“Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitrary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all.” -Geralt, The Last Wish-

_____

James and Anesh woke up at the same moment, wrapped around each other in the same sleeping bag, uncomfortably hot, and both wanting to use the enchanted buckets that the expedition was using for a bathroom. Unfortunately, they weren’t the first people with that thought, and so they played the world’s most magical coin toss to see who got to go first.

[Shell Upgraded : Finger Regrowth Time -2.1 Lunar Cycles]

[Shell Upgraded : -1 Hangnail / Week]

”So… which of us… loses?” James rubbed dusty grit out of his eyelashes as they tried to figure out who had gotten the worse orb, and therefore deserved pity.

Anesh swallowed the mouthful of water. “It’s you. I’m gonna get fewer hangnails, but you’re never gonna get that number down low enough to regrow a finger. Not that you’re missing any.”

James waggled his eyebrows salaciously at his boyfriend. ”You’d know.”

The experience of dating James had, over time, given Anesh an amount of resistance to comments like that. He almost got through giving James a level stare without blushing, until he heard a pair of muffled laughs from nearby, one a snort, one a chitter. He didn’t turn to see if Alex and Keeka were watching their conversation, instead just gnawed on the inside of his cheek as he tired to keep his face from flushing. “I would.” He deadpanned as best he could. “Go use the bathroom and try not to lose your fingers.”

_____

“JP would like me to pass on his thoughts that you are receiving unfair treatment.” Bea told James as she joined him to stare out at the ocean of ink to start the day. Unlike James, she didn’t wear a filter mask, and didn’t seem bothered at all by the omnipresent and invasive smell of toner.

James wasn’t so much watching the waves as he was helping Arrush to secure his own mask; even refitted with the now-common blue power, ratroach faces just weren’t good with these things. Too many sharp angles and slippery bits of chitin. “If he wanted priority on Planner’s deluxe express infomorph therapy service, he should have gotten incepted with something more complicated than just needing to clean his shoes.” He told her as he secured the velcro strap that went up the side of Arrush’s muzzle, letting his hand linger for a moment on the side of his face and sharing a fluttering giddy smile with the tall figure. “You ready for the day?” He asked both of them.

”mmphyess” Arrush’s voice was more muffled by the mask than a human’s would be, but he didn’t let it get him down, instead just giving James a series of lopsided thumbs up.

“Yes.” Bea’s clipped answer suddenly made James realize why her monotone was especially disconcerting. She didn’t apply context to her words; everything she said was the same unique utterance of that word, every time, no matter where it was in the sentence. He wondered if the other inhabitors talked that way, or if it was a thing she was developing herself.

Either way, it would be a bit rude to ask directly out of nowhere, though James was pretty sure Bea wouldn’t care. “Alright. Well, all the bright white light everywhere already has me awake and on edge, and I don’t get my ocean sunrise, which is disappointing. Is everyone else up and milling around?”

”Mostly.” Bea answered. “Is that why you are here by the toner?”

James nodded. ”Well, yeah. It’s also just nice to step away from everyone every now and then.” He shrugged and Arrush nodded alongside him. “Also Arrush saw something moving in the wat- in the ink here. Also holy shit it’s been ten minutes and I’m already forgetting this stuff is toxic printer fluid. It’s a miracle I’ve lived this long as a delver.”

Bea walked closer to the water, moving past the two men as she approached and leaned forward with her arms pinned to her sides and staring into the ink. “Interesting.” She said. “The glowing things?”

”…yeah. You can see through that?” James asked, curious.

”No, one is near the-“ Bea shot backward with a smooth motion worthy of a Japanese horror movie creature, fluidly going from peering into the water to an upright backpedal as a luminescent little guppy shot out of the ink ocean and speared through her. Her dodge not quite fast enough to save her.

The fish came out the other side and spun around in midair before plunging back into the sea, and then doing a few arcing hops out of the ink as it seemed to watch the woman on the shore.

James groaned. “God dammit.” He said as he pulled Bea back by her arm, plastic crunching under their feet as the three of them put distance between where they stood and any more of the infokleptic sea creatures. “Phish.”

”Fish?” Arrush asked with a muffled voice.

”No, phish. With a p.”

Bea nodded. “P-hish. I have read the entry.”

”No, they’re… I’m not doing this with you two right now.” James said, watching the slowly cresting waves of ink as a whole school of little glowing guppies started hopping up out of it. Too many to count easily, and more showing up by the minute. He had a brief moment of clarity as he remembered something. “Hey, these things can fly, let’s back up a bit more. I don’t wanna lose my driver’s license, even if I never use it anymore.” The kept up a steady backward pace, heading up the beach and comfortably away from the shoreline. “Also, Bea, sorry about whatever you lost. We’ll figure it out and get it replaced.”

”I lost nothing.” The inhabitor said, probing fingers poking at her chest where she’d been struck without damage.

James nodded. “Yeah, everyone says that. But it probably took your debit card or something.”

”I do not have a bank account.”

”Oh. Uh… I guess you wouldn’t really have any government ID or anything. Email address?”

”I do not use the internet.”

”…was it annoyed because you have nothing to phish?”

Arrush, tugging on the edges of his filter mask, started making a noise like a coughing laugh. “We should… catch one for Karen.” He said, grinning at his own attempted joke, before he slouched in slight embarrassment when James gave him a confused stare. “Because they both like… paperwork and things.”

”Ooooh.” James nodded. “Okay, I get it. Sorry, still waking up. Yeah, that’s a fun thought. You realize Karen would murder us if we put something that eats certifications in her office, right?”

Three sets of claws clicked together in front of Arrush’s muzzle as he thought. And then he came up with the perfect answer. “We could say it was JP.”

“…let’s see how annoying he’s being about being the one who has to wait on getting an infomorph extracted.” James settled on as they headed back to where the camp was packing up.

_____

“Please be careful with that.” Camille’s voice was calm, even if it was always on the edge of an emotion that could charitably be called fashionably irate.

She was doing a routine patrol of the perimeter as the expedition moved across the beach, when she came across a potential problem. A problem beyond the misuse of the word, that is. Camille had been on beaches twice before, and she was reasonably certain that while they were allowed to be rocky, they weren’t supposed to be composed of half-crushed pen lids, nor were they supposed to be surrounded with crumbling interior walls and the occasional thing pretending to be a tree made out of ribbed plastic conduit and shattered computer monitors.

The chemical fumes and the buried potentially lethal threats were familiar though. Cam had tried her hand at making a joke about that earlier, but she wasn’t stupid, and her razor sharp intellect and ability to read people let her know instantly that she’d joked incorrectly.

All that was background though. The current situation was that she was armored and prepared to respond to anything that lunged out of the sand, and she was supposed to be keeping people secure.

Which was why it was a bad sign when her voice got a terrified shriek out of Keeka. Though despite his surprise, he did muffle himself rapidly, and it seemed unlikely that the sound would attract anything dangerous. Cam still scanned the high tide line of cubicles to ensure there were no tumblefeeds creeping over, while Keeka tried to not lose his balance and fall into the tide pool he’d been looking at.

