“Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight.” -Vice President Thomas Marshall-

  _____

  It was against all odds that a routine emerged.

  Not, critically, a schedule. James lived in a simmering stew of chaos and problems that came out of nowhere. Also schedules made his fingers itch. But a schedule and a routine were different things, and one of them he could handle, even if it was weird as hell.

  Because despite the chaos and the threats and the problems and the possible end of the world looming on the horizon from something that probably wasn’t climate change but also definitely was climate change if the first apocalypse didn’t work out, James kinda felt like he was having a relaxed time of things. His routine, erratic and eclectic, full of things that might confuse anyone who first had to get past the sentence ‘okay, magic is real’, unsuitable for basically anyone else, grew and flourished and eventually, began to stick. A real routine, of sorts, not just things he was doing.

  Every day, he woke up, took a hot shower that was molten even before he was magically upgraded and hadn’t gotten any more bearable since then, and then made breakfast for someone. Sometimes it was Alanna and Anesh - veggie omelets and whatever fruit was left in their fridge - sometimes it included Auberdeen - bacon - or Sarah - also bacon, but when it was Alanna and Sarah together Alanna got the bacon she shrugged off while eating with Anesh. Sometimes it was Arrush, and there James would mix things up and make new things to share with his new boyfriend who had never had so many foods. Keeka and Anesh joined them sometimes too, and James was happy to do a little extra work to feed more people, though when he was staying over at Arrush’s apartment in the Lair, no one else wanted to wake up at 5 AM like the big ratroach did. Honestly James didn’t either, but he was the beneficiary of Sarah’s ‘sleep subsidy’ program, so he made do.

  Once he was awake, clean, and fed, and equipped with his concealed arsenal of dungeontech, James got to work.

  He had given up entirely on the concept of office hours, because actually sitting in one place at a set time sounded like it just wouldn’t work for him. But he did have a signup list for people who needed to talk to him, where they could leave their own availability, and James would start out working through as many of those as he could. Which was usually all of them. There wasn’t really a gate on his time, this was his primary role in a way.

  Sometimes knights had questions about the responsibilities or options. Sometimes survivors had questions about what had happened to them, or where they were going from here. Sometimes people felt like they had something important James needed to know about, and sometimes people needed to know if James could learn something important for them. Sometimes, people who weren’t human needed to know about very niche things and they trusted James to not be weird about explaining them.

  And so, part private investigator, part counselor, part leader, James fielded questions and had personal conversations with everyone who needed part of his time. That often took chunks of time throughout the day, as he caught up with people who were only around at night or were on delves.

  After the first wave of it though, he made sure to read priority reports from Research about new developments and weird magic intricacies. Just in case knowing would keep him alive sometime, and certainly so that he could look for weird interactions that the Order could leverage.

  What came next depended on what day it was. And also if he needed to rush to the Research basement to dive tackle someone, but mostly what day it was. They’d gotten better about not blowing things up or creating terrifying entities.

  Every couple days, James teleported out to the isolated mountain cabin where Kiki was staying. James didn’t need to go there to learn about the progress they were making - he knew the progress they were making, he read the reports, and he was aware it was almost no progress at all. No, he went there to hang out with Kiki.

  Her stay stretched on for a week, then another past what she’d said she’d stay for, then on toward a month. And things were going slow, but they were going. Her effects started to become noticable on the Research team, who were swapped out for a different group immediately, but that did set things back. James did regular check-ins, mostly to try to just not leave the non-pillar feeling isolated, but also to get to know her.

  They talked about his life more than hers. She loved hearing about his friend group and small stories from his past. And he in turn appreciated that she was an outside perspective on the Order who wasn’t fully comfortable with them, but was willing to listen. Most of their conversations weren’t strategic; he’d already shared everything the Order knew about the other pillars, and she’d shared what she could about what she knew about herself. Knowing that pillars felt a compulsion to act in accordance with their name was confirmed for James, but they both knew there were depths to it that couldn’t be explained. Knowing that there were other dungeons was confirmed for Kiki, but she still wasn’t ready to try touching one, even one as nice as Clutter.

  She had been ready for everything to end. And then James fucked that up by making her feel like things could be okay again. Every visit he made ended with her taking a long breath of the increasingly chilly forest air, and looking him dead in the eye, before telling him that she could maybe put off dying for another few days.

