“This tape will self destruct. Over a period of several hundred years. Entropy comes for us all. Good luck.” -Andrew Cownden, Dice Friends Fang & Claw-

_____

“This way, this way!” Momo moved down the hallway with a lot more fluid grace than she had possessed a week ago.

James followed in her exuberant wake, glad that she had been bullied into shaper substance physics therapy by El and Deb working in alliance, but wishing she could maybe slow it down just a bit.

He was healing nicely, and was almost ready to go back out on some kind of paladin operation that wasn’t just him sneaking into easy delve teams. But he didn’t want to dodge between the people and storage boxes and various extra objects that lined the hallways of the Research basement. He wanted to walk at a normal speed, and trade small talk with the camraconda and human engineers and testers that he was only sort of familiar with as individuals.

”She seems excited.” Paper-And-Words commented with a slight narrowing of its camera eye. “You should follow. I must return to using furniture.”

”Yeah, have a good one.” James sighed. “Ping me if you figure out what that chair does.”

The camraconda nodded like a bow, and it and James both moved on. And James was rapidly beginning to feel like he should just kind of spend more free time wandering around down here, because it was really cool to see the slow evolution of Research into a professional operation complete with employee information posters hanging on the wall. And these ones, unlike the ones James remembered from past jobs or the Office itself, weren’t random, had decent layouts and bold keywords, and provided real useful information. It was neat.

He was trying to speed read one about proper procedure for transporting anything that broke like orbs when he almost ran into someone moving a hand cart with some kind of gas canister in it down toward the elevator. James apologized to the exhausted looking guy, and paid more attention, shaking his head as he picked up his own pace and tried to keep up with Momo. Which might have been a mistake.

At least she kept hopping back and forth on her toes when she got to corners, waiting for James like he was the slow player avatar in a classically bad escort quest. “Keep up old man!” She yelled back at him, reinforcing that exact thought in James’ head.

”Momo… slow the fuck… down.” James caught his breath as he chased after her, leaning on the corner of the concrete wall and being too out of breath at this point to even flinch when one of the local potted plants drooped a vine down behind him to tap him on the shoulder. “Not now Tyrannadonny. I’m… plotting a murder.”

The potted plant, less potted now and more a sprawling mass of vines that hung out on the overhead ventilation pipes down here, gave him a sympathetic pat before retreating and leaving him to it.

When she finally got to the room she’d been using, and James followed her inside, he felt like he’d run about a mile, and he was definitely feeling the lack of stamina he had when his life wasn’t in danger. Endurance was such a weird stat, he wished it worked more for him when he wasn’t bleeding.

”Behold!” Momo said, not giving him a single moment to rest. She threw her arms wide, the fuzzy and statically charged material of her black bathrobe hanging from her wrists and making her look like a wizard about to turn someone into an undesirable reptile. “My grand penguin!”

James took a few deep breaths, chest rising and falling with the ache of healing muscles, before he rose up to his normal posture and dusted his hands off. ”Your… magnum opus?” He asked, looking past Momo to where a surprisingly large red orb totem had been assembled, looking like a solar system model if the solar system had a few hundred extra planets and no sense of self control. “Okay, I get that reference, but why do you get that reference? You’re a baby.”

”I’m twenty six!”

”A decade younger than me-“

”That’s not even true! I know how old you are, because of… uh… totem stuff probably.” Momo worried at the inside of her cheek, not sure why she did know that piece of James-based trivia. “Anyway I had to clear this room out to use it, and it was one of those basement rooms that spawned like this was a real basement. So it had a bunch of storage boxes in it, and one of them had a ton of comic books.” She gave him a proud look. “I also took a vacation, I just spent mine reading Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County.”

James gave an appreciating nod. “Okay, that’s cool.” He agreed. “So what’s your opus and why does it look like a totem several times the size of anything I’m comfortable being nearby?”

Momo rolled her eyes at him, finally dropping her arms and feeling rather put out by the lack of excitement. “It’s a red totem.” She said, trying to keep in mind that James often bantered with people this way, and he probably didn’t intend to make her feel like she’d been wasting her life. Time. Wasting her time. “But it’s cooler. I made it cooler.”

”Is it going to kill me?” He eyed it suspiciously as he shut the room’s door behind him, looking at where Momo had marked circles on the floor in duct tape; two of them focused on the base of the large totem itself with a gap in the middle, and then four other smaller circles that were placed around the outside that currently had chairs in them.

”Holy shit, no one has any faith in me.” Momo muttered, a little too loud. “No it’s not gonna kill you. It’s… I made a calculator. That’s it.” Her shoulders slumped, but she still moved to wheel out the big standing whiteboard that she’d covered in math. She’d asked one of the Anesh to do it, but he’d said something annoyed and British when her totem wouldn’t do more than the most basic algebra, so she’d done it herself. “It’s also targeted, which is why it’s big I guess. Only broadcasts to those circles. Oh, don’t get close to it.” She shrugged. “I dunno. It makes it easier to absorb red orbs. That’s it. Sorry, I thought this was cool.”

James watched her as an uncomfortable tension built in the room, eyes widening with sympathy. “Momo, are you doing alright? Shit, I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to…”

”Yeah, no, it’s fine.” Momo waved him off rapidly, not turning around from her math boards. “Just a bad anxiety day.”

”I’m not trying to shit on your totem work.” James told her bluntly. “A lot of what you make is the closest we get to magic magic around here.”

