"No, just the ordinary sense of foreboding that comes with exploring intradimensional rifts. I'm sure everything will be fine." -Osyris, Starcraft 2; Ark Star-

  _____

  Morgan woke up and felt like it was going to be a good day.

  There had been a shortage of those lately. He hadn’t been allowed to help when the Underburbs attacked, which he begrudgingly admitted made sense, but it had still put a real sour mood on everything. The people who’d lost homes or needed medical help staying around the Lair for several days had also kind of sucked, and he and Color-Of-Dawn had spent a lot of that time hiding in their place. After that, there wasn’t more bad news, but everything that got passed around the Order’s news circuit seemed kinda grim. Apparently there was a whole Canadian city being taken over by a dungeon. And Morgan had seen a woman around the Lair a couple times who felt like she was barely holding a hurricane inside herself, which was a fucking weird thing to feel about a person.

  So waking up and feeling like it was gonna be a good day was cool.

  He rolled over in bed, sleep leaving him instantly, and curled up against Color-Of-Dawn under their covers. The camraconda was still sleeping, its tiny cute hisses turning into waking breathing as Morgan wrapped his arms around his nafriend.

  They’d made up a word for that. It wasn’t like they were totally unique, but no one else agreed on the right word anyway, so they just made one up.

  Color-Of-Dawn twisted in his grip, bringing its camera head to rest on Morgan’s shoulder. The edge of its frame bit into his skin a little, but without actually pressing down intentionally, it wasn’t enough to hurt. The black and green camraconda didn’t speak, despite having upgraded to the tiny attachment to its skulljack that gave bluetooth control of a speaker that didn’t need to be worn. Instead, the two just cuddled for a while, enjoying a sensation that neither of them were really used to and was still very electric.

  They wished Liz would stay with them more, to share this kind of thing, but she had adult responsibilities now or something. Though it wasn’t much of a secret that they were both her biggest supporters for her new college career.

  Sooner or later though, Morgan needed to get up. And, if he was being honest with himself, which was encouraged by his therapist, then he should make an effort to get up before they got even more comfortable in their shared embrace. Because as fun as that sounded, Color-Of-Dawn had a support group thing today, and some Lair chores, and Morgan had…

  Well Morgan had delving to do.

  It had felt very, very difficult at the time, to ask James to train him. And in Morgan’s head, ‘training’ would be something a lot cooler than what it ended up being. So far, he had yet to meditate under a single waterfall, and no one had taught him any elaborate sword forms.

  Instead, he had slowly been given specific yellow orbs for seemingly random stuff, and then gone through days of practice that showed him how to put those odd skills to work. Geography ranks turned into the ability to read and make a map, a material orb for a specific kind of fiber and a skill rank in knot tying ended up forming the foundation for knowing how to do about fifty different useful things with rope, and someone’s .mem file about how to set up a campsite was of additive value to scattered ranks in different kinds of biology and first aid that left Morgan knowing way more than he wanted to about how different wild plants would make his insides upset if he ate them.

  James’ idea of combat training had come down to drilling Morgan in some foundational martial arts. An hour a day, rotating through judo, boxing, and fencing of all things, with another three hours dedicated to physical fitness on Morgan’s own time. Exercise potion and a diet the medical team had outlined for anyone on this plan had helped fill out his muscles in a way he’d never expected to have. He was still a lanky teenager, and he was never going to win a weightlifting contest. But the quickness of the changes made it noticable just how much better he could move now.

  What Morgan had expected was to be taught how to be… something like a soldier. Like the shield teams. An action movie hero. Instead, what James taught him, in the hours that they worked together, was how to be almost like an all purpose problem solver. That included on delves, too. He’d gone on three more since the last one in the Pylon. All fairly short, all with him being added to experienced teams. Morgan had learned how to navigate the Stacks, how to fly an overwatch drone in the Route, and how to love the Attic. And very little of what he was learning was fighting, which had been weird at first, but the more he actually thought about it, the more he realized just how creepy it was that he’d assumed that being able to fight was the best way to solve problems.

  And today he was supposed to actually go on a delve with James. Several delves, technically. They weren’t just practicing, they were doing something useful for the Order, and mapping out more of the Pylon. And he was excited. An adventure, a trip into another world, a chance to do something really, really cool. It was what he wanted his life to be. And he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t counting down the days to something like this.

  But first, he had to get out of bed.

  Morgan and Color-Of-Dawn didn’t live in one of the fancy apartments. Instead, they made their home in the Lair as a whole, with ‘their room’ being one of the ones right down the hall from the communal baths. Which was convenient. Less convenient was getting breakfast, which required going upstairs, which meant waiting for the elevator. Color-Of-Dawn pretended to be fine with stairs all the time, and Morgan had stopped believing it.

  The baths weren’t packed in the early morning, but they were busy enough even with Bill’s recent expansion. The pair split one of the smaller pools with a couple friends, but as excited as Morgan was, he was still too tired to actually make conversation.

  They did have friends at the Lair, which was something he hadn’t expected to happen. Liz kept intentionally getting them entangled as a group in various social gatherings, which were fun more often than they weren’t. But past that, and not counting Color-Of-Dawn making the effort to get to know some of the new camracondas, there were a few people they were close with. Fredrick was one, the stuff animal being surprisingly cunning despite his small size and relatively recent creation. Lincon, Emma, and Liam were others, the teens that were younger than Morgan by a little bit still having mixed and confused feelings about everything. Hanging out with them and just talking while they played video games was comfortable. Also Color-Of-Dawn and Smoke had been hanging out lately, though as far as Morgan could tell, that meant that they sat in one of the room’s corners, and read different books, silently. Which was…

  Actually no, that tracked for his nafriend.

  It was nice, though. Having friends. Even just having the weird kind of people the Order attracted around. The crocamaws were mostly cool, even if they were skittish. The new Mormon kids were… fucked up beyond anything Morgan could imagine… but otherwise nice. Some of the guys who’d been trapped in that weird plant weren’t that much older than Morgan and half the time they asked him questions about the Lair, which made him feel a lot more like an adult than he was comfortable with.

  Morgan hadn’t been in a good place in his life in a long, long time. But here, now, he finally felt safe. And he was going to ruin that by going off to fight traffic cones for ability points.

  Without wasting time, but also without rushing, the pair got through their morning, from helping each other dress to eating quietly together, before parting ways to go about their respective days. Color-Of-Dawn flicking its tongue against Morgan’s cheek in a version of a kiss that left his face still a splotchy bright red by the time he linked up with James and the rest of their group for the upcoming delves.

  It was gonna be a good day.

  _____

  The briefing was quick, because most people had their assignments already downloaded into their brains. A thing that Morgan was already used to, with that teenage energy of chaotically adapting to technology that would continue to frustrate the older generations for the rest of time. But James still seemed to enjoy the process.

  “Okay. So we’ll go in and everyone who has the speedrun milestone will secure the entrance while everyone else gets clear.” James used a laser pointer to tag the part of the flowchart of milestones they knew about. “Once everyone has that and the first delve one, we’ll split into groups, and everyone has their own objectives. Remember, if you get injured, call it in and get back right away. This is a marathon we’re running here. Same thing if you suspect everyone on your team has reached a milestone. Only one at a time, remember! And the more we learn about, the more we can optimize the path.”

  ”Are you trying to speedrun a dungeon?” Morgan mumbled under his breath.

  ”No, I’m trying to get other people to speedrun a dungeon.” James replied cheerfully, getting an embarrassed duck of the head from Morgan. “Now! Questions from anyone?”

  ”How are we getting in unseen?” Kirk asked. “Because I don’t know if you noticed, but I brought a giant spider along.”

  The vent spider raised one of its forearm articulated blades, and waved it back and forth. “Hello!” The synthetic voice it used was the same as the camracondas, and it had opted for one that was deeper and had an odd vibration added to it. “Am here find out if count as breathing.”

  Morgan had been wanting to ask about the spider the whole time, and now was a good chance. “Really?” He leaned forward.

  ”No.” The spider lowered its body in a slump. “Here to become strong enough perform coup.”

  “Same, TBH.” Momo chimed in. “But yeah, Kirk, I’ve got a box of earrings for everyone. James is gonna be our canary and see if it’s safe, then we’ll all hit the invisibility, teleport to the door, and pile in.”

