“The distinction between vampires and players who Siphon also becomes blurred when considering players who happen to be inorganic entities (e.g. Pitching Machine) who, to date, appear to have consumed nothing but blood.”   -Blaseball Wiki, Vampires-

_____

Malcom McHarn’s phone rang exactly twice before he picked it up.  It was a desk phone, which meant that, in this building, everything he said on this conversation would be recorded and archived so an analyst could check it if needed.  It was also his personal desk phone, which meant that recording would get lost.  Not because he was pulling any particular espionage tricks, but because his basement office and everything that happened in it tended to get forgotten.

“McHarn.”  He answered, crisply bringing the black plastic bar of the phone’s receiver up to his ear.

“Hey Malcom.  James Lyle.”  The voice on the other end spoke.  A young man’s voice, that nevertheless made Malcom’s blood chill.

He set the phone down on his desk, stood up, walked across the ornate rug that he’d gotten to cover the otherwise barren floor of his small office, and locked his door with a nod to his newest assistant as he shut the blinds on the door’s inset window.  Then he deliberately made his way back to his desk, picked the phone up again, and took a deep breath.  “This line isn’t secure.”  He said.

“Oh, it’s fine.”  James told him with an easy tone.  “DeKay isn’t in the building, and I trust you’ve swept your own office for bugs.  Also I’ve got someone on the phone thing, so don’t worry about that.”

“What idiot would be stupid enough to bug the office of a deputy director of the FBI?”  McHarn asked, rhetorically.  He knew the answer to that.  It was one of his own subordinates.  “Well.  What do you need?”

There was a pause that sounded like a wince to his experience hearing people give reports over the phone.  “Well,” James started slowly, “I’ve got a little information for you.  Uh… so, how’ve you been settling into your job?”

“Badly.  Get to the point.”  Malcom was a lot of things today, but ready for small talk from an informant wasn’t one of them.

“Okay.  We’ve identified the group we believe is responsible for your killings.”  Lyle’s tone snapped to businesslike in an instant, and McHarn pulled a yellow legal pad and a freshly sharpened pencil out of his desk to start scratching notes to himself.  “I’ve got a name and a location for you, but this isn’t free.”

“What do you want?”  McHarn’s face twisted into a scowl.  “Safeguarding your country’s stability isn’t enough for you?”

“You know it super isn’t.”  James laughed.  “Remember, I believe that murder is wrong , not that oil execs are good .  Don’t confuse the two.  I don’t give a shit about economic stability paid for with blood money.  We’re way more personal here; you asked nicely, so we’re helping you . Not the FBI, not your special division.  You.”

Something about the way the young man phrased that unsettled Malcom.  He rapidly wiped the back of one hand across his smooth forehead, before he responded.  “Fine.  What do you want for the information?”

“At their home base, these people have a series of blueprints.”  James said simply.  “We want them.  As well as one other thing, that we don’t know the shape of yet.  Everything else, take it as evidence, or whatever.  You’ll probably like the helicopter.  Call it an early Christmas gift.”

“That’s all?”  McHarn’s eyebrows raised ever so slightly, even with no one in the office to see.  “DeKay made it pretty clear you were extorting our discretionary budget when she worked with you.”

“That was then.  This is now.”  James said.  “Do you want the intel or not?”

“Go ahead.”

“Alright.  You’re looking for a group called Priority Earth.  They were an ecoterrorist group operating for the last twenty years or so, using the kind of tactics that your division was made to fight.  Something happened to them, probably recently, to change their behavior and ideology, but they’re still in your wheelhouse.  I’ve got a set of GPS coordinates here for you, you got a pen?”  James waited for confirmation, then rattled off a set of numbers while McHarn wrote rapidly.  “There’s another group there too, mercenaries working with them.  They’re all fairly heavily armed, so be careful.  Maybe thirty or forty people total.”  James paused, then added slowly, “I’ve also got a bit of speculation, if you want it.”

“Sorting speculation out of noise is my job.”  Malcom said smoothly.

“Right.  Well, if you ever want to defect, let us know.  We could use someone good at that.  Anyway.  Priority Earth?  We think they’re being used as a diversionary tactic.  By an entity called the Last Line Of Defense.”

Malcom desperately wanted to ask James how he pronounced the capital letters, but instead, he focused on the relevant details.  “Motive?”

“Unknown.  But we know it’s dangerous.  If you’ve noticed that there’s a city missing from the US, you can blame the Line for that.”  James told him in a grim voice.

Malcom nodded with a similar grim look on his face.  “I have.  Morocco.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.  And then, a slow voice saying, “Morocco is… still around?”

“Morocco, Ohio.”  McHarn knew he didn’t have to give this information away for free, but so far, the Order of Endless Rooms was paying dividends as a contact, and the more James trusted him, the more he was going to get out of this overall.  Though he did make a note to find the other missing city, while in the background of the call, he heard James’ voice yelling for someone to find a man named ‘Nate’.  “You won’t find anything there.”  Malcom saved him some time.  “Literally nothing.  It’s like the place never was.”

“Well that’s fucking terrifying.”  James said.

“Agreed.  Anything else for me?”

“Not right now.”  A tiny pause.  “How’s DeKay doing?”

“She’s being handled.”  Malcom said.  DeKay wasn’t useless , unfortunately.  She was an unnervingly good field agent, when he actually had something to point her at.  Her opinions were dangerous, but that wasn’t enough to have her fired.  Not in the current political climate, and especially not with the fact that Malcom wasn’t sure if anyone but payroll remembered his department existed.  “As far as she knows, I have a direct line of intelligence on your organization.  So we’re biding our time until you’re too much of a problem to ignore.”

“Do you?”  James asked with a smile in his voice.

“We’re talking, aren’t we?  Tell me, how many people are in your organization?”  McHarn made a joking effort to secure a small tidbit of intel.

“Uh… define people?”  Was not the response he expected.

“I suppose I walked into that one.  If I say humans, I’m not getting an accurate answer, am I?”

“Nope.”

“Everyone always assumed when aliens arrived, they’d call the White House.  Maybe the Kremlin.”

“You guys would be weird about it.”  James said.  “Anyways.  Call me when you’re ready to lose some evidence.”

There was a click, and Malcom’s phone went quiet.  Gently, he settled the plastic handset back in its place, and took a deep breath.  He had liked it more when Lyle was a little intimidated by him and his government agency status; with each conversation he had with the younger man, some of that faded, and he got to see more of who he actually was.  A snarky, unprofessional, fundamentally compassionate human, who had to work very hard to repress his disrespect of authority figures whenever he talked to Malcom.

And yet, infuriatingly, this was the best lead his office had gotten in weeks.  Part of him wanted to know how James had done it.  Mind reading, maybe?  It would have sounded silly a few months ago, but… nothing was off the table anymore, was it?

Malcom looked down at the paper he’d written a set of coordinates on.  “Alaska, huh?”  He took a deep breath, and stood up.  He had calls to make, field agents to retask, law enforcement to coordinate with, and at least two other department heads that he could draw on for resources and manpower.  Maybe they’d forget his department existed, but he was a deputy director, dammit , and they didn’t need to know anything about his job to give him what he needed.

They’d play it safe.  But if this panned out, this could be a major star for his career, and a chance at some real answers, besides.

But first, he needed to figure out what he was going to tell his most problematic asset.

_____

“That went well.”  James told Nate as he hung up.

“I still say we could have taken them.”  JP protested from his spot at the table.  There were a handful of other rogue division members around, listening in.  But mostly, the briefing warehouse was empty, because it was fairly early morning for everyone here.  JP just hadn’t slept last night, and was getting increasingly irritable, which was a sharp contrast to James, who actually had slept, and was only up this early because he and Alanna had a dungeon date.  “There’s, what, twenty guys?   I could have taken them.”  He leaned forward on his elbows, cracking his knuckles in a ball of hands as he spoke.

