“God has cursed me for my hubris, and my work is never finished.” -Brian David Gilbert-
_____
“This place has changed.” Alanna commented as they pulled into the parking lot of a run down convenience store across the street from the high school. James glanced over at her, waiting for more; he was pretty sure that she didn’t mean the cracked plastic light facade of the Plaid Pantry. “There’s fewer cars. Everyone is just a little more worried. And I see at least two plainclothes cops.” She casually arrowed her finger toward the two men pretending to be normal teachers, keeping her arm close to herself so it didn’t draw attention from anyone outside the car.
“Yeah.” James glanced in the backseat. “I’m surprised they reopened it at all. It’s… this place is just uncomfortable.”
“Lotta kids died.” Sarah said, normal enthusiasm dampened by the words as she held a duffel bag open for Frequency-Of-Sunlight. “No one really ever recovers from that. They should have done more. Moved the kids to other districts, covered costs, actually done more for therapy than getting one semi-mystical woman to cover the whole school. It’s… it’s *dumb* how the city dropped the ball.”
“Some of us died, too.” Frequency-Of-Sunlight added, as she curled up inside the duffle bag and shifted her weight to be as even as possible. “I miss my brother.”
“Hard to have fun in a place like that.” James said, shrugging to Alanna. “You ready to go?”
“Should we actually be doing this?” She asked. “Don’t the dungeons sort of mimic the mood of the place? Or am I over committing to something I heard a Research girl say?”
Leaning over the backseat, Sarah draped her arms around Alanna’s shoulders and gave her a series of rapid pats. “It’ll be fine. We’re here now, to cheer everything up!” She said with a determined smile. “Also the dungeon *sucked* to begin with, so it’s not like it could get that mu-“
“*Red light*!” Frequency-Of-Sunlight yelled at Sarah from the gap in the duffel bag.
“Yeah, holy shit, do not finish that sentence.” Alanna flicked the temporarily frozen Sarah on the nose as she cracked her door open and got out, stretching her legs on the parking lot pavement while the others followed.
James grinned as Sarah pitched forward into the Alanna-sized gap before scrambling out and hauling the camraconda sneaking spot with her. “Okay. Let’s go. Anesh and Deb should be waiting for us. Technically, we have permission to be here, but there’s no need to spook anyone more than before, so… let’s not waste time.”
They didn’t. A brisk walk across the school’s front driveway, to a double door that was at the bottom of a side ramp, was all it took to get them into the building. Normally the door would be locked, but Anesh was already there, having been let in by Lua before the main group had arrived. If any of the students spotted them, none of them said anything. But it was also late August, and the only kids here would be for summer clubs, remedial classes, or attempted graffiti. So the barren front parking lot was probably easier to ‘sneak’ through than it would be when they had to do this during the school year proper.
“Hey.” James greeted Anesh with a lithe kiss on the cheek as he led his group into the building. “How’s the Sewer doing?”
“So, to fill you in on what Lua shared; the dungeon has exactly this one entrance. But if left unattended for more than a week, it starts to send out small creatures. We’ve caught a few on camera - they’re the little rat things - and pretty much all they do is steal stuff or break things, then run back to the dungeon.” Anesh let out a sigh. “It was mostly by accident, but since we know it isn’t too bad after a week now, Reed’s asked us to ‘reset’ the place, then wait for it to do it again, so we can get repeat data.” Cracking his knuckles, Anesh led the rest of them around the corner and down the ramp that went too far under the building. “I think he’s gonna ask us to keep waiting, at some point, and I’m a *bit* bothered, because this is probably the one dungeon we shouldn’t be experimenting with, unless we can clear out the school.”
“Yeah, absolutely not.” Deb nodded to them as they approached from the bottom of the ramp. She was leaning against the wall, eyes never really leaving the battered blue metal security door set into the otherwise normal brick wall that the ramp ended at. “Hey guys.” She offered them a wave. “The school’s cop says hi, James.”
“Oh yeah, that guy!” James gave an appreciative nod. “I think we can probably recruit him, if we ask nicely.”
“Do we… is that a thing we’re doing now?” Sarah asked. “You have a noted dislike of the police. Wait, hang on, *I* have a noted dislike of the police! Everyone here has been shot at by the police at least once!”
James shook his head and made a tutting noise. “Yes, but if they join *us*, then they aren’t *the police* anymore. Keep up, slowpoke.”
The group didn’t waste much time, instead keeping up the light banter as they passed through the door and into a space out of a horror film. The lobby of the Akashic Sewer was the same kind of stained and rusted space it had always been; a couple flickering red lights casting a dark glow over sharp concrete walls and an uneven floor with a few sticky metal grates in it. They found a clear space here, and set to work inventorying what the dungeon had taken from them.
“Armor’s still good.” Anesh said, checking his duffel bag. “Staves are here too. Staves? Staffs?”
“Sticks.” James answered, taking the offered body plate and slipping it around his torso. “Ugh. The smell here is burrowing into my eyes.”
“Frequency’s here too.” Deb said, unzipping the bag that held the camraconda and giggling as her partner shot up to flick a serpentine kiss over her lips. “Arms, too. Maybe the place thinks of it as a prosthetic?” She pulled out the set of mechanical arms that Research had constructed for the camracondas, and helped Frequency-Of-Sunlight into the harness, tightening straps and adjusting for comfort before adding the plug to the connector the camraconda had affixed to the back of her neck. “Battery’s good for an hour and a half. Feel good?”
The set of manipulators unfolded from Frequency-Of-Sunlight’s back, four arms, all with two major joints for mobility, and a basic gripping tool on the end. This was still an early prototype that was being updated frequently as the engineers working on the project tried different styles. This one was trying to cover for the lack of actual stable lifting power with more flexibility. Frequency moved the arms a few times, before carefully reaching up and ruffling her girlfriend’s hair. “Yes.” She stated. “Sarah! Here!” The camraconda turned, offered and received a high five. “Hm. Needs work. But can feel them. Should test purples with them.” Frequency stated, as Deb helped her fit a transparent camera cover over her eye before seeing to her own goggles.
“That, or a book. Which I’m hoping we can get for you today.” James said, assisting Alanna into her armor before strapping on a filter mask. “Anything actually missing today?”
“Nope. Looks like it’s all here. Sample cases are secure, too.” Anesh confirmed, standing up and shouldering the bag, now with the two other bags emptied and packed into it. “Your glasses, too.” He handed a pair of dungeontech glasses from the Office to Alanna - one of the first sets they’d found, that let someone see in infrared. “Let’s get to it?”
