“Women and men; soldiers and outlaws; fools and corpses. All will find their way to us now that the road is clear.” -The Narrator, Darkest Dungeon-

_____

Two days later, James and Anesh arrived at their destination.

There was a certain *tension* at the end of a road trip. Any long journey, really. This feeling that you were almost, almost, *almost* there. Where, no matter how many miles were left on the map, your body decided that it was time to get out of the car *now*. That the trip was *over*, and that was just it! No more! No more car, no more road, no more to any of it!

For James, this feeling hit when they were off the long haul of the highway, off the smaller local thoroughfare, and he was in the process of trying to remember that you couldn’t go ninety miles an hour when you were trying to find a specific residential neighborhood. For *Anesh*, this feeling had started a half hour ago, and he was resorting to bribery to try to desperately get James to stop the car.

“Look. A gas station. We need gas, right?” They did not. When that didn’t work, he shifted gears. “Hey, how about lunch? There’s a steakhouse over there that probably isn’t great but I bet they’ve got… bathrooms? Or a park, where we can eat our own food? Please? Look at that park James, it has trees!”

He wasn’t wrong, it *did* have trees. James was left feeling a little weird in this small town that El had come home to, specifically because of the parks. Not just that they looked somewhat more unkempt than he was used to, but also just because ‘park’ seemed to be the same thing as ‘empty lot that no one ever built on, so it’s a park now I guess’. He felt almost spoiled, coming from where he did.

“I know ya’ll wanna get out.” James calmly replied even as Rufus tried to steer him from his head, keeping his eyes forward despite the strider’s efforts. “But we are literally almost there. Like, one-more-left-turn almost there.”

Anesh didn’t stop fidgeting, but he did wait patiently for the pickup truck in the oncoming lane to go by, and for James to take the turn down the street to the address they’d been given a week ago.

When James pulled up to the curb in front of a pale blue two story house, with a worrying number of lawn flamingos in the middle of a blossoming garden, and a half-intact car in the driveway, Anesh practically dove from the vehicle as soon as he parked. James was more reserved in getting out, stepping out and leaning on the roof of his car with a grin. He’d chosen a garish floral print shirt for today, and the bright colors of it were practically radioactive in the beating sun.

“Hey!” He called out to the driveway, and winced as there was a thunk and swearing from under the car.

The swearing was followed by a metallic clatter as tools and parts were pushed aside, and El slid herself out from under her current project, glaring at first and rubbing her elbow, but her angry look didn’t hold up long once she spotted James leaning on his car.

Her face went through a lot of feelings in a short timeframe. And James realized that himself of a year ago would never have noticed half of it. Relief, that they’d showed up. Bitterness, reflected inward, that she needed to ask for help. Amusement, probably at his shirt. And then, covering it all up as fast as she could manage, annoyance.

“*This* is the car you bring? You could have gotten this at a dealership *here*.” El commented as she kicked herself to her feet, wiping her hands on a shop towel. James never figured out what that was supposed to do, exactly; her hands were still covered in oil stains, along with the rest of her. Smudges on her nose from where she’d obviously tried to scratch an itch, and a dozen marks across the overalls she was wearing. Some of which were obviously idle doodles from the artist, and not accidents. “I’m offended you didn’t think I was at least worth some late nineties convertible.”

“First off, don’t question my car child. Second, I wanted to take a vacation. Third… no, no third. Just those. Road trip! Across some mountains.“ James replied, still grinning as he tapped the roof of the car. “Wait, I thought of the third one! My dad *had* a late nineties convertible! It was the worse thing in the world to ride in. I don’t think they’d designed ‘seats’ back then.”

El rolled her eyes. “I am literally offering you the best road trip of your life. What could ‘some mountains’ offer in comparison.”

James and Anesh, who had more or less gotten past his euphoria of escaping the passenger seat, both looked over to the horizon in the distance, minds going back to the sight of a blazing orange and gold sunset over the peaks of the Rockies. Light weaving in beams through the canopies of shaded green as they drove in and out of tunnels of trees, catching glimpses of the sky on fire until they exploded out into an open ledge, and the entire *world* lay before them, waiting to be explored, in all its enthralling splendor.

“The mountains were pretty cool.” Anesh offered.

“Well I’m glad you had fun while I lurked around trying to solve a cryptic mystery.” El scowled at them, and it was unclear if she meant it or not.

“All mysteries are cryptic.” James informed her, letting Rufus down to the lawn and muttering “Don’’t play in the road” to the strider.

“Yeah, well, this one is worse.”

James nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, you said you thought something weird was going on. What’s up?”

“No idea.” El sighed.

“Well, what made you suspect something was wrong?” Anesh asked. “Missing people, weird happenings, anything like that?”

“Nope.” El shook her head. “I mean, there might be people missing? It’s hard to tell. The town is kinda small, but I really don’t know most people, especially since I’ve been gone a while. And nothing weird is going on, except the one kid that no-scoped me as a wizard.”

