"I wish we could have spent more time in less hopeless contexts." -Sciel, Clair Obscur Expedition 33-

  _____

  The lives that Arrush and Keeka lived had been upended so completely that all the words they would have used before were useless now. Not that they ever really spoke that much, their broken mix of English and Spanish only sometimes having overlap and often with the words they ‘knew’ having no context. Also the danger of being heard and hunted. But now, they had more complete languages to draw on, and all the words they might have put to work if they’d had the option felt like they were out of date.

  Merely the simple fact that they thought about their lives as things to be lived was a change. Upended, instead of annihilated. Open places where they found not just a need but a desire for words, instead of tightly held silence in dark nooks where they struggled for the next day.

  It was nice. Better. Good. Keeka found that now he was running into a new language problem; humans didn’t seem to have the right words to express this feeling. Which was probably why the human world had so much poetry; words were more like lego that you could put together to make what you needed.

  He spent some time thinking about it in the shower. Their apartment’s endless source of hot water - it wasn’t actually endless, he’d checked, it was just part of a massive scale constructed system that required thousands of people working together - wasn’t quite the same as the baths. It wasn’t as floaty or as all encompassing. It also lost something in being lonely. But that same privacy meant that it was very quiet, and good for thinking.

  For once, Keeka was up before Arrush. Today was a day for the two of them, as the old emotions of savage protectiveness and hidden trust continued to change and flower into a lasting love. Keeka didn’t really have words for this, either. They both had human partners too, now, and Anesh and James held sway over the same feeling in their own ways, but the two of them together had been through everything. They had survived. And so had their bond. And now that it had room to breathe, they continued to find that it was something made to last.

  They were planning to go to Townton. To walk around, under the open sky, in a place where no one would hurt them. Because the Order was still worried about ‘normal humans’, and Keeka agreed with that. He had far less exposure to them than Arrush did, his boyfriend’s morning jogs with Alanna having exposed him to random people much more often, and while he knew it wasn’t always good to be afraid, the fear had been a critical part of his survival for too long to not listen to it.

  Townton had people, but they were like Keeka. Even the humans. People who knew what it meant to survive, and who were often constantly on guard for the next threat.

  It should have made the city feel tense and violent, but the Order opened their hearts and coffers in equal measure to work to keep that from happening. There were still problems, there was still fear and anger and pain, but it was muted. Dulled. Townton wasn’t a place where people went to hide, it was where they went to heal, and Keeka liked that.

  Keeka finished his shower, and started the process of drying out his fur. There was technically a blue orb in use in the Order for collecting moisture, and he could attest to the truth that it was much faster than a hairdryer, but it also had costs associated with it. Stipend costs, sure, but Keeka didn’t really use his stipend anyway, and blue orb prices were supposed to drop soon if what one of Sarah’s latest interviews had said was true. But also it gave him a headache, and besides, the hot air felt nice and made his black fur fluffy and left the edges of his chitin radiating warmth into him. His opinion on the perks of that might change when summer came back, but right now it was cold enough outside that he liked the comfort.

  He made himself toast - hot bread was an invention he was never going to get tired of - and waited for Arrush to get up. Keeka waited by listening to music and, eventually, deciding that someone had to put the scattered blankets and pillows back on their couch, clear off their low table of all the things that had accumulated on it, and move all of the clothing that had been haphazardly thrown across the floor into the laundry basket. And, sadly, that someone was him.

  It did remind him to get dressed though. They were going outside today, and there was sun, so he went with his brand new long skirt that was mostly green with wide blue-black ovals printed on it. It made him look like a moth! But a moth with arms. Keeka had just finished struggling his last arm through a shirt sleeve when Arrush woke up and rolled out of bed to find his boyfriend unfortunately dressed. His larger partner tugged him close for a pressing kiss, despite their misaligned muzzles still making it work just on pure passion.

  ”Good morning!” Keeka said breathlessly as he was released from his boyfriend’s multi-armed grasp. “Do you want toast? It has two of the three food groups!”

  The look Arrush gave him was suspicious across multiple species worth of eyes. Squinting rodentine beads and widened insectile facets both peering at Keeka with all the limited mental power that Arrush could manage after a sleep so comfortable and deep that he never would have dared to imagine it before, lest it actually happen and cost him everything. “There are more than three…”

  ”It has bread, and butter! That’s two! The third one is ‘other’.” Keeka happily and mistakenly informed him as his boyfriend presented him with a piece of toast.

  Arrush could have argued. But his stomach protested seeing food that he wasn’t already tearing into, so he just quickly converted the simple breakfast into a few stray crumbs on their nest of blankets that was a bed instead.

  The pair didn’t talk much for a while after that. Talking was a luxury, and they did love it, and each other, but it was simple sometimes to fall back on old habits of silent cooperation. When they had a goal - like taking the day to explore Townton - they tended to return to the comforting patterns of working together to accomplish things swiftly and aggressively.

  Checking their clothes to make sure they were socially armored properly, making sure the other one wasn’t trailing shadows or parasites, watching corners and moving as a hunting unit as they went from their apartment to the teleport space upstairs, even acquiring the boxed lunches they were taking with them, all of it was done with rapid precision. The usual way of swiftly and quietly cutting through a space only slowed down when a few people would wave or say hi, small reminders that they were somewhere else. Bishop, the human man who lived a few apartments away, wishing them a good morning with his own relaxed yawn. Ava and Hidden, their self-proclaimed ‘big sisters’, clearly trying to avoid an obligation and getting no help hiding from the pair. An unfamiliar ratroach that moved too fluidly even for a repaired member of their species that Keeka instantly clocked as one of the mimics, probably Ruby; he was rewarded for greeting them by name with a disappointed sigh.

  All those people and a few more between them and the exit. The Lair was busy these days. Full of life, and while that life wasn’t cruel or hostile, it could be a bit much.

  Townton, in comparison, was a bit less safe, and a lot quieter. When the teleport bubble closed up overhead and they were suddenly in Tennessee, so much of the pressure cut out.

  Fewer people, fewer vehicles, fewer noises. An island of the Order in an isolated place, forgotten by half the people who had ever known about it, and never known about at all by most of humanity.

  There was a convenient shuttle bus from the logisticor platform to around the growing cleared space the Order had moved into and begun messing with, but Arrush and Keeka chose to walk instead. Sandeled paws making light snaps on the pavement as they passed by a salvage crew where a thick human with a scratchy black goatee was teaching a ratroach how to operate a crane with rapid fire bursts of casual Spanish. Into the core of the restored zone, around the series of semi-permanent tents and stalls that now filled the otherwise sprawling parking lot of an old department store, and around the arc of the park.

  Which was where they found Kalik; the frog-dog sitting in the shade of one of the disc shaped canopies of a beech tree along with a pair of chanters. All three of them had their various forms of legs folded up under them, with Kalik leaning so far that his back was pressed against the dry grass, staring up at the canopy overhead.

  With a soft “Hello”, Arrush greeted his friend from the Sewer. They’d both been taken out of there at different times, in different ways, and under different conditions. But the frog-dog had found Arrush waiting when he’d arrived on Earth, a willing source of help and compassion that had let the young Sewer creation let go of his pain much more quickly than either of the ratroaches had been able to.

