“and we will promise that if there is something after the fire that will extinguish us all, we will always do this. we will love each other infinitely with all the time we have. and it will be enough. it will be enough.” -Judas H., THE WORLD IS ENDING-
_____
James had planned on napping before delving. But apparently, his best friend and his girlfriend, who was also his best friend’s girlfriend, were on alternate sleep schedules, and Sarah had wanted to take a nap with Alanna, so before James had even had time to plan his return to his apartment, he’d been ambushed. The bond he had with Sarah - the Attic bond, not the normal bond of an unbreakable friendship - let her dump about two hours of sleep into him, which was just enough to make her feel drowsy, and just enough for his rank in Energy to amplify it into feeling like he was prepared to wrestle a bear.
If it weren’t for the almost childish lack of side effects this kind of thing had, James would have been annoyed. But it was almost deliberately harmless, so he laughed as Alanna swept Sarah up in a bridal carry, gave him a kiss as thanks for his unknowing participation in their shared sleepy time, and teleported away.
It came with a surprise for James, and one that took him a second to parse.
<| Corridor Filled : Bond Formed - Mutual Love : Share - Focus : Vector - Shared Food : Two Corridors Established : Zero Corridors Empty |>
The Attic was getting more creative, it seemed. It also made James laugh gleefully when he realized the feeling he and Sarah had shared was most likely love for Alanna. Which… well hell, that tracked. Alanna was a force of nature, and sometimes deeply distracted by whatever she was up to, but she was a very lovable hurricane.
”Sometimes,” Daniel said from where he was leaning on the front counter, watching the attack on James along with the pair of humans behind the desk, “I see you around, with your bizarre life happening, and I feel like I know what it means to be a side character.”
”Well that’s not fair to yourself.” James felt a wash of pained sympathy for Daniel. “You’re weird in your own way, I’m sure!” James paused, and then narrowed his eyes at one of the first people he’d rescued from Officium Mundi. “Wait hang on. Daniel, you’re bonded to and also basically married to the Order’s strongest navigator, I know you go on dungeon delves because you found a whole new form of Library orb, and you’re the lead on one of our scout teams. I know you go camping in places with amazing views every other week too because you post pics in the server. What the fuck are you talking about?” Sympathy was gone now, replaced by confusion.
”It just wasn’t meant to be.” Daniel shook his head, answering a question James definitely had not asked.
Around his arms, feathers and eyes bloomed into life, the peacock appearance of Pathfinder opening up into reality in a way the shy navigator normally avoided. “Please… ignore him…” she asked James in an airy voice. “And our party is assembling. We should… go…”
“Already on it.” James saluted her. “Where you off to today?”
Daniel shrugged. ”Oh, sneaking into the parking structure dungeon. There’s a few of the Mormon kids that are feeling restless, and also I’m taking my kid along too. We’re going to grab a few points, and Path and I are gonna try to test out the links you talked about in your presentation last week.”
”Your… what?” James paused, pressing his eyes closed as he felt like maybe Sarah’s sleep infusion had rattled his brain. “Hold on. I’m out of the loop. You have a kid?”
”We adopted one of the ratroaches.” Daniel moved his arm in such a way that it held Pathfinder up next to him, the navigator’s orange glow darkening to a fluid amber. “Do you not have lists of people or something?”
James stared at the knight. ”Daniel…” he started.
”I know.” Pathfinder interrupted him. “I… know. I’ve… tried. He can’t… see it.” Her feathers fanned out to gently brush Daniel across his face. “Don’t be late.” She admonished him.
”Right, right! We can talk about your charmed life later! I’ve gotta get to work! Oh, I’ll make sure to ping you for the link thing since I know you care!” Daniel left with the kind of rapid walk of someone who didn’t know how to end conversations desperately trying to escape.
James tried to make eye contact with someone else, but everyone in the lobby was either busy or avoiding him. “Zhu, you there?” He asked.
”Yo.” The navigator came to life across his right side. “What’s up?”
”Is Daniel cooler than me?”
”I’m going back to sleep.” The navigator vanished without hesitation, fragments of broken orange light flickering like electric embers as his manifestation crumbled off of James’ body.
”That’s a yes.” James nodded grimly. First Dave and JP, now Daniel. He was going to have to up his game if this kept up.
_____
James filled the rest of his time before he was supposed to be taking a scheduled trip into Officium Mundi with rounding out his build.
It was something he still shied away from, despite having made a commitment to maximize use of their dungeontech. He didn’t know why he was like this, but he knew it was some kind of fear. Fear of changing himself, fear of fucking up, fear of committing to a choice he couldn’t take back, maybe all of them all at once. It was a problem, because James was supposed to be their frontline. The person who could be flung into situations, whether they were dungeons or pillars or cults or governments, and come out alive and maybe a little victorious.
But he relied a lot on other people to plan the magic out for him. Not that he didn’t train his ass off to make the best use of all his tools; he did, he put the work in to be good, because that was what he needed to do. But the last time he’d made a proactive decision about his own magic it had been picking his Climb spells. And they’d mostly served him quite well! He was even getting along a little better with the cat now, especially since when he had the chance he used the Climb ‘wand’ that amplified the spell and let the cat prowl around the Lair as a five foot long panther-y thing.
But for everything else, it was mostly picking up orb packages and grabbing a few bits from dungeons when he was in them. Like he planned to do later to Officium Mundi.
And that wasn’t good enough to be a paladin. James needed to be proactive, no matter how he felt about it.
His first stop was the vault to check out one of the old Underburb crystals for a moment. And then feed nine skill points into it, a tiny fraction of what James actually had available.
[+1 Skill Rank : Programming - BLISS]
[+1 Skill Rank : Programming - BLISS]
[+1 Skill Rank : Programming - BLISS]
[Lesson Continues : Biology IV (4110/4200), Endurance III
Lesson Continues : Basketball IV (122/4200), Aim II, Agility I
Lesson Continues : Computer Science II (745/1400), Energy I
Merits : 43, Credits : 0, Accolades : 28]
Each one of the ranks added about two hundred points to his computer science Lesson. But… the weird thing was, they added less and less with each upgrade. Still said they were one rank each, though. James chalked it up to a quirk of the way the various magics communicated to people, and noted it in the research log. The point of this, ultimately, was to accelerate himself toward being able to complete another level of the Lesson shortly after his biology Lesson ticked over, and this was well on track to do so.
