“Step 1E. Fear.” -how to make jorts, Brian David Gilbert-
_____
North Smiths, Utah, was experiencing pretty heavy winds when James and Arrush arrived in it, to an absolute lack of fanfare. Not one to be caught getting hit in the head by stray lumber again, James snatched a branch out of the air just before it slapped into his face, and dropped it to the sidewalk to be taken away by the ongoing gale.
”I didn’t think tornado was on the menu today!” He shouted into the wind, trying not to lose his balance. Next to him, Arrush almost did get shoved backward, but the ratroach’s bifurcated tail caught him on the pavement and kept him upright. “Let’s- awkkkguhgh!” His comment devolved into random noises as something got carried by a gust into his open mouth. Hoping that he hadn’t just eaten whatever the most common native bug was, James pointed up the driveway of the house the telepad had put them in front of, and hoisted his luggage as he led Arrush up the fancy stonework path through the manicured lawn.
Suburbia. James’ worst nightmare.
And not even because of the traumatic memories of being dumped into a suburb-based dungeon; being injured, poisoned, plagued, and forced to watch a large portion of the civilians he was trying to shepard out die to those things even as he survived them all. That was bad, sure. Some nights, it was bad, and there were times where if he hadn’t had his partners with him James wasn’t sure how he would have made it this long living with it. But it was a trauma he was working through. It was an event, and it was in his past. If he ever went into the Stratified Underburbs again, it would be with a grenade launcher and a score to settle.
Regular normal suburbia was a lot harder to deal with, because a lot of polite society frowned on firing a grenade launcher into it.
The suburbs just felt like a special kind of lie to James. Everything was always so clean, but only because no one ever existed there. The yards were cared for by hired help that didn’t live anywhere near here, the trees lining the sidewalk were from somewhere else and had barely taken root in their transplanted homes. It felt like a shell of a place; too much space for too few people, even without the magic an orange totem could bring to life.
This house was an Air B&B, which James already had a problem with, in the middle of an upper-middle class suburb. It was a very pretty facade, that was actually part of a parasitic development strategy that unintentionally drained useful resources away from both rural and urban places that needed them more. All so someone could have a really nice lawn.
The wind died down as they got halfway up the walkway to the front door, the skinny transplanted trees going from whipping about to gently swaying. At least, James figured, the odd weather had the wide street empty of people. Or maybe that was just what it was like here; he was feeling cheerfully uncharitable toward suburbia today.
He knew bringing Arrush along would, at some point, lead to a clash of some kind. But it was one James knew was coming eventually anyway. The ratroaches couldn’t just hide under the Order forever; they needed to be able to live openly. And that meant taking the steps to start doing that, because the world would never change without being prompted to do so. Still, at least the wind gave them a quiet moment to drop off their bags first.
A rapid knock on the door got a quick answer from a middle aged man that James recognized as one of the people in the Order who specialized in checking places for new dungeons. Well, specialized in that they were the ones who took the jobs, not specialized in that they found dungeons. Dungeons were, it turned out, really fucking hard to find. Most people found them by pure luck, and statistically a lot of those people didn’t have the luck to survive their first delve. Those that did, didn’t seem to advertise much. Or their attempts got caught up by whatever memeplexes ate the information out of circulation.
”Hey Charlie.” James greeted the man, offering a handshake.
”Sir paladin.” Charlie returned the firm grip with a self-satisfied smile as he let James into the rental house. “James. And… Arrush, right?” He offered a handshake as Arrush followed James inside, utterly unconcerned with the ratroach’s nature. Charlie turned and led them both into the home’s living room, where the rest of his team were watching something on the rental home’s Netflix account. “Time to be professional, you two.” He said, getting a pair of unhappy looks from the human and camraconda on the couch.
”Oh, don’t be professional on my behalf.” James said, gently slinging his bag to the floor. “Hey Alice.”
”Yo.” The woman nodded at him. “Welcome to Ute.”
The camraconda next to her let out a dramatic digital sigh mirrored with a loud exhaled hiss. “It’s Utah!” She reminded the smirking human woman in a way that made James feel like he’d just walked in on someone’s in-joke.
Charlie didn’t so much as sigh at their antics. “Welcome in.” He said to James and Arrush. “James, you’ve met Alice. Alice, this is Arrush.” He said the ratroach’s name with the kind of precise pronunciation that made it sound a lot sharper than it was supposed to. “And this is… Dance.” He pointed at the camraconda.
“H-hi!” The camraconda shrunk back down behind the textured white back of the couch she was on. “I’m Dancing-Gleam-Of-A-Thousand-Knives. B-but you can call me Dance, cause everyone else does.” She twisted her head upside down to glare at Charlie.
James titled his head, trying to ignore that he’d never heard a camraconda stammer with their digital voice before. “I mean, that’s kind of a mouthful, but I’ll still call you that if you want?”
”Don’t humor her, she’s trying to make people feel silly saying her name.” Charlie told James as he leaned on the counter that separated the room from the kitchen. James was trying really hard to not be jealous of the massive amount of counter space available here, compared to his own kitchen at home.
So instead he shrugged. “I mean, Zhu keeps using a last name as his first name cause he picked it without actually knowing Chinese. Plus, I’m not gonna pretend I wasn’t the kind of teenager who had a geocities page with a black background and red font. So I feel like I can say Dancing-Gleam-Of… no, Gleaming-Dance… fuck I’m really sorry, say it again, I forgot the order.”
