"King Um'mar ruled Patagonia back in the 300 AD time frame. As he rose to power he demanded larger and larger thrones to show and radiate that power. The problem was they were very valuable, being that they were made from jade and gold. To keep his wealth and power he would simply place them up above his throne room like a private bank. Engineering back then wasn't what it was today though. They lived in grass and mud houses. So the weight was a problem. He was King for ten days before they all fell and killed him after buckling the roof of the hut. The moral: people who live in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones." -Louie Gumba-

  _____

  Alanna didn’t think about the world the same way James did. She could, actually, say that with one hundred percent certainty. She knew, because they’d been the same person before. More than a few times, really; they’d done it last night just as a comfort thing with Anesh, and it actually made her both understand Marlea a little more, and also understand how she didn’t want them to be like Marlea. There was something electric about the closing of distance between people that Alanna valued, more than the persistent state of closeness.

  The point was - and Alanna was self aware that she and James both did this, she just liked to tease her boyfriend for it anyway - was that she didn’t disconnect from the solid actionable world like James did. He wasn’t dumb or anything, but he had narrowed his life into dungeons and magic, and oh god did he love the Lair, and Townton too, and the projects the Order was working on. As an example, James was intellectually aware of how valuable their whole deal with the power company was, but he didn’t really get what it would mean to thousands and thousands of people to wake up one month to a power bill that had lost its extra zeros. He lived in a different world now; he lived in a post-scarcity bubble, where problems were centered around either getting therapy for camracondas or stopping the annihilation of cities, and while he visited Earth, he wasn’t mundane anymore.

  Alanna liked to think she was still pretty mundane. Yeah, she teleported around, and she was bulletproof, and she did love the dungeons. But while James saw magic as a new world to sink into, Alanna saw it as an addition to real life. Neither of them were wrong, they just kind of approached things differently. It was why when they’d gone down to Oklahoma to meet Kiki for the first time, James had been kind of caught off guard by the old school building and the people in it; like he hadn’t really thought he was in a world that had that kind of thing. Alanna knew though. Those sorts of places were getting rarer, but there was a lot to explore on Earth even without magic involved. The mundane wasn’t mystical though; she was never really surprised by what she found, just interested.

  Or so she’d thought. Then Sarah had asked if she wanted to go bowling, and Alanna had to briefly remind herself that bowling both existed, and was a thing that people could just do.

  The bowling alley was loud. A dozen different bright light sources from screens to arcade machines flashed in her peripheral vision. The shouts of casual groups speaking over the music and the screams of a young kid’s birthday party at the other end of the building rose over the music that warred with the clatter of pins. And all of it was normal. Which, Alanna was willing to admit to herself, she just hadn’t been prepared for. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d stepped into a bowling alley, though she must have at some point because there was a faint twinge of recognition in her heart.

  It was both alien and familiar. Not unlike a dungeon, really. And like the first time she’d been in Officium Mundi, Alanna kind of just followed after someone she was romantically invested in and hoped they knew what they were doing.

  By their third game, Alanna had established that Sarah absolutely knew what she was doing, and that this was some form of elaborate revenge for trying to take her girlfriend on morning jogs with herself and Arrush. At first, their companionable conversation had been a comfort that Alanna was happy to slip into. Then it had shifted into an attempt to, in some way, distract Sarah. But by now, with Alanna laughing at her own resignation to complete defeat, it was back to being just fun catching up.

  ”You know!” Alanna said as she and Sarah sat at the metal edged table and waited for the lane to reset itself. “I’m actually kind of surprised you’re here and not… you know.”

  ”What, doing something silly?” Sarah grinned at her as she twirled a nacho in the little paper tray, discarding any cheese on it that wouldn’t survive the trip to her mouth. “Or the other thing?”

  ”She can talk to Clutter.” Alanna’s own snack, a bag of almonds she’d smuggled in, was already gone. Fuel to her body’s competitive need. “You know how half the Order is adopting kids these days? You got in on it early, and your kid is a dimension.”

  Sarah tried to pout, but couldn’t keep from looking like she was really just struggling to not smile. “Maaaaaybe.” She deflected. “But I’m here cause I like you, dummy! And it’s exhausting for Kiki anyway. Talking, I mean. She can only get a sentence or two at a time, and she says it comes through kind of broken up. So I’m giving her a break!”

  ”Ah, the magnanimous boss.” Alanna gave a sage nod as she tried to see if she could taunt her girlfriend into throwing a chip at her. So she could eat it. But Sarah was onto her plan and there was no such luck that Alanna would get a free chip, and then the little nightmare computer the bowling alley used to track games finished resetting their game and told Alanna it was her turn to show off her lack of understanding of object physics. With a heavy heart, but an easy motion, she rose and retrieved her ball, gauged her steps, mistimed somehow, nearly stepped over the line, and hit the singular pin on the far left side. Walking back toward where Sarah was applauding her with complete sincerity, Alanna switched to trying to distract herself. “What about just relationsticking with Kiki? Give her what she needs to keep trying?” She asked before finishing the frame by hitting the exact same now empty spot with her second attempt.

  Sarah offered a high five as they passed, which Alanna halfheartedly returned, somehow still infected by this girl’s enthusiasm for the vibrancy of life. “Oh, I would!” She said as she spun the ball in the return rack with two fingers before carefully hoisting it. “But she’s… paranoid?” Sarah took three precise steps, launched her ball down the smoothed lane with an instinctive amount of spin, and didn’t even watch as she got a strike. Alanna watched, head tilted to look around her girlfriend before returning to stare at her. “Yeah, I know.” Sarah said with a sigh that got swallowed by the building’s ambient noise. “It’s like a real phobia for her; she feels like dungeon stuff, any dungeon stuff, will do something to her if she touches it.”

  Alanna rolled that thought around her head for three more frames where she actually managed to almost get a spare and where she tried to not think about the relative scores. “Isn’t that what she wants?” She asked Sarah. “She came to us to…” Alanna dropped her voice as a group sat down at the lane next to theirs. “To die.”