  Kalik opened wide bulbous eyes on the sides of his canine face, the patchwork of fur and hide, all of it very lightly slimy, a mix of brown and dusty white. For a long time, he had lived with letting the Order use the spell that transformed his frog parts into bat parts. But over time, and with a change in diet, his ‘natural’ body no longer had access to the materials to produce the painful toxin that he had been created to use. And so his base form was, actually, far less painful than almost anything else the Sewer made.

  ”Arrush!” He greeted the ratroach, the r’s coming out with a light croak as the amphibian parts of his throat vibrated. The pair of chanters, stirred, glittering oval eyes peering out at the new arrivals from the shadows of their ridged shells, projecting curious worry into the air. “And Keeka!” Kalik pronounced the smaller ratroach’s name flawlessly.

  “Hello! We brought lunch!” Keeka’s lower arms held up the bag he’d brought with him, before he deflated slightly, looking at the pair of chanters. “We… need more lunch?” He asked tentatively.

  One of the chanters dragged their sharp front limbs upward, hand-like manipulators pushing them off the ground slightly as they inhaled deeply to speak. “Not hungry.” The words were accompanied by a layered and focused burst of unexpected gratitude, contentment, and satiation. Having made the effort to speak, the chanter slid back into their laying position.

  Kalik nodded as Arrush and Keeka found seats on the grass, the small ratroach handing out boxes of packed lunch. ”We have been talking. Slowly.” He said, the short fingers on his paw pointing at the chanters. “This one is Mist. And this is Miette.”

  ”Oh! That’s the same name as our neighbor’s cat!” Keeka said as he pulled his tails around his folded legs, letting his skirt splay out in a whorl around himself.

  The chanter extended their head slightly, almost like they were going to nod, but not quite having internalized body language enough to really be comfortable with it at a moment’s notice. “Like cats.” They stated with fascination and surety.

  “Yes. Cats are good. Mostly.” Arrush thought about the cat that had tried to claw its way through his chitin the other day. Or the thankfully singular Officium Mundi stealth cat that was often brought to Townton to get exercise, the vehicle-sized beast mostly friendly but very unaware of how hard it could headbutt people. “And I am sorry. I cannot… speak the way you do.” He set a paw on the grass between himself and the chanters.

  One of them dusted understanding into the close vicinity. “Yes. Thank you for thinking.” They said.

  While the chanters relaxed, becoming more comfortable with the new arrivals, and the three who were hungry unpacked and began to pick apart their lunches, Kalik leaned forward to peer at Arrush with open excitement. ”Do you have any stories today?” He asked. “What has happened? It has been so long!”

  ”I was here two days ago.” Arrush protested with a small smile.

  ”Forever!” Kalik bemoaned, the frog-dog only slightly grasping the concept of hyperbole, but fully enthusiastic about deploying it in conversation. “My stories are small.” The word came out with another vibrating croak, before his long tongue curled pulled half a sandwich into his mouth and he continued to speak while chewing. “Your stories are adventures.”

  Arrush twisted to press his body into Keeka when his partner chittered out a laugh at him. There was something that felt strange about how Kalik treated him as if he were some kind of champion, but Arrush didn’t hate the sensation. His voice still slipped when he tried to think of something. “W-we went to the Pylon dungeon again.” He said. “But it wasn’t an adventure. There’s so much space there. I think where we were going in was an empty part. I’m better at some things now, but not… nothing special.”

  ”What about the origin? The Sewer?” Kalik asked, looking away quickly as Arrush and Keeka started at the mention of their creator dungeon. The way he had pushed his normally steady voice to a rapid question made it seem, to Arrush, like the frog-dog wasn’t just idly curious, but was actively seeking something.

  It was Keeka that answered, a tremor in his recreated voice. “The Order isn’t going into that place for… for a while.”

  ”Oh. Why? Is it not a good adventure?” Kalik asked as he chewed through the other half of his sandwich with ravenous hunger.

  Arrush set a paw on Keeka’s slim thigh, giving comfort to the other person like him who didn’t want to ever think about the Sewer again in their lives. “W-we are trying to… learn how to slow it down. Or maybe hurt it.” He said.

  ”What about the others?” Kalik asked with a quick croak.

  The instant sense of concern for other people was something that Arrush found familiar, and relaxing. The frog-dog had lived a painful and hostile life, but he hadn’t had the time to build up the same painful scars that many others bore. “They… we? We. We aren’t going to stop taking people out.” He told Kalik. “So you might have more siblings when that happens.”

  ”I’ve been thinking.” Kalik said slowly, shifting his furred form on the grass, picking up a fresh collection of bits of organic matter that he’d need to brush out later.

  ”Thank you for thinking.” The same chanter that had spoken earlier piped up.

  The interruption caused Kalik to flounder, his bulbous protruding eyes blinking with both sets of lids they had in a fluttering sequence as he failed to fully understand what had happened to the conversation. Arrush, finding a quiet amusement in watching from the ‘outside’, gave a lightly glowing grin as he picked an apple slice up from his lunch box and pointed it at Kalik. “Thinking?” He prompted before ripping the fruit apart with fangs made for living flesh, savoring the gently sweet taste.

  ”Thinking!” Kalik’s croak was triumphant as he remembered what he was going to say, turning up his snout at the chanter in a way that the shelled person clearly was familiar with as being passive. “The others. In the… the Sewer. But one other specifically.” He spoke the last word with the deliberate clarity of someone who had only recently learned it properly. “I am thinking about the Beautiful One.”

  ”Ah.” Arrush’s heart hammered heavily, before he felt Keeka’s paw on his own, and reminded himself where he was. “I saw her again, the last time I was there. She is… so angry.”

  ”We should remove her.” Kalik stated with determined confidence. “You should. On an adventure.”

  Arrush didn’t really do Sewer delves. But also, he wasn’t sure he would have the stomach to kill that old monster. Even if she deserved it, even if it was needed, even if she had hurt them so so much. He didn’t know if he could. He knew he wasn’t afraid of her, not anymore. But he also didn’t have a good reply to Kalik’s words.

  Keeka did though. “Even after everything,” he said in his gentle chitter, “I don’t want her dead.”

  ”Oh! Not dead!” Kalik seemed surprised. “I mean remove her. To here! Like us!”

  Arrush felt a weight leave his chest. “James asked. Lots of people have asked.” He said.

  ”Why?” Kalik questioned, tilting his labrador face in a curious stare. A tinged emotional aura of curious questioning emanated from the chanters as well, wrapping around the group as a whole. The emotional broadcast had Keeka and Arrush returning the curious stare, both of them tipping their angular muzzles as they tried to understand what Kalik meant, and promoting the frog-dog to elaborate. “Why ask?” He clarified. “No one… asked me. And, and, I couldn’t have said yes, so not asking was good.”

  ”You mean… just take her away?” Keeka asked. He closed his maw, then opened it again to make an argument, but couldn’t think of one. Slowly, mouth hanging open, he turned to Arrush. “Why?” He asked.

