“There is no peace without a passion to create. There is no passion without peace to guide.” -Code of the Grey Jedi-
_____
Today was a day of conversations. And also one real important event, but that event was occurring outside of James’ sphere of influence and so for him it was a day of conversations and maybe witnessing an event.
It was also a day of challenges. Starting with the one clinging onto him as he tried to stand at the front of a small classroom.
”This is highly unprofessional.” James couldn’t hold back a smile, though he did at least keep himself from laughing. For now.
Banana, feathered and chitinous arms wrapped around James’ shoulders as she used him as a vehicle. “It’s fine!” She declared in her warbling voice. “I am too!” Her voice was so much more steady and lively these days, with the only trace of how she used to sound being a thrumming buzz applied to her n’s and u’s.
Banana had been the person from the Sewer that had come closest to the brink, so far. Others, both ratroach and her own species of crow-wasp, had been worse, but the problem was that you couldn’t get much worse and still survive. She had lived, though; clung on long enough for Alanna to find her in her early days, and then slowly recovered until her body could be rebuilt into what she was now.
A young girl. Even if she was taller than everyone else in her maturity group here at school. And certainly the one with the most feathers.
The school the Order had built had originally not had a name, and in fact, the name was the last thing that had been applied to it. A bit of a last minute scramble as they realized that you kind of couldn’t just refer to places by their GPS coordinates. A few people from Research who were working on the project had lobbied to name it the Thomasi Academy after Virgil, who would have hated that shit, and James again had to try to puzzle out if the people who’d known Virgil had liked him or not. But that idea was outvoted in favor of the simpler - and honestly lazier - route of just calling the place Greenway Primary School. Because it was located off of Greenway drive.
James understood, in the abstract, how names like this became common. But he was disappointed with the Order for falling into the trap. He felt like they should have given it some kind of grandiose name instead, but he was also outvoted in favor of simplicity, and something that mundane human parents might see as a classy option for their kids.
Where the name might not be grand, though, the school itself was. It wasn’t ornate, but it was vibrant. Colorful and spacious where it needed to be, prepared for dungeontech additions but not currently containing very many of them, the Order had poured resources into making a place that optimized learning across species.
For humans, it was easy. There was, actually, a huge amount of research into how well humans learned at different ages and maturity levels. Modern schools didn’t use any of it. That was a failing of government and logistics that the Order didn’t have to deal with though, they just took the information and did better. For all the nonhumans, it was trickier, but a lot of the issue was actually figuring out what classes to put people into.
Ratroaches could often be larger than their classmates, but have a relatively lower maturity level and less information in their brains. Camracondas could present as perfectly ordinary teenagers until the moment one of the topics they were implanted with came up and suddenly you were dealing with an industry veteran that was bored of the simple engineering class. And many of the students were coping with and healing through trauma. Survivors of dungeons and nightmares, whether they were human or not.
It very easily could have been a maelstrom of problems. Especially if they were just working to hit a mandatory quota. But the Order wasn’t doing this because they had to, they were doing it to prove a point, and to showcase a better way of doing things. Which meant they invested the resources and personnel they needed to make it work, and they invented the methods and tactics required to make it work well.
One of those resources was having a rotating group from Recovery come through every couple weeks to talk to students. Either in groups or one on one or a mix of the two. It wasn’t enough to simply say they knew what they were doing and then do it, and the input of the people under their care for a large part of the day wasn’t just valuable; it was critical that they got at least tacit agreement from the kids here. Made them feel heard, and used what they said to look for any potential changes.
So James was here being tackled by Banana while a few other students came in. Getting the crow-wasp settled in a seat was a challenge, because Banana hadn’t seen James in a while and had a litany of questions for him while her classmates were still arriving.
”What’s Canada like? Did you see a moose? Or any foxes? Or hedgehogs, or geese? It’s the wrong time of year for migratory butterfly colonies…” Banana’s eager and healed voice filled the room and buoyed James’ spirit better than anything else as he tried to fit a word in edgewise and failed. “Did you meet new people? Oh, what happened to your face this time? Were there bad dungeons? Mom says I’m not allowed to go to the dungeons but that’s okay! I want to go see whales instead, and they aren’t in dungeons. Was Canada fun? Did Alanna get hurt too? Can you ask her if she wants to see whales with me?”
”Banana!” James got out, now fully laughing as the small cluster of her classmates watched her interrogation with obviously knowing looks. “I have to actually be allowed to talk to answer a question!”
”Oh.” Banana’s elytra fluttered against her back with nervous energy as she shifted on her legs. “I forgot.” She told him.
“Alright, alright, get settled. You can visit Alanna and me later, okay?” James told her, softly ruffling the feathers on her sharply curved head. He waited for Banana and the other young students to shift in their seats until they were suitably comfortable, before he got started. “So! Are you all excited for winter break?” He asked the mix of young life forms.
James remembered very well just how much he’d been desperate for a winter break when he was in high school. And because of that, despite knowing that they were trying to create a less stressful environment, he was still more than a little surprised when half the kids shook their heads in some way, and the other half just didn’t offer an affirmative.
”…Huh. Okay.” James raised his eyebrows.
The next twenty minutes - because no matter how sharp some of these kids were, no one their relative age wanted to focus on something for more than twenty minutes - were a casual and friendly back and forth of James asking questions about their school life. What did they like, what were they learning, what didn’t work for them, were there any problems they were having trouble talking about. A suite of questions he was going to ask about four groups just like them today, to the point that he felt a lot like Banana by the time he was done interrogating everyone.
There were problems, of course. Some conflicts of personality, a gap in the games during their physical time when it came to camracondas, and some students that were never going to enjoy math. But it was a little surprising just how much you could get done when you talked to kids like they were people. No one was quite as enthusiastic to see him as Banana had been in the first batch, and there were so few issues that James worried that maybe the kids were hiding something from him.
He’d voiced that concern to a group of other visitors and teachers during the lunch break they took together, and had received concerned agreement from the others like him, and amused smiles from the people who worked here. Including Rufus, the stapler giving James a motion that somehow conveyed deeply smug pride.
When he left Greenway, heading back to the Lair to talk to a different group that needed to be heard, James felt… weird.
The initial point had been to build a place that would let younger or less mature camracondas and ratroaches have healthy childhoods. And they’d clearly done that, both for those species and more besides, and the hundreds of human students that filled those halls during the days. So that was good.
It wasn’t frictionless. More than one student had talked about feeling like they were out of place, or not learning fast enough, or something wrong. But that was kind of what James was there to evaluate; how the Order could match theory to reality and smooth over problems like that. And the kids he’d talked to actually got that. It might have been a revelation for a lot of them that the adults in their lives were struggling to keep up with what they needed to learn too, but it also created a sense of connection that had immense value.