James put a hand up to his mouth as he thought over her words, idly biting at his index finger. “So, nothing weird, no signs of activity, just a hunch, eh? Have you been back into the local dungeon since you got back?”

“Hell no.” El said. “My car is in pieces.” She gestured to the ongoing engineering challenge in her driveway. “Also, did you know the price of ammo has gone way up lately? I can’t-“

“Yes.” Anesh said, with a thousand yard stare. “And we can’t even duplicate it anymore.”

“...Kay.” El blinked, then shook her head. “Anyway. I haven’t gone in to check it out. I had to get my lifeline here back, and then I guess I was waiting for you. Turns out, it does feel a lot safer when you’ve got someone watching your back.”

“Don’t I know it.” James nodded. “Well hey, no worries. We’ll be here for a week or so at least. We can keep our eyes open. And if it is the dungeon… we’ll find answers in there, hopefully.”

“I guess. It just feels weird.” El said glumly.

“What does?”

“Being here. Being home, I guess? Like I… ah, you don’t need to know.” She shrugged, seeming to shrink down into her mechanic’s garb as she lowered her head.

James knew, though. “Like it hasn’t changed at all.” He said quietly. “But you have. You’ve changed so much. Learned so much, gotten so much better. And everyone expects you to be the same, and you can’t explain to them that you’re outgrowing who you are, and who they want you to be. That it’s not you; it’s them, and it’s them because they’re exactly like you left them.”

“This… happened to you too?” El said in a shaky voice, while Anesh looked at James with sad eyes and a concerned frown. “With the Office?”

“Nah. With the dungeons, I’ve dragged everyone that mattered to me along for the ride.” James said. Then, he gave a nervous laugh. “This happened to me with college.”

“Fuck, yeah!” El slapped the leg of her overalls, “That’s why it feels familiar! It’s just so much worse!”

“Well, you did help us do a small war.” James wiped sweat off his forehead, the afternoon sun continuing to cook him while they talked. Then, very much wanting to change topics, he shifted the focus of the conversation. “Also, you have clearly been at this for a while. What is… this?” He asked, waving to El’s project car; a bright red - if slightly dinged up - body, hood popped, a half dozen manuals scattered around it showing El’s ongoing progress in learning as she went.

She turned back to her car with clear satisfaction in her eyes, also glad for the subject change. “*This* is an *actual* car child.” El informed him. “‘92 Mazda Miata, slightly modified in a boring and frustratingly difficult way to have working air conditioning, heavily modified in an arcane way to have slightly more horsepower, torque, acceleration, and fuel capacity than it should.”

Anesh perked up. “Exhausted as I am from driving since 4 AM to get here, I really wanna know about those things.” He half-asked.

“The engine is, somehow, a sixteen cylinder monster.” El told them, circling around to the hood and motioning the two boys over. James strolled onto the unfamiliar driveway, hands awkwardly in his pockets, as he looked down at the machinery he did not understand in any way. “I don’t know it’s actual displacement, because I don’t know how to calculate that. But between the engine itself, a set of ball bearings that double the amount of torque the car’s internals can safely handle, and this part of the drive shaft that I am…” El cleared her throat, “...*attempting* to figure out how to install, I bet you anything I can outpace your dumb mom-car.”

“El.” James rubbed his hands together. “I understood almost none of that. I have skills points in fixing Jettas, and nothing else relevant.”

“Jetta.”

“That’s what I said.”

“That’s *not* how you pronounced it, don’t lie to me.” El reached into the open hood and tightened - loosened? - some presumably important component. “Look, I was an art school dropout before I was a mechanic. If I can pretend to learn this, you can too. It took me *two weeks* to figure out I didn’t even have the right sized wrenches.”

James glanced at the candy red chassis of the car in front of them. “I cannot help but notice that you picked yourself a late nineties convertible?”

“Early nineties.” Anesh corrected him. “She said ‘92. Also, can I just back you up a bit? How do the ball bearings impact the entire car?”

“Magic?” El shrugged. “Same with the drive shaft rod and boosting acceleration, I guess. I install it, and its effect spreads over the whole unit or something. It’s kinda cool, cause half the time the parts don’t have anything to do with what their actual function is.”

Now it was Anesh’s turn to have a headache. “Okay, fine.” He conceded, not wanting to get into a debate on how the dungeons did what they did right now. “How do you know what they do? Do you have a spell for that, too?”

“Nah. When I find the altars that have parts on them, what they do is carved into the stone around them.” El walked back around the side of her car and settled herself down next to one of the manuals, holding the metal rod in her hand in different directions to try to puzzle out which orientation she needed. “Also, I really want to finish this before it gets dark, or my brain forgets what I was working on.”