  ”Why did we not… do that?” Arrush asked. Not asking Keeka if that was the question, but asking the open air why the Order had simply missed the obvious answer. He’d been to the rescue briefing that Alanna had given, he’d heard the core tenant that you didn’t ask abuse victims if they wanted to stop being abused, you just helped and then sorted things out later.

  And the Beautiful One was a victim. Just like the rest of them. She might have hurt them, but hadn’t Arrush hurt people? Hadn’t Keeka? How many people had they killed, and now they got to be here in this paradise. Did the Beautiful One deserve it any less just because she had been twisted further and further by the dark god of that place? Or because she worshipped it after everything it had forced from her?

  ”Why did we not do that?” Keeka’s squeak was a fragile tremble at Arrush’s side, his lunch half-eaten and forgotten where it lay in its box on the grass. “How did we… why…”

  ”I keep thinking of reasons.” Arrush rasped, his throat suddenly tight. “I think she would hurt people. I think she wouldn’t be contained. I think she would bring disease. And then I think those things are problems that we could solve. If I’m smart enough to think of solutions, the Order could solve them. But then I think all those things again.” He flicked his eyes around, dividing his gaze between Keeka and Kalik. “I think I need… to call someone. Now.” He said. “Before we forget.”

  It was an interruption in their friendly lunch hangout. And it took an hour for a pair of knights to show up and confirm what Arrush had only slightly begun to suspect. Afterward, Kalik would act like there was nothing different, an almost placid mind happy to go on a long walk around Townton with them, with a break at one of the fresh water swimming pools for him to refresh his skin. They would talk about their lives in different places, about the chanters and necroads and how they were becoming more alive according to Kalik. About how Mist and Miette were some of the first chanters who had picked their own names, about how their young ones were growing slowly but steadily into the first truly free generation of their people.

  They talked about so many things. And Keeka, eventually, let go of his anxiety and embraced the friendly evening with an open sky and the cheerful company of others who were like them. But Arrush never stopped thinking that he was going to ask to break the Sewer quarantine.

  And he wondered at something else, too, now. He wondered just how many people like them were like Kalik. Who was, himself, like Elizebeth. Naturally immune to the memory modifications and hostile infomorphs that were clearly still hard at work ripping up any plans or thoughts around the Beautiful One.

  He wondered, out loud at the end of their evening, sitting alone with Keeka on the roof of what used to be a bank that he’d once watched a pack of wild necroads from, if it was something he could learn. He finally voiced out loud, as they watched the stars hundreds of miles from ‘home’, the fear that he couldn’t shake loose. That the world could drop out from under them, and he wouldn’t even notice.

  Arrush felt a sickening guilt as he confessed to his boyfriend, that what he wanted was an assignment partner to shield him and keep him alert to the changes in the world. He knew it wasn’t fair to want. But it wasn’t fair that he had spent over a year now being influenced against his will either. And Keeka had replied that he felt the same thing, in the same way. And they’d sat there with their backs to a half-demolished air conditioning system, staring up at the night sky with their paws clasped together.

  Wondering if they were just too small for the world, but holding each other steady regardless.

  _____

  Dave unclasped the buckles of the shield bracer, peeling the stretched defensive gear off of Pendragon’s rear leg with a firm tug. Kneeling down in the half-modernized barn, he examined the limb closely.

  Chafing. Exactly what he didn’t want to see. Dave had assumed that paper wouldn’t be able to chafe at all, especially not laminated like most of Pen was. He ran a hand around the marking from where the bracer had been clasped too long, adapting his mental model of Pen’s biology to include the fact that her material was semi-organic. Good in a way, because it let her heal and maybe feel more in detail, but awkward in how it had many of the weaknesses that a meat body did.

  Pendragon was being really patient with him and not instantly craning the black plastic exoskeleton of her head around to gnaw at the itch, but it didn’t change the reality of the situation. Wearing shield bracers full time just wasn’t an option.

  They’d just have to put them on every time they went flying. The paper drake version of getting saddled up, maybe.

  Dave stood up without much effort, patting Pen on her flank and stepping back to let her chuff away at her sore and itching limb. He’d need to come up with some other way to help her be safe while flying, especially in situations.

  The Underburbs had been bad. They hadn’t gone flying since then, not really. Just enough to get Pen back from the Lair to his uncle’s barn. And since then, it had just been walks and short hops into the air that didn’t count.

  Both of them spent most of their time in the barn, actually. Pen liked the cows. As friends, not as food, Dave felt like he had to mentally clarify his own thoughts.

  Getting shot had been fine. Even on her own, Pen was practically bulletproof, and with Dave helping to keep her with complex planning, getting shot wasn’t actually an issue. What was an issue was the plague the bullet had carried with it. Creeping black sludge that had steadily converted living paper into more of itself. Spreading through them both in a way that was painful, and impossible to ignore, and impossible to forget. What was an issue was that they weren’t invincible. What was an issue was that there was phantom pain from where some of the bolder knights had risked themselves to rip infected paper pinions out. What was an issue was that the survivor notification didn’t feel honest.

  They hadn’t been flying in a while, was the point.

  So Dave was left sitting on a bench in the middle of the barn that had been modified to have something between a pen and a gantry for the paper drakes that were often down here, with a half dozen cows sheltering in here from the cold rain outside, wondering what he could do to make them safer.

  More magic items seemed unlikely. They collectively wanted a permanent solution, so while the bracers were an option, they weren’t going to be perfect. If they had been an Officium Mundi item, Pen could have just eaten them to incorporate a few into herself. But that was off the table because even the imbued ones gave her the dragon version of indigestion, and also because she was already at her limit.

  In the early days, learning that Pen could munch down on magic items had been wild. Dave had instantly understood that this was how his particular weird dragon made her hoard, and he’d helped her pick out the things that were the best of the best. Not for the humans in their delving party, but for her.

  A pencil that let her selectively ignore gravity. A ballpoint pen for absorbing ink, which let her do a great job of keeping her blood inside herself in the early days before she was armor plated. A fancy call center headset that let her hear from her whole body. The lamp that turned itself - and by association now Pen too - invisible. The binder that let her convert hits into more paper. And of course, the ream of paper that couldn’t be torn in the first place.

  As it turned out, eating magic items didn’t give Pen free magic. It gave her those effects as ‘muscles’. Much more flexible in how they got used, but they took effort, and practice. Not a bad thing, she was still a whole size category larger than any other paper drake so far, and it was probably because of her just not paying attention to a fundamental physical force, but it wasn’t just all easy answers. Even less so because she had a limit. Possibly because of her size; she’d need to grow even larger to munch her way to a larger horde.

  So no Office items. No Status Quo - or was it leveler now? - gear either. And the items from the Library, Climb, and Underburbs were all useless for their purposes anyway. Also while she might play the role of troop transport, she wasn’t enough of a vehicle to have Horizon parts installed.

  Now, Pen had been up Winter’s Climb. She had spell slots, and, even better, she breathed. On top of that, she could still absorb blue orbs, and she could pick up Verdigris spells. But there was a problem with everything in that part of the list, and it was that Pendragon was…

  Well she wasn’t stupid. That wasn’t fair to her at all. But she was, as clever and intuitive as she could be, an animal.

