"And yet a trace of the true self, exists in the false self." -aleksfo96, circle of life-

  _____

  Liz found the basement of the Lair to be a weird place.

  Not that she had a single shred of moral high ground to stand on when she made that judgement, but it was just how she felt about it. She would have said it was a lack of sunlight, but half the basements got sunlight somehow, so that wasn’t even true. Though maybe that was the problem; these halls like tunnels had inherited the gloomy and underground eerieness of a real basement, and then added all the dissonance of the magic that kept changing them in dramatic ways.

  Liz didn’t really think of it exactly like that. Or at least, she wouldn’t admit it to anyone that her inner monologue used words like ‘dissonance’. In a twist of fortune, the same quirk of her self that kept her safe from having her memory altered also meant that she was kind of a bad host for most infomorphs, so no one would ever really hear the way she thought.

  She let her thoughts run in loops for a while as she walked through a stretch of well lit and clean concrete, going around in circles on whether or not she would have to eventually be embarrassed that she had thought that when an infomorph did roost in her mind, or if the close understanding would finally mean someone got her.

  At no point did she actually think that maybe it would be bad to have an infomorph companion, which she realized as she made it to her destination. The key to let her into the room was the only one that had a gold color to its metal; the other three being for her locker and mail cubby at the Lair, her bike lock for school, and the apartment in a different basement that she supposedly lived in. This room wasn’t one she technically lived in, but she let herself in anyway.

  ”Excellent. Liz is here. She can tell you that you are wrong.” Color-Of-Dawn announced her arrival, its head rising out of the blankets of the bed like a periscope as Liz shut the door of the small but cozy room behind her and kicked off her shoes. “Hello Liz. You missed Ravini.”

  ”Darn!” Liz had wanted to ask the crocamaw girl something, but it was really hard to reliably track down people without phones. “What’s Morgy wrong about?” Liz asked, feeling herself relaxing already as she closed the basement out.

  Morgan, mostly laying on the rugs covering the floor while partly propped up against the bed, looked up from the book he was reading at the worst possible angle. “I thought we agreed I wasn’t getting a nickname.” He said, unable to keep from smiling as he watched Liz, while mostly upside down in his vision, pull off her sweatshirt and toss it onto the standing coat rack they had that was only about 20% ever used for coats or coat-adjacent objects. “Hi.” He added, still smiling at her.

  ”There was a discussion.” Color-Of-Dawn told him. “My religious objection to a nickname means there is only one candidate.”

  ”Liz is also a candidate!” Morgan protested, rolling himself away from the bed, keeping the book clutched close until he wasn’t at risk of crushing it. The room was actually pretty small by most standards, and with the bed, dresser, desk, set of shelves with a TV on it, and the aforementioned coat rack, there was precious little space to actually maneuver. But Morgan did so with the casual ease of someone who had been living here for a while, and knew intimately where every hard furniture edge was. “Well, maybe not, Liz is already kind of a nickname.”

  Color-Of-Dawn nodded. “Correct. Liz is special and so it must be you.”

  ”Dawn, you’re not religious.” Liz reminded it with a laugh as she dropped onto the bed next to the camraconda, slowly tipping sideways and slinging an arm around the camraconda who was bundled in the bed. “You let Morgy call you anything. Also Liz doesn’t count as a nickname! What if I want a cool nickname?”

  ”If you stop calling me Morgy I will call you literally whatever you want.” Morgan offered. “I mean…! Like, a normal nickname. I’m not being weird!”

  “This time.” Color-Of-Dawn said with a hiss as it curled into Liz.

  “This time.” Morgan agreed, echoing the words with a rapid nod of his head, loose hair getting in his face from the force of his agreement.

  Liz looked at the two idiots she was apparently dating, and flopped backward onto the mattress and by association Color-Of-Dawn’s tail. “So what did I interrupt where Morgan is wrong?” She asked as she draped herself on the increasingly familiar bed.

  “Oh, Color-Of-Dawn is mad that I’m trying to find a knight to shadow to Oklahoma.” Morgan said, settling back into a cross legged position on the floor so that he was more or less facing his partners. “It thinks I’ll get hurt.”

  ”You will be in danger. I do not want you in danger.” Color-Of-Dawn corrected. “You may not be hurt. That would not change the danger.”

  ”Also didn’t James say you weren’t ready for this kind of thing?” Liz asked him, legs dangling over the edge of the bed. She didn’t look Morgan in the eye because staring up at the ceiling was just so much more relaxing and after all the walking she’d done for class for the week she just didn’t want to move. “It was a whole thing! We didn’t see you for months!”

  Morgan flushed red, trying his best to not sound super defensive as he answered. “It wasn’t months.” He matched Liz’s tone. “It was… a while though, yeah. But you’re also in school! Both of you are in school! I have free time for knight training when you aren’t here!”

  ”A valid point. What do you do when we are not here?” Color-Of-Dawn asked idly, lowering its head to rest sideways on Liz’s stomach.

  ”…I play competitive fighting games look don’t question me.” Morgan said. “The point is… the point is that James is wrong.” He said, voice firming up. “He’s wrong. I don’t know why he’s wrong exactly, yet. But I know that I could be doing more, and I wanna do more, so… I will!” Morgan declared, the drama undercut by the nervous awkward sensation he had at actually declaring anything at all.

  Color-Of-Dawn flicked its tail nervously, rolling its body underneath where Liz was using it as a makeshift pillow through the blankets. “But I cannot come with you.” It said quietly.

  Morgan quickly misunderstood the comment. “You don’t need to though.” He tried to reassure Color-Of-Dawn while he fiddled with the edge of the book he was holding. “It’s not a dungeon delve, and it’s not an end of the world or anything either. It’s kinda perfect, because I can help out and if I screw up then it probably doesn’t kill a bunch of people.”

  From her spot on the bed, Liz absolutely noticed the failure of communication, and decided to patch it. “Mor, it means that if something does go wrong, we’ll both feel bad that you get hurt while we can’t stop you. Help you.” She winced, glad no one could see her face at this angle.

  ”Oh.” Morgan stalled. “Okay. Well. Yeah, that sucks.” He admitted. “Sorry Color, that was shitty of me.”