“Yeah, no problem.” James cut off his boyfriend who was, presumably, about to object to mystic words carved in stone altars. “We need to-“ His words were interrupted by a loud bark, the kind of deep friendly greeting you got from a dog that was the size of a small car itself. He glanced over, and noticed an older woman walking something with about as much grey fur as a woolly mammoth. “-pet that dog.” He finished.

“Ah. Hi mom.” El looked awkward.

“Hello honey! Are these two bothering you? I can sic Ingrid here on them!” El’s mother said with perfect cheer.

James gave a laugh while El gave an awkward explanation. “No, mom! This is James and Anesh. They’re just in town visiting. Gonna hang out tomorrow or something, after I get my car working.”

“Oooooh, the James you had a crush on?” El’s mom leaned in and gave James a joking elbow to the ribs that nonetheless hurt like hell.

“Mom!” El looked like she wanted to hide under the driveway, if possible, as she turned a shade of red pretty close to the car behind her. “That’s literally the opposite of what I said!”

“It’s true,” James offered politely, “when we first met, the first thing she did was shoot me.”

“Eleanor!” Her mother looked chagrined.

“*That is also not true!*” El yelled at James.

Anesh tapped him on the shoulder and whispered in his ear, “Yeah, that was technically the second time? The first time was you and Alanna failing to explain yourselves properly.”

“Not helping.” James whispered back.

“Mom, please stop embarrassing me in front of my friends.” El’s tone was almost… was that *petulence* in there? James tried very hard not to smirk as the reminder of just how young El actually was sunk in. “We’re just friends, *they’re dating*, and I don’t have a crush on any of them. Okay?”

El’s mom stepped up in front of James, still holding the leash to a dog that was currently giving curious sniffs to a nervous Rufus. She looked up at him, almost a full head shorter than he was, and gave him an interrogating look that made him almost instantly uncomfortable. Eventually, after what felt like a decade of gazing, she stepped back and nodded once. “You have kind eyes.” She said sagely, before stepping in and folding James and Anesh in a hug made awkward by the dog leash by way of approving greeting. And, while hugging, whispered in their ears; “If my daughter gets hurt, no one will ever find your bodies.” Before stepping back, still wearing that all-knowing mom smile, and telling her daughter “Well, have fun Eleanor. Make sure you clean up before dinner time. Come on Ingrid!” She clicked her tongue and pulled the curious dog up the front porch and into the house.

There was a moment of quiet, where the only noise was the distant roar of cars on the highway and wind in the sky.

“Well.” James started. “*That* was weird.”

“Is your mother…” Anesh started, but couldn’t find a good noun to finish with. “...Nevermind.”

“Oh my god, I am going back under the car, and I’m never coming out.” El announced. “Go away, leave me to my shame.”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic.” James laughed. “That could have been *way* more embarrassing for you! Anyway. We need to go find a place to stay for the next few days. Hopefully before you overwhelming infatuation with me overrides your better judgement and-“

James ducked, enhanced perception giving him just enough time to avoid the lug nut El had just chucked at his head.

“Get out of my driveway!” She shouted at him. But there was no bite of anger in the words, and James was giggling manically all the way back into the car, and for about a block after that.

_____

“How’s he doing?” Reed asked, entering Research’s den of inquiry, sipping at a cup of something warm that was *probably* caffeinated.

He was speaking about Nikhail, who was presently occupying one of four observation chambers that Research had remodeled into.

Previously, the basement they were in had held what could best be described as a ‘vault’. And they still had secure storage down here, to be sure. But with the help - or perhaps better to say, entirely with the hard work of - some of the new members of the Order who were well versed in construction, the vault had been refitted into a series of four rooms. It wasn’t too much different from an observation room at a hospital, really, which was where they’d partially stolen the idea from. Locks and light controls on the outside, viewing windows, and a slew of measuring devices to check for anything ‘off’ inside the chambers.

Reed had wanted something like this, since before they’d started actually trying to work with infomorphs more. But it was only now that the camracondas had their own home floor, and a more dedicated place of worship, that they had moved their most precious artifacts out of the vault and given Research space to start messing with things.

One of those rooms contained Nikhail. It was, to be fair, nicely furnished. Just with very little that could be turned into a weapon without significant effort. And with someone always watching, that effort wouldn’t go unnoticed. His current status was ‘mildly annoyed, but distracted by catching up on Netflix’.

Another room contained the two ‘wild’ camracondas that Simon had brought back about… oh, a month ago? They were visited frequently by other camracondas, who did their best to establish communications with their brethren. But despite being outside the dungeon’s reach, the new arrivals were randomly hostile, and didn’t seem to understand communication in the same way the older ones did.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Feeling-Of-Home described them as children. Immature, perhaps because they had never been truly pushed to adapt.

Currently, Davis, on watch for this shift, also chose to describe Nikhail as a child. “He’s being a baby about it.” The older man gestured with the half an apple he was eating, sitting leaned back behind a desk that had been set up in the observation area. “Even though this is entirely his fault.”

