"A city named Ironton, which was founded by a group of people who were very good at mining iron, and apparently not very good at coming up with names." -Shaun, The War On Science-

  _____

  “What fresh batch of lunacy is this?” Anesh asked as James returned to their apartment and dropped a box onto their living room table. “Planning to collapse this poor old thing?”

  The piece of furniture had been with James for so long; reliable and enduring no matter how unsturdy it seemed. And it continued to endure the weight of the cardboard that he’d put on it, as well as the laptops that Anesh and his paired self were using, and the fact that Auberdeen was resting her canine chin on the edge while she watched Casablanca with a rapt gaze. James could have put a lot more nonsense on it and had it stay standing, and he knew that, because he and Anesh had both been there for game nights and hangouts that included a lot of people putting a lot more crap down.

  “It’s my paladin… stipend? Allocation? Pile.” James settled on a word as Arrush came in the door behind him. They were significantly less soaked through than they had been, having stopped off at the Lair for a bit, but were both still damp to the point of discomfort. “Hey.” James leaned over the chair to kiss Anesh on the top of his head, then shuffled sideways to repeat the whole thing for the other Anesh. “Hey Aubs!” He added.

  ”No kissing! Movie! You are wet!” Auberdeen declared through her authority, not looking away from the screen. “Look what I learned!” She added, and there was a tiny wisp of a blue glimmer curving away from her.

  Suddenly, the water soaked into James’ clothes and hair pulled away. Enough force that he almost staggered back into the mantle over their fireplace, but slowly lessening as the droplets were wrung out of everything that held them. James turned just in time to see a baseball sized globe of water hovering just next to his head, before it arced across the room and mostly into the sink in the kitchen.

  So now James could add ‘absorb blue orbs’ to the list of things the resident dog could do. That was neat. Probably.

  ”I feel like I should have a lot of complex thoughts about this.” He said out loud. “But I’m kind of emotionally drained and also we have so many different existential crises going on all the time in our magical lives that this just seems fine. Thanks Aubs.” James looked back at where Arrush was struggling to get his boots off. “Can you hit him too?” He asked.

  The amount of water that came off Arrush was actually less than for James, surprisingly, though he did chitter in panic as he was tugged sideways. All that fur he had was mostly under his clothes, and his sweatshirt was pretty water resistant. But he still made a grateful sound as Auberdeen splashed what had been on him into the kitchen as well.

  James was pretty sure she was hitting the sink. He hoped, at least.

  “Well, welcome home.” Anesh said as James dusted his now dry hands together and found the feeling weird. The other Anesh continued as they tagged each other in on the conversation. “Now, I love you in a way that is difficult to fully describe, and do keep that in mind when I tell you to get your paladin pile off the table because I am both doing work. Also Auberdeen probably wants us silenced.”

  ”I am focused!” Auberdeen barked happily.

  James wasn’t sure if that was a yes or no, but he was still smiling as he hoisted the box. “I’ll be upstairs.” He said, gazing at the ladder to the apartment’s attic. He caught a glance of the movie on their TV as he did so, and suddenly had a curious thought that Auberdeen might like black and white movies more because of the range of color dogs normally saw. He’d ask later. “You wanna hang out more?” James asked Arrush.

  Arrush was standing silently in the open floor between the kitchen and the living room, awkwardly not sitting as he found himself interested in the film himself. “I…” He looked at James, and the sudden reminder that the human genuinely asked him things snapped him out of the melancholy mood he’d been in all the way back. “Later.” He said, moving to sit next to Auberdeen, the dog shifting her white furred bulk to give him room without adjusting her vision an inch.

  ”Have fun!” James said as he climbed the ladder.

  He wondered where Keeka was today, and if maybe in the future he could get both the ratroaches over for a movie night. He missed nights like that with friends; James had thought it before but constantly being on the attack did sort of eat into his quiet downtime with the people he loved. And he did love them, so much it burned. He just wanted a world where he could watch bad anime and eat pizza with everyone he cared about, and, he realized, it turned out he was willing to kill to get there.

  If that had been all he wanted, though, he’d have stopped a long time ago. The ‘problem’ was, he wasn’t content to have it for himself. Everyone deserved bad anime and good pizza night. That was, ultimately, the guiding central force for the Order of Endless Rooms. Everyone should have their best life; even people who were kind of shitty, because having a better life tended to make people less shitty; even people who looked like monsters, because the people who looked like monsters had so far been the most in need of compassion in James’ experience.

  He fumbled the box of stuff up to the slightly overlapping throw rugs of their small attic; a space that was as wide as the living room below but felt rather claustrophobic to James’ six-ish foot height.

  It was slightly more cramped because the place wasn’t empty. “Hi friend!” Sarah said happily as James decided to just sprawl on the plush rug they had up here. “Are you dead?”

  ”Yes. Thoroughly deceased.” James announced. “Hi. I’m here, finally.”

  ”I was starting to think I’d been forgotten!” Sarah smiled, looking over the edge of the comic she was reading. “How was…” she asked kindly.

  ”Kind of a kick in the head.” James replied as he wormed his way into one of the beanbags up here and fully settled his box on the table between them. “I’ll talk about it later, after I go through this stuff.”

  Sarah perked up. “About that!” She said. “I have an addition for your level up!”

  Looking up at the rope lights hanging overhead, James felt like he wasn’t fully alive enough for that conversation. “You don’t wanna chat about deep emotional trauma?” He asked Sarah. “You love deep emotional trauma.”

  ”We can do that later you goober; look, I have a book for you!”

  ”I do like… books…” James stopped talking as he rolled to see what Sarah had slid across the table, bumping into the cardboard edge of his paladin kit. “This is the Attic book.” He said.

  ”No!” Sarah cheerfully corrected him. “Or… yes! It’s a new Attic book!”

  Okay, fine, James would engage with this. Sitting up so he could gently pick up the bound text, with pages like starfields and a cover of gentle midnight paper, James turned the magic item over in his hands. It felt, more than looked, like it had an impression of a spaceship on its front cover, which was more deliberate and directed art than the first one Clutter had made. “Is it like the other one?” He asked.

  ”Not even a little bit.” Sarah told him, replacing her thumb in her comic with an actual bookmark and setting it on the table too. She continued, excited to share. “The first book turns the reader into a sliiiiightly lossy router. This one lets the reader and any of their bonds borrow against the future!”

