“It was painful and confusing and I suck at it, but I’m gonna keep trying. I mean, that’s how I feel about life anyway, so.” -Marigold, Questionable Content-
_____
The Research basement was still in the process of being sorted out, a sentence that was likely never going to stop being true. Sometime in what James figured was last month, but refused to put a specific date on, someone had added about a mile of hallway to the place. Nothing attached to it, just hallway. It made things confusing enough, so with the growing Research staff that included actual real world professionals who needed things like their own workspaces, someone decided to make it worse and just put rooms there.
A lot of this came from green orbs. Unreliable, finicky, capricious green orbs. In trying to keep up with the ongoing tests on the things, James had sort of figured that there was an intuitive design to them where they had a ‘perfect target’, and if they were used somewhere else they’d try to conceptually match what they would have ideally done. An orb that would be perfect for a farm would be fine for a garden and would install a potted plant in someone’s corner office, for example.
And that was fascinating and all, but it didn’t really account for the Lair. Because the Lair was kind of sort of a lot of different things. It was the headquarters of the Order, but it was also a hundred homes, a restaurant, a tactical planning center, dispatch for emergency response, a pretty expansive public bath, a youth group, technically the ground floor of an accounting office, and a magic vault.
As in, a vault for magic. Not a vault that was magic. That specificity was probably important.
All this was to say, there was a reason why there was a ballroom down here. James figured that the green orb that made it probably just got confused, and in a way he sympathized with that little compact mote of magic. But it was still weird to pass by two sets of ornate double doors complete with stained glass arches over top, set into unadorned concrete, on his way to get to the landmark of the skulljack braid development lab.
From there, it was just following the signs - they’d made signs, James was so proud of them - to find the side hallway with the empty set aside rooms that didn’t have much of a unique purpose, and often got used for when people wanted to either test something specific or have a quiet place for a meeting or a nap.
“So!” James said as he slid through the door, mindful not to be too vigorous in his dramatic entrance; a week off split between a bed and Townton had done a lot of good for him, but he still had stitches in some of his injuries and was currently down an eye. Though he was getting used to that. “You made a breakthrough!”
Three different Anesh all looked up with startled twitches, one of whom made a noise like a parrot’s squawk as he jerked sideways. On the smooth plywood table between them, the pool cue they were messing with got knocked out of place, and someone either focused too much or too little.
A blob of magic hit James in the chest. It didn’t feel like anything, and it barely looked like anything either. Just kind of a clear film in the air that moved so fast he barely had time to track it; fired out of the end of the pool cue like a slimy projectile.
James looked down at himself, then held his hands up, checking to see if he was mutating or dying or something. Calmly looking up at his boyfriends, he nudged the bit of hair that had fallen into his field of vision back over to where it was covering his eyepatch, and cleared his throat. “Why am I thirsty?” He asked.
Two of the Anesh looked at each other with pursed lips while the third frantically messed with the pool cue’s position, trying to keep it pointed at absolutely no one. ”Because you were just hit with the spell that converts addiction or compulsion into thirst?” Anesh asked him. Or told him. “And in a more broad sense, because I’m working on this and not on imbuing the Underburbs skill crystals, cause there’s a moratorium on that particular foolishness. Also probably some other broad cosmic reasons, I suppose.”
”Alright, two things.” James held up fingers and counted off. “One, what am I no longer addicted to? Is it caffeine? Because I won’t like that, I like caffeine. Two, at the risk of sounding obvious here, that’s a touch attack spell?”
”We don’t use D&D terms but yes, it requires contact.” Anesh said. “Hi, by the way. Welcome back. How was Townton?”
”Nooooo no no no no.” James laughed even as he stepped around the cardboard box full of random stuff to wrap his arms around the first Anesh he found, moving on to the next one before the hug became too warm so that he’d have the same level of energy and enthusiasm for each of them. “You don’t get to play this game! You can ask me about vacation later, now you get to tell me about how you made a wizard staff!”
One of the Anesh nudged another, the third shifting slightly back as all three of them made brief eye contact. James picked up on a surprising depth to the byplay; not surprising that he noticed exactly, but surprising that there was so much between three of the same person. “Alright, well, as long as we get to hear some stories. The whole place has been buzzing the past couple days about our privately owned city and I blame you.”
”What did I do!” James laughed happily as he moved to the other side of the table, deftly turning a clipboard with a checklist of Climb spells on it so he could read the words.
”I haven’t the foggiest. That’s why we want stories.” Anesh all grinned at him, the small little lopsided smile his boyfriend used when he was feeling tired but still at peace. “But for now, behold.” Two of the Anesh spread their hands out over the pool cue. “Dungeontech from Winter’s Climb.”
James nodded, appraising the object. ”Yeah I remember this. Arrush said it smelled odd on our very first delve. We still have this?”
”Seemed like a good idea.” Anesh shrugged. “And clearly it was.” Another one of him added. “Because it’s magic.”
”How magic?”
”Wizard staff magic. Well, wand magic I suppose.” Anesh tapped his chin in idle thought. “This one is anyway.”
”Anesh.” James could feel his boyfriend stretching out the explanation, enjoying the mystery of the whole thing. He found it fun, and was himself smiling back, but he also wanted to know what the hell was going on. “Tell me the secrets you… you…”
An Anesh stepped over to his side of the table and lightly leaned his head against James’ shoulder. ”You’re so much worse at friendly bullying than Sarah is.” He told his partner.
”I don’t want to be rude, I just want to bully you into giving me more magic!” James protested, knowing full well that nothing he said defended his honor at all.
If anyone was going to understand though, it was Anesh, and all three of the copies of him in the room nodded. “Valid point. Alright, here’s the long and short of it. They’re all wands.”
