“All systems nominal.” -Mechwarrior-
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[+.1 Skill Ranks : Athletics - Pole Vaulting - Olympic Rules]
[Problem Solved : Restocked Toothpaste]
[+.1 Skill Ranks : Repair - Ceramics - Kintsugi]
[Problem Solved : Medical Attention]
James, newly refreshed by the phantom sensation of having been laying on an emergency room gurney for a few hours, and the less phantom sensation of some kind of helpful painkiller to go with his wound being stitched up, landed on the shaded sidewalk between a department store and a parking garage.
The fact that teleporting was working for him again said something about the magic that had locked him in place when he’d encountered Lincon, but he didn’t know what. Maybe it was temporary, or it required upkeep, or there was a condition for breaking the curse. Whatever it was, neither James nor anyone else in their group could safely plan around being able to teleport, but if it was going to be an option, he wasn’t going to take the bus just out of spite.
Momo let go of his hand as soon as their teleport dropped them back into reality, stretching and stepping away from him, letting him get out of range of the personal red totems she had tightly contained in capsules hidden in her coat.
It was a bit weird to abruptly not know what street they were on, where the nearest publicly employed emergency responder was, or how hungry every friend within half a block was. Knowing in the first place had made his head hurt, and James really worried what Momo was doing to herself carrying those around all the time. It gave her an obvious advantage in a lot of situations; that information could tell someone some very useful tangential things after all. But James was pretty sure those weren’t the only totems in her cargo pants, and he didn’t know what to say to make her stop.
Momo had been a little reckless ever since James had met her, but it had always bordered on self destructive, and now he worried it had gotten a lot worse.
”Ooh. It’s nice here in the shade.” Momo commented, enjoying the gust of marginally cooler air sweeping between the two multi-story buildings. The shade was provided by the concrete skybridges overhead and not anything as pleasant as trees, but it did still feel better than standing in direct sunlight. “Hey.” She nodded at an elderly couple that were staring at where she and James had appeared from nowhere.
“This way. Don’t be weird.” James wanted to lead her across the street to the parking garage where the others were waiting, but even on this rather leisurely afternoon, he still had to wait for two pickup trucks and a minivan that seemed to think pedestrian right of way was a suggestion. “Everyone in a car is a threat to national security.” He grumbled to himself as he eventually just stepped out and got honked at, unwilling to waste more time here.
With a cocky grin and another elbow in his side that James deflected, Momo followed along next to him. “Don’t you drive? You drive a lot! You do Horizon shit, and I know you do cause El complains about it!”
”First off,” James said as he swept his gaze around the mostly empty parking garage to find the stairs, so they could creep up to the fifth level of the monolithic temple to the automobile, “when I’m driving, I’m also an idiot. That’s how it works. That’s why it’s a problem.”
”Self-knowledge is the key to enlightenment.” Momo nodded sagely, without a hint of irony or self reflection in that statement.
James gave her a side eye before continuing. “Also El complains about me?” That hurt a little. He felt like that shouldn’t hurt, but it kinda did.
”Eh.” Momo shrugged, causing a series of metal rattles from her coat. “Not really. She just tries to make everything sound like a complaint even if she secretly loves them. Me. It. Loves it.”
There was no way in hell James was going to touch that comment right now. He had stairs to climb, preferably without making too much noise.
On the fourth floor, they found the stairs blocked by one of the most potent memetic defenses known to mankind. An orange and white wooden barricade, propped open and sitting on the bottom step, complete with a sign informing them that there had been a chemical spill.
”Huh.” James said as he took in the sight. “I mean… if that’s all it takes…”
”If it’s stupid and it works, it’s not stupid?” Momo shrugged.
They walked past it, which meant it wasn’t working, which meant it was kind of stupid. This was the sort of thing that the Order of Endless Rooms needed to be on guard for. They weren’t the only ones who were ‘up to something’. And sometimes people were just curious or contrary or clever, and you couldn’t assume that a single sign would baffle everyone. Active defenses were important, intelligent actors were important.
The Order’s own intelligent actors were waiting as James turned the corner and got mildly startled at the armed and armored team that were arrayed around the stairs and elevator. “Paladin! Stay low.” One of them called softly to him, the whole group of five moving with a kind of smooth unity as he and Momo joined them that James suspected meant they were on a limited skulljack link. The young man pointed them in a direction, and one of the shield team split off to lead him and Momo around to where everyone else was lurking in the shadow of a utility company van.
”Oh good, you’re not dead!” Ink-And-Key greeted James as he approached, the camraconda flanking Rho as the two of them lurked alongside the others. Lincon was hanging back, shifting nervously as he hugged the side of a concrete pylon and looking like he wanted to talk to James but didn’t want to speak up.
”Yet.” Anesh grumbled softly, turning from where he was sticking his head out around the back of the van. “We’ll see how Alanna and the rest of me are feeling when we get back.”
”Please don’t… kill him.” Arrush said, clearly feeling awkward about it. James gave the ratroach a soft smile, and opened his mouth to say something, when Arrush continued. “Ch-counterintuitive. Punishment should be eh-embarrassing…” On the grungy concrete floor, Keeka curled back from where he was observing their prey from under the van to shoot James a cracked glowing grin, showing Arrush support for his plan. On Arrush’s shoulders, Zhu gave him a supportive pat of equal agreement.
James didn’t want to get into interpersonal drama right now. “What’s the actual situation?” He asked. In response, Anesh just scooted back, and motioned for James to take a look over the hood of the van.
Peeking up, legs only protesting a little bit at his crouch walk, James peered out over the flat part of this level of the garage. This area was away from the ramps, and a quick check behind them showed that someone had put up cones and caution tape to block it off too; drivers could take the ramp up or down past it, but not actually get in. Unless they just ran over some orange cones. But, oddly, the level was full of cars like the one they were hiding behind.
Probably what all the people took to get here. Because ahead of them, there was a crowd of maybe twenty humans. Well, presumed humans. They all looked human, anyway.
A lot of them were lined up and blankly staring at an elevator, silent bodies waiting for the doors covered in ‘out of order’ signs to open. There were only two people who looked like they were actively participating in the world, and they were also the only two who weren’t lugging suitcases or backpacks. But instead of seeming like they were part of some kind of malicious cult, the two mid twenties men just looked bored, and a little impatient. At least, that was how it seemed from this distance.
As James watched, the elevator doors slid open with a rough rumble, revealing what looked like a cargo lift inside. The two people who were alert seemed to sigh in relief, as one of them led the way in and the other started waving, prodding, pushing, and ordering the group to get moving and sort themselves into the cab.
“Okay. Lincon?” James was pretty sure he’d agreed to not mess with this exact thing, but actually seeing this many people - adults and children, too - being moved around like blank faced cattle was disturbing. There was a pause as James looked back at Lincon, who was watching him expectantly, and James realized that his shorthand way of talking with his friends and close allies wasn’t going to work on a teenager that needed explicit instructions. “Lincon, what are we looking at here? Is that the dungeon entrance? Give me something to work with here.”