  James set the book down quickly. “Explain while I’m not touching it.” He said, concerned.

  ”Okay! So, we share focus, right?”

  ”And rest, but yes, our mutual adoration for our incredibly beautiful girlfriend has given us a new option. We should really try using that more when one of us is sleeping, by the way!”

  ”We sleep weird, and one of us would forget and then it would be a disaster.” Sarah pointed out. “Anyway yes. So with the other book, I could take focus from you and pass it to anyone else, right?” James’ eyes shifted to Sarah’s arm, which was well on the way to becoming a geometric art piece with all the relationstick tattoos covering her halfway to her elbow. “Well with this one, if one of us has it, we can take out a focus loan!”

  ”Or a rest loan.”

  ”You’re being difficult!” Sarah pouted. “Yes, or a rest loan! From the future! But not really from the future, it comes from… nowhere, I guess? We tried, we can’t break time.”

  James closed his eyes, and held back the urge to ask why they’d tried that. “Okay.” He said. “So… how does it choose when to pay it back?”

  ”Seems to start right away!” Sarah said. “Slowly though, it gets worse until the halfway point. So if you and Anesh yoink a little bit of speed out of nowhere, it’ll start slowing you down for the next few days. The more you take, the bigger the drain, but it generally only takes a few days to pay back!”

  ”Okay, that’s pretty cool. So it’s a limit break of sorts, right? Alanna and I could double our strength, at the cost of being half as strong for the next few days? That’s… hm.” James ran a finger down the spine of the magical book. “That sounds good, but…”

  ”But?” Sarah cocked her head.

  ”But when is it ever just one day.” James sighed. “When have we ever finished a quest and then gotten to rest.”

  ”…Now?” Sarah asked him. “Yeah! Right now. You are resting. The umbral are settling in and no one is being ultra-racist, the Beautiful One is going to have a chance to be okay, Kiki is less suicidal, Research hasn’t blown anything up in several days, and… and you have time! There’s always times like this! You’re always going to have quiet times where you can heal, and that’s good, because healing is part of the war. Right, James?”

  He tried to smile as he looked at his friend. “You only ever say my name when it’s really bad.” He commented.

  ”Yeah! Now say I’m right.” Sarah crossed her arms at him.

  ”…There’s a dungeon flooding Oklahoma with animal-level creations and they’re occupying enough land that it might become statistically relevant.” James said.

  Sarah stared at him. Then back at the book on the table. Slowly, inch by inch, her hand reached over before slapping down on the cover, and dragging the Attic-made arcane text back to herself. “Are they at least cute dungeon creatures?” She asked with a despairing sigh.

  Pulling his phone out, James flipped through his messages. “Yeah, Charlie sent me some pictures. They look liiiiiike… this.” He turned the screen for her to peer at, showing off a white furred mammal with powerful hind legs and what looked like a pair of bone scythes for front arms. “Dance wants to call them ‘jackknife rabbits’ and I think that’s funny but also hard to say.”

  ”That’s pretty cute.” Sarah nodded, her own appreciation for things like isopods and platapusses letting her see the beauty in the little bioweapon. “They’re super mean, aren’t they?”

  ”Intensely hostile.” James nodded in confirmation.

  ”Boop.” Sarah sighed again. “Well, so much for my surprise for you! Can I tell you that there’s a bunch of new stuff animals instead?”

  ”You can tell me that anyway no matter what!” James said cheerfully. He loved hearing about the Attic’s creations. “How’re they doing?”

  He let Sarah talk about the process of taking in new stuff animals that were sort of created in shadowy hidden spots by the dungeon, and the way they were often confused at their sudden existence, while he unpacked the box of paladin stuff from the table. As he set rows of orbs and gears and even a couple different Garden texts down, Sarah described the different forms of hybrid creations that had come from the Attic and their different nascent personalities. The way the different parts seemed to flow into different styles of behavior; not just that the ones with salamander or frog mixed in liked water, but things like how those that were given insect parts were often paired with more outgoing and bold personalities.

  James liked that. He felt like it might be, in a way, the dungeon’s form of an apology to Fredrick. An attempt to correct the fact that it had kind of ‘abandoned’ that early stuff animal creation and left him exceptionally shy and drawn in because of it.

  James also had a brief moment of thought, which he felt a little bad about but couldn’t completely shut out, that with how the stuff animals provided a damage buffer for their friends, Sarah was probably more capable of surviving than he was.

  It was hard to measure the shield the stuff animals provided. Or if it was actually a shield at all. They were being careful about it, because no one wanted to find out the hard way that it was metaphysically linked to the friendship itself, and that if it activated then it cost something from the bond. Magic didn’t tend to work that way, but… well, it was magic. So who knew? Whatever way it worked though, James tried not to think about it; if he thought about it, he might start trying to think of how to optimize it, and that wasn’t fair. Not for something as critical to a healthy life as friendship.

  “And now there’s a few too many in the Attic’s under-house. So now we need more people to be parents!” Sarah said. “I would volunteer, but I dunno. Am I ready for that? Could I even be responsible enough? I already feel like I’m failing when it comes to helping Alanna take care of her sisters, and her sisters basically take care of themselves except for in all the ways they don’t.”

  ”Ah, teenagers.” James grinned. “I know Alanna's doing something like that for her sisters, but it's less parenting and more just harassing them into knowing how to live on their own and stuff. I often feel the same way about Morgan. Like, I spend a good chunk of time making sure he’s doing okay, and he knows he can come to me with problems, but I don’t feel… parenty. I’m not around all the time.”

  Sarah nodded rapidly. ”Right! And I don’t know if it’d be okay to just bring new stuff animals into our place here. It’s cool for us to live in, but is it good for kids? Besides that I don’t think everyone would be okay with it, either.”

  ”I would.” James said, surprising her. “Seriously,” he added at her shocked look, “I don’t think I could be a full time parent, hell no. But I can help. That’s literally the principle of our custom crafted foster system, right? That a lot of the work of parenting gets easier if you divide and conquer, and that five people can parent five kids way easier than two adults can manage two kids. I’m not always here, but when I am, I could totally make dinner or do laundry. I do do that. I could do it for more people, is my point.”

