Lacey rubbed sleep out of her eyes, a soft purr lulling her back into the twilight of half sleep. Her dreams were lightly scattered, and she winced at the memory of them that she didn’t want to keep. They’d been nightmares, even with the kitten-therapy of sleeping next to the cutest ball of fluff to ever exist in the world. Flashes haunted her. Flashes of watching the assassin slit Colt’s throat as she sat helplessly at her desk.

Lacey blinked her eyes open and tried to forget. It hadn’t happened that way. They’d repelled the assassin and finished out their shift together. Knowing that they’d see Kat again at lunchtime the next day, they’d made an early night of it and gone to bed shortly after the last adventurers left. The dungeon was set to light up and blow up all the alarms if anyone came in uninvited. They even had a few goblins at the entrances with their hands on the menagerie trap all night, not that they were as reliable as the system.

The flush of the toilet reassured her that the dreams weren’t real. No one used their private bathroom but them. Colt was awake and making a mess in the bathroom, just like he always did. She had a perfect little pet kitty cat cuddled up and purring in her ear and hundreds of layers of protection. She told herself she was safe, and her mind laughed back at her attempt to snuggle back down under the covers. After all, her mind asserted, the assassin had gotten through all that twice already, and that was only the times they knew about for sure.

Lacey gave up trying to sleep, contorting herself to pet Spark, only to be rewarded with claws. “Ouch! You little beast,” Lacey belied her words with a slow smile. Little paws clutched around Lacey’s wrist as Spark sank her little teeth lightly into the pad of Lacey’s thumb.

“You okay?” came Colt’s voice from the bathroom and the last of Lacey’s nightmares faded away.

“Our hero is being prickly this morning,” Lacey mumbled out, her eyes seeking out her best friend in the world, for just that last reassurance that he was okay.

“Ah,” he smiled at her, his hair still sticking up all over his head. “Spark, be nice. She’s the one with the treats.”

Spark let up on her grip of Lacey’s wrist, but as Lacey started to pull away, two little back paws raked along the length of her arm, barely breaking skin.

“No treats for you,” Lacey jerked her hand away, making it worse.

“I warned you,” Colt poked his head around the doorway again to say, a toothbrush stuck out of one side of his mouth.

“I’m going to need Eve to give me a heal,” Lacey hissed, holding her hurt wrist in the palm of her other hand.

“Baby,” Colt teased, his head disappearing back into the bathroom, where he spat into the sink.

So much for a lazy morning of sweet thoughts, Lacey thought, rolling up and headed for her closet rather than fight Colt over the sink. He ran the water to rinse out his mouth and she clenched against the need to pee. Lacey threw on some jeans and a snarky t-shirt proclaiming that she wasn’t distracted, she was doing side-quests. She fished some thick socks out of the dresser and plopped back on the bed, her back to the kitten that eyed Lacey like she expected retaliation, even though Lacey never had.

“I’m out,” Colt called out to her as his voice faded.

“Thanks,” Lacey called back, their routine settling something in her. She took her turn at the bathroom, cleaning up his mess as well as the one she made after him. The evidence of his shower was a lump of soggy towel on the floor. Lacey could have left it to Ginger, but she folded the towel in threes and hung it on the rod next to hers.

“I’ve half a mind to go to Mom’s for the day,” Colt told her as she walked into the control room.

“You don’t mean that,” Lacey chided him gently.

“I don’t, but it’d be easier,” Colt leaned back in his chair, tossing Lacey a warm biscuit sandwich wrapped in paper.

“Thanks, and no it wouldn’t,” Lacey unwrapped her breakfast and took a bite.

“It wouldn’t,” he admitted with a charming smile. “You’re in a good mood this morning for being a pin cushion again.”

“It’s nothing,” Lacey looked down at the mild welts on her arm and shook her head. “I’ll head down to Eve to get a heal and be good as new.”

“No need,” Ginger strode into the control room like she owned the place, her grin huge. “Ginger fix.”

“You learned the heal spell?” Lacey tilted her head at Ginger but held out her arm.

“Probably,” Ginger jerked her head in an empathic nod and grabbed Lacey’s arm even as Lacey started to pull it back.

“Probably?” Colt stood to interfere, but it was too late as Ginger was casting a spell.

“See?” Ginger glowed with pride as the welts disappeared. “New spell.”

“Who taught you to heal?” Colt asked, knowing that Eve had been denying Ginger for weeks because Ginger had refused to become a shaman.

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“Eve,” Ginger answered.

“Did you decide to become a shaman after all?” Lacey asked, running fingers over newly healed skin.

“Nope,” Ginger shook her finger and then pointed it at Colt’s breakfast wrapper.

“Spit it out, Ginger!” Colt admonished the goblin, snatching back his hand that had still been holding said wrapper when the clean spell snapped the wrapper away. “How did you learn the heal spell without becoming one of Eve’s shamans?”

“Ginger no spit,” Ginger professed, and Lacey got the idea that she was avoiding the answer.

“Ginger!” Colt and Lacey said together, probably just a little louder than necessary.

Ginger pursed her thin lips and placed a hand on her hip. “Ginger higher level than Eve now. Eve not deny Ginger anymore.”

“Woah,” Colt laughed, tilted back on his chair again. “Eve finally got sloppy?”

“Ginger,” Lacey was more in tune than that. Eve was always the same level as the dungeon. She kept on it diligently so she wouldn’t lose her position as Head Shaman. “What level are you?”

