_____

Debriefing Sapphire had come after the girl had a chance to down some painkillers, eat some of the technically illegal special cookies Alex had brought, and take a shower.

Alex was understanding. It hadn’t been too long ago that she was a civilian herself. Technically she still was, probably; Alex didn’t know what ‘civilian’ meant anymore. But she fought bad guys, and was capable of walking off explosions, so she prooooooobably didn’t count.

Getting information out of her, and putting it all together, had been something Alex needed to work on learning. So she’d sent a message and used some of her special paladin budget to have a few yellow orbs delivered.

[+2 Skill Ranks : Templating - Policing - Crime Scene Investigations]

[+1 Skill Rank : Acting - Improv - Drama]

The first one seemed like the kind of thing the rogues would have in high demand, and Alex was lucky she was a paladin to get quick access to a copy. The second one was mostly on hand for Ceaseless Stacks adventures, for what she was told were obvious reasons, but she hadn’t actually been in that dungeon yet.

It was on her list! She had a list, of dungeons, and that made her feel both baffled and a little guilty. Maybe she wasn’t a great fit for the Order if she wasn’t jumping at the chance to delve everything they had?

It didn’t matter. The point was, she had, with her own experience and the parts Sapphire had heard that she hadn’t, put together what she hoped was a useful model of how the murderer’s magic worked.

He needed to wait, after setting conditions. Sapphire confirmed that he’d spoken with long pauses, but the only time he did that to Alex was when he’d called her a ‘second’. So he was, she was pretty sure, giving the magic time to ‘sink in’. Some kind of requirement of the ritual.

That was why she’d gotten the improv orb. Because if his magic worked at all like the Stack’s own bards did, that meant there was something in there that she could work with.

During the duel - he’d called it something about glass, Sapphire told her - the killer had also specified that the fight was with blades, which might have been why Alex’s baton and attempt to kick his knee in half hadn’t worked as intended. She should have actually grabbed the dropped blade. That part, she didn’t know if it was the magic that compelled him, or if he was just an asshole looking for the rush of a fight.

Since she couldn’t bank on the former, Alex brought her own sword. As well as one other thing, which tied into her plan.

Alex had called in a consultation with some of Research, and they’d largely agreed that if it was actually formatted as a duel, then there was a high likelihood that the magic worked both ways. That whoever ‘won’ got the reward. Which was what Alex needed to hear, because she felt wrong with her movements too slow and her body too sluggish. Not by much, but by enough that it made her feel like she was sick, almost. And if she could take it back, well…

After that, it was a lot of coffee and a little exercise potion that she probably shouldn’t have taken with her neck still injured, while Alex scrolled through hundreds of student records and looked for anyone she recognized as her assailant.

Filtering the school’s database with its surprisingly robust tools by gender and hair color, she still had a lot to go through. But she wasn’t looking for details, just a picture. So she focused, even when her eyes started to hurt, and kept hitting the ‘next entry’ button until she found what she needed.

The thought only occurred to her after she’d made sure Saph was in a safe place away from her dorm and with another friend that Alex had never once considered that maybe she wasn’t going to seek a rematch.

Of course she was. Not only had he taken something from her that she needed as a paladin, he’d also proven that he wasn’t going to stop. He was killing people. People like her. Any one of them could have been her, if the timeline had been slightly different. It wasn’t right, went the thought spinning through Alex’s head over and over. No one should have the power to kill like that. Not even her. Maybe especially not her, because right now, she wanted to use her own power to murder him right back.

But she did have the power to fight back, and so she was going to use it. And it clicked for her, abruptly. That was all it took, that was what paladins did, what the Order of Endless Rooms did. They had the power to act, so they acted, because it was better to do good a little recklessly than to sit back and let this bullshit happen.

She also wasn’t planning to go to the police. Partly because the Order had bad experiences with the Long Arm Of The Law, and partly because… well, cops were still people, even if they often were shitty people. No one deserved to be used as cannon fodder against someone who could teleport and cut through someone who was twice as tough as they should be thanks to her authority. Alex could handle this; no one else had to get hurt.

Armed, tactically prepared, and with a few shield bracer charges restored, Alex walked out into the university’s campus, and cast a spell.

Call to Blood needed a name. But she’d seen Bruce Rothschild’s face, and she had way too much access to files she shouldn’t, so his name had been one of the easiest things to find.

Maintaining the spell took Breath, but Alex had that to spare, and half her oxygenation potion ration kept it from being a problem. Though she did get chilly, with the night ending and a cool fog rising. The first place it took her was an engineering classroom, in a building she wasn’t supposed to be in. Not wanting to waste time, Alex broke the window in one of the two doors, let herself in, and cast the spell again from the middle of the dark classroom, getting another line of direction to the next to last place that Bruce had been cut.

And that took her to a dorm. Specifically the boy’s student housing building, a place that felt more like an institution than a residential structure. Alex didn't know why she felt like that was an important distinction. At four AM, there were still a few people up studying in the common room, and Alex got one of them to let her in. She didn’t bother pretending to be a fed or answering their questions, just moved toward where Call To Blood pulled her, going upstairs and deeper into the halls of a place that looked like a perversely alive version of somewhere she’d been before in Winter’s Climb.

She might have lived her college life in the wrong order.

When she got to Bruce’s door, Alex had taken a deep breath, checked the starkly lit hall in both directions to make sure no one was there, and then knocked. Feeling her heart speed up as she heard footsteps approaching with a shuffle that was either tired, or cautious.

The door swung open, and a familiar face looked back at her without realizing who he was looking at. The man standing before her in a suave red bathrobe with elegantly disheveled hair giving Alex a half-smile and a glassy stare. “Hey there, what’s-“

He cut off with a high pitched noise that was half scream and half gurgle as Alex slammed a greave-augmented kick into his balls. Lifting him off the floor with the force, and using the momentum to shove him backward into his personal apartment and down to the carpet.

It was much, much nicer than Sapphire’s room, Alex noted. He had carpet, for one thing. Nicer than any of the dorms she’d visited in her time here. This was a whole little studio apartment. He must be rich, or he’d murdered his way into better accommodations, and either way, she hated it.

”Hey there.” Alex said, struggling and only partly succeeding to keep her voice from shaking as she stepped inside and shut the door behind her. “We’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.”

”Y-you bitch!” He coughed out, rolling to his knees, tiny electric sparks dancing on his legs and arms. “What are you doing?!”

Alex answered by trying to kick him in the head, but despite the pain, he was already moving and he rolled sideways to reach under his bed and come up with a different sword than before. “Oh, back to stabbing?” Alex asked, taunting. “That didn’t work for you last time.”

”It worked fine.” He snarled, clearly unhappy to have had his sleep or apartment invaded. He tried to slash at her, but the shield caught it, and Alex just smiled and spread her arms. “Fine, you want a fight?” The sickly handsome smile crept back onto his face as his eyes flicked to the side like he was reading something. Alex recognized the motion; people did it when they got orbs or checked leveler items, even though you weren’t actually ‘reading’ anything.

”No, I came here from the future and killed your potential kids because I want to have a chat.” Alex rolled her eyes in the kind of partial way that let her keep him in her vision, voice dripping sarcasm. “What, too hard when someone actually fights back?”

“Oh, I love a woman who fights back.” He laughed, spreading his arms. “The Duel of Tense Glass, here and now.” He intoned, and Alex felt for where the words met the spell that was being lain on them. She couldn’t sense it; humans didn’t have an organ for mana perception or whatever. But she could smell broken glass, so faint it might just be from a case of vandalism from somewhere else in the dorm, but there nonetheless. It echoed with the words, waiting.

Waiting in a way she recognized from the Order’s notes. Waiting the same way people described how the bards in the Library waited. Not pausing in time, but leaving an opening with a hinted expectation.

She tried not to smile. She’d been right.

The killer, Bruce, paused too; needing to let her take the next step if she chose to, before he could speak again. He stumbled back a couple steps, sword in hand, as he watched her. An opening that Alex filled, speaking steady and clear, pushing back the seconds before the spell’s trap snapped closed. “Agreed. Three strikes apiece, loser shall be the worst injured.” Her own voice shifted, language unfamiliar to her coming out and signaling that she’d fallen into the magic’s groove correctly.

He bared his teeth at her, almost like she’d caused some grievous harm already. ”Agreed. Blades only. None of that stupid force field this time!” That was what he wanted. To force her to comply with letting him shove the blade through her flesh unopposed. It was transparent, and it was exactly what she’d invited him to zero in on.

She saw the spell’s opening, and took it, forcing herself to not grin maliciously at the bastard. “Weapons only. Your weapon,” Alex inclined her chin at him, and tapped the hilt of the blade on her hip, “against mine. Agreed?”

Bruce tipped his head down, eyes glinting at her as a horridly good looking smile stretched across his face. And Alex knew, in that moment, that he was savoring this. He was a killer, yes, and a monster too. But she’d realized in their first fight what he wanted. Not just to be powerful or to feel the rush of violence, but to feel like he’d earned it. Oh, it was framed as if he wanted a challenge, like he was pretending that he wanted people to fight back because he loved the fights. But really it was just a part of his superiority complex; if people struggled and he won, it made him feel stronger. More real.

Alex challenging him made him feel like he was getting what he wanted. A woman that would struggle, so he could feel even better about his murder, because it would prove that he deserved it. So he smiled at her, and said “Agreed.”

And the spell closed, and Alex felt the trap seal in along with the ring of broken air around them. It stopped at the room’s walls, but it was still there. The arena for their fight demarcated in an otherworldly way. Her term countering his, because he had… not cheated, but unbalanced the magic. He had said two things at once. And Alex had followed the vibe of the duel spell, which demanded fairness, and accepted one condition. Replacing the other with her own, disguised as grim acceptance.

She should take some improv classes when she got back. This kind of vibe based verbal sparring would be really cool if someone wasn’t about to knife her.

