“Things tend to get worse, before they get worse.” -Mary Kennedy, Nightmares Can Be Murder-

  _____

  Over the last eight hours, James had encountered an unsurprising number of problems. The problems themselves were kind of interesting, but the quantity was something he’d just sort of resigned himself to. Having assumed, correctly, that there was no way this situation was going to just easily part along his path and let him cut straight to the core.

  His current problem was that he required food that wasn’t delightful baked goods sourced from vaguely magical old people. Food, and rest too. There were only so many times you could exert yourself in a day before you needed to sit down, after all.

  Or at least, that was true for most people. James didn’t have that limitation anymore, it seemed. Endurance, recently pushed forward another rank, was now well into superhuman capabilities. If he didn’t stop moving, then he could keep up with constant heavy action for at least twenty hours; forty if he didn’t have to get in a fight.

  That all fell apart when he sat down though. The Sewer stat just deciding he was done enduring, and leaving him sore and mentally drained; though probably less than he should have been on both fronts.

  The main thing James needed, though, was an absence of people. At least for a little bit. So he and TQ were currently sitting in what had once been the school’s front office. The big administrative assistant desks long since removed leaving only shadows on the floor where the behemoth furniture had once stood; the room now stood as a mostly empty echo of its former self. Narrow halls leading to the offices of vice principals or school counselors, staff bathrooms, and a second access to the coveted and mysterious teacher’s lounge all spread out from here like a spider’s web. It wasn’t even particularly private, with the front wall of it being half glass windows.

  “Are you going to eat the tomatoes?” TQ asked James as they slowly got through the packaged salads they were having for lunch.

  ”Nah, here.” James quietly used his fork to tip the offending vegetables into TQ’s bowl, shifting forward from where he had his back braced against the bare wall to do so. They kept eating together quietly for a few more bites before James spoke up again. “Sorry.” He said with a tired voice, smothering a yawn.

  TQ turned a narrow lens on him. “For tomatoes?” He asked, already knowing that was the wrong answer.

  “For turning hanging out into more work.” James sighed. “I thought this would be something a little adventure, a little fun, and maybe a little dangerous. But it’s a mess, and people are dead, and it’s all horrible.”

  The camraconda hissed out a small little note of amusement, long tongue fluttering between himself and his salad as he turned back to lunch. “I do not think any time together is wasted.” TQ said bluntly. “My expectations for spending time with you included, at different points: lunch, conversation about important things, and mortal peril.”

  ”I sometimes worry that you think way too highly of me.” James said in response to that.

  ”And now we have met the second expectation.” TQ lowered his body in an amused curve. “That is three total. I am, once again, proven correct.”

  He couldn’t help it, James laughed. ”Some friends might be put off by item number three on your list.” James pointed out, holding on to the energy that amusement brought him.

  TQ twisted, tapping into James’ side with the coil of his body. “I am made of different material.” He said as he used his tongue to drag more spinach into his mouth.

  ”Yeah, rubber.” James shifted to nudge against the camraconda.

  ”Please. My settlement is composed of pseudo-organic bioplastic.” TQ said as he chewed. “Also keratin!”

  James breathed out a laugh as he speared a cucumber slice on the plastic fork he’d been given. “Perfect substrate for providing suppressive fire I guess.”

  TQ hissed his own laugh around his food. “You worry.” He said, not really making it a question. “You do not need to. My entire life has been this way. I am glad I have the choice to be something else, but I am not surprised I am here.”

  ”Didn’t you say recently to me, and I am quoting here, I, TQ, professional camraconda, have decided to be soft and silly and not go on adventures anymore? I remember you saying that.” James said as he shifted one of his legs on the floor he was sitting on, balancing his salad in the palm of his hand.

  “I was likely lying.” TQ admitted. “Or it was right when I said it.” He added.

  James smiled as he watched a group from the shield team enter the building, a few of them pausing and shooting confused looks his way when they saw him and TQ sitting on the floor eating lunch. “I’d rather you take it easy, ya know. You don’t have to be a knight, but you seem to continually end up in situations.” James paused. “Wait, hang on. I’m thinking about this, and… you’re everywhere when I start paying attention. You go on Stacks delves-“

  TQ twisted away, hissing defensively. ”I enjoy puzzles.”

  ”You were at the Underburbs attack too, and-“

  ”I could not leave my people alone against that.” TQ’s voice was flat, the digital tones muted as he spoke.

  ”…and now you’re here. TQ did you ever take a break?”

  ”Did you?”

  ”Well no. Obviously.” James rolled his eyes. “But I’m not the one we’re talking about here. I thought… I thought you wanted to be normal, you know? Have a calm life and a useful job and a social circle you don’t need to worry about constantly getting shot and… stuff like that. I thought that was why you moved to Townton.”

  ”I moved to Townton to be close to Cheha.” The ratroaches name didn’t quite come out right the way the camraconda had available to speak it. “And I do not worry that my friends will be shot, because my friends include Cam, who cannot be reasonably shot, and other people, who Cam would get shot in place of the majority of times it occurred.”

  ”I feel like you’re deflecting here.” James said with narrow eyes. “I asked you if you wanted to be a paladin once. And you told me you would be bad at it, and that’s why Spire is a paladin now. How much of that was you meaning it, and how much was you being afraid to say yes?”

  ”One hundred percent of it was those things, correct.” TQ said, before nearly spilling what remained of his salad as James pulled him into a headlock with an arm wrapped around his serpent form. “It felt wrong to deny her a chance to be who I knew she could be.” TQ added, voice steady while he was being shaken back and forth by James.

  ”You dumbass, there’s not a population cap on paladins!”

