“Computer. Deactivate iguana.” -Emergency Medical Hologram, Star Trek Voyager-

  ______

  “The idea that we only needed to do this once every two months was naive.” Nate opened the meeting. “I don’t know what we were thinking, and I don’t care. The idea that the four of you, you idiots, would let more than a week go by without a disaster, was insane.”

  ”Hi Nate.” James said cheerfully. “Nice to see you too. New tattoo?” He asked, genuinely curious about the man’s growing collection of ink.

  Nate, a human still unused to the kind of genuine curiosity people like James showed about basically everything, paused in his rant to look down at the red and purple feather tattoo that circled his arm below a half dozen other pieces of art that were slowly collecting space on his skin. “Yeah. Thanks.” His gruff grumbling briefly slowing, even if his voice was exactly the same as it had been.

  ”I like it. Very navigator-y.” Alex nodded.

  Spire-Cast-Behind narrowed her lens at the human, getting a closer look at the tattoo. “I have been considering some form of body decoration. But I do not know what I would choose.” She said.

  Sitting next to her, Simon stretched backward. “A… camraconda.” He said. “That is all I can think of. Wow, I think James infected me with that idea and it won’t go away.”

  ”Which one?” Alex asked, before wincing and turning her head away.

  “Both, surprisingly.” Simon smiled, unbothered by the reminder.

  Nate balled up his hand and stamped the flat line of his fingers onto the table. “It’s not a navigator, and let’s cut the banter.” He ordered. “Out of all the weird rules you put down, no small talk at meetings is the one thing I’ll never stop complimenting you on. So before one of you vanishes, and because it’s a real pain in the ass to collect you four in the same room, let’s cover everything as fast as we can, okay? Then you can go back to whatever crimes you were doing.”

  Alex tried to turn to look at Simon with a leer, but hissed in pain and froze as her stitches pulled. “Yup. Yup, okay.” She gasped out.

  “Let’s start there.” Nate pointed at her with a thick finger. “Dragonflies. Go.”

  ”Right.” Alex sucked in a breath while the others paid close attention. They’d seen the materials, and in fact, had tablets or laptops in front of them that had those same recordings and reports. But when a paladin told you about a thing that tried to eat them, you listened. “The thing doesn’t look the right size in the pictures. Maybe you guys can tell better than me, but it was huge. Like, it could have taken off with one of the cargo containers, I bet. Long mouth, big teeth, the usual stuff. The wings are hefty enough you can stand on them and it’s got the strength to just pick you up.”

  James, who had made a habit of missing every dragon fight so far, grimaced. ”And the breath weapon?” He asked.

  ”The rust monster special.” Alex answered after she finished the painkiller she’d forgotten and capped her water bottle, speaking as she twisted the cap closed and flipped it cleanly back onto the table like that was a normal thing humans were supposed to do. “Sorta! It makes metal… bubble? Pop? It fucks up metal. I didn’t get a great look at it, but I’m pretty sure it’s also destroying some of it. And I mean that there’s less metal at the end than at the start.” Alex puffed out her cheeks. “It sunk that ship pretty fast; I looked up the average time for something to actually sink and it was going down just too soon after getting hit the first time. Oh, and my sword is now a piece of weird art, and we’re down two shield bracers, an earring, a greave, a set of identification glasses, and worst of all, the headphones that don’t get tangled.”

  ”A true loss.” Spire lamented. “We may never recover.”

  ”Also… I dunno where to say this, but… fuck guys, people react to panic situations way worse than I expected.” Alex closed her eyes. “I split off with one of the crew and gave him a telepad to get another group out, but they never showed up. I don’t think he used it.”

  Nate grunted. “Boat definitely went down, bits of the cargo got picked up. No bodies though.”

  ”The dragons probably got them.” Alex tried to stay stoic, but didn’t quite manage it, sniffing harshly at the end. “Oh yeah. At least three of them.”

  ”So, what’s your theory on the crystal turtle then?” James asked. “Anyone wanna take guesses on how these things are related?”

  Alex shook her head. “Nah, I don’t think they are.” She said, glad to have something to focus on. “The turtle… look, I bumped into it and it bailed, right? These guys though, they showed up like they were hunting for a convenient snack. I think they’re completely different, and the ocean just has more problems than we expected. Which means there’s probably more out there too.”

  Laying her chin on the table, Spire-Cast-Behind hissed out a sigh. “I look forward to learning that giant squid exist.” She said.

  ”Giant squid do exist.” James told her. “Just… not like you’re thinking.”

  ”Oh. I will look that up later.”

  ”I’ll link you some stuff, I’ve been learning a lot about sea life for my bio Lesson.”

  Nate rapped the table of the meeting room again, giving James a bizarre sense of deja vu to when he’d been in possibly this exact same room back when he worked at this building. Owning the structure that the Office grew inside of was convenient for having a lot of space for meetings like this and also Recovery’s operations, but James still felt like he would have rather done this in the Lair’s baths. “Alex. Whadda you think the odds are that we could find these things and deal with them?”

  ”Find? Depends. I got a tracker in the one that came down; if it falls out then probably not, but if it doesn’t pick it out until they’re in a nest or something, maybe? Deal with them though? I… uh… um… well.” Alex shrugged. “We’ve got a gun that shoots fireballs, I guess.” She said. “Bullets didn’t do much, I think they’re just too big. We need a rocket launcher, or some kind of orbital railgun.”

  ”We possess an orbital laser but it wouldn’t work in the ocean.” Spire lamented.

  Making a mental note to get some range time for a lot of people with the high caliber rifles Nate had mostly legally purchased for the Order a long time ago to kill terrorbytes, he gave Alex a jerk of his head. “Okay. Good work. You’re on internal work exclusively until you can walk again.” Nate stared at her, noting that Alex wasn’t looking at him. “Hey. Eyes up. You’re on internal work until you’re healed, got it?”

  James of all people took Nate’s side, the hypocrite. “Hey, Alex.” He said with the soft voice he used when he was worried about someone. “You’ve been on a boat for the last, what, two months? Take a break. Hang out with your friends. Solve minor communication issues at the Lair. Go to the new Indian restaurant in Townton. But come on; don’t do this. None of us want to see you die on a delve because you’re being stubborn.”

  ”The American thing of martyring yourself because you feel guilty for not being useful is kind of shit and you should maybe not do it.” Simon added, flicking his fingernails idly.

  Alex glared at them, then back at Nate, but it was just a show and she quickly gave up. “Fine.” She huffed. “Maybe Ink-And-Key can carry me everywhere.” She muttered.

  ”Oh he would hate that. I endorse this.” Spire-Cast-Behind said with a pleased hiss. “Now. What is next?””

  “You.”