”But?” Momo turned with a small smile, the motion concealing that she wiped the corner of her eye with the edge of her bathrobe sleeve.

James tried for a little banter. “But also your totems cause brain damage sometimes?” He ventured.

Momo signed, swinging an arm around just so she could feel herself move, and nearly wiping half the whiteboard’s words out with a careless flick of her wrist. “I guess.” She said morosely. “Kinda feel bad about that too, cause, like, I’ve been working on it. But yeah, I’m fine. Bad anxiety day I guess.”

”I’m sorry, that always fucking sucks.” James offered his condolences. “I’ll try to be- no, I can do better than that. I’ll be less of a dick. Full stop. So, this makes absorbing reds easier?”

”Oh, yeah. It’s basically that thing that Juan and Ink-And-Key figured out where you can hypnotize someone and make them do math problems, except this is easier and faster. I was trying to make one that would put a whole book in your head.“ As soon as Momo started talking about her plans she immediately reminded both James and herself why people were constantly worried about her totem projects. “Safely, obviously!” She protested the unspoken question. “I thought it would be useful for the Utah dungeon spells!”

”Oh, yeah, I could see that. They do seem to categorically count as ‘books’, anyway. At least as far as that blue power to organize books is concerned.” James huffed once. “Yeah, maybe keep trying for that?”

”I will. Nik said I should be careful and not ‘cause an extinction event’ or something.” she put air quotes around the words, scowling at an imagined Nik. “Anyway this does technically help. We have a few copied reds - not a lot but a few - and two of them actually help with the spellbooks. It’s stupid, but if you hit them with certain interrogations, it lets you ‘read’ the spell faster. Like, seconds faster, but whatever.”

James shrugged, willing to take a win where he could get it. Seconds added up after all, especially if these were things they were going to be folding into the Order’s tactical doctrine. “That’s neat, but the spell totem would be neater. But, like… be safe about it? I don’t know how you test this stuff, but please be careful.”

”It’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m the digital team; they’re working on a stable arcane AI - an AAI if you will - and one of their actual target goals is getting it spell slots. So watch out for that!” Momo dismissed his concerns, the manic giggle she gave absolutely not helping her case, or instilling faith in the programmers working on digital life. “Oh, also? Name the fucking Utah dungeons already! There’s two of them, I assume the books come from the plant one, and I wanna name one of them! This is important!” She stomped softly, the sound of her foot slapping on the floor making James squint as he noticed she was barefoot in the one part of the Lair where that was probably actively dangerous. “To… to me. It matters to me.”

“Really?” He asked. “Like, do you have ideas?”

She hadn’t expected to get this far, and nothing had popped into her head so far, but that didn’t deter Momo. “Not yet! Look, I didn’t get to name the Climb cause I got out-heroiced on that one by a teenager and the power of love or some shit, but I wanna name one of these! Rho doesn’t care and Ink-And-Key said I can have his vote! You got to name too many already, so I’ll split the naming job with Arrush and Keeka! That sounds good, right?”

”What about Anesh?”

”Anesh is British, he’s culturally named half the planet!” Momo threw her arms up, anxiety temporarily put aside in favor of being indignant about colonialism.

James wasn’t gonna let that one go without comment though. “Anesh’s heritage, in case the name didn’t tip you off, is Indian… soooo…” He met Momo’s eyes, clearing his throat. “I think maybe we should give him the option and not talk about cultural theft?”

”Oh. Right. I forgot.”

”How?”

”I dunno, he was talking about cricket earlier and I kinda don’t… uh… look at people that often? And I’ve heard the name Anesh so much it’s easy to not think about where it’s from or anything.” Momo sighed deeply and dropped into one of the chairs she’d set up, apparently either showing that the totem was currently off or that she didn’t care that she was getting calculator answers in her head. “I just wanna name a dungeon.” She admitted.

”I’ll see what I can do.” James shook his head, smiling. “Good thought on the spellbook thing though. I guess we have more of those now. I should really go check on that?”

”You haven’t? Come on.” Momo groaned at him. “Even I’m not that lazy. And you stole the fucking things! You should be plundering the shit out of our new library!”

“…Just tell me what we got.” James said, sitting in the chair one arc from her, suddenly knowing the answer to a lot of algebra equations, and standing up again to move the chair all in one fluid motion. “Or I guess I could look it up?”

”Yeah, it’s all in the database now. Or the ones we can use anyway. Uh… we’re only using the ones we can verify, since none of us have level three or up slots.” Momo rubbed the back of her neck, massaging away the pain from where she’d slammed into the edge of her bed after falling out of it when she’d tried to test one of the level three spells. “Anyway…”

James was already scanning the list through his skulljack braid, his comfort with wearing the piece of augmenting tech having grown to the point that it reminded him of when he used to wear glasses. “I’m really annoyed.”

”…at me? Again?” Momo was confident enough that she was joking that it didn’t bother her.

”No? No. No I’m annoyed that these people obviously have the ability to copy spellbooks.” James waved a hand in the air as he kicked his feet up onto one of the other chairs, careful not to get anywhere near the totem’s exclusion zone as marked on the floor. “We have a satisfyingly square sixty four copies of the stupid brainwashing spell. That’s so many.”