  Part of what made her and Dave so very, very effective, was that when they were connected, they covered each other’s weaknesses in an almost perfectly comprehensive way.

  Dave had… trouble being impulsive. He could understand that. His instincts weren’t so much instincts at all; he liked to go slow, think things through, know exactly what he was doing before he took the first action. And on early delves with his friends, that had been wrong. That kind of behavior got people hurt. But when he was linked into Pendragon, he could borrow her momentum, her reactivity. Actions could be started before they were planned for, and how they were going to end could be worked out midway through. It made Dave faster, even reckless, but in a way that let him not just overcome but embrace his own fears more than anything else.

  Pendragon, in contrast, had trouble with plans. Analytical thought wasn’t something she could really do. She was an animal, no matter how smart of an animal she was, and that meant that on her own, she didn’t really have the ability to make stable decisions. With Dave riding along though, she could think through an event to multiple possible conclusions. She could understand chains of cause and effect, and form complex tactical strategies, even when a crisis brought them somewhere filled with sound and violence.

  Dave had trouble feeling, Pendragon had trouble thinking, and together, in synthesis, they could both do more than they could individually.

  So while they were linked together, operating as a single entity, spellcasting would be easy. Heck, they’d have two upgraded minds to work with, multitasking was simple.

  The problem was that Dave wasn’t always going to be around. Pen was going to have to be able to survive without a pilot. And Pendragon was not smart enough to understand when to cast spells. Though… she also was pretty smart. And dogs could be trained to do some complex stuff.

  Dave considered if maybe he could condition Pen to shield herself with the Mountain spell if she was ever in danger. Maybe that would be a bad plan, though. The cost was high, and his companion did, unfortunately, require breathing to survive. Not air specifically, but the mechanical action of breathing did something to keep her body functioning that the Order’s recently grown biological team was trying to understand. And it would be really awkward to give her a defensive spell only for her to die to her own lack of self control.

  It was a hard place to be. Dave wasn’t sure what there was to be done at all. So he tried to map every option out while he sat on the bench and rolled the shield bracer over in his hands.

  At one point he checked its stats. This was one that James had been wearing during the Underburbs attack, on loan to him while it recharged, and it was currently set to intentional fuel tank explosion. Dave stopped thinking of plans as he widened his eyes at the object, not having really thought about why it had that until just now. Out of curiosity, he activated the battlefield adaptation ability and gave it a mental command. Then another.

  ”Why does it do that?” He asked Pendragon, not expecting an answer as to why the bracer could accept both intentional fuel tank explosion, and also just fuel tank explosion with no qualification. “No. New question. When did James get blown up on purpose?”

  A voice interrupted both his thinking and his more active questioning. “Hey Dave! You in here?” His uncle’s strong and weathered tone called out.

  ”Back here.” Dave answered, rising from the bench and leaving the altered bracer behind. He’d have to get that refitted to a human arm later.

  His uncle was a good guy. Not always friendly, but he’d never had a problem letting Dave stay on the farm and learn from him over the summers when Dave’s parents hadn’t wanted him in the house. Sometimes, Dave thought that his uncle was like him, just because of how he never had a problem with answering six extra questions before Dave helped out with anything. But according to the hardened old man, he just didn’t like having to fix fuckups, and if Dave was actually going to listen to the answers ahead of time, that saved him a headache.

  ”You eaten?” His uncle asked, walking into view and patting one of the cows with a hearty slap. “Going into town, if you wanna come along and grab a burger.” Dave froze as he considered it, long enough that his uncle probably noticed. “You doing alright kid?” The man asked him directly.

  ”I’m fine.” Dave said, turning away to step across the barn floor so that he could ruffle Pendragon’s headpages now that she’d finally stopped fussing with her leg and was watching him with a bend in her long curved neck. “I should be okay.”

  His uncle didn’t buy that for a second, and Dave actually noticed this time. ”You sure?” The older human asked. “You and the big gal here haven’t really left for a week. You’re not getting sick of box mac and cheese yet?”

  Dave tried to smile. “I could eat box mac and cheese forever.” He said.

  The other human didn’t say anything for a while, but Dave knew he was still there behind him, watching while he ran his hands down Pendragon’s neck and upper body. “Did something happen to you?” His uncle asked.

  ”No.” Dave lied instantly, not wanting to cause any problems. “Really, I’m fine.”

  ”Then you’ll be fine coming along to help me load a half ton of lumber into the truck.” His uncle switched tactics, turning and heading toward the barn’s door. “Come on, I’ll buy you lunch.”

  Dave watched him go out of the corner of his eye, Pendragon giving a quiet buzzing growl as she tracked his movement too. The fact that his uncle meant well made it hard for Dave to be mad at the guy, but he… really didn’t want to go outside. Not yet.

  But he also knew that if he didn’t, then he never would.

  ”Okay.” He gave Pen a few last pats, mimicking the same way his uncle had given friendly thumps to the heavy frames of the cows that were slowly crowding close to their favorite dragon-shaped space heater. “Want to ride along?” He asked Pendragon, using the ‘trainer’ voice as he held up the skulljack connector that they used when her mind was a passenger in his body.

  It took a few minutes of a stared standoff, but eventually, the bus sized dragon dipped her head in acceptance.

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  Which Dave appreciated. It was a lot easier to actually understand his uncle’s explanations of the history of the classic rock bands on the radio when there was a second style of mind helping him process it. And if something did go wrong, out there where there were more people, more potential threats, more of the kind of spaces that dungeons kept going after…

  Well, Pendragon could fly very fast. And there was only a tiny amount of lag in their long range connection.

  Dave still stopped to grab the shield bracer, clipping the shifted piece of gear on like a thick belt that he covered with his shirt, and swapping it to a bullet type before he stepped out of the barn. He could make personal progress while still being protected.

  Maybe his uncle would stop asking him if he was ‘doing okay’ after this too. That would be nice.

  _____

  Ava lived in a world with magic.

  Technically, everyone in the Order lived in a world with magic. But they used words like ‘dungeontech’ and ‘known effects’ and ‘tactical viability’. Ava was grown up enough now to know what those words meant, in a surface way, and she was also smart enough to use words like technically with reasonable accuracy. But she didn’t live in the same world as the knights.

  She lived in a world with magic.

  At first it had been two different worlds. Ava would wake up and eat breakfast and her mom would tell her that she loved her and Ava would definitely not roll her eyes. Anymore. She would go to school, or watch tv, or get dragged into doing chores before being freed to go play in her room or around the Lair. And then, when she was able to, she impacted like a meteor the world where magic was a thing and people were weird aliens and wizards were everywhere. Briefly. Before she had to go home.

  Now, there was no barrier between the normal and magical. Ava woke up with her sister, who was a phantasmal fish. She went to school, where mostly-human teachers that had needed to rapidly adapt to her world taught classes filled with ratroaches and camracondas about world history and math and literature. On her days off, her friends were from other places - sometimes on Earth, sometimes not - and their adventures often involved spells.

  Not spells that Ava got to cast, usually. But still.