“Ginger level 32,” the goblin replied, her nose lifting slightly in a mannerism more like Eve than Ginger.

The dungeon was only level 31, so Ginger had taken their semi-permission of the day before as a reason to defy goblin tradition and become a higher level than their makers. Lacey studied the goblin for signs of aggression, but there was only a new pride. Ginger headed for the bedroom, where she always went to clean up after Colt first thing in the morning.

“Should we be worried?” Colt asked, smacking down to four legs of his chair. They would need to order a new chair if he kept doing that.

“Damned if I know,” Lacey shrugged and sat in her own chair, taking another large bite of her breakfast sandwich. “Yesterday, I thought I knew the world and how it worked. Today, I’m thinking I don’t know enough to even guess.”

Colt gave her a quizzical look, like he was wondering if he should try to talk her out of that kind of mood. His look made her chuckle around her sandwich. She didn’t blame him. She’d gone from pessimist to defeatist. Was that a big leap? Maybe it was, for her.

“What?” Lacey said around her sandwich, her other hand already flipping through screens.

“You feeling okay this morning?” Colt’s raised eyebrows weren’t even enough to get a rise out of her.

“The morning is full of all sorts of possibilities, none of which I can rule out since nothing works the way I think it does,” Lacey rolled her eyes at her own drama. “I don’t mean that in a bad way or even a good way. I just don’t know.”

“Now you’re scaring me,” Colt said, but he was smiling.

“Shut up and let me eat breakfast before you grill me about my changing world philosophy, would you?” she snarked back.

“Okay,” he raised both hands up in surrender.

Lacey liked that about Colt, normally. There were days sometimes when shit was just shit and she didn’t want to talk about it. Her dad had always been poking at her first thing in the morning with questions like he cared about anything she said. Colt didn’t push her. Lacey finished her sandwich and got up to grab a soda and a water. She sat and took long pulls on her soda, pretending to get into work mode.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she answered, when she found herself rereading a paragraph for the fourth time.

“Want to talk about it?” Colt asked, pretending to be more interested in what he was drawing than what she was ready to say.

“I had some bad dreams, but that’s only because I feel so out of control of everything,” Lacey tried to explain. “Every time we think we understand something, there’s more to learn and more I feel like we’re screwing up because we don’t know enough.”

“That it?” his head was still bent over his drawings.

“Maybe,” she told the top of his head. She was pretty sure that he was working on yet another module. It would be his seventh one. If every module took about half an hour for adventurers to clear, then they’d only need five or six for a satisfying level. “I mean, I can’t stop some super-powered assassin from sneaking into our dungeon and killing us any time they want. I can’t draw any faster or make dungeons any faster. I can’t level any faster. I can’t spend millions of credits on new monsters until we run another week of dungeons. I can’t possibly speed up the levelling of every creature in the dungeon. I can’t stop our minions from taking over if they break through their polite limits. And I certainly can’t get the stupid cat to stop clawing me up every morning when I ask for affection.”

Somewhere during the rant, Colt had looked up and propped his chin in one hand, elbow on his desk. “And we can’t learn any faster.”

“Yeah,” she frowned at him.

“That’s the big one for me,” Colt admitted, shoving back from his desk. “It keeps coming back to that one. There’s just no way anyone could learn all these rules and how things work any faster than what we’re doing.”

“And yet, no matter how fast we speed toward getting up to speed, I feel like we’re still behind!” Lacey smacked a palm on her desk.

“Yeah,” he smacked his desk too, a small smirk at the edge of his lips.

“You suck,” she tried to resist the smile.

“Because I agreed with you?” he gave her an innocent look.

“Because,” she started and stopped, throwing her crumpled up breakfast wrapper at him. “Just because you are an infuriating man, and this was my rant and you hijacked it!”

“Yeah, but I’m cute, so you put up with me,” he grinned at her, catching the paper out of the air.

“You’re not that cute,” she narrowed her eyes at him, but her mouth was twitching.

“Yeah, I am,” he assured her with a jut of his chin.

“You think you’re so charming,” she plucked a drawing pencil out of the can and then put it right back in. There was plenty of time for drawing later. For now, she needed to get things summoned and set for the day’s dungeon crawls.

“Because I am,” he winked at her and went back to drawing.

Lacey checked the clock. She had 2 hours to get the new dungeon levels situated and levelled appropriately. Kat was likely going into the level 15-20 dungeon again, so she arranged the race for it. Did it matter what par was? The first one might be totally fubar, but what the hell. They weren’t going to learn if it would work out well by sitting on it forever and a day.

“You’re running Kat through the race?” Colt looked up to watch her pin it in place on their wall of dungeon maps.

“Yep,” she answered.

“Are you going to run anyone against her?”

“Yep,” her chin tilted at a stubborn angle.

“Hey,” Colt called out as Lacey stuffed her sketchbook and pencils into the backpack she hadn’t used since Monty had invaded. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going out there to explain all this to the groups coming into the race,” Lacey answered with a shrug.

“Alone?” Colt finally got the first hint of a frown on his pretty face.

“Yep,” she picked up her backpack, and checked her pockets for ample pencils.

“Who are you and what have you done with my neurotic best friend?” Colt placed a hand on his chest in mock dismay.

“You want her back?” Lacey teased him, tapping an extra pencil on her chin.

“Can I get back to you on that one?” he hedged, and she lobbed her pencil at him.