"Every time we hear that a proposal will destroy society as we know it, we should have the courage to say: ‘Thank God; at last.'" -Stafford Beer, Designing Freedom-

  _____

  Townton at night was, depending on where you were in the city and what time of year it was, somewhere between mildly socially active and openly terrifying.

  In the summer, when the light lingered as long as the warmth of the sun and everyone had the time and joie de vivre to gather and socialize, then the streets inside the fortified area were never really empty. The park wasn’t the only green flourishing in the area, and the now-reinforced magical streetlights cast a beautiful and comforting hue over the regrowing city as the night fell.

  However in, for a completely random example, late November? If you landed near the logisticor arrival platforms, at night, then your world would be a thin puddle of light outside of which there was only an all consuming wall of darkness.

  There were also literal puddles. It had rained recently, though it thankfully wasn’t now. It was cold, but the Tennessee night probably sat around 50f instead of the near freezing that Canada had been enjoying with its ongoing wet snowfall. Clouds matted the sky overhead, blocking out every celestial body, as James walked ahead of a loose pack of seven umbral, the shadows outlined by the lights ahead as the group got closer to Townton’s developed area.

  ”You said you would show us. Show me.” The umbral directly behind James, as scary as it had been in a melee, sounded ragged. He wasn’t sure if the shadows had to breathe, but if they did, this one was coming up short on it. “This is… nothing. An empty street.”

  Zhu fluttered on James’ arm. “Empty of humans is what you wanted, relax.”

  James brushed a hand over his friend’s feathers. “We came in where we tend to teleport in supplies and people.” He said, raising his voice to explain to the group, all the static laced whispers stopping to listen to him. He was trying really hard to keep his pace even, but his leg hurt like shit from just being clipped by the umbral earlier, and the bruise made him want to limp. But James pushed through it, leaning on the continuing boon of Endurance to keep himself steady. “Does anyone want the history lesson?”

  ”Human history?” A small umbral - small being barely larger than James in this case; relative smallness - asked, thin legs maneuvering it closer to his side.

  ”Partly.” He said, sensing some interest, and having time to fill as they walked. “Welcome to Townton, Tennessee. Legally, the United States is fuzzy on whether or not it counts nonhuman life as people, so you might not currently be undocumented immigrants. I don’t really care. Moving on.” He waved a hand in the air, Zhu rolling his eyes at him from the limb as he did so. “Outside of Townton is a dungeon, though I think it’s a lot unlike yours. Some time ago, a human on the opposite end of the violent asshole spectrum from the gatekeepers tried to harness it to turn himself into a god or something. He killed or drove off basically everyone here before we could stop him.”

  ”…how often does this happen?” Another umbral behind him asked with alarm.

  ”Good question.” James puffed out a foggy breath, the hot air disappearing into the air under the lamp they were passing. “Afterward, the city was abandoned, and cut off from the main roads. It’s also obfuscated, or at least it was for a while. Didn’t show up on maps, or records, that kind of thing. So we moved in.”

  The large umbral that was still nursing his own bruises from the fight with James made an unpleasant and raspy sound. “Human greed again.” He said angrily.

  ”No.” James’ reply was sharper than anything he’d said so far tonight. “Fucking stop that shit. I am getting so fucking tired of…” he felt Zhu’s talons gently cup the side of his face, the navigator looking up at him worriedly as he breathed through gritted teeth and tried to let go of his own fury. “No.” He repeated. “At first, we were searching for survivors, and personal effects for those that had to leave in a hurry.” James continued, pretending he didn’t notice the smaller umbral shifting back away from him. “But at a certain point, we had some people who were skittish around our home base, and needed a place to live.”

  The evenly spaced lights along the street they were on didn’t do much to reveal the still broken buildings and old damage surrounding them. The Order had cleaned out the destroyed cars here, cleaned up the shattered glass and stone, but Townton was a city that was planned out, and the walk from the logisticor to the occupied place was unnerving on a wet night.

  But as James finished talking, they got a good look at where the new city lit up. And the checkpoint that they were approaching, too.

  ”Those humans are armed.” One of the umbral whispered.

  ”They are.” James said, deciding to not pretend he couldn’t hear them. “Well, kind of. You’ll see. This isn’t a trap.” He reiterated, walking forward and raising a hand to wave at the perimeter team.

  Most of the umbral seemed like they didn’t know what was going on, and were following more out of stunned curious confusion than anything else, but the one that was even still looking for an opportunity to maybe murder James spoke with unconcealed hostility as they approached the checkpoint. “When it is a trap, I am going to… to…” he trailed off. “What is this?” The umbral asked, stopped on the asphalt with the others fanning out around him as James and Zhu walked past the sentries that were watching the shadows right back.

  ”Welcome back.” Kirk said from his little raised watcher spot. Next to him, a chanter had their front legs pulled over the edge of the simple plywood structure, holding onto the edge as their oval eyes peered down at the group. Below, on the other side of the gap in the fence, a ratroach with curved swooshes of an almost sickly yellow chitin leaned around the edge of their own sentry nest to stare with anxiety at the umbral, a thick coat wrapped around their body. “Are we being invaded, or are you gonna make Bill design a whole new apartment style again?”

  ”That happened once!” James retorted, feeling a familiar comfort seep back in as he walked past into Townton proper. “And I didn’t even do it, it was Indira, and… uh… the camraconda that I don’t remember. The one with the red, and the same sense of humor Indira has.”

  ”Indira doesn’t have a sense of humor?” The ratroach questioned as they passed, several of the umbral jolting at the rasp of a voice that the unshaped dungeon life still had.

  Zhu made a small noise of amusement. “Are you thinking of Ink-And-Key?”

  ”No, he doesn’t live down here, I’m thinking of…” James shook his head. “I’ll figure it out later. There’s too many people. Anyway, hey, I’m gonna show these friends around town. Kirk, can you let Cam know please?”

  ”Got it.” Kirk gave him a casual thumbs up, already signaling ahead.

  ”Come on.” James said to his group. “And go ahead and ask.” He added as they passed through the fence and into the growing four by three city block area that held the majority of Townton’s residents and services.

  One of the umbral jumped at the chance. “What are they?” It asked. “What… both of them. What are they? Are they like us?”

  ”Yeah.” James nodded. “Well… in different ways. The shelled one up top with Kirk is called a chanter, and they’re the most like you in terms of story. Their people were captives of a different kind of what you call gatekeepers. Now they live here. It’s actually a huge part of why we started expanding Townton at all, really. We needed people living on site to help with logistics and medical care and stuff, and it just… grew out of that.”

  ”And… the other?” Even the big umbral put aside his anger for a second, colored rings of his eyes shifting back to look at James as he walked ahead, staring at the odd touches on the restored buildings, at the shadow cast by the towering hedge wall around the park, at everything. “What was it?”

  ”Well, that’s Fann. He’s relatively new, and he’s not an it. But also his species are called ratroaches. They-“

  ”You call them that.” The umbral growled.

  Zhu rustled audibly. “You call yourselves umbral, you don’t get the moral high ground here.”