  It wasn’t that Ava didn’t miss her old friends, and thanks to the internet she could still ‘talk’ to them sometimes. But she was too busy being really excited about everything going on even just in the Lair to be too sad.

  Today, what was going on in the Lair, was that Ava was sneaking.

  She was really good at sneaking, and with Hidden’s help, she was even better at sneaking. Her sister’s name didn’t actually mean anything, not exactly. It was really just like if a human was named ‘Hope’. Ava had known a Hope before her mom had let them move here, back when she was in fifth grade, and that Hope hadn’t been very hopeful at all. There were also three different boys named Duke and it turned out that was a title not a name, and none of them had owned land. Or whatever dukes were supposed to do.

  Despite her name not giving her superpowers, though, Hidden was good at sneaking too.

  Today, they were teaching Banana how to sneak, too.

  Banana was part of the magic. Ava had only known her for a month at this point, but Ava was only barely thirteen, so a month was essentially the same thing as forever for her.

  The other girl was pretty in a way that Ava probably never would be. At least, not until she was allowed to have wings. Her mom kept saying that was ‘an adult decision’, but she said it with the voice that meant that what she actually thought was that it was ‘a very stupid idea’, so Ava wasn’t sure how that was going to play out. Banana, though, had both wings and arms and all of it covered in fuzzy black feathers. Her voice buzzed when she got excited, which was really easy to accomplish, because she was new and excited by everything.

  Right now, they were prowling through the upstairs serious business space of the Lair. Everyone called it a warehouse, but they didn’t store anything there, so that was wrong.

  Ava led them along as they crept through the shadows of desks and standing whiteboards. There weren’t many people here today; she was pretty sure it was because a bunch of people were still on vacation. Banana had said that the Order was also starting to send out delvers again, which was why Ann - her mom - was away for the day.

  Behind her, Banana’s wings kept clipping things off desks, which meant that Ava and Hidden were putting in a lot of work to enhance their friend’s sneaking, the human grabbing falling objects, and the assignment masking the ability to recognize their party as they crept.

  Ava and Hidden agreed that this was a little familiar. But creeping through desks was weird when there was no mortal peril around. They weren’t here for any real reason, though, just kind of sneaking in a loop around where one of the few people working was sitting in a concave arc of computer monitors.

  Ben was fun. The mental dissonance Ava felt at having known him for her whole life, and having met him for the first time a few months ago, was fun. It made it feel like she was seeing two things at the same time whenever they talked. He was also one of those adults that was easily exasperated, but never bothered, and that made him fun to sneak up on.

  Their infiltration was going slower than normal, because they were stopping at every whiteboard on the way to doodle something in the bottom corner. At first, Ava had suggested they draw their group, but she and Banana had quickly realized that neither of them knew how to draw people at all, and that Hidden was too good at art with dry erase markers, so that plan had been abandoned after the first rendition of two stick figures and one artistically rendered fish. Ava was drawing lumpy birds now, and Banana was drawing cats. They were also very careful to not erase anything else on the boards.

  She’d learned the hard way that these notes were important. Though since moving here, things had changed. A lot. Her mom had changed a lot. Ava had never really been yelled at, or punished that harshly, but the Order’s determined focus on mental health and talking things through meant that her mistakes weren’t the end of the world. Which was cool.

  Ben was currently working on something boring as the trio approached his desk from the opposite side. Ava having long since learned that he had some kind of superpower to see behind himself, but no superpower to see through all his computers. The plan, such as it was, was to sneak under the desk, through the small jungle of cables, and pop up to surprise him. Just to see what would happen.

  ”You guys really don’t have anything better to do today, huh?” Ben asked as Ava and Banana were crawling forward, well below his line of sight. They froze, Hidden slipping a veil of inscrutability over them, all three girls going silent. “No, yes, I mean you. Ava. I know you’re there.” Maybe if she stayed perfectly still, it would turn out Ben was bluffing. “I’m not bluffing.” The friend leaned over the edge of his desk and met her eyes.

  ”Hi Ben!” Banana squawked cheerfully.

  ”Hey ‘Nanners. Sorry guys, I’ve got work to do today, I can’t engage in antics.” Ben told them.

  Banana deflated, her wings drooping over her fancy shirt as she stood up. “Ooookay.” She said, extending a hand with curled fingers to help Ava to her own feet.

  ”Okay, we’ll surprise you later!” Ava decided. “Come on, let’s go find somewhere else to infiltrate!” She seized Banana’s hand, tugging her away rapidly toward the exit and getting a squawking laugh from the wasp girl.

  Their next target was the bakery. Because of course the magical headquarters had a bakery in it. And Ava was pretty sure she had a great plan for sneaking themselves in and some cookies out. They even recruited Lavant to help them, the crocamaw less a useful team member and more just a friend who happened to get caught in the social tailwind that Ava produced.

  The plan lasted two minutes before they were caught.

  The next plan, now with Edge-Of-Winter in their group too, involved trying to stealthily and safely relocate the fancy new magic totem that made cats into a place where ‘a lot of cats’ would provide maximum entertainment value.

  This plan also collapsed quickly, as they had turned a corner to find Nik and Reed both standing ready for their squad. Arms folded, bemused expressions doing nothing to lessen the blow of being caught.

  ”I don’t get it!” Ava protested as the group - now with Megan who was the only one actually her age in it - sat around one of the restaurant tables and ordered dessert like pedestrians. “I thought we were sneaky!”

  ”I am sneaky.” Hidden offered. “Look, I’m sneaking right now. No one can see me.”

  ”I can see you.” Levant offered cautiously, the crocamaw sitting curled up between Banana and Ava like he was worried about something.

  Hidden made a very un-stealthy noise. “You can see me. I mean no one else can see me.”

  ”Are we…” Ava didn’t want to say it, but she felt like it was the only explanation. “Are we bad spies?” She asked her various recruited younger siblings, and also Megan.

  A voice from under the table spoke up. “No,” said the older sound of a pen scratching across the page, “ but I am a very good spy catcher.” Planner informed them as several of their tentacles curled out around the table’s edge and opened scarred eyes to face the assembled group of younglings. “And also I am bored.”

  ”Planner!” Hidden’s indignant exclamation was almost as much of a squawk as Banana’s usual ones. “That’s not fair! We’re bored too!”

  ”I wasn’t bored.” Megan corrected. “This is just more interesting than homework.”

  ”I was bored.” Edge-Of-Winter confirmed with a bob of his head.

  Planner’s tentacles shifted, wavy ninety degree alterations in how they folded their limbs around the table, with no central part of their manifestation to be found. “Oh, I am sorry. I did not realize that it was required that I be fair in allowing you to startle Ben and Marjorie. Are there other rules I should know about?”

  ”Yes!” Ava was glad someone finally understood that there were rules. “First of all-“

  ”No, I apologize, that was sarcasm.” Planner had gotten too used to spending time with Ben and Nate. “I will be continuing to foil your plans for the foreseeable future, until I am healed, or until your plans become unfoilable. I wish you luck, as this is quite amusing.” They raised all six of their tentacles in a hexagonal farewell, before sliding back under the table with sound of a brush of the quill. “Fare well, good luck!” They added.

