“Utopia is a verb in the present continuous.” -No End, No Beginning; Levi Diniz-

_____

Over James’ head, the world sealed itself up. A pouch of sky slowly being closed together and sealed like a ziplock bag as the logisticor teleport that they’d designated the vast majority of the Lair’s back parking lot for finished its work.

The things were always fascinating to watch, for two reasons. One was because it was just super cool to watch another part of Earth slowly creeping upward like someone was rolling up a garage door. Every part of it, even the little details like how the light was a different color on the other side, all just made the process feel magic; in the sense that it was wondrous and not that it was a teleporter powered by literal magic. The other part though was that James found it a little terrifying that, aside from the moving line of where space had already folded as the sphere closed itself, it was impossible to tell that there was a potentially lethal disturbance just sitting there.

It wasn’t assuredly lethal; James was pretty sure they’d flown Pendragon through one of these things before and it had been fine. But safety tests had shown that there was about a five to ten percent chance, depending how fast you were going, that any objects pushed through the portal before it had ‘closed’ would take some damage. Damage that varied from ‘bent slightly’ to ‘torn in half that one time’ which had happened to an unlucky jeep.

They had a safety fence around the perimeter now. James approved.

He and Alanna were standing on the upper platform of the logisticor space. So far, no one had actually gone through with James’ original idea to build an Ominous Sphere for passenger transport, but they were moving that direction. It wasn’t even for space requirements yet; they could run the teleport every ten minutes, they weren’t really hurting for volume moved. Instead, because of how often restored vehicles were brought out of Townton, the platform was used as a place for pedestrians to stand safely during loading and unloading.

The Order of Endless Rooms was a lot of things James had never expected it to be. And now the list included ‘writing their own safety manuals’. It was great. He loved this stuff.

“Mmh, this place always smells weird.” Alanna said, stretching as she shouldered the backpack she’d brought for their little vacation and prepared to head down before anyone started filling the marked off teleport space with more cars.

”You only say that cause of all the asbestos in the air.” James elbowed her side, moving carefully to keep his own injuries from aching, but feeling a lot better even with just a couple days of bed rest. “But hey, sometimes the price of our own city is mesothelioma!”

Alanna swept her gaze around the partly restored area around the logisticor plaza, craning her neck like she could maybe see farther to the burned ruins of parts of the city that had been hit by fire. ”…Really.” Her deadpan response covered up an actual worry that they might be sticking people in a toxic cleanup zone.

”I mean, I was joking, but now I’m not sure. We should check.” James walked past her, taking careful steps down and feeling the stab wound in his side shuddering with every one of them. The sounds of Townton in late afternoon wrapped around them as he made his way to the repaved road and tried to get his bearings in a city where his phone was no longer a useful source of map data. “So hey, now that I’m free from hospital food, do you want… oh, hey!”

Alanna nearly ran into James as he stopped and waved at a couple people that were lingering around the edge of the teleport zone. The thirty meter diameter circle would not have fit anywhere reasonable in the city of Townton before its uncontrolled demolition, and afterward, the Order had been in a situation where the nearest swath of park that could have fit it was in use by a bunch of chanters. So a combination of absorbed blue orbs and salvaged construction machinery and dumpsters had pushed back a wide zone that had then been repaved and was slowly being improved on. There were a lot of benches around the outside, and on one of those, a familiar camraconda and ratroach were lingering, one of them calmly watching the teleport and the other with her legs curled up and head buried against the camraconda’s side.

”Oh hey.” Alanna echoed, shoving James as softly as possible so he got out of the way of the people behind them. “These two lovable weirdos.”

James started to roll his eye before getting a pang of pain as a reminder of why that was still a bad idea, and headed over to where TQ and Cheha were sitting. “Yo.” He greeted his first camraconda friend. “Fancy meeting you here.”

”Yes, fancy that.” TQ said in his curious digital tone that he never actually changed to sound more organic. “It is because Alanna told us to meet you here.” He instantly ratted out his source.

Alanna just gave an unconcerned shrug as her boyfriend looked back at her. “What? I wanna get lunch and TQ wanted to say hi while we were down here! It solves two problems!”

”It is true, I know where they keep the food.” TQ nodded, his long grey and blue body dipping and rising back up as he adjusted his coil on the park bench. “Including food that will not kill you.”

”I… what?” James felt like he was already getting whiplash from this conversation. “What food would kill me? Is there camraconda food that melts human stomachs or something?”

TQ hissed a little burst of amusement, tongue flicking over his fangs. “You seem hard to kill. I do not think any food here would kill you.”

”Alanna help me.” James begged his larger girlfriend, trying to hide behind her. “Save me from this.”

Alanna just laughed at him. ”Absolutely not! Let’s go grab some food. I wanna try the weird burrito you and Anesh got to sample, since I’m here!”

With a shrug and an easygoing grin, James started to follow her. TQ fell in at his side for a moment as he slithered off the bench, then pulled ahead to lead the group, leaving Cheha to scramble to catch up. The positioning of the group as they joined the movement of people going to and from Townton’s new ‘center’ meant that the ratroach didn’t have anyone to hide behind, so she stayed a few steps back from James, her tails whipping back and forth in anxiety as she silently lurked after them.

Until James turned and caught her multitude of eyes, smiling back at her and waiting for the distant sound of someone drilling something to die down before speaking. “Hey, no pressure or anything.” He told her in the calm voice he tended to use with the more skittish species. “If you’re feeling too out in the open we can move around a bit.”

Cheha froze up slightly, but then nodded back at him and moved a little closer. “I’m okay.” Her quiet words were more for herself than anyone else. She’d met James before, been in his home even, she just hadn’t hung out with him, and TQ and Alanna were currently moving a lot faster than James’ battered legs wanted to go right now, the two of them bantering about their shared D&D game. And while Cheha was interested in that, she also felt comfortable enough quietly walking at the back of the group with James.

The human was familiar enough. And he seemed interested in Townton, which was a space she’d been getting more familiar with too, even if it was against her will and only because TQ kept making her come outside.

James enjoyed the little walk. The last time he’d come this way had been with Anesh, and the city had gotten a little more lively even in just the last week and change. There were squads of chanters moving around outside of their park, even though it didn’t seem like they were doing more than exploring. And they were still steering clear of the few necroads that were wandering around. Actually, everyone was; the asphalt claw creations often just moved into spots and stood there silently, but despite maybe making an effort to be non-threatening, people still didn’t approach within stabbing distance.

One of them waved at him as their group passed where its hovering parts were lingering near the sidewalk. James smiled as he started to raise a hand in reply, before Cheha beat him to it; the ratroach girl’s bifurcated arm moving more enthusiastically than he’d expected from the shy survivor. He’d heard that someone had tried to skulljack with a necroad and it didn’t work, and he really wanted to talk about it, but he felt like Cheha would spook if he said too much, and kept it to himself until they made it to wherever they were eating.

There were a lot more people than James had figured would be here. He wasn’t the person with the final say in hiring for the Order, and he didn’t actually know how expansive their roster was at the moment, but the small restored segment of the city seemed like it had been filled with more life than he’d remembered putting in it. There were a lot of ratroaches, many of them sitting alone or with single members of other species. Chanters of course, and the necroads that had started to slowly establish themselves as part of the landscape. But also humans both Order and the people they were trying to help, camracondas in a variety of colors and patterns who filled the same pair of roles. And as-of-yet unique life, too: the first frog dog, partially transformed most of the time into a ball of fluff; the vent spider that was slowly healing and apparently wanted to bring more of his people out here; Ruby and Prince, the pair of mimics that were currently pretending to be camracondas but badly as they escorted their human friends around; and more and more besides.

”This place got busy when I wasn’t looking.” James said as he took a seat on the park bench in one of the open areas near some of the food stands with Cheha and Alanna, TQ making a vague promise to bring them ‘something’ as he slithered off. “And I need everyone to know I looked at it pretty recently.”

”You’re only half looking at it now.” Alanna pointed out with a shit eating grin on her face. James shifted, turning on the bench and staring at her with the single functioning eye he had, an unreadable expression on his own features. He raised a hand over his head, getting an involuntary burst of chittering from Cheha who was made nervous by the gesture. “This is dramatic and all, but what-“ Alanna stopped talking as a droning buzz rapidly approached, then cut off, and was followed by a thwack as a rounded frame quadcopter slapped into James’ palm.

Cheha, peeking over the edge of the table that she had taken cover beneath as soon as the odd noise started, clawed a single paw up to point in a shaking motion at James. “D-don’t!” She said with the firmest voice she could manage.

Abruptly noticing that he’d made someone panic, James flushed in embarrassment and shame. “Ah, fuck, I’m sorry.” He said, setting the drone on the rough wood of the table. “Uh… this was to prove a point, I wasn’t trying to startle you.”

”You could have just told me to shove it.” Alanna pointed out, poking at the non-living quadcopter’s blades, amused by the whole thing but worried about Cheha and trying to project confidence in a way that would help the other girl calm down. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

”Frankly, I thought I did.” James said. “But in a very funny way that let me get more skulljack practice in. Anyway, I’m never getting caught off guard again, and that means more practice. Cheha, do you mind flinging my overwatch into the sky? I’d ask Alanna but I think she might accidentally turn it into a satellite.” He smiled at the ratroach as she gently picked up the quadcopter, and then leaned back before catapulting it upward with a squeak. James flipped the motors on with his skulljack control at the top of the small arc, taking control and sending it up into the sky enough that the sound faded to inaudible. “Thanks!” He shot her a pleased thumbs up that Cheha returned, while he spent a moment reorienting the camera, tagging himself with the program he’d had grown for specifically this kind of viewpoint, and making sure no one was sneaking up on him.

Aside from TQ. “What are you doing and why is it strange?” The blue-grey camraconda asked as he added himself to the bench on Cheha’s side.

”James is surveillancing everyone with drones.” Alanna said, making an exaggerated shrug. “I guess?” I didn’t know that was an option or I’d be doing it too!”

”Oh. That is prudent. Maybe he will stop being ambushed.” TQ arched himself up. “You are injured much too often. I don’t like it. Stop.” Alanna nodded along with his words, a disapproving frown on her lips as she shook her head at James in time with TQ’s comment.