It wasn’t really a tide pool. This beach didn’t seem to have tides at all. But it was doing a passable attempt at mimicry. A small hexagon of cubicle walls that crumbled like sandstone, surrounding a basin of bright teal ink. The ground was rough, though Camille just stepped hard enough to shift things to a preferred flat state. But Keeka nearly toppled off the edge of the half buried chair he was perched on as he leaned over the ink. Camille stepped forward to catch at one of his upper arms, but the ratroach flinched away from her, finding his balance rapidly as he deftly landing chitin banded paws on a clear part of the rough false sand ground.

He was afraid of her. Camille wasn’t unfamiliar with the body language. Even on a nonhuman, the micromotions were familiar to how she’d been trained to stop various emotions.

It was in how she reacted that she knew set her apart from the Order. James or Alex or Sarah, her handlers, such as they were, she knew would have tried to reassure the ratroach that they meant him no harm. But Camille also recognized the careful stare she was being given. The one that meant that it didn’t matter what she said or meant; she made this creature afraid.

So she said nothing, and stepped backward, deliberately breaking her focus away from Keeka to look into the tide pool. There, partially submerged in the ink, a cluster of palm sized black plastic discs sat. Some of them cracked open, letting teal ink flow across their oddly textured insides, before they closed again. Patterns like breathing.

Camille watched them curiously, trying to see what it was that Keeka had found so interesting.

“They’re stamps.” The ratroach said after he steadied himself. His voice was so much softer than Cam always expected from something that wasn’t human. “I wanted to see if they ate anything.”

“To see if they were a threat?”

“No, I just wanted to know.” Keeka said, crouching down on his digitigrade legs, getting more comfortable as he peered over the low crumbling wall and into the tide pool again, but still ready to run if needed. “Everything here needs to eat. A lot of things eat the orbs, but there’s no orbs here, and I don’t think they could hurt anything.” The black furred ratroach scratched his upper arms with his lower claws. “Maybe they eat the ink.”

“Hm.” Camille reevaluated the tactical value of the pool. “Perhaps the ink could be of use. We should take a sample for the researchers.”

“They know.” Keeka chittered a laugh that was still nervous. “Nile complains, whenever people tell him something would make a good potion. He says that’s not how it works. And then he changes colors and gets upset with everybody.” He sighed, the exhalation rattling something in his chest with soft clicks.

The two of them stood looking at the teal basin of ink for some time, Camille trying to understand why it was so interesting, Keeka just enjoying the little round stamp creatures. “I should be keeping an eye on progress along the beach. Please do not stay too long on your own.” Camille tried to not give an order. That wasn’t her place, nor how this outfit operated.

And she really did need to be screening for any buried shellaxies. The engineers had found the way their intake fans filtered particle matter to be fascinating, but that was only after Cam or another alert delver dealt with them and stopped them from giving the engineers an up close view of how sharp some of their components were.

Progress was slow, but steady, covering the miles of coastline toward the distant peninsula where a threatening tower waited.

“I’m sorry.” Keeka’s squeak gave Cam pause as she turned to head back, her platemail lightly rasping when she moved.

The apology was out of place. “Why?” She asked directly. Sometimes the easiest way to get information was to simply request it.

Keeka tried to emulate the shrug he saw James use all the time, but it didn’t quite work with the way his shoulders were angled. “I’m afraid of you. It’s not fair.”

“Very little is.” Camille replied, and pursed her lips when Keeka chittered an unexpected laugh. She saw why that was funny, but it hadn’t been her intention. “You don’t need to tell me you’re sorry. It doesn’t offend me. I’m dangerous, and I don’t share the same ideas as the Order.”

“But you won’t hurt me.” Keeka told her, voice heavy with confidence as he stood up and moved to follow her back to the rest of the expedition. “And you do believe in them. No matter what you say.”

Camille tilted her head to the side and looked at him with an imperious stare. “Everyone is so much more certain of me than they should be.” She said, perhaps somewhat harshly. “Why?”

“Because you’re here.” Keeka said simply. “Isn’t that… why you’re here? You’re here because you ran away from something worse.”

“Having suffered doesn’t make me a good person. Which recent events have harshly reminded me.” Cam paused in her walking, boots crunching against the shredded cardboard and broken pen caps underfoot as she stared ahead to where one of the delve teams was trading away an incalculable fortune in yellow orbs for an incalculable fortune in purple orbs to the broken glass lizards living in an artificial palm tree. “And some days, I think I understand my father. I think that the Order is a threat to the stability of the world. And I think you are a perfect example of that. Look at you. You’re a…” Camille stopped herself and took a deep breath of air that smelled like a can of spray paint exploded.

“A monster?” Keeka said, standing closer to her flank than she should have let him approach unchallenged. “I know.” His triangular muzzle pointed down at the beach as he met her normal human eyes with all five of his own faceted beady orbs. “If I wanted to forget, Arrush would let me.” He kept his voice as steady as he could, even though the words threatened to catch in his throat. It took effort to not swap languages in anxiety. “That’s how I know you won’t hurt me. You’re like me. You’re dangerous, and violent, and you’ll screw it all up and lash out eventually, and you might injure me, but you can’t hurt me.” Keeka’s claws scratched along his chitin bands, blunted tips failing to find purchase. “You gave up everything to risk being here. I understand.”

As the ratroach suddenly realized how much he’d overcommitted to what he was saying, and how intently he was staring at Cam before he broke away and whipped his head to face somewhere else, hyperventilating and shaking, Camille processed his words. Because he was right. She had given up her life to be here. And she didn’t even really know why; only that she couldn’t keep doing what she was doing, and this was her best chance to not die at the hands of her sisters when she left. It was simple. Wasn’t it?

And now this dungeon creation, one of many that the members of the Order of Endless Rooms insisted were people and should be treated as such, was telling her that they were the same. And Camille felt a cold anger building at the thought. She’d read every report and personnel file the Order had, whether she was supposed to or not; she knew where Keeka came from. She was nothing like the thing in front of her that had been forcibly reshaped by an authority figure to serve a purpose, that had been made to kill for the convenience of someone else, that was made to kill from the youngest age possible just to survive, that was so utter replaceable that being expendable was baked into their role, that had more care paid to her armor than her injured flesh after an operation misstep…

“This is what I was afraid of happening.” Camille said steadily as she tried to force the tears back into her eyes by force of will alone.

“Being understood?”

“Changing. I saw it, in the Climb. This is what you do to people. This is how you disrupt, this is what makes the organizational structure so concerning.”

Keeka almost relaxed, shuffling next to her as he put a little distance between them. “I’m not… I’m not like the humans that study this.” He admitted. “I don’t know about governments or things. They say there’s billions of humans, and I only know a few. But I know that this way, I haven’t had to kill. And you don’t either, anymore. You could have gone to Status Quo, but you came to them. To us.” Keeka reached out his two right arms, the lithe digits of his reconstructed paws reaching for Camille almost without thinking about it. His voice was a whisper that she still managed to pick out over the omnipresent sound of a distant and massive fan. “From one monster to another. It’s going to be okay.”