Nate and James ignored him.  They’d been over this already.  “Smooth enough.”  Nate admitted.  “You didn’t need to give away our membership having species as a factor like that, though.”

“Ah, I want him used to it when it comes up.  Besides, he’s met Debt.”  James shrugged.  “Anyway, think he’ll hold up his end?”

“I’d say so.  He’s not our friend , but he’s thinking of you as an asset now, and he won’t want to burn that yet.  It’ll help that he won’t know what the blueprints are.”  Nate scratched a thumbnail along his chin in thought.  “So.  What’re your orders for us now?”  He swept that same hand out to show off the rest of the rogues.

Ben’s eyes snapped up from the laptop he was rapidly tapping at.  “He doesn’t give us orders.”  He said.

“I didn’t even realize we got orders.  I thought we were freelance spies.”  Another rogue said.

While Nate was shaking his head and looking like he was about to bite their heads off, James snorted a laugh and jumped in.  “I’ve actually got two things for you guys.  One?  Keep on New York.  Something’s still happening there.  But don’t push it .  We can benefit from knowing more, but it’s not critical.  Two, track down some of the people and places we got from the Priority camp and check them out.  Same reason.”

“Low stakes adventure!  Woo!”  A girl off to the side threw up her hands.  “Also I’m not a guys.”

“Guys is gender neutral.”  JP protested.

“How many guys have you slept with?”  The rogue gave him a toothy grin, and James had the sudden question on if JP was exclusively recruiting people that drove him personally insane to his growing cadre of spies.

He answered in place of JP.  “Between one and twelve, depending on how you count Anesh.”  He said.  “But I take your meaning.  Nate, do you need anything else from me today?”

“We’re good.  Get out of here.”

“Thanks.  And good job, everyone, getting us this far.”  James nodded at them, before turning to walk away.

In the end, it had been simple.  The Order was growing, both in size and strength.  But they couldn’t handle every problem, and they didn’t need to pick every single fight that showed up at their door.

But the FBI was at its peak, in terms of power.  And they already wanted to know about what they’d uncovered here.  So, solve two problems at once.  Tell McHarn enough of the real truth to set him and his government goons on the actual dangerous bombers, hopefully remove an opponent from the board, score trust points with an FBI deputy director, take a chance on getting access to the magical blueprints, and, if they were really lucky, mildly inconvenience whatever the Last Line Of Defense was doing in New York.

Clean, efficient, and easy.  Several problems solved with one phone call.  The FBI could handle the violent terrorist group with assault rifles, and the Order could get back to what they were meant to be doing.

Building the future, and finding new magic.

So James was feeling pretty smug as he walked out of the briefing warehouse into the early morning activities of the Lair.  It was almost five AM, which meant there was less life happening, not that there was none at all.  Especially as he headed back to the dining room to get some breakfast.  Nate might not be cooking, but they had an actual kitchen staff now, and El’s mom made great bacon.

James ate while he watched Response members trading out shifts, listened in on a conversation between two exhausted engineers about building a city out of a space elevator, and nodded a quick hello to Karen and Texture-Of-Barkdust as the two women sat down to their own breakfast with the motions of a solidifying habit.

He had just finished his egg and toast when Alanna dramatically swept herself across the seat across from him and took a slice of his bacon with her.   “Yo.”  His girlfriend said as she toppled the chair back onto all four legs.  “You ready?”

“More or less.  Neck still aches, but I’ve got ibuprofen.”  James gave a small shrug.  “Turns out you can’t just walk off getting shot.  Who knew?”

“Well, I mean, obviously not us.  The authorities are awesome, aren’t they?”  Alanna asked rhetorically.  “I’m thinking… would you mind if I bonded with one?  When the hive makes more, obviously.”

James cocked an eyebrow.  “Now that’s an odd thought.  Do you… actually have a position that one would thrive off?”

“I do Response stuff!”  Alanna looked almost hurt.  “Hell, I pretty much just do Response stuff.”  She added, her voice getting more contemplative.  “That and hanging out with you.  Fuck, wait, am I getting boring?”

“Never.”  James said easily.  “Also you hang out with Anesh.  But yeah, maybe take some time off?”

“That’s what we’re doing today!”  Alanna bounced back to being excited, rubbing her palms together after she crammed the rest of James’ bacon in her mouth.  “Dungeon things!  Oh, also, speaking of Anesh.  He’s seriously thinking of quitting NASA.  You should talk to him about it.”

“You know I’m absolutely just gonna tell him to do it, though.  Right?”  James asked her as he stood and cleared his table, dropping the dishes into the plastic tub by the kitchen’s side door.  “It’s not making him happy, even if he is actively using his enormous brian.”

Alanna leaned down to bump shoulders with James as she hopped up and started walking next to him, the two of them headed down into the basement that contained the Order’s armory.  “Uh, yeah?”  She said as she shared inconvenient physical contact with her boyfriend.  “That’s why I want you to talk to him.  He needs a nudge.  And then he’ll be around more.”

“There’s three of him  around!”  James laughed.

“And there could be four .”  Alanna cocked her head to stare up at the ceiling of the stairwell, pausing on the landing above James.  “Think of the possibilities!  And… you know.  The mental well being of the guy we love, who is burning out because one of him is constantly alone.”

“That’s the important part, really.”  James agreed as he held the door open for her.  “Anyway.  You ready to go on a hike ?”

Alanna didn’t have a great answer to that.

In theory , the two of them were excited to be going into a dungeon in a couple hours.  But, despite all the wonder at the magic, and the sensation that James couldn’t deny of feeling kind of badass in the armor, climbing harness, and gear loadout, there was something about Winter’s Climb that wasn’t exactly fun .

Officium Mundi was fun.  Terrifying and easy to get lost in and full of constant dangerous creatures, but also packed with small adventures.  Route Horizon was fun.  Terrifying and easy to get lost in and populated by occasional oversized monsters, but also a thrill to drive through and to experience the suns of.

Winter’s Climb was cold .  It was unfun, in the same way the Akashic Sewer was.  Though, in fairness, it did smell better.  You couldn’t ever be comfortable in it though; there was that endless pressure of the cold and the wet and the wind that made it hurt just to be in the dungeon’s space.

But both of them wanted to get high enough to unlock a second spell slot.  And also, there was so much they hadn’t seen of the place.

Getting equipped was easier than it had been the first time. The Order was ready for the Mountain these days.  Dry suits and armor plate and climbing harnesses, hatchets and pistols - no rifles, not since the avalanche incident - flares, breaker gloves, exercise potions, coffee thermoses, ski goggles that were enchanted to show where things were going to fall (they’d made several copies of those).  That, mixed with clicking a .bat file on a terminal that set them as the ‘users’ of a handful of the resistance programs they had built up copies of, making each of them roughly ten percent resistant to wood and venom.  Both of those things were worryingly useful in the Climb.

And then, because they were a little early, about half an hour of lounging around upstairs, waiting for the rest of their team.  Because even though James and Alanna were grinning in anticipation of their dungeon date, they weren’t stupid enough to not bring backup.  Especially when there was a specialized Winter’s Climb team that was around today anyway.

“Hey guys!”  Ethan greeted them with excitement when he found them waiting.  Ethan was, admittedly, too easily excited, and James remembered it grating on him when he was trying to save the younger man’s life from Officium Mundi.  But these days, that enthusiasm was tempered with experience, and he’d turned into a fine team lead.  He was already outfitted like James and Alanna, and gestured behind himself as he introduced them to the rest of his  delvers.  “This is Marlea,” he said, a sweep of his hand indicating the two women with him that nodded and made a quick greeting in perfect unison, “Spire-Cast-Behind, and Rudger, who is a good dragon.”  The camraconda was armored, and had a four-limbed motorized backpack on, and was already riding on the back of the laminated paper dragon.  Rudger was nowhere near the size of Pendragon, yet , but the drake was more than large enough to support the camraconda nestled in a groove on his back.