The other five nodded, and together, they moved into formation and headed down the open hallway.
The yawning dark sewer tunnel greeted them like an irate ex. Immediately, the piping underfoot became a navigation issue, as the uneven tubes were sometimes slick with condensation. James and Alanna took point, and had small flashlights pointing forward in the webbing on their armor, while in the middle of their group, Frequency-Of-Sunlight carried two larger maglights in a pair of her hands, keeping them as steady as possible on the walls around them as she slithered.
Overhead, the ceiling closed in at odd times. The chaos of different sized pipes sometimes leading to large, almost organic looking bulges in the faux ceiling that required the human portion of the party to duck under them. As they moved, they had to navigate around the occasional steady drip of some bizarre liquid, or step carefully over a jagged rent in the floor below them.
“This place has changed too.” Alanna said. “Way more attention to detail. I hate it.” She stated with a stomp of her boot that eliminated a skittering fist sized green roach thing. A pathetic red spark jutted out of the corpse under the foot, and up into the palm of her hand.
“It’s getting better, I guess.” James muttered back. And then he paused as his voice echoed off the walls, and something scratched overhead in response. “Sst.” He hissed back at everyone, holding out an arm to Alanna.
The group waited, tensed up, as the scratching on the metal and ceramic pipes escalated and shifted, before suddenly a chunk of one of the pipes almost right overhead shattered outward. If James hadn’t insisted on masks and goggles for everyone, it might have been a problem. It might have been a *serious* problem, as a shard of ceramic stopped about a half inch from his eye, buried in the protective plastic.
The thing that dropped out of the gap was far less of a problem. A howling rat-shaped creature roughly the size of a small dog. It had wiry fur, and a gaping, sucking crater in its chest that glowed with a cherry red heat. It also silenced itself and froze midair as Frequency locked onto it.
Then Deb, mid panicked yell, nailed it in the neck with a metal pole, slamming it into the wall where Alanna landed a second hit on it with her own staff, smashing its skull in. A spray of red, both blood and sparks, jutting out of it and painting the pipes, and hands, of the participants.
“Ow.” James said, plucking the ceramic shard out of the eyes of his goggles.
“Yup!” Alanna declared vehemently. “Still hate this place!” She glanced over at Deb, who was bent half over, clutching her chest and panting as the adrenaline wore off. “You alright? Need a minute?”
“I’m good.” The other woman replied. “This isn’t something I do often.”
“You’re in the Office every week.” Anesh spoke quietly, no one seeing his raised eyebrow in the dark of the surrounding pipes.
Deb’s glare was highlighted by one of the flashlights Frequency was carrying, the thin whir of motors as she moved her adapted arms around drifting through the air near them. “Nothing in the office has *ichor*, Anesh.” Deb gasped out. “Or *any of that*.” She jabbed her staff toward the corpse.
“I mean…”
“Don’t ruin it for her.” Alanna cut James off. “We ready to keep moving?”
They were, and they did. Making decent time considering the poor footing and number of roaches they had to keep smashing. It wasn’t long before they came across something out of the ordinary. The pipes in front of them splayed out, and if they hadn’t had lights on them, they might have not noticed until it was too late.
The pipes, both above and below, took sudden ninety degree angle turns. The ceiling was suddenly so high overhead they may as well have been outside, and the floor… well, the floor was gone. In front of them was a thirty foot wide pit, with pipes like organic vines making a thin rim of walkway around the edge, and just an empty hole in the center of the room.
Frequency-Of-Sunlgiht pivoted her flashlights down toward the empty space, and was rewarded with dots of light playing off the walls, but when she angled them deeper, there was just… nothing.
“Bottomless pit.” James commented, like this was something he saw every day. “Neat.” His voice was dryer than chalk dust.
“This is new.” Alanna said, standing next to him. “You didn’t warn me about this!”
“We haven’t seen this before.” Anesh said. “The dungeon is growing. Won’t be long before it’s more than just a straight line to the exit.” He shook his head. “Gentrification gets everyone, I guess.”
“Snark is James’ role.” Frequency told him. “Look. Liquid.” She tilted a manipulator, and pointed a flashlight toward the middle of the pit. Sure enough, there was a thin streamer of some kind of fluid cascading down. The bottom, if there was one, so far away it wasn’t making a sound.
Anesh had already unzipped his bag when Deb spoke up. “I know you wanted to take samples. But, uh… how?” She inched out toward the ledge, holding onto the slick pipes around the walls as best she could. “That’s gotta be ten feet out. We don’t have ten foot long sticks.”
“Damn, my D&D experience should have prepared me for this!” James quipped.
“Hmm…” Anesh considered. “We could get Frequency to freeze a pole midway over the…”
“Absolutely not.” The camraconda spoke up. “No. Bad.”
“Yeah, I’m with her.” James agreed. “There’ll be other strange fluids. Come on, let’s get going. We still have to skirt this thing.” He sighed, looking out over the pit. “Is this a bad time to say I’m terrified of heights?”
“Everyone is terrified of heights.” Deb muttered. “Everyone who says they aren’t is terrified of telling the truth.”
“I’m gonna pretend that’s a medical diagnosis of humanity. Alright, I’ll go first. Catch me if I fall.” James rolled his shoulder, adjusting the position of his armor slightly before he took a cautious step. And then another. He mostly just clung to the wall, didn’t look behind him, and shuffled his feet with as little lifting as possible.
The pipes under his feet weren’t exactly wet, but they were thin, and there were only two or three, none of them easy to stand on. Behind him, he heard movement start as the others began to follow, single file, but James didn’t look back. Just kept his eyes forward, and kept moving.
Until he hit the problem.
“Hey!” He called back, stopping as his fingers found something strange in the harsh glow of his flashlight. “Door here!”
“Don’t fucking open it!” Anesh yelled from behind him.
“I *know that*” James replied. “I just wanted to warn everyone!” He slid past the door, doing his best to not touch the handle, which still sensed his passing and offered him a glittering red ‘ten’, the cost in stolen life force to pass. The door was a smooth metal, almost clean compared to everything else down here.
He was another five feet past when the scream came from overhead. Something, something *his* size, shot down past him, leaving a terrifyingly unstable trail of disturbed air behind it. James didn’t see what it was, but he heard Deb and Anesh yelling behind him, and more importantly, he heard the screeched word of whatever had just dive bombed him.