Momo shrugged. ”Gonna risk sounding like half the nerds down here, and say that it could just be that this dungeon makes copies of stuff way more often. Actually I’m also annoyed! But I’m annoyed cause I wanted a hundred weird spells, not ten weird spells and sixty copies of the same shit spell.” She slid her legs up onto the chair under her, leaning forward to glare at her totem. “Been talking to some of the kids. They’re real fucked up, you know? And it’s pretty much all on that one stupid fucking book.”

”Fair thing to be annoyed at.” James tsked in consideration as he kept reading. “Appointed Arrival seems like it’s move person with extra steps?”

”And less organ damage. And technically it’s a single step so…” Momo nodded, then froze. “Wait, shit, was that a pun?! Sorry, start over so I can laugh!”

James shook his head. “It’s too late now. Moving on. I’m not seeing the fireball, or the ‘turn human into butter’ spellbooks? That sucks. What’s Jubilant Crossing?”

Before he could answer his own question, Momo was talking. “That one’s cool! It makes you feel what someone else is feeling. Like, tactile, not emotional. Great for… uh… long range communication.”

”I don’t even think I’m gonna pretend to believe that’s your interest in it.” James knew this, because he knew what he’d use that for. “Ah, there’s the one that converts waste plastic into gold. Weird conditions I guess. Why do some of these have warning notes by the levels? How do I open these with the… how do I middle click with the skulljack? Dammit, I need to update this.” He grumbled to himself, sitting up as if better posture would help. It didn’t.

Momo knew though, which was helpful. He should use other people as information repositories more often. “They’re ones that go up in level when you put too many pluses on ‘em. Can’t get too plussy with the level two or it’ll melt your brain!”

”Please never say ‘plussy’ again.”

”You’re not my dad.”

”Good, I’d be a terrible parent.” James tried to read the rest of the list, ignoring names and looking at the descriptions of cantrips, many of them useless even by Order standards.

Momo rolled off her chair, landing on all fours before springing up. “You sure? Morgan’s doing fine.”

”I am barely a parent figure to Morgan. Though maybe I should be. I could… be better about a lot of things.” James huffed out a breath. “Okay. I’ll look over the rest of these later and I guess see if I need to redo my whole build or something. Oh, the coin? That’s not listed here.” He swept his eyes across nothing, reflexively moving like he was reading while the words were all in his head.

Momo knew what he was talking about yet again. “The one with the ruby bit? Yeah, it’s… meh. Level one, it adds a ‘ma’ tag to the slot for some reason we will literally never know, and if you keep using the same spell in it, eventually it auto-pluses it. But you can’t select these things, I think? No one knows how to slot spells into arbitrary slots or anything. Also how come you’re okay with me saying ‘slot’ over and over but not plussy?”

”…I am leaving.” James announced. “You horrible little goblin.” He added in the dryest voice he could manage.

”Remember to tell me what dungeon I get to name!” Momo yelled after him. “And fix your ass so we can go check out the park!”

_____

In the AM hours that were slightly offset from when James actually wanted to be awake, a familiar doorway opened itself up to him and let him back into the world that had reshaped his whole reality.

Officium Mundi hadn’t changed. Or at least, not that James had seen. It was still huge beyond the Order’s ability to meaningfully transit and scout the whole place. It was also still one of the more static dungeons; stuff would sometimes fix itself or be replaced when left alone long enough, and new traps or the odd turn in a hallway would pop up, but maps mostly stayed stable. Unlike the Sewer, that added a new forked path every week these days, or the Climb that had its own bizarre shifting terrain going on, Officium Mundi was steady and boring.

Well. It was an endless expanse of cubicles reshaped in a thousand variations, spread out across hundreds of miles or more, and filled with bizarre life and often more bizarre magic. But it was steady at least. When it wasn’t messing with them.

The false horizon, normally in the corner of his vision, was easier for James to ignore with only one eye. He really was planning to repair his sight, hopefully before he got used to this state of things. But shaper substance was limited in supply, he needed to learn about eyeballs, there were ratroaches in line before him, and he probably had a couple other excuses in there too. But he would do it. Maybe get himself a tail while he was at it.

The tail would serve him poorly for delves like this. They were biking into the dungeon, which felt so wrong. Not just because it was a hostile environment, but because the whole of Officium Mundi felt like it was inside. And for all the weird stuff that James had been doing in his life, he still had a lot of little constants that he subconsciously believed without really knowing why. Things like “bicycles do not go on carpet”.

They were using mountain bikes for this trip, because it turned out, the people who made bikes agreed with James in general about what surfaces they were and weren’t made for. A small detachment of delvers heading on a straight line deep into the dungeon, out to where the maps became more blank space than known elements. Not to the really dangerous places, but far enough that they might see something new.

James was biking while maintaining two camera drones overhead, watching around them for motion and not putting too much more focus into it. If anything large tried to ambush them, the party was prepared to turn that fight around. Hunting for green orbs was absolutely something they were interested in, since more information about those was coming in now. But also he was just scanning for unique things that they could check out as a diversion.

The group didn’t talk much. These were delvers James wasn’t actually familiar with; he’d just joined up with the group, they were all either people who had been hired that he’d only met once or twice, or they were rescues from Status Quo. Six other people, and they didn’t talk much. Though that was honestly just because they were good at delving and weren’t idiots. Officium Mundi didn’t tolerate noise, no matter how familiar people got with it. And even James knew to keep the banter to a low volume.

Guns were not a get out of jail free card here. They might save you from a single tough fight, as a last resort, but then you had to deal with every strider and tapeier and alligator clip within fifty cubicles. And it turned out, for some of the smaller life in here, there could be a fucking horrifying number of them in that space.