  ”Also if I am not a paladin I can be in your coterie.” TQ added.

  “Okay I’ll give you that one.” James admitted, loosening his grip but keeping TQ held in a light hug. “Just… I want everyone to be free to be who they want to be, right? That includes you.”

  TQ stilled, and then shoved the edge of his head into the crook of James’ arm, the voice from the small but powerful speaker slung on a harness on his back unimpeded as he spoke. “I do not like danger.” He said. “I do not want to be a hero. I do not know what I want though. And every time I am with you, I see people that need me to act more than I need me to be something else.”

  James felt like that sounded way too familiar. “Want to know a secret?” He asked, and didn’t wait for TQ to say anything before continuing. “You can be a hero, and also be someone who loves themself and their own life.” He told the camraconda. “It’s okay to enjoy the part where you get to save the day.”

  “It was fun earlier. Is that bad?”

  ”How should I know?” James asked with a chuckle as he watched Dance and Manon speed by outside the windows, the other camraconda in the building seeming to be leading a confused crocamaw somewhere. “I don’t think so though. But I’m weird.”

  ”I have noticed. I approve.”

  ”You would. But I… oh, hey.” James addressed the new arrival as Charlie came through the double doors into the otherwise empty front office. “Welcome back. What’s up?”

  Charlie looked at the two of them sitting where the floor met the back wall, and very obviously did some kind of mental calculation to decide he wasn’t interrupting before he met James’ eyes and spoke. “The state governor didn’t believe me, and also tried to have me arrested. I suggest delivering living samples to his office. Also did you nearly get my ward killed?”

  ”You call Dance your ward?” James locked on to what was objectively the wrong part of that sentence. “And no I did not! I had her stay in the car while I nearly got killed. And even then I barely nearly got killed.”

  ”Don’t take Dance into the field.” Charlie told him bluntly.

  TQ pulled his head out from against James to widen his lens at Charlie. He was going to say something silly, but then saw the strange mix of anger on the human’s face. “You worry?” He asked. “She is not so fragile.”

  ”She’s still recovering from internal damage that we don’t have proper medical treatments for.” Charlie said with an unusually animated tone. “So don’t let her talk you into taking her along. Now, I’m going to check in with Alice and get lunch. Is there a plan for the rest of the day?”

  ”I mean there is now.” James answered. “And it’s getting some cages that can hold angry jackknife rabbits. Also I might just endrun the governor and go talk to the national guard directly. Not sure how that’d work, but I bet we can find a name and address I can teleport to. That’d probably also benefit from the live capture part too!”

  ”I’ll go find the nearest pet store. It’s probably in Liberal.” Charlie turned to leave.

  James stopped him with a raised hand. “Sorry, what?”

  ”It’s the name of a city, don’t worry about it.”

  TQ nodded as he shifted, his mechanical arms stacking the empty salad bowls from himself and James as he uncoiled and stretched his body. “You cannot be surprised.” He informed James. “I live in a place that was named ‘town town’ until a typo on a document decades ago was accepted as historical. Humans are bad at names.”

  ”I don’t think you get to make that call!” James laughed.

  ”Oh, camracondas are also bad at names. But at least we did not name a large region filled with mountains the word ‘mountains’ in a different language.”

  ”You would have, given enough time. You might still have that chance!” James pushed himself to his feet with a grunt before nodding at Charlie. “Alright, get us some pet carriers that won’t break on contact with giant bladed limbs, and let’s figure out things from there. I saw the shield team come back so I’m gonna go see our updated battle map, and make the call on if we should be mobilizing the rest of the Order. But I’d really rather not for this one if possible.”

  Charlie nodded as he followed James’ line of logic naturally. “They’re not dungeon check creations, they’re just dangerous and there’s a lot of them. It’s a suitably correct situation for deploying a conventional military. We can act as support or consultants while it happens. Actually my team can get to finding the other dungeons while you check deeper into the affected area.”

  ”Hopefully Rajesh just got back from that checking, so let’s go say hi.” James took the empty dishes from TQ as the camraconda slithered past. “You ready for more adventure?” He asked his friend.

  ”Apparently I have been the whole time.” TQ said. “I am learning many things on this trip.”

  _____

  “Ever been on a good hunting trip boyo?” The man next to Anesh, Forest, asked him. He was short by local standards, which meant he was about Anesh’s height, with a big belly and a pair of thick glasses perched on his stubby nose.

  Like everyone in the Grandparents Society, he had, at some point, been altered either by Kiki or a dungeon’s magic. The effects of aging on this human were cosmetic, and not things that seemed like problems, or even really slowed him down. He moved like he had less back pain than Anesh did, and spoke with a constant kind of energy that made him seem thrilled to be alive. It was honestly inspiring, even if Anesh was a bit envious.

  Even here, waiting in a car that was parked on a gravel shoulder, both of them looking periodically through binoculars toward the animal cage they had set up as a trap, it was clear that Forest moved too smoothly, sat too comfortably.

  Anesh didn’t know what to make of it. Though that could be said for this whole trip, really. Unlike James, who seemed to be having a hard time accepting the scale of the problem, Anesh was having a great time. He genuinely loved the feeling of being plunged into a different delver culture that had different emotional priorities, but absolutely meshed with the Order’s attitudes. Talking to all the people in the Society, when they weren’t trying to weasel their way into conversations with Kiki, was fun. Working with them to backtrace their own dungeons was fun. Trying to figure out how much of the stuff in that old school building was from a dungeon was very fun, like a series of miniature puzzles to solve. He was, at every point during this outing, a little bit unclear on the strategic goal, but absolutely loving the moment to moment adventure of it all.