Camille let him take her gauntleted hand, not feeling much of anything through the armor, but somehow appreciating it anyway.

“We should return before anyone becomes concerned for your safety.” She said eventually. Ingrained combat instincts not letting her attention wander as she may have wanted. And really, all Camille wanted to do at the moment was to stare out at the endless black expanse as it lapped at the stained shore and consider if maybe she didn’t know what she was doing. But she couldn’t. She had to be on guard, no matter what it was that was happening in her chest.

Keeka nodded, giving her a look like he might have been expecting something else, before he led the way to follow the trail across the broken plastic shards where the Order’s expedition had passed by recently.

This was the danger. This was the threat the Order represented. The power to take people, and change them into something else. It was the same power wielded by global governments and megacorps and world religions. Except what they did with structures and hierarchies, the Order did with personal connections. Maybe it wouldn’t scale up well, Cam didn’t know, but the worst part was she found herself wondering if maybe the power would be better held by them than by someone else, and she knew, instantly, that she was already compromised beyond recovery.

Down the beach, between twenty to thirty people depending on how you counted were making their way slowly forward, stopping to let some of them set up a telescopic camera to capture images of some kind of behemoth whale miles out from the shore. Many of them waved to Keeka as he rejoined the group, humans accepting the ratroach like he wasn’t built to be a device that inflicted pain, but instead made exclusively to be a friend.

Camille still didn’t understand. And she didn’t know how he did.

But she followed anyway.

_____

[+3 Skill Ranks : Cartography - Topographical - Construction Survey]

”Huh. Neat.” James looked upward, mind filling with different ways to redo the maps they had of Officium Mundi.

”Delicious.” Zhu added with a cascading sweep of his manifestation that ended with two extra rows of feathers growing up James’ arm. Then a massive yawn split his manifested eye down the middle. “I am tired now. Goodnight.” He announced as he sunk backward.

James watched him with a worried pang of guilt. “We need to figure out something to do about that.” He whispered to himself.

_____

The expedition stopped at the base of a cliff made out of what looked like layered dark grey carpet, and that had a lighthouse on it.

The lighthouse wasn’t really a lighthouse. It was just a tower of cubicles, like all the others that delver teams had been raiding for coffee since before the Order was called the Order. It simply… happened to be brightly glowing from its upper layer. Like a lighthouse.

”That’s so goddamn weird.” Juan said as he helped Thermoclese and Mars set up their testing station on a bunch of stolen desks, preparing to check an influx of blue dungeontech items to make sure they didn’t take anything problematic home, or break anything that could be earthshaking.

Nearby, an older man who was wearing a button up shirt uncomfortably underneath the armor he had been warned he’d need to have on looked up from where he was staring upward. “It’s called light, and it’s been around since the dawn of time.” The words were overtly antagonistic as the ex-Alchemist commented on the glow.

It was interesting to Juan in an academic sense that Nile could say, word for word, the same thing that Thermoclese had said to him ten minutes ago, but instead of being friendly banter, it just made the boomer come across as the world’s biggest bastard. “It’s not fluorescent light.” Juan said, trying desperately to keep that mindset of viewing the words with detached intellectual interest and not letting the bastard get to him.

“Oh hey, that’s cool as heck.” Thermoclese said, now standing behind him and looking upward too. “What do you think it’s for?”

”it’s a lighthouse, girl.” Nile said with a bite of disdain. “It’s for guiding ships.”

The actual members of the Order’s basement cult shared an exhausted look. Thermoclese held up her hands, since she’d been the one to handle this last time, so Juan and Mars threw down a quick match of rock-paper-scissors. Juan lost, and then sighed as he turned to Nile. “What ships.” He asked.

”Excuse me?”

”What. Ships.” Juan replied while waving a hand at the ocean of black viscous fluid, trying not to flinch as some of the pencils orbiting his head turned to face where he pointed. “The closest thing this place has to ships is the cached AO3 page on my phone.”

Nile went from considering the point to scowling at Juan. “Speak English. No one knows what that means.”

”I know what that means.” Mars said without looking up from where he was setting up a half dozen computer peripherals to run rapid tests on. “Everyone here knows what that means. What’s your excuse?”

”I have better things to do than pick up your childish slang.” Nile retorted. “I’m only here to further my own understanding of the mysteries of the metaphysical world, so I will not be talked down to-“

”Oh, yeah you will.” Mars was disarmingly neutral as he kept working, and Juan had to bite down hard on his lip to keep the laugh in as his friend roasted the Alchemist. Mostly because laughing would make Nile start talking again instead of silently fuming. “Oh hey Myles.” He pivoted instantly as one of the delvers approached with a friendly wave.

”Hey nerds.” Myles’ version of banter was still working on the friendly part too, but he was working on it, so none of the specialists gave him shit for it. “We’ve got teams about to advance on the lighthouse now. Just giving you a heads up.”

Mars nodded as he passed Juan a connector cable and indicated that Juan should plug it somewhere, which was utterly unhelpful. ”Thanks man.” He said. “We’re ready to go here. I think Nile wanted to go in with someone?”

”Yes, I would like to actually witness something of value as long as I’m required to be here.” Nile groused.

”You literally begged to be here.” Myles snorted. “And if you ask nicely, right now, you can come with my group when we clear the third floor, and I’ll even have Marlea screen for you.”

Nile glared at the rogue who was emotionally extorting him, though he thought of it more in terms of insolence than anything else. He opened his mouth like he was planning to say something rude, then took a long and bitter breath before gritting his teeth and grinding out a “Would you allow my attendance with your little exploration?”

”Sure.” Myles said. “And because you were so nice, I’ll only point at a few things and ask if they’d make good potion materials.” He turned back to Mars and Juan. “Anything you need to share before we get going?”

”Nah, this part of the beach seems safe, and we’ve got Cam anyway, so we’ll be fine.” Juan said. “And no last minute revelations. I’m too damn tired to climb that thing today though, so I’m gonna stay here and work on a theory. Thermoclese, you wanna go up?”

”Call me if there’s a totem!” She called from where she was under one of the desks, crushed cardboard crunching under her armored knees. “Or a ritual projector or something!”

Myles dipped down to flash a thumbs up to her. “Alright. I’m gonna go risk death. Later.”

_____

On the outside, the lighthouse was thicker than most of the cubicle towers. Smoother, too, with fewer corners jutting out. Not smooth, but certainly at least trying for a little more elegance.

The inside was still cramped though, and while it was less gloomy than most of these towers, the light that filled it seemed to come mostly from the luminescence put off by the colored plant bulbs on the vines that crawled the walls. Neon yellows, oranges, and blues painting the inside like a Las Vegas street but without the buzz James associated with neon.

And it was empty, too. Normally, towers that were heavily populated were defended, with even the yellow- or red-type life fighting viciously to protect the places, and either a whole swarm or a deceptively powerful green guardian at the top. If they were empty, they had a handful of small creatures nesting there, and that was it. This one, though, was almost devoid of life.

