looked back at the others with an eye roll visible even in the flickering light, and a look that seemed to demand they buy Noct dinner later.

James was fine with that, it was practically tradition anyway.

As they emerged into the next room, the dungeon really started to open up, and it became clear how someone would need a guide in this place.  The floor here was some kind of coarse sand, a flat ribbon of it emerging from the arch they’d passed through across the room to another archway a few hundred feet away.  And on either side, there was a drop.  Bits of sand spilled off the sides as they walked, though their floor didn’t fall despite being suspended in midair.  It took a little coaxing to get the necroad to even try it; the construct seeming more uncomfortable with this terrain than anyone else by far.  Further ribbons of the walkway peeled off from the main one at a few points, leading up or down at steep angles toward other exits from the warped sphere of a chamber.

So far the dungeon was nice; all the doors were lit by torches, and none of the bands of floating walkway were directly over them, so there was no sand falling in people’s eyes.  But it was also a deep cruelty that James wasn’t going to get to go look through every one of the eight or ten extra doorways.

”You don’t wanna do that.”  Noct told him, the eye on the back of her hand seeing him almost whining like a puppy at the prospect of sliding down one of the sandways.  “Anyway, the big tribes-“

Spire cut her off with an apologetic hiss.  “I am sorry, I also want to know, and James will perish if we do not give him more information.  What is down there?”

”Oh, sorry!  This is a trick room!  There’s only one real exit; you can tell because it’s different somehow.  I’ve been through here so many times I kinda forgot, that’s my bad.  Sometimes the position of the exit changes, but the condition is always the same, see how that one only has one torch but the others all have three?”  Noct pointed at where the ribbon of sand split off, their ‘real’ exit fortunately not requiring any climbing.

”So what if we go into one of the other doors?”  James asked what everyone else was thinking.

”Then you get darker terrain, smaller spaces, and it always dead ends within two rooms.  Usually there’s blank nests in those places, too.  And you can find loot boxes, but… this early in?  They’re just gonna be dumb shit.”

Riho’s hand shot up in the air.  “Hey yo question!”

Jasmine answered the other girl preemptively.  “She means stuff like blenders or socks or junk.”  She explained.

”And blanks?  Dungeon life that’s… animalistic? Or always hostile?”  James asked as he tried to not think about how his feet were sinking a half inch into sand that was hovering over a fifty foot drop.

”Blanks are the hostile ones.  We don’t really have a name for the critters, they’re just… normal?  Oh, blanks are technically a resource on their own; we can eat the thick darkness from them, but obviously we have to hunt them first, and some of them are mean.”  Noct flicked her upper tendrils around in a loop. “Anyway don’t go down there.  You don’t even need to.  Humans going as deep as we are?  You’ll get your advancement as soon as you nap no matter what, you don’t need to kill anything for it.”

”I don’t wanna kill something, I want to stick my nose in places!”  James declared.

Jasmine slapped the back of her hand on Noct’s arm.  “See!  I told you!”

”You don’t even know how to use a hammer, I am not taking you to fight blanks.”  Noct shot back at her friend.

James loved it when he got to see a tiny window into other people’s obviously long term friend dynamic, especially when it involved a dungeon he hadn’t seen before.  But he only got a brief chance to smile before they were moving up the slight incline toward their exit, and passing into the next chamber, with Spire asking Noct to resume discussing umbral living situations.

She obliged as they passed through a long, long hallway with rough white walls bathed under the light of hanging candles.  At least there was a real floor here though.  “Right.  Tribes!  So sometimes, stuff does get shaken up, okay?  And sometimes a spot we’re living in ends up a designated blank nest.  We could probably handle it, but it takes a lot of work, it’s dangerous, and half the point is finding places where we show up.  So tribes move sometimes.  Also when numbers get depleted, two tribes might merge.  Usually we mix our names when that happens, too, so you can sort of tell if a tribe has been around for more than a few years and also been through some rough stuff.”  She added the last part in a quieter voice, the tiny sounds of the flames overhead filling in the quiet gap in her words.

”So, you guys don’t think of yourself as ‘umbral’ as a whole, huh?”  James asked when they got to about a third of the way down the singular excessive hallway.

”Oh, yeah.  I mean we kind of do?  The tribe thing is so we can work together, but I’m a Hanagalitia umbral all the way, if you know what I mean.”  Noct said the name with pride.  “Newer tribes aren’t disrespected or anything, far as I know.  Ling and Iptu are both doing fine.  The main thing that separates us isn’t distance, either, it’s danger.  The places we find to live are pretty deep in here, we’re not even visiting a real tribe today, we don’t have the time.”

“I did wonder.”  Cam said with her usual steely demeanor she used with strangers.  “An outpost, perhaps?”

”Yeah.  It used to be where the elders would meet, before… it got found.”  Noct said, voice crackling angrily.  “History lesson time, I guess.  The Gatekeepers took over the needle for about two months, and wiped out three different tribes before something else kicked them out.  After that, it got used as kind of a military base.  We tried to fortify it, but doing that meant going out, and out was a bad idea.  It survived two more attacks, barely, before Mark and I guess that one human had their stupid idea to try slavery instead of resistance.”

James closed his eyes to the small dancing lights of the tunnel as he took a breath of the dungeon’s air.  “Yeah, I… I wish we’d been here sooner.”

”Well, it’s history now.”  Noct said like she repeated that phrase a lot.  “Watch your step here.  This place splits sometimes.”  She pointed at the midway point of the floor, where what looked like a crack in the stone ran around them.

”What’s that mean?!”  Riho demanded, and didn’t get an answer as Noct continued talking.

The umbral seemed to find some amusement in not explaining things, and as long as those things weren’t lethal traps, James also kind of found it funny.  ”So the needle usually has new umbral showing up from nowhere, but no thick shadows.  So the new kids, if they don’t want to just end up as half-blanks, need some kind of direction.  We’ve got tribal representatives there now, and sometimes groups get sent back to join the tribes they join up with.  There’s usually a party when we send everyone off.  Oh, and now sometimes, they can decide to head out, because… well, it’s close to the Big Door.”

“Yeah, actually, how did you get out of here in the first place, if it takes human blood to open the door?”  James asked.

”I’m not sure, but I do know that some early invaders got captured after attacking a few of my people.  That was years and years ago, I don’t know what happened to them.  But I think that’s where we learned it.”  Noct shared that with all the excitement of a history textbook as the group crossed over the crack in the dungeon and didn’t get bitten by anything this time.  “For a while we used stored blood from any Gatekeepers we managed to kill in here.  But now we just have… well, you guys.”  The umbral held her hand out so her eye could look back at the Order group.  “I know Recovery isn’t really you, but they do the organizing for blood drives and keeping the door rotating.  This place gets pissed if it’s jammed open, so I appreciate it I guess.”

Spire twisted her head sideways as she kept slithering after their guides.  “They are though?”  She said.

”What?”

”Recovery.”  James filled in.  “They definitely are ‘us’.  That’s just their division name, they’re all Order members.”

”…Really?!”

Ignoring Karl’s snicker at the outburst, James shook his head and tried to keep from grinning himself, feeling like it would be rude.  “You know for someone with a paladin as your ombudsman, you really should talk to the people helping out more.”  He offered.

”You guys need a uniform!”  Noct shot back, the tendrils of her upper body whipping side to side in aggravation.

”So I have been informed.  Repeatedly.”  Cam said with the kind of dry tone that only James really recognized as meaning that she was fond of whoever kept telling her that.

The umbral deflated.  “Alright well fine.  Thanks I guess.”  She said.  “What was I even talking about?  The needle?”

”Your dudes’ collective history.”  Tyrone prompted, holding up an imbued scope to his eye to peek ahead to the speck of brighter light at the end of the huge hall.

”Right, right.  Not much to tell I guess.  I guess if you want to put it in textbook terms, there’s a gap between the original tribal council, and the new one that we started after the Gatekeepers showed up.  Partly because we lost so many people the first time, but also ‘cause… well…” she went quiet.