James was tough. James had only been getting tougher. Endurance at the third level, Agility at the first, enough Velocity to cast a half dozen spells and enough Breath to cast a half dozen useful spells, purple orbs giving so many small boosts to his body, and the ability to enhance a handful of different things just by being near people he liked on top of that. And he’d been training in all of it, getting better and better at being an action protagonist.

James did not think he stood a fucking chance against a thousand angry staplers. He did not think he would ever have a chance against a thousand angry staplers, and if he ever did, then he’d probably be kinda afraid of himself. Maybe he could manage against a hundred. Maybe. But when they were mixed in with the larger life, even the medium sized stuff like maul carts, the odds of survival felt long at best.

So guns were a problem. Yelling was a problem. Their best bet was to move fast, and leave anything that might be alerted by the sound of all their bikes far behind. They’d stop when they reached one of the known calm spots.

And from there, it was exactly what James had promised Anesh and Alanna. A normal, simple, exploratory delve. With no going too deep, or taking stupid risks. By the numbers and clean.

As far as they’d ever know.

After biking at least three miles down the main cleared corridor that the Order had started with, James took some time to chat with the other delvers while they started to explore in earnest.

He learned that two of them were actually a couple right around the time the group was moving through a section of cubicles where every single surface was covered in sticky notes. They’d started dating before joining the Order, and the sticky notes seemed to have been propagating from a desk lamp that had occasional spores drifting out of it for about the same length of time.

The sticky notes didn’t end up being anything threatening, so they let the whole place continue along with being a papery fungal bloom.

He had a conversation with one of the older guys that James had mentally filed as ‘an adult’ about fishing. It was prompted by them coming across a channel in the floor, like a steep culvert, that was full of smoothly flowing black ink. The team mapped about two hundred meters up and down the bank of it, seeing that it wove deep into a dense tangle of cubicles and might be something like a ‘river’. They didn’t find any fish or other living things in the ink, but they did get ambushed by a tentacled copy machine; the first one James had seen in a long time.

The dungeon species might not have been as endangered as they’d thought. Though it was slightly more endangered by the time the delvers were done with the combat. They harvested the orbs from that creature and the half dozen shellaxies that had come to snap at their legs during the battle, and moved on. The biggest takeaway for James was that he was a lot more educated on trout species by the end of it.

Gradually, they got more comfortable around him, which was a thing he had been too stupid to realize was something that needed to happen. At least two of these people had been locked up and chained by a prisoner infomorph in the Status Quo jail, and they remembered James pretty directly. The others had heard of him, or at the very least had read something he’d written for the Order’s operations manual, or knew of something he’d accomplished.

That kinda felt good, but also it meant it took a while for the conversation to really relax. When it did though, the whole group spent some time chatting about skill orbs while they explored a strange tilted cubicle tower that was kind of half-supported by one of those lobby staircases that didn’t go anywhere.

The tower itself was oddly normal, as far as the dungeon went. The view from the slanted windows felt disorienting, sure, and it was certainly odd that most of the furniture hadn’t slid to the lower side, but it didn’t actually contain anything they hadn’t seen before. It did have one of those phone vines all over the ceiling on one floor though, and they agreed to not try answering it as they poked through desks and filing cabinets, and talked about their first skill ranks.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Which was how James learned two very important facts. One; there was apparently a betting pool about what his first skill rank was, and absolutely no one had ‘phone book templating’ on their list. Some of them apparently thought he’d gotten some kind of super special skill, and one of the other delvers had actively argued with him when he’d tried to explain that no one had ever once, in his experience, gotten a good first skill. Which led into fact two; the woman who’d been a Status Quo prisoner had gotten a useful first skill.

She felt pretty guilty about it too, especially after James had just joked about how everyone’s first skill orb was something they’d probably never bother copying. It had been one of the yellows dropped by a particularly mean potted plant during her first delve, and her group - half of them among the people here - had split the rewards out of spite for the thing that they’d cut their teeth on. And she’d gotten two ranks in electrical repair.

The fact that there were so few extra words attached made James comically jealous, but he did make sure to tell her he was hamming it up and not serious at all. That would have been a cool orb to have on hand, but there were three different electricians who were full time members of the Order now, and at least one of them had a skulljack. They’d make that particular magic themselves soon enough.

By the time the conversation ended, at least one person felt a lot better about their random orb gains, and the party had discovered that the tower had almost nothing in it except for the husk of a camraconda corpse on one of the higher floors. They also found a little wire pen basket that maybe produced endless pens or something like that, so that was neat.

James also took one of the small yellow orbs that the group shared, just for fun. The vast majority of their collection from the delve’s skirmishes and discoveries would be getting turned in, because while Officium Mundi did its best to fragment skills down into mostly useless bits, mostly wasn’t entirely, and there were often things worth copying over and over once they discovered them.

[+1 Skill Rank : Geology]

He let the alien thought fill his focus, and then linger. And he did that because James was waiting for the rest of the words. When they didn’t come, he pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the slight awkward sensation of shifting his new eyepatch around by accident. That was a skill that would have been useful to copy, probably. Too late now though.

The acme of the delve’s path was when they found a particularly dense cluster of cubicles that had enchanted programs on their computers. Traveling light and not wanting to plunder twenty different PCs of varying shapes and sizes, the group opted to just check all of them once they realized that it was likely that all the desktops in the area had something on them. The increased security was the biggest clue; not just layers of odd passwords but also physically thicker cubicle walls, and half the places fully concealed behind the beige walls, requiring them to climb over to get inside.