  Ava and Banana ducked their heads down, moving in the same direction and nearly getting their feathers and hair tangled as well as nearly headbutting Lavant while they searched to make sure Planner was actually gone, before raising back up over the table. “Okay.” Ava declared. “This is serious now.”

  ”Really?” Several of the people she was with tensed up.

  In the deeper parts of her thoughts, Hidden whispered a reminder to her, and Ava spread the fist that she’d pounded on the table out into splayed fingers. “No!” She corrected quickly. “Not serious serious. It’s silly serious.”

  ”That makes no sense, and I don’t think you really listened to me.” Her sister whispered to her.

  ”I know what I’m doing!” Ava insisted. “Everyone come with me! We can’t let Planner win, or be bored, because both of those things would be horrible!”

  Hidden’s sigh trailed after Ava as their unified group of friends actually did follow her for some reason. “You definitely didn’t listen to me.” She said.

  But she was following too. Even though she didn’t have to.

  _____

  Rudy was having a bad day. Bad week. Bad life, maybe.

  Currently, he lived in a place that his jailors called ‘The Lair’, which was stupid and pretentious. They kept telling him they were here to help him, but he didn’t want their help.

  He wanted things to go back to the way they were. He wanted to be told he was a hero, to be allowed to fight monsters in the dungeons, to have his biggest worry be his parents scheduling around the nights he had to be at the secure temple for the demon attacks that came from his magic, and to be loyal to God in a way that indisputably made him right in all things. He didn’t want to have to worry about whether or not he was being ‘offensive’ to those demons.

  The first time he’d tried to explain that he was offensive to everyone, so no one should take it personally, the other teenager he’d been hanging out with, some guy named Morgan who lived here already, had just looked at him with concern and said “If you’re having trouble figuring it out, it’s okay to just say so.” Which had been condescending in a way that would have made Rudy feel like punching the other kid if he’d been allowed to think that. It was even worse when he realized later that night that Morgan had been right.

  At least the people here called the places dungeons like they were supposed to.

  The problem, as far as Rudy saw it, was that his whole life had been undone, and he didn’t know how to restart it. He was adrift, and a big part of why he felt that way was that he was supposed to have his future mapped out by people who knew better. But his parents weren’t around, his bishop wasn’t around, and he’d been handed over like a slave to people who didn’t know anything. He was sixteen years old, which meant he was absolutely smart enough to do a better job than them, but he also wasn’t meant to; he was meant to take direction from his elders.

  So what was he supposed to do?

  The answer, it turned out, was play video games. He’d never really been much of a gamer at all, so it wasn’t something he’d needed to be corrected on by the ritual. Which meant there wasn’t really anything stopping him from picking up the hobby now.

  And as stupid as it was to call your secret base a lair, they did have an arcade in the basement. In… in one of the basements. Somewhere. And it didn’t even take quarters either.

  He needed something to do. What he didn’t need, and really didn’t want, was to see other people down here. “Oh, hey. Rudy, right?” Morgan asked as he walked into the basement room. The whole place had been transmuted into a small sliver of a piece of the outside world; black carpet with colorful designs, two dozen varied arcade machines with shaded glowing screens, and for some reason, some kind of modified candy dispenser by the door. “You okay?” Morgan asked as Rudy just stood there.

  The reality was that Rudy was considering just leaving. Or, if he had thought to be honest with himself, running. He didn’t like Morgan, and he didn’t want to spend time with him or the snake demon that Morgan was hanging out with. But… well, he was bored.

  ”I’m fine.” Rudy said, leaving the two along so he could wander around the room and look at the other games.

  He spent a while, probably half an hour, messing around with the variety of stuff that had been stuck in here. But there was a lot of empty space, and whoever was putting this place together clearly wasn’t done with it yet. So the selection of fighting games was rather limited. And so sooner rather than later, he ended up back with the only other person down here, awkwardly hovering and wondering if he could ask for a match on the freshly refurbished and yet painfully retro Darkstalkers cabinet.

  ”We are being observed.” Color-Of-Dawn said from its perch on a movable ramp as it failed to execute a block and near instantly lost their game.

  ”Yeah, hey man. You wanna play?” Morgan asked the younger teenager.

  If he’d been less bored, Rudy might have noticed the insidious way that he was entrapped into socializing with someone he didn’t like. But he was bored, and he would walk into a trap if it meant being less bored. So it worked out.

  Which was how he found himself hanging out with a human and a snake demon. And after about twenty minutes of losing badly to both of them, actually having a conversation instead of just angrily tapping out his frustration on the buttons. Venting his aggravation about almost everything, and offloading his tragic life story onto someone else.

  ”Yeah, it sucks man.” Morgan said in reply. “But it’s not forever, right?”

  ”What are you talking about?” Rudy asked, too surprised to be annoyed.

  Color-Of-Dawn spoke up, interjecting in a way that meant Rudy couldn’t ignore it like he’d been half-trying to when he didn’t forget. “Do you,” the black and green snake asked him with that slow synthetic voice it had, “believe that you are never allowed to leave here?”

  “…Yeah?” Rudy let the word drip out full of condescending venom. “Duh. Otherwise I’d leave.”

  ”I apologize, I assumed you were legally underage for a human.”

  Morgan leaned over to stage whisper, still keeping his eyes on the screen. “Okay, you’re, like, four, so I dunno if that’s a good comeback.”

  ”You’re four?!” Rudy hadn’t really expected that.

  Color-Of-Dawn inclined its head slightly as the game concluded in its favor, since Morgan had made the stupid error of taking one hand off the controls. “I may be older. It is difficult to measure, I was not…” The camraconda went quiet, turning away from the humans.

  ”Hey…” Morgan set a gentle hand on its head. “You okay? I can derail this chat into Street Fighter. I’ve been trying to figure out who made this place so I can bully them into putting a SF2 cabinet in here.”

  ”I am not fragile.” Color-Of-Dawn hissed, twisting slightly but not shaking Morgan off. “I was not permitted to think.” It told Rudy. “For how long, I do not know. I have been awake for over four years. So that is how old I am.”

  ”Oh.” Rudy shook his head, not sure even how to reply to that. “Well I’m not allowed to leave. And I’m sixteen.”

  Morgan shook his head as he stepped back and gave Rudy a wave toward the first player spot. “But like, once you’re done with the therapy thing, you can just go back to living with your parents if you want, right?”

  Rudy’s hands curled on the joystick and buttons as he gave a teenage snarl. “Nah, cause they left.” He said. “Went into… I’m not supposed to talk about it.” The mental reminder from the helpful ritual stopped him before he said too much.

  ”Oh, the stasis thing. Right.” Morgan apparently already knew about it, which made Rudy more mad for some reason. “That sucks dude, I’m sorry. Is it really that bad here?”

  Something cracked in Rudy at the simple question. ”I…I wanna go home…” he said weakly. “I don’t want… I want… I don’t know. I just don’t want to be… you know…”

  Color-Of-Dawn paused on character selection, stalling out the game as it turned to look up at Rudy’s face with its concave camera lens. “You want to be anywhere but here, not because here is bad, but because you are hurting, and resetting everything feels like it couldn’t make it worse?”