  On days when he wasn’t doing that, instead, James was hosting lectures in the briefing warehouse. Which, while a little less personal, was a lot less emotionally heavy.

  For a lot of the Order’s existence, the main way James recruited people was by saving their lives and then giving them a space to recover and grow, before trapping them in an intricate and delicate web of friends and opportunities. In contrast, the method of just hiring people through various means was a lot more direct. It also meant that the Order kept growing, which was good.

  And some of those people, from all different walks of life, were interested in being delvers.

  But just throwing people into the dungeons and explaining on site was a terrible idea actually. So James had prepared presentations of varying levels of depth on each of the dungeons, and employed the magic of public speaking to give people the information they needed in order to not get hurt or killed by something dumb.

  They took place in the briefing warehouse, and James did his best to respect people’s time, while still hitting all the main dangers of the dungeons he was telling teams about. As well as constantly and consciously making it clear to new people what the Order expected their mindset to be. That new life forms weren’t assumed to be monsters, that even hostility or aggression didn’t mean something was a target, that relying on and trusting your team took priority over interpersonal issues but that those issues were still valid and could be addressed. Things like that. And then also what not to touch in the Akashic Sewer (everything) and what to be on the lookout for in the Climb (books but also don’t touch anything there either just to be safe).

  James ate his lunches alone, just to unwind. Sitting in various parts of the Lair - or on the roof since he could do that now and it felt very dramatic to him - and watching life move on.

  People lived here. Worked here. The Lair wasn’t like some city unto itself or anything; it was just a building in the middle of a mostly developed area, no matter how big it was inside. But the Order had given a lot of people a place, and James liked to just watch it all go by. Watch people chase errant iLipedes, or meet new people from sometimes literally different worlds, or practice little magics as they waited for a teleport ride.

  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, James conceded to some need for a schedule, and participated in training courses after lunch. Sometimes Nate ran them, sometimes it was Karen, and sometimes it was other people that James hadn’t met yet but was getting familiar with the style of. Everyone focused on different things, but all of them pushed people to improve themselves.

  Though Nate pushed him in a very specific way, pitting James against his increasingly competent shield teams repeatedly. And when James proved he could handle that, adding more and more problems until the paladin hit another point where it required repeated attempts and developments to overcome. Complications like changing the environment, forbidding certain tactics or magics, adding one or two more whole shield teams, adding one whole Camille, or at one point straight up blindfolding James and making him do the whole thing trusting Zhu’s guidance. That last one was great practice for both of them, the navigator pushed to learn how to give James movement impulses without the need for spoken words or phantom lines.

  In contrast, Karen asking him to work on snap decision making and disaster relief plans while also running an obstacle course was easy. Though it got less easy when exercise potions stretched it to marathon levels of endurance. All of it, though, made James a little sharper. Everyone had an idea of what a paladin should be able to do, and James thought they were all partly right, but overall wrong, because no one else seemed to think a paladin should be able to do all of it. Except him, and the other three paladins, who he felt even more sure about selecting as they took to the training with the same attitude as him.

  That was only part of his week though. Other days, his evenings were filled with making plans with groups of knights and the other paladins, with testing new magic, or with putting hours into developing his Garden spell list with as many pluses as he could manage. That last one was frustrating, because some of that magic was good, but it required practice to work it into his style of action, and every cast consumed the prepared spell. So even just training a handful of times on Appointed Arrival took hours of prep time. But James wasn’t needed anywhere, and self-improvement now was extra leeway later.

  The other concession to a planned schedule was Saturdays. Because on Saturdays, James… did not have a routine. On Saturdays, James took a break. A break that, no matter how much he loved his work and his role, he really needed.

  He spent time with his partners, hanging out and playing board games and watching movies together. Explaining why he loved The Fifth Element to Arrush and TQ, getting trounced by Anesh at any competitive game that involved statistics, and having long talks with Alanna about local politics. Going on walks together, and enjoying how as the days went by, there were fewer weird looks as people in the area got used to the nonhuman friends and lovers that James hung out with.

  He found a new cafe, which was a painful experience at first, but the memory of that trauma was slowly scarring over and leaving him with a painless anger. The new place was a Brazilian coffee shop that had tapioca bread as a food offering, which James ended up really loving. It wasn’t familiar, and it didn’t feel as welcoming right away, and it wasn’t open until midnight, but it felt good to have somewhere to walk with his roommates when they wanted to restlessly hang out.

