“Believe it or not? Skeletons.” -Grant, A Brief Warcraft 3 Retrospective-
_____
The Lair’s bathhouse area had expanded significantly between when they were first put into operation, and now. The room, which had started out as essentially a hole in the concrete due to some opportunistic gold extraction, had been reconstructed in total with help from a large handful of green orbs. But despite being ship of Theseus’d, it maintained what had made it special.
The feeling of the treated wood highlights and copper piping, the diffuse and dancing light, the smell of soaps and hot water, the preserved and restored mosaics on the walls. All of it gave the place a cozy comfort that wrapped around everyone who spent time there like a warm towel.
They also had warm towels now. As well as an upgraded workflow to actually keep those towels clean. Turned out, fun stuff like this took work. But that was life, and the residents of the Lair were comfortable putting in the collective hours to make the place shine. Even James, who had done more than a couple shifts scrubbing floor tile.
Right now, he was scrubbing nothing. Instead James was just gently floating in one of the pools, the waterfall of hot water in the middle shunted away to flow more stealthily so that the people could speak without white noise, the privacy screen of decorated treated wood pulled around them.
”This is weird, right?” Alex asked, staring up at the colored lights playing off the web of brass pipes overhead. She was floating on her back, placidly unmoving as she drifted in the center of their pool.
”I am a giant snake.” Spire-Cast-Behind answered. She was currently curled in one of the shallower bowl seats around the edge, a waterproofed simple bluetooth thing plugged into her skulljack letting her speak from digital speakers sitting on the side of the pool in a safe container.
Simon nodded, also sitting, leaning back against the wall of the pool from his own seat with his scarred and tanned arms over the edge. “Life has been weird for a while.” He pointed out. “But this is weird.”
”Look,” James told them with a laugh, “the point of being what we are is that we do things our way. Our way should be understanding, compassionate, and flexible. But it should also be ours. One day, maybe one day soon, some or all of you will be on my side of this. And when that happens, apply your own eccentricities. Do these briefings on rooftops and in dungeons and at your favorite restaurants. Find the place that centers you, and work from there.”
”This is the place that centers me.” Alex said thoughtfully. “Actually, yeah, every time I should be getting PTSD, I instead come here to get naked and wet and talk about my horrible experiences. Is that… am I weird? Guys?”
James felt like he’d just finished explaining how things were different but not weird, but Alex clearly had some doubts. “Actually,” he said, “the whole thing of talking through harrowing events in their aftermath is a proven tool for preventing long term trauma. I didn’t exactly know about it when we started doing this, but it does help. A lot. It’s also a training tool for human neuroplasticity. Spire might be out of luck there.”
”Luck has been against me.” Spire-Cast-Behind confirmed. “Also I am almost always naked, so I cannot become naked to fend off trauma. So. Shall we begin to talk about our luck?”
James nodded. The reason he had these three here, after all, was to debrief them on their adventures. But really, it was less a debriefing, and more… a talk. Sharing what had happened, determining what they would be following up on, and being there to support each other. Because they were, now, going to be a support network for each other. All of them had companions within the Order and sometimes friends or family outside it, but even James couldn’t rely on having Alanna on call as his personal bodyguard. Paladins, though, were for that. They needed to trust each other, rely on each other, without even the thought of it. So he nodded at Simon, the human shifting forward while Alex splashed her way to a comfortable listening position, and let the first one of them talk about his errancy.
”I feel like mine is going to be the least interesting.” Simon said. “I took a path southward, traveling mostly overland. I don’t know if it’s just how the world is, or if it’s what James ritualed into us, but I did get into a few small calamities on the way through the southern US and Mexico.” He held his arm up, showing where the little Akashic Sewer eyeball construct thing had more cleanly fused with his skin. It didn’t blink, but the black sliver of a pupil suspended in the dark red ‘eyeball’ did flit to look at each of them.
”Creepy.” Alex commented, before James hushed her.
”Maybe. I did learn more about this… thing. I keep wanting to say ‘this guy’, but it’s not a person, it’s just vaguely biological. I also don’t know what it’s doing, on a physical level, but I can tell you that the angrier I get, the stronger it makes me.” His mouth twitched in a small grin. “Very Hulk smash, I know. Bad for endurance or even picking stuff up, but great for punching things. If I…” he paused, and breathed out slowly, “the most I’ve found it capable of is letting me kick through a telephone pole. Which broke a bone in my foot even through the purples. So.”
James winced, because he was familiar with how it felt to break bones when you expected them not to. He saw Alex make a face too, but though Spire seemed sympathetic, she’d never been hurt that way.
Simon continued. “Anyway. I was looking for something specific. Trying to solve problems while I worked to get meetings with government officials in a few places. Uruguay was the only one that really worked out. Uh… I didn’t officially declare war on Ecuador or anything, but there was a misunderstanding where they thought I was trying to assassinate someone. The good news is I wasn’t, and also no one knows who I was, but I might not go back there. Which sucks, because the place seemed cool, and I’m pretty sure there’s a dungeon there. But I don’t know where, or what, or… well, it was a vibe, that’s all.”
”I know that feeling.” James muttered.
”Yeah. Well, like I said, Uruguay was actually willing to listen. And then they said no. Or, the current government did. At least officially, and I turned down the secret meetings because of the general rule about participating in political conspiracies.”
”Good call.” All three other paladins said at once.
Simon flushed a little. ”Thanks.” He muttered under the praise. “Anyway, the country doesn’t have any memeplexes that I could find. Of course we barely know anything about the fucking things, so I might be wrong. But their ministers seemed to be fully aware of dungeon creatures roaming around, and accepted the nonhuman thing right away.” He pulled his hands out of the water, watching casually as droplets rolled down his arm. “That part of the world has a lot of tension right now, and I think it’s because of the dungeons, but I don’t know how exactly. I did end up finding something that had definitely roamed out of a dungeon, and I brought back a body.”
”Sophont?” Spire-Cast-Behind asked.
”I don’t know.” Simon admitted. “It ignored me talking, and I watched it for a while to study its behavior. It was acting like an animal, but with the violence turned all the way up. Nesting, eating, grooming, all kinda normal. Except it was killing anything it could find to eat it. I stepped in when it went for someone’s dog, and the guy with the dog too. Which might have caused an international incident, so sorry about that in advance.” He waited for James to finish sighing before he continued. “Also whatever it is, it’s from a non-drop dungeon. Or it’s like the Underburbs and it needs more than one kill. Either way, nothing new for me.”
James shrugged, pulling his feet up under himself as he shifted. “Nothing wrong with that. Alex, you wanna go next?”
”Sure, sure. Uh. How do I… do that?”
”I mean, do what Simon did. Did you have any adventures?”
Alex swept a hand over her head, nervously wringing water out of her short hair. “A bunch I guess. Some of them kinda small. I think I legally own property in, like, four countries now? I’m not really keeping track. I stopped an arson! Oh, I did a lot of investigation on different memeplexs. Simon kinda brought this up; we don’t know shit about how they actually work, you know? But I can now clearly say that they work differently in different places.”