  ”Ah.” Spire exhaled, her corded body rising off the table as she politely addressed the room. “I have nothing to report. Ophiem, Montana, remains empty of any dungeon my team could find. The memory wyrm is either an outlier, as with Alex’s various sea monsters, or it destroyed the dungeon in leaving, or it is a result of a dungeon dying, or it is unrelated in some other unknown way.” The camraconda said bluntly. “That is all.”

  It took Nate an embarrassingly long time to realize her blunt conclusion was actually a conclusion. “Followup questions? Anyone?”

  ”How do we deal with that?” Simon asked. “In the future. When the next one shows up.” He clarified.

  ”Sustained gunfire.” Spire said. “Authorities for any engaging knights. Memory bullets seem especially effective. But that is not what you meant, is it?”

  Simon shook his head. “I mean… if it hadn’t been a town of sixty people, what do we do then?” He looked around at the other paladins. “We’re running into a problem, fast, you know? There’s not enough of us, and we’re learning about more problems than we have time to solve. We need more active hours.”

  ”You mean more people?” Alex cocked an eyebrow.

  ”More people, or more time for the people who we have, or more clone powers, or more time compression.” Simon shrugged like he was willing to take any solution. “Green orbs don’t really work well for a crisis though.”

  ”Ah, but great for meetings!” James pointed out, motioning to the room they were in, in the building that made project meetings faster. Somehow. There were actually a couple people from Research outside right now taking measurements; just because the time fuckery was safe didn’t mean they didn’t want to know what the hell was actually happening. “Anyway, before Nate murders me, Simon? How’s your thing going?”

  ”Right now I’m focusing on Saskatoon.” Simon said, omitting what he had been focusing on for a moment. “It’s… going interesting. A few people from Recovery basically have an ombudsman office there now in the Post building that the dungeon is in, and the door is regularly opened so umbral can move out if they want to. There’s a lot of them deeper in the dungeon, supposedly, but they’ve asked that no one go in for now. Locals kinda became aware of them, fast, though there’s no news-news about them. Which contradicts at least two theories.”

  James’ mouth twitched into a frown. “We figured there was no memeplex. Which is of course…”

  ”Incorrect. Yeah.” Simon didn’t sigh, just directly tackled the issue. “In some way at least. Anyway, the umbral are… weird. They’re hiding something, but I don’t know what, and I’m not pressing, just keeping an eye on things. I’ve had to manage a few conflicts with police who are still treating them like invaders, but it’s worth a lot to say that there’s a ton of local humans who are aware of their story, and are fucking pissed at the way things went down. But a lot of people are… uh… okay, how do I say this without sounding mean…”

  The grin James gave was not a pleasant one. “Please don’t try to not sound mean.” He said sardonically. “We need to be direct here. Lay it out for us.”

  Simon clicked his tongue. ”Okay. A non-zero number of the residents there are normal, and by that I mean they’re whiny insufferable bigots who swoon if they see someone with different skin color, much less someone who has skin like the shifting of a beam of light on a forgotten summer day.”

  ”…I need to hang out with the umbral…” Alex muttered. “That sounds sweet.”

  ”Right. And you’re not normal.” Simon told her. “Normal people… I don’t want to call them evil, but they’re careless. They see the tendrils and the hand-bodies, and their default is to think that’s freaky and wrong. So even though there’s a strong feeling of community support, especially in the downtown area, and even though the ex-mayor apparently bullied a lot of his clients into coming out in public support for them even to the point of having a few big biotech and agriculture corporations either hiring or funding education for them, there’s also just a bunch of bigots.”

  ”Shoot ‘em in the dick.” Alex suggested.

  ”Do not do that.” Nate countered almost on reflex.

  James, though, shook his head at the man running the meeting. “No no, I’m liking where Alex is going with this.” He said. “We can’t tolerate that shit. Maybe don’t literally shoot them in the dick, but…” James shrugged, “we need to do something to make sure that doesn’t take root, and land the umbral as yet another marginalized population.”

  ”Recovery has some plans.” Simon said. “I’ll give you Landry’s number. Also there should be reports available.” He continued with the rest of his own Saskatoon report. “So. The dungeons. We still haven’t started delving the Compiled Wastes; not until we can get an idea for what the team got from the first couple floors.”

  ”Should be soon!” James said, eager to see his own pocket dimension in person.

  Simon smiled slightly, for just a moment, at the paladin’s enthusiasm for the magic. “We’re not the only ones though. There’s at least twenty umbral that are actively delving it, and… I haven’t stopped them.” He said. “I did make sure they passed a vibe check, but that’s not exactly a background check. Oh, and here’s something; one of the groups that came in yesterday? They had a pair of humans with them. Not anyone on our radar, literally just friends they made.”

  ”That’s…” James trailed off.

  Spire picked it up. “That is so reassuring.” She said, like a weight had been lifted from her.

  ”Explain.” Nate ordered the camraconda bluntly.

  Spire-Cast-Behind straightened her body, tilting her boxy head sideways to peer at Nate. “Does no one else ever think of this?” She asked. “That the Order is the aberration? That we will be alone, except for those we drag into our collective, through tragedy and force?” Spire’s voice, though synthesized, carried a shaking tremor of fear that matched the nervous flicking of her long tongue. “But no. No. Look at them. So much like how my people were, thrown into an unfamiliar world, freed from slavery, aimless and afraid. And what do they do?”

  ”…they make friends…” Alex whispered.

  ”They make friends. Or allies. Or antagonists with benefits.” Spire agreed. James started to open his mouth, raising a finger, but the camraconda rolled on over his objection to her phrasing. “They are not separate from the world of human civilization and that world will not remain separate from them. This is the future. Suddenly here, whether we are ready or not. Things might become messy, but people will remain people.”

  Simon leaned sideways to prop an elbow up on Spire’s head. “That’s the most optimistic thing I’ve ever heard for random people getting superpowers.” He said. “But hey, at least the random people are meeting a minimum level of being not racist, I guess?”

  ”Progress is progress.” James offered.

  ”It is a good sign.” Spire said. “But there is worry in what Simon said. We should invite them to the Order.”

  ”Just like that?” Nate laughed roughly. “Wait, no. Don’t answer that. I know already.” He shook his head. “Guess I’m not one to complain. And I’m not an idiot either; the kind of people who are comfortable delving are the kind of people who’d probably fucking love to see a few more dungeons, and have something useful to use all that magic on. Yeah. Okay. You on that?” He asked Simon.

  Simon winced. “Actually I need to get back to Utah?” He said slowly.

  ”Right.” Nate crossed his arms. “Talk.”

  ”Identifying Bell casters is tricky. There’s a lot more people in the church’s spellcaster roster than we thought, and a lot of them just ignored our treaty. I’ve got three that I know of, all with private spellbooks for it, and… well…”

  James’ voice cut through the air. “How many of them are child abusers too?” He asked.