”…Dance is fine…” The camraconda raised herself up farther, and James realized she was wearing a pink and black sweater, but not one that was repurposed from human clothing. Someone had made that for her, which was cute. “You’re different than I expected.” She told him.
”People say that a lot.” Arrush said with a knowing nod. He’d noticed that people always seemed caught off guard by James, especially when James acted exactly like himself and approached situations with a refined honesty. “Hello.” He waved two of his left arms at Dance and Alice.
The camraconda looked at him for a moment before turning back to the human woman. “Mom!” She hissed. “How come I can’t have any arms, but he gets five?”
”I’m not playing this game with you.” Alice declared.
James hadn’t been exactly sure what his introduction to the ongoing investigation down here would be, but this wasn’t exactly it. This felt familiar though. Sort of like he was seeing a reflection of his own close group. These were people who worked together closely, who clearly cared for and trusted each other, even if they were currently in the process of either bantering or arguing.
Charlie shook his head at the two on the couch, before turning back to James and Arrush. “Well, we’ve got a few open bedrooms in this place, we should get you settled before I give you the long rundown of the last month.” He paused, looking at the two of them with what seemed like uninterested consideration. “Two bedrooms?”
James glanced at Arrush, who shuffled back with slight embarrassment, before he turned back to Charlie. “One’s fine!” He said cheerfully. “Just so ya’ll know, Arrush and I are sort of dating right now.”
”Oh!” Dance yelled from the couch where she was fighting Alice for control of the remote. “See! I told you I should be allowed to date!”
”You are allowed to date, you’re just not allowed to- Dance get back here!” Alice’s yell got a tiny sigh from Charlie, who stoically refused to turn around.
Instead, he just shook his head and led James and Arrush upstairs and down a wide hall to a round atrium space with four different doors. “This one should work for you.” He said. “Alice is there, I’m downstairs, Myles isn’t here now but he and Lin have the basement suite. Dance pretends she doesn’t sleep but that’s hers. Bathroom here, the water pressure is excellent, and this is the closet with extra blankets.” He pointed at different doors in turn. “Oh, that little alcove over there? Don’t try to get up there.” He gave one more point to a spot that had a few fake plants, but was built into the wall with a high window and had absolute no connecting path. It was just… up there. Overhead, if you were walking through the downstairs foyer, but barely visible. The kind of weird thing that houses like this had sometimes.
”…why not?” Arrush asked, curious now that he’d been told he shouldn’t do it.
”I don’t want to hear Dance complain about how someone else is allowed up there when she’s not.” Charlie answered. “Anyway. Take a moment, I’ll get Alice and we’ll prepare a rundown for you.”
”Excellent.” James smiled as their host vanished.
The bedroom was, much like the front yard and the house itself, very nice. A freshly made queen bed with ornate pillows, the smell of some kind of air freshener and a little dust, shelves with… stuff on them. Knickknacks, really. The sort of stuff James loved having on his own shelves; but unlike the little trinkets that all held fond memories for him, these were just… things. Just stuff. Though the small portrait of a horse and the metal sculpture of a flower were nice; it just wasn’t personal.
Arrush poked one of the pillows on the bed. “I… I worry.” He said quietly, one of his paws covering the corner of his mouth just to be safe, to make sure he didn’t drip on it.
”Oh, don’t worry!” James said as he set his bag down on the carved wood chest under the window that faced the front yard. He’d actually unpack later, especially for the things like the leveling equipment. “We’re not gonna be using those.”
”Because of me.” Arrush sounded a little sad as he handed James his own backpack to set next to the first one, even if he did understand.
But James had other ideas. “Hah! No.” Unburdened, he took a moment to slide up behind Arrush, and wrap his new boyfriend in a warm hug. Carefully, though; Arrush wasn’t the same as Anesh or Alanna, and not just because of his species. He was a little more fragile, like this. A little thinner in places. So James’ hugs had to be more measured, and less playfully crushing. A change he was still getting used to, though that was the point really; that they get used to each other. “You’re absolutely fine, and if you want to melt one of their stupid pillows, go for it. I’m saying we’re going to use pillows that don’t feel like garbage.”
”You haven’t… haven’t touched these pillows.” Arrush chittered lightly as he leaned back into James, his heart hammering from the proximity and the feeling of being held. He was only barely used to this from Keeka, and now he had another source of this feeling, and it was, he readily admitted, amazing. “They could be…”
”They are not.” James said definitively. “I’ve been in a fair few places before, and let me tell you; there is no way that a pillow that looks like that, is comfortable to lay on.” He pointed at one of the objects sitting at the head of the bed. It had dark gold cord around its edge, an almost stereotypical plump shape, and tassels. And James knew for a fucking fact that it was going to be awful. But just to be sure, he let go of Arrush and made a joke out of approaching it with caution before snatching it up. “Oh, yeah, no. This thing feels like sandpaper that has a grudge. No, we’ll use the other pillows that they’ve hidden out of aesthetic shame. Or I’ll teleport somewhere and buy real bedding.” He was spoiled, a little, to even have that option. But he didn’t care; he wasn’t gonna make Arrush suffer through anything with tassels on it.