  Except having to run something over with the car earlier. That was less fun. Anesh didn’t particularly like the feel of a living thing vanishing beneath the bumper with a thump, and it was one more thing that put him on James’ team in terms of finding a way to cut down on the number of cars the world used.

  None of that was what Forest had asked of him though. “Surprisingly, I have.” Anesh said. “Though nothing quite like this.”

  ”Oh ho? I wouldn’t have thought you’d be much of a hunter.” Forest propped an elbow up on the open SUV window, resting and bored, not facing Anesh but still speaking clearly. “Got a story there?”

  ”If I’m being honest, I’m not much of a hunter.” Anesh said. He had an amount of apprehension about the question, though it was muted; the members of the Society, altered as they were by Kiki’s magic over time, generally weren’t racist. But they still lived in Oklahoma, and while their inclination was toward friendly compassion, sometimes they said shit that reminded Anesh that people could be friendly and dumb at the same time. “I’m mostly a vegetarian.”

  ”Religiously?” The old man asked with honest bored curiosity.

  Anesh allowed himself a smile. “Not quite. My parents, however… and I just got raised that way. The hunting I’ve done has been against things with less… meat.” He pinched his lip between his teeth as he figured out his own answer. “It’s easier if they’re made of rubber and trying to kill you.”

  The man nodded. “I hear you there. I used to do a lot of hunting with my dad, back when he was alive and walking. Spent some time going after boar when I had better knees. Don’t know if I could handle it anymore.”

  ”Really?” Anesh’s turn now to be curious. How much had this man changed, he wondered.

  ”Really, really. Used to love fresh venison and pork. Now it just seems… a little too bloody. Duck’s better, but not much. Now fishing, there’s a hunt I can get into. Fish still taste like fish, if you know what I mean.”

  Anesh chuckled, relaxing as the old man spoke more. ”I do not, but given how much my boyfriend and our roommate both insist on making salmon constantly, I can understand.” He said, taking a moment to put the binoculars back to his eyes and check the field again. Movement, he could see, but not near the cage. Maybe headed that way though, grass slowly shifting as something crept closer to their trap.

  Forest did the same, before shaking his head as the creature ignored the bait and seemed to veer off. ”Boyfriend, eh?” The man asked, as hungry for gossip as anyone else in the Society.

  ”James. You’ve at least seen him around.” Anesh tried to not be nervous about being open about his life, but it was hard.

  ”Thought he was with the big bug fellow.” The words were probing, definitely searching for gossip and rumors, but not in what Anesh felt was a mean way.

  So he just gave a content little laugh. “I’d say it’s complicated, but it really isn’t that bad. Though explaining everything would be easier with a chart.”

  ”Ah! Your own little polycule, eh? Good shit. Eileen and Archie have been happier than clams since they pulled the sticks out of their asses and went that route.”

  ”…I’m not sure what I expected.” Sometimes, Anesh felt like he and James had radically different responses to different things. Right now, though, he was pretty sure his partner would have exactly the same thing to say, and it made him smile all over again. “Sir, can-“

  ”Oh hell no. Sir was for the army. I’ve got a name and you know it boyo.”

  Anesh gave a single rich chuckle. “Forest then. How much have you changed? Kiki talked about what she was afraid of, and we can all… see the shape of things. But what does that look like from your perspective?”

  ”Looks like one of the rabbits is heading for our bait.” The old man said, nudging his glasses back up as he lowered the binoculars.

  ”Ah, defensiveness is part of the package then?” Anesh said before he could stop himself.

  Forest burst out with a wheezing hyena’s laugh. “Okay, you got me there!” He shifted in his seat, still leaning on the open window but now facing forward so Anesh could see more of his face. “It’s a little like dying, and a little like finding god, and a little like I’m lying about all of that.” He said. “You know what Kiki can do?”

  ”Some.” Anesh had read some of the reports and written others, been part of the rotating teams that had been studying Kiki’s magic until they found the trick to keeping it all under control for her with the Attic’s help. “I don’t think even she knows everything she can do.”

  ”I hear you there. But what she always knew how to do was heal people.” He had a faraway tone to his words, fully ignoring their stakeout now. Anesh kept his eyes peeled, but they were one of many groups aiming to snag a lone dungeon creature from the outskirts of the infestation, so he wasn’t too concerned if they missed their first chance. “Every time she fixes something, you can feel it going deeper. Down to some old hurt that you didn’t know you were carrying around. And her old lady magic, it takes that, and shows it to you, and tells you that it doesn’t have to own your whole life. That things can be better, right?” He sighed, shrugged, like it wasn’t bothersome at all. “We told her, you know? A few times. But it’s like she can’t hear exactly.”

  Anesh thought that sounded a little bit familiar. “Therapy at high speed?” He mused, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “Why is she so…”

  ”High strung? Twitchy?” Forest looked like he had a whole lineup of synonyms ready for exactly this question. “A big ol’ scaredy cat? Kind of-“

  ”Something like that.” Anesh decided to cut him off quickly before he found out how far that list went. “It does seem like an overreaction if that’s all that’s happening. But maybe I’m not the right person to ask about that.” He noticed the odd look he got in response to that, and shrugged. “Most of us in the Order, we’re close in some way to at least one person that lives inside thoughts. I think that scares a lot of people that aren’t as used to it. I can see how it would scare Kiki, to think she was becoming something like that. It’s a lot of power to have in your hands, especially if it’s not on purpose.”

  Forest nodded slowly, the man idly stroking the freckled skin of his cheek with the back of his hand. “Don’t get me wrong, I can see why it would scare someone. Heck, maybe I would have said no if I’d known. But I can’t say I’m unhappy with the result.” He shrugged easily. “It’s easy to be full of righteous fire about something that seems queer, and a little harder when you see all your friends still alive and having a great time.”

