“People say ‘phase’ like impermanence means insignificance.  Show me a permanent state of the self.” -thegirlwiththeloontattoo-

_____

Camping in Officium Mundi was odd.  It was quiet, with sound everywhere seeming muffled, right up until something was too loud.  But that meant that when they settled in to rest for the ‘night’, it wasn’t really possible to hear anything coming until it was right on top of them.  It was also empty in places, which combined with the smothering silence to put everyone on edge, because it was impossible to know if this was the camp where nothing happened, or the camp where one of the office cats was going to wander in and try to rip someone in half.

That last one hadn’t happened, thankfully.  The worst they’d gotten was a run-in with a tumblefeed that had been as surprised as they were when it came over a wall and landed on the side of their resting spot.  It had still tried to kill them, but they had knights with far better reaction times, and also thermite, the classic tool that James was actually surprised hadn’t been replaced yet.

When he’d been in the Ceaseless Stacks, it had been quiet, and there’d been constant pressure from hostile monsters, but it had felt much more wild.  Winter’s Climb had, for all that it contained structures and traffic lights, felt like camping in the great outdoors.  Here, though, it felt wrong.  It just felt like sleeping in an office, no matter how twisted the cubicles looked.

James realized he was staring at the ‘roof’ of their camp and not actually asleep anymore.  Sometimes he woke up this way, like he was asleep even after his eyes were open and he just sort of slowly came to his senses.  They’d cleared a fairly wide space, tearing down cubicle walls and making an external barrier of desks before setting up some of those same walls in small areas that provided shade from the eternal white lights overhead.  The dungeon was full of traps, especially this deep, and it was simpler to say they cleared a camp than to have done it, but a couple dozen people working together were far more of a threat to the level design than a single delver team.  Especially when they were planning to hunker down, and not just cutting a line through the terrain.

He sat up, pushing the sleeping bag down and letting himself cool off.  Of all the ways to wake up, James ranked this one pretty high.  Below the way where he drifted out of sleep and then realized he didn’t have anywhere to be and went back to dreaming, and certainly below the way where he woke up because his partners were fooling around on the bed near him and he got to sleepily watch.  But miles above his least favorite method of waking up screaming from a trauma dream.

That last method combined poorly with the voyeur style.

Today was going to be their last day making further inward progress.  And James knew that this expedition was going to need to be repeated with a longer timeline, because it felt like they’d barely scratched the surface.  Rough estimates put them maybe twenty kilometers into the dungeon, and there was no sign that it was close to being the end, even not counting the fact that they’d carved a mostly straight line through, and that there were vast expanses of the space to every side that were untouched.

Still, it was an opportunity for further growth.  Despite saving the vast majority of the orbs for testing and copying, everyone had been using a few of them.  James didn’t really need the ability to smell pine better, or to know about color theory or the marketing behind restaurant menus, or to be better in tune with his emotional sense of hunger, but he had all those now.  Little bits and pieces that, over time, added up in a person.

James had a theory percolating in his head, that the reason the Order was full of people who were more mature and understanding than a lot of the assholes he’d met ‘out in the world’ was just that it was really hard to not become a well rounded individual when those small orb bits added up over time.  It was a little creepy, but also, it was what he wanted anyway, and he wasn’t going to waste time acting like being a better person was undesirable.

As James got ready, quietly clipping armor back into place and making sure all his gear was where he’d left it before dropping unconscious and not dragged off by a curious stapler, he looked over at Anesh’s still snoozing form.  Well, Anesh, and who his boyfriend was sharing his sleeping bag with.  Keeka apparently slept curled up in a ball, which meant only the rounded and ridged ends of his antenna were poking out under Anesh’s chin while the two of them slept.

”Cute.”  He spoke under his breath as he smiled and left their little portion of shade, leaving his bag behind for later.  His last check before walking out into the bright light was to reach for the exhausted mental formation that was Zhu; the navigator resting in the back of James’ mind like a folded map.

He was still there, which was a relief.  James had started to feel a constant sense of dread that Zhu wasn’t getting better, and whatever Underburbs bullshit was infecting him, it wasn’t something anyone knew how to fix.  But for now, his friend was still there, just sleeping.  He slept a lot these days.

James had slept ‘late’ relative to some of the others.  The rest of the delvers in their temporary indoor campsite were mostly up already, with Sunny’s team already off doing local exploration.  Despite the danger on all sides, and the increasing threats the deeper in they went, there was just something about being in a larger group that felt safer.

In some situations, that feeling of safety would be an illusion.  But here, it was a very real force multiplier that they were relying on.  They weren’t running away this time, they were deliberately making progress, and having a whole team of experts as backup made that possible every step of the way.  Professional and magical medical aid on hand, structured guard rotations, even just having prepared food without having to worry about getting nougat poisoning from eating one too many Baby Things.

So James was waking up feeling refreshed, not having been afraid of anything while he slept after his guard shift last ‘night’.  His gear was fully loaded or charged or stocked, depending on what was needed.  His damaged armor had been reshaped to full functionality by someone else’s casual use of blue orbs during an unrelated problem.  And now he got to have breakfast and flirt with Arrush before they went out to find something tremendous and awesome.

it wasn’t even really the ‘last day’ of the expedition.  They’d be looting everything they passed through as they traveled in a wide arc back toward the front door.  New towers, especially, were priority targets for the ritual coffee they spawned and the Order relied on.

James took a rolling chair, letting momentum slide him across the hard carpet to drift into place at a small table at Arrush’s side. ”Our respective boyfriends are sleeping together.”  James opened with, ignoring the other two people eating their breakfast out of collapsible plastic bowls.

He’d ignored at least half the rest of the table because one of the people was Nile, and while Arrush started to blush green and come up with a response, the older man cut off the banter by dropping his spoon and the binder of notes he’d been reading, rolled his eyes, and gave an exasperated glare in James’ direction.  “ Must you do that?”  He asked in a very put upon and indignant way.

”…Yes.”  James said, only briefly glancing his way with a confused narrowing of his eyes.  He wasn’t actually confused, he knew what Nile’s problem was, but James was still trying to be committed to giving him a second chance and not just stabbing him for his many crimes.  A feat Nile had been making very  challenging every time he’d spoken to someone on this delve.  James missed Amelia as their tagalong.  “So.  Boyfriends.”  He focused on Arrush.

”I am glad you slept well.”  Arrush said diplomatically, his muzzle pointed upward as he tried to not focus his faceted eyes on James.  James didn’t accept the deflection, though he did take a second to appreciate that Arrush was, more and more, speaking with pronouns in his language.  It was just satisfying to see his speech patterns flesh out over time.

James grinned at the reaction.  “They’re really, really cute.  You can go look at them!”

”This is unprofessional.”  Nile continued trying to interject.

” You’re unprofessional!”  The fourth person sitting at the table said.  She was one of the new people, who James had seen around but hadn’t had time to talk to yet since a lot of the expedition was divided by team and role, and with the exception of downtime at camp he wasn’t spending a lot of time casually chatting with the others.  “And also an asshole.”  She added, saying what James was thinking.

He nodded.  “Yeah, Nile, can you dial back the hostility?  We’re really trying to accommodate you on the dungeon experience thing, and you’re making it really hard to want to put up with your shit.”  James glanced at the new girl.  “Also hi.  I’m James, sorry I haven’t made a chance to say hello so far.”

”Hi James.  Marlea.  We’ve met.”

”…I… you…” James let out a long, long stream of air from his nose, pushing his hair off his face and pressing his palms into his eyes as he groaned.  “ Sure , hi .”  He settled on.  “I’m really fucking interested in everything about that and also why you’re keeping the original name and a bunch of other things.”