While James went around the room, poking at every window, shelf, and the one tiny door that led to some kind of crawl space, Arrush actually did unpack. Laying out his loose clothing in neat piles, before taking up a drawer of the dresser by carefully laying out the array of knives he’d brought. By the time he was done, James had already stripped the bed of everything that offended his comfort standards, and was feeling like he needed something to do.
”Can we hug again?” Arrush asked in a soft rasp as James lay staring at the ceiling with his feet on the floor at the foot of the bed, waiting to see if he’d actually feel more rested.
The words brought a smile to his face as he flung himself upright, and wrapped Arrush up, getting a surprised squeak from the ratroach. “Of course.” James told him. “But only for a bit, cause I’m not exactly feeling tired from just teleporting down here, so I’m ready to go see what the situation is and what we can do to nudge it along. How about you?”
Arrush just replied with a series of wet clicks, his ability to form words fading as he lay the end of his muzzle on top of James’ head and just enjoyed being held. Humans hugged differently. He wondered if, somewhere miles away, his partner and love was experiencing a similar hug from a similar human. It was a nice thought.
All too soon, James got restless though. Arrush could have stood there with their arms around each other for hours, but this human had a deep need to be constantly moving, and making himself useful. So Arrush let James go, and followed him downstairs, to where information about their objective was waiting.
Maybe if they solved the problem fast enough, he could get more time for hugs. Maybe this would all be nothing, and this could be… a vacation.
That sounded pretty nice.
_____
James and Arrush returned to the others to find that Myles was back, and that he and Charlie were comparing a map on Myles’ phone to an actual paper survey map spread out on the kitchen table. They’d stacked up the silver plated candlesticks, the bowl of fake fruit, and a few other doodads that had been on the table into a haphazard cluster balanced precariously on the windowsill behind them, while they focused in on marking sites.
”There’s a house here.” Myles was arguing.
Carlie just kept a dull frown on his lips. “Not on the map.”
”It’s an older map.”
”Is it a new house?”
”Probably?! I don’t know, man, but there’s a house here. Mark it.”
James looked around for the others, but didn’t see them. Presumably they’d escaped from whatever was happening here. “Hey.” He said, getting a raised hand from Charlie without the man looking up. “Are houses going missing? Is this another thing where I’m gonna get ambushed by real estate agents?”
There was a small pause as Myles cracked his mouth open to ask one of five different questions, before the rogue processed what James had just said, put together what he meant, and came back with a real answer instead. “No, if anything, houses are appearing. Through a mystical and previously unknown process known as ‘construction’.”
”We don’t have enough information to meaningfully prove that.” Charlie said, sounding to James like he was reciting a mantra. “There isn’t a public record of this house being built.” He poked the physical map again.
James took a breath, and nodded. “I’m gonna call in an expert on this.” He said.
”House spawning?” Myles asked.
”Maps.” James closed his eyes and held out his right arm to the side, focusing on the feeling of being somewhere new, and of checking out a map that might lead them somewhere interesting. Before he opened his eyes again a few seconds later, the sensation of spectral feathers running down his forearm and the sound of a distant engine told him that Zhu had arrived. “Heya.” James addressed the navigator. “Sorry to wake you up.”
”It’s fine. Ooh, this place is fancy. We should steal all the silverware on the way out.” Zhu’s singular round eye on James’ shoulder flicked around the room, taking in the decor.
”Okay, he’s feeling punchy, that’s a good sign.” James laughed. “So hey, take a look at this.”
”Yeah. Bad map. It’s missing a bunch of destinations.” Zhu said rapidly as James stepped up next to the table, making a gesture to invite Arrush just in case he didn’t feel like he was included in this. “How old is this? You guys need to update your maps.” Zhu failed to notice Charlie’s grimace or Myles’ look of vindication. “What am I looking for anyway?”
James pointed at the ‘new’ house. “What’s here?”
”A house. Probably. Almost no barrier to getting there, with this in front of us.” Zhu gave a feathery shrug, his own taloned arm pulling James’ shoulder upward with it. “So probably normal?”
”Okay. So there’s one normal house there. Good.” James nodded and looked at the two men who had now had their argument and or debate settled. “So. Do you two want to fill me in on what’s been going on down here?”
Charlie nodded stiffly. “In the last week, we’ve seen a spike in…”
”Weirdness.” Myles jumped in where Charlie trailed off.
The older human shook his head in a tight motion. ”No, that would imply-“
”Charlie. Weirdness.” Myles balled his hands into fists on the edge of the table.
”…in the last week, we’ve seen a spike in weirdness.” Charlie conceded begrudgingly. “For a while, the rogues were keeping an eye on the extended families of the kids we returned home down here, especially after… after we dropped the ball, and they went missing. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, a couple in-laws. This place may be suburban, but there’s some extensive family lines here.” He pointed at several addresses on the big unfolded map circled in red. “Missing. It started slow, which might be how the first few households vanished without notice. Their stuff is still there, mostly, but it doesn’t look like kidnapping or murder. They packed up and left, possibly on purpose.”
Myles picked up as Charlie took a drink of iced tea, before offering drinks to James and Arrush from a frosted glass pitcher sitting on the polished marble counter. “So far, there’s a confirmed twenty nine people who have disappeared. Once we caught on, we put stakeouts on as many of the others as we could.” He pointed to a few houses on the map, almost neighbors. “Gone. And the rogues - who all have authorities, assignments, or navigators - reported missing time. In one case, almost a whole day. From their perspective, they blinked and it was the middle of the night.”