James nodded as Anesh spoke, carefully taking in each word and committing it to his enhanced memory. And then realized that Anesh had stopped talking. “And?”
”And that’s the basics. You now know everything you need to, in order to use Climb dungeontech.” Anesh told him with satisfied nods and a professional voice like he was narrating a training video before one of him chimed in with his normal speaking tone. “Well, mostly. But the basics really are that simple. Climb items let you cast spells into them, and use them later. It’s just the details that get complicated.”
”Details like how you shot me with a spell that has a range of nanometers.” James pointed out, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth and wishing he’d brought a bottle of water. “Speaking of, I’m gonna actually need to find a…oh, thanks.” He trailed off as Anesh handed him a mason jar full of ice water. “Is this safe to drink or is it radioactive or something? I never know down here.”
By the time Anesh started to tell him it was fine, James was already drinking anyway. “It’s for testing the… oh, go ahead then. At least I know how to poison you if I ever need to.”
”Easily. Apparently.” James sighed in contentment. “So the details?”
”Yes. Well. Each different item modifies the spells put into it. The pool cue is the most directly useful I’ve found so far, because it makes something ranged, but they all change it somehow.” Anesh started rearranging stuff in the box and handing it to himself. “The watch will automatically cast the spell in it every… well, it’s a weirdly specific amount of time but roundabouts every four hours. The hubcap is pretty near to being a landmine. This sock will try to cast a big version of the spell whenever it gets too hot. I think.”
James stopped trying to commit things to memory, this was all a bit too much. “Woah hey hang on!” He laughed and held up his hands. “That whole box is stuff like this?”
”No, this whole box is badly sorted, and a lot of it is mundane. But it turns out… okay, you know the sensation of Climb casting?” Anesh asked, tagging out for himself halfway through the sentence.
Carefully watching his boyfriend stack random water damaged items on the table, James gave a slow answer. “Like having your lungs pulled out through your throat?”
”Yes, exactly.” One Anesh winced. “Well, for these things, it’s possible to sort of… guide that process into the item. Casting slower, and pouring a single spell into the reserve that these things all have.”
”Hey, yo, hang on.” James snapped his fingers in excitement. “What about-“
”None of them are even close to big enough for the cathedral spell, no.” Anesh answered, already anticipating the question. He glanced up at the ceiling in unison as the air conditioning clicked on. “Thought we got that fixed.” One of him muttered. “And by fixed I mean locked in the off position.”
”I’ll check it out later. So they have set amounts they can hold?”
Anesh nodded and directed James attention to a different set of notes. ”I’ve been measuring them in Breath cost, which seems to be accurate. The watch actually has the most despite being small, but none of them go over thirty. You can, as long as it’s the same spell going in, drip cast things though! At least into some of them. We need more, clearly.”
”So why all the mundane stuff?”
”Well, partly, we were testing things.” Anesh said. “And also,” another Anesh continued, “there’s a lot of objects that got brought back that people thought were magic, that just aren’t. And this is something else I wanted to talk to you about. You know the way Office dungeontech feels?”
James absolutely did, the feeling of it had become a comfortable friend to him over the last few years. “Hot salt!” He said with a knowing nod, eye staring off into the distance as he remembered the first time he realized that he actually could feel magic.
Anesh all wore small smiles at the enthusiasm of their boyfriend. “What a way with words. Well, it’s wrong.”
”Beg pardon?” James jolted out of his reviere.
”Wrong. Incorrect. Not right. Third synonym.” Anesh sighed as he held up a rather distressed looking sock. “Tell me what this feels like, would you?”
James looked at it, focusing on that item alone among all the others. “I mean… a little bit like that. Not as much molten as the Office stuff, but yeah, still got the hot salt feeling. Why?”
”Okay this one is fake.” Anesh threw it over into a separate box he had in the corner, sinking the shot with an easy overhand lob. “That’s what I wanted to mention. We’ve been relying a little on those dungeon instincts that people build up, but I don’t think we should. We’ve been assuming there’s a universal answer to dungeontech like this, and I’m starting to think that’s a mistake.”
The information had James frowning in thought. ”So dungeon sense doesn’t have a universal… what, tone? Language? Vibe?”
”I’d say language, but that’s because I don’t want to sound too American.” Anesh conceded.
”Vibe is in no way an American only word.” James felt like they could get way too sidetracked on that argument, and so he forced the conversation back into place. “So do these break? Like with Office blues?”
The guilty look on Anesh’s faces gave him an answer even before his boyfriend spoke. “Yes, but they seem to be as durable as things normally are. Except to fire or electric current.” That was oddly specific but also oddly easy for James to instantly understand. “They drop orbs, if you can believe it. Not a color we’ve seen, they’re a sort of cloudy grey. Nik and Mars have the ones I… acquired. We figured it was a good idea to split up the testing, before we get enough material to open things up to the rest of Research.”
”What do they do?”
”Well cracking them refills Breath, and that’s all we know for now. It’s absurdly dangerous because it gives none of the associated air or heat. Someone from medical came by and put up a few new warning posters, which is how you know it’s serious.”
James couldn’t keep from smiling at that. “I love this place.” He muttered with a shake of his head. “Alright. Well, are you busy right now?”
”Not… exactly? I’m mostly just working on how each spell interacts with each item, but you know I have a rather limited pool to work with and my horrid assistant went out to lunch.” Anesh crossed three sets of arms in unison. He’d been wanting to go on a slightly longer Climb delve in his new semi-individual states, and see if he could split off new spell slots into a different spread of options. But all the delves the Order was doing were booked for a while, and he certainly wasn’t going to go alone.