”Yeah, that’s why I keep posting essays.”  She told him.

James nodded, resolving to check those out when he had free time after the delve.  Ignoring Nile’s increasingly red face and apoplectic attempts at being rude, he refocused on Arrush.  “You sleep okay?”  He asked the ratroach.

Arrush nodded, itching slightly at some of the lines between his chitin and the tan fur that had started getting a little rougher after a few days without a proper shower.  “I…” he stopped himself from lying.  There was still, even now, an impulse to hide any fragment of weakness, even from the person second closest to him.  “No.”  Arrush shook his head slowly.  “I don’t like this place.  It feels like it wants to hurt me.”

”I get that.”  James looked off at the tops of the cubicles around them.  It was so cluttered here, it was impossible to see more than a few hundred feet without line of sight being blocked, much less to the weird non-horizon.  But it was still possible to get a good look at the repeating and iterated patterns of cubicles.  “I guess… I dunno, I can understand that.  Did you not feel that way in the Stacks?”

His potential partner perked up.  “The Library is different!”  Arrush seemed to leap to the defense of the dungeon that was weirdly one of the most eager to send things to kill them.  “It’s quiet, and… smooth?”

”It’s kinda quiet… here… okay nevermind.”  As soon as he said it, James could hear the omnipresent spinning motor of the distant air conditioning fans.  He twitched as the ongoing argument between Marlea and Nile threatened to spill back over to him, before deciding to ignore it.  “Smooth, though?”

”The carper here is hard.”  Arrush said.  “It’s… it’s faking?  Not lying, I guess… but it isn’t real and it wants us to think it is.  Everything here is like that.  The Library wants us to think it’s made of wood, so it makes things out of wood.  It’s different.”

James tipped his head to the side and pursed his lips.  “I can see that, yeah.”  He agreed.  “I might be a little too used to places like this.”

”It’s your… what is it to you?”  Arrush suddenly asked as he realized he didn’t really know how James thought of this place.

”The dungeon, or the idea of offices?  Offices are just places I’ve worked.  They’re… eh.  Horrible but familiar, and horrible in a really banal way.  The dungeon though…” He paused and met Arrush’s eyes with a small smile.  “Officium Mundi is full of dangerous things and terrible implications.  It killed a lot of people, either directly or by creating the things that did the killing.  It stole my best friend from me , and we’re still working on repairing that damage.”  He wanted to laugh, but held it in, especially when he saw the others at the table and a couple more people around them surreptitiously listening in.  “And because of how it plays with infomorphs and mental attacks, too, I don’t even know the true extent of the pain this dungeon has caused me.”  James added.  “ But , you know what?  It gave me real honest magic.  And if I’d never nearly died here, I wouldn’t have met you.  So I think I’m okay with calling it even.”

“But you came back.”  Arrush pointed out, struggling to keep his face from glowing green.

”Oh, yeah, because it has more magic.”  James waved a hand easily.  “I’d be happy to trade or something, which you’d think  an office would understand the concept of business.  But since it seems to want to go the route of dangerous exploration and pitched battles, I’m cool with that too.”

On the other side of the table, Nile made a rude snort.  “All this bluster so you can play at building your little kingdom on Earth.  You are just like we were, aren’t you?”

Before James could speak, Arrush kicked his own chair backward and rose to his full height, towering over the group.  He didn’t do it with an aura of intimidation, but Nile still shut up real fast as the ratroach nervously scratched at himself with his extra arms.  “You had fifty years and all you could do was make money.”  He looked at James, the tension in his clenched jaw softening.  “And you never would have helped someone like me.  You wouldn’t even help someone like yourself.”  He huffed out a breath, a few drops of corrosive saliva hissing on the center of the table as he steadied himself before he spoke to James.  “I am going to go wake up our boyfriends.”

”Have fun!”  James injected artificial enthusiasm into his voice, trying to recover from the tense conversation.  “I’m ready to go when Anesh is, so I’ll go round up the others.  You looking forward to adventure today?”

”I’m looking forward to getting away from that.”  A small claw pointed out of Arrush’s back at Nile’s face as the tall ratroach padded away through the camp.

Nile tugged on the collar of his shirt and sat straight up.  ”I-“

”You will shut up.”  James spoke in a perfectly even voice, with no hint of animosity in it.  Which made it legitimately terrifying to the ex-Alchemist as the words sunk in.  “I will put up with a lot of grief from you, sir, but there are hard lines for who you get to talk down to, and you have found one.  Now you are welcome to stay here and learn what you can from this, because I do know that it’s important to the work you want to do somehow,” James stood and brushed his shoulders off, casually adjusting his armor back into place, “or you can teleport back to the Lair, and instead learn firsthand why we don’t do that, and have plenty of time to process that lesson as you pack your belongings to leave.  Am I clear?”

Nile was a lot of things.  Annoyed at being treated like a novice, angry at the wealth and status he’d lost, furious at the casual way that people in the Order kept treating him, irate at the lack of luxury in his private apartment, and a few other variants of bitter and cynical besides.  But he did, deep in his cold heart, pride himself on not being stupid.

”I believe I take your meaning.”  He said, already going back to his reading and finishing his oatmeal.  He didn’t look at James, because he wanted to have the last word and making eye contact might come across as any kind of submissive.  But when the younger man just turned and left without a word, it somehow didn’t feel like a victory for his wounded pride.

”Wow, you fucked up.”  Marlea told him bluntly, the girl watching him flounder with a haughty expression.  “I mean, I’ve fucked up in my lifes, but dang.  You’d think being old as shit would make it easier for you to know how to avoid that kind of thing.”

“It’s not as if we knew about his kind.”

“Man, don’t try to be droll at me. I’ve got the time and extra brains to read everything, and I know you weren’t even looking.”  This fragment of Marlea paused briefly. “Maybe that’s why you’re falling behind Red.  You’re just not looking.”

Deciding to put his true intellect to use, Nile chose to keep his mouth shut and pretend to continue his reading until Marlea got bored of needling him.

_____

Perhaps sensing that they were planning to turn around soon, Officium Mundi put a strong front forward in terms of handing James and his team some excitement as a form of enticing them to stick around.

Well, James thought so anyway.  Though he figured the others might disagree.  While he was busy trading melee strikes with a stuffed shirt, using his trusty hatchet to deflect a flurry of cardstock that kept rearranging itself into different swords and having his own probing attacks blocked in turn, the rest of his group were having problems.

JP and Anesh were laying prone on the floor, trying to make their arms work to pull themselves upright, but seeming unable to find the energy, with Ganesh curled up against his favorite human and not bothering to try to move.  Zhu was draped against his skin unmoving.  Arrush had faltered the least, and was tanging with a screaming mask made of pink and yellow sticky notes, but he couldn’t get his claws to close properly to rip it apart.  Bea was the worst off; when the paper pusher had dropped that stupid stress ball to the floor and the emotional attack had rolled out of it, she’d just dropped, like a puppet with her strings cut.  She was the one James was most worried about, and why his excitement was pretty fucking tempered in the moment.

The paper pusher twisted away from James’ swinging axe with a rotation of the waist that would rip a human’s spine into pieces.  The move put it in the perfect position for a counterattack, but the bizarre mismatch of different types of intellect was on full display with this one.  Instead of doing what James would have done if he were the one trying to kill him and stepping back to slide sideways and hit him while he was overextended, the paper pusher chose a different option.  Specifically, it chose to give out a feral scream - the actual words about obeying human resources unimportant compared to the berserk intent - and lunge forward, its cardstock sword forming into a cleaver as it went for James’ neck.