James had kind of heard this, but wanted to know more. “Elaborate on that. Also good job on the arson thing.”
”Thanks! It was weird! But yeah, I kinda had my authority protecting me from mental effects, and it alerted me to something big. Which I guess was the local memeplex. But when I left to go handle a job, it shifted. I spent a while hopping between places, and yeah, there’s just different ways that different geographical regions handle the veil.”
Spire-Cast-Behind sputtered out a wet hiss. “The what?” She asked from her displaced voice poolside.
Alex sunk slightly into the water. “You know, like, the thing that keeps normal humans from knowing about magic. It’s a trope that shows up in a lot of fiction. ‘The veil’ or sometimes ‘the masquerade’ or something.”
“That one’s copywritten I think.” Simon provided helpfully.
”Cool. Anyway. I found a few methods. Selective blindness, hostile rejection, and I think it might have been a dungeon but one small area just caused nightmares? I marked that one, Alice and Charlie are checking it out after they finally find the Underburbs. But also none of them were exactly like what our local area has, with the whole ‘information doesn’t spread’ thing.” She scratched at her mostly healed arm. “That was what I was trying to work on when I ended up in Oklahoma.”
Spire-Cast-Behind floated past Alex, camera lens focused on the girl. “Yes, tell us about Oklahoma.” She said, no hint of sarcasm in her voice.
Alex flushed anyway, though that might have been from being scrutinized like this. “Short story? I caught a delver serial killer. His power wasn’t drop on death, but it was some kind of duel thing, and since I won the last duel… well, I got a lot of what he had. I’m faster now. A lot faster. I think it’s a finite resource, and there’s a lot to using it that I don’t get, but yeah.”
They paused for a moment as the sound of laughing voices passed by their pool. Their conversation wasn’t a secret exactly, but there was a kind of habit of not sharing within earshot of others that was hard to break. When they were passed, James cleared his throat. “There was something else that came out of that part of your adventure. You wanna cover it, or should I?”
”Yeah. Yeah.” Alex took a breath. “Well, we definitely know there’s other delvers out there. But also, in case anyone’s just been sleeping since they got back, yeah, I ran into the NOPGAP and things kinda got weird from there.”
Simon slowly pressed his hands together in front of his mouth like a silent prayer. “The what.”
”The NOPGAP. You know, the… I forget the exact name, I just remember how fun the acronym is to say.”
Simon ticked off words on his fingers. “Northern. Oklahoma. Proud. Grandparents. Adventuring… Society. Alex there’s no P at the end it’s an S. So NOPGAS, I guess.”
Spire-Cast-Behind hissed again. ”That’s much worse.” She commented, still floating in circles in the middle of the pool.
”Whatever! You knew what I meant! Look, the point is, they’re us, but older, and they have a pillar. And she’s nice. She doesn’t even think she is a pillar, never heard of them, even if they’re the same kind of thing.”
James nodded to the other two. “Her name is Kiki, which is a moniker for ‘Kill ‘Em With Kindness’.” He tried not to flash a smirk as Simon winced. “She actually does seem nice, which could just be a long con against us. We’re putting her up in a cabin up in the mountains while Research works to figure out how to help her with her predicament. That predicament being that she’s… well…” he motioned at Alex. “She changes people her magic works on. Makes them kinder, mostly, but there might be more stuff we don’t know. And her magic leaks a bit.”
”Personally I feel great and think everyone should make her queen of the world.” Alex commented. Then cleared her throat. “Which I guess I get why people would be worried about. Sorry James, you’re off the table as potential ruler of everything, at least for my vote.”
”Thank fuck.” James muttered as he swished his feet underwater. “That was too stressful.”
”Is this not a massive problem?” Simon asked. “Her magic is leaking?”
”Yeah, it’s weird. Also she seems new by pillar standards, but also way less unstable than all the others we’ve met.” Alex held up her hands defensively. “I know I can’t be trusted to be objective! I’m just saying, she doesn’t have any weird self-destructive behavior going on, you know?”
James elected to not share that Kiki had literally asked him to kill her. Not right now, anyway, because Alex might be prompted to do something about that. He’d fill the other paladins in later. Via private text, probably. “Alright. Spire, you’re up. What was your adventure like?”
The camraconda leaned back, drifting in a loop and staring silently at the ceiling. It took her a while to actually answer, long enough that Alex and Simon started shifting uncomfortably. When she did start speaking, it was like she was very distant from her own words, and not just because of the lack of proximity to her speakers. “I took a road trip to Montana, which was randomly selected.” She said. “Two knights accompanied me, and we had a relatively smooth journey, while we became closer socially.”
There was another long pause. Long enough that Alex felt like she had to ‘interrupt’. “What was in Montana?”
”A small town called Opheim.” Spire-Cast-Behind said, twisting with a splash in the warm water to look Alex’s way. “Population listed at sixty five, real population closer to forty five. Current population zero.”
”Shit.” Simon said without thinking.
”I agree.” Spire-Cast-Behind’s body slumped as she flicked herself to propel closer to the wall, and then drape herself over the smooth tile. “I thought there was a dungeon. Then I thought there was a remnant of some kind, or a leak like Simon found. Maybe that was correct. What I found was… was…”
She went silent, and Alex scooted herself sideways by inches until she was next to the camraconda, gently leaning over and reaching out a hand to place on Spire’s back. The mass of red, white, and yellow cables flinching away from the touch at first, before realizing it was Alex and slowly pressing back into her hand. Which turned into a hug, when it became clear that Spire was silently crying, small bursts of hisses coming out uncontrollably.
Her voice still worked though. “I was too slow.” She said as Alex held her, the intimate sensation comforting her enough that she could keep speaking. “The town had been under siege, and no one knew. Not a memeplex. Another effect of some kind. A loose dungeon megafauna that ate the images of people and turned them into… soldiers. Weapons? Troops.” She raised her head to look back at the other humans. “Five survivors. Five. And of them, three would not accept infomorph protection, and forgot soon after.”
James floated over, sharing a questioning look with Alex and getting an approving nod before he joined the shared hug, offering physical comfort to the camraconda that was going through something deeply familiar to him. “Yeah.” He whispered. “I get it.”
Simon didn’t join them physically, but did swim around to be on their side of the pool. “That’s a big problem though, right? I mean, Spire, I don’t think you should blame yourself. If you weren’t there, it would have been zero. But also being ambushed isn’t a moral failing. But also, getting ambushed at all by… how big was the thing? I mean, it’s a problem of its own.”
“It was bigger than anything we’ve seen.” Spire said. “Video analysis puts it at over a hundred and eighty feet long, and twenty feet thick. No internal organs, nothing but the outer rings and the solidified light and the effect. Whatever dungeon it came from, its door would have to be enormous, or some other magic let it out. Or…”
”Or it’s not from a dungeon.” James finished, moving back and letting Alex take point on comforting the camraconda. “Which would be bad. But seems unlikely?”