  ”I think we’re getting through to her! But also she says it would be worse than death. But also she says that about making people nicer so maybe we shouldn’t trust her.” Sarah tapped at her chin as she angled her head upward in consideration.

  Watching her girlfriend act out complex ethical thought, framed by the bowling alley screen playing a little animation that exalted her most recent strike, Alanna couldn’t help but feel her heart skip a beat or two. She took advantage of the upturned head to lean down and steal a kiss, which Sarah eagerly returned with only a little blush on her face.

  “This is fun.” Alanna commented, more about their date in general than her apparent ineptitude when it came to the human art of bowling. “Sorry I’ve been kinda sporadic lately. This is like the third time we’ve tried to date this month and the first one that worked.”

  Sarah shrugged as she leaned into Alanna. “I knew what I was getting into! You’ve always been like this. It’s not sporadic, you big nerd, it’s that you care so much that you can always find something to get invested in. Or someone!” She smiled up at her girlfriend. “It does still feel a little wrong to say it, because we grew up in a world that teaches us some bad habits, but it’s nice to not be the only person you’re relying on for love.” She said, with the kind of uncertain tone that made Alanna nervous for a second before Sarah continued. “I really love you. I think you’re kind and wonderful and my heart stops when you do that thing with your fingernails on my neck. But part of why I love you is that you have so much going on. You’re ambitious for solving problems like I’m ambitious for friendship! And that’s great! But if I told you… if I told you to stop… then you’d say no, or worse, you’d say yes, and you wouldn’t be the girl I love.”

  “I do feel guilty about that.” Alanna admitted, hoping that Sarah wouldn’t notice it was Alanna’s frame for a minute so that part of her ego could recover from the repeat blows. “I mean, I’m… faking it, mostly? James has thought all this out, he’s poly. I’m just along for the ride. And I worry that you’re the only one who only has one person to rely on.”

  “Bah!” Sarah exclaimed. “I’m fine, Alanna!” She leaned back, using the half-hug to support herself as she looked up at the screen. “Oh hey, it’s your turn!”

  ”Oh good.” Alanna deadpanned. “Our love isn’t coerced but my bowling skills sure are.” She still felt buoyed as Sarah cheered her on, offering helpful advice on how to turn her arm as she swung it forward like an off-center pendulum. The worst part was, Alanna could feel herself getting better at this, and she was trying really hard to not like it. “What if you need me though?” Alanna asked as she walked back past Sarah from scoring a respectable eight pin split. “I mean… I guess there’s not much of a conflict. Either of the guys would just tell me to prioritize you. But… it only works because of who we are, you know?”

  Sarah laughed. “Not everything has to be an all-applicable system!” She told Alanna. “Sometimes it’s okay for something to work for us because we made it work. We aren’t living other people’s lives, just ours!” She stepped up to the lane and smoothly brought her arm around like a much better pendulum, joints flexing like a machine designed for one single thing. The sound of her fifth strike clattering behind her as she turned back to Alanna. “James knows! That’s why the Order is laid out to grow with chaos instead of suffer for it.”

  “Why the hell are you so good at this?” Alanna finally asked as she stood and went to pick up her ball, preparing herself mentally to hit three pins and then the gutter.

  “Bowling or emotional processing? Wait! The answer is the same! A lot of practice with a lot of different people!”

  Alanna took a deep breath as she centered herself, holding the fifteen pound orb in front of her face like she could somehow stare it into obedience. “Can we go on a delve for our next date? Like… wanna go to the Verdigris? You can make friends with a scarecrow? I can stop embarrassing myself? I promise I won’t let us get eaten by anything.”

  Gigging to herself loudly enough to be heard over the dings of a whole birthday party let loose to play on the pinball machines and the group next to them drunkenly cheering as their friend nearly threw a ball into someone else’s lane, Sarah stepped around behind Alanna and set her fingers on the back of Alanna’s hand. “Okay, like this.” She gave a gentle motion, and pulled Alanna’s arm into position. “Elbow here. Lean like this.” A warm hand against Alanna’s back had nowhere near enough force to actually make her move, and yet, her body shifted almost automatically. “And make sure to extend all the way when you throw. Don’t worry about spin or anything, just keep your eyes between the front pins for now, okay?”

  Alanna didn’t instantly get miraculously better. For all that Sarah was good at this, she wasn’t capable of filling the role of a skill orb yet. But she did at least hit the pins.

  And, she’d admit, it was pleasant to just be normal for a bit. To not be a responder or a delver or anything other than someone out with her girlfriend to eat bowling alley snacks and get absolutely dumpstered in terms of final scores. The mundane world still existed for Alanna, and she didn’t need a special occasion to visit.

  Even if her magic did mean that she always had perfect grip on the bowling ball.

  _____

  Tino had only been with the Order of Endless Rooms for a short time, and he wasn’t actually sure what the heck he was doing here. The group he’d been hired with had, collectively, been told that their first few months would be for messing around, and he’d heard that and assumed it was a total lie. Well, what they’d actually said was that it was for learning and exploring options. But that was the kind of thing corporations said when you got hired when what they meant was that you had two days to get good at the job before they fired you.

  But the Order meant it. Maybe it was okay for them because they were a real life adventuring guild. Tino wasn’t sure, exactly. But they were handing out magic like candy, and there were a ton of real options for him, so he figured he’d stick around. Because what kind of moron wouldn’t?

  The answer was three of the people in the group he’d been hired in. One of them had only gotten halfway into his welcome package. Another had felt like the Order was creepy, and left for personal reasons. The last one, Tino didn’t know; despite having a few training and introduction sessions together, it was easy enough to lose track of one person in the building. He’d just heard about it after the fact. Personal reasons maybe. Or maybe he was a secret asshole; Tino lived for drama, so he was happy to speculate in his own head while he worked.