Though it might be a little tricky because the crystal stopped giving him ranks after the third one. Well, the fourth technically, he already had one from a long time ago. But while the crystal kept taking his skill points, it didn’t let him take anything back.
When James had curiously asked Nik for help with the thing, Nik had gotten two ranks instantly on touching it; everything James had ‘paid for’, but apparently wasn’t allowed to have anymore.
So he’d need a new source of computer knowledge. But that was doable, they had orbs probably.
After that, he had a quick conversation with one of the techs in charge of maintaining their resistance program ‘server’ room, and got an expansion to the clunky set of old pieces of hardware that ran his own resistance upgrades. By the time he left, the mix of CD-ROM and zip drives that he had personally tied to himself was giving him a solid 15% resistance to wood, 11% to hammers, and a respectable 20% to venom.
Some things, like wood, James was advised to not push over 30% ever, and never go above 50%. Initial tests had been promising, but it only took one accidental slip to learn that physics did not like when your resistance approached 100%, and this was how James had learned that someone had turned a chair into a frag grenade by lightly brushing against it.
No one had been able to figure out where the hell the programs actually came from. The constant theory that Wikipedia itself was a dungeon had either been passed over from his own friend group, or spawned independently here in Research. But James was less convinced as time went by, even if he couldn’t explain why.
After that he spent a mind-numbing amount of time - not a lot of time, just a boring portion of his minutes - restocking his Appointed Arrival casts from the Verdigris Venture spellbook. At least he could listen to music while doing this, though as he wasn’t the only person in the room, someone had gotten to the aux cable first and was currently playing some kind of ephemeral trance playlist. James didn’t hate it, but it was kind of background noise and not something that alleviated boredom. But hey, he wasn’t Reed, who was trying to get to thirty pluses on a single cast of Amber Icon.
It was as he was leaving the vault that he learned that Emma and Lincon had agreed to share their own hidden spellbook that let someone have rubbery extendable arms long enough for the Order to make a copy of it. So they now had Wrought Leaf Migration as a spell option, and James wished he’d known that before. It took over half an hour though, and he just didn’t have the patience today.
That was after he’d gone through the process of hitting the book itself with two different absorbed red orbs. So now he knew its height and day of the week it was most used on, which was… pretty much entirely useless. But both of them, for reasons unknown, lowered the study time by about five seconds. It wasn’t much, but it would add up as James cycled through more red absorbs over time, and he used them on as many spellbooks as he could before running out of charges or starting to bleed from his eyes.
Deliberate progress. Incremental, yes, but real. Planned and consistent. Something James could make a habit of, like how he now tried to watch at least one animal fact video a week to keep his biology Lesson progressing.
He also tried his hand at absorbing another orange orb. The small ones were relatively available, and James felt like his current ongoing task of eating apples to spawn saffron was… well he liked saffron. The kitchens certainly approved. But Anesh got to spawn more Anesh, and James was kind eager for something more on that level.
He did not manage to be the first person to absorb a second orange. Instead, he got a different reward.
[Certification Added : Motorcycle License - Japan]
James was going to have to remember to clean out his wallet later.
After that, the last thing he took care of was a couple of select purple and yellow orbs. Because James remembered a lot of lingering discomfort at applying a ton of changes at once, and he wanted to ease into the most important ones the Order had on offer.
[+.8 Skill Rank : Firearms - Maintenance - Rifles - Early 21st Century]
[+1 Skill Rank : Piloting - Helicopter]
[Shell Upgraded : Maximum Applied Force - Left Hand - Fingers, +3N]
[Shell Upgraded : Organ Efficiency - Intestines - Lower - +12%]
Of the yellow orbs, the first one was for constant use, and he knew he’d use it because apparently he’d been doing it enough that he already had point two ranks in the skill. The second one was just in case.
The purple orbs were a little more minute. The second one was just nice. A pleasant thing to have that would technically make him operationally more effective just because the better his body worked, the better he could act without discomfort. It was also one of the rare percentage based orbs, and James looked forward to finding out that his insides were so fucked up that twelve percent was essentially worthless. It was also only nice because he was a human; apparently that one did the thing for ratroaches where it caused them to grow more internal organs, which was… not lethal or anything; they would expel them when they grew too much. But it was unpleasant at best, and it was marked with a warning for that reason. Camracondas just got less heartburn from their own ‘stomachs’, which were more like matter annihilation engines. James had no idea camracondas could get heartburn, and felt like he should have heard about this before, but it was cool that they had an option beyond antacids now.
Mild improvements to his self made, and no existential dread setting in just yet, James felt like he was fully ready for some exploration. Awake, alert, energized, upgraded, and…
Okay, the last purple orb apparently took offense to the barbeque he’d had for lunch. So maybe he’d take the free time he had before the dungeon door opened on a bathroom break.
But then, adventure.
_____
Officium Mundi was a lot of things to a lot of people. To James, it was the start of everything, and nothing more need be said. To Arrush, it was a place that he could apply his most practiced skill of fighting for his life, in service of someone that he cared about. But also, while he did that, there were snacks and air conditioning and there was a surprising lack of fungus to get in the lines between fur and chitin.
It was also a source of skills. For both of them, yes, but for Arrush, it meant something different. Arrush knew a lot of weird things as a result of the way the Sewer had shoved information into his brain to accelerate his growth into a soldier. But not a lot of that was practical. The Office, as dangerous as it could be at times, offered… a kind of purity of function. A single skill orb could make him useful in a way he never had been before. Maybe one rank in a subset of cooking wasn’t enough to work in the kitchen beyond his current job washing dishes in the morning, but it taught him something critical. Something more important than the information itself.
It taught him that he could learn.
That just because he was monstrous and broken, he wasn’t different. Not that much. Skill ranks worked on him. And once he had them, he knew that he could learn more. He could keep going. There were hundreds of different worlds that he could explore with his mind and hands, all of them eagerly waiting for him.
Arrush liked the Office almost as much as James. For James it was the start of everything. For Arrush, it was the start of anything.
The rest of their party for the delve were people James had sort of met before, in some cases delved with before. A pair of Status Quo prisoners that had joined the Order in full with the alternating goals of being safe, and being part of making sure Status Quo never happened again. And one man who had worked at a coal burning power plant before he’d been trapped in some kind of floral stasis pod and slowly eroded from the memories of everyone who knew him.