  ”I kinda thought you hated kids.” Sarah asked him.

  ”I hate responsibility.” James pointed out. “But… only when it’s not my choice. This would be, right? Though obviously ask everyone else. But I’m on board. Someone has to do the work, and… I dunno, I think our home would be good to share.”

  Sarah bit the inside of her cheek, almost chewing on her smile as she watched James arrange orbs and consult the little printed guide for what each one did. If often felt like her best friend was, in many ways, completely unaware of the depth of his own compassion compared to most people. Most people would say no. They might say no and I’m sorry, or no and I have a good reason, with only the really mean ones saying no and fuck off, but they would still say no. But not James. James said… well, he said a lot of words. He did the thing he always did, where he laid out his core beliefs in clean lines of reasoning as if that was normal for humans, and then he gave an answer that, Sarah would admit, really surprised her. Even if it was obvious when everything was said, just how he got to it.

  Yes, because someone has to, and it’s important.

  Sarah still wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, but she was sure that he meant it when he said he’d be willing to try. So she’d ask everyone else who lived here later. Alanna might be the most resistant. And she needed to remember Auberdeen was a roommate and not a pet.

  She also needed to ask James a very important question. “You’re not going to use those, right?” Sarah asked as she pointed at the small velocity gears James had on the table.

  “…Yes?” James asked. “I mean, I’m at twenty five max already, which is starting to get into the same territory as El where I need either a week of sustained driving, or one of those land speed record cars if I want to hit the cap in a reasonable amount of time. Which is hyperbole, yes, stop frumping at me. But despite everything I just told you I do regularly go for a week or two without using Velocity, and even though my loyal navigator partner regularly abandons me to go hang out with people who do drive all the time, I get in a vehicle often enough that having a cap of… uh…” he checked the provided numbers on the printed page, “twenty nine would just be pure benefit.”

  Sarah leaned over and slapped her palm over the gears, sliding them with a rasp of metal on wood back to her side of the little table. “You never talked to Deb!” She accused him. “Did you even check the update?”

  ”…The gears kill people somehow don’t they?” James sighed, resigned to losing a whole magic system.

  ”Welllllll… nooooot exactly?” Sarah knew the flat stare James was giving her was one of friendship and love, so she didn’t take it personally. “Okay, you know how with orbs, they actually do sort of sit inside you when you absorb them?”

  James remembered how it looked when Zhu has an absorbed blue, the little ball of magic suspended and muffled by the glowing orange of the navigator, but still visible. “Yes.” He said.

  ”Yeah! So it’s like that! Except different in almost every way!” Sarah wasn’t making James feel reassured. “The gears give you a Velocity mana pool, but it’s… uh… it’s like an organ? Or I think Deb called it a gland. Either way it’s a physical fleshy bit of you inside you. Well, flesh or whatever your body is normally made of. We’re not sure what assignments get, but navigators tend to have a little part of their manifestation near the tail. That’s also why they lose their stockpile when they demanifest!”

  ”So I have a dungeon tumor.” James said dryly.

  ”Lots of us do!” Sarah did her best to pave over the gnawing terror at that with cheerful humor.

  A thing James appreciated. “I suppose it hasn’t killed us yet.” He said. “Also if it were actually a tumor the purple orb would have gotten it, so that’s safe at least. Though now I’m wondering what happens if I get stabbed in my Velocity sac, you know? Is it… is it in there? Is the mana physical? Can we milk someone for Velocity? Sarah these are important questions to me.” He leaned forward farther and farther with each word, spreading his hands on the table.

  ”I knew you’d ask about milking people.” Sarah crossed her arms and stuck her tongue out. “Talk to Deb. Ask her about milking people. She’ll love that!”

  ”She will not.” James stuck his tongue out right back at her. “I’m not, contrary to what Deb thinks of me, dumb.”

  ”…Deb doesn’t think you’re dumb.”

  ”Really?”

  ”Really. She thinks you’re reckless and dramatic and that you try to cover up serious talk by being silly, but she doesn't think you’re dumb.” Sarah told him with a confident nod. “Also I don’t think you’re dumb either. But also don’t expand your Velocity gland.”

  James could get behind that. “Okay, well, what about the orbs? Are they going to do something to my spleen? Is this where I find out that the foundation for my entire magical life is bad for my health?”

  ”You get beat up so often.” Sarah said it as a joke, but her voice had real worry in it. “It is bad for your health!”

  ”But the orbs are less bad, right?” James smiled as he waved one toward Sarah. “This one might stop me getting beaten up as often!”

  Slowly, his friend picked her comic book back up, opened it to her bookmark, and slid the top of the pages up to slowly cover her staring eyes.

  ”That’s a yes!” James said, smiling as Sarah suppressed her giggles into silent shaking behind her barrier.

  Sometimes, when James cracked orbs, they were random things from dungeons that had just dropped. Whether by accident or lack of carry capacity, he’d get random little one-off rewards. Other times, they were curated copied prizes, bits and pieces of select skills that were the closest thing the Order could get to letting someone level up on purpose.

  But however they happened, James never got tired of it.

  He knew it could be compelling, and if he focused too much on it then it would definitely be unhealthy. So he didn’t do that. He kept busy, and he focused on how his skills and spells and everything in between could be used to do good.

  And none of that changed the fact that he was always excited to see what new stuff had been copied and added to his monthly loot crate.

  [+1 Flora Rank : Vine - Fruiting - Gooseberry]

  [+1 Tool Rank : Backpack - Hiking - TETON Explorer 85L]

  [+1 Tool Rank : Shovel]

  [+1 Material Rank : Petroleum - Bitumen]

  The Library orbs were often not especially game changing, but James appreciated the ones curated here for him. The backpack rank was hyperspecific to the point that it specified a brand and model, but that didn’t actually matter that much; it would still speed up the rate at which he got comfortable with any strap-supported storage medium, even if it was slow. But every bit mattered, and it mattered more when he didn’t have to think about it. The one for shovels seemed like it was in there just because it was so broad, while the one for bitumen was there for a very specific reason.

  Next up James had a pair of blue orbs. Well, he actually had a pouch of forty blue orbs, the little bath bead sized spheres capable of doing minor first aid courtesy of Nik’s advancement in orb-copying methodology. They’d gotten super lucky with his imbued mechanical pencil lead; although it wasn’t just luck, it was also retrying over and over until that luck made itself known. But the other two orbs were for James’ personal spellbook.