”That’s fucking terrifying.” James murmured. “So, are any of them left?”
”No.” Charlie’s word was like a bullet to the mood. “We searched the homes. Cars are gone, along with some personal effects. We did find a few more spell coins, and bits of what might be delver gear, but nothing we could grok as magical. It’s just all leftovers. No sign of forced entry, nothing suspicious.”
”Except that whole ‘no one there anymore’ thing.” Myles chimed in.
Arrush shifted awkwardly, bobbing on his legs as he lowered down to try to make sense of the map. “But… they are humans.” He said. “They can leave, right?”
”Sure. Oh, I get what you’re saying, yeah.” Myles folded his arms and leaned against the window, making James wonder how long until that fruit bowl was condemned to get knocked over and fall to its death. “But all of them? And only these people? And everyone watching has no memory of the time it happened? Their pets are gone, too. This isn’t something-“
”I would take a pet with me.” Arrush interjected, before flushing neon green and looking away. “S-sorry…”
James hummed into his fingers, hand curled around his mouth in thought. “No, that’s actually a really good point. Pets being gone too means something.”
”Correct. Either whatever happened was very thorough, or the leaving was intentional in some way and the pets were accounted for.” Charlie handed an iced tea to Arrush, sipping his own as he kept frowning at the map. “Could go either way.”
”Hard disagree.” Myles sounded, James suddenly realized, like he was having this conversation after a week of stress and frustration. “Mysterious forces don’t pack dog toys.”
”Ooh, no, I see it. Hang on.” Zhu’s feathers rotated around James’ neck, tail flicking behind them with eager energy. “How many families?”
”Twelve. Nine with a pet of some kind.”
Zhu mimed snapping his talons, even though it didn’t quite work like a human’s snap. “Okay, someone should have hated their dog.” He said. “I know there’s the memes and things, but there are humans who just don’t like dogs. Or people who got pets they didn’t want. Or other corner cases, right? So if it’s all of them, that makes it weird.”
”Weird is the flavor of the day.” Myles sighed. “I don’t like it. At the very least, it makes it not… not natural? It’s someone doing something.”
”I have a question.” James asked, eyes gazing out the window at the mountain in the distance, peeking over the next row of houses in the neighborhood. “And I don’t want you to take this as me saying that the rogues aren’t thorough. But. Are we sure that these are the only people disappearing?”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
”Yikes.” Zhu muttered.
Myles sighed. “That would be a yikes. I can tell you that with the exception of where the targets were living nearby, at the very least, the surrounding houses weren’t poofed.”
”Raptured.” Charlie offered.
”I told you we can’t call it that.” Myles snorted as he narrowed his eyes. “Especially not around this place, where every one of these people do go to a church that believes in the actual for real rapture.”
Charlie’s mouth quirked into a tiny lopsided smile. “Mormons don’t call it that anyway. Maybe that’s literally what happened. Maybe we’re all left behind, for being terrible people.”
”That would be fitting.” James said plainly. “Let’s put literal divine intervention in the ‘probably not’ pile for now.” He looked at the paper map spread out, miles and miles of suburbia, homes broken up by strip malls and churches, eleven red circles marking empty homes. “I need to see these places, I’m bad with maps. Do we have pictures? I’ll go check them out in person later, get a feel for the area.”
“Ooh, we can establish route loops!” Zhu sounded too excited about the navigator tool of creating known and repeatedly traveled paths that could be apparently used as building blocks of other routes to ease the strain of it.
James gave a sad smile, turning away from Zhu’s eye so he couldn’t quite see. “Yeah, okay. Don’t overexert yourself, right?”
”Obviously. Stop worrying or your next walk to the store sends you into a lake.” Zhu’s dry bite of a comment got a chitter of unexpected laughter from Arrush. The navigator was quick to move on. “Maybe from one of the points, I can track where they went, too.”
”I should tell you, other navigators have tried.” Myles said with a disappointed huff.
Zhu preened. ”They weren’t me.” He said confidently, long feathered tail wrapping around James’ leg.
“Is there anything else going on?” He asked. “Or just the missing persons, as far as we know?”
“It’s hard to find out. People around here are addicted to gossip, but getting it out of them directly is a nightmare. And everything is really spread out, so any kind of geographically located effects are going to be up to chance to spot; we just don’t have enough eyes. And there’s almost no fucking traffic cameras to tap.” Myles took a deep breath, trying to quiet the building anger he had going on. “Ideally we’d want to get close to a few community figures, pastors or elders for the churches, owners of local businesses, that kind of thing. But the community is… it’s not closed exactly, but everyone kind of has their own established social circle. There just aren’t that many people who are isolated enough to be potential informants. The best we’ve managed is setting a couple rogues up on blind dates, but then people talk.” Myles rolled his head back to stare at the ceiling. “You know, the advantage of working in a place like this is supposed to be that it’s spread out and you have a ton of people who don’t communicate. But no. Everyone in the area is close. This is not a suburb problem, this is a this region problem.”