The fight started. But she could feel the arrogance of her opponent as she drew her sword in time with him, could sense the way he vibrated with excitement to get started hacking her apart. And Alex knew she’d already won.

Bruce lunged for her, and Alex let go of her sword, got her arm in the way, and let the tip of the rapier go right through her shirt and forearm, scraping against the bone. Too slow, she’d been too slow to use Mountain of the Self; not even her timing was enough to let her get it right this time. She screamed, the pain way more than she had expected, and Bruce actually flinched as she wrenched the skewered limb sideways and tugged at the weapon he was holding.

He stepped slightly to the side, bumping his leg against his bed frame. Eyes flicked down to check the line of movement, and despite being slowed, Alex was prepared for this opening.

Her main hand drew the concealed handgun and shot Bruce twice. Once in the stomach, once in the solar plexus as she brought her aim up. Blood splattered out, the pressure of the shots forcing the vital fluid in sprays across the carpet, the bed, and Alex’s front. The gunshots were deafeningly loud in the dorm, even with the earplugs she’d worn.

The sword dropped from his grip, sliding back out of Alex’s arm to thud to the floor coated in her blood. He looked down at the gun in her grip, one hand slowly coming up to clench at the bleeding wounds in his body.

“Wh… you…?” He looked back up at her, trying to figure out what had happened. Or maybe not even that, maybe just unable to think at all through the shock and pain.

”Surrender.” Alex said pleadingly, still holding the gun as she stepped back. “Please surrender.”

”I…I can’t.” He muttered, voice coming out stupefied. “I’ll lose it all. I can’t. I’ve got… I’ve got two hits left. I can… I can kill you. It’s still fine.” It was almost begging. Like if he asked nicely, Alex would let him slit her throat so he wouldn’t lose his magical ability to murder young women so he could steal their speed.

The fucking idiot.

The rage came back. Alex had a whole thing prepared; she’d contacted Recovery, they’d set up a containment and rehabilitation plan for someone with his known powers and mindset, she’d had every intention of taking him alive and helping him.

And even now, with the fight clearly over and his own need for immediate medical attention at an all time high, all he could think about was losing a tiny bit of power. Magic that was replaceable, that he’d fucking gotten by murdering people.

Bruce flickered with his electric motes as he knelt, knees slamming into the carpet when he rolled for his fallen sword and came up in a lunge, planning to cut Alex in half and hope that the magic of the duel would put him back together somehow. Or at least make him fast enough to get to the hospital. After all, he’d never gotten so much as when he’d beaten her the first time; doing it again… it would be enough. It had to be.

At the end of his roll, Alex put a perfectly timed shot through his face. Her third strike, and Bruce’s last. She hadn’t even meant to; she was going to hesitate, going to give him another chance. But then he’d shocked her, and her Timing had set it up for her, and…

The seed round, the third shot she’d loaded just in case, went through his head and turned to vapor on the other side, leaving a crater of gore and a circular Pollock painting on the back wall around the dorm’s radiator and third floor window.

Lightning, black and white and blue, arced from the corpse into Alex’s body with a sensation of pleasure she did not welcome. Getting back what was taken from her, and then some. And then a lot of some, it felt like. More and more, until her bones felt like they were full to bursting, and then the lightning stopped.

Two weeks ago, at Explain Movies To New Life Including Ratroaches And Human Kids night, they’d watched Highlander. And Alex had told everyone that it was not a documentary, which was something that came up sometimes in a world where magic was real. It was also, apparently, a fucking lie.

The thought made her start laughing. Then crying. Then just making noises she couldn’t understand as she worked to pull herself together, holding the hole in her arm shut while she swept up the twenty empty seed rounds that had dropped from Bruce’s glassy eyed body.

She had to get out of here before someone came checking on the weapons fire. And as she stepped out, there were a lot of people in the hall that were clearly panicking.

Alex moved with the confidence of someone who knew what was going on, saying impolite ‘excuse me’s and shouldering through everyone as she got back to the front door, and walked out into the dawn light.

Halfway across the quad, she took a seat on a bench, and started fishing for a telepad. She needed to get medical attention. Which was when a polite elderly voice caught her attention.

”That looks pretty bad there, young lady.” Alex looked up to see an old man, grey hair and a skinny face with sunken cheeks and drooping skin, but with a flinty look in his eyes. “How’d that happen?”

Alex was about to say it was nothing, but then she noticed that the man wasn’t alone; there were two other old folks in a loose triangle around her bench, and while the man in front of her had his hands in his coat pockets, the others were carrying shotguns. So she opted for honesty, and got ready to use a greave charge while she set her shield bracer for buckshot.

”Got in a fight with a serial killer.” She said.

The man pursed his lips, nodding with a bobbing motion like he was part bird. “Could be, could be.” He flicked his eyes over to one of his companions. “You win?”

Alex met his gaze. “I killed him.” She said. “I don’t feel like I won.”

At that, his eyes softened. “It’s like that.” He told her, offering her a hand up. “Come along little lass. Let’s get you patched up.”

”I’d appreciate that.” Alex said, blinking back tears. “I think I’m gonna pass out soon.” Paladin training hadn’t really prepared her for this. And yet, there was something familiar about it all. Something she felt like she should latch onto.

Alex wasn’t sure she was a good paladin. But she took the offered hand, her own slick with blood, and stood to follow. Because good or not, she was going to keep trying, and there was something about this odd trio that merited investigation.

At no point, ever, in the short history of the Order of Endless Rooms, was a paladin actually done. And Alex felt that in her fucking soul as she walked away from the campus battleground.

_____

“There is no right way for a paladin to succeed.” Spire-Cast-Behind spoke at a low volume to herself as she watched half the adults of the tiny cluster of structures that was Ophiem slowly filter away from where they’d gathered in front of the bar. “And today, I define success for myself as a safe evacuation.”

Which was, actually, a problem.

The sunset was lighting up the sky with a gradient of orange and red that was so tremendously large that it felt more like a solid object than a planet’s atmosphere. And Spire knew that, at least among the creatures that she had found and fought, this was the time of day that they came out.

There wasn’t enough information. But that was often the way with magic and dungeons and life in general. You had to survive enough times to find patterns, and in order to do that, you had to guess.

All the information Spire did have made it look like this town had died to two separate things. One of them was the slow slide into economic obscurity facilitated by the presence of capitalism, but the other one, arguably the less destructive one, was whatever had destroyed the outer section of the western side of the town. Physically, it was probably more intact than it had any right to be, but the destruction had taken place on a level that left a scar in perception; no one knew what had been lost. Even Tyrone and Riho couldn’t see it, and Spire-Cast-Behind had flatly told them exactly where things were.

”So is the town haunted?” Karl asked her, the young human a little too excited about the prospect of something, anything, happening in his home. He had been hovering around Spire constantly since their encounter with the smoke creatures, and he assured her - like a liar - that his mother was fine with it. Spire had spoken to his mother. She did not believe Spire was real, but even if the camraconda was a person, she did not believe that her son should be spending time near her.

Spire-Cast-Behind had adopted an emotional strategy for that situation that she called “not caring”. She had more important things to do today.

Like figure out how to get people to leave. No one had wanted to. She had explained the situation, explained the issue, explained the danger. And the response from the population that had bothered to show up was… laughter. Disbelieving and bitter. Someone had thrown a bottle at her, and Spire stopping it midair before casually moving aside and letting it whisk past her head to smash on the bar’s dirty front steps hadn’t impressed anyone.

”I don’t know.” She told Karl. “I know there was some danger, but not if it is still active. I know that it is not safe here, and I can offer free relocation and support, which no one wishes to take.”

”A few people do.” The thin young man muttered. “You could take us with you.”

Spire looked up at him. Karl had been… not pestering her, exactly. She knew, intimately, what it meant to be trapped somewhere. Though she did feel, perhaps unfairly, that he was being melodramatic, since nothing stopped him from just leaving.

Or maybe something did. Maybe people who left never made it that far down the road. Maybe. Spire-Cast-Behind hated maybies.

Mentally, she nudged the pale green ribbon around her neck that was her authority, just to check that it was still working. Dutifully, it gave the impression that it was following her command as best it could; which was not what it normally gave as a reply. Authorities didn’t seem to get frustrated or irate, but they could falter. They could fail to accomplish a task. And that was what she felt was being communicated to her, in regards to whether it was successfully blocking any memory or perception alterations.

”Can you tell me what you aren’t blocking?” Spire said at the lowest useful volume her artificial voice could manage, staring down the road to the north edge of town, wondering if maybe there was a different abandoned military base she should go investigate.

”What?” Karl asked.

”Not you.” She replied, listening to her authority as it said… something. It said something. Authorities didn’t really speak - or at least, none of the ones in the Order did - but Spire knew when her’s was trying to say something more complex than it could really handle. Which was… not good. “Something is wrong.” She said out loud. “But what? Tyrone! Tyrone where are you?” The camraconda raised herself up to the longest height she could manage, trying to see over the heads of people who were milling around and treating her request that they run for their lives as an impromptu garden party. The people of Ophiem were, if nothing else, always ready to take an excuse to get drunk with the neighbors they’d known for thirty years.

This did not seem healthy to Spire-Cast-Behind, but she wasn’t human, so maybe there was a species specific thing she was missing. Either way, Tyrone came jogging up to her, elbowing his way through the crowd and getting a wake of narrow eyed looks and sneers as he passed. “Sup?” He asked.

”Something is wrong. I am going to attempt to find what it is, but my authority is having difficulty protecting me. Take Karl and find the others who wish to leave, just in case.”

”On it boss lady!” Tyrone gave her a British naval salute for some reason, and clapped Karl on the shoulder. “Let’s go round up your friends.” He said, projecting confidence as he distracted the human with some long and unrelated story about an Office delve while they walked away.

Spire, meanwhile, slithered down the street, focused on the different methods the Order tried to work around memetic hazards. Checking the time, checking recordings from her skulljack of recent events, checking recordings from a normal camera of recent events, individually focusing on each of her seven senses to try to isolate aspects that shouldn’t be there, and querying her authority constantly to check her mental work.