”Perfect!” James said, which got a puzzled look of synchronized raised eyebrows from his boyfriend. “That means I can take you out to lunch! I’ll trade you talking about Townton in exchange for you explaining what in the everloving fuck ‘pretty much a landmine’ means.”
Anesh smiled back, two of him already moving to pack stuff back into the temporary storage box. “Deal.” He said easily, happy to spend a little time with the guy he’d fallen in love with.
_____
When Anesh used pen and paper for notes, James thought it was cute. When the mormons he was meeting up with handed his four person delver team a printed sheaf of paper stapled together, it was offensive. Though it was possible, likely even, that James was just upset that he didn’t have the option to abandon reading with his eye and check things with his skulljack.
So while the two that had been assigned as the Order’s guides silently fumed at each other for reasons that James was entirely prepared to ignore for the whole delve, he tried to keep himself from getting actually annoyed, and read what he’d been given.
None of it was maps, which was also annoying. Though there was a section about how maps of the structure - they only ever called it the structure, which meant he was excited to name it - degraded over time. And by ‘time’ they seemed to mean ‘two to four days’ so that was worrying. Sharing information was a challenge; speaking or typing stuff outside of the dungeon was actively stymied by physical revulsion. The packet he was reading was actually a smart workaround to their memetic problems; they’d just brought a whole PC and printer setup into the dungeon and typed it there. Actually good problem solving, James approved.
Now, the parking structure dungeon was awesome, but James had also wanted to see the garden today. But it seemed like there was a whole thing with the memeplex here that half the delvers of each dungeon didn’t or couldn’t acknowledge the other’s existence. And that was a hell of a problem when they literally overlapped. James didn’t know what caused it, and Zhu was still in hibernation, so he was relying on Planner and to a lesser extent Moon to keep the team from succumbing to a similar condition.
”So we’re in and out? One hour on the clock?” Matt’s question came from where he was helping Rho gear up, the canine bodied inhabitor standing still in a way that was unnatural for a dog while his delve partner tightened the straps of his heavily modified riot armor.
”One hour.” Ishah said, standing patiently with his back to a wall, the ratroach’s lower arms cradling a shotgun that the Order had rescued from what used to be Townton’s police station. “We are here to search and scavenge and scout. And James is here too.” He added, adjusting the pair of headphones dangling from one of his belts.
James ignored the comment except for cracking a smile as he read the documentation, partly keeping an eye on the other two humans that were shooting Ishah dirty looks that the ratroach was ignoring in favor of triple-checking his bandolier.
It made reading hard, but he kept at it, because this was useful.
The parking dungeon gave one known reward, and it was ability points. Okay, well, it was AP, but James assumed that meant ability points. He shouldn’t do that.
You got AP for completing milestones in the dungeon, and it was all rewarded as soon as a delver crossed back to Earth. Limit one milestone per delve, though there wasn’t a rule about just looping yourself in and out, so that was… weird. It felt lazy, but he wasn’t going to say that out loud near the dungeon.
The people who had experience here had a list of milestones that they knew of, and a rough approximation of the ‘tech tree’ that was required to unlock some of them. And James felt like they were holding out with this information they were sharing to the Order, because it felt super limited. There were things on the list for kills, using the machines in the dungeon, making it to a roof, and… that was kind of it. Not really much else. And that felt like a lie, but he wasn’t going to press on it.
AP got spent as soon as you did something that went beyond what your current magical level in that thing was, and it gave you levels. Which seemed to be a lot like skill ranks in terms of power, but more broadly applicable. Except, of course, that you were highly likely to spend your first three to five AP on breathing just because that seemed like this dungeon’s particular dirty trick. Actually getting anything special out of it would, James assumed, require dedicated and focused effort. Which the Order was already theorycrafting on. So the dungeon could suck it up, because they were going to get people levels in something useful, even if he had to stock the elevator itself with training tools and get people the orbs that made them not have to breathe.
“Alright! We’re all set.” He said to one of their guides; a young man that was probably just barely eighteen who put off the vibe of someone who’d been right at home in his church’s secret program of thought sculpting. “You two want to take point, or… how are we doing this?”
”I don’t want all of you behind me.” One of them said bluntly.
James decided to confront this now, though he was still going to sigh about it. He made a point to scratch around the edge of his eyepatch as he shifted his stance slightly. “So, part of me wants to be coy and ask if that means we’re going first, but let’s get this out of the way. Do you have an emotional problem with us that is going to keep this delve from going well? Because we can go by ourselves, it’s okay. You don’t need to participate. And I don’t really want you to if you’re going to be a dick.”
”No.” The younger one said with a firm conviction. “General authority said we have an agreement with you. And a good son of God keeps their agreements.” His eyes flicked over to Ishah. “But that doesn’t mean I approve of you, or that I trust you to keep your side. For all I know, you’re the reason we have demons among us now.”
”Oh, that!” James feigned cheerfulness. “I’m not, they were there already. If it’s any consolation, I think they might have started as an infiltration of sorts, but at least half of them legitimately converted to your faith? I dunno if that makes you feel any better.”
The young man scoffed at him. ”No? Why would it?”
Before he could offer a reply, Matt chimed in, appearing at James’ side in a sudden motion that made it seem like his normal walk was itself a violent action. “Psalms. All the living look to you for food, and you open your hand to satisfy.” He shrugged, and James remembered that Matt himself was one of the more openly faithful members of the Order. “You think God cares what his followers look like? I don’t know, but I’m not gonna pretend I make the rules.”
”That’s different. They’re demons.”
”They’re things your bishops and authorities decided to call demons.” James pointed out. “Also, this is… not why either of us are here. I can understand your thoughts,” specifically he could understand the kid probably wasn’t in full control of his own mind, “but we can talk about it after if you want. For now… how about we move in groups of three and you can give us pointers or directions as we move, okay?”