  The green and black camraconda rolled against Liz’s stomach, getting an oof out of her as it turned its head toward Morgan, who was in the process of standing up with stiff legs. “Yet you still wish to go.”

  ”Yeah.” Morgan admitted sadly. “Because I can help. And I do think James’ whole thing about how I shouldn’t rush is stupid. I know it’s a joke that being nineteen doesn’t make me an adult-adult, but I should have a choice.” He let his shoulders slump, tossing his book onto his desk. “I have actual magical superpowers, and I can’t… use them to do anything heroic? That’s so stupid, and I hate it.” He concluded.

  ”Ask Cam.” Liz said after a moment of quiet in the shared bedroom.

  ”What?”

  ”If you need to shadow someone, because you’re not in the knight assignment app or whatever, ask Cam.” She clarified. “Because no one ever asks her, Cam will probably go too, she kinda likes all of us for some reason, and then when things do go wrong, you have supergirl within range of dive tackling you to safety.”

  Color-Of-Dawn’s lens adjusted slightly, the apparatus inching open and closed by marginal amounts as it gave a choked hiss of laughter. “It would be deserved if you were dive tackled.” It told Morgan.

  “Cam likes us?” Morgan asked, while grinning at Color-Of-Dawn.

  ”Cam likes me at least!” Liz said. “I mean, we only talk every week or so, but I think she likes me? Cam’s really hard to tell things about.”

  ”She is made of mystery.” Color-Of-Dawn acknowledged.

  Morgan, now pacing in short circles on the plush rug, found he had a lot more reservations with these two accepting that he should go. Like he didn’t have the safety line of saying well they want me to stay anymore. And yet…

  He took a deep breath, and brushed himself off. ”When I started leveling up the social studies Lesson, I kinda figured that ranks in Judgement would make it easier to make the right choices all the time?” He said. And got a double barreled look back from the people he was lucky enough to be dating that unmistakably asked him why the fuck did you think that Morgan? “I’m gonna text Cam.” He said, as they stared at him.

  ”I will still worry.” Color-Of-Dawn said. “But less. Now. An important issue.”

  ”What’s up?” Morgan asked quickly, unable to smother his own worry.

  Color-Of-Dawn twisted to look at their girlfriend. “Liz is here.” It said. “Which is good! But also suspicious, at this hour.” The camraconda pressed its nose into the side of Liz’s head. “Reveal your secrets.”

  ”Oh, that’s how you proposition me?” Liz asked, barely getting the words out before breaking into a giggle. “Alright, alright!” She twitched away as Color-Of-Dawn flicked its tongue across her cheek, and Morgan dropped into a sitting position next to her to keep her trapped with the camraconda. “I wanted to ask if I could stay here tonight.”

  Morgan gave Color-Of-Dawn a look of raised eyebrows over their mutual girlfriend. “Yeah?” He said. “Of course. Duh. Half your clothes are already h- okay I know it’s way less than half, stop laughing at me in your head, I can hear it.” He poked her in the side to break up her huge smug smile, which turned into Liz catching his hand and tugging him down into the bed while Morgan struggled to escape. When he caught his breath, a minute later, he finished his question. “Anyway you stay here all the time. Why are you asking this time?”

  ”I just wanted to make sure!” Liz said. “And because being at home feels weird right now.”

  ”Why?” Color-Of-Dawn asked, with curiosity that Liz really should have anticipated.

  She opened her mouth to sigh, pulling an arm up to cover her face in mild embarrassment. “Because. Mom and Barkdust are sitting in the living room drinking love potion and staring really intensely at each other.” She told them.

  ”Oh.” Morgan said. “Uh… I have more questions.”

  ”About my mom’s love life?”

  ”No, that makes sense. About the love potion thing. We have love potions? Since when do we have love potions?” Morgan wanted to know. “Like, what kind of love potions? Are they evil?”

  Liz looked over at her human partner with a caring smile. “It’s really cool that that’s your first question.” She said. “Also I dunno? Mom said it tasted like pineapple curry and then I escaped cause I felt like I was really eavesdropping.” Liz admitted. “It’s one of the Utah spells.”

  ”Amber Icon.” Color-Of-Dawn filled in, and suddenly began rattling off facts about. “Eighteen minute study time. Creates a glass and beverage. At twenty six advancements, creates a second drink.” It pushed itself upright before flopping over both Liz and Morgan, pinning the two humans against each other on the bed. “There is an emotional component when shared. A mysterious one. Mysteries abound. We should solve mysteries.”

  ”As a hobby?” Morgan inquired, only slightly crushed. “Wait you’re not gonna get bored while I’m gone will you?” He asked.

  ”I have friends. And mysteries to solve.” Color-Of-Dawn was now fully locked on to something that Liz and Morgan were wondering about the actual depth of now. “Smoke will help me solve mysteries.” It said.

  Morgan wiggled his arms free to wrap over the top of the camraconda, rolling it back into the blankets alongside himself and Liz. “Go back to the love potion thing!” He demanded. “It just makes food? That’s so cool! I should get that one! We’re doing another Pylon run next week if everyone isn’t dead or something, maybe I can link it up to reading or inputting.”

  ”Mom said it was ‘ineffective as a nutrition source’ but I never know what she means when she says stuff like that.” Liz told him, pressing up against Morgan’s back and snuggling into her boyfriend, finding the physical contact to be something she had really grown to crave when she was with these two goofballs. “Sometimes it means it just doesn’t work very well? And then sometimes it means she’s… I don’t know! Like she’ll decide something is only worth it if it solves every problem forever perfectly, you know?”

  ”Oh. Yeah, there’s a bunch of people who do that with the magic.” Morgan told her with a sad grimace. “So your mom’s trying to solve world hunger, but maybe it doesn’t need to solve world hunger all on its own, or something?”

  ”Exactly!” Liz exclaimed. “But also it’s a love potion.”

  Color-Of-Dawn gave a laughing hiss. ”That she is drinking with Texture-Of-Barkdust.” It reiterated. “Strange. Almost a-“

  ”It’s not a mystery.” Morgan told it with a loving squeeze around the camraconda’s midsection. “Karen’s weirder than everyone thinks she is. She’s weirder than she thinks she is. No one believes me when I try to tell them though.”