”I’m trying!” James braved splinters as he leaned an elbow on the table and plopped his chin onto a cupped hand. “It’s hard. Turns out people don’t like us trying to stop them from making child soldiers or whatever.”

Cheha curled in on herself slightly, slouching shoulders and pulling her paws back from the table. “I… I appreciate it.” She whispered.

”Oh, yeah, I mean…” James floundered slightly, before taking a breath. “I mean there were always going to be people who benefitted from hurting others, who were going to try to fight us on it. Those are the people I have a problem with. Like your home dungeon. Or Mormons.”

”I swear you cannot just fucking say that.” Alanna elbowed him, getting no more reaction than a slightly shift out of her boyfriend.

”The Sewer knows what it did.”

She huffed at him. ”No, the… oh you know.” She shook her head, feeling the sense of sass coming off of her partner. “TQ, save me from this. Tell us something going on down here to distract me from James.”

TQ tilted his head back, tongue flicking out as he made a noise that was probably meant to be some kind of considering hum but came out as a cracked electronic squeal. “We have been going on walks.” He said, tilting his head toward Cheha.

Alanna waited only briefly, her Empathy rapidly informing her that TQ had zero intention of saying anything else. “…And…?”

”And that is something going on down here. You are distracted. I have helped.” The camraconda seemed satisfied with himself.

Cheha looked up from where she was softly picking at the edge of the table. ”Th-there’s music every few nights.” She said quietly. “That’s why we’re here today.” Her face tinged green as she looked back down at the wood surface, having said more than she expected to in casual conversation.

”Ooh, neat!” James eagerly latched onto the words and tried to drag her farther into socializing. “Is it, like, live music? I’ve actually thought for a while that we’re gonna need to design instruments for nonhumans. TQ, do you think you can play drums?”

”I have been practicing beatboxing.” The camraconda said with so little emphasis that everyone decided to simply let that comment go for now. “Also we have not brought music to life yet. It is humans making it.”

Cheha gave James a small nod, ignoring her friend as she shifted to lean forward against the picnic table, one of her limbs swatting at a bug that was enamored with her head. “S-sometimes. Tonight is… uh… outsiders. They stopped here by accident.”

”Hold up.” Alanna coughed, raising a hand as she caught on the words.

James also had some questions. “Yeah, wait, wat? Just… outsiders? Like, a garage band stumbled in here and… we’re… giving them a stage?”

”Correct.” TQ said eagerly. “And I am taking Cheha to see them. They are something called filk rock. Which I am unfamiliar with. But I am not a geologist.”

James had forgotten how much he loved conversing through TQ’s particular brand of insanity. Alanna patted him on the back as he slumped forward into folded arms, asking the important question. “So you two’re also on a date, eh?”

”N-no!” Cheha protested instantly and way too suspiciously.

TQ, either oblivious or having a lot of fun, gave a looping full bodied nod. “Cheha is correct. We are simply two people having dinner together before going to a show together and then retiring for the night. Which is not a date, as I have studied them. But-“

”If you say you’re not a… what kind of fruit is a date, an arborist?… I’m firing you.” James threatened. “I don’t know what your job is but I can probably demote you.” He pointed a finger at TQ from out of where he was still laying his head, suddenly considering a nap.

”-dates are a tree fruit, it would be arborist. Or botanist, if I were being ambitious.” TQ confirmed without having to check, turning to observe his friend. “Cheha you are very green, are you alright?”

”Fine!” The ratroach chittered, mimicking James and setting the layered chitin of her muzzle flat on the table before covering her head and antenna with folded arms.

Alanna got weird feelings off both of them, and thought for just a second before she decided to plunge in with a question. “So… are you two dating? Like, I don’t wanna tell you what your relationship is, but it kinda feels like dating? But also not. Is this a… am I gonna ruin stuff by being too talky about it?”

”Talking never ruins stuff.” James muttered.

”Yes. To what James said.” TQ said rapidly. “I do not know.” His voice shifted in tone, suddenly less digital and more like the semi-random natural patterns some camracondas used. “I do not know a lot of things.”

Cheha splayed her paws out over her head. “I… I don’t know things either!” She declared with the most certainty that she’d used in the whole conversation.

Sitting up and feeling half his bones crack as he stretched, James gave Alanna an amused smile. “This is familiar.” He said. “I like this.” The only thing he didn’t like was that he had sat on the wrong side of her, and he had zero peripheral vision of his partner at the moment.

”Of course you like this, you don’t have to feel a kind of infrasound made of confusion coming off them.” Alanna grumbled; not really upset, but also not sure if she should be bulldozing her way through their shared trepidation. “This right here, though? This makes me think there’s enough… James what’s the fucking term… narrative room? Whatever, enough space that you could have an authority that feeds off of a codified relationship.” She held up a hand, her own authority’s flickering green showing around her wrist in a solid band as Alanna rotated it and tapped the solidified infomorph.

James blinked, catching on to what she was saying. “What, like, whatever this that these two have is so nebulous that it highlights the difference between a poorly titled situationship and Being Married?”

“Exactly! We should test that.”

“Don’t test that.” Said everyone at once. Including Alanna, joining in with a roll of her eyes.

James laughed, suddenly feeling like a weight had lifted off his shoulders. This was just nice. Sitting with people he liked, or people he was growing into liking, and chatting. Enjoying the warm sun and soft breeze and even the too many bugs. “Well hey,” he said to Alanna, “you wanna go see a garage band tonight with me?”

”Absolutely.” She agreed. “But I do wanna make sure we’ve got wherever we’re staying set up. Oh, and actually eat first.” Alanna craned her neck around. “Did we get food, or did we just sit here and assume?”

”I ordered food.” TQ said with clear pride. “It will be here very soon.”

Within a minute, a human and ratroach pair both wearing tye-dyed aprons navigated through the surrounding tables and varying species of diners to their table, bringing with them several red plastic baskets of hot food and an accompanying pile of forks and napkins. James, generally happy to try new things as long as someone else was making the decision for him, was more or less happy to see a serving of poutine placed in front of him. Alanna looked less happy, but she’d probably just never had it before, and he could see her reacting to his own feeling of happiness with the upward turn of her mouth as he handed her a fork.

”Alright, good choice.” James said.

TQ hissed as one of his mechanical manipulator arms unfolded to gently grip a fork that Cheha held up for him to snag. “Your species has an unhealthy addiction to gravy.” He said.

”In my defense, poutine is Canadian.” James pointed out as he speared a cheese curd and raised the fork to point in TQ’s direction.

His camraconda friend hissed again as he began to eat. “Oh. I have not met Canadians yet. Only humans. I look forward to learning more about your world.” Next to him, Cheha wrapped a paw around the end of her muzzle, shaking with silent laughter at a joke that James wasn’t quite sure if he was missing the punchline for, or if he was actively inside the joke and could not escape.

”Talking to you is always a delight.” He told TQ with a smile as he started to eat his lunch.

”Thank you, I am very enigmatic.”

_____

“You sure you’re okay?” Alanna asked, ignoring the Empathy that kept telling her that James was, if not okay, then at least nothing worse than increasingly exasperated. “I’m serious. We can just lounge around in bed all night, we don’t need to go to a concert.”

James, currently sitting on the floor at the foot of their temporary bed and pulling strands of the carpet between his fingers, rolled his head backward against the mattress to try to get a good view of his girlfriend. “Of course we don’t need to. But come on, how weird is it, in a cool way? And if something goes wrong, we’ll be there. So I’m justifying it perfectly!”

With a noise that was probably closer to a growl than anything else, Alanna stared James down, but he didn’t relent. “Fine.” She eventually grumbled. “But only cause it is weird and cool.”

”Also I’m doing okay.” James reassured her, only partly lying. “I mean… I’m… I fucking hurt everywhere, right? Actually, can you feel physical pain through Empathy?”

The question had clearly been bothering him, but Alanna shot down the concern pretty quick. “Nah. I mostly just get the irritation that comes from it. At this point, I can feel a bit of why someone feels a certain way, so I generally know, you know? But I’m not hurting cause you’re hurting.”

”Good.”

“You’re just lucky I don’t like manufacturing existential crises for you, or I could have said I did just to motivate you to stop getting hit in the head.” Alanna joked.

James smiled back, letting himself relax back into his seated position. “Could work, honestly. I’m a sap like that. But honestly I’m doing okay. Sore as hell, and I’m getting used to having no 3D vision, but Deb says fixing wounds is way harder with the shaper substance, so I’ve gotta heal before I heal. My neck is getting stiff from tilting my head to see more normally.” He sighed. “Mostly I’m just worried about everyone else.”

She flipped her suitcase shut as she stood up, dropping a pile of clothes for the night onto the bed. ”Zhu’s still napping?”

There was an undercurrent to that question too, which was ‘is Zhu around for this trip’. Alanna liked Zhu, and was fine with him hanging out all the time; usually his hanging out was basically implied because he lived in James’ head almost always anyway, so that was fine. But she did kinda want to know who all was around for their vacation.

And James did pick up on it. “Yeah, he’s recovering, Mercy checked him over. Might be a week or two, might be a day, who knows. And I think we should maybe road trip to wherever the next magical hotspot is just to give him the boost. But he’s… not dying. I hope.” James closed his eye and itched around the edge of his eyepatch. “We kinda figure if he was going to die, it would have happened by now. And with the new dungeons… well hell, so many new opportunities for infomorph medicine!”

”Good optimism.” Alanna could actually feel James’ hope, and it was like a shelter from a storm in his heart.

”Yeah. And then there’s Arrush being… scared, I guess. I want to be there for him, but… I mean… it…”

It felt like Arrush didn’t trust him, and Alanna winced into the shirt she was pulling off, taking advantage of James not looking at her to let herself get the grimace out of her system. “Eh, it’s fine. Like you said, he’s nervous. He’s known Keeka for years more than you, and he’s healthy at least.”

”True!” There was the optimism again, and Alanna latched onto it as he spoke. “He and Keeka are so lucky to have each other. Reminds me of you a lot, actually.” James turned to look at Alanna, who was now standing with widened eyes that flicked around the room as she tried not to blush.

”Me?” Was the best noise she could squeak out.