Jasmine filled in, the human leaning on the umbral as the two walked.  “Because things got mean.”  She said.

”Understatement as always.”  Noct huffed at her.  “Sure, though.  The council used to be for organizing, and it was something that your tribe kind of… promoted you to?  Like an ambassador, is the human word.  Now it’s mostly nomination and then you have to be accepted by the current council.  I think they’re still doing a proving ritual, too.”

”I’m guessing that entails combat, given the nature of…” James jerked a thumb back over his shoulder in the direction they’d come from.

”Yup.”  Noct confirmed.  “And then you guys come along, and start asking to be let in, and…”

The picture took shape in James’ head with a little more clarity.  The umbral outside had been mostly a collection of those that had been used as decoys.  The ones familiar with the world of Earth and Saskatoon, who found that they liked it a little more than the dark tunnels here.  On top of that were brand new umbral that were excited to explore in that direction, or those from deeper in that were willing to take a risk that Townton was less dangerous than their own home.

And where the Order came in were as people that kept pestering the umbral, many of whom were living in both worlds in some ratio, to be let into the dungeon.

They probably looked like slightly more polite Gatekeepers at that point.

“Okay, so, the council…” James started to ask.

”Hold up.  You’re gonna want to stare at the walls here for a second.”  Noct told him as they neared the end of the tunnel.  “Don’t get too distracted though, this area has critters sometimes!”  She warned them.

The group tightened up, James, Cam, and her necroad companion forming a rear guard while Spire’s coterie took up an almost bodyguard formation around her.  The end of the hall could be seen coming from a ways away, but as they approached, what was on the other side didn’t actually resolve into anything.  Instead, it was just an increasingly bright white glow that obfuscated the demarcation line.  James was starting to really get that this dungeon played around with light and shadow a lot, but it was almost a comical realization to step out of the tunnel in a combat formation, and catch on to the fact that the blinding glow was just… a big rectangular light panel on the far wall.

”That’s so fucking mean.”  He laughed as he looked around the space, finding it to be a sharp departure from the previous chambers.

This one had a steel lattice of five foot squares for walls, with the inner spaces being filled by either clean metal plates, softly glowing glass panes, or just nothing.  That last one let James see into the walls, sort of, but the insides seemed to follow the same pattern so all it actually did was make the room a baffling optical nightmare to parse.

”Watch your step!”  Jasmine ordered them all.  “Some people don’t get fooled by this place, but humans sure do, so watch out!  Warnings I wish I’d gotten, free on offer here.” She glowered at Noct.

The umbral hunched her body in a way that made her look a foot shorter.  “I apologized, stop bringing it up!”

”Never.”

The banter was a good indicator as to how empty the space was.  Nothing moved in here, it was just an endless field of squares, some of them lit up.  If it weren’t for how the metal lattice was pulled out of the floor and walls in some places, forming towers and platforms, it might have been possible to fit a couple football fields in here.  But as it was, if you did try to play football, you’d be contending with some creative geometry, and also the fact that Jasmine was right; the floor wasn’t free from the empty spots in the lattice, which meant the floor was jam packed with tripping hazards.

Navigation wasn’t impossible though, since Noct actually could see just fine somehow.  And so could Tyrone, who appeared to have at least three different dungeontech optics on him, including the glasses that showed the world as a heatmap of time expenditures.  And it turned out that falling in a hole was a pretty big one.

Still, James wished Zhu had come along.  Actually he had no idea where Zhu was right now.  Safe, obviously, because he’d left a message with Auberdeen, but the navigator had declared that he had ‘some stuff going on’ and hadn’t returned to James in time to come on this very short notice dungeon delve.  It would have been handy to have glowing orange outlines on everything he shouldn’t step on, but also, it would have just been cool to share this with Zhu.

”This is frustrating.”  Spire complained as the side of her body nearly slid into one of the gaps.  She wasn’t even unaware of it, and that one wasn’t a huge pitfall if she did fall in.  It was just that she didn’t have the precision of movement required in this cramped space.  Camracondas slithered, they didn’t carefully place footsteps.  “How large is this biome?”

”Well, depends!”  Noct replied.  “You ever see Cube?”

”Yes!”  Riho’s excitement exploded out of her.  “I love Cube!”

Noct stumbled in her forward scuttle.  ”That’s genuinely concerning, yup.  Anyway this one’s small, we can get through in a few minutes if no one goes climbing, especially since it seems empty right now.  But there’s some places where these zones can go on for klicks.  Oh, if you ever need to punch through one in a rush, it is worth climbing.  There’s just fewer holes to fall in for humans.”  At the back of the party, the necroad raised a talon in the air so Noct could see, his digits twisting and rotating in quick one-handed signs.  “I feel like you think I can understand that, and I can’t?  But I’ve seen you floating so if you can do that, no it’s not faster for you, and if you can’t, then it is.  I guess?  Is that what you were asking?”

”He was more sarcastic about it but yes.”  Cam nodded as the necroad lowered his talon.  A complete lack of a face to have expressions making it hard to tell if he was happy or not.  “I was going to be more sarcastic.”  Cam admitted quietly to James.

Noct heard her anyway.  “Is this gonna be like with Simon, where he’s been something inhuman the whole time and didn’t tell us?”

”No, Simon is human.”  Cam retorted, getting a cough of laughter from James.  It was often hard to tell if Cam was joking or just using information as a shield, but he was pretty sure this was a case of the former.  Then, the winged girl pointed up at one of the forty five degree angles making up a ledge overhead.  “Is that one of the packages you mentioned?”  She asked.

James followed her finger and with his human eye, saw what looked like a blurry lump against one of the white glowing panes.  With his better eye, it was more sharply focused; a cardboard box rectangular, maybe the length of his forearm, sitting on the angled surface like it could slide off at any second.  Noct glanced up too, stopping to look as the rest of the party was clearly going to be wasting time on this.  “Yup.”  She said simply.  “Again, we’re still pretty close to the edge, so it’s not going to be anything you’ll really want.  But I guess if anyone wants to climb that…?”  She sounded amused as she motioned her heavy arm toward the fifteen foot tower of latticed steel with only the occasional gap to use as a real handhold.

”I got it.”  James said.  He wasn’t here in heavy armor and full dungeon loadout, but he wasn’t here with nothing either.  So it took minimal effort to pull out one of his drones, fling it into the air, stabilize control through his skulljack, and just have it nudge the box off so that he could catch it with the same raised hand he’d thrown the drone with.  He lobbed the box over to Tyrone like he was juggling before snagging his drone back and flicking the power off.  “Easy.”

”…you guys do this too much, don’t you?”  Noct asked.

Jasmine was more enthusiastic about it.  ”Hey, who wants to join my Wastes team?  Please?”  She asked with a rough but earnest laugh.

Tyrone, meanwhile, had wasted no time slitting the box’s tape with a knife that appeared and vanished in his hand using perfectly normal sleight of hand and not real magic, and then pulling the package open.  “Good news my dude.”  He said, holding up a simple stainless steel and wood object.  “We’ve got a gift for Nate.  Offset whatever that guy’s upset about today!”

”See?  Useless.”  Noct said, flicking a tendril toward the spatula.

”Are you kidding?  Free spatula!”  James laughed happily.  “But seriously, Tyrone, tag that one.  We’ll get it checked out when we leave.”

Noct’s colored eye bands shifted in a way that James was pretty sure was derisive.  “Yeah, check out the spatula.  Can we keep moving?”

”Right.  Sorry.”

The room of metal and light was, in James’ opinion, really cool.  Despite the potential for fall damage.  So it was only after they’d been led through a gap in the lattice that was technically a door, and had entered back into a shadowy space lit by burning lanterns, that a lot of them noticed how hard on the eyes the glowing room had been.

The new place was what seemed like a grid of twenty foot wide hallways of plaster walls filled in with a similar grid of carved pillars.  An exterior of a heavily used business with the gooey center of the architecture of an ancient greek temple.