He exhaled calmly, heat and oxygen leaving his blood in a rush as he did so.  James didn’t have the same power of timing that Alex did, but he did have a massive stockpile of Breath to mess with, even if it would be just as lethal to overspend.  Still, while Mountain Of The Self took it out of him, it also let him take the hit without flinching or feeling it, sapping every erg of momentum from the incoming magical weapon and leaving his opponent way out of position, even if it could twist its paper body.

James capitalized on the overextension by something that thought it was going to kill him, but instead had stopped at his neck.  A hand with fingertips that felt way too sharp through the freezing cold pushed under the paper pusher’s arm, while James threw himself forward with his other forearm pressed against its throat.  Using his full body weight and taking advantage of it not being grounded, James carried it back several steps to slam it into the water cooler at the center of the little intersection of cubicle halls.  Toppling it over, James let his feet leave the floor and dropped his full body weight onto the falling humanoid figure.

From the squeezable stress ball sitting on the ground back behind him, something tried to worm into James’ mind.  A feeling of exhausted despair, the impulse to just give up, and maybe just stop fighting and let the paper pusher do whatever.

He didn’t listen, even as it continued getting louder and louder.  Instead, grinding his teeth together, James hammered the edge of his hatchet into the supine form of his enemy’s face.  Each chop tearing open a hole in the fleshy thick paper, letting more of the dust and glitter inside spill out.

By the time the thing died and orbs spilled out of it, James had reduced its head to little more than a mangled pile of debris.

Rolling sideways, the voice in his head still intensifying, James took some hesitant steps backward, pausing to bisect the mask Arrush was pinning down, before he made it back to the small black foam form of the stress ball.

He tore it in half, and got a blue orb for his trouble.

“Is everyone alright?”  James instantly moved to help Anesh up as his boyfriend started pushing himself off the floor.  “Bea?  You with us?”

She wasn’t.  Not dead, but definitely unconscious.  They made a makeshift defensive position until she woke up, and James took the time to check on everyone else, giving Zhu reassuring pets along his steadily realizing feathers as the navigator came to.

”What the fuck was that?”  JP asked as he downed half a water bottle, sitting on the floor and slumped against a filing cabinet that had too many drawers.

”It felt sick.  I still feel sick.”  Arrush had a pair of hands clutching at the armor over his stomach.  “Are… are you safe?”  He asked James.

James gave a small hum as he looked up from watching Anesh check to make sure Ganesh hadn’t been crushed.  “Hm?   Oh.  I’m good, yeah.”  He said.

”Yeah, why is that?”  JP questioned.

”Antidepressants probably?”  James shrugged.  “They’re doing a fucking great job, actually.  But that’s probably why it didn’t hit me as hard as everyone else.  I’m guessing for sleeping beauty here,” he motioned at Bea, laying on the floor with JP’s backpack as a pillow, “being an inhabitor, she just wasn’t ready for it.”

JP glared at him, tipping the water bottle he was holding at James like it was a weapon.  “For what .  You’re being cryptic and I hate your wizard bullshit.”

”Oh!  Sorry!  Depressed.”  James clarified, giving JP a sad and lopsided smile as he looked down at his friend.  “Uh… congratulations, that’s what it feels like to be depressed.  Now you know!”

Zhu fluttered against James’ armor.  ”It’s worse this way!”  The navigator declared.  “Normally it’s like terrain in your mind.  Not my mind!  That’s cheating!”

”That’s magic!”  James clapped his hands together and then arced them over his head.  “Anyway I broke the wretched depression vortex sphere, so we’re fine.”

Anesh let out an unexpected laugh.  “I love you.”  He said simply, still trying to get his hands to stop shaking, as his little drone friend placed wings like scythes across his fingers.  “Thank you for breaking the sad ball.”

”That’s not what I called it!”  James wanted some credit for his naming style.

The group took the time while they waited for Bea to come around to strip the cubicle of anything that was either money, food, or magic.  James didn’t participate so much as he kept watch, given that the wandering monsters in this part of the dungeon seemed to be an excessively higher threat than he was used to, and also to quietly offer reassurances to everyone else.

”I felt like I couldn’t move.”  Zhu’s whispering voice confided in him when they were standing out in the hallway, checking the corners for anything approaching.  “I’m sorry.”

”It’s all cool,” James told his friend, “Arrush helped me out, and we handled it.”  He shrugged.  As far as he was concerned, they’d made it through the attack alive, and that was what mattered.  Also the paper pusher had dropped a yellow orb the size of a bowling ball, and James was excited to know what that gave.  Too big to copy, sadly, but he was still excited to see what mishmash of high skill ranks it handed out.

”No.” Zhu’s arm curled around underneath James’ own, his talons wrapping around James’ hand while his tail curled around a leg.  The navigator pulled in close against his host, like a blanket of ethereal orange.  “No.  I am sorry for not understanding.”   He said.  “I live in you.  And I didn’t know .  Not really.  Not like this.”  Zhu shuddered against James, tail threatening to unbalance them both as James tried to keep walking.  “I knew what it felt like, but I’d never felt it like that.”

”Well yeah.”  James snorted.  “Because I’m on antidepressants and going to therapy.  Zhu, I love you, and I appreciate the empathy, but the whole fucking point is that I don’t want  you to know what it feels like to be depressed.   I  don’t want to know!  Just because I have experience functioning under those conditions… it’s not a perk.  It’s not a superpower.  It’s just bad luck.”  James peeked around a corner, doing a little scouting before the others were ready to move, and jerked back as a potted plant tried to take his eye out.  It was in a hanging pot, dangling from an arch of cubicle walling that looked like artificial stonework made out of the thin material.   “Not that way then.”  He mused.  That thing was way too high up to fight effectively.

”Well I’m going to feel bad.”  Zhu huffed.  “And you can’t stop me.”

”It’s true, I can’t.  But since you’re physically linked to me, I can keep bringing you to therapy!”

”…you’re a good person.”  Zhu grumbled.  “It’s very annoying.”

”I hear that a lot.  Let’s go make sure Bea’s okay, and then go see what our next problem is.”

_____

A hundred rows of cubicles, a towering stack of smushed offices, and navigating a break room that had far too many ledges holding explosive coffee cups later, and their team found some time to rest and evaluate what they’d gathered.  The Office had been a lot more active as they’d progressed, with near constant pressure from green orb life mixed with a higher density of difficult terrain and traps.  But they weren’t just surviving it; this was where James belonged, and he felt like he was thriving.

Mostly.

”Dammit.”  James dropped a soaked paper bag on the floor of the receptionist’s office they’d occupied.  “This one’s ruined.”

”All of it?”  Anesh asked, taking the coffee from his boyfriend and popping the top open.  “Half of this is still fine.  Do we have a plastic bag around here?”  He took the object that Bea offered without hesitation.  “Perfect.”  Anesh pinched the middle of the container of coffee grounds, cutting off the part that had been soaked when an explosive Starbucks cup had gone off near James, and pouring the dry grounds into their new home.  “Arrush, are you doing okay?”

The ratroach was sitting against a wall of glass bricks that separated the endless cubicle landscape from this little side office, and was trying to get his fur to dry.  The heat from the close call had fortunately not hurt him; they’d been far enough away.  But he’d still gotten a good splatter of old coffee that had dripped into his armor’s chestplate.

”I smell like… like chocolate. But on fire.  And bad.  Why do you drink this?”  He half-snarled as he dabbed at where fur and chitin met with a wet towel.  “You spoiled me!  I live in a place that smells nice all the time, and now…” Arrush cut off, wheezing repeatedly as he tried to catch his breath.

“I like the smell of coffee.”  JP commented, looking at Arrush with concern.

”D-don’t sniff me.”  Arrush coughed out.