  James didn’t even bother trying to keep Zhu from expressing the impolite thoughts anymore. “Yeah, also, they call themselves ratroaches too. We’ve tried to workshop something different, but it never takes; the name is more or less correct, and also, a lot of them take a kind of satisfaction in being what they are, and still being… you know.” James shrugged as he realized they might not know. “Cared about. Loved. Our people.” He looked away from the group that was now silently staring at him, clearing his throat. “Anyway. Their dungeon isn’t a home to them, it’s a prison. So we do our best to rescue and heal them whenever possible.”

  He led them past one of the big maintained gaps in the brambles and other plants that surrounded the stretch of park. A cluster of chanters passed by behind their group as they moved, the emotional broadcast coming off them soothing James’ ire even more.

  ”What was that.” One of the umbral said, suddenly on guard.

  ”Chanters are natural empaths.” James explained as he walked, realizing that it was a little hard to explain Townton at night and when it was cold out. “They like the rain, and they like the greenery, so most of them still live in the park space here. You can see all the tents there in the stretch in the middle? Those are where they sleep, usually, and also where they kept their eggs before they hatched.” He felt himself smiling fondly. “Their children aren’t even close to grown up yet, and we’re kind of all learning how to take care of them together. But yeah, sorry, the emotion thing. What they feel, especially if a group of them feels it, bleeds off into the air.”

  ”A good defense against people like you.” The grim brute of an umbral commented.

  ”…Yes.” James said. “It is. Because it means I, and everyone who signed up to help them when they arrived, got to know exactly how hopeless they were.” He was still smiling, but now because of the contrast between his memory and the current time. James had come to a stop, leaning on a little bit of the wrought iron fence that was still visible through the explosive vegetation. “Against people like me? It works perfectly. It tells me they’re people, and they need me. Against the people that kept them like cattle, it didn’t work quite so well.”

  He turned and kept walking, faster than he needed to, and forcing the umbral to keep up if they wanted to.

  The smaller curious one mustered up some of its courage, pacing to catch up quickly to ask James a question. “This place… who else is here?”

  ”You mean other species? Or, like, total population?” James asked.

  ”…both?” The umbral’s question took a while to manifest, like it wasn’t used to talking to people at all, much less someone like James.

  He tilted his head up and thought. “Human, ratroach, labratoad, chanter, camraconda, assignment, navigator, singular inhabitor, Camille, a couple shapeshifters that refuse to name their species, necroad… I think that’s… oh, crocamaws. They’re new.” A shape moving in the sky overhead, barely visible as an outline against the clouds, reminded him of something. “Camcondors too, maybe. They might not be people? But they are super helpful.” He looked back down. “As for population, it’s almost twelve hundred people at this point. Four or five hundred humans mostly split between people who work for our Recovery division and people who need our Recovery division, three hundred chanters, about a hundred ratroaches, limited numbers of everyone else.”

  ”And it’s just… here.” The umbral said, staring around. They looked back to one of the other umbral that had been either brave or suspicious enough - or both - to come along. “We could…”

  “Don’t.” The other umbral sounded… hurt, maybe. James didn’t know them well enough yet to tell. “Don’t.” The repeated word was softer, definitely sadder.

  The big umbral scuffed a thin leg against the sidewalk where they had been walking; possibly an unintentional decision that made them even taller than James and Zhu, who were comfortable down here walking in the middle of the road. “This is just words.” Their anger was on hold, but not actually diminished. “And this is just a street.”

  ”Correct.” James said, muffling Zhu with his sleeve as the navigator started to inform the umbral that they had literally just passed a pack of chanters. “Which is why I am taking you somewhere we can sit down before it starts to drizzle again. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about this region it’s that the rain is never actually satisfied with being a drizzle.”

  He rounded the corner of the far end of the park, the road splitting as it headed past the current boundary of what they were actively repairing and making use of, the way there mostly cleared as it was the main route to the dungeon. The massive and wasteful parking lot of what used to be a big box grocery store was now used to store increasingly modified delver vehicles, while the building itself was where a lot of the group therapy meetings and communication efforts happened now, as they kept shuffling things around to avoid impact from the weather.

  James narrated this to the umbral as he led them in the other direction, toward a thick walled brick structure that used to be a bank.

  ”This place is, oddly, important to me personally. Or it was. It’s less so now, cause it’s a restaurant.” He checked the messages he’d gotten from Alanna and Evans, saying that things were calmed down and he had time. “If you look over there, you can see one of the necroads that wanders around here. The ones inside the perimeter are… passive, at least? But please don’t provoke them. They’re still learning. The ones outside, we do our best to repel without hurting them, now that we know that eventually they can break into conscious thought. Anyway, one of the first peaceful encounters we ever had with them came from my boyfriend and I standing on the roof of this place.” He smiled at the small memory of Arrush, back when the ratroach had been a million times more awkward. “Anyway, who’s hungry? We have some time, the rest of your people are safe now. Let’s sit and talk.”

  Zhu decided now was a good time to add to the conversation. “Also the two of you that snuck away are cool to wander around.” He raised his voice. “Just make sure you don’t poke the necroads! Seriously!” He called after the shadows that had vanished from the group within the last few seconds.

  The other umbral tensed at the accusation, but James didn’t falter; Zhu had mentally lit their escapees up when they’d moved, and the duo had decided to let them do their own exploration. Ruby and Prince were ironically shadowing them anyway too, just in case.

  He held the bank’s repaired glass door open for the umbral, but they just stared at him, holding back like maybe this building would be the trap. James refused to let his smile slip, steeling his determination to show them the best that he could, and walked in ahead of them.

  By the time any of them dared to actually follow him in, he had already secured them a table. If James had planned this, he would have maybe called ahead, but instead he just got lucky, and enjoyed the fact that the restaurant that had grown like an invasive vine into the interior of this bank had enough tables.

  “There weren’t really restaurants in Townton until I think a week ago?” James said casually as the others craned their bodies to look at the space he was leading them into.

  The smell of spices and savory food filled the air in the building. Everything that had made this a bank had long since been removed, and in its place, salvaged mismatched tables and chairs had begun to fill the lower floor. Trellises ran from the floor up to the green orb provided balcony, and the chanter’s regular presence meant they were flourishing, adding partitions of verdant life that separated booths and tables.

  The kitchens themselves were partly visible in the back half of the structure. This was no high volume extravagant experience, and so the human refugees that had asked for the space had some adjusting to do from their normal experience in restaurant jobs to the way the Order tended to run things. Everyone was still learning, there were a lot of mistakes happening. But this was one of three places where you could go in this city to have a hot meal served to you, that wasn’t outside, and when it was winter that counted for a lot.

  It wasn’t so late that there weren’t people here either. Tables held humans, camracondas, ratroaches, and even chanters. The slow extraction from their social shells was ongoing, but there were always the adventurous few that were happy to explore things like this. One big communal tables held individuals that didn’t feel like eating alone, while others were here with friends, or lovers, or family. And a lot of them watched James as he led the umbral back to the circular booth in the back corner underneath the shadow of the balcony. Various forms of eyes tracing the newcomers not with suspicion or fear, but with the curiosity of people who lived in a world where sometimes, James just showed up with a new species, and you kind of had to be on board with that.

  “…What are you doing?” One of the umbral asked as James sat down, the five of them still with him that hadn’t gone off to check if he was lying or running a Potemkin city standing at the end of the table and staring at where he’d sat and then moved to make room.