Spire wasn’t willing to sit out her own debriefing just because she was experiencing an overload of grief. ”This could be an alternate form of a pillar? We could ask the new woman, perhaps. But all we have now are pieces of its remains. When JP moved the Order’s shield teams and other knights in, they did so with a mortar barrage that made closer investigation difficult.”
“Hm. This confirms what I’ve long suspected, that being under artillery fire makes things harder.”
Simon blinked slowly. ”James why did you suspect that?”
“Skill ranks. Early skill ranks, actually. I’ve been waiting to make this joke for a while, since even when we’re using mortar barrages, I’m not involved.” James sighed theatrically. “Okay. Now. I have one question for all of you. The big question, really.” He waited as they moved to look at him while he stood in the middle of the pool, his toes just barely reaching what wasn’t even the deepest part. “How do you think you all did?”
”Terribly.” Spire-Cast-Behind said quickly.
”Not great.” Alex followed up.
”Not good enough.” Simon added.
James looked at the three of them. Each of them had, honestly, failed to accomplish their actual goals. The idea of the errancy had been more to summon the Right Person At The Right Moment than for any proven efficacy in training new paladins. But he’d still committed to sending them out, and every one of them had brought back more problems than they’d solved.
Which was, in a word, perfect. That was exactly what he’d hoped. That these people would weave threads binding the Order of Endless Rooms into the world at large more firmly. That they’d learn both how to win and how to lose, not as part of the Order, but on their own. The way they might be handling future problems; as problems themselves, dropped in like ink into clear water to mess everything up and pave the way for the Order to follow.
There must have been an expression on his face that said something. Because when he started talking after they shared the fact that they didn’t think they’d done well at all, they didn’t seem surprised at his words. “You’ve all proven you’re the kind of people who should be paladins.” He said. “I know it’s not always easy, and I know it’s not always fun, but I also know you can be strong in the face of that. You all did something, and you didn’t have to. So good job.” He smiled slightly. “There’s a special run of assorted copied magic upstairs for all of you, once you’re dried off. And you’ll also find your schedules have paladin briefings and training sessions on them now.”
”You do get that none of us feel ready for this, right?” Simon asked sardonically.
”Well yeah.” James laughed. “You never will. Cliche, I know, but come on. I still don’t feel ready. No single person is ever going to be ready for what we have to deal with. That’s why there’s four of us now. So let’s… you know… get back to it.” He shrugged with a lopsided grin, resisting the urge to rub at his damaged and sightless eye. It itched without the patch on.
Alex let go of Spire, leaving a lingering pat on the camraconda’s head. “So what do we do now? Like, exactly.”
”Lend a hand around here. Go on some delves. Get practice with magic or mundane stuff.” James shrugged. “I’ll be doing the same for a bit. But in a few days, we’re going to pick what we do next, and I want all of you to be there, because you’re like me now.” He swam over to the steps out of their pool. “And I mean, really. The next time we do this, you’re not reporting to me. You’re paladins now, whether you feel it or not. And that means every disaster is ours to handle, and new nonsense is ours to discover. Got it?”
”No.” Spire-Cast-Behind admitted bluntly. “But I suspect I will learn. Or am learning.”
”Great!” James said, wrapping himself in a towel as he went to grab the purification brooch. “Now I’ve got to go deal with, like, a million more things today. So rest up, catch up with what you missed while you were on the road, and I’ll see you all later.”
He left them still not feeling like they were real paladins. But all of them realized, slowly, that something had changed. And while they were all uniquely worried about what was ahead of them, none of them wanted to turn back now.
_____
The leveler crown was a frankly bizarre item. Out of all the dungeontech that the Order had, all the weird magic items and literal skill ranks and actual potions - though no health potions yet - the crown stood out as unique.
Because it was the only case they really knew of a metamagic effect.
A lot of what it did was weird and often a little bit silly. It made you yearn to write poetry and let you freehand draw circles better. It made certain species produce pheromones that made them irresistible to both moths and ratroaches, and it made certain other species smell like cherries, which made them irresistible to select individuals but for more personal reasons. It also seemed to prevent acne for a couple days.
But then, it did other stuff that was more useful too. Like helping people manage anxiety, or reducing the impact of chronic pain. Things that could hugely improve the lives of a lot of people. Except that it only made six and a half charges a day, even when the mild time shenanigans in the Lair were being put to work.
So while those effects were great, it was the other, even weirder ones, that people looked to. Compressing Velocity so that Route Horizon spells had more impact. Incrementing absorbed blue orb charges for powers that would otherwise be lost. And who even knew what other esoteric interactions with magic they hadn’t found yet.
Of course it wasn’t a pick-and-choose effect, as James had discovered previously when it turned out that compressing your velocity also ended up making the ratroaches in your life uncomfortably horny around you. But it was still a unique and invaluable asset.
So he was maybe gonna break it.
”So I understand the details.” Alanna told him as he finished his explanation. “I’m also in the know on the big picture. Like, we voted on this. We were in the same room when we voted on this. We had a whole conversation. I even said yes, I’m fine taking a risk on ruining the most valuable spellwork we have for you and Anesh.”
James nodded stoically. “The ratroach pher-“
”The ratroach pheromones correct.” Alanna’s voice overlapped his. “What I’m getting at here is, why are you doing this? Specifically. Aren’t you going into fucking surgery later?”
”That’s early tomorrow morning and this is fun. Also I have the most experience at imbuing looted Status Quo gear.” James shrugged as he rolled one of the orbs on the folding table in front of him. “I dunno, I’m kinda just excited to see what comes out of it. And also this way, if something goes wrong, it can be my fault and not someone else!”
Alanna crossed her arms at him, muscles pulling at the thing material of her workout tank top. “No, James.” She enunciated precisely. “Why are you doing this on stage.”
Looking around at the small stage set up in the delver briefing area, where there were multiple cameras watching him so anyone who wanted could tune in to the stream, and also a handful of people in the seats nearby, James grinned and rubbed a hand on the back of his head just under his ponytail. “So… everyone can watch it be my fault?” He said. “Also the stage is just kind of a nice open place, and it wasn’t in use! I didn’t actually think anyone would come hang out.”
”You’re being streamed.”
”That’s not hanging out. Chat isn’t real.” James scoffed. “Anyway. Let’s do this!”
For all the buildup and goofing off in their banter that he and Alanna were doing, the actual process was surprisingly easy. James actually did practice with the magic that the Order used, even if he didn’t have as much time as dedicated Researchers. One minute, he was checking the crown’s stats…
[Inner Spirit Ignition - 5 - 39 / 2710 - 1:3:40 (0)]
…no charges left because obviously they’d wanted to use them up just in case. Level five, only just starting its journey to six. Only a single esoteric ability with an hour left on the cooldown.
James focused in the weird way that was required to imbue this already-magic item. What was a crown? What could make a crown special but obtuse? But also, what was this crown? It wasn’t really a hat or a symbol of a throne, it was something else. And he didn’t really know what. That was part of the fun of it; that little mystery that sat there and teased out the deeper desires of everyone who used it to know a little more. To pry into the secrets of magic itself.