Within a minute of moving between the columns with Noct trying to give them a rundown of which umbral were currently on the council that met at the needle and what their various opinions on humanity were, something finally tried to kill them.

It came out of the shadows in a bounding run, angling straight for Tyrone in particular in a way that was cleanly obvious.  The thing looked like if a big friendly dog had been forged out of a darker kind of shadow than what made up the umbral, but that someone had made a mistake along the way and most of its mass was composed of mouth instead of anything else.  Gleaming white teeth shone a sick orange under the lanternlight, emerging out of the moving shadow like a rippling smile as it opened up to bite, lunging the final few feet toward the surprised human, Noct’s shouted warning and rapid pivot not quick enough to catch the creature.

Cam punched it at a weird angle, one of her wings clipping Tyrone and sending him stumbling into an ornately carved column as her fist met the supple material of the creature’s flesh on the left edge of its mouth.

And then kept going.

The sound of the thing ripping apart was viscerally unpleasant to the humans that heard it, and probably much more so to Noct.  A wet sound mixed with small pops like bubble wrap being played with, as Cam’s high speed strike hit so hard that she ripped a hole in the creature and went through it.  A few teeth snapped loose and kept going even as the creature’s momentum was arrested as it was stopped by Cam’s shoulder, the sharp fangs bouncing off her wing and clattering to the dungeon floor.  The rest of the creature writhed against Cam silently, as if it were confused as to what was happening, before she placed her free hand on the end of it’s snout, jerked her other arm back, and then twisted the whole thing in half with another wet pop.

It took about three seconds.  And afterward, Cam looked back at Tyrone like the worst thing that had happened was that some of the wet sludge of the popped shadow flesh had gotten on her favorite coat.  “Are you alright?”  She asked, and he’d given her a shaking thumbs up as he tried to stop himself from having a heart attack.

Noct had slid to a stop a second later, looking at Cam with renewed suspicion.  But that suspicion persisted as she focused on the dead lump of a dungeon creature at the woman’s feet.  “That’s a retriever.”  She said, the static in her voice rising to an electric hum.  “Dangerous blank, for people like you.  Not so much for us; they hone in on anyone carrying packages.  Those don’t spawn here.  Ever. I mean, that shouldn’t be here.”  She said, lowering herself down to use one hand to flip the mutilated corpse over.  “Well, at least you’re gonna get your first spell from this.”  She told Cam, clearly shaking by the event.

”I won’t.”  Cam said, taking a towel from James to wipe her hands off with, the dark sludge of ‘blood’ sticking to her even if it didn’t stain.  “I’m at three already, though even I don’t quite know why.”

”…you make a habit of getting in fights with us?”  Noct asked, her suspicion back on full display.

Cam thought for a moment.  ”I have been repeatedly coerced into playing obscure board games with Ink?”  She offered.

”Yeah!”  James spoke up.  “I know!  Because TQ stole my copy of Cosmic Encounter!  I don’t even know how he gets into my apartment!”

”Are you not dating?”  Cam asked, ignoring Noct’s look.  “He talks about you like you are dating.”

”Well we are now, but this was before that.”  James shook his head.  “Anyway, this is off topic.  Is there anything we need to do about this?”  He asked Noct and Jasmine, quietly replacing the weapon he’d drawn before Cam had carved herself through the dungeon creature.

The umbral’s tendrils twitched, and she rose back to her full height, hands half-folding back together.  “No.  If it were a day with heavier travel I’d say we should throw it to the side so it didn’t trip anyone up, but it’s just us today, and it’ll melt away soon enough.”  She looked down the hall toward the corner, where what looked like a crooked poster was sitting comfortably on the wall at the intersection.  “Come on.  We’re making good time so far and if we don’t get ambushed again, I can fill you in on what not to say when you meet the council.”

Spire looked away from her own watch over the direction the retriever had come from.  “Yes, and perhaps the names and ideologies of those people?”  She inquired.  “I have been curious.  You said there was no competitive ideology among tribes, but your representatives surely have some thoughts if our own arrival has been contentious.”

”…Well…” Noct started.

They got through three more gradually growing chunks of the dungeon before she was done giving them a list of names that James was only going to remember because he had a computer plugged into his brain.

_____

“Oh that’s why you call it the needle.”  James said with equal parts humor and wonder as they stepped through a rectangular sandstone doorway and onto a bridge made of the same material which James would describe as… tenuous.

The bridge sagged precariously between the trio of pillars it linked up to, but didn’t sway as Noct and Jasmine walked across it like it was fine.  Though the human that James had just met did stick very close to the umbral, and this time he didn’t think it was a romantic thing.  More a ‘wow that is a long way down’ kind of mood.

The tops of each pillar in the line were like little islands, though some of the group independently noted that there wasn’t anything floating here; those rock columns did seem to reach to a floor somewhere below.  They also weren’t the only ones; other lines of pillars, some not connected by any bridges, led at various heights to other parts of the cavern wall that surrounded this particular chamber.

Tyrone had his scope out again, peering across the expanse when they reached the first platform, and it wasn’t until Spire gave a twist of her head back toward James and Cam that James realized that Spire’s coterie was probably using their skulljacks at least a little bit this whole time.  Tyrone took the hint though, and spoke up for his benefit.  “Fifteen hundred feet to that door.”  He pointed to where a different bridge extended out of the wall, a secondary path that led out to a whole new part of the dungeon, but led in to the same place all the bridges did.  “So probably eighteen hundred diameter?  Kinda miss my math orbs, won’t lie to you dudes.”

”Dude.”  Karl spoke up with the level of annoyance in his voice that only a teenager could produce.  “Just get more.”

”Nah, I’m on a journey of self improvement.”  Tyrone said back in the voice of a man who had probably already gotten several new orbs of varying sorts, but had a delightful time driving his younger coterier insane.

Noct’s irritated words were almost swept away by a gust of cold air that abruptly flowed past them like a momentary river.  “Are you done?”  She asked.

James nodded, even though he hadn’t been the one being distracted this time.  He was too busy looking at the needle.

It was a rock formation itself, hanging down from the ceiling high overhead like a stalactite, though shaped like a drop of water that hadn’t quite decided to fall yet.  The bridges from the walls around the cavern mostly met it near the lower tip, but even there it was probably a few hundred feet in width.  And while the outside walls of the cavern were lit by lanterns over the doors, and there were some standing torches on each of the platforms that led in to the needle, the piece of geography itself was so large and so far away that most of that firelight didn’t touch it.

What did light it up was the glow from its own windows.  A dozen styles, from slim jammed apartment windows before construction standards existed to sheets of plate glass like modern office structures, from elegant bay windows to the frosted glass of cheap hotels.  The windows didn’t belong, they were a construct, but here they were, settled into the hanging rock like it had been built by a scavenging contractor and not grown by a dungeon.

Many of those windows were lit up, too.  Glows in a handful of colors pouring out of them, giving the towering shape of the needle definition and light illumination.  It made it look like there was a chunk of a city skyline hanging upside down in the middle of this part of the dungeon.

Noct strolled across the bridges toward it like she was used to it.  A casual disregard for just how fucking cool this looked that James figured must be the universal experience for anyone that lived in the shadow of something monumentous.  “So the needle is a kind of formation that shows up pretty often?”  She said as she fell back into her role as tour guide.  “Not common I guess, but you can find one every forty or fifty chambers if you go in a straight line.  This one is weird, and we call it the needle because it’s the closest to the edge.”

”First or last and everyone argues!”  Jasmine added with a familiar laugh.  “You should ask her when I’m not around.”  She elbowed the umbral, who growled back at her but didn’t deny the allegation.

“It’s the last, because it’s the farthest away from the core, obviously.”  Noct declared, and did not explain what she meant by ‘core’.  “Anyway, the thing about the needle is that basically any way you go, you gotta go through it.  You get the special treatment, we took the patrolled path that we try to keep clear, and that’s the short route.”