“Hey.”  James nodded at all of them.  “Okay, I’ve been meaning to ask about this.  Are you two always connected?  Like Simon and James were?”  He asked Marlea.  “Is that rude to ask?  I don’t know if we have skulljack etiquette yet.”

“Oh, yeah, we are.”  The two women nodded.  “It’s not rude.  Though I use a singular pronoun, please.”

“…Wait, what?”  Alanna tilted her head.  “Are you… going full hive mind with this?”

“Absolutely.”  Marlea’s shared voice harmonized with herself.  “I’m literally twice the person either of my component lives were.  I think everyone else is crazy for not wanting to explore this more.  I’ve got a couple essays written, if you’re interested.”

“Kinda, yeah!”  Alanna said, surprising herself even.  “But after this.”

“Yeah, you two ready?”  Ethan asked.  “We’ve got a stable and easy route mapped out that’ll take us the first twelve hundred feet up in about four hours, but after that, we’ll need to press kinda hard to make it to a structure to shelter in before we continue.  Unless you want to do a broader exploration, and not just go for your second slot.”

“It’s weird seeing you be professional.”  James muttered.  Though really, what he struggled with more was the sudden realization that professional dungeon delver was actually a thing that was solidifying in the Order of Endless Rooms.  “We’ll follow your lead.”  He added, louder.  “But maybe after we make camp, we can do some poking around.  There’s always more to find, it seems.”

“Absolutely.  Alright, let’s go!”  He nodded as he held out a hand, a telepad ready to take them almost directly to the foot of the mountain that the Winter’s Climb tended to grab people from.

James and Alanna laced their fingers together, and slapped their palms into the circle of contact with the others.  Shortly after, they were gone from their home base in Oregon, and appearing in the middle of a hiking trail in Australia.  They barely had time to get their bearings before a chunk of angry ball lightning in the shape of a hole in the world dragged them off to somewhere else.

_____

Snow crunched under James’ boots as he flanked Alanna, the two of them moving as part of the line of delvers as they pushed through the gently sloping knee-high white ground.

It was the kind of snow that had something like a shell over its surface.  Not quite a frozen layer of ice, just enough that it would crack and then give all at once with every step.  Enough to make walking even more exhausting, but not impossible.  Not a constant tripping hazard.

No, that honor went to the tangles of roots buried in the snow.  Intellectually, James was aware of the fact that they were ascending a mountain , and not a parking lot , but the constant reminder that there were protruding roots and a layer of shifting pine needles underfoot was frustrating.  It made it even more important to take each step carefully, to focus on the act of walking.

Which was stacked on top of focusing on staying ahead of the slowly creeping storm wall behind them, focusing on not being ambushed by stickbugs or snow beasts, focusing on keeping an eye out for any incoming ice artillery from the benign looking sky, and focusing on not getting too far apart from each other while doing all of this.

James and Alanna were part of the left wing of their formation, with Ethan on the far outside.  Marlea took up the right side of their line, her two bodies moving in unison and keeping close.  Spire-Cast-Behind stayed in the middle of their formation, the laminated drake he was riding trailing behind them and mostly following the trail Alanna was leaving, as it was the easiest to walk through.  Rudger might have been the size of a horse, but most of his motion was magical and not physical and plowing through two foot high untouched snow was hard for the big guy.  Especially since he was also wearing saddlebags with half their gear in it.  So they made it easy and let him follow in their partially cleared paths, as Spire-Cast-Behind kept a watch out for anything hostile approaching.

They’d been moving for almost half an hour, and James’ legs were starting to burn with that low fire of sustained exercise.  The kind of feeling that made him smugly know that he could keep this up for hours without a break, that made him revel in the body he had now, shaped by a combination of magic and hard work.  Still, it was worth noting that the only reason he was starting to feel the ache in his calves and not already collapsed from exertion was that Ethan and his team were leading them on a pretty easy path.

Oh, sure, tripping hazards.  And the cold of the snow wrapped around their legs was kept back by carefully planned gear.  But the slope was gentle, nothing had tried to directly attack them yet, and there hadn’t been any ice spikes falling from the sky.

Winter’s Climb, it turned out, was a pretty stable dungeon.  The Order still didn’t have enough examples to put together a full picture yet, but in his head, James did  have a few classifications for the dungeons.  In this case, ‘stable’ was in contrast to ‘shifting’.  The Akashic Sewer and Clutter Ascent were both shifting dungeons; maybe just because they were new, maybe it was something dungeons grew out of as they figured out how they liked things.  But Route Horizon went in the shifting category too; its roads sort of had a pattern to them, but it wasn’t  a hundred percent predictable.  Officium Mundi was stable, though.  It could change, and it did that thing where it tended to reset parts of itself, but the actual big picture map of it stayed the same week to week.

Just like the Climb.  Where, if you were a group of dedicated explorers, you could start to route out the best way to get from the screaming cliffs that the entrance dropped you in at up to the height of two thousand feet needed to get the second spell slot.

It annoyed James immensely that the Climb used feet.  It was in Australia , technically.  He considered complaining about this to Alanna, but he’d have to speak pretty loudly to be heard over the sporadic blasts of sharp wind, and they were both in the groove.  Step, push down, test the ground, pull forward, one foot at a time to maximize stability.  Play it safe, they had plenty of time, they were already ahead of the storm.

The other thing that was annoying about this place was, despite being stable, it did the Officium Mundi thing of stripping away the guide ropes and climbing pitons that they tried to leave.  It meant that a lot of their navigation was done by landmark, and there was also no promise that those would stay where they were.  But the dungeon hadn’t screwed them over just yet.

James corrected his hiking spacing as he got too near to Ethan.  Their line was spread out for a reason; they were close enough to help each other, but not so close that a single tripwire trap could take out more than one of them.  Ideally, they just wouldn’t trigger any traps, but this dungeon really liked putting things under the snow.

It actually got kind of silly after the fourth time either Ethan or Spire-Cast-Behind called out a space they should avoid stepping.  James knew that experience with a dungeon could make a person look really impressive to someone who was new, but he’d been here before, and he had no idea how they were spotting the triplines.

“We go left up here!”  Ethan’s voice was projected to be heard, but he wasn’t yelling as he pointed to the ridge they were approaching.  “The outcrop stops and we can keep climbing the hill in about a quarter mile!”

“Got it!”  Alanna called, checking for a nod from James for good measure.  They pressed on, until they made their way to the base of the rocks that they’d been headed for.  It wasn’t a sheer cliff or anything, it was more like a pile of boulders that had been piled up and gradually had the rest of the world fill in dirt and snow and plants around them.  And if Ethan was right, it wasn’t a very long barrier either.  They could just climb it, but climbing freehand in this place was a worrying prospect, and even if it took a little extra time, it was worth saving the energy to just go around.

They lined up near the rocks and turned to start moving, Ethan taking the lead now ahead of them.  On their left, as they moved, a thin collection of anemic pine trees started to appear in their line of sight out of the thin snow, while the rocks to their right kept their vision a little clearer as they blocked some of the wind.  The trees here, James remembered, tended to be ambush points or maybe nests for the weird long limbed stick monsters.  So he was keeping an eye on them, closely.  Even if he knew Spire-Cast-Behind was probably also doing the same

It was why he didn’t catch the motion from the rocks to his right as something sinuous darted out for him.

Alanna caught it though.  One hand moving in a blur as she snapped across James’ field of vision to grab the snake that had lashed out at him by whatever part of a snake the neck was.  James’ brain caught up to the motion just as the thing started to writhe in her grip, trying to sink long fangs that glittered like ice into her arm.