”I… I don’t know? I mean, yes, that’s the door. Or one of the doors? But I don’t know what they’re doing! Are they kidnapping people?! Shouldn’t we stop them!?” His voice rose, but it didn’t seem to attract attention as the two humans that were awake enough to care seemed exhausted and busy with trying to fit twenty people in a big elevator car.
James shook his head. “It’s… likely that this is voluntary.” He said softly. “I don’t know why they’re like this, though, and keeping low was a good call.” Anesh gave him a nod and a small smile at that, a little proud to have made a good choice. “We don’t want to spook them now. But I do want to have the whole picture of what’s going on. Is there a limit on the door?”
”No, no it’s just… it’s the elevator, you know? You get in and it takes you to a dungeon.” Lincon licked his lips, looking at it almost longingly before glancing back to James. “You’ll know what button to hit I guess. It’s always been… uh… ‘open’ every time we got to it. But no one ever uses it, cause it’s out of order.”
”The ultimate defense!” Momo whispered gleefully.
Anesh shuffled over to get closer. “So, what do we do?” He asked. “Just let them go?”
”I’m okay with that.” James said. “Give them some space, then follow them in? Trail them if we can, see what’s going on. Otherwise, just try to pull some secrets out of the dungeon itself. Either way, the more we know, the better a position we can negotiate from when we make contact.”
His human boyfriend gave him an agreeable nod. “At least we have backup this time. Do we bring the shield team, or leave them to cover the entrance?” He shook his head rapidly before answering his own question. “No, entrance, of course. There’s more than enough of us for a safe first delve, isn’t there? Though having Alanna around would make me feel better.” He and James shared a small chuckle, because of course it would.
Momo raised her hand. ”We could also always call Max back?” She offered. “Actually El might be into this too, if the dungeon is full of cars. Is it full of cars? I didn’t get the details.”
Lincon opened his mouth and said something none of them heard.
”Cool.” James enunciated the word as plainly as he could. “Great. Love that.”
The younger kid gave them a confused look. “What, the-“ he said something else. No one heard that either.
”Hey Zhu, can I borrow you for a second?” James said, linking warm and scratched up hands with Arrush to let the navigator flow back to him. “Can you hear him?” James asked.
Zhu rustled his smoothed out feathers as he situated himself on James, opening a few eyes across his shoulder. “Of course I can-“ Lincon said something else about the dungeon, and Zhu stopped talking. “Oh.” He tightened his manifestation, giving the impression of someone pursing their lips but with his whole feathered body. “That is… very odd.”
Behind them, the elevator doors closed, which sealed at least part of their plan in place. James acknowledged that they were alone with a glance, standing up to stretch and lean on a nearby low concrete barrier. “Okay. So. We are gonna get Max back here briefly, but only to take Lincon home.” Lincon opened his mouth like he was going to argue, but James patiently held up a hand. “You can’t give us advice, so you’re not a good guide, and you won’t work well with us without practice. I know you know this dungeon, and I’m not shutting you out, but my dude, come on. You haven’t been eating or sleeping well, I’m sure you feel like shit. I’d like to send you off to meet up with your friends and get settled at the Lair, but until we figure out what’s holding you here and shoot it, let’s settle for sticking you back at the safehouse, okay?”
”But I can-“ Lincon kept talking but the words didn’t actually process. He searched James’ face for signs of recognition, but even Zhu gave him a shrug, and he sighed. “Wait, my friends…?”
Momo gave him a thumbs up. ”Yeah, we got Emma and Liam out. If you’re still friends, obviously. I remember being a teenager.” She stared wistfully off into the fairly short distance of the cramped parking garage.
”I don’t.” Keeka offered. “Which is good. It sounds awful.”
”It’s mostly just being awkward and kinda horny and suffused with anxiety all the time.” Momo told him, eliciting a sputtering bright red blush from Lincon.
”Oh! Okay, I do then.” The ratroach gave her a glowing smile as he dusted off the bits of his black fur that had gotten tangled crawling under the van. “Should we go now?” He asked, watching the elevator.
Arrush settled arms around his smaller counterpart in an enveloping hug. “Are you… sure?” He asked.
”No!” Keeka happily admitted, before his voice turned more serious and he tipped his head up to tap the point of his triangular muzzle against Arrush’s. “But I am here, and I can help. And you are going, so I am too.” And that was that. A simple statement, but one Keeka found critically important to say out loud, just in case anyone had forgotten.
Preparation came quickly after that.
James quickly checked in with the shield team, and had them fall back to cover the dungeon entrance with orders to politely inform anyone who came out what was going on without detaining them. He was actually really impressed with the level of professionalism they had going on, and said so, which had gotten an awkwardly proud reaction from the leader he’d been talking to. The crack showing they were still people, not actually reforged into military machines by Nate and his kinda dramatic training plan.
Meanwhile, the same Recovery knight from earlier blipped in to swap them a suitcase full of armor for Lincon. The teenager barely taking the time to say goodbye before they left in a mundane fashion to return to the safehouse, and from there to meet with his rescued friends; though not his family, as they were still among the missing and James suspected somewhere in this very dungeon. Before he left, he cast one of the last spells he had, summoning a sturdy grey steel longsword in a puff of vapor and handing it off to James.
A show of trust, or of gratitude maybe. He didn’t say, just quietly waved as he left with Max. James had no fucking idea what to do with a sword like this, though, so he gave it to Arrush, who apparently did somehow comfortably know how to use it.
He and Anesh helped each other strap on the armor plates with calm hands, his boyfriend being gentle with James’ injury and giving a worried tsk but no other comment. Then they moved on to helping the others, especially Rho, get their own armor on.
Equipment was repositioned, weapons were checked. The quiet before something dangerous took over, but James felt completely comfortable even though he could see Anesh nervously fidgeting and Ink-And-Key anxiously flicking himself into loops.
James, though? He felt at ease. This was nothing. In the last few days, he’d been stabbed, pecked, clawed, and punched across a room. He’d spied on a conspiracy and talked to a pillar. He’d gone through having his memory altered and survived slotting a spell that had painfully detached itself from his magic. He’d learned way too much about the geography of North Smiths, and learned exactly as much as he wanted to about Arrush’s driving abilities.
This was easy in comparison. All he had to do was go on a delve? In a new dungeon, that had one of the Horizon-style baffle effects on talking about it? Walking in through the front door?
Well, elevator. But still.
This was nothing. This was fun. This was his hobby. James would have done this for free. James would have paid to do this. Though when he’d made that joke Anesh had helpfully offered up that he had paid for it, if not with money.
James and Anesh bantered for a while, leaning on each other as they waited. They were giving the people below a good fifteen minutes before they went down in the dungeon elevator, so they had some time to relax into each other.
Anesh, his worries for his partner slowly fading, had started to talk about what he’d been working on lately. Authority testing and poking around with the weird items from Winter’s Climb and a little bit of potion stuff. James had shared his amusement at the presence of a league of gentlemen thieves in the city. They’d both agreed they had picked the right tasks for themselves, since neither wanted to do what the other was working on. A few times, they’d fallen silent and just smiled or kissed lightly, enjoying being together for a bit.