“Trespasser!” It squaked at him in a voice that sounded like it hurt just to use.
There was a muffled thump, and then everything was quiet again. “Missed it!” Alanna called out.
“I opened the door!” Anesh’s voice was less panicked than it would have been if the door had been full of problems, so James relaxed a bit. “I’m gonna fall back to the back, clean this one out. It’s just a closet, nothing moving!”
James inched his foot forward, desperately trying to avoid looking over his shoulder, and mostly failing. He was ten feet from the tunnel’s exit, not quiet exactly on the other side as the entrance. And all he had to do was not fall. Straining his ears for any sound of something else falling from the sky at him, he crept forward bit by bit, until finally, his hands met only air and he pitched himself forward into the empty tunnel.
“Oh thank god, *ground*.” He sighed, and started to relax, until the dungeon reminded him of where he was and an inhuman arm, dripping clear slime and pretending to be part of the pipes of the wall, unfolded one of its dozen joints and tried to wrap long, dangerous fingers around his throat.
James’ staff clattered to the ground as he brought his hands up to catch the thing; his still-not-fully-healed fingers held askew as he tried to keep them away from anything that was going on here. He kept himself from freaking out, despite not being able to let go or risk letting this thing kill him. Instead, he just matched his strength to it, and held on without protest.
Right up until Alanna slid around the edge of the pit, saw what was going on, and started snapping emaciated elbows with her own staff. Going down the line until the arm stopped moving, and a flow of red poured into her palm.
“You take me to the nicest places.” She told James as she helped him up. “Hey, is my memory still effed up, or have we never actually gone on a date that didn’t involve punching?”
“We went out for a nice coffee that one time.” James said, trying and failing to not sound defensive. “Yeah, that’s kind of bad. Wanna go on a date?” He asked.
“You’re adorable.” Alanna said, moving him aside to make room for Deb and Frequency, the nurse helping her camraconda friend stay stable on the ledge. “And yes, but we should invite Anesh.”
“Invite me where?” Anesh asked,
“We’ll tell you later. Ready to keep going?” James asked.
“Yeah. Did this place get bigger?” Deb asked.
“Looks like.” James looked down the tunnel ahead of them. “How’d the room go?” He asked Anesh.
“Fourteen green bits.” Anesh said. “Enough for at least one book. Got lucky.”
James sighed, and regretted it as the smell refreshed itself in his nose. Even through the mask, it was like rotten eggs and stale piss was just the *least* offensive atmosphere down here. “Alright. Let’s go, and try not to tire ourselves out. We still have a job to do here.”
So they kept moving. Dealing with the occasional suicidal rat, ignoring any doors that Alanna couldn’t peek through with the infrared glasses she’d brought, and generally just trying to avoid touching anything.
Once, Sarah felt like something fell into her hair, and they spent about ten minutes making sure there weren’t brain worms trying to burrow into her skull or something. It was, probably, a false alarm. But no one wanted to screw around here.
A few times, Anesh stopped them to fill sample vials with the liquids from the pipes where there were breaches he could get to. The strange blue goo that was easy to spot by its glow, the alarmingly radioactive green sludge, and at one point, a substance leaking out of the end of a pipe hanging overhead that appeared to be a perfect facsimile of sloppy joe meat. All of them, *especially* the last one, went into sealable lead cases. Just in case.
Twice they opened doors to rooms they could look into, and confirm were empty. Anesh and Sarah answered the violent questions on the walls, and harvested the sparks.
When they came to a familiar dirt floor, air full of spores and an actual choice in which direction to go, Sarah filled Alanna in on the changes the dungeon was making here while Anesh took another sample, and the rest of them stood guard. There didn’t seem to be anything hostile here, *yet*, but no sense taking chances.
And in that weird soil and mushroom cavern, just off to the side from the exit point where it turned back into a concrete floored tunnel, the group spotted a carved out space where the floor had been turned into a moat of that blue goo, and in the center of it, a thin platform with a pedestal on it sat.
“Alright, so, what does that *do*?” Alanna asked.
“We didn’t poke it last time.” James said, staring at it. “It looks like a trap.”
“I want to poke it.” Alanna stated, nodding to herself.
“Well, we do have six people here.” Sarah said, elbowing James in the armor. “Should be safe-ish?”
“I honestly have no idea why you’d think that. But you know what? Go for it.” James adjusted his grip on his weapon, and turned to the others. “Frequency, eye on Alanna please. Deb, Anesh, take that side. Sarah and I will watch the exit. If anything comes out of the dirt, someone yell, if anything comes from past that weird trap, *you* yell Alanna.” James waited as they got into position, Sarah standing next to him with an eager bounce. “Curious about this too, eh?” He asked, and she just gave a happy nod. “Alright. Hit it, Alanna. Please don’t fall in.”
Before he’d finished the last sentence, Alanna had taken three large steps and leapt across the small moat, landing nearly perfectly on the dirt pillar in the middle of it. Stabilizing herself slightly, she pressed a gloved hand down into the misshapen depression on the pedestal.
James risked a glance over his shoulder at her, and caught the tail end of a light show. A small swarm of purple sparkles, dancing in the air, before vacuuming into Alanna’s hand.
And then, nothing happened.
“Nothing happened!” Alanna called out. “Just purple sparks. What are those even for?” She asked, turning, and shoving off in a standing leap to fling herself back over to solid ground.
“We’ve never seen those before.” Anesh admitted. “So that’s kind of cool. If that actually wasn’t a trap, we should be on the lookout for that now.” He sighed. “Assuming we don’t figure out how to just bury this place.”
“This place is useful.” James reminded him.
“This place is vile.” Deb added.
“Vile and useful.” Anesh admitted. “Let’s keep moving. We should be almost there, unless the pattern is really getting shaken up.”
The group reformed their marching positions, and moved on. They didn’t talk much, everyone getting quieter as they approached their destination. The concrete floor, now smooth and free of pipes, echoed the steps of their heavy boots, and the air cleared up a little bit, the scent of rot fading slightly.
When they could see the orange firelight ahead of them, the arena that guarded the exit, they stopped. Gear that wouldn’t help in the fight, like Alanna’s glasses and Frequency-Of-Sunlight’s arms, were stowed back in the bag. A pair of thermoses were brought out, and reflex enhancing coffee was shared around with all of them. One final check of the armor was done. And one final personal check, too.
“You sure about this?” Alanna asked James.