”That was short?”  Karl asked, the teenager not quite out of breath yet, but definitely the one of them struggling most with the long hike.  Though it did seem like Noct’s friend wasn’t exactly used to this level of walking either.

Spire twisted to shake her head at him in a swaying back and forth.  “In a dungeon?  To find a specific place?  You are lucky we didn’t need to bring camping supplies.”  She turned ahead again, lens focusing on the end of the bridge that was approaching and the series of windows that looked down on them more directly overhead.  “All paths go through here?”  She asked rhetorically.  “That explains why it was contested.  And why you have such heavy guard.

”It’s not personal.”  Noct didn’t sound apologetic when she said that.

James adjusted the imbued tie wrapped around his wrist.  “It feels a little personal.”  He commented with forced cheerfulness as his boots scraped on the stone bars of the bridge.

He’d gotten used to learning a lot of his more militarized skills from orbs, and then just honing them through live experience and training, but one thing James had been forced to learn from scratch - and sort of from a .mem because he loved cheating - was how to identify weapons.  Critically important for anyone who used shield bracers to survive, the extra few seconds and ‘first strike’ block before the automated swap kicked in was often the deciding factor in training fights.  So he knew from his quick check of the windows that a lot of the guns being pointed their way were familiar.  Specifically because they were the 9mm UMPs that the local Status Quo had used, the exact same gun he’d stolen out of a Gatekeeper safehouse and kind of loved using.  Not much of a secret where they’d armed themselves from then, given that Canada was a little stricter with its laws on looming alien life forms purchasing assault rifles.

Maybe he could bond with them over their shared weapon source?

”No, that would be stupid.”  James muttered out loud, getting a snort from Cam as if she were reading his mind as she picked up the rear of their party.

Noct led them into the base of the tower without any concern for another umbral slipping on the trigger, but James was pretty sure she only did that because she didn’t know just how many people were aiming at them.  But the Order group followed anyway, with the necroad doing what James had been considering and waving at the armed guards hiding in the windows as they passed underneath and through one of the dozens of doors into the needle.

The weapons being leveled at them didn’t stop at that point, they just changed slightly.  The first room inside of the needle that the party saw made James think of a slightly melted industrial building.  A metal floor with tall walls that looked like they had a lot of hooks, brackets, and rails for machinery to be mounted on.  A catwalk running overhead that led between two doors upstairs and didn’t seem accessible from down here.  And about twenty umbral surrounding them in various states of aggression, many of them carrying melee tools.

Tools, not weapons.  Shovels, sledgehammers, in one case a machete.  The human-sized implements looked like toys in the larger grip of the umbral, but it was probably still easier than using their tendrils to brace the recoil of firearms.

”That’s far enough.”  One said.  An umbral that wasn’t so much large as he was dense, a feeling like he was a solid wall coming off his form.  He was also one of the few wearing something; velcro straps holding what would be chest pads on a human against his arms, a similar arrangement on the quartet of legs he balanced on.  And what looked like an anti-material rifle held against his body, the weapon modified - awkwardly - so that he could pull the trigger without his tendrils which definitely wouldn’t have withstood the recoil.

James almost started laughing at how stereotypical that was, but it was Spire who spoke up first.  The camraconda slithering past Noct like the order hadn’t been given at all, and rising up to her resting height in front of the assembled umbral.  “Good afternoon.”  She addressed the umbral that had spoken.  “You must be Tempest, I have heard quite a lot about your leadership here.”

The umbral paused, being addressed by name at first seeming to flatter him, until the bands of his eyes thinned in a glare at Noct.  “I bet.”  He said with a grating crackle of lightning.  “Look.  Someone promised you could come in here.  Fine.  But you’re not wandering around.  This is a military base, not a theme park, got it?  You can use this chamber for your grinding, and that is it.  If anyone wants to talk to you, they can come to you.  If you want to leave, you’ve got a door, or you can ask nicely to get escorted to a different bridge.  Understand?”  He pointed at Noct and Jasmine with a finger roughly the size of James’ entire arm.  “Even you two.  Especially you Noct, this is your mess.”

“Reasonable, but misguided.”  Spire said as Noct’s tendrils started to irately whip against her body in protest.  “We are not here for easy power, we are here to explore and establish friendly contact with your people.”  She said with her customized digital voice.  “Establishing friendly terms is our priority.”

”Oh yeah?”  The towering umbral said, the offset eyes around his body focusing on Spire as the camraconda faced him.  “And how do you expect to do that?”

”Base bribery to begin with!”  Spire admitted with a happy tone.  “Followed by enticing offers for various things outside of the dungeon, along with repeated conversations and shows of trust.”

Tempest seemed to deflate slightly, the dull red of his eyes shifting as he unconsciously folded his arms loosely back into their resting position.  “I… don’t think you’re supposed to just say that.”  He said.

”This is why I keep trying to make her our diplomat!”  James exclaimed.  “Also hi, love the armor.”

”Thank you, I took it off dead men that looked like you.”

”Yeah, that’s where I got my favorite gun!  We should be friends.”  James took every lesson he’d learned from TQ about weaponizing language and used it to spike the conversation back over the net at the big umbral.

Tempest looked over James, as if searching for something specific, before his eyes thickened.  “You’re the paladin.”  He said quietly, the other umbral around him that seemed to be under his command murmuring and shifting at the words.

”I’m a paladin.”  James said, smile slipping.  “Spire’s better at it than I am.”

Tempest looked over at Noct, then back at the other umbral around himself and the others hanging out on the catwalk that seemed to be here more as onlookers than additional muscle.  “Spire.  Spire-Cast-Behind, you were…” he froze, like he wasn’t sure if he was actually allowed to be intimidating to them anymore.  “…I can… talk to the gathering?  See if you can be allowed more places to stay for your time here?”  He offered.

”That isn’t required.  As we said, we are here to meet people and explore.”  Spire told him.  “Please do not treat us differently than you would other guests.”

Noct curled two of her tendrils around, the flexible bulbs on the end of them pressing into what might have been her forehead.  ”Spire, we used to shoot any other guests.”  She said plaintively.  “And we called them something else.”

”Treat us slightly different.”  Spire corrected in the exact same tone, and there was a sparkling breeze of a laugh from the catwalk overhead.  “If you do not mind, we will take some time to rest here, though I will comment that this room could use some seating.”  Her camraconda face twisted into something like disappointment at the lack of couches.  “Should anyone wish to speak, we are all available to do so.  I would also like to ask, how does the community here handle distribution of resources?  If we had a communal gift, what would be the best way to see it dispersed?”

”What kind of gift?”  Tempest pulled himself out of the stare he had fixed on James that seemed like something very far away from hostile right now.

Spire motioned with one of her mechanical limbs back to Karl, who slung the backpack he’d been porting off his shoulders.  Setting it to the floor next to his paladin, Spire waited for more dexterous fingers than hers to unzip it, before she pulled the flap back to reveal a glittering hoard of gemstones.  “We are aware that while food is something of a suggestion for your people, there are nutritional needs that you do better with.  Ruby and sapphire seem best for those, so we have brought a number of them, as a way to improve quality of life.”  She informed the umbral nearby.

”We can eat rocks?”  Noct asked curiously.  “I feel like I should know that.”

Jasmine laughed at her friend, though the human was clearly nervous with so many armed umbral around that had opened with hostility.  ”Nah, humans don’t know what’s good for us, why should you?”

”Fair.”  Noct shrugged.  “So, can I go in then?”  She pressed the other umbral.  “Cause I was suppose to talk to Abby as soon as I got back, and you know how the tribes get these days about people stalling on check-ins.”  She gave Tempest a look, and the big umbral seemed to wince as he waved her through, the armed group parting to let her pass as Noct called back to the others, “I’ll be right back!  Don’t let anyone bully Jaz!”

”Not the rest of us?”  Tyrone laughed.

”You know she absolutely doesn’t care.”  Riho told her fellow coterier quietly.