  James nodded, and looked around at the group of thirty six biological Order delvers and half again as many infomorphs. “Number up in your groups, and file through the door in order. Because we don’t want anyone tripping over someone carrying a sword.” Next to him, Arrush placed a paw protectively on the gifted sword he was still carrying. “We’ll set up the smaller training tools at the landing just outside the entrance door. I know you all know this, but some of you are newish.” About a third of the group was new recruits, and for at least one this would be their first delve. “So remember! The name of the game here is learning. The more milestones we’re aware of, the better the Order as a whole can get. This isn’t some ‘keep the best secret knowledge to yourself’ fantasy, if we all share, we all get cooler magic, right?”

  ”Yeah it’d suck if you were one of the first people walking into new magic blind and you got stuck with a dumb power!” Momo said with a canny grin.

  James pressed his eyes closed. “Is this revenge for being worried about the horrible machine you were building in the basement? Fine, I’m sorry, and yeah I’ll take that one. Momo’s right though.” He straighted up and clapped his hands, an eager smile on his face. “So. That’s the usual stuff. Be careful, be kind, be smart, and let’s go find some magic.”

  Morgan was practically vibrating by the time they actually pulled the telepad page and landed in Utah.

  _____

  Pylon Motoric felt a lot to Morgan like being in a shopping mall, but without any of the commerce.

  Typically, people would call that the important thing that made a mall a mall, but he was less convinced. The layout was also wildly different too, which was also a point against it. But Morgan had spent his whole childhood getting lost in malls, and that felt like it could happen in an eyeblink here too.

  If you stuck with your group, it didn’t matter. But the moment you turned a corner and lost sight of people, it was like there was a bottomless hole opened up underfoot. Anything could happen, the slightest move could be taking you farther and farther away from your team, and there was nothing nearly so helpful as the map computers in the Stacks here.

  The whole world was grey. Morgan had trouble with it, but he also loved the way it played with his line of sight. Depending on where he stood and what he was looking at, their destination could look like it was a hundred miles away, or just a short walk farther. It didn’t mess with him at short distances, which was good, because if the traffic cones with teeth had also had optical illusion camouflage, that would be bad.

  And Morgan didn’t want to fuck up and miss something that obvious. Not just because he didn’t feel like getting eaten, but also because he felt like he had to prove that he was supposed to be here.

  At the start of the delve, James had told him something that the Order’s founder might have thought was an offhand comment, but it had thrown Morgan’s thoughts into a frantic loop. This, he’d said, would be a delve where Morgan was supposed to be a delver. Not someone they were escorting, not someone who was there to grab some of the early milestones, but a member of their party. He was still supposed to learn, and James was definitely gonna push him into situations where it was safe, but they were, in effect, taking off the kid gloves.

  Morgan was pretty sure that was scarier than actually getting attacked by a camraconda knockoff. People weren’t supposed to trust him, that was insane! But here they were. He was following - no, he was taking the right flank of - the formation with James and Arrush leading, Ishah and Spire-Cast-Behind armed to the teeth at their core, and a guy named Matt covering the other side. The orange glow of Zhu brandished off James’ shoulder, and a deeper blue from Moon framing Ishah, both infomorphs doing different jobs for the party. A team of delvers, where he was supposed to be ready to navigate a crisis in real time, because the whole point was that a crisis would happen.

  The first crisis took a while. For what felt like hours after the initial ‘work’ of getting everyone loaded up with the known and easy milestones, they just… explored.

  The exploration still involved a lot of hostility. This dungeon seemed to love traffic cones and teeth the same way the Library loved books and teeth, or the Office loved staplers and… teeth… Morgan would ask about that later. But it meant that every two or three hundred feet, they were getting in another skirmish with the little fucking monsters.

  James didn’t like the word monster. But Morgan felt like it applied to these things. He’d made the acquaintance of a feral raccoon when he was younger and lived in the sticks, and that guy had been the meanest fucking asshole on the planet. It was willing to get in a fight with multiple adult humans over the contents of a dropped takeout container. And Morgan still felt like his old friend had more self restraint than the traffic cones.

  He was getting a lot of good advice from Matt on how to swing his baseball bat as an actual weapon, though. The trick was to aim behind the enemy. Morgan wasn’t on par with the kind of violence that James and Arrush could put out, but he was learning how to actually fight and mean it, which took a lot of getting used to.

  While they explored, he got another crash course from James on how to loot a small space. Check containers first, like the glove box or center console. Check the trunk last, because you could usually just look in it. Be aware of spaces that had semi-hidden pockets, like the doors or backs of seats. James lamented that the cars usually didn’t have loot, which Morgan found amusing, considering they were up twelve hundred bucks so far. That was… impossible money, to his mind. That was ‘we can afford more than ramen for three months’ money.

  He also stashed a few of the CDs from unknown and possibly made up bands in his pack, along with a set of lockpicks he found in a visor flap that James gave him a congratulatory nod on.

  Those cars were the ones that only took a minute or two at most to check out. The ones they actually wanted to spend time on were the ones that weren’t cars at all.

  Morgan felt like he was an idiot when Spire said that it was easy to tell which was which. Like there was some secret knowledge, possibly a skill orb he missed, that told people which cars were models purchasable on Earth, and which were dungeon-brand oddities that contained strange machinery and no kind of car parts at all. He felt dumber still when it turned out that it wasn’t a skill at all, Spire just saw things from a lower angle, and she could see if the undercarriage was smooth or not. It wasn’t foolproof, but it was a good way to do a quick check when they were moving through one of the massive aisles that had hundreds of cars in it.

  They took a short break while half the team tried to work out how a thing that looked like a beat up white van did its internal magic, and Morgan had moved to the outside wall. Cautiously, keeping attentive for yet more cones, but feeling more confident now that he’d been put in fights by himself to get him used to the feeling of the flow of a small skirmish.

  Looking out of the rectangular hole in the side of their parking structure, he could see a half dozen other towering concrete pillars in the distance, and the rooftops of more below them. He’d already voiced the thought that there was probably an achievement for hang gliding from one to the other, but James had been very against bringing a hang glider into a dungeon, for a reason he explained and which seemed kinda valid, but also kinda wrong to Morgan. Yeah, it had gone wrong before. But they could just… not do it wrong this time? Though the downside of failing here was a fall to certain death, not just a fall to a horrifyingly bloody injury like Chevoy had gotten.

  For all that this place smelled horrible and burned his lungs, even through the filter mask, Morgan thought the panorama outside looked sweet. It was like one of those cyberpunk cityscapes, all dark smog and looming towers. But without anything that made it human. No one had built this up to be lived in and let bad city planning get out of hand. It had been made like this. For no reason aside from because the dungeon wanted it this way.

  On one of the nearby walls, there was a seemingly spray painted piece of graffiti that drew Morgan’s eyes as he stepped back and went to rejoin the group. It looked like a roughly drawn reptile painted in sharp yellow, blue, and orange, some kind of salamander or something, but with a huge Cheshire grin on its face. It looked like it was drawn entirely of triangles, which made the edge between the teeth and the rest of it kind of blurry. It actually had the same vibe as the crocamaws did, and Morgan took a picture of it with his phone, intending to show Lavant and Cassa when he got back and saw them again, just to see what the two members of that species thought.

  The van ended up being a bizarre arcane machine that turned anything edible in one of the compartments in its cargo space into compressed nutrient bars. Everything it made was uniform, no matter what went into it, though whether or not it had the same nutritional content no one could say. Ishah had been swapping between pairs of dungeontech glasses to study the things and declared that they were ‘technically edible’.

  So naturally Morgan volunteered to eat one. He was told it was made up of different protein bars, but it tasted a little bit like a mixture of sand and dirt, so it wasn’t exactly his favorite.

  Then he tried one - somehow still not under duress - that was made up of traffic cone corpses. And it tasted exactly the same.

  James proclaimed it ‘worrying’. But all Morgan could think was that if you could shove a tree in there, you could make enough food to keep an entire high school fed for a week. Bad food, but if the choice was between that or going hungry, who cared? And maybe they could find a car that could make some kind of dipping sauce out of rocks or something. The three nonhumans in the group had instantly agreed with him, and James had quickly dropped the joking attitude to mark down the location on their growing map.

  Pylon Motoric changed sometimes. But not often enough, or dramatically enough, that maps weren’t helpful. And the less an area was disturbed, the more likely it wouldn’t shift. So it was likely this would be here later.