  ”I’m inviting you to sit and eat appetizers and talk.” James said, two of them freezing as they realized the one that seemed to be their leader was pointedly staying standing. He let Zhu make a sweeping gesture at the empty spaces. “You can hang out there if you want but you need to let the person behind you ask if we want drinks.”

  The sound of one of the world’s sneakiest ratroaches announcing her presence with a throaty clicking made several of them visibly flinch. ”H-hello.” Glow said softly. “D-dietary requirements?” The needle-thin ratroach asked, a nervous green vibrancy around her arc of eyes.

  ”I am not going to tell you how to poison us.” The large umbral snapped.

  ”Yy-you might be a-ccidenitally poisoned then.” Glow responded, and James felt a moment of gratitude for the umbral that stepped toward their leader and settled several of their upper shadow tendrils on his side, stifling whatever angry thing he was going to say in reply.

  “We can eat human food.” The calmer umbral told her. “…Thank you?”

  The slender ratroach nodded, two of her smaller limbs slowly stroking the hem of the apron she was wearing. “Okay. Is t-this a… a…” Glow struggled to find the word she was looking for.

  ”I’m showing them around and we’re talking about the future.” James said.

  Glow nodded. “O-okay. TQ sssaid you were a-adding to your p-polycule.” Her muzzle peeled back as she smiled coyly at him. “I w-win this bet. We will bring you… some snacks.”

  ”Tell TQ that when I add to my polycule, he’ll know.” James said, getting a huff of amusement from Zhu, the navigator still focused on keeping all his eyes and other senses on the umbral. “Thanks Glow.”

  Already walking away, the ratroach chittered with her own laugh, her presence soothing the other diners, including several of her own species that were far more skittish than she was. Glow hadn’t been here the longest, and she was quick to tell her friends that she was never going to be fully okay, but out of every ratroach, she had been the one to adapt to Townton’s changes by mastering the ability to bluntly impact every social problem that came her way.

  All the umbral sat, eventually. Their legs seeming capable of sliding around the base of their unfurlable torsos to make it comfortable for them. As they did, the leader looked away from where Glow had headed back to the kitchens. “Is this what we are supposed to be impressed by?” He asked. “That you dressed up your servants?”

  ”If you’d said slave I was going to set you on fire.” Zhu cheerfully told him, a fire already set in his emotions as he grappled with anger.

  James nodded in agreement. He was actually becoming less and less angry with the overtly hostile umbral over time, because he could see in real time how useful he was. Every stupid and antagonistic thing that the large one said was driving a wedge between himself and the other umbral, as they were perfectly capable of actually seeing the reality happening around them. “Okay. Let’s talk.” James said, spreading his hands on the table, keeping his arm extended so Zhu could be fully present.

  ”We have been talking.”

  ”I’ve been talking.” James corrected cheerfully. “I would like us to discuss, like people. Hi. I’m James. This is Zhu.”

  ”My name is Crow.” The small umbral that had been the first to sit said after only slight hesitation. And then, like the floodgates were opened, the others introduced themselves too.

  James noticed a theme fairly quickly as he was told their names were Ink, Midnight, and Ash. The big angry one offered no name, and James just decided to let that go. He’d faced a lot of suspicious ratroaches, crocamaws, and even camracondas before. Hell, even human delvers like El. He knew there was no way to convince the guy except to behave like he was going to anyway and prove himself.

  ”Okay.” James used his favorite word with a patient smile. “I’m sure you have questions. Before that, I wanna explain what I want. What the Order of Endless Rooms wants.” They watched him quietly, appraisingly. “I know you’re not all leaders or elected representatives or anything. This isn’t a formal negotiation. I just want you to feel safe, and know that we’ve got a safe place for you if you want it. So ideally, you can take what you learn here back to your people, and share that with them. I have no expectations, but I am going to be honest about one thing; I am not going to let you kill anyone, even if they really deserve it, okay?”

  ”The gatekeepers.” The large one said with open bitterness.

  James nodded. “The ones that survived are going to be in our custody.” He told them bluntly. “The Order has a policy of restorative and not punitive justice. Our goal is to make them into people who will never cause harm again.”

  ”And when you can’t?”

  ”Then we’ll keep them comfortable, but isolated from society.” James answered. He was not exactly comfortable himself with the idea of life in prison, even as an alternative to just executing people. But other options included stuff that was probably worse, and he didn’t feel like mind controlling anyone. “Now. That’s the main thing we might argue on, and I just want to tell you, up front, that we’re not taking suggestions on that. That said… well… what do you wanna know?”

  There was a sudden breeze, and James flinched before he realized it was one of the umbral. The bulbous core of their body expanding and then settling back into its linked-limbs state as their eyes slid out of sight and then back in on their surface like there was something invisible covering them and sweeping side to side.

  A sigh. The most common motion. The familiar, in an alien package. James didn’t want to get in another fight in his life, he just wanted to write cultural studies on sighing.

  The small umbral, Crow, spoke first because the others were looking to them, and also because no one really wanted the larger one that wouldn’t give James his name to be the one asking questions. “I… we understand you are… offering us a home.” They said. “Here. But there are others that will not want to leave. Where we are born can be hard, but it is familiar.”

  James nodded along. He got that, on the kind of I am in this picture and I don’t like it level. “We aren’t going to force relocate you.” He said confidently. “Anyone that wants to live here, can. Our responsibility as the de facto government of this place is to make that happen. But if you, or any of your people, prefer your origin, then you can make that choice.”

  Zhu added onto that more bluntly. “Unless your dungeon isn’t giving you a choice.” He said. “Then we have other plans!”

  The umbral all mostly had a similar body shape, but the one that had given their name as Ink had a different coiling pattern to their central form that looked openly different than the others. Whether it was some kind of sexual dimorphism or a species variant, James didn’t know, but the umbral leaned forward on the table with several of their upper tendrils running across the wooden surface as they peered at Zhu. “No one has asked yet,” their voice was less like static and more like the soft hum of an old lightbulb, “but what are you?”

  ”Oh. Hi. I’m Zhu. James said it earlier, but I’m a navigator. Sort of a living expression of a map. Kind of. There’s a lot of dumb nuance to it that isn’t important.”

  ”Yeah, like how exactly one example of your species is lopsided.” James commented.

  The trio of Zhu’s eyes that rose out of James’ arm in slitted domes all turned away from him. ”Noooo idea what you’re talking about. Anyway.” Zhu turned his own arm off of James’, talons spreading as he held his palm open. "I’m most bonded to James, so I stick with him a lot of the time. Before the angry one asks, it’s not a slave thing, I can leave whenever too. Though, I mean, I still need to live with someone if I want to… uh… stay alive. So it’s a compromise between reality and ideal.”

  ”You’re going to have to compromise with us.” Crow said sadly. “By our nature, we-“

  ”Quiet!” The larger umbral snapped. “This joke is bad enough already, don’t make it worse. They don’t need to know-“

  ”Hey, if we’re interrupting people,” James said smoothly, “I already know three ways to level up in your magic set. We’ve talked to delvers that got subverted by Status… by the gatekeepers. I know that ‘defeating’ you gives progress. That’s not going to be an issue for us.”

  The angry umbral seethed, colored eyes glinting as they trembled slightly, a moment away from just giving up and attacking James directly again. “Not an issue?” They said in a furious low tone.