James slung his own lighter pack off and set it on the metal floor, some of the buckles clacking against the surface.  Trying to be as casual as possible, he took a seat, bracing his back against a stainless steel column that rose up out of the floor like it was designed to block people from driving in.  It couldn’t possibly be for that, so it was actually just a weird dungeon affectation, but at least he had somewhere to sit that wasn’t the worst possible option.

A moment later, Cam settled down next to him, kneeling like she wasn’t bothered by the metal.  The necroad definitely was bothered by it, almost anxiously flitting its talons around its central body behind her while she relaxed.  Cam didn’t say anything, instead just watching as Spire and her group took a much more active role in engaging with the umbral.  The guards weren’t especially forthcoming with social niceties, but they weren’t the only ones here.  A few curious onlookers, many of them quite a lot smaller which James had learned on the way in indicated recently spawned life, had questions for the camraconda.  And once they started calling out, it wasn’t long before the people on the catwalk were joining in, more umbral were creeping into the room, and the line of guards mostly broke down into just people watching the doors while some of them got involved too.

For all that Spire seemed to be increasingly grumpy these days, she navigated the attention almost flawlessly.  Maybe her annoyance was with certain groups of humans in the outside world, less so than people in general, because when the various umbral came to her to ask questions, to thank her for her work in Saskatoon, or just to say hi so they could have met her and her coterie, Spire handled it in a way that looked effortless.  Not just her, either, but her coterie too.  James knew that Riho was trained as a rogue and she definitely had that attitude, but she and Tyrone did a great job running interference so Spire didn’t get swamped; splitting the growing crowd with simple questions and also the pretense of handing out treats from the bag of gemstones they’d brought.  Even Karl, newbie in training that he was, added to the mess as the most polite representative of Montana that he could be.

”She’s having fun.”  James commented, looking around the rest of the room and seeing a few of the umbral upstairs staring back at him, too.  Or maybe it was Cam and her wings.  “You know we’re not gonna get left alone for long ourselves, right?“ He asked her.  “If you want to avoid that, you can probably get away with hanging around by the bridge.”

”I will survive.”  Cam told him placidly.  “Besides, while Spire-Cast-Behind can handle the public relations well enough, I would prefer tangible information on the dungeon itself, if we plan to explore it deeper in the future.”

”I’m somehow still kinda surprised how every time we talk about dungeon delves, you end up sounding excited about them.”  James mentioned, intuiting excitement from Cam’s tone.  She cracked an eye open at him, a narrow slit watching him from a sideways angle.  “You’re allowed to enjoy delving Cam.”  James rolled his own eyes as he noticed a specific umbral approaching them through the slowly swelling crowd.

She closed her eye again.  “Would it surprise you if I said that I know?”  She asked.  “Struggling and making repeated mistakes with my sisters has, I think, made me pay more attention to myself.  Dungeons… well, it’s nice to go somewhere that I can use my strength to have fun.”  Cam smiled softly.  “Though I would like to go deeper in many of them.  Including this one.  So ask the right questions.”  One of her hands lifted off her leg to point at the umbral that had cautiously walked up to them first.

The umbral was the largest one of the guard force that had met them coming in.  Tempest.  The most clothed umbral James had seen in a while, though he understood that Townton had some developing fashions.  ”Sir.  Paladin.”  He said, almost deferentially.

James closed his eyes alongside Cam, keeping his sigh on the inside.  “Is there a world that exists where I can get you to not call me that?”  He asked.

”Probably not.”  Tempest said, though his slightly static voice was lighter, a little amused, as he said it.  “Do you have time to talk?”

”Sure.”  James said, motioning like he was offering Tempest a seat.  “Not a lot of chairs here, but…”

”Furniture is one of our shortfalls.”  The armored umbral admitted with what sounded like deeply human shame.  “All the recoverables with furniture are much, much deeper than the needle, and no one wants to haul a couch through a few hundred chambers just so we have one here.”

James nodded sympathetically.  “I get that.  I’ve got a little extra space that… actually you’ll know what demiplanes are, you’ve probably been to the Wastes, right?”  Tempest flicked a couple sharp looking tendrils in agreement and James nodded again.  “I can add furniture to mine, but only through one of the slips, and it’s the one that pops up near highways.  Incredibly inconvenient, I have no couch in there.”  James grinned as he saw the umbral start to relax at the most bizarre point of shared experience ever, Tempest settling down on his multi-jointed legs in a kneeling position that seemed a lot like how Cam was sitting next to him.  “So, what’s up?”

“I have… a lot of things I want to say.”  Tempest said nervously, the umbral shifting in his seated position to settle his gun back against a heavy strap that didn’t fit his body properly.  “I want to thank you, to start.  And apologize, for the poor welcome.”

”You really shouldn’t.”  James said, looking over at the crowd of other umbral.  “We did what should have been done well before we got here.  That’s not… it’s not something that feels like we did anything that wasn’t the bare minimum.  Fighting monsters is just kind of our day to day.”

”I’m familiar with the sensation.”  Tempest’s voice sizzled with sarcasm.  “And I don’t care.  The others, I don’t care about,” he flicked one of his hands back toward Spire’s group, “but you two?  The paladins that did this?  We owe you a lot, since you moved in.”

James scrunched up his face.  “You know that the Order is people like me, right?”  He asked.  “Like, I’m not a wandering ronin or something, our whole organization is dedicated to fixing problems.”

”That… doesn’t make any sense.  Why do they keep guard on the threshold then?”  Tempest asked cautiously.  “Why take away so many of us?”

Cam spoke up with her direct strike of a voice.  “Orientation for new umbral that wish to live outside, regular scheduled openings of the door so that no one needs to be delayed or trapped, and protection against any locals or other groups of interest that may attempt to take your home by force.”  She said, opening her eyes to focus on the umbral.  “I understand that sometimes, when life has been unnecessarily cruel, that asking questions can feel painful.  But you should be asking them anyway.  You should know your own situation better.”  She said with a frown.

“We have scouts.”  Tempest said, confused.  “Some of them even have human friends.  Or at least humans they talk to.  Why didn’t any of them bring this up?”

”They might not have realized either.”  James sighed.  “From the way Noct talked, I kinda get the impression that they think our people in Saskatoon are there to 'keep an eye on you' euphemistically and not, like, as your advocates and points of contact in case anyone needs help.  It doesn’t change the fact that your suspicion is really understandable.  But we are here to legitimately start the process of making friends, just so you know.”

Tempest spread his thick fingers out in a splay of digits as he focused on James, his eyes sliding off the necroad he kept glancing at.  “What does that mean?”  He asked.

He sounded genuine, so, sitting on a metal floor in a strange box of a room, James wanted to give a real answer.  “I don’t really know how to lay out friendship in terms of what we do, it really is more about what we are to each other, I guess.”  He said, because he didn’t know how to answer that question cold.  “At the very least, it means I want us to trust each other not to fight.”

”Is that how you ended the Last Night?”  Tempest asked.  “Most of the umbral that fought never came back.  And those that did said that you…”

“Ah.  I showed some people a better option.  I didn’t really know about your community in here at the time, I still don’t even though Noct’s been talking about the tribe culture the whole way here.  I know a lot of umbral have migrated down to the city that the Order runs.”  He shrugged.  “You knew about the plan Terror had?”  He asked quietly.

Tempest went almost perfectly still, taking his time before answering, though he’d already sort of answered with his caution.  “I knew… he was angry.  Most of those that went out were angry.  If we didn’t need the needle to be guarded, maybe I would have gone too.  Did you kill him?”  Tempest asked, almost ruefully.

”What?  No.”  James was a little shocked.  “Terror?  No!  He lives in Townton!  He’s a giant pain in my ass!  Hell, he even fought with us against the Underburbs last week!  Uh… that’s another dungeon, except it eats cities and spawns plagues.”  James explained.

“Oh, like the orange zones.”  Tempest flattened his tendrils.  “Horrible.  But… he’s not…?”