This crown, which stubbornly resisted being reshaped into a size that could be copied, that had an ability name like it was threatening to ignite someone’s dantian, this decorated circlet of silver and ivory that wasn’t really alive but certainly didn’t let that stop it from being a little sarcastic…
James felt like he understood this crown.
The size four blue orb and the three yellows of equal weight that had been brought out for this - because there was nothing quite like overkill when you only had one shot - all slipped into the crown in an easy motion. James felt his focus almost slip, but then suddenly snap as the task was complete. And an intact, slightly more magic item sat in his hands.
He checked what it could do again.
[Inner Spirit Ignition - 5 - 39 / 2710 - 1:3:40 (0)
Infusion Following Praxis - 1 - 0/225 - 4:00:00 (0)]
”Oh good!” He said happily.
”What, what did you do.” Alanna’s voice was the first to reply to him as a few other people in his impromptu audience applauded. “Is it going to explode? I feel like I’ve literally heard you say ‘oh good’ in that tone before something exploded.”
”That was my cooking, it was years ago, and this isn’t nearly that calamitous.” James laughed and gently set the crown down. They’d have to be careful with it now that it was a blue item; one hit point meant one hit point, and while it might have been worth doing this, it would definitely increase their liability insurance if they had any. “No, it’s just a weirdly obtuse name.”
Nik hopped up onto the stage with a padded carrying case ready. “So what’s it do?” He asked.
”I… Nik they don’t work that way. I just said it was obtuse.”
The Researcher shook his head despondently. “Is it too much to ask someone around here actually tell me what dungeontech does before handing it to me?” He bemoaned as he packaged up the crown and carried it off to the basement where their literal job was answering the question he had just tried to skip.
James felt like maybe this was an inside joke that he was looking at from a great distance. But he made sure to double check that he’d added himself to the update thread for the crown.
Four hours later, he would learn that it put something ephemeral into a held object, and no one knew exactly what. Four hours after that, he’d learn that it worked on other leveler items (though not itself) and it added about two days worth of charges.
His high fives with whoever was closest at the time got more enthusiastic with each update.
_____
It wasn’t quite evening yet. The end of August still had long hours of daylight, and while James’ day had been crammed so far, he was still planning to get a few more things done.
So he enjoyed the warmth of the sun in the process of setting as he teleported to his old workplace, which was now technically his current workplace again, and really, had always been somewhere he’d “worked” since Officium Mundi’s doors were here. He could have driven, but he’d become spoiled by telepads, and right now, they weren’t really a limited resource for the Order.
He was interested in finding other ways to link distant doors. They’d done it once, for their elevator, and James was pretty sure that a select part of exactly how they’d done it had been aggressively forgotten, because they absolutely should have found a way to do it again by now. Still, for today, he just blipped into the parking lot as a car was pulling out, and made a mental note to remind everyone that just because they were an organization of magically secret vigilantes didn’t mean you didn’t have to get license plates.
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That wasn’t why he was here though. He was here for Recovery.
The floor they were on was, bizarrely, an office. Just… a normal, functioning office. Cubicles and everything.
James had thought for a long time that he’d had a problem with cubicles. And he’d felt a little vindicated when he’d encountered the capital-O-Office where cubicles turned into an endless exhausting maze seemingly designed to disorient and trap unsuspecting fools. But it turned out, most of why he didn’t like cubicles in real life was that the also seemed to do exactly that. And when you had a few clear signs, and an environment where your management wasn’t at war with the rest of the staff, it turned into something a lot more pleasant really fast. Turns out vibes mattered, which James really should have grasped earlier.
The people in the cubicles, not all of them human, gave him polite bobs or smiles as he passed. The staff here doing the necessary paperwork and making the right phone calls to ensure that life could continue for the victims the Order supported. Housing arrangements, matching foster families, job placement, mental health check ins, setting appointments and making sure people could get to them, investigative work into missing friends or family, and scheduling the increasingly complex but organized web of connections that the Order itself had with many of their internal residents. It all happened here, and while they were expanding their bureaucracy to allow for future expansions, it was all done with the primary goal of making help happen as fast as possible.
James liked this place.
He wasn’t here to bother anyone who had multiple phone calls to make - a superpower that he was frankly in awe of and would never be able to match with simple magic - he was instead here to bother Juan.
Juan opened the door to the small meeting room four seconds before James knocked on the door. “You don’t knock for these.” He said with casual anticipation of the paladin’s actions.
”There’s no window on this door, how did-“
”Planner. Come in.” Juan grabbed a seat at the part of the large horseshoe table he’d decided to use, and slid a folder across to James. “There’s a group of new kids who have this room booked in half an hour, so let’s be quick, or Planner will throw us out the window.”
”Ooh, defenestration. I don’t get to do that very often!” James sat and ignored Juan’s rapid blinking stare. “Okay. That’s it. That’s my joke for this meeting. Also hi, I was supposed to be talking to Connie and Yish today?”
”They’re busy with a thing. Well, Connie is. And Yish is following her. You said no distractions?” Juan sounded resigned to the tangents anyway.
So James felt fine continuing. “Yeah, wait, the last time we talked you were in Research.”
”Ritual, technically. But I couldn’t really learn Momo’s weird talent, and also I kinda accidentally picked up seven different relevant skill ranks, so I’m here now, and it feels pretty damn good to put that to use. And I know you know how that goes.”
“I do!” James nodded happily as he opened the manilla folder. It was exactly how he’d felt the first time he’d used his cooking skill ranks. Or when he’d put card counting into practice to get the Order some of its startup money. Or, gloriously, the one time he’d gotten to use his preposterously niche backpack combat ability to full effect. So when Juan said that, James got it right away, and he also understood that this flexibility was the core power of the Order. One skill rank could change where someone belonged, and enabling that movement of people got better results than trying to keep things ‘stable’. “Well, congrats. So! Business. The crocamaws.”
Juan tapped his mechanical pencil at the top of the first page in James’ folder without looking. “Demon species XII-I, according to our friends.” He pronounced the individual letters and the em-dash.
”According to our strategic opposition.” James corrected, holding up his index finger with his eyes calmly closed in an ah, hold on motion. “Also I‘ve seen Morgan’s memes going around. The kids call them crocamaws.”
Juan held his mechanical pencil in place while he stared into James’ eye. ”It’s actually absurd how I’m only twenty three years old and I feel like talking about the damn kids these days.” He flatly said. “Whatever. They’re confused, and all pretty new. The crocamaws, not the damn kids, that is. They don’t seem stupid, and they can understand and speak language, especially after some help. A few of them opted for skulljacks too. They seem like they have problems with some social cues, but…” he shrugged.
Pursing his lips, James silently considered the fact that he had trouble with a lot of social cues. “No issues with them lashing out, like with ratroaches?” He asked.
”Oh, no, that is the social cue problem. They have a pretty hair trigger attack response. We’ve had a few injuries so far. They’re not exactly vicious, but all the ones we found were combatants. The Mormon bishops use them as bodyguards for delving. Uh… we have a copy of the containment spell, by the way.”