He shoved himself to his feet and went over to wrap his arms around her, mindful not to stab her exposed skin with the zippers on his pants. Bulletproof didn’t mean that the sensation would be comfortable after all. “Yeah, you! Dumbass. You’ve saved my life so many times I don’t even know how to keep score anymore.”

Alanna grabbed James in a sudden hug; not crushing him but keeping him firmly against her as she smiled over his head. “Hey, I thought we weren’t keeping score.”

”Good thing I forgot how!” James laughed against her skin. “Anyway, hot as you are, wanna get dressed and we can go wander our city for a while?”

”Our city.” Alanna laughed as she pulled on the Hawaiian shirt she’d stolen from James and refused to give back, letting it sit open and unbuttoned as she traded her Response pants for a pair of casual shorts. “We should conquer more cities!”

”Alright calm down there Genghis Khan. Don’t make me tell your girlfriend you’re planning world domination. She’ll listen to me, too, I know it!” James suppressed a groan as he bent down to go through his own luggage and find some socks. “Where are my socks?”

”I packed you socks!”

”These are not my socks. These all have… are these camracondas? Wait where did these come from? Who made these?”

Alanna beamed at his amused confusion. “Some kinda green orb testing thing at the Lair, and I got some, and now you have them!” She dropped onto the bed and watched happily as James covered up a dopey smile. “Also Sarah would totally let me take over a city. She loves me too much to stand in the way of my dreams.”

”Alanna I love you too much to stand in the way of your dreams, but I will still absolutely stop you from taking over Portland, because… uh…” James struggled to pull the socks on, trying to use the motion to buy time to think of a good reason. “Because it is… badly laid out. Yeah, let’s go with that.”

”Half the city is a grid.”

”And the other half isn’t! Terrible planning. Conquer a different city.”

Alanna barked out a laugh. “Okay, okay. I’ll take that under advisement, since you’d obviously be my shadowy vizier operating behind the throne.”

”Do I get any say in my position? What if I wanna be a concubine?”

”You can be that too! Polyamory is great for flexible title definitions like that.”

James finished getting his socks on and tried to fix one of the loves of his life with a level and unamused stare. It lasted about three seconds before he broke into a smile that he couldn’t contain. “I’m not helping you take over Portland, I’ve got stuff to do. But you can help me with the next thing!”

Alanna tugged her stolen shirt closed, still not really bothering to button it. “Ahh, it’s a downgrade from West Coast Warlord, but I’ll take it. What is the next thing?”

”Taking a walk around, enjoying the sunset, and lingering on the fringes of a random encounter concert!” James threw his arm around her back as the two of them shared a quick kiss. “Also one meeting.”

”…vacation.” Alanna glared at him, their noses separated by about two inches of air.

”It’s a good meeting! You’ll like it!” James defended himself. “Now let’s go see what our people have made of the place!” He declared, pulling open their temporary apartment door and revealing the solid wall of doors from all the different living spaces that had been compressed into this building.

For a place that only had a few hundred people in it, Townton had lively nights. And when they were outside in the warm air, the smell of vegetation all around them, it was really easy for Alanna to feel the beat of the regrowing city.

Mostly because of the chanters. Three hundred of them, over half the total permanent population of Townton at this point. The buglike rescues were powerful empaths, especially in groups. For most people, this meant that Townton had a background mood to it; a mood that had been slowly but steadily getting better as the chanters gradually came to understand and trust the Order more and more. For Alanna, it meant that being in the area could be overwhelming really fast.

But tonight, it just felt vibrantly alive. Maybe leveling up her Empathy had just given her more control. Or maybe it was because the chanters were sending out a kind of shared cautious excitement that was definitely infectious.

They weren’t the only ones either, though the vibes of the other species out for the evening were definitely less broadcast. Most people who did work during the day were packing up and taking time to relax; the Order’s version of a standard workday being far shorter than most places not stopping some people who had specific projects from putting in extra hours. There was a delver team coming back through the perimeter of the occupied area, their armored and augmented vehicles rolling past two streets down as they made their way toward a garage, some pedestrians waving to them as they went by. And all over the place people moved in small groups as they went to meet friends, get food, or make their way toward some kind of event happening that night.

Both Alanna and James were aware that probably half the humans down here were people who worked what they called ‘lifetime shifts’ with Recovery. A little bit like foster families, a little bit like always-on-call therapists, a little bit like just supportive community members who were always there for the people around them. They’d hired, trained, and moved about twenty of them in at first when the Order had started using Townton as a place to give rescued ratroaches a place to learn how to live with other people peacefully, and then upped that number to close to a hundred over time.

In a way it was a problem; this was a big cost on the Order’s budget sheet. But it was also something that was needed. And as the ranks of long term support Recovery agents was boosted with ratroaches and camracondas who wanted to give back their own form of the help they’d received, it didn’t just feel needed, it felt… correct. Right, in a way that both Alanna and James would be willing to fight to preserve.

Seeing a ratroach cover a laugh for what might be the first time in its life, or catching a glimpse of a camraconda staring up at the colors of the sunset, or seeing a human survivor sitting on a bench and finally being able to feel safe; the little moments that everyone had - should have - played out across people who hadn’t gotten to experience them in their short lives.

The dungeons gave them access to phenomenal power, but both of them knew it came with the same responsibility to use it. And there were people across the world and all its little pockets who deserved better.

And here, in the restoration zone of a city that had been nearly wiped out because of a confluence of dungeon bullshit and petty human bullshit, they gave people something better.

Sure, some of the buildings looked a little weird compared to what James was used to, but he knew that was because a lot of the structures had been put back together and smoothed out using blue orbs; it caused that distinct rounded edge look that was a lot more organic than most modern structures. And obviously there were setbacks in putting small bits of dungeontech into common use; he’d heard that they’d needed to hustle to get better protection for the magic lamps they were using as streetlights after the first time a moth the size of a softball had slammed into one, broken it, and flown off with the blue orb in tow.

And yeah, not everyone got along. Not everyone was a perfect person with pure emotions. Especially on the human side, a lot of the people here were bringing decades of baggage and trauma to the party in a way that couldn’t be undone overnight, no matter how good the therapy was.

But when you didn’t need to worry about food or rent, a lot of stress went away. When you didn’t need to worry about being murdered for fun or profit, you could start healing for real.

James talked about this a lot as he walked with Alanna, taking a loop of the multiple stretched suburban city blocks that made up the western perimeter. His enthusiasm, upgrades to his Energy, and some pretty effective painkillers, all working at making him feel chatty as Alanna walked at his side with an easy grin and a careful eye out for any problems. “See, the parking lots were a big issue.” James was saying. “Because we barely use cars anymore. So-“

”Yeah hey, that’s weird right?” Alanna asked suddenly as they skirted one of those asphalt deserts that James was talking about. “How do we move heavy shit?”

”Kei trucks mostly.” James answered, pointing out a few in the lot. “There were a few here already, but we got more. They’re more compact than the bigger box trucks, but we use those too for getting stuff to distribution spots. The thing is that we get to benefit from two different perks. Magically, we’re a lot more compressed, so pedestrianing can get you to more places. But on the mundane side, there’s basically no cost to moving or swapping jobs, so we can streamline population organizing so that people don’t need to drive as much. But I still think we should put trains around somewhere when we get to that point.”

”Why?”

”I like trains. Anyway. Parking lots!” James leaned into it as his girlfriend ruffled his hair, going back to pointing out the open space. “The important thing… an important thing is, all our buildings here are actually making use of the foundations that were mostly undamaged. So we don’t want to just build new stuff over a parking lot; that would actually take a ton of effort, and it’s not super valuable because we aren’t hurting for space to expand into and restore. But, they’re still there. So wherever they are inside our perimeter, we sorta encourage people to use them. Community gardens, eating and gathering spots, that kind of thing.”

Alanna nodded, sweeping her eyes and Empathy across the external fence and the gap in the asphalt that worked as a firebreak between the safe spot and the thousands of necroads outside that were often still hostile. There were a pair of sentries on watch, casually keeping an eye out, but not burning themselves out on high alert. “Or live music?”

”Exactly!”

They took a turn and headed down a path past a stacked pile of chain link fence. The building they were circling used to be a police station, and the Order had used it as a forward base for a while here. Now, it was just the Recovery office for Townton, that expansive back lot used for storing restored vehicles until they got shipped out. The place was modern, and had been clean and professional before the incident, and now it was again even if it did fill a different purpose. Sandwiched between a strip mall and a main road, it was in an odd spot that left it almost stranded on the far side of the area they were working on; nothing else that was quite worth putting back together past it yet except for a sea of roads and more fully demolished structures.

There weren’t as many people here, but the crowd picked back up quickly as they finished the outer part of their walk and headed back to where there were more lights in the dimming twilight. Night was coming on fast, but the part of Townton the Order had taken back didn’t get plunged into inky darkness anymore. Electrical infrastructure helped out by dungeontech keeping the lights on for everyone.

James pushed away from Alanna and stepped into the street as they got closer to a crowd of people around one of the parking lots turned pavilion, the two of them dodging an actual child of a ratroach that was chittering high pitched laughter as he sprinted away from the human caretaker trying to catch him. “Wait, what?” Alanna asked, snapping her head over to James to look for information.

”What? Imu? Or… his brother? I can’t tell them apart.”

”Yeah, what the hell is that? James that was a kid.” Alanna didn’t know how to feel about that.

James stepped back over to the curb and butted his shoulder into her flank, now even shorter than her as he kept up their slow walking pace but now on a lower elevation. “I guess you’ve been busy with Response. Imu and… Iru, that’s it! They were found in the Sewer almost immediately after being born.”

Alanna’s good mood slipped, the smile on her face sinking into a frown as she puffed her cheeks and exhaled. “As in…”

”Yeah. Their mother didn’t make it.” James didn’t know if he’d ever be able to say something like that with complete detachment. Ratroach ‘mothers’ would, without intervention, never make it. The dungeon made them that way. “But they did. And it turns out, for the ratroaches that aren’t just spawned, the dungeon takes a little time to shove information into them and force grow them up to size.”

”So… they’re actually kids?” Alanna asked, looking back over her shoulder toward where Imu had charged headfirst at a tree, then clawed his way up it with expert poise, leaving his caretaker panting in exhaustion to lean against the trunk as he claimed victory. “Okay. Good.”