“I think he’s in self-imposed exile.  He can send messages back whenever he wants, he’s just being a dumbass.”  James groaned.  “Is part of why you guys are suspicious because you think we’re just vanishing anyone that leaves Saskatoon?!”  He asked.

The pause Tempest gave said a lot.  “It has been suggested.”  He said slowly.  “The gathering isn’t… as experienced, as we once were.”  He said.  “A lot of us died over the last five years.  A lot of us… never came back.”  Tempest shook himself, his hands flattening against the cold floor.  “And why would they?  You say Noct told you about our tribes, did she tell you how thin they all are?  Half of them are gone, the other half reduced to barely being able to handle blanks in the mainlines.  This place keeps making us, but whenever we try to be something more, it keeps killing us too.  And then humanity started doing it from the other side, and our strongest people ended up fighting and dying over this stupid needle just so the rest of us can have the right to fight and die farther inside.”  His shadowy form shivered, the parts of his coherent darkness that were visible under the armor seeming to lose some of the appearance of being shadows with light filtering through them, and simply grow cooly darker.  “And then, you.”

”And then us.  And at least some of your problems ease up.”  James mused.  “But not communications, clearly.”

”We were just starting to develop a bureaucracy.”  Tempest laughed bitterly.  “This used to be our library, and our town hall.  Then the Gatekeepers found it.”

”We can help with that.”  Cam added herself to the conversation, though both she and James noted that Tempest seemed less comfortable with her than him.  “The Order has some experience with these things.  But also, you do not need to be here.  There is somewhere better, and it is open to everyone.”

Tempest rolled one of his hands into a fist on the floor.  ”I had a new umbral tell me that once.  Like he believed it.  Then he left with one of the groups going to the Compiled Wastes, and never came back.  Said he was going to be like you.”  He told James.

“Aurora?”  James asked with raised eyebrows.

”…Yes…?”  Tempest seemed equally shocked.

”Yeah, he showed up at our home base and asked to join up, which I am right now realizing is insane, since I don’t think he should have been able to find it without getting through Planner?  Actually kind of worrying!  But yeah, he’s fine!  Holy shit, Tempest, how much of this animosity is just a lack of information?”  James didn’t wait for an answer.  “Have you guys just been… digging in here, the whole time?”  He asked in quiet dread.  “Did you think we were just…”

”The next ones.”  Tempest said.  “Well, the Order.  Yourself and Spire-Cast-Behind, no.  The others that were with you, that everyone saw fight.  Alanna.  The maybe-human JP, later, when you shattered the Gatekeeper cell in the police force.  And the friend.  You could all be trusted.  Maybe your other paladins.  Maybe.”

”Okay now I think I don’t have enough information.”  James deadpanned.  “I know this might sound silly, especially with that going on,” he motioned to where Spire was apparently showing off her ability to hold people in midair to a group of umbral, the youngest of them laughing like a collective maelstrom of currents, “but you don’t need to be afraid of us.  I’m not claiming responsibility for you or anything, but the Order of Endless Rooms is open to you.  We’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing, but hopefully with a little more cooperation, to get you back on your feet in the way you want.  And if you do want to join us, then you can do it as real partners.”

”And that’s what friendship means to you.”  Tempest said with a reverent tone.  He glanced at the necroad who was now plucking a talon at the metal post James was sitting against, and then at Cam and her imposing wingspan.  “That’s why your group is like this.  Why the humans outside aren’t always humans.”  He surmised.

James nodded happily.  “Diversity is its own reward.”  He said with a grin.

”Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure one of my people just offered to play Monopoly with your youngest soldier for twenty bucks.”  Tempest said flatly.

”…why Monopoly?”  James asked.

”That’s your question?”  Tempest sounded a mix of amused and perplexed.

Cam held up her hand with her palm out to grab his attention.  “We already know how to acquire magic from your people.”  She said.  “My question is what you would do with money.  Especially since Karl isn’t going to have Canadian dollars on him.”

“Okay that’s a good point.”  Tempest’s eyes seemed to spin to stare back at his soldiers.  “I did hear that you drained Terror, I should have known…”

James grimaced like he’d just had a lemon shoved in his mouth.  “Please don’t say it that way.”  He begged.  “But yeah, that was me.  Also a weird experience.  Did you know that if you guys ‘donate’ magic that way it knocks people out for a split second?  It’s actually the quickest… way to…” he trailed off, before sucking in a breath.  “Hey, is that an all-or-nothing move, or can you give, like, a tiny fraction?”  He asked suddenly.  “Because I am just realizing that even though I’ve probably ‘earned’ a level up from here, I won’t get it until I sleep, but if that’s skippable without actually causing any problems, that’s another way you guys can have access to a source of functional wealth.”

”The whiplash of you stating a way to use as as tools and then pirouetting to making it about our own betterment is… difficult.  Should have expected that from the paladin though.  That might be my own bias.”  Tempest said.

”Please stop hero worshipping me.”  James said with another wince.

Tempest laughed at him, loud and sustained.  “Unlikely!”  He said, his voice booming.  “Do you know how many of the council gathering would want to meet you?  I just got lucky, because I’m the frontline today.  It was a joke.  That you show up, and problems go away.  And now…”

”It’s happening again?”  Cam asked with a wry grin.  “I’ve noticed that too.  You should capitalize on that.”  She told James.

”You I can fire.”  He warned her.

She shook her head.  “You really can’t.” Cam settled her wings and looked back to Tempest.  “I don’t want to diminish this moment for you, but we would like more information on the dungeon if you’re willing to give it.  And it might be some time before Spire is done with her own talk, as it seems like more umbral are arriving.  Continually.”

”I told them to stay back.”  He grumbled, turning and starting to stand, adjusting the heavy rifle he was wearing.

”It looks like Spire has it handled.”  James commented.  “Mostly I think she’s passing out snacks.”

”I want to know about that too.”  Tempest said.  “Explain the gemstone thing and I’ll tell you about our deeper mapping efforts, fair?”

James shrugged.  “The first dungeon I ever found is an endless office.  Like the Compiled Wastes, but cleaner and brighter, and way less cramped.  The traps there, if you disarm them successfully, drop red orbs that give you a bonus to understanding your own emotions.  But, if you absorb them by forcing your brain into the right problem solving patterns, it gives you a limited cast divination spell.  I got one a while back to learn the diet of people, and I used it on an umbral once, which told me that your people’s optimal nutrition includes an amount of sapphire.  Other stuff works too though, turns out!”

”…What I wouldn’t give to have an office that was better lit…” Tempest took away the wrong information from James’ long-winded explanation.

”Come back with us and I’ll set you up on a delve.” James promised.

Tempest laughed again, motioning in a wave to one of the umbral that was slowly moving closer to where they were sitting.  “I’ll hold you to that, paladin.  And fair is fair, I can tell you what we know about this place we unfortunately call home.  But first, do you want to test that empowerment idea?”

”Oh.  You sure?  I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable.”  James asked, pursing his lips.  “Also hi.”  He said to the new umbral that Tempest had called over, who gave him a silent stare back in reply.

Tempest leaned himself back, seeming to look up at the scuffed metal surface of the wall over the door back out to the bridge.  “If you had asked?  Pressed?  I would have said no.  I’d understand why you’d want it, but I wouldn’t like it.  But instead you asked about it, like it’s a puzzle.  Like you’re just curious.  What better human to try it with?”

”Fair enough I suppose, but still…”

”James.”  Cam set a hand on his arm.  “Shut up.”  She told the single person in the Order that was most resistant to getting the new magic that they loved so much.  “Your partner has given me permission to suplex you if you do this.”

”Wha- which one?!”  James demanded indignantly.

”Multiple.”

”Fuck, alright, fine!”  He stuck a hand out toward Tempest.  “Either this or just let Cam body slam me and I’ll be unconscious either way I guess!”  The umbral laughed at him again, seeming to delight in the way his hand engulfed James’ entire arm.  And then, there was a tiny little bit of something that surged across the link as he gave up, just a tiny, tiny bit.  Making James a winner by force of will in a contest they weren’t really having, and, in doing so, triggering a flicker of disorienting blackness in James’ brain.