  Liz took umbrage with that. ”My mom’s not weird.” She muttered into Morgan’s hair.

  ”Your mom hired an ex-yakuza enforcer to run a magical cargo shipping company? Like that’s a normal thing to do?” He tried to explain this with the best example he had, but Liz instantly started offering qualifiers and conditions that made Karen’s decision make sense.

  But Morgan had never said Karen was dumb. That was the thing people always thought he meant, but it wasn’t true. Karen was some kind of genius, or at least, someone with a lifetime of professional experience. She was just… not a normal person. And that was okay! But it felt like Morgan was the only one in the Order who knew that, so he was the only person in the weekend knight training scenarios that didn’t get caught off guard when they learned that Karen was a secret ninja, or the only person in his social circle that didn’t think it was out of character for her midlife pivot to be into a queer relationship with a camraconda.

  Morgan had been anxious, at first, to see how much a rank or two in Judgement would actually change him, as a person. Now, though, he mostly wondered how anyone else made it through the day without noticing the obvious weird stuff that made the majority of people in the Order so special.

  Turned out being changed into someone who thought about things more clearly wasn’t that bad.

  Neither was being trapped in his comfortable and safe bed, between two people he actually really liked, and kind of wanted to keep in his life forever.

  Morgan actually knew exactly what had happened, to make his life this way. He knew that where he was now was built out of tragedy and pain. But he also knew that every step toward something better had involved someone from the Order helping him.

  The world got better when people who could help, helped. It was so stupid, almost a childish view of heroism. But every single time it mattered, Morgan had noticed, it was true.

  He was going to enjoy his time tonight with Color-Of-Dawn and Liz. But later, whether Cam said yes or not, he was going to find a way to get to Oklahoma, and be the next person who helped someone that needed it.

  He wasn’t interested in anything less than that.

  _____

  Evans went through his evening routine with the kind of pace that a person used when they weren’t quite used to having their own routine. When someone was, for the first time, separated from close family, living nominally on their own, and having to learn what they needed to do to keep their life functional.

  For him, it was a little easier than for most people, because the Order had a lot of random support for things that he would have said were pointless or even stupid before coming here. Now, though, he was actually pretty grateful that there was just a community that was almost aggressive about sharing advice on how to do simple shit like laundry that he would definitely have fucked up if he’d fumbled through it on his own.

  So his routine was still in development. Come home from shield team duties - today was physical conditioning and reflex practice - shower, feed Killbot, feed himself, do a quick check to make sure he didn’t need to clean anything, then do a quicker check to see if he had any messages before he got the whole evening to himself.

  He did have a message, which was common. Second left him a minimum of two of the things every day, and while Evans was pretty sure that just texting would have solved the problem faster, apparently the AI was avoiding having any kind of direct connection to an outside network for safety reasons. Something about it being analogous to not knowing if they were immunocompromised, which was a scary thought.

  ”Good evening Evans.” Second’s synthetic voice came through the phone as Evans hit the button and started listening while he dropped onto the couch and started fruitlessly scrolling through Netflix. “I have recently incorporated a modification that allows me to passively monitor public information on the world’s various rail systems. It is an interesting and useful influx of information, however, I am having difficulty with the upgrade as I seem to have an unusual number of feelings related to it. Do humans, or the biological living in general, experience similar changes when they begin to learn new datum? How do you manage the dissonance and stress that comes from multiple processes interacting with constant new knowledge? Thank you. Second.”

  Evans stared blankly at the TV screen for a moment, before closing his eyes and his Netflix queue at the same time and taking a deep, deep breath. “Sometimes,” he told the kitten that was climbing the cat tree next to the couch and doing his best to prompt Evans to pet him, “I think that I’m the wrong person to be the adult in these situations.”

  He let Killbot throw himself off the cat tree and onto the couch, before grabbing the cat in one hand and swinging him around to settle in his lap, slowly petting the tiny beast’s fur as he figured out what he was even supposed to say to that message. He even replayed it again, just to be sure he was actually being asked the question he thought he was.

  ”Okay. Message for Second.” Evans said out loud, knowing that the magic would take effect for what he had to say next. “First of all, you don’t need to ‘sign’ your messages to me, I know who you are. Though I guess it’s fancy formal if you really want to, but I’m not upper class enough to be worth it.”

  Evans looked around his Townton apartment as he kept talking, doing his best to not ramble. He wasn’t sure if it worked, but he did do his best. It was a weird place to be; he’d spent most of his life without having anything useful to say, and now, after less than a year of learning how to be better than his most fantastic image of his best self, he felt like he could talk way too much. Which, he realized, was kind of relevant.

  ”So, I know you learn different from humans. Or at least from me. But I think you should maybe talk to someone on your dev team about that. And I mean, right away.” Evans stressed that part. “Because it sounds like what you’re saying is that you’re having emotional reactions to everything you’re learning, constantly? Like you have a totem for trains or something - cool, by the way - and every time it tells you about a train, you feel something? But that’s gotta be so much, that’s an insane amount of things to feel about.”

  He thought for a second, about what it might be like for himself, and tried to express that, fumbling through the words. “I think if I had that, in my head… I mean I’d probably hate it? There’s a reason we use Momo’s totems as… like… weird flashbangs during training. But if I did know about trains all the time, I’d probably have one emotion for each chunk of it. Like I learn about the trains in Italy and I feel like that’s fancy and historic or something, and then every time the totem updated me I’d remember the last emotion? I wouldn’t redo the work I guess. Which is also how I think most humans learn most things? Unless I’m the weird one.” Evans raised his hand to let the cat that had now had enough pets escape his grasp.

  Sitting up and deciding that he would go out and do something tonight, since he didn’t have anywhere to be for a week now that his particular shield team was on personal time, Evans started stretching while he finished his message.

  ”I think you already know we learn different. Half of what I’m supposed to learn, if I actually believe Nate, is supposed to be drilled into me so I can do it without thinking or especially feeling. So don’t compare what you’ve got to a human, okay? Compare it to you. You’ve already got a dozen totems and programs telling you stuff, but this one feels bad, right?” Evans’ voice sped up as he realized that he felt like he was onto something here. “It sounds like this one is giving you something like an anxiety attack. So yeah, you should tell whoever is in your room right now, actually right now. I don’t think you tracking trains is as important as your brain working.”