  That work had sort of settled, for now. He’d rotated through making food for people - a thing he’d known nothing about and had to learn from scratch - to helping with distributing the repaired cars from Townton to people who needed them - something he felt he already had the general aptitude for - to a short lived shift in medical as a nurse - he was given orbs for that, and could have had .mems too if he’d wanted, but the fluids had gotten to him - to a job as a culture coach for new camracondas and sometimes others too - surprisingly, he’d gotten some weird orbs for that too. That last one was where he’d met Caller-Of-Midnight, a week before ever moving to the allocation counter, where he’d met the camraconda again.

  And that was where he’d landed for now. Maybe he’d change later; being able to just pick a new job to try was empowering. But for the time, being trusted with a priceless amount of magical wealth and then handing it to people who asked nicely and had points in their account felt… normal. Like it was just the sort of thing that happened, and he was comfortable with it.

  The job wasn’t just sitting at a counter all day though. He did have other stuff to do that required him off his ass. Stuff like today’s task, which involved collecting, sorting, labeling, and then hauling off a bunch of random magic items from the open briefing warehouse that delve teams tended to end their nights in from there to the basement they were needed in.

  Tino liked this part of the job. He was like Santa Claus but for Researchers.

  ”Alright you nerds!” He announced as he wheeled the flat push cart into the central room in the main Research basement. Everyone who was getting a delivery was already here, because he’d learned weeks ago that if he just messaged them, they’d show up in a group and Tino didn’t have to track individual people down. It also made it a bit of an event.

  ”You’re one of us too though.” A camraconda responded to Tino’s announcement.

  ”And does that not make me qualified to speak on if you are, all of you, nerds?” Tino boisterously demanded with a rolling shrug of his wide shoulders.

  A ratroach sitting at the closest desk and typing away at the laptop sighed in a very put upon way. “Can we have our deliveries, or is this going to be a production?” Reed asked.

  Tino nodded as he grabbed the first box off the cart and checked it. He was sort of aware that Reed was a ratroach now, which meant that there was a ratroach in Reed’s body somewhere? Or maybe their terms for species broke down when more than one of those species could talk. There was going to be more stuff like that. More confusion, more weirdness, more magic. Delves were getting back on track, so the weirdness fountain was in full operation, and Tino was here for it.

  “Alright, alright, keep your… pants?… on.” He didn’t check if the ratroach was wearing pants. “First thing! Got a box here for John! Sounds and feels like eight pounds of pens!”

  John rose from the spinning desk chair he’d claimed with a groan, shaking his head at the cheers and applause of the rest of the Researchers around him as he plodded forward with his head down. “Thanks.” He grumbled as he took the box from Tino.

  This was something Tino had come to expect. They were just like this. He didn’t know why. “Cool man, enjoy. Next up, got a couple new spellbooks?”

  ”Ooh, what dungeon?” Chevoy’s voice called from somewhere in the shellaxy pen.

  Tino looked at the box he’d been given, not actually certain. As a joke, he held it up to his ear and shook the thing, and was surprised to hear a metallic rattling inside of it. “Garden.” He said confidently.

  ”Damn.” Chevoy’s reply came back, though no one questioned his apparent ability to hear spellbooks. “Those are for Momo.”

  ”Is Momo here?” Tino felt like he knew the answer.

  Voice-And-Touch answered, the dull blue camraconda wound back on himself as he waited with the others. “She is away today. I take to her work space for her.”

  Reed spoke up as Tino handed the box over and the camraconda unhinged his jaw to carefully grip it with brass pen tip fangs. “If anyone wants to test those, they’re from the last delve, and we have no idea what they do. We have some coins in there too, which are easiest to figure out if anyone doesn’t have a spell level.”

  Tino pressed on, taking the next thing off his cart, which was a clear plastic carrier. “I’veeeee got an iLipede?” He asked.

  ”Oh that’s mine.” Reed extended one of his new body’s extra arms and gently set the case on the desk next to his laptop. “Door’s team found them, they’re another identification one, just… slower. And weirder.”

  ”They’re all weirder!” A mostly human voice shouted from across the room at Reed.

  “Alright alright let me get through this!” Tino stopped their shouting mid-word. “I’ve got a thing for Anesh? Is Anesh here or is everyone just here today to heckle?”

  ”I’m here, I’m here.” Anesh slipped between the people standing in a semicircle. “Is this my laser?”

  ”Your… what? No.” Tino didn’t want to carry a laser down here; actual laboratory lasers were huge and heavy. “It’s Winter’s Climb stuff. That’s what the box says anyway.”

  ”Oh.” Anesh frowned. “I mean, sure. This is really more Paper-And-Words’ project at this point. Paper, you want this in the wand lab?”

  The camraconda poked his head around the pillar he was ‘leaning’ on. “Please. What is the suck threshold?”

  ”The what.” Reed’s voice had an unintended little chitter attached to it, which he seemed really self conscious about.

  Paper-And-Words clarified without seeming to notice or care. “The point beyond which I am allowed to break them for the much more interesting storm orbs.”

  ”Don’t break the wands!” Anesh stepped back, pulling the long flat cardboard box against his side.

  ”We need more orbs.” Paper-And-Words continued calmly. “And no one is ever going to use the sock. Let me destroy the sock, Anesh.” Tino didn’t even bother trying to get things back under control, he just set a heavy black plastic case in front of Paper-And-Words as the camraconda and the human argued, cutting off whatever was being said. “-and it would…! What is this?”

  ”Storm orbs. Forty of them, copied just for you.” Tino said. “Happy?”

  ”Oh. Yes.” Paper-And-Words ceased conflict right away as soon as Tino let go of the container for the copied orbs.

  Tino gave a deep laugh as he plodded back to the cart. “Okay, I know there’s more of you than there are packages here. Davis? Davis, you around? I’ve got your pots.” A box got handed off. “Is there a Jacob or an Emm here? There’s a bunch of USB sticks? Alright here ya go. Next up… Peng? Or mister Peng? Sorry, you’ve got some computer hardware, here, careful with this. And then Nik, just for you, a pile of sticky notes.” The last box was a flimsy little cardboard thing that Nik still took with a beaming grin.

  ”Yessss. Gonna cause problems with these.” He said

  ”…should I not give these to him?” Tino asked the room openly, only half joking. “This seems bad.”