  “It’s a strong argument.” Anesh agreed. “Also I think… something burrowed under our cage trap, and is trying to steal the bait.” He commented, dropping the binoculars and getting ready to hop out of the car.

  ”Dag gammit, where’s my rifle?”

  It was, at the very least, the closest thing their stakeout had to an opportunity this whole time.

  ____

  “Lieutenant, come in.” The man’s voice was hard, tired, and annoyed. He didn’t look up from a form he was writing on as James walked into the back room of the Army recruiting office.

  James, definitely dressed in civilian clothes, tried not to wince as he realized what the Schedule Meeting blue power had done. “I could have sworn we got that resolved.” He said quietly to himself. But then realized, no, he’d mentioned it to Malcom McHarn, and there had been an implication that maybe he shouldn’t still have an official rank from the government he was technically planning to ignore every step of his life. But nothing had ever come of it. “Afternoon.” Was the only thing he said out loud though, saving the frustration for later.

  The military man’s eyes flicked up to him in obvious annoyance, taking in his ununiformed style in an instant. While the man behind the desk was wearing simple green fatigues, James was wearing a battle tested black leather jacket and an old teeshirt with his favorite Blaseball team logo on it. It wasn’t a great first impression. “I was expecting someone else.” The man said. “Staff Sergeant Hill. And you are?”

  ”Oh, no, I’m the lieutenant you were thinking of. I’m just not supposed to be a lieutenant. A mixup in paperwork somewhere.” James measured the figure that was assessing him right back with narrowed eyes, and decided the best kind of smile he could use in this situation was slightly sardonic. The opening tactic in his social strategy would be disarming through shared dislike of forms, if James could trust the way Hill was practically stabbing his paperwork with his pen. “I am here to talk to you though.”

  ”Talk quickly then. I have a job.”

  Yes, James thought sharply, a job lying to children. So noble. But he kept that thought to himself. “I’ll be direct, and not waste your time. Where is Fort Sill?”

  ”It feels like you’re really wasting my time.” Hill said with a scowl. “You’re a hundred and twenty miles too far north to be asking me that.”

  James frowned, and looked around the back office of the recruitment office for a chair he could swipe, but found nothing. So, still standing, he focused on the officer and tried to sound like he wasn’t going insane. “Fort Sill isn’t there.” He said. “There should be a specific fort, in a specific location. That fort would be Sill, and the location would be exactly where you would think it would be, but it is not there.” James shrugged. “So we’re trying to figure out if anyone knows what happened, or can acknowledge it directly.”

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  “Now I know you’re wasting my time.” The staff sergeant said, openly angry. “Get out. Don’t come back.”

  James sighed as he shook his head and left without comment, returning to the parking lot of the block of businesses that the recruiting office was sandwiched into. Over his shoulder, he saw the irate recruiter watching him through the window, a phone in hand, but his mouth not moving as he placed a call.

  Returning to the convoy of three vehicles that they’d brought, James didn’t get into any of them, just leaned on the side of one of the rental SUVs and waited for Alice to roll the window down. “Would you believe,” James asked the woman from the scout team, “that he didn’t believe me?”

  ”I believe that, from everything I know about you, you probably antagonized him.” Alice replied, her seat slightly reclined, eyes shaded by sunglasses that James knew were dungeontech of some kind. “Another dud?”

  ”I am fucking positive that the US Army exists.” James burst out. “They have to be real! But this is the second time we’ve run into this very specific and very terrifying problem!”

  Alice said something that was swallowed up by a bubble of silence. Her mouth moving, but no words coming out, right up until she noticed James giving her a tight lipped stare, and her own eyes narrowed behind her sunglasses. Pulling her seat up, she turned and clearly yelled something into the back seat that James couldn’t hear.

  A moment later the wall of silence between them was gone, and Alice repeated herself, though James was pretty sure that she was doing the very human thing of changing her words slightly even though he hadn’t heard them the first time. “At least the Air Force base is still there.” The woman said with what was probably an attempt to reassure.

  ”It’s a training base. Though I guess it’s not like I’d want an active military airfield for deploying bombers in the middle of Oklahoma.” James thought about that sentence with a frown. “Honestly I don’t want it anywhere. I’m kinda sick of living in a world of imperial powers.”

  ”But who would protect us?” Alice asked with a saccharine sarcasm, before switching back to her normal voice. “Though if I think about it, who’s protecting us now? That’s two missing army bases so far, right? Or did you find more while my hand regrew?”

  ”Just the two.” That we know of, was the unspoken addendum to James’ comment. “I just don’t… get it.”

  The woman in the SUV snorted at him. ”Man I’m a dungeon scout. I need more to work with than that.” She told him.

  James folded his arms, trying to think of their next step now. “Okay, so, originally we thought that the missing base in Springfield might be the result of the Underburbs, right? An oblique vector of attack, making sure there was no one to fight back when it crashed in. But here? There’s… nothing here. I mean there’s dungeons in the state, I guess. Separated by a hundred miles each or so. And one of them is just fucking missing. But that means that this very specific happening is something that’s just… just…”

  ”Wildly coincidential?” Alice offered. “Total nonsense? Very scary?”

  Walking up to him and handing James a milkshake from a neighboring fast food burger place, Anesh looked between him and Alice. “Is James brooding?” He asked. “I was gone for no more than five minutes.”

  ”Yeah, finished my meeting and still have time to sulk.” James told his boyfriend. “Base is definitely gone.”