  He paced around the studio apartment while he finished speaking, casually pocketing keys and his wallet and cell phone, even though in Townton a person really only needed maybe half of one of those things. “Let me know if things get better, okay? Talk to you later.” Evans spoke the words to stop the message feeding through the imbued phone on the other end of the conversation.

  And with that handled, he had a whole evening ahead of him. A whole week in fact. A week off from active duty, with nothing but the expectation that he’d keep up on light exercise and not burn any of the spells he’d been trusted with unless it was important.

  So he headed out to see Townton. Not that Townton had a bustling nightlife scene, yet anyway. Nor would Evans have a fucking clue what that would look like; his somewhat backwater upbringing meant that his idea of a weekend party involved going camping with friends, getting blackout drunk, and shooting cans off logs with a .22 while still mostly drunk. Townton had a more… relaxed… vibe.

  Actually it had a vibe like it would just have more interesting stuff to do. Evans just didn’t know what that meant yet.

  There weren’t a lot of people out on the streets; Tennessee wasn’t tropical, it got cold in the winter. And as time marched toward December, it meant that there was a fresh demand in the salvaged city for indoor spaces to spend time, seeing the population starting to cluster more either in people’s new homes, or in the remodeled bar or the new couple restaurants or even just the baths as a social experience.

  Evans wasn’t much of a baths guy. Not yet anyway. The rest of shield team three seemed to fucking love the experience, so he got roped into it often enough that he was getting comfortable being naked around strangers. But then, they weren’t really strangers, and maybe if it happened enough he would be a baths guy after all.

  For now, though, he just made his way to the little cafe that had occupied what used to be the parking lot of the apartments just up the street toward the chanter’s park. Their use of Climb heat distribution spells meant they had no problem being ‘outside’ in this weather, which put them in the same category as all the new umbral that Evans passed who were out walking or socializing in groups on the sidewalks. A species that just didn’t seem to care what temperature it was, which was cool for them. Same with the few skittish yet otherwise nonhostile necroads that were in the central streets.

  When Evans stepped across the invisible threshold to the open air cafe, and the temperature noticeably eased up, he let himself sigh and start to unclench his chilled fingers in his pockets. Coming in here, with the salvaged tables and chairs underneath a canopy of interlinked umbrellas, wasn’t quite a Cheers moment. No one cheered his name or anything. But a couple people who recognized him gave Evans nods and the barista, even if he was faking it, at least did a good job making Evans feel like he was happy to be seen as he got his coffee.

  He hadn’t thought he was a coffee guy, either. But it was kind of nice, watching the cold drip of rain come down ‘outside’ the covered area while he held a hot drink, listened to the eclectic music the people running the place had playing, and just had some time.

  Evans didn’t take too much time to think though. He also had one of the Order’s local podcast episodes to listen to, and somehow got into a conversation with that barista about some kind of love potion ethics thing, which turned into a conversation with a few other people in the cafe that Evans snuck away from when he realized he was being surrounded.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  He’d split off from where the conversation had gravitationally pulled in half the cafe, alongside one of the new umbral things and one of the professional Horizon delvers. Adding a pastry to his table, Evans listened to the other human passionately talk about the challenge of trying to source motorcycle parts to a city most people didn’t deliver to, and the umbral asking more questions about motorcycles than Evans knew was possible.

  It was fun, he realized. He was socializing with people again, in a way he’d kind of dropped after breaking away from his home and joining the Order. Oh, he was friends with his team, sure, but there was something nice about doing it when there were no stakes.

  But it was during that conversation that Evans heard the news.

  Something going on in Oklahoma. Just a couple states away. Nothing world-ending, but some kind of problem anyway. An unknown number of people in trouble, and also, an open slot for any knights that wanted to help contain it.

  Evans, after overhearing that, pulled out his actual Order phone and checked the weird app that let knights put themselves in a call rotation. He still wasn’t used to it at all, either the bizarre UI choices, or the fact that they called him a knight. But there it was. Oklahoma. A task with no cap on volunteers.

  He stared at it for long enough that the umbral at his table noticed and asked if he was okay, which was a hilariously ironic thing to hear.

  “I think I’m going to get yelled at for skipping my break.” Evans said as he touched the screen to confirm his addition to the roster. It was such a strangely simple and easy choice to make, too; not that he hadn’t thought about it, just that it didn’t feel that important to commit to the action of casual heroics. Evans didn’t know what that meant about him, and decided not to think about it too much. “Hey, good to meet you two. I gotta go.” He said as he stood up and collected his coat, looking unfondly at the cold waiting just beyond the invisible cage of magic that was holding the warmth in this pleasant reclaimed urban bubble. His new friends didn’t question it, just gave him polite goodbyes and waves; even the umbral, new as he was to this place, had adapted to the fact that sometimes, with the Order? People just had to get moving in a hurry.

  When he got back to his apartment, and was sternly chastised by Killbot for daring to leave the cat alone for any length of time, there was a message waiting for Evans.

  ”Good evening again Evans.” Second’s words filled the air as the human started checking his personal equipment and packing an overnight bag. “Your advice was sound. Prompting me to action was the right decision, and I am experiencing what I and the development team believe is a significant reduction in emotional distress since the new addition has been expunged. This message is to thank you for your time and empathy, as well as to inform you that I will be be assisting with an active operation for the first time this upcoming week. I will, as your people say, see you in Oklahoma. Thank you. Second.”

  Evans stared up at the ceiling of his apartment before he decided that the deeper implications of all of that was someone else’s job. “You seriously don’t have to sign voicemails man.” He muttered out loud, even though the AI was never going to hear him.

  _____

  Ann wasn’t used to being responsible. In fact, if asked, she would insist that she had been tricked into it.

  It had started small. When the Order of Endless Rooms had first settled on that kind of stupid name, and opened the Lair up as a place for any of the survivors of the Office to congregate, Ann had done what she’d assumed was going to be important to make sure that she didn’t get kicked out. She’d made herself useful.