Still there was nothing but the feeling that something was being successfully hidden from her, and the instinct of dread that had kept her alive for years in the harsh environment of a dungeon.

Spire knew they had to get out of here, she just didn’t know why. Or if they should be taking everyone with them, whether they asked or not. You didn’t ask before removing someone from a burning building, after all.

And yet for all her attempts to understand, all she could tell was that there was a vibrating in the ground that she couldn’t place to a source, and some kind of noise in the air that was almost like a whistling. Though that sound cut off as she tried to place it, even as the vibrating increased.

Spire-Cast-Behind kept slithering down the road, looking back and forth. There were only a few more houses out here; spaced out by a hundred feet, the one on her left sagging on its own raised foundation and currently housing a weathered human woman who gave Spire a wave from where she sat on a bench swing. Spire waved back, which was why she was looking that direction when the worm crashed to the ground behind the house.

Calling it a worm was stupid, but it was the only thing she could think to compare it to. Five hundred feet back, in the bare dirt and scattered gravel on the edge of Ophiem, a beast made out of loops of solid amber light and black smoke finished its arc through the air and hit the ground. The rings that made up its body were suspended away from each other, and it tapered off, but even the one at the fore was fifty feet wide. The thing was monstrous, enormous, Spire could have fit her entire childhood home tower inside it with room to spare. And as it slammed into the dirt, it slipped into the ground like it was swimming into a placid pool of water. One by one, each ring sank underground, leaving only a series of ridges in the dirt to mark their passing until even the tail was gone.

”…Run.” Spire said, voice sounding normal even as terror overtook her. “Run.” She broadcast louder to the woman on her front lawn.

The human cocked her head at the camraconda and gave an amused snort, not moving to get up. She didn’t seem to feel the rumble or hear the grinding of dirt and stone as the worm reemerged. It burst up out of the ground with a terrible force, spraying dust around itself as it arced into the air again. Closer this time, too close; it wasn’t mindlessly roaming, it was aiming for the house. Aiming for the woman herself, Spire realized as she subconsciously did the math. The old human was dead center for where the featureless set of polished rings was going to land.

Spire started to dart forward, putting on a burst of speed in a way that always surprised people when they learned camracondas could move that fast. Her version of a spring, closing the distance as fast as she could, one of her mechanical limbs snapping to life at a mental direction and pulling a telepad from its slot on her rigging. It would be tricky, she might have to bite the woman while pressing the telepad to one of them, but Spire could do it. She could make it. She could-

The first ring of the monster fell from the sky, hitting the ground in a ring that encompassed most of the dry grass and struggling flowerbeds of the garden. The woman, sitting in the middle of it, didn’t even seem to notice, though she did stop moving in her lawn chair. The force of the impact send up a plume of dirt into Spire’s lens, some of it sucked down as she ran toward the human and causing her to give a rough camraconda style cough.

The next segment of the creature came down. And the next. And Spire knew, even though she had almost made it, that she couldn’t move fast enough to get through the gaps between the rings.

But that wasn’t the worst part. As it flowed over the building, Spire-Cast-Behind forgot what she was doing. She watched as the… something. The thing humans built. Structure? Yes, that was the word, the structure was overlapped by the sunset orange rings of the worm, shifting and sliding but always staying tethered to each other despite the gaps of open air between them. Watched as the creature effortlessly dug into the ground. Through the gaps, she forgot the details of what those glass things were, then the clear objects, then the… oh they probably had a name, but it didn’t really matter. The badly warped box in front of the structure she quickly unrealized into a metal and rubber lump, and then just a mild distraction.

There was something else in there too, making a noise. It started as a surprised laugh, before the mobile collection of organics forgot what laughing was, and it ceased motion to pile onto the ground in front of another small angular obstruction. Spire didn’t know why that part had been moving around when the rest of the worm’s food hadn’t, but she felt uneasy about it. A queasy instinctive dread, just like she’d been feeling all the way to where she was resting to watch the beast feed.

Then the worm was past, a trench like a moat in the broken earth marking where the last ring had burrowed into the ground. The dirt and broken pavement filling in behind it as it tunneled away, first a soft shaking underneath them, before the sensation faded to nothing.

Spire’s authority, still operating under the last command to protect her mental security, tried to keep her from forgetting. And when that failed, it tried to let her see the crushed house in front of her, shattered glass and splintered wood and a fountain of fiberglass insulation in the air and a car shorn in half by the falling bulk of the huge worm creature, but the attack was too recent and Spire couldn’t even understand that the thing had been a house, despite the authority’s help.

But it needed to help. So it did something different. Authorities were of very, very limited intelligence; they were kind of like exceptionally dumb dogs, but they could sometimes learn things beyond the abilities they picked up through their tethered bonds. And this one had learned that, when its commander was trying to remember things, she checked a video recording.

So it pulled that from digital storage, and imprinted it over her vision. Converting digital media to a physical projection was taxing, but authorities were much more physical than most infomorphs; this wasn’t like Planner’s trick of projecting information that ‘felt’ like paper or screens because people thought it was supposed to, this was actually a projection over Spire’s vision.

”Oh. Oh dear.” The camraconda said as she saw, the extra step of removal from the memetic effect allowing her to perceive with only a slight lag the effect of the attack. She saw now, the destroyed house, the crushed car, and, most importantly, the figure slumped in front of her lawn chair, what had once been a human body smoking like it had been set on fire, slowly shedding its skin and hair and replacing vital parts with solidified amber light and hazy black smoke.

The thing that had been a woman a few seconds ago stood up. And Spire wanted to vomit.

The ground undertail rumbled slightly, and she jerked into motion. “Oh no. Oh no.” She chanted it like a mantra as she fled, clearing ground across the cracked old pavement back toward where she’d left Tyrone and Karl. “Time to leave. Time to-“

The first ring of the worm erupted from the ground behind her, arcing in a way that would bring it down closer to the town’s anemic center. She twisted to look overhead as it sailed by, rings of whatever grim smoke material it was made of that were ten feet around and a hundred feet in diameter sailing past, gaps you could drive through between them, the dungeon creature absolutely unconcerned with physics.

It started to hit the ground ahead of her as Spire was already on a call with Tyrone, relaying frantic instructions to get clear, now, with anyone they could move. To not ask permission and to simply start teleporting people out. Her companion only barely hesitated as she told him there was a memetic threat coming in, telling her that Karl had helped him get a group already, so they’d start with that, and he’d be back in a second, before the call cut off.

There was still a monster though.

Spire ran through her options. And found them… limited. What was a crossbow or an emotion modulating laser pointer supposed to do against that?!

She tried the laser pointer anyway as she moved, getting no result from sharing her poorly contained fear and cold calculation. Spire kept racing forward, but her slithering against the rough ground wasn’t back toward the gathering of humans, exactly. Instead, she changed tracks to the RV that she, Riho, and Tyrone were using to travel. She had limited time while the smoke worm was underground, and was just about to wrench the door open, fumbling with her fangs around the latch, when it erupted again, this time on an arc that would take it down toward where there were people gathered, having a night of drinks and the same stories told because she had brought them together to try to get them to evacuate.

Spire felt something in her body crunch as she slammed into the RV’s steps too hard, pulling open a container and dragging out her other backpack. The one with the weapon mount, and the rifle attached to it. Throwing herself backward, one arm loading the gun and another trying to hit the safety and failing to do so quickly, she tumbled out of the vehicle and sighted on the rear section of the worm as it threatened to come down to Earth without anyone even seeing the doom approaching.

The seed round, loaded with a childhood memory of hiding under a bed from a thunderstorm that had been gifted to her before she left, hit the fifth to last ring of the worm with a clap of pure sound that was louder than every noise the mobile natural disaster was making. Not dead on, it was closer to the edge than Spire would have liked, especially since the recoil broke two of the joints on her armature pack.

The force of the shot left a glittering trail of smoke and plume of amber dust, a chunk blown off of the seemingly mindless and silent monster so hard that it shifted the ring out of position from the others. And for a moment, Spire-Cast-Behind hoped that was enough to knock it off course. Enough to buy just a few minutes to remove people and flee.

But then the ring slid back into position, like a magnet slowly gliding itself into place once more. And the worm hit the ground, silently surrounding fifty feet of street party and cratering the front of the tiny town’s only official bar.

It didn’t surface after that.

Spire lay on the gravel, part of her head listlessly slumped in a patch of thorny plants just past the curb by where they’d parked the RV, and felt… like a failure. An utter failure. How many people had just died? How many people had died while she’d been here, slowly and meanderingly poking around and exploring the expanse of grass around the town?

How big did Ophiem used to be?

She suddenly understood a part of James a little better. The way he looked so tired sometimes. The way he looked like he didn’t want to do this anymore. The way he made the obvious human motion that he was holding back from crying when he thought no one was looking.

Spire-Cast-Behind didn’t like it. She felt like she shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be a paladin, not after that.

But then the screams and the pop of gunshots from two stretched out and barren blocks of the slowly dying town started. And she jerked herself back to an upright pose, some of her mechanical arms dragging in the dirt.

The worm converted people into those things she’d fought previously.

And the noise meant there were still people alive.

Whether or not she should be, right now, Spire was still a paladin. And that meant she knew what direction to dart.

To save who could be saved. Before it was too late at all.

_____

Simon’s meeting had gone about as well as he could have hoped. Which was to say, he hadn’t gotten shot down immediately, and had managed about twenty minutes of conversation uninterrupted by the minister’s aides or some kind of scheduled meeting.

Everything he’d learned before trying had made it clear that it was generally a stupid idea to try to skip the line in this particular manner. But there was a kind of feeling that he wasn’t moving as fast as he maybe could. That he could be doing a little bit more for the Order while he was out in the world.

That might not be the right way to learn how to be a paladin. But when James had given him instructions, it had been irritatingly unclear what exactly Simon was supposed to do. So if anyone had a complaint with him focusing on home and not elsewhere, that was their problem, they should have instructed better. And by ‘they’, he meant James.