The whole area was still by the little ink river, so they parked their bikes in position to make a clean getaway, and got to work, the acrid chemical smell filling the air alongside hanging paper vines and the occasional distant sound of a strider’s clicking.

James didn’t bother trying to identify the files he was moving over to his pocket full of USB sticks. But he did at one point run across what looked like a saved webpage that was some kind of social media advertisement. It invited people to a church newly built by a religion that never was, and it was… oddly boring.

He found himself less interested in the things like this that came out of Officium Mundi these days. Some stuff, like the alternate reality songs or episodes of nonexistent TV shows, that was always super cool to him. But this kind of weird wiki entry he’d lost a lot of interest in. In contrast to this, James had a skill rank in cathedral demolition; a skill he’d never used, but still had roots in his brain. And that skill provided a lot of very odd, very specific trivia. But unlike reading these dungeon made files, he found it really really cool.

Because it was real, he decided. This stuff, it was just noise. It was the dungeon doing worldbuilding exercises with no end goal. He wouldn’t be able to go out and visit the place it talked about, it wasn’t a part of this world or his home planet. And unlike finding an mp3 file of a disco version of Paint It Black, this didn’t even give him something to enjoy for its own sake.

In a way, it felt like he’d lost something that had been important to him when he’d first found the dungeon. A bit of his personality that had changed when he wasn’t looking. But also, it gave him something to think about while he searched through desk drawers for if there was a password written down anywhere easy, and that little distraction was important as it let him tune out the two other members of the delve team who had started arguing about how good puzzle games were.

They ran out of USB sticks. It would have been a lot easier if the blue orb enchanted programs actually played nice enough to be on the same storage medium without breaking, but unfortunately, they had to live in a world where magic was obtuse and stupid sometimes.

The bike ride back out was slower paced, and took a few diversions to complete and verify parts of the growing map of the Office dungeon in this area. Having the whole map constantly available to view through his skulljack made James feel a little too much like he was in a video game, but it still felt cool to know he’d be contributing directly to turning some of those blank areas into clean lines and biome notes.

He said goodbye to the delve team as they turned in their collection of orbs, and since he was dropping by the Lair before going home, he offered to take a load of copied cargo back with him. Talking to the Anesh running the copy ritual tonight also got a couple early goodies foisted on him, including two more tiny Horizon gears that upped his Velocity storage to ten total, and a skill rank in jogging which felt like it would be passively handy for the rest of his life.

When he left the dungeon, he did perform one small personal ritual. Carefully and slowly checking his pockets, backpack, and the back of his shirt. Just in case, as had become something of a commonality in his life, someone from inside Officium Mundi had decided they wanted a ride with him out into Earth.

But the night ended with no life deciding it wanted to be a loot drop, and just a quiet set of goodbyes from new companions who were part of something bigger than James ever expected. It felt nice. And now he could honestly tell Anesh and Alanna and anyone else who happened to put too high of a priority on his personal safety that he was fine. Six or so miles of biking and another mile or two on foot, and the sore flesh of his injuries barely ached at all beyond what it already had. And his impaired depth perception had barely come up! He was basically back at full capacity already.

And if he could sell his partners on that, maybe he could get them to come with him on his next exploratory delve in the Sewer.

_____

“Yeah, sounds good man.” James spoke into the phone call without using his physical voice. “I don’t think there’s a problem with you coming back, there’s plenty to do and I know Morgan is excited to see you again. Sucks it didn’t work out, but hey, could be worse. We’ll see you when you’re back.” He listened to a quick reply, and then let the line go dead as he finished the climb up the stairs to his apartment.

His apartment. James shook his head more at that thought than at the call from Simon. The poor guy seemed to have oopsed into some kind of international intrigue, and in an effort to avoid being aggressively hired by a national government, wanted to head back to the Order. James hadn’t really set a limit on what a new paladin’s errancy was, but he trusted the trio to figure out for themselves when they were ready, or alternate for him to hear about some bullshit and have to dramatically show up to tell them they were ready. And somehow, Simon getting involved in a blackmail plot that involved a national border and dungeon wildlife roaming the Earth was less of a mental speedbump than the fact that he was at the door to his apartment.

James wasn’t home often enough. Or when he was home it was to shower, sleep, and eat something that happened to be in the fridge. This apartment used to be somewhere deeply important to him; his little bit of freedom in a world that sucked. And now it was just a stopover between way more interesting things.

He blinked and turned to stare out at the parking lot. The row of unassailable blackberry bushes between here and the little hiking trail he’d just gotten back from a walk on. A dozen cars, one of which was technically his even if he hadn’t driven it in months. And all of it baking in the sun, a summer that was the hottest on record currently doing its best to ignite his whole city, apartment included.

”I think Zhu’s dreams are leaking.” James muttered to himself, holding back from mentally prodding at the sleeping navigator. He was getting better and better at syncing up with Zhu, but the infomorph needed real long term rest to fully heal up, and James was now trying to learn how to not constantly open up mental doors to his friend.

Opening the door and getting inside as quickly as possible to not let the heat in, James leaned against the dented door as scraped his shoes off, dropping his bag into the nearest armchair. “I’m back!” He announced.