Alanna squeezed it.  And then, even through the mask and goggles, James could see her face twist in confusion as the snake didn’t die.  He focused on the thing quickly, and saw coils that were too rough, segments of a body that were more like chunks of rock than flesh.  Moving quickly and saving the time it would take to communicate this to Alanna, he just dipped his mind down to the Status Quo breaker glove that he was wearing, triggered the effect that shattered stone, and lashed out with a tightly controlled punch, putting the force of his whole body behind it.

His gloved fist connected with the stone snake’s head where it was currently sticking up out of Alanna’s grip as she tried to hold it away from her face, and the snake exploded.  Chunks of wet stone and an explosion of blood like pure melted ice splattered across the snow ahead of them with a bang that echoed off the terrain.  No stopping the movement, James let the tug on his awareness guide him and set his feet to Alanna’s right, pivoting just in time to jam another punch through the center of the second snake that lunged out of its nest in the rocks at him.  That one, too, simply exploded as he hit it.  The creature’s body popping in a shockwave ripple as the magically enhanced impact traveled down its body with another bang .

Catching on, Alanna switched to a stance that brought her own breaker glove up, but no more snakes jumped out at them.  Seconds later, the rest of the team clustered around them, the big laminated drake shoving his body in between the group and the trees like a wall, everyone on high alert.

“We’re good!”  James told them as he caught his breath.  “Couple of rock snakes.  Which I guess are a thing?”

“Not usually around here, but yes.”  Marlea said, her dual voice carrying well with the wind having died down temporarily.  “Their fangs are actually a kind of industrial sapphire, if you want a souvenir.”  She looked to Ethan, who was sweeping the line of trees with his gaze.  “More importantly, the noise will attract anything nearby.  We should move quickly.”

James and Alanna nodded, and got ready to hustle, when it became clear it was too late.  A half dozen wooden figures had dropped out of the trees and were closing the gap to them, long spindly limbs and… nothing else.  The stick creatures were basically nothing but long spindly limb, with all the sharp bits dripping with dendrification venom.

One of them froze, then another, then a third as the first one started moving again.  Spire-Cast-Behind using his paralyzing gaze to stagger out their approach.  “Alright, everyone back!”  Ethan’s voice was tight.  “Six of them, be on the lookout for others!  We’ll repel their first hits and then see if they follow!”

James and Alanna shot each other a confused look.  “Or… let us handle it?”  Alanna said to Ethan, who gave her an equally confused look.  “Yeah, we got this.”  She nodded as she and James stepped past Ethan, who tried to grab their arms and yell something cautionary at them.  But they just stepped up to the front and unhooked their hatchets.  “Ready?”  Alanna asked James.

“Set.”  He replied, his heart starting to hammer.  Not in fear, though, or even excitement.  Just in simple anticipation of a fight for his life.

The two of them dared one more look at each other before the first three stick creatures made it to them.  “Go!”  Alanna’s voice held a feral glee that James’ didn’t quite feel himself as she burst forward, a side armed swing of her axe leaving a green splatter of blood-adjacent-fluid on the snow.

James followed, his own weapon moving quickly and effectively as he tore into the incoming monsters.  With support from a camraconda that had a little bit of elevation, it was hardly even a fight , really.  In no time at all, he and Alanna had mopped up the incoming ‘ambush’, and were catching their breath, ready to get moving again.

“What… the fuck was that?”  Marlea demanded as they used handfuls of snow to wipe the green blood off their axes before reholstering them.

“What was what?”  James asked.

“You just… went right through them.”  Ethan said, his voice subdued now, hard to hear over the growing strength of the gusts that were chasing them.  “We don’t… we normally fight , sure, but not like that .”

“We just… I mean, it’s…” James paused as he realized that nothing he had to say here would actually sound very reassuring.  “I dunno what to tell you, I guess.”  He shrugged lamely.  “Though I’m actually fine fighting more defensively; we’ll try to work with your formations from now on?”

“Yeah…” Ethan looked uncertain.  They moved on, but it was a while before the others stopped shooting looks at James and Alanna when they thought the two wouldn’t notice.

It got old after the third time he noticed.  “For fucks sake, we don’t have a case of the bloodlusts .”  James would have thrown his hands up if he weren’t starting to get tired.  “Stop being so weird about it!”  He declared as they made their way up an embankment that was actually somewhat bare of snow, following the bank of a thin stream of water that flowed down from somewhere up ahead.  “You’re making this weird.”  He grumbled as he tested a patch of ground and found it too icy to step on.

His words actually did break them out of their apprehension.  Well, the humans anyway.  Spire-Cast-Behind was completely used to that level of violence, it was just Ethan and Marlea who were more cautious and reserved when it came to fighting.  But they were delvers, they did fight all the time.  It was just that, to them, fighting was a defensive action that ended when the things attacking them pulled back, not when they eliminated everything moving.

Which actually surprised James.  They talked some more as they kept climbing.  Winter’s Climb, it turned out, was a little more natural with its wildlife.  Oh, there was a lot of evidence that the monsters were straight up monsters, and not part of an ecosystem or even particularly sentient.  But they did display some weird behaviors and tactics sometimes.  The stick things, for example, actually would pull back if they didn’t manage to seriously injure anyone within a minute or two of ambushing, even if they weren’t hurt themselves.

It had become a habit of theirs to just survive the fights, trusting in their armor, camraconda, and a magical enhancements, to get them through without injury, without having to expend the extra effort to actually fight to the death.

Part of James thought that was kind of weird, and especially unsafe since it left an enemy at their backs.  But it had literally never been an issue; once they were past the ambush, the stick things didn’t try again, just returning to their trees to wait for their next chance.  And really, he’d only been here maybe three times, while Ethan and his team came through every few days.  They’d been here almost thirty times, and as Alanna pointed out, this time they were the experts.

Which became apparent with how quickly they set up a climbing line when they reached the first cliff of their trip.  It wasn’t a straight line of rock or anything, and they probably could have done it freehand without too much of a problem, but Marlea went first, hammering pitons into the stone and leaving behind a line that the rest of them could clip their harnesses to.  Ascending was a matter of minutes to go up what felt like twenty or thirty feet.  Faster for James, who had Zhu helping him find the perfect footholds as he ascended, the navigator exerting a small amount of his energy to help out, even though he was mostly keeping back unless needed.

Once the majority of them were at the top, they all worked together to help haul up Rudger.  The big drake might have been made of mostly paper and plastic, but he still weighed a lot .  Alanna had asked why he didn’t just fly up over these bits as she dug her feet in and strained her muscles to provide the lift the drake needed to claw his way more easily up the stone, and had gotten the answer that the Climb did not like it when you flew in here.

It barely tolerated drones.  It absolutely would not put up with anyone alive trying to skip any of its obstacles.  Ice strikes would become more frequent, and the wind would start to get sharp enough to flay someone alive if they were more than a few feet off the ground.  They’d tried once , and only barely got out without injuries via telepad.

Marlea brought the rope in, retrieving most of the pitons, and the group pressed on, keeping ahead of the storm wall behind them.  They were making good time, and so they kept to the route that the team had traced out ahead of time.  Skipping a few shallow overhangs in the rocks, taking a trail that kept them away from the frozen lakes that everyone was still perfectly reasonably nervous about, and heading up at a quick pace to the first stopping point they had planned.

By the time they saw the first traffic light, standing proudly in the growing flurries of icy white that were coming down, everyone had downed at least one exercise potion to keep themselves fresh, and James was ready to take a break .  The green pool of light that splashed across the snow like an uneven ring of paint did have a magical quality to it.  Not literal magic, but a more emotional spell; the feeling of a world that had been quieted by the storm, where light and color were like islands in the cold.  It was also, he knew, a sign they had started to get near to a building.