  [+32 Activations - Manipulate Asphalt]

  [+9 Activations - Separate Alloy]

  Restocks for his blue powers. And for one of those blue powers, the material rank in bitumen kicked in and provided a flat increase to the number of uses. Not only that, but he’d be getting better with Manipulate Asphalt a little faster, and hopefully, getting less internal bleeding from it too.

  James couldn’t quite get to three simultaneous absorbed blues, but he felt like he was close. He didn’t know what he needed, but soon he could add Move Person to the rotation. That one was probably more useful, but since there was a spellbook for Appointed Arrival, it was a lower priority than before.

  Then came the skills. Skills in two flavors; some orbs for practical use, others for boosting James’ various Sewer Lessons. He took them both in just the same, savoring each one and the knowledge it brought with it.

  [+1.3 Skill Ranks : Gardening - Semi-Wild Plants - North American]

  [+1.22 Skill Ranks : Weaponry - Bladed - Knife]

  [+1 Skill Rank : Engineering - Computer - Circuitry]

  [+1 Skill Rank : History - Sports - Canadian]

  [+1.6 Skill Ranks : Animal - Frogs - Brazillian]

  [+.8 Skill Ranks : Athletics - Exercise - Jogging]

  [+1 Skill Rank : Logistics - Inventory Management - Business - Grocer]

  [+1 Skill Rank : Observation - Human - Behavior Patterns]

  [+1 Skill Rank : Observation - Signage]

  [+1 Skill Rank : Maintenance - Vehicle - Car- Engine]

  [+1 Skill Rank : Medical - Pathology - Diagnosis]

  [+1 Skill Rank : Medical - Treatment - Parkinsons]

  A lot of the skills were impacted by two different things; Library ranks that boosted the learning, and preexisting knowledge that seemed to make the orbs run into a barricade of some kind. So James had a lot of weird numbers on there. But weird or not, many of those numbers contributed to his Lessons, and as he slowly digested the new information that he’d need to work to incorporate into his daily life, he did a quick check on the progress there.

  [Lesson Continues : Basketball IV 319/4,200, Aim II, Agility I]

  [Lesson Continues : Biology V 2,410/12,600, Endurance IV]

  [Lesson Continues : Computer Science II 1,389/1,400, Energy I]

  [Merits : 191, Credits : 0, Accolades : 8]

  Between the circuit design orb and his brain getting through processing one of the related .mem files, his computer science Lesson was almost to the next tier. At this point, James was absolutely giving up on ‘optimizing’ the order he leveled up in; he’d get to the next rank of each Lesson or not, it was just a matter of time and continued education. Meanwhile, while his basketball knowledge had stalled out, his biology Lesson had profited greatly from all the new frog facts he’d just internalized. Well, frog facts, and deep knowledge of how to recognize and properly identify disease symptoms.

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  James had thought before that it was cool that the Order could turn anyone into a proficient doctor. He just hadn’t really considered that it could happen to himself.

  That aside, he still had more to do even if he wasn’t going to be absorbing the Velocity gears. And that was modifying his body in other innovative ways.

  [Shell Upgraded : -1 Cavity / 91 Days]

  [Shell Upgraded : Muscle - Calf - Development Speed - +35%]

  [Shell Upgraded : Reaction Speed - Hand - Right - -.08 Seconds]

  [Shell Upgraded : Temperature Tolerance - Internal - +/- .4 degrees C]

  The purple orbs were, despite everything they could do, often the hardest things to shop for someone for. A dental plan was one of those things that was just going to be an endless lifetime upgrade, yes. And the last one would make Climb casting safer and more consistent. But the Order had very few purple orbs that were really worth the diminishing returns of multiple copies, and of those, James had already used enough to block a dozen broken bones a month. Not that he wouldn’t make use of his new slightly-more-superhuman reflexes, but just that it was weird that he was more excited about frog facts than any of these.

  After that there was one last thing to take care of. The other paladins would be having to pick their new map spell, but James had already made himself a mild flamethrower, so he had a different choice to make.

  What to do with his Garden-Pylon links.

  It wasn’t much of a choice really. He needed to restock his Garden spells, especially Appointed Arrival, so he needed to do something with the links now rather than waiting for a perfect hypothetical future. The only choice, to go with his new private copied library of Venture spellbooks for home, was what to link to.

  Appointed Arrival actually seemed like a good choice. But it already did what James needed it to. A staple spell; useful in any situation but not something that he’d get a huge amount of benefit from making better. Granted Eyes was one of the other books he had a copy of now, and that was going in his list of one-off casts for utility, but it wasn’t even in the running. Same for Informal Pagoda; as far as information gathering devices it wasn’t that impressive, more of a supplement, and while James appreciated the audiobook format he didn’t think it was going to change his life. He also couldn’t take either of the level four spells, until the Order found a coin of that level, which meant no Tether Together or Aspire To Shape, and therefore no backup healing for the next time he got kicked in the face.

  But there was one thing that James could take. Maybe it was stupid, maybe it was silly, maybe it was even childish. But he did need an option for a backup weapon. And he also just liked the symbolism of the paladin with a shining blade pulled from nowhere.

  Breaking Forge was level three, took up the single slot James had of that level - the inconveniently special one - and required forty eight minutes of study to equip or advance. It made a sword. The same kind of sword Arrush carried, as a gift from Lincon, though apparently that specific sword had taken over two full days of laser focus to create. James wasn’t going to ever be able to sit still that long, he figured, and he wasn't even sure how Lincon had done it in the first place. But he could start.

  So while he kicked back and got comfortable in the close warmth of the attic, opening up the first page of the spellbook to read alongside Sarah in quiet shared companionship, James staved off boredom by reminding himself that eventually, inevitably, this was going to let him make a really cool dramatic gesture.

  [(Link Set | Walking <> Breaking Forge | -20% motion required)]

  [(Link Set | Boxing <> Breaking Forge | + / 2 hours sparring)]

  Almost immediately, James felt the effects of the first link. He was still bored and frustrated staring at the gibberish faux runes and lines on the spellbook’s page, but he didn’t quite feel like he needed to get up and sprint away at high speed quite as much. If he had to guess, he’d say almost 20% not as much. Just off the top of his head.