“Did you die?” Sarah asked in a drawn out question from her place draped over the back of the couch. From the cushions in front of her, Auberdeen offered a sympathetic but listless heavy woof, her white furred body similarly sprawled.

”Yes.” James answered as he pulled a still mildly cold energy drink out of the bag and tossed it toward Sarah, his Aim letting him target even the bounce off the cushions to be perfectly placed without nailing his friend in the head by accident. “I regret to inform you that I am now a zombie. This causes me a great sadness, but I believe we will be able to move past it, as a community.”

Auberdeen sniffed the air in his direction, then woofed again and dropped her head back to her paws, having decided that her roommate wasn’t actually a member of the ranks of the dead.

”You wonk.” Sarah scrambled her arms forward to grab her drink while James filled Abuerdeen’s bowl with the special organic cranberry juice she liked. The hiss of the can opening filled the air, and Sarah moved to sit like a normal human while she drank “Ahhhhh. Perfect! Now my plans can continue.” She declared.

”You had plans?” James grinned at her as Auberdeen politely and precisely lapped at her juice, and he took a seat opposite the duo, spreading himself out on the plush chair that he and Alanna had bought from a Goodwill a decade ago, and letting the faux leather absorb the heat from his scorched shirt and hair. “I didn’t have plans. Plans don’t work in our business.”

Sarah set her can on the table and started idly flicking it with her fingernails, slowly building up to making a kind of tune. “Rufus has plans!” She reminded James. “Rufus has office hours, even. Office hours he is currently working, by the way. Oh, he said to tell you that… well, he didn’t use words, but he was waving a Magic card at me.”

”Was it Muldrotha?” James asked with exaggerated dread.

”…James we’ve been friends for twenty years.” Sarah told him, looking up from her attempts at making music to meet the eye of her best friend in the world. “You don’t even remember how many times I have failed to learn how to play Magic. And I know, that you know, that I super extra do not have a clue if the card was… Muldrotha?” She had already almost forgotten the name.

James nodded as enthusiastically as the heat allowed. “Correct! It probably was. Rufus wants me to go with him to commander night at the local game store, and I kinda sorta want to, because that would be really neat. But also I don’t… want to play against his deck.”

”What does Muldrotha - the name is growing on me - do?” Sarah asked.

”Stop everyone else from playing the game, usually.” James explained.

She leaned her head around the half empty energy drink can, peering over the collection of notes and orbs and dice and remote controls on their living room table to stare at James again. “Does anyone actually have fun playing Magic?”

”Oh, gods no.”

”You’re impossible.”

”Thank you!” James smiled as he stared at the ceiling. “But honestly, I really do wanna hang out with Rufus more. I wanna hang out with everyone. I want to stop taking week long trips into places where people try to kill me, and just enjoy the rest of August doing board game nights.” He gasped, turning in the seat. “We should do a board game night before I get shot at again!”

Sarah’s eyes briefly fluttered into the saddest forlorn stare that James had ever seen, a moment of deep despair from his friend before she was herself again. “Stop getting shot.” She ordered him. “Or I’ll… I’ll…!”

”You’ll think of something.” James said reassuringly.

Auberdeen nosed Sarah and gave a half woof, prompting her to nod. “Yeah, I’ll get Auberdeen to think of something!”

”Oh that’s much more threatening.” James admitted. “Also hey Aubs! You excited to go back to college?” The dog raised her head, long and smoothly groomed white fluff shifting as she considered the question before barking twice and laying back down. “Is that a no?” He didn’t get a response from her, so turned to Sarah to translate. “Sarah, is that yes or no? Does Auberdeen hate school now?” Auberdeen woofed again softly, but in a way that made it feel like she was grumbling at James.

Sarah shook her head in the closest thing to irate anger she’d ever express openly. ”I think she doesn’t like that she can’t express herself.” Sarah said quietly, petting the back of Auberdeen’s head as the large canine moved over into her lap. “You know, I think it explains why she’s the one that stuck around?”

James didn’t know. “I think you did the thing we do where you skipped a few logic steps.” He told Sarah with a smile.

”Oh!” She covered her mouth with her fingers for a second, before shaking her head. “I’m glad you remember that.”

”I remember that because we both still do that and do that to each other constantly.” James laughed openly. “That never stopped! We did that while I was in the middle of saving your life that one time!”

The small pout that Sarah replaced her hidden smile with still held all of her exuberance and verve. “Well fine, you butt. I mean… Aubs doesn’t want to get a skulljack or anything like that, right? And she’s not actually interested in the veterinary program, so I don’t think she wants shaper treatment, do you girl?” Auberdeen huffed a negative as Sarah kept petting her. “Yeah. So, she’s exactly like you. James.”

”Wait what did I do!” James grabbed a nearby pillow to hold defensively as Auberdeen made a noise like a wheezing snicker. “I have a skulljack! Auberdeen follow my example!”

”Your example, mister ‘look at me I can do an Odin impression’, is that you put off the same stuff!” Sarah challenged him. “You wouldn’t have a skulljack if you weren’t…” her voice caught for a second, “…like me. Oh and how long did you stall on the depression thing?”

”In my defense!” James held up an index finger like a professor about to make a point. “The depression potion would have turned me into an inhabitor!” That wasn’t really the right technical language, but he decided he was too hot to correct himself, even with the green orb slowly cooling the apartment.

Sarah glowered at him with friendly disappointment. “And the mundane antidepressants?” She asked.

”Okay shut up.”