“Yeah.” He answered, instantly. “Because you were right when we talked earlier. I’ve been… looking at this wrong.”
“Okay.” She said, giving him a side hug as best as they could while armored up. “Just… remember I could be wrong, too, okay?”
“Well, let’s go find out.” He said. And stepped forward into the ratroach court.
As always, the space felt more like a basketball court than a bloody arena. Somehow. The wire fence around the edge, the ‘scoreboard’ overhead that was really just a collection of endlessly burning torches - James made a mental note to steal some of those - and as always, the ratroaches. A hundred or more in the stands, drawn from *somewhere*; they never seemed to appear in the dungeon itself. All of them mismatched, with jutting extra limbs, scabs and matted fur, and eyes that oozed infected pus. They screamed as the party entered, a single lusting cry for blood, for violence.
And in the court itself, on the rough gravel, three ratroaches stood waiting for them.
“You are baaaaak!” The one in the middle let out a screeching laugh. She towered over the other two now, changed again since the last time James had seen her. She was almost seven feet tall now, fur and chitin almost seamlessly blended together. The lines of the infection at the joining points were a pale pink, almost a color accent in spiral swirls, rather than a poison red. Her third arm was now more aligned, positioned under her primary right arm, and looking strong enough to support rather than just get in the way. The two ratroaches to her sides had similarly changed, but they eyed the approaching humans and camraconda with somewhat less violent relish; one of them was wider, with a fourth and fifth thick arm jutting from its back, while the other seemed to have narrowed in frame, grown thicker dark shell and an extra joint in its legs. “I have whaited!” She yelled. “Do yhu come to taaalk again?”
“So, here’s the thing.” Alanna said, toeing the line of the bloodied gravel court as the others fell into a wedge position around her. “James thinks he’s helping you when he does that. And he’s probably not wrong. He’s a good guy, but he misses things sometimes, you know? He sees you people down here, and he thinks to himself ‘Oh, such a tragedy!’” Alanna swooned, putting the back of a gloved hand to her forehead. “‘I must broaden their horizons, break their chains, offer them a true choice!’ And, okay, sure. Good job James. You’ve offered a choice to something that doesn’t understand what choices are. Cool.”
“I don’t sound like that.” James grumbled next to her. “But also yeeeah, I do that.”
The ratroach in the center of the field hissed at her, a wet sound that flung droplets of blue spittle out from her cracked maw. Alanna ignored it, shaking out the muscles of her calves. “Here’s the thing.” She said again. “James wants to treat you like peers. And you aren’t. How old are you? A year? Two? No. He looked, and saw people his own size, with language dripped into their heads that they don’t fully understand, and he decided you were making poor choices. And what everyone missed? Is that you are *children*.” Alanna’s voice had no warmth in it anymore. It was iron, and it was simmering anger. Not toward the ratroaches, the back two of whom had paused, and were sharing glances with each other, but toward this *place*. This nightmare sewer that had created kids, and forced them into this non-life. “You’re just kids.” She whispered, mostly to herself. “Scared, trapped, *abused*, kids. And you don’t look at a victim of child abuse and *ask them if they want to stop being abused*.” Alanna snarled.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“I ahm not a *victim*!” The ratroach in the middle screamed back. “I, I, I… I fight! I kill! I worship happily! Hyu think hy I am too *new* to be who I am! But I khhham *complete*!” She shifted her feet, drawing furrows in the gravel floor, and hefted the spear in her right arms, a wicked looking spike of shaved rusted iron.
“Hey.” James said, interrupting. The ratroach pivoted her head, and fixed her multiple eyes on him. “You can be as much of a monster as you want. But she wasn’t talking to you.”
And then, the ratroach froze, as Frequency-Of-Sunlight *also* locked her gaze on the creature.
The other two tensed up instantly, as James stepped forward, the gravel crunching under his feet.
There was something *wrong* with the vast majority of the ratroaches here. With most of the life forms, really. In a way, they reminded James of the feral staplers in Officium Mundi; they weren’t really made to be people, and even if the potential was there, it was a long road between your average freshly minted strider, and someone like Rufus. With enough time, enough effort, a random monster could eventually become a person. But it did take time, and they didn’t stop trying to kill you between then and now. And here, in the Akashic Sewer, the issue was amplified a hundredfold. The ratroaches were made, *designed*, to be violent. To be angry. To be *in pain*, all the time, and to worship the dungeon that made them like a god.
James suspected that there was no amount of time that would actually turn a random ratroach into a person. Even a shitty person, that he could at least politely ignore from a distance.
But, beyond the one or two hundred random mashed together ratroaches in this room, there were a few that *had* changed. That had pushed past what they were, somehow. Whether it was through dungeon given gifts, or some strange magic down here, or just a natural part of their life cycle. They’d changed. And of the three, he’d only made the offer to one of them, and that one had been the one trying to actively murder him.
“I’ve been ignoring you two.” He said to the vanguard ratroaches. “Even though you’ve both been growing. I can see it, in your eyes. And, you know, the rest of you.” James paused, as the two ratroaches moved around him, like they were planning to flank him. Behind him, his friends stayed back, but were ready to move if needed. “Alanna’s mostly right.” He said. “But I still think asking is important. So I’m going to ask.” He glanced to his side and met the eyes of the larger ratroach, the one with too many arms. “Would you like to leave? You don’t need to let her turn you into a weapon. You can go, right now. We have somewhere safe, and somewhere a hell of a lot more free than here.”
The ratroach stopped, like it was thinking about it. Then it did something James hadn’t actually been expecting. It walked around behind the white one, and settled two of its three-digit hands onto the shoulder of the other one. The two of them staring at each other for a second, before turning back toward James and the others.
The smaller one opened its mouth, and pointed at its throat, only soft wordless whines coming out.
“Can fix that.” Frequency-Of-Sunlight said. “They are good at fixing things.”
“I think we can also fix a lot of the pain you’re probably in.” Deb added, though she didn’t look at them, she was busy scanning the teeming crowd around the chain link fence. The other ratroaches starting to shift, their cheers having gone silent as they watched, slowly getting more agitated. “Guys, we might need to move soon.” She said quietly to the others near her, tightening her hands on her staff.
Perhaps also sensing the way the less upgraded ratroaches around them were turning hostile, the two still cautiously watching James linked two of their hands together. Their other hands dropping weapons to the floor with a scrape of metal on rock. And then, together, they nodded.