Minister Bouvier had been willing to hear him out, and in a quick outline, Simon had explained that the Order of Endless Rooms had encountered multiple nonhuman species, and was currently trying to secure the wellbeing for all of them. And she had nodded and understood, and that was kind of the entire reason he was in this particular country in the first place.

Not that Brazil wasn’t a nice place - barring the fact that he was pretty sure it was currently either planning a war of expansion or having one planned against it - but Brazil and especially its institutional power was under the effect of an actually vicious infovore. Simon didn’t know if it was something like an assignment or more like a memeplex that just happened to sit on top of at least three of the major cities, but either way, it wasn’t somewhere that he was capable of talking to like this. Cuba had been another option, but while its antimeme problems were less “murder you in your sleep”, and its political instability was a little less turbulent, it was still problematic.

Uruguay seemed to just slip under the radar somehow. No antimemes that Simon could find, a robust democracy, high general happiness, and as far as he could tell, no dungeon monsters eating people. Not that dungeon monsters eating people was a common problem, but having it happen to yourself once was kind of enough to be on edge about that sort of thing.

So Simon told the minister what he wanted, and she had nodded and then informed him that despite being one of the country’s ministers, she wasn’t actually part of the party with the most political power at the moment. So even though she sort of believed him - he’d had pictures to show her at least - she did tell him that there was only so much she could do when it came to just giving away something from their nation to people who were, at the end of the day, unknown foreign refugees.

And Simon understood that. He really did. Even though his little symbiote had urged him to get really, really angry about the injustice, he was aware of the fact that at the end of the day the books had to balance. The Order got away with it because making as much platinum as they could fit in a box that was secretly the size of several larger boxes gave them an economic reach well beyond their size. But a country needed country sized solutions.

So he’d saved the anger for later, and had told her that they were prepared to offer a few things in exchange. Things like scalable free clean renewable energy.

He was aware what he was offering by how she froze for a moment; the woman was smart, almost certainly smarter than he was, and it only took her a second to run the angles on what he’d said. This wouldn’t just make her career, this would make her country important; but that was assuming he was only offering it to her, and if someone like Simon who admitted he wasn’t the one in charge could offer this, then they would surely be sharing it elsewhere. But if he could offer this, what else could he possibly have? And what would she be able to get from a deal just by being in mild proximity to it?

Watching someone do political math in real time was actually amusing enough to get Simon to smile slightly during the meeting. Both for that, and because he knew for sure that when she said her office would be in touch, she actually meant it.

That had been earlier. Now, though, he’d found something else to occupy his time while he waited for a longer meeting and a concrete decision. Or rather, it had come up in the meeting itself. Reports of something odd, weird creatures spotted around the border with Brazil in the north of the country. And unlike everywhere Simon had ever been, these reports weren’t decayed or obfuscated or ignored.

Teleporting north had brought him to somewhere colder and windier than he’d anticipated, which was stupid when he had a magical brain connection to his phone and could know the weather anywhere on the planet at any moment. Simon had chuckled softly, the pattern of his laugh a blend of two people that had become something truly uniquely his in the last week, before getting his bearings and teleporting again to a better spot.

The country really was beautiful, in his opinion.

Hilly in places, but he hadn’t noticed that as much because he wasn’t stingy with his telepad ration. A lot of green, though few trees; cities actually had more trees than the grasslands because of all the palms scattered through them on purpose. A lot of beaches, though most of them lost something special when they catered to tourists, but that was just life.

Not too warm, not too cold, and a little humid to the point that Simon knew a lot of people would be uncomfortable even though it didn’t bother him. And he hadn’t realized how strange it was that all the ladybugs and butterflies were gone from his daily life until he was here in a place that had them in abundance.

The language wasn’t perfectly familiar to him - a skill rank only went so far after all - but skill ranks jump started learning, and Simon was here to learn. Not just the language, but the place. He was here to learn what it was like, and to see if this seemingly unique oasis of mundanity was somewhere that could be home.

The others had gone looking for a problem to solve. But Simon didn’t think he needed to; unclear instructions or not. He had a problem; or the Order did as a whole. They needed validity. They needed someone bigger than them to stand up on a large scale and say that normal was changing, and that was okay, and it was gonna make the world better. So he’d spent some time checking out different places, helped by the people who were nominally his errancy team even though they didn’t travel with him, and often helping with small things that got in his path as he did so.

And then he’d settled on taking the plunge here. Asking openly if a global government would just… help. Not purely out of kindness, but still. Anywhere else, Simon would have felt like he would have had to lead with the carrot. Offer up cancer cures and free electricity. But here, he felt like just asking was the way to start, honest and pure, and the bonuses the Order could commit could come later.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

There was just one problem.

There were reports of something new in the north.

So Simon knelt on the loose dirt and organic detritus of the latest hill he’d climbed, feeling a little silly using a telepad for a ten minute hike. This place wasn’t exactly untamed wilderness; he was pretty sure it was a national park, and there was a passenger airline high overhead reminding him of the existence of civilization. But he’d still gotten pretty far from the winding snake of a highway, both through hitching rides and liberal use of teleports as he checked out different spots.

His armor, donned for this particular foray into the northern wild grasslands of the country, was shifted to the same color as his eyes, giving him a little camouflage at a distance. His vision was better than human normal thanks to the random purple orbs he’d tested, one of which had given him an ability to focus on small objects about two hundred feet farther away, and another which had given him faster pupil dilation, but he still had binoculars because the Office’s small purple orbs worked at a pretty small scale.

And what he needed to see was maybe a couple miles away, hours of searching having paid off.

Technically, this was within twenty miles or so of the border with Brazil, but the river that marked that particular geopolitical object was far enough away to be out of sight. Simon hoped that the creature he was looking at, currently striding along on legs that glinted in the light as it passed through the tall grasses, carrying a mangled capybara corpse in its mouth, hadn’t come from across the border. That would be a bigger problem. Bigger still if it were sent.

It looked like someone had redesigned a raccoon with the principles of brutalist architecture, but made it the size of a wolf, and gave it the temperament of a much angrier wolf. The creature was obviously artificial, not just for its shape, but also for the fact that it gleamed in the evening sunlight. Through the binoculars, Simon could barely make out the detail of hundreds of articulated metal plates, like scales instead of fur, that covered the dungeon life. A slow accumulation of dirt, scuffing, and blood along parts of it showed that it would require cleaning over time, but also that this one was probably fairly new. If it could get dirty, but was still a glittering chrome along most of its upper body, then it was probably a fairly recent addition to Earth. Or it had taken a bath.

This wasn’t something Simon had been told to handle. This wasn’t a condition of the government’s decision. This was just him, being a paladin. Because they had known, or at least felt or suspected, that there was something odd. And while there was no obvious threat like missing cities or forgotten dead, there was still something going on that the country was having trouble with.

He felt a spike of annoyance. Ire, even. And then another burst of anger that was more personally his. “Stop that.” Simon bluntly commanded the symbiotic dungeon creature on his arm. “For now. It might not be that nice when we get closer.” Another wash of violent intent swept through his thoughts, though this one was more clearly external, which he appreciated. “Yeah, yeah.” He muttered.

He was trying to use the symbiote as little as possible. And it was trying to get him to use it as much as possible. Simon was probably going to get it surgically removed when he got back to the Lair, because this was starting to become a liability. But for now, he wanted a closer look at the ambling creature that had found the shade of a tree, laying under a canopy that looked like green clouds and slowly ripping apart its prey. Metal it might be, but it still seemed to enjoy eating.

Best case scenario, he could trace it to its home dungeon. And so far, Simon had been effective enough to get best case outcomes for a lot of small problems, which actually felt weirdly at odds with how he’d expected being a paladin to go. He doubted this one would be small though, but he left a camera drone on the hill to connect to with his skulljack for a vantage point, and slowly started descending the side of the hill anyway.

He didn’t feel a need to prove himself as a paladin, like Alex did. Nor did he think he had some kind of quota of deeds to hit, like Spire. But he did think of himself as just… someone who did this kind of thing, now. Maybe it was part of him that had changed when he’d taken in his other half’s ghost. Maybe it had always been there, and the Order had just coaxed it out. Simon didn’t know, and he didn’t need to know.

Instead, he was eager to see if the thing actually was a giant raccoon.

_____

“I do feel obliged to tell you, that you’ve been bleeding all over the lovely bed they threw you on.” Zhu said as James took a second to recover from forming himself an additional left arm out of ice. Zhu’s weight wasn’t actually real, but it felt better to be symmetrical, and James had made it really sharp. So as long as he didn’t forget and try to scratch his eye with a limb he wasn’t familiar with, he’d have one more tool.

”If they wanted my blood to remain inside me, they shouldn’t have shot me.” James said, gently testing the door and finding it locked. He could probably kick it enough to open it, or form a set of icey fingers that could work as lockpicks, but those would both alert anyone on the other side while leaving him more tired than he already was. Actually, he wasn’t that tired, really. Despite the injury and long day, what James felt was mostly just hungry. Not even stressed anymore, just like he hadn’t had anything except half a chalky protein bar during the delve, and that he wanted chicken. “Anyway, banter over, right?”

”Right, right. But what I mean is, the others will find us.” Zhu pointed out. “Cause you bled everywhere. You can just take a nap.”

James let out a long noise of understanding. “That’s a really good point.” He admitted. “And I’m super glad you’re here to think for me! But also I don’t trust them to leave me alive and unmindwiped for that long. Also we’re underground.”

”So?”

“So we’re probably underground in a secret vault or something.”

The navigator scoffed. ”You look at me and tell me that Anesh couldn’t absolutely solve the escape room puzzle to open their magical church elevator.” Zhu challenged him.

James smiled. “I’m always looking at you.” He said softly, before ruining the touching comment by adding, “I have really good peripheral vision and you’re a big glowing distraction.”