James wasn’t sure how to take that. ”Good?”

”Good.” Alanna nodded once, her smile coming back a little harder but no less real. “Good, because can you imagine how cool it must be to grow up here? They’re gonna get such good Christmas gifts, buddy, you have no idea.” Her boyfriend gave her a blank one-eyed stare for a moment, before her own optimism swept him up and he smiled along with her.

In truth, Alanna felt like in a town full of people who had survived sad stories, the two kids might have good odds of winning the contest to have bragging rights for the saddest. But that was what had happened. And as personal title holder for ‘saddest story in this friend group’ for a while, Alanna liked to think that ‘was’ was something you could fix.

“You know, you’re probably right? Especially since they’ve effectively got, like, five parents.” James laughed.

Alanna almost reflexively elbowed him, but stopped before the change in relative height had her taking out his other eye. “Okay, I gotta know. How the hell do you know everything about this place?”

”Oh! I keep a close eye on it!” James winked at her, and then didn’t give Alanna time to be irked that he was already making light of his injury. “This is… I mean, a lot of the policies and practices here are stuff that I was part of putting into place, you know? I put a lot of effort into figuring out how to make our shared labor program work. And I care about a lot of the people here!” James spread his arms and spun slightly, getting a few looks and grins from the people walking or sitting near them. “Chanters deserve our best. Same for the other victims. And the necroads are weird and cool so I keep up on any research about them. I dunno, what do you read in your downtime?”

Alanna flicked fingers through her hair, pushing it back off her forehead. ”Clearly not the same reports you do! This is what Sarah was talking about, huh?” She admitted with a chuckle. “I’m gonna be totally unsurprised now when you tell me you already know the name of the band that we trapped here for your next trick.”

”First of all, we didn’t trap them here.” James reminded her. “Second, I don’t know yet, because I want to be surprised. And the next thing I tell you is a much more fun surprise for you.” He stepped lightly up onto the sidewalk, talking one of her hands in his own as they approached the set aside space with its own secure perimeter of rope lights and heavy sheet metal plater boxes full of dirt and ferns. “Close your eyes for a sec?”

”…you know normally people who say that have an extra eye to spare to help out…” Alanna saw James looking up at her, and realized he wasn’t kidding about making some kind of sappy romantic gesture. “Alright, alright! Fine! Eyes closed, what now?”

”Now follow me for a sec, and I’ll make sure you don’t run through any of the tables on the way to the one important meeting we have today.” James favored her with the greatest gift of all; not breaking furniture with her shins, holding her hands as he slowly walked backward and guided her through the group of people. It was weird for her, because Alanna’s Empathy was strong enough now that she could still sort of feel the people around her, especially when they noticed her specifically. Curiosity, a little anticipation, a steady stream of confusion that she assumed was from the garage band that had been pseudo-kidnapped.

And then one source of bouncing joyous excitement, aimed directly at her.

”Hey, can I open my eyes, or do I have to wait until whoever that is dive tackles me?” Alanna asked, only half joking.

”Yeah, go for it.” James said, stepping behind her and setting a hand on her back.

Alanna was almost rolling her eyes as she opened them, but if she did, she would have regretted it. Once the world came back into view, there was on single thing in front of her that was more important than any of her normal defensive sarcasm. More important than the garden party atmosphere, more important than the mismatched tables and wrought iron chairs holding a growing crowd around them, more important than the band setting up their equipment and trying not to stare at the nonhumans too much.

There was a young girl standing by the table in front of Alanna. Very young, by human standards, even if she might actually be the oldest member of her species ever. A tightly packed quadruped with arched claws of keratin; rings of black feathers gave cover to a triangular chitinous body and highlights to the shimmering blue color of the chitin itself. Arms with a secondary wing membrane and their own feathered covering, but separate from where they had once been contained as an elytra, the girl’s face still bore the thick red line of a scar across her beak and one eye, but that was an obvious and deliberate choice to keep, especially since both features had been reworked to better-than-original functionality.

Alanna stared for a second. And then maybe a few more. Long enough that the feeling of excitement started to get poisoned by anxiety. “Banana?” She asked with growing realization, and the shaper substance reforged crow wasp nodded back at her briskly. If nothing else, the vest the girl was wearing with a big circular shark pin on it should have been a giveaway. As she figured out what she was looking at, exactly, Alanna’s grin came back in full force, and she threw her arms open. “Banana!” She exclaimed, hearing laughs from a few people around them that probably didn’t know that was the crow girl’s name.

”Alanna!” Banana yelled back in a matching tone, exploding into motion as she flung herself forward with a rustle of fabric and the slap of her sandals on the pavement, slamming into Alanna at full speed but causing no damage; the brick wall of a human absorbing the impact and returning the high velocity hug. Alanna started laughing, feeling herself close to crying, as Banana’s back split open and a pair of folded glittering black wings also wrapped around her, adding to the embrace. “Look! Look! I’m better! I did it!”

”You sure did.” Alanna’s voice shook as she tried to figure out exactly how much she could squeeze the girl without hurting her, and discovered to her surprise that it was probably a lot. Banana’s new body was durable. Like, armored vehicle durable, if Alanna was getting the feeling of pressure right. “You sure did! Look at you!” She stepped back, one hand spinning Banana around to the delight of the healed crow wasp. “Look at you. Knew you’d be fine.” She said. “When did they let you out? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

”About six hours ago.” James said from behind her, Alanna glancing back at her partner’s quiet voice and self-satisfied look. “And because I wanted to surprise you.”

”I’m surprising!” Banana declared. “I can talk! Listen!” She declared, and then stood there, staring upward before ducking her beak down to focus intently on the ground. “I don’t know what to say!” Banana bemoaned.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Well hey,” James said, sliding around Alanna and ruffling Banana’s head feathers to the beaming delight of the girl. “We were gonna hang out for a little while and listen to some music. Wanna join us?” He asked, already knowing the answer as Banana was in the process of giving an energetic and painless nod. “Alright! I’m just gonna check in with Mercy really quick for ya, and then grab something from the snack place. Alanna, you want a drink?”

”I don’t really drink much anymore, you know that.” Alanna idly said, still half-hugging Banana. “Oh wait you meant like water. Yeah, that’d be nice!”

James was still laughing to himself on the inside by the time he got back with their drinks, and they had a little time before the show got started to chat with Banana about how she was doing. Alanna wanted to know everything about her changes, and Banana wanted to talk almost exclusively about a variety of beetle facts she had learned over the last two days in recovery quarantine.

After a little bit, there was music from the people who had stumbled into Townton, and conversation got paused except for during some of the quieter instrumental interludes they had. The band ended up being called And Then The Mind Wolves, which James felt sounded like a particularly dense in-joke. They were, in his opinion, pretty okay, and after their improvised concert, he bought a CD and teeshirt from them, while he got to take part in his third favorite hobby of answering questions from people who were trying to figure out if camracondas were real or if they were somehow in the same shared lucid dream.

Seeing Banana off back to the Lair was a little bittersweet, but it was so obvious that she was doing not just better, but good, that it was hard to feel anything except satisfaction. And ending up on the familiar roof of an abandoned bank a quarter mile away making out with his absurdly cute girlfriend was a high mark for James as well.

It was, in his opinion, quite the perfect evening.

_____

James woke up partly inside Alanna. Which was to say, Alanna was currently gnawing on his arm in her sleep.

“Mmh ham fismmms…” Alanna uttered in her sleep, still halfheartedly trying to bite through James’ forearm.

He came around slowly, reflexively rubbing the sleep from his eyes before the sensitive stitches around his injury reminded him that he was doing double the work required. Sleepily watching his girlfriend, James opted to just lay there with a soft feeling in his heart, glad that he’d ended up here with this person, and also glad that his skin’s tensile strength was improved through arcane orb-based means to resist any attempt to eat him.

Though really, this was probably the least damage Alanna could cause in her sleep. Her fingernails were sharp enough to slice someone open if she wasn’t careful, and she did flail sometimes. James was well aware that Alanna, like him, lived with the memories and nightmares of battles and beatings they’d both survived.

Right now though, he was just happy to be waking up next to one of the people he loved. Getting some time with Alanna, especially after everything he’d been through this week, was just pleasant. Even if the room was already way too hot to sleep in, and the calls of small birds that sounded like much larger birds were already waking Alanna up too.

Not that he was completely free of worries. James took a moment with his free hand to reach for his phone, trying to let Alanna stay asleep a little longer. Once he had the device, wishing that sleeping with his skulljack braid in was comfortable so this would be easier, James checked for any updates from Keeka and Anesh. There was a quick and awkwardly written text from Keeka letting him know that Arrush was doing okay but still wanted to be alone, and a much longer essay from Anesh saying that Keeka was healing, and spending the day with Arrush. So that was good at least.

A more clinical reading of the roster got him updates on the other knights who’d been hurt, but since the worst damage really was to himself and Arrush, he basically knew the others were okay. Even Momo, who had finally conceded to getting glowered at by Deb for a while.

Zhu was okay too. James tried to give him a mental nudge, but the sleeping navigator was buried deep in his thoughts at the moment, and while there was a fading memory of a dream, and the sensation of climbing something, he didn’t know if he’d talked to his friend. But he was still there, and resting peacefully.

“You’ve been awake for sixteen seconds and you’re already doing anxiety shit again.” Alanna’s muffled voice came paired with the removal of teeth from his skin. “Also you taste like soap.”

”Thank you!” James said, stealing a maneuver from TQ. “It’s rosemary, I figured I’d make myself taste like a chicken dinner.”

”Surprised you didn’t fill yourself with the magic beans and go for that flavor profile.” Alanna shifted, the blanke spilling off her shoulders as she propped herself up on her arms and stared at the pillow like she was considering falling back into it. “Seems more your… thing… these days.” She failed to hold back a yawn, and then gave up, collapsing face first back into the bed.

James rolled over to throw his arm across her back. “Not a chance.” He followed suit on the yawn. “Those things are dangerous.”

“Ecological disaster!” He heard Alanna cheerfully mutter into the pillow.

Laughing as he pressed against his partner, James gave her a firm hug. “Not really. They adapt, though!”

Alanna refused to leave her new pillow cave. ”’dapt to concrete!”