  ”Oh come on!” Nik laughed, scratching at the back of his head with the thin green glove clinging tightly to his hand. “It’s not that bad, they just heal damage.”

  Reed’s misshapen and mostly insectile head snapped around so fast Tino was worried he might have just broken his own neck. “We have healing potions now? Finally?!”

  ”Ah… no.” Nik didn’t let the murmur of excitement in the room last long. “We have sticky notes that fill injuries with… uh… paper. Specifically with more sticky note. They’re not… perfect…”

  ”Wow that sounds horrible.” John commented from where he was already working through his box of pens. “Tino don’t give it to him. Give them to me, I promise no one will ever get filled with paper.”

  “Let me have my sticky notes! I’ve gotta figure out if they’re actually useful, and if they are, it might save your life someday.” Nik said, suddenly serious. “Thanks.” He added calmly as Tino handed over the box.

  And that was mostly it for today. Except, of course, for a lingering question. “Hey, uh…” Chevoy pointed as she rolled to her feet from where she’d been laying under a desk in the shellaxy pen. “What’s that one?”

  Tino looked at the sealed wooden crate the sized of a coffee table marked with hazard labels. “Coffee table.” He said. “Maybe Underburbs infected. Or… altered? Messed up? You guys come up with the terminology. Point is, we’ve got a bunch of these, and someone apparently has a job to move them all down from where they got teleported in to the quarantine storage here in your slice of the Lair.”

  ”…is that someone you?” Reed asked.

  ”Yup! So I’m gonna need alllllll of this space clear, so I can spend the next six hours wheeling furniture that might kill you past your desks!”

  ”Is this revenge for something?” Nik asked, hand raised in the air.

  Tino shrugged. “Probably!”

  ”Do… do you want help?” John asked.

  ”Oh goddess bless yes.” Tino’s bold face dissolved as someone actually offered.

  The next three hours weren’t too bad. And really, it wasn’t enough to make him want to change jobs anyway; sometimes moving a few heavy things was kind of the least onerous task he’d ever had. But… well, there was something fun about being able to just pick up and check out something or somewhere else in this weird organization.

  There was always more to do in Townton, maybe Tino would try that next.

  _____

  James walked into the paladin security briefing slightly late, which was… concerning.

  The last time he’d done this, everyone had been exactly on time, because Planner’s anxiety pushed him to rearrange schedules to polished perfection. And that, in and of itself, was a little worrying. James was aware that Planner was interpreting some pretty vague stuff as schedule requests, and finding yourself unable to miss events was, just a little bit, terrifying. But he also knew that the assignment had fundamentally good intentions, and while Planner did need some therapy of his own, that didn’t mean he was evil or anything.

  And now, finding himself late because Planner was still recovering from having parts of his manifested self exploded during the Underburbs attack, James felt less relieved that he was in control of his own timing and more concerned that someone in the Order was hurting.

  He wasn’t the last person to arrive, having spotted Spire-Cast-Behind frantically slithering around the corner down the ordinary office building hallway. James had seen her move, both casually and in training and most recently in the actual do or die situation of the Underburbs. But it still looked so weird just how fast camracondas could move. Either way, she’d catch up by the time he’d gotten his own seat in the meeting room.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The others were already in attendance. Simon was reading something on his phone, Jim was having either a conversation or an argument with Knife-In-Fangs about something sports related, and Alex was coercing an embarrassed Ishah into showing off his suit. “I’m here.” James announced as he took one of the seats on the paladin side where there was already a stack of printouts for him. “Spire’s almost h- oh Spire’s here!” He changed his comment as the camraconda, making rapid hissing gasps in exertion, burst through the door behind him. “HI Spire.”

  ”Apologies for being late. I did not know this was an option.” The camraconda told the room.

  “There’s something going around lately.” Jim said, though James couldn’t tell if it was in agreement or not. The man didn’t look offended though, he just idly ran his knuckles across his beard stubble as he got to his feet and clicked on the projector. “We ready to get going here? Not spend all day in this room?” That he said like he was annoyed, but it was hard to tell what he was annoyed at. The concept of rooms, maybe? Or just holistically irate.

  ”Is Nate joining us this time?” James asked curiously, looking over at the door as the absence registered to him.

  Knife-In-Fangs twisted his body, lens eye irising in a blink. “He is not. He is otherwise occupied.”

  ”The last time someone said that to me, Nate was busy learning how to use a sword.” James pointed out.

  The camraconda gave a bobbing nod back in reply. “Yes.” He said, and then waited, the expectant silence stretching out. “He is not doing that this time.” Knife-In-Fangs eventually added.

  Alex broke the silence on their side of the room. ”Cool. That’s super reassuring.” She said with a sigh that James found amusingly familiar. “The first thing’s the Underburbs, right?”

  ”Right.” Jim nodded once, preferring to use the tablet screen on his arm over a skulljack to check his notes as he started his presentation. “You’ve all been through the debriefings, so you should be mostly caught up. Short story, we’re in official contact with FEMA, for as long as they exist as an organization. The locals that we interacted with seem to remember us alright, but documentation is getting shredded if it’s actually in the city, and that doesn’t seem related to the ‘Burbs. Search and rescue is wrapped up, and we’re fairly confident there’s nothing left alive that’s a threat, but there’s no way to be sure there. Look forward to learning there’s a new pandemic.” He clicked to a different slide on his powerpoint presentation. “What we want right now is…” Jim trailed off as he noticed Simon and Alex both had hands in the air. “What?”

  ”Sorry, why is FEMA going away?” Alex questioned. “They do the hurricane relief stuff, right? Oh no, is this another thing where I’m gonna learn a government agency is actually super racist? Or being erased from collective memory? I don’t know which one is worse.”

  ”Same question.” Simon echoed.

  Jim frowned at them for wasting time. ”Because current US polls put Hamdon as the leading presidential candidate, and the man’s main promise is cutting agencies like FEMA.”

  James frowned himself, looking down at the rectangular table in front of him. “I do… not remember that name. Wait, there’s seriously a guy named ham done running for president?”