One of the ex-prisoners was the woman who had birthday magic; a thing that the dungeon for had been lost, and James was intensely jealous of. Every year, on her birthday, she got a tiny bit faster, a tiny bit more perceptive, and a less tiny bit better at eating granite. That last one, she admitted, wasn’t useful yet, but she was holding out hope.
The plant worker, who introduced himself as Harv, was badly faking being gruff, and was a way better Climb caster than James expected. James could tell his persona was a veneer from the start, but he was shocked by how easily the man put Mountain Of The Self to work. His bulky frame and equally bulky coat keeping him nice and toasty as he burned Breath like it was nothing all throughout the delve.
The other not-prisoner was a quiet little guy who James had met before on a delve just like this one, months ago. He had some upgrades, but he didn’t really want to share them, and that was okay. He did make it clear that he could take care of himself, but James made sure to watch his fellow delver’s back the whole time anyway. Especially since he’d been the first one to ask about Arrush’s lingering injuries, and to do so in a way that made it seem like he cared about the person, not their capabilities.
It would be a horrible thing to get this far, survive that much, just to get ambushed by a paper pusher and die here in a place that was… not safe, but manageable.
They spent a couple hours sweeping a pair of known cubicle towers that spawned the magic coffee used to run the replicator ritual, before moving on to exploring farther out into the carpet savannah. Learning to work with each other on the fly, the Order’s training helping them find the edges where they could click together.
As they walked over a bridge made out of the frames of cubicle walls, crossing a chasm that punched a hundred feet into the floor revealing buried areas like a city built into a cliff face, James distracted himself from his fear of heights by thinking about this dungeon’s secret trick.
It was teamwork.
It had always been teamwork. And teamwork, of course, was valuable in every dungeon. But James had sort of mentally mapped out how sometimes dungeons would have a very specific check on whether or not someone got to continue in them. For the Climb, it was right out of the gate, and it was “can you survive the cold”. The Stacks was more esoteric, with the librarian-ish creatures demanding that someone be able to improvise and use language with creative flair. The Sewers tried to make it a matter of if someone was willing to kill, but it probably didn’t come out the way the dungeon intended.
For the Office, the check was simple. A single camraconda, almost every time, beat a single delver. Camracondas were the ultimate check of if you were working as a team; either have backup, or die, with minimal middle ground.
James knew in his bones he was extraordinarily lucky to have had Rufus and Anesh and Alanna the first time they’d run into one of the snakes. Because if he’d been on his own, doing the lone wolf thing, he’d be a corpse and an orb-shaped dinner. And no one would remember he’d existed.
But that hadn’t happened. And instead, he was here helping to pry up heavy desks that were sunk into the carpeted floor like it was dirt, exposing tight dark spaces where iLipedes made their homes. The group working together, even the people who found the bugs too creepy to get near being helpful by keeping watch, to try to collect more of the iLipede subspecies that could scan orbs. The ones that created countdown timers to important events, they avoided; the Order’s policy on not fucking with prophecy in full effect.
It took a while into the delve, and through at least two tricky combats, for James to start to understand that he wasn’t fully comfortable with these people. Oh, he trusted them to watch his back. He trusted Harv especially to watch his front; the guy loved the feeling of invincibility that the Climb spell gave him. But he didn’t feel like he knew them.
Which, obviously, he didn’t. But it really hit him when they found a young decision tree in an unexpected little corner of a shifting cubicle labyrinth, and James and Arrush got lost in the fun of asking it for ‘advice’ on their path. An echo of his first time in here with his friends, now passed on and shared with a new lover that was rapidly becoming an integral part of his life. And… the other three delvers weren’t part of it. Not just that they weren’t interested in the tree, or engaged with the dungeon; the birthday girl was really trying her best to get one of the glowing lizard things made out of fragments of a computer monitor to give her the time of day, after all. You didn’t do that if you didn’t care. But they didn’t overlap with James. It was an emotional distance he hadn’t been expecting.
And once he noticed it, it did make him uncomfortable. Maybe that was what had Arrush being so jumpy at every encounter with a paper flock or strider pack they ran across. But it also let James realize that the gap closed slightly with every mutual discovery of some silly dungeontech, every dumb joke during a rest, and every second of growing familiarity with each others habits.
It all came together just at the right moment for a fight with a maimframe.
The towering creation, an amalgam of computer cases welded together and bulging with components, was the kind of thing that was a more direct skill check for any delve team. What it asked wasn’t a specific preparation or fortune. It asked if you could survive being shot with sharpened silicon bolts, crushed by the thick cables whipping around its undercarriage, trampled by the heavy metal legs, or, if you were very unlucky with the subspecies you got, assaulted with a wide-spread microwave beam.
This one was guarding something. In a part of the dungeon where it would have looked like an earthquake had struck if it were a normal building, but in the Office instead looked like there was a deliberate assault on the architecture, the maimframe watched. The collapsed ceiling tiles, massive rectangular foamboard shapes slanted where they had fallen, were under constant observation by the fifteen foot tall mechanical beast. Because if it weren’t watching, then the spider-forms made out of vents and tubing from up above might successfully complete their own dungeon delves.
James was, in general, okay with the Office. It was harsh and dangerous, but it wasn’t evil in the way the Sewer was. It felt more like it was making a very brutal ecosystem than any intentional cruelty. But forcing the spiders to remain in their enclosed habitat, with a finite limit on their population due to starvation conditions? That felt shitty to him. And these vent spiders, who had banded together to break that cycle, were a population low enough at least that James could offer them a way out. Or at the very least, crack the gates to their home.
The fight was simple, and fast. Because a five person Order team doing the ambushing and properly armed was a nightmare for a single opponent. Two of their members created a diversion, luring the maimframe out from its own position by sprinting past and rapidly creating distance. When it started shooting - something it did on a hair trigger - Harv was there. Spending Breath and creating a wall that stopped first the projectiles, then the maimframe itself as it failed to trample over him. The beast, stalled for a moment, was in position for Arrush to lunge out from his waiting spot with a tightly trained and controlled motion, the sword he’d been gifted back in Utah thrusting toward the creature’s base. Not to hit it, but to instead clash with the force field that maimframes could project from their CD drives. The summoned blade met the blue dome, and then, with barely a hint of resistance, popped it like a soap bubble.