“Never!” She cracked a smile, both of them making it clear they were goofing around and not actually being hostile. “But yeah, Aubs, you’re just a fluffy copy of James, aren’t you? Aren’t yoooooou?” She smushed the dog’s face, scratching behind her ears enough that Auberdeen wouldn’t get indignant.

James watched the interplay before rolling back to stare at the ceiling again. “Hey Aubs, is it weird that we… like… pet you like a dog?” He asked slowly. At the words, Sarah’s eyes got wide and her hands froze midway through running her fingernails through Auberdeen’s neck fur; an action that got the canine to whip her snout up in protest, nearly headbutting Sarah as she aggressively demanded the petting continue. “Alright cool, just checking.” James was satisfied with that answer.

“Of course she’s cool being petted, she’s just like you.” Sarah added with chaotic happiness, continuing to lavish Auberdeen with affection.

”I have no idea what that means.” James pursed his lips as he kept staring at the rough texture of his living room ceiling, assuming that his skin felt hot because of the weather and not because he was feeling oddly embarrassed.

Now it was Sarah’s turn to try to control her own unfamiliar awkwardness. “Oh, something about… dating Alanna, probably.” She buried her face in Auberdeen’s fur. “I don’t know I didn’t think this far ahead.”

James found the whole thing adorable, and he chuckled with an easy confidence that he was happy to get more familiar with. “How are you and Alanna doing? I know I stole her away for a few days.”

”You needed it! For medical reasons that you did not do!” Sarah went from encouraging to chastising in a heartbeat. “But at least you’ll have a great Halloween costume!”

”As a pirate captain?” James asked, flicking his eyepatch’s edge with one finger.

Sarah planted an arm on Auberdeen’s head, eliciting a noise that was like a baby version of an indignant howl, and propped her chin on her open palm as she considered James carefully. “I was thinking you’d be some kind of cautionary tale. Like you could go as the victim of an industrial accident! Like from the training videos!”

”I’m Astro, a robot.” James intoned. “I can put my eye back in, but you can’t. Follow tactical operating procedure on your teleports, kids!”

”You won’t put your eye back in though.” Sarah reminded him. “Even though you’re still delving every day, which has gotta be against the safety guidelines in the manual that… you… wrote. Hey hang on!”

James sighed, actually starting to feel a little annoyed with how many people kept bringing that up with him. “Look, I’ll deal with it… uh… pretty soon actually. I really will. I’m not procrastinating for no reason, I’m waiting to not have lingering injuries, and to make sure Zhu’s okay just in case. Also I obviously can delve every day! I’m really good at it!”

”Confirmation bias!”

James rolled off the chair and hopped to his feet. ”Yeah, in that I am confirming that I am biased toward being good in the dungeon!”

”That’s not what that means you goober!” Sarah shot back, but they were back to laughing with each other now, the thin moment of tension diffused. She took a deep breath, and looked up at James with a placid grin as he failed to keep up a convincing scowl. “Oh hey we were bullying Auberdeen weren’t we?” Sarah turned back to the dog who suddenly remembered that she had an appointment somewhere else. “Get a skulljack you scaredy… dog…! They don’t hurt and you’ll be able to post on forums about shows you like!” Sarah shouted her argument as Auberdeen escaped her clutches and lumbered at high speed down the hall to hide in one of the bathrooms.

James gave Sarah a pat on the head. “She needs time.” He said. “To make that decision herself. She’s… I mean, like you said, she’s a little like me.” Sarah stuck out her tongue at her best friend, and James made a show of ignoring her as he continued. “But she’s also still a dog. She’s a smart dog, but I don’t think she’ll ever think the way we think. And that’s okay!”

”Of course it is.” Sarah sighed deeply. “I’m just worried about her! What if she’s sad? Or lonely? She’s a dog, but she doesn’t have any dog friends. But does she have anyone she talks to, or spends time with?” Sarah shook her head, cutting astutely to the heart of the matter. “Pets from me are, clearly, the greatest thing ever. But they’re not enough on their own.”

”I’ll double check that with Alanna later, but you’re probably right.” James sighed himself. “But it’s her call. Maybe we should take her to the Lair more often; she seems to like movies and stuff, she’d probably love movie night. Maybe having people that would want to talk to her will help.” He shrugged, collecting Sarah’s can that had been freshly emptied of caffeine and guarana and also Auberdeen’s empty juice bowl. “But yeah, it’s probably weird for her too.”

Sarah peeked over the back of the couch, watching down the hall to see if Auberdeen was going to come back out. “Well, as long as she’s happy.” She settled on. “At least it’s not like with May.”

”How is the little raincloud anyway?” James asked.

”I think… she needs to be let go.” Sarah admitted with pain in her voice. “Either figuratively or literally. Turns out living rainclouds don’t do well in captivity at all. And I think they have really short lifespans too. But I want May to be happy, but I also don’t know if just letting her out in the world is a good idea?”

”We could let her go in Townton?” The suggestion was kind of a bad one and James knew it as soon as he said it, Sarah shaking her head at him as he leaned over the kitchen sink to chat with her. “Actually, what about a different dungeon? One of the more natural ones. The Climb would fucking suck for it, but… maybe whatever the park is? Or out in Horizon somewhere?”

”I think Horizon might actually kill her from the suns.” Sarah had already been considering this exact thing. “Do we even know if the park dungeon is a real dungeon, and not just part of the parking lot?” She asked.