  ”Yes. Don’t be a dick about people’s names.”

  ”Fair, I should be better about that. Is this an antimeme thing?”

  ”No.” Jim’s exasperation was climbing by the second. “How are you not keeping up on this?”

  Simon looked at the others and shrugged. “I’ve mostly been focusing my political news on South America?” He offered. The others didn’t even bother answering; they’d been doing dungeon delves. Or they were Alex, who was always two months behind on political news. “Is that… in our wheelhouse at all?”

  ”Are you asking me if we should influence a national election?” Jim asked with a blunt lack of humor.

  ”Yyyyyes?” Simon ventured.

  Ishah spoke up for the first time, the ratroach speaking like he knew exactly how much this annoyed the human up there with him. “I think we s-shouldn’t. But w-we should t-talk to the candidates personally. Personal seems to avoid memeplexes more often.” He gave Jim a look with the eyes on that side of his head. “Also J-Jim says Hamdon is bad anyway.”

  ”My personal opinions on the man have nothing to do with the Underburbs.” Jim said flatly. “Moving on from election interference. We’re calling it on our activities in Springfield, but we want one of you working with the Rogues on tracking down the human part of the Underburbs. That team will be tasked with figuring out where the next hit comes from, how the dungeon has human allies at all, and also where they live so we can capture or kill them.”

  James raised his hand in the air for a real question. “Ishah, you found the Underburbs location the first time with some kind of ground scan, right? Like the spatial deformation of the dungeon registered on records? Any chance we can use that to see if it’s actually left, and also find where it’s going next?”

  Ishah stood, opal chitin fingers brushing the navy blue of his suit jacket as he moved up next to Jim to answer the more complex question. “It w-would work.” The ratroach nodded. “I don’t think the d-dungeon knows we can see it that way, so it doesn’t hide. But not everywhere uses that or Kh-keeps records. Mostly places with earthquake researchers. We can get small ground penetrating radar ourselves, but it… it isn’t big enough to see the Underburbs outlines.”

  ”Hm.” James idly glanced at Spire. “Well… we can narrow it down to it seeming to specifically target suburbs, right? How much territory is that?”

  Ishah whispered something to the starfish-esque infomorph manifested behind his neck and head like a blue-white halo. After talking to Moon for a second, he turned back to James. “Two million square miles.”

  ”Ah. So no then.”

  ”No to what?” Ishah’s initial reaction to confusion was panic, but he slammed that down quickly to just ask James what the hell he was talking about.

  ”Any of my ideas.” James said. “That’s an absurd amount, clearly I didn’t understand the scale of the problem. How are we supposed to find the delvers?!”

  Jim cut in again. “The Rogues have a couple leads, we mostly want a paladin to work with them for any fights they get into.”

  ”That seems… like something we should be on call for, not directly assigned to?” Simon ventured. “I mean that’s a long term thing, and none of us are specialized as investigators. Which… actually… might be a good reason for this I guess. Get some practice in.”

  ”Okay, that’s on the list.” James said. “What next?”

  Knife-In-Fangs spoke up. “Montana.” He said, taking Jim’s place as the two switched. “Not to make us responsible for the whole United States of America, but we would like to know where the fuck the thing Spire-Cast-Behind found came from.”

  He stopped talking, and it took a second for everyone to realize that was all he had to say. “And?” Alex asked.

  ”No, that is it.” Knife-In-Fangs said. “The wyrm was discovered near Ophiem, Montana. Which is also where we killed it. But its strong antimemetic effect even while dead means we continually forget to follow up on that. This is me cutting that off. Someone look into that. Next item.” He slithered back to the basket seat he was using while Jim stood back up.

  ”Right.” The human sighed at his notes. “Keeping up with the theme that too much of this place is based on who’s dating who… who wants to check out Marcus’s coffee date?”

  ”Beg your pardon?” Spire-Cast-Behind asked. “Are we vetting romantic choices now? I have a problem with this.”

  James leaned over to whisper at her conspiratorially. “Are you dating someone now? Cause I don’t want to vet them or anything but I’m really curious.”

  ”I have a new problem.” Spire-Cast-Behind loudly announced.

  Scowling at the group, Jim tried to take control of the conversation. “Marcus is one of our full time Response dispatchers. A week or two ago, Planner… made sure he made it to a date he had ‘scheduled’. It just so happens that was through some kind of hippie dream quest, and the chick on the other end is a delver who contacted us once but gave no details.” A click of a remote put the details on the projection for them to see. “Girl’s name is Jubilance, so she’ll fucking fit right in here. She claims she doesn’t work alone, and she’s willing to meet, but no one has made that happen yet. So someone get on that.”

  ”Why us and not anyone who is available?” Spire asked with a whir of her lens widening. “Why not simply send Marcus?”

  ”Because she’s a delver with unknown i-ideological takes.” Ishah chimed in. “And… all of you survive things th-that other people wouldn’t.”

  ”Understood.” Spire-Cast-Behind hissed placidly as she spoke. That was actually something she’d been having a hard time crystallizing into a thought lately, but Ishah spelled it out quite nicely. Paladins weren’t meant to be superior, they were just meant to survive what others couldn’t. Which let them go first, and lead the way. That was nice. She was going to remember that.

  Jim cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. “Moving on, we’ve also got Alex’s nightmare zones.”

  ”Hi. Sorry ‘bout that.” Alex apologized as if she had made the stupid things.

  Ignoring that, Jim pressed on. ”Right. So if anyone wants to handle that, it’s on the list. Same as tracking local memeplexes since we know what they look like now. No idea how to find them, but…”

  ”Oh! Navigator support can do it.” James offered, cutting in. “Sorry, uh, navigators can see where you’ll never go, and take you there. I think any of them can.”

  ”Got it.” Jim made a note. “Tell people sooner next time.”

  Alex cleared her throat in a much less aggressive way than Jim kept doing. “Sorry, uh, shouldn’t the memeplexes be a scout team job? Not that we can’t do it, but especially if they’re potential dungeon sites…”

  ”It’s a low commitment job.” Simon pointed out with a shrug. “Having one of us on something like that, so we’re ’on call’ for anything that comes up, is probably a good idea, right?”