  She’d worked worse jobs before, and kitchen duty wasn’t that bad. It had honestly been kind of relaxing for a while there, and keeping access to the dungeon that gave skill ranks was a huge bonus. Ann had thought herself a selfish person, for a lot of her life; maybe a little unfairly, or just meaner to herself than she needed to be, but still. If she had to do some basic prep cook work to get free magic, she’d do it and she’d even pretend it was fun.

  Then Nate had started teaching her how to actually do the job well. And after six months, she was the one teaching the new prep cook, while she took over doing lunch three days out of the week. It was a slow transition, and it wasn’t less work, either. It was just that she knew what she was doing and no one had yelled at her. Even Nate didn’t yell at her, which was fucking insane. The man looked like he yelled at people as a hobby.

  Once Ann had her feet under her, the world had turned upside down again. And in surviving, and wanting to be part of an active defense against having to frantically survive again, she’d sort of become a part time cop, only without most of the bullshit that made cops bastards. Along with her fellow prep cook, who was, it was important to mention, an alien snake made of semi-organic rubber and metal.

  The thing that was almost infuriating was that she was good at it. Good at listening to the training, good at learning how to improve, good at conditioning her body into something more powerful, good at the magic. And week by week, she’d been given more responsibility, and more authority. And a literal authority too, eventually.

  It happened so slowly that Ann hadn’t noticed what she’d become until well after she’d taken in a foster daughter, and had to go through the same ladder climb of learning what being a parent was supposed to be like. Then throwing out half that information, because the broader public sucked at parenting, and working with Recovery to develop a parental training program for their own fostering operation.

  She had wanted, originally, to roll the dice on skill and shell orbs until she got lucky and hit on something that could make her rich while being lazy. But what had happened was that she’d been led by inches into the trap of being a mature adult and the worst part was, she wasn’t even pissed about it.

  Ann had made the decision to go to Oklahoma before it had officially been listed within the Order. It was, after all, just another step on the path she was already walking. The hard part was that she had a much more personal responsibility in parallel to that one.

  ”Can I come too?” Banana asked Ann, the black feathered girl staring up at her from the couch as Ann tried to entice her into helping with folding laundry. Her voice was so much more alive than it had used to be; not for lack of enthusiasm, but because she’d just had so much practice speaking. Endlessly speaking, Ann thought with a smile, as Banana continued. “I can help!”

  ”You aren’t going anywhere near something that dangerous until you’re much older.” Ann said, knowing damn well that would only be true in a perfect world. Then, in a softer voice, said, “Here, like this.” and helped Banana make the movements with her hands that would wrap a pair of socks together into a neat package.

  It was such a strange thing to teach her, since Banana didn’t wear socks. But given how the Order kept throwing people together in a big whirlpool of interpersonal relationships, the odds that she’d get use out of this niche skill someday were reasonably high.

  ”But I wanna!” Banana rebutted with. “Danger is fun!”

  ”Oh really.” Ann gave the kid a raised eyebrow smile. “Is this what you were learning in your science class this week?”

  Banana whipped her head back and forth, her beak carving a razor sharp line through the air as she took Ann’s distraction bait. “No!” The word came out stretched and buzzing, as her sentences often started. “We learned about wetlands! And and and the ecosystem that they have!” She fumbled through the shrinking pile of unsorted laundry as she rapidly spoke, stacking pairs of underwear into two separate piles as she explained in deep detail to Ann about the role frogs played in local swamps. But eventually, no matter how many interested comments and questions Ann asked her, Banana remembered her original goal. “Since I know all about frogs now I should… should come with you.” She said. “So I can learn about somewhere else’s frogs!”

  ”Foolproof logic.” Ann said, rustling the fuzzy feathers of Banana’s head. “Except that I know you don’t need to see the frogs up close to learn about them. And also because of the danger. Look, you don’t wanna end up in pieces like me, do you?” Ann tapped the left side of her chest, the scar under her shirt a reminder of the missing piece of herself where a Wolfpack merc had carved half her tit off with a magical sword one time, giving her probably some trauma but also a story that ensured she won about 90% of the one-upping contests in the Order.

  ”I can lose pieces!” Banana retorted. “Look! I got better!” She leaned back, splaying out all four of her legs and holding up the curved claws of her feet, pointing down at them to make sure Ann got the point about being wrong.

  ”Okay, I walked into that one.” Ann laughed, and sat on the couch next to her foster daughter, dropping the pair of crow-wasp modified pants she was trying to get to fold up properly for later. “Alright, hey, look.” She said quietly, using the tactic that was most effective with Banana; overexplaining things directly. “You’re still growing up. You aren’t ready yet to start learning how to handle the real bad situations. Maybe you will be someday, or maybe you’d rather spend more of your life learning about sharks. Either one is okay! But I don’t want you getting hurt, okay? And if you’re around with me, you might get hurt, so I’d worry the whole time.”

  ”…oh.” Banana buzzed sadly, her shoulders slumping, the split lines on the chitin of her back flaring slightly as she sighed and almost let her wings slip out in anxiety. “What if I…” she started to say, and then faltered. “Okay.” Banana eventually relented.

  ”Hey, it’s not like I’m leaving you here.” Ann wrapped an arm around the young dungeon-made child, giving a reassuring laugh that she hoped sounded as warm as she wanted it to. “It’s just like work! I’ll just be in a different place, and you and your friends won’t be able to sneak up on me for a few days.”

  The sneaking up on her was something that happened whenever Ava was in the mix. That girl, and her own infomorph sister, were trouble. But the kind of hilarious and mostly harmless trouble that Ann figured every kid needed in their lives.

  Banana shuffled nervously against her new mom. “Whaaaat if I need you for something?” She asked, drawing out the questioning.

  ”Okay, now, that’s not the smart Banana I know you are.” Ann crossed her arms and leaned back, looking sternly down at the kid. “Come on, you know this one. What do you do if there’s an emergency?”

  The crow-wasp made a buzzing deep in her chest as she looked away, before giving her best attempt at sounding broody in her answer, even though she was smug that she remembered it perfectly. “Go to Daniel. Then Jeanne if he’s not home. Then c-call Response.” She even had her own phone, just for that, too. “Oh! And I can call you!” She added happily.