James and Anesh were good friends. They had been since the start, and it was gratifying to be reminded that despite distractions and devastations, that hadn’t faded. If anything, it was only stronger now that they could spend time like this.
And then it was time. The tentative countdown expired, they weren’t in peril from anyone encroaching, and the people they were hoping to trail after hadn’t come back up. It was practically cathartic, to be doing this thing mostly for the sake of exploration and meeting someone new, and not fighting some petty tyranny. Though there was always the chance. They were planning to gather information, and it turned out a lot of people were petty tyrants in the making. Or at least, that was the impression James was getting from this whole fucking adventure.
The elevator made a dull ding as it arrived, doors protesting as they rolled open. Inside was a space that James personally felt like the delvers should have at least tried to clean; a grit covered floor and the smell of car exhaust making it feel identical to every other parking structure elevator he’d ever been in in his life. Maybe that was the point; camouflage.
The others filed inside, Keeka ending up in the middle of Arrush, Rho, and Ink-And-Key, the three of them an unofficial honor guard for the group’s designate cinnamon roll. And Momo was already checking out the panel of buttons before Anesh had brought up the rear of their group.
”This one, right? Like, obviously.” She pointed to the one button that was unmarked. It even had one of those little metal braille pads next to it, but with nothing on it. What was odd was, there were just other buttons, like it was a normal elevator. James leaned past Momo and hit the one for the ground floor. “Hey!” She protested.
Nothing happened. The elevator didn’t move. “Okay. Out of order becomes a much better disguise when the elevator is out of order.” He nodded in appreciation. “Hit the button.”
As Momo complied, James and Anesh took up kneeling spots near the door, making sure everyone else was back and partly out of sight for when the doors opened. Anesh had one of the p90 rifles that was the only firearm he was really comfortable with, while James drew his own revolver. “Do I get a gun?” Zhu asked.
”I… hadn’t really thought about that. Sure. We can get you a gun.” James acquiesced. “But later. Did you ask this before? Did I forget?”
“I asked Alanna. She said I would be a menace to myself and others but mostly others.” Zhu said it proudly, life creeping back into his words as he more fully woke up. “Also this ride is long.”
Coming from anyone else, the comment would be idle chatter. Coming from Zhu, or any navigator really, it was something a bit different. It was a signal that the elevator’s motion was taking them somewhere else.
Down and down and down and down. The sensation of dropping quickly leveling off, though not before there were panicked hisses and chitteres from a couple of the box’s residents. And then just the light sensation of motion. The occasional bump, the sound of metal squealing outside, and a quiet hiss of air through the doors.
Anticipation built. No one spoke, even Momo. It wasn’t the time for that. A new dungeon, even ‘new’ in the sense that they were following other humans into it so it clearly had been discovered before, was still cause for a little bit of weight.
Especially for James.
When James had first stepped foot in Officium Mundi, before he’d known that was what Sarah called it, before he’d gone far enough in to see the ink seas and the carpet plains, before he’d climbed through the smallest scratch of its many layers, he had already seen what he needed to see. It was cubicles. Reaching away forever. Something utterly mundane, and yet replicated, stacked, extrapolated, and stretched out to such a distance that it felt like staring at infinity even if that was just a strange optical distortion.
There were a lot of things James had needed in his life then. Purpose, certainly, but also more casually simple things. Money. Antidepressants. The death of capitalism. The basics. But the need that Officium Mundi had filled without knowing or caring about him was the deep longing for something, anything, fantastical.
All it took was cubicles.
Six other dungeons later, and Officium Mundi still held in James’ heart the position of the most overwhelming. Walking into the Climb was like being slapped with a blizzard and told to deal with it, being dumped into the Underburbs had been a hellish struggle for survival every second of his time there, driving through the Horizon was like experiencing the most open road ever. But even when they had the same scale, it never really hit him quite the same way. Even the Ceaseless Stacks, with its winding endless corridors of bookshelves and back staircases, while it was amazing to explore it never showed off just how big it was. The other dungeons were all different somehow. Too narrow in the wrong way, too broad in another.
He loved the dungeons. He loved the discovery and novelty. He loved the magic and the power they gave him to better the world and its people, even if he still couldn’t just wave his hand and fix everything. But he had given up on having the same transcendental experience as when he first stepped into Officium Mundi.
And then the elevator doors opened. Squeaking in tired protest at not being properly maintained, the elevator car still wobbling slightly as it came to a complete stop, the smell of sweat and gasoline fumes everywhere in the air, a perfectly ordinary experience for the lift in a parking garage.
Outside, there were cars. Smooth concrete, yellow and black caution strips on some corners, grey pillars, speed bumps, hanging signs. Normal. Almost like they really had just gone down a few levels.
Except.
It just.
Kept.
Going.
James and Anesh, priding themselves on their teamwork after all this time, moved out of the elevator before it closed and swept each side of the entrance for threats. But James was having a hard time paying attention, as he was more focused on how the ramp leading down to their left seemed to go on, and on, and on. And on. And on. He did some quick math, and gave up counting after two hundred cars, all parked mostly neatly in their spaces. Zhu had to draw an artificial horizon across his vision so he could see without his eyes watering.
On Anesh’s side, it wasn’t much simpler. There was a chest high rough wall, a different color than the rest of the building; white stone material speckled with something that sparkled. The exterior wall of the parking garage, which, naturally, looked out over a fifty foot drop to what seemed to be a massive flat parking lot. More cars, more grey stone, the only color that wasn’t the vehicles coming in the occasional splash from a sign or a warning cone.
That parking lot stretched for half a kilometer, if his mental math was right. And it usually was. And it had ramps in it. Ramps leading down. Down to more parking, to more… more of this.
And at the other side, there was another structure, maybe a copy of the one they were in, rising up to a concrete ceiling.
“Holy shit.” James breathed out, lowering his gun as he slowly took in the ramp down, the view out the side, the whole level they were on that itself was large enough to contain every part of the Lair twice over assuming you could find the parking for it. “…Holy shit…” his voice felt small in the flat, smoggy air.
Just cars and concrete. Going on forever. Far enough that even from the entrance, they could see where the scenery started to turn to something odd. Not sinister, just a little bit strange. The mundane, replicated so far that it became the mystic.
James felt his heart pounding, a feeling swelling in his chest. The sensation that he’d been missing.
This was the kind of bullshit he needed.
”Yeechk.” Momo ruined his moment. “Smells like a semi truck farted in here.”
”Ssh.” Arrush gently pressed a claw against her mouth, pulling back when Momo started thrashing around lest he accidentally hurt her. “We are appreciating… this…”
Arrush didn’t see the world the same way the humans did. He knew it, even if he knew he could change. But to him, and to Keeka as well, places like parking structures already looked like this. Too big, too much, but with so many useful points to hide or ambush from. Even the ‘small’ city of Townton, devastated as most of it still was, had single buildings that could have contained all of his home dungeon from back at the time of his birth. Humans built big.