”Yes, sure, and then there’s a strain of beans that requires concrete to grow. It’s mostly safe. Safer. Safeish. God damn we’re cavalier with things that could destroy the planet, huh?” James rolled onto his back and distantly stared at the ceiling fan. “Forget saving humanity, we’re gonna accidentally blow up Australia some day aren’t we?”

“Not you.” Alanna rolled to flop on top of James, curled up so that she could pretend she was the small one for a minute. “You talk about being reckless, and I see it sometimes, but you care too much to let us sink a continent.” She smiled into his chest as she tried to adjust to using a squishy human as a pillow. “You wouldn’t even shoot at a literal cult.”

James’ smile got a little strained. But he took a few seconds to breathe, and remember that Alanna wasn’t trying to provoke or belittle him. “I didn’t.” He said. “I’ve been trying since the start, you know?”

”To be your weird blend of pacifist? Yeah, I actually figured that out when Rufus… uh… existed.”

”I didn’t kill anyone this time.” James said in a low voice to Alanna, words accentuated by the birdsong from outside the window. “I’m tired of it. I’m tired of violence at all, especially when it’s used by assholes to force their authoritarian bullshit on people. But if I need to fight, if it’s the only way to protect people… I’m gonna do my best to not kill anyone. And I did it. Bleeding and hurting and weaker than I ever should have let myself get, and I did it my way. And I’m so fucking… not even proud, really… I’m just… I’m doing things the way I knew worked. I’m proof of concept. No one gets to condescend to me anymore about what’s necessary, you know? Because I’m a fucking idiot, and if I can do better, they can do better.”

Alanna let him ramble for a bit, and then let the words hang in the air before replying. ”You’re not.”

“What?”

”An idiot. You’re not.” She shifted, looking down his form and away from his eyes. “Just kind of a dumbass sometimes. But you’re not an idiot. I wouldn’t love you so much if you were.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. But it felt reassuring to hear the compliment, so James just cuddled with her until they both started to overheat. Deciding that the place needed air conditioning, probably in the environmentally friendly form of ‘literal magic’, they eventually got out of bed and let the day start.

While Alanna showered, James sat on the floor with his back to the door, looking up the local happenings and relaying them to her. “There’s a delve today we could go on!” He offered.

”In the Route? No, you dork!” She’d sounded excited for a second before remembering she was technically supposed to keep James on vacation, and no matter what he claimed, delves didn’t count.

James relented with a laugh; he wasn’t that serious about it anyway. “Alright alright. Uh… they really are clearing out a natural history museum, if we want to help with that?”

”That also sounds like work. But also cool. Do they have dinosaur skeletons?”

”They have dinosaur skeletons.”

”Put it on the short list. What else?”

James thumped his head back on the hollow wood of the bathroom door. ”I mean, I know I wanna check in with the chanter communication team. We can do that first, maybe? Oh! Don’t forget to vote on the crown!”

There was a wet slap from inside the shower, like a certain someone was ramming her forehead into her palm. “Buddy, you can’t just say stuff like that. What does that mean?!”

”The… fancy leveler crown.” James stopped himself from saying ‘Status Quo crown’ this time; he was getting more used to using the Order’s chosen language. “Okay, you know how it’s too big to copy?”

”Yeah, and no one liked my idea to resize it for someone with an exceptionally narrow head!”

That got a small laugh out of him. ”Everyone liked that idea, the crown didn’t like the idea.” He reminded her. “Anyway, we only have the one, and imbuing stuff with blue orbs can go wrong. So there’s a direct vote on if we should try.”

”What’re you voting?”

”The ballots are secret!” James gave a mock gasp.

Alanna pulled the shower curtain back so she could stare at him, about a quarter of the low pressure stream of water that was hitting her now splashing onto James in a fine mist. “What’re you voting?” She repeated.

”Yes, and stop getting me wet!”

”Weird vote but I respect it.” Alanna closed the curtain again and went back to trying to scour herself of soap. “I’ll probably say yes too?”

”Yeah, I just don’t think the crown is… I mean, it’s so cool. I love it, really do. The growing list of effects from its singular ability is hilarious. But it’s… what, six uses a day? We can’t build a strategy around that. We can barely test it. Worst case scenario we lose a curiosity. Best case, maybe its bonus power lets it recharge faster.” James shrugged, and regretted it as the old wood of the bathroom door threatened to leave him full of splinters. “Anyway. I dunno. Wanna go walk around and see what the city is up to for a while?”

”Want me to get dressed first?” Alanna asked as she stepped out of the shower and helped James up so he could take his turn under the water.

He was beaming as he kissed her in passing. ”Not really!”

_____

They had three buildings in Townton that were orange totem sites now.

All of them were apartments. Or living spaces, rather; one was more like a communal house that had gotten delusions of grandeur. But without the delusions.

The main thing that had stopped them originally was the fact that orange totems, powerful as they were, required stability. You couldn’t modify the area outside of their own parameters without twisting how space was warped, and that was, to quote Reed, a recipe for losing more internal organs.

And unfortunately, ‘the area’ didn’t just include what the totem was focused on, but the space around that zone as well. How space related to itself seemed to include material composition and positioning. In a way, the totem was composed of a whole chunk of the world, and not just the material used for it specifically.

So if, for example, you were thinking of setting one up in the ruins of a mid sized moderately suburban American city, you would have to first be certain that you weren’t going to be adding or removing whole structures within a few blocks. Because doing so could cause people to suddenly find themselves without doors, windows, or any connection to the rest of the material reality they lived in.

Since the restoration zone had expanded though, the option was on the table. And the first few structures where it was in use here were where a majority of the Townton population resided. One of the apartments wasn’t even the original structure, and was actually a replicated room that had been custom built by Bill’s team to accommodate the growing number of species specific needs around here. The other, where James and Alanna were staying, was a restored building that had been stretched on the inside and had its staircases conveniently cursed.

It was nice. It gave them a lot of extra space that was ready to go for if they needed to bring more people in. And people did show up pretty regularly. New hires for the restoration, knights in training, rescues human and otherwise, there was a steady stream of new people arriving that needed places to live. To the point that there was a portion of the administration for Townton that was specifically focused on the distribution and upkeep of housing. They were, James decided after checking out the other totem apartment that the residents seemed to love bragging about, doing a great job.

The green orb boosts helped too. Not just here, but everywhere. Though sadly the diminishing returns meant that water pressure in the city wasn’t very good even with magic. There were still a few hundred different small effects that just continually made things a little nicer. Food kept longer, everyone slept better, there was no shortage of secret closets and couches, and the fact that an amount of trash self-deleted every day made keeping the place clean a lot easier.

That last one was part of a specific cultural target that Townton’s citizenry had. The objective was to keep trash generation below trash annihilation. Because if they did that, then there was essentially a ‘budget’ for extra junk that could be purified from the surrounding area. It was slow, far too slow to be the only method for a reasonable timeline, but it was still something that helped with cleanup.

It was after James was checking in and - to Alanna’s narrow eyed aggravation - spending an hour doing manual labor at the backup potion sap growing site, that they were ambushed.

”I’m just saying.” Alanna was telling him as they left the patched up brick structure. “You don’t have to work. In fact, stop working! You-“

She was cut off by a small chitinous projectile impacting her knees, with a second one hitting James from the side at roughly the same time. Alanna was unmoved by the impact, but she stepped quickly and carefully to grab James before he toppled over with a yelp.

Steadied by his girlfriend’s prodigious upper body strength, James bit back the adrenaline and looked down at the three foot tall ratroach gazing up at him with insectile eyes and a panting smile. “Hey kiddo.” James said, smiling back and not willing to risk getting one of the twin ratroaches names wrong. “How’s-“

”C-Cam says you’re a hero!” Iru declared.

His brother, recovering from a devastating meeting with Alanna’s immovable frame, nodded in agreement from the ground as Alanna offered him a hand up. “Can you pick us up too?” He demanded.

James was forced to admit that he could not, in fact, manage that today. “But,” he added, “Alanna’s secretly more heroic than me.” James knelt down to lean in and whisper to the duo. “Just don’t tell anyone. But if you ask nicely she could probably juggle you.”

”Now hang on…” Alanna got about two seconds into protesting before she was besieged by requests to be thrown into the air. She didn’t oblige those, but she did hoist both small ratroaches up to her shoulders where she let them ride, bifurcated tails whipping along her back, as she walked with James down the street and tried to hide how happy she was for some reason she didn’t quite know.

A half block later on their approach to the park, they ran into Dorothy, the older human taking the term less literally than Imu and Iru had. “You two imps.” She placed her hands on her hips as she stared up at where the twins were trying to look away from her stern gaze. “Far too fast for my bones to keep up with. Are they bothering you?” She asked Alanna.

”Psh. This is great, I’m getting my workout in.” Alanna said, rolling forward and gently catching both kids before setting them back on the ground. “But I do need to let ya go. Be nice to Dorothy!” She ordered the two. “And maybe we can work on catapulting you next time.”

Dorothy shook her head as the pair bolted away, keeping in sight but off on their own game with hardly a word. “Those two. They’re the quietest kids I’ve ever seen with that much energy.” She sighed. “And here I am, an improvised grandmother. Never expected that, now did I? I blame you.” She told James.

”Well yeah.” James said, for once not finding the comment that humorous, and instead going for a kind of blunt honesty. “It’s… mostly my fault, yeah.”

The aged human eyed him, her smile losing some of its shine. “You made us into better people, you know.” She told him as Alanna got baited into a game of tag with the ratroaches. “And I don’t even really know how you did it. But some days… I wake up and I don’t recognize myself.”

James sighed. “It was irritatingly simple.” He said, standing at her side and watching his partner play with Dorothy’s charges. “You know what I did, really?” She shook her head, waiting for the answer. “I took away your problems.”

”Beg your pardon?” She looked like she was about to start telling him about the problems she still had.

”The big ones.” James waved a hand in the air. “You all had some of them solved already - you were rich and powerful - but you were missing part of it. I took away… your needs.” He wasn’t sure how to express this to Dorothy, but then realized that if she’d been living in Townton and did feel like she was a better person, maybe she already got it. “No one here cares about your bank account, or your house. No one cares if you’re useful. Right?”