  ”I don’t know.” Simon said. “None. I think. Except the crocamaws are kind of children, and they’re part of the organization that’s still socially pressing people into their own delver program but just waiting until they’re eighteen to do it. So I guess they all are. And before Alex recommends what I know she’s about to say, I haven’t shot them because if I do that, the rest of the Mormon church is gonna know exactly what the pattern is. And… there’s a lot more of them than there are us. And I mean there are thousands of people who are aware of the magic-as-miracles, and hundreds of active casters and possibly delvers.”

  ”Weren’t you tracking some kind of extra bonus sub-conspiracy?” Alex asked him curiously.

  Simon nodded. “Yeah, that’s the good news. I think that there’s some people who are still socially tied to the church but disagree with them on… a lot. And they’re smuggling crocamaws out. Not just crocamaws, other dungeon life too, I think. I think there might be at least two other sophont species from the Garden, but I might be mistaking evidence and one of the species is the oil shapeshifters from the Pylons.”

  ”Pylon.” James muttered.

  ”Shut up.” Nate told him, before clearing his throat. “I know this isn’t gonna convince anyone of anything, but they also have more money than us. A lot more. That much money can hire a lot of professional violence.”

  ”Grim.” James said. “Do we care?”

  ”No.” Nate said with his standard blunt force tone. “So do it openly. If there’s people who oppose it, then let them know we’re in their corner. Arrange a meeting, as an Order representative, and give them names and accusations. If they try to cover it up, nail them to the fucking wall. If they don’t, then at least that part of the problem gets solved, and you can keep doing what you’re doing.”

  James sighed, leaning back on two legs of the slightly more comfortable than normal chair he was in. “To the credit of most people,” he said slowly, “if you tell someone that their friend literally owns slaves and has them, right now, chained up in his basement, then they’ll usually say that’s bad.”

  ”Too many qualifiers. Humans were a mistake.” Alex said, also staring at the tiled office ceiling. “Also when I’m better we can tag out if you want; you can go hang out in Saskatoon and I can be the bad cop option for all of Utah?”

  ”A lot of the umbral want to move to Townton, so I might go there instead.” Simon commented. “Anyway, that’s my thing. Who’s left, James?”

  James wanted to actually cover one quick thing before he got into his own depressing report. “Sorry, Alex, what do you mean the bad cop option?”

  ”I mean, I’ll hate it, but I think I have less of a problem than you or Simon when it comes to stabbing monsters when they’re shaped like humans?” Alex explained. “I don’t actually like killing anything, really, but… I dunno, I was talking to Ishah and Glow the other day and I feel like they’re right when they say that if a dungeon acted like the Mormons are, we’d already be bombing it.”

  ”It’s not every Mormon.” Simon countered.

  Nate gave a grunting sigh. “She’s right.” He said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s all of them because we don’t go to war with populations anyway. Not the way we fight. And she is the best at it.”

  ”Oh. Uh… thanks?” Alex didn’t look like she took that as a compliment.

  Which James understood. He was in a similar boat, and he gave Alex a sympathetic look. “We’ll talk later.” He told her. “Also it straight up doesn’t matter if it’s all of them or not, because a critical flaw of their organizational structure is that it enables and protects the ones who are doing this. So it doesn’t matter if it’s ten or ten thousand, right?”

  ”I’m not gonna touch your ethics,” Nate added, “but that number does matter. We’re good, you’re good, but no one in the Order is fight an army good.” He pointed at James, with a finger extended from where he’d crossed his thick arms again. “Now. Talk.”

  James filled them in, as quickly and effectively as he could, on the Chain Breaker’s situation. He’d even made himself an outline so he wouldn’t forget anything important.

  A lot of it was confirmations. Pillars, or pillar-style entities, were definitely bound by whatever their central idea was. They’d used this before, but it was both interesting and scary to know that they were not just compelled to act according to their concept, but changed so thoroughly over time that they would become the kind of thing that would never even consider acting contrary to it.

  Related to that, dungeons did something to pillars. For Kiki, talking to Clutter Ascent, it was a kind of draining exhaustion that sapped the forced behavior of her title, and also some of the power of her magic; though that might have just been because the Attic dungeon was fumbling through things just as awkwardly as Kiki was. For the Chain Breaker, it meant having a ‘secure space’ where a bound dungeon was keeping her power out, and seemingly doing nothing else. This also lined up with Blitzkrieg needing to force the Sewer out before she could get into it, and both the Last Line and the Right Person taking great pains to stay the fuck away from dungeons currently in baseline reality.

  Sadly, a lot of the Chain Breaker’s notes were useless to the Order. They used terms that no one had seen or considered, and even when they knew there was an overlap like with the chanters, that didn’t let them connect any new threads. It was unclear if there was a zombie apocalypse going on right now that the pillars were containing. No one knew what any of the dire sounding terms for events or dungeons actually referenced. And that made most of the intel kind of on the same level as decrypting the Status Quo files; maybe one day they’d know enough to know what the hell they were talking about, but by that point, they’d know enough to not need the original file.

  The one thing that did stand out was another confirmation. The pillars - the actual pillars, not just those with their power style like Kiki had - were an organization. They had a treaty, a pact. They were working together for a bigger goal, and that goal wasn’t even a bad one.

  They wanted the world to go on.

  ”And,” James concluded after telling everyone that, “I dunno about you? But that doesn't seem good enough to me.” He shook his head, pursing his lips while he sat back down. ”If the Last Line wants to stop nuclear war, good for him. But how many of their shitty plans end up causing mass casualty events? How… I don’t even have anything else here, just… we keep meeting them when something is going horribly wrong, and their ‘solutions’ usually aren’t making things better.”

  “Just making things not as worse.” Simon said, distantly gazing down at the speckled table. “Everyone here’s read the transcript with Nick, right?” He got a quick series of affirmatives. “They think they’re the backstop. The ‘good’ version of a status quo.”

  ”It seems wrong to call that evil.” Spire-Cast-Behind added, speaking up after a long silence of just absorbing information. “But it does not align with our goals. Mutual non-interference then?”

  ”I think that’s what Chains wanted with us.” James said. “Or… what Rhonda wanted. Fuck me, are they even the same person? I have fewer language problems with Marlea than I do with this. Anyway, yeah. They’re kind of coming at the problem of things getting nebulously ‘bad’ from a different direction. Like Aku’s whole thing of using a dungeon as an ark; they’re planning for failure.”

  The camraconda tapped her tail on the back of the larger chair she was in. ”While we plan for success.” Spire mused. “However, how do we plan for them?”