  ”That is the issue though.” Crow said, their tendrils swaying back and forth like seaweed in a disagreeing current. “We are exploitable. Our type is physically durable, and dangerous if a human is unprepared, but… we don’t have the infrastructure or numbers your kind do.” Their body unfurled as one of their large hands spread in a mirror to the gesture Zhu had used. “Or will you argue that you are so pure that no one would take advantage?”

  ”I would argue that we don’t need to take advantage.” James answered, tapping a fingertip against his nose. “I could tell you that you share a status with at least three species that we are currently failing to exploit. But that’s meaningless, because I can give you a better and safer answer; it’s faster to just be allied with the population that inhabits your origin site. Because like I said, I know three ways, and one of them is just hanging out deeper in the dungeon, right?”

  ”…that is… yes? For anyone that is not born there, that is enough.”

  James nodded as he continued. “Right. So if we’re on good terms with you, then you can secure your home, and you have a valuable trade good.” He was starting to learn their mannerisms, and the way that the sharper tendrils on their upper bodies jolted upward sometimes was probably a marker of confusion or surprise. “Time.” James said. “No one needs to get in a fight with you, when we can just sit in a dark corner for a day and get the same effect.”

  ”It is naive to believe no one would try to-“

  ”Yeah I know.” James sighed at the big guy. “I am aware that a lot of humans suck. I am telling you why we, the ones with working brains, can be trusted, not other people.”

  Ink made an electrical hum. “There are… there are others like us?” The umbral asked. “How do they… what is it like for them? Are they here? Is it…” they looked around, eying the restaurant population that was still trying to catch glimpses of the new shadows.

  Their stare landed on Glow, who was returning to their table carrying a tray spread across three of her hands. Chitin segmented fingers deftly setting servings of samosas in front of everyone before she gave a wide toothy smile that matched her name. “N-no one has tried t-to eat James yet. A good omen!”

  Crow stared at her, while the others were looking at the food. “Do you have a-“

  ”Don’t ask her that.” James and Zhu interrupted the umbral at the same time, James continuing as Glow took a worried step back, tails curling up in anxiety. “If you live here, you’ll have to know. I get it. It’s not a secret exactly. But right now, it looks like you’re probing for information on who you might want to attack.” James told them bluntly.

  ”We would not!” The larger umbral shot to his feet at the end of the table. The oppressive silence that settled over the restaurant doing nothing to stifle his complaints. “Even if you look different, even if you know how to say different words, you are still exactly like every other human that treated us like monsters. I would sooner die than listen to you for a moment longer.” The umbral spun, and then froze, as he came eye to eye with Glow.

  The ratroach had the metal tray she’d brought their food on raised beside her head, clutched in two paws with a grip that creaked her chitin it was so tight, prepared to slam it into the umbral’s form if it came an inch closer.

  The umbral didn’t move. Instead, in a moment of clarity, it looked past Glow, at the rest of the patrons. The people who had stopped eating, and were watching very carefully. Many of them, especially among the humans and ratroaches, were tensed up with their organic muscles ready to burst into motion if they were needed.

  He looked back at Glow, and then suddenly the warm dusky mass seemed to deflate, losing a few inches of height as the umbral slumped. “I am sorry.” he said, turning back and sitting without another word.

  ”G-good!” Glow’s grip slackened but she still looked like she was considering nailing him in the head. “D-don’t d-do that! No yelling! Y-you could have got-gotten hurt!” She chittered at him furiously. When the umbral looked like he was going to try to argue, Glow made a sudden clasping gesture with her free paw. “No! No more yelling! Y-you have to eat quh-quietly now!” She ordered, spinning and rapidly stalking back to the kitchen.

  James let out a tense breath, letting himself settle back. He and Zhu had been about ready to dive over the table and tackle the umbral if he looked like he was even remotely about to hurt the obviously startled ratroach, and he was glad that there had been a moment of clarity there at the end. He wasn’t going to countermand Glow’s order for the big guy to shut the fuck up though. “So, yeah,” he turned back to Crow, the small umbral having sunk even farther down at their companion’’s outburst, “the issue is that we can’t trust you with that information right now. For the same reason that if anyone new shows up after you, we won’t just automatically tell them how to beat you up and take your own magic.” James finished.

  ”I understand. I shouldn’t have asked, that was stupid.” The umbral’s tendrils smoothed backward. “It’s… none of us are used to this. Talking? To a human? Our captors were often polite, but they were never… we didn’t talk. Do you know how hard it is to just sit here and speak with you?”

  ”Yes. Because of all the other damaged and betrayed and exploited people we work with, constantly.” James replied bluntly as he casually dueled Zhu’s grasping talons for one of the golden flakey triangles full of curried vegetables that had been set near him. “Zhu if you’re not gonna eat it, let me eat it…” he muttered, getting a playful laugh from his navigator companion. “Anyway. That’s… barely covering one question, but let’s move on. Anyone have anything they want to know?”

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  Two of the umbral had started eating the spread of easy food that had been brought to them, and seemed a little incapable of responding in the moment. Their mouths, James noted, were part of the upper outline of their torsos, above where their arms unfurled. And they could easily eat by using their tendrils to grasp food, which is why one of them had a small half bitten samosa hanging in front of their face, steam rising from the potato filling as they blankly stared at it.

  The umbral, Ash, had ‘closed’ their eyes, but that hadn’t stopped lines of rainbow liquid from rolling down their form in small beads. Iridescent and silent tears that made James question whether anyone had ever given them food before in their life. The one sitting next to Ash was having a similar reaction, and neither of them seemed like they’d be asking anything.

  “How?” Crow asked as they poked at the food, flinching from the heat of it. “I can understand, I think, how you exist. We know… you call them dungeons? We know there are more.” James did not miss the way the others shifted who they were looking at when that was said; some of these, especially the big leader, had their own rewards from the other Saskatoon dungeon. Probably where the structure fire in a box came from. “So you are…”

  ”We call people who explore and benefit from dungeons ‘delvers’.” James said honestly. “And yeah. Counting the two in your city - yeah I know already, don’t panic - we directly know of ten. Five are wholly under our purview, two we share with a bunch of religious fanatics who outnumber us, one is uncontained and violent.” He looked down, smiling to himself. “One of them is nice.” He added.

  Crow’s tendrils twisted on themselves, the umbral’s primary color eyes dipping sideways. “Nice?”

  ”Nice. Clutter Ascent, a dungeon in a suburban attic. Recently we found a way to talk to her, and she’s just… she’s friendly. It’s nice. I don’t have another word for it.” James took a deep breath and shook himself; he was feeling a lot of emotions more powerfully than he normally did, and it was making his conversation a little disjointed. The chanters here might actually make this a difficult place to hold a first meeting. “Anyway. I have various improvements, equipment, and active magic from most of those places. But at the start, it was just one. And then… there were people who needed me.” James’ throat tightened.

  Ash lowered the rest of the samosa they were still holding. “Terror cannot ask, because he is rightly silenced,” James filed that name away, and bit down on his own tongue before he said anything, “but he is right to question. Why did you help them, but not us?” It wasn’t an accusation, just dull if painful curiosity.