“I had really hoped you’d say that.” James gave them a relieved smile. Then he turned just enough to call over his shoulder. “Deb! Telepad!” The young woman was already moving, the destination of the containment rooms in the basement of the Lair having already been written in. It wouldn’t be a permanent home, but it would be somewhere they could quarantine the two until they were sure it was safe.
Then, with a wet hiss, the shorter one lunged forward toward James. If he hadn’t been on high alert, dosed up with magical coffee, and also just a heavily modified human, the motion might have surprised him. But in his current state, James just pivoted, and did what the ratroach was planning to do himself, and casually plucked the thrown knife out of the air.
The ratroach in the stands that had thrown it screamed at James. The ratroaches around him screamed at the rest of them. They were here to witness blood, violence, and death. Not this.
“Deb!”
“On it!” Deb slipped past James, follows by Sarah, and the two offered their hands to the ratroaches, one a little nervously and one with a beaming grin. “Let’s go!” She said. The two of them gave the girls a curious look, but took the offered hands all the same. Possibly the first time any of their species had ever done so. Then Deb tore the page, and they were gone.
“Now, for *you*,” James turned on the white ratroach, still frozen in the middle of the court, “well shit. I mean, Alanna’s not wrong. You’re just a kid. But you’re not a victim, are you? And there’s only so many chances on offer. So we’re…”
A pair of ratroaches jumped the fence, and sprinted toward James. Anesh caught one of them and Alanna hit the other, driving the unthinking creatures into the ground with sprays of blood
“James! Monologue time is over!” Anesh called, as more ratroaches started scrambling over each other to climb the chain link. He sprinted for the bank of damaged lockers, intent on using the green sparks he’d collected, while James and Alanna moved to flank Frequency-Of-Sunlight as the camraconda started rotating around the most dangerous foe on the field, heading toward the other side of the court and the exit door waiting for them there.
“Well, it’s been fun!” James yelled, slapping a thrown spear out of the air with his own staff. “Sorry you didn’t get a real fight!” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the increasing screamed volume. Ratroaches tumbling to the ground, breaking their own limbs and opening cuts in their skin in their rush to try to break Frequency’s line of sight. “Anyone else want a free ride out of here?” He yelled, before one of them dove to try to knife the camraconda he was blocking for. “No? Alright, fuck off!” James wasn’t interested in playing fair anymore, and he took the legs out from under a charging creature before whipping his staff around to crunch into another one’s midsection with a wet snap, a trio of purple orbs that boosted his speed in some way stacking to let him hit way harder than he should have. “Anesh!?” He shouted.
“All good!” Anesh ran back toward them, ducking just enough that when Alanna flung her staff in a spinning motion over his head, it took out the ratroach trying to grab him. “Go!”
“Go faster!” Frequency-Of-Sunlight added, as a dozen ratroaches interposed themselves between her and the white one, their leader letting out a zealot’s bellow of rage and frustration.
James turned and shoved the security door’s bar, noticing with some concern that it drained fifty red sparks out of him to do so, and held it open for the others.
Then they were back in the high school. The door clicked shut behind them, and the only noise left was hissing panting through the filter masks, and James giving a nervous laugh as the adrenaline wore off.
“Okay.” He said. “Yeah. Good call.”
“Still think we should have taken Gretchen too.” Alanna said. “But I get why that might be a bad idea.”
“...Mean Girls?” James asked.
“Yeah.”
Anesh pulled his mask off, and took a steadying breath. “I’ve never seen that movie.” He said. “Is it good? You reference it a lot.”
James and Alanna traded a look. “We should watch Mean Girls.” James decided. “Maybe as some kind of date.”
“But first, let’s get back and check in with our new friends.” Alanna said.
“No, first, book!” Frequency-Of-Sunlight reminded them. “That one.” She stated, not indiciating which of the three books Anesh was holding she meant at all.
Anesh looked down at the stack of bound paper in his hand. “This one?” He asked, offering one to her.
“Good enough.” The camraconda agreed, taking it in her fangs and gently setting it on the floor before flipping it open. A second later, the book dusted away into nothing, and Frequency-Of-Sunlight looked up at them. “History!” She declared. “This will be easy! All history is new to me!”
“I love how enthusiastic about that you are.” James said with a smile. “Want any podcast recommendations?”
“James all your podcasts are really weird deep references to a million things.” Alanna reminded him. “Also can we get out of here? Standing around a school basement in body armor is making me feel weird.”
“Good call. Podcasts later.”
Frequency-Of-Sunlight started up the ramp before the others, trusting the faster humans to catch up. “Sounds like more of a threat than the dungeons.” She said, synthesized voice unable to truly mutter, but still doing a great impression of it.
_____
“How are you adjusting to things?” James asked Jeanne. The two of them were sitting in the dining space, James enjoying the constant flow of knights and aspirants as they shared a quick meal. Somewhere nearby, Ava had discovered that Anesh could change colors like a chameleon, and was busy trying to make that happen as often as possible. Possibly so she could steal the technique.
“It’s... a lot!” Jeanne said with a tired smile. “Not in a bad way! But… this place. These people are… really something else, James.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.” He agreed, looking down at the salad Nate had handed him. He could have sworn he’d asked for a sandwich. Was Nate trying to put him on a diet? James was pretty sure the chef didn’t have that authority. “But are you doing okay?”
“I don’t know.” Jeanne sighed. “It was… please don’t laugh, but it was fine when we were life or death, you know? When I had to adapt, or my daughter died, I could handle anything. But now we’re safe, and my brain just isn’t letting me catch up to the teleporting rescue teams or the snakes with camera faces, or *how much* magic you have here.” She looked at him with a sharp stare as she pointed up at the windows. “There’s sunlight coming through windows that are physically blocked off from the outside! That’s not normal!”
“Frankly, I’m kind of surprised you went with the small lighting quirk and not the multiple overlapping basements.” James admitted. “You seem to be taking it well, though.”
Jeanne sighed. “Ava loves it. That’s all that matters. She’s gone from looking forward to seeing her grandma to being sad she has to leave her new friends for a couple days.” She shook her head, but didn’t lose the smile. “She’s never been happier. I think she wants to trade me for Sarah as her mom.”
“Sarah would *not* make a good mom.” James chuckled. “Or… well, maybe she would, but I don’t think she’s in the market. Besides, she makes a better weird aunt.” He bit into a chunk of cucumber and spoke around the bite of food. “But how are *you* doing?”
“I…” Jeanne looked away. “I’m fine.”