  Anesh gave a displeased shake of his head. “We could go down south to check ourselves, again, but that seems like a waste of time. What now?” He asked. “Also, what happened to the people? The last one was in people’s social media tags, wasn’t it? I assume this one is too. Where did they go? Did all the soldiers walk out one day and just move somewhere else?” His voice was unsteady as he spoke. It was one thing to deal with an immediate life threatening situation, it was something else entirely to learn that not just groups of people, but whole entrenched systems that had seemed so much a permanent part of the world were, in fact, paper mache facades.

  “Next step…” James let the rest of the questions lay as rhetorical ones, and focused on that. “Well, I vote we release the scythe rabbit into the recruiting building.”

  Alice jerked forward, fumbling for the lever to adjust her seat. ”Woah, hey!” She cried out. “There’s normal people in there!”

  ”I was kidding.” James tried to not look too hurt that someone would assume he’d actually do that. “Actual next step?” He took a deep breath and tried to think. “Okay, one thing jumps out to me. We need to get deeper into the affected area, and talk to everyone we can. Figure out what they need, and what we can do for them right now. Our good captain said the locals were belligerent, but now that we know where the dungeon was centered, we should check there and assess the damage. For now, regroup at the Society schoolhouse, call in everyone in the Order who has free time and no active injuries, and then move out. Secondary plan after that is just open warfare I guess. Take out as many of these things as we can before they kill and eat everything in range. Hence why we’re calling in more people. Obviously.” He looked down at the milkshake in his hand. “Also when did this get here?”

  Anesh patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll tell the others.” He said. “Enjoy your milkshake.”

  ”Did you do this?!” James called after his partner, his brain having completely skipped over forming a single memory of Anesh handing the drink to him. “I’m going insane.” He said to no one in particular.

  No one except Alice, who leaned out the window to look at James. “What about us?” She asked. “I don’t want Dance or Manon back in danger again, especially since we’re supposed to be… not that.” She told him pointedly.

  ”You guys should take off.” James agreed. “Unless you want to just hang out. I have no fancy job for you, so maybe consider this a break? Relax, or maybe take Dance to the Pylon. Throw her at some Mormons and see how that turns out.”

  ”Apostasy probably.”

  “Neat. Do that then!” James ducked under her as he circled back around the front of the car and got in the driver’s seat, as he saw the others from both the Order and the Grandparents Society loading into their own vehicles.

  Alice rubbed at her neck as they got moving. “Kinda sucks, this is gonna eat into our record.”

  ”Your dungeon finding record?” James asked with a grin.

  ”Exactly! We’re lowering our ratio!”

  ”Well, you’re welcome to get Kiki to point you in a direction and take another shot. Or check with our intelligence division for any new leads.”

  ”Oh! I can see if anyone reacted to my social media posts.” Alice said, and James had honestly no idea if she was messing with him or not. “I dunno, I know it’s silly and not anything that we’re gonna get fired over, but it is weird that we’re supposed to be the experts and we keep missing.”

  James wanted to just stop the car and stare at the human woman until she realized how dumb that sounded. But that would be irresponsible, and even rural northern Oklahoma had traffic he didn’t want to screw up. Even if that traffic seemed to be composed entirely of pickup trucks that were willing to murder him in attempts to pass. “If you do wanna keep score, you can count this one.” He told her.

  ”There literally is no dungeon! Also we didn’t find the other one either, someone remembered it, so that doesn’t count.”

  ”…What? When?” James asked. He hadn’t heard this part.

  ”Earlier, while we were setting up a few of the old people with assignments. Charlie’s got the details, we weren’t gonna let you not know about it.” Alice tipped her chair back again, stretching her legs out as the car rolled along. “But it doesn’t count!”

  James pursed his lips. “One of the dungeons that you were sent here to help locate, that you have located by using the Order’s stockpiled magic in order to circumvent local memeplexes - I assume - and through good interactions with local contacts, doesn’t count?” He asked.

  Well, he wasn’t really asking. He had already updated his mental scorecard for the scout team.

  ”When you put it that way I sound like I’m whining.” Alice said.

  ”Eh, I get it.” James shrugged as he rotated the wheel, leaning slightly with the car’s turn and ignoring the rasping clatter of bone on metal from the caged creature in the back of the SUV. “I think it’s pretty easy to look at solutions that are easy for us as… well… not ‘work’, if that makes sense? But it is. It matters to people, that we take ourselves seriously, because if we don’t we might forget that we’re actually helping at all.” He paused and glanced at her as they stopped at an intersection, a curved road leading through nothing but empty dirt crossing their path and somehow deserving a stop sign. “But if you do wanna find another one, I’ll give you a bonus point.”

  ”I knew someone was keeping score.” Alice muttered in annoyance.

  _____

  Eileen found Kiki in exactly the place she had expected to, even if she never would have thought of it as expecting anything. It just so happened that, when she wanted to talk to her old friend, she had ended up exactly where she wanted to; right where she’d somehow known Kiki would be.

  The elementary school had closed some time back in the late 70s, which meant that the building didn’t really have that many amenities to begin with. The room pulling double duty as cafeteria and gym class, which would have looked so massive to Eileen when she was a little girl, now looked more like an empty vinyl floored box with the age of that floor really showing itself. Not that she had room to talk; but if they were having a competition, then she wore her wrinkles better than the building did.

  The kitchens, though, had needed to be sized for adults and not children. Even if being given KP as a kid had been something halfway between a punishment and a special reward, the things like ovens and fridges were made for people with adult height and grip strength.

  Almost everything had been removed though. Either by the Grandparents Society when they moved in, or by whoever had sold off everything of value in the building before they’d gotten ahold of the deed. And while a lot of them spent a lot of their copious free time in the building, they tended to use their own home kitchens for things.