  ”Because I didn’t know. Because even though the Order of Endless Rooms is growing, we can barely keep up on our own backyard. And it feels like every Tuesday brings a new horrible thing to light that I then get to scramble to deal with.” James met their flat ring eyes with his own sorrowful gaze. “I wasn’t there because of bad luck. If I were… I don’t know. I don’t. The gatekeepers are a lot like people we’ve fought before. I mean, fuck, they have the same shield bracers. That’s a problem, that means something bad, but we don’t even know what yet. If I were there sooner… well, no. No what ifs. I’m sorry it took so long to get to you.”

  That was all. He was sorry they hadn’t gotten there earlier. It was that simple.

  ”And everyone here is a delver?” Terror asked, breaking his silence. But he wasn’t yelling, so James didn’t comment. “Going into places like our home, to fight and plunder?”

  ”A little rude but not wrong.” Zhu answered with a revving laugh. “We do actually put in some effort, you know? We try not to kill unless it’s something that isn’t thinking, we don’t harvest even if we do have to fight. And, this is a bit personal, but I only exist because of it. My origin doesn’t give a paved fuck about people like me; she ditched the one of us that she ever made on purpose. Most of the people here have bad dungeon homes, too. You guys are…”

  He stopped talking, but James voiced the thought anyway. “Lucky.” He sighed. “Not in the humans you met, but in the dungeon you come from. If any of you want to stay? To make it your own home? That’s… that’s impressive. That’s new to us.”

  ”That is… very sad.” Crow buzzed out the words, punctuated by a crunch as they bit into one of the samosas. “Oh. This is different. And good?”

  James smiled at the simple pleasure the umbral was taking in the food, some of the others already working on their second or third. “Anyway, no, to answer the question, not everyone here is a delver. It’s actually not a common job even in our Order. But we do take rewards that can be distributed, and do our best to spread them out. We have a couple dungeons that give bonuses just for exploring them, so the trained teams often escort others through the safe parts to get them some of that improvement. Or for things like skill orbs or potions, we have a whole system to hand them out. The point is to make everyone powerful, not to focus it all on one idiot.” He chuckled as Zhu helped by punctuation that statement with a pointed talon.

  ”That does not answer how this place came to be. How can you… how? The resources it would take, even for this small place…” Crow looked across the circular table to where Ash was sampling every variety of the Indian finger food they’d been given. “You would know more. What would this cost?”

  At James’ raised eyebrow, Ash gave a summer breeze of a sigh. “I was often kept by one of the corporates.” He explained, a tremor in his voice beyond the normal static. “Costs and currencies… just to lease this one building would be over a million dollars a year. And we saw the damage to the outer spaces on the way… remodels are often more than the yearly cost for a structure. Our home will sometimes give prizes of currency, but a delver would need to find thousands of them to be able to afford just this.” His tendrils drifted as one of his hands pulled out of his body, the solidified shadow running a hand through his hair in a motion that was so normal it caught James off guard. “And you have a city.”

  ”We have twenty two usable permanent structures.” James countered. “But yes. We have… a lot of resources. We have a functionally unlimited supply of platinum, and we have a business arrangement with a mundane company that keeps us funded. A lot of that gets put in here, but also, there’s a lot of magic at play. It turns out, when you’re drawing from multiple places, and have multiple species that bring unique things to the table, you can sort of build above your weight class.”

  ”So you do make use of the people you say you are saving.” Terror commented.

  James nodded. “I mean, kind of? It’s more like I just stopped saying no when they asked to make use of themselves. Because that was denying them agency, and I got chewed out by several camracondas and also one of my boyfriends.”

  ”One of?”

  ”I will not be answering questions about the expanding cloud of my polycule at this time.”

  ”I… don’t know what that means.” Crow said slowly. “None of us know what that means.” They confirmed with the other umbral.

  James gave a small laugh as the group he was talking to slowly opened up. “Anyway, yeah, like I said earlier; the Order is responsible for the wellbeing of everyone who lives here, but people do get bored if left to their own devices. And magic doesn’t take away the need for labor. So we split up jobs, and everyone contributes to their comfort level, which, it turns out, is about 60% less than the modern western business schedule would have you believe.”

  ”Okay.” The way that the large umbral - that Terror, that name was never going to not amuse James - drawled the word was clearly sarcastic and mocking even with his nonhuman voice. “You tell us we can bring our people here. What then? What will you do to make this right?”

  ”Like… how will we undo the damage of years of violence and exploitation?” James asked, and got a twitch in reply that might have been a nod. “I… no, it doesn’t…” his voice wavered for a moment. “Nothing will ever make it right.” James told them all quietly, his words almost swallowed up by the renewed sounds of clinking cutlery and quiet conversation in the odd restaurant around them filtering in from around the wooden lattice dividers between tables. “I can offer you homes, a community, therapy, resources, safety… I can tell you that if you want it for the right reasons, then we can make you knights and give you the chance to be there for the next people like yourself that need help. I can tell you that things will get better. I can tell you that you can join us and be treated with respect as people. But I can never make this right.”

  ”Then what good-“

  ”Please stop.” Ink whispered in her electric whine. “Terror. Stop. Please?” The words weren’t an order or even anything more than what seemed like someone begging their friend. “He’s giving us what you wanted. Just giving it to us. A place away from… all of them. A place we can…”

  The large umbral softened at the words, but still leaned forward to brush against Ink’s side with some of his own drifting shadowy tendrils. “It’s not enough.” He said with a terrible kind of certainty, before turning red ring eyes toward James. “You want us to stop. But there are people who did this to us. And I… I know you are not one of them.” The admission was clearly a challenge, but he said it anyway. “But I will see them destroyed.”

  ”You were going to kill Silverson.” James said calmly, folding his arms and leaning back.

  ”Yes.”

  He steeled himself for the reaction to what he was about to say, because he knew he was provoking the large umbral. ”Finishing the gatekeeper’s work for them.” James said.

  Every one of the shadows at the table went perfectly still. If it weren’t for the noise of hissing steam from the kitchen, soft laughter from the communal table, and the clatter of plates nearby, then the room would have been dead silent.

  ”What do you mean?” Crow asked with a fearful monotone.

  ”I mean, you arrived to ambush the mayor while he was meeting with one of the people he was renting you guys out to as prisoners, right? Probably a great idea, take out the person overseeing your slavery, as well as the traitor that was collaborating with him, and some of his support or clients all at once?” James tried to sound approving, but he didn’t think he was doing it very well. “Tactically sound. Not a huge fan of your followup plan to just start burning the city down. Zero out of ten there. But still. Did you know the gatekeepers would be there?” He asked forcefully.

  Terror was the one that answered, anger warring with confusion. ”Of course. He was one of them. That was why I chose tonight. Before you interfered.” Okay, confusion wasn’t doing too well against anger, apparently.

  James didn’t let it bother him, and ignored Zhu’s amusement at his surface thought. “Drak Silverson has been, as far as we have determined in our investigation, the only human actively standing between the gatekeepers and a total genocide of your people.” He said with brute force directness. “If we hadn’t been there tonight, the gatekeepers that showed up were going to kill everyone in that mansion anyway, I think because they’d realized something similar.”

  ”Impossible. That’s… a lie. Or you’ve been lied to. That’s what the gatekeepers do. Lie. You’re wrong.”