“Wow, that was so obviously a lie even I noticed.” James said. “Spill.”
Jeanne looked down at her meal, like she was considering if she could time bites of food just so she wouldn’t have to speak. But then, decided against it, and talked. “I’m having nightmares.” She admitted. “Ava and I need to go home eventually. But… I’m having nightmares. I’m scared to go outside. How am I supposed to be anywhere but here? It’s weird, but it’s also probably the safest place on the planet, right?”
James shrugged. “We hope so. Probably not though.”
“But here is where I feel safe.” Jeanne said. “Or at least, where I can pretend there aren’t any monsters. We tried to go on vacation, and I nearly got my daughter *killed*. How am I supposed to let her out of my sight? Let her go to school, or leave her home while I go to work?” A trio of Order members a couple tables over burst out laughing at a joke, and Jeanne flinched at the noise. “I’m trying to hold it together, but there’s just too much, sometimes.”
“Have you talked to a therapist?” James asked quietly. “I’m not the best at it, but we have staff therapists. Sarah *is* a good listener if she has time. But Texture-Of-Barkdust, or Lua or Connie if you’d prefer a human face, are trained professionals.”
“I don’t need *therapy*.” Jeanne protested. “I just need… well, I don’t know what I need.”
In the back of the lunch room, a pair of alerts went off from a pair of knight’s phones. The human and camraconda pair leaving their lunch and rushing to the Response deployment, the dining area getting a bit louder as the people who noticed cheered them on. You could tell which of the two was new, because the cheering caused the camraconda to awkwardly duck her head, while the human part of the duo just smiled and moved past.
James waited for things to quiet down before answering. “Therapy isn’t a bad word.” He told Jeanne. “Especially for things like this. You’ve had your *memories* violated. That leaves painful holes that you need to explore. Ava too, honestly, though she might not have the same problems because of Hidden. I *still* talk to Connie every other week if I can. It’s not bad to get help, you know?”
“I.. you do?” Jeanne looked surprised. “I kind of assumed you were more of the standard macho hero type.”
James looked at her, then looked down at the Cowboy Bebop tee shirt he was wearing. Raised a hand to check and make sure he still had a two foot long ponytail. Looked back at Jeanne. “What about *any of me* makes you think I’m some kind of figure of masculinity?” He asked, incredulously.
“You get in a lot of fights?”
“I resolve half my fights by making friends with whatever is trying to kill me!” James protested. In his pocket, his own phone buzzed, and he checked the message he’d just gotten. “Look. Connie has some free time, since we’ve gotten the majority of the Townton survivors stabilized in new homes. Talk to her, please. I’ve gotta go.”
“Another emergency?”
“Uh… no, not really? Someone just accidentally spawned a very specific model of server in our basement, and Reed is asking for help moving it.” James cleared his throat. “So… probably okay?”
Jeanne stared at him. “You know, sometimes I think this place just has drugs in all the food.” She stated.
“Impossible. I’ve barely touched my salad and I’m sharing this hallucination.” James told her. “Also we *do* have drugs here, they’re just in the basement, and before you ask, *no*, obviously we’re not giving your daughter drugs. Give me *some* credit.”
“Go deal with your waiter problem and stop loitering.” Jeanne huffed at him. “And yes, yes, I’ll talk to a therapist. Tomorrow, though.”
“I’ve already messaged her to drop by and say hi.” James said, looking up from his phone. “Have fun. And server like a computer thing, not like waitstaff. Later!” He slid out from the bench he’d been sitting on, and pivoted around the camraconda who was getting practice with their mechanized set of arms as an actual waitstaff server. “Thanks Spire! Appreciate it!” He called back as he walked out of the dining room.
Always something to do around here. James was lucky Sarah had a proper sleep balance, because if she didn’t share naps with him, he wouldn’t have been able to keep his eyes open for the past three days.
_____
James and Alanna stood side by side, looking down over a field of carpet that blew like grass in the false wind of Officium Mundi’s massive air conditioner units. They were at the top of a tower, the kind of tower that was the only place they could find the magical coffee that ran their duplicator.
Behind them, Daniel yelped in pain as Anesh carefully wrapped a bandage around his ankle. “You knew what you were getting into!” Anesh admonished him. “Misadventure my ass…”
Alanna cracked a smile, not turning around. “You know, I kind of feel like the misadventure thing is a bit underrated. They’re never lethal, right?”
“I think they *could* be?” James said, leaning forward on the ledge of the hole in the tower to look down at a quill dog rustling through the grass. “It’s weird. I’ve actually got a map like Daniel’s now, but it’s not exactly alive. I want to actually go on the journey it offers sometime, maybe see if I can emperson it. Also it’s supposedly to a good burger joint. But it hasn’t told me if there’s any misadventure’s in the way. Maybe it’s… like… a mana cost of sorts?”
“Weird way to price things.” Alanna snorted. “Like, what does one sprained ankle get you?”
“Well, technically, I don’t think the boss fight counts as the misadventure.” James said, eyes flickering over to the dead paper pusher. “I’m actually pretty sure that’s just Daniel getting hit. This has come up before. With me.”
Alanna gave him a sharkish grin. “Did you get hit by something?”
“Can of soda.” James did not elaborate further.
“Alright, we’re good here.” Anesh said behind them. “Alanna, wanna help me search the tower?” He extended the offer, casually leaving James to pair off with Daniel. Anesh noticed James’ amused expression, and stuck his tongue out at him as he followed their girlfriend down one of the ramps. “If we’re lucky, we’ll get a good ten bags of coffee from this.” He said as they vanished down into the stacked cubicle tower.
James wandered over to where Daniel was busy testing his foot, and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry too much about it.” He said. “Anesh isn’t actually mad at you. And you’re still, like, the most valuable person for this dungeon, hands down.” He shrugged. “No pressure or anything.”
“I know, I know.” Daniel sighed. “It’s mostly fine, honestly. I like feeling useful, and Path likes going places, so this works out. It’s just…”
“You wish it weren’t so dangerous?”
“Huh? Oh, no. That’s fine.” Daniel brushed off James’ attempt to understand him, apparently oblivious to how much different his view on the dungeon was to just a year ago. “No, what’s bugging me is, why are we *here*?”
“Like… here, back in the carpet grasslands of Officium Mundi, one of the more threatening biomes we’ve found so far? Or here in this tower, full of magical coffee that powers our attempts to tell cancer to fuck off? Or… that’s all I’ve got.” James admitted.