  ”Right. Exactly right.” Ann relaxed a little. “Now let’s get this stuff shoved in the closet, and go get some dinner, hey? Maybe you can run into your alligator friend upstairs.” The offer was a tactically precise one; Ann knew damn well that Lavant’s own foster parent had a roughly similar schedule to her, and watching Banana make a friend when both of them really needed it was gratifying. Which was part of why she and Watcher-Under-Stone coordinated so their kids could have room and time for that friendship.

  ”Okay!” The young wasp leapt up, trotting through their apartment while humming with buzzing notes to herself as she raced to finish the chore.

  It wasn’t that she’d forgotten entirely that she didn’t want Ann to go off alone. But it was more that, Ann knew, Banana would accept explanations when they were honest and clear. And that was something she was having a hard time getting used to. She didn’t talk that way normally.

  But as with everything, she was learning by inches. Dragged up the ladder of responsibility and adult maturity.

  It would have annoyed her a lot more if Banana’s enthusiastic love wasn’t so fucking magical.

  _____

  Kirk took about ten minutes to decide to go.

  There was a simple mechanical math to it, as well as an emotional symmetry.

  The hard truth was, he owed more than he’d ever pay back. And being a Route Horizon delver put him in the position of being a better driver and shooter than a lot of people, on top of being someone who was nihilistically comfortable risking his life. So there was probably a role as a high-risk evacuation driver that he could fill.

  It would never fix anything. But that had stopped mattering a long time ago. There was never going to be a balance, only the eternal motivation of chasing it.

  The soft side of the truth was just a bonus, really. There was… not a city, not in the way Townton had been a city. But a series of towns, a thousand homes spread out into the family businesses of farms, with tiny clusters of a few businesses and stores seeded along connecting highways. And they were, collectively, going through the same thing he’d helped cause. Or something close to it.

  A dungeon had decided to occupy territory. That was his read anyway. Flooding the world with weaponized life forms that looked a hell of a lot like mutant animals, shredding the agriculture of the region and the farmers that maintained it. The why didn’t really matter. It was something that he saw the shape of, and felt a deep disgust at.

  So the choice was easy. Even easier because Harriet wanted to go, the navigator comfortably in sync with his thoughts, even if her reasoning was far more optimistic. And he didn’t even have to arrange for anything; he wasn’t scheduled for a delve for a while, he’d broken off the relationship he’d been attempting in a mostly friendly way, and his hobbies currently kind of started and stopped at delving, symbolic sculpture, and amateur photography. And one of those he could even take with him.

  He’d need to see if he could get equipment from the armory, though. Somehow, Kirk figured, the .50 BMG antimaterial rifle he’d been using for Route delves ever since someone had looted it from Saskatoon might be considered overkill for rabbit season.

  _____

  Momo paced around her ritual site, or research laboratory, or whatever the room where she fumbled her way through figuring out the really weird magic applications was called. It was a good room; even if she had to go through Research’s territory to get to it, and it wasn’t in her bedroom. But El had made the increasingly pointed and constantly correct argument that if Momo made one more Climb wand while she was trying to sleep then she was going to ‘do a murder’.

  So now Momo had a lab.

  Or rather, Momo used the lab she’d had the whole time. She’d been reminded of a half dozen little things she’d been working on when she’d come back here, collecting what dust they could in the limited time she’d been gone. Obviously there was the big red totem that she’d built, set to focus on a whiteboard of equations where the dry erase pen wasn’t so set yet that it couldn’t be removed. But also a bunch of test frames, pieces built out of different materials to try to get different effects out of the red orbs. A whole crate of red orbs sat under the main workbench, glowing like ominous roe, stacked alongside similar but less heaping milk crates of yellow and orange orbs. There were actually two yellow orb crates, one labeled ‘not this one’, and Momo kind of wished she’d written down what that meant.

  She really needed to get back to the locational totem at some point. ‘Tuning’ these things was a real pain, because while she was now absolutely certain they were ‘speaking a language’ in a way, it was a language that Momo only knew six words in and two of those words were probably profanity. But it would be way too helpful if she could make something that could let a group of people ‘read’ a Verdigris Venture spellbook all at once. One of those game changing additions that the Order got way too infrequently that let them scale up.

  Her main project right now was making Climb wands. Trying to find ways to get them to do weird shit, which was slow going. The storm orbs weren’t exactly in high demand, and Momo could burn through a lot of them pretty fast, so materials were the main bottleneck. Technically, Momo’s quest at the moment was to find the best repeatably imbueable way to make something that could safely spam the anti-addiction Mesa Oasis spell. And she was getting to that. But she had a whole bucket full of shovels down here to test with, and she was gonna at least try to make one that turned every spellcast pink or activated at sunrise or ate blood or something.

  That was also only technically her main project. Because she’d run out of orbs making the latest batch of wands, so now, she was tinkering. Her latest obsession was trying to figure out how to turn her extra red orbs into the kind of traps that they originally spawned from.

  The concern that everyone else had was that this would make some kind of capital-L-Life. Momo got where they were coming from, they were looking at the iLipedes that dropped red orbs when they died, and freaking out. But she was pretty sure that was a result of the Office lifeforms dying of their custom form of old age. No one had actually killed an iLipede yet - a thing Momo found kinda weird given that they did look like creepy bugs and new delvers could be really skittish - but she kinda wondered if they would have dropped yellows if they were killed that way.

  A lot of the original dungeon’s stuff involved ‘mixed’ orb types. And it felt like a bunch of the Order just chalked that up to weirdness. Maybe that was true, maybe there was no pattern. But Momo had a vibe from it, and for her, vibes were more important than carefully documented patterns.

  So she was trying to make traps with red orbs. And running into a brick wall, mentally speaking. The problem was, she already knew a few of the things that should work; pencil darts, coffee bombs, graphite clouds, whatever. But she just couldn’t make any of them click.

  So far, she’d picked up two ranks each in perturbance, ennui, and lust. She mitigated accidental breaks by using copies, so that was after the diminishing returns, but still. By her count, Momo had a minimum of six emotional resonance ranks in lust at this point, which was the most of anything that anyone had. It also made her a great case study, and the fact that she wasn’t the horniest person in the Order at this point really spoke to the way that red orbs didn’t change your feelings that much. They just let you listen to yourself, tune in to your own thoughts and the reasons for them, understand what you were feeling and why. It was kind of cool; definitely an amplifier when Momo did have sex, but not something that took over her life. Kind of the opposite really.