That seemed to mollify the two for now, and honestly, that was all James really wanted. He’d probably never see them again, and while he felt a lot of sympathy for what had been done to them, he didn’t really have the ability to snap his fingers and give them the help they needed without restarting a fight that the Order might not be big enough to win.
Though that was still a ‘maybe’. And part of this arrangement was that the Order would get put in closer contact to help their rogues evaluate if that was true. And if not, how to tip the scales.
But that was for a tomorrow. Today was for exploring, and acquiring his second milestone from this place.
The elevator dinged open, and hundreds of feet of sporadically marked concrete floor stretched away in either direction. Navigating through the chipped yellow paint of the bollards surrounding the elevator door, the group moved out into the dungeon.
And instantly, James noticed a problem.
His people, all of them people who had actively trained to delve, moved with a silent professionalism. He and Rho checked left, Ishah and Matt swept right, their shooters had their weapons out and ready but not aimed, their scrappers stayed just to their sides so that lesser threats could be handled without making the loudest possible noise, and all of them cleared the area in under five seconds before calling out that status of everything being good.
The other two walked out and looked around like they were going on a trip to the mall. Casual motions, no preparation except whatever spells they had slotted that James didn’t even know about. It was a sign of either complete confidence, or complete overconfidence, and judging by how they looked at the Order group with a mix of worry and confusion, James was pretty sure it was the worst of the two options.
He didn’t sigh again, because he needed to save his breath, and even here by the entrance the fumes of this place filled his nose with the smell of old diesel. “Okay. Point us along a normal delve, and let’s get going.” He said, clipping his filter mask into place.
The two young guides double checked between themselves, and then took the party directly away from the direction that the stored human population in the dungeon was. Which James was fine with, but honestly, it was about ten miles of hard delving away, and they didn’t need to bother. The skullduggery irritated him.
The scenery made up for it.
The halls of the parking garage went on for so long that every sight line was eventually blocked by concrete in some way. Pillars and low ceilings, barricades and dividing walls. But despite how much there was in the way, the place felt open to motion in a way that the Office never did. There were a lot of straight lines, a lot of hints in the corner of the eye to where you could take a turn and double back to see a whole different set of parked cars and painted lines on the floor.
Outside, between black clouds of thick smog, distant towers of similar construction loomed. There was a ‘ground’ below them, but it was likely just the roof of a different structure, just like their roof was probably the ground for another larger column itself. The place felt like a world that had undergone an apocalypse and was just left to go on momentum without any people.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
And yet, there was still life. Or rather, there was life; James shoved aside the thought of it being a post-apocalyptic world. This was a dungeon, created wholesale and populated with things meant to live here.
Things like the bounding deer-like creatures that he and Ishah watched with rapt eyes from their vantage point. Fifty feet below, the things had the dull texture of metal as the herd of them moved in bursts of motion across a skybridge between this structure and the one next to them. Hundreds of meters of open air with absolutely no railing for safety, and the quadrupeds seemed like they slid every time they touched down. The motions were terrifying even from the distance; the thought that they were one misstep from plunging off the edge to splatter on the concrete below was heart stopping.
Matt had taken a look through his binoculars, and proclaimed that they had wheeled hooves. The metal texture was from the pipes and pistons of the engines that made up their main bodies and the headlights that were their heads, with all of them held in place with some kind of black substance.
Not, he was quick to point out, asphalt. Just in case anyone thought they would have a get-out-of-combat-free card with those.
James decided to call them caribou. Emphasis on the car.
They kept moving, hiking up the gentle slope of a ramp as they moved through the interior of the structure toward an upper level, passing a score of huge painted numbers on the wall. No one had ever parked here, and no one ever would, but if they did at least they’d have a guide to find their car.
At one point they found a piece of wall graffiti, between a sign written in aggressive Spanish declaring that anyone who did not pay the parking fees would be towed, and a set of pipes that came from the ceiling and went into the floor and that James was pretty sure didn’t go anywhere at all or contain anything.
The graffiti looked authentically human, though. In green and black spray paint, it gave a quick warning about radiation in the area, centered on a big old classic warning sigil for nuclear waste. The two guides insisted it was just one of the random things the dungeon put there, but James wasn’t prepared to take their word on it, and besides, a portable Geiger counter fit in a pouch and was a standard part of the Order’s delver kit anyway since the Akashic Sewer existed.
Five minutes later, there was no sign of anything radioactive, and James got an ‘I told you so’ from someone who objectively should be more worried about cancer than he was.
It was on the next level of the garage up that they were attacked. Up until that point, they’d encountered a few hostile traffic cones, and hidden as a pair of aggressive tires had rolled by, but nothing too dangerous. This, though, was something unexpected, and more importantly, planned.
The air was so still that James felt the disturbance in it as soon as the projectile was in motion. He didn’t really process why he was doing it, only that he was reflexively twitching his head to the side, and that something had just passed him by. Behind him, the badly shaped bolt hit a car window and shattered glass, while Matt and Rho were already in motion to take cover behind a slightly off color truck.
The missed shot wasn’t followed up with any more. Instead, a series of battle cries that sounded like a child trying to mimic a car horn sounded from around them, and a cluster of short black furred figures burst out of suddenly opening car doors or from out of the back of pickup truck beds.
James had about two seconds to process that they looked a lot like humanoid rats before one of them tried to hit him in the head with a tire iron.