”That wasn’t where I was going with that, but okay.”  JP nodded.  “So, anyone get anything good from the swarm orbs?  I’ve got a rank in making chairs now.”

Bea looked back from where she was examining the heavy clock set on the wall above the semicircle of the receptionist’s desk, four hands pointing to unnumbered and uneven marks doing nothing to clarify what time it was.  “I have acquired ranks in plumbing, laser etching, amputation, and one in love.”  She gave the barest hint of a pause.  “I do not feel different.  Am I supposed to?”

”No, you’ll need to find someone to love first.”  JP shook his head sympathetically.  “Good luck!  If you figure out how, let me know!”

”Very well.”  Bea’s monotone sounded like her cutting off her participation as she went back to sketching a picture of the clock.

James caught JP’s eye and gave his friend an exasperated look, but JP just gave him a thumbs up in reply along with a satisfied grin.  Pretty sure that his friend was just trying to challenge himself, James shook his head and sighed as he swept his gaze around the room again.  They could leave out the glass double door they’d come in, but there were also a handful of office doors with frosted glass surrounding them.  “The last time I saw a place like this,” James told the others, “it was during the thing .  But we never got a chance to check out these doors.  Does anyone wanna take a look?”

”Sure.  I just need a new blue first.”  Anesh said, grabbing one from their pack to try to absorb.  In another case of them having too many to reasonably duplicate, it was more or less fair game to make use of orbs they found past a certain point, and Anesh didn’t take long focusing to absorb a few uses of a new spell.  “Huh.  Repair System.  That’s…”

”Worryingly vague?”  JP filled in.

“Yeah.”  Anesh shrugged.  “Anyone else need one?”

Unfurling from around his partner’s arm, Zhu spoke up.  “Can I try?  I know in theory that my kind can use those, but I’ve never actually done it.”

”Go for it.”  James took the orb from his boyfriend and tossed it up for Zhu to snatch out of the air.  He and Anesh started trying to help, providing commentary and suggestions as the navigator narrowed his singular eye into a slit and held the blue orb between the tips of his talons.  But despite a significant amount of glaring, and a mental pressure that James could actually feel as almost physical inside his ribs, Zhu didn’t manage to absorb the orb.  Their advice, James was forced to admit, might not be helping.

Of course, their advice was overshadowed by Bea snagging the orb out of Zhu’s grip like a casual viper strike, placing it on the back of the nearest waiting room couch, pointing, and saying “Pick this up.  But don’t touch it.”

”That’s stupid.”  Zhu said reflexively.  And then tried to do it, and got it first time.  “That’s still stupid!”  He declared as the orb phased into his hand, and then… sat there.  A softly glowing blue sphere, hovering inside his manifested body.  “Also I have three uses of ‘rearrange calendar’.  These are so strange.  I want to go back to the Climb spells.  They make sense to me.”

JP bit his lip as he pointed over toward the navigator’s new situation.  ”Uh…”  He started scratching at his own armored wrist as he watched Zhu’s arm move with the orb inside it.  “Hey, that’s not what they do with us, is it?”  He asked.  “Because I don’t think it’s healthy to have random balls inside of me.”

”Pause for laughter.”  James deflected with humor.  “But actually, good question.  We’ll look into it.  And maybe get some X-rays.  Yikes.  Also what a weird power.  Can you swap things around so that Monday and Tuesday trade places?”

”…I think so.  And then I’d die.”  Zhu said.  “Why do I know that?  What is with these things?  I regret this.  Let’s go look at offices.”

”I think the Office is kinda like a more hands on GM than a lot of other dungeons.  Perfectly willing to yes-and on some of the more complicated or vague magic.  Except the ‘and’ is always ‘and then you die’.”  James shrugged.  “Anyway!  Before we - Bea don’t touch that  - before  we touch any of the doors, the last one of these had a time trap in it.  So let’s plan ahead for that really quick?”

The plan ended up being pretty simple.  The traps were a huge problem if they didn’t prepare and have the tools, and James was pretty sure they’d be instantly lethal to a solo delver unless they ran out of power eventually.  Being locked in an endless time loop until the sun exploded, or maybe just until a camraconda found and ate you.

With a sledgehammer that didn’t care about physics, and a quick numbering system of the drywall around the door, they were a lot more manageable.  Basically a free orange orb.

The first two offices were just… offices.  Small, maybe, with frosted glass windows and metal blinds that looked out on what seemed to be a fuzzy impression of a parking lot.  Desks covered in documents, laptops, phones, paperweights, ashtrays, framed photos of… ducks?  Just a lot of clutter.  The bookshelves flanking the desks in both of them made each personal office feel even more claustrophobic, and it was absolutely no surprise to either Arrus or James when one of the books split into a fanged mouth and tried to eat them.

He wondered if the dungeons shared notes.  Because this looked a lot like a Ceaseless Stacks book, and that dungeon did the same thing with orbs too.

The group stripped the spaces of anything that looked, felt, or acted magical, and kept going.

On the third door, James had only just grabbed the handle when he heard Anesh’s voice calmly calling out “Four, and kinda high!”  Sighing to himself as he moved, James and Zhu collectively whipped the sledgehammer around to the spot near the floor that was designated with that number.  Kneeling down, it only took a couple seconds for James to grab and rip out an orb from an orange totem, popping him out of the time loop.  “Wow, good aim that time.”

”Zuh helped.”  James admitted.

”I don’t think those work on me.”  Zhu added.  “Not exactly.”

They kept going, and that office yielded an address book that translated everything to Esperanto, a box of paperclips that didn’t seem to run out of paperclips even when turned over and allowed to fountain like a waterfall of metal, and a pair of glasses that could see radio.

The fourth door led to a conference room suspended in a black void.  They’d closed that one and decided not to risk it.

The office in the fifth door tried to kill them.

As soon as the door was open, it had lunged out.  The whole office.  Or at least, that’s what it felt like.  The walls around the door had stretched and warped so that the doorway could disgorge its internals.  Desk chairs turned into claws, the rolling wheels on the ends spinning wildly and and speeds that squealed as they made contact with the walls or the squad’s armor.  They pulled the room outward, its ‘face’ made up of a desk piled high with papers and folders, a wall clock and a lamp sitting high up as its eyes, while the space underneath the desk sported every piece of metal in the room as blunted crushing teeth.

No one had hesitated this time to make use of their guns.  The sound might attract attention, but at least they wouldn’t be flattened by an entire room coming at them.

Bullets tore holes in paper, shattered electronics, and left holes bleeding molten ichor.  The world turned frigid as James interposed himself between his friends and every lashing claw that was thrown at them, draining Breath to power his defensive magic, and then borrowing it back from Arrush through their link without the ratroach having to suffer the backlash all while James struggled to down an oxygenation potion.  Bea abandoned subtly altogether, throwing herself up onto the part of the creature that was towering over them, pushing her body far past what a human could do as she ripped handfuls of document flesh away.  JP and Anesh bolted to the sides of the room, taking cover behind couches and lining up shots that didn’t put the others in harm’s way as they made use of the rifles that had gone untouched for most of the delve.  And launching himself off Anesh’s shoulder, Ganesh clung to the ceiling in the far corner, using his stolen weapon systems to set portions of the paper to burning.

The abrupt violence caught the aggressive giant beast off guard.  It had probably expected to grab one of them, pull them back inside, and slam the door to eat the unlucky target.  Instead, it was shot, stabbed, lasered, and hammered by everyone’s one or two stored casts of pave as they unleashed everything they could think of as fast as possible, not trying for subtly or targeting weak spots, assuming it even had them.