  ”Fair.” Alex agreed slowly. “I feel like I didn’t actually know what I was signing up for with this job.”

  Simon coughed out a laugh, as on the other side of their table, Spire suddenly found herself hissing uncontrollably. “Yeah, uh… none of us signed up, James press ganged us, remember?”

  “I did not! You said yes!”

  ”Alright, all of you shut up.” Jim grunted, annoyed at the waste of time. “Knife, get back up here and tell them about the terrorists.”

  Knife-In-Fangs moved up, taking skulljack control of the presentation and switching smoothly to a set of bullet points and aerial photos as he started talking. “Priority Earth continues to be real and mostly inactive.” He said. “Ongoing investigations have uncovered further trace evidence of a memetic attack in their history, but no concrete details, for obvious reasons.” He paused and stared at the paladins for effect. “Because memetics.” He added.

  ”I kinda wish we lived in a world where the biggest threat to personal freedom was nuclear weapons.” James muttered, not interrupting, just complaining to himself and getting a snicker from Alex.

  Knife-In-Fangs continued. “Malcom McHarn, former FBI sub-director, is currently in the relevant region of Alaska with something that looks like a team.” Four pictures up on the board, one of them agent DeKay, who James narrowed his eyes at. “Observation of both this team and Priority Earth has turned up very little. We suspect the Priority are planning another operation soon, due to the buildup of material and apparent attempts at recruiting. But no information has surfaced about their methods, ideology, or magic.”

  ”And by operation, you mean murder.” Jim pointed out.

  Knife-In-Fangs made a chirp from somewhere in his throat. “I understand the desire to kill the individuals causing problems. Their target selection and methodology is problematic however.” He said. “We could do what they are doing, more effective and less deadly, in about a week. They are bad at this.” He hissed out in exasperation. “Which is why someone needs to go actually resolve this decisively. We cannot have them sitting there waiting to be a fucking tool for a pillar again.” The camraconda had been one of the Rogues who was actually in New York when the pillars were scrapping with each other there for some unknown reason, and the interference of Priority Earth had nearly killed at least one of his comrades. He didn’t like them much, even if he could comprehend the why of their actions.

  “Speaking of pillars.” Jim jerked a nod at Ishah, the ratroach only flinching slightly at the human’s sharp gesture.

  ”Ah.” Ishah traded places with Knife-In-Fangs. “Yes. W-we know not much. But! Kiki’s discovery has led to more understanding. The pillars are not a species but a group, and a fractured one too. Th-they know each other, worked together at some point, but are not working together now.” His lower hands wove fingers together behind his back as he started pacing, Ishah talking like this was something he’d done a lot of thinking on already. “There might be more, like them. Like Kiki. Alone, maybe afraid, maybe we can find them and help them.” He looked up quickly at the paladins. “But they might be dangerous. Kiki might be a… a fluke.”

  ”Yeah, it’s hard to guess what someone will be like, even if we know their Name.” James agreed.

  ”It would be easier if they announced themselves.” Alex said with fake cheeriness. “Like, it sucks that Lloyd is the only one who strolled in and went ‘Hello, I am insert name here’.” She affected the deepest and manliest voice she could, which was pretty good, as far as James measured it.

  Ishah chittered a small laugh before he continued. “We need to know more about the pillars, too. As a group. Which is h-h-h… difficult, because all of them can teleport somehow.” He added, flushing slightly in frustration at his own stumbling over a word. “But we have a few leads.”

  ”Did we ever find the people working with the Chain Breaker?” James asked.

  ”Yes. That is one of the leads.” Ishah’s shoulder’s slumped as he looked at James with sorrow that his point was being co-opted. James ducked his head, motioning for Ishah to go on, and the ratroach recovered quickly. “We found them jussst before the Underburbs happened. I have addresses and names for either the people or their families.”

  ”I wanted to talk to them anyway.” James said. “Get me that info, I’ll follow up on that part at least.”

  Ishah nodded, and looked to Knife-In-Fangs, who was already compiling the list to send to James before the meeting even ended. “Th-the other lead is Camille. Or Camilles?” Ishah shrugged, his infomorph friend twirling behind his head. “The others that aren’t Cam are awake more now. We can try asking them for information. Learning where they came from would let us know where the Line is sometimes. Which is good?” Ishah sounded almost uncertain. Though it was hard to blame him. Pillars were terrifying, and following one around sounded like a horrible idea. “We also think we found a place in Texas that Blitzkrieg was at. Wh-where it… killed people. And… and there was the chemical plant that it was doing something with that we can investigate now that the Wolfpack isn’t watching.”

  ”Oh, good point. We kinda forgot about that in the wake of a million other dungeons.” James hummed. “Okay, the list is getting kinda long. There isn’t too much else is there?”

  ”Shipping disruptions.” Knife-In-Fangs added rapidly.

  ”God dammit.” Simon wanted to hit James. “Don’t say shit like that.”

  James refrained from rolling his eyes. “I don’t think that actually does anything, I think that’s just how our lives are. Shipping you say?”

  ”A statistically unlikely number of oceanic vessels, including a number of cargo ships which is how we found this, have gone missing lately. This is, technically, good for us, as it lets us leverage our unique form of transportation even better.” Knife-In-Fangs paused, then leaned his flexible body back to stare up at the ceiling. “But it is also terrifying, so it’s an option.”

  “And then we’ve got our last big problem, which is still a problem, just one that’s been keeping its head down.” Jim looked up at the projection on the shaded wall, and flicked to the last part of their collective presentation, before turning back to the group with his default unhappy frown. “Mormons.”

  ”I don’t disagree, but what specifically are we talking about?” James asked.

  Jim didn’t even smirk at the comment. “It’s a collection of fuckups.” He said. “Our treaty with them involves us giving them bureaucratic help with their stupid ark project, and they’re happy to take that. But it lets Recovery get a look behind the scenes, and in every other part of their faction, things are a mess.”