”Isn’t that good?” Arrush asked. “Not… not for you. That’s bad for you. But isn’t it good, because it means they have friends? This is how this one” he poked a claw into James’ side, “talks about making community. And… and it’s nice, in the Order, when people are close.”
”Oh, they’re not friends.” Charlie said bluntly. “It’s really very uncomfortable. I’m not good at the emotional elements of socialization, but I can tell a lot of these people resent or hate each other. They’re just in each other’s business, due to a complex web of power imbalances.”
Arrush emulated something he’d seen James do, and started lightly gnawing on one of his own claws. He found it was a good expression of utter confusion. ”…why?” He asked.
”I don’t know, exactly. I think it’s momentum.” Charlie said. “There’s an easy answer, but it’s a reflection of now, and not a reason for how it got to be this way. And I don’t like easy answers.”
“What about younger people?” James asked. “Not to sound like a tobacco exec, but have we considered targeting teenagers?”
Myles coughed out a laugh, before giving James a negative. “The whole place skews young. But when I said people kind of have assigned social circles, I especially meant teenagers. I’d bet you money there’s a bunch of them that want some kind of escape, but we don’t really have a way to identify or contact them.”
”Okay.” James placed his hands on the end of the table. “So, somewhere out there, twenty nine people have gone missing, something is blanking our knight’s memories, no one is talking about it, there might be more stuff going on, and all of this is happening in the orbit of what we assume to be a family of dungeon delvers. Correct?”
”That’s a good summation, yes.” Charlie was mildly impressed at how concise that was on short notice. He was a man who appreciated a good concise summary.
”Alright.” James rubbed the back of his hand through Zhu’s spectral feathers. “I want to get into local police records, see if anyone has reported them missing. They should be public if there were kids in the victims. Maybe actually talk to some of the officers for this area. Politely, don’t look at me like that, I’m not gonna open with… whatever you’re thinking.” He barked a counter to an unspoken argument from Myles. “Myles, you want more surveillance set up? Get someone on that. These houses look fairly clustered up. Like, within a few miles, right? Covering major roads in and out with disguised wildlife cameras should work.”
”I sent Yin out to get what we need already.” Myles said, showing off the quiet competence Nate was trying to cultivate in their rogues.
James cracked a smirk. ”Good. Last thing… have we checked any of the potential dungeon sites?”
Charlie reached up to the top of the table and unfolded a copy of the exact same map, with entirely different markings on it. And a lot more markings. “Alice and Dance have been on it since we got here. We can’t verify everything, but our group does a lot of studying of dungeon entrance environments. Statistically, it’s probably not in a house, so we’re focusing on high-metaphor locations. Movie theaters, churches, schools, larger businesses and stores. Yellow tags are places we’ve done a sweep of for emotional or mental tampering, list of times is here. Greens we’ve done extensive checks for emergent dungeon life or influence, including comparing external structures to historical records and going over months of video surveillance from inside, and turned up nothing. High confidence those aren’t it.” His matter of fact tone and clear knowledge on the subject came across as professional and detailed. “Red is places we can’t easily check. Emergency responders like police or fire stations, mostly. We’re checking everything in the immediate area first, before expanding the radius, because it’s likely that it’s near either here, or the high school those kids were going to, in order for them to have easy access to it.”
”I would have just said ‘yes’.” Myles offered.
”What about libraries?” Arrush asked. “Or parks?”
Charlie gave the ratroach a quick look. “Libraries are easy, they’re mostly green. But anywhere with a lot of out of the way doors is harder to check. Parks we can’t do much about at all. Worst case, the entrance is like the Climb, where it’s artificially created. Best case, there’s a naturally occurring ‘threshold’ that we could at least start from.”
Zhu split his arm off from James’ own, and put the tip of his glowing talon to a blank space in the middle of the northern part of the map. ”And this?” He asked.
”There’s nothing there.” Myles said. “It’s new construction, the roads are all laid down but the place is undeveloped. Just contractors and foundations.” He went quiet for a second, before adding, “If you want to steal a nail gun it’s a good spot for it?”
”Okay.” James repeated himself. “I think I want to get a look at stuff. Zhu, remember that spot, we should look at it too. How far is the nearest house someone went missing from?” James felt the thrum of his recently acquired Energy; he was ready for a walk, and the weather seemed to be getting less hostile, which would make this nice.
Charlie just turned and pointed at the kitchen.
James was about to say something, but then he stopped himself, and followed the arc of the knight’s finger. Not the kitchen, the window over the sink. Out over a gap before a fence separated the property lines between their rental home and the next door neighbor. “No, wait…” He said, looking back at the table and scooting past Myles to pull the dungeon search map up so he could look at the missing persons map..
”Oh yes.” Zhu said with an engine hum giggle. “We are here.” He pointed again, and his talon landed on one of the unmarked houses. Sitting directly between two of the places that had been stripped of their human occupants. “Oh that is bad, isn’t it?”
”Yeah.” Myles said with a bitter heat. “This happened under our fucking noses.”
James didn’t know what to say. He probably should have said nothing, but heard himself uttering a quiet ”Oof.” instead.
”Should I… wait here?” Arrush asked.
”If you want.” James said. “Apparently this walk won’t be as long as I thought.”
”I will wait here.” Arrush nodded, not quite comfortable strolling through the neighborhood just yet. “If you… if you are ambushed, I will be a surprise.”