Screaming in a distressingly human voice, the mass of furniture, paper, and drywall grabbed Bea off its back and flung her down at James, who caught the inhabitor without stopping the impact and tumbled backward.  Still howling, the living office tried pushing itself backward, losing the end of an arm to Arrush cleaving through it with the weightless hammer that he’d taken from James.

But it did successfully escape, clawing its way out of the unexpected onslaught, the door starting to peel closed on damaged muscles.  Which was when Ganesh buzzed by, dropping a flaring thermite grenade through the crack, just as the door slammed shut.

The screaming continued as everyone caught their breath and tired to get their heart rates to return to normal.  “What the fuck was that?”  JP demanded.

”An office?”  Arrush asked.  He was panting, but not nearly as heavily as when he had to overexert himself talking too much.  All of his eyes flicking in different directions as he whipped his head around to scan the room, and the space outside.

James was also on edge, making sure they hadn’t just attracted a swarm of striders or something.  “Offices don’t do that.”  He told Arrush as the hostile room kept screaming and howling from the other side of its door, black smoke starting to leak out of the cracks.  Anesh double checked the safety on his rifle before clearing his throat and starting to raise a hand.  “Okay shut up, I just heard what I said.”  James conceded.  “ Usually  that’s not what… look I don’t know.”  He rolled his eyes as the noise of their attacker trailed away before cutting off.  “Anyone want to... check that?”

No one did, so James took the lead, cracking the door open and letting out a wall of smoke and the ask of the pile of documents that had formed a body.  Nothing moved inside, most of it wasn’t even damaged by the thermite.  There were just scorch marks all over what was left, and hot ichor dripping from every hold they’d made.

A small wave of orbs poured out over James’ feet, too.  The space was carpeted in them, enough that they pushed each other across the floor.

It was one more thing to be on the lookout for, but after they bagged up all the yellow and green orbs, James could safely say it was a lucrative target.  Even if the fight did leave him shivering and his fingers and toes so close to numb that every movement hurt.

Also he got a skill rank in cooking fish, which was the coolest thing he’d picked up in a while.

_____

[+4 Skill Ranks : Etiquette - Smoker - North American]

[+1 Emotional Resonance : Exhaustion]

[Shell Upgraded : +2 Comfortable Run Speed - MPH]

”Gross.”  James looked at the glittering dust that was all that remained of the larger mostly yellow orb he’d cracked.

Leaning against him as they took their short rest, Anesh didn’t look up from the iLipede he was keeping an eye on.  They weren’t friends, Anesh still didn’t like bugs, and the iLipede seemed to feel the same way about his humanity, but they’d reached a détente and were working toward mutual cooperation.  “Arrush got a purple effect that makes him smell meat better, so you’d better be prepared to defend your ‘gross’ judgment against that .”

”First off, meat doesn’t smell bad  most of the time.”  James opened with.

Zhu stopped him from getting to his second point.  “The purple orbs consistently give ratroaches things that are just barely on this side of the line of grossness, so you know it’s going to work too well on garbage or roadkill.”

”Is garbage… supposed to smell bad?”  Arrush undermined everyone’s point without even trying as he helped JP pull stuff out of the low cupboard of the break room they’d taken through grit and force of arms.

James, Zhu, and Anesh all had a mutual moment of regret that they’d diverted down that path.  James decided to try to salvage it and talk about Arrush’s olfactory senses later.  “ Second… no, it’s just skill ranks related to smoking.  And I think smoking is gross.”

”I… would have expected differently from someone who lives around Portland.”  Anesh admitted.

”What?”

”What?”  Anesh mostly wasn’t paying attention, instead nudging a small yellow orb toward the iLipede that was considering taking the gift.  “Sorry, I know I live here, but this is really more your department than mine.  Isn’t weed legal here?”

”No, not…” James frowned, and actually thought about what he’d had buried into his mind.  The denizens of the Order used the phrase ‘meditate on your orbs’ as something of a joke, but James did actually have some mental tricks to figuring out exactly what the parameters of a new skill were.  He had actual experience with actual meditation now, and it helped for situations like this.  “Huh.  Okay, that’s… yeah, I just kind of assumed it was cigarettes or something.  It is, but it also includes proper manners for sharing a bong.  Fascinating.”  He pursed his lips and tilted his head against his boyfriend.  “That’s… technically better.  I still don’t smoke though.  Anyway, what are you up to?”

Anesh poked at the screen of the iLipede as it finally settled in to munch on the orb, and let Anesh look through the singular app it had loaded.  It was one of the confusing ones.  They ran into these sometimes, where the output was just context-free strings of data.

In this case, he’d been prompted to choose a time frame - day, week, month, year, and he’d picked day to start - and then the little crawling insectile phone had stilled briefly before providing a timestamp and a number.

”I have… no idea.”  Anesh said.  “Four, though.  Four of something, at a little after 9 AM… probably tomorrow?  My watch doesn’t know what day it is because…” He waved his free hand around at the dungeon, getting an irate buzz from Ganesh who was trying to either nap, or observe the iLipede, from his perch on Anesh’s arm.

”Plenty of time to learn.”  Zhu said calmly as he helped James latch onto the edge of the counter, pushing their dual form up with his tail.

”What?”  Anesh felt like he was saying that a lot.

James smirked as he and Zhu pointed in unison to where the iLipede was stealthily crawling its way onto Anesh’s boot, and settling in like it owned the footwear.  “Look, you made a friend!”

”What!  No!  I hate you, please leave.”  Anesh tensed up, tipping his foot forward to dislodge his passenger.  “Get off.  Get off.  Someone please move this, I really do not like these things.”  He kept his voice steady, but the insistent tone made it clear he wasn’t kidding.

Arrush came to his rescue almost instantly, gently lifting the iLipede and settling it on one of the pouches at his side. The phone bug didn’t at all protest, and seemed quite content with one of Arrush’s smaller limbs twisting around to lay a comforting chitin covered hand on its back.

”Thank you.”  Anesh sighed out in relief.

”I don’t actually get how you’re bothered by bugs, but I had to pry you out of sleeping wrapped around Keeka.”  James commented as he worked through some warmup stretches before the group continued.

From across the room, there was an almost reflexive yell of “Cute!” from JP.  A sentiment James shared, but he was pretty sure their friend was just using it as a way to tease Anesh.  A method that worked really well, and also hit Arrush as embarrassment collateral.

”It’s different.”  Anesh explained as James helped him up and the group went through the routine of double checking everything they had.  “Keeka is large enough I can make out what he’s doing.  This thing might be the nicest telephonic millipede in the world, but I’m always going to be suspicious of it.”

James felt like that might be a little unfair.  But they were on the clock for today, and they had one last thing they were going to try to do before turning around, so he just smiled and shook his head and saved the debate about size discrimination for later.

_____

“I am pretty sure I can’t stop that all the way, when this goes wrong and you die or something.”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight told James in a way that made him think that she was still prepared to give it a good try anyway.  He was surprised to find that he found the sentiment touching; not like he didn’t get along with Sunny, just that he didn’t really think of her as someone who had his back personally  like he did with some of the other camracondas.  “Hey, if you die, who inherits your girlfriend?”  She asked as a followup, shattering James’ moment.

”There’s no way that’s how that works.”  Ben muttered from where he was laying nearby and scoping out their target.  ”None of my relationships worked that way.”

”…Ben.  No, Sunny…”  James wasn’t sure who to sigh at.

Daniel helped him cover half of the conversation.  “Ben you dated one person and it was by accident for two hours.”

”Badly.”  Pathfinder’s whisper added.

”Yes, thank you love, dated them badly .”  It was honestly a treat to James to see Daniel so comfortably positioned in the dungeon that had almost killed him.  His transformation from being voted most likely to get someone killed into a senior delver working on making sure he had a clear line of sight for his rifle to their target ahead was not exactly a complete change of his personality, but it was still quite noticeable.