“Just here, I guess? I don’t know why Pathfinder told me there was something here.” Daniel said.
“It’s a tower.” James stated. “We’re trying to map all of these.” He shook his head and blinked, trying to get his tired eyes to focus properly. “I kinda figured that’s why you led us here.”
“No, see, that’s the thing. Path is *still* telling me there’s something here. Specifically here. And it’s not the second projector, either.” Daniel looked over at the device that looked like it would be right at home in a normal middle school classroom; maybe a slightly newer model than the one they had in their home base tower that duplicated matter. They’d found instructions for a different ritual to make it work, and absolutely no information on what it did. They were in no hurry to test it today. That would be a job for Research, in the future. Daniel looked back and continued. “And she’s not talking to me, like a person. I’m just getting the background impression. Like there’s a problem and a target all at once, and it’s right here.”
James looked around. “We cleared the tower.” He said. “There’s nothing nearby, I can see that there’s, like, a few of the quills down there on the ground. But we aren’t about to be ambushed by something huge unless it’s invisible.” He hummed. “Weird.”
“Sorry, I know it’s hard to believe, but…”
“We’re in a magical infinite office. Chill.” James told him. “I believe you, I just don’t…”
Somewhere, maybe two floors of cubicle below them, a phone started ringing.
“Um…” Daniel looked at him with a worried expression. “That…”
James was already moving, sliding down the ramp, and trying to lock onto the exact position of the sound. From below him, he heard Anesh and Alanna also calling upward with similar sounds of surprise. But they’d gotten pretty far down, and James found the phone first.
It was sitting on a desk that had already had its drawers tossed open, buried in a lopsided cubicle in the middle of the tower’s floor, where the light didn’t penetrate much. The ringing guided James close to it, but it was the blinking red light that really highlighted it. The phone was one of those older multi-line corded office phones, that were basically everywhere in the nineties.
James only paused for a couple seconds to wait for everyone to get a little closer to him, before he answered it. “Hello?” He spoke down the line.
“The wheel turns.” A distorted young girls voice came through from the other end. “The crash is averted.”
James gave a small smile as he recognized the voice and speech pattern of the road dungeon, which they had collectively dubbed Route Horizon. “Yeah, thought it might be you.” He said. “Glad we could help. Hey, maybe, as a thank you, tone down how lethal you are?”
If the dungeon heard him, or cared, it gave no indication. “The sun dips on the horizon.” The girl that wasn’t a girl told him. “Too much fuel burned. Low on everything. Asleep at the wheel.” In his head, James made the connection the dungeon was trying to get across; it had done too much, and it was going to take some downtime. What that meant, he didn’t know, but it would be interesting to see what a sleeping dungeon was like.
The others found James all at once, Anesh and Alanna stepping aside to let Daniel limp into the cubicle next to James. James could see him coming, and could see why his partners let Daniel approach first; Pathfinder’s wavy orange Fata Morgana form was lighting the air around his shoulders. “James!” Daniel gasped out. “Can…” He just waved a hand around him.
“Hey,” James spoke down the phone, “your daughter wants to talk to you. Do you have a minute for that?”
There was a *pause*, and James could feel emotional ripples of shock and confusion from the other end, and then... annoyance. “This is a solo route.” The girl’s voice said, like it was trying to pretend to be a trucker. “Watch the lines. No tampering with the cargo. Ten four. Out.” And then, a click, and the line went dead.
“Uh…” James looked down at the silent phone in his hand, and then up at Pathfinder’s eager form. “She… it… hung up.” He said.
Pathfinder seemed to dim a bit, swirling around Daniel slightly. Daniel huffed a breath, and tilted his head to listen to his partner before looking back to James. “Dungeons can’t really talk much, huh?”
“I… it…” James didn’t know how to phrase what he had heard. “I think… it doesn’t… I’m sorry, I don’t think it cares.” He felt his voice go rough as he tried to say the last part.
“...Oh.” Daniel said. Around him, Pathfinder stopped moving, stopped the swirling motion, and just… sagged. Dimmed and faded, back into the background. ”Oh. Well. That’s…”
“Wow, what a fucking shitty parent.” Alanna said bitterly, breaking the awkward painful conversation like a hammer through plate glass. “Hey Path, if you want a better mom, I could legally adopt you.” She said.
Daniel answered for his friend. “She was just… so excited. That’s why she didn’t say what was here. She was just excited to talk to…”
Alanna leaned back against Anesh, unsure of what to say. James wasn’t sure either, but he held a hand out to where Pathfinder generally was. “Hey.” He said, mind racing to find the words he needed. “I know there’s no replacement for the family you had hoped for. But everyone in the Order likes you, and we’re here for you if you need to talk. I don’t know how exactly that works for you, but we can figure it out. And if it makes you feel better right now, you’re welcome to drag us into some kind of misadventure where I get dropped into one of those ink pits as recompense for not handling that conversation right.”
There was a flicker. A spark orange and yellow. And then, a small whorl of light came back to life around Daniel’s arm. “She says thank you.” Daniel passed on. “Also the misadventure on the way back apparently involves a lot of running. So that’s nice to know.”
“James, you’re the kindest person I know.” Alanna told him. “But I’m letting you know in advance, I’m blaming you for the running.”
He sighed. “Go load the coffee and stuff into the cart. Let’s see if we can beat the problem if we run *fast* enough.”
A thin orange wisp flickered between the four of them, and he heard what could only be Pathfinder’s bubbly giggling echoing through the air.
_____
“Bill, I’ve had a long week.” James wearily mumbled. “My partners are waiting for me, and I haven’t technically slept in three days or actually *showered* in a day and a half because of the dungeon time dilation. And I still have to be up tomorrow to go do a recruiting thing, *and* check out the Townton progress. What’s up, and can it be fast?”
“Funny you should mention showering…” Bill started with a broad grin, not bothering to contain his enthusiasm.
James shook his head, trying not to smell himself. “No it isn’t, I promise.”
“Follow me.” Bill laughed as he turned and headed to one of the stairwells. “We need a cargo elevator in this place, by the way. Or some kind of magic thing. That’s not really my department, but I’m sure you can come up with a magic thing.” His boots made echoing concrete thumps on the stairs as he led James down into the basement. “Moving the materials was the hard part.”
“Hard part of *what*?” James was more confused than concerned. Honestly, the idea that he should be concerned at all hadn’t really entered his head. “Is this going to be some kind of giant bed? Because I’m okay with that.”