It was so different from his own experiences in school that it was jarring. And, yeah, part of it was a resource issue; Greenway had one staff - not specifically teachers - for every ten students. Not the lowest that was possible, but lower than the national average certainly. They had better classrooms and more accommodations and the time and money to adapt policies around kids, instead of slamming kids into policy-generated holes until they either fit or broke.
And the students got listened to. Not just listened to, but approached and asked for their input. No one waited passively for the kids that were the most vulnerable and most afraid of speaking up to speak up.
James had a moment of realizing that his thoughts were really bitter, in a way that he hadn’t experienced in a while. And the thing that had James feeling weird, he also realized as he arrived back at the Order’s operational home, was that he was, in a word, jealous.
He took that sensation; that feeling that he wished it was him learning geometry and computer literacy and research methods, that he wanted it to be him with classmates that weren’t bullies and teachers that listened and an environment that he actually looked forward to being in; and he held it up to examine.
He did wish for that. He wished his life could have been different. James was mentally distant as he walked out of the Lair’s teleport arrival room, coming to terms with his emotions as he headed down a random basement hallway. Just slowly unfolding the thought that every tiny aspect of the daily life they’d built for those kids shined a light on some ancient hurt he’d thought he’d buried forever.
James leaned on a wall in a side hall, stiffly waving off a ratroach that nervously paused to ask if he was okay. “It’s just hitting me,” he said to himself in a low murmur, “that I might have some trauma entirely unrelated to being shot at.”
So he followed what his therapist had advised. Took the shape of his feelings and the state of reality and his own actions, and compared them. Was he behaving as he believed he should? Was he making progress toward a goal? And, most important in his opinion, if he didn’t like something that had happened, was he doing something about it for those that had to deal with it next?
James took a deep breath. When he actually stepped back and thought, worked through his mental model of himself, it was pretty easy to see. Of course this was good. High school had clearly fucked him up worse than he’d thought, even two decades after it was over. But if the main thing that brought those memories to the fore was the fact that they weren’t happening to a new group of students? Because of something James was part of?
That was pretty good.
He still felt envious, because of course he would have wanted to go to the utopian school with a bunch of weird species to make friends with. But he also knew exactly why Rufus had displayed so much pride.
This was a better way for the world to be, James decided, as he pushed himself off the concrete bricks and stretched. A place where kids got to actually enjoy that experience, for as long as he could safeguard it for them.
Which meant he was going to spend at least some of his brainpower for the rest of the day trying to think of camraconda-viable sports.
_____
”So what’ve you been up to?” James asked JP as the two of them crouched behind a metal railing on the roof of an industrial production building. It was midday, but between low light conditions from the weather and magical attention deflection from their gear, they were hard to spot.
”I have a phone.” JP told him, raising a pair of mundane optics to his eyes as he looked over the industrial factories and chemical tanks to the less frequented warehouse that was separated from their perch by a chain link fence and a layer of urban decay. “You can just call me.”
”Phone calls are scary.” James said glibly as he wiped water off his forehead. It was currently raining in Saskatoon, and despite the black rylon covering he was wearing, he was still feeling soaked and freezing already. “Also I don’t wanna call you while you’re in the middle of sneaking into a pillar’s house!”
”Oh. Right, that’s what I’ve been up to for work.” JP said as he shuffled backward. He and James were both laying prone as they watched their targets. “Pretty much just that. Did I tell you Debt defected? I don’t know what you know these days, you’re never around.”
”I’m never…!” James bit back indignity. “Yes, I knew about that.”
”Cool, cool.” JP flicked his eyes sideways, looking for any sign of disapproval. But James seemed like he was being his usual self, so it was probably fine. His friend would say something if he’d actually crossed a line. “Yeah, I know where the Chain Breaker hangs out. Your tip was right, but she’s almost never there, and I hesitate to get close when she is. I’m not like you after all.”
James nodded. “Probably smart. What do we do with that?”
”I’d say ‘follow her’, because it would get us good intel on magic nonsense.” JP suggested. “But she does something similar to that aggravating thing Kiki pulls. Just goes through doors and vanishes.”
”Hey, I like Kiki.” James protested.
JP shifted his position to observe the back alley of the space they were watching. “Of course you do.” He said, before the coy rhythm of his voice shifted into something cold and professional. Something that made him seem alien to James, different from his friend had ever been. “Contact. Back lot. Three cars.”
”Got it. Two more approaching.” James didn’t change his own tone as he scanned his drone feeds, since they were still waiting. “So, find anything cool yet?”
”You know me.” JP said distantly. “I prefer to be methodical. And a little slower than your approach. Though I think I’ve at least figured out what city Aku has his office in.”
James shook his head. ”Ugh.” He groaned. “I hate that name. I keep thinking of Samurai Jack every time he comes up.” He tried to play it as a casual joke, but every conversation he had about the absurdly dangerous pillars left him on edge.
”I can use his English title, if you want.” JP wasn’t really paying attention. “Anyway. Main thing I’m doing is waiting for an opening. For when I know the Chain Breaker will be gone for a while, and I can poke around her hideout. I don’t know how much she can sense though, and… well, I’m steering clear of Kiki, but I can still read. I know that woman has a few extra kinds of eyes. Her counterpart probably does too.”
The problem, both of them figured independently as they watched the cluster of people get out of their cars and roughly shove their captives into the warehouse, was that investigating pillars was important, because no one knew what they could do exactly. Which created a horrifying circular logic; they needed to know what they could do, and they ideally needed to know without actually experiencing what they could do.
James had watched the Chain Breaker splatter someone in half. He’d seen Blitzkrieg move so fast it was almost teleporting and execute his companions with weapons that didn’t miss. He’d witnessed the Long Arm Of The Law possess dozens of police like the pillar was playing an RTS version of reality.
And through all that, he still didn’t know what the hell half of them could do. It wasn’t exactly calming.
“Be careful, okay?” James asked JP in a serious voice that barely carried over the sound of rain thundering down on the various metal surfaces around them. “I don’t think I can rescue you from that.”
JP smiled smugly. ”Please. I know what I’m doing.”
From behind them, the large umbral that had been brought along at his own demanding finally snapped. ”You are not taking this seriously!” Terror accused them in a static-laced bark. “My people are down there, and you are making jokes!”
”Yeah, it’s how I prepare for life or death action.” James said without turning around. He was deliberately showing the umbral his back; a gesture of trust in the person that had maintained a generally hostile attitude, even if he’d promised to not murder any of the people caught up in the whole mess of his home city, including the umbral that had ‘betrayed’ them.
”Oh, now you will fight?” Terror asked bitterly.
”Fight implies return action.” JP said with that same distant voice as he scoped out the warehouse again, their angle giving him a look through a few of the windows that weren’t covered in graffiti. “Okay. They’re clumped up. No one else on the way?”
James checked his drones. “No.” He confirmed. “Main roads have some traffic, but nothing heading this way except a tanker truck.”