  This meant that when Eileen found Kiki in the back kitchens, she didn’t really have anything to pose dramatically on for her friend. There was no table to be sitting at when Kiki came out, no serving counter with its smudged glass barrier and ancient slot for even more ancient plastic trays, not even a swinging door to lean on the frame of. Okay that was too dramatic; the frame was still there. But while Eileen’s body was in better condition than it should have been, considering she was pushing eighty, she still wasn’t prepared to James Dean her way into a conversation by balancing against the arched portal.

  Instead she just walked in with a smile, and saw Kiki looking down at one of the disconnected ovens against the back wall. There were three of the big beasts, from an era before taller and more energy efficient devices had come into play for the express purpose of cooking twenty pizzas at once for a school class. And maybe it was because of that fact that these ones had been abandoned here, without value, and nonfunctional anyway.

  ‘Those don’t work you know.” Eileen said as she walked in on her friend staring down at the ovens with folded arms. The look that Kiki gave her was a gratifying one; she knew for a fact that she’d never surprise whatever her friend had become, but starting the conversation with bad news let her at least catch the lady off guard for a moment. “Or at least you should know, since you’re the one who told me when you showed me around my first time here.” Eileen pulled over one of the folding chairs that had been sitting open in here for the last decade, and sat, smiling slyly at Kiki.

  The smile slipped slightly as the oven dinged. A nice clear chime, which belonged to a timer that it had never had built into it. “Ah.” Kiki said, schooling her expression. “They might now.”

  “Well.” Eileen said, blinking owlish eyes as she watched Kiki stoop down and open one of the ovens, reaching in with her bare hands to grab a tray. “Now you’re just showing off!” She laughed as the older woman came back up with a tray of slightly steaming cookies that she sat on the flat rack atop the oven.

  ”Maybe I am a little.” Kiki replied with a smile. “It’s good to see you again.” She added quietly, still not really looking at Eileen.

  “Oh hush, you old baby. It’s only been a month or two.” Eileen said. “Barely enough time to properly miss you! Maybe we should kick you out more often, you’ll appreciate us more.”

  Kiki turned her head with a single raised eyebrow, the swirling scent of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies in the air becoming an almost crystallized sensation of nostalgia as she slipped in her control ever so minutely. “I seem to remember leaving on my own, not being kicked out.”

  Eileen flapped a hand at the scrawny woman. “Well we would have gotten around to it if we’d known they’d be so good for you over there. What’s the secret? Did you seduce one of their dashingly handsome knights?”

  ”…You’re seventy eight years old, and you gossip like you’re back in middle school.”

  ”Oh Kiki please. I never stopped gossiping. You just reminded me how it could be fun for everyone.” Eileen laughed, her voice almost a parrot’s squawk of amusement as she leaned forward. She watched as the other woman finally turned around, dusting off hands that had shifting scars on them that Eileen could never keep track of, and only barely understood that they were changing at all. “You look good.” She said honestly to her friend.

  The restrained sense of danger and compassion masquerading as a human woman gave her a kind smile in return, though one that had a lot more humanity in it than Eileen had seen from Kiki in the days before she’d left. It was a little sheepish, a little embarrassed. Things that the woman had lost along the way; not grown out of, but had taken away. All back now, even if it seemed like it came with some caveats. “I sure don’t feel good.” Kiki said, craning her neck until one of the bones in it cracked loudly enough to make Eileen’s teeth itch. “But thanks. You’re not looking too bad yourself.”

  ”It’s all the magic, you know.” Eileen told Kiki conspiratorially. “I add some to my makeup every morning, no one can tell the difference.” She said in a stage whisper.

  Kiki looked at Eileen, in a way that Eileen could definitely feel and knew wasn’t just seeing with her eyes. “Just checking.” She said with a smirk, before that too faded from her lips. “Just the normal amount of it in your old dusty bones.”

  ”We have you to thank for that.” Eileen said, standing up smoothly and taking a short step toward Kiki, before freezing as the woman stepped back from her. “Still brooding about that, are you?”

  ”It’s wrong.” Kiki said, a simple bitterness in her words, and absolutely no stirring of the air around them.

  Eileen noticed. She’d always been better than everyone else at noticing. And she raised her hand over her head to twirl it through the magic around Kiki like she was pulling cotton candy. “You dumb old girl.” Eileen laughed. “You know, just because you’re older than a human’s ever been, doesn’t mean the rest of us haven’t lived our fair share. You said it; I’m seventy eight years old. You think anyone in this building made it this far without having some opinions?” She ticked a bony finger along an invisible current of magic next to her head. “Maybe you should have asked us.”

  ”That’s the problem Eileen. I never did ask. I made a mess, and now I know I can’t trust anyone’s answers, because what if I made those too?” Kiki didn’t sigh, didn’t even frown. She almost lost her grip on herself, but in the moment when she was focusing on that to the exclusion of everything else, she didn’t really pay attention to Eileen coming close. Her body, somewhat detached from reality, still tensed up in human reflex as the younger grandmother wrapped her up in a crushing hug.

  ”You’ve been like a mother to me.” Eileen said into the side of Kiki’s hair. “I don’t think I ever could have raised Jessica without you there to help. You’ve been with me for so long I can’t imagine life without you. I know we’re not family like our parents would have said family, but I’ve never really had a life without you hanging around in the background. This place, this little adventuring society, we’re here because of you. We trusted you long before you rearranged our brains. You think we would have said no?”

  ”…Chuck might have said no.” Kiki said, arms stiff at her sides, even though the core of what she was told her to return the hug and reshape a whole person into something new.

  ”Chuck was an ass.” Eileen huffed out. “And he’ll be the first to tell you that.”