There was a flurry of violence around him as he slapped the attack aside, the rat landing in a deft roll to his side as its leap failed to cause any damage. Undeterred, that particular attacker kept up its running pace, heading straight for the next delver in the path of its momentum. James was a little distracted by the next one that tried to capitalize on the distraction to hit him from the side, but if he’d kept watching, he would have seen the rat falter before taking a swing at Ishah, confusion playing across the smoky orbs of its eyes before it doubled down and engaged the ratroach.
”Run!” One of the kids yelled, the two guides who had been hanging back breaking into a sprint as the first of them turned and bolted for where the slope of the ramp left a gap. His maneuver was awkward, but he managed to wedge himself past a car and hopped the concrete barricade so he could drop back down to the next lower ramp segment.
James didn’t run. Instead he caught the wrist of the rat that was trying to spear him with a sharpened pipe, and pivoted, moving with his hips as forcefully as he could without aggregating his still-healing injuries to pin the creature to the floor and hold it in place as it struggled. Claws from all four paws scratching ineffectively at his armor as it started screaming, and the rest of the pack snapped their attention away from the people they were trying to hit to swarm toward James in an instant.
His brain said pack, but his eye said there were three of them. Plus one that was unconscious or dead that had tussled with Matt and failed to come out on top. James kept one hand on the chest of his captive, and expended Breath to make himself a thick ice arm that he used to grapple the first one to get to him. It pulled on his body, but he resisted being tackled and instead threw the rat attacker backward, letting Rho bound after it while it was dazed as he dealt with the next two.
Pave to the first one in the stomach, black fur erupting in a sudden and unexpected burst of soot or maybe dust as James hit it with the spell. The next one almost got to him when Matt’s gloved hand snagged around its howling muzzle and jerked it violently to the side, his other fist coming around to slam into its body repeatedly until he swept its legs with a kick and threw it to the ground.
The one James was pinning was still screaming, and he let his arm melt away as he looked down at it. “Please stop that?” He asked nicely, slowly letting the pressure off of it.
The rat scampered backward, legs seeming to shift their joints as it rotated itself and bolted, grabbing one of the more conscious other creatures before fleeing over the edge of the structure. James and Ishah called out panicked wordless yells as the two creatures rolled over the concrete barrier and into open air, the ratroach slinging his gun low as he ran for the edge after them. But when he got there, the two were gone. Not gone as in turned into paste on the ground below, but just missing, having escaped to a lower tier of the garage somehow.
Matt helped James up as he looked around at the unconscious ratling monsters that had ambushed them. “So… do we take prisoners, or what?” He asked.
”I mean, I want to say yes, but…” James winced as he stood, his knee twinging in pain. He gave Matt a short glance, biting his lip as he tried not to wince for a second reason. “Let’s make sure none of them are dying, and let them get back to their people. They’re obviously smart, and care about each other, which is…”
”Not new.” Ishah said as he rejoined them, Moon’s light shining from behind his neck as his informorph companion partially manifested. “But uncommon? They seemed confused by me.”
”Bodes ill.” Rho added as he nosed one of the downed rats that was playing dead. “It means they are used to fighting humans, likely for bad reasons.”
James nodded. “Aaaaaaand our guides are gone. For also likely bad reasons. Dammitall, this was supposed to be a scouting mission.”
Everyone sighed in unison, though all of them for slightly different reasons. It took them a couple minutes to carefully collect the unconscious rats and make sure they weren’t going to get spotted or run over by a car in the middle of the floor. Not that cars drove here, but it was an intrusive thought James had, so they got them laying down in the bed of a pickup.
Taking the opportunity to examine them while he checked their injuries, James found them to be a weird kind of humanoid. Very stubby arms, with almost no reach or leverage, but tight muscles all along their bodies. They were like a creature made out of a powerful torso and built out from there. Their fur was definitely not black naturally, or at least, not this black; his hands were stained with soot by the time they were done. No tails though, except for a stubby little bristle of fur that was more like wire at the base of their bodies.
And despite how aggressive they were, and how much force they’d put into their strikes despite their physical limits, they still seemed thin and underfed. The group, about to leave the dungeon anyway, left the majority of their emergency food supply in the pickup along with the non-captives. Matt argued that they shouldn’t be feeding their enemies, and everyone else had just stared at him until he’d admitted that even he knew he was being an idiot.
Ten minutes later, they caught up to the guides near the entrance.
”Oh, you survived the goblins?” One of them asked as James rounded the corner. He was lurking behind a pillar, clearly intending to ambush someone if he needed to, but perhaps not expecting the whole Order party to confidently walk back. “Those things are so ugly and gross.”
”Ugly?” Matt asked with raised eyebrows.
”…Goblins.” Ishah said in a lightly chittering voice.
”Security goblins.” The other guide confirmed. “Or lot goblins, if you want. Because they used to scream about tolls to pass a lot of the time. And cause, you know, they’re ugly little guys.”
James just stared at them, a firm sense of disappointment hardening in his chest. “Hey, how did you guys survive as delvers if that kind of ambush is a problem?” He asked. “Do you normally have bigger groups?”
The kid shrugged, talking coming a little easier as the adrenaline had shaken him open a bit. “Sometimes. The church has people that are… uh… more military, if we need to fight something to get to a place. We come in by ourselves all the time, we just do a lot of running. I guess some kinds of people don’t have to worry about that.” Once again he shot a small glare at Ishah.
The ratroach was previously willing to ignore a lot of the human’s barely veiled hostility, but right now, he just didn’t feel like it, and he knew that no one would stop him if he decided to shoot this particular human in the knees.
But he didn’t. Instead, Ishah met the human’s eyes and made a show of blinking all of his own eyes in sequence, which he knew many people found unsettling. “I am familiar with running.” He said, struggling to keep his voice casual. “I spent my whole life running. Because if I was caught, I would die. It is good you know the value of running away.” He was pretty sure he didn’t keep his voice from wavering, but it was hard to hear.