”You know what you’re here for?” JP said, twisting his neck around to look at Terror.
”Retrieving my kin.” The big umbral said after a moment’s hesitation. “Because you refuse to let us fight back.”
”Oh, don’t worry about that.” James said with a hard anger in his voice that the umbral was surprised by, but that JP had heard before and more or less expected from his friend. “You get your people clear. We’ll handle the violence.”
Terror’s tendril furled like an anemone in frustration. ”…you do not believe in-“
”You don’t understand James.” JP said in his bland kind of way that he used when he was deliberately putting people off guard. “I know you think you do, but you’re new here. Get your friends out, they should trust you more than us anyway.” He handed Terror a telepad, moving quickly so it didn’t get soaked in the rain. “We’ll handle the rest.”
The conversational tactic, surprisingly, worked. The umbral went quiet, covering the telepad with one unfolded hand as it waited for James and JP to rise to kneeling positions. James glanced at his friend. “You handle the cars?” He asked.
”Ah, I get the fun job!” JP grinned with a layer of malice. “You know, I really thought we’d have enough time before this came up that we could just point Simon at these idiots. Oh, and remember that the skinny guy has bullet resistance, so don’t just shoot him.”
”I know, I know. And alas! Simon is still busy. So it falls to us.” James put a theatrical flair on his words as he pulled a taser out. “Give us ten seconds then follow.” He told Terror, before he vanished from the roof.
The umbral turned colored ring eyes to JP, but the other human just gave him a sarcastic thumbs up, and vanished himself. “What does that mean?” Terror asked the empty air with bitter words.
But he still counted, and then pulled the telepad he’d been given, appearing in the back shadows of the warehouse that more of his people had been herded into like cattle, or property.
Expecting to find the long haired human attempting to politely talk down the others of his own kind that were committing an inexcusable crime, Terror was mildly surprised to instead find three people already on the concrete floor either unconscious or writhing in pain. James was holding a fourth in a chokehold, while two more pointed guns at him. Before Terror could move to assist, if he even wanted to do that, the guns themselves peeled apart; metal separating in a way that disabled the firearms and left the bullets spilling to the floor in a ringing cascade.
Not the gun the man James was choking had though. That one, the human grabbed, twisted free of its owner’s grip, and unloaded on one of his opponents. The ‘skinny one’ apparently had bullet resistance, as JP had said, but while resistance kept him alive, it did mean that he got a tattoo of bruises across his chest and face as he tumbled backward with a yell of pain.
The last one charged James as he held his own captive in the arm bar. Rage written on his face; rage at being attacked, at being defied, maybe just at seeing his own companions hurt. It didn’t really matter. JP popped into existence at his side, seeming to move with almost dismissive grace as he slapped the attacker’s knee sideways with a tire iron and turned the charge into a sprawling fall that ended with a scream of pain.
James dropped the now-unconscious person he’d been holding, a whole human body hitting the concrete floor like a toy. “Nice.” He said as a far too close by explosion sounded from outside the warehouses’ walls, followed by more blasts that brought with them the sounds of protesting metal and breaking glass. “Where’s Terror?” James asked as he looked over at the collection of eight umbral that were painfully tied up with too much rope in the back of the building, two of them halfway dragged toward a laid out tarp.
They were looking at him like they were afraid. And he understood. He really did. But he needed them calm and not screaming to get them out of here.
Terror stepped forward, out of the shadows. “What are you… doing?” He asked as James leaned down with a knife and started slicing the shirt and pants off one of his mostly disabled victims.
”Sending a message.” James said as JP calmly approached the umbral, hands in his pockets and an easy saunter on display. “That this is unacceptable.” He stripped two more people, pocketing their phones and wallets but throwing everything else into a growing pile, before he found one that wasn’t totally out, and slapped the face of the man under him. “Hey. Wake up asshole.” He said bluntly. “You listening?” The man nodded, dazed. “Good. Now. We each have a problem.”
“W-whaz your problem?” The man slurred, perhaps having been hit slightly too hard.
“My problem is you are violating the terms of our agreement with your government. Your problem is that I am very angry, and inside your safehouse.” James said with a dark glee. “Is this going to be a problem for me again?” He asked. “Because if it is, I’m going to have to escalate. Do you understand?” The man stared at him, eyes glazed over, giving a scared shake of his head. “Tell your boss if you need to. I don’t care. Next time you lose more than your stash and some cars. Got it?” James dropped the human and went back to taking everything of value from the others.
“You guys want to get out of here?” JP asked the collected umbral who were staring to be freed, jerking a thumb at Terror himself. “He has a teleporter. We can at least get you some hot food. It’s pizza night at the Lair! And I don’t wanna miss it, so don’t take too long.” Terror stared at him, trying to understand how even the human’s compassion could come across as smug.
He still helped JP cut his kin loose. Helped keep them calm, and answered what he could, though he didn’t really understand his own words as he told them that they were there to help. And he helped prepare the telepads to get the group back to the Lair, where they could then make a real decision; possibly the first one in their artificial lives.
The last thing he saw of James before he vanished was the human idly tipping a very familiar flame-filled glass terrarium with his foot, and holding a phone up to his ear. “Hey, Detective Miller! James here. We met briefly a few days ago. Hey, weird question; if someone discovered a case of overt and ugly corruption in your department, would it be better to report it, or burn a building down? Because I think we might need to have a conversation about-”
Then Terror vanished, his wide shadowy frame suddenly perched on different ground, tendrils drifting in the air with stunned incoherence.
Maybe, just maybe, he actually had misunderstood the humans of the Order.
_____
“I have confirmed that I cannot drink things.” Second told James as he spent some time hanging out with the digital intelligence, slowly recovering from the brief horror that came from hurting people and exposing himself to a similar kind of hurt in return.
”I…” James blinked, refocusing on reality as he spun in the very comfortable chair someone had down here in the room dedicated for Second’s operations and development. It was kind of like a brain, but not exactly, kind of like a body, but not really, and the digital intelligence was very particular that ‘close enough’ was not a good reason to use words for things. “…I have a number of questions about that, but I think the most important one might be do you need me to unplug one of these machines really quick?” James asked, looking around the center where a few other programmers and one developmental psychologist were at work on their own parts of Second’s life. “Did someone pour a potion into a circuit board?”
”Liquids are not allowed in this room.” Second informed James.
”That’s probably smart. Can you clarify maybe what the heck you were trying to drink, and maybe also how you were trying to drink it?” James stayed calm as he rotated back and forth in his borrowed chair.
Second’s reply - spoken and not typed, the digital intelligence had been upgraded and taken to it quite well - was a lot calmer than James felt a computer that had tried drinking things should be. “I requested assistance from Momo. Using a connection to a drone to test early viability.”