James might have started to have weird standards in his life, because that came across as one of the sweetest and most romantic things anyone had ever said to him.
_____
The view from the street was a bizarre mix of mundane and naturally beautiful. In the distance, it was easy to see the peaks of mountains covered in a thousand lines of vegetation and exposed stone. Clouds painted a dozen pareidolia pictures in the late afternoon sky, and despite the sporadic sounds of car engines all around, the air was clean. Dry, a little more alkaline than James was used to, but clean; and a lot easier to take in now that the abrupt windstorm had died down.
”This place is weird.” He muttered to Zhu.
”What, because of the people disappearing?” Zhu asked, eye tracing the path of a chonky bright yellow hummer driving down the street until the driver turned without bothering to take a second glance at the stop sign a few blocks away. “Or because of the other weird magic stuff?”
”I was gonna say just because of how it looks.” James waved his Zhu-covered hand at the distant scenery.
Zhu rotated his eye, unbothered by the dry conditions at all in his manifested form. “Oh! I was looking at the streets, sorry.” He stared off at the distant mountains. “We could go there, you know. It’s farther than you think, but there’s some good hiking paths over there. A lot of satisfying journeys.”
The words brought James to a stop, his feet resting at the end of the house’s fancy stonework path where it met the sidewalk. ”Sometimes I wonder how you see the world.” He said in a gentle voice. “I know we’re different. I know I… I know I screw up sometimes and try to pave everything down to what I’m used to. But I’d love to see the mountains the way you see the mountains sometime.”
After a pause, Zhu found his voice again. “I could maybe show you.” He said. “Not now. But when you’re dreaming, when I can touch more directly, I maybe could.”
”I’d like that.” James breathed deep of the unfamiliar atmosphere. “Alright. Want to go solve some murders?”
”They can’t all be dead already. Right?” Zhu’s talons clutched around James’ wrist as his ethereal limb layered on top of his friend’s. “Right?”
”I guess we’ll find out.” James said, realizing as he did so that his attempt to deflect from his anxiety with humor was pretty bad when he couldn’t even get through that small sentence without finding himself speaking in a dull grey tone as he remembered all the people he had personally failed. All the people who were all dead already.
The house next door wasn’t a copy of the one James and the others were staying in. That would be too pedestrian; the high class suburbs didn’t just replicate the same building over and over, they iterated and tweaked and played with styles. And honestly, James could appreciate that; he’d get bored making the same place over and over. The only reason he was okay with making replicas of the same apartment a hundred and twenty times in the Lair’s basement was because they only had to build it once.
It was also empty. The garage was sitting open, but there were no cars in there or on the driveway. Checking his saved skulljack notes, he knew the rogues had searched the place and left it as it was, and that he could probably just walk in and poke around if he wanted. But it felt uncomfortable to just stroll into someone’s house, even if they were gone.
So he kept walking. Getting a feel for the geography of the sidewalks under his feet, feeling Zhu tagging landmarks in the part of his brain that the navigator had set up a penthouse suite in, and checking out every one of the buildings that had been hit.
They were just normal homes. They weren’t out of the ordinary at all. There wasn’t a strange feeling around them, there wasn’t the smell of hot salt that James associated with magic in action, there wasn’t battle damage or spilled blood. All there was was the occasional dog walker that James gave polite passing greetings to, or passing cars ferrying people home from work, or groups of kids out playing basketball or something in the driveways of various homes.
It was nice. Felt a little spread out, and a little unwelcoming to James specifically. But it wasn’t evil. Just nice. Only nice. Nothing more than nice, at any point.
It took the two of them over an hour or so to walk the streets in the winding path that took James past all the buildings that used to contain people. Some of them were clearly vacated, but others still had cars in the driveway and lights on, lit porch lights standing out during the daylight. He tried to take in as many details as he could, matching locations to the names and profiles of the missing, referencing his map so he knew where each different spot was, acquainting himself deeply with the information at hand.
And also watching the rest of the neighborhood. Or neighborhoods, really; it wasn’t clear where the dividing lines were all the time, but James had to cross a couple of larger roads, and saw a couple different large brick edifices with metal signs on them declaring the names of the developments.
The whole area was pretty flat, despite being surrounded by mountains. James was kinda used to growing up in Oregon, where even the suburbs were built all up and down hilly terrain. And he’d sort of internalized that as ‘normal’. But here, the flat scrubland had been easily paved and founded on. The perfect environment for this kind of construction. It didn’t even completely destroy the natural world, it was just that local flora were kept inconspicuous, and attention was diverted from them by the much more diverse gardens full of foreign plants. Though he did give the residents credit, there weren’t that many lawns; at least people here took drought seriously.
That was just the feeling of walking around though. The more specific details, James filed away for the future. Intersections, spots where streetside parking was heavier, how to get back to the connecting roads. And while he was alert and paying attention to things, he noticed something else, too.
”That door is open.” He looked across the street at a house that was sitting with its cherry red door hanging open to the front room. “Is that… no, that’s not one of the marked places.” James looked up and down the street. There was an older couple doing some gardening, and a truck pulling into a driveway, but no one was out walking around. Nor watching him. He shot a text off to Charlie about what he was doing. “Wanna go knock?” He asked Zhu.