But dungeons - older dungeons - built bigger. They took ideas, aesthetics, imagery, and they scaled it up to absurd fractal art.
Arrush’s myriad mismatched eyes let him see some of the illusions at play in a way humans couldn’t. But to him, this was something more.
Every dungeon Arrush had willingly walked into, had been James reaching out to him. He hadn’t even realized until recently the true extent of the damage that had been done to him, nor how important places like this had become as part of his recovery. He didn’t know what he was recovering toward, even. Only that he liked it more than the alternative.
Next to him, the other survivor of their shared horror linked reforged symmetrical arms with his own distorted ones. “Everything is okay.” Keeka whispered to him, the chitin on one of his fingers smoking slightly as he wiped away a caustic tear before it could splash down on Arrush’s armor.
Arrush hadn’t even noticed. But he leaned on Keeka anyway, drawing comfort and support even as he kept himself alert, eyes scanning the cracked and pitted concrete rectangles that formed the ceiling. Dungeons liked to exploit how often people didn’t look up, and Arrush liked to foil those plans. It wasn’t really a hobby, but it did make him feel a sense of cunning satisfaction every time it happened.
After making sure that nothing was going to jump them from their left, James had moved back, trying to avoid getting distracted by the equally huge ramp leading up. Joining Anesh looking out over the ‘exterior’, he gave a small laugh, keeping back from the edge because of the intrinsic fear that he would somehow drop his phone and it would never come back from that. On his arm, Zhu excitedly rustled at the prospect of this whole place.
Momo, meanwhile, was already checking cars, while Rho was cautiously circling the area and sniffing the air.
”This one…” Ink-And-Key mused, staying near the elevator as he swept his eye back and forth, “this one is okay. Nothing has tried to kill us yet. I appreciate that. All the other ones, something tries to kill you right away.”
”That…” James stopped, biting his lip. “That is… only technically true.” He admitted. He had been assaulted by a stapler a long, long time ago as his first introduction. That was true. Now wasn’t the time for this though, so he lightly clapped and got the group’s attention before everyone got too introspective. “Okay. Everyone on your guard. We know this place makes some really hostile life, so be alert. Rho, how’s it smell?”
The inhabitor made a sound that dogs were not meant to make, a kind of rueful coughing. “I have never specifically disliked anything as much as I dislike this.” He said in his monotone unmasked voice. “But I can follow them. They seem to move people this way often.”
”Good.” James nodded. “If we’re following them, we’re less likely to be ambushed by anything hostile, but let’s keep an eye out anyway. First priority is safety, then finding our friends, then exploration and collecting magic. Everyone cool with that?”
Momo raised her hand. “We could split up, and I could go find magic?” She offered.
”Request denied, and do you really even need me to explain why?” James set his mouth in a line as he shook his head at the self destructive girl. Momo made a show of kicking the floor, her sneaker squeaking against the smoothed surface, but didn’t actually object, because of course she knew. And it had mostly been a joke anyway. “Okay.” James smiled, and looked away from the group, his eyes stealing across endless brackets of parking spaces and metal pipes. In the distance, an engine rumbled, a sonorous roar from something that might be a new dragon to meet. “We’ve done this before.” He told them. “Let’s move out.”
_____
James was used to things going wrong in a way that often ended with him getting hit in the head again.
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He read a lot of stuff. Even as a paladin, trying to map out the edges of his honorable duty and figure out what the fuck he was supposed to be doing, he still had free time. And he used quite a bit of it to read both for fun and for information. One of those informative bits had been on the dangers of long term brain injury from repeated head trauma; a thing he had read while laying in bed, and then had turned off his phone, and stared at the ceiling without sleeping, wondering how much of the damage he’d taken was irreversible.
So he’d been trying really hard to not get hit in the head so much. It was a work in progress, because he was still going delving and doing shit like this. Hell, earlier today, he’d at least taken a slight bump from the Camille’s strike. But James was putting effort into being a little more careful. Trying to make it so when things went wrong, at least his grey matter didn’t pay the price.
Right now, he felt like the finger on the monkey’s paw was curling down. Because while he wasn’t getting flung into concrete at high speed, he was experiencing a sense that there was a problem.
Maybe the sensation wasn’t that complicated. Maybe it was because he was being attacked by a traffic cone.
In retrospect, perhaps James had learned exactly nothing from his history of being attacked by supposedly inanimate objects.
The ambush had come when they were passing by a quartet of empty parking spaces, the rectangle of bare concrete blocked off by stubby knee-height orange traffic cones. The spaces were against the exterior of the structure, which the group was more or less sticking to as they hiked. It had been at least half a mile by this point, a straight line of endless cars and grey stone, and while there had been plenty of blank spaces, the traffic cones were new.
James had been about to say something as they skirted the zone, just in case, when an orange cone caked with grime and stuck concealed between two SUVs on the other side of the open corridor had leapt at him.
The black rubber flaps had shoved it up into the air like they were spring loaded, and, naturally, the whole thing had split along three long lines to reveal its insides were sticky flaps of barbed teeth. James had caught sight of it out of his peripheral vision, and felt like he’d had enough time to start to react for an easy dodge, but Momo had other ideas. In that Momo had panicked, yelped, shoved her hands out in front of her overlaid on each other with fingers spread, and Paved the toothy cone with a spell that had shot it skittering away fifty feet through the cold air to slam into the side of an old Toyota.
And then the car’s alarm had started. And the rest of the cones had opened up, and launched themselves at the group with the sound of rubber slapping on the smooth grey floor.
The fight went smoothly, though. Ink-And-Key froze the first one, and the other three lunging forward at a group that scattered with semi-practiced movements. One landed near Anesh, who planted a boot on it and leveled his rifle at the thing, but didn’t fire; instead, he just held it down as it started to writhe with a fluid organic movement, trying to break out from under his pin. Arrush was less kind to his, slashing at it with a short blade as it moved by, and Zhu made a similarly hostile claw swipe at the one that landed past James.
The cones bled some kind of rubbery ichor, which James looked forward to learning was actually blood, before learning that was wrong and it was ichor again. He knew the pattern at this point.
Just like he knew the pattern of this fight. With only two of the cones really still mobile, the next time one sprang off the ground to try to wrap around a head, Keeka snagged its black fins in a tight grip and held it in places even as its toothy flaps whipped around to try to eviscerate him. He held it out to Arrush as his partner methodically shredded the creature until it had stopped moving, and it was tossed away from them dripping the black blood that shimmered with a tiny bit of color. When James caught the other one, he just whipped his arm, exercised a few small purple improvements that made the strenuous motion feel good, and flung the cone out the open gap in the structure to fall to its presumable death on the layer below.
”Okay!” Momo said, hands on her hips, back arched imperiously as she turned back to the others. “That went- aaaahh!” She cut off as the one Anesh was pinning down twitched again, jumping back as Anesh ground his boot down.