And it would have been a beautiful quiet place to visit if it didn’t have such a creepy vibe going on.

“You know what bugs me most about this?” James asked Harvey as the two of them participated in the methodical sweep of yet another floor of the stacked maze of office equipment. With so many people participating in this part of the operation, they hadn’t bothered to enforce the team lineups, because that would be silly to begin with. And James wanted to take the opportunity to check in with the man who was, in part, in charge of their Response operations.

Harvey didn’t glance back, trusting James would say something a little more urgent if there was an actual crisis. He thought of James as a kid despite their relatively close ages, but a kid who knew what he was doing regardless. “I get the feeling you’ve got strong opinions that aren’t gonna make any sense to me.”

That was, James had to concede, probably true. Though he was surprised enough that Harvey wanted to come back into the Office to begin with, given how he’d felt about it after being rescued from here in the first place. “This just feels like the natural environment for stapler crabs.”

”I thought we called them striders. For being stapler spiders.” Harvey shoved a folded paper bag of coffee grounds into the bag they were using for that. “And because no one felt creative that day.”

”Oh, do you have a better option?” James arched an unseen eyebrow as he leaned around the internal cubicle wall and peered down the hall to where a cable vine as thick as his arm formed an archway over a cramped passage.

”…No.” Harvey’s rich voice hid his annoyance. As soon as James had started asking, he’d known he was going to need to come up with something, but the best he could think of was ‘clippers’ to reference the paperclip webs, and that was just worse in every way. “This desk is empty, by the way.”

They kept moving, James being less cautious than normal since they’d encountered no resistance in the last four floors, and Harvey exactly as on edge as he’d been the whole time. Their place in the search pattern was a source of comfort; practiced by now, something easy that they could fall back on in the event that things went wrong. And also it meant that other delvers from three total teams were all around them in the crammed together cubicles.

Nothing attacked them. Even when they moved to the next flattened cubicle with a slanted desk and all the pens piled on top of the keyboard where it met the floor, the whole thing bathed in red light from a pair of organic bulbs growing off the vine. The place was perfect for a jumpscare. But nothing happened.

”Okay. I don’t like horror media. But.” James started.

”But you wanna see something skitter off into the shadows?” Harvey prompted. “You get that this is why you’re not on Response rotation anymore, right? Because you get bored.”

”Everyone gets bored.” James countered. “And I don’t want to be confronted by some kind of monster that pulls from my greatest nightmares, thus requiring me to grapple with my own psyche as well as its prowess as we fight to the death. But if that did happen, it would be interesting.” It was his turn to search, and he made quick work of it, personally less hesitant to open drawers than Harvey was. All the pens and pencils went into a leg pouch, just in case. Everything else got the poke test, though nothing reacted and James couldn’t feel magic coming off anything. His senses weren’t perfectly calibrated by a wide margin, though, which was why they still brought along anything small to potentially harvest for blue orbs. “How’s Response going anyway?”

”We put a borderline irresponsible amount of work into writing reports, and you don’t even read them.” Harvey accused him as he rested on one knee, methodically swiveling his head back and forth down the sides of the thin hallway while still taking the time to scan the small gaps where the wall and ‘ceiling’ met.

James clipped his leg pouch shut. “I read everything.” He said. Which was technically true. Marcus read everything, possibly because the coordinator wrote half of it, and then James ran an experiential .mem from the young person. “I’m asking because you’re there, and you’re going to see a bigger picture than I am.” James paused for a second as they moved to the next open space where multiple gaps intersected. “And it’s kind of my job to know what’s going on.”

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“Mh.” Havey’s grunt was noncommittal as he flickered his light to signal another duo that was at an intersection to their left. When he turned to James, the purple and green bulbs of glowing ink overhead illuminated his face and made him look like an embarrassed ratroach. “This really the best time for this?”

”There’s nothing here.” James sighed as they got another light signal from ahead, as the scouring of this floor wrapped up.

If Harvey had an answer for James, either in the form of a report or just casual conversation, it had to wait a bit as they met up with the other duos. Delvers shook their heads as they confirmed that this floor, too, was empty. Not of things to scavenge, but of anything moving. There was still plenty to walk away with.

After they consolidated their collected magical coffee grounds into one backpack and sent it back downstairs with JP, who needed to clean off the glowing orange ink that had covered half his face and chest when he’d walked into a vine, the group filtered up the ramp to the next layer, and fanned out again to continue.

James kept quiet at first, until he once again got the feeling that this floor was silent not because everything here was very good at lying in ambush, but because there just wasn’t anything lying here at all. “So?” He prompted Harvey.

The man sighed, but at least he’d had some time to consider. “I’m thinking we just call the things staplers. Save some time.”

”Staplers are real.” James replied reflexively as he tested whether or not an overhead ledge of an extended panel would hold his weight. “So that doesn’t work. And you know what I mean.”

“Alright, the- hold up.”

The conversation ground to a halt as something moved on the glowing cubicle wall ahead. A shadowy blob wavering on the surface that still somehow looked bland and beige despite being cast in day glo pink and part of a towering cobbled together structure.

James pivoted, sweeping the area behind them for an ambush or a trap or something, while Harvey kept a steady eye on the spot in question. The each took a half step back, closing the gap between them and causing the flat pane of the floor to creak and bend.

So far, none of the floors had collapsed on them, but they really were just the walls of the cubicles turned sideways. And sometimes not even all the way; the floors here were riddled with slants and lip that caught at boots.

The moments before a potential conflict were tense, but in an almost exhilarating way. James had just told Harvey he didn’t like horror, and that was true; standing here waiting to get jump scared didn’t actually make it any more fun. But there was that little part of him that made him love exploring that wanted to know. After the shot of fear, what then? What was it? Was it something new, something weird, maybe even something potentially friendly? It could be anything.

It wasn’t. It was just one of the vines shifting, because somewhere else on this floor, someone had pulled on part of the interconnected mass of alien plant. And the safety of the still-empty floor was almost disappointing.

Actually, James didn’t want to leave that unsaid. “Well that’s disappointing.” He grumbled. “How many more floors of this place are there?”

”Six.” Harvey answered easily, making up a number on the spot. He didn’t mind whatever it actually was; he really was the kind of guy who could just stick to a task until it was complete, and if they had to take a break or come back to it, that didn’t invalidate progress. Six more floors didn’t bother him at all. Neither would ten, or twenty. “Check that desk, I’ve got an answer for you.”

James moved into the flattened cubicle, crouching to fit into the four foot tall little den. It would have been a perfect strider nest, with the floor overhead crushing it down. But no, still quiet. “Ooh, this bag is almost full. And go ahead.”

”On paper, Response is doing it’s job.” Harvey started.

”Wow, that’s so fucking ominous.”

”Save it. We’ve got almost a hundred active full time responders, connections to twenty different fire departments and twice that many hospitals scattered across the western US. We’re going to start hitting our telepad limit in the next year if we expand at the conservative rate we’re at, but I’m told we’re working on it.” Harvey sounded like he knew that he was telling James things James had already read. “Things are fine.”