  And sometimes, he spent hours and hours alone. Just relaxing in his room or on the couch, playing video games or reading a book for fun and not because he was trying to cram a civilization’s worth of civics lessons into his head. He had fun with some magic, instead of training to use it to save lives or fight monsters; enjoying the Officium Mundi headphones that generated power metal cover songs, or trying to entice his personal snow cat into playing with a laser pointer. He took a breather, and rested, and when his routine resumed he was more prepared for it than ever before.

  Throughout the Order, projects advanced, progress was made, people learned and healed and made fuckups that they had to learn and heal from, and magic was accumulated. Potential dungeon sites were scouted, potential enemies were probed, and potential great ideas were tested. More long delves were planned and executed when there were the numbers to make them safe. And plans for future expansion slowly shifted forward as things like the logisticor shipping project moved from plans on paper to the initial steps of on-location development.

  And while all of that was happening, James spent all that extra energy he got from his days off going on at least two standard delves a week.

  It was a good routine.

  _____

  [+3 Skill Ranks : Geography - India - New Delhi]

  [+1 Emotional Resonance Rank : Appreciation]

  ”Well, at least I feel like I could appreciate this.” James commented, looking at the handful of dissipating glinting dust. “Actually, yeah. I’m gonna appreciate that I didn’t accidentally waste a useful orb! Unless…”

  ”Good attitude.” Alanna slapped him on the shoulder as they moved deeper into the Office, leaving the remains of an ambush behind them.

  _____

  When the Order of Endless Rooms rescued humans - a thing that happened on a concerningly consistent schedule - those people needed certain things. Help, obviously, but help in known forms. They needed a place to stay, they needed to have their agency restored, they almost certainly needed therapy, and it also never hurt to set them up with money, magic, or both, as a way to help secure their futures a little.

  As the Order kept expanding, and different experiments and initiatives were tried, there were also humans that needed other stuff as well. While a surefire way to lower homelessness was to give people homes, a lot of those people needed additional boosts to manage addiction, chronic health issues, or just the spectre of time spent isolated and without any social practice. And while they had a lot of money to pour into developing their programs, it was still development and not wide-scale execution.

  But even the most in need that the Order took in in ones and twos all too slowly still had a core of familiarity with Earth. No matter what city in what country they were brought from, they would know a language, they would know basic economic concepts like commerce and value, and they would at least be aware of the majority of social norms. Maybe they were terrible at managing money, and maybe they were an asshole who thought social norms were for suckers, but they had a framework.

  Banana did not have a framework.

  She didn’t even have anyone in her life that looked like her. She was the only crow-wasp in the entire Order right now; a trait that almost no one else shared. Camracondas had a lot of camracondas. New ratroaches came in all the time. Even the crocamaws had a few others like themselves.

  Ben didn’t count. Banana had met Ben, and looked up to him as someone that was cool and smart, but he also looked like a human, so he didn’t count.

  It was probably for the best that Banana didn’t know that there had been another crow-wasp, at one time, but that her maybe-sister hadn’t made it.

  In addition to not having anyone that looked even a little like her, given how much her shaper surgery had changed her body, Banana just… hadn’t grown up. She had a brain that was capable of decision making and surprisingly clever tactical analysis, but she had been created to cause and feel pain, and then die shortly after, and the Akashic Sewer hadn’t really done a single thing beyond what was needed for that. She had to learn language from the ground up, and even the most minor facts about human civilization, daily life, or social conduct, all had to be taught to her.

  In a way, she was almost the ‘youngest’ dungeon life they’d ever found. Not a blank slate, but lacking in both practical and implanted knowledge. She wasn’t a baby, but she couldn’t exactly be left to her own devices.

  Banana’s day to day life was different than she’d expected it to be. Not that she’d expected anything at all, but she didn’t really consider things that way. Instead, things just sort of seemed like they happened, and she only really understood half the explanations that she asked for.