“I can feel you being a jerk!” Nik shouted from inside the room. Pointlessly shouted, since the observation chambers were wired for sound.

“Like that.” Davis nodded to himself. “No signs of any compulsion, though. Unless you count rude gestures. No signs of modification, changes in temperature, radio interference, any radiation fluctuations really, or anything else we’ve thought of.” Davis glanced up at Reed. “Normal across the board. Should we let him out?”

“Hmm.” Reed glanced down at the readouts Davis turned his way. “Tomorrow. Just in time for the deescalation classes with the new Response members.” He looked up and met Davis’ eyes. “If we’re all being sort-of punished for being reckless, Nik gets the extra condescending version of that.”

Davis gave a sharkish grin. “Got it. Also, I enjoy the classes. I’m learning a lot about people.”

“I’ll be honest, I’m kinda into it too.” Reed admitted. “Though it’s a bit… um… what’s the word for being super concerned by all the implications of something?”

“Working here.”

“No, I mean… okay haha. But every time we go through one of the training courses on subdual or spotting signs of abuse or diffusing fights, um…” Reed rapped his knuckles against each other nervously. “Okay, a lot of it is depressing because it implies a depressing world where people are shit. But have you noticed how often the people teaching the class start with ‘we had to put this together from a lot of different sources’, and literally only once, for the martial arts stuff, do they say ‘we got this from a police training manual’?”

“I usually miss the first five minutes of any given class, because the elevator is getting kinda clogged up.” Davis admitted.

Reed rolled his eyes. “Take the stairs. I know you can. You *act* old, but you’ve got a dozen purple orbs keeping you going.”

“Respect your elders, sonny!” Davis put on a crackling old man voice. “But no. We have stairs?”

“Yeh, every basement has stairs. How have you not noticed this?” Reed folded his arms and leaned his hip against the desk. “Did you think the basements were just huge fire hazards with only one exit?” Davis opened his mouth, and Reed cut him off, “Don’t answer that. Take the stairs. It’s easy once you figure out which staircase goes where.”

“Do you ever feel like there’s too much going on around here?” Davis asked, sounding tired, almost to the point of numbness. “How are we supposed to keep up with everything? Like, oh, hey, you know how we have an iLipede that can tell us where a given thing was produced? Well, for obvious reasons, we gave it one of the Status Quo bracers. Did you know that iLipedes can - and will! - set the bracers to intercept dust motes and burn through all the stored charges to see the lights?”

“That’s cool? Also, Sarah has a podcast? That might help. And I bet she’d love to know that.” Reed offered, but then shook his head. “Hell if I know how to keep up on everything. Hey, here’s something else fun. Did you know that the camracondas can have memory problems if their voices or arms get unplugged suddenly? Not, like, serious ones or anything. But they forget faces and names and stuff for a few seconds. Until someone snaps them out of it, I guess? We haven’t looked into it too much so far, but that new hardware guy, Mike? He’s concerned about it. Specifically, he’s concerned about brain damage.”

“Oh yeah, that can happen to people, too.” Davis nodded. “Learned that in the support group when someone tripped on a router during a meeting. Weird two minutes where a couple people puzzled out that they were married.”

“Were they?”

“Not at the time!” Davis replied. “I think they’re engaged now? It’s hard to-“

“To keep up on everything, yeah yeah yeah.” Reed laughed. “Alright. Well, I just wanted to make sure Nik was doing okay. I’ll be back in a couple hours to take over.”

“Don’t worry about it. Barkdust’ll be here for the next shift. Take some time off.” Davis didn’t say why, exactly, and he used an almost suspiciously casual tone as he waved an empty coffee mug around. “We’ve got this.”

Reed narrowed his eyes. “I’m not taking time off.” He grumbled, suddenly acutely aware of the surgery scar in his side. “Also stop being nice. I liked it better when everyone was mildly antagonistic.”

“I can want you not to bleed out and be an asshole at the same time.” Davis challenged, all sense of playing it straight gone from his voice. “Now get out of here.”

“That’s better.” Reed grumbled, stalking away.

_____

James and Anesh pulled into the parking lot of one of two motels in the city.

Well, they tried to. The parking lot was packed, despite the ‘vacancy’ sign being on. So what ended up happening instead was that Anesh headed off to find somewhere on the street to park, while James moseyed inside to get them a room.

“Just making sure,” he started with as he came up to the front counter, “you do have rooms open, right?”

“Oh yeah.” The old guy nodded. “We’ve got, like, two rooms filled right now? It’s the off season.”

James’ follow up question about who the hell decided to pour cars into the parking lot like sand down an hourglass vanished from his head as something much more interesting came to light. “Oh yeah?” He raised his eyebrows. “What’s the *on* season like?”