”I do know you wanted to go faster.” James pressed his armored shoulder against a corner and checking down the tunnel. It twisted past an overturned water cooler, and a potted fern that was lit with otherworldly colors. He flashed his light down the corridor, and got a very distant white blink back from another team. “That’s… way too far.” James muttered to himself, clicking his radio on. “This is James, be advised, there are orange totems in the lighthouse. I’m looking at a spatial warp on the sixth floor. Over”

”Copy. Everyone be on the lookout for the sources. Early check in now. Over.” Ben’s voice returned, the young friendship mimic having fallen into his familiar pattern and taken over running the operation rather than coming in himself. A quick check of everyone followed, while James and Harvey started moving through the extended space, prying back wall panels and looking for any floating orange orbs.

”It’s now how fast we’re going.” Harvey said as he held a wall pried back so James could slip a crowbar through it. “Though we shouldn’t be neoliberal cowards about it. When you’ve got the weight to throw around, you make it happen. You promised me that.”

James nodded, expression serious. ”I did.”

Harvey took him at his word and continued. “The problem? It’s recognition.”

”For Response?”

”For responders.” Harvey corrected. “Okay, here’s a question. Why were you taking shifts when that was still a thing for you?”

”Because I like helping people.” James said simply, grunting as they snapped a cubicle wall with the crunch of drywall. There was no totem behind it, so they moved to another potential spot. “And… there’s a lot going on there, let’s just leave it at altruism.”

”And why do you think people join Response now?”

”Well, half of them are our own knights, so I’m assuming something similar to me. But the new hires, I dunno. Money, with a side of ethics?” James hadn’t actually thought about it, which he probably should have.

Harvey held out a hand for the crowbar, answering as James passed it to him. “Nah. Well, yeah, but the other way around. Bunch of people do want to help, they do wanna do the right thing. They just can’t afford it. We pay well enough that they can. Or they’re camracondas, and money doesn’t really matter to them. But money is just transactional, it’s not recognition. There’s a hundred people working out of the Lair doing risky and important work every day, and they’re turning into background noise for the ‘big stuff’. That’s not okay.”

”Oh.” James put some thought into it as they finally found the offending orange totem, radioed it in, and then then marked the spot to be collected on the way out. “Okay, I get it.” He said after that was wrapped up and they were moving on the the next floor. “Just because someone’s job is helping doesn’t mean they don’t need a little help themselves, right?”

”…are you throwing Mr. Roger’s quotes at me?”

”Wow, I legitimately thought I’d get away with that.” James laughed softly, his voice lingering in the still air.

”Well, whatever. You aren’t wrong. Helping for the sake of helping is fine, nothing wrong with it.” Harvey gave him a meaningful look. “But I’d like it if we had a way to let them know that they’re making a difference, and that people give a shit.”

”I give a shit.” James spoke quietly.

”Yeah, well, drop by and tell people that.”

”…Okay.” He set a mental note for himself to do that, adding it to the schedule stored in his skulljack braid. “I’m sure we can come up with something better than just my dumb ass though. Not special privileges or anything, to be clear. But..”

”Oh, hell no. The mission statement is still ‘like the cops, but less shit’. Don’t just redo the same fuckups.” He could almost hear Harvey rolling his eyes.

The conversation lapsed as James rolled ideas around in his head, and the two men kept scouring the tower. Floor after floor went by, including a long break where the whole group of paired delvers just took a rest around the next ramp up. Spread out, of course, so the floor didn’t buckle under them unexpectedly. It was easier to have brought lunch up with them than to go all the way back down and up again midway through, especially when they had settled on a rest this far up the tower.

As they finished up and started heading up the ramp made of an angled cubicle wall, half of them needing to duck to avoid clipping their heads on the floor they were soon to be standing on, there was just one problem waiting for them.

”What the hell is this?” Myles asked, looking around at the others.

Arrush just gave a multi-armed shrug, Bea silently stared, Frequency-Of-Sunlight titled her head as if a different angle would make it all an optical illusion, Daniel checked in with his navigator to see if anything was actively wrong here, Simon ran a calming hand through the magnetic distortion of his vaguely dog shaped friend. The other delvers, farther down the ramp, mostly just waited for them to hurry the hell up.

James just narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

Because the last time he’d seen an office door like this, it hadn’t gone well for him.

Tan wood with a false grain, a long silver handle, painted metal trim around the edge. And, of course, it was set into the space at the top of the ramp at about a five degree angle, the cubicle walls wrapping around it like it was being held in place, looming over them as they approached. It was illuminated by a dozen flashlights, and also the handful of glowing ink bulbs that lined the ramp up before the vines finally gave up and ended their attempt to grow on every surface in the whole tower.

”Well that’s fucking ominous.” James said.

”But we’re going in, right?” Myles asked, not having seen anything like this before in the Office. Despite it being a perfectly normal office door, even the warped terrain of the dungeon had mostly been cubicles as far as he’d seen. Not actual corner offices and meeting rooms.

”Oh, we are.” James said. “I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page first.”

And when they did go in, something violent and angry was waiting for them. But it turned out alright.

_____

The adults talked about this place like it was some kind of huge adventure, but Ava just didn’t see it.

Everywhere she looked, it was like the back rooms for the teacher’s at her old school. Cubicles and carpets and lights that were too bright to look at. There were weird things all over the place, but they weren’t as magical as Ava had expected. The staplers that ran around were cool and all, but it wasn’t like Rufus wasn’t a person she’d met before. The weird ocean was gross and awful and she’d had to make a mask out of her extra shirt so she could breathe, but it wasn’t special, it was just a terrible ocean.

“Well I like it.” Her sister’s voice was a tiny and defiant squeak in her ear. Hidden was coiled up under Ava’s hoodie, resting mostly around her left arm and spending her time making sure no one noticed them so they wouldn’t get in trouble.

In that regard, it was an adventure. Just not in the same way the adults talked about being delvers; this was just Ava’s standard adventure where she snuck into places she wasn’t supposed to be. Which, maybe, wasn’t supposed to be a standard adventure for a kid her age. Maybe. She wouldn’t know, because she kept forgetting the things her mom and sometimes Marjorie told her.

“You just like it because it feels comfy to you.” Ava whispered back to Hidden.

”Mmh.” The tiny serpentine leviathan made a noncommittal noise. In truth, they both knew what Officium Mundi felt like to her. Not exactly comfortable; all the information here was either too flat to be food, or too tangled up to make sense of without getting serious. No, it felt like something else. It felt familiar. Or haunted. “I’m bored.” Hidden said, instead of saying what they both already knew.

Ava rolled her eyes at her sister. But she was bored too. Neither of them felt like they could sneak up the sea cliff to the big glowing tower, and both of them were smart enough to know that wandering off here was a stupid idea. They’d gone off to poke around on their own a little of course, but aside from finding a pair of reading glasses that didn’t fit either of them and showed people’s names and a random looking date, and also finding one of those pencil sharpeners that exploded in a big cloud of dust, they hadn’t wanted to get far from the expedition.