  Shaking his head James continued. ”I don’t know where the communication failed, but your traitor was working with him to try to buy time for all of you.” James rolled up his sleeve, showing off a shield bracer and getting small upset sounds from some of them. “I didn’t get this from your gatekeepers. I got it from another group, that worked suspiciously like them. And their whole thing was that they believed that human power structures needed to be maintained. They weren’t anti-magic or anti-dungeon, but they were willing to kill anyone they needed to just to make sure no one disrupted the hierarchies at play in daily life on Earth.” James scowled, his own anger matching Terror’s and seeming to surprise the big umbral. “The whole ‘renting you as prisoners to the rich and also cops’ thing? That was Silverson trying to convince the gatekeepers to fuck off and let him reinforce those power structures. When that started to fall apart, he went for trying to exert political and financial power over them, but they don’t care about those things. He fucked up. But he was, at the end of the day, trying to keep you all alive.”

  ”No…” Terror muttered with a crackling tone. “No, but he… he is a monster. A slaver. He sold us, had the stragglers hunted…”

  ”You might actually be right.” James conceded. “We need a much deeper investigation into what the fuck that guy was actually doing. I’m not even sure if he was ever elected mayor, or if he just showed up one day and started acting like it. And like I said, he fucked up a lot. But you have something in common with him.” He paused for effect. “You were both people the gatekeepers wanted dead.”

  If Terror had anything to say to that, he kept it to himself. To James, it looked like the umbral was going through the process of having his entire world collapse around him. The human wasn’t like his girlfriend; he couldn’t read the umbral’s mind, but he could follow body language and just the general vibe in the air. And the silence of the person who had up until now been not just openly hostile but practically idiotically confrontational said a lot about what was going through his mind. And the other umbral didn’t look like they were doing much better; the sudden revelation that you were part of a mob that was about to murder someone that was on your side was a bit jarring after all.

  There was a muted crunch as Ash turned a samosa into crumbs.

  ”Sooooo…” Zhu’s feathers broadcast a distant engine noise, his version of clearing his throat to get people’s attention. “Does no one want to ask which species in our collective are romanceable? Because I’ve been working on a mental list this whole time and no one’s said anything.”

  It looked like at least one of the umbral really wanted to ask that, now that it had been put forward as an option. But Terror had more to say that was unfortunately less fun.

  ”I want… to see proof. If what you say is true, you will have proof.”

  ”I will. And you can.” James agreed without a hint of hesitation, which also did a lot to chip away at the emotional walls the umbral had up. There was a brief moment where James began formulating something snarky to say, but pushing that thought aside is a lot easier for him now than it ever was before. Instead, he chose to say something that was a lot harder. “Thank you for listening.” He told Terror, and met some of the umbral’s colored eyes as he twitched to pierce James with his gaze. “I’m serious. A lot of people wouldn’t have listened.”

  Terror’s center mass seemed to warp outward, then contract tightly as he clenched his body-limbs with a renewed tension. “It is just one more way we are different from humans.” He settled on pointedly. “Better.”

  James pursed his lips and nodded. “Fair enough. Camracondas have a similar thing going on, but we don’t have the population to do useful sociological studies yet.” He looked around at the group as someone sent him a message. “So. Want to go see a little more of Townton while we pick up your friends?”

  ”What?”

  ”The two that you sent to spy on stuff. Cam has them right outside.” James moved to stand up, the umbral on the booth’s bench that were blocking his exit moving a little too quickly for his peace of mind to get out of his way. “Come on, everything’s fine, but let’s go do a little more walking.”

  Ash looked back and forth between him and the table, the double-take an amusing gesture on a life form that just slid its eyes around its body instead of actually turning. “Do we not need to pay?”

  With a rustle of orange light, Zhu extended his talons down and out from James’ frame in a sassy snap. “Think about everything this long haired hippie socialist just told you.” He said.

  “Hey!”

  ”Oh, no, that makes more sense.” Ash said, following with the group that was more comfortable walking with James now and not just stalking him at a safe distance. “How do you provide food?”

  James and Zhu waved to a couple people they could see through the thin window into the kitchen as James held the door of what used to be a bank open for them to escape to the still drizzling night. He’d forgotten about the weather. “We have a teleporter, which we use to bring in supplies. A large amount of what gets eaten here is commercially sourced, because of that infinite money glitch I talked about earlier. But we also grow a lot of food in the area! There’s some beans that are an existential threat to civilization and they taste pretty alright, and also the chanters have a kind of grow-aura, and so if you ever want to see the commons failing to be a tragedy, you can check out the park. One of the more useful jobs down here is actually being a harvester.” He smiled brightly as he came face to face with a group of people waiting for him. “Hey Cam!”

  ”Paladin. One of-“

  ”What are you?” The umbral had flinched back as they’d realized Cam wasn’t human.

  Cam looked down at herself with an unimpressed frown. She was currently dressed in the blank grey athletic wear that she’d gotten comfortable with, still too slim to be especially healthy but at least getting a little better now that she was eating, and still having to have her shirts custom modified to fit her fifteen foot scaled ocean-hued wingspan.

  She looked back up. “Good evening.” Cam said curtly. “My name is Cam, these two were attempting to sneak into the species X-III enclosure.” The umbral she was standing slightly behind looked more afraid than ashamed, but only by a little bit.

  ”Ah.” James nodded, a pulse of amusement shared between himself and Zhu. “I don’t envy you guys. It’s really hard to explain to someone that you got caught breaking into a derelict Hooters.”

  ”What do you need an enclosure for?” Terror’s words came out as an aggressive static crackle. “Are you-“

  Cam cut him off without even really trying. “Containing them, obviously.” She said. “Out of every species that someone has at some point mistakenly called a demon, they’re likely the closest in actual behavior. There are local raccoons that are both smarter and friendlier than all of them put together, they constantly attack anyone who brings them food or cleans the enclosure, and no one likes them. But it would be irresponsible to let them loose.” She paused just long enough to let the large umbral start to say something about the situation, probably to complain that they were prioritizing Earth animals over dungeon animals, before continuing. “It would be unfair to the demons, after all. I suspect if they were left to their own devices they would all be dead in a week after picking a fight with a bear.”

  ”I think that is, legitimately, the most I’ve ever heard you say at once.” James said. “And it’s to complain about our honored guests.”

  ”I’m honoring them in my own way.” Cam stated imperiously, refusing to elaborate.

  ”Right. Well.” James cleared his throat as Cam let the two umbral go, their coherent shadow bodies scampering to the side where they joined with the others. He noticed Ash handing over several of the samosas that he’d collected in his tendrils on the way out, the umbral having scoured the appetizers like he was never going to see hot food again. “Thanks for keeping them out of trouble. You two see anything interesting?”

  The umbral that had just confusedly been handed a stuffed pastry by Ash looked at James suddenly. “We were lost.” They said flatly.

  ”He already knows.” Even Terror sounded resigned to the insane casual way James was approaching the situation. “Tell us all. If he gets upset, it just proves he was lying the whole time.” The umbral stated with a slash of a serrated tendril.