”Okay, that’s… better than I expected.” James exhaled. “Did you want to taste things? Because I… actually I don’t know if we can do that, now that I think about it. Red totems kind of don’t give physical sensory information, do they? It’s all stats and numbers, even if they get esoteric.”
Second spoke with the kind of instant pattern that James had begun to expect from them. ”A brief allowance for this tangent. While I cannot taste, I do not desire it as many have suggested and asked. While additional senses would not be rejected, I am not missing anything. This is akin to you wanting to feel the pattern and chronology of a database, when you are not an assignment, and have no frame of reference.”
James didn’t have the same kind of ‘reply prepared to go’, but he did have a quick comeback to that. “Okay but I do want to feel that. That sounds cool.”
”Yes but you do not long for it as a missing piece of the self.” Second informed him, and James had to concede that was probably correct. “Closing this tangent now. I was attempting to determine if dungeontech liquids functioned for me.”
That made James pause and do a quick mental check. ‘Dungeontech liquids’ basically only had two things it might refer to; shaper substance, or potions, and of the two he wasn’t sure which ones Second would want to be trying. Or why. “I’m actually pretty sure potions, despite being impossible substances that should not be, work on biology. Same with shaper substance now that I say that. So what were you testing out? Did you want to see if you could replace cooling fans with oxygenation potion?”
”Neither category is appropriate. I was attempting to make use of the beverage generated by sufficiently charged Amber Icon casting.”
“Oh.” James said. And then, leaning forward and looking directly at the small camera that Second used to keep an eye on this particular part of the room, asked in a quieter voice, “This seems like a personal topic, and I am noticing that you are being less direct than normal. If you are feeling vulnerable, please tell me, and we can pause or conclude the topic, okay?”
”I am not as subject to the feelings of shame or embarrassment as some.” Second said. “It is simple to tell you that I wished to understand what it meant, to feel closer to those who have created me and work diligently to develop my existence. I do not think or feel the same way that you do. Attachments are analytical. Measured. Understanding a different form of connection would be a valuable experience for me.”
James didn’t reply for a while, which was one of the neat things about talking to Second. You could just say nothing, and take the time to think something through, and the digital intelligence would just wait. It didn’t get impatient or annoyed, probably because, James suspected, it was secretly playing Minecraft with half its brain as it had any given conversation with him.
He knew a lot about Second. Everyone working here did, because the digital intelligence was deliberately open about why it had opinions, where it traced thoughts to, and what events influenced its growth. It made requests for additions and adaptations, and the timetable for developing both the totems it saw half the world through, and the computer infrastructure that it saw the other half with, was posted publicly and had Second’s constant input.
But sometimes, Second would say things like this that hinted at deeper feelings that didn’t quite ever get mentioned directly. Lower priorities, maybe. Not worth mentioning. But James felt a kinship with that; the sensation of something creeping into his language and mindset, bit by bit, unnoticed until the day that it boiled over and suddenly he realized that he was different than he had ever realized.
Second said that it didn’t want things that it had never possessed. Didn’t want to feel the same physical sensations as a biomorph. Or rather, didn’t have an active desire for it, beyond abstract and intellectual curiosity. But then it turned around and took the long distance leap of behavior to try to drink a magical beverage with a piloted drone, just to feel closer to someone, because it might work.
”Second, do you want a body?” James asked.
The reply that came out was so rapid that he was pretty sure Second had copy-pasted it from a different conversation. Making use of their flowchart of dialogue to be prepared for something that multiple people had said to them before, and immune to the mild anxiety of feeling like they were repeating themselves. “A body is not something that I have a meaningful need for. Technically I do have a body. My body is the adaptable machinery that my thoughts and feelings run off of and are combined in to create a collected conscious view of the world. Any construct I operated, no matter how advanced, would be an extension of the body I already inhabit. I am, remember, not an infomorph. I have a physical self.”
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
”I didn’t ask if you wanted a fancy drone.” James pointed out, leaning an elbow on a clear part of the monitoring desk and resting his chin on his fist. “I asked if you wanted a body. As in, if you could have a single biological self, is that something you’d be… you know… interested in? More than interested in, fuck, I mean do you want that?”
This time, it was Second who paused before answering. Something that was getting rarer and rarer as the digital life developed sharper social acumen and a more coherent view of how it preferred to speak. Whether through voice or text, Second often had replies ready to go because in many ways it thought faster than the squishy organic beings that had made it; but that didn’t mean it didn’t take the time to think at all. It just meant it did more thinking in less time.
Which meant that the lingering pause, which lapsed on for first a minute, and then two, and then seven before the digital mind actually answered, was unnerving. James was beginning to worry that Second had suffered the AI version of a medical emergency. But then, it did speak, and its words were different than normal.
“I do not know what I am, or what I am meant to want.” Second said with their emulated voice. “Feeling itself feels sporadic and often disconnected from the reality that I am capable of observing. Speaking to others assists with developing a self-ideal, and opinions or behavioral traits that are aligned with that ideal. But none of this has allowed me to proactively desire a hypothetical future state, as many members of the Order seem to do naturally. In this way, I feel isolated. I have determined that it is not organic, as even infomorphs have wants, but I have determined that I personally lack this aspect of life. There are numerous strong emotional triggers that revolve around this information, and I am capable of fully understanding none of them, which is causing me significant ongoing distress.”
It was considered, yes. A level of self insight that most humans tended to neglect in favor of living their lives in a perpetual state of mild immaturity. But it was also drifting into a more sporadic and fragmented way of speaking that Second didn’t use. James noticed it quickly, but he also noticed that what was being spoken painted a very specific picture. “You want something.” He said. “That is what you are describing, in a roundabout way. Ongoing distress that the way things are doesn’t match a state where you wouldn’t feel that distress? That’s a kind of wanting.”
“Fascinating. That is both understandable, poetically revealing of an inner truth, and also entirely unactionable.” Second emulated a pause. “I am for the first time uncertain if this has taught me something.”
James smiled kindly at the AI that lived in their basement. “Let me ask you something that might help you focus.” He said. “What does Amber Icon do, exactly?”
”The spell generates ex nihilo two forms of material. One, glass in the shape of a mug, and two, a generally digestible and nutritious liquid contained within the glass. These things are created in identical pairs. Each charge to the spell brings a corresponding increase to the general nutrition value of the liquid, the durability of the glass, and the secondary effect of consuming the liquid. When the liquid is consumed by two separate individuals, it increases the bond between them.”
Raising his eyebrows, James turned his head from side to side as if he were looking to the programmers in the room for something. “And?” He asked.
”That is the definition of the spell.” Second said.
This was new. It was almost like James was being deflected, which was something the digital mind never really did. ”Second, you can’t… okay, do you understand why it might be odd for you to say you were trying this out, this very niche magic out, and then your explanation of it is just the database description? Not even that, you left out a lot of description.”