  It took him less than the normal amount of time to equip the spell, since he’d hit it with his absorbed red orb for knowing how tall the book was beforehand, which somehow shaved a couple seconds off. And then another couple hours of thankfully easier work to fill out the rest of his spell slots. Or at least, many of his spell slots. James had used a lot of coins, even if he didn’t think he’d ever fully fill them all up, it was just better safe than sorry.

  | 1 : 14 Slots Empty

  1: 1 Charm River Transmutation +++

  1: 1 Jester’s Sip

  1 : 1 Jubilant Crossing

  1 : 2 Granted Eyes +

  1 : 1 Informal Pagoda

  2 : 8 Slots Empty

  2 : 6 Appointed Arrival

  2 : 1 Visiting Tongue

  2 : 1 Altercation Imp Ward

  3 : 0 Slots Empty

  3 : 1 Breaking Forge (TC) |

  It took him long enough that Sarah finished her comic and slowly slid around the attic to climb down the ladder, leaving James with soft jazz music playing in the comfy space. While he was sitting down, he actually liked how close the attic was, and he let himself dwell on that as much as was reasonable while he read through spellbook after spellbook, the minutes passing as he made sure to burn through absorbed red charges and permanently lower his study times, even if only by a little bit.

  By the end of his planned equippings, he even felt like he had the mental energy to grab a single cast of Jubilant Crossing. That one wasn’t for paladin duties, unless Anesh and Alanna counted for that. That one was just for fun.

  He did not have the mental energy to keep studying spellbooks for equipping Wrought Leaf Migration. Nor, he noticed, did he have the book for that one. He’d have to find a copy at the Lair later. Stretchy arms sounded like it was one of those things that would end up being hilariously useful in almost every situation, but the almost hour equip time made James balk a little. He was fine with that long for a sword that would stick around, less fine for an effect that lasted a couple minutes.

  Still, he felt good when it was all said and done. He was… getting better. Rapidly and eagerly stepping over the line of the limits of humanity. Which would be needed, going forward. Every new challenge that James ran into required more and more from him to survive, much less to achieve a good outcome from.

  They were hurtling face first toward some kind of end of the world. And James planned to come out the other side not just alive, but victorious. And for that, yeah, he was getting better and better at accepting that empowering paladins - himself included - to be superhuman protectors was something that was a good idea.

  Magic, especially as the Order had it, thrived when it was shared. Hoarding was for suckers and losers, the best stuff they could offer were delves in the Climb and Pylon so that anyone could have small boosts to their daily life for free. Little things that added up and stacked together and built out the foundation for a future that was going to be weird and glorious. He really, really hoped the umbral saw his vision sooner rather than later so their own dungeon could be folded into the formation too.

  But just as he didn’t want to keep everything to himself, James recognized that if he wanted to safeguard against the next disaster, they needed people who could actually do that without dying. And, yeah, he did like the feeling of orbs and spells and upgrades and magic.

  James felt like he was capable, if he really wanted to, of chasing his thoughts in circles all day about whether or not he was willing to say he liked the monthly paladin upgrade pack. So he shelved that, and headed downstairs, the ladder that descended to just past his apartment’s fireplace behind the big couch taking him back to a world where he had the comfortable distraction of other people and an old black and white movie playing for an attentive exceptionally smart dog.

  Tomorrow, he had more to do. Hell, later today he had more to do. But sitting on the couch and enjoying being snugly fit between Anesh and Arrush for a little bit was nice.

  And Sarah was right. Healing was just another part of the fight.

  ____

  “S-so… the species has a glass shell, but it… itself is the liquid?” Arrush asked.

  He was curled up with Keeka on the couch, Auberdeen’s movie watching having ended and the other ratroach having shown up at about the same time. The afternoon had slipped into James doing casual chores, while every other human in his apartment headed off to the Lair for their own projects.

  They didn’t all have to leave, but while Alanna needed to be on site for her Response shift, and Sarah was doing podcast things, Anesh could have just hung out at home to work on making more Climb wands.

  But he didn’t, because he was smarter than James, and he didn’t want to accidentally make a wand that generated a noise complaint with its creation gale. Or that made an actual gale in their apartment. Climb wands were weird, and Anesh took proper safety precautions.

  “Well… okay, yes.” James answered from the kitchen where he was wiping off the endless march of breakfast cereal crumbs that were eternally on the counter somehow. He didn’t even know when he’d last bought cereal; he assumed this was Rufus and Ganesh having adventures somehow, which made the chore easier. “Yes, but also no.” He continued answering. “It’s not really a species, it’s a mascot.”

  ”A mascot that isn’t human, but everyone loves?” Keeka asked with coy excitement. “I could be a mascot!”

  ”Everyone loves you already.” Arrush told Keeka confidently, shifting so more of his secondary arms could wrap around his boyfriend’s slim black furred midsection.

  Keeka deflated slightly. “Not humans.” He said, struggling to not let himself be sad. “Some humans don't. Not our humans.” He added before perking up. “But if I were a mascot then it would be different!”

  ”Keeka do you know what a mascot is? I feel like I should ask this.”

  ”…A furry?” Keeka asked in a slow chitter. “But for sports?”

  Despite the worry James had for the smaller ratroach, he could not keep back a twisting of his lips into a thrilled smile. “Yes.” He said. “But also no. Sorry! That’s some mascots, but others are, like, marketing tools. Businesses use them to make people recognize their commercials. Like the aforementioned Kool-Aid Man. So while a lot of people recognize mascots, I wouldn’t say they’re… beloved? Maybe ironically?” James had opinions on the corporatization of culture, and they were opinions that included quite a lot of unpleasant words.

  ”Oh.” Keeka nestled back against Arrush. “So is it the shell or the liquid?” He pivoted the conversation back sharply.

  ”A question for the ages.” James nodded sagely as he rinsed out his cleaning towel. “I can’t actually prove this, but I think there are some commercials where the juice is different color?”

  Arrush, eyes now closed as he held his boyfriend close to his chest on the couch, asked a question in a murmur. “Is the juice his… blood?” He questioned. “Does he change who he is when the color changes? That would be how a dungeon species would work, I think.”