  They kept going, spending less time looting because it was ineffective anyway, and more time looking for odd cars or landmarks. Which was when the crisis occurred.

  Everyone had given him advice on dungeon tricks. But Morgan should have remembered something from watching Animal Planet episodes back in school. Red? Red meant fuck off and don’t touch me in nature. And dungeons were, in many ways, closer to nature than they were to the places they pretended to be.

  No one thought anything about the emergency hose box because of where it was placed. They were on a flat corner of the dungeon, where yellow painted bollards carved an arc out of the grey concrete and marked off a pair of elevators, along with a staircase. They’d tried calling the elevators, and were still waiting, when Morgan had taken a step backward and into the line of sight of the lurking predator.

  The red square mounted on the wall had burst open from its center, glass peeling back like angular spears as the hose inside sprayed forth like it was pressurized liquid. Making contact with the air, it had hardened into sticky flat ropes, half of which had nailed Morgan at high speed, his reflexes just not enough to dodge. And then, it began to pull.

  His first human instinct was to panic. To scream, flail, lash out, anything. But despite still being a kid in many ways, Morgan was ready for something to go wrong. Not just because of the practice he’d been getting in, but also because of his enhanced Judgement.

  He stayed calm, forced himself to stay calm. Called out, got Ishah’s attention instantly with the others following close behind. Planting his feet, Morgan pulled back against the forceful tug of the spiked glass mouth that was sucking him in, and found that he was just not strong enough to resist. He could slow it down, but it was going to easily win this contest. And there was nothing nearby to grab onto either. But he had options, and one of them, which he decided on in under a few seconds, was to make a handhold.

  Morgan let himself drop, hard, using the weight of his body and armor to shove himself down closer to the floor, while he triggered the leveler glove he had on. For once in his life, being left handed actually did make him superior in some way, and his directed punch at the floor of the dungeon didn’t just work, but left a shattered crater with a crack that split the air and also possibly part of his cheek from the shrapnel. But it was something for Morgan to grab onto, and with that extra bit of leverage, the thing pulling at him was suddenly in a stalemate.

  His fingers would slip eventually. The creature was a lot stronger than him. But Morgan didn’t actually need to win a fight, because the most important lesson that every delver learned early in training was that their greatest weapon was not being alone.

  Arrush’s sword cut through about half the sticky semi-cloth bindings attached to Morgan, pinning many of the rest to the ground before Spire-Cast-Behind froze the thing’s internal body and the pressure on him vanished. While James slid in next to him and started taking the rest of it apart with a notched hatchet, Matt lunged past Morgan’s prone form, arm moving like a trebuchet as he slammed a thermite grenade through the open glass aperture and setting whatever it was - life form or inanimate trap - off in a blaze of sparing heat.

  The tiny fight drew some attention, probably because Morgan had made it sound like there was a war going on when he’d shattered the floor, and they had to handle a few of the rubbery tire creatures and also a curious handful of fluorescent moths that were more irritating than they were violent. But after things died down, Morgan got congratulated by Spire and James on his quick thinking, even if they’d all screwed up by not thinking about the potential for a trap.

  Then they’d done the post-battle check of each other, and Morgan had learned that the small ache in his face was because one of the shards of stone from his creation of a handhold had gone through the edge of his mask, broken his cheekbone, and was still embedded in his body. It had missed his eye by about an inch or so.

  James made him feel better about turning back, on the grounds that they probably earned a bunch of milestones anyway. But Morgan was aware that him getting hurt was the reason, and that sucked. They’d gotten so far, and it was his own stupid fault.

  Also it hurt like hell, and didn’t stop even after the chunk of concrete was pulled out and he was properly bandaged.

  _____

  Team One Report (unfinished, update later) :

  Milestones :

  Low Visionary Apprentice - 1 point, seems to be for taking a picture of graffiti, has a high priority, Morgan would like it known this is annoying. Easy pickup, recommend everyone who can cycles through it quick.

  Early Machine Attunement - 3 points, probably for activating one of the magic non-cars, this one is for sure lower priority than Low Rhetoric Resolution and Wilding Watcher, but higher than Amber Bitterant

  Marking Revolution Lasting - 3 points, this one is confusing because it doesn’t seem triggered by anything at all? It’s got a high priority, but only Ishah got it, and the only thing we can think of is that it’s his birthday, but he doesn’t know what day that is, so there’s no way to verify. Personal note, Ishah’s maybe-birthday is November 16th.

  Amber Bitterant - still 2 points, confirm it’s between 8 and 14 kills of the traffic cones, and requires Initiation Skirmish to get.

  Skills :

  Ishah and Spire both hit 5 in breathing, Matt and Morgan hit 5 in running so you can skip breathing levels if you move fast enough, Zhu is at 5 in glowing and we’ll see what that does.

  Trying to level Winter’s Climb spellcasting stopped working quickly. Combined with how other skills require more effort or maybe accomplishment to level, this implies that you can get good at Climb casting, which is huge. Now we just have to figure out how to do that.

  Intel :

  Be on the lookout for fire hose emergency boxes, they can be alive and hostile. We’ve got samples of the webbing they spit out, and they can pull with at least a couple hundred pounds of force. Unclear if they’re alive.

  Route 2-F-A has a major blockage in it that took half an hour to circle to continue ascending. We’ve already confirmed that there’s multiple paths upward that don’t quite overlap, so marking that one as no good for now if we plan on getting to the roof today.

  _____

  “Here.” Matt handed Morgan a bit of cloth made of sliced up summoned towel. “You’re bleeding again.” He pointed at Morgan’s face while he soaked his own strip of towel and tied it around his face as a makeshift mask. His own mask had been lost over the side of the tower when he’d been hit by a spring loaded trap, the snare nearly sending Matt over the tower too, before Morgan and Ishah had grabbed him and pulled him back up.

  ”Oh, uh, thanks.” Morgan felt weird talking to the delver. Matt was usually pretty quiet, but he had stuff to say about a lot of what they ran into. He didn’t talk about ideas or long term plans like James and Spire did, but he did have wry commentary on a lot of stuff they ran into. It was a different form of humor than Morgan was getting used to, and it was kind of neat to see them put side by side.

  It was a weird thought to have while he was still shaking from adrenaline.

  He’d asked James about it, and been told that he’d probably never actually get used to danger. Adrenaline was just a thing the body did when you felt like you were going to die, even if you didn’t think that was a concern. Humans were just like that; brains and hearts were more like an uneasy alliance than a unified whole.

  Maybe Morgan could be a camraconda instead. Color-Of-Dawn would probably let them swap for a while, if he promised not to try to figure out how to use their freeze ray.

  This dungeon was weird. He’d gained a lot of sudden skill levels in things - different than skill ranks obviously - and already Morgan could feel the difference. Running was easier. Faster. Smoother. How much easier and faster and smoother was kind of hard to tell. It wasn’t something as simple as ten percent, and seemed to be different across different people. Like it was boosting him, and not an actual skill. Having spent time now deliberately learning skills by his own volition, Morgan was almost offended that the dungeon used the word, when it wasn’t teaching anyone shit.

  The Office, at least you learned things. That was skill. No magic, no secret changes to your ability, just being good at a thing.

  Actually, what would happen if he swapped with his nafriend, and then got AP? Did they know if the levels were for bodies or minds yet? And what if he got to level up in slithering or something? That’d be cool, Morgan could swap back to his original human self, and get really good at… break dancing?

  He scrunched up his face in concentration. There had to be a better use than that.

  “Are you thinking?” Ishah’s soft voice got Morgan to look up at the ratroach. “Are you hurt?” He asked as a worried followup.

  Ishah was the most nervous guy Morgan had ever met, and that included a lot of traumatized teenagers. It was a weird contrast with the lighter armor he wore, padding and some kevlar lining covering his body in a ninja-esque black wrapping. It was even more of a contrast from the professional and dangerous way he moved with the shotgun he carried. Ishah hadn’t shot anything on these rapid delves, yet, but Morgan had zero worries about his handling of the weapon.

  ”I’m fine.” Morgan said, pushing himself up off the grimy concrete. “Just catching my breath.”

  Ishah nodded at him as he offered Matt a hand up. “This place is scary.” He said simply. “Will you be okay? Humans feel different when that happens, don’t you?”