If they went too far, they might never find them again. So even though it was boring, it was scary sometimes. And as fun as it was to have found some of the little orbs that taught Hidden how to play the drums or Ava how to feed an elephant while it also did her homework for her, they weren’t worth dying for.

Because if they died, or worse, got hurt, their mom would kill them. And that would be bad.

”Wanna go check out the water?”

”Nnnnnnno.” Hidden didn’t exactly like the idea of being so exposed out on the shoreline.

Ava did though. “Oh! Look! Birds!” She pointed pointlessly, Hidden already looking where she was, as a flock of printer paper fluttered across the shoreline like airborne litter. “Aw…” Her shoulders slumped as she realized they weren’t birds at all. Just crumpled sheets of paper.

They’d seen them a few times before, from a distance, but never this close though. So it was still worth checking out. The pair left their spot on the edge of the delver campsite, and headed closer to the sticky black ink of the ocean where the flock of paper had landed. Ava’s slim feet crunched the pen caps, each step shifting under her in a way that was quickly exhausting for the young girl.

As soon as they got close, maybe ten feet away, the flock paper burst into motion. Maybe seeing them, since Hidden wasn’t exactly making them invisible or anything. Maybe it was just luck. Either way, the sheets of paper exploded into a cloud of sharp white lines as they took flight from the beach.

It was luck that Ava didn’t fully understand that the paper cloud had headed away from them. She was clever for her age, and her sister gave her a lot of options most kids would never have, but she hadn’t read all the entries for Officium Mundi, and didn’t know that the edges of those pages could slice her like a knife.

Instead, there was just a curious boredom as Ava moved forward to where the flock had left from. “Ooh!” She exclaimed, picking up the pace and half jogging across the uneven surface as she spotted splotches of white left behind. “Look! These ones are all torn up!”

”Are they alive?” Hidden’s own curiosity poked through, the two girls skidding to a stop and both inching closer to the nearest downed piece of printer paper in their own way. “It’s moving!” Hidden squeaked, jerking their whole body back into Ava’s hoodie.

Ava looked around for a stick or something, but this beach was utterly devoid of driftwood, which was another way that the real world was superior. Using the toe of her sneaker, she nudged at the closest piece of paper, which twitched back from her. It had a tear down its middle, ragged and leaving it apparently unable to fly at all.

“This seems dumb.” Hidden prodded her sister as Ava crouched down to make a similar, but more physical, prod at the piece of paper. And then, when it twitched but didn’t seem to try to run, reached out to pick it up. “It’s a dungeon monster! Stop touching it!”

”You’re a dungeon monster.” Ava shot back without either thinking about it or actually meaning it.

Hidden started gnawing on her hair. ”You’re mean and I hate you.” The infomorph lied. “Let it go!”

”But it can’t fly.” Ava looked around the beach, and at the four other downed pages. “It’ll just die here, won’t it?” She thought about it, and then set the paper on her leg, smoothing out the crumpled sheet with her hands. She got a lot more careful after she sliced her finger open on the edge with a yelp, but it was a shallow paper cut, and wasn’t bleeding, so Ava kept trying to smooth out the creases and straighten the wriggling paper.

”What are you doing?”

”Trying to remember that thing James showed me.” She screwed up her face, as if biting her lip was a good way to recall things. That always worked on TV, but it wasn’t working for Ava. “Can you help?”

Hidden gave a put upon sigh. “I suppose. But you owe me now!” This wasn’t strictly true. There was a complex interwoven web of debts between them for a whole bunch of different favors or helps or dares, all at different scales, all interacting in different ways, and all of it largely ignored by the two girls because while it was funny, it wasn’t really convenient. “What do you need to… oh, I see it.”

And then the infomorph pulled back, manifestation receding a little as she slipped into Ava’s active thoughts, a tail that wasn’t a tail reaching down to the depths of a mind that didn’t have any actual verticality. She’d had to practice this with some of the others, for boring science reasons, but it was always hard with other people. With Ava, though, it was as natural as opening her eyes, and it only took a second to find the memory she needed and bring it to the fore with crystal clarity.

”Thannnnks!” Ava’s hands started moving, a little clumsy, but now following directions she could remember. “Hey, don’t worry, it’ll be okay.” She tried out her best serious adult voice on the sheet of printer paper, which was flapping against her as she tried to fold it. “Just stay still for a second.”

Basically forever ago - a little over a month - James had dropped in on the youth group that Ava was a part of. It was weird being one of the oldest just because she was human, but there were a couple other people actually her age, and the others were cool too, so she didn’t hide from it too often. He’d been showing them something that he’d made some weird jokes about nostalgia on, which was how to fold a paper crane. Other things, too, but the cranes were the ones Ava had liked, and had stuck with her. Mostly.

She had to improvise here. A fold to make it a square, the triangular fold in a way so that folding the edges in would repair the rip, edges in again, top down… the motions came easier as her memory was buoyed up by Hidden. When she finished, and gently tugged the wings out so it wouldn’t split in half, the piece of paper seemed almost confused as to what had happened to it.

It shifted back and forth in her palm, new wings and beak moving and flexing like it wasn’t sure what to do with this. Then it made a tiny hop, and then another that sent it sprawling over the edge of Ava’s hand and down to the coarse beach. But then, realizing it could still move, it flung itself into the air, wings that absolutely should not have been able to keep it aloft pumping as it took wing.

”Alright, that was neat, I guess.” Hidden admitted as she pulled herself out of Ava. “Are you gonna do the others?” She sounded almost expectant.

”Well… I guess it’s not fair if I just do one.” Ava nodded, decided she was doing the right thing, and got to work.

Watching the paper cranes - some more damaged than others but all of them airborne - fly away was bittersweet. Because Ava had secretly been hoping that one or more of them would stick around and she could have a really cool magical pet to hang out on her shoulder. But even the ones that had held still for her to fold still got clear of her pretty quick, and one had even pecked a hole in the back of her hand which was bleeding, so they were really more like wild birds than anything else.

Hidden was chastising her as they headed back along the beach to see if they could sneak a bandaid out of the medical cart. “You didn’t need to try to catch it! You’ve already got the cutest living thing on your shoulder!”

”You hate people looking at you. And you’re not cute, you’re slimy.”

”You’re slimy! Stop running away from baths!”

”Well you-“

Ava was certain she had the perfect retort for her sister. Unfortunately, she didn’t get a chance to deploy it. Neither of the girls noticed the shadowed circle in the beach where the surface was just a little sunken, but both of them noticed real fast when Ava’s crunching step triggered an explosion of shredded cardboard and broken pen caps.

They were both screaming, Ava flailing her arms and falling backward onto her butt, when out of the sudden eruption of the ground, the whirring mass of a shellaxy burst forth. It was only about half Ava’s size, but the speed it moved at and the extended tightly wound cable tentacles that it used to fling itself forward made it seem like the world’s largest monster in that moment. It snapped forward with its maw of sharpened components, and Ava kicked it in the teeth once. A strike that cost her her shoe, the intact nature of her sock, and half the skin on her foot.