  ”Oh! Oh!” Two of Keeka’s arms shot upward like he was grasping for everyone’s attention. “If… if it changes him… it could be gender fluid!”

  The comment caught him so off guard that James spent the next couple minutes laughing and struggling to turn off his kitchen sink. When he composed himself, eventually, he straightened up and brushed off his shirt, taking an exceptionally deep breath. “That sounds like a more specific cousin to shaper substance.” He said. “Probably gives a whole new meaning to ‘drinking the kool-aid.” He paused, and then decided to not follow up on the thought he’d just had.

  Keeka had no such reservations. “Is it a kind of sex to drink his juice?” The ratroach asked with what had to be the lewdest form of innocence ever. “Or is that bad because it’s his whole body?”

  ”There isn’t an answer on the planet that I could give that would be satisfactory and accurate.” James said honestly, drying off his hands and circling out of the kitchen to lean on the living room side of the little raised counter. He smiled serenely at the ratroaches on his couch. “You two are so cute.” He said casually. “I’m glad our lives ended up this way.”

  ”M-me too!” Arrush stammered out, while Keeka just flushed a radioactive shade of green and covered his face with all four paws. “You too? Wait, no!”

  James laughed in honest happiness at the two. “Alright, I’ll stop teasing for now.” He said. “I’ve gotta go do prep for tomorrow anyway.” He took a second to sigh and shake his head. “Gotta go… I don’t even know. Actually get in a protracted dungeon fight? Like, this might be the closest to literal farming I get with a dungeon.”

  Arrush narrowed all of his eyes. ”Was that a pun?” He asked, a glowing grin on his muzzle.

  ”Yes.” James happily confirmed. “Anyway, what’re you two gonna get up to?”

  ”…I’m… coming with you?” Arrush asked.

  James tilted his head. “…Why?” He asked. “I mean, I love you, you can come with me, but this isn’t an adventure. It’s just… a job that involves combat. Like I’m pretty much just going to be there to keep the scout teams safe so they can find the dungeon. You can totally just hang out here, it’ll be fine. If there is an emergency, there’s no teleport restriction either, so you can swoop in and save me.”

  ”He does swoop!” Keeka exclaimed. “Looming and swooping are his favorite things.” One of his paws reached around his flank to clasp clawed fingers with Arrush. “But if you aren’t going, we could go back to Townton?”

  ”The umbral don’t like me.” Arrush said, looking away from the two, even as he held tightly to Keeka’s paw.

  ”Terror doesn’t like you, because Terror doesn’t like anyone.” James reminded him. “Ink is cool. And I think… uh… Ash is the one that’s on a quest to eat every food available? I like Ash. It’s like she was waiting for freedom so she could get down to business doing everything.”

  ”Also Kalik is there! And Miette!” Keeka reminded Arrush. “There’s hundreds of people there. It’s not lonely anymore but that’s okay, because it means we don’t have to talk to Terror, who is what James said. A jerk!”

  ”I didn’t say… okay I did imply that.” James chuckled as he admitted to it. “He’s had a hard time though.”

  Arrush closed his eyes again, letting himself live in the moment of warmth and safety on his boyfriend’s couch. “Haven’t we all.” He chittered quietly.

  “I dunno if I’m in that club.” James said, raising a hand, before the two ratroaches stared at him incredulously for long enough that he lowered the hand back down and tried not to think about how many times he’d been shot. It wasn’t that many, at least. He could probably still list them all. “Alright fine maybe.” He conceded. “I should visit Townton after this, I wanna hang out with TQ but we’re always moving in opposite directions. Also Kalik is the labratoad, right? I wanna meet him too!”

  ”You did meet him.” Arrush gave a clicking laugh. “You turned him into a bat. A… a little bit.”

  ”Meet him with talking.” James rolled his eyes. “Maybe I can line it up so I’m in Townton when my first demiplane slip opens. God I cannot wait to see what’s in thereeeeee. I hope it has some kind of weird nonsense in it, like whatever weird psychic tree Jubilance got. Or the magical extradimensional cafe like Jubilance got. Or… wow she has all the cool shit doesn’t she? Am I jealous? I dunno! I don’t get to be in anticipation of magic often enough.”

  Arrush huffed, not opening his eyes, while Keeka gave James a suspicious look. They didn’t believe him. At all. And for good reason too; James was constantly talking about how this or that magic was going to ‘change the future’, all while enabling the people around him to use those same magics to change the present.

  ”I hope mine has a soft floor.” Arrush said, still reclining, relaxing further as he realized just how tired he was and how comfortable the couch and his partner were. “I could… could nap in… in the void…”

  ”You can nap here.” Keeka told him. And then twisted his neck around to look upward, his antenna tapping against Arrush’s chitin as he observed his larger boyfriend in repose. He looked back to James, displaying the inhuman flexibility of his spine. “…I’m trapped!” He whispered.

  ”Enjoy your nap!” James whispered back, and smiled at the simple laughter in Keeka’s evenly spaced rows of eyes.

  He left the two there, confident that they’d be okay, and went to handle more life maintenance. Doing laundry, making his shared bed for as little time as that would last, doing a quick clean of the shower in his bathroom that still got used a fair amount even though most of them made extensive use of the Lair’s baths, that kind of thing.

  Just… keeping up on being a person.

  It was relaxing, in a way. Especially after spending hours sitting in enforced stillness and equipping magic from spellbooks. A kind of meditation in motion, as James went through the old forms of measuring detergent and wiping down mildew. A reminder that, no matter how far past human ability he went, he was still here. A person part of the collective of people, who had small needs to take care of.

  He liked that. Even if he would have liked a spell to do laundry for him. Or maybe he could get Pylon ranks in it, and it would make him inexplicably better at moving wet clothes over to the dryer. Somehow.

  James liked the Pylon level ups. And not just because they were kind of classic RPG interactions; he loved that they were sort of obfuscated. They definitely did do something, but it was on a scale that was hard to measure. Distributed improvements spread so evenly they became fuzzy when you tried to focus on what had changed. It was very cool. It felt magical, mostly because of how it defied categorizing in a way other magic didn’t quite manage.

  Also, while he was finishing up laundry, timing it so it was the last task to do, he did end up using his single daily cast of Patch Garment to repair a hole in a sock. And that too felt like powerful arcana. Something that bent the rules of reality itself, just so he didn’t need to go buy socks ever again.