  ”Was.”

  ”Well, still is.” The woman admitted. “But it’s not so evil now, and we love him anyway.”

  “It’s so hard.” For someone that felt like a geological feature of the planet, Kiki’s voice sounded awfully small as she stood there being awkwardly hugged. “Everyone keeps saying they’re fine with things, that I did okay, that they don’t mind. And meanwhile I’m over here struggling to keep my head above water, while the rest of you tell me that drowning feels pretty alright. I don’t think I’m explaining much of anything the right way. I come back in here and see all the people I’m afraid I hurt, and you’re all just so happy to see me, and Eileen I don’t think I can do this.”

  “Oh hush.” Eileen said softly, pulling Kiki’s mortal form in tighter, like she was trying to snap the other woman in half even though she knew that wouldn’t actually do anything. “Of course you’re worried; you’re a good person, you lovely old fool.”

  ”I feel like everyone is trying to be reassuring but you’re all calling me an idiot today.” Kiki mumbled.

  Eileen squawked a laugh into her friend’s hair, pushing her back and gripping her shoulders. “Kiki. What are you? What’s your big fancy name?”

  Kill ‘Em With Kindness. A thing that she couldn’t reject, ever. She couldn’t even remember her real name, she was just this now. There was nothing left of what she had once been, except for a trail of memories of her mother, and the generations of people who had come after, the years taking them in slow waves through Kiki’s awareness.

  She wasn’t sure if she’d said it out loud, but she’d certainly expressed it. Which was why Eileen nodded, still holding Kiki’s shoulders. “Well here’s what we’ve all decided we wanted to say to you, a little message from everyone here, that I get to deliver since I got to you first.” Eileen smiled. “Kiki you need to be nicer to yourself.”

  Kiki gave a sardonic smile, proud of herself for corralling her nature enough that she could be a little bitter. “Is this your way of telling me to off myself? Because that didn’t work last time either.” She said, and then regretted it so deeply and immediately as she saw the horrified look on Eileen’s face.

  ”Kiki…”

  ”I’m doing better now.” Kiki instantly reassured her. “But yeah. I tried. Didn’t really work. I never actually considered being kind to myself like that. Big old blinders on, as always.” She tried to wrestle a smile back onto her face.

  Eileen wasn’t having any of that. “You know, maybe it’s been too long. Maybe I should have shaken some sense into you a long time ago. You certainly did to me! What did you tell me, when Jess was born? You can’t love someone right if you don’t love yourself? Was that you, or the magic talking?”

  ”Bit of both.” Kiki admitted.

  ”Well you were both right then!” Eileen snapped. “It’s been so long, all of us watching you slide out of our lives. Hiding from yourself, from us, keeping us at arms length when we just want to help you because you don’t think you’re worth it. Well enough of that bullshit! For once in your new and strange life, it isn’t about your magic! It’s about you!” Eileen moved a hand to tip Kiki’s chin up, making sure the other woman was looking at her properly. “You have to be kinder to yourself. And maybe then we’ll stop calling you a big old fool. Even if you are the favorite secret grandma to half the kids that come visit.”

  Kiki’s body froze, though the part of her that wasn’t quite a physical body anymore was almost torn in half. A roiling maelstrom of magic and mundanity slipping past each other as she fought to figure out which side she was in control of, and which side was her.

  But Eileen didn’t let go of her shoulders, and in a very sudden moment of clarity, Kiki realized something that was profoundly simple, though she never would have been able to come to the conclusion if she hadn’t stumbled across the Order and their weird set of solutions to her when she did. The truth was obvious, but it wouldn’t have been true if she had been the same thing she was months ago. If the slide hadn’t been arrested, and her control clawed back.

  They were both her.

  And maybe she was allowed to think that whatever she was, it wasn’t so bad anymore.

  Kiki’s arms, shifting and changing but always her own, came up and wrapped around Eileen. Returning the hug her friend had been holding onto, and in doing so, letting kindness kill what someone had been, replacing it with something new.

  ”Maybe it’s not so bad.” Kiki said quietly.

  ”Now you’re getting it.” Eileen told her. “ Now come on. Forest and Barn came back from their little hunting trips an hour ago, and they brought back these adorable little bunnies I want you to see. Also everyone else is going to want to say hello, if you’re feeling more yourself!” Eileen swept away, strolling out of the kitchen humming a gentle melody. “Oh and bring those cookies!” She ordered Kiki.

  Kiki watched her go, shaking her head. “Here or there, everyone seems to think they know what I need more than I do.” She complained.

  It stung a little that it seemed like everyone was right. But maybe that was just because she’d picked the right everyone to associate with.

  _____

  James slunk out of the cafeteria, feeling like he’d intruded on an intensely personal moment. Because he had, really, but he did correctly assume that if Kiki had an issue with him being nearby she could have thrown him into the sea without too much issue. Or at least a nearby lake; Oklahoma had some truly scenic lakes, he had learned from getting to see photos from some of the more outdoorsy grandparents of the Society. And he assumed also that he’d be seeing at least a few of them up close before this operation was over, if they ended up taking an extended amount of time to hunt down the majority of the loose dungeon wildlife.

  ”Did you receive an answer?” TQ asked as James reentered the trapezoidal classroom they’d been given free reign of, and were using as a kind of war room that wouldn’t be in the middle of the big gathering that was going on in the library. Because as it turned out, not everything in the lives of people not in the Order revolved around the latest crisis, and they were doing a family potluck tomorrow night, and didn’t want a shield team and an increasingly frantic paladin running through while there were kids around.

  They could hide off to the side and let the kids find them via exploration, as was tradition.