The name of the spell was dumb, James had seen it during his quick look through the Order’s loot. Bell By Midnight did absolutely nothing to explain itself, but it seemed to be… well… James couldn’t call it anything except a magic pokeball. It was also the only one they had outside information on, one of the people they were negotiating with having let slip to Redding that it was a level four spell. Which was slightly contradictory to what the Order knew, but not by much.
They used it to hold the creatures they called demons, and control them when let out. Though there was no information on if the spell would work on non-dungeon life and James didn’t want to find out. Though he suspected they would. “What about the other ones? The goat swans, and the ankylosaurus things?”
”Non-sophont. The big thing is… not even remotely an ankylosaurus despite the armor and tail, but it acts sorta like a hippo. It just wants to eat a lot and relax, so we set it up in an abandoned swimming pool in Townton and fenced the area off. The flyers are harder to manage, and there’s about twenty of them as survivors of the church’s bad decisions. We’re considering releasing them back into the dungeon.”
”Would that be best for them?” James asked.
Juan shrugged. “Honestly? It might mean they get killed by a delver team later when they attack us. I don’t know what’s good for them exactly. I don’t even know if they’re still feeling the effects of the mind control. They are aggressive though. I think they might be happier if we just build them a habitat and feed them a few dozen trout every day.”
”Trout?”
”They love fish.”
The blunt answer almost threw James off. “Okay. Well, that’s… a thing to look into. How are we handling the crocamaws? Practically, I mean.”
”There’s few enough that each of them has an assigned knight that they’re shadowing and living with. We don’t know how things will go, but right now, people are hopeful. We’re also keeping an eye out for more, though we need a way to detect if someone is holding one ‘inside’ the spell.” Juan paused. “I’m not officially asking, but it would be nice if there were some surprise checkups on them, just to see if they have more captives like this.”
James nodded, already planning to rustle up Arrush and Alanna to help him commit tactically useful breaking and entering. “Alright. I’ll see what I can do about that absurdly specific request. The first one. Not the second unofficial one.” He had no fucking clue where he was going to start with getting ahold of a magic detector. That was one of those meta effects that just never seemed to show up. “What about the human side of this mess? The kids?”
“Ironically - I think, I don’t actually know what irony is - they’re doing a lot worse than the dungeon mobs.” Juan’s grimace didn’t instill confidence in James, and the way he rapidly tapped his fingers on the chipped laminated surface of the table didn’t help the image. “The ones we pulled out of their prisons are in bad shape, but they’re going to recover, and we can help with that. We’re working on building foster families using a patented Order experimental pattern for them, and given that it’s still August, all of them are going to have at least a little time to recover before they go back to school. We’re putting them in the equally experimental Order school, too, because that might ironically be the most stable way to make them feel normal, and they need that with their socialization.”
”At least one of those is not irony.” James said. “Experimental foster family program?” He was pretty sure he knew, but wanted confirmation.
”It’s a community collective approach to handling raising kids. Group living situations with multiple different sets of ‘parent’ figures, support available and openly offered from a broader set of individuals, that kind of thing. It’s sort of more resource intensive, and it relies on some of the volunteers being okay living together when they might not know each other perfectly well ahead of time. It’s sort of been tested previously with ratroach and camraconda integration, and there’s mundane research evidence that it works on humans, so we’re trying it.”
In a vague way, James kind of understood how having multiple designated adults in a kid’s life could help them be more comfortable, and also heavily cut down on abuse. He needed to do more reading, clearly, though, because his instinctive (and stifled) response was to think that he would have gone mad if he’d grown up with an extra version of his mom. “Okay.” He said out loud. “What about the other ones? The non-prisoner ones?”
”Less. Less good. A lot less.” Juan took a deep breath. “A lot of them weren’t kept as prisoners because they were exceptionally good at doing what they were told. Following orders, believing what they were raised and instructed to believe, and essentially being groomed to be good faithful soldiers.” He turned to stare at the back wall of the room, shaking his head as he talked. “A lot of the ones Recovery has talked to that are still with their bio families are resentful of losing access to their magic, and angry at us for going against what they see as the will of their god. Though when I say ‘what they see’, you need to understand, it’s not a coherent ideology. Some of these kids are ten, and just angrily lashing out at us because we’re the ‘bad guys’ they’ve been warned about. And there’s no way we’re forcibly rehoming a specific class of people.”
”Yikes. Yeah, no.” James agreed instantly. “But it’s a hard problem to solve, isn’t it? We need them to trust us, and that means we need the parents to trust us, but the parents think we’re fucking with their expression of faith, right?” He got a grim nod. “Yeah. That’s bleak. But at least… I mean, they’ll never thank us for it, but at least they have a chance at having a real choice.”
”And we’ll probably get a few more ‘problem children’ in the next few months as this boils over.” Juan said. “And there’s… there’s more of them than you thought. There’s at least eight hundred cases that we’re tracking so far, and I don’t think that’s the end of it.”
”Jesus Christ.” James swore softly.
Juan nodded. “Yeah, let’s blame him.”
”No, I…” James narrowed his surviving eye at the bad joke. “…alright. Well. Thanks for keeping me appraised.” He said.
”No worries. Anything else?” Juan started to stand up, leaving the documentation with James.
A raised hand stopped his escape, and James nodded to cement the fact that Juan wasn’t getting out of here that easy. “I have a few side things from you guys that I’d like to check in on. I got notes on two of the New York Status Quo prisoner survivors?”
”Oh! Yeah, they want to go back to being delvers.” Juan sat again in the uncomfortable hard plastic chair. “But not as part of the Order. Just on their own, but in our dungeons.”
James frowned a little. “Hm. We could… that’s an interesting problem. We could say yes, as long as they follow common rules of etiquette in the dungeons? Maybe a percentage magic tax on exit, but that’s weird for places like the climb, and meaningless anyway. I dunno, we should maybe have a general meeting discussion and vote about that.” He let a few ideas freewheel out of his mouth before setting on the easiest option; get smarter people to draft smarter rules, and then collectively decide those rules were useful.
”I’ll leave that to you to set up. Oh, before I forget, Ruby and Prince both wanted to join the Order formally, going the other direction.”
”No shit?” James hadn’t thought that the shapeshifters liked him that much. Maybe it was just him, and not the Order as a whole. “Did they say why? Wait, do they have some weird ulterior motive?” Maybe the fact that he’d jumped to that thought was why they didn’t like him much.
Juan’s answer almost got a laugh from James though. “Yeah. They want shaper substance.” He said. “We don’t have enough for recreational purposes, and they know that being knights will get them a broader magic resource stipend. Personal reasons.” He answered James’ question before James could ask it.
”What about the kids that they’re protective of? The ones that’re obviously delvers, but, like, fourteen or so.” James asked.