The navigator brought his tail down on the back of James’ leg, the angle of his manifestation preventing it from being more than a small pat. “I don’t know why you’re asking.” He said, stretching out his feathers and keeping alert as James smiled and jogged them across the street.
Just in case it was just someone who was airing out their house, James knocked on the door a few times. “Hello?” He called into the interior of the residence. It was a wide two floor home, might have a basement too; the kind of place that would run an easy $500k around where he lived. “Excuse me! Anyone home?”
No answer. And Zhu said what they were both thinking in a whisper. “This went from boring to spooky pretty damn fast, huh?”
”No kidding.” James said, ringing the doorbell for good measure, the sharp chime sounding like deafening toll inside the house. Noise bouncing off smooth wooden floors and family pictures on the walls. “Hello?” He tried again. “Ugggggh. Zhu I wanna go inside.”
”Send Charlie the address first.” Zhu told him.
”Done.” James stepped over the threshold, and stopped talking. If there were people here, they were either deaf, or in the bathroom, and yelling more wasn’t going to speed up meeting them either way.
A mix of knight training days guided his actions as he and Zhu swept the house. Upstairs first, the stairs sturdy and silent under his shoes. Two bedrooms, a small bathroom with fish painted on the walls, what was obviously a kid’s game room, master bedroom with attached bath and a closet, James took it all in with sharp eyes and his hearing up as far as he could put it. Nothing was moving in the house except him and Zhu though. Then downstairs. Empty kitchen, refrigerator ajar and leaking cold air, some dishes in the sink and empty plastic cups on the table. TV still on. There was a basement, and a chill hit his spine as he walked down the enclosed stairs. But while there was a den or office, a pantry, and another TV with some game consoles and couches down here, there were no people. The pantry was still stocked with a month’s worth of canned goods, too.
Room by room, make sure no one can slip behind you if they’re hiding and dodging your search. Preliminary sweep ignored objects and focused entirely on people or threats, so James didn’t get distracted by the display of hunting rifles on the wall that was clearly missing a couple entries. The point was to just make sure that the structure was unoccupied.
”Empty.” James declared. “Baring someone hiding in the crawl spaces.” He and Zhu met each other’s gaze, sighed in united annoyance, and checked all the crawl spaces. “Okay. Empty.“ James declared correctly.
Zhu tightened his feathery manifestation around James. “That’s bad, though.” He said, quiet and fearful. “That’s really bad.”
”Yeah.” James breathed out. “That is… not good. Okay. I hate to ask this, but I need to appear mundane for a second. Can you-“ Zhu writhed his feathers up under James’ shirt, tail tucking down the back of one of James’ legs. “Thanks. Sorry.”
”Meh. I don’t care that much. Go. Do investigation.” Zhu directed him.
So James got on it, heading outside and to the home next door, knocking firmly but not aggressively. A late twenties woman opened the door, giving James a cautious greeting as she did so. “Hi.” James said with a friendly little wave and a mild smile. “Sorry to bother you, I promise I’m not selling anything.” He gave a casual laugh, and saw her soften up a bit. “I was just walking past, and I saw your neighbor's door is hanging open. Knocked there, but no one seems home. Just wanted to make sure that they were okay, so I figured I’d see if you knew them.”
”Oh, is it?” The woman stepped out onto the brick courtyard of the home to look over at the place next door. “That’s strange! I haven’t really talked to them, but I know the husband drives a big red pickup, and it’s not there. I think he’s been on a trip though, haven’t seen that stupid truck in a week. He always parks on the curb and blocks my mailbox.”
James looked up and down the street. “Odd!” He said. “Maybe they’re out for the day and the wind blew it open.”
”Oh, probably.” The woman gave him an unenthusiastic smile and a shrug. “Nice of you to check though!”
”Of course, of course.” James laughed. “Gotta watch out for each other, right? I’ll go shut that for them, keep the bugs out.” He waved as he walked away, and the instant his foot hit the edge of the property, his smile vanished, replaced by a stormy snarl. “God dammit.” He whispered.
Zhu pushed himself back out of James’ shirt. “It could be worse.” He said. “At least there’s still people here?”
James nodded, staring up at the swaying leaves of one of the sidewalk trees. “Honestly, good point. It could be worse. Okay. I want to try something, let’s see if any of the other neighbors know the name of the people who lived here.”
As it turned out, the young married couple on the other side did. They had a lot to say about the truck blocking their mailbox too, which… James didn’t actually think was possible? Sure, a bad pickup truck driver could ruin a lot of things, that was a universal constant. But they shouldn’t have been able to spatially displace their vehicle to block off two separate points thirty feet apart. He wasn’t prepared to chalk this up to hostile magic yet though; this sounded like something where it had happened exactly twice to each side, and they remembered it so sharply it was like it happened to them every day.
It didn’t matter. He got a name. And from there, he had a hook for his magic.
The people who worked in the Order’s rogue division were still members of the Order. They weren’t some shadowy background detail; they went on delves, they were good knights, and they were all very clever. At least half of them had Winter’s Climb spells, and every one of them that could take it had picked up Call To Blood. It had also been used extensively on the missing people here already, but all the trails were mundane, and focused around the houses, and none of them had anything added on that went anywhere weird.
He didn’t have high hopes for using it here, either. But maybe. It cost him almost nothing to confirm.