Before Ben could apologize, James rolled to face the camraconda with them.  “You know you don’t need to wait for me to die to ask Alanna out, right?”

”Oh!  I wasn’t thinking about for me !”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight helpfully failed to clarify anything about that sentence.  “So, do you still want to do this?”

He did.

The four of them weren’t the only ones here.  The cubicles here, and the floor they were walking on, was actually what James figured was the upper layer out of three.  Below them was another whole level; not like the cubicle towers though.  It wasn’t any more crammed together or smashed than the Office just made things sometimes.  But it didn’t go too deep underground.  Instead, hallways and cubicles and sometimes meeting spaces or break rooms, all spilled out under the overhanging cubicles overhead, forming a kind of geometric hill.

And then there was another layer below that .  Protruding out the same way, before it carried on just like the normal dungeon landscape.  Except from their vantage point a little over ten feet overhead and perched on the ledge, the expedition delvers could look out and see how in maybe a quarter of a mile, the angles of the first and second layers came together again before smoothing out.

What this left them with was a cenote in the cubicles.  Like a tiered cake carved out and lifted away, leaving behind a basin.

And what a basin it was.  Formations James had never seen in the Office were down there, including what looked like an angled trench that wove back and forth at right angles and carried a thick flow of black ink in a stream, a pattern of cubicles that was tilted slightly to leave open slivers of space that made it look like a beige crystal, a pair of skeletal decision trees that looked like they were struggling against each other for resources, and, of course, their target.

In the shadow of the lowest layer, close to one of the hillsides but with no part of itself covered, was a free standing room.  It actually took advantage of the open space overhead where the cubicles and floor had been peeled back to get a little extra height.  The walls of it were thick glass held together with metal supports, a pair of doors with spare between them like an airlock with a heavy duty ventilation system on its ceiling.

It had been a long time since James had seen a server room in an Office.  The only one at the Lair was in its own self contained underground room, kept at peak functionality thanks to over a dozen different green orbs, and ‘server room’ was selling short the cobbled together hardware that ran different copies of their immunity programs.

James wished they had one for immunity to dragon, right about now.  It would probably be something that would only run on a buggy version of Windows Vista and take a building’s worth of electricity to get the processor time for, but he’d take it.

Because down there in the server room was what the Order called a terrorbyte , and the more James looked at it, the more he felt like it was really living up to the name.  Curled up on a hoard of thousands of orbs, a forty foot long serpentine body composed of electronic hardware sat, an exoskeleton of server racks like a patchwork protective shell.  Symmetrical LEDs burned along its form, reds and greens and blues all capped off by the mostly circular light on its face in the shape of a power symbol that was currently dull as it napped.  That face was a three foot long angled maw that had fangs of sharpened metal crackling audibly with electricity every time the creature breathed out a snore.  Wings that shouldn’t possibly support flight formed out of more metal struts and dangling cables, hundreds of cords draped across its body like a blanket, though they’d tense up and form the ‘skin’ of the wings if the terrorbyte raised them up.

No one had ever fought one.  No one in the Order anyway.  They’d snuck by or run the two times the dragons had been encountered.  But this time , with all these people, and time to prepare, and the high ground, there was an opportunity to do something that James had been curious about from the very first time he’d seen one.

“How’re the others doing?”  James asked, rather than giving an answer to the question he felt was self evident.

They weren’t using radio, just in case the terrorbyte could hear it.  So Daniel held a hand up to the side of his head and got a perplexed look from James and Zhu as Pathfinder’s lightly feathered hand shifted into a ghostly orange lens that he used to scope out points around the edge of the basin.  “Camille looks ready.  JP and Bea are set up.  I don’t see… oh, there’s Ty.  Yeah, they’re set.”

”Alright.”  James stood up, keeping part of the desk between him and the open air as he stretched.  “You know what to do if this goes wrong!”  He said as he edged up to the lip of the floor, and lowered himself down to sit on the last bit of stable ground before dropping one layer down.

Arrush and Anesh were waiting for him, and while Anesh tried to give James one last out to maybe abandon this plan, Arrush just fell in with him as James grinned and led them over the next edge.  His heart was starting to pick up, that tension of being about to do something stupid or unpleasant but not quite there yet familiar to him; but this version was a lot less grimly wretched than the stuff he’d gotten used to it on during high school.

“The plan is fine !”  Zhu shot down Anesh’s continual attempts to tell them all that the plan wasn’t fine.  “Stop trying to make James doubt everything, it’s very uncomfortable.”

”Does that actually do something to infomorphs?”  Anesh asked, abandoning his complaints for curiosity as James held up his arms from the lowest layer to catch him as he slid over the ledge.  He dropped the last couple feet, his boyfriend cushioning and stabilizing him as his boots hit the lowest floor.

”No, but it’s a good distraction for you.”

Arrush just dropped and bowed his whole form as he landed, five different limbs flexing as he absorbed his impact, with one secondary arm steadying him on a heavy wooden conference table that stretched back underneath where they’d all just been standing.  He landed with a hollow thunk that betrayed how light his tall form was before rising up to his feet next to Anesh.  “I like this plan.”  He offered.  “It feels… nice.”

It did feel nice.  They’d spent a lot of the last few days fighting; sometimes tumblefeeds or camracondas or other green life, but also sometimes just aggressive packs of staplers or alligator clips or other more free life that still wanted a bite of them.  It wasn’t the only way to sole problems, as the growing flock of dungeon life following along with their expedition proved, but there was a lot of combat.  So, as angular cubicles passed, some of them filled with watching eyes and waiting traps, it felt nice to be going toward an active attempt at conversation.

Maybe it was a stupid idea.  There was every chance that the terrorbytes were green life themselves; they certainly had the sheer imposing power for it.  But James wanted to give this one the same chance they’d given literally everything else in this place that hadn’t actively ambushed them.  And some things that had.

Counterbalancing how dumb the idea might be, they had multiple groups posted around the edges of the basin, the effective elevation giving them clear lines of sight to offer covering fire and magical support should things go wrong.  Because James was feeling kind , and not naive  today.

The four of them, with Ganesh high overhead, made their way to the gap of space around the server room and dragon’s lair without incident.  The gnawing feeling of excited fear building in James’ gut as they stood just a few feet away from a space that contained a creature bigger than all of them put together.  “How does it even get out?”  James whispered.

”Over the top.”  Zhu and Arrush answered him at the same time.  The navigator made a conciliatory motion, and let Arrush explain.  “It’s… an illusion.  There isn’t glass there.  It crawls out.”

Zhu bobbed his eye in agreement.  ”Or flies.”

”Or flies.  Okay.”  James nodded.  “Let’s go ask.”

The ring of tempered glass on the terrorbyte’s face began to fill with a pale green glow as James approached the wall of the server room.  It took more steps than he was hoping, each one of them driving home just how huge this thing was compared to him.  Though it did also highlight just large its hoard was, too.  Thousands of orbs.  Tens of thousands.  Enough to start another Order if they wanted to.

James rapped his gloved knuckles on the window.  Sharply enough to be heard, soft enough to be polite.  “Excuse me!”  He called by way of a wake up.  “We’d like to talk, if you’re up for it?”

The terrorbyte’s glowing central eye came fully online as it roused itself, its neck of heavy mechanical hinges lifting slightly to lean forward and look at James through the glass.  The reaction so far was placid, which gave James hope that it would at the very least be curious and not instantly aggressive, even if it couldn’t actually talk.

Then it surprised all of them by actually talking.  Though what it said was a little unexpected itself.  “Two plus seven.”  The voice came not from its mouth, which was still sealed, but instead all across its body. Like it was made of speakers.