Juan’s eyes closed as he checked through his skulljack for the Recovery records. “They don’t remember their families, in a dark reverse-antimeme situation, and they trust Ruby and Prince, so they’re staying with us. They’ll be attending the mid-level of our school, which they chose because they have ratroach friends.” He sighed and rubbed at his eyes as he opened them, the wonderful reality of those kids having friends at all much less nonhuman ones just kind of sliding past him as he continued. He’d heard the good news already, he was used to it. “We’ve got another eight ratroaches and two camracondas this week, too. Actually working with Recovery has shown me that we’re running short on one really important resource.”
”Healing potions? Because I’ve put in a request with the universe and it hasn’t replied.”
”No, time.” Juan ignored James’ joke in favor of his own sense of drama. “We’re trying to build a bureaucracy that can help us manage things, but we’re starting to get stretched thin. Stuff like this, these updates? They’re really important for keeping everyone on the same page, but they’re taking up time I could be spending arranging meal plans or checking for demon captives. We need more people, but we also need faster processes. And… and I can’t believe I’m about to say this… better paperwork.”
”Ah, my mortal enemy.” James grimaced.
”Aren’t you a paladin? You file reports all the time.”
”Nate files reports based on my debriefings. I’ve never done a single piece of paperwork for that job.” James was fully confident that wasn’t true, but it sounded funny to say that as he stood up from his seat.
Juan glared after him as he followed James out, Planner’s gentle influence putting them through the door thirty seconds before they would otherwise be blocking the next people who had the room booked. “I’m going to form my own Order.” He threatened. “Just out of spite for that. I’ll make my own paladins, and make them do paperwork.”
Despite the bizarre nature of the threat, James was kind of on board with that. “Have fun.” He told Juan. “Just remember, if you start it, you’re gonna end up with my job.” He grinned as the young Recovery agent swore colorfully in a few mixed languages, making his escape from his old workplace now equipped with a little more information than when he’d started.
_____
Two swords tapped against each other, tested for a split second the conviction of the other duelist, then disengaged. Both fighters moved a quarter step, shuffling their feet as one tried to close the gap and the other denied it. The blades met again, twice more, the strikes sending the sound of thin metal clattering through the air.
James and Anesh stepped away from each other, holding their fencing rapiers out in a mirrored stance. The first time they’d done this, Anesh had handily taken James apart. The last time they’d fenced, after spending years casually doing it together as a hobby, they’d been more even but Anesh had still been better.
This time, James was winning.
Though it might be because of two different conditions for this particular spar.
”Why are we doing this on stage?” Anesh asked as he bought a second to catch his breath. His boyfriend had gotten both faster and more precise, and while neither of them were masters of the sport, Anesh could tell that the gaps he’d previously been easily exploiting were covered up by James just being a lot more aware.
”Because it’s fun, Anesh!” His boyfriend answered happily, striking forward with a flick of his wrist and not giving Anesh a chance to recover.
That strike got parried too, and Anesh riposted in a flawless move that only got dodged because of condition number two.
It only lasted a second, but his lapse in concentration let James pull their relationstick bond toward himself; the collective amount of ‘speed’ that the two of them normally shared equally tipping in his direction and giving him the agility to avoid Anesh’s counter. Then Anesh had it back, and a little extra, and he turned that into a pressing attack that had James taking steps back and frantically trying to keep his blade in basic parry positions to deflect.
Their audience gave a variety of cheers at the action. Sarah happily egging them on, multiple other Anesh watching carefully and critiquing his own form, Daniel and Pathfinder just kind of there for the show, Ishah and a few other ratroaches James didn’t recognize taking a break from their delver academic training to wonder why the humans were fighting, and Bea sitting silently next to an equally quiet camraconda, both of them covered in glitter, both of them waving tiny flags supporting Anesh. James really wanted to know where those had come from. Or how they’d gotten them so fast. Or why they were here at all. Or especially what was up with the glitter and how he could avoid that fate.
His moment of distraction let Anesh get really close to hitting him on his face mask, but his boyfriend hadn’t fully noticed and capitalized on it. Which gave James the space to sweep it aside, and give a breathless laugh. “See? Fun!” He declared.
”For them maybe!” Anesh answered. The words were a bit rude, but there was a joy in his voice that he let himself feel more completely as he lunged forward.
James had been waiting for a lunge like that. With a tiny grin behind his protective mask, he pulled on the mental muscle required to cast a spell, and brought out a single mostly well timed use of frost vector.
Anesh found his lunge suddenly problematic, as all friction between his shoe, and the smooth wood of the briefing warehouse stage they were goofing around on, vanished. But it wasn’t that awkward, because he’d felt the temperature drop, and when James had started casting that spell he’d also slipped on the tug-o-war of their relationstick corridor. So Anesh felt like he had ample time to react, and cast his own Climb magic.
Worldwalker Piton was an odd choice for someone who wasn’t a dedicated Climb delver, but Anesh liked it and he had plenty of extra slots since he wasn’t taking some of the more combative spells. For five seconds, he couldn’t trip. Which meant that even though he could feel the lack of friction like he was standing on a tiny pillow of air, he also wasn’t sliding.
James never had a moment to reconsider that his plan hadn’t worked. Anesh’s rapier tapped into the breast of his fencing jacket, just over his heart, right before Anesh’s spell wore off and he was suddenly sliding forward. He lost his grip on his blade as he windmilled his arms, before James caught him and bent him down like they were in a Shakespearean romance, their protective masks tapping against each other. “Hi!” James said happily as he cradled his boyfriend.
”Hi yourself. I won.”
”In my defense,” James laughed as he caught his breath and straightened Anesh back up, “I’m tired from helping to haul worm chunks into a teleport site for the last hour and a half.” He turned and bowed to the sparse audience, getting a round of applause from Sarah. “See? Fun!” He told Anesh.
Anesh pulled his mask off to wipe sweat and stuck hair off his forehead. “If we weren’t using magic I’d be winning more.” He said.
James walked past, tapping Anesh on the nose lightly with a hand gloved in thick white padding. “But if we weren’t using magic, I’d be losing more!” He said. “So, round… nine? A tiebreaker? Or do you need a second?” Anesh’s boyfriend playfully held out a hand and offered him a towel for his face that hadn’t existed a second before.
Taking a deep breath, trying to will his Breath stores to replenish fast enough, Anesh ignored the ‘gift’ and nodded, pulling the mask back on. “Next time we’re not telling the rest of me about doing this.” He muttered. “Being critiqued by other people is bad enough. Also it’s not fair that they’re having fun when I’m doing all the work.”
He considered for a second that if James were good enough, he could maybe fight multiple Anesh at once. And then Anesh could threaten his duplicates with participation. Which would be hilarious, as long as he was the Anesh doing the threatening.
Clearly the only way forward was to keep pushing James to do better, because that sounded fun.
_____
That night, after a day that was as busy and hectic as James expected every day of his life was going to be for a while, he capped things off not with a crisis but by having dinner with people he liked.