“Same as now, but with a couple college kids that got lost on the way to spring break somewhere else.” The motel’s keeper didn’t even bother to shrug. Barely moved at all from where he was reading a magazine with his feet up on the edge of a potted plant, chair tipped back a hair. “You want a room?”

“Yeah. For about a week, maybe more.” James said in amusement.

“Cheaper if you pay up front.” The old man told him, still not moving.

“More expensive if I leave early.” James countered.

The old guy grunted, and finally put the magazine down, and rolled his chair over to the desk to give James a short page to sign and a bill, followed by a pair of room keys. “Seven. Front of the building.” He told him. “No pets.”

James said nothing. Rufus wasn’t a pet, after all.

Anesh met him out front with their suitcases. “We good?” He asked.

“Yeah. Room seven.” James tossed him a key which his boyfriend had to fumble for. “Fuck, I forgot to ask about all the cars.” He grumbled, navigating through the dense line of vehicles in the parking lot to get to the little sidewalk that led to their room. “Place is clean at least!” James happily pointed out.

“If I see anything even vaguely centipede shaped in our room, I’m burning the state down.” Anesh said, apropos of nothing.

“That happened *once*.” James reminded him.

“Once too often.” Anesh scowled. “Never again.” He informed James as he led them in rolling the bags toward their room. He got about to the doorstep of room seven before he was interrupted by an inflated rubber ball bouncing out between two of the parked cars, and thunking into the back of his leg, sending him stumbling with a yelp and Ganesh launching off his shoulder with a buzzing hum.

James caught the ricochet of the ball under his foot, balancing with a duffel bag in one hand, and a suitcase handle in the other, trying not to step too hard on the toy. A second later, he spotted the kid it belonged to as a young girl came scampering out from between the cars. She was maybe ten or eleven, wearing a light coat with the hood up even in this heat, and James saw her eyes get wide as she looked at him. “Careful!” He said, pushing off with his foot and rolling her ball back toward her. “Lotta cars around here, don’t wanna get run over.” He informed the child.

“Yes sir, mister wizard.” The girl said meekly, not meeting James’ eye at all before she grabbed her ball and sprinted away back between the rows of weathered pickups and beat up camaros.

Anesh looked back at his boyfriend with wide eyes, before he couldn’t contain his laughter anymore and it bellowed out of him with a snort. “Oh man, she’s got your number!” He exclaimed.

“Bah!” James responded, sliding past to set the bags he was holding down and giving his aching arms a break. “Must be the kid El talked about. But I thought… hm. I’ll have to ask her about it tomorrow. You think she sees magic?”

“Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing.” Anesh said. “We could try finding their room and asking whoever she’s traveling with.”

“El said it was the kid and a mom, so yeah.” James nodded. “But for now, I am going to take a shower that lasts between one and two hours, and then I’m going to revel in the feeling of having wifi again.”

“No, you’re going to go into the bathroom, turn the shower on, and get distracted sitting and reading Reddit on your phone looking for mentions of us for an hour.” Anesh corrected him. “Which is why I’m using the bathroom first.”

“I love you, and feel incredibly persecuted right now.” James grumped, folding his arms and throwing himself onto one of the beds.

_____

Karen sat in her office, doing her best impression of someone who was focused on her work, and not at all interested in what the *hell* her daughter was thinking running off to *Australia* of all places, and when…! Karen set aside the pen she realized she was threatening to snap in half, and calmly tapped the world’s most useful object to the stack of papers in front of her to reorganize them. She took a deep breath.

All family issues aside, Karen actually was having a frustrating evening. The problem, as so many problems eventually looped back around to, was money. And while she wasn’t nearly as eager to shatter the worldly systems of finance as James was, she did have to admit that keeping the budget for this place was a challenge she could perhaps do without.

Her attention had been split a lot harder toward the accounting side of things, since any attempts at recovery had largely gone nowhere. And while the decoding of Status Quo’s documentation continued, and would eventually, hopefully, come up with something useful, Karen just wasn’t part of that project anymore. No, these days, she left the missing persons searches to the growing expertise of Response and their increasing control over mind linked scout drone swarms, and instead just tried to keep the power on and the parking lot intact.

The thing that was killing her was, ever since she’d found out that the Order had access to a *duplication machine*, Karen had assumed that they could solve every financial problem they’d ever have. Then, when James and Anesh and the others who controlled what went into the machine and how the output got used *didn’t* solve those problems, she wrote long, *long* reports on high-value-low-volume materials they could be copying, to stabilize their situation long term. She’d missed something, though, while she was busy being angry they weren’t creating chunks of platinum. Which was that the duplications were very limited, and what they chose to duplicate was, in fact, very intentional.

Practical things. Safety and knowledge for their members. Improvements to their properties that helped everyone. Immune boosters, muscle growth enhancers, the *cure for cancer*. James had self-mockingly informed her that when they’d started, they’d duplicated *bullets*, and Karen didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or try to strangle him. Now, though, they replicated telepads, and used them to fuel the most rapid emergency response unit possible.