The guide stared at Ishah, face going from shocked to angry, before James cleared his throat and decided to make sure that didn’t go any farther. “That wasn’t a threat.” He told the kid. “Ishah is way too nice to threaten you.” He considered letting it go unsaid that he wasn’t that nice. Then he realized he was tipping over the level of annoyed required to spur him to say something hostile. “But I’m not, though, again, I don’t really want to have this conversation. Let’s… just get out of here. Everyone good to head out?”
”I mean, this was pretty light exercise.” Matt said, dusting off his knuckles in what he almost certainly felt was a cool pose. “I could do another one?”
”We’ll see what the plan is when we get out.” James sighed.
The elevator ride out was the kind of tense that would have set off James’ anxiety if the tension came from people he respected or felt had any kind of power to do anything to him. Instead, it was just a little boring, and he couldn’t wait to see what milestone he got, and how quickly he leveled up his breathing again.
The really funny thing was, leveling up breathing was actually just great for the Order. Part of this scouting delve was that they were also doing incremental testing with Matt and Ishah and their own use and collection of Breath from the Climb. James knew it helped, but they wanted to know exactly how much, and in what ways. This dungeon’s dirty trick was the Order’s boon.
The doors dinged open, and the quick glance inside a world of concrete and smog ended with an alien thought broadcast into his brain.
(Milestone - Initiation Skirmish : +1 AP)
James tried to feel for the AP settling into his body somewhere, or if it was a presence he could sense somehow. But it was a seemingly invisible presence, less detectable even than the Library’s species ranks. And the lack of any reaction from the magic told him that, if nothing else, the dungeon didn’t consider ‘sensing his own magic’ to be a skill he could learn.
So he moved on to the next thing he was supposed to test, and took a deep breath, feeling the fresher air fill his lungs with a pleasant stretch.
(Breathing : +1 Level, 2 Levels total)
(1 AP spent, 0 AP remains)
Well that confirmed several things. They got to know their total level in a skill, each level only took a single AP, and most importantly, the couple of normal breaths he’d taken hadn’t been enough to get him the next level. So it did get harder with each step up the ladder, which was classic, and also very helpful.
Because that meant that after long enough, someone would stop leveling up in inhalation, and could move on to more important stuff. Unless the breathing was what they really needed, obviously. But James figured that if someone really needed it that bad, then breathing would be enough of a challenge that they’d get their level ups easily enough.
Tagging out for another exploratory delver, James headed home. He really was kinda just there to get early confirmation of some of the magic, and he wanted to report on that, and let the others get deeper in on their own. He was also pretty sure Matt was desperate to level up in punching, and while he wished him luck, James was just too damn sore to do anything more than find somewhere in the Lair that was comfortable to sit down for an hour or ten.
_____
The Lair’s living quarters hadn’t been improved yet, but the excessive amount of yellow tape and measurement markings on the walls as James entered made him think it was about to be. His own architectural ability gave him a little insight into it, but a lot of it was orange totem based stuff that he didn’t have a mastery of.
Either way, the increasingly impressive underground garden was doing well, and there were a lot of people who were hanging out or moving through the space on their way to or from homes. The fact that they were going to need to have a day where they moved everyone’s furniture out and then back in again just so the construction team could improve on the blueprint was a little awkward, but it was less awkward than being stuck with a design that didn’t work, unable to start over because of the sunk cost.
For once, he wasn’t here to critique design though, or to meet people in the miniature park and talk about their career futures. Instead, James was here for a much more personal reason.
He had only just begun to knock lightly on one of the apartment doors, still feeling a little weird about how closely compressed all the doors in this building were to each other, when Keeka pulled his front door open and stared up at James.
The slim ratroach was less injured than James still was. When Keeka had remade his body, he’d shown an absurd amount of trust in how he’d taken away a lot of the ways a ratroach had to hurt people. No sharp edges, no corrosive blood, no spines, even his teeth had been modified to be more in line with a true omnivore. But trust didn’t mean he was stupid, and he’d done nothing to interfere with just how fast ratroaches could heal from damage. Apparently it hurt a lot, because of course it did, but it also meant that since getting shot through the throat hadn’t killed him, he had already shed the worst of the injury.
He still didn’t want to talk too much though; his voice wasn’t fully back to normal. But he greeted James as the human arrived. “Y-you’re here!” He rasped excitedly, repressing a wince. “Are you okay?”
”Doing better.” James answered softly as he passed Keeka to get inside and had the door shut and locked behind him on familiar reflex. “You’re looking good yourself!” He smiled as Keeka started to turn a shade of emerald, adding, “For someone who got shot, not… I mean, you are still cute, I just… holy shit I didn’t even get a full sentence into this conversation before I fell apart.”
”Don’t mind.” Keeka’s grin was a blue glowing arc in the dim light of his living room, though he moved around turning on lamps as James came in, revealing a space that was in a bit of disarray. Not messy, exactly, but James was familiar with the process where something would get set down along with the mental promise to ‘put it away properly later’ and then that just wouldn’t happen for long enough that things became static. There was a little brass urn thing with a cluster of purple orbs in it, a pair of framed posters leaning up against the arm of the couch that hadn’t been hung up yet, and at least three pairs of headphones hanging on different pieces of furniture. “Glad you’re here.” Keeka said, before choking back a cough and scrambling into the kitchen to get himself water.
James started to reach after the ratroach, before smiling as Keeka deftly flipped a cup into one of his paws, filled it, and drank the entire thing in a single motion. He was still clearly injured and hurting, but it seemed like that wasn’t even close to enough to slow down the energy that he’d picked up from his adaptation to his new body and also his time healing with the Order. “Yeah, sorry I didn’t come by earlier? I mean, I know you said that… we should give Arrush space and everything. But I still feel bad about it.”