  Nate had an answer. “Keep the same plans we have already.” He said. “If we can avoid them entirely, we do it. Multiple teleport stops on the way out. Don’t give them an excuse to follow.” He frowned, though it was more of an act of contemplation than irritation. “Actually we can use that. They need an excuse to follow. So anyone leaving a pillar’s AO, deliberately go for… fuck there’s probably a fancy word for it, but let’s just say ‘James behavior’.”

  ”Can do!” James saluted happily.

  “I am gonna regret the shit out of that sentence later.” Nate told himself. “Alright, new problems. Gotta pick what the Order is actually handing. Simon, you’re still on the Mormons, Alex, you’re out so don’t even bother. James and Spire, take your pick. We’ve got a mass feral dungeon life exodus, a government contact from Uruguay, and… that’s it. At least until we decide to go dragon slaying.”

  ”Shockingly small list this time.” Spire hissed in amusement. “Of course that is a lie. I am working with Deb on developing camraconda medicine. A program that needs expanding to other species, as well. Do you mind if I take Uruguay? That seems simpler.”

  Simon screwed up his face. ”The last time I was in that country I got attacked by a woodchipper shaped like a giant raccoon and got kind of involved in a mild kidnapping plot.”

  ”Yes. Simple.” Spire-Cast-Behind turned a fanged smile up at her friend and fellow paladin, getting a flat stare as a reaction to her friendly taunt. “A good test bed for my… coterie. Though it is not yet my area of practiced expertise. Perhaps we should have a diplomatic corps that does not rely on random paladins being socialized?”

  James hummed at it. “Maybe put Redding on it. He’s good at that kind of thing.”

  ”Jake Redding is a property and family lawyer.” Nate said slowly. “He is not an international diplomat.”

  Spire stared at him so pointedly that James wondered if she’d just frozen Nate in place for convenience as the man practically deflated for the first time he’d ever seen. “Yes, Nate.” She said. “That is correct. Do you believe I am?”

  ”I’ll see what Redding’s up to.”

  James knew the answer to that. “He’s been spending a lot of time with his dragon. Also helping other people train their own paper drakes. Did you know we have a stable? Well, Dave’s uncle has a stable. The guy adapted to us really well, he told me we were ‘good for Dave’ and then didn’t… explain…” He trailed off. “This isn’t relevant. I’ve got some stuff to handle too, but I’m okay checking out the dungeon. It might just be cleanup, honestly. But I liked the grandparents I met out there and Eileen is… I mean… she reminds me of my grandma, but with a shotgun? So I’m cool with that.” James said, smiling fondly at the memory of his grandparent who wasn’t around anymore. “Gotta check in on about ten things before I go though.”

  Nate nodded and started packing up. “Good shit. Don’t forget to take your coteries this time, either.”

  ”I don’t have a coterie.” Simon pointed out. “I have… Magneto?”

  ”Get one then.” Nate told him, unamused. “Stop going off without backup. It wastes time if we have to bring in more backup.”

  ”My coterie is my polycule!” James offered unhelpfully.

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  Simon shook his head. “I can’t do that, I don’t have a polycule.”

  ”Oh you should get one! They’re great.” James said as he stood and stretched. “We ready to get out of here and get back to it?” He asked.

  ”Last thing.” Nate said. “Status updates from all of you. Abilities, magic, whatever. Share it now, so you know when it comes up, before you have to read a profile off the server mid-fight.”

  James ticked things off on his fingers. “Fire breathing spell from the Route, another level of Endurance that makes me distressingly hard to incapacitate, Pylon upgrades to my fine motor control while running, and an umbral spell for patching up clothes.” He listed. “Also I have a paladin upgrade kit I need to get to later.”

  ”You all do.” Nate grumbled. “Spire?”

  ”My authority strengthened by a noticeable amount when we added the umbral to Townton. And my Pylon ranks in slithering have paired with the Garden spell Rat’s Ground. I actually require more level two spell coins, if possible, it upgrades quickly. Also it pairs with shield bracers to replicate the swap effect, though this is inefficient compared to wearing another bracer.” The camraconda thought for a second, then added, “I would also like to request a better arm pack. Or shaper substance so I can simply have arms. I am… frustrated, as is. Alex?”

  ”Alex?” Alex echoed. “Oh, Alex! Right! Sorry, uh, leveled up the home ec Lesson and took another rank in Timing. I think it’s time for me to get another Lesson, I don’t think I’m seeing more useful gains there otherwise, and I’m not picking materialism just to see what it does. Same as Spire, better authority recently. Uh… I’m actually down a lot of the extra lightning speed reserve; it’s recovering but my cap is probably ten or twenty percent gone. Can we send our super effective scout team over to where I killed that guy to find his dungeon next?”

  ”I’ll look into it.” Nate said, intending to make Ben look into it, and forgetting instantly as he was halfway through making a note, and then, realizing what had happened, making a very loud and hard to ignore note for later. “Anything else?”

  ”I need a new sword?” Alex sounded sheepish.

  ”You can borrow mine.” Nate told her. “Simon?”

  ”Anger management practice actually hit me about the same as Alex’s debuff.” He admitted. “Less maximum strength from my Sewer parasite, but I don’t mind much; less likely to hurt myself or others. I have a new orange orb job that spawns aluminum sheets, a bunch of semi-relevant skill and material ranks, took the Climb spells for extra arms and heat transfer, and I’ve paired both my level five Pylon skills with Tether Together so when that comes up I’ll be ready.” Simon hesitated for only a second, then added, “Also two umbral spells. Drug Resistance at one and Quick Look at two. That second one is kind of like… like having extra time to examine something. I can share today’s casts with someone if they want to see.”

  ”Jesus that’s way more than I did.” James exhaled. “Well, everyone went through the trouble of prepping more kits for us, so we should use them, huh?” The others nodded. There was a lot less resistance from all of them at this point to having magical upgrades funneled into themselves. Yes, the Order thrived because they shared magic, but also, they thrived because paladins were increasingly hard to kill and capable of handling anything.

  ”Good talk.” Nate said, the palm of his hand impacting the table he was standing at with no intentional force but still a substantial weight. “Go get your packs. Simon, you stay, we need to talk. Alex, you’re tagged as on medical time in the system so no one will let you help with anything, and fucking grow up and stop scowling. Everyone else-”

  Before Nate could order them out, James took the initiative. “Alex! With me! Let’s get out of here before Simon recruits us!”

  “Can he do that?” Alex asked as she limped after James, nearly tripping over at least two chairs on their way out. “I don’t think he can do that. But what the hell do I know, I’ve been off hunting dragons for a month and you rewrite the book every two days.”