”Uh… nine?”  James answered on reflex.

”Nine, correct.  Did you have to think about that?”  Zhu asked with a feathered nod.

Their banter was cut off by the dragon’s voice.  “Four cubed minus six.”

”…fifty eight?”  James had stepped back from the glass as the terrorbyte’s questing face pushed forward toward it.  “I did have to think about that one, if you were-“

Then it spoke again, and James completely lost track as the math question ramped up in complexity rapidly , going from simple arithmetic to using algebra notation that he didn’t actually know how to solve for when it was spoken out loud.  He floundered for a half second, being stared at by the focused face of the massive metal wyrm, until Anesh spoke up, providing an answer that sounded far simpler than what had been asked.

The terrorbyte shifted focus to Anesh, disregarding James and Arrush completely as its questions became more and more complex, and also came faster and faster.  The two of them speaking in vastly different voices, but sharing the common trait of being increasingly incomprehensible to James.

Then the terrorbyte asked something that took a full three minutes just to express verbally, and James tensed in anticipation as his boyfriend paused, looking like he had to struggle through the process for the first time.  As the seconds ticked by, he was getting the feeling the terrorbyte was radiating a smug vindictiveness.

Through his skulljack, James got a connectivity request from Anesh, along with a simple question.  “Can I borrow your brain for a second?”  James agreed instantly, letting the two of them subsume each other into a shared mind.  The collective person was far, far better at math than James would probably ever be without skill ranks, but his physical brain was still a useful addition to the process of problem solving and memory, even if it became instantly clear that Anesh on his own had been cheating using his own skulljack braid to offload a lot of the simpler math.  The problem that had been posed though was one that was resistant to just being plugged into a calculator, and so he’d tapped James’ for help finishing up the answer.

When he had the answer, the combined person broke off the connection, leaving Anesh to finish speaking the final formula, and James with the vague impression like he’d just done six hours of accounting homework back in college and his brain hurt, but no memory of what the process had been like.  He wasn’t unprepared for the feeling, it was just odd.

Anesh finished answering, and the terrorbyte’s power symbol eye flashed a brief irate red before the dragon pulled away from the wall, shaking its long neck back and forth seeming in frustration.  “So… do we pass the test?”  Anesh asked, trading a look with James as they watched the massive creature put on a show of annoyance.

The terrorbyte sighed , cooling fans making the exhalation both loud and dramatic.  Then it spoke the first word that wasn’t a math puzzle, staring at Anesh through the glass.  “ Acceptable .”  It uttered, before adding in a tone that only came from higher up its neck and maybe wasn’t intended to be heard, “Bah.  And so no lunch today.”

”So, would you be open to…” James started to say before the dragon cracked its maw and dipped its head like a scoop into the mass hoard of orbs, and then lunged for the wall of its den.  The claws on its front legs caught on the top of the wall, glass squealing but holding steady as the dragon pulled itself up.  James forced himself to stay steady, though Arrush took several steps back as the creature reared its head far over them, staring down at Anesh in particular.

Then the terrorbyte cut James off entirely by spitting its mouthful of orbs directly at Anesh, many of them still dripping in coolant.  Some of them impacted so hard they broke on contact, granting boons from across the colors the dungeon offered, while the rest just splattered to the floor.  A not insignificant portion sprayed against the others too, and James found himself picking up a few new magics himself as the terrorbyte finished its reward based assault.  “No.”  It boomed.  “Now leave.”

James processed that at the same time that he was trying to sort through a half dozen orbs popping against his face.  

[Problem Solved : Meeting rescheduled]

[+1 Skill Rank : Government - Swedish]

[Certification Added : AMOPP - Therapist]

[+1 Emotional Resonance : Grief]

[Shell Upgraded : -22 oz Blood Loss - Internal Bleeding / Year]

[+2 Skill Ranks : Agriculture - Machinery Operation - Combine Harvester]

[+1 Skill Rank : Communication - Dog]

[Shell Upgraded : +2 Meter Vision Range]

“…How often does this dungeon give skill ranks in horses?”  Zhu asked while his host was busy sputtering as some of the dragon’s coolant saliva got into his mouth.

”Wait!”  James called, ignoring that to take one last try at talking to the terrorbyte before it pulled back.  “That’s great and all, but we really just wanted to talk!  We’ll leave if you want-“

”Good.”  The dragon’s voice boomed.

”…but is there anything you want if we come back this way again?”

”Lunch.”  The terrorbyte’s claws pulled it’s head farther over the wall to peer down at James from ten feet overhead.  “Are you volunteering?”  It’s echoing digital speech held a playful cruelty to it.

Which was, perhaps, exactly the kind of thing James thrived on in conversations.  Because it prompted him to just roll his eyes.  “I was thinking I could bring you a steak or a laserdisc player or something, but if you’re good being a snarky asshole, we can always just come back and take more of your stockpile later.”  James snarked as Anesh and Arrush tried to pull him back with them, the two of them having finished scooping up the majority of the sprayed orbs that hadn’t been cracked on contact.

The terrorbyte growled, a sound of overclocked fans and a rumbling mechanical vibration.  “I am required to give you one minute to begin to flee.”  It said simply.

”Yeah, sure.”  James sighed as he turned, waving over his shoulder as he led the others away.  “Nice meeting you.  See you around.”  He said.

It wasn’t until they were ten cubicles deep, with Arrush and Anesh hustling to fall in around James, that his boyfriend spoke up.  “What in the hell were you thinking?”  Anesh demanded.

”I was thinking that I wanted to see if it was actually not allowed to attack us.”  James said.  “And also to see if it was being an asshole on purpose.  I think it was, but I also don’t think it’s defensive.  If it wanted to fight while at a massive disadvantage, it would have anyway, so I figured I’d test something.”  He winced to himself as he felt the adrenaline starting to wear off.  “Sorry.  I should have messaged you.  Oh, I don’t know if you noticed, but it saw everyone.”

”What?”

Arrush nodded, sending thin drips of glowing blue down to the Office’s carpet.  “The small eyes on its side.  Like… like butterfly patterns.  But in reverse.  It’s pretending they aren’t eyes, but when it moved, they focused on our friends up above.”  He clenched one of his claws, the joints popping as he applied pressure.  “It knew the whole time.  What were the numbers?”

”Hm?  Oh.  Calculus, mostly.”  Anesh said.  “No message hidden in them, just… I wonder if it’s like a sphinx.”

”Ah, answer the riddle or get eaten?” James nodded.  “But you did, and it gave up a bunch of orbs, which I think also tracks.  Seemed unhappy about it, too.  Which makes me really want to come back and bother it more.”

”I’m in favor of antagonizing jerks, but that seems stupid, even for you.”  Zhu chimed in.

Arrush almost ran into an inanimate potted plant as he stared at James while they walked.  “Why… why did… how did sphinx evolve to do that?”  He asked.  “Where do they get the treasures?”

”What?”  James asked reflexively before realizing what was being asked.  “Oh!  No, no!  They’re mythological, not real!  Holy shit, I need to get you a book on fictional creatures.  We should hang out sometime and…” A thought struck him as they reached the far wall, and James spotted Frequency lurking overhead as he helped Anesh up to clamber onto the next layer of exposed cubicle.  “…Anesh!”  He called after his boyfriend as Anesh leaned down to offer him a hand up next before they could haul Arrush up.  “Anesh we should play D&D with Arrush and Keeka!”

Maybe it was just because compared to James’ last idea of getting up close and personal with a dragon, this one seemed pretty easy to do and non-life-threatening.  Maybe it was because they were at the end of their trip inward and the next three days would be getting easier and easier as the expedition headed home.  Maybe it was just because Anesh hadn’t gotten to run a game of any RPG in over a year as his multiplicitous life descended into an endless string of problems and conflicts.