  Now that she wasn’t staying in the hospital room all the time anymore, she needed a place to go. And while planning for the future wasn’t her strong suit, she had, just a little bit, wondered if she would get to live with Alanna. The human that had been the first person to offer her compassion, who had brought her back here to be healed, who had visited so often, who had taken her out on short trips that Deb always seemed so annoyed about. Banana loved Alanna. But she was determined, because Alanna had explained how crowded her own apartment was getting, and also that she was already splitting her time and secretly running herself ragged taking care of her younger sisters, to not feel betrayed to have a different guardian.

  Ann was not the same as Alanna, despite having a name with most of the same letters. She was less expressive, and less familiar, and sometimes she seemed very angry at things, and Banana had been uncertain about staying with her at first. That feeling lasted three or four days - practically forever - until an incident with a broken picture frame and a cut hand had led to Ann patiently and effectively bandaging Banana’s new manipulator, cleaning things up, and then coming to make sure she was okay and ask if she needed to talk about it.

  Banana hadn’t really realized that she did. But Ann listened to her as she exercised her voice, stumbling to explain what had happened, and then carrying on to talk about so many other things that she hadn’t thought to say. When Ann had offered her a firm hug and an apology, Banana had welcomed it. When her guardian had told her that things would be okay, and that she’d try to be better, Banana had believed her, even if she didn’t actually think Ann had done anything wrong.

  The young girl’s view of the world was definitely skewed by her lack of context. And Ann had set about trying to fill in as much of that as she could. Banana was smart, but she could only focus for so long every day. Unless, Ann reminded herself with a smile, it was about marine biology. If she kept that passion for more than a few years, the kid would definitely be going into that as a lifelong passion kind of thing.

  In the meantime, she needed to learn the basics. So Ann tried to figure out what those actually were, working with Recovery and the other knights that had full-time charges, and then started teaching Banana one thing a day. One thing was easy. Classes were a lot, lectures were exhausting, but one thing? They could both do one thing.

  Here was how you safely used a microwave. This was the value of a dollar, and why people agreed on it. Laundry worked like this, and it was important for these reasons. Remember that it wasn’t wrong to ask questions or apologize. Simple things at first, chores and safety tricks, how to not hurt yourself boiling rice, or what information you shouldn’t reveal on the internet. But as days went by, and Banana assimilated lessons quickly, they both started changing how they approached each little lesson as things got more complex.

  How to not be a sore loser at a board game became a longer conversation on how to be kind at all, as Banana asked questions that even Ann didn’t have good answers for. A day where Banana shadowed Ann on her less dangerous job working in the kitchen turned into a discussion about how they organized things, and economies of scale. A question about how to drive that turned into both of them looking up information about trains.

  There wasn’t one specific day where Ann found herself racing to play catch up, but every now and then, she got the impression that Banana’s brain was making up for lost time. The kid made a lot of mistakes, but Ann never punished her for them, they just talked them through and worked out how to not make the same mistakes again. Usually that worked, and when it didn’t, well, the same Response training that she was applying to being a parent also worked for keeping her patience.

  Banana hadn’t expected someone like Ann to be the person that helped her learn how to feed and dress herself, and Ann hadn’t really expected to enjoy the process of what was functionally being a foster parent, but they got on well together.

  She didn’t spend all her time at ‘home’ though. Not in the apartment anyway. She could walk now, and talk, and touch things, and be outside, and while outside-outside was scary and huge and bright, there was no way that Banana was going to stay in a few rooms. Even if they were nice rooms!

  Sometimes she went out with Ann, and spent time around the other knights that had their own charges. And Banana found that her voice was a lot harder to use when there were new people around. Especially when some of those new people were, like her, more than a little shy. She spent a few of those gatherings sitting quietly, feeling torn between saying something to the other new life, and trying to hide inside her wings.

  It was at one of those gatherings that Banana overheard a term from one of the knights. She didn’t understand the whole context of the conversation about where the crocamaw had come from or what it had been ‘used for’ before coming to the Order, but she heard the knight use the word ‘unfamiliar’ to describe him. And Banana knew what a familiar was, because she’d been watching a brightly colored cartoon with Ann every night about a witch girl. And the character had a normal familiar. So an unfamiliar must be something similar.

  Maybe she was an unfamiliar too. It sounded fun; like she was a companion, but not something summoned, maybe. She liked the word, and decided to steal it for herself and for the others.

  She just had to find a way to tell them first.