Second’s reply, true to form, didn’t display any embarrassment or anxiety. But it was kind of fascinating to watch the AI seem to concede the point and almost backtrack over the conversation. “The magic amplifies.” It told James with one of its emulated pauses used to lend weight to the words. “It cannot create from nothing, but it brings feelings into focus. Shows people how they are connected to each other, and solidifies that connection. It is abstract and poetic, which I appreciate due to the circumstances of my creation.”
”So you wanted to try it with someone you knew.” James could understand that, but he could understand that as a biological. It was different for Second, he knew, so he pressed on that question to prompt the digital mind to explain, both to him and internally to itself. “What prompted that?”
”I began to doubt that my feelings are real.” Second said.
And then nothing. Silence followed the simple and painful admission. The doubt was hard for Second to keep up, when simply saying that caused it distress. Intellectually, it knew that it must be feeling at least something, if it were having an emotional crisis. But emotionally, that didn’t matter.
”Oh.” James said softly. “You wanted to try it because if it amplifies emotions, then you’d know that you had something it considered emotions.” He deduced.
”Correct. However I cannot drink things in a way that magic finds suitable.” Second paused, this time not for effect, but out of trepidation. Not a long pause though. “Or I do not have interpersonal emotions. As you mentioned, no other magical liquid specifically requires to be imbibed, that is only a useful method of delivery for the biomorphs they affect.”
James leaned back in the decadently comfortable chair, not letting it distract him because he’d already decided to get one for his own shared office. “Third option; a drone you’re piloting isn’t you, and doesn’t count. Also drones can’t really ‘drink’ anyway? Most of them. I guess you could get one with a… this isn’t important.” He waved a hand, slashing through the air where Second could see. “Two things I want to tell you. One is that magic isn’t impartial. There’s an Officium Mundi spell called Move Person that moves a person, but it’s the Office’s definition. It won’t move cats or dogs, for example, including the dog that lives with me and is taking college classes on literature and media criticism. So just because a spell doesn’t think you’re drinking, doesn’t mean you’re not real, okay?”
”I understand this.” Second said. “And yet I doubt myself.”
”Understandable. That’s a very emotional reaction.” James grinned as he tried to fold his arms, realizing he had no comfortable place to put his hands right now. “The second thing is that if you want, we can do some actual further testing with this? Like, Amber Icon seems to conceptually be about sharing food with someone, so it might be focused on the nutritional value? Kind of like how the Route gas requires a combustion engine. So maybe we could hook up a burner generator to your power supply and feed it in there, test that out? It’d be better than you dunking a quadcopter into a mug at least.” James offered.
The AI considered the offer. “I would like that.” It told James. “And for your earlier question, I believe I do not need a body as you are offering it, no. But I would appreciate a modification so I might activate various forms of dungeontech that require violent disruption to use.”
Things like breaking orbs, or spell slot coins. Things Second had a growing interest in, as the digital mind slowly integrated more and more forms of information and emotion and overlapping dungeontech programs that added to the complexity of its world.
There was a lot that someone who never had to blink could do, when it came to studying a Garden spell. Or at least, Second hypothesized that might be the case. And as with anyone that pursued objective truth, a hypothesis such as that should be tested.
”I’ll see what I can do.” James nodded as he stood up, their conversation coming to a conclusion. “Quick check though; there’s a roomba with a camera and some kind of squirt gun mounted on it roving around one of the basements. Is that… I’m not gonna say you, but is that Momo’s fault and piloted by you in some fashion?”
”I am unaware of this newest adversary.” Second stated. “I will contact Momo and demand a cessation of hostilities. When diplomatic attempts fail, I will mobilize countermeasures.”
”…yeah sure.” James laughed, heading toward one of the creation team to start a conversation that Second was still completely aware of. Passing on the digital mind’s desire for something that even it hadn’t fully seen the shape of yet.
But it still felt good, to have someone care.
_____
Townton was still wet and kinda cold, but in a very beautiful way. At least, as far as James could see. The city had, like many western cities, an urban core that ended up with industrial developments sprawled out around its edges. But a lot of that industry was destroyed, along with a lot of the city in general. And it had been long enough since that breaking event that a form of reclamation had begun.
Not the civil reclamation that the Order practiced. Not the restoration of buildings to working condition, and then the changing of them into new forms; the magically enhanced interiors of apartments with splintered wooden railings and cracked siding housing hundreds of members of the community; the old husks of businesses that would never operate again turned toward the purpose of a new kind of life. Not, in general, rebuilding.
Instead it was the reclamation that would come after the end of humanity. It could be found, in places, already; ghost towns dotted the planet in the most unlikely of places, and the American southwest sometimes felt like it was littered with abandoned houses slowly being dragged back to the earth.
There was a fun factoid that James knew about, that if everyone moved out of Los Angeles tomorrow, then it would take only two years for the city to appear as a green space from the air, and five years for it to begin to be difficult to spot. Plants just grew. It took a lot of effort to keep structures maintained, and streets clear, and when people vanished from a space that effort stopped.
Which meant that the tiny blades of grass that found cracks in the pavement, the ‘weeds’ that sought the face of the sun in gravel lots, the roadside trees and manicured gardens that humanity had permitted already, all of it was suddenly unchained and free to just keep going.
They incorporated greenery a lot more into Townton than some places, but it wasn’t wild. Outside the rebuilding zone, though? That was quickly becoming a place where ivy and fungus and the world’s most determined grass made its way through brick and asphalt. An adventuring party of plant life, combining forces as time and weather slowly eroded the remnant of the human civilization that had been here before.
Townton was beautiful to James, because Townton was a very polite battlefield. A three way fight between an old world that had fallen, an older world that sought a return to its natural form, and a new world that the Order negotiated into existence between the two.
Also it was just kind of cool to see, over the course of months, plants slowly devour a partially collapsed structure. And it didn’t hurt that James’ occasional casts of Rot Eyes got him a few neat mushroom facts every time he was down here; though he probably should have been concerned by how many types of fungus were taking hold in the abandoned places. That, at least, would need to be pushed back at some point.
James chilled his fingers a little casting the spell one more time as he got to the apartment he was visiting. Unlike the three main residential nexuses in Townton, this one wasn’t spatially expanded in terms of adding more apartments. It was also older than the others, but it had escaped the mechanic’s small apocalypse largely unscathed, including the fires that came afterward, so it would be a shame to have fungus consume it now.
A sanded wooden porch created a horseshoe for the doors to the units, with a staircase of thick rough wood taking a right turn at a landing midway up to lead to a second iteration upstairs. It was in a strange little spot, off to one side of where a road split around the relatively tiny sliver of greenbelt that was their central park. A little bit in the middle of a few different, more lively, parts of Townton. But it wasn’t far from anything, just not next to anything.