At which point there was nothing stopping James from landing a pair of drones on different elevated parts of the maimframe, and lighting off their thermite payloads.
Fast, clean, efficient, and the only downside was that the smell of melting metal and rubber was acrid enough to cause everyone to want to play rock-paper-scissors for who had to fetch the orb drops.
James lost.
But the thing dropped a coveted size-four green. One of the ones that tended to have a dozen other orbs packed into it, and also tended to do something ridiculous to the space it was used in. Too big to copy, this one was scheduled to head to Townton’s chanter park, unless one of the other teams in here had gotten another one already. James hoped it would give the place cell service. Or maybe some kind of thing where every time you needed a place to sit there was a perfect bench available.
The others didn’t quite share his vision, but he got to hear Arrush explain how his idea for it making gardening faster could work without breaking time, as long as everyone didn’t look too closely. Harv, continuing to surprise James, opined that this was just how quantum physics already worked, as far as anyone knew.
That whole conversation took place as they tried to find a way to navigate up to the ceiling. A process that, it seemed, just wasn’t going to work out. There were too many spots that were hard to see from a distance where it would require precise long leaps to bridge gaps, or where you’d have to be able to jump five feet straight up. James could maybe do that, he could jump artificially higher than most people. But it would be a stretch, and then he’d be exposed until he could haul someone up after him.
After waiting around for about half an hour, taking the opportunity from having an area that was already cleared of basically anything alive by the maimframe to pick up all the loose snack food and dungeontech they could grab, there was movement from up above. James spotted them first, since he was more focused on that than the loot, and waved at the cluster of boxy metal spiders with their faces made out of tubing loops. LED eyes looked back with curiosity, or perhaps apprehension. it was hard to tell. LEDs weren’t actually that expressive as far as eyeballs went, which was, in James’ expert opinion, why most species went with wetter organs for the purpose.
“If you guys want to leave, or just want to talk or trade, we’ll be stopping by here at least once a week!” He called up, keeping his voice pitched low just in case, but still trying to be audible to the overhead group. “One of you guys is outside right now, they’ll be coming back at some point to say hi, we’re just here to clear the way.”
The spiders shifted, one of them deftly hopping downward from panel to panel, their terrain swaying without bothering them at all until they landed closer to the floor on one of the broken slabs that was still braced against bits of the Office walls and hadn’t fully fallen down. They leaned forward, rectangular body letting out a mechanical whir from slatted vents in their side like metal gills, and regarded James and the others curiously.
Arrush stepped up next to his partner, glancing at James with complete confidence, before craning his chitinous neck upward and waving as well with one of his smaller paws.
The spider looked toward where the maimframe had been hiding, and a smoking pillar of debris rested now. Then back at the delvers. “Oh, yeah.” James said. “Got that one. I dunno if the dungeon will replace it, but you should have at least a little time.”
The vent spider regarded the corpse, then James again. And then it turned its looped face upward and made some kind of whistling sound, air forced through sharp gaps. The other spiders higher up responded quickly, moving with deft hops to clear the distance toward the ground, grouping up around their forward scout.
Now Arrush tensed up, but James just set a hand on his boyfriend’s armor, and stepped backward. A few quick words collected their team, and moved them away from the main part of the fallen platforms that formed a ramp up to the ceiling. And the got to watch, and be watched in return, as the unit of eight vent spiders surged down the ramp and into the dungeon itself. The last one keeping an eye on the Order team waiting until the others were into the thick of the warped and high walled cubicles before following.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
”Well that went well!” James said cheerfully.
He chose cheerful, because the other option was worrying that they’d made a big mistake here. But he’d at least seen the report from the people who had talked to the vent spider living with them in Townton; he knew the conditions those guys were under. So he chose to hope. To hope that their lives could get a little better. And that they might be a new ally to the Order, whether they chose to leave their home dungeon or not.
That, though, was all the team had time for in terms of big adventures. So they turned back, following the known parts of the map, notating where things had changed in small ways, collecting a few more orbs and bags of coffee on the way out. Getting back with enough time to spare to drop off the fuel for the replication ritual, and some new various colored orbs to make test runs of.
And, for once, James made it through an entire delve without accidentally cracking an orb. He did get a pen that made any plastic it was used on glow for a while.
And Arrush picked up the slack for him in terms of shoving his paw into the wrong pouch, James’ companion leaving the door knowing a lot more about fly fishing, masonry repair, and how to pull a shot than he did going in. An accident, yes, but one that was completely acceptable compared to the possible range of problems that Arrush could have had, delving with one of his arms still in a sling.
Plus it was good that someone was taking up the torch of collecting new skills. And now James had a new excuse to get an espresso machine for the Lair.
_____
Tigris was a name James hadn’t expected to hear again. Not because of anything sinister, it was just that of the three surviving members of the Guild of Alchemists that surrendered to the Order of Endless Rooms, Tigris was the one that wanted the least to do with any of them.
The Order of Endless Rooms had an interesting policy when it came to handling criminals. It had grown out of James’ initial reflexive discomfort with the carceral state, been nurtured by the rapid realization among members of the Order that the police were not going to help them with dungeon problems, and then been constructed into its current form through informed research and expert consensus. And it was, essentially, the simple truth that punishment didn’t fucking do anything.
It had been true before the magic, and it was still true even if the people they needed the policy for were called Alchemists. Systems designed to punish people for crimes did very little to actually stop crime. Instead, they encouraged more radical measures among criminals to hide their crimes; the harsher the punishments, the more dangerous someone was willing to be to avoid them. So the Order just skipped that part.
Oh, some of what they did would certainly be seen as punishment. Of the Alchemists, Nile essentially never shut up about how he wanted his mansion on a hillside and his personal housekeeping staff back. And Red certainly saw the limiting of her freedoms as punitive. But the important distinction was that the Order didn’t do that for the purpose of hurting them. It was more the inverse; it was to keep them from hurting anyone else.
Confiscated estates had been used to help the victims and their families, permissions had been pulled back to the point that the individuals who were a threat could be monitored and worked with, and the perpetrators had been put through mandatory therapy and counseling before being thoroughly dunked into a cultural environment that gave them a more productive outlet for their abilities and attitudes.
Well, for two of them.