  One of the places that Banana spent a lot of her free time was in the lobby of the Lair. Because the lobby had a large collection of aquariums and terrariums, and so it had fish and bugs and frogs and also a slime thing that she could look at and learn animal facts related to. Well, except the slime. There was no wikipedia entry for it, for some reason. But the rest! And it was there that Banana had met one other human.

  Her name was Ava, and she was smaller than Banana was and like most humans only had half as many legs, but she still decided that she was Banana’s older sister. She seemed to have a lot of younger siblings, and she kept getting more, which meant it was a different kind of sibling than the other version of it, which mostly just reinforced Banana’s theory that you could use words for whatever you wanted. But also, Ava liked frogs, and was excited to tell Banana about frogs when they had both been sitting near the terrariums, and so Banana had a new lifelong friend who she was perfectly willing to kill for if that ever came up.

  Banana asked Ava how to approach new people, especially scary people, and Ava and her other younger sister Hidden had given her a series of rapid fire ideas that Banana remembered exactly nothing from. But she came away from the encounter feeling encouraged and determined to try something anyway, because Ava had made her feel like she could do anything.

  Then later that day when she and Ann went to have food in the Lair’s big dining area and there were other young unfamiliars there, she’d purposefully sat herself next to one of the new crocamaws that always looked like he was waiting for something bad to happen. Banana had prepared a series of crocodile facts to share, even if he wasn’t actually a crocodile, because everyone loved crocodile facts.

  Then shyness and trepidation had taken over, and her attempt to get her table neighbor’s attention had devolved into her and the crocamaw staring at each other with growing panic. When Banana felt like she had to say something, she’d found her voice, and in a buzzing squawk, declared that the crocamaw could probably fit her whole head in his mouth.

  The knights sitting with them had gone quiet as the two had stared at each other, before the scaly boy with the fanged maw making up half his body mass had blinked his slitted yellow eyes, and then he’d made a high pitched squeaking noise that had resolved itself into a sheepish giggle. Banana, her hide shifting to an embarrassed neon green underneath her feathers and fur, had taken a moment to think before deciding that was a good outcome, and joined him in laughter.

  They were friends now. Though he was just as jumpy as she’d been when she’d escaped the Sewer. Almost as bad as some of the ratroaches were. She’d surprised him by accident a few days later and he’d nearly hit something vital with his claws, but while Banana was still learning the ins and outs of social structure and the impossibly complex subject of mental health, she didn’t blame her new friend. She couldn’t, even when it hurt. Because she’d done the same thing before to Ann, coming out of a nightmare screaming and trying to kill whatever was closest. She knew the truth.

  He was hurting more than she was. And he apologized when she saw him again a week later, tears pouring in rivulets across his long downturned face. By then, she’d had the stitches taken out, and was more concerned with the fact that Ann had been asking her about if she wanted to go to ‘school’ in the upcoming month. And Banana didn’t know. She didn’t really know what it meant, but she knew it would be an obligation and a lot of people, even though it would also be something to do that would let her safely leave the Lair and see a new place.

  So she accepted her friend’s apology, and they sat together by the front window of the Lair to watch the terrarium with stickbugs in it and talk about how afraid they were together.

  Banana hadn’t really expected anything at all out of her life. So all of this, everything from getting to know Ann, to visiting Alanna sometimes, to eating new foods, to making friends, to learning just how little she actually knew. All of it. It was all… special.

  She had left the hospital, changed, hoping for little more than being able to hang around one specific human forever. But now, she found herself hoping that life would be special for a very long time.

  _____

  Getting the book had been a trial-and-error kind of thing, because according to Ethan who had somehow become their Climb expert, the mountain dungeon changed its map based on who was in it. Though really, the trials and errors were all about navigation with different party members around messing up the map.

  Getting the book itself was easy. Almost too easy, compared to just getting there, but James wasn’t complaining. The long necked riding lawnmower fanning out wings of frosted wood and metal was clearly aware someone was nearby, but it was doing a bad job punching through the leveler earring’s invisibility and anti-hostility power. Thought it was trying. Violently.

  James touched the spine of the flat blank thing that would soon turn into a spellbook. And he was asked which of the three things that had most helped him get here was important to him. He was tempted to pick ‘teamwork’, but that wasn’t why he was here. He looked beyond, to the list of lesson and skill ranks and spells and orbs.