”What do I do with this?” He asked James. “I feel almost bad for the poor bloke.”
James huffed. “I feel like I’ve influenced you too much.” He said with good humor. “It is trying to eat your boot.” He pointed at the cone that was trying to roll so it could get its orange toothy flaps up to drag along Anesh’s armored leg.
”Mmh. I don’t want to shoot if I don’t have to Arrush, can you…” Anesh gave a questioning look at the ratroach who had just used the sword he’d been given to carve halfway through the suspended cone, freeing Ink-And-Key to blink. Arrush craned his neck around, splotches of chitin flexing as he moved in a way that would probably have been dangerous for a human but was just normal for his body. With a few long strides, he took a thrusting stance in front of Anesh, and lanced the tip of the sword down in a two handed grip to impale the cone. It took a few stabs, and he missed one as the thing twitched, but eventually it stopped moving.
That had gone smoothly, and James nodded to the others happily. “Check for coins? Before that car alarm attracts something.” It wasn’t super loud at this distance, but the echo off the interior of the whole structure meant that they were going to be hearing it for a while unless they did something.
There were no spell coins from the cone creatures, which wasn’t abnormal. So they followed Rho, who had patiently waited in the back for the people who had non-bite combat options to solve the problem, as they continued tracking the civilian group.
When they were far enough away from the car alarm that they could hear again, James shared a regret. “I lament that I don’t still have my sublimate rubber ability, if that’s gonna be a thing around here.”
”Oh, I have a rubber blue!” Ink-And-Key seemed eager to share, before dipping his head in an abrupt shy motion. “Ah, but it is for deposit rubber, which is less useful.”
”Deposit it where?” Keeka asked as he worriedly waited for Arrush to check the upcoming corner from around a scuffed cement pillar.
Ink-And-Key flicked his tail and gave a short hiss. “No, it is the material process. It turns gas into solid. It does not give me a rubber bank account. Oh! But we could invent one of those? I do not know if it would be useful.”
As much as James wanted to get deep into the conversation about how cool it would be to have some kind of material bank that was accessible via magic, they were in a new dungeon, so he hushed them as they constant beeping settled into the background and eventually ended, and the party moved on.
_____
”How do you feel about being a parent?” Anesh asked James as the two of them stood at the vanguard of the rest of the group while they took a short rest. It had been ten minutes of solid high-alert delver walking in this place, another cone ambush, and taking a turn that James was pretty sure meant the parking structure they were in only looked square. So they were indulging some of the others and carefully searching through a few of the cars as a half-rest before moving on.
James didn’t quite process what Anesh said, instead keeping his eye on the upcoming end of the long row where a stairwell and one of those emergency stations that had a fire extinguisher in it were waiting. When he did catch up, though, he felt a shock of alarm. “Wwwwwwhy?” He tried to make the word sound amused but he was pretty sure it came out as a panic instead.
”Relax!” Anesh gave a worried laugh as he caught on to what James was thinking. “I was joking about babysitting Researchers.” He softly jerked his head back to where Momo and Rho were going through one of the unlocked cars with different degrees of excitement.
The comparison James had gone for instantly was that the cars were a bit like the cubicles in Officium Mundi. They were little bundles of potential loot, obviously; glove boxes and center consoles, places to search and treasures both mundane and magic to find. Maybe with their own challenges in the form of traps or nesting life forms. Or at least, he’d kind of assumed that.
“Ooh, score, an invitation to a wedding!” Momo’s voice was at delver level where she was making sure people could hear her but carefully controlling so as to not yell.
So far, with a little help, the group had gone through three cars that were unlocked - they didn’t want to force the others yet - and found close to nothing. The biggest score was a discarded wallet that had contained a receipt for a place called Big Waffle Palace; likely it had never been printed for a real order, but if it had, whoever had been had gotten a brunch large enough to cost seven thousand dollars and probably kill a man. There was also a cell phone that had no battery and didn’t work. If any of the bits of scrap were magic, James couldn’t tell, and he actually had gotten good at that.
Of course, if they were at the ‘start’ of the dungeon, it would make sense that there wasn’t too much dungeontech. James wasn’t exactly upset that they weren’t being handed enchanted jumper cables or something already. But it did feel weird that there wasn’t ‘loot’. Other dungeons seemed to use things like edible food and real world money for more than just aesthetic purposes, but here, there wasn’t even a decade old dusty Snickers bar in a glove box. Not yet anyway.
“Alright. Let’s keep moving before the gasoline fumes choke out Rho entirely.” James said, sharing a look with Arrush who was watching their rear.
It had been quiet enough so far, but he’d never forget how dungeons could turn on you if you weren’t careful. He’d lived through a strider swarm before, and he didn’t want to test himself on a flock of traffic cones.
Also James was feeling anxious about losing their quarry. While they were making good progress on one of their objectives - learning about the dungeon - they had a more limited window on the second goal of figuring out what the shit was going on here. And since only one of them was a bloodhound of some description, he didn’t want to fall too far behind.
_____
The trail led into the stairwell, and Rho awkwardly led them down the steps covered in black strips of gripping material. His canine paws weren’t really made for this, though he seemed if not fine then at least apathetic about twisting the body he inhabited in odd ways to make it work.
They continued down, boots clapping on the echoing steps, the plastic and kevlar of their armor often scraping against the tight confines of the walls and railings. Down, quick left turn to the next staircase, around the landing ignoring the hefty metal door out, down again, repeat the pattern.
”This one.” Rho said after the group was staring to get very tired of stairs, seven levels down. They took the time to let him verify, going slightly farther down but finding the scent faded further into the dungeon.
Anesh made a record of the distance and the markings on this particular landing in his notebook, a hard copy version of the map that Momo and Ink-And-Key were making their own version of through one of the skulljack programs. While they did that, James and Arrush moved up to the beige painted metal door, the human leaning forward to peek through the slit window of security glass.
”Nothing hostile I can see.” James said quietly. “This place is so weirdly quiet.”
”The Office is quiet in the same way, in a lot of places.” Anesh offhandedly reminded him. “But maybe the people before us cleared the way? That could be why there’s nothing to steal either.”
”Loot.” Momo contested.
”Pillage!” Keeka chimed in happily. “No wait that one sounds worse! Acquire?”
James gave a smile only Arrush saw. “I like acquire.” He said, before tapping Arrush’s arm that was loosely holding his sword toward the ground in the absence of an actual sheath. “You check left.” He muttered, placing a hand on the door and starting to push it open.
The two of them stepped out, sweeping the new level as the others followed.
Cars, mostly hatchbacks here but with a few compact economy models mixed in. Whites and browns not really contrasting with the surrounding garage. The low ceiling seemed even closer to the ground here, and across the internal road from where they’d left the door, there was a flat wall of pitted concrete that was framed by dull metal pipes and still bore the marks of construction that had never happened.
On the wall was graffiti. A riot of neon pinks and yellows, spray paint covering drilled holes and other marks. It didn’t seem like it was meant to be anything at first glance, except maybe stylized letters or numbers. James had never been good at deciphering that kind of street art, and that was when it was made by humans and not a dungeon.