No one knew yet, even the experienced exploration team for this very dungeon, if the colors on these lone traffic lights meant anything.  But he took the green as a good sign as they filed past.  Though James did frown into his ski mask as he tried to remember if Australia used blue and not green, and if this dungeon was just screwing with him.

He became absolutely certain it was when they reached the shelter marked on the map.  The fact that the building was surrounded by a patch of absolutely no trees at all was strange, but the realization that it actually had a parking lot was weirder.  It was the rotting and broken remains of the sign on the front of the one story office complex that really made James unsettled, though.  What looked like half a massive human tooth, black cracks running down its frame and a crown of snow piled on top in a cone, sat above the shattered front windows of the building they were going to rest in.

“You brought us to a dentist’s office .”  James stated flatly as they stepped inside, alert for anything moving in the interior.  He could think of a million horrible things that could come from a dentist’s office.

But nothing moved.  The front lobby was silent and dark, nothing left of the reception area but waterlogged appointment books and broken piles of junk that used to be phones.  Ethan said it was safe, but all of them still swept the building for anything dangerous before they found places to sit and take a breather.

“I assume you’ve searched here before?”  James asked.

“We did.  But didn’t find anything useful.”  Marlea said with a shrug.  “Though some of the dentist tools could be?  There was actually a drill the first time that should still work, but we didn’t take it.  Because, well, how do you test that?”

Alanna winced, grinding her teeth together.  “Ahhhhh, that could go bad.  I’m imagining it vaporizing someone’s mouth now.  Eugh.”  She twitched, splaying her hands in front of her to ward off the thought.  “But like, you didn’t find any books here?”

“Like the spell textbooks?”  Ethan asked.  “No, annoyingly.  There was half of a dental hygiene textbook here, but it wasn’t enough to work, and we didn’t find anything else.”  He glared at the frozen tile floor where they’d set up in the back office space, trying to get away from the wind pushing through the broken front windows into the lobby.  It wasn’t actually that much warmer, but at least without the wind it was quieter, and they could sit for a little.  “Mar thinks it’s because this is sort of the easy route.”

“Oh?”  James quirked an eyebrow at the pair of woman.

“The dungeons want to challenge us.”  Marlea shrugged.  “It makes sense that there’s better prizes in the harder parts.  We’re still doing it , here, but I think it’s fair enough that the hike without the ice spikes has less free magic in it.”

“Conjecture.”  Spire-Cast-Behind punctuated the words with a camraconda hiss.  “From my origin point, I am no more difficult to kill than one of the shellaxy creatures.  Why do I reward more?”

“You can stop things from moving by looking at them?”  Alanna offered, making a finger gun out of her gloved hand to punctuate the statement.  “Also this does kinda line up with Officium Mundi more than anything else.  The deeper places always have way more stuff  in them, even if it’s just cash.”

“It’s so fucking weird that we don’t find cash in other dungeons, by the way.”  James added.  “Also, how long are we resting?”

“I’m good.”  Ethan said.

“Me too.”  Marlea added her voices.  The drake just rustled as he stood back up.

James cracked his knuckles and pulled his goggles back down.  Time to get moving again.

It was strange how almost entirely uneventful the climb was.  Oh, it wasn’t easy  by any stretch.  The storm felt like it was closing in from all sides, the sky darkened, and the wind tugged at them from multiple directions.  The snow that had been brief flurries and a constant black static against the sky became thicker, trying to constantly block out their vision, separate them from their party.

They clipped ropes to their harnesses, so they didn’t get too far away, as visibility dropped.  The enchanted goggles proved their worth when the first spike of sharpened ice dropped out of the sky in front of them, and then more and more of the aerial artillery started coming down.  But none of them ever managed to find the delvers; they were always just far enough out of the  way of the dropping spikes.

A snow drift tried to eat them at one point, the mass of wet snow unfurling icicle jaws under their feet as they tried to climb over it.  Spire-Cast-Behind locked down the single opponent, and they moved past it without incident.  It decided not to give chase.

The deadly icefall picked up, and they took temporary shelter in an overhang set against one of the cliffs they didn’t dare try until the storm ebbed.  The overhang turned out to be more of a tunnel, and, curious, the group left Rudger to guard the entrance he couldn’t fit through, and poked their noses in.  Their flashlights illuminated painted markings on the rock walls, wobbly abstract lines that were interspersed with hanging bits of metal.  Hubcaps, street signs, handfuls of coins.

“Well, at least we know this dungeon makes money.”  James had said, poking at what looked like a perfectly normal quarter glued to the cave wall.

The cave came to an abrupt end with a four by four grid of lines drawn on a too-smooth wall.  Two of the squares of it were glowing, a soft blue light seeming to drip from the stone.  “Okay, I’m not the smartest guy,” Ethan said, folding his arms and looking back at the rest of them, “but we’ve all played this video game puzzle, right?”

They had.  With the rest of them watching for traps or ambush, Ethan touched one of the squares with a gloved finger, and the squares adjacent to it lit up, or went dark, respectively.  James gave a respectful nod as Ethan made a series of rapid taps, quickly lighting the whole grid and firmly disproving his self-inflicted title of ‘not the smartest guy’.

Then the wall had slipped into the floor, and they’d been met with an alcove.  Within it, a raised pillar of smooth stone came up to about waist height, and on top of it, hundreds of hockey-puck-sized gold coins sat glittering in the beams of their flashlights in neat stacks.

“Oh well that’s just fucking mean .”  Alanna swore.

“We’re rich!”  Ethan exclaimed.

“We’re already rich!”  James reminded him.

“We could be richer, and it’s not like we don’t have the backpack room, since we’ve found nothing else.”  Marlea said.

Alanna groaned.  “I feel like you guys are underestimating how fucking heavy gold is.”

“It’s probably not solid gold.”  James suggested.  “But regardless, let’s get this back to the entrance, and split it up while we wait.”  They did so, each of them moving an armful of the metal ‘coins’.  Alanna was right, though.  It was fucking heavy.  Enough that, when they did move on, the stack of the coins in the bottom of James’ pack made moving noticeably a little tougher.

They navigated upward, taking more time to safely crawl their way up the cliffs and ledges, and spending a lot of effort to haul Rudger up after them, the drake’s developing office chair claws having trouble finding purchase on the increasingly treacherous stone.

At one point, James spotted a line of streetlights through the growing blizzard, orange lights glowing like small blazes in the darkening air.  He pointed it out to the others, and they came to a quick decision to avoid it.  From the curve, they assumed it was a ring, and from what they knew, those rings contained two things.  Blank books, and dragons guarding them.  They were ready for a lot, but none of them would be immune or resistant to the emotional weapon the dragons here had shown before.

It hurt to pass up the chance, but James had learned this lesson repeatedly.  It was not worth it  to risk death just for a little magic.

And then, Marlea pointed out a landmark; a distant and barely visible red light in the sky, the top of a radio antenna that scraped the cloud layer.  The group gathered behind a packed chunk of ice and snow, and hunkered down.  “That’s it!”  Ethan said.  “We’re past the two thousand line here!”

“What, just like that?”  Alanna asked, and James could feel her eyebrows raise.  “That was easy !”

“We nearly died several times, shut up!”  Ethan cheerfully replied as Marlea carefully pulled out a telepad and they started stripping gloves off to join hands.  “And that was a seven hour hike and climb!  There are marathons that take less work than we just did!  If you want to come in to do your own exploration, that’s cool, and we’d love to have the maps!  But this tour is up, and we are outta here .”  His teammate tore the telepad without any further preamble, and just like that, their trip came to a close.

[Cowardice. Deception.

Ascension : 2,399 ft.

Bestowal : +66 Breath Storage, +1 Available Learning]

_____

The Lair’s bath was, as far as James was concerned, their greatest contribution to the lives of everyone that lived and worked there.  Or, at least, the biggest ongoing bonus.  For some people, it was literally ‘their lives’, and he felt weird comparing saving someone from death to unlimited hot water.