”Okay banter over.” Zhu rumbled. “How are we getting out? Want me to unlock the door?” The fact that he could do that was news to James. It made sense, in a way, but James still looked down at his arm, raising his eyebrows a little before that motion pulled at the hole in one eye and made him want to scream, tears welling up at the spike of pain. “Okay nevermind.” Zhu said, worry and sympathy in the engine of his words. “What about Move Person?”

”A lot easier.” James admitted with a gasp, catching his breath. “Let me do one thing first.”

What he was doing first was actually two things. First, fishing out the little cat statuette and activating it. It crumbled into sand in his hand, which slid away into nothingness as it spilled through the air; the logos items from the Stacks didn’t always break, but from all the test reports James had read and participated in, they broke more often the heavier their effects were.

The second thing was to bend down by the door, knees protesting, and place his palm near the crack between the barrier and the floor. Another nine Breath poured out from between his lips, his body feeling a bit sluggish as vital oxygen was expended along with the magic. And on the other side of the door, someone yelled as the chilly little cat James had just conjured burst to life in a literal flurry of snowflakes.

James had only just gotten back to his standing position when Zhu triggered his Move Person absorbed blue, and put him on the other side of the door. And again, James was glad that worked, because he didn’t know what the rules on the spell that kept him from teleporting were. Maybe the orb didn’t count as teleporting, maybe the spell had worn off, it didn’t matter.

Because he was standing staring at the door opposite himself in the hall, and out of the corner of his working eye, he could see the guy who was supposed to be watching him turning to chase after the cat that James had summoned. The little snow creature was racing away, and the man in blue jeans and a polo shirt that had been unceremoniously ordered to keep an eye on things looked like he was planning to bolt after it following a deep sigh.

James and Zhu didn’t let him finish the sigh. One human arm wrapped around his neck in a chokehold, while a navigator limb and an arm made of ice grabbed at the man’s wrists as James choked him out, holding the grapple absolutely no longer than it took for him to stop struggling and drop to the floor.

The hall had shaded white lights every ten feet overhead, carpet that looked like it had jumped in time from the mid fifties, and doors every so often down its length. To the side, there was a half-staircase up, five or six steps that led to a landing and a turn. The hallway also had a couple battered old stained wood bookshelves pressed against one of the empty spaces in the wall, chairs that would have been right at home in an elementary school sitting on either side of them. Farther down was a vending machine that James made the tactical decision to not get close to if he could help it.

One of the doors swung open twenty feet from James, and a man stuck his head out. “You okay out here… Danny…?” He went quiet as he saw James standing over the slumped body on the floor. “Someone’s here!” He screamed abruptly. “Intruder! Help!”

”It probably wouldn’t help if I said that I was technically invited?” James asked quietly.

”Shut up.” Zhu poked him, but the navigator was laughing as he did so.

The sound of boots barely muffled by the coarse carpet sounded behind James, and he spun to see a man standing at the top of the little mini-stairs, hand going for a revolver at his hip. And James, on a trained reflex, reached through the magic from the statuette he’d used, and drew the gun himself first.

The skirmish winner seizes blades effect was a bit of a weird one, since it was next to impossible to measure the actual motion of the weapons being drawn. But it traded being scientifically obtuse for being intuitive; if you were winning a fight, then you could start grabbing weapons from farther away, or out of people’s hands. And James was, currently, winning.

He flicked the cylinder of the gun open and shook out the bullets onto the floor as the man gave him a blank stare that turned into a scowl as he jumped down the steps and met James with a wide swing. James in turn hit him with the butt of his own gun, sending him sprawling past as someone else drawn by the yelling appeared and shouted a challenge at James.

James turned his back on the new arrival just long enough to shoulder check the first guy into a bookshelf, rolling around him as his foe tried to backhand him. Fumbling slightly with the lack of peripheral vision on one side, James wrapped his hand around the base of a football trophy sitting on the shelf, and slammed that into the offered forehead as his attacker scrambled to get him without any kind of plan. The arrival of the third man came with Zhu giving James a barely anticipated dodge line, the two of them jerking out of the way as someone tried to ambush them with a crackling taser.

There was a brief moment where James wondered what would happen if he got shocked on his ice arm. But he shut down that line of thinking because he was busy, and instead just closed his hand on thin air - which was actually the grip of the stun gun - and drew it out of his enemy’s hand. There was a moment of pure confusion from the man trying to hit him as an empty hand that wasn’t clenched into a fist limply hit James’ shoulder.

Then James pressed the prongs into the guy’s neck and held down the button as his target spasmed.

”Any more?” James asked Zhu casually as they stood over the pile of bodies, all of them alive but all the conscious ones groaning in pain.

”Oh, duck.” Zhu said quickly, prompting the motion from James as a chair narrowly avoided his head. “That one.”

The man who had shouted for help in the first place, panicked look in his eye, brandished one of the light plastic and metal chairs at James like he was a lion to be tamed at a circus. “G-get out!” He demanded in a weak squeak.

James threw the revolver at him, hitting him in the forehead with the spinning projectile, and then following up the stagger it caused with a fist to the gut that sent the man slumping to the wall.

”Okay.” He said, starting to feel through the statuette‘s magic that there were weapons nearby he could draw, his combat momentum compounding as he kept knocking people out of the fight. “Let’s steal or break something important.”

The first door they tried looked like a concrete boiler room that happened to have a massive bin of plastic bottles in it, and James didn’t poke around much before moving to the other side of the hall. The room next to his prison was locked, and he doubled back to grab the hefty cluster of keys from one of the men he’d injured before hurrying back, Zhu highlighting which one worked.

Inside was empty. Less blood on the bed than his, too, so he felt cheated.

The one after that had an occupant though. And they started thrashing against where they were strapped to the bed as James let himself in. Not human, but close in shape. A naked form of roughly scaled green hide, face like a smoothed down alligator except with a far more flexible mouth. James could see them trying to speak, or perhaps just scream, but it was weak and also one of the straps was currently holding them with their neck bent back and their mouth strapped shut.

He shut the door gently, noting an increase in the attempted thrashing. “Hey. Hi. Sorry, can you understand me?” He asked quietly, keeping an ear out for footsteps coming from outside. There was a pause, before a muffled series of grunts that sounded incredibly pissed off. “Great. You want out of here?”

Perhaps a stupid question, given the circumstances. And Zhu let him know it too. “That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said, and I’m usually around when you’re flirting with Alanna.” The navigator told him. “Here, get this one.” He highlighted one of the straps in James’ vision, his own claw working on the other.

Freeing the prisoner only took a minute, made longer by the fact that she jerked away from wherever either of them accidentally touched her skin. When the straps were off, they shoved James back and rolled off the bed, pressing their back against the wall opposite the door and sucking in air like they hadn’t been able to breathe properly. Like this, standing up, the massive maw reached most of the way across their thin body and down to their knees, the toothy mouth hanging open as the figure panted heavily.

When they did speak, it wasn’t English, and might not even be a full language. But it was an attempt at communication and not violence, so James just shot them a thumbs up, stepping away. “I’m gonna go take care of some things.” He said quietly, hearing someone coming from outside. “I’d wait here; don’t worry, I’ll be back to get you out when I leave, okay?” When the person flinched when he spoke, it was with a rippling twist of their whole mouth, teeth gnawing on the extended lip. They stared instead of reacting aside from that, and James felt his smile slip before hardening into an angry frown. “Okay.” He exhaled, wrenching the door open and drawing the cattle prod from the belt of one of the two people with neatly printed elder name tags running his way. “I’ll be right back.”

The first one seemed alarmed to see him step out of that particular room. But not for long, before he had something else to be worried about. James didn’t bother with the prod for the second guy, just slapping him in the face with an open palm and discharging his own electric burst into him, leaving two twitching figures writhing in pain on the floor. On the way past, he kicked one of the other men who was starting to get up in the stomach, angry and done with this bullshit as he moved to check the next door.

“Are we in the basement of a masonic lodge?” Zhu asked curiously as they found a room that seemed dedicated to the storage of chairs and folding tables.

“Why do you even know what that looks like.” James tried to shake off his annoyance as he headed for the worn wood of the last door down here.

Zhu tapped a talon against James’ armored elbow. ”Well, partly because you know what that looks like. You shared that memory of your grandpa with me a long time ago, and the place it was in is still down there in your thoughts.” Zhu’s tone held a soft kindness. “But also I like exploring!”

”Stop breaking into places!”

”They were having an open house! Also you said banter was over.”

”I did.” James really, really wanted to pick at his wounded eye, but tightened his grip on the doorframe instead. “This is one of the church meetinghouses. I know it is. Hopefully the main one they’re working out of.” He tried and failed to keep his breathing steady, the gnawing and persistent pain mixed with his resurging anger causing him to pant raggedly as he spoke. “Let’s hope this is where they keep their spellbooks and burn the place down on the way out to send a message.”

”Let’s do the first part.”

Pulling open the last door, conscious of the fact that there was a seemingly normal but potentially hostile vending machine at his back, James was greeted with the largest space so far. It was a long and narrow room, with compact reading desks lining both sides from the door. About half of the twenty desks had people sitting at them, many of them young, all of them with a single book in front of them. Or… in one case, something that looked like an ebook reader. That one was new.

Around the room there were a few extra seats, and even a slide projector pushed to the side that might have been part of their own experiments with the spellbooks. But most of what caught James’ attention were the blue metal lockers at the back of the room that were all heavily padlocked. If anywhere was going to have a stash of magical material, that was probably it.

The other people in the room were a pair of men and one woman, keeping an eye on things. One of the men looked like he was currently doing the rounds, pacing in front of the kids and their spellbooks, while giving stern looks to anyone who wasn’t focusing hard enough. While everyone kept studying despite the sound of the door, those three looked up at James immediately.

Maybe it was something about James’ being armored, with two off-colored extra arms and a glowing mantle of feathers. Maybe it was the blood on his face and the hastily assembled eyepatch. Maybe it was the cattle prod he’d kept ahold of. Whatever it was, the three authority figures froze, mouths open, as he walked in and let the door hang open behind him.