It was very frustrating to work with exceptionally smart people who had just slightly different priorities. Because it was hard to argue that they should cancel a print run of forty six of the orbs that made a human immune to cancer forever, in favor of… what, printing a few bricks of gold? What did *gold* matter, in the face of that?

Also Karen had been informed that the Lair had a vein of gold. Specifically, lodes of the stuff, formed in sizes well beyond what was normal. Karen had checked. It seemed as if someone had looked at what a standard native metal deposit of gold would look like, saw that it had a lot of quartz and pyrite in there, and just shrugged and replaced all that extra stuff with *more gold*. It was preposterous, it was *quite* extensive, no one really minded the noise of drilling into the growing tunnel, and Karen refused to rely on it.

It was, she knew in her gut, going to run out. It would help, absolutely. It *was helping*. The undoubtedly and perfectly understandably suspicious smelter that Karen had contracted to dispose of the ‘waste’ silver from the cooler caves could handle gold just as well. Though it being unregistered and in such large quantities would become suspicious to other parties in short order, and he advised her to look into distributing who she sold to, even if only because he couldn’t keep liquid assets available to soak too much more.

They were solvent for six months out. More, if the FBI continued to uncover problems. Less if James decided to build a moon base again and Karen honestly couldn’t tell him that they couldn’t afford the materials. But they were still adding new people, and budgeting more and more for everyone’s different projects and training that they didn’t have easy access to orbs for.

The totem experiments were promising, though. Karen had asked their unwitting new architects to figure out if they could make a ‘structure’ out of valuable materials that could be easily dismantled, but still register as walls and floor to the orange totems that could duplicate buildings but not, it seemed, furniture, orbs, people, or anything even remotely not nailed down.

There was also the business software the first generation of chips had finished growing, the digital seeds and their carefully balanced inputs cracking open to reveal highly specialized tools that a good management team would find invaluable. At least, that was the sales pitch. It wasn’t even a lie; the tools were things the Order had made for itself, to direct their energetic chaos as effectively as possible. And while it was a little strange having to tell a program when you *liked* to sleep, and also when you *felt best having slept*, as if those were different things, Karen couldn’t deny that their scheduling application was eerily on point when it came to assigning knights and aspirants to groups.

Where the sales pitch ran into reality was a problem. For one thing, a lot of elements like scheduling had become harshly simplified with the pandemic for a lot of companies. And for larger corporations, they used in-house software that didn’t work very well, and didn’t care. For another, it was simply very hard to justify the expense of a piece of software to a company that wasn’t actively shopping. And it only took a few attempts before Karen and her assistants had come to the joint conclusion that sales calls were shit and no one should ever have to work a job that involved taking or making calls all day, and had just hired a local freelancer to make a professional website that was easily searchable and could accept credit cards for product keys.

The games that a few people had set to growing, mostly the high school students and also James when he thought no one was looking, were still germinating. Karen was reasonably sure that most of those wouldn’t make it to a ‘finished product’ stage, as they clearly were going to need more input data than more utilitarian tools. But she’d set them up with a developer account on Steam anyway, in case they wanted to take one to market.

Overall, it wasn’t an income stream like she’d been hoping for. Though it did bring up an interesting thought. Why not sell the chips directly? They weren’t personally empowering magic, like the orbs or books were. They could obviously be abused, but Karen wasn’t stupid. Even the simple efficiency programs and office tools they were offering could be abused. Any increase in the efficacy of an evil system resulted in ‘more evil’. She didn’t need a degree and twenty years of work experience to know *that* math.

The thought took her down an interesting track though. The silver was an excellent steady source of renewable income, because the dungeon kept resetting. What other resource extraction could they capitalize on that would maybe have more direct benefit, without being overly challenging?

The printer ink ocean was right out. There were a *number* of old notes from Alanna, and they all ignored the challenge of building a pipeline, factory, and shipping network. No. Karen actually bothered to give that idea a stern frown. It didn’t even account for the thorned whale creatures that lived in that particularly viscous sea.

Food was unreliable, the actual building materials were usually mundane and not especially useful, computer parts were clearly fantastic for when the two boys had been starting out, but couldn’t sustain an actual organization like this. Also there was the eternal risk one of them would be magical in a way that was truly dangerous.

The Office, it seemed, would need deeper exploration to truly figure out if there was anything in there worth going back for over and over, like with the caves.

But Officium Mundi wasn’t the only dungeon they knew of, was it? Karen had no interest in pillaging the attic; she knew what it was too well, and didn’t wish it any harm. But the sewer? Now *there* was an idea.

Many of the world’s most useful medicines and chemicals were derived from plants or fungi that were, at first glance, horribly lethal. Not from the actual glance, that was a dungeon thing, not a reality thing. But they were fatal to smell, to taste, to touch wrong. And even beyond that, the discovery of new species of biological life pushed human science forward one more step.