“Not quite, though we are working on designing camraconda nesting spaces.” Bill admitted, apparently oblivious to the fact that maybe he was as immersed in the magic as anyone else. “Though it is a giant something.”
“Bill, please.” James rubbed his eyes. “I am so tired.”
“You’ll like this.” Bill promised, walking ahead through the decorated concrete corridors of the residential floor. James didn’t really have the energy to argue, so he just followed, taking a couple more turns and one really long hallway that he’d only been down once or twice. Until, eventually…
“Isn’t this where the gold vein was?” James asked as they came to a door at the end of an intersection that looked like it was carved out of soapstone. And, more importantly, to where a pair of Anesh and Alanna were standing around. His partners grinned at him as Bill led him to the door. “Did something *weird* happen again?” James asked.
“Again?” Both present Aneshs asked.
At the same time Alanna snorted. “Like it ever stopped.”
“So.” Bill said with an attention grabbing clap of his hands. “Turns out, some of the greens aren’t permanent. But Karen had me and Jim excavating kind of a lot of this space looking for more gold before we… you know, you don’t need to know. Point is, we had a big open, structurally stable, space, and a bit of free time.”
“You liar.” James accused him. “Where did you find free time?”
Bill glared at the interruption. “Also it turns out you can make a remodel go pretty fast when you’ve got a few toys that let you cheat. *And*, when you I think on purpose hired the best plumber in the state.” He stepped past them and pressed both hands on the double doors. “Anyway, my kid really likes Harry Potter, so if you wanna blame someone for the design, it’s her fault.” He gave a push, and the doors slid smoothly open on oiled tracks.
The room beyond was like something out of a fantasy. And that was kind of impressive for someone like James, who could say that about most of the places he visited on a weekly basis. But this fantasy, in particular, would have been one from someone who had spent the last three years looking at home improvement catalogues, drooling over color swatches, and dreaming of the time they owned a home and had an infinite budget to screw around with.
The space was roughly the size of an Olympic swimming pool, with rounded off corners and a slightly rough white stone making up the floor in what looked like an unbroken single piece. And the swimming pool comparison was apt, because the center of the space was a sunken basin, full of clear water, divided into four quarters by a river stone wall through the middle. Overhead, a seemingly intentional maze of copper plated pipes fed into waterfalls and drains, the piping sharing space with orange, red, and blue lamps that cast shimmering lights across the whole room. The walls, largely taken up by colorful tile mosaics - the first one James saw was of a *very* familiar looking stapler - also held hanging racks and what looked like heated towel holders.
A few parts looked mismatched, like the white wire baskets around the pools, or the not quite finished mount points for what would obviously be faucets in the future. But…
“You built the bath from Harry Potter.” Alanna breathed out, eyes glittering with excitement.
“There’s a few technical things you might appreciate.” Bill said, pointing around the room. “We’ve got different heating controls for each section, and there’s a raisable barrier in the middle for privacy. Still workin’ on the atmosphere settings, but we’ll get there. Piping for soaps and stuff is in the works, too. Modeled a lot of the pool design off Japanese hot springs. Onsens?” Bill pronounced the word like he’d read it, but never said it out loud. “Uh… what else… oh, you know that brooch Knife wears around?”
James rolled that sentence over in his head for a minute. “Knife-In-Fangs? I… refresh my memory.”
“The thing purifies food. Turns out, it counts water as food.” Bill shrugged. “Got a copy made, hanging on the wall over there, it’s our main cleaning tool. Zero-chemical waters.” He pointed to one of the bare walls. “Left a couple spaces for future art. I’m not much of an artist.”
“Rufus seems to disagree.” James grinned at the mosaic of his strider friend.
“Eh. It’s kind of a mess.” Bill rubbed the back of his head. “Anyway. It’s not *done*, still haven’t set up changing areas, we probably need some safety features and all that, but… well, it’s done enough, and you looked like you could use a break.”
“When did you… how did you *do* all this?” James marveled, stepping into the warm and wet room. “I was gone for a *week*!”
“Well, people were asking for showers when I first got here.” Bill said. “So a few of the other new hires and me decided to make ourselves useful, you know? Also I dunno if you know, but time is kinda messy around here. Also it’s kinda scary how much you can get done when you’ve got camracondas to hold stuff in place while you run pipe.”
Alanna practically ripped her shirt over her head, causing Bill to rapidly turn back toward the door and clear his throat awkwardly. “James! Bath!” She excitedly yelled. “It’s perfect!”
Anesh chuckled, the two of him stepping past Bill, one of him offering a fist bump that the older man returned. “This is amazing, thank you.” He said quietly.
James also turned back to shoot the embarrassed man a grin while Alanna threw the rest of her clothes off, and then herself into the nearest pool at high speed, bare feet making slapping noises across the stone floor. “This is the coolest thing I’ve seen today.” He said, ignoring Alanna’s bellowed yelp at the realization that she’d chosen a *cold* pool. “And I need you to understand how impressive that is.”
“Yeah, well.” Bill shrugged. “I…
“Man.” James cut him off. “I’ve spent the last twenty years mastering self depreciation, and the last year trying to break away from that. I know it’s hard, but seriously. You made something awesome, and weirdly fitting for our microculture. It’s okay to be a bit proud.”
“Heh.” Bill shook his head. “Aren’t I supposed to be the wise one? I’ve got more than a decade on you, kid.”
“Yeah, but *I’ve* been going to therapy.” James said, hearing another splash behind him, joyous shouts from his partners catching up to him. “Anyway. I’m gonna go enjoy this.”
“Have fun.” Bill told him, tilting his head just enough to show a grin. “Don’t break anything!” He said, pulling the doors closed on their tracks.
“Pff.” James waved a hand. “I’m immune to broken bones!”
“I didn’t mean you!” The last words caught him before the doors closed.
James looked over the overlapping colored lights playing off the water with a smile that threatened to spill over into tears of joy. In one of the pools, rapidly heating up from the dial Anesh had adjusted, Alanna tackled the other Anesh into the water with a splash. The whole place just looked… well, perfect. It was creative, and colorful, copper and stone giving it a burnished and cultured look.
It wasn’t done, no. But it would be. And James couldn’t wait to see what it would be like.
But until then, he started pulling off clothing, and went to join his partners. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Bill he hadn’t showered in a day or so, and everyone would probably appreciate it when he made use of some of the soap.