”Good evening.” James said flatly. “Get out.”

”You can’t be here!” One of the watchers spoke with the kind of stern voice that adults used on children when they thought they had the ultimate authority in a situation. “Who let you in?” He said, circling a desk where another adult human was clearly doing her best to keep reading and not look up to see what the disturbance was.

”There’s a long and complicated answer to that.” James admitted. “But I’m not interested in sharing.”

The man reached for something on his belt, and James let Zhu snag the gun from across the room before it could get drawn. The other two teacher figures flinching and diving for cover before the duo could even unload the weapon. The man who had tried to draw it instead charged James, his heavy frame making his steps sound like thunder on the wood floor of the open room; one hand reached out in front of him as he focused during his run.

And James, still inside the area of effect of the Stacks item, and even more empowered by it now than previously, felt what he was reaching for. Not just an object, but the spell that made a weapon.

So he drew it first.

The knife slid out of nowhere with a little grey line in the world. Unsheathing the blade from space itself as James cast someone else’s spell. His target’s eyes got wide as he did so, the man fumbling to turn his attempt to skewer James into a football tackle, but James just hefted the knife by the blade and flung it overhand at the charging man, the hilt of it hitting him in the forehead at high speed with a dull impact.

He grabbed the knife as it bounced off, pulling it from the air as he tripped the now stumbling human with Zhu’s tail, yanking a leg out of place and sending him into a coatrack before he yanked the whole thing over, slammed into a desk, and then hit the floor face down with a whimper of pain.

James and Zhu both paused to make sure he wasn’t going to get back up, then turned back to the others as they worked their hands together to slip the magazine out of the gun and throw it to the side. “Good afternoon.” James raised his voice. “Everyone who wants to be here, get the fuck out.”

Someone abandoned their spellbook, ruining what was probably a lot of work judging by the fact that they seemed to have an IV drip in, and started to point at James. He kicked the desk into the opposing set of knees, toppling the figure over. Someone else came at him with a pretty mundane looking knife, and he stole that too, throwing it aside before getting punched in the face hard enough to taste blood and devolving into a small brawl with someone who actually knew how to fight.

Not fight well enough, though. James was trying really hard not to severely injure anyone, but when multiple adult humans tried to pile on him and Zhu, the pair switched to fighting a little rougher.

Because as long as they were winning, no one else got to have a weapon. And that left James with a massive advantage that he used as an open threat to keep people from taking swings at his face while he tried to subdue as many as he could. But that wasn’t a perfect solution, and more than once, James ended up using a summoned knife or a sword to hamstring someone and leave them bleeding and in pain on the floor.

Someone, at one point, hit him with a spell that made all of Zhu’s dodge guidelines snap to a single point. That effect ended when Zhu caught the person who was moving to tackle James as he was pulled to the point himself, the navigator’s tail wrapping around a leg and pulling with just enough force to trip, before Zhu and James backhanded him away in unison. The man went crawling for the door in a mad scramble, and the magic blinked away.

Someone else threw a fireball at him, and James allowed himself a momentary pang of jealousy as he put a thermodynamic tunnel in its path; the heat equalizing fast enough that the ‘fire’ was quashed. Lucky he did, too, because it didn’t even hit him in the melee; it struck someone else in the head hard enough that it looked like it might have broken something as the unintentional target dropped away.

When things looked like they were going really badly - all of them against James and the group losing because they just weren’t prepared or practiced at actually fighting - one of the watchers decided to do something stupid. A spinning whorl of grey fog manifesting in front of them, and something that looked much like if you’d melted a boar until it was soft and poured it into the mold of a centiped coming charging out. The caster screaming at it to kill James, and the demon seeming uninterested in holding back on collateral damage.

James and Zhu shared a brief moment of connection, eye contact and a tiny twitch of acknowledgement that yeah, even for this they weren’t going to kill it unless they had to. Because they both knew now that the nonhumans in this building could be people, so there was no excuse for pretending they had the moral high ground if they were fighting compelled prisoners.

The centipig didn’t have any compunctions about hurting people though. Thick hooves and heavy coarse furred legs shoving it forward with a lot of force even if it was kinda slow, trampling over people who’d been tripped or knocked down. Its tusks extended like a dual set of mandibles and lunging for James’ neck, while the person who summoned it was already trying to circle around and shoot James in the back.

Zhu took his gun while James caught the attack head on. Mountain of the Self, even for a second, was draining, but James technically had enough Breath to use it. One hand held out stopping the charge dead and getting a croaking squeal from the demon who staggered to the side, eyes reeling. James followed up by leaping onto its sizable back, his icy arm scooping a jacket off the ground from where it had been flung in the wreckage of a coatrack earlier, and tying it around the long demon’s face as it tried to whip him off. When it rolled sideways, he was already jumping off, but not fast enough as both his left arms got caught underneath the bulk of the creature, several hundred pounds of weight snapping his icy arm into pieces and, from the feeling of it, only avoiding snapping his forearm in the same way because of a purple orb that he really wished he had a count for his remaining uses of.

James let the boar roll past, crashing through desks and sending up rough scratching as the furniture was shoved across the floor leaving scrapes and marks in the wood. Then he was back up, staggering at first but moving faster as his blood pumped and his Endurance kept him going. Leaping to where the demon was thrashing on its back, blood seeping from cuts it had gotten flinging itself across all the knifes James kept throwing into random places away from their owners, James got an arm around its throat. It tried to snap at him with its mandibles, but the jacket covering its face kept it from anything effective.

James held it there while Zhu hit someone that was trying to sneak up on him, the squeals of the demon getting wetter and quieter, until eventually, it stopped moving.

He pulled back, staying on the balls of his feet next to it, and checked to make sure it was still breathing.

Then he rose back up, reached both hands into the air at his side, and grabbed the cattle prod and sword that were somewhere near enough for him to reach them. Turned. And faced the remaining conscious men and women who had been trying to kill or at least hurt him a moment ago. A crowd of pale faces staring back at the guy who had just choked out a dungeon monster that it took them serious effort to catch in the first place.

And then they broke. And fled. A cluster of potential wizards fleeing from the basement room clutching cuts and bruises and screaming for help. Well. Those that weren’t unconscious or hiding behind furniture and hoping James didn’t murder them. Which, lucky for them, he had no intention of.

Though one of the young men down here, maybe thirteen years old with a numb look in his eyes, might have had different ideas. James barely caught the shaft of the spear before he could skewer one of the unconscious men on the ground. “Hold up.” He said quietly as the kid jerked back, keeping ahold of the weapon just in case. “Let’s put the murdering on hold.”

”No!” The kid screamed at him, voice shattering. “Th-they…!”

”Yeah.” James nodded. “I know. We’ll handle it. But right now, you’d rather get out of here, right?”

”I’d rather kill them.” One of the other young people said, staring with a locked gaze at one specific figure on the floor.

James nodded. “I get that. I really do. How about stealing everything from them instead?” He looked toward the lockers. “Zhu? Limited time here.”

His navigator friend highlighted the right keys, and James went to work opening up the metal frames to reveal shelves of neatly organized and labeled spellbooks. “Getting tired.” He warned James. “Also this is wrong, isn’t it?” A talon of his feathered limb extended away from James to point at a row of spellbooks.

”It sure fucking is.” James muttered, biting his lip as he looked at the six identical books with the same label on them. “That’s… a real problem. But also not gonna think about it now. Hey! Any of you have backpacks?”

As it turned out, they did. And while James and Zhu dragged unconscious or injured enemies to the far wall where he did his best to tie their hands behind their backs with the limited material he had, the teenagers followed his instruction to shove everything they could into their bags, and get ready to make a break for it.

It still left almost a whole locker full of copies of the same spell. Or ‘miracle’, as the locals labeled it. And while James was increasingly worried that this wouldn’t be every copy, it was worth assuming it was while they had the time. “Zhu, can you set that on fire?” He asked.

”Can I, the mostly incorporeal bird thing that eats geography lessons, make fire.”

”Yes”

”No.”

“Can you try? I can use Survival Flare on it but my head’s starting to really hurt and I don’t know what temperature spellbooks burn at.”

Zhu’s weakened and tiring gaze stared up at James’ remaining good eye. “I’ll try.” He said eventually, looking back and stretching his talons out toward the kicked over shelf, pulling James’ arm with him. He didn’t know, exactly, that he couldn’t do this. Navigators were still largely unmapped life forms, ironically. Maybe it was possible. So he organized his thoughts, considered what fire even was, and tried to project it onto the dungeon simulacra of paper.

The locker burst into flames.

”Holy shit.” James said with raised eyebrows that he instantly regretted moving like that. “You did it!”

”I… I did it?” Zhu asked, utterly perplexed. “How did I do it?“

”Uh…” one of the teens, the only girl in the group, awkwardly raised her hand as she ducked her head, “…I did it. I’m sorry, I-“

“Oh that makes way more sense.” James and Zhu sighed in unison as the flames dripped like red and yellow liquid down the neatly shelved books, pages bursting and popping like they were filled with something flammable as they caught and curled into blackened ash. He kicked the locker shut, keeping the flame contained enough that the building wouldn’t burn down. “We should go.” He said, starting to offer the girl a pat on the shoulder before freezing at her flinch, remembering that he should be using his general ratroach approach with these kids until things got better for them. A quick look at the others showed a similar group to what James had encountered just… yesterday? Kids who looked like they wanted to be anywhere but here, out of their depth and terrified most likely of meeting the same fate as their friends and peers who had vanished ‘mysteriously’. “Everyone stay behind me and Zhu.” He said, projecting calm confidence. “We’re getting you out of here, and you will never have to come back.”

At least one of them started crying. James let them; he knew how much that was needed even just after a moment, and these kids had been going through this abuse, basically alone, for a lot longer than a moment.