  _____

  “So where’re we going?” Alex asked as she moved after James, doing her best impression of someone who didn’t currently have multiple sets of stitches and a swollen and aching arm from a tetanus shot that was required because of what had caused all the stitches. “You know we don’t need to be in a bath pool to talk, right?”

  ”Hah.” James shook his head as he took them into the third floor break room, using a round table he remembered from a long-ago mundane job to write on a telepad. “I had the same thought.” He told her as they clapped their palms together in a sustained high five while he ripped the telepad and sent them to the Lair. “And no,” James didn’t let the displacement of air or the change of scenery interrupt their conversation for even a moment, “I have a job for you.”

  Alex pulled her hand back, automatically wiping her palm on her jeans. “Hey, you remember that time Reed blew up your car?”

  ”Yes.”

  ”I love how open to tangents everyone here is.” Alex grinned as she followed behind James, silently grateful that he was setting a languid pace through the basement halls, because she was pretty sure she couldn’t dodge a ratroach in a hurry in her state. “So yeah, after that went down, you kinda got really mad at a bunch of people for pushing too fast and hurting themselves and possibly others, right?”

  ”…I did, yes. I think? That was two hundred years ago. How do you even know that?”

  Alex rolled her eyes at his side. ”It was not shut up. And I talk to people. That’s my job. Or character class. Whatever.” She shrugged. “Look, I don’t… I don’t want to do nothing. I feel like I have to do something. Everything sucks, and I have superpowers, and I can fix something. But you also aren’t wrong.”

  ”Why thank you.” James said, and before Alex could mistake him as joking at her expense, he picked up her thought and ran with it, speaking in a steady quiet voice as they waited for a group with a dolly to move a secure metal shelving unit across their path. “You feel like the world is falling apart and if you don’t stop it, it’ll be your fault. And you feel like you just failed at something, and you’re being punished. Not by us, but just for being a failure.”

  ”…I guess you’d know.” Alex said, and then slapped her hand over her mouth so hard it must have hurt. “Holy shit I didn’t think before I said that! Sorry!” She instantly apologized.

  ”Nah, you’re good.” James told her as they continued toward the Lair’s elevators, enjoying the pleasantly earthy air here with the shockingly healthy trees that were growing up toward the green-orb-added mezzanine. “I do know, you know? I’ve been through it. And that sucks, but it means you can trust me that I get you.”

  ”Fine. Well, you’re also not wrong that I can’t do anything.” Alex added bitterly. “Not right now. I can’t run, I hurt so bad I can barely breathe sometimes, and… I don’t think Deb actually wanted me to get out of bed at all. This sucks. I hate my body, you know?”

  She said it so casually that James wasn’t sure how real of a statement that was. But he still gave her a worried sideways glance as they got on the elevator. “There’s options for that.” He said, equally casual.

  ”You could join the body exchange club.” A camraconda that had boarded the elevator with them suggested from behind them.

  James turned and raised his eyebrows as far as they would go at the orange and blue serpent. They had a flatter rectangle of a head than most camracondas, which made them look oddly sleek. “The what now?”

  ”You didn’t know about this?” Alex asked him with her own surprised look. “Yeah, that cafeteria table that swaps bodies? There’s a whole club for trading. They have a spreadsheet and everything!”

  ”I am learning this now.” James said.

  ”Follower-Of-Horizons is in it.” Alex said, nodding at the camraconda who she might be mistakenly assuming was himself. “But also I’d feel bad about it.”

  The camraconda inclined his head. “We are not adverse to humans!” He told her.

  ”I mean because I’m missing half my blood and have holes in me right now.” Alex explained as the elevator doors dinged. “It’d suck to use it just to make someone else heal for me, you know?”

  ”Courtesy appreciated!” Follower-Of-Horizons said as he slithered between them and out to a different basement floor. “Will talk later.” He said as the doors closed.

  ”…So…” James looked down at Alex.

  ”So I mean sure, I could be a camraconda a ratroach or something else.” She said, not looking back at him. “Like a… actually nevermind.”

  James bit down on his lip so he didn’t seem like he was laughing at her. “You know,” he commented as they continued past the main floor and up toward LA, “I think if you want a different body, the Order is kind of the place for it.”

  ”Bat.” Alex said abruptly. “It’d be cool to be a bat. Like an anthro bat.” She waited for James to say something for a second, then continued, “Most people laugh or something.”

  ”Oh yeah, that’s me, laughing at people for being transhumanist furries.” James snorted. “I absolutely don’t have a design document for a cooler body somewhere in my office.” James stepped off the elevator, giving Ferndinand a friendly fist bump on a coiled vine as they passed by the Office plant, and a polite nod and smile to Smoke who was the coordinator today. “Speaking of, step into my office. And then sit the fuck down before you die.”

  Alex did so with an exhalation as the pain of keeping herself upright started to fade. “I can’t die I’m busy.” She muttered, before waving at the strider in the office who flicked a pen leg back in his own wave. “Hey Rufus. Anyway I want to do whatever job you have. But I actually know I shouldn’t. So… can you just not give it to me, so I don’t feel guilty?”

  ”No, because it’s one that you can do from a chair.”

  ”Oh. Oh! Hit me then!” Alex perked up.

  James didn’t actually circle his desk and sit in his chair. Instead, he took the plush chair Alex had sat down in, and lifted it with the paladin still in it, kicking his main chair backward so he could maneuver her into the space in front of his computer and next to where Rufus was working. The stapler watched him with an amused eye, while Alex just made confused noises.

  It was surprisingly easy for James to make the move; which was to say, it wasn’t effortless at all, but he could do it just because he thought it was fun. His strength, mostly mundane muscle mass that was just earned through exercise potion, was something he wasn’t fully used to. Because he’d earned it through exercise potion, and so, hadn’t really internalized the exact amount he could lift.

  “Okay.” James leaned past Alex and opened a few files on his computer. “This is the ops manual, and all my side notes on it. This is the formatting guide I’ve been using. And you already have database access” He stood back and tapped the blade of his hand on her less injured shoulder. “Write us a combat doctrine.”

  ”…what?”

  ”We have so much shit Alex.” James told her bluntly. “Nate’s army buddies are training shield teams like soldiers. Our soldiers, but still soldiers. Karen’s training plans are great for making knights into better knights, but Karen is one disturbingly busy woman and she’s not doing that full time anyway.”

  Alex looked up at him, tilting her head back so she was staring at James’ face from her seated angle. “You know I’m not a soldier, right? Or a… captain? General? Military.”

  ”Yeah no shit.” James scoffed, getting a mirrored scratching noise from Rufus sitting on the desk. He walked back around the desk, leaning on one of the clear edges. “You’re a paladin. And more importantly, you’ve got time, and you’ve been keeping up on all our magic. We’re going to have another Underburbs. Another… anything.” James couldn’t keep the anger and exhaustion out of his voice. “Make plans. Bring in whoever you need to for brainstorming. Find strategies that use the magic we have for maximum advantage. Think up nightmare scenarios, and then figure out how we can counter them with what he have, and write it so it can be updated when we have more. Then we’ll start doing testing and wargaming and see if anything has any obvious fail points.”