  There would be time for the Order’s list of test cases later. Right now, he picked the purple orb that gave him more brainpower for location memory, because what mattered was helping Zhu while it was still an option.

  The spell text dropped into his hand, a pristine and heavy textbook. But that was for someone with spell slots to check in depth later, because right then the team needed to get the fuck away from the dragon.

  _____

  Ink-And-Key was irate. And not just because he still needed to make decisions on a half dozen different things. Most of the decisions were small, but every small decision left hanging added to the pressure until none of them could be addressed without panic. And on top of that, one large important thing pressed down like the machine that they used to test material density.

  Cathy had asked him - him - if he wanted to be one of the knights taking care of the new people. Which was silly of course. Ink-And-Key could barely take care of himself. He relied on others for food and shelter, and in a roundabout way and with application of the internet, he relied on them more for any other material things he needed. He wasn’t even legally considered a person by any human agency, and yet, Cathy had asked him to take in a young and scared and potentially dangerous crocamaw.

  Of course Ink-And-Key was an idiot, so he hadn’t instantly said no. And now the pressure of needing to say no weighed further on all other decisions, and the camraconda approximation of a stomach in his body felt like it was burning from the stress, which was probably not healthy. This added more stress, naturally.

  Being stressed made him irate. A simple chain of logic, with the simple solution of giving people actual answers and making actual choices. But he had learned early in his time at the Lair that simple and easy were separate things. Another thing to be irate about; life should not be this much of a struggle to get through. A life of freedom should not feel harder than a life imprisoned in a dungeon tower.

  His discomfort seeped into his mood as his day began. The apartment that he shared with his brother - a word that was incorrect but close enough - had been modified for camraconda convenience, but he still ended up using too much force from his heavy body to open doors and pull his speaking rig off its hooks. That same brother, Paper-And-Words, found him while he was clattering around in the kitchen, a mercifully durable glass coffee pot dangling from one of his fangs as he made coffee rather deftly for someone without hands.

  ”You appear agitated.” Paper-And-Words opened with. “I know this, because I am perceptive.” It added with a sleepy hiss, having been pulled from nest by the noise.

  ”I am fine.” Ink-And-Key lied. His brother’s synthetic voice was actually quite smooth and natural in its inflictions, guided by a version of the program that they used that he had quite a bit of practice with. It was the words themselves that came across as unfamiliar. Ink-And-Key, in contrast, was the other way around. His voice was clearly artificial, but he didn’t care. The words, and the use of them to share feelings, that was what was important. “I am making coffee. How much coffee do you want? The machine has no limitations beyond time.”

  ”That does not sound correct. But I will have a small amount, thank you.” Paper-And-Words replied, slithering up the carpeted ramp to the incomplete circle of a couch that surrounded their table. It was a strange amalgamation of furniture; part bespoke camraconda mobility aid, part… kitchen table from IKEA.

  Ink-And-Key loved IKEA. He had never been, but the concept was brilliant. Unified logistical efficiency, with no room for doubt or misunderstanding. One of those human wonders that he found the humans never really appreciated properly.

  The white-cabled camraconda took a moment to try to calm down as he made coffee. Making a mental attempt, as his therapist had suggested, to be appreciative of the good side of being the largest of his species, he considered that it was helpful to be able to reach things on the counter without needing help. It didn’t quite work, but he was steady enough when the coffee finished to deftly grip the pot and carry it to the table where he poured it into bowls for himself and his brother.

  ”I am grateful to humanity for coffee.” He said, his constant anxiety making him worry that he should be filling the time with conversation. “But I would like a pot with fang handles.”

  Paper-And-Words irised its lens at its brother, tilting sideways as he mentally set aside the book it was reading on his skulljack. “Humans will be disappointing you.” The camraconda stated. “Common.”

  What was common was the small but repeated disagreements they had about the nature of their hosts. Ink-And-Key suppressed a hiss, instead flicking his tongue into his coffee, enjoying the heat and the sparkling tingle of caffeine, if not the flavor. “I like humans.” He said. “I think you are unfair. I think maybe I should tell you that more, instead of saying nothing.”

  His brother pulled back from flicking a long tongue into its own drink, looking at Ink-And-Key with a steady gaze that had been familiar long before they had