James had thought before that the umbral could probably use that as a combat tactic in some way, but right now, he was mostly thinking that he had options that he hadn’t before.

//Advancement : 2//

//Patch Garment - 1//

//Move Through Glass - (3)//

//Bounce - (2)//

//Undo Spill - (1)//

//Weaken Disease - (1)//

//Check Container - (1)//

//Survive Asphyxiation - (2)//

//Choice : Undo Spill, Clean Tool, Identify Unintentional Factual Inaccuracy Regarding Recent Event//

Two things jumped out at him.  One, all the gifted spells he still had were here, listed alongside his own.  That on its own was fascinating, but also, Undo Spill had been listed as one of his choices.  And that was something that was of critical importance.  Because, as the Order had started to learn as they mapped out the umbral magic, certain advancements had high odds of giving you the option to pick up more daily charges of a spell you already had.  And it was always the first one listed.

Which, if this meant what he thought it did, meant that they could steer.  Not perfectly!  But every little bit mattered when you were trying to equip an organization of knights to push back against the apocalypse.

Also James had lied to himself, he actually noticed three things, there was no way in hell he was going to ignore that absurd spell choice.  While umbral magic leaned heavily on bolstering both food and people, and repairing or cleaning things, it also had a few divination spells.  And while Clean Tool would maybe be handy, and Undo Spill was something James actually did have an ulterior use for, he just couldn’t leave that third choice alone.  It was too silly.

It was also, if it worked the way he hoped, something that could be the most powerful investigative tool he’d have in his paladin arsenal.

//Identify Unintentional Factual Inaccuracy Regarding Recent Event - 2//

“I have a tradition about this I’m trying to get going.”  James told Tempest, extending his hand once again.

”What, you want more?”  The big umbral asked.

”Not exactly.”  James said, and fed the two daily casts of the spell back to him.  The minor focus it took to make the sharing happen sparking a sudden noise of shock from the umbral as he felt the tiny wisp of the spells passing back into his body.  “I’m sure you’ve heard about this by now, or at least, I hope you have.  But this is also part of what it means to be friends.  Gotta make this stuff as fair as possible, you know?”  Tempest just stared back at him, the slightly crinkled eyes on his body’s unfolded form watching James like he wasn’t sure what to do with this information.

”Right.”  He said eventually.  “Of course.  Paladin.”

”Stop that.”

Tempest did not plan to stop that.  ”Well.  This is Aphy.  One of our scouts that handles this zone and the next one.  Between the two of us, we can probably tell you anything you want about a lot of this place, if you’ve got time.”

James pulled his legs up under himself on the cold metal floor.  It looked like Spire was going to be occupied for a while, and while he could practically sense the way Cam was waiting, she still gave him a quick nod, as interested as he was in the process.  “Aphy, that’s short for Aphotic, isn’t it?”  He asked curiously.

”Oh, yeah!  Not many people know that one.”  Their voice sounded like a theremin.  Maybe the umbral version of a nasally squeak.

”I’ve encountered the word recently.”  James said with an awkward smile.  “So!  You said red zone or something earlier!  What’s up with that?”

What was up with that was, in fact, kind of a lot.

_____

It was weird to feel like he was debriefing someone.  Especially since it was about a dungeon.  But at the same time, James had recently heard Three Oh Six gush about her own home, and there was something fascinating about getting an insider’s view of the dungeon they came from.

The difference here was, Tempest and Aphy didn’t like the dungeon.  A lot of umbral didn’t like it, exactly.  To the point that they didn’t even have a mildly agreed upon name for the place; some tribes called it Gloom, but a lot of them either didn’t think it needed a name or wanted to call it something stupid.  Tempest’s words, not James’.

The group had already heard a lot from Noct on the walk in about the ways the umbral interacted as a community, as a society.  The way they patrolled areas, managed the animals and monsters of the dungeon, divided up resources, even how they thought about the outside world and the people there.  They’d heard a lot about that actually, with Noct and Jasmine arguing in circles about interactions with humanity, neither of them arguing in favor of their own species, which James found hilarious.  He wondered what the umbral term for a misanthrope was.

What they hadn’t heard a lot of was tactical information.  These two, though, seemed to have devoted their lives to looking at things through a tactical lens, in a way that made James worry.  Was this what he was going to become, on a long enough timeline?  A person who knew how to use every piece of terrain on the average street as cover in a fight, who could say more about the floor plan of a building than the emotional purpose of what was in it?  Probably not.  But it was uncomfortable to see it from umbral that were, compared to most humans, pretty young.  The dungeon tactic of starting people out as adults continued to be a point of friction, even if they were both at least five years old and veterans of an actual small scale war with their Status Quo.

The discomfort also faded as they talked about dungeon zones in a way that felt almost exactly like Order delvers.  They might be new, but they weren’t kids.  They’d just… never gotten a childhood, and that was kind of fixable.

Orange zones, they explained, were places where the walls and floor were made of some kind of tough material.  Not quite rock, and cloth would slip against it, which made James and Cam ask a series of questions before identifying it as possibly hard plastic.  The umbral had seen plastic before, but there were a lot of varieties of the stuff.

The general layout was often narrow tunnels, sometimes multiple in parallel, and they could be found leading out of almost any other style chamber in the next ‘layer’ of the dungeon past the needle.  The tunnels were heavily trapped, with pressure plates, tripwires, heat sensors, and motion detectors all connected to various forms of assault.  Most of the stuff that got triggered were spikes or swinging ‘blades’, but most of it was also made out of semi-soft black rubber, and wasn’t exactly lethal.  Umbral could bypass most of the traps by flattening themselves, though, so ‘not lethal’ might be subjective.

Once past the outer section of tunnels, the orange zone would open up to a spherical chamber that was lined with metal and glass spines.  Not big ones, either, James had asked.  Maybe a few inches long, many of them curved or broken, the slim needles grew out of the orange floor in clusters like they were cactus spines but missing the plant.  As with many of the chambers, it was possible to find both packages and problems in orange zones; the packages always seemed to be bulk ordered chemical powders though.  And the problems were usually very angry, with orange zones being the only place a certain kind of tick thing spawned that would latch onto a person’s shadow and slowly suck their bodily fluids out through it.

Cam had a lot of questions on how that exactly worked.  And while she didn’t get perfect answers, at least they learned some more concrete details.  The ticks were killable with intense light sources, but it was very painful, and it left the shadow of a person visibly warped for a week afterward.  They did get bigger, harder to kill, and worst of all faster as they ate more.  And they weren’t made of shadows, either; they had bodies made up of the same material as orange zone flooring, so they were hard to see unless they were spreading out into the rest of the dungeon.

The umbral didn’t go to orange zones, mostly because of the needles everywhere.  Those things would often infect anyone that stepped on them with some kind of nightmare disease, the majority of the infections bringing both a fever dangerous even to an umbral, and a disruption of a person’s interaction with gravity.

They had questions about that too.  Tempest and Aphy didn’t have any good answers this time though.  That little tidbit was lore to them too, a warning passed down from years ago.

The two umbral gave a rundown of other important kinds of chamber.  The sand belts, like the one the Order party had passed through on the way in, were valuable for harvesting packages.  Most of their doors led to places that looked like mundane storerooms, and only sometimes did they have blank nests in them.  They were on a finite lifespan though; the sand constantly trickled away from the walkways, and when they were gone, the dungeon would collapse the doorways and replace the room.  That was also a warning; Aphy had personally witnessed one of those rooms shut with a person inside, and the dungeon didn’t seem to have any restriction on doing so.