Arrush and Keeka specifically. Because his other friends and lovers and resident navigator were all scattered to the winds working on their own things or just sleeping in. Not that James minded at all; the two were his favorite ratroaches, and as soon as he had that thought he started wondering if that was maybe a completely incorrect way to think about people. But he still really liked them.
He met them at their apartment in the Lair’s basement, and made use of their kitchen to put something simple together. Just a basic meal of pan fried chicken and roast potatoes, something that he would have certainly fucked up in six unique ways a few years ago, but was easy for him now. And not just because of yellow orbs and skill ranks; practice mattered. Learning mattered. And James had come to love the process of getting better at things.
Arrush stood at his side, the repaired ratroach looming over him as James happily shared advice on cooking. And James felt a warmth as he showed Arrush how to cut vegetables; holding his own hand over Arrush’s inhuman paw, the two of them working to find the modified grip that worked best for him for the purposes of dicing an onion.
In the living room, Keeka lounged on the long couch that wouldn’t be picking up any more corrosion scars now. Angular chitinous head leaning over the edge as he watched his boyfriend and James from an upside down position, seeing Arrush slowly untense bit by bit as repeated interactions reminded him that no one thought his body was wrong.
Keeka loved Arrush, in a way that wasn’t hard to explain. Arrush had been his entire world for so long, that Keeka didn’t know if he could ever give him up, even if he wanted to. But he couldn’t conceive of a reason for wanting to anyway. He’d killed for his partner, and would do so again without hesitation, even if he had made himself weaker on purpose to adapt to a softer world.
Watching his boyfriend with James was interesting. Keeka felt a different kind of love for the human; one that was slower and less fierce, but no less real. It had been suggested that he might be jealous, but he didn’t think that was it. He still wanted to belong to James the way he did with Arrush, but he didn’t feel like an outsider watching them move and talk together. Instead, he felt like he was watching something wonderful that he was lucky to witness at all.
When Arrush smiled, and it clearly didn’t hurt him, Keeka thought it was all worth it.
When his boyfriend brought the plates he helped James prepare over to the coffee table - Keeka didn’t know why humans called it that, they used it for food not coffee - and set all three of them down with one just for him that had more of what he specifically liked, he knew it was worth it. Arrush moved with an overflowing pride; not quite strutting but also clearly happy to have helped with the process.
”We made you dinner.” He told Keeka with his soft, newly musical voice.
Trailing behind him, James arrived with a trio of mugs. Normally a human would have trouble with carrying three things at once, especially the glazed and fired cups Keeka had made in the Order’s growing pottery class. He’d put inexpert art of ratroaches holding hands on them, and felt a strange kind of embarrassed that James had picked those out of the cabinet. “Arrush made you dinner! I just helped.” He said, using two normal limbs and one made out of ice to set the drinks down.
”He lies worse than he cooks.” Arrush said playfully, enjoying his ability to actually put tiny inflictions on his words without stressing about it. “Look! Chicken!”
The chicken was a little messed up, but as soon as they started eating, Keeka found that he’d been hungrier than he’d realized, and the flavor didn’t care how badly it was cut. James settled in cross legged on their apartment floor while letting Arrush sink into the beanbag that had been flipped over so the worse corrosion damage was hidden. “Thank you!” He exclaimed happily as he held his plate steady with his lower arms as his upper hands rapidly helped him scarf down dinner.
”See?” James told Arrush with a smile and a hand wave. “That’s why cooking is fun.”
”…also there is food at the end.” Arrush tensed, holding in a sigh for just a second before he let it out carefully. “Thank you.” He murmured.
”Bah. You don’t need to thank me, I actually do think this kind of thing is fun.” James stretched, trying to banish the stiffness in his back as he started in on his own food.
He’d completely missed why Arrush was thanking him, but the two ratroaches shared a short glance and a twitch of their antenna that indicated that yes, Keeka got it. It wasn’t a thank you for cooking, or even for spending time together. It was a thank you for making Arrush feel normal. Something far more valuable than mustard chicken. Something so new it hurt sometimes.
Keeka rubbed at his throat as swallowing brought up a phantom pain from his recent injury. He’d healed. Mostly. But it was still something he liked a distraction from. Things tasted so much better now that food wasn’t flavored with his own pain and bile, and he didn’t really feel like relearning what it used to be like. “What did… what did you do today?” He ventured asking James, hoping that he could prompt a conversation that would pull his thoughts away from his own body.
”Lots of things! But also not that much.” James declared with a level of energy that seemed out of place on someone who’d fought against a mortal foe less than a week ago. “Mostly admin stuff, I guess. Hung out with Anesh and Alanna a little, did a tiny bit of magic. I think my idea for what a busy day is has skewed a lot lately. It used to be I got tired if I had to go to work and go to an appointment. These days… today has felt relaxing. I did work all day, and I feel relaxed.” James sighed.
Arrush tipped his muzzle up, the asymmetrical chitin bands on it seeming to shift color slightly as they got more light. “Should I go back to work?” He mused. “I might be less tired now. And I feel… better.”
”Shit.” James muttered. “I’m sorry, I feel like I’m complaining about an eight hour shift to the wrong people.”
Keeka just laughed at him. “You’re hard to understand!” He chittered at James. “But I don’t mind. I like it when you talk.” Arrush nodded in agreement. “And it’s nice to hear about things happening. Especially when they are things your boyfriend did!”
“…my boyfriend?” James asked slowly. “Who is also your boyfriend? Or your boyfriend, who is also my boyfriend?” He pointed at Arrush.
There was a moment of Arrush slowly opening his muzzle to mouth words, staring at the short coffee table and his mostly empty plate. “I think I have made a decision.” He said, getting both James and Keeka to look at him expectantly. “We need to… invent new words. Can we do that? Is that allowed?”
James laughed. “Probably!” He told the tan furred ratroach. “This is kind of a known issue, but our specific situation is so rare…”
”For now!” Keeka reminded him. “Your habits are spreading.”
”First off, Arrush and Anesh aren’t habits.” James pointed out. “Though I could get them nun outfits, that would be funny.” He didn’t let his brain go too deep down that particular well. “But also what do you mean?”
Keeka leaned back into the padding of the couch, two hands holding the mug he was sipping cider through a straw out of as he shrugged with his other arms. “There are more people in the Order who… do what you do? What we do. Humans don’t normally romance more than one person, do they? But they do here. So it’s probably your fault!” He concluded with a long toothy smile along his muzzle.
It was true, James admitted to himself, that the Order of Endless Rooms was a statistical outlier in terms of how many weird relationships it contained. He didn’t know if they were to the point of needing bespoke words for odd poly configurations. “Maybe.” He said out loud, deflecting. “Anyway which boyfriend did you mean?”
”Arrush!” Keeka pointed an accusatory claw at the other ratroach who tensed up, eyes twitching to every corner of the room at the sudden attention. “You took him to the Oklahoma for another dangerous thing! It wasn’t supposed to be dangerous! Just a normal safe thing!”
”Keeka thinks I should stop doing dangerous things.” Arrush said quietly.
”I do not!” Keeka protested with an odd form of a squeaking pout. “I… just think I should also be there.”