  ”No!” Rudy sniffed, turning away. “No, I hate it here.”

  ”Seriously? But here has a free arcade. That… I mean, a free arcade that showed up out of nowhere one day. So that’s kinda creepy I guess.” Morgan looked around them. “You know, I actually haven’t checked to make sure all the games here are real. Do you think any of these are dungeon creations? We’ve got, like, dungeon posters all over Research. And I know some people collect music from the Office.”

  ”The what?”

  ”The Office?” Morgan looked at Rudy like he wasn’t sure what was going on here. “The… place Color-Of-Dawn is from? The dungeon? Oh shit, were you only thinking about your guys two dungeons?”

  ”D-don’t swear.” Rudy bit the words out automatically, unable to hold them back. “And the church only has one…” He stared at Morgan with widening eyes. “There’s two?” He asked with a lame crack in his voice.

  “Man there’s like ten.” Morgan laughed, trying to diffuse some of the tension in the room. “Oh you mean in Utah. Yeah, there’s two. Did you get the Garden or the Garage?”

  ”…garden…” Wait, he wasn’t supposed to talk to outsiders about-

  ”That one’s cool.” Morgan nodded. At this point, the game was long forgotten, and he was just leaning against the side of the heavy arcade cabinet, arms folded, chatting like they were old friends and not prisoners here. “Do you… wanna talk about it?”

  ”I’m not meant to.” Rudy said, backpedaling away from them slowly. “I’m not supposed to… do a lot of things.”

  ”The brainwashing spell, right. Sorry man.” Morgan said quickly.

  Color-Of-Dawn twisted around, slithering down its ramp to get in range to flick Morgan’s shins with its tail tip. “They don’t like it when you call it that.”

  ”Yeah, it’s not brainwashing!” Rudy snapped out quickly. “It just helps me remember things I have problems with that I’m supposed to do!”

  ”Or not do.” Morgan said. “And those are things that you had a problem with? Like, personally?”

  ”N-no, they’re things… hey!” Rudy pointed accusatory, his voice rising. “You’re doing the thing! You’re… you think I’m an idiot!”

  Morgan nodded rapidly. “I think a lot of people are idiots though!” He said with a smile on his face. “So it’s nothing personal! Like, I’m kind of an idiot too. I got my hopes up about being a delver and got so into it that I barely saw this one for a month.” He jerked his thumb toward Color-Of-Dawn.

  ”Please.” Color-Of-Dawn corrected. “It was much longer than a month.”

  ”You’re allowed to be a delver?” Rudy felt like he was drowning in confusion here.

  Morgan shrugged. “I mean, sure? I had to do the training stuff, and I’m still learning. So I’m not a knight yet or anything. But it’s not like I’m not allowed. I mean, shit, you’ll probably be allowed to if you’re still here in a few years. You don’t even need to wait that long just to visit the Attic, probably.”

  ”Don’t… don’t sw-“

  ”Bro. No.”

  The cutoff made him flush tomato-red. ”I don’t think I’m allowed to do anything.” Rudy told them. “Everyone thinks I’m brainwashed.”

  ”Well yeah, you moron.” Morgan laughed, getting another burst of anger out of the younger teen. “I mean, it’s not really brainwashing, but it kind of is? But, okay, question.” He waited for Rudy to calm down enough to focus. “What did your therapy thing actually ask you to do?”

  ”I’m… I’m supposed to notice when one of the corrections tells me to do something.” Rudy said, finding himself embarrassedly staring at the floor, nervously shuffling his feet. Why he felt like he was a failure he didn’t know. Was it because he needed so many corrections? He didn’t have time to think it through, there was just a gross impulse in his chest that he couldn’t shake. “The guy in charge, James? Told us we should be ‘mindful’. To start.”

  ”Ooh. Did he try to make you meditate?” Morgan empathized. “James tried to get me to meditate. I spent the whole time thinking about drive rush cancels.”

  ”You can do that?”

  Color-Of-Dawn hissed out in a laughing burst. “Disappoint James? Yes. That is an- oh you mean the Street Fighter maneuver. Yes you can do that too.”

  Rudy had meant the first part actually. But this didn’t change anything. “It doesn’t matter.” He told them with hot anger still clinging to his words. “I still can’t leave! I’m, like, a political prisoner!”

  ”Dude, when you turn eighteen, or get your emancipation paperwork complete, you can just move out.” Morgan rolled his eyes in unison with Color-Of-Dawn looping its head around. “They’ll help you move. I think Recovery handles your first few months rent too. You can go whenever, just, like, get a GED or something.”

  ”But…” Rudy was almost positive Morgan was just wrong. But on the other hand, he seemed to know way too much for just another random teenager who’d been kidnapped. “But what would I do?”

  ”Whatever you want? That’s literally the point? It becomes your problem.”

  Color-Of-Dawn made a soft chirping sound. “I believe people call that being independent, not ‘a problem’.”

  ”It’s a problem.” Morgan insisted

  Rudy looked between the two idiots. ”Wait, so, why are you still here?” He demanded of Morgan. “Don’t you have a family or something? Or shouldn’t you have escaped by now?” Rudy stopped talking very suddenly, taking a rapid step backward and bumping into a Pop’n Music machine hard enough to make the arcade game wobble as Morgan’s casual and mostly friendly face abruptly turned furious.

  It took Morgan a little while to wrangle his emotions back under control. While he bit down on his lip and tried not to snarl out an angry response, Color-Of-Dawn filled the silence. “His father is not a viable option. His mother is dead.”

  ”Oh. Uh… sorry, I…”

  ”As am I.” Color-Of-Dawn added.

  ”I told you to stop apologizing.” Morgan sighed, knowing damn well what the camraconda was doing.

  Rudy’s brain clicked. “Wait, did he kill your mom?”

  "It. And y-" The camraconda got exactly one letter into confirming before it was cut off.

  ”It. And no, it’s a whole thing, it’s not important.” Morgan glared at Color-Of-Dawn, daring the camraconda to contradict him. His partner just staring back placidly, long tongue poking out of the corner of its mouth. Morgan shook his head and took a deep breath of the filtered basement air, turning back to Rudy. “I live here because James gave me a home when no one else would. Everyone I care about is here.”

  Unable to resist interjecting, Color-Of-Dawn slipped ”Or sometimes in California for college.” into the sentence.

  ”Or that, yeah.” Morgan smiled. “I don’t need to escape. This is where I want to be.” He shrugged. “But also I get it if you wanna go? I know it’s kind of a mess here sometimes. If you want, I could show you around or something? I’ve got free time! And also maybe if we walk around for a while we’ll come back and the arcade will have more stuff.”

  “Does that happen?” Rudy asked.

  ”I don’t know!” Morgan eagerly declared, throwing an arm around Rudy’s shoulders and leading the younger teen away from the arcade that they’d all kind of lost interest in for the immediate moment.

  It was, Morgan decided, intensely difficult to be open with people like this. To talk to the Mormon kids who were here in a way that could reach them. But James had asked him really nicely to be open to it, and since Rudy was, like, the fifth person he’d had a similar conversation with, he felt like he was getting good at it.