  ”Are allies supposed to spy on each other?” Spire-Cast-Behind asked.

  The toe of Simon’s shoe tapped into the table leg with a steady beat as he answered before Jim could. “We’re not allies.” He told his camraconda companion. “We have something they want, and all they need to do to get it is be slightly less evil. It’s a win win.”

  ”Yeah, since they confirmed for us that the dream potion lets people interact while in their stasis thing, they’re asking for a lot of it.” Jim confirmed. “Anyway, of course we’re spying on them, because they keep lying to us. They’re definitely still trying to find ways to abuse the mind control spell, and they’re still using the threat of demons to scare some of their people into toeing the line.”

  ”How about the ark project itself?” Simon asked.

  ”Progressing.” Knife-In-Fangs answered. “They are still loading people in. The ones running it believe the end times are near. So they are motivated.”

  ”Good for them.” Simon grumbled. “But they’re being honest?”

  ”Shockingly yes.” Jim didn’t sound that shocked, but he never really did anyway. “Probably because at least a chunk of them are the oily shapeshifters. Some of them highly placed, we think. They don’t trust us either, and at least a few of them are true believers.” He checked his tablet. “Yeah, you’ve got our list of names for that in your little packet. Page twelve. Their delving plans are also faltering, by the way. Ishah?”

  The ratroach snapped to attention. “Yes! Th-they have a few experienced delvers, but most of their strength was… was… the children. And we cut that out from under them.” He sounded angrily happy about that part. “The old ones are also the ones using captive dungeon creations to fight, I think.” For that, he just sounded angry. “Oh, they did separate the children by dungeon. Their old delvers would know about the combinations, and hid that, but none of the lost that we took in would have known except for the ones breaking the rules. And there ah-are two antimemes on it anyway.”

  ”Dicks.” Simon grunted.

  James splayed his hands out on the table. “Okay, now hang on.” He laughed. “These guys suck out loud, but let’s not hold that against them. We’d do the same thing. And besides, the whole… thing about what you can and can’t share about dungeons is so wildly inconsistent.”

  “Fair enough.” Simon conceded. “The Office is mean as hell, but at least we can talk about it. No one’s a big enough dick to shut that down.”

  ”Haha! Right! No one would do that!” James looked away, biting down on his lip as Simon and Alex stared at him.

  Jim, standing in place and waiting for the bullshitting to stop, just started talking again when he had an opening. “So we can try recruiting from their shifter population to undermine their power, and maybe find out more about their copying magic. Also we should be trying to identify targets that have active Bell By Midnight captives.”

  ”For some,” Knife-In-Fangs opined, “it is acceptable. Animal level intelligence would not be especially harmed by the spell. But they are not using it for that. They are using it for sophont life, because it is convenient for them. They are evil, and we should stop them. Oh, we should also determine - without testing - if killing a caster releases their captive.”

  James almost let out a low yikes at that, but… well…

  They were keeping slave soldiers.

  Something Arrush had told him in Utah came back to him. A thought that had been circling in his brain more and more lately. Not the exact words, but the shape of the idea. The feeling of long buried embers of rage finally being given oxygen again in the ratroach’s voice.

  If a dungeon did to me what they were doing to them, you would have started killing by now.

  “Okay.” James said instead of anything else. “What do we prioritize, and how do we split it? Ishah?” The ratroach looked like he had an opinion already.

  Which was actually the point of having dissenting voices in this briefing. Ishah just got to go first because James could see him fidgeting, no amount of training and professionalism making up for the fact that the ratroach simply did not have a lot of experience sitting still for longer meetings. Nor did he want to gain it. “The crocamaws should be the highest priority.” He opened with. “And the survivors of the Chain Breaker.” He flatly and patiently ignored Jim’s unhappy grunt at that one. “You’re right that we have scouts for the memeplexes. Th-the unknown is scarier than the humans with guns, too. So Montana, and the oceans next. Everything else… we can manage as the Order. I want half of you to not… not be… uh… committed to anything. For when something goes wrong.”

  ”I have different thoughts, but I’m with him on the when part at the end.” Jim said from his seat. “Priority Earth should be something we check off. One way or another, we shouldn’t just be letting them sit there, they blew up multiple people’s offices for Christ’s sake. I don’t care if you want to talk to them, but I’m tired of them being at our back and eating up resources, especially since they still have a Wolfpack unit with them somehow.” He pointedly didn’t look at his nonhuman cohorts as he continued. “I don’t think the Mormons are a high priority. They might be unethical, but they’re stable, and if we keep relations with them nominal, we can learn more than if we go back to interfering. I’d rather see you lot hunting down anything on the pillars, especially their history. You didn’t see them at the Underburbs, but they were there, and next time we might get ones that aren’t willing to just walk away. The other stuff, the monster hunts and looking for even more dungeons, put that on the back burner. Offload it to the AI or the scout groups or whatever bullshit we have. Go find real threats and cause problems for them before they find us.”

  ”Oh shit, the AI is working?” James perked up, and got ignored.

  Knife-In-Fangs had a fundamental problem with some of that, and decided to say it openly. “What my asshole colleague means is that we should ignore the people suffering if it is convenient for us.” He said, earning a scowl from Jim, but no verbal protest. “Which is, of course, wrong. Securing the crocamaw prisoners is an imperative. But after that, I think you all would be at your best finding new problems. Very little requires you to come to a conclusion, it would just be helpful. But there is more out there that we don’t know about. I would rather see paladins aware of security concerns and ready to react, but spending your time making allies and eliminating problems before they find us. But also yes, please deal with Priority Earth. Even if you just ask them how they made the giant hypnosis plant. Everyone wants to know what it is.”

  The four paladins shifted to talk amongst themselves. Not that they weren’t open to input, but the whole point was to be self-directed. “I already wanted to follow up on the Chain Breaker’s victims.” James said. “So I can do a little digging while I handle that, and then… honestly probably pivot to Alaska? I feel bad for McHarn, if he got mindfucked, and if DeKay is there… things are not gonna get smoother with her around. I can maybe interfere, and at the very least I do agree it’s time to make more proactive contact with Priority Earth, even if I’m not gonna say ‘check off’ like they’re an item on my grocery list.”