  He joked a lot, but it was pretty rare that James actually felt like a wizard. And yet, holding a black athletic sock that had been with him through college, multiple jobs, more multiple dungeons, and probably being set on fire or something, James felt like he was in command of time itself as he wove the spell that repaired the simple piece of clothing.

  Its pair still had two different holes in it though, so he’d get to that tomorrow. And maybe the next day. He’d probably still be alive for that.

  It was overall a relaxing way to get the clock to where it needed to be for the next thing on James’ plate, despite the green orb effect that gave his apartment extra minutes for cleaning which was easier to measure, but also a headache to conceptualize.

  It also gave him time to process the whole thing with the Beautiful One. Removing her from the Sewer, and slowly healing her, had done nothing to change her general attitude, it seemed. And that was something unique among ratroaches so far. Many of the survivors of that place were ready and willing to fight and kill if they felt threatened, and a lot of their healing process was convincing them that they were actually safe. Smoke was a great example of that; she’d arrived ready to murder James and anyone else if they tried to touch her, and getting her to understand that she had the power to say no at all and have it mean something was the primary challenge.

  The Beautiful One, by contrast, wasn’t like that. James had once felt like he understood her a little bit, but it was more distant now. And yet, he still knew that feeling she had; that violence and anger were the solution to every problem. Maybe she wanted to be welcomed back, maybe she wanted to be free on her own terms, maybe she just wanted to give in to the call of the void and hurt and burn and rampage until either everything else was gone or she was. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was, she wasn’t like the other victims.

  It was acceptable, in a very soft echo of a way, to compare ratroaches to the children of narcissistic parents. There was a lot of overlap in the styles of abuse, if not the intensity. And with that comparison in mind, the Beautiful One was the Sewer’s own golden child. A victim, yes, but one that didn’t understand what had been done to them. And who had also been conditioned to participate in the abuse of others, and see it as normal, or even enjoyable.

  Recovering from that was going to be a longer, harder road, James figured. And he didn’t know what he could do to help. If he could do anything at all, really. All his wizard powers and he didn’t have a button that just made people whole and kind and happy; though maybe he could ask Kiki for one later. She’d probably defenestrate him for asking, but that was fine, James had proven he could tank that.

  Might be harder to do if Kiki was the one doing it. He’d never been defenestrated through reality itself before. But at least it would be a novel experience.

  James let his mind stop wandering to weird places as he stretched, checked the time, and settled in to make a scheduled call, and to try to recruit a new wizard.

  Hopefully, anyway.

  _____

  The phone rang with the beat of a garage band that no one had ever heard of. The holder of the phone did a surreptitious check to make sure no one was looking, and then ducked underneath her desk, answering in a low voice. “Yeah, what’s up?”

  ”…Vex?” James asked, raising his eyebrows at her tone on his end of the line.

  ”Oh shit. Uh. Hi. Sorry I’m at work.” The delver replied. “I didn’t think anyone would actually call right now.”

  ”I mean I can call back?” James offered. “As long as it’s not tomorrow. I have to go do a thing tomorrow.”

  Vex held the phone away from her face and glared at it for a second before putting it back to her ear. “That sounds sus as fuck.” She told him. “Are you gonna go assassinate a government official or something?”

  ”I mean I could fit that in I guess? My schedule is pretty full and I don’t actually know what good it would do compared to, like… why am I answering this?” James’ voice spiked as he questioned his own reply. “Should I call you back?”

  The question came a little too late. Vex had already slipped the tether of headset, slung her coat onto one arm, and made it to the back stairwell door in a low hustle that kept her out of sight of anyone else. The door had an alarm on it, but it was one she’d made a point of figuring out how to disable on her first day of the job, even though doing so was kind of obvious. But it was obvious in a way that her coworkers would see and not her boss; at least, not until it was too late.

  ”I can talk now!” She said more confidently from the stairwell as she headed for street level. “Hey! Good to hear from you! Glad you’re not dead!”

  ”…Are you okay?” James asked her with concern. “You’re not being coerced are you?”

  Vex scowled, her friendly demeanor vanishing. “I’m escaping my job at high speed, you try making conversation under those conditions.” She challenged him.

  ”Fair enough, I never really had good banter when I was breaking into my office’s dungeon.” He admitted. “So. Hi. You reached out to the Order, and I am officially reaching back. But I’m gonna make use of the sacred bond of having saved each other’s friend’s lives at some point and be kinda casual about it. What’s up?”

  ”You say friend but you saved my girlfriend and I saved… wait are you and the glowing bird guy dating yet?”

  ”Not at present.” James said blandly, glad that Zhu was away at the moment and couldn’t add to that comment.

  Vex swore. “I’m gonna lose a bet with Mags. Okay, whatever. Uh… on the official behalf of the Greater Springfield Lesbian Witch Polycule, we would like to extend the offer of… trading dungeons.” She told him, pitching her voice like she was making a diplomatic statement. “Dungeons and also money. Because we’ve got medical bills.”

  ”…Vex I’ll pay your fucking medical bills just for the fun of it.” James told her with quiet simmering irritation that she had that problem at all. That anyone had that problem. He hated living in a place that spent more on the bureaucratic process of keeping people from seeing doctors than on doctors, and he planned to find a way to endrun that with purple orbs at some point. “How much is it?”

  There was a pause from his conversation partner, who was now huddling in a security camera blind spot outside the building she’d gotten a shit minimum wage job at scamming small businesses into buying search engine optimization. The kind of pause people often experienced around James, when they realized they could have had their problems solved if they’d just asked, and that James had in fact probably told them exactly that at some point.

  ”Are you even allowed to do that?” She asked him, instead of giving a number.

  ”How much is your medical bill.” James reiterated flatly.

  ”Twelve grand.” Vex said, fighting off the wave of despair that came from that crushing all encompassing debt. The cost of appointments, tests, medications, and eventually surgery. Whatever it took to keep Astra alive and healthy. She and Mags would have paid any price, but it wasn’t an abstract ‘any price’, it was… a lot more than twelve K, but that was what it was at right now.

  James didn’t say anything for a second. For long enough that Vex figured he was regretting making the offer at all. So when he replied, she didn’t really understand at first. “Okay. I can eat that. It’s not cancer right? You guys got the cancer inoculation thing from us, right?”