Keeka made a single sharp squeak at him that actually got a surprised jump out of James. “No!” He added, trying to breathe in a way that didn’t make the inside of his throat itch, which he’d been failing at all day. “He did need space. But now he needs to stop needing space.”
”I don’t think that’s…” James didn’t know how to explain why he thought that was wrong, but it felt like the kind of thing where Keeka might not actually know what Arrush needed, and maybe James should have been paying more attention to the people who were so new and didn’t deserve to get hurt like this. But he didn’t want to say that out loud, partly because Keeka did actually know Arrush far closer than James did, no matter how much James liked them both, and also because they’d clearly proven they could both make their own choices. So instead, he let his words trail off before giving a weak smile. “Yeah, okay.” He settled on.
Keeka seemed to sense that James was still definitely worried, and he let his own anxiety slip back in as he looked down the short all to the door of the bedroom he shared with his love. “Also… also he w-won’t come out.” He said in a thin voice, like he was forcing himself to stay as upbeat as possible. “But you’re here. He’ll listen to you.”
”…he isn’t listening to you?” He asked Keeka, alarmed and concealing it badly.
”He…” Keeka set the cup he was holding into his apartment’s sink, the glass rattling slightly as his paw shook. “He can’t believe me. He thinks I’ll say anything to make him feel better. And I would. But he thinks he’s broken all over again, and I’m not good at telling people they aren’t.” Keeka ran his right two paws across his angled muzzle, scratching at his chitin as he tried to remember to breathe steadily. “And… he’s worried about you.”
James raised his eyebrows, the motion no longer hurting that much, even though his eyepatch covered most of one of them. “I’m fine though.” He said. And really, that was reassuring; if Arrush was worried about him, that was at least one thing James could fix by just being here.
”N-no.” Keeka’s small bark of laughter was darkly humored. “He’s worried you won’t like him.”
”Well that’s dumb.” James couldn’t keep from saying.
Keeka made a waving shrug with his lower two hands. ”I kept telling him. Also he can probably hear you.” He tilted his muzzle at the bedroom door.
”Then he can know I think that’s dumb.” James doubled down.
He’d hoped to get a laugh from Keeka, but instead he just got a shake of the head, the smaller ratroach scratching idly at the black fur on his bare arms. “He isn’t interested in eating or sleeping or even sex. Deb said he n-needed time. But I’m worried, and… can you talk to him?”
”Of course.” James said, followed by a surprised oof as Keeka lunged forward to grab him in a hug. “Also next time… if there is a next time… feel free to ask me sooner, you know? I wasn’t doing anything important.” He shook his head as Keeka muttered something about everything being important into his shirt. “Alright. I’ll go see how he’s doing.”
“Thank you.” Keeka squeaked, pressing against James tightly before letting go and slinking back into the kitchen to get more water.
James headed down the short apartment hall. Their bedroom door had a small wooden sign on it, hung with twine and carved with words that had been burned into it. It was simple, just their names, and it seemed a little weird since they lived in their own apartment. But despite that, James found it cute, and he knocked just under it. “Hey Arrush. You awake?”
There was the sound of motion from inside the room. James hadn’t wanted to just barge in, that was a stern violation of his rule that people’s private spaces in their homes were theirs unless he got invited in. Or if he was spying on a cult. Which… seemed to happen a lot actually. But that was a secondary concern to the sound of the bedroom’s door rattling as something pressed against it, and then a voice that sounded very much like Arrush saying “No.”
”…You’re pretty ambulatory for a guy who’s asleep.” James offered casually. “Keeka, does Arrush sleepwalk?”
”No. But! He does sometimes…” Keeka trailed off, a tinge of green around his eyes and a distant smile on his face. “…you’ll find out eventually.” He finished, looking away from James.
”Okay ominous.” James shook his head. “Arrush, I just wanna make sure you’re okay.” He said. “I know you got hurt pretty badly, and that Deb had to… that you might look different. But I don’t care, and I wanna be sure you’re alright, okay?”
”I’m fine.” The voice was steady, more clear than Arrush’s usual hoarse rasp was, and almost musical. “Please leave.” But it still held a deep uncertainty and fear.
James was not going to do that. “In a bit. But I really do wanna check on you.”
”I’m fine.” The words held more heat than he’d ever heard from Arrush. “You don’t need to… to…” Arrush’s new voice finally broke, and there was a thump followed by a scrape as he slid down against the door to thump again into the floor. “You don’t need to be here.” He added with thick words.
Pulling his hand back from the door, James took a deep breath, and then turned and sat down in the hallway, feeling the door shift slightly in the frame as he set his own back against it. He couldn’t exactly feel Arrush on the other side, but he could feel the door move when he heard Arrush shift, and he knew his boyfriend was there. “I should have been here earlier, and I’m sorry.” He said. “Maybe this would be easier if I’d just been with you when you woke up. But I do want to be here. Of course I do.” He gave a blind reassurance.
There was a long silence, long enough that Keeka started idly pacing back and forth at the end of the hall and giving James a dizzy feeling just from watching him pace.
Eventually Arrush found his voice and spoke, partly stumbling over words not because of his body this time but because of how he felt. “I hate this.” His voice, muffled through the wooden barrier of the door, was still clearly audible to James’ enhanced hearing. “What I am. I was supposed to… I was going to… I should be something else. And now I’m trapped. It was easy to be trapped when it was my choice, but now it’s not. I… let everyone down. Ffffucked it all up.” The last words were said with a wet sniff and the shaking impression of a sob.