James made a noise around the glass of water he had poured himself while she was talking and was currently trying to inhale at high speed. “Mmh! Yeah, we got confirmation from some of the kids that are more open to talking to us. A lot of them are… depressingly okay with what was done to them. But whatever, not the point.” He waved his cup in a slashing motion through the air. “It’s a real dungeon. They’re just… fused? Or bleeding into each other? It’s so weird, the video does not look the way it does to see with your own eyes. I can’t wait to show it to you in person, if you…?” James looked at her expectantly.

Sarah folded her arms at her friend. ‘I will delve with you when you have binocular vision again!”

”…Fine.” He conceded. “Fiiiiine. I’m gonna get a tail while I’m at it though.”

”Not moth wings?” Sarah’s hand came up to cover her heart in shock. “I thought for sure!”

”While mothgirls are certainly seasonally appropriate,” James held in a grin at the untrusting look on his friend’s face, “I feel that I can get more done with a tail. I’m thinking of putting extra eyes on it. As backups.”

”Because you need-!“

”Because I need those yes thank you Sarah.”

“I’m astute!”

”You sure are.” James stretched, having enjoyed his relaxing afternoon, but really needing to get some sleep at this point. “Oh, hey, before I go grab a short nap between now and my next life event; I’ve got a few green orbs that I wanted to use here as part of the new testing situation. You wanna split these with me?”

”What do they do?” Sarah asked. “Also hey Aubs! Come eat an orb with us!” The sound of claws skittering on the fake wood hall floor rapidly filled the air as Auberdeen excitedly bounded out of the bedroom she was hiding in. Apparently, exactly like James, she didn’t consider the changes that orbs made to the self to be anywhere near as scary as intentional personal modifications like skulljacks.

“You’ll see!” James said, placing one of the greens down for Auberdeen, and handing one very specific one to Sarah. “This one is for something I know you’ve been working on. Just… in case it ever matters.”

”Marvelous!” She said as she took the orb, a little curious why James was talking like he thought it was a big deal, but also aware of how dramatic some of these things could be.

James went first, the remains of a dungeon puppet bursting in his fingers and spreading a faint green dust that glittered only once in the sunlight from the door to their porch before it was gone.

[+3 Skill Ranks : Communication - Instructions - Labor]

[Local Area Shift : +4 Repairs - Minor / Week]

Auberdeen jumped at hers next, teeth chomping down on something that popped with only a tiny bit of pressure as feedback. She didn’t actually fully understand the orbs, even with all the knowledge that filled her doggy mind, but she did know that they made her better at enjoying stories. And that was enough.

[+2 Skill Ranks : Music - Theory - Bass Drops]

[Local Area Shift : Effort Required - Cleaning - Kitchen, -22%]

Sarah watched the other two, seeing them both pleased with their outcomes for different reasons, and the apartment not shifting wildly around them. So she used her own, assuming it would be something potent but smoothly integrated, which was what the Order seemed to be fond of these days.

[+4 Skill Ranks : Perception - Searching - Library - Nonfiction]

[Local Area Shift : +1 Attic]

She stared at James, then over into the corner where the spiral staircase behind their fireplace that went down into their cellar now extended up, into the ceiling which should surely punch a hole into their upstairs neighbor’s floor. But it didn’t. It went somewhere else. It went to their attic.

”We are never, in our lives, getting the deposit back on this place.” Sarah said as she let the glittering dust slip through her fingers and fade forever.

”Yeah, I figured.” James admitted, stepping up next to her and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “I heard on your podcast that there was talk of trying to help Clutter expand. And I don’t know how dungeons do that, but I know for a fact they can have multiple entrances. And I also know I wouldn’t mind another roommate.” He gave Sarah a hug. “But assuming that never happens, hey! Enjoy knowing how to find books on plants at our local library!”

”You dork.” She said, hugging him back on reflexive impulse. “When are you even finding time to listen to my dumb podcast anyway?”

”Sarah, you are single-handedly helping me keep up on half the stuff going on in the Order. You have no idea how important you are. You say podcast, but you’re basically our own personal news network and it’s super important.”

She flushed with pride as she pushed lightly at James. “Well fine!” She said playfully. “I guess I am pretty great! It takes a lot of time though, and I do miss…” Sarah trailed off, waving a hand around the otherwise empty apartment.

”This?”

”This. Us. Our friends. Not not caring, I don’t miss not caring. I miss having nothing worth caring about. It wasn’t evil to ignore stuff that wasn’t our job. But now it is our job. Now we’re supposed to be giving people clean energy and free teleports and it’s so much, but I just wanna make food with you and play board games with our friends.” Sarah met James’ eye and boldly let her vulnerability out into the open. “I don’t want to go back! But I do get tired, and no shared naps can fix that.”

”We should do a board game night.” James declared. “I’ll make it happen. I promise.”

”I believe you.” Sarah’s grin could have lit up a whole city for how bright it was. “Anyway, go sleep you goof. Also… weren’t we supposed to be testing these? How is Aubs supposed to tell you what she got?” She asked, pointing at their dog and possibly collectively adopted daughter.

James looked down at Auberdeen, who stared back up at him, softly panting. He made a contemplative sound, and she woofed at him. “That’s… a good question.” James admitted. Auberdeen barked again in agreement.

”And?”

”And it’s a good question. I’m glad you asked it. Next question please.”

”James. Go to bed.” Sarah was polite enough to hold in her laughter until he was in his own bedroom, at least.