Whatever it was, that sounded nice .

”I could do that.”  He said with a nod as two of Arrush’s arms clamped around his own and he helped his partner haul their friend up.  “But first, are we ready to start heading back now?”

”Yeah.”  James said.  “This was a bit of a let down, but overall, I think this trip has been worth it.  And there’s still plenty of chances for more orbs and stuff on the way out!”

”You are… too excited about things that might… hurt you.”  Arrush told him, panting slightly as he tried to express himself.

James nodded.  “Yeah.”  He agreed.  “Maybe.  But also… I dunno.  Sometimes it’s worth it.”  James smiled a broad smile; not a carefree one, not a smile that was blind to the hardship he’d been through or would likely be picking up along the path forward.  But a smile that was content.  Secure, right now, in the knowledge that continually putting himself in danger had paid off.

Hell, Arrush was right there, living proof that his method was working.  At least, for him.

Still, it was time to turn the expedition around.  And James was more than willing to accept the easier time of it they’d have as they got closer and closer to the front door of Officium Mundi.  Outside, there was a whole world waiting for him.  Problems that were on hold or slowly being chipped away at, people who needed help, projects to be finished.  Friends to catch up with.

James laughed as he looked down over the empty chunk taken out of the Office’s floor, looking back at where they’d come from.  He was watching for movement, but his mind was elsewhere.  When Frequency-Of-Sunlight gave him a questioning look, James just shrugged and smiled at her as he answered.

”I just realized that I’m thinking of Earth the same way I think of the dungeons.”  He said.  “As somewhere to live, and not just somewhere to survive.”

”…You’re weird man.”  Sunny told him bluntly.  “Come on, Keeka’s gonna put lunch away if we take too long getting back to the rest of them.  And it’s your turn to tell the Research squad that we can’t live here!”

“Heh.”  James couldn’t even feel bad about having the responsibility foisted on him right now.  “Yeah, sure.  Let’s go home.”

_____

Report Draft - Officium Mundi Long Delve - Copier Use

Thanks to the efforts of the expedition teams to secure more and more of the ritual coffee for teleport back to our home tower, we’ve been able to continue running the copier ritual constantly this week, both for pure production, and also testing.

Testing results first.  Attached, find a chart of levels of mundane to ritual coffee needed for various things to be duplicated.  Most of this is just formalizing things we already suspected or knew, but extra data is always helpful.  Of special interest is that the yellow orbs that underwent the upgrade ritual took a higher density than normal to copy.  (Two upgraded orbs were lost in testing.  Sorry.)  Also, Sewer lesson books officially have the lowest required density of any dungeontech item so far, while Climb books come in at the highest, requiring 96% concentration.

Climb books will  copy at lower ratios, but the copies come out with worse versions of the spells.  Thanks to Rho for helping to verify this, sorry Rho.

We’ve also found another thing that simply will not copy.  The death-reversal pills from the last Status Quo simply do not materialize, no matter what concentration of ritual coffee.  That makes two things, this, and the potions that create inhabitors.  Which, personally , makes me think we should think twice about ever using the death pills.

Replicating Sewer books should be on the list of things to talk about at the next general meeting.  We produced several sets on request for groups, but the unique complications they have makes it hard to stockpile the things, or to know if we should even be trying.

In other news, the second ritual projector arrived safely.  Because it emails objects out to real world email servers and we didn’t think to set one up here for testing ahead of time, we won’t know until we get out if the objects actually arrived, but they did disappear once we got it working.  It only works on the top floor of the tower, and we weren’t willing to risk moving the duplication projector at this time, so I don’t know yet if that specific space is the optimal spot.  It did take a higher than usual concentration of ritual coffee to work, though.  But it did work.  So at the very least, we can safely bring the upgrade ritual back here where it won’t require being under guard fifteen kilometers into the dungeon.

This doesn’t look good for taking them out of the dungeons, but at least we can keep them closer to where we’re familiar.

Now, the duplications.  Between myself, my growing army of helpers, and the constant supply of ritual coffee, we averaged 30 duplications a day.  This is far and away the best rate we’ve ever sustained, and it’s a good reason to have a permanent expedition in Officium Mundi all on its own.

Our duplication efforts focused primarily on priority dungeontech, followed by ritual testing, followed by using the remainder to create test copies of new orbs.  We have thousands of new orbs, we will not be able to test all of them in a reasonable time frame, especially not if we keep gathering them.  That’s just a fact at this point, we’re going to hit the throughput bottleneck before we can.

Duplications and their required distributions include :

62 Logisticors, to be delivered to the Lair’s vault.  Inform Karen in particular and Recovery and Research in general that the requested number for beginning operations has been filled.

24 Succulent Pots, to be delivered to the potion area of basement two.

5,400 anti-cancer purple orbs, to be handed off to Justine Bennet or a representative of her office.  These are in the grey plastic crates labeled as live lobster.  It was what we had on hand for the volume, tell Justine the crates do not contain lobsters.

4 different eight book sets of Sewer lessons.  The set labeled as ‘shop class’ is earmarked for Bill, the others are to be handed off to Texture-Of-Barkdust, Ink-And-Key, and Raul.

A backup set of every Climb book, for redundancy.  Deliver to the storage at the office around the Office, not to the Lair.

120 new Status Quo brooches, to be put into rotation at the Lair’s baths for leveling.

80 new Status Quo shield bracers, 32 earrings, 8 armament bracelets, and 2 hairpins.  All to be delivered to John in Research, for leveling over time.

20 new 4” Route Horizon Velocity gears, to be tested for repeatability before we commit to making more.  Deliver to Momo.

6 Stacks statuettes (Skirmish Winner Seizes Blades) for delivery to Nate or security squad training area.  6 Stacks statuettes (Fungal Winner Seizes Cleaning) to be delivered to the Lair’s janitorial supply closet for practical application testing.

~2 tons of platinum, to be delivered to the loading dock of the Office office, with an alert sent to Texture-Of-Barkdust

80 Order introductory armory sets; 50 knight armory sets; 20 specialized delver sets each for the Climb, Stacks, and Sewer; 10 rogue armory sets; 10 medical armory sets each for mental health, general practice, and surgical skills; 40 response armory sets.  Introductory sets and half the knight and delver sets to the vault, the remainder of the knight and delver sets to the front desk of the Lair.  Medical sets to hospital staff, with two sets of each type reserved for unaffiliated hospitals as samples.  Response sets to Harvey or Marcus for distribution, rogue sets to Nate or Ben.  Boxes ran out due to lack of foresight, so a lot of sets require packing before being handed off.

8 paperweights, to be carefully delivered to the space elevator project team

240 common use blue orbs for absorption, to be delivered to the front desk of the Lair.

~3,000 new copies of orbs spread across Office yellows, purples, and greens, and Stacks yellows, greens, blues, and purples.  Varying sizes.  To be delivered to the front desk of the Lair, with instructions that they be cracked at the moment of handoff, and the information on the skill recorded along with the code labeled on each orb.

32 orange orbs, to be delivered to the construction project team

10 liters of shaper substance, to be delivered to Deb for testing, labeled as copied .

800 A-type telepads, for handoff to the Lair’s front desk for distribution to the Order

The remainder of the duplications were used for individual requests or small batch copies of magic items, and there’s a few too many to list out.  Those will be available for pickup by whoever wanted them.

Also a single strider wanted to be copied, and I obliged as payment for telepading us a load of coffee from the expedition.  They’re still hanging out, both of them, and seem happy to have a friend.

-Anesh-