”Oh. Interesting.” Ink-And-Key stopped as the others fanned out and checked the surrounding space for cones or anything else mobile and hostile. He gazed at the wall ahead of them with a slightly narrowed lens. “Six, three, seven, zero. Who wrote this? Why?”
Momo slid up next to him, folding her arms and nodding appreciatively. “Kinda looks like ass compared to some of the better signatures I’ve seen, but I get it. You got that fast though, do you have skill ranks in street writing?”
”Yes.” Ink-And-Key said. “Is this relevant though?”
”Could be a passcode. Some of the cars have those digital locks on them.” Momo mused. “Might be some kind of clue for something else. Or just dungeon nonsense! What’s up with the little bug doodle in the middle though?”
Ink-And-Key inched forward, trying to see what Momo saw. “Oh. That. I assumed that was empty space. A car, perhaps?”
If it was, it was the weirdest car either of the knights had ever seen. It actually reminded Momo a little of the exploded diagrams that Route Horizon sometimes showed, but instead of being about a specific car part, it was like the impression of a car with tendrils leading to other parts of the cluttered mural. One a little icon that was clearly fire, one that was an unknown cluster of circles and lines, one that was just a series of rectangles…
”This place is weird as shit.” Momo decided.
“To be fair, Officium Mundi frequently generates wikipedia articles for things that have never existed.” Ink-And-Key contended. “I am new to knowing wikipedia exists, but I did not require long to realize that was weird.”
They took pictures of the graffiti, added a pin to their map just in case they needed a reference for if this was one of the dungeons that rearranged itself frequently, and moved on.
_____
They passed a car that didn’t have seats inside, but instead a flat metal panel and glass cylinder near it. Some kind of weird machinery that they stopped briefly to let Momo peer at. The car was locked, though, and James wouldn’t let her smash a window. So they marked it for later.
It wasn’t the only one. Soon enough, they were seeing things like that every twenty cars or so. The insides replaced by wires and levers and tools that had no instruction manuals or easy ways to identify them.
One of them even was unlocked, but none of the group could figure out what it did. The inner panels of the car doors had been replaced by slanted slots, the ignition was just a single green glass button, and there was some kind of hose that snaked around the ceiling before terminating over where the driver’s seat would be.
It was deeply weird, and nothing happened when they hit the button anyway.
They kept seeing those strange machinery cars, but they had to keep moving. Deeper investigation could come later.
_____
It didn’t take long to find that they were on the right trail.
Rho had kept leading them, insisting they were getting closer, and that there had definitely been a large group of people moved through here. More and more recently.
James wasn’t sure if dogs actually had that kind of magic smell power, which had prompted Momo to remind him that the Order had magical blood tracking magic.
”That doesn’t work on people who’ve been kidnapped-and-or-recruited.” James told her. “Which… actually, now that I say that…”
What Momo had meant was to imply that magic for tracking was generally available, and maybe Rho just had some purple orbs. He did, too, and Rho was going to clear up the confusion just to end this conversation. But James had an idea now.
He focused, calling up his Breath. The resource regenerated fast enough that he didn’t feel that bad spending some to test this. Call to Blood was one of those spells that James was learning had a lot of weird cornercases and potential uses, but right now, he gave it the name of one of the people who it just straight up hadn’t worked on a few days ago at the start of this investigation.
Covering most of his arm, Zhu wheezed like a sputtering engine. “Oooooh, that feels bizarre.” He said, pulling the sense of direction out of James’ mind as the spell fed in the last place this potential victim had bled. “It’s like being thrown off a horse tornado but kind of on purpose.”
Of academic interest to James was the fact that, to him, it just felt like a normal cast of the spell; which meant Zhu was experiencing a sensation radically different than he was, which was cool. Of immediate interest to the ongoing case, it stood out to him that it worked normally, and he had a general tug taking him forward and a little bit down, which just hadn’t worked outside of the dungeon.
Of personal interest was the fact that Zhu had just called something - James assumed it was a carousel - a horse tornado. But he wasn’t going to mention that one.
”This way.” James said, shifting his armored form and wishing he had a heat pad or something to offset how the spell had chilled him. At least it wasn’t enough Breath to make him dizzy or actually frozen.
“That is what I said.” Rho managed to sound indignant while having exactly no emotional tone to his words at all.
Boots and claws slapped and clicked against the grey floor as they proceeded, passing a row of chipped yellow traffic bollards as they approached a down ramp.
There were too many ramps. It had been almost instantly obvious. Some of the ramps went much, much too far, and there were multiple versions of them on each level, which just wasn’t possible unless they were crossing through the same space. And James wasn’t the only one who suspected that if they’d tried to take the smooth angled surfaces to get down here from where they’d started, that they would find themselves somewhere entirely different to where the stairs let them out.
This ramp, though, was going the direction they wanted. And at the top of it, tucked between the end of one of the structural walls, and the first yellow pylon, there was another little splash of color.
A pink suitcase. Wedged in the gap, retractable handle still sticking up. It didn’t move as James and Arrush both held out hands to stop the others.
”…do you want me to shoot that luggage?” Anesh asked slowly. “Because I will. This is how much I love you. I will gun down that innocent baggage for you.” Months and months of firearm training had drilled into him enough gun safety that he didn’t actually hoist his bullpup rifle toward the target, but his hands gripped the gun in the kind of way that made it clear he was ready to.
“Someone already shot something here.” Arrush said before James could respond, giving the air a thick sniff.
Ink-And-Key slithered up past Keeka, gently peeking out from behind the ratroach that was literally only half his size as if Keeka was a stable source of cover. “I am looking at it, but it is not moving.” He offered.
”I’m shooting the bloody bag.” Anesh raised his rifle.
Now James stopped him, a gentle gloved hand on his boyfriend’s armored arm. “Hold up.” He said, inching forward. “I’m gonna check it.” James took two steps forward, and froze as something squeaked.
It was the kind of squeak of sneakers on a smoothed floor, almost. Or like a car turning too suddenly in a parking garage exactly like this one, except with the volume turned way down. The noise put them all on guard, and the source revealed itself almost right away; a two foot tall black form lurching away from the wall on the other side of the ramp and accelerating toward James at high speed.
Rolling toward him. James had barely a second to process that he was about to be run over by a single tire - all season, puncture resistant, symmetrical tread, his brain filled in the information unbidden and James was distracted wondering when he’d gotten that skill rank - before the black circular form hit the dividing curb in the middle of the top of the ramp, launched into the air, and slammed into his ribs.
It didn’t actually hit that hard, was his first thought. The armor did its job and distributed the force pretty evenly, and most of the strike came from the weight and not the speed. It still made his stab wound ache though, and James tried to grab the thing as it bounced off him, even while he staggered backward.
But it didn’t bounce off him. Instead, the tire had opened up, uncurling. What looked like a hubcap coming apart to form stubby arms and legs with long thick claws, as the rest of the black rubber opened up to an arched form with a flat tail and equally flat face, some of those hubcap bits making for good teeth too apparently.