  ”Oh good, this isn’t just me making shit up then!” Alex’s voice squeaked.

  ”It’s a team effort.” James confirmed. “This is your job until you’re in the field again.” He smiled. “Sound good?”

  ”Sounds… yeah.” Alex cut herself off. “Yeah, this sounds good.” She said with a nod. “You want, like… how do I even say this? Do you want me to do different levels of deployment too? Like, different strategies for the size of the problem?”

  ”Absolutely. Also? I want you to plan specific builds for us to work with. Nothing that requires us to enforce permanent changes, but use the Venture spells or Climb wands or whatever. Anything we can assume we can get access to without forcing someone into a path, use the shit out of it.”

  ”…I’ve got thoughts on that already.” Alex muttered. Unspoken, for now, was the idea that there were a lot of people in the Order who would volunteer for permanent picks in their magic, just to be a useful part of a team strategy. Route or Climb spells, or Pylon-Venture level pairings, things like that. Alex knew for a fact there were people here who would give up their own flexibility if it meant helping others.

  And while she understood that James specifically would be uncomfortable around that, and probably have a lot to say about accidentally or even just eventually having that lead to forcing people into something, she also disagreed. The Order could draw lines that mattered. They could incentivize contributing without punishing not contributing. Because at the end of the day, they either trusted themselves to be responsible, or they didn’t. If every single thing was a slippery slope that would lead to horrifying inequality and abuse in the future, then there was no point to any of this shit.

  Alex chose to be optimistic. Not blindly, but with consideration for the simple fact that if the Order could change people into better versions of themselves, then they could keep doing that into the hypothetical future. And so the plans in her head were already starting to include looking at the spreadsheet with all the orange orb jobs, and all the different specific things the Pylon could level up.

  ”Yeah. I’m on this.” She told James. “And Rufus can help?” She looked at the stapler, who looked back at her, then back at his own modified custom laptop, then back at her, with his whole body conveying a sense that he was busy. “Rufus can’t help, I’ll call Inky.” Alex settled on as James gave her a thumbs up and headed for the door. “Hey wait, this is your office. Where are you going?” She asked him.

  ”I’ve gotta see a man about a rat.”

  _____

  “Top ten worst ideas, let’s play a game.” Zhu announced. “Here, I’ll start; this one.”

  He was currently brandished in form across the right side of James, thick orange feathers made of something that looked like light and was probably a completely different kind of thing. It was hard to say if his arm was slender or not, because despite mimicking a bird, he didn’t really have bones to be hollow, and his blanket of feathers were just as much him as anything underneath. The tail he had flowing down from James’ back, though, was three quarters the width of James himself, and definitely counted as thick. The large central eye on the top of James’ shoulder was followed by three or four smaller ocular openings dotting the arm, and another on the tail, but those weren’t really the ones he used to express himself.

  He was also currently in Yamhill, which he found to be stupid. The dusty orange glow from his form muffled with his irritation at the situation.

  ”Nnnno.” Arrush nearly choked on the soda he was drinking through a long metal straw that James had given him a long time ago. Coughing wetly, he wiped away the corner of his muzzle with the back of a paw. “It’s… it’s his superpower.”

  ”…Explain.” Zhu stretched the word out as he watched Arrush, ignoring James’ embarrassed sigh.

  ”If this counts as a mistake, then we’re both on the list.” Arrush said after a slow moment of just walking, his fancy new custom fit boots making oddly shaped marks in the mud next to James’ own footprints as they headed toward the barn that the Order had rebuilt after… well, everything. “You were supposed to be a dungeon trap. I was… I was just supposed to kill him. How is this different?”

  ”…I’m annoyed now.” Zhu stated.

  Arrush chittered nervously, and started to apologize, but James set a hand on his boyfriend’s back, just above where one of his smaller arms connected. “He’s annoyed because you’re right.” James said warmly, as they got near the figure standing outside the barn; a dark silhouette in the November rain that was coming down and soaking all of them slowly resolving into a human woman under an umbrella. “Hey, Dr. Holly right?”

  ”That’s me! Welcome to… uh…” the doctor, who wouldn’t have anything close to the qualifications outside of the Order where their orb and .mem supplemented education was trusted, looked back at the barn. “Here?” She finished.

  ”There’s a weird name for it people use isn’t there.” James said as the doctor let them into the building.

  She didn’t answer, but one of the people inside did. “Mousetrap.” The young man in light body armor said, looking up from the monitor showing off the internal cameras. “Uh… paladin.” He added.

  He wasn’t the only person here. There were two other people on the medical team, and a half dozen more members from shield team four that were on guard. Though only two of them were currently alert; the others relaxing at a coffee table nearby.

  The interior of the barn itself was a far cry from what it had been. The frame was still there, sure, and as the only intact building left on the otherwise devastated property the Order kept using, it was a decent starting point. Especially on short notice. But anything that wasn’t important equipment had been cleared out, and the floor rapidly redone with mostly clean linoleum, with a new interior wall to act as a barricade if needed crossing between this entry space and the central room, and bracing metal reinforcements added to the exterior walls.. Medical monitoring tools, as well as a number of emergency options if they needed them, had replaced the old farm equipment. And in the middle of the space, a wide basin padded with a kind of aerogel-esque foam that cost way too much but had been found to resist ratroach pseudo-acid acted as a bed.

  The reason for the extra reinforcement and the whole shield team put here for security was simple.

  This was where the Beautiful One was.

  It had been just over a week since her capture, though capture was an odd word to use. Retrieval, perhaps, or even rescue. Because as soon as the Akashic Sewer had caught on to what the retrieval team was doing, it had just tried to murder her. A worshipper and weapon that was, ultimately, completely disposable. But now, she was here. Given medical aid, heavily sedated, and kept under armed guard while her body recovered. But now, having survived the worst of her injuries, the medical team had started slowly lowering the chemical and infomorph sedation, and so James was here to greet her when she woke up.

  The doctor, trailing the fishy pink and white fin of Mercy around her hands, picked up a clipboard and started talking to James as he and Arrush stopped to look through the plexiglass barrier at the slowly breathing form of the Beautiful One laying on her bed in the main room. “Its injuries were pretty bad when you brought it in.” Holly told them. “But mostly the creature has recovered, though there is still a persistent factal infestation that keeps masking parts of… excuse me, Mercy?”