The packages themselves were apparently a big deal to the umbral, since they were the only source of tools and goods.  The packages were almost always household goods in the outer layer, and increased in the range of how bizarre they could be going deeper.  In the second layer, they started to include food, but there was never enough for everyone to not be the umbral version of hungry.  By the third layer, which was as far as either of them had gone since their ‘home’ tribe stayed in the body of the second layer, packages could sometimes have personal electronics in them, but as Tempest reminded them, the umbral didn’t exactly have records and a chart of drop rates.

Cam ran through some questions anyway, and a hole emerged pretty quickly.  The packages never held weapons.  At least as far as things like firearms or explosives.  That seemed far too deliberate on the dungeon’s part.  Aphy agreed, and apparently the umbral delver had a lot of theories on what they were ‘allowed’ to have, which might have sounded insane if James didn’t know for a fact that dungeons were living things.

Telling the umbral that dungeons were living things, and he could prove it, kind of rattled them.  He maybe needed to remember that not everyone knew that.

Tempest made Aphy move on from barraging James with questions of his own, the umbral standing and flailing his arms around like a windmill as he demanded more information.  James offered to either bring him a copy of the operations manual, or else just let him come back to the Lair and hang out for a while afterward, which was what he was probably going to go with.

Keeping them on track, Tempest started listing off other areas in the dungeon.  There were elevator shafts, apparently, which James thought was cool.  It didn’t mean quite the same thing as it meant in the Office, where it indicated a world an order of magnitude larger, though.  Because this dungeon was already vertical in many ways; lots of chambers had elevation built in, and their initial map on the way in mixed with what they were learning now indicated that there was a lot of ‘blank space’ that the Office didn’t have.  Up and down were just further vectors of navigation, not actually a meaningful extension in terms of how much ‘stuff’ there was to explore.

Still, the elevator shafts were a navigation hazard all on their own.  Something that Aphy called Collections lurked there a lot; creatures that would gather up the beige cardboard boxes of unopened packages and build themselves a small den out of them.  They were made out of hands.  Not shadow in the shape of hands, or any kind of abnormal material, but fleshy human hands, dozens of them, clutching each other tightly the way the umbral’s central body did to form bizarrely jointed arms and a peering face with looped fingers that watched for motion.  For every package in their collection, a hand, and if any of those packages were moved, they would attack viciously.

It was actually up for debate if they were blanks or not.  But they never tried to communicate except to attack, only breaking off and fleeing if every one of their packages was opened, which was often easier than actually killing them.  At least for the poorly equipped umbral delver society.  They liked the elevators because while the cars never moved and the shafts had to be climbed the hard way, the elevator cars were almost always full of at least a few packages, and made for good den spots for the creatures anyway.

They got to hear from Aphy about a creature that was a rectangular frame of hollow pipes, made flexible, bending in ways metal wasn’t supposed to as it gingerly stomped across larger areas and hunted down packages to eat that just seemed to make itself grow bigger.  The pipes were sort of like a hermit crab shell, too; the real creature was the slimy shadow mass that filled it.  They got to hear from Tempest about the rooms in the outer layer that had loading bay doors except made of stone and opened manually with heavy chains; the reward for managing to get through one often a pool of thick darkness that the umbral were always on the lookout for.

Both of them told James and Cam about the everpresent concern of any of the blanks getting ahold of those patches.  The fact that spawn points moved, which was what pushed the umbral to keep on the move themselves, made it basically impossible to secure their own wellsprings.  But they still tried to keep an eye out for anything that was getting too big to ever deal with unless someone had heavy weaponry.  They needed their finite heavy weaponry to guard the needle, which meant that any dungeon life that got over a certain size simply became… a natural hazard.  A walking disaster that tribes fled from rather than fighting.  Because how do you fight thirty tons of metal with a few hammers and machetes?

“I want very badly to say that we should abandon my own personal issues, and spend a month pushing farther into this place.”  Cam said as the umbral ran out of biomes to explain to the Order members.  “Especially to learn more about ancillary magics.”  She had, personally, turned down the ‘sliver’ technique of bestowal that could quickly level someone up without them having to manage to take a nap in here.  Cam wanted to curate her spell list first, to maximize the odds of a ‘repeat’ of something of her choice.  But she also still wanted to know what strange caveats awaited them farther in, especially if it related to the loot of the uniformly textured featureless cardboard packages.

James gave her a steady glare.  “Cam no.”  He said.  “We don’t know how much breathing room we have.  We’re going home, and finding your sister, before the world ends.”

”Question!”  Aphy’s hand shot up.

”Yes, you in the belts.”  James called on him like a teacher.

”World’s ending?”  The umbral asked.

”Yes.  Any further questions?”

”Yes, actually!”  Aphy declared.  “So, to start with-“

Tempest’s large hand wasn’t enough to cover whatever part of the body that umbral spoke from - James assumed the mouth, they did have mouths, but that might be a mistake since they sighed and laughed with their whole bodies - but he still made an attempt to flatten Aphy back to the metal floor.  “If I let you take him with you, will he make it back?”  He asked seriously.

In a strangely solemn gesture, Cam pressed a hand to the front of her coat, and nodded.  “I will promise to make sure he both arrives safely and is scheduled to return within a week.”  She said.  “Though now I have further questions about timekeeping in here.”

”Watches and clocks aren’t a common package, but they show up.”  Tempest said, still trying to smother the struggling umbral that had an excess of questions for James.  “Is the world actually ending?”  He asked quietly, bands of his eyes sweeping back over the crowd that was still mostly focused on Spire’s group, before looking up to the catwalk where a dozen umbral were perched over them seemingly mostly to watch the necroad with curiosity.

”It… might be.”  James said with obvious guilty feelings.  “I’m working on it.”  It sounded so pathetic.  What was he supposed to do, just ask all the terrible stuff to hold off for a bit?  But he was working on it, even if it was only in a small way.  If everything blew up, maybe a few people could make it through in his blast shadow.

”Okay.  Take him with you.  Please.”  Tempest said.  “Whenever you do leave.  How long are you staying for?  I am one of the council, and you’re… you’re not what we expected.  You’re not what anyone expected.  If you want to stay…”

James pointed over at Spire and her coterier.  “I think they might, but I’m not kidding when I say I promised to help someone with something, and have finite time before the next catastrophe.  So if Aphy wants to guide us out, that could solve two problems at once.  I don’t really want to test teleporting out of another dungeon.”

”Wow I have more questions now!”  The smaller umbral broke out of his containment, theremin voice rising to a high pitched whine as he got free from Tempest’s grasp.

”I’ll explain on the way.”  James said, standing up and feeling his knees scream at him, not a single part of his body happy with sitting on bare cold metal.  He didn’t miss that the umbral still twitched at his sudden motion, even if many of them relaxed after their reflexive panic.  But just like everyone else, it would take nothing but time and earnestly to heal that wound.  “Gotta go check in with Spire really quick.  Figure out our plan.  But no matter what… thanks.  Thanks to you, to everyone, for giving us a chance and letting this start.”  James said gratefully.  “I hope…”

Tempest pressed his hands back together, reforging his body and standing up to his full height, the solidity of his frame feeling dangerous, but comfortable as he faced James.  “I hope we can be friends the way you think of friends.”  Tempest told him.  “Now go, before I think of more package drop spots to annoy you with.”

”Oh, I’m never going to be annoyed hearing about dungeons!”  James said in the most enthusiastic voice he’d used in a while, going over to retrieve the other paladin.

They ended up leaving as a group, for a variety of reasons.  One of which was that a non-zero number of umbral did want to leave and see more of the Order’s world, now that they were less certain it was a trap.  Sorting out their magical development path was the other important reason, but Spire mostly claimed it was because she had run out of bribes, and needed a new sack full of sapphires to take back in next time.

James wasn’t sure how much of that was true, but he wished her luck with… whatever weird social attitude Spire was cultivating.

And he couldn’t wait to come back here sometime.  To see the parts that weren’t patrolled, that weren’t safe, that weren’t occupied.  The places that were wild and weird where he could be an adventurer with a real purpose in helping out the residents of this strange place.

Paladin or not, James was always going to be a delver, he figured.

It was just too fun to pass up.