James thought it looked fucking adorable, but before he could react to the thing that was trying to sink its natural weaponry into his flesh, Momo had run forward, grabbed it by the ‘neck’, and with a twist of her body that must have hurt her, slammed the thing into the ground like she was spiking a football.
Arrush tried to slash at it, and his gifted sword just bounced off. Rho circled around where the creature was twisting to flip itself back over, but didn’t look like he wanted to try biting the thing. And James just wanted to take a second to appraise the creature and see if maybe it wasn’t actually hostile.
A desire he did not get to fulfill, because as soon as it pulled itself up, the beast curled itself back up and began rolling forward. A burst of motion that seemed to come from nowhere, dodging another swing from Arrush and hitting Momo’s leg hard enough to send her tumbling to the ground with a crunch of her hard shelled armor. Not satisfied with that damage, it circled through the group, James pivoting to track it, slammed into Rho’s flank and kept rolling over the inhabitor as Rho let himself roll away to mitigate the impact, and then wheeled around to charge Anesh, building up momentum.
It was five feet from Anesh when James tackled it, Zhu helping him to get a grip on the rubber monster as he slammed it to the ground and tried to get it in a chokehold. As soon as it unfurled and started frantically biting at his legs, James realized that he had grabbed it ‘upside down’, but that didn’t really make grappling it any less effective. Deprived of momentum, its claws and teeth were actually far too dull to pierce the Order’s standard delver armor.
”Okay, okay, chill!” James wasn’t sure who he was even talking to. This thing seemed hostile in a way that dungeon life often did; not evil, but singleminded in the fact that it was here to be a problem. “Bite twice if you understand me!”
It responded by making a sound like a plastic tube being used as a woodwind, and then vomiting a projectile of boiling rubber at James’ feet. He jerked his legs apart, letting it splash on the floor, but lost his grip long enough for it to start bounding away.
Before it could curl up, Anesh dropped both knees onto its back, flattening it out like a piece of rubber roadkill, its clawed stubby limbs scraping for purchase on the floor. A blank, eyeless ‘face’ whipping back and forth as it tried to get away.
And then Arrush stabbed it. Carefully, but deliberately and precisely.
”Well that was exhausting.” James said as Anesh offered him a hand and helped him up, both of them avoiding the steaming puddle of spreading black rubber bile.
”Really?” Anesh asked idly.
”Yeah, I got tired.” James said in what he hoped was his normal voice.
There was a groan from the floor where Keeka was helping Momo up. “I hate youuuuuu.” She grumbled. “Also hey, free luggage.” Momo pulled the pink bag they’d been looking at out from where it was wedged in the wall. “Since this thing also didn’t drop a coin, I claim this as my loot.”
”This says it belongs to someone…” Keeka said shyly, the fight having spooked him enough that he reverted a little from his newly energetic self.
”Well, dungeons put name tags on things sometimes.” James said. “But also let’s see what’s in it.”
Zhu opened the bag, just in case, claiming that being mostly incorporeal he was the easy option for disarming traps. Inside, there was tightly and neatly packed clothing, toiletries, and some books, only about half of which were religious texts. It looked like someone had packed for a really long trip, but a perfectly normal one.
”Too coherent.” Anesh decided.
”Agreed.” Ink-And-Key chimed in with a heavy nod. “If it were dungeon made, it would be erratic. This is… this is a person’s. This belongs to a real someone.”
Anesh gave the camraconda a professional nod back. “My thoughts exactly.” He said. “Why’d they leave it?”
”That feels… cruel?” Arrush asked.
”Yeah, we’re in bad vibes territory.” James admitted. “But it actually could just be a mistake. If we find a pile of discarded luggage, though, then I’m assuming we’re about to run into a pile of human skulls or a slave labor camp or something. And I don’t care what I told the pillar, I’m gonna start blasting anyone I see at that point.”
”Noted.” Anesh said with a lopsided frown. “What now?”
James steadied his breathing, massaging his flank and hoping it would magically fix his problem. “Now we head down, keep our eyes sharp, and hope things are fine.” He said. “Also, keep an eye out for what’s… weird about this place?”
”Is something weird about this place?” Anesh asked, frown spreading across his whole mouth. “It’s a dungeon, isn’t it?”
Rho’s monotone voice coming from a dog’s mouth was only the second most uncomfortable thing about what he said. ”No flesh in the creatures. No coins. No books. It is the wrong dungeon.”
”Well that just doesn’t make any fucking sense.” Momo threw her hands up, startling Keeka. “Lincon brought us here! It’s the dungeon!” Her angry voice bounced off the metal piping and grey walls.
”No, he’s right. But I doubt Lincon was trying to screw us. Especially since he couldn’t say anything about this place.” James sighed as the group made sure they hadn’t gotten injured by the angry treaded beast, got back in formation, and followed him down the ramp.
One of the things he actually didn’t like about delving with groups was the persistent sense that a lot of time was burned waiting for other people to form up and move with him. It wasn’t a huge annoyance, especially now when he did know and like these people. But it added up, and it made his desire for efficiency itch.
”You worry a lot.” Zhu gave him a worried whisper. “It’s okay. Enjoy the journey. We’re almost there anyway.”
”Are we?” James raised his eyebrows as he led the wedge formation of delvers past car after car in a low walk. They gave a wide berth to a pair of orange and white reflective barricades that had been unfolded to block the right hand turn from cars that would never drive here. The turn itself was probably a good idea to block, honestly, if this were a working parking garage. It split off from the steep downward ramp, veering off in a way where a car that actually tried to drive it would be angled more than a little bit sideways as the driver had an anxiety attack about whether or not they were about to scrape part of their vehicle on the rectangular columns of concrete that boxed it in. “Well, good.” James decided. The air here was making his lungs hurt. Or maybe that was just the Breath he’d spent. But no, it was regenerating slower than it should; there was definitely something wrong with the air, and they were going to need to bring proper gear for that in the future.
The ramp kept descending. A few times, in the endless rows of parking spaces, there’d be cars that had dents or bullet holes in them. It made James pretty sure that the reason they were getting this deep without too much combat was that the party ahead of them was sweeping the area.
And they were deep in. If they’d gone as far into the Office as they had here, they’d be encountering camracondas and weird geometry by now. But instead it was mostly quiet.
Until they approached the bottom of the ramp. Smooth concrete leveling out to the next lower level of the garage, the party having descended at least eighty feet by now in total. But past a painted white LEAVE on the floor, and a drinking fountain mounted on the corner that you could not pay James enough to taste from, there was a hole.
The external concrete wall, the chest high barrier that kept people from driving their cars off into open air, had apparently had some kind of unfortunate interaction here. It looked like something had taken a scoop out of the wall, a near perfectly circular explosion that had blown away the concrete in a neat line, leaving only a few rebar bones behind.