But the unlimited hot water was really compelling.

There was an evolving etiquette to the place that he was also becoming more comfortable with.  He and Alanna, when they’d gotten back sometime in the late afternoon, had found the bath actually fairly occupied.  So they’d chosen one of the hot segments of the bath, and just asked if the people minded company.

Asking was important, as was the fact that anyone could say no for any reason and it was fine.  As it was, the group in there already had been fine with it, and two of them were leaving anyway.

It was still a little weird, being naked with other people around, but any trepidation vanished when James claimed one of the spots under the heavy waterfall of hot water.  It was like a good shower, only with enough water pressure to drown in, which was perfect.

After he and Alanna had warmed up and gotten the sweat and dirt from their long hike off, they’d wrapped up the story they were sharing with the other bathers, climbed out, tapped the water with the purify food power of the Status Quo brooch hanging on the wall, and headed out.

“I thinnnnnnk…” Alanna drawled, “ curry .”

“I have no idea how you’re hungry.”  James shook his head at her.  “I’m too sore to be hungry.”

“Well, I’m  hungry.”  She declared with a grin.  “And Anesh offered to treat me to that one good curry place.  So I’m gonna do that.  I’ll see you later tonight?”

“Probably.  Also we live in a city with at least six good curry places, you gotta be more specific.”

“No I don’t!  Love you!”  Alanna called as she waved over her shoulder and headed out to get lunch with their boyfriend.

“I love you too!  Tell Anesh I said something sappy!”  James called after her, shaking his head with a peaceful smile on his face as Alanna’s retreating form gave him a thumbs up.

He didn’t really know exactly how his life had ended up this way.  But he kind of loved it.

Also, as tired as he was, it was a kind of floaty tiredness.  His muscles weren’t even really hurting, the exercise potion had worked overtime, and done its job perfectly.  The hike and climb and the few fights hadn’t been easy, but while he was sore, it was the kind of lingering soreness of having rested for a few days after a comprehensive workout, and nothing more.

Between that feeling of satisfying growth, and the warm bath, he was feeling pretty good.  And with his thoughts relaxed and his outlook positive, he made a quick decision on how to spend the rest of his day, before he could second guess himself.

It wasn’t to fill his second spell slot.  No, that would come later, and he still wasn’t sure what he wanted to use it on, if anything.  He might just wait until they’d found more books.  And it also wasn’t to check in on the value of the gold they’d brought back; James’ brain wasn’t wired for wealth, really.  They’d gotten rich enough to do some things, and so he stopped thinking about it, until they needed more money to do more things.

Instead, he wound his way through the basement hallways, until he found himself moving through a space that was once a smooth concrete floored underground storage room, and was currently something a lot more livable.

The apartments that the Order had put together, where a good chunk of their membership lived now, were wrapped around the walls of the room in a configuration that there absolutely was not enough space for.  Each of the units was itself fairly mundane, but the way that the distance down and up to each one was different, the way that three stories of two bedroom apartments fit inside a single floor of a basement, and the fact that there was cold winter sunlight pouring down from overhead despite the fact that they were underground, all sort of contributed to the instant recognition that this space was magical.

In the middle of the ‘courtyard’ that the horseshoe of living space surrounded, a series of six metal cylinders sat inside a low brick wall that ringed in the art project.  And it was an art project.  James was one of a handful of people who knew that the orange totems that maintained the warped and replicated living spaces around him wasn’t here .  Its actual location was somewhere much less public.  For most of the totems, anyway.  The ones for which catastrophic failure just wasn’t a fucking option.  The sculpture here did contain a few of the less dangerous ones, like the totem that kept the skylight up, or the one that made it so that you didn’t actually have to climb any stairs to make it to the second floor if you didn’t want to.

James made his way inside the left side of the apartments, though he did wonder if that distinction actually mattered as he passed by rows of doors that were way too close together for there to not be magic happening.  This was either spatial warping, or a coffin motel, and he had a little inside knowledge on which one was more likely.

When he got to the door he was looking for, he found himself paradoxically more nervous than he had been fighting for his life a few hours ago.  Which made him laugh to himself, and made knocking a little bit easier.

James shuffled his feet, trying to figure out how to look casual as he waited, and utterly failing to accomplish it.  When the door cracked open, he jumped and jammed his hands in his pockets as a black furred face peeked out at him.  “Yess?” Keeka’s voice came through the small gap in the door with what sounded like more nerves than James had.

“Oh, hey Keeka.”  He said, smiling at the ratroach who opened the door more fully as he heard James’ voice.  “How’re things going?”

“G-good.”  The ratroach gave two short nods of his triangular head, shifting to lean on the door with a pair of his arms.  “I am getting… better at… talking.”  He said, the right side of his mouth cracking in a fanged smile.  “The orb that grows our lungs is… helping.”  The ratroach wiped the chitinous back of a paw across his mouth, catching a drop of corrosive blue drool.  “Are you alright?”  He asked.

“…why would I  not be alright?”  James asked, suddenly confused.

“You don’t come here often.”  Keeka pointed out.

“Oh.  I mean, I was… in the area?  No, wow, that sounds intolerably stupid.”  James snorted as he got his conversational feet under himself, and Keeka blinked and nodded at his comment.  “Honestly, I was just going to talk to Arrush while I was feeling okay.”

“Oh.”  Keeka said, his multiple eyes flickering in relieved blinks as his shoulders slightly untensed.  “That is good.  That there is nothing wrong.”  Then he stopped, and pushed himself away from the door, leaving his apartment hanging open as he leaned forward on digitigrade legs to peer up at James with a sharp nose.  The ratroach tilted his head, examined James’ face, then pulled back again.  “ Oh! ”  He said suddenly.  “I… oh.  Yes.”  He nodded, as James realized that trying to be circumspect was meaningless with this particular ratroach.  “Arrush is not here.”  Keeka said suddenly.

“Oh.”  James felt like that word was getting used a lot today.  “Well dang!”  He sighed.

“He is in… Tennessessee.”  Keeka informed him.  “Kirk is teaching him to drive.”  He sounded a strange mix of sad and proud, but James might have been reading too far into the tone of voice for a nonhuman speaker.  “Do you… want to come in?”  He asked James suddenly.

James smiled and shrugged.  “Yeah, sure.”  He said, stepping forward as Keeka moved back to let him into the apartment he shared with Arrush.  “I don’t think I’ve actually been in your apartment!  I moved a lot of furniture down here, but never made the last jump with it.”  He mused as Keeka shut the door, and locked it rapidly.  And then another lock that James was pretty sure wasn’t standard.  Then peeked out the peephole.  “Are… you  doing alright?”  He asked Keeka as he stood awkwardly in the living room.

“Fine.  Why?”  The ratroach actually did seem okay as he moved past James, seeming much more comfortable now that the door was closed.  Keeka settled down on the long black cloth couch that dominated the back wall of the room, pulling his skirt up and folding his legs into a splayed pattern as he sat down next to a pair of large padded headphones.

The apartment was sparsely decorated, and had a kind of chaotic clutter to it.  A big couch, a couple tall stools up against the kitchen counter, a tall stereo speaker in the corner.  There wasn’t really anything on the walls, which gave it a bare feeling, and there were different bits of clothing or books or electronics set haphazardly on every surface.  James noticed that the kitchen also had a fair number of dishes in it, which he felt almost unnaturally compelled to clean.

“You just seemed nervous.”  James said, leaning on the edge of the couch.  “And, you know, I care about you guys.”

Keeka nodded rapidly at him, his hands toying with the headphones like it was a fidget toy.  “We know.“ He said happily.  “I don’t like… the door open.  That’s all.”  He glanced down the hallway and away from James.  “Everyone is nice, and I am still hiding.”  He muttered.