”Well, being useful is pleasant, and I think you know it.” She shot back.

On that, James would agree, and he nodded pleasantly. “Oh, I do! But what I’m saying is… the pressure that led you down the path you took? That’s what we got rid of. I don’t think you ever woke up and decided to be evil. But I do think you made a lot of small steps that seemed like they made sense. And here, now, I hope you’d see that you just wouldn’t need to.”

Dorothy stared after where Imu was currently rolling under a park bench in a maneuver that only a child of any species would ever think to perform, coming up with twigs and leaves in his clothing and fur as he succeeded at dodging his brother and Alanna while they tried to catch him in the warming morning air. She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I’m glad you won.” Dorothy said. “Change whatever you want. Take away what you need to.”

”You do deserve it.” James said, replying to a statement that hadn’t been made, but that he’d heard in her voice anyway.

”I really don’t.” Dorothy started to walk away from him and toward where the kids she was watching today were chittering with laughter. “But I understand you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t think so. Imu! Iru! Come on now, let’s get breakfast!” The duo looked up at Alanna, before giving her legs headbutts in unison and then sprinting off to circle Dorothy as she walked them back down the street the way James and Alanna had come from, the woman waving back over her shoulder at them.

“Fun kids.” Alanna commented as she fell in next to James, entirely unruffled by the physical exertion. “You okay?”

”I dunno.” James said, rubbing the back of his hand over his good eye. “I… think so?”

”Cool. Now let’s go learn how things are going horribly and the chanters are secretly plotting to eat us all!” Alanna declared, clapping James on the back hard enough to make the various stitches in his body rattle.

He didn’t bother protesting on that front. Mostly because he felt like, with the way his life had been going, if he did say that wasn’t the case, the next words he heard from another person would be ‘James, it turns out, the chanters are ironically evil’. So he kept his disbelief to himself.

Instead, he just followed the sidewalk around the park, giving friendly nods or greetings to the people who were working in the flourishing green space to harvest the local produce. None of it was magic beans, much to James’ relief; they kept those separate and contained after the various incidents. But the presence of the chanters meant that stuff here grew unnaturally fast, and there was a meaningful portion of Townton’s food that was actually local.

James and Alanna paused at a street corner for a minute to watch a modified and heavily armored moving truck roll away from where it had been parked. The presence of people on the roof and the fact that it points for weapon mounts once it was out of the city made it clear that this was something specifically geared for delving Route Horizon. The city wasn’t so flattened that they could trace its route, but James could see it as it rolled up to the perimeter gate where it idled along with a more ordinary appearing car, waiting for the rest of the day’s delve to assemble.

He waved at them, and got a mechanical arm waving back from one of the camracondas on the roof that spotted him.

After that distraction, it was pretty easy to find their way over to the gathering tent that was positioned just on the other side of the open street from the park. Though it was pretty clear that the chanters frequented this specific path, along with a few others that led to many of the setup places where they could get food and water and medical help. The sign was in the street itself; grasses and weeds piercing the asphalt and seeking the heavens, a complete defiance of the human desire for a flat and colorless world in plant form. Growth trailed where the chanters walked, reinforced by a thousand trips.

James knocked on the pole of the thick canvas tent, even though the flap was open. “Hey, you busy?” He asked the woman inside who was in fact busy rearranging some of the seating and setting up a film projector.

”Yes.” Indira replied, but turned her wheelchair to face them anyway. She wasn’t wearing the silicone mermaid tail that James had always seen her in this morning, and the absence of the costume piece made her look shockingly alien to him. “But I suppose I can’t stop you walking in and bothering me.”

”Sure you could, just guilt the shit out of him.” Alanna said, elbowing James as she walked into the tent and took in the simple setup.

”It’s true, I’m a sucker for that.” James agreed. “Hey.”

Indira sighed. ”Hey yourself.” She replied. “Is there a new disaster you’re planning on adding to the pile?” She raised an eyebrow expertly, but let it drop as she saw the look of confusion on James’ face. “I assumed. I do keep up on things going on elsewhere with the Order, you know. Just because we’re physically isolated doesn’t mean we’re out of touch.”

”I… don’t think so?” James wasn’t sure anymore. “We might have another friendly species, but they speak English?” He offered with a shrug.

She gave a sigh like a gunshot. “Acceptable enough. Well. Why are you here then?”

”Oh! I really did just want to see how things were going!” James relaxed a bit. “No disasters from me, I promise!” He almost reflexively held out a finger to press to Alanna’s lips, just before she said something. “Nooooo disasters!”

”How incredibly not reassuring.” Indira said dryly, leaning forward in her chair and propping her elbows on her thighs. The motion drew James’ eye, and he tried not to hiss at the mess of scars that peeked out from under her shorts. “Well. Yes. I suppose you came at a good time. Your effort to create the seed of language did work. The chanters… not all of them, but many of them, they have begun learning real language. It’s… we are optimistic. For now.”

”What language?” Alanna asked, perking up with interest.

”It’s a learning language, really.” Indira said. “I would say it is limited English, but it isn’t really limited. It is part English, part emote. Easily understood, impossible for most non-chanters to speak. But it introduces them more fluidly to the idea of speaking, and also understanding words.”

It felt like a weight slowly faded off of James’ shoulders as he heard that. He didn’t even know how to express the feeling; it was something like a profound relief that the people he had saved weren’t going to just surrender and give up. They were… maybe not destined, that was a word he didn’t like… but they would have the option of being part of a community. Their community. A shared one, where they could keep growing and learning and their own take on language itself could be a valuable and loved addition.

Out loud, he simply said “That’s great.” And tried not to choke on the words as his own feelings overwhelmed him, Alanna silently moving behind him to set a hand on his uninjured shoulder in a comforting gesture.

If Indira noticed, she pretended not to, instead itching at where one of her legs ended midway down her thigh. “Mmh. It is so. Constructing it has been a feat, especially so quickly. It would have been better I think if we could get one of the magical programs to do it, but still. And learning to speak it so I could teach them is an ongoing process, let us say. But-“

”Hollllld up.” Alanna perched her head on James’ shoulder to stare at Indira. “You said mostly only the chanters spoke it.”

”Yes. And me.” She delivered that information in a blunt way like she didn’t seem to care how revvalatory it was.

James also had questions, much like his girlfriend. Starting with “Uh… how?”

”Like this.” Indira said as James felt a geographically focused source of smug satisfaction and educated consideration.

Alanna pushed back from her boyfriend, tilting her head to stare off into the middle distance. ”Do that again!” She requested. Eagerly.

This time, her response was paired with modulated annoyance. “No.” She said, then winced as she fumbled. “That was a mistake. Their language has no space for sarcasm; it isn’t in their nature. Admirable, really.”

“I love this place.” Alanna said, rather bluntly herself, nodding to the woman in front of her as she took a deep breath of the morning air in the tent. “Do we have copies of that purple or whatever you used? Or is it an infomorph thing? I wonder if I could replicate it with an authority.”

“I just checked,” James informed her as he pulled the information with his skulljack attachments, “we’ve got a few of them, copying is ramping up for exactly this project, so they won’t be available until two weeks from now probably.”

”Well I know what I’m spending my points on!” Alanna declared.

Indira gave her a confused look, still speaking the constructed language for the chanters to learn on. “You have budget?” She asked with an outpouring of questioning and the sense of miscalibrated importance. “Ah, apologies. Emphasis is a challenge like that. You have a budget? I would have thought you would be…”

”Exempt?” Alanna laughed. “Nope! The whole point of the points program is that we want magic distributed, and that doesn’t work if someone gets special treatment!”

”I get special treatment.” James said, at the same time that Indira was pointing at him and saying “He gets special treatment.”

”James is a paladin, he gets everything he needs to do that job at high speed.” Alanna found herself seemingly arguing against two people at once, including one person who she really shouldn’t have to have this argument with. “Also James still doesn’t take his orbs!”

James shrugged. ”It’s true. I’ve got a paladin package waiting back at the Lair. Though this time it’s kinda on purpose, because I need to heal the eye first so I don’t get purples that mess with it in a weird way.” He quirked a smile at Indira, trying to not make it sound like he was making light of his own healing in a way that would annoy the girl that seemed resistant to restoring her own missing limb. “But yeah, that’s cool chanter progress. Legitimately, super excited about that.”

They chatted for a bit longer about the specifics of the language, of how some of the chanters who had begun to learn also started to accept yellow orbs more directly, and about how communications with the necroads were going. Or utterly failing to go, as the case happened to be.

James spent a while there, including sitting in on a short lesson with a group of chanters that came by, while Alanna went off to roam the town on her own. And he felt again that satisfaction he’d been experiencing down here over and over again. Here was something that was working. Where their insistence on compassion, even if it took effort and resources, was proving to be worth it.

It felt like a window into a world that was coming together. A place on the edge of being fully realized.

Afterward, it was late enough into the day that he rounded up Alanna to grab lunch. And as he felt was only appropriate for their new world, they got about a third of the way into their food before something interrupted them.

—-

There was a difference to James between restless and bored. Probably because of some mental health problem that he’d never really acknowledged fully, but he felt like it was a reasonable distinction anyway.

Bored was when you needed to do something. Restless was when you needed to do something else. And right now, he was technically doing a few things. He was on vacation to relax and recharge, and also importantly to heal. He was spending time with Alanna, even if some of that time was quietly lurking near each other while they hung out. He was reading a book he’d picked up from the local library - Townton had a library, even if it was just the top floor of one of the restored main street buildings filled with every salvaged book they’d found. And also the roof of that building, covered in various seating and tents to keep the weather off - and generally enjoying the story.

He was also, against the advisement of at least one person, exercising his Climb magic to throw out a cast of the Rot Eyes spell every half hour or so. It wasn’t like he was doing anything else with his Breath, and the reduction in his body temperature while he and Alanna sat out in the sun was welcome.

Before he’d set out for this little vacation, Anesh had told James that he’d started to figure out the potential dungeontech from Winter’s Climb. And James was really, really interested in that, but he was also interested in hearing it from Anesh.

So since he didn’t exactly need to know right this moment, he kept alllllmost reading the document Anesh was compiling, before stopping himself. But he wasn’t content to do literally nothing with his magic, so he was trying to figure out just how flexible the Climb spells were compared to something like an absorbed blue orb. The answer seemed to be that they were highly inflexible.