In the hall, two of the people James had downed previously were missing. He held up a hand sign, and then had to verbally give an instruction as he remembered that the kids following him weren’t knights, asking them to stay put while he got their group’s last member. Moving carefully, cautious of anyone waiting to ambush him, James slid up to the ‘cell’ door and gave a quick knock on it, listening to the scrambling of motion from within.

James cracked the door, but kept back from it just to be safe. And good that he did, as a heavy figure slammed into it at high speed, the scaled person with a vendetta against their captors bursting out and snapping their inches long teeth toward James before realizing that he actually had kept his promise and come back.

One of the kids screamed, then more of them. Motion erupted as some of them scampered behind the others, while one of the rescues - the one that had been ready to kill the adults in the last room - looked like he was prepared to help James fight the new arrival.

”Hey.” James with the softest smile he could manage, hoping that his face didn’t look too messy. He could feel the bruises creeping across it, and despite the fact that he was winning every fight he got into, someone had still managed to cut his cheek open a little. “I’m back. Are you okay?” The massive reptilian head peered back at him as he helped the prisoner up, eyes on the top of it staring at him as their thick pillar of a tail counterbalanced their weight. “Okay.” He said, assuming an answer and hoping that they would carry that with them as he turned to the younger humans, keeping his hand around the one that had been given to him when he helped the newer life form up. “Hey guys. This is a friend of mine. I need someone to keep them safe while we get out of here, anyone think they can do that?”

“Do you ever worry you’re too good at manipulating younger humans?” Zhu whispered as half the group raised their hands and James gently moved the crocodile-esque demon into the middle of the pack of teenagers, watching carefully to note which ones were still afraid of the other style of person.

”Not right now.” James replied in his own whisper as the group rearranged themselves so a couple of the kids were pressed farther away from the new arrival. That was fine though; the fact that they weren’t all outright terrified meant they probably knew more than he did about what was going on. “I might need you guys to fill me in on some stuff after this.” He told them, which also got a good reaction; kids that age often felt like they knew more than everyone else, and in this case, it was true. A state of being that should, in James’ opinion, be rewarded.

For now though, it was time to get out of here.

James took point, using his extended sense through the statuette to feel for weapons getting closer, and moving quickly because of how empty the building seemed. Up the side stairs, finding a poorly lit narrow hallway that seemed to loop around on itself, James was halfway around the building before he realized that he was on the other side of that weird semi-basement he’d been in. Except, looking down the half staircase, the space he saw wasn’t the same. No bodies for one thing, no vending machine. Significantly more security on some of the doors.

Security that wasn’t doing it’s job, since the heaviest doors seem to have been blown off their hinges. Recently, judging by the smoke in the air.

”Oh for fuck’s sake.” Zhu muttered, voice starting to waver. “Does anyone not have overlapping spaces these days? Your world is so dumb.”

”You live here too.” James reminded him, clearing the stairs in a bound and feeling his body scream in protest as he landed. He needed to be out but he couldn’t risk leaving any other captives here. So he took a quick look from room to room, using Zhu’s highlighting trick and his stolen bushel of keys to crack what was left. They skipped the breached rooms; those didn’t look like there was anyone in them and one of them was straight up empty anyway.

James found one person. Looking like a slightly darker colored version of the figure that was hanging back in a hunched posture surrounded by teenagers that had been given the opportunity to do something heroic, the new one had a lot more injuries. Cracked scales and an ugly bruise on their elongated mouth, a packed and wrapped bandage acting as an eyepatch that matched James’ own. They didn’t wake up when James checked their room, or when he and Zhu grabbed blades from one spatial warp sideways so they could cut the straps holding them down.

James was going to have to carry them. Which might be a problem. But despite their appearance, they were pretty light; too light for his comfort, even if it was convenient in the moment.

The rest of the way up out of the basement was less eventful. Passing fading paint and empty rooms full of too many ugly folding chairs, getting to the creaking wooden staircase that led to the main floor, James went first with the unconscious person on his back, their long maw folded across his shoulder and Zhu holding them in place. Creeping up as he heard voices ahead that increased in volume as he climbed.

“I told you. I told you what would happen, and you kept playing at your game.” A harsh and angry man’s voice said. A familiar one, too; James had eavesdropped on this one before.

“Captain, please.” The reply was condescending, and not at all actually pleading. Another voice James had heard a couple times now; the bishop who had ordered him thrown in the basement here, among other things. “Everything is exactly as it was yesterday. Nothing has changed. The office of the apostle is-“

”Is not here, Russ.” The police captain replied bluntly. “And I wonder how much they really know about what you’re up to.”

James paused at the top of the stairs, peeking out around the extended cheap plaster wall that kept them screened from sight, cautious both of being seen and of hitting his delicate passenger's head on something. There was an empty hallway on either side, which meant the men arguing were somewhere nearby but not visible. James motioned for the others to follow quietly, and began creeping forward.

”Captain. I understand you are upset. But you have to trust me on this. Trust in God on this.” The bishop said, compassionate concern in his voice that made James sick to hear. “After all, it’s not as if you can order a stop to all of it. Now please, there is something very important that I need to see to.”

”Oh, I think you’d be surprised what I can do.” The captain’s voice was sharp and bitter, the real captain Mecham having finally, at long last, run out of patience for what was happening under his auspice. “I have a warrant, Russ. You get what that means? You hear me? A warrant. How do you think I got a warrant for you in this town? You’re so far out of line, and you know it.”

James stopped as both voices were raised, realizing he was leading everyone close to them. “Is there a back door?” He whispered to the kids and a couple of them nodded. “Great. Zhu, can you…” The navigator gave a tightening around James’ arm, and he realized that Zhu had no actual contact or experience with these kids. There was no way he could jump to them. James winced. “Okay, take our friend here. You two look tough.” He used his patented trick of flattering teen boys, and handed over the limply stirring crocodile demon on his shoulder. “Get out. If anyone gets in your way, use this.” He handed over the cattle prod to the girl who looked fully prepared to fireball anyone that tried to stop her from leaving. “Or fireball? I dunno, that seems like a decent idea too.” James nodded. “Now go! There should be some friends arriving soon, they’ll take care of you.”

The crack of a single gunshot, muffled by the folded and partly carpeted walls of the meetinghouse, rang out.

”Okay, run now!” Zhu instructed, the group following his direction as he and James turned back to head toward the confrontation, ready to cover them if anything came after the cluster of people. “James. James! We also should run!”

”I fucking know!” James snapped, drawing pistols out of the air from the basement and wishing he hadn’t unloaded all of them. There was one single semiautomatic that he hadn’t cleared the chamber of, which meant he had an bullet, a situation he wasn’t exactly comfortable with if he needed to exchange fire with someone. James stalked forward in a low stance, holding the gun out to cover the hallway as he took the turn to retrace his steps back toward where the shouting was happening.

As he got closer to the front lobby of the meetinghouse, the strange mix of religious imagery and oddly low budget furniture giving James whiplash, he heard the argument between the bishop and the officer begin to boil over. As if the shot earlier wasn’t clue enough.

“-a joke anymore Russ!” A man howled, a yell of pure anger that was loud enough to make James flinch. A lot of people had shouted at him so far today, but not like that. “Put that down!”

”It was never a joke, you idiot human.” Came the snarled reply. “You just had to… to…!”

James decided to stop peeking and take that opportunity to round the corner, emerging into the room with rows of folding chairs in a semi-circle around a small raised platform that wasn’t quite a stage, exactly. Some of the chairs were knocked over, and the two men standing in the room were clearly annoyed with each other; the one in a police uniform had a pistol out, while the other was holding a familiar style of longsword, except this one seemed to drip with grey light that ran down the blade like water. “Maybe we could put the weapons down for a bit, and talk?” James introduced himself, flicking the safety on the pistol he was holding on and tossing it casually over his shoulder. He still had ample time to draw it from the floor if he needed to.

”Who-?” Captain Mecham started to ask.

But he didn’t get far in that before bishop Anderson - James assumed this was Russel Anderson, he hadn’t ever seen the man in person, and since he was clearly a shapeshifter that didn’t matter anyway - made a noise. One of those long, exasperated sounds, halfway between a groan and a growl. ”You.” He said. “You have been nothing but trouble for this community ever since you showed up.”

”…No?” James glanced over at the police captain. “I’m sure I’ve been trouble for you, but in my defense, you’ve tried to have me killed at least twice.”

”Son, who are you and how did you get here?” Mecham asked, trying to sound authoritative to James while still keeping his gun trained on the bishop. “And what are you wearing.”

”In reverse order, this is lightly modified body armor, the bishop here had one of his minions kidnap me after a fight and lock me in the basement, and I’m James Lyle.” He turned his head and met the glare of the man holding the blade on the other side of the lines of folding chairs. “I am a paladin of the Order of Endless Rooms. And I am here to call for your surrender. This has gone on long enough.”

Anderson sighed, rolling his eyes. “It really hasn’t. You don’t understand. Neither of you, you shortsighted idiots. A police captain that takes bribes and a bored college hippy cosplaying as a soldier, you don’t even know what’s going on, much less how long.”

James glanced at Mecham. “I don’t think you know who I am.” He said. “Which is understandable, this city is a little messed up when it comes to actually learning things. But I promise you I am not cosplaying a soldier.” He heard Zhu snicker from his shoulder and back, a full bodied little laugh from the manifested navigator.

”You were keeping this man prisoner?” Captain Mecham sounded incensed. “Russ, we made a deal. And you overstepped so far. How in God’s name are you going to tell me this isn’t just outright evil?”

”Oh he wasn’t a prisoner.” The bishop waved his non-sword-holding hand, dismissing James entirely. “He was… a guest who wasn’t allowed to leave.”

James resisted the urge to raise his eyebrows, knowing that path led only to pain. ”You shot me.” He said. “Like, an hour ago. You’re lucky I carry medical supplies or I’d be bleeding on your fine establishment’s carpet.”

“Russ.”