  ”…It’s… no, I… what?” Vex floundered. “I don’t know what the fuck to do with that, man.” She said bluntly. “Are you fucking with me?”

  She got a laugh in response. ”Nope. I get paid a reasonable wage as a paladin and I don’t do anything with it, so I have the money. And I owe you for Zhu, so consider it a fair trade. You’ll probably get an email from either Cathy, Samuel, or Smoke in the next few days about the details, depending on who I find first, but yeah, stop stressing.”

  ”Okay. I’m gonna go quit my job and steal all the phones they use to spam people on the way out.” Vex said, staring back up at the building that her ‘company’ operated out of the third floor of.

  ”I’ll put you in touch with Momo for that.” James offered. “She does that kind of thing a lot. But anyway, does this change your dungeon math?”

  ”…no, man. You… fucking hell you guys really are what you act like. I hate this. I hate being suspicious anyway. God you’re just… irritatingly honest, it’s so shitty.”

  James rolled his eyes unseen, shaking his head at nothing. “Thanks I guess.” He said. “So, want my offer?” He asked.

  ”Go nuts. Can’t shock me any more I guess.” Vex ceded the floor.

  ”We can trade dungeon info, and work out sharing. Go with some kind of thing where you guys get to pick one of ours to delve for every time we go through yours, something like that. Depends on a million factors obviously. But we can make a fair trade. Or.”

  ”Or?” Vex fidgeted nervously. One hand holding her phone while the other flicked fingers to latch onto the thin layer of motor oil in the closest parking space just inside her domain. Pulling it up into a pair of toothpicks that she sent rotating over and over around her wrist. A mental and magical idle animation that she did whenever she was stressed these days after too long spent practicing. “Or what?”

  James chuckled at the tension in her voice. “Nothing ominous like that. Or, you come visit for a while while the world isn’t ending. Get a feel for the Order and how we operate, what our goals are, that kind of thing. See if you like it, and if you’re willing, see if you want to join up.”

  ”And do… what?” Vex asked. “We’re not soldi- okay Astra and I aren’t soldiers. How important are three people anyway? Why us?”

  ”Yeah, gee, why would I want to rope in the three people who go dungeon delving on their own, routed some kind of nefarious cabal, survived an Underburbs breach, and have the most experience with a whole new kind of magic. Great question.” James replied sarcastically.

  And, though it annoyed her to say it, Vex did understand the language of sarcasm. Maybe the paladin was better at this than he let on. “And then you could just have our dungeon for free, you think?” She pressed him.

  ”And then you could have our dungeons for free too.” James replied. “I mean… subject to scheduling I guess. Like we are still hiding our activities in Utah from the Mormon church so there’s regulations and stuff. But getting into a dungeon is mostly just a case of signing up for it.” He told her. “There’s so much you’d probably find worth doing with the Order, if you want to take a shot at it.”

  ”This is a recruitment pitch?” Vex asked, incredulous. “God dammit, Mags and I owe Astra so much for that stupid bet.”

  ”…Yes? Yes. We have a great dental plan.” James offered. “Also there’s just a lot of cool stuff going on and new life forms to hang out with and you can help us save the world.”

  Vex caught those last words, and her natural language - sarcasm - allowed her to hear something else in there that wasn’t the overt honesty James used all the time like some kind of idealist. “That’s not hypothetical, is it?” She asked, flicking her wrist and sending her needles of oil back to the parking lot as she noticed someone rounding the corner.

  ”What, the new life forms? You’ve met Arrush, you-“

  ”No, the other thing.” Vex rolled her own eyes as she cut him off. “The saving the world thing.”

  ”…it is not hypothetical, no.” James said.

  For a brief moment, Vex considered just hanging up. Taking the money, sure, but cutting things off there. Playing it safe. Because it would be safe; the Order were still unknowns, even if they seemed… cool enough, she supposed.

  But if they thought they were heroes, there was so much that could go wrong. People with magic hurtling toward some kind of revolution was a massive risk to be caught up in. People with guns and magic was even worse. And there was no telling what this would do with her girlfriends; Astra would fucking love it, but Mags? Mags would see this as just another military, and there wasn’t much that could change her mind when she was already pissed about something, even if it was stupid and irrational.

  But also… lots of people these days thought they were heroes. And a lot of them were fucking ghoulish monsters that believed anyone different from them needed to be purged from society. James and his whole gang seemed to have swung so far in the other direction it was like they were trying to balance out the amount of hate in the world through sheer force of will.

  Vex didn’t know if she trusted them to be right all the time. But she had to admit, if she saw the Order having a rally somewhere, she wouldn’t be afraid of them. And when you were someone like her, living where she did, that meant a lot.

  ”I’m listening.” She said into the phone. “I can grab the others and meet up sometime tomorrow if you want to?”

  ”Oh, I have to go save Oklahoma tomorrow.” James said. “But I can send some other misfit wizard to say hi. You met Momo, right? Right, I know you did, yeah. It’ll probably be Momo and El. They're kind of a unit at this point.”

  Vex nodded. “Okay. Okay, uh. Cool. Thanks. I guess? This went unexpectedly.”

  “I hear that a lot.”

  ”Yeah, well. I’m gonna go quit my job now.”

  ”That’s pretty rapid turnaround.” James said appreciatively. “A lot of trust in me, given the circumstances.”

  Vex laughed. “Yeah, well, my boss is stalking toward me right now and I think he’s yelling at me for taking an unauthorized break, so it’s either quit my job or figure out if I can drown someone with loose environmental oil.” She admitted with razorblade glee. “Good luck in Oklahoma I guess. You can have Momo call me later if that’s okay.” Vex said as she lowered the phone.

  ”I’m glad we’re gonna hire you before you turn into a James Bond villain.” Was the last thing James said that she caught before she hung up, and turned an unsettling toothy smile on the person she was about to shake down for her last paycheck.

  What the fuck was she even thinking.

  There was no way the Order was worse than this. Who cared if they were a cult of revolutionary idealists? Whatever they were doing was working.

  And Vex kind of wanted to see where they were going with it. Aside from, like Oklahoma.

  Shit, her grandpa lived in Oklahoma, she should call him before the state sunk into a volcano or something.

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