It offered a great view of the outside, and James approached the open area cautiously but curious. There were no cars parked here, and this whole level actually looked pretty empty of vehicles, though he obviously didn’t have a perfect line of sight through the stone pillars and walls.
Out there, though, there were clouds of grey-black smog, some of them roiling with sparks of lightning. Up above, by the entrance, they’d spotted another adjacent tower across a massive parking lot, and here wasn’t much different. Down below them - though only maybe a fifty or hundred foot drop below - there was what looked like an asphalt rooftop dotted in vehicles. And out beyond, other structures rose like fingers into the sky until the smoke and clouds blocked the view of their peaks.
One of them, a spiral structure that gleamed with a sparkling white exterior and elegant LED outlines, was so close to where they were that James felt like it would be possible to find a way to bridge the gap if he needed to. As he and Zhu crept closer to the breach, the navigator digging talons into the broken wall with only a little nervousness, James could see to the left that there would be no hang gliding required; there was some kind of sky bridge over, not too far away on this very level it looked like.
“What the fuck is that?” Momo asked, kneeling on the other side of the gap and leaning out way too far to point down below them.
James refocused, waving a hand to tell Ink-And-Key to not crowd the people who were way too close to a lethal fall as he looked down at where Momo was pointing.
”It looks like there’s a garden on that… roof…” Zhu’s obvious answer trailed off as the garden shifted.
Not like the plants shifted, or there was motion within in. Instead, the splotch of green that Momo was pointing at was sliding across the rooftop parking lot below them; smooth and steady motion as it swung to one side and seemed to vanish over the edge, before swinging back again to the other end. Different plants and other formations showing through as it moved, cars vanishing to be replaced by garden walls or fountains, before reappearing when the splotch passed fully.
It looked for all the world like there was a hole in the photoshop layer of their world, and it was being dragged back and forth in a consistent pattern.
“What is that?” Momo reiterated. “It looks like… holy shit, goat bird!” Her eyes widened in excitement as a furred winged creature flapped through the green and landed heavily on the roof of a minivan, hooves setting off a distant car alarm that added to a low wail of the things that made up the background soundscape here. “Yo, check that out!”
James puffed his cheeks as he blew out a long breath. “That…” he stared at the distortion in dungeon space that was odd even by his standards. “That is another dungeon.” He said quietly. “That’s… holy shit, that’s so fucking weird. That is gonna blow a billion theories out of the water, wow, everyone is going to go nuts about this one.” He turned back to the others, seeing Arrush, Rho, and Keeka with their noses collectively turned upward and sniffing the air, while Ink-And-Key and Anesh moved to look now that there was a safe spot by the ledge over the unsurvivable fall. “What’s up?” He asked.
”Something is… off.” Arrush said, claws tightening on his sword and the handles of his sheathed knives. “Th-there’s less smell.”
Rho made a noise that just didn’t fit with his dog form. ”It’s recent. Maybe something approaching us and hiding itself.”
James forced himself to keep moving and not freeze up, pacing out into the open and standing under the yellow and black bars of the hanging maximum clearance sign. He slowly panned his vision across the breadth of the space he could see, including an elevator in the back wall and an interior door that was propped open that he was pretty sure led to that skybridge. Gently resting one hand on his holstered gun, he gave Zhu a mental nudge.
”I don’t know what you want from me, I can’t see invisible stuff.” Zhu murmured. “All I can say is that we’re close to… no, we’re at the end of the… there.”
A spot was highlighted to James, a feeling of a destination imposed onto the physical world. With a practiced flash of motion, he had his pistol out and leveled directly at it, his Aim locking onto something that he couldn’t see, but somehow suddenly understood was there.
And the spell broke. The cloak of warm haze that had kept the people surrounding them from being perceived dropped away, and James was faced with the end of a much more modern pistol pointed back his way, a somewhat surprised young man in an oil-stained white dress shirt looking at him with alarm.
Not too much alarm though, because the dozen people that had the Order team in their sights had gotten very close, and covered a whole semi-circle of space between them and the door to the skybridge.
There was a long, long pause, where it felt like the slightest twitch could set off a deadly battle. It really wasn’t that long at all, because James knew that the others wouldn’t be frozen for long. Arrush and Keeka weren’t frozen at all, they were just waiting for his lead. Actually, Rho was giving off a calm aura as well, and Anesh had a modified reaction time. Was James the slowest person here? He’d dwell on that later.
For now, he made the snap decision to take a risk. And he smiled, honest and cheerful. Putting on his best Sarah impression.
”Ah!” James said, spinning his handgun around in his grip and partly holstering it with a smooth motion that got a twitch from their ambushers but - very importantly - not a gunshot. “Doctor Livingston, I presume!”
”Who are you?!” The man closest to him demanded in a scratchy voice that was very much on edge and not amused by James’ quip at all. “What are you doing here, how did you follow us?!”
James sighed, slowly moving a hand back and lowering it slightly to indicate to his companions that he didn’t want a fight here. “Consider me your two o’clock appointment.” He said, meeting the man’s eyes with calm determination, and getting a flinch in response as the person still aiming a deadly weapon at him adjusted his nervous grip. “We have a lot to talk about.”
”Yes. Take us to your leader.” Ink-And-Key added. Unhelpfully, too, as every gun shifted to point at the camraconda.
”God dammit.” Momo fearlessly walked up to Ink-And-Key, cracking her neck and leaning an elbow on the camraconda’s head, conveniently blocking every shot with her body and bevy of shield bracers. “I was going to say that! You fucking asshole, you’re supposed to be shy and nervous!”
”I am evolving! Get off of me!” The white-corded camraconda nudged Momo away.
One of the ambushers, a skinny guy with an almost gaunt face, snickered at the byplay, lowering his gun ever so slightly. And that was enough. Several of the others lowered their weapons too, fundamentally unwilling to shoot people who were joking and not threatening them.
”Seriously, though.” James said to the angry young human who had kept a pistol leveled at his face. “Put that down please. We’re here to talk, and if you have leadership, we should meet them.” He met his eyes, wishing that he had Alanna’s Empathy and not his own useless-for-this-situation Aim. Maybe they could find a way to trade later.
The process of negotiation in a situation like this was an odd one. James needed to make it look like he wasn’t imposing anything, while at the same time, getting what he wanted. And he needed to do it while saying as few words as possible, and getting the man to think it was his own idea.
So he kept his gaze level, projected an aura like he was supposed to be here, kept himself from smiling just in case it was mistaken as a smirk, and waited. Lessons from JP and knowledge from a skill rank mixing to tell him oddly specific things about how to tilt his head and how to shift his feet. What to do about eye contact and microexpressions. How to send a message without saying it.
And then the gun was lowered. Still pointed at him, but not directly leveled at his face, which was a nice gesture, even if the stance didn’t actually matter and James was shielded anyway; they didn’t need to know that.
”Rourke! Go get Robertson!” He said, trying to make the command sound authoritative and ending up sounding like he was definitely not the one in control here. “Tell him we have guests, and they want to talk.”
James just smiled, and nodded.
Finally, he was thinking, progress.