“Psh.  Man, that’s fine .”  James said.  “I just won’t stand out in the hallway so long next time.  That’s easy .”  He gave a small chuckle.  “A lot of people have stuff like that that bothers them, you know?  It’s not bad or anything, just let me know if I do anything so I can avoid it.”

“My therapist says that…” Keeka looked up at James, and James suddenly realized how much Keeka was directly meeting his gaze.  No longer trying to keep his head ducked all the time.  “She says it’s… a work in progress.”

“Your therapist sounds cool.”  James grinned at him.  “So, what’ve you been up to lately?  I haven’t really seen you around since we went to the beach what feels like a short lifetime ago.”

“M-music.”  Keeka’s voice still shook as he talked.  “Pottery.  And… waiting?  Waiting.  Talking to the doctors.  Preparing to change again.”  He shivered, bringing his smaller arm up to rub at his muzzle.  “And Arrush.”  He added, his mouth twisting into a small smile.

James barked out a surprised laugh at the phrasing Keeka had chosen, sliding forward over the arm of the couch.  “Sorry!”  He said, as Keeka stared at him intensely.  “Sorry, I just… the way you phrased that sounded maybe unintentionally… uh… lewd?”

The ratroach nodded, ignoring the drip of corrosive drool that dropped down to the sleeve of his sweatshirt.  “Yes.”  He said, then looked down at where James was uncomfortably sprawled on the other side of his seat.  “Not unintentional.  We can be… lewd … here.  And no one will kill us.  You still… still don’t know.”  Keeka’s voice hitched as he spoke.  “You don’t know what it means to us.  What you gave us.  No one here hurts .  Not really .  So no, not unintentional.  Just… what I meant.”  Keeka looked away from James, tilting his angular head up to stare at a corner of the ceiling,

“Then I’m sorry for being an ass.”  James said instantly.  “Though if you meant it to be funny, you did a great job.  Also… I dunno, man.  I think I know how horrible your lives were.  And I’m just glad you feel safer here.”  He sighed as he righted himself and settled into the couch cushions near Keeka’s spot.  “Also, backing up a bit, you’re still working on the shaper substance thing?  How’s that going?”

“Good!”  Keeka whipped his head back around as he refocused on the conversation.  His breath came in fast bursts and his heart was pounding as what James said washed over him, but he was grateful for the change in topic.  “I h-have… a plan for what I will be.”  His hands turned the headphones he was holding over in a steady rhythm as he spoke.  “It will hurt, but it will make me better.  Organs first, Deb says.  So I study, and get ready.  Next… next week.”

To James, the ratroach sounded more nervous than excited.  Without thinking, he reached over and set a hand on Keeka’s head, rustling his wiry fur affectionately.  “I’m sure it’ll go great.”  He said.  “I think at this point we can safely say Deb is far from reckless with this stuff, right?”

“R-right!”  Keeka said, a ripple of tension going through his arms as James made contact with him, before he relaxed slightly and leaned into the hand on his head.

James smiled, and left his hand there among the ratraoch’s antenna for a few lingering seconds, before he pulled back.  “So, what’re you gonna look like?”  He asked Keeka.

“Better!”  Keeka said instantly.

James blinked and stilted a laugh.  “That’s… uh…”

“It’s a surprise.”  Keeka said, folding his arms.  His own toothy smile slipped a little.  “So that… so that if I… do it wrong, then it won’t be a problem.”

James huffed at him.  “Bah!”  He said dramatically.  “But also, uh… maybe focus on your internal organs more than how you look, okay?”  He let a little pleading enter his tone.  “I don’t want you dying because you think you don’t look good already.”

“I don’t look good.”  Keeka said, one paw coming up without thought to tug at the hood of his sweatshirt.  Though he refrained from pulling it over his head entirely.  “It is… hard to forget.  That I’m a mons-“

“ Stop .”  James commanded abruptly, pointing a finger at Keeka with a storm brewing in his eyes.

“But…”

“ No.”   James restated.  “No self-depreciation over body image here!”  He let his voice soften.  “I admit, I might be the wrong person to say this, because I don’t like how I look either, but wow you do not get to call yourself that, okay?  Not here.”  James watched Keeka as the ratroach recoiled slightly, but eventually gave a small nod of acceptance.  “Good.”  He stated.  “Now, that said, it’s still fine to change yourself to look more like what you want.  But also… I dunno, maybe I’ll call Arrush and ask him what he thinks of how you look, just to embarrass you into submission.”

‘That is mean!”  Keeka protested.  “And unfair!”  He paused, and then stared at James with cunning in his expression.  “May I borrow your phone?”

“Sure, why?”  James reflexively started to pull his phone out of his pocket.

“To call… Anesh.”  Keeka stretched out the ‘n’ in Anesh’s name as he spoke.

James slowly retreated the phone he was holding out across the couch cushion.  “Nnnnno.”  He said slowly.  “Because that would ruin me being unfair.”  He barked out a laugh and jerked back as Keeka suddenly lunged  across the couch at him, the black furred ratroach uncoiling his legs in a burst of motion that speared him toward James, trying to snatch the phone in what was still obviously a playful motion.

In a moment, James found himself holding his phone over his head as all of Keeka’s arms pressed down on his face and shoulders, the comparatively light creature trying to scramble up him like his sitting form was a tower to be climbed.  Still laughing, so hard that he was running out of breath, James toppled backward, hitting his head against the arm of the couch with an audible crack as he fell with Keeka landing in his lap.

“No!”  Keeka’s voice turned terrified in an instant as he sprawled on James.

“Ow.”  James was less worried, and more just feeling benign amusement.  And also a small headache.  “Oof.  That was dumb of me.”  He mumbled.  “I’m fine, I’m fine, don’t worry.”  He looked down his prone form at Keeka, who was staring at him with wide insectile eyes.  “You okay?”

“…my ot- my boyfriend likes you.”  Keeka said suddenly, shifting against James.

James lowered his arm slowly, tucking his phone back in his pocket as he sighed.  “I know.”  He said.  “I have no idea how to feel about it, or what to do about it, or anything .  I was gonna try to talk to him today, which is, you know, why I came by.  But also I was secretly planning to chicken out and instead be awkward about it or make up some excuse about wanting to just have a conversation or go on a walk or something.”

“Why?”  Keeka seemed confused.

“Because I’m constantly terrified of driving away people I like?”  James shrugged, feeling Keeka’s limbs shift against him as he moved.  “I think it’s a human thing.  We’re really bad at being emotionally open and shit.  And, like, I know it’s largely cultural, and I want it to stop. So I’m trying to build a world where the kids we’ve got around here can grow up better.  But that doesn’t make me less scared.”

Keeka tilted his head down to rest on his arm, looking away as he softly crushed James’ stomach with his weight.  “I don’t think of you as scared.”  He mumbled.  James didn’t reply right away, and Keeka continued when he’d had a minute to collect his thoughts.  “You seem… always… like you know?”

“To be fair, half the time you see me, there’s a major crisis going on.”  James pointed out.  “I get focused when people are shooting at me.”

“I understand.”  Keeka said with a simple acceptance of that fact that came too easily to not make James’ heart hurt a little to hear it.  “I… I do understand.”  He perked up, suddenly.  Staring out at the empty living room like he’d just realized something.  “Y-you don’t…” Keeka took a deep breath, his lungs aching from the prolonged conversation, but his new enhancements making it possible for him to talk for this long for the first time.  “…you don’t have to be afraid of me.”  He told James, still looking away.  “You tell us, all the time.  But no one ever tells you, do they?”  Keeka asked suddenly.

“I… guess not.”  James admitted.  It was almost funny, but he kept back his reflex to laugh at everything.  It didn’t feel right, in the moment.  “Anesh and Alanna do sometimes.  Sarah.  Obviously.”