It scuttled over her downed form, singing out in error tones, and Ava felt nothing but terror that it was going to kill her, and if it didn’t, her mom absolutely would. Then the shellaxy paused, it’s glowing eye swiveling over her with an ominous blue light before it eased its weight off her and started receding.

Ava still hadn’t even managed to suck a breath in, the air knocked out of her lungs keeping her from screaming any further. But she felt a moment of hope, before two of the tentacles wrapped around her ankles and started dragging her roughly across the beach and down into the hole. Then, she managed to pull in some air, and let it out in a scream of panic. Wrapped around her neck, Hidden broke out of her own abrupt daze, and added her own shout. Less a scream and more a pulse that bellowed to anyone nearby to notice.

It all happened so fast, but Hidden felt like she could see the world with crystal clarity. The worn black rubber wrapping up the shellaxy’s limbs, the lapping acrid ink just a couple yards away, every bump as Ava’s head was dragged over the rough surface, the way that there was something deeper down in the hole the shellaxy had come from. But she was tethered to her sister, and they were both being pulled under, and no amount of perception actually translated to being able to stop it.

From below the beach, pushing out of the shellaxy’s sandy ambush nest, much thinner cables with tiny fangs on their ends began to wrap themselves around Ava’s leg, and Hidden’s sister screamed louder.

Then a battle damaged sharpened grey metal mace slammed into the front edge of the hermit crab computer that was pulling them down. Thin metal warping and plastic parts snapping as a clean corner became a foot deep indentation. The creature made a confused ding, wobbling and loosening its grip like it wasn’t sure if it was hurt or not.

So Camille obliged it, and gave it a clear answer, yanking her weapon out with a lean motion, and then slamming it back in, small chunks of the shellaxy spraying out as its face was caved in and broken.

Instantly, the cords gripping Ava’s leg that had been half buried let go, and pulled back, but Hidden couldn’t feel them move away under the beach at all as Ava scrambled backward, dragging her leg out of the hole and starting to shake with sobs as she rolled over and tried to crawl behind Camille’s armored form.

There was the click of a radio. “This is Azure. I have a situation. Over.”

”P-please don’t tell my mom.” Ava’s face was a mess of tears and blood from where she’d wiped her hand on her cheek.

Camille just looked down at her with a blank expression as the radio at her side clicked. “Yeah Cam, what’s up?” There was a pause. “Over.”

”I have something here that appears to be a preteen human girl.” Her eyes flicked to Hidden, curled up in Ava’s tangled hood. “And one infomorph. Nature unknown. Please advise, over.”

”It’s not gone.” Hidden tried to whisper to Ava. “Tell her it’s not gone. Tell her.” But Ava wasn’t in any condition to understand what Hidden was saying. So she had to do something she actively hated, and slithered out of the hood. “It’s not gone!” Her voice was a terrified squeak, but she managed it. “It’s below us!”

The radio clicked to life again. ”Hey Cam. Uh… we don’t really know what to… uh… you know…” Below the armored woman’s feet, smaller cords were snaking out, seeking her through the sound. Cam, utterly untrusting of the thing that looked like a person laying on the beach, was still acutely aware of her surroundings, and noticed the cables going for her when the radio was on. As Ben continued to give a frustratingly repetitive explanation of the concept of adopting dungeon life, Camille flicked her wrist without moving her feet and sent her radio spinning to the ground five feet away.

The buried tumblefeed took the opportunity, and burst out where it had tracked her steps, a cascade of blue and black plastic and shredded cardboard filling the air in a column as its cords reached upward. The problem was, it burst out a few feet to Cam’s right, and that was a critical mistake. It adapted quickly, cords lashing against her armor and face, but finding no purchase. One cable tried to snake around to the back of her neck, but Cam was already moving and just let it skip across the side of her head.

Her mace dropped to the ground, and her hands blurred as she drew a secondary armament, cracked the ignition, and stepped fearlessly into the core of the tumblefeed’s mass swinging a thermite lance like she was an avenging angel. The heated metal bit into the creature’s core, and while it struggled to pull more of its cords out of the beach, Cam filled the air with the scent of burning plastic as she melted away the root of its tangled cords. She hit it a second time, the thermite lance snapping as she curled her left hand around the tumblefeed cords trying to sink fangs into her platemail. One good yank and the heart of it was peeled open.

Red sparks from the burning brand of a weapon splashed to the ground as she pivoted to place herself between where Ava was kicking and scrambling to put distance between the fight and where she was on the ground. Cam ignored the girls except to interpose herself between them and the lashing cables, then dropped what was left of her thermite, flicking it into the creature just in case this fight dragged on, but then caught its heart in a satisfying grip and pulped it in her fingers.

The green orb it dropped, Cam caught in her goo-coated gauntlet, and casually dropped to the ground as she stepped back from her kill.

When she looked sideways to glance down at Ava and Hidden, the two girls both felt like they were being watched by a far worse predator than anything in the dungeon. The radio on the beach still broadcasting was the most comforting lifeline ever. “…Cam? You there? Hello? Please don’t kill anything, Cam. Uh… over.”

Camille stepped over kicking the tumblefeed out of the way to retrieve her radio. “This is…” She paused and sighed. “I’ve killed something. Over.”

”Dammit Cam. Over.”

”It was a tumblefeed. The child is still here. I’m bringing her back.” She affixed the radio back to her armor and reached down with her clean hand. “Thank you.” Cam said simply to Hidden, before focusing on Ava. “You are injured. Our medics will want to see you. Stay close, and come with me. And bring that please.” She motioned to the orb the size of a grapefruit sitting on the beach.

Ava just nodded. This was still salvageable. Maybe, maybe, it would be possible to get out of this without getting in trouble.

_____

It wasn’t.

_____

Long Delve Report - Officium Mundi - Lighthouse Projector

The overhead projector discovered in the structure designated ‘the lighthouse’ is the third to be located and identified. It was found guarded and in use by a ‘hiring manager’ and six variant stuffed shirts, and was taken with several moderate but non-critical injuries. The area that it is in is styled like a skyrise ‘corner office’, with a higher ceiling and more solid walls than any of the parts of the cubicle tower below it. Additionally, the entire room is filled with a highly potent version of the highlighter vine, which accounts for the powerful glow visible from outside the lighthouse.

The projector itself accepts the same style of limited input in a space (10”x10”x8”) as the others, and uses the same ‘ritual’ placement of coffee grounds around it, which can be found on several of the respawning bags of grounds in any cubicle tower. The ritual is trigged by pressing the switch on the projector, as normal, which consumes the coffee grounds and produces a flash of light. The output has not been extensively tested, but based on limited information, it appears to improve whatever is placed in its input zone.