Now, James wasn’t bored. But he was restless. And the mild distraction of suddenly learning about the different fungi near him was a good way to feel like he’d done something so he could then ‘switch back’ to quietly reading.

”Stop that!” Alanna, laying with her back flat on the picnic table and holding her phone over her face in a way that James was certain would bite her in the ass later, chastized him. “I can feel when you do that!”

”Yeah, but now I know about how there’s lion’s mane mushroom growing here!” He said. And then when Alanna looked back and forth like she was searching for where, James leaned his head back against her flank and added, “Not here here. I mean, in the area. Found that one earlier. Normally wouldn’t grow in a city, but with most of the people gone…” He trailed off before picking back up. “Anyway, I’m up to almost twenty two hundred on my Biology lesson! That’s like relaxing!”

Alanna tried to put him in a headlock without getting up, which mostly just led to her dropping her phone into her neck and flailing around a bit before dramatically draping herself like a beautiful corpse over the table. “That is the opposite of relaxing. That’s work!”

”I’m a paladin right now, all magic is technically work, yes.” James agreed. “But this work has a number that I can make go up! And if I do it another two thousand times, I’ll be even harder to kill!”

Begrudgingly, his girlfriend had to admit that was a pretty good sales pitch. Alanna sat herself up, watching a group of chanters scurry past the little seating area sandwiched between three different important things. It almost looked like they were escorting, or perhaps kidnapping, a couple of people. “Alright.” Alanna tried not to sigh. “I will admit, I like you better alive.”

James laughed. ”High praise!”

”Mmh, priorities shifting rapidly.”

”No, my praise!”

She swung her legs over to sit on the table next to where James was on the bench, his book held loosely in his fingers. “You remember a year ago, when we hung out in the summer and got ice cream that one time, how we talked about the way we didn’t want to let dungeon things overcome our whole personal lives?” Alanna asked him.

James carefully set the paperback on the table, and turned to face her with his fingertips pressed together. “Alanna.” He said.

”Aw shit, that’s the ‘you fucked up’ voice. And the ‘you fucked up but it’s funny’ emotion! What did I fuck up? Was that with Anesh?! Dammit, I’m not cut out for being poly, I can’t remember shit!”

”I… no, that was me.” James bit back a smile. “We did absolutely get ice cream and have that conversation. Like… almost three years ago?”

”No.”

”Yup.”

”Noooo. That can’t be right.”

He shook his head sadly. “I regret to inform you, but do not regret how hilarious this is, that it has been a while. We weren’t even dating at the time! We didn’t know about Sarah.”

Alanna pressed a palm to her forehead. ”Holy shit. My life has been entirely taken over.” She stated in a daze. “Should I be trying to escape? Three years? No, impossible.”

”Why the heck would you want to escape? We can have casual conversations about literal magic. Also for those of us who don’t have integrated cooling systems, we can double up on beating the heat and learning about mushrooms.” James felt like there were a number of perks to their current lives. The fact that they had more responsibilities was kind of a personal issue; if he’d gotten elected or found buried pirate gold or something that didn’t involve magic at all but still gave him power, he’d still feel like he had those responsibilities. The magic just made it… fun.

“Oh right!” Alanna leaned back on her palms to gaze up at the blue sky and the rippling white clouds that didn’t do much to block out the midday sun. “Actually when you say it like that, and I really think about it, we’ve done a lot in those years, huh?”

”Ayup. I mean, shit, even the chanters have been with us for months at this point. And…” James paused as a trio of those very waist high life forms scuttled up to a handful of people who were unloading cardboard boxes from the back of a small truck on the other side of the street. The chanters isolated one of them after she sat a box on the ground, and while James couldn’t hear anything specific even with his enhanced ears, he could see that one of the chanters was talking from under its thick shell. A second later, the woman waved and called to her companions that she had to take a break, before she was escorted away in the middle of the chanter group, their angled legs moving with quick taps across the pavement. “…and…” James had completely lost his train of thought.

”Yeah that’s weird.” Alanna agreed, hopping to her feet amid the dry grass. “Should we check that out?”

”Aren’t I supposed to be on vacation? Aren’t we on vacation?” James ribbed her in a way that he knew for a fact she would understand was joking.

Alanna stuck out her tongue at him. “Checking out weird stuff is a vacation. Remember that thing that was probably a fucking decade ago I dunno anymore, where we went on a road trip and found an axe murderer for our summer road trip?”

”That was… not a vacation!” James stopped himself correcting her on the timeline because he was no longer sure himself. Maybe he had been doing this for ten years, how was he supposed to know? It wasn’t going to stop him from tucking his book into the pocket of his cargo shorts and catching up to Alanna, every part of his body aching and sore despite the energy he felt filled with. “Wait up!”

The Townton restoration zone wasn’t large enough that you could easily get lost in it, and due to the orange totem living spaces there were a lot of people in a relatively compact space. So seeing others on the street was a common thing. And that included chanters, or sometimes the curious nonhostile necroads that showed up. What was less common was the chanters leaving the park space that they had been set up in with numbers. But today, that seemed to have been overturned.

In under two blocks of walking, James and Alanna saw at least five different chanter escort squads; small groups of them with their eyes glistening from under the shade of their shells, moving in formations around people as they led them back to the park. Species didn’t seem to matter; there were just as many camracondas and ratroaches as humans, though he noticed that the vent spider wasn’t being included. Yet, at least. And neither was one particularly grumpy looking human that James noticed had the hallmarks of either Ruby or Prince’s shapeshifting technique.

There was a small moment where James considered that if this was the chanters collecting people into a trap, it was basically the perfect long con designed to target a group like the Order of Endless Rooms specifically. Everyone mostly thought of the chanters as poor little meow meows, even though that was clearly a result of abuse and deprivation and not because they were inherently lesser in any way. But that did mean that if they showed up to lead you somewhere, an Order member would likely drop what they were doing and follow just to see what was up, especially if they thought the chanters might need help.

Literally that was the job of half the people down here, after all. So if the chanters had dug a giant pit trap, this would be the optimal way to get a lot of people in it.

”What in the hell are you thinking?” Alanna asked as they paused for some people who were leaving the building they were passing by to get out of the way. “Because it feels like you think you’re thinking something really dumb, but you’re also amused, and it’s bizarre.”

”I love your special brand of mind reading.” James took her hand in his, briefly, before they both decided it was too warm for that to be comfortable. “I was thinking about a giant pit trap.”

Alanna’s cheeks took on a hint of red as she bit down on her lip. “Yeeeah, I had that thought too. But it’s fine, right? Right.” She agreed with herself before James could get the word out, but he did honestly think it was fine.

When they rounded the corner and saw the verdant green space of the park, James faltered slightly, because it didn’t feel quite as fine.

The park had always had a weird relationship to the space around it; the Order deciding to use it for the chanters had sort of led to them pushing their restoration to surround it and then move outward from there, and the park certainly wasn’t small. Multiple blocks of space where half of it was allowed to grow wild and just sort of continued by city employees, a walking path that ran through it with enough room that no one would have to feel crowded, and even with the forty or so thick canvas tents that the chanters slept in, there was still a lot of open ground. But for all that, the park was still divided. There was a road, and despite the chanters’ magic slowly eroding it with defiantly growing grass, that road marked a cutoff point.

Today, the cutoff point was a little different. Today, standing at intervals around the park space, at least a hundred of the chanters stood staring outward in what looked very much like a defensive perimeter line.

They were obviously nervous, and it wasn’t just the body language of shifting side to side and twitching at motion that cued James in, but the broadcast empathic sensation in the air. Next to him, Alanna shivered, twitching herself as she tried and only partly succeeded in keeping the outside emotion separate from her own feelings.

The pair kept back, waiting in the middle of the road between one of the food stalls and the spot where scavenging teams were supposed to drop off intact electronics for repair. Other people nearby were also paused in what they were doing, watching as the groups of chanters that had darted out into the city and its small crowds returned through their perimeter with their escorted people in tow.

Behind the chanters on guard, it seemed like the handful of people the empathic group was collecting were people familiar to them. James spotted Indira in there, as well as Dorothy and Kirk. Also a ratroach he was pretty sure was Ishah, but he didn’t want to assume just based on the infomorph glow.

And then, abruptly, the camraconda that had stuck her head out from between the medical tent in front of them pulled back, and the chanters that had emerged again scuttled at an incredibly rapid speed to surround James and Alanna.

”Oh, hi.” He said, calm as he could reasonably be. Which was actually pretty calm; this seemed like something important to them, but not dangerous.

One of the chanters planted its legs and raised its front two limbs up in front of itself as James and Alanna were encircled, the light smell of cinnamon coming with their new escorts. ”Hello.” The word was… rough. Almost a warble; not stammered like how ratroaches often spoke nor in the piecemeal english of new camracondas, this was just a voice that hadn’t ever been used that needed practice with a lot of things. The word came with an overlapping dual emotion; of reassurance, and of progress being made. Though the reassurance felt… not fake, but a bit stressed. “Follow.” The chanter paired spoken language with the emotion of expectation and hope.

“Happy to!” James said, trying to mirror the emotion part, and realizing that he just… couldn’t. He couldn’t wait for one of those purple orbs; being spoken to with emotional clarity was actually hugely helpful in communication even if the words themselves were limited, and he wanted in on that but with more complexity. “Shall we?” He offered an arm to Alanna.

”Only if we’re not about to be murdered.” She said lightly, linking elbows with him and lasting about three steps before their height difference ruined their attempt to look suave.

Some people waved at them or called out greetings as they were led through the line around the park. It looked like a lot of people were gathering around now, keeping a distance probably so the chanters didn’t get nervous, but still obviously curious. As soon as James and Alanna were brought through, they were led over to one of the newer park benches that the Order had installed, and then just left there.

Inside the park, the chanters were alight with activity, and the emotional pressure of nervous energy was even higher. Now this, James felt, was restless. Dozens of chanters, the remaining hundred or two that weren’t out fetching people to the other benches or watching the outside of their home territory, scuttled back and forth. Checking inside tents, brushing up against each other with gestures that James didn’t know the social meaning of, running off to employ their burgeoning communication skills to talk to their guards. It didn’t seem like they were doing anything, only that they felt like they should be.