So James exhaled Breath, and cast the spell, focusing on the wife’s name. Miriam Edwards, the simplest piece of information that was needed to get the magic started. There were obviously other Miriam Edwards in the world, but because he had a clear idea of ‘which one’ he ‘meant’, it worked.
On his shoulder, Zhu made a satisfied hum as James felt his Breath starting to deplete slowly, the tiny chill from the very small cost not bothering him in the summer air. A physical tug in his chest pointed him toward the kitchen of the empty home. And once he was there, to the master bedroom. Master bathroom, kitchen, garage, master bedroom… all around the master bedroom, actually. The spell’s mental list of sites where the target was injured kept growing in bursts as he was close enough and within sight line of the last spot she was hurt. It took over fifty additions to the list before one of them pointed outside, trailing off into the distance.
James let the magic go, down about fifteen Breath. He resisted, barely, the urge to scream. Because he’d been trained on recognizing patterns in this spell, too, and this one pointed to something very specific. And it wasn’t a delver. The Order had tested this on its own people extensively; delvers actually made the pull to the next spot feel like splinters in your throat if it was inside a dungeon that wasn’t currently accessible. No, this was what someone who was being physically abused read as. Either that, or someone who was into knife play in the bedroom, and was just clumsy in the rest of the house.
”Check the drawers.” Zhu reminded him with the same grim anger that James was feeling. “Maybe they’re just kinky.” The two of them did, but turned up nothing. They then checked the whole house again to make sure it wasn’t just that the wife was diabetic and needed constant insulin shots. But no dice there either. So James repeated the spell for the husband, and then the one kid he knew the name of. The neighbors hadn’t known the younger daughter’s name, and it wasn’t on any of the mail that James had found on the home office’s desk.
The husband had one spot in the garage, three in the master bathroom, and then another somewhere else. Distance wasn’t part of the spell, nor was time, so these could have happened over any amount of time. The son had a few that were in the backyard or the front sidewalk, and about thirty in one of the bedrooms.
”I am suddenly having less fun.” James said, his skin crawling. “I mean, I wasn’t having fun before. But I was… I dunno, I was ready to solve a mystery and save some people. I don’t think I want to save one of these people anymore.”
”Let’s go back.” Zhu urged him. “Myles and Yin will be here soon. They can take over.”
”Yeah.” James frowned, stepping out of the house and pulling the door mostly closed. He stared at the red paint with a dull fire in his chest. “Don’t even know if they’re delvers.” He muttered to his friend.
Zhu tapped his talon on the back of James’ hand rapidly as he had a thought. “The others, the ones that vanished. They were all related, right? The same genetic line?”
”Weird way to put it, but it was three different families. Why?” James shook his hand as he interrupted his own question. “No, I just got it. We need to see if they have any relatives. And we need to do it before anyone notices they’re missing and calls in a wellness check, or before those relatives vanish too. Okay. Let’s get back, and let the rogues do their thing. I need to talk to Alice and Charlie.”
”And Arrush.” Zhu added.
”And… I mean, I like talking to Arrush, but why am I talking to him too?”
”Because I can feel something in the path.” Zhu said. “It’s like… you wanted to know how I see the world?” James nodded, and the navigator continued. “Through this eye, I see just like you. I see the mountains and the clouds and things. But in my seeking perception, I see things differently. Metaphor doesn’t work, it’s not like anything, I just know travel and destination and obstacle and event. It’s a little bit like looking at a weather forecast, but don’t ever tell another navigator I said that. The thing is…” Zhu’s eye rotated upward, staring at the sky. “Right now, the way I see the world? It’s like there’s storm clouds forming overhead. It’s dark and thunderous and powerful. And I don’t think it’s meant for us, but I think the storm is going to be big enough that there’s going to be a few roads washed out.” He wrapped his hand around James’ own. “So you’re going to talk to Arrush, and you’re going to tell him you need him with you.”
”Is this a prophecy thing?” James asked. “Because that perception thing is cool as hell, but the Order has a standing ‘no negotiating with fate’ policy. So I can’t listen to the prophecy.”
Zhu didn’t laugh. Just tightened his grip. “No.” He told James. “It’s not me predicting anything. It’s me being worried, and wanting to have the most dangerous person we know nearby when someone tries to kill us.”
”Really? Not Alanna?”
”You were sick for the Route Horizon delve. You don’t really know.” Zhu said. “Alanna is too nice to be really dangerous.” He tried to put a bit of levity into the words, but it didn’t quite work. Neither of them were feeling good right about now.
They passed by Myles’ car as they walked back to the rental house, though James didn’t wave or call attention to it, just traded confirmation texts via skulljack. When he did make it back, he was feeling physically limbered up, but emotionally drained. And when Charlie and Alice looked up at him as he approached their little research station on the kitchen table, he saw the same feeling mirrored in their eyes.
”This could be better.” Charlie said, looking at the freshly circled house James had found.
The words were so utterly, completely and totally, impossibly inadequate, that James had no choice but to start laughing.
It could be better. But he was here now, and he had no intention of letting this go. Not these people, not this time. There was something here, he could feel it. Cracks that he could leverage open to reveal a hidden truth. James just had to step out and start pulling things apart.
But first, he needed dinner, and maybe actual sleep, and not just what he’d borrowed from Sarah earlier.