  James thought that was a little uncharitable, but he let the umbral answer themself, in slow and stammered warm static. “There are places that have the sensation of being folded.” The umbral said, and James eagerly filed that fact away for later. “But none of them are traps. They use them as… as homes. There are fences and walls around everything, but we did not see anyone try to escape. And… and he wasn’t lying.” It sounded like it stung to admit that part. “There are others. Not our people, but like us. Not human. But… but…” the umbral’s tendrils shook, torn between two views of humanity.

  Looking at James’ face, Terror took a long inhalation of the cold and wet night air. Stepping past James and out from under the overhang around the entrance that everyone else was sheltering in, and tilting his body to face up into the rain, the umbral letting the cold night wash over himself as the others that looked up to him and followed him watched on.

  ”What happens when you lose?” He asked suddenly.

  ”Lose what?” Cam asked quickly, not out of any attempt to steer the conversation, just looking for a tactical detail to work on.

  James found it amusing, but off target. “Everything.” He answered in Terror’s place. “I’m assuming. You mean, what happens when someone breaks this? Breaks us? Takes away the safe and kind world we’re trying to build?”

  ”Yes. I… I want this.” Terror’s static admission saw the rest of the umbral, especially the ones that had been sent to scout, straightening up in surprise. Their upper tendrils stilling, even the bulbed ones that seemed to be in constant motion. Some of them waved to the other umbral. “They want this more. I want to believe you. I want it to be over. I want… I want. More than anything. I would kill anyone and anything in the way of this if it were real.” His limbs unfolded, a flower of shadowy lines and sunbeams through the air showing his outline as he held up a hand to catch the rain. The falling water splattered off of a shape of a body that was as solid as it looked, but shouldn’t have looked solid at all. “But what happens when you lose?”

  While it looked like either Zhu or Cam might have their own answers, James had one that he’d put a hundred restless nights of thinking into. “Then we lose.” He said quietly.

  ”And?”

  ”And that’s it.” He shrugged. “The reason things suck now is because there are people who are willing to use violence to enforce their shitty bigotry and parasitism. This isn’t a shock to you, you know how fucking wretched people can be. And it’s people, not just humans.” James stepped out into the rain, Zhu fluttering his way under James’ clothes to get away from the cold water as his human made a dramatic gesture. “I can tell you that if someone tries to break us, then we’ll resist. I can tell you that if someone uses violence, we’ll defend ourselves. But if we lose?” James shrugged. “It means we’re dead. And it doesn’t change anything.”

  ”I feel like it would change everything.” Terror said, standing side by side with James and finding it strange that he had lost so much of the anger for this one specific human. “It seems that being dead would bother you.”

  ”I plan to live forever.” James said coyly. “But also, it doesn’t change what matters. Slavery is bad and freedom is good. Bigotry is bad and compassion is good. Someone can kill me for saying it, but they can’t make me wrong, and they can’t make it a bad idea to fight for those things, because if I don’t fight, they won’t not kill us all.” James let out a breath that coiled like a steam serpent in the frigid air. “Failing to fight means a loss by default. If I’m going to lose, I’m going to make someone work for it.”

  ”You are so certain in your beliefs. But so are your supposed enemies. The gatekeepers believed we were a threat. And… maybe they were right. I would destroy them all, even now. I understand you. But if you gave me a choice, I would still kill them.”

  James tried to not let himself look hurt, but it stung to hear that admission. Though, maybe it being admitted at all made it better than someone hiding their motivation until it was too late to stop them. ”I believe, yeah, but I can’t really define good. Good is hard. The perfect outcome is near impossible. I try, but doing good is always a matter of making mistakes and being willing to own those mistakes. But I can tell you what evil is, because evil is really simple, and really stupid. Fighting evil isn’t the same as doing good, but holy shit, am I going to fight some evil.”

  ”So if you lose…”

  ”Then the outcome is the same as if I just got out of the way and let it happen.” James said with grim certainty. “So I won’t do that. If we lose, then you and your people are in trouble. So is everyone else that relies on us. So we cannot lose. But if we do, then… whoever picks up the fight after us, I hope they can do better.”

  ”Four.” Terror said suddenly.

  ”Beg pardon?”

  ”You said there are three ways to gain our magic.” He folded his hands back together, smooth arms loosely coming together to reform the core of the umbral’s body as he looked toward James. “There are four. Or at least, one more than you know.”

  James blinked. “Okay?”

  ”Defeating us shakes some of it loose. But there is something else.” The umbral’s thin legs bent as he dropped down to a crouch, or perhaps kneeling pose. James almost stepped back, looking around awkwardly at the motion. “I think this is a foolish, naive vision you have. I think you are going to get a lot of people, including my people, killed. I think you will never prove that humans deserve less than anger from me.” Terror said bluntly. “But I am not the smartest umbral. And I know I am… difficult.”

  ”That’s the same word I was thinking would be the political term!” James said happily.

  ”You are making this difficult.” Terror’s voice might have been amused. “All of that is true. But I will try. I will try it your way. And so you know, I offer you this.” Soft tendrils set down on James’ shoulders. Or, one on his shoulder, one technically on Zhu. Terror, either out of one last attempt to provoke him, or just out of not caring, used the serrated ones that had probably been the reason for the scabbing and itching lacerations on James’ face right now. “I submit. You win this war.”

  James didn’t hesitate. “We win. That’s the whole fucking point. This isn’t a-“

  //Advancement : 1//

  //Choice : Patch Garment, Aloe, Mild Decay Enhancement//

  “-zero sum game oh you mean like that.” He finished, blinking spots out of his eyes. He felt like he’d just blacked out, the world spinning around him as he recovered. “Do I have to choose this now? Normally when these things happen I get locked in a mindscape for a while.”

  ”You are insane.” Terror stated, rising back to his feet. “And yes. Choose soon or it will choose for you.”

  ”Great.” James tried to pick without speaking, and was quickly rewarded with a new thought that scarred its way into his brain. He was certain that this was going to end up, in the long run, being a bad idea. Not because he legitimately thought it was a bad idea now, but just because that was how his first contact with magic always ended up going.

  //Advancement : 1//

  //Patch Garment - 1//

  Terror kept talking as James took stock of the sudden sensation of something like a new ethereal limb growing from nowhere. “This is what makes us most exploitable.” He said, and James realized with a jolt that the umbral was smaller than he had been a moment before. “Losing is one thing. This? This is zero sum. I am telling you now, so that you know. And I am also telling you that if you ever use it against us, or coerce it from a single one of my kind, I will kill you and burn this city to the ground.”

  ”Does it bother you that he sounds like you?” Zhu’s muffled voice called from inside James’ coat.

  ”Shut up.” James poked at the navigator. “Also that’s kind of a weird dungeon-biology thing. So do you have two different sources that get drawn on? The difference in effect on your own bodies is kind of unique.” He made a note of that information, both mental and literal through his skulljacks, and almost the instant he’d internalized the factoid about different ways umbrals could bestow magic onto others, he was somewhere else.

  The classroom had gotten worse since James was last here somehow. He didn’t waste his time, or the ‘teacher’s’. Instead, before the bugs crawling under his desk could make it to his dream state legs, James gave his answer for the next upgrade to his biology Lesson, and snapped back to wakefulness standing in the November rain in a mostly ruined city in Tennessee.