“O-of course.”  Keeka gave a bobbing nod, wiping his thinner arm against his mouth again as he agreed.

“But yeah.  No one ever really just… lets anyone know that everything is okay.”  James let himself flop back onto the couch.  “Maybe that’s why the world sucks so much.”  He took a deep breath.  “Thanks.”  He told the ratroach that was still sitting on him.

“I… I like you too.”  Keeka said suddenly, his voice scratchy and wavering, the exposed skin around his eyes coloring a bright green as he tried not to stare at a wall while he spoke.

James paused as his brain caught up to that.  “Uh…” He realized, suddenly, that he was absolutely unprepared for this situation, and he had almost literally nothing to say.  “Uh?”  He settled on, trying to fill the awkward conversational gap.

“I-I’m sorry!”  Keeka stammered, suddenly jerking away, rolling off James and onto the floor, landing on a multitude of uneven limbs in a motion that was asymmetrically graceful.  “I didn’t…”

Suddenly, James found he actually did know what to say.  “Okay, hold on.”  He said, sitting up.  “Don’t panic, please.  Deep breaths.”  He gave Keeka a worried look.  “You don’t need to apologize for anything, we’ve been over this.  I just… wasn’t expecting that.  Man, I came here already not knowing what I should say to one person, and now I’m just doubly uncertain and confused and… bah!”

“D-do you not… like us?”  Keeka asked.

Normally, if someone had said that to James, it would have actually made him angry.  That kind of sentence, to him, had always felt like emotional blackmail when he’d heard it before.  But Keeka’s tone wasn’t one that tried to drag sympathy or pity out of him.  Instead, it sounded like just curiosity.  And maybe that was James misinterpreting it because Keeka’s voice wasn’t  human, and it could be hard sometimes to tell, but he was pretty sure that Keeka was really just trying to figure things out too, just like him.  So his answer was more measured, and he tried to be openly honest.  The way he wanted the world to work.  “I don’t know.”  James said simply.  “I think I do!  But I’m also worried, because you two are… are new , you know?  And you’re both so hurt, from how awful your lives have been.  And I don’t know if I know you well enough, or if this would be taking advantage of you, and all of that is on top of worrying about screwing anything else up in a normal context.”

“I’m not that new.”  Keeka protested.  “I-I’m one of the oldest of m-my kind!”  His voice took on a wet hiss as he spoke, his teeth showing in an awkward grin.

“Keeka, chronologically, you and Arrush are… what, three ?   Maybe?   That’s unsettling to me.”

“I know…”

“But you’re also people.  And it’s confusing.  Everything about our world is confusing, and now there’s even more moving parts to be confused by.”  James chuckled.  “You know, I was going to talk to Arrush about how I didn’t want to rush into anything if he wasn’t in a mentally and emotionally healthy place?  I think he’s been actively avoiding therapy.”

“He isn’t.  He just doesn’t… think it’s… critical.”  Keeka gave a sigh, spattering a corrosive drip on his skirt.

“That’s not good either.”

“No.”  Keeka sighed again.  “Excuse doesn’t… work on me though.”  He pointed out.

James let out a “Heh.” As Keeka’s words.  “You’ve got me there.”  He admitted.  “We should talk more.  All of us, at some point.  And… and we should actually spend time together .  And then… I dunno, then we can figure everything out as we go.”  James realized that this wasn’t exactly a ‘plan’ so much as it was deferring the problem to his future selves.  “Talking, though, that’s important.  Do you have any idea how many problems communication solves?”  He asked rhetorically.

“Yes.”  Keeka said abruptly.  “Most of them.”  He looked down at his claws, rubbing them together with light scratches.  James tilted his head slightly as he noticed that the claws on Keeka’s fingers were visibly blunted.  “I like it.  It is… why… music is so… so…” He shrugged, rolling his shoulders with a creak of flexing chitin.  “It makes me feel.”  Keeka tried to sum up his thoughts.

James swung his legs around to sit up properly on the couch, looking down at Keeka as he latched onto the easier conversation topic.  “What’cha been listening to, anyway?”

“L-Linkin Park.”  Again, the space around Keeka’s eyes tinged green.  “They… they sound…” he trailed off.

“Like they get it , right?”  James said softly.  “I actually listened to a ton of them when I was younger.  And then, I sort of fell out of liking them.  I thought I was growing up, but that was stupid.  Went back and listened to some of their music pretty recently, after I knew what was wrong with my brain,” he tapped a knuckle against his skull, “and yeah, it’s… the lyrics are so painfully relevant.”  He thought for a second.  “I should loan you my Metric albums.”  James said mostly to himself.

“They’ve hurt too.”  Keeka said.  “Can tell.”

“Oh yeah.”  James sighed.  “But there’s something about it.  Knowing that… not just knowing that someone feels like you do, but that they made art out of it.  I love that.  It’s powerful.”

“Also the guitar!”  Keeka excitedly hissed the words.

James snapped his fingers, then decided to never do that again as he noticed Keeka’s flinch.  “Oh!  Fun fact.  The guitarist actually has a twitch channel?  He streams himself making new songs, it’s really cool.”  He looked over at Keeka, who had opened his mouth to say something, but then abruptly stopped and doubled over as he started coughing.  “Oh, hell.”  James whispered, dropping off the couch to place a hand on the ratroach’s back, trying to make sure he wasn’t choking on anything.

But Keeka limply pushed him back, and shook his head, eyes pressed closed in a glare.  “F-fine.”  He gasped out.  “Breathing.  Hard.”

“Yeah.”  James murmured.  “Okay.  How about… how about we talk more later, okay?”  He suggested.  “You can relax for a while, and catch your breath, and… and we’ll sort it out when you’re feeling better.”

Keeka pivoted his head to look at James, half his eyes forced open and with glistening liquid in their corners.  “Sss-sor-“

“Nope.”  James cut him off again with a friendly word.  “You didn’t do anything to apologize for.  Besides!  This gives me a chance to freak out as I try to decide if I’ve screwed everything up or not!  That’s valuable time right there.”  James joked.  And then, because he realized Keeka’s stare was a little horrified, quickly added, “That’s mostly a joke.  Now I’m sor-“

“Noooope.”  Keeka drew the word out and then devolved to coughing again as a laugh caught in his lungs.

“Alright, alright.”  James helped him up, standing himself.  He was going to get the ratroach settled on his couch, but as he did so, Keeka pressed into him, wrapping his arms around James’ torso.  James froze briefly, but then slowly returned the hug, placing his arms carefully on Keeka’s back so as not to crush the smaller creature.  “Alright.  You sit.  And, I dunno, we’ll figure out a good time to hang out later.  Okay?”  Keeka nodded eagerly as he pulled back.  “Hey.  Thanks for talking.”  James said with a smile, as he moved to show himself out.  “Oh, the door.  Do you want to lock… okay yep.”  Keeka had bolted upright and was right behind James as he headed down the small hall to the apartment’s front door.  “And now I’m gonna go… I dunno, do something relaxing.  My legs hurt.”  He mused as he left, the ratroach seeming fine with allowing the conversation to come to an abrupt end as he gave James one last fanged smile, and then rapidly closed and locked the door.

James took a deep breath of the clean air in the spatially warped apartment complex’s central hallway.

That had gone better than he’d expected.

And he still had no idea what he was doing.

“I’m gonna go to random Thai restaurants until I find Anesh and Alanna.”  He decided to himself.  “They’ll know what to… mmmmh, no.”  James gnawed at his lip as he vocalized his thoughts.  “No, they’ll be snarky.  But I do want curry now.”  He pulled out his phone, and texted Anesh.

He could put up with some snark if it meant getting curry.  Especially now.  He was in an unusually good mood.