He almost made it to knocking on one of the doors before there was a series of eager thumps from upstairs, and one of the doors burst open, spilling out a group of younger life forms. Humans, ratroaches, camraconda, stuff animal, chanters, and at least one variety of informorph along for the ride, all moving with the kind of frenzied energy that only kids fully immersed in playing a very dumb game could have. James paused with his fist up, knuckles waiting at the downstairs door, as he watched the group race around the second floor balcony loop twice before bursting in through a different door.
”Hey!” James heard the shout from upstairs, and though it was firm it held no anger. “Running is what they invented outside for!”
He held back a laugh as he shook his head and knocked, waiting with a backdrop of uncontrolled laughs and thunderous stomping as the flock of children raced down the stairs in their different ways and out to the safe cleared area around the apartment. And, he admitted to himself, probably to the less safe and less cleared areas too. Kids were going to get into trouble, that was just a part of life. All they could do was mitigate the worst options.
The door cracked opened before he could let that thought go anywhere darker, letting warm air that smelled like nutmeg out around James. “Hey man.” Juan greeted him as he nodded at James, inviting him in. “Have a good trip?”
”You know that’s sort of pointless for… yes. I had a good trip.” James rolled his eyes with a smile. Zhu probably would have disagreed, but Zhu was off having a vibrant social life while James teleported everywhere today, ‘cheating’ on his travel. “How’s the home?”
Juan moved with an easy pace as he walked into the apartment, down a hall that was just a little too long toward their slightly oversized kitchen table. He leaned his head back as he walked, the light glinting off the gel in his black hair. “It’s growing on me.” He said with the sort of happiness that came from someone who had found a comfortable place in things. “Not perfect, but I’m locked in on it.”
James asked a few questions that he mostly knew the answers to, but had fun hearing Juan get excited about. The guy wasn’t in charge exactly, but he was responsible for a lot when it came to their fostering program, and he had a good way of looking at things.
While some people in the Order, like Daniel or Ann, took in individuals that needed homes and a touch of family, the Order had an abundance of kids that needed homes and many of them needed something more than just a place to stay. And this modified apartment structure was where a lot of them lived now. Each unit nominally held three or four adults - some of them outside hires who had needed to catch up on the ‘magic is real’ thing pretty quickly, some of them from the Order, but all of them full time parents - and ten to twelve kids ranging across various species.
The way that they were set up, they weren’t discrete units; anyone who was here as a caretaker could be approached by anyone else. The kids, as the ones that were most traumatized slowly found their footing, would often make friends across units, and people wandering between apartments was common enough that Juan had asked Research to find or build some kind of environmental dome so that their AC didn’t end up meaningless in the summer.
”I’m not saying there aren’t favorites. There sure are.” Juan said. “You gave us the imperative to give these kids a family. It’s… you can’t do that and expect people to not care, unless you’re hiring real bastards.” He shrugged as he watched James take a seat at the table. “So you’ll need to probably prepare for a higher needed replacement rate for this job. Even for the Mormons.”
The Mormons were actually why James was here, both to check up on them and because he’d been asked to be talked to.
When the Order had encountered the layered conspiracy within the Mormon church, their resolution had involved a stand down of the child wizard-soldiers that were being trained up. But for some - almost a hundred of them actually, that they knew of - it was a lot harder than just cutting them off from delving and magic for a while and doing regular checkups. For a lot of them, their parents and family had left, adding themselves to the roster of people in stasis in one of the dungeons as a kind of apocalyptic ark, while their kids were left in the care of the church.
Between those kids that the Order had agreed to take in, and the smaller group that had been actively imprisoned and psychologically tortured into obedience and now refused to return to their families, there was a big chunk of people who needed help that were normal humans that had been raised in a pretty bad environment. Which, in this weird case, meant that they were really hard to integrate into the Order’s culture, because they were kind of just racist toward all the nonhumans in Townton.
It was awkward because a lot of them were also thirteen or fourteen years old, and it was kind of difficult to force someone that age to believe anything without magic. With magic, you could, but that was also the thing that had gotten these kids into this mess, so James was hesitant to replace magical brainwashing with more magical brainwashing.
The majority of the kids of various ages lived in one of the other main living spaces in Townton. Some of the worse cases, mostly older teens, were at the Lair where a closer eye could be kept on them. But here in this particular apartment, Juan and the two others that were part of his fostering family helped provide a stable, caring, and most importantly healing environment for twelve of the teenagers that James had found locked in metal boxes in a derelict Utah chinese buffet.
”The thing that really feels good,” Juan told James as he talked about the ongoing progress in breaking the victims out of their technically-but-not-really self-inflicted brainwashing, “is that you can tell when one of them… kind of just tips over into living here, and not just feeling trapped.”
”How so?” James asked.
”They start asking questions.” Juan said. “Not just from us, but from each other. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still friction. It sucks that they’re semi-isolated to their own part of this home, because a lot of ‘em are uncomfortable around anything they were forced to think of as a demon. They don’t just wake up one day and decide to be friends with a ratroach, it’s not that easy.” He paused. “Okay, most of them don’t. Liam did. That threw me, gotta say.” Juan’s smile spread as he admitted that.
”So no big problems?”
Juan had a list prepared. ”A few unpleasant interactions between the fostering staff, but we sorted it out. A big thing we need to be aware of with this spread out family setup is that we can’t contradict each other. You ever get told no by your mom, so you went to ask your dad for something?”
”Oh Christ.” James saw where this was going, and he chose to laugh rather than deflate in despair.
”Yeah, you get it.” Juan laughed. “You want to know what the real weird thing is? Like, the hardest problem we have to contend with for these kids specifically that isn’t an issue for any of the other clusters?” He waited, but James had no idea, and was legitimately curious. If he’d wanted to guess, he would have said it would be something about the kids wanting magic that was kind of off limits for them for now. But when Juan told him, it was so far from that, James wasn’t sure how to handle it. “It’s that they don’t break rules.” He said.
”I… what?”
”I wanna say we’re just so damn good at being parents, that all our rules are perfect, and everyone understands.” Juan said with a small touch of sarcasm. “But yeah, they don’t break the rules. And it hurts, man. It really hurts. Even these guys, the rebels and outcasts, they’re stuck. They won’t even think about it half the time. I just… I dunno man. I want them to sneak out after curfew or steal a beer or something. Just so they can know what it’s like.”
James found that… profoundly sad. Even his anxious and stupid teenage self had sometimes skipped class or something. Every kid should be able to learn how to exercise their own freedom in mostly harmless displays of defiance.
He and Juan talked for a little bit longer about resources the home might need - more Lego - and issues that could be patched through an increasing amount of available magic - maybe some kind of enchanted self cleaning Lego - but James actually wasn’t here to talk just to Juan.
When the human teens that lived here returned from their school day, they found James talking to two of their caretakers - many of them balked at saying foster parents - sitting at the kitchen table and trying to imbue a whole Lego set with a blue orb. And failing.