  ”Pests and bothers, one moment.” The radiantly kind infomorph poured into the world through Holly, the fin on one of her hands stretching and extending into much more of the glittering eel form that Mercy often had, the infomorph then spilling around the wall and into the main area.

  James twitched as he felt the concept of teeth in the deep, and felt Arrush tense up next to him, before Holly continued. “Ah, that’s better. Hate those things. The fleas were a lot easier to handle. So, yes, her injuries are dealt with. The fungal infections will take a lot longer, and so will the full healing of the…” she motioned with one hand, looking for the words as she looked up, her eyes straying to Arrush. “Bonding lines? The parts where her chitin and flesh meet. All standard ratroach issues so far. Less standard is the strain of fungus that seems to convert bits of a common hormone into a kind of neurotoxin in the bloodstream. It should cause intense agony, though obviously we’re not testing it on people. We’re not the potion department.” Holly shook her head. “Our methods are working on it, and have mostly scrubbed it from her system so far though. That’s all manageable. But.”

  ”But?” James asked, turning to raise an eyebrow at the woman in her plain blue scrubs. He was pretty sure he already knew what they’d found. He’d felt it, when he’d grabbed the Beautiful One and felt the mint sting of her… well, it probably wasn’t legally blood anymore.

  ”Ah. The but. Yes. Ah hah.” Holly took a long breath of the cool air. “We have to be extremely careful with her, you were right. The blood isn’t too bad, it’s more of a side effect. Most of her bodily fluids are like that. The pseudo-acidity takes care of the worst parts of the problem. But only most.” She flipped the clipboard around, pulling back some pages to show a pair of outlines of the Beautiful One’s profile. “It’s not really the right term, but it’s simplest to say her mammary glands are active, and producing. It’s just… well… shaper substance. Not quite the same form of the stuff we’ve seen from the Sewer and use in surgeries, but definitely the same stuff overall.”

  James, holding one edge of the clipboard with Zhu’s talons overlaid on his fingers, frowned. He decided, for once, to keep his mouth shut and not make a joke about this being a pretty blatant expression of one of the Sewer’s kinks. Instead, he just flicked his eyes across the notes. “It’s not killing her.” He said, a little surprised.

  ”It’s not. It doesn’t work on her at all, actually, which might be the big difference in it.” Holly confirmed. “I’m not the expert on the substance, so I can’t tell you what the consequences would be exactly, but it does build up in its… in her body. We have a - and I know this sounds horrible - milking regimen in place to keep her stable.”

  ”Great.” James sighed, turning back to see Arrush just standing and staring into the room. “Well. We’d like to talk to her, if she’s going to be awake for a bit. Though I’d like to remind my boyfriend that he’s not required to be here again…” James pursed his lips in Arrush’s direction.

  The ratroach didn’t turn away from the plexiglass. ”What would have happened if I’d made a mistake back then and brought her with us?” He said.

  ”Dunno. Because the dungeon kinda goes out of its way to make sure no one thinks of that.” James said.

  ”She could have been my sister.” Arrush said with a quiet clicking in his chest.

  James felt more than saw the doctor move away as he stepped up to Arrush’s side again. Out in the room, the human and camraconda nurses in hazmat suits exchanged a quick series of words with Holly while James just stood next to his boyfriend. Eventually, he figured, he had something that might be worth saying. “I don’t think it’s ever anyone’s fault for not being strong enough to resist abuse.” He said. “That’s… sort of the problem with abuse. No one chooses it, and if anyone says otherwise, they’re a moron. It’s not your fault what happened then, and it’s not a requirement for you to do this now.”

  Arrush set a paw on top of James’ head, his claws slipping through his boyfriend’s hair to gently settle against his scalp. “And you keep saying that. And I… mostly believe you. But I want to be here.”

  ”See, this is what happens.” Zhu interrupted, though his voice was gentle. “You make everyone believe they should be nice all the time.” He accused James.

  ”And he’s right.” Arrush added. “I don’t know how long I need to live before it stops being confusing.”

  ”I’ll let you know when it happens to me.” James told the ratroach, who straightened up at the words, unintentionally looming over his shorter partner. “Anyway. Want to go say hi, and see if she’ll try to kill us?”

  He’d said that part a bit louder than the rest of the quiet conversation, and from behind them, the shield team member who was keeping an eye on the side of the monitoring equipment that wasn’t the nurse’s station chimed in. “Hey, maybe don’t expect her to try to kill you? We’re only mostly sure we can stop her if she gets up and starts ripping things apart.”

  James gave a reassuring smile and a thumbs up as the doctor came back to their side of the barricade. She glanced at the security team James was looking at before looking back at him. “Okay. She should be becoming more alert soon, you can go in. Just remember to keep your distance, and also that Mercy’s work falls apart if you intentionally antagonize her, alright?”

  ”I wouldn’t do that.” James said. Zhu started to say something, raising his talons slightly, before James cut him off. “No, seriously.” He told the navigator. “I do that to people who have too much power and not enough sass in their lives. Not to people who need help.”

  ”What about Terror?”

  ”Terror has a demiplane that spawns fireballs that eat buildings. Terror can handle a little antagonism.” James retorted.

  Arrush coughed out a surprised laugh as they followed the doctor. “Y-you just don’t like that he can do more property damage than you.” He teased James.

  ”Gonna be honest, I can already do way too much property damage. So yeah, you’re right!” James’ smile grew brittle as they got closer to the Beautiful One’s bed. The smell of antiseptic and antifungal agents filling the filtered air, along with the scent of rain and mud from outside. A barn, even modified, just was not a suitable clean facility, but it was the only place they actually had that was even remotely safe right now. Especially since most of the surrounding area had seen a lot of its population leave after the fires.

  The Beautiful One herself was covered by thin blankets large enough to probably count as sails. There were multiple IV lines running to different arms; from what James had picked up from the chart, she needed at least two just for nutrition and hydration simply because of her sheer size.

  The damage to her body, inflicted by tooth and claw and jagged makeshift blades, wasn’t just recent. In many places, her cream-white fur was shaved down, exposing a network of twisted scars that extended to poorly healed cracks and breaks in her chitin. But what had still been bleeding when she’d come in was probably going to be itching like crazy as the stitches and bandages kept her blood inside her.

  Despite being the size of a truck, she seemed so small, laying there. Figuritively. She was still the size of a truck. Some of her claws were the size of James’ arms, and even though they’d been trimmed and filed while she slept so they weren’t quite the same deadly weapons they were before, size was a force all its own.

  The pair of nurses nodded or bobbed at him as he approached, Arrush following with the kind of gentle steps of someone still getting used to new footwear behind him. And the Beautiful One stirred.

  ”She is semi-conscious.” The camraconda stated, his voice professional and direct. “Mercy is holding her in a state parallel to lucid dreaming. Do not antagonize her.”