”Good afternoon.” A young woman’s dry voice from behind them paired with a sudden shadow over their bench, and James flinched at the presence while Alanna seemed to have expected it.

”Hey Cam.” Alanna said, leaning one arm over the smooth wood and looking up at the human looking girl who had opted to keep her original color theme going by wearing all grey today.

James’ reaction was less subdued. “You are ten feet wide, how are you so sneaky?” He should have expected her; he’d seen a glimpse of the girl patrolling the area, though it was unclear if she was helping the chanters or keeping a watchful eye on them. Probably both.

The fact that Cam hadn’t approached him over the last couple days probably meant she just didn’t have anything to say to him, because he was positive she knew every single person that entered Townton.

”Training and conditioning.” Camille said simply. “I would like to ask you to wait here, and not move too suddenly. They are nervous.”

”I noticed.” Alanna said, foot tapping rapidly on the emerald grass. “What’s going on anyway?”

Cam glanced back from where she had turned to peer over the edge of one of her wings to watch the chanters bringing more people into the park. “Their eggs.” She said. “I believe they are hatching. Though I do not know why they are selecting the people they are to be nearby.”

“Probably picking people they like and trust. Or… as much as they can, you know? I know I saw Indira earlier.” Personally, James felt really satisfied to be on the ‘trusted by the chanters’ list. He hadn’t been here very often, and just being the person who rescued them wasn’t exactly enough to show them who he really was. “Probably why you’re allowed in, too, which is neat.”

Camille’s bare hand tightened on the back of the bench, and the wood creaked under her grip until she blew out a short breath and relaxed before she crushed it to splinters. “Thank you for saying that.” She said, like she was operating on a script. “But I do not… I am not someone they should…” when James turned to look at her, she was blankly over his head at the center of one of the park’s big fields, eyes focused but mind clearly elsewhere as she searched for words. “I should not be here.” She settled on.

”There’s a ton of space, if they wanted everyone here we could have fit the whole city in for an event.” Alanna pointed out. “But you don’t mean like that.” It wasn’t a question.

”I have two skillsets.” Camille said in her dull voice. Not bored. James knew bored, and Cam was never neither bored nor restless, but a secret third thing. “I acquire targets, and I break things. Neither of those are… I’m not supposed to be here. Not here, not for this. This is important. I just break things.”

James sighed. “You really don’t.” He said with what he hoped was a reassuring grin. “You’ve been here for, what, a week or so? And nothing is broken, and a bunch of people know you and like you. Sounds like you’ve got more roots here than I do.”

Suddenly interjecting before Cam could respond, Alanna lightly clapped her hands together. “Oh, you’re afraid of admitting it to yourself.” Alanna said suddenly, provoking Cam to snap her head around and stare. “Sorry! Empathy doesn’t really turn off! But it’s also on your face, and the chanters probably know anyway. You’re afraid that if you acknowledge that you’re a good person, it’ll hurt, because you could have done it earlier. And I get that!” Alanna nodded with the satisfaction of someone who had just finished a puzzle. “But come on. You’re new to freedom, cut yourself a little slack.”

”Never.” Cam whispered. “Because if I do that, I might make a mistake. Your mistakes might get you hurt. My mistakes… when we first met, do you remember, I asked you if you needed help?” She stared into James’ eye. “Help exterminating a loose dungeon species.” Her hand snapped out, pointing like a knife toward the chanters in the field that were probably making the whole population of the city feel the weight of expectation at the moment. “My mistakes are not tolerable.”

James stared at her, then closed his good eye and tried for force through a calming breath despite the ambient emotional fog. Reaching up, he settled a hand on Cam’s wrist and slowly pushed her hand down. “Fuck. I… I think everyone gets that, Cam. Everyone feels that way sometimes, even if you’re more dangerous everyone has shared that feeling.” James said, smooshing a hand into his cheek and rubbing at his face hard enough to make his bruises ache. “You’re not… a bad person, just because you’ve become a better person. It’s okay, you know? It’s okay to not be okay, and it’s okay to grow. And however you do it, the Order is here for you. Because you did ask. Because you didn’t just start breaking skulls.”

Alanna had the thought that it was probably why Camille was upset. Because she had known that maybe doing things the way she was trained was wrong. That asking was her way of getting an out; either to not do it, or to shove off responsibility. But she kept it to herself.

And was glad she did, as Cam idly gripped the joint of one of her wings and tugged the limb lightly into a new position while standing behind their seat. “…and I am here for you.” Cam whispered into the breeze, replying to James. “How could I not be? You are everything the Last Line told us humanity was not. You are worthy of everything. You make me feel worthy. I don’t understand it, though. And maybe I don’t want to.”

“It’s okay to be afraid.” Alanna said with a steady look, not hearing half of what Cam whispered but feeling her trepidation anyway. “We’re all afraid, all the time. And you’re doing what we do! Punching through it. Emotionally, not… not physically. Maybe physically? Do you punch things?”

“Not as much, here.” Cam glanced back down the street to an unassuming apartment that wasn’t one of the restored and upgraded ones. “Perhaps later.” She said cryptically.

James really, really wanted to dig into that. But he knew, in an instant, that he wasn’t going to get a chance to.

The first sound came from one of the nearest tents, and the chanters froze in place. Even the ones still bringing more people to the park, who then sped away even faster than before, showing off top speeds that James had actually never seen out of them. They’d definitely been holding back what their bodies could do, which felt a little bad, but maybe after this things could keep changing. Keep improving.

The noise itself was like a flat rock breaking. A single crack, not overly loud, but certainly not ignorable. When it repeated itself farther off in the distance, it became even less likely that it was something unpredicted. The chanters began to cluster around specific tents, a sea of grey shells and spiky legs that shifted like a bizarre crop of wheat.

Then another, and another. A string of cracks and pops, followed by a minute of silence, followed by another singularly loud snapping. James sat in silence with Alanna, while Cam stood behind the bench like she was prepared to take action in a nebulously undirected way.

The emotional atmosphere roiled and shifted like a tide. Excitement, panic, enthusiasm, fear, and then, as the sounds that were almost certainly the hidden caches of chanter eggs hatching faded away and no more took their place, the emotional broadcast from the collective group of the chanters took on a dull and distant tone. Something familiar to James, as how they suppressed their empathic outpouring in the early days.

Things got quiet. The breeze, the crunch of grasses and weeds underfoot, the shifting of people outside the park and the rumble of engines heading back into Townton from even farther out, those noises were still there. But everyone who had been invited in by the chanters seemed to be holding their breath.

Motion from across the park caught James’ attention, and Cam started to step around their bench like she planned on investigating, but the suddenly scuttling of two dozen chanters past them from behind stopped her as a good chunk of the ones that had been guarding the outside rushed past toward the tents. More still seemed like they didn’t know where to go, darting between other chanters and in and out of the tents, moving in frantic bursts as on the other side of the park, a small group approached where James was pretty sure Indira and a few others from the communication group were seated.

His tense curiosity was sated not long after, as from one of the tents, a single chanter emerged that had six others flanking it in a V formation. It swept tall glittering eyes around the park, until it saw where James was, and began making its way toward him.

Stopping ten feet away, half on the little asphalt path that ran through the park, half on the barkdust underneath one of the pear trees that had way too much fruit on it for something that was only a year old, the honor guard fell back as a single chanter approached the group, something carried close to its chest.

James heard Alanna suck in a breath next to him, and realized why as the chanter got within a few feet. It was something he’d felt from them before, and had hoped to never have cause to feel again. A kind of dread, a dark pit of it, the sensation of being Damocles and waiting forever for the blade to drop with the firm knowledge that nothing would ever take it away.

The chanter was clearly trying to keep it from leaking out, but the fear was still there, and they had learned away their restraint.

Which was probably why the child it was cradling was crying. The fear reaching it as well, as it was carried out to the watching humans and Cam. The chanter, perhaps its specific parent even, still not entirely sure if this wasn’t the moment where things turned.

It wasn’t much suspense for James, though, who knew that it wasn’t. But it was a meaningful moment for a different reason, as the chanter walked slowly forward on needle legs toward Camille. And ever so gently, raised the burden in its forearms to her.

Cam looked to James with her own secret terror behind her eyes, but he just gave her a smile and a short jerk of his head. Alanna similarly offered no advice on what she was supposed to do, except to say “Be careful.”

Which was how Cam found herself gently dropping to her knees in the dirt of a flourishing park in the middle of nowhere Tennessee, and reaching out to hold a newborn. The chanter had no shell, and barely had a form at all yet. More of a grey blob of a creature with just the hint of where its legs would grow in. The eyes, though, were open and glistening, emotive under the bright sunlight.

So Cam pulled it closer into her shadow. Kneeling in the grass and dirt, both her and her charge entirely unarmored, though for different reasons, cradling a creature she couldn’t begin to know the future of as gently as she possibly could.

”Hello.” She said, her voice as crisp and professional as it always was. Or at least, that was what she tried to do. For some reason the word didn’t come out right. The child in her hands seemed to stare up at her, and she allowed it access to one of her fingers to poke at with the thin needle of its newly accessible limbs. And then, unsure of what else to do, she looked back up at the other chanters and delicately offered their child back to them.

The tide of emotion broke, at least around their group. Alanna could already feel the contrast from other points around the park, where fear and dread were swept away by tentative joy and confused hope. But it was almost overwhelming from the cluster of chanters that had brought the newest of their number to them, and was so close. It hurt her teeth to feel, and she considered if she’d have to excuse herself.

But then the chanter was offering them the child to hold, and she knew she couldn’t when James took the kid and cradled it in his lap.

”Hi there.” She heard her boyfriend murmuring with a smile to the newly hatched tiny form. “You’re going to have an amazing time here, I promise.” James slowly turned to let her give the chanter a smile and a small facsimile of a high five. “Welcome to-“ he stopped and looked up, out at the chanters and their place in the city, but also at the other people around with them. Everyone who was sharing the moment and the space and their lives. And he changed what he was going to say. “Welcome home.” James whispered, just loud enough for Alanna to hear.

It sounded good to everyone there.

As a bonus, for the rest of the day, James could confidently say he was neither bored nor restless.