Mushrooms and spores, insects, liquids that defied normal physics… maybe they could leave that last one alone for now. But here, perhaps, there was a chance to contribute to human progress, and collect a finder’s fee in the process.

She started looking into how one would go about capitalizing on discovering a new and hostile species of mold. Then she purchased a few hundred sample vials online, and began formatting another list of delver equipment.

There was a delve scheduled for Friday, three days from now. She’d talk to some people before then to make sure. And then, all things working out, maybe they could find something that would be a lot more reproducible than the anti-cancer purples.

_____

Alanna was headed west.

She’d started out strong; leaving Florida by the first highway she ran across and making good time up to Atlanta. Atlanta was not a city that Alanna felt comfortable in, though and she’d left before really making it into the city proper. Just kind of skipped along the sprawl of suburbs, burning the last of her money on a full tank of gas before passing by an continuing northeast toward Jacksonville and the east coast.

She had no idea what she was looking for. She just had this idea that she’d know it when she saw it. Or when she was close enough, hopefully.

Alanna picked up a few odd jobs along the way, leveraging a seemingly unceasing stamina and upper body strength into forty bucks here, sixty bucks there, in helping people move furniture or shovel gravel. More than a few times, she was pretty sure that the pitying grandmothers using her for yard work were more interested in giving themselves an excuse to shove some cash and cookies into her hands than anything else. But Alanna wasn’t, as near as she could tell, the kind of person who accepted charity when she didn’t have to. And god *damn* if she didn’t leave that old woman’s yard looking more beautiful than it had in decades.

The cash got turned into gas. For supplies, every now and then Alanna would just rob a Wal Mart. She’d thought she’d feel bad about it, but despite having a cultural understand that shoplifting was wrong, it didn’t ping any sense of guilt that she could detect. Maybe it was the scale. It wasn’t like Alanna was stealing a couple candy bars or something. No, she had bigger aspirations than that.

There was a voice in the back of her head that reminded her that a clipboard and a marked container was, along with one of those green vests, basically tactical invisibility for social situations. No one would question the person who was selecting what *must* be defective produce and removing it, or carrying an entire pallet of bottled water away. Walk like you were supposed to be there, and take the back employee exit, and basically no one was interested in stopping you. Hell, the employees always seemed so *tired*, they probably wouldn’t have stopped her anyway.

At a certain point, after one particular odd job that wasn’t crime based, Alanna made the bizarre realization that her wallet was bigger on the inside. She’d stared at it for an hour; not in confusion, but more hoping that it would help her uncover some clue in her memory. But just like with her inability to overheat or her power to sense emotions, it didn’t do much aside from be a highly useful tool to an aspiring master thief. She could fit a ton of granola bars in there. And granola bars didn’t care if they were broken in half by the wallet’s fold.

So instead, she went searching for memories elsewhere. Driving on.

And at a certain point, Alanna realized she was headed west.

She didn’t know when it had happened. She didn’t have a phone or a GPS of any kind. Instead she was navigating by a beat up atlas with a ripped cover that had been buried in the glove box of her truck. It was, almost certainly, a little out of date. But she still acknowledged, when she checked the signs around her, that even this shitty old atlas shouldn’t have gotten her lost on interstate forty.

Alanna went over options in her head. A wrong turn somewhere? Maybe. But how would she not have noticed? It had been over a day of constant driving. She’d stopped at a gas station or truck stop at least a few times, even a completely blind driver should have noticed that they weren’t moving toward their target *coastline*. Had she literally just zoned out and not paid attention?

No, she made the decision, folding the atlas up. Something else was going on. She was going west because she knew she was supposed to, somehow. Even if her plans didn’t, even if she couldn’t think it herself. She knew.

Alanna tossed the atlas back into the cluttered passenger seat, and stepped off the gravel shoulder where she’d pulled over. There were no cars out, it was one AM on some empty stretch of wilderness highway. She was in more danger of being hit by a rogue deer than a vehicle. And she’d made a choice.

Wherever she was going, there was a road nearby. Roads touched everywhere in this part of the country, Alanna had noticed, after getting once in an old logging town that stubbornly refused to die. The interstates were these massive arteries, sometimes moving millions of cars a minute, sometimes quiet empties like now. But off of them, highways and byways and surface streets spread like the fingers of some old asphalt god. The reached to cities, towns, homes, farms, abandoned mining facilities, old historical sites, and singular ranches in the middle of nowhere.

Wherever her heart told her she needed to go, there’d be a road to get there.

She got back in the car and turned the key, sparking the old coughing engine to life.

Alanna was heading west.

_____

“What can we expect?” James asked in a soft voice that still carried over the low mechanical hum of the two engines.

Their car was pulled over behind El’s mechanically complete abomination, currently looking like a perfectly normal if slightly scuffed up Mazda, on the side of a freeway under the one of the last streetlights for a while. It was eighty nine degrees out. There was no shade to hide in, as the sun was currently down and the sky was dark. Because it was two AM, and apparently summer temperatures had stopped playing by the rules of logic.