  [Lesson Continues : Biology V 0/12,600, Endurance IV]

  It was like he’d just sucked down a gallon of exercise potion. Breathing was easier. Moving was easier. The bruises and aches were banished, the hitch in his step was gone. What did pain mean to someone who could not just shrug it off, but ignore the consequences of the reasons for that pain, as long as he had something that he was working toward?

  James tried to keep himself under control, but he could feel tears of relief forming as another layer of a lifetime of accumulated damage sloughed off his shoulders. Just a little more in the process of healing, even if it wasn’t really taking away the problems. He tilted his own head back to face up into the rain until he got his composure back.

  Well, now he knew that the umbral’s effects were a kind of biology. Studying dungeon life in general had probably contributed a few hundred points to that Lesson, now that he thought about it. They’d have to contribute thousands more if he ever wanted to level it up again; twelve thousand points was kind of a big ask, the compounding cost of having three Lessons active really kind of fucking him over.

  Out loud, though, he said none of that. “Come on.” James offered a hand to the umbral. “Everyone gather round. I’m going to teleport us back. You can talk to your people, and make an actual group decision tomorrow.” He could feel the exhaustion from not just the day, but the whole week, even if it failed to even scuff the surface of his ability now. “And for those that want it, we can start integrating you into the Order whenever you choose.” He smiled at Terror, genuine joy at having found a path on his face. “You’re not the only one that can give people magic, after all.”

  Honestly, James should have expected that several of the umbral wanted to stay now. It took a minute, after getting out of the rain again, to convince them that it might be seen as a little bit suspicious if he vanished with seven of them and returned with only four.

  Things weren’t fully resolved. Things weren’t cleanly ended. But actually… clean endings sucked. Every time James had been through a clean ending, it had been because too many people had died. And even then, it was still messy because he had to get up and keep going when the sun came up next.

  So he teleported back with a bunch of umbral in tow. And then swapped with a pair from the shield team as they took their own group of less-nervous umbral down for a similar but smoother introduction.

  James’ night was far from over though. He leaned on Alanna for mental support as the two of them spoke to a lot of people. Until night turned to early morning, the thick dark grey clouds blanketing the city of Saskatoon letting up on the sporadic snow, but not leaving.

  They had a conversation with the mayor, who apparently had an actual job to do tomorrow; meetings about funding for road maintenance and park conditions, a dinner with financial donors, a small speech at a primary school assembly, normal mundane things that he had assumed he would be alive for.

  James and Alanna didn’t keep him up long. The Order hadn’t decided what to do with the man, exactly, but whatever Drak Silverson was, he wasn’t blind to the chaos that had come close to consuming his city, and he gave an explanation for his actions that painted him as someone who had meant well, and seen everything spiral out of control very fast.

  The detectives were somehow easier. “Just… do your jobs as normal.” James said. “You should be aware that the umbral are people, and that none of them see you as very trustworthy right now. A lot of them might be moving out of this city, but in the meantime, you’re going to treat them as citizens.”

  ”Respectfully? You aren’t our boss.” Detective Miller told him, still looking stunned at the explosion of violence that had swept past them. “And you really aren’t anyone else’s boss.”

  ”I wasn’t really asking.” James said. “You’re in the know, and Silverson clearly trusts you two. Don’t test me on this.” He finished, letting Alanna silently help guide him to say exactly the right thing for the emotional state of the two detectives.

  They decided not to test him on it. Which James appreciated. Over the next week, a lot of people in this city would be getting debriefings and visits, and a decision was going to be made about how to slowly introduce the umbral to the public sphere. The police were, unfortunately, going to be a part of that. James had already looked into their general record, and it wasn’t the worst, but it was littered with all the problems that modern western police forces had. Still, the Order would work with them if that’s what it took to make progress.

  Tylor and Jubilance are harder to talk to. They both wanted to be involved more closely. Jubilance especially seemed on edge, almost frantic, which was why James made the executive decision to send them both back to the Lair. There was time, now, to sort things out. They’d helped with being guides for their hometown, but right now, they were two people who had been lied to by the gatekeepers and who had been enemies of the umbral for long enough to be known. And having them in the area was just not worth it.

  Ironically, the surviving gatekeepers were a lot easier to talk to, because James didn’t have a conversation with them, just an ultimatum. “You will be placed in custody until it can be decided how to determine the conditions for your release.” James told them. “I’d appreciate it if you cooperate, because we need to know more about the origin of organizations like yours, but you won’t be coerced or interrogated. You will be treated with dignity, and mercy, but you will not be allowed the freedom to harm others.”

  ”You can’t do this.” One of the less injured gatekeepers had told him, like the young man was honestly very surprised that he was facing consequences at all. “We have rights.”

  ”From where?” James asked them with imperious arched eyebrows, his one inhuman eye taking in the smallest of motions on their faces. “You wiped yourselves from all records. No country on this planet claims you as a citizen, and all it took to get the police to let me have you was to remind them that you tried to shoot them. Now, you can take that as a condemnation, because they definitely think I am going to torture you. But the fact stands. As far as the Order of Endless Rooms is concerned, you forfeited your right to free action the moment you started your genocide.” James didn’t bother hiding his disgust. “You’re lucky you got us stopping you, and not people who behave like you.”

  The Order of Endless Rooms didn’t exactly have a prison. But they had some options for how to deal with people they needed contained, and the gatekeepers were taken one by one by the second shield team that was providing an escort. A lot of them needed medical attention. James wasn’t really sorry about that.

  The last couple people he talked to together. The umbral ‘traitor’, whose name ended up just being Mark and catching James really off guard, and the agricorp executive who had stuck around, not wanting to step outside until things were absolutely safe. They were having a conversation when James intruded, and he was a little surprised at just how normal Kinly was treating the inhumanly shaped physical shadow he was talking to.

  Their conversation was short, and to the point. Kinly was clearly disappointed that Mark’s offer of more magic wasn’t one he umbral had the ability to actually enforce, but James made a vague allusion to the Order maybe being able to help out on that front. He knew only cursory things about the older human, but he seemed excited about the mystical in a way that James was pretty sure he could bend toward his own utopian goals, especially given how Kinly was willing to pay basically anything for more spells. So he cultivated a potential contact, and sent the man on his way without any hostility.

  Mark, on the other hand, got sent back to the Lair. Because despite the sharing of information with the other umbral, group attitudes didn’t just change in an evening, and a lot of people still thought that Mark had betrayed their whole species for his own gain. He hadn’t, but that wouldn’t matter if someone thought he had and hurt him for it anyway. So the umbral got to be, for however temporary it was, a refugee in a distant and strange place, along with three others that were working with him that shield team three went out to collect.

  And then… things wound down. There was no moment it was suddenly all over. But there was a time when it was, basically, over.

  There was a lot to do tomorrow. Recovery would be making contact with everyone who’d been part of the umbral captivity program, and spelling things out for them. Townton would be preparing for an influx of a new species on top of all the people who kept adding to its population every week anyway. Spire planned on acting as a liaison with the umbral for at least the next week or two. The Order as a whole would need to have open discussions and general votes on a few different pivotal choices going forward.

  And for some people…

  James and Alanna would be getting some company from home. Just a small group, for their first forays.

  It was important to be safe, and send the best, after all; when the Order gained access to a new dungeon.

  There is a discord! Come hang out with us.

  There is a wiki! It's starting to become helpful.