  That was all tangential to the trap project. Except that it sort of proved that imbuing red orbs didn’t make red life. The traps were something Momo really wanted. Not just because having some kind of custom-craftable defenses would be cool and probably annoyingly relevant in the near future, but also because the Officium Mundi ones reset themselves. Another source of ex nihilo matter would be pretty cool, if she could make it work. And make it useful. And make it either non-lethal, or as-lethal-as-currently-desired.

  So Momo was switching tracks. Currently she was in the planning phase for her next trap attempt, because she needed some new stuff. Stuff that wasn’t pencils, coffee cups, lamps, or pencil sharpeners. Because she had a theory.

  There was, down here in Research somewhere, a monguasse. One that wasn’t Magneto, who was still off with Simon menacing someone who probably deserved it. That wasn’t the weird part; someone wanting a pet magnetic field dog was totally normal. The weird part was, it had come out… the same. Not identical to Magneto, but… the same species. Despite the person making it not actually having quite the same idea.

  A similar thing happened with the paper drakes. The new ones, growing up so fast now, were following in Pendragon’s wake. Showing variance but also clear coherency, again despite different makers.

  But those life forms hadn’t been made by the dungeon. They’d been made by people. And now, when someone had tried to make a paper drake that was similar, but too different, the process just hadn’t worked. It was like there was some kind of shell around the idea of ‘tiny dragon made out of paper that grows into a real aircraft mecha’, and you either got it right or you got bounced out of the zone.

  So if Momo wanted to make a trap, and she didn’t actually know how the Office made its own styles of bullshit or what the secret caveats of them were…

  ”Hey you filthy little gremlin!” El’s voice got Momo looking up from her work immediately, the other girl striding into the room with a massive beige binder under one arm and a glowing fish looking like a serpentine waveform trailing out from behind her hair. “Brought you a present. And a legal requirement that you have eaten a sandwich today.”

  ”Hey you… sexy ogre? Sure. Ooh, a gift, is it my quartz?” Momo asked, eagerly stretching out her arms and making grabby motions with her hands. “Give!” She kept making the motion as El just stared at her, until eventually relenting. “Alright fine, I ate real food. You’ll be proud of me, I had a whole lunch and everything.”

  “Good girl.” Reassured, El slung the hefty tome out from under her arm, the ream of papers within the binder looking a little faded with time. Hefting it in one hand and shaking it near her ear like she was listening for something, El shook her head sadly. “And no, sure isn’t quartz.” She answered. “It’s… uh… Carbon Capture Engineering Principles 2014 Edition.” El looked up at Momo with a frown. “I just kind of told Tino I’d bring this to you. Why the fuck did you order this?”

  ”To learn about carbon capture tech stuff. Can you put it on that shelf, with the other one?” Momo pointed with one hand while her other swept her sleeve through the wood carving she was doing, shoving it into a pile on her workbench before she stood up.

  El obliged her, before turning and giving the shorter human girl a look, one hand cocked on her hip as she stood next to the tall directional totem assembly that Momo had built without any kind of fear. “Do I even wanna know why?” She asked. “I mean I kinda wanna know why. But do I?”

  ”Tenebrous Camp.”

  ”You made that word up.”

  ”Which one?”

  ”You know which one. I know what tenebrous means.” El gave her a cocky grin. “I wrote a lot of bad poetry when I was younger.”

  Momo stuck her tongue out as she slunk up to her girlfriend, doing her best not to limp. “It’s a new Climb spellbook dumbass.” She said as she slumped forward against El’s body, quickly finding her girlfriend’s arms wrapped around her and holding her up. Momo’s voice going both quieter and more distant as she leaned against her human shaped security blanket. “Catches smoke in a ball.”

  ”That seems rude, what’d Smoke ever do to you?”

  It took Momo a second to realize that El was making fun of her, and she gave an impotent glare up at her girlfriend’s face without really letting go of the hug. “Not her you dingus. It grabs… you know, smoke. Ash, I guess? Smoke is technically carbon particulate but the spell needs a density. Anyway I’m doing some casual application research.”

  ”Dude, that’s a technical manual the size of a baby.”

  ”What kind of baby?”

  El snorted and stood Momo up, hands shifting her around and tugging the bathrobe back into place around her shoulders in a move she didn’t really think about before she did it. ”That’s such a weird question to be real.” She said, shaking her head. “Why are you doing casual research?”

  ”Cause I’m in one of Research’s rooms so I have to keep up my camouflage." Momo gave a grin that said quite clearly that she knew she was being a problem. El’s return smile equally clearly said that Momo better stop being a problem if she didn’t want to have a new problem shortly. “Alright fiiiiiine.” Momo barked a laugh. “Chevoy and Mike are busy, so I can’t make them do it. We haven’t hired new engineers in a while cause it turns out we don’t have infinite money yet. And it’s actually not that hard? Like this shit is a lot easier than I expected it to be for my college dropout brain. So I’m helping while I wait for my trap supplies to come in!”

  ”Alright Scooby Doo, calm down on trapping the Lair, would ya?” El laughed herself as she took one of the chairs in the currently inactive totem array and relaxed into it. “So, what’s the application? Also what trap supplies could you even…”

  ”The main idea is anywhere that puts out a lot of smoke, obviously. Focus on fossil fuel power plants though, because they’re what actually literally kill people. I’m trying to workshop a wand design that can both periodically cast the spell and make the zone movable so that it can… I dunno, be shuffled back and forth so it doesn’t plug up smokestacks? Then the captured shit can be exploded in a safe containment spot too. But I wanna see if there’s an easier way. Also I need trap supplies that aren’t things the Office has already used.”

  El nodded along. “Cell phones?” She asked.

  ”Cell phones don’t produce smoke unless you use them wrong.”

  ”For traps you fucking goblin.” She rolled her eyes, though still kept a worried eye on Momo as the other girl limped a little while she grabbed her own chair and fell into it. “We’ve never seen an Office cellphone trap. Though maybe check the delver’s guide first. And you’ve got… uh…” she started counting on her fingers before looking up at Momo with wide eyed mock innocence. “A few phones.”