  “Aaahhhh…” the groan coming from the massive ratroach was slow and languid, the long tongue lolling out of her muzzle and onto the foam filling her basin bed curling as she noticed James approaching in her field of vision. “Aahh. Ahy aahhhhm… dhhhed.” She said almost sadly.

  ”Dead?” James stopped and clasped his hands behind his back, speaking softly but loudly enough for her to hear. “No. You’re not.”

  ”Thhenn khyuu are dhead.” Her voice, which had always been thick and hard to understand, had not gotten any easier while she was in this state. “Dreeeeam gahousts. G-ghosts.” Her body bucked like she was trying to cough, but her lungs didn’t engage properly. “Khilled khyuu. F-f-finally.” The words were there, but they had almost no emotion behind them. Just a hollow nothingness in her tone as the constellation of eyes that were on the side facing upward looked away from James, focusing on nothing and just staring off into space.

  ”You don’t sound too happy about my untimely demise.” James offered in a conciliatory tone.

  The Beautiful One didn’t respond for a while, just staring with glazed eyes at the far wall. “Dead.” She said slowly, eventually. The slow drawl and the fact that she was taking her time and not literally slavering with the act of violence making her speech clearer than James had ever heard from this particular priestess of a mad god. “Dead too. All of ussh dead. Is thhis… whaat c-choms next?”

  James looked back at Arrush, who was standing out of her line of sight, then back to the Beautiful One. “It… yeah.” He decided to say. “It’s… it’s what comes next.”

  ”Oh.” She said, groaning out a long whine with popping clicks from something in her throat punctuating the noise. “Wh-whhaaas ahy ghood en-ennnuff?” She asked, the words falling over each other.

  And James had to step back. He was, he suddenly realized, the wrong fucking person to be here. There was a pain echoing in his heart that his reasonably successful antidepressant routine wasn’t capable of helping with; an ache that had been there the whole time he’d known about this creature - this person - but had suddenly spiked into his awareness like never before.

  What were you supposed to say to an abused victim who was begging for the admiration of the monster that had done this to them? She wasn’t innocent, wasn’t pure of heart, but who fucking cared about that? The Beautiful One - and what a treacherous title that even was on its own - had been twisted and shaped into a weapon made to cause pain, and she didn’t even realize the crime that had been done to her. She’d been hurt so much, and James had been part of that hurting, because he’d never thought ahead far enough to get one of the Order’s infomorphs or antimeme-resistant members to help him double check if they should maybe think about this travesty a little harder.

  He felt like he was going to throw up, which would have been very bad for something that was supposed to be a place of at least mostly meant for healing.

  Arrush’s arms wrapping around him as he turned away caught James by surprise. The larger ratroach talking to the Beautiful One did too. “No.” Arrush said, the single word coming out with a tremble.

  ”…nnnhhhhho?” The Beautiful One repeated, one of her arms that had been shaved down to the scarred hide struggling to rise off her bed. “Whhhh…” her voice stopped as she slumped.

  Arrush found his voice, and kept going. Mimicking how he knew James talked to people. Had talked to him, him and Keeka. On rooftops and in quiet dark places, and once, in a hospital room that wasn’t really that dissimilar from this one. ”It lied to you.” He said, not trying to make it a challenge, but instead making it a firm fact. “W-what you did wasn’t good.” Arrush saw recognition starting to glimmer in her eyes as she stared at him. “But no one is mad at you.”

  ”Ghhosets ahhnd dreams ahhre nhaever mad.” She said, though it wasn’t clear if she was replying or reassuring herself.

  Looking back at Zhu, and seeing the navigator giving him a worried look, Arrush nodded for the door and let the glowing orange manifestation guide James by the hand out of the room. His new boyfriend was a strong person, in many ways that mattered a lot, but he could be caught off guard by other people’s pain far too easily. “I’m mad.” Arrush admitted to her quietly, stepping over the line on the floor in yellow caution tape that denoted her effective range of lashing out. “But… but I think he’d be disappointed in me if I were mad at you. You hurt us so much.”

  The Beautiful One looked at him like she was confused to see Arrush again. She definitely recognized him, but nothing he was saying was making sense to her.

  And when he looked back at her, he saw something off in her eyes. She didn’t care. Not just from the sedation, she looked… she looked like she had the same blankness that James got when he was depressed. Like she had already given up.

  In a way, this would have been easier if she was angry. If she had lashed out or yelled or threatened, then he could have had something to fight. But this was different, and so much more painful. Arrush ran one of his claws across the underside of his muzzle, abandoning the words he’d planned to say, and instead finding something else. Something that mattered. That had been said to him, and that he now passed on, a strange kind of inheritance. “We aren’t dead.” He said. “Neither of us are dead. But this is what comes next. They’re going to heal you, and you won’t hurt anymore, and… and you don’t know what that’s going to be like. None of them can explain it, not really.” His own voice, made more whole by his own healing, still caught in places as he spoke. “We… we can talk when you’re feeling better.” He told her. “Really talk. Like people. And… and I hope you feel better. G-go back to sleep, and things will be better tomorrow.” Arrush said.

  The Beautiful One stared at him with eyes that she couldn’t keep focused, trying again to raise her split arm and finding that it wouldn’t move correctly. “Hhhave toooo… khhiill…” she slurred out.

  But her heart wasn’t in it.

  ”I used to think I was afraid of you.” Arrush said. “Then I hated you. But now I just want you…”

  ”Dhhhhhead?” She asked him, struggling to make sense of the words.

  ”No!” Arrush coughed out in surprise at the interruption, before smiling at her with a glowing crescent of teeth. “No.” He reiterated, softer. “I want you alive. So… so sleep. Go to sleep. And things will get better later.” He said, shuffling back and wondering if maybe now was the right time to listen to the part of him that was telling him to run from the predator in the medical bed.

  “Khilll khyuu whhen I wake.” She tried to call after him.

  Arrush didn’t turn. And he didn’t listen.

  When he rejoined James out in front of the barn, the human standing under the tiny awning that didn’t really keep the rain off, James greeted him with a miserable. “Hey.” Before turning his head away. “Sorry. I didn’t really realize how much that was gonna fuck me up.” He said.

  Arrush didn’t say anything. He just enfolded one of the people who inexplicably loved him in an embrace, ignoring Zhu’s extra feathers rustling against his sweatshirt, and held it there for long enough that they both ended up drenched and in the way of some of the shield team that needed to use the door.

  It had been an unproductive conversation, maybe. But it was a start. A single first step. And Arrush and James and even Zhu all knew there were going to be a lot more steps before anything really changed.

  But you had to start somewhere.

  There is a discord! Come hang out with us.

  There is a wiki! It's starting to become helpful.