  He just had to remember to stop using the word ‘brainwashing’. Somehow. That was the real challenge.

  _____

  “Greetings, human.” Spire-Cast-Behind said as she hauled herself up into one of the chairs at the northern Texas library where she and a handful of others were preparing for a relatively routine Stacks delve.

  Simon tipped the book he was reading down, raising his eyebrows over the pages. “Human?” He asked.

  ”I am trying something new.” Spire-Cast-Behind told him. “Does it make me feel sufficiently exotic?”

  ”Spire you’re a…” Simon closed his eyes and leaned back. “Yeah. You got it. That’s the thing that makes you feel exotic.”

  “Good.” She settled in, but didn’t relax.

  Simon noticed, and checked the timer on his braid to see how long they had for this conversation that was about to occur. “What’s up?” He asked softly.

  “You have had more time alive than I have.” She started, easily accepting the transition before swerving control of the conversation into the heaviest topic Simon could imagine. “How do you know if you love someone?” Spire asked him.

  ”I… uh…” Simon rebounded from his relaxed position, eyes focusing on Spire as he leaned his elbows on the little reading table they were at. The rest of the delver group was busy pretending to relax while they quadruple checked gear and armor, it was just them over in this corner. But he still felt weird being asked that. “Like, me personally? Or anyone?”

  ”I’m asking you. Not anyone else.”

  ”I have no idea.” Simon said honestly. “I’ve had girlfr- sorry, no, James had girlfriends. I guess I have too, now? But I don’t think that was really love. I don’t know though. Even though we’re sort of all mixed up in here,” he tapped his skull, “a lot of the other stuff feels distant. I don’t think I’ve ever really loved anyone beyond just having a crush on someone.”

  ”Why would you crush someone?” Spire asked curiously.

  Simon closed his book with a thump. “I know you know what that means. You can’t fool me, I’m onto you.” He told her, gripping the spine of the book like a rifle and leveling the text her direction.

  ”Fine.” Spire hissed, but only briefly, before she seemed to stumble over the sound. “Can I tell you something painful?”

  That wasn’t something anyone had ever asked Simon before. But there was a look on Spire’s red and white face, even as alien as it was, that made it seem like she was hurting. And he trusted her. He knew her. She’d given him something to hang onto when they were fighting together against the Underburbs. She’d been a fellow paladin for as long as both of them had been doing this. There was really only one answer. “Yeah, what’s… what’s up?” It sounded so weak compared to the weight that seemed to be weighing on the camraconda. But Simon wasn’t like some of the other people in the Order who talked like they had all the right words all the time.

  ”I think I loved someone.”

  ”Past tense?” Simon heard that clearly. “What happened?”

  Spire turned her head away, coiling herself into a ball in the chair and facing away from Simon. “Outline-Of-Green.” She said, her voice as steady as it ever was, the digital construct letting her talk evenly through her grief. “I didn’t think about it before. Or didn’t know. But now I come home and he isn’t there. I go to sleep, and he isn’t there. I go to talk to him about our lives, and he isn’t there.”

  ”You two were close.” Simon said quietly.

  ”We survived so long together.” Spire-Cast-Behind said. “But in the tower, it didn’t mean anything. Our people died constantly. You couldn’t trust that anyone would be there. But here? Out here, where it was supposed to be safe?”

  Simon started to understand. ”You… you let yourself get closer.” He filled in. “I… okay I don’t know what I feel like when I love someone. But it sounds like you were in love.” He offered sadly. “But even if that’s not what it is, it’s… it makes sense to miss someone who’s gone.”

  ”I don’t want to miss him.” Spire said, her buried snout letting out a barking cough that Simon had never heard a camraconda make before. “I want him back! It hurts, and it hasn’t stopped hurting, no matter what I do or what jokes I make, and I don’t like it!”

  Simon shifted his chair, raising and lowering the heavy upholstered beast repeatedly as he scooted around the table so that he could lean into Spire and give the camraconda a painfully awkward armored hug.

  As he did so, and as she shook with silent grief, something struck him about the way she’d worded that. “I change my answer.” He said.

  ”What?”

  ”I… I know what loving someone feels like.” Simon said. “If that’s what losing someone you love feels like, anyway.”

  ”You- oh. Your partner. Other James. I had forgotten. I am sorry, I-“

  ”It’s fine.” Simon pressed down on Spire’s armored back, letting her know it was actually okay. “But yeah, I dunno, I’m not a poet or anything, but I think if we’re missing someone every day, then maybe we loved them. I think that counts.”

  Spire-Cast-Behind bucked her head up to turn and face him. “And how do you keep going?” She asked.

  ”You just… do.” Simon shrugged. “What are you supposed to do, give up? You think Outline-Of-Green would have wanted that?” He actually had never even met the other camraconda, not really. So he was really hoping that they weren’t secretly awful.

  Spire-Cast-Behind stared at him, and then ducked her head again. “No. Of course not.” She said in her warbling synthetic voice. “But sometimes, lately, I have wanted to. To give up.”

  That was beyond worrying, especially right before a delve. Routine or not, no one who was potentially suicidal should be going into a dungeon. ”Spire, are you sure you’re okay? Not just for this, but, like, are you sure you should even be going to the scouting run in Saskatoon?”

  ”No. But what am I supposed to do?” The paladin asked honestly. “I am called. I am needed. It gives me focus.”

  Simon reached down to flick a gloved finger across her snout. ”Spire, stop!” He told her with heat that surprised even himself. “Take some time off! I’ll go with James, you take a fucking rest!”

  She shook her head at him, twisting away to escape the awkward embrace that was mostly ruined by the library chair’s armrests anyway. “You are busy. You have people to kill.”

  ”Please don’t make me sound like an assassin.” Simon asked her with a wince.

  ”Then stop killing people.” Spire told him. “Or maybe do not. They seem contemptible.”

  Simon wanted to argue that he’d only killed one person, and it hadn’t exactly been his choice. He wanted to say that it was justified, but everyone already knew that and the words would have been wasted a bit. He wanted to tell Spire that his ongoing project was a rescue operation and not a murder spree.

  But their timer was running low and the dungeon would be open soon.

  So instead, he asked the important thing. “Are you going to be okay?”

  ”I don’t know.” Spire-Cast-Behind told him. “Are you? Have you been? When did you know?”

  ”I…” Simon trailed off. “I guess… one day… it just didn’t hurt as much.” He admitted. “Eventually, it gets easier.”

  ”Then I will be okay. Eventually.” Spire said, sliding off the chair and slithering toward the door with the others. Hissing back over her shoulder, calling Simon along with her.

  Until they were okay, they both decided, they could at least get some work done. Until they didn’t hurt anymore, they could fill their time exploring dungeons, finding magic, helping people. Until they were actually fine, they could cover the gaps by being useful.

  Of course, Spire was going to have to do all that from Saskatoon. Simon had never actually been to Canada, and only barely recognized the name, but he was pretty sure she was going to have a harder time than him.

  And he was basically working on a degree in assassination. So that was saying something.

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