”William.” The bishop sniped back in a mocking tone. “God’s important work requires sacrifice. Stop pretending that you’re better than everyone else. Especially to me. You cheat on your taxes, you cheat on your wife, you cheat on your enforcement of the law, you are the last person to lecture me.”

James cleared his throat. “Hi. Yes. Um… you keep teenagers in secret prisons? Like, I’m sure you’re terrible too Mecham, no offense, but bishop, you’re leading two different secret conspiracies, and at least one of them involves child abuse on a scale that is frankly terrifying. So yeah, I’m gonna have to ask you to stop what you’re doing, stop impersonating a member of the church, stop pretending to be human for a minute, put the sword down, and negotiate the end of this conflict before anyone else gets hurt!’ James found himself shouting by the end of it.

”Pretending to be human?” Captain Mecham muttered.

Russel Anderson, or the shapeshifter using that name, just sighed. “You know.” He said flatly, eying James as the paladin circled around the chairs in an arc away from Mecham. “You’re not the first person to come in here, thinking that I’m somehow corrupting the church.” James had not been thinking that. At all. But he let the guy monologue. “What a joke. I was invited. Brought in properly. You think I’m some outsider ruining the proper path? I’m faithful! My belief in God is stronger than both of yours combined!”

”I am fully willing to concede that.” James said without hesitation.

”And now you have the gall to think you can arrest me?! After all I’ve done?!”

Captain Mecham lowered his revolver ever so slightly. “Russ. Please. You’re saying some crazy stuff here, and I just need you to calm down. Come on down to the station, answer some questions, we can get this sorted out and-“

”No!” The word was the next step on the increasingly frantic tirade that the bishop was building. ”I have done everything right! Nothing is going to deter me now, least of all one sycophantic human with a gun! Get out! Leave! You’ve done enough damage, haven’t you?!” He shouted out the words, having a rapid breakdown as he edged backward toward the rear wall of the group meeting room, maybe to make a break for one of the side doors there.

James held his hands out as non-threateningly as he could. “Look, no one is questioning your faith, or that you clearly care. My only concern is that the harm stops. That anything you do in the future, you do it without hurting people who can’t consent, and that you do it openly. Even now, I think we can work something out. We don’t have to fight.”

”Oh, but I want to fight.” Anderson started laughing uncontrollably. “I want you both to die. I want the tides of lies in this stupid human city to eat your corpses, and everyone that knows too much, and leave me with a blank slate to start again, and I will sacrifice everything to make that happen. Now-!”

He was cut off as Mecham shot him.

Or tried to, anyway. The shapeshifter caught the bullet on the palm of an outstretched hand, tarry black sludge erupting from the impact site like too-thick blood. Anderson glared at the captain, and started to raise his sword.

So James took it from him. Grabbing the hilt and pulling it, the blade vanishing from one hand and reappearing in his own. “You don’t get to fight.” He yelled. “And you don’t get a do-over! Sit down!”

”Never!” The bishop scream laughed, and then, escalated.

The creature that poured out of the grey ring in front of him was thirty feet tall. A problem, in a room that had a ceiling that was at the absolute most half of that height. That didn’t stop it from emerging and ripping into the walls of the meetinghouse, pulling drywall apart like it was wet paper. It stumbled to try to rise on four shaggy legs as it emerged through the breach where scattered wood splinters and glass shards fell from the damaged structure, a long and black furred pillar of a body like a twisted giraffe rising up as a platform for a bunch of limbs that twisted like tentacles and held long scythelike protrusions at their ends. It howled from its head like a siren, body trapped but bladed tentacle limbs still capable of trying to grab and kill everything in the area.

Mecham stared up at the thing, gun hanging loose in his hand, as its hunched neck turned and it caught sight of him amidst the sea of toppled folding chairs. Two claws from opposite directions came for his head, and he didn’t even notice, just wide eyed and not understanding that his death was approaching. ”Down!” James yelled, tackling the cop to the floor, feeling the air ripple his hair as he barely missed getting hit. “Go! Out! I’ve got this!”

”W-what?!” Mecham shoved himself backward, firing blindly over a chair that would offer exactly zero protection. “How?!”

”I’m working on it!” James shouted back as he shoved the man forward, lunging himself to follow Zhu’s dodge prediction line and narrowly avoiding a strike that sank a bone scythe into the floor. James hit the middle of the clawed protrusion with a Pave, cracking but not breaking it fully, just to see if it would work. “I would really like my friends to show up now!”

”What is that?!” Mecham yelled as James placed a hand on the older man’s back and pushed him along, both of them stumbling to their feet and running toward the door with the demon behind them forcing the ceiling to bow upward while it struggled to follow.

Zhu turned some eyes behind James to check. “Squid giraffe?” He asked, making the police captain jump. “Maybe something else in the mix. This dungeon seems to follow the Sewer method but with fewer problems.”

”Later, Zhu!” James said as he shoved Mecham aside, a clawed tentacle slicing the air between them with a whip crack of pressure. “Run!”

He gave another push to the stunned man in front of him, sending his heavier form stumbling through the door which James followed, going for the front entry as the double doors behind him had their frame cracked and broken when the demon, still wailing in its air raid siren roar, started shoving itself through head first. James threw the sword at it, the blade actually stabbing deeper than he’d expected and opening a bleeding wound that stalled the creature. But it wasn’t enough. The single shot he added from the pistol he’d tossed aside earlier wasn’t either.

And then, he felt something else available to be pulled up in the area. Several somethings, actually.

The presence of the battle rifle that the Order’s shield teams used, several crates of them procured perfectly legally by Nate, meant two things. One, it meant that help wasn’t just on the way, help was here. Call to Blood most likely being the reason that they’d been led straight to where James was.

Two, it meant that he had a higher caliber gun.

James pulled the rifle from outside the meetinghouse, dropping to one knee and partly rolling to slam his shoulder against a wall that had a cheerfully colorful art project hanging on it, and leveled the weapon back at the demon trying to rip its way through the structure to get to him. The shots were deafening cracks, but he didn’t hesitate, just let Zhu help him steady his grip as he trusted his Aim more than his single eye and lack of depth perception, putting each bullet into the demon’s head and long upper body one after the other.

It screamed, voice escalating, but it didn’t stop thrashing before James ran out of ammo. So, he dropped the rifle, and grabbed another one, hoping that he wasn’t ruining someone else’s skirmish in doing so. Shot after shot continued to snap out in a steady staccato as James emptied the magazine into the monster, its tentacles lashing closer and closer to him as it broke through, and then knocked down half the wall of the hallway before emerging into the wider lobby.

James kept shooting, not sure he had time left to run, and seeing that it was slowing and starting to stagger. When it did collapse, he didn’t stop, continuing to shoot until its drooping wail tapered off to nothing, and it went fully silent, body sagging as all life left it, dozens of bloody wounds spilling its vital fluids across the wreckage it had made of this part of the church building.

Letting the barrel of the rifle dip to the floor, James and Zhu exhaled at the same time. “Close.” Zhu said with muttered exhaustion.

”Yeah. Ooh, look, coins.” James could barely hear his own voice as he spoke, rising up on shaking knees as the adrenaline wore off, staggering over to grab the handful of loot drops that he could see by the thing’s head, giving it a regretful look before turning and trying to hurry outside before anything unfortunate happened.

He was met with the sight of a parking lot in evening sunset. Multiple cars pulling in, with Order members hopping out and fanning out around the building, and one truck pulling away. James placed a reassuring hand on the police captain’s shoulder as he came up behind him. “We’ll talk after this. Don’t worry, I think we’re on the same side.” He said, maybe a little too loudly. After that, he found himself busy pointing and directing Anesh and Ink-And-Key to collect the kids that had escaped out the back, getting the shield team members to see if they could find bishop Anderson before he escaped fully, and trying to figure out why the hell there was a semi truck in the parking lot anyway.

The truck pulling away was labeled as from a large scale food delivery company, which sort of made sense. When James caught sight of the driver, a man he’d first met while both of them were impersonating law enforcement, and the driver gave him a grin and a wave, James felt a mild wave of irritation that quickly subsided to incredulous laughter.

Becker had told him, to his face, that he planned on a gold heist. And James was pretty sure, in this moment, that the man had used him as a distraction. Emptying out the people who were protecting his target of whatever was in this building’s basement. Maybe it really was gold. Maybe he’d told James the truth about that. Maybe James was just jumping to conclusions.

Either way, he hoped that whatever was in the back of that truck rattled around enough that Becker didn’t get his deposit back.

Wishful thinking, probably.

”I.” He said slowly. “Am really. Really tired.” Anesh, holding the door open so one of the kids that had been injured when the building started falling apart could get into the back of the car without incident, met his eye and nodded. His boyfriend silently reaching out to help steady him as Zhu finally let his manifestation go and James tilted sideways. “Let’s get out of here before-“

The look Anesh gave him almost made James smile. Maybe it did, and he was just losing the ability to tell, all the exertion and mental stress catching up to him. “Please, I am begging you, if you love me at all, do not finish that sentence.”

James smiled. He was surprisingly unworried. He’d done what he’d come here to do. Whatever part this particular building played in the overall operation, it was done. Anderson probably had more stashes of magic, there was certainly cleanup to do, and it was likely that he wasn’t the guy who was ultimately ‘in charge’, but this kind of chaotic damage would be a massive setback to anyone trying to follow that specific path.

And also, he’d done something of personal importance. These kids and these kidnapped life, they were going to get something better than what was being done to them here.

Everything else could come later. James would figure it out after a rest. The Order would figure it out. They weren’t just looking for leads now, they had multiple people to negotiate with, multiple if obvious problems to address with clear plans of action. So for now, he really did just feel like he’d done what he was meant to do. Like for once, he’d actually earned it when everyone called him a paladin.

It felt good. And it felt even better, held in Anesh’s arms as he threatened to pass out when his Endurance just gave up, to know that his dumb heroics weren’t the only part of the solution. That after all that, even though there was more to do, the last thing he was in the world was alone.

James had a lot to do when he woke up, but he actually felt pretty good about it, overall.