  James grimaced as his boyfriend, his navigator partner currently settled on his boyfriend, and the half of a shield team in the room all turned to look at him with the same question in their eyes. “Kiki’s a bit busy right now.” He said by way of explanation, though it sounded kind of silly even to his own ears. “We can check later. Don’t make plans around her just yet though.”

  ”As you say.” Rajesh said, the shield team captain clearly not liking that answer, but accepting it anyway. “It does not change the broad objectives.” He said, looking down at the maps they were using.

  It was a weird mix of physical media. Maps from road travel pamphlets and an atlas that had been in the building, as well as one topographical survey of Oklahoma as a whole. They were going to have much more detailed and useful maps tomorrow when people began arriving from the Lair in force, but for now this would do. It wasn’t like they were mobilizing an army anyway.

  As much as James wished otherwise.

  For now, they were getting what they could done, and planning their travel into the town of Goodwell. Which was, itself, kind of a challenge. Zhu was eagerly helping to map out points of extreme road hazards, and that was something that was leading to more questions than answers.

  ”Heeeeeeere. I think.” Zhu tapped a talon off of Anesh’s arm into a spot on the map. “Yeah. This seems like it. Uh… maybe don’t send anyone from the south at all I guess?”

  ”I still think we should just teleport a whole platoon into the place and go from there.” Anesh said.

  James slid up to his boyfriend, standing by one of the short tables that had been worn when the building was first constructed and hadn’t gotten better since. A bump of his arm against Anesh’s saw Zhu sliding across the physical bridge; feathers leaving one human and blooming across the other in a lopsided orange flare. “And that’s why you’re not in charge!” James told Anesh.

  TQ’s head swung from side to side like a metronome as he reacted to the idea. “Teleporting invites ambush.” He said. “We take small risks often. But not like this. There are no cameras to check, no people to call. Only bad omens.”

  ”Yeah we’d appear and get eaten by a dungeon bear.” James added.

  Anesh knew that was probably true, or at least possible enough that they shouldn’t risk it. But the continual lack of options for travel into the area without the route having its own danger was just as worrying. “We need to get a dragon out here.” He settled on.

  ”We have reconnaissance drones that can cover a fair distance.” Rajesh reminded them, pointing at the two shield team members who were most skilled in that field. “And we are not so far from the location that we couldn’t make the drive and simply retreat if things become… unmanageable.” The man’s accented voice made it clear that his definition of ‘unmanageable’ was probably different than what a sane human would choose.

  James shook his head and sighed. “So south is out. Which is concerning, because as empty of non-farmland as a lot of this Oklahoma peninsula is, there’s still… like… people living out here. Other towns and stuff. Hell there’s an airport twenty miles east of our goal.”

  ”And we are getting quite a workout in, finding the edges of the infestation and evacuating those who are willing to leave.” Rajesh added with a nod to the team that was in the room.

  ”You’re getting a workout in because people keep shooting at you.”

  ”In their defense, they do not know we are not more dungeon creatures.”

  ”In their offense, at least the one guy you brought back earlier was just kind of racist.” James pointed out. “And I’m being really generous with the ‘kind of’. Also we don’t need to rehash this. Zhu how many more half-routes can you do this for?”

  ”Eh, three or four?” Zhu gave a little flutter. “There’s kind of only one actual way there, unless you’re willing to take old logging roads or whatever. So I’m sort of just pointing at a random spot and then seeing where we get attacked. You will be happy to know, there is no misadventure on this one! Just horrible violence!”

  James lugged his arm up to give the navigator on it a flat stare. “Joy.” He said atonally. “Alright, go ahead and do what you can. I don’t want to go out again tonight, especially not in the fucking dark. I’m realizing that a huge threat of these creatures is that, in a rural environment, the things that eat sound might be a very serious nightmare to fight. Rajesh, make sure no one from your team goes out again too.”

  ”Understood.”

  Shaking his head, James just stared down at the mess of maps he only half understood how to parse properly. Property lines and hills and valleys, roads and ridge lines. The natural world outside of a dungeon could be very large, when it wanted to, and when every step could bring another encounter with one or more of the hostile dungeon species they’d been finding, it could be an exhausting kind of size to make one’s way through.

  ”I think… we come back tomorrow.” He said, genuinely grateful that he did have the option to just teleport home and spend the night there. The old schoolhouse was cool, as a club house, but it didn’t really have comfortable beds. Also he wanted to immerse himself in the baths at the Lair until he was lightly boiled. “Yeah. Play it safe, come back, and take another shot when there’s what limited daylight November offers us.”

  ”It is literally December tomorrow.” TQ told him.

  ”I am going to go mad.” James said in a conversational voice, getting a sudden laugh out of Zhu and a reassuring hug from Anesh. “But my point stands. We’ll return with a few more people, and keep trying.”

  Anesh held up a hand, palm out, and gave James a concerned look. “A few more people?” He asked.

  ”Yeah, like, whoever volunteers. This is bad, but the meat of the damage has kind of already happened, so we’re not doing a crisis mobilization.” James said.

  Anesh nodded, and then shared a shake of his head with TQ, the two of them giving James an almost pitying look. “James I love you, but you are sometimes the dumbest human on the planet when it comes to estimating reactions to things.”

  ”…how many people are coming back with us tomorrow?” He asked Anesh, already seeing where this was going.

  TQ gave a delighted little hiss as he turned to slither out of the room, going to visit the library and the cat he was trying to make friends with before they left for the night. “You will be pleasantly surprised!” The camraconda told him on the way out. “We may be done by next sundown!”

  James chose to assume that was hopelessly optimistic.

  But the way TQ said it, he also chose to hope anyway, and let the Order surprise him.

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