”Hey ya little imps!” April, the other foster parent who’d joined James and Juan, greeted the kids. She had explained that she called them imps only in positive and friendly contexts, because she wanted them to make the mental association between something ‘demon-esque’ and something happy. “You asked to see James, and behold, James has appeared! Juan and I are gonna be upstairs for a bit so you guys can talk, okay? There’s cookies on the counter, remember to share.” She said as she passed by them, giving small hugs to about half the kids that seemed amenable to it. Juan’s own exit mostly echoed her’s, though when he offered a hug, the teenage boy he’d thrown his arms wide for had laughed and dodged like it was an ongoing game of theirs.
It felt carefree and happy, and it made James know that they’d made the right decision to essentially kidnap these kids. This was unquestionably better than what they’d had before, even if there were some troubles.
That carefree attitude had faded as they’d come into the kitchen with James, many of them scattering into the apartment before returning, while the others claimed seats at the sizable table.
”Hey…” one of the kids greeted him uncertainly as the group assembled, seeming to be their representative.
James didn’t recognize any of them, except Liam. Emma and Lincon had decided to live at the Lair, not here, and their younger friend had made the personal decision to take a place in this home and abandon being a delver. Which everyone supported, honestly, but it felt a little strange to know about a delver group breaking up.
Still, he didn’t know who he was talking to. “Hey there. I’m James, we’ve only really met… very briefly.”
”Oh, I’m Brianna.” The girl seemed glad to have a deliberate path. She introduced the others in rapid succession, and James would have to admit that he would never remember their names if he didn’t have enhanced memory, and if two of the weren’t named Scott. That brought the Scott total up to five he was pretty sure. Fortunately neither new Scott was one of the ones that had stabbed James previously, that would have been awkward.
”So! What can I do for all of you?” James asked, trying to seem friendly as he watched the nervous group of kids. “Is this about dungeon delving?” He saw Liam flinch, along with a couple others, and worried he’d said something wrong.
”No!” Brianna quickly reassured him. “Well, kind of! Um…”
”You’re making us look bad!” One of the boys told her loudly enough to get someone else to tell him to shut up.
James held up his hands. ”Hey, if you need a moment, I can-“
”What happened in Missouri?” She asked him suddenly, voice louder than she’d meant it to be and face red with a feeling of magically enforced chagrin.
The question caught him off guard, because it was clear that it was hard for her to ask and James was trying to be patient and open. But the actual question, the words, opened up a memory of a battle that was genuinely pretty unpleasant for James.
He swallowed the echo of blood in his throat. “Are you asking generally? Like, do you want to know about the Underburbs, or its human agents, or just what the Order’s involvement was?”
”You were there.” Brianna said. “There’s… there’s people who live here in Townton, who talk about it sometimes. They say you saved their lives, but they can’t tell us what happened.”
He felt like this was going somewhere, but he didn’t know exactly why this group of kids had asked to talk to him specifically about something that Juan probably would have just answered. Juan had fought in Springfield too, after all.
But James tried to give them a clear picture anyway. “Okay. You’re all aware that dungeons exist, and there’s a bunch of them. Well, the Underburbs is both angry and hungry, and it tried to take a bite out of the city of Springfield. A bite about fifteen miles across. I took mild offense to this.” He made it a joke, a small smile and a glib word downplaying the horror of that night for these kids. They had enough to deal with, they didn’t need that on top of it.
”Shaun said half his family died.” One of the kids said.
And James’ smile shattered. “…yeah.” He said quietly. “A lot of people died. Do you want the actual statistic?” Some of them nodded, though they all looked like they didn’t really want to know. “Eighty three percent survival rate. So seventeen percent of the area’s population was lost.” The number was more or less confirmed, but it was hard when the government was doing disaster relief and seemed to have forgotten the disaster.
”…How did you do it?” Brianna asked for the group.
”Are you asking tactically, or emotionally?” James asked her bluntly. She tilted her head in confusion, and he clarified. “If you want to know how we made ourselves go there and fight, the answer is simple; it’s really fucking hard, but it’s the right thing to do, and we could do it. If you’re asking what our operational doctrine is, that’s more complicated. A lot of our usual tricks, like, using drone overwatch to have perfect knowledge of a fight, don’t work when the dungeon can make things that can kill you to look at. But the general answer is a lot of magic and a lot of guns.”
They watched him, and he was aware of it, but his own eyes were watching the row of cabinets in the kitchen. It was a constant question in James’ mind, if the Order could have prepared better. If they could have been more militarized and less dedicated to their specific cultural values. Yeah, those values had built them Townton, and it was in a very real way how they managed to handle being custodians of so many dungeons. But what could have been different if they had soldiers, and not knights? Dungeon harvesters and not delvers?
James believed in the value of the path they’d chosen, but sometimes, he wondered about whether it would be more effective if they just took what they needed and preemptively shot anyone that was a problem.
”What about Canada?” One of the kids asked.
”Like, the recent thing?” James raised his eyebrows and brought himself back to the table. “That one’s less of a horror story. Duel dungeons in the same city, though not twins like you imps got.” He smiled kindly as he saw some of them react to the moniker. “There was a group trying to kill one of them, and everyone born there, and another group fumbling to stall them. It… was a bit of a mess. Someone threw me out a window.” James laughed. Being defenestrated was actually a highlight for him, and he knew in his heart that his life was never going to be anything approaching reasonable ever again. “But we got it sorted out without too much damage. You’ve seen the umbral around down here yet?”
Some of them shook their heads, but Liam spoke up. “They’re the walking shadows? The kind of… crab… anemone… things? They look cool but it sucks they don’t have hands.” He gave a sad wince as he shook his head, with some of the other kids around him showing agreement. “Dungeons need to stop making people who can’t use Xbox controllers. That’s just not fair.”
”Okay, that’s… really specific.” James barely held back a laugh as he shifted his chair back slightly, moving out of where a winter sunbeam coming through the window had hit just the right angle to go into his eyes. “But they do have hands, it’s just their hands are their bodies. You’ll see it eventually, the point is, a bunch of them are in the process of moving here, but we got there before it got really bad. So they’re… afraid, hurt, anxious, all that stuff, just not as bad as most people. It feels good.”
”And that was because of the magic too?” Brianna asked, like she was probing for very specific information.
”I mean, I did survive getting thrown out of a window.” James didn’t get specific on how high up the window was.
“Can you let us talk about something?” She asked, and James took a second to realize that she meant please leave.
But he stood up, stepping outside and sitting on the front porch steps, far enough away that his enhanced ears couldn’t pick up their conversation. Even as some of them got louder, he just watched the cluster of young chanters that were playing tag with the fosterlings from upstairs, broadcasting kinetic joy into the air in a way that made him almost want to take a gamble with a tall window again just to see how far a fall he could survive when he meant it.