Tigris had wanted nothing to do with that. He was, in his own words, an old man who was out of the game. He’d said it early on in his time at the Order with a fresh sort of bitter anger, anger that hadn’t had time to settle and simmer. But while the anger might have faded, and he kept to the terms of his surrender, he hadn’t been willing to go through the same things that Red and Nile were. So while those two had, in their own ways, built new lives and found versions of themselves that could be trusted with the responsibility of freedom, Tigris had just stopped.
He treated his apartment like a prison cell. He did the bare minimum demanded of him. He had his meals delivered and barely ate anyway. While Amelia found meaning in making connections with other Researchers while developing their potion program, and Nile found it in being an abrasive but harmless boastful twit when he scored a success at something, Tigris found… nothing.
He just languished.
And it sucked, because while James was perfectly willing to take prisoners and enforce surrender conditions in order to stop harm, there was only so much he or the Order were willing to do to force improvement. If Tigris wanted to suck for the rest of his life, then that was what was going to happen. Just so long as he wasn’t using his wealth, connections, and magical acumen to cause more deaths, he could be as much of a fuckup as he wanted.
Which was why James found it weird that he had been called for by the aging man. But he had some time before the people he needed to talk to were awake, and he was going in the same direction either way, so he made his way to the room in medical where Tigris was currently staying. On its own, that told James something grim. People didn’t stay in hospitals for a long time unless they were dealing with something serious, or dying.
And James did know which one Tigris was.
He checked in at the front desk, getting directions through the copied and tessellated hallways to the correct room. Tigris was placed deeper into the medical wing, the space itself one of the larger areas of the Order already, having been planned out for the growth of the Order and the Lair itself. Some day, they’d have multiple floors to it probably, and the building’s transition into an absolute mess would continue. But for now, it was just a couple turns down smooth floors that his shoes squeaked softly on while he walked.
James stopped outside the room, a pair of people already inside. Tigris caught his eye from the bed he was laying on, and his hand raised ever so slightly to indicate that James should wait a moment. The man looked… old. So very old. James remembered the last days that he’d visited his grandma before her death; life draining away so fast from the woman, wrinkles and spots on her skin deepening to canyons and blots as everything that had kept her going just shut down. Tigris looked like he was one step shy of that kind of complete bodily shutdown, like maybe the IV in his arm was the only thing keeping him going.
The other two, in comparison, were spring chickens. Amelia was talking as James approached. “-alchemic neutral. Or so we’re calling it.”
”It’s something we never could have studied on our own.” Nile admitted, standing behind Amelia’s chair with his arms folded, facing perpendicular to the bed, perhaps so he didn’t have to look at Tigris. “It took too many drops of sap. Not to mention the other magic.”
”Yes, yes. I’m sure he knows how impressive that all is.” Amelia’s voice contained a bite of sarcasm. “The important thing is that it was never about ingredients. It was, or has always been, pairings. At least. Each pairing of discrete ingredients creates an effect, with larger collections then acting on each other, to produce the effects that…” She trailed off, the animated determination to share her work fading as Tigris gave a coughing chuckle.
The old man stopped his pained laughter as the other two Alchemists went quiet. “It’s good, I think.” He said, voice a hoarse croak. “That you’ve kept busy.”
Nile finally turned at the placid words, catching sight of James as he whirled around, but not dropping the scowl that he’d already put on. “You damned idiot.” He snapped at Tigris. “This entire thing is pointless. You’re wasting our time here, when you could…!” He trailed off, his face going through the process of trying to express something that might be sorrow or sympathy when he might not have needed to do that for years or longer. “You don’t…”
”Normally,” Amelia said in her normal calm tone that always made James feel like he’d been sent to the principle’s office, “I’d tell my colleague to shut it. But he’s right.”
”I’m what.” Nile blinked, looking like he’d just missed a once in a lifetime event and hadn’t thought to record it.
”You don’t need to do this.” Amelia continued. “There are options. Not just potions, though we have enough of everything now and good health is just one of the perks of working here. The Order has methods of life extension, you don’t need to…”
Tigris tried to laugh, and coughed dryly instead. ”Die?” He asked with a cracked smile. The other two adults both nodded softly, neither of them knowing what to say or how to say it. “I think I do.” He said, breathing deep and mustering his strength, “I’m tired. Give it twenty years, you’ll both be tired too. And maybe it’s foolish, but I do… want to know where my soul ends up.” The man, who had been the head of an organization that used their powers to enrich themselves without care for who they had to hurt to do it, gave his students a warm gaze. “I am… proud of you both. Yes, that’s the word I’ve been looking for. I know you don’t need me to tell you, you’re a far cry from children who need platitudes or reassurances. But you’re better than me.” He sank back into his pillow, his strength fading. “Better than we were. I’m proud of what you’ve become. Forget me, please, it’s better that way, but remember that at least.”
“There is absolutely no evidence that your soul, whatever that may be-!” Nile bit his words short, staring at the man who had closed his eyes and was breathing steadily on the bed, before he spun on his heel and stalked out, shouldering past James as he did so.
Amelia followed him, though less violently. “He’s wrong.” She said to him as she passed.
”About which part?” James asked, his voice catching a bit as he spoke.
”I’m not going to be tired in twenty years.” She told him, meeting his eyes. “I don’t know how long this body is going to serve me for, but I want the lifespan purples. Please. There’s more to do, and my soul I’d rather take into my own hands.”
James didn’t even get a chance to tell her that he wasn’t in charge of the allocation counter before she had moved past him, only pausing to lean on the corner of the hallway’s wall next to one of their fire extinguishers, before wiping her eyes and stalking away.
And then it was just him, and Tigris. James entered the room with a knock. “Still awake?” He asked quietly.
”Yes, yes. I just didn’t want to…” he trailed off with a grimace. “It’s a hard thing, to open up. Maybe a bit easier since I know I won’t need to live with anything I say.”
”Nile is right, we’ve got multiple options.” James said. “But if you want to die, and I can’t say I understand, that’s your call.”
Tigris didn’t move his head, just cracked his eyes open in narrow slits to stare at James. “When we surrendered to you, do you remember the terms?”
”Nope.” James said honestly.
The old man froze, eyes opening fully to take in James’ earnest look, before his mouth opened in a silent gasp, body shaking as the gasp resolved itself into the most powerful laugh his failing form could still manage. “I don’t know what I expected.” He whispered. “It was arguably the Guild of Alchemists’ second most important day.”
”But for me, it was Tuesday.” James said, feigning seriousness and really hoping Tigris didn’t know what he was quoting. “Why do you ask?”
”I held back.” He said, without a hint of remorse. “What we gave you. It wasn’t everything. I was… waiting, maybe. For the right moment. Too late now.” Tigris wheezed out the tail end of a breath, looking at James as the younger man sat down like he was expecting to see anger or annoyance. But James just gave him space to talk. “There’s a pad of paper in the drawer over there. Convenient little thing, I don’t even need to use a pen anymore. Locations and passwords to a few stockpiles. Bank accounts your witch of an accountant might have missed. Two recipes I kept to myself.” His almost skeletal hand motioned toward the side of the hospital room before dropping back to the bed with a light impact, and he stopped talking.
James waited for more, but that seemed to be it. “Not that we won’t put this to use,” he said, “but why? Why now?”
”Because you’ll use it.” Came the hoarse reply. “Call it pride if you want. Hard work and all my luck went into some of that. It would be a cowardly shame to let it rot.” He coughed again, and didn’t stop for so long that James had stood up to call a nurse in before Tigris caught his breath and composed himself. “I don’t think we’ll be having any more dramatic chats.” He said, voice still tight, like he was forcing out a last few words. “Do me one favor, and bury me with my wife. Maybe she…”
He stopped talking entirely, a small and distant smile on his lips as he looked away from James. And James knew the conversation was actually over at that point, even if Tigris still had days or even weeks of life left in him.
Silently, he retrieved the notepad, the invisible hand of the magic effect that translated thoughts to ink having put down precisely what Tigris had intended. And with a final nod to their least cooperative prisoner, James let himself out.
The walk back to the front part of medical was quiet and morose. James had never done well with death or aging, and even less so as he got older. So his head was in a fog and his heart feeling like a lump when he decided to distract himself by actually reading some of the notes.
”Oh. So that’s where the telepath command network potion got to.” He muttered as he looked at the first one. The second recipe was for something that apparently made listening to music ‘practically orgasmic’, a phrase he really wished he did not know came from Tigris. He also got why that one hadn’t ever entered their catalogue; kind of overshadowed by the practical effects and profits they could get out of just exercise, skin care, and reading potions.
He took a seat on one of the waiting benches in the front part of medical. He had about twenty minutes before he was meeting someone else here, and he planned to use that time doing something useful with what amounted to the last will of a man who had decided to give up on his own life.
If there was one thing the brief interaction with Tigris did for James, it wasn’t fill out the Order’s potion cookbook or refresh some of their bank accounts. It was to remind himself that he never wanted to end up in that position. Maybe, one day, he’d be damaged beyond any kind of reasonable life; he had a dangerous life, he might lose limbs, might get brain damage, or might just get sick in a way that shaper substance couldn’t fix. Maybe he’d need to tap out early, just because there wouldn’t be a life to live. But he couldn’t feel that right now. Right now, all he could think was that if he had any hope, even if it was just the hope that he could have one more pleasant experience, then he wasn’t going to give up. Not like that.
Also, by the time his other meeting arrived, three different people had volunteered on the Order’s task tracker to hurry to pick up the music enjoyment potion.
That small bit of normalcy - Order style normalcy anyway - gave James the little edge of a good mood he’d lost.
_____
“Bea.” James said, pausing at the lab the inhabitor was using while he ran to grab a snack instead of just lurking in medical.
”Hello.” She replied to him with her standardized blank tone. Blank, but not empty. Not really. James could detect a hint of something as the potion person sat unmoving on one of the room’s chairs, an intricate device holding a small yellow orb sitting in the central observation table, and a cream colored siamese cat sitting on her lap. “How are you?” She asked neutrally.
James hadn’t gotten this far in life by not being able to sense a deflection.
”Bea what is this.” He asked from the lab’s observation window, waving a hand at the whole room.
She didn’t even blink, only barely tilted her head to look at the pile of slightly transparent cats currently curled around each other and napping underneath the room’s heating vent, at least two more of them napping on her to siphon warmth out directly. “I am testing a totem.” She said.
Some days, James felt like he was overwhelmed and underprepared for the world. Some days he was so tired that if he didn’t have a point in Energy he’d just lay in bed and embrace lethargy. Some days were hard.
Today, he felt like it was all worth it, to get to experience this dual moment of magic. Of a person surrounded by domestic animals and clearly absorbed in the moment, and those animals having been… created ex nihilo?
”Wheeeeere did the cats come from?” James asked carefully.
”The totem produces them.” Bea motioned with the hand that wasn’t occupied petting the cat on her lap. “This one in particular is limited to eight cats before it stops.”
A distant horror howled for James to ask a terrible question. ”…and… what happens when the totem… is turned off?”
”The cats vanish.” Bea said bluntly. “Like with the Cloud Prowler, the same cats then return when the totem is activated again. They do not seem distressed by this, though it is hard to tell. Skulljacks do not work on them, their reactions to stimuli are uniform and extremely limited, and they do not eat or drink, so verifying that they have thoughts has been difficult. They may simply be constructs. I am waiting on further materials to continue trials.”
James nodded along, looking through the observation window and counting the number of cats in the room. “Hey, so, there’s sixteen siameses in there?”
”Yes.”
”You said eight.”
”I built a second totem.” Bea said in the kind of voice you used when the truth of the matter was so blatantly self-obvious that it was almost a waste of time to explain herself. “Testing is important. And the Stacks magic is poorly understood so far.”
”Testing, and being covered in cats. Or cat-emulating constructs.”
”Correct.”
James should have seen that coming. “Of course.” He said with forced evenness. “Does this happen to work with other Library orbs? Like, to make other species? Because we’ve found some weird orbs so far.”
It was one of the earlier things Bea had tried. “They are specialized by orb. This one makes cats. It is capable of making other forms of cat, but only cats, and we have not found an orb for lions yet to trial. Though now that we know the method, Mars and Anima are confident that they can iterate.”
”Cool. I’m gonna have an existential nightmare about this later, and then probably have a bunch of other questions.”
Bea gave a tiny jerk of her head. “I will be here when you are ready.” She said, as James tentatively stepped away and picked up his pace down the hall, hoping to get some chips or something even with the distraction taking up some of his time.
_____
James’ meeting was in a different hospital room, because the people he was talking to insisted on it so their whole team could be present, and he wasn’t about to tell them no just so he could have a chair to sit in.
Charlie was doing fine; much like James, he wasn’t exactly sitting, instead the man was leaning against the cabinets of the hospital room with his arms crossed doing his best impression of a statue. Alice, in contrast, was more animated and specifically animated in the way that someone who was constantly itching and fidgeting was animated. Dance, normally the more energetic of the three, was watching them all with a tired narrowly irised lens from her own hospital bed; recovering but still under observation.
”So.” James started as he entered the room. “First off, glad to see you’re all alive.”
”Maybe I don’t have to be!” Alice offered. “I could really dig being in a coma or something! Or maybe Dance and I could trade bodies while we heal? I was just about to ask when you came in; what do you think Dancy, try out some legs? Itch like crazy?” Alice asked as she scraped her bandaged hand across her pant leg.
Dance, her voice returned to her after there was no Underburbs infection found lingering, sounded like she was considering it. “Maybe. I could reach shelves. But would that be okay? Your body is kind of older isn’t it?”
”…Okay ow.” The comment got Alice to forget her hand at least, laughing as she met Dance’s look and saw the camraconda giving her a fanged smile. “Rude girl! Who taught you to bully poor old ladies.”
”You’re twenty eight.” Charlie said with a clipped tone. “Also you can’t trade bodies, we don’t know if that purple goes with people or not.”
Alice sighed. ”Fair. I guess I’ll have to settle for magical finger regrowth for now. Solving all our problems with purple orbs.” She gave James a quick little nod. “Also I owe you a thanks for being the one to test the finger orb. Thanks. Seriously. I’d get by missing parts, but I don’t have to, so that’s cool.”
”I’d say you’re welcome but it seems like it itches like hell so say it again when I’ve lost a finger and need to wait for it to regrow.” James smiled for a moment before taking a breath and focusing on what he was here for. “Okay. So here’s the deal. Do you guys want to keep working as a scout team?”
The room went quiet, and Alice and Dance both looked over at Charlie, waiting for word from their most hesitant member. When he realized they were waiting on him, he blinked, looking up suddenly from his vigil of the floor tiles. “Not like we were.” He said, one hand coming off the arm it was resting on to stall whatever Alice was about to say in response. “Look. None of us are good at heroics. Dance isn’t even a delver. The Underburbs was a mistake.”
”Well yeah, everything about that place is a mistake.” Dance hissed as she spoke, though whether it was amusement or ire was hard to tell.
James cut in ”No, he means sending you there was the mistake.” He got a stern nod from Charlie. “I agree, too. It’s too easy to forget that not everyone around here is a combatant, and we just dispatched you to the most dangerous dungeon situation to poke around. Terrible plan, all things considered.”
”We did find it though!” Alice pointed out.
Dance curled her body forward on the bed before making a pained squeak. ”And then someone threw me through a window.” She said. “And stabbed you! Stabbed parts of you off!”
“But we did find it.” Alice insisted.
With a sigh, Charlie shook his head. “Alice is right. Even if she’s right in a terrible way.” He ignored his companion’s yell of indignation. “We’re getting good at investigating things. Poking around. Finding dungeons is next to impossible without good leads, but following trails? Finding signs of magic in the world? We might be the best in the Order at it.” At his words, Alice quietly straightened up, and even Dance rolled herself over to watch him talk, a previously unknown spark of pride uniting them. “But I don’t want to do that again.”
It was such a simple thing to say. To James, it almost came across as simple too. But he could see the way the others were looking at him, and while he didn’t have Alanna’s power of Empathy, he could recognize that there had been conversations, arguments, about this exact thing before he’d talked to them.
”…and I don’t wanna… uh… lose you guys.” Dance added quietly, prompting Alice to scoot her chair closer and lean over the camraconda in a loose hug.
Fortunately, James had options for them. “Well, there’s a few things your group’s talents can be put toward. I doubt you want to go back to Springfield…” all of them shook their heads, with varying levels of vigor, “which is fine. There’s nothing there anyway.”
”Wait, nothing how?” Alice asked.
Charlie answered her, having kept up on the situation. “There's just nothing there. Everything is gone. Power lines, buildings, roads, pipes, foundations. It's just dead dirt and holes.”
”And the county is selling the land for development, so there’s also a lot of construction equipment if we need to know where to steal a backhoe from.” James added smoothly. “We considered buying some, but local developers got on it really fast, so that plan got ditched. Now. Options. We’ve got two known dungeons in Canada, but I’m only telling you this so you know why I’m not gonna send you there, because the city they’re in or around is under dungeon control somehow.”
”Unsettling. Pass.” Charlie vetoed that one early.
James nodded and continued unabated. “There’s still four sites that the last Status Quo had notes on implying that they hadn’t quite obliterated the dungeons there. Mostly on the east coast, we think.”
”It’s open ended…” Alice said with the cadence of someone looking at a potential apartment that had a gaping hole in the wall and optimistically saying ‘well it has natural light’.
”Right. It’s also still a risky option.” James pointed out. “If this Status Quo found them, that means others might too. And we still don’t know the exact method they were using to kill dungeons, so while it might be important to get to them quick to stop whatever it was, it also might be the case that they just covered the entrance in landmines. So.”
”So.” Dance repeated. “Maybe not that. I could survive a landmine. But Alice is squishy.”
”Hey…” Charlie looked almost offended that he wasn’t the one Dance was theorizing about being blown up.
The camraconda girl turned in her bed to look at him, her tail poking out the side of the blanket. “Do you also want to be squishy?” She asked.
”I can’t believe I’m the one saying this, but focus you two.” Alice nudged the young camraconda as she met James’ eyes. “Is there anything else for us?”
Clearing his throat, James felt like he should add a specific thing. ”To be clear, even if you’re not actively doing something as a scout team, there’s no problem, right?” They looked at him like he was crazy, and James decided he needed to call some kind of representative meeting to figure out how to explain to the members of the Order that they were allowed to take breaks. Himself included, probably. “Alright, cool. Because Dance needs to take it easy for at least a month; Deb says we still don’t know how camraconda internal organs heal, and you literally broke your tail, so you all get a break.”
”Right.” Charlie said.
”Sure.” Alice added.
Both of them were lying, somehow.
“Are you two planning to go into a dungeon without me again?” Dance asked. She sort of meant it as a joke, and her digital voice carried some humor. But the mood in the room cooled as it became clear even to her that she felt like she was being left behind.
”Or we could take some time off.” Charlie’s shrug matched the distant sound of his words, but both of those contrasted the quick care in what he was actually saying. “We should plan some delves though. If we’re going to keep working. Dance needs Climb spells, at least.” The words were simple, objective oriented, and somehow the most reassuring thing he could have told the camraconda.
James tried to not step into the middle of their moment. And probably failed. “Well, last option. The Proud North Oklahoman… no, Northern Oklahoma Proud Grandparents Adventuring… Society? Holy shit you’d think that name would be easier to remember.”
”The NOPGAS. Yeah, it’s pretty simple.” Charlie sounded like he was serious about the abbreviation, which was possibly worse than if he were messing with them.
”Right. Well. They had a dungeon, possibly two. But they’ve forgotten or lost them. It might be related to Kiki’s presence, it might also be memeplex crap or something else ominous and horrible.” James sighed at the fact that it could be several problems all at once. That was just life now. “Thing is, they’re cool people. They’re like a mini-Order in a way, even if they are mostly pushing eighty. And now that Kiki is more open to not getting us to kill her, it’s a lot safer to open up contact with them.”
Dance perked up. “So we could go to their clubhouse?” She asked as her cable tail flicked back and forth at the end of the bed, constantly flipping over the edge to thwack Alice in the stomach. “I wanna meet the smart cat! Arrush told me about the smart cat!”
”Okay, hold on sweetie.” Alice stopped her. “That’s still a risky option…”
”Less risky than anything else.” Charlie said, the admission not bothering him as he looked back down at the floor tiles with a pondering expression. “And we’d be assisting delvers, not hiding from them. That’s something.”
Alice craned her neck at him, trying to force him to look at her glower. “You want to pick this one? The Status Quo dungeons at least we know why they went missing!”
”Aren’t all the old guys soldiers or something?” Dance asked. “We could have an army on our side! That’s cool!”
”That’s not cool.” Alice flicked at her again.
Charlie shook his head at them. “I’m not saying we go there now. But Dance isn’t wrong. It’d be safe operations with people who we can mostly trust. That’s different for us. I like it.”
”Or they could betray us.”
”There’s no way to know that’s the case.” Charlie bluntly dismissed Alice’s concern.
The pair met each other’s eyes, until they both looked at Dance, who was making an eager little series of excited hisses in the hospital bed. “Okay. Fine, fine.” Alice laughed. “I mean, I was okay with a little risk anyway. If you’re cool with it, let’s go for it.”
James smiled as the trio made a choice. “Alright. One last thing. Well, one last thing unless someone literally calls us and tells us about a dungeon again, but the odds of that seem low. And this thing is more of a favor really. The digital life team has a… working is the wrong word… an AI that’s present? They’re asking a lot of questions. The AI. Not the…” he trailed off as they all stared at him. “Sorry, I didn’t plan this part out super well, I got distracted by cats. The AI wants to know about us as a group, and the different parts of our activities. If you three have some time, it’d be cool if you could talk with them about your own role and methods.”
”Oh. Oh, that sounds rad!” Alice perked up. “I mean, you don’t really need us specifically, though, right?”
”Well, you are one of two scout groups, and the other one is… I actually have no fucking idea.” James rolled his eyes. “Watcher-Of-Clouds dipped in at two AM to tell someone that they were ‘onto something’ and then vanished again with one of the engineer’s 3d printers, and that’s all I know.”
Alice looked over Dance’s laid out form at Charlie, the two of them setting the mouths in mirrored lines. “Yeah that checks out.” Alice said.
”Anyway the point is, the AI is curious about a bunch of stuff, and you three are the best dungeon trackers we have. So sharing that would be cool. And, like, their attempts at locating dungeons so far have been real bad on the hit rate. I think it’s a hobby for them at this point, but they’re trying to ‘find’ dungeons we already know exist, and getting results that’re off by comical amounts.”
”So a student.” Charlie seemed interested.
”Wait, I thought I was the student!” Dance claimed.
Alice patted her on the head. “You’re allowed to be both.” She told the girl. “We’ll take the job!” Alice added enthusiastically to James.
”Cool. Now. Speaking of students.” James laughed as Alice gave him raised eyebrows pointed at him like a weapon. “One actual last thing now. I know I keep saying that, I’ve been lying the whole time, but this one is actually it. One of the older crocamaws has been… restless. His name’s Manon, he’s skittish but a lot less traumatized than some of the others. Still, I don’t want to put them on dungeon delves yet, but they need something to do. And you three are actually a shockingly unique combination of social, intellectual, and athletic activities in your day to day.”
”…Is this how you butter us up by telling us that we end up running away from a lot of stuff?” Dance asked him bluntly. “Cause that’s a shitty way to-“
Alice bopped her on the snout with the tips of her fingers. “Hoy! Language! Almost dying doesn’t let you swear all of a sudden!” She admonished the camraconda, who hissed at her and tried to trap Alice’s hand in her mouth without actually biting her.
While those two got into a wrestling match that was almost certainly against Deb’s orders for Dance, Charlie shook his head and turned away to look at James again. “Yeah. We can handle a fourth teammate. Standard trauma victim procedure?”
”Please. Also I hate that we have that.”
”Enough survivors here.” Charlie shrugged. “And everywhere, just statistically. Didn’t need the dungeons to need it.”
James winced. “Fair enough.” He conceded. “Anyway. Drop in on the AI lab anytime, and I’ll arrange for you to meet Manon… tomorrow? What time is it, even? I’ve lost track. Not that I know when she’s even awake; there’s so many people now it’s all getting away from me.”
”It’s… it’s 8 AM.” Alice told him with a worried look. “Do you sleep?”
”Less than I’d like.” James grinned. “Anyway. I’ll leave you to your own devices now. Thanks for the chat.”
He headed out, giving polite greetings to the humans and camracondas and singular ratroach working in medical today. It being morning was handy, because now he actually could go home, with no disasters or appointments looming, and get a little real sleep. And then, after that, he’d probably have time to himself before everyone was coming over to his apartment tonight to hang out.
A version of James from the past would have spent that time goofing around online, maybe playing some video games. And he did plan to do a little of that.
But mostly, he planned on helping the rogues review several hundred hours of security footage while he got his exercise potion assisted workout in.
James realized that his life had become the weirdest fucking thing.
But he was kinda into it. And definitely on the wrong side of the sunk cost fallacy at this point.
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