El was struggling to get a bandolier to stop getting tangled in her hair. She’d cut it short for almost this exact reason, and yet it was continuing to annoy her. The slots on the bandolier were filled with neat rows of red and copper shotgun shells, ready to go for the break action double barrel she had flagrantly illegally displayed in her passenger seat. In contrast, James and Anesh were already set to go, the parts of their armor they could comfortably wear while driving on, their weapons cleaned, checked, and good to go. They’d had a lot more practice, though.

She looked up at the question, and clicked her tongue with a grimace. “I actually don’t know if I should tell you?” El half questioned herself.

“Why though.” James spread his arms. “We are *right here*. You can’t just tell us nothing.”

“It’s… okay, how do you get into the Office?” El asked.

“A door.” James said.

El rolled her eyes at him, the motion so exaggerated that he wouldn’t have missed it even if they weren’t standing in a puddle of orange light. “Cool.” Her sarcasm washed over them. “That’s not how this works.”

James sighed. “Is this gonna be weird?” He asked. “Is the concept of using a door just native to my state?”

“It is weird. Shut up.” El bit back. Then she took a breath, and in a storyteller’s voice, explained. “There’s a feeling that you get when you’re running away from everything.” She said, staring up at the fraction of the moon hanging over the horizon behind them, a white wedge over a field of glimmering lights from a distant city. “A feeling where you don’t know exactly where you’re going, but you’re excited to be moving. You could probably give it a name, like the call of adventure or something like that, but don’t. This isn’t the kind of thing where a name helps, where words really help. This isn’t your kind of art.” She glanced back at James and Anesh, who were giving her solemn looks. “You get into the Road by not thinking about what’s behind you, or what’s ahead. You get there by just being a traveller.” She cracked a smile. “And, you know, *here*, at 2 AM on a warm night. Gotta be a warm night, always.” El told them with a raised finger.

“It’s a pretty damn warm night.” James agreed.

“So, yeah. I’m not great with this kinda stuff. But I don’t think I should tell you what’s in there. Or you’ll be looking forward to that, and not… being. Here.” El shrugged. “I think I can lead you in, but you’ve gotta be at least a little lined up right with the door. As for what’s over there… I mean, it’s a road. And some monsters and stuff. I’ll show you when we make it.”

James nodded. “Got it.” He said, cracking the bones in his neck as he rolled his head from side to side.

Tapping his foot on the ground, Anesh agreed. “We’ve got a little practice just driving.” He smiled at his partner. “We can follow you.”

“Alright.” El said. “It’s about time.” She didn’t check her clock. Didn’t need to. As near as she knew, the door here opened when it *felt* like it was time, not according to any actual timekeeping device. “Let’s go.”

She didn’t waste any more time. It wasn’t with impatience or a hurried rush that she slid into her driver’s seat and started her engine. After all, if it was a hurry, El probably wouldn’t have taken the time to roll down the windows and fiddle with the bass on her radio. No, it was just that she felt like she wanted to get moving, so she did. No real need to waste time chatting any more, when she could instead be flying across the black ribbon of road stretching out into the night.

James and Anesh weren’t quite so elegant about it. Anesh fumbled his seatbelt the first couple times, and James couldn’t get his heart to stop pounding so loud he could hear it.

“You know.” James said, in the quiet interior of their car, lit up by the furious red of El’s tail lights. “I didn’t think I’d be this nervous when we started?”

Anesh scoffed a bit, finally getting his seatbelt in place. “You haven’t been looking forward to this?”

“Oh, I have. But, like… vacation, right? A week of driving and I felt *good*. And now I’m here, and it’s like… holy shit, I don’t feel like I actually know what I want.” James took a deep breath. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

“A number of legitimate mental health issues.” Anesh reminded him. “Hey. We don’t have to do this tonight.” He reassured James. “We’re under no pressure, huh? It’s not like we need to do some kind of anime training arc where we turn into improbably muscled versions of ourselves so we can come back and punch god, who has kidnapped our cat, or something.”

“What anime have you been watching without me?” James asked, giving Anesh a puzzled smile.

“It’s an aggregate thing.”

“Alright.” James laughed. “You know what? Maybe I’m overthinking this. Hey.” He reached over and held out a hand, which Anesh curved his arm around to take. They were wearing the padded gloves that fit into the plated armor shells on their arms, but the shared grip was still reassuring. “You wanna go on an adventure?” James asked.

“Yes,” And before James could say anything else, Anesh continued, “and this time I’ll be picking our soundtrack.”

“Noooo!” James let out an uproar of laughter as he pushed the car into gear, and rolled out onto the empty road to follow after El.

He and Anesh were still laughing together as the two cars cut through a line in the air, and slipped out of reality.