”I… yeah I understand that.” James sighed and twirled a piece of asparagus on his plate with his fork, not feeling like eating while having this conversation. “I feel the same way sometimes with things Alanna does. And I know they feel the same about me.” From the look Keeka gave him, it seemed that Alanna and Anesh weren’t the only ones who felt that way. “But our lives are dangerous sometimes. Also you know why Arrush went and you didn’t, and it worked out okay.” He paused, and then added one more thing. “Also it’s just Oklahoma. There’s no ‘the’. I know a lot of stuff in our lives feels like it should have a definite article, but most US states don’t.”
“The Oklahoma part isn’t important.” Arrush said before making a quick set of clicks in his throat. “I don’t think so at least. But we did meet someone nice.” He said with a distant happiness in his voice. “She would like you.” He told Keeka.
”Ah. Yeah.” James took a breath and tried to keep himself objective. Which was hard. He’d already started the process of requesting as many copies as possible of red orbs that gave emotional resonance in kindness and related emotions, because while Kiki seemed and probably was an incredibly nice person… it was really hard to stay objective. And he already recognized that in himself. “Once we know more I bet she’d love to meet you.”
Keeka set his cup down and sprawled out on the couch, stretching like a cat as he consumed as much space as possible, tails flicking behind him. James grinned coyly at Arrush as he saw his newest boyfriend openly ogling his long term partner, getting a blush from the larger ratroach before Keeka spoke again. “Is she a prisoner?” He asked. “Or… like us? Quarantine?” He said the last word with the kind of odd infliction that meant he hadn’t really used or heard it a lot.
”Well,” James said with a shrug, “Research went and got an isolated cabin up in the mountains relatively near here for her and anyone trying to help her to stay at, so it’s somewhat isolated. With you guys, when you showed up, we knew how to stop the spread of infections and spores, you know? Airtight seals and filters, careful observation, that kind of thing. Kiki isn’t sick though, she’s… I mean, she’s magic. It’s actually kind of insane. Keeka, have you ever seen a pillar? They’re terrifying. They are instantly recognizable as something absurdly powerful. But Kiki’s just this old lady who has a cool friend group and makes people kinder.” He sighed.
”That wasn’t really an answer.” Keeka said, voice starting to strain as his throat scar ached.
James bit his lip, shifting his legs under himself and deciding to just give up and flop on the side of the beanbag Arrush was sitting in. “Neither.” He answered the question as he looked up at the underside of Arrush’s muzzle, noting that the ratroach was twisting like he was trying not to stare down at James, and that there were bright green highlights on the visible parts of his hide where the fur and chitin stopped. He’d never really seen Arrush from this specific angle before. “She’s got some things to manage in her personal life, then in a few days she’ll be spending a week or so with us, to see if we can find a solution. Hopefully we can also convince her that suicide is a bad idea.”
”You said she was powerful?” Keeka asked, and James and Arrush both stopped failing to flirt with each other to nod silently. “Could she fix your eye? She helped Alex.”
”I did ask, actually.” James said. “She said she could do it, but it would ‘change me’, so she didn’t want to.”
Arrush linked his offset hands onto whichever joints were within reach. ”That’s the point.” He said with a surprising amount of heat in his voice. “She’s being… afraid. She’s afraid of hurting you, so she won’t help you.”
”That’s also what I said!” James said, reaching his hands over his head to wrap around Arrush’s torso, feeling him tense before leaning into the touch. “I kind of actually want to be changed! Changed into someone with depth perception! But it’s fine, I’ve got shaper substance surgery tomorrow, and after that, delves! Hey who wants to go dungeon diving with me?”
Arrush raised his hand instantly, which got a giggle out of Keeka. His boyfriend was actually adorable. And the way James looked at him with clear compassion and desire was great. He wished James would look at him that way sometimes, but it wasn’t actually a big deal, because it made him feel an inner warmth just to know that the human recognized how great Arrush was.
The apartment was warm and comfortable, the food was filling and tasty, the people he was with were kind and wonderful. Really, Keeka thought to himself, the only thing that wasn’t perfect about this moment was that Arrush and James weren’t in the process of kissing. And now they were both staring at him. Which was when he realized that he had part of his thoughts out loud.
Part of him was terrified that he was slipping. Turning into someone who was so careless as to make noise without intention. But the rest of him, the part that had embraced this new life, decided to double down. “Y-yes!” He stammered with embarrassed determination. “You should kiss! Arrush wants to and I know you haven’t!”
”Oh, yeah, I didn’t want to pressure anyone.” James said, craning his neck and looking up at Arrush again.
His ratroach boyfriend blushed again, staring up at the ceiling. “I… I didn’t want to… it would have hurt you, and you were… it… isn’t import-“
James understood. Maybe not the part about having saliva that was corrosive enough to melt skin, but the rest of it, certainly. He understood way too well how it felt to think that sharing what you wanted was just causing problems, or to believe that your own desires were unimportant. And also he knew how hard it was to be vulnerable, and he also knew that vulnerability would be amplified a hundredfold for someone who had lived through the kind of trauma Arrush had.
And in that moment, he felt a strange kind of confidence. That he knew, without a bit of doubt, that showing vulnerability would be rewarded. Specifically, rewarded with kisses.
Arrush was still trying to get out an explanation and stumbling over his own words, his voice repaired and healthy but his emotions as turbulent as ever, when James reached up and placed a hand on his neck. He trailed off, looking down at the owner of the hand and the person that he felt a growing attachment to as James shifted against the beanbag they were both resting on.
And then his blush went from glowing to practically radioactive as he felt James’ other hand settle on the other side of his folded legs, and the press of lips against the fur on his exposed neck as his boyfriend got closer. Arrush’s intake of breath came with a trembling squeak of sound, before the hand that was settled on him guided his face down and another kiss landed on the side of his muzzle. And then he was gently pulled into staring into James’ eye; the way their lives had gone leading to the disparity in the number of eyeballs between them having risen over the last week.
James smiled at him, his own cheeks showing the human version of the green glow around Arrush’s eyes, and Arrush stopped worrying so much. When James leaned forward the last couple inches, Arrush did too, and met the human’s lips with the end of his triangular muzzle. Bodies not built nor modified to be compatible, but both of them happy to find a workaround for this particular gesture of love.
”Perfect!” Keeka announced as they pulled apart and took long breaths, the slender ratroach watching them from the couch with a wide glowing grin on his muzzle.
”Uh… would you like to go on a dungeon delve with me and call it a date?” James asked sheepishly, suddenly aware of just how close he was to Arrush.
”Yes.” Arrush answered instantly.
Keeka chittered at them. “Less perfect!” He scolded the two, but quieted down as they kissed again. For all the different kinds of magic the Order was collecting, there was something uniquely special and irreplaceable to him about watching his boyfriend be romantic from the outside.
Now he just had to figure out how to get the two to agree to only go on a relatively safe delve. Maybe he could bribe them with chocolate. That worked surprisingly well with a lot of the new camracondas, at least.