The idea that Arrush was despondent because of his body was something James hadn’t really put together properly. He’d understood it was because of the fight and because of his treatment, but he’d been tunnel visioned on the wrong thing, and hadn’t understood. Hadn’t really processed the fact that Arrush couldn’t use the shaper substance again, and whatever Deb had left him as to save his life, that was it. For now anyway.
And he’d been here, without James, without anyone else but Keeka, worrying that he’d failed them all because his body was going to be wrong somehow.
James had the intrusive thought to call Arrush an idiot, and he bit down on that hard. Because while that was sort of what he was thinking, that was almost never what someone actually needed to hear. So instead, he composed his thoughts, and then started to speak.
”I know you’re feeling off balance, and confused, and hurt.” James said, staring down at his hands and the one new scar he’d restarted his collection with. “I don’t know if you feel like you should stay away from people, or if you’re punishing yourself, or if you’re just afraid of anyone reacting to you. And I guess I don’t really need to know. It’s not… it’s not what’s important to me.” He looked up to where Keeka was standing at the end of the hall, the slight little ratroach with his skirt bunched up in his paws seeming uncertain if he should be listening at all until James gave him a reassuring smile. “Arrush, I love you. I’m new at it, but to me, when I say that, it doesn’t mean I only love you if it’s convenient. I wasn’t expecting anything out of you; not with your life and certainly not with your changed body. You can’t disappoint me, or scare me away.” James took a heavy breath, and shifted forward, sore legs obediently pushing him upright. “I’ll never force anything out of you. But I want you to know that when you’re ready, I’ll be here for you, no matter how long it takes. I just also want you to know that you don’t have to think there’s some required time before it’s okay. Literally whenever your ready, whether that’s next week or right now, I’ll-“
Abruptly, there was a fumbled scratching on the other side of the door. And then a loud click, followed by the handle being frantically yanked down. The smooth wood of the door was pulled open in a short motion before hitting Arrush’s leg where he was still on the floor, one of his arms fumbling upward to get the obstruction out of the way.
He looked up at James from where he was sprawled partly on his hands and knees on the bedroom’s floor. His face was streaked with drying lines of glowing blue that ran in channels down the chitin and fur of his muzzle; he’d been crying, a lot, but all that James could think was that it wasn’t sizzling and burning. Dressed in just a pair of ratroach fitted sweatpants, it was clear that his body was exactly as asymmetrical as it had been before. Three extra arms that split off from him, from the back of his torso or the one from near his shoulder, one of them still in the process of regrowing from having been vaporized. Ridged plates of asymmetrical chitin that fused with his hide in awkward places making him look like a patchwork golem of parts.
All of his eyes seemed like they wanted to watch James for a reaction, but that he was terrified to actually see how the human would respond to him. So he stared at the wall by James’ head, and spoke in his healed voice that sounded like a distant string instrument. “I can’t change anymore, and I am still a monster, and no one cares, and… and…”
That was worth cutting him off over. “Arrush, you haven’t been a monster the whole time I’ve known you.” James said, faltering in a nervous half step forward. “If you don’t like how you look, then we’ll fucking figure something out. But if you think that I needed you to be conventionally attractive to the average human, that’s… I mean, come on. You’ve been cute the whole time I’ve been dating you. That’s how my brain works.”
“That’s what I said!” Keeka chimed in. “You have always been beautiful. And now you don’t melt things, so you are more practically beautiful and the couch is safe!”
“…I don’t know how reassuring that is, but-“ James started to say, before Arrush, chest heaving with sobs he didn’t understand the source of or know how to stop, lunged off the floor in a fluid and painless motion, and grabbed him in a crushing hug. The towering ratroach still wearing most of the body that had been made and refined repeatedly to kill things - to kill James specifically actually - holding on with careful claws and crying his eyes out. And James just wrapped his arms around Arrush, motioning frantically with his hand for Keeka to join him and to let Arrush let his fears and anxieties out in the hope that maybe things would be better afterward.
He stood there in the doorway with them for a while, until eventually Arrush sniffed and found that he just couldn’t cry anymore, and that he felt a little silly.
”Hi.” James said with a soft smile and a hand running down the back of Arrush’s neck.
”…Hi.” Arrush whispered, finding speech to be far too easy.
”Keeka says you haven’t been eating properly, and I feel obliged to tell you that somehow, our kitchen now has a bakery in its upstairs, and that there is some really fucking good fresh bread and a chicken soup available right now.” James ran his hands down Arrush’s back, fingers scratching lightly through fur and across chitin alike. “Would you like to come with us and get lunch?”
Arrush had thought that he wouldn’t. That he would hate to be seen at all, that he wanted to be alone forever. That he should be alone forever. But to his own surprise, the prospect of leaving the bedroom didn’t seem so bad anymore. And soup did sound nice. At least, his stomach thought so; the sensation of hunger without the burning acidic pain that came with it would take some getting used to.
He looked at James and Keeka in turn, his longer term boyfriend giving him an expectant and hopeful stare that he quickly tried to hide with a small eep, while the human just remained close and offering comfort. “…I would like soup.” He said in the voice he was also going to have to get used to being him.
”Excellent!” James smiled and stepped back, looking him up and down with a smile that was painfully genuine. “Now. I know this might be too soon, but? An upside? All your shirts are going to still fit. That’s gotta count for something!”
”…You are the worst at this.” Arrush told him with a nod.
And there, he had told his first lie with this new voice. Because while the base fact of what James had said didn’t count for anything… it being James that said it did. The undercurrent of love that ran through every word that both his partners said counted. Made him feel like he counted.
Arrush found one of those shirts that fit, and went with them to eat.