  ”I’m fine with that.” Simon said. “Anyone mind if I go poke my nose in on the Mormons?”

  ”…No, but any reason?”

  ”Yeah. James was… the other one, my James… was raised in the church. I know all the shibboleths, and I might be able to make more progress with less punching.” He shrugged.

  Alex raised her eyebrows. “No shit? I had no idea.”

  “He and-or I don’t like to talk about it. Also we don’t hang out.”

  ”We should hang out sometime.” Alex commented. “Spire, you want Montana? I think it’s fair to say there’s probably nothing to find, at least not that easily, but I can at least look at the various kaiju problems for patterns. Unless you want?”

  Spire-Cast-Behind hissed out a dire sound. “I do not want.” She stated with her fluid digital voice. “I will meet Marcus’s mystery delver. At least I will be a good test of her initial reaction.”

  ”Sounds good to me.” James said. “That doesn’t cover everything, but… it’s a start. Hey, Ishah is right though. Who’s on call for when things collapse?”

  Alex snorted in a rather undignified way. “All of us. We can teleport.”

  ”…What if you can teleport, but you’re busy saving a cargo ship from a kraken?” Simon asked her with arched eyebrows and a smug grin at his own improvement in flowing with the group’s banter.

  ”Then the kraken better get ready to be someone else’s problem!” Alex declared. “Also it won’t be a kraken, don’t be silly, a submarine would have found that by now. Also, it’s… it’s me and Spire. We’re on call. Cause our things are easier to bail out of, kraken or not.”

  ”Anyone have any complaints?” James asked the side of the room that was presenting them with information.

  Jim shrugged, Knife-In-Fangs inclined his boxy head in acceptance, and Ishah just gave a relieved smile that everyone in the paladin group seemed to understand the prioritization of rescuing captives he’d pushed for. “I think we’re good here.” Jim said, turning off the projector and opening the blinds, letting in streamers of eye-piercing sunlight from the cold afternoon outside. “And hey, we finished almost on time even without Planner.”

  ”We’re learning!” Knife-In-Fangs announced with a cheerful hiss.

  Ishah shook his angular head as he packed up his own notes. He was learning, but what he was learning was that everyone got sidetracked very easily in these meetings, and as much as he had come to cherish the casual voices and laughter of the Order, it was nice when Planner was here to make people pay attention. His patience for long meetings wasn’t quite as good as his ability to engage with more kinetic activities like training sessions or delves.

  He was the last one left as the others filed out of the room, Jim striding out ahead of everyone else to head off to do whatever it was he did all day. Knife-In-Fangs talking with the paladins as they left, planning their first moves and what they’d do for preparations. And then it was just him and Moon in the quiet room.

  Except they weren’t the last ones. “Hey.” James said quietly as he settled into a sitting position on the edge of the table Ishah was clearing for whoever needed this room next. “You alright?”

  ”I…” he hadn’t been expecting that question. “Yes?”

  ”Okay, just checking.” James said, brushing some of his hair out of his face. “You’re… I mean, I don’t wanna be a jerk, but you’re the newest, you know?”

  The ratroach heard the words, and then heard Moon’s processed interpretation of the meaning behind them, his assignment companion helping draw out the intent and structured emotion underlying the sentence. Concern, empathy, compassion, all of these Ishah had recognized and understood, and he was amused to see that his view was mostly matched to Moon’s. But what he hadn’t quite glimpsed was the concern for his concern. James was asking about how he felt about the crocamaws, and their own parallel fate, even if he wasn’t saying it, or didn’t even realize it himself.

  ”I think they’re like me.” He told James. “It wasn’t hard, you know?”

  ”What wasn’t?” The human asked, momentarily confused.

  Ishah smiled, traces of glowing saliva on his teeth making the motion a gleaming arc even in the now-sunlit room. ”Learning to th-think like you.” He said. “Maybe… it’s because I died? And this is a new life.” He shrugged with the arms that weren’t closing the binder of notes, pushing back reassuringly on Moon as the manifested assignment worried after him. “All you want is for me to be like you. And you saved me. So wh-why would I say no? And now there’s more people like me. There’s always more people like me, who need more people like us.” He watched James with his array of eyes, tracking the small motions of surprise and understanding on the human’s face as he looked back at Ishah from his impromptu seat. “I n-never th-thought I could be a delver. Never thought I could be smart. But all it takes is… practice.” He looked down, still smiling. “And you let me.”

  ”Well yeah. Of course.” James sounded surprised. “What else were we supposed to… actually I just realized we’re looking at a situation where someone else did answer this question differently, huh?”

  ”And they’re evil for it.” Ishah nodded sadly. “And we’ll stop them, and save their victims. And then we can go back to fun things. There’s so many nice things in your world, and they’re w-wasting all our time with this.” The only reason he managed to say it as a slight joke and not a bitter bark of rage was because Moon helped him stay calm, which Ishah appreciated.

  James glanced at the infomorphic halo around Ishah’s head before nodding sadly. “Yeah.” He agreed with a sigh. “I’m glad you’re with us.” He told the ratroach as he moved to leave. “And I hope we get to the fun stuff soon. I’m tired of… you know.” James trailed off, exhausted with the world’s bullshit as he headed for the door.

  ”I know.” Ishah murmured.

  He suspected they’d never be done with the work. But he’d rather die doing this, than what his options had been before.

  Also now he was definitely past the time limit for the meeting. Did this count? Ishah wasn’t sure, but he missed having Planner’s power to rapidly disperse groups when the clock ran out. He hoped the infomorph recovered soon, both because he liked Planner’s directness, and also because he wanted to spend as little time in conference rooms as possible. At least he got to wear his fancy suit for this kind of thing, though. He looked so out of place, he assumed that it would make the Sewer incredibly angry that he was performing an act of elegance.

  Which was exactly what the Sewer should be. Annoyed that it was being thwarted, at all times.

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