They weren’t the newborn chanters; those little guys still hadn’t grown their shells. But not all of the species was a uniform age, and the younger ones had recovered from the muscle atrophy and malnutrition faster than their adult counterparts. And it warmed James’ heart to watch them play.
Eventually, before he got dragged into the game of tag in a way that some of the younger kids were clearly planning, he got called back in. And before James even sat down, Brianna had something to say to him.
“We’ve been lying.” The teenager told James, twitching and breathing heavily in the way that they often did when they ran counter to the mental conditioning that Mindful Reverberation put in their heads. “To everyone.”
”…Okay…?” James gave her space to continue, deciding not to make a joke about how Juan would be proud of them.
”We didn’t… give up our spellbooks.” She said. “Not all of them. Because even though you’re the adults and we should obey you, we… didn’t trust you.”
”You really shouldn’t obey us just for being adults.” James said automatically.
Brianna grimaced. “We know. I know. But it’s also hard to know. You know?” That didn’t explain much, but also explained a lot, which James appreciated. “Things are getting worse, aren’t they?” She said next in a quiet voice. There was fear in it, but it was suppressed, held back because no matter what anyone did, a group of teenagers that lived together were naturally going to have trouble being vulnerable when they were all in the same room.
James had tried to not make it sound that way. But… she wasn’t wrong. “Things are getting… different.” He settled on. “Maybe a bit difficult.” James admitted.
The next words were uncomfortable. ”We talked about it. For a long time. Before it’s too late, we want to help.”
He took a deep breath. “I… admire that. A lot.” James told them, looking around at the group that was only half watching him, some of them staring at the floor or walls like they were awaiting execution or something. He still hadn’t sat down, so he started pacing. “But… you guys deserve to have a good time growing up. Okay? Go to school, make friends, figure out who you want to be. When you’re ready, then I bet you’ll make great knights, if that’s what you actually want.” He tried to not stare in Liam’s direction. “But I don’t… no, the Order doesn’t need you to fight for us. That’s the whole point. To keep you safe from the worst case scenario.”
”I think…” Brianna paused and took a breath, one of her friends or roommates or foster siblings or whatever they were setting a hand on her shoulder as she sniffed. “I think we were worried that was what you wanted.” She admitted.
”I know. And I know that no matter how much we tell you, you won’t really believe it until it happens. Or doesn’t happen. Or… you know.” James erred on purpose to lighten the mood.
It kind of worked, and he saw some smiles. And, more importantly, a relaxing of tense shoulders and open relief at the fact that they could, finally, feel a small amount of freedom. It was shortly after that, as if they’d rehearsed it, two of the kids ducked under the table and came up with a cardboard box.
Brianna reached in and pulled out a simple book bound in a blank black glossy substance. “This one is called Visiting Tongue. It… it makes a fireball. But the fire doesn’t do that much, it’s mostly that you can hit something with it.” She said as she sat it on the table between them.
”I… wait, hang on.” James started to say.
Another book joined it. “This is Copper Craft, and it makes a knife. If you… if you keep studying it for long enough, it can cut wi-fi connections.” Another book, this one with a cover of metal loops, almost like chainmail. “And Daring Cloud Acme, summons a spear, isn’t very good.”
”You don’t need to-“
”Hey.” Liam stood up too, stopping his hands just before they slapped into the table, the kid jerking like he had done something wrong before he slowly leaned forward. “You told us we could trust you! This is that! Take the fff- take the spellbooks and then we’ll know no one got hurt because we were selfish, and you can be better at being a superhero!”
James raised his eyebrows both at the outburst, and at that Liam had almost just sworn at him. But he saw heads nodding, and other voices in the group of a dozen kids echoed the sentiment.
So he let them keep stacking magic on the kitchen table.
Brief Contact could bring a stone statue to life for a short time - not real life, just mobilized. Granted Eyes let you share your point of view with someone else. Informal Pagoda came in audiobook form and created ex nihilo a newspaper that reported on the local area, which James was told was usually utterly useless but sometimes just really cool for gossip and drama. Aspire To Shape let someone very minorly heal recent damage, but only to the head, and unlike most spells advancing it didn’t make it stronger but instead let it creep farther down your body. It was also level four, which the Order hadn’t even found a coin for yet.
And then there were three that James was very surprised by. Because they had come from Emma and Lincon, and were presented by Liam himself.
”They didn’t want to be here.” He said. “But this… this is Tether Together. It creates the dome no one can leave. Not the bad version! Just the one that keeps people in!” He quickly denied that it was the same as the one that wiped memories. “Breaking Forge is the one Lincon used to make swords. And Rat’s Ground means you can block something you probably couldn’t.” He looked down at the books, then back at James. “I… I know we’re not supposed to have a lot of this.” Liam said quietly. “But these mattered to us. Still do to them I think. Can you… can you maybe make copies like you do, and give theirs back? I think they’d like that.”
”That wasn’t what we-“
James gently cut Brianna off. “I think we can work something out.” He said softly. “And…” he looked down at the stack of absurd power. A curated selection of spells that had been slowly tested and used by these kids when they were made to delve into dungeons that were way too dangerous for them. “And thank you. Actually I’ll offer that to anyone. If you want your own books back… I think I’m good trusting you to hold onto your own copies.”
”I have one more.” Liam said with a strained voice, just to James while the others discussed that offer in tones that were more excited than they probably wanted him to know. Slowly, he pulled a small paper book, almost like a notepad, out of his pocket, and handed it over.
James recognized it instantly. And he took the copy of Mindful Reverberation like it was a toxic object. “Ah…” he said slowly.
”I… if I have it, I’m gonna use it ag- if I have it I’ll use it.” Liam said. “And I think I could do it better!” He said sharply, before rubbing the back of his neck and looking away. “…but I would use it.”
“Thanks, Liam.” James told him, pocketing it before anyone else saw. “You’re a better kid than I think you think you are.” He told the teenager.
James felt, very suddenly, like he was interrupting something. The kids here might not all be friends, but they had shared a very specific trauma. And living together, making this choice together, it had brought them together in a new way. A way that had him as an outsider, if a benevolent one.
So James bid them goodbye, carrying the box of powerful dungeontech under one arm as he exited the apartment. Passing April on the way out and waving to her, getting a brightly proud smile when he filled her in on what the kids had done and then a slightly more suspicious smile when he said he might give them back copies of the spellbooks that let people throw fireballs.
He had, through all that, never actually gotten one of the cookies. But that was pretty normal for trying to score food when there was a flock of teenagers around.
In this way, there was something normal and grounding here in Townton. One thing that never really changed, no matter how much the shape of the environment or the people in it did.
James headed back to the Lair physically weighed down, but feeling a lightness of comfortable purpose that made the walk to the logisticor platform the easiest thing he’d ever done.
_____
Life continued. Wild and strange and vibrant.
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