  ”I do have a few phones, it’s true!” Momo perked up. “Can you open that locker for me?” She pointed to one of the tall metal cabinets lined up on the far wall. These ones hadn’t actually been down in the basement when it had appeared, Momo had gotten them for cheap from a craigslist deal, and they’d barely had any spiders in them at all.

  El pointed at the locker in question as she walked over and raised eyebrows at Momo. When she shrugged and opened the latch, the door practically fell open, a waterfall of smartphones pouring out and across her feet. El, who had pressed her eyes closed in exasperation as soon as the phones started falling, opened them up to look down at the new carpet, standing unmoving and unamused, before turning to stare at Momo. “Why.”

  Momo’s answer was in the form of a grin that devolved into uncontrolled laughter the more El stared at her, until eventually El gave up and laughed too.

  ”The downside is I’ll have to clean that up.” Momo said, rubbing at the pain in her hip like she could somehow make it go away by doing so. “Anyway, hey! What brings you two down here anyway? Probably not a secret rendezvous if Speaky’s here.”

  ”I’m a deterrent!” The informorph’s voice was unmuffled by El’s hair, coming through perfectly clearly even though she didn’t leave hiding.

  El’s grin flickered back onto her face at the words as she extracted her feet from the morass of smartphones and stepped away from that part of the lab floor. “Just making sure you didn’t want us going to Oklahoma.”

  ”Where the wind comes sweeping down the plains?”

  ”What?”

  ”Ooooooklahoma.” Momo said, entirely atonally.

  There was never actually a time when El questioned her relationship with Momo. But there were lots of times when El wanted to question Momo personally. This was one of them, but she held back that instinct. “The state of Oklahoma. Where there’s dungeon beasts roaming around and new magic orbs to fuck with. Kinda thought you’d be all over that and I’d have to tag along to keep you from hurting yourself more?”

  ”Not… try to talk me out of it?” Momo asked slowly, the humor fading from her voice.

  El shrugged. “Hey, I love you and shit, but I don’t think either of us have the moral high ground on doing reckless bullshit. You wanna give up delving? I don’t. It’d fucking suck if you got hurt, but…” she trailed off. “Anyway enough sap. You wanna go? I hear there’s abandoned buildings and I kinda wanna get practice making post-apocalypse graffiti before I need that skill, you know?”

  ”Who else is going?” Momo asked, trying to push through the bright red color that her cheeks had turned at the casual words from El.

  ”At this point, who isn’t.” El replied. “But yeah, if you’re up for it…”

  Momo caught a weird vibe from El as the other girl talked, and she cocked her head to the side as she realized it. “Do you want to go? You can go without me!” She told her.

  ”Nah, that’d be weird. I’m not, like… you know.”

  ”Not what?” Momo asked, incredulous.

  ”Not… like… a member I guess?” El shrugged again. “I’m just hanging out.”

  ”And you call me a goblin. You are absolutely feral.” Momo laughed as El flipped her off. “Speaky, make her go to the thing.”

  ”Okay!” The infomorph said. “I also want to go, so that works! Want to come with us? There are magical old people and a talking cat. Or so I hear.”

  Momo’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh shit, really?” She struggled to stand up, making only a small noise of pain as she did do. “I’ll go get dressed. Maybe take the pain meds. Do we need anything? Guns, bombs, deployable cognitohazards?”

  ”Clean up your fucking phones. It’s not until tomorrow, and I’ll be back in ten minutes when I find your fucking meds and force feed them to you.” El said with some heat in her voice as she shook her head and turned to step over the puddle of smartphones and out of the lab.

  ”Hey Speaky! Maybe stay behind this time, cause that sounds kinda hot!” Momo yelled after them.

  ”It’s good that you’re voicing your feelings!” The infomorph called back. “Please do not voice those specific feelings in my direction!” He said, glowing tail covered in angular fins trailing around the corner as El strode away with the assignment still wrapped up in her hair.

  _____

  Part of Marlea really wanted to go tackle the challenges that Oklahoma offered.

  A lot of magic interacted with her in super fun ways. Sometimes it sucked, like how Velocity didn’t charge correctly. Sometimes it was neutral, like how Breath charged exactly normally. And sometimes it was really, really cool. Like how the Pylon considered each of her component minds to be capable of earning their own milestones, but her levels being an aspect of her whole self, letting her collectively rack up an absurd amount of AP.

  So when she heard there was new magic occurring alongside the chance to do the knights-in-shining-body-armor thing, Marlea was intrigued.

  Not every magic was like the skulljacks, capable of reshaping the human experience into something with a brand new glorious horizon. But sometimes there were gems that showed up, and sometimes there was just stuff that was cool and fun and useful. And Marlea genuinely liked her status as a confounding presence for dungeons; it felt like a lot of them never expected a legitimate hive mind to walk in and start challenging their methodology.

  The problem was, while part of her wanted to go, part of her also wanted to keep up her duties on Response. The Response program was an actual practical duty, and it was also an excuse to spend more time with Smoke-And-Ember, who was kind of great.

  Normally when people were split on something, they had to flip a coin. When Marlea was split on something, she had a much cooler option. It still involved coin flips though.

  She intentionally didn’t think of her components as ‘people’. She was a person. Everyone who was part of her was equally valid now as they had been before, but she wasn’t four people pretending to be one person, she was one person that had four components, that conveniently were capable of independent action if necessary.

  So even if the magic wasn’t worth writing home about - something she seriously doubted was true, it was fucking magic - at least Marlea would have an opportunity to test out an aspect of her self that she hadn’t really explored up to this point.

  Half of her relaxed, settling back in to stay at the Lair and keep up her Response schedule. The other half of her started preparing for a little trip.

  She wanted to be one person anyway. And since she did repeated checks with her components anyway, she knew that stayed true over time. This was just a different form of that; instead of a break to make sure things were okay, this was more of a rubber band stretch.

  Marlea looked forward to when she got back together with herself, just to experience that brand new sensation too. And maybe she’d bring back some kind of stupid magic with her as a bonus.

  _____

  They arrived as groups and as individuals, for reasons both personal and public, with as many styles and ideas as there were knights coming along for the ride.

  And James got his reinforcements, and, yeah, he was glad he let the Order pleasantly surprise him.

  There is a discord! Come hang out with us.

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