  ”We’ve got a gland.” Matt said with a kind of blunt cheerful enthusiasm. “I’m ready to go if you are though! Got more of this place to see! More traffic cones to punch!”

  ”You haven’t punched a single traffic cone so far.” Morgan accused him.

  ”It’s a state of mind.” Matt insisted.

  With absolutely no idea what that was actually supposed to mean, Morgan shook his head at Ishah and they got back to the delve, the whole group moving steadily upward, aiming to actually get to the top of the tower their personal hidden entrance let them out in.

  If they were in a normal parking structure, then the endless concrete would have gotten boring quick. Instead, Morgan found himself constantly surprised every time they came to the end of a thousand foot long corridor, turned a corner, and found that there were new permutations and changes in the environment. Nothing world-shaking, but the way some areas had ceilings covered in grids of pipes, or others had rectangular protrusions dotted on the walls like bricks sticking out, or how they could never be sure exactly what pattern of barriers and walls would be put up. The terrain made it feel like they were in a building designed by an architect with serious ADHD, constantly wanting to try different things.

  They ascended a ramp where the outer wall was covered in whorls. Still flat, but like someone had imprinted circles into the stone.

  They passed a row of thirty fake cars that were all identical, none of them parked straight, not that they’d ever ‘parked’ at all. Most of them were sealed lumps of material, but a couple had trunks with a few random odds and ends, and one was a Device. They didn’t figure it out right away though, and so kept moving up.

  They had a tense little moment where one of the red and white striped serpents with its own weird directional stopping ability - barracondas, Spire tried to call them, before being shot down due to how confusing that would be if they ever met a fish version of this effect - had stared them down. It was wrapped around a sign that declared ‘exit leave exit never exit’, flaking yellow paint on a metal rod hanging from the ceiling. James had asked him what to do about it, and Morgan had gotten them to wait for a while until it got bored of staring at them and looked away, before them just skirted the edge of its territory. It let them go, seeming happy to have the delvers fuck off.

  They climbed a lot. Morgan thought he’d be good at it, since he was used to the Climb. But even though everything here was smooth, not covered in snow, and straight lines, it was surprisingly exhausting. The air in the Climb was never really thin, and there was a vigor in that dungeon that was absent here, replaced instead by smog that definitely was getting thicker as they ascended.

  They climbed, specifically, a ramp that was wet. Not just a little bit, but a stream of water held together by its own surface tension, rolling down one of the central ramps before spilling off the edge of the structure. Morgan felt like he should have seen the waterfall from below, since he’d been looking outside every chance he got, and James and Spire agreed that it was suspect. They skirted it as they ascended, not stopping to check cars until they were past where the broken pipe was leaking a steady stream of water onto the concrete.

  They saw signs of life. A nest of the rolling tire creatures, some of them adorable babies that looked more like bicycle tires. A caribou at the end of a lane, the beast roughly slamming its body into a door to a skybridge, the splayed out antenna antlers bending and scraping on the metal frame as it wedged itself out of the structure, moving on to whatever business caribou got up to here. A few whispers of black fur and chirped language in the shadows, the rat goblins keeping their distance as they let the delvers go without a fight.

  Morgan wondered how tall this building was. They weren’t one of the teams that had moved across skybridges to other structures, and they hadn’t gone back yet to check in. Basic trig and a laser range finder said that some of the other towers they could see were at least eight hundred feet tall. At least, because they couldn’t see the bases. Their own could be shorter, or taller, but at maybe twenty feet of elevation per ramp, that meant they’d have to do, what, forty of these? And Morgan wasn’t getting physically tired of hiking, but he was wondering if they’d have time when every loop around the lanes and rows of parked cars that were definitely bigger than they should be, also came with a fight, or a trap, or something.

  As if summoned by his anxieties, a new problem stopped their ascent.

  “Is someone there?!” A voice called out from around the next corner. A very human voice. Male, maybe around James’ age. “Hello?”

  The group froze, moving into cover quietly, with Morgan crouching at the end of a truck’s chassis in front of James. “Alright.” James spoke quietly, making a signal to everyone else to wait. He and Morgan peeked out, the two of them far enough forward to just barely have an angle on a human figure limply struggling from where they seemed to be stuck by the side of a car. “Tell me what you think.” He instructed Morgan.

  ”Wait, is this a test?!” Morgan hissed back. “We should help that guy, right?” He almost stood up right there, but everyone else was waiting, and something felt off.

  ”Hello?!” The man’s voice had an edge of muted panic in it.

  James tapped him on the shoulder of his armor. “It’s a learning opportunity. Look at the whole scene. Think it through. Make a choice.”

  Morgan sucked in a quiet breath, and tried to do that. “Okay.” He murmured, keeping his voice almost silent knowing that James could probably hear him anyway. “Okay. So. He’s… not one of us. And he’s alone. How’d he get here?” He glanced back, but James was still looking at him like he expected Morgan to answer that. Which seemed really fucking unfair, but Morgan tried anyway. “Is he another delver? But that… would mean he came from a different door. Or he’s been here for at least a day, right? So he’s a Mormon.” He said the word ‘Mormon’ the way some people said the term ‘existential threat’. “But we can’t just leave him, right?”

  ”We wouldn’t leave a delver to die, no.” James said softly.

  But he still didn’t move. So Morgan mentally stepped back again, and thought about the situation. James kind of gave him the answer already, in a way, and once he realized it, it was easy to put the rest together. “He’s one of the shapeshifters, isn’t he?” He asked. “The ones we haven’t seen yet. He’s from here.”

  James nodded. “Seems likely.”

  ”Maybe we can pick up a new Ben.” Zhu whispered like boots on sand. “And then Ben can finally relax from Ben duty!”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Ignoring that, because he was pretty sure Ben didn’t work that way, Morgan continued. ”But then…” Morgan’s brain turned over, his enhanced Judgement suddenly lighting up a path forward. “We could introduce ourselves, let him know we know. But he’s here. He’s out in the open, calling for help, and he’s not here for us is he? He looks like he’s dressed… uh… Mormony. What if there is another door around here, and he knows it, so he’s waiting for them?”

  ”I…” James trailed off, looking back at the restrained figure. Well, maybe restrained. “Well shit, I didn’t think of that.”

  ”Fall back?” Zhu asked. “Worst case here is kinda bad.”

  ”Worst case is we get caught, which isn’t really that bad, but yeah, it would strain relations.”

  Morgan asked a question. ”Isn’t the worst case that he tries to kill us?”

  ”Yeah yeah whatever.” James said, while Zhu dismissively flicked his talons out. “I don’t think we can risk this though, you’re right.” He made a hand sign to everyone else. “We’ll back off. See if we get any fresh milestones, check the time, and mark this place as suspicious. I don’t think we’re getting to the top of this one today.”

  Before he quietly rose to slip away, leaving the man that was still calling out to his fate, Morgan had one last concern. “Okay, but what if he is… like… stuck?”

  James paused. “Ah.” He sighed.

  “How do we check?” Zhu asked.

  ”I have a… really stupid idea?” Morgan suggested tentatively. He explained, and to his horror, James nodded. The rest of the team moving back, covering the ramp down as an escape if he needed to run, while Morgan hid behind the truck and removed most of his armor. Which left him looking like the underfed kid with messy hair that he normally was, a worn metal band tee shirt completing the vibe. He kept the shin guards on though, since that was believable, and also they were the hardest part to take on or off.

  ”Ready?” James asked.

  ”No.” Morgan wanted to laugh. Or scream. Or maybe go back to fighting traffic cones. “But it’s my stupid idea.”

  ”We also can’t really send me.” Ishah reminded them.

  ”I could go!” Matt offered. “I’m diplomatic.” The words got a wince from James and Arrush. “What?” He demanded a little forcefully.

  Arrush made a clicking in his throat. “The… the last time you talked to the Mormons, you told them you knew more about god than they did, and kept quoting your book.”

  ”Yeah. And?” Matt shrugged. “I’m allowed to be diplomatic and better informed.”

  ”Morgan. Good luck.” James clapped him on the shoulder, everyone else crouching down to let him ascend the ramp they’d snuck back down alone.

  Morgan took a deep breath, hoped that Arrush and Matt’s quiet debate wasn’t going to turn into a fight, and started moving back up like he was a perfectly normal teenage delver.