When quantified with the yellow orb standard, this improvement is a 25% boost to the skill rank gained. But the ritual still works on mundane objects, and they show clear changes that are difficult to say are limited to only 25%. Examples include:

-Pens writing with smoother and cleaner lines with less ink usage

-A shirt changing material and being a better fit for its owner (it can determine ownership)

-An iPhone showing marked improvement in function and battery life (it appears to have had its version of iOS reverted two iterations, and it’s unclear if this is the ritual being sarcastic)

-Candy being more filling and not leaving a cloying aftertaste.

-Knives being sharper

-A water bottle adjusted to be more ergonomic when part of a delver’s kit, with better insulation

None of the changes to mundane items make them magic. They are simply better versions, though what constitutes ‘better’ appears to be subjective and based on factors like who the item belongs to and what its use case is.

Preliminary tests with magic items were limited, as the expedition hadn’t planned for this situation and didn’t have many items that could be considered potentially disposable in the event that things went wrong. However it was tested on one of the Status Quo breaker gloves, and while the glove is now noticeably more comfortable than its duplicate copies, there was no change to the cooldown time, charges stored, uses to level, or any other immediately noticeable effects.

Since it was unsafe to create a fresh orange totem on site, it is unknown if compressed spaces will still upgrade everything inside. If they do, however, because this one doesn’t have the same “output bottleneck” that the copier has, it could be of massively increased value to upgrade mass quantities of food, tools, components, or even people if we want to risk that after extensive testing.

Several delvers recommend setting up a permanent base in this tower to secure the ritual, so that we won’t have to fight a respawning boss every time we want to access it. Because this one merits a lot of further testing.

_____

“You sure you’re okay dipping out? This was your vacation time, wasn’t it?” James asked Harvey as he helped pack up the heavy camping backpack that the man would be wearing as he teleported back to the second iteration of Fort Door.

Harvey gave James a level stare. His salt and pepper beard was currently half a vibrant green that would glow so powerfully under a black light that it would be able to charge solar panels. The rest of him was less soaked in the ink, but half of him was still a riot of bright colors, no matter how black his skin was supposed to be. The armor he’d been wearing had been so damaged that they weren’t even taking it back, just ditching it here and replacing it later, and the only reason Harvey wasn’t delirious with blood loss was because they had Climb empowered medics here.

”Vacation?” He asked stiffly.

”…Yeah?” James asked. “I mean, this is my vacation. Kinda.”

”Don’t be mad at him.” Arrush wheezed out from where he was sitting nearby being fussed over by Keeka, his boyfriend gingerly cradling one of Arrush’s smaller arms. “He is very dumb.”

”Hey!”

Harvey sighed. “Man, I don’t even know why I’m here. I just wanted some skill points.”

”Oh. Yeah, no, I get that.” James nodded. “Here.” He opened one of the pouches of random yellows and reds. “Just… take some? It’s fine. Like, we duplicate so many of these, we can’t get to all of them. So take a handful. Reds are legitimately useful for leadership positions, by the way; they help you understand how to approach people.”

”They don’t taste as good though.” Zhu said from James’ shoulder. “Not that humans taste them, I suppose. But the reds are more like a hot dashboard than fresh upholstery.”

“Yeah, what Zhu said. Orbs?” James offered the bag to Harvey.

”…We’re gonna have a talk later about delver privilege.” Harvey said. But he did take the orbs, popping a great handful of them and letting his eyes flicker upward as he made notes on his skulljack about his gains. “Alright kid, you ready to go?”

”Kids.” Anesh corrected idly as he waited to bother James to help him mess with his own armor before the expedition moved on. “Hidden is… oh, sod it.” He broke off as it became clear it wasn’t actually worth arguing the point.

Ava just nodded, looking like she was going to her doom. Which she might be, but not nearly as much as James would be when he got back and had to face Jeanne’s wrath for letting her daughter sneak in here in the first place. Ava was actually an excellent reminder that humans had no natural defenses against infomorphs, and that maybe, maybe, it wasn’t great to trust a kid with the relative power of ‘walking around with a mental rocket launcher’.

”Alright. We’ll drop this off for ya.” Harvey shifted the pack on his back. “And tell… uh… you that you say hi?” He gave Anesh a narrow eyed look. “How the hell do you keep track of all this?” Harvey asked James.

”Honestly I mostly just let Anesh deal with it, and focus on whichever one is closest.” James tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially and dropped his voice. “Especially when we’re alone and I want to make him-“

”Wow, yeah, no, we’re not close enough for me to stick around for that. Let’s get you home.” Harvey took Ava’s hand and gave James one last look and a snort before pulling the telepad and vanishing back to the one place they could reliably telepad to in the Office.

”Alright.” James said. “Is everyone good to move?” He asked Keeka.

”Yeeeees…” The ratroach peeled back his muzzle to show his fangs in half-agreement. “But we should let some of the hurt ones ride the carts if we can find space. Just for today. To rest.”

”Yeah, I’m cool with that.” James said. “Especially since I’m one of the hurt ones! Good thing my boyfriend thinks scars are cool.” He held up his hand, bandage wrapped around his palm.

”No we don’t.” All four people near him echoed at the same time.

Zhu followed up by peeling his own feathered arm away from James own, a dully glowing line where they’d been injured on his own palm, which he used to try to slap James on the side of the head. “Stop being damaged!” He ordered his host.

”I’ll see what I can do.” James said. “Alright, let’s get this show on the road. We’ve got people to meet. Kirk’s group will be coming through tomorrow, and we need to cover… what, ten miles or so to meet them?”

“You’ve done it before.” Anesh said with a wry grin. “Should be easier this time around.”

James snorted, brushing Zhu’s orange light feathers off his neck. “Yeah, well, if it’s worse, then that’s a sign from our dungeon master that it’s time to get out.” He said. “Anyway. I’m feeling pretty good about all this, even if I did get cut up. We did the big things we wanted to check out! Now it’s all just… you know…”

He looked out over the sluggish waves of the ink ocean. The way it had a sort of rainbow sheen to it farther out was almost beautiful, even if the smell from the world’s largest air conditioning fan blowing its fumes into his face was bad, even through his mask.

The bathroom, the ink sea, they were cool places that the Order had wanted to fully explore, work toward mapping out. And that was great, it really was.

“But out there,” Zhu picked up James’ thoughts, “there’s something new.”

”Exactly. Let’s go find it.” James smiled.

Arrush made a wet coughing sound as he cleared his throat. “It’s going to try to eat us.”

”…let’s go find it cautiously.”

_____

Long Delve Report - Officium Mundi - Day Two Acquisitions

Yellow Orbs (Size 1) : 21 (10 “Improved)

Yellow Orbs (Size 2) : 2

Orange Orbs (Size 2) : 17

Blue Orbs (Size 1) : 50

Purple Orbs (Size 1) : 24

Purple Orbs (Size 2) : 8

Red Orbs (Size 1) : 30

Green Orbs (Size 4) : 1

Blue Items (Misc, unidentified) 10-20 estimated

Ritual Coffee : 18 bags (Net loss of 6 bags)

iLipedes : 3

Expedition Voted Best Candy Name Of The Day : Nut Loss