  ”Hello?!” The voice came again, and Morgan instantly knew there was something wrong. Because it was exactly the same as it had been the first time. No change in tone or emotion.

  Part of his training - a lot of his training actually - had been communication. Etiquette, empathy, different kinds of ways to share information, and just as many ways to read people. And right now, he felt like it was almost too easy to realize this was meant to be a trick.

  Moving more confidently, the smug satisfaction at having been right filling him up, Morgan walked into view of the ‘trapped’ man. “Oh thank God!” The guy said, sagging as he saw Morgan. “Can you help me out kid? I’m sorta stuck!”

  ”Oh. Uh… sure.” Morgan played up being nervous. “W-who are you? How’d you get in here?” He started to creep forward, looking like he was looking for monsters or something.

  ”The usual door. Got separated from my group, and now this stupid car has me snagged.” The guy’s laugh was almost perfectly crafted, with just a hint of panic in it. “You, uh… you look different. Hang on…”

  ”I’m alone.” Morgan said. “I didn’t know anyone else was in here.” He paused like he’d heard something, twisting his head around. “Did you hear that?”

  ”No. It’s fine. Whatever, come on, help me out here.” The man insisted. “I won’t tell anyone you snuck in, it’s fine!”

  Morgan was looking away now, turned so that he could just barely see the ‘trapped human’ with the cuff of his long sleeved white shirt ‘stuck’ in the window of a sedan. “I didn’t sneak in. What, do you own this place? Also I heard something.”

  ”There’s nothing there. Come on.” The man was starting to sound annoyed.

  ”No.” Morgan said. “This isn’t right. No one is ever in here. There’s only one door. And there’s something…” he whipped his head around like he was worried. “I have to go.” He spoke rapidly, turning and sprinting back down the ramp he’d come from.

  ”Hey!” The man said, moving after him.

  And Morgan stopped suddenly, turned, and stared at the clearly not trapped figure. His arm rippling as thick black oil reformed his shirt and part of his hand. “I knew it.” He said triumphantly.

  ”Fuck.” The mimic deflated. “Okay. That’s on me.”

  ”What, the part where you were going to lure me in and murder me?” Morgan demanded.

  ”Murder…?! No!” The mimic looked positively indignant. “Hot damn, you really are prowling around on your own, aren’t you? This the first tower you’ve explored?”

  ”No, why?” Morgan answered instantly, lying, and pretending he was curious. His voice was shaking, because he wasn’t good at this, but he hoped that would be covered by the fact that he was supposed to be terrified.

  The mimic sighed, slumping back against one of the cars, body deforming slightly as it relaxed on the metal and plastic edge. “New door somewhere again, huh? Alright. Well let me give you a tip, free of charge. Out there? Watch out for people with these.” He tapped the golden name badge on his breast.”

  ”…Mormons?” Morgan seemed confused because he was actually confused.

  ”Right. I know I’m dressed the part, but they don’t like people your age in here. And they do act like they own the place.” The words were said with some vitriol.

  Morgan made himself relax. “You’re trying to sneak out with them. Do you hate it here or something?”

  ”Other way around. Sort of.” The mimic shrugged. “This is my home. They don’t have a fucking right to it. If they can sneak in and take stuff, well…”

  ”Oh!” Morgan nodded at the implication. “So… can I go?” He asked.

  ”Yeah, sure, whatever. Keep your head down. And if you run into anyone else pulling this, tell ‘em Eight Oh One says you’re alright.”

  ”Your name is a number?”

  ”It’s where I was… well let’s say born, so I don’t make you ask more questions.” 801 shrugged again.

  Morgan nodded, taking uneasy steps back. “I’m Morgan.” He said. “I’ll see you later.” He added, continuing his retreat.

  ”Not around here, if you’re smart! They’ve got patrols all over this area every few days!” 801 offered. “But yeah, get out of here. I’m not gonna hunt you down, damn.” He turned and started walking back to his previous position, Morgan watching him carefully as he crept backward, before quickly turning and making a rapid escape.

  A level and a half down, he met up with the others, with only a little bit of panic that he was lost and would never see anyone alive again. “How’d it go?” James asked quickly.

  ”Are you hurt?” Arrush added as he and Matt helped Morgan put his armor back on.

  ”I’m good. He was a mimic, but he’s… I mean, maybe he was lying, but I think he’s trying to… uh… counter delve? On the Mormons?”

  James and Zhu both straightened up, the two turning their eyes on each other before looking back at Morgan. “That’s fucking hilarious.” The duo said in unison.

  ”I mean it’s kinda funny now.” Morgan said. “I’m shaking. Why?! I wasn’t in a fight this time!”

  ”Human bodies are fascinating.” Spire-Cast-Behind suggested. “We should think about that back at the meeting point. I believe the others should be warned.”

  ”Good call.” James said. “Okay! Return formation, let’s get out of here, again!”

  _____

  “Hey man. You mind if I sit here?” A human voice got Morgan to look up from where he was sitting with a Verdigris spellbook in his lap on the floor of the parking structure dungeon.

  They were back near the entrance the Order had secured. Resting, waiting for other teams to get back, testing out new connections between the dual magic of the entwined dungeons. Preparing. And also working on that ‘secured’ part of the description; because now that they knew there was another door that led into this very tower, it was a good idea to have a lot more cameras around them. Just in case any other, maybe unfriendly, delvers decided to get close.

  The fact that ‘around them’ was kind of hard to cover, what with the fact that the ramp down to the level below them was a half a mile long and almost completely smooth along the walls, was a problem for the knights to solve.

  Morgan’s problem was that he was really, really bad at focusing. Which was why he’d looked up from the Jester’s Sip spellbook as soon as someone talked to him, and well before the twelve minutes of staring at squiggly lines could equip a single use of the spell to him. Or do something with the open connection between his level five running skill.

  He still didn’t really get how this magic worked. It felt like a lot of details, and even though Morgan had been studying his ass off for a lot of things, quickly grasping the way this very specific thing functioned wasn’t something his brain wanted to do.

  So even though he’d been interrupted, he took the distraction willingly. “Yeah, sure.” He said, scooting over on the little concrete cube that he was using as a chair. “Uh… Tylor, right?”

  “Man, everyone here knows us already, huh?” The new guy asked as he dropped down with an exhalation of pure relief as he got off his feet.

  Morgan looked at the new guy. He was ‘an adult’, which meant between twenty and forty years old, and Morgan was aware he kind of had a bad time guessing at ages. Fluffy hair under a bandanna, a friendly rounded face with the shadow of an attempt at a poofy beard that wasn’t panning out. Tylor looked like a soft guy, but Morgan knew he had survived a lot of stuff like what the Order had in the early days, so that appearance was clearly a trick. Also he had a really cool tattoo running from behind his left ear to cover a portion of his neck; it looked like a stylized circuit diagram almost, lines in right angles with dots and stars at points.

  ”I mean, I know you cause James said your name in the briefing earlier. You and… Joy?” Morgan was always nervous guessing names.

  ”Yeah, she goes by that. I call her Joob!” Tylor leaned forward to tug fruitlessly at the edges of his shinguards. “Anyway, you seem like the normal one here, so I thought I’d say hi!”

  Morgan wasn’t quite sure how to take that. Part of him was actively offended to be called something so small as ‘normal’. But also something about Tylor came across as just a little artificial. So his own answer was sort of him shoving back a little. “James calls my polycule the ‘chosen one support group’.” Morgan said, feeling a flood of satisfaction at not stumbling over his words.

  ”…Alright well, I take back the normal thing.” Tylor said, blowing a raspberry as he turned away briefly.

  ”Oh, thanks.” Morgan nodded appreciatively, stealing Color-Of-Dawn’s trick of just taking everything at such pure face value that it tended to catch people off guard. “So how’s the delve going for you guys?”

  ”Us guys do things a little different than you.” Tylor said with suffering sigh that implied his version involved more long range sniper fire and less walking. “But… it’s a lot. I mean, it’s been a lot for a while. We knew there were more places like this, right? But yeah, more powers is cool. Getting good at breathing is… I mean it’s something.”

  Morgan stopped himself - barely - from going off on a long and enthusiastic explanation of Climb magic. Not for any strategic reason or because of help from Judgement, but because he specifically felt like he never stopped rowing that, and even though this was a new person, he didn’t need to make that specific first impression. “I’m getting good at running.” He said instead.

  The look on Tylor’s face was one of wide eyed wonder. ”Holy shit, I didn’t think of that!” He said.

  ”How?” Morgan asked. “You were at the same briefing as everyone else.”

  Tylor threw up his hands, the gear strapped to his armor rattling in the cool acoustics of the concrete world they were in. ”I mean I thought that was about, like… impractical skills!”

  ”Like crocheting.” Morgan nodded.

  ”Like breathing!”

  That didn’t sound right. ”Breathing is super useful. Just ask, like, any ratroach here.”

  ”What, can they not breathe?” Tylor’s retort was a borderline mean little probe for information.

  Morgan just kind of walked into it. “What? Yeah. I mean, no, they can’t. That’s why it’s important to them. Before they’re changed, they can barely even talk.” He looked at the older human appraisingly. “Also you’ll appreciate it when you don’t do that thing where it feels like there’s something cold in your throat anymore and your lungs won’t fill up.”

  ”Eugh. Okay, touche. Also I didn’t know that about the chimeras. My bad.” That part at least sounded earnest.

  ”I don’t think we… call them that?” Morgan shook his head, dropping it. “Hey, what’s your dungeon like?” He asked, genuinely curious. He’d been burning to know this whole time, and tried to make the way he wedged it in casual.

  Tylor’s demeanor shifted for a second. For just a brief moment, he wasn’t a soft man with a friendly face; instead he was a threat. A cold and dangerous figure who Morgan could feel the violence from.

  Just for a second. Maybe less. Then it was gone. “Sorry.” Tylor actually genuinely apologized. “Uh. It’s… I mean, you wanna know about the cool one?”

  ”S-sure.” Morgan stammered, being frozen in place the only reason he wasn’t scrambling to his feet.

  Tylor talked like he was trying to pave over the slip up. “It’s this old office building. Well, ‘building’. And ‘old’ too. Actually put everything I’m about to say in the bunny ears.” He made quotation marks with his gloved fingers in the air. “It’s actually, we think, shaped like a pyramid. Well, Kelsey thought. She…”

  There was a crack in the man’s voice. Both sides of it. And Morgan for the first time felt like there was a bit of genuine emotion in there. “Sorry.” He said quietly, knowing how much it hurt to lose people, and exactly what it sounded like when someone stumbled over that.

  The look Tylor gave him was one of abrupt pity. “Oh.” He said, like he was realizing that Morgan had gone through something similar. “Yeah. Well. Anyway.” He turned away as he threw out some stalling words before taking a breath and trying again to wash the conversation in something safe. “So you go in, and it’s all powerpoint ghosts and living desk fans and whatever. But if you find an elevator… or maybe also stairs? But we never found stairs. The point is, you go up a level, and you get this.” He tapped the tattoo.

  ”The whole thing?”

  ”Nah, starts out small. Every bit of it is an addition to my dungeon.” Tylor grinned and spread his hands out in a wide stretch. “I’ve got a little pocket dimension that I can get into… uh… sometimes. Okay, I’ll admit, the ‘getting in’ part is a pain. It makes slips in weird places and… oh nevermind that part.”

  Morgan laughed at the sudden embarrassment from the guy. “Sorry, sorry!” He said, still laughing. “I mean, no, that’s like, half the stuff here too, right? Like it’s this crazy magic, but it’s so dumb.”

  ”Exactly my man!” Tylor’s nod was that of a man appreciating being understood. “Joob doesn’t get it, cause her wizard bunker has a whole magical cafe in it, and she gets everything easy.”

  ”Uh…” Morgan didn’t know how to tell him. “The… the Lair also has a magical cafe. Kind of.”

  ”Well fuck me I guess.” Tylor rolled his eyes. “This is just life now, eh? Anyway, the dungeon, right? So it turns out, the more you accomplish on a floor, the better the dungeon addition is. Or, well, Joob and Kelsey called it ‘accomplishment’, but I think it’s more like a scavenger hunt. Hard to take notes when you’re not an army.” He motioned at the delvers around them who were checking equipment and eating lunch off folding tables. There was something both bizarre and humanly familiar about the concept of a delve with catering. “Anyway. You only get one thing from a floor, ever, and we didn’t realize until we were three or four deep. And now that I’m seeing this place, I kinda feel like they’re screwing with us on purpose.”

  Morgan nodded. “They are.” He said. “Our Office does the same thing, all the skills are really specific.”

  ”I heard you have an Office too.” The words sounded casual, but suddenly, Morgan heard the interrogation in them.

  He tried not to frown as he realized that he was being used as an information source. Why he didn’t really know; the new guys could just read the manual, couldn’t the? Maybe they didn’t trust it. But he didn’t like the way he felt like he was being manipulated in the conversation.

  ”Yeah, but yours sounds cooler.” Morgan deflected. “So what’s in your pocket dimension? Like… does it get bigger every level or something?”

  Tylor seemed willing to drop his questioning if it was to brag. “Oh yeah!” He said with a friendly smile. “So my first level was just, like, this little patch of dirt. It’s got air, but not much air, because there’s nothing around it. Like nothing nothing. Terrifying shit my man.” Morgan nodded with a tight expression; he’d seen what dungeons looked like when they had boundaries, he believed it. “Second was a walking path that had birds chirping. Not birds, just the chirping. So…”

  ”Weird. But cool?”

  ”Very cool. Cool birds too.” Tylor agreed. “Third was this spiral, still made of dirt - did I tell you Joob got cobblestones? Hers looks fancy and mine got dirt - but it had real magic. It went to a pillow that I can poke and it’s like god’s perfect energy drink.” He waved a hand. “A lot of the levels were just more space or upgrades. But later, I got a garage.”

  That was weirdly specific. “Like, for cars?” Morgan asked curiously.

  ”’Zactly. Let’s me drive a car through one of my slips, and it’ll always park perfectly on the other end. Great for getaways.” Tylor’s voice went tight. “As long as we’re close enough.” He added, before shrugging it off. “So hey, what’s with the fancy book?”

  ”Oh, more magic.” Morgan said, wincing as he thought that he was going to have to go back to staring at squiggles. “Actually I’m supposed to be doing this right now. You can probably ask Momo about it if you want? Or Ishah. Actually Ishah is better at it, he’s way more patient than I am.” Or than Momo was. Momo could apparently focus on projects to the exclusion of such petting things like ‘eating’ or ‘bathing’ for long periods of time, but those projects had to actually interest her.

  Spellbooks did not interest her.

  They clearly did interest Tylor though, who was leaning over to stare at the first page of the arcane dungeon manuscript. “Neat.” He said. “Which one is Ishah?”

  ”He has the smooth antenna and he’s the shortest person here.” Morgan answered.

  It wasn’t exactly a dismissal, but he tried to do his best to shove the new guy away with body language. And Tylor obliged by giving him a casual ‘later’ and wandering off. He really actually wanted James to let him come on the last sortie into the dungeon before the Order pulled out for the day, and if he could do this, and learn a little about the magic link… it would be useful to everyone. Matt was already doing the same thing, and since they had the same skill with a link open, it meant they could study different spells and get comparative information.

  He didn’t actually think that being useful was a condition to go on a delve. He just actually believed that stuff about everyone working together to get better magic. Maybe he was going to get a random reward that wasn’t perfect. His own dirt platform in the void. But so what?

  Dirt platform in the void was cool. It also sounded like the name for a metal band, that Morgan was going to pitch to his partners later. Liz insisted that her ability to play the violin made her uniquely unsuited to being in a metal band, but Morgan thought that was quitter talk.

  He let his mind wander as he stared at the book. In the end, it took him about five minutes longer than the ‘perfect’ time, just because he let his mind wander a little too much. But he did get a use of Jester’s Sip, and he got another little bonus on top of that.

  [(Link Set | Running <> Jester’s Sip | + from running 40 minutes)]

  Just like the other links they’d begun to uncover, it was… very human in its actual wording. A lot of dungeon rewards were either very specific and technical, or they were flowery words that sometimes completely disguised the actual magic at play.

  The dual dungeons here were a bit on either side. The Garden’s spells would often completely fail to describe themselves, but sometimes gave hints. The Garage’s skill levels technically defined exactly what they were and gave hard numbers, which masked the fact that those numbers didn’t say what they really did.

  And the link between them was a sentence that explained itself perfectly well. Run for forty minutes, get a plus to this spell.

  Clean, simple, and…

  Morgan shut the spellbook and groaned. “It doesn’t tell me anything about how it works!” He declared loudly.

  He didn’t notice the dozen other Order delvers looking his way with barely hidden smiles.

  _____

  James lingered on the outskirts of the group as they prepared to leave the dungeon before the door cycled. The time dilation here wasn’t quite like Officium Mundi; it was a little more clean cut in a way, and at least one of the dungeons was always open. But it still meant that, unless they wanted to commit to another eight hours or telepading out, then they needed to keep to the schedule.

  While everyone in the Order had their own ways of sorting dungeons, and there was something of an attempt to make a categorization system for them, James was kind of fond of the simple divide between ‘dungeons you could teleport out of’ and ‘dungeons you absolutely should not teleport out of’. It was simple! The Climb, the Attic, even the wretched Sewer, they were all perfectly fine places to blip out of. The Office, and now, the Pylons? Absolutely not.

  It wasn’t lethal. Or at least it had failed to be lethal so far. But it would cause some symptoms, probably from skipping the magic that eased passage between literal time zones. Nausea was a guarantee, as was a headache at best. The dizziness and lack of focus almost mirrored a concussion in humans, and could last for up to three days. And, of course, there was always the chance you stopped breathing.

  A small chance. It had only happened once. And no one had died. But that was kind of enough to make the general policy “don’t fucking do that”, which James was comfortable with.

  Walking softly, trying to keep his boots from echoing too deafeningly loudly off the concrete and rebar, he approached Spire-Cast-Behind where she was keeping watch on the secret second ramp downward that they’d found. It was great. James loved this dungeon, though he could do without all the smog. “Hey. We’re packing up. You want any lunch before it gets stowed?”

  ”No thank you. I am monitoring drone feeds.” The camraconda replied, not moving from her sentry post wedged into a triangle of empty space on a shaped ledge that overlooked the ramp.

  James nodded, before squinting at her as he thought through that sentence. “Oh!” He cut himself off before he could start to say anything stupid. “Right, you can eat security footage. Forgot.”

  ”It is especially bland compared to pineapple.” She replied.

  “I’ve never tried any, but then, I don’t have the jaw strength to eat a hard drive.” James commented, movement drawing his attention to his side as Arrush approached, doing his best to not sneak up by accident. “Well hello there. Doing okay? Arm alright?”

  Spire hissed for a split second. “His arm has been healed this whole time.” She accused. “Please find a new thing to fuss regarding.”

  Arrush looked at James almost sheepishly before putting paws on his human boyfriend’s arms and shoulders. “S-she’s right.” He said. “I’m not fragile.”

  ”You had a broken arm yesterday!” James protested.

  ”You have had broken… no…” Spire-Cast-Behind turned her head toward them. “Have you ever broken anything?”

  James didn’t want to answer that, because the truth would make him look a lot worse. “I… may have reached a dètente with my bones.” He said instead. “Hey wait this isn’t about me.”

  ”No, it is now.” Arrush nodded, stepping in to embrace his partner, planting the chitin bands of his chin on the top of James’ head. “S-stop breaking your bones. It is unbecoming.”

  Spire focused on Arrush with a jolt of interested movement. “You have learned a new word.”

  Arrush nodded onto James, who was trying to gently pry himself loose and failing. “I like this one. I am going to use it until it becomes unbecoming.”

  “Holy shit I love you.” James laughed. “Also excellent delve today. I wish we’d actually found any of the rats though. Or that I didn’t get quite so many levels in blinking.”

  It was actually just one level, and it taught them something important. Because no one had gotten a blinking level before, and James had only gotten it because he had started to have a moment of panic as he was leaving that he needed to still all actions that weren’t what he was going for. Which led to him being very conscious about certain reflexive actions.

  And just like how not breathing was still a form of intentional control, James had quickly added blinking to his list of skill levels. Only the one, though. And he’d gotten a bunch of new milestones to round out some of his skill levels. Amber Bitterant, Low Wrangling Resolution and it’s older brother Snare Wrangling Resolution, Low Visionary Apprentice and then Low Visionary Practicer which they were pretty sure came from photographing a wider variety of graffiti…

  When you knew how the Pylon Motoric worked, and you had your own staircase in and out, and you brought thirty other delvers to start to map out the milestones and more importantly the best route to achieve them? It wasn’t hard to rake in the AP.

  ”I like bladeworking.” Arrush said with a glowing smile as he stepped back. “Which is another new word I’ve learned today!”

  ”Yeah that one isn’t… I mean… it’s…” James floundered. “You know what, I’m happy. Can’t wait to see what the level five for that is.” He started to take a deep breath before remembering the thin black smoke here and choking it back. “Though hey. Before we get out of here with everyone else…” he paused, letting the other two refocus as he changed the tone of the conversation to something more serious, “how do you think Morgan did today?”

  Spire-Cast-Behind pulled herself back off her ledge with a powerful flex of her tail. “There is something wrong that I do not know how to explain.” She said bluntly. “Your… what is Morgan? A squire?”

  ”I thought paladins weren’t doing that?” Arrush remembered James talking about that one night.

  James jerked a thumb at Arrush. “Yeah, what he said. This isn’t anything official, I guess. It’s just… I mean, the kid asked. And I wanted to give him a chance.”

  The hiss Spire gave was long, rising and falling as it went on like an uneasy sigh. “He is her son.” She said. It was something the camracondas never forgot; not the ones that had originally been saved by the Order at least. They owed everything to Morgan’s mother. And there were still many of them who saw him as someone… important… because of it. Even if they didn’t say it. “I cannot tell you what feels wrong.” She decided on.

  ”I can.” Arrush muttered awkwardly.

  James turned his head up at the armored ratroach, raising an eyebrow. “Go for it.” He said invitingly.

  Arrush wasn’t sure he felt good about saying it. He had learned part of his new way of fighting in a class that he took alongside Morgan in the Lair’s basement, back before they even had real homes there. He knew the teenage human was partly responsible for many of the younger humans that were hurt in the Sewer attack not only accepting his existence, but finding greater understanding of their shared hurt. And above all, it made him feel really, really guilty to have this specific thought about someone who was at three times his survival time.

  But.

  ”He’s not ready.” Arrush said simply, his voice - still not quite feeling like his - a clear and bright chime that conflicted with his twisted appearance. “He’s clever. And likes to learn. And he can be strong. But he isn’t ready.” He saw James’ face fall, and his stomach twisted in anxiety.

  ”Yes. That.” Spire-Cast-Behind added. “He did nothing wrong.”

  ”No, nothing. He was good, even.” Arrush added quickly.

  The camraconda bobbed in agreement as she moved between the two of them, weaving through a row of pylons covered in flaking red paint. “Don’t know why.” She added, her own voice coming out clipped by worry. “But he is not ready. That is all I can say.”

  “I don’t know if he’ll like that answer.” James said, feeling Arrush tense up at his side. “But… fuck, I know you’re right. I know.” He sighed. “Why though? That’s what I don’t get! Am I just being a grumpy old jerk, assuming that anyone younger than me is incompetent?”

  ”I’m… ssssssix?” Arrush couldn’t be sure. “And you let me carry a sword.” He tapped one of his rear claws on the sheath at his side.

  ”I might also be six.” Spire added, trying to inject some levity into the conversation. “Maybe we could share a birthday.”

  “And while you two do that - invite me by the way - I’ll tell Morgan…” James trailed off. “I’ll tell him…” he didn’t even know. “What do you tell a teenager when you need to crush their dreams?” He asked his fellow paladin while walking after her, as if somehow Spire had inside information on this.

  She didn’t. All she had was advice. “Perhaps tell him the truth.” She said. “He is not ready to be a delver. But he is ready to keep growing.” The camraconda’s mouth pulled back, brass fangs exposing themselves as she mimicked a human smile. “Maybe he will surprise you.”

  ”Yeah.” James exhaled, the fumes making his lungs sting even with all the breathing levels. “Alright. Well. I appreciate the appraisal.” He elbowed Arrush gently. “Don’t stress out, I say, knowing how little that works on you, because you’re exactly like me.” The ratroach flushed neon green, turning away from him and getting a laugh from James. “Okay. Let’s pack it in. I want a bath, and then to put way too much time into planning what Vancian spells I link my new skills with.”

  Arrush poked him with a claw through one of the gaps in his armor. “Stop making up words.” He ordered his boyfriend.

  ”That’s how language happens though!” Spire-Cast-Behind cheerfully announced as she slithered ahead of them.

  ”She’s right, but also, it’s just a term for the Garden spells.” James laughed as he caught Arrush’s paw, intertwining their fingers as they tried to walk side by side before their hands got uncomfortable. “Come on, I need to find Zhu before someone else walks off with him.”

  ”Oh. I have him. He’s napping.” Arrush said sheepishly. “S-sorry.” He paused as James stared at him, narrow eyes focused on his face until he backtracked. “I-I… o-okay I’m not sorry. This is your fault.” He corrected.

  ”Good enough for me.” James said. “We’ll work on the details later. After we wash off, and then I have to… have to…” he made a conscious effort to not rub at his face. “Ugh. A million things I guess. Pillar bullshit and talking to dungeons and liberating a town and… and… I’m getting tired. I want to do this.” He whispered to Arrush. “I want to explore with you. With everyone. I want to have fun. I don’t want to be a hero anymore.”

  Arrush gave him a sad smile, muzzle twisting as his angular head peered down at James. ”Yes you do.” He said, with pure faith. “And I’ll be there with you. And so will Keeka. And Anesh. And Alanna. And… probably Zhu. If he wakes up.”

  ”Bleh. Stop it, you’re gonna make me cry and I cannot touch my eyes without a truckload of hand sanitizer.” James laughed. “Okay. Let’s go. I’ll talk to Morgan and we can get out of here. Oh. And be ready for another milestone just in case.” He called that one out a little louder, making himself heard by the edges of the assembling group where Ishah and Juan were coordinating the exit. The two of them not exactly working together, since they hadn’t planned for this as well as they could have, but more having split the group of delvers in half and each taken a side.

  James found Morgan, and sent Arrush off to join the group that was leaving single file through the door to the stairs and practicing up skills as they left and got their milestones and AP. “Hey.” The teenager greeted him, half his armor already off, shifting his backpack on his shoulders with clear impatience. “Uh… can I ask something?”

  ”I’d be an idiot to say no.” James said, adjusting his own backpack in sympathy. “What’s up?”

  ”How’d I do?” Morgan asked.

  James wanted to laugh, just at the symmetry of the universe sometimes. “You want the good news, the other good news, or the meat of the news sandwich that is the bad news?”

  ”Why is the bad news the meat? Why would you make a sandwich out of bad news?” Morgan focused on probably the wrong thing. “Wait, why is there bad news? Can I have the bad news?” He said it with a smile, but the tension was real.

  ”You aren’t ready to be a delver.” James said bluntly.

  Morgan looked at him, face falling, and then turned back to stare forward, trying to smile anyway. “I know.” He said with a shrug. “Kind of. Maybe. I don’t know, I thought I did okay.” His words started coming faster. “What was I supposed to do different? Or could I do? Do I get another chance at least? We never really talked about what happened if I failed, and I just assumed that I-“

  James held up a hand. “Hold up.” He said with abrupt firmness. “Morgan, you didn’t fail shit. You did good today. And the rest of our squad, excepting Matt who I did not get a chance to ask, agree.”

  ”So why am I not ready?” Morgan asked, trying and failing to hide his bitterness.

  ”If I tell you that I don’t know, it’s gonna make it sound really bad.” James said. “Which sucks! Because that’s what I’m gonna tell you!”

  Morgan stared at him, confusion overtaking his face. “Seriously?” He asked.

  ”Seriously.” James said. Seriously. “There is not a single thing you did wrong today. You might think walking into a trap or getting hurt or breaking that one machine might count, but you know what? I’ve done so much worse. Mistakes and errors aren’t dealbreakers. And you were helpful to have with us. You probably kept Matt if not alive then at least less dead, which matters.”

  ”So I’m a good delver.” Morgan said. “Who is not ready to be a delver.” He tried to arch his eyebrows, but James’ frustrated hand gesture broke his composure. “That doesn’t make any sense!”

  ”You were good on this delve.” James said quietly. “And you’ll be good on delves in the future. And I’m not at all sad that you got a bunch of skill levels; you deserve a little boost. I’m not saying your dungeon career is over, I’m saying… I don’t know why, but a lot of people have a feeling that you aren’t ready for this to be your career.”

  Morgan took a deep breath. ”Was some of that the good news?” He asked.

  ”Yeah, all the good stuff I said about you was the good news.” James wanted to ruffle the kid’s hair, but held back. “Morgan, I’m not fucking sidelining you. I’m giving you a two month vacation, before you even think of training for extradimensional exploration again. Because you know what?”

  ”What?” Morgan said the word like he was grabbing for a life raft.

  ”I want you as a knight.” James said firmly. “Not just as a delver, but I think you’ll be… I mean I believe you’re going to be a great citizen of a utopia we’re going to build.” He almost whispered. “But I want you to have a little more life first.” He paused, and then added, “Which actually includes going on delves. Just not as a delver. Am I making a fucking lick of sense?”

  Morgan shrugged. “I feel like I almost get it. Which now that I say it out loud, maybe means you’re right.” He straightened up. “Thanks for just telling me.” He added.

  ”Communication is the important factor.” James reminded him. “Alright. We’re on deck. You ready to figure out what fresh bonus we get?”

  ”I’m gonna see if I can get a skill for gaming.” Morgan said, pulling a Nintendo DS out of his pocket and flipping it open.

  That, James decided, was aspirational. He wasn’t even sure he’d get another milestone at all, just because he’d only come back into the dungeon to talk a bit, help pack, and be the ‘last one out’ when the whole crew left. But, as he followed Morgan out through the door to the cold and smoky parking structure, preparing to climb the stairs back to the little brick structure in the middle of a normal park in a normal US city, he was surprised to get one last gift from the dungeon.

  (Milestone - Initiation Mercurial Acquisition : +3 AP)

  He read the words, and almost right away, James was certain that this was something he’d suspected existed. ”Hah! Yes!” James cried. “There is a milestone for getting a bunch of milestones!”

  Well, it was either that, or stealing car parts or something. Or maybe looting something else that James didn’t even know about, some kind of parking structure magic they hadn’t noticed yet. But he was pretty sure it was a milestone milestone.

  (Cheering : +1 level, 1 level total)

  (1 AP spent, 2 AP remains)

  He hadn’t expected any more AP, so he’d spent one before he actually got to work on his planned upgrades. And maybe it was the quick reaction, or it was multitasking, or something he wasn’t clear on yet. But he did manage to push one skill up a level that he hadn’t quite expected. While the other one was more reasonable, and still welcome.

  (Spellcasting - Winter’s Climb : +1 level, 3 levels total)

  (Boxing : +1 level, 5 levels total, 1 link available)

  (2 AP spent, 0 AP remains)

  James allowed himself to stop forcing his mind to not think about blinking, and relaxed with a laugh. That was, what, twelve total AP today? Multiple skills leveled to having links. Multiple other delvers who’d done better just because they hadn’t already hit the same milestones as him. Learning and planning and growth for the Order’s frontline. The first shield team upgraded to slightly more superhuman. The first real workhorse delve for a lot of newer Order members.

  Progress.

  And as for his own skills…

  (Spellcasting - Winter’s Climb : 3 levels total)

  (Spellcasting - Officium Mundi : 2 levels total)

  (Breathing : 7 levels total, [Charm River Transformation])

  (Walking : 5 levels total, 1 link open)

  (Boxing : 5 levels total, 1 link open)

  (Swallowing : 1 level total)

  (Blinking : 1 level total)

  (Cheering : 1 level total)

  Yeah. That was some good progress.

  And if his own link for walking was anything like what some people had gotten for running or jogging or slithering, then James could maybe turn the Verdigris spellcasting system from an inconvenience into his personal supply of magic knives. Because James, it turned out, did a lot of walking.

  A… a surprising amount of walking. On delves. Around the Lair. In Townton. On Response shifts. On mountains. Magical, or normal mountains.

  Holy shit his feet hurt.

  James went to find Arrush and Alanna in this press of delver bodies, pausing momentarily for congratulating Morgan on getting his inputting skill levels, with a new plan in place to take his partners to the warmest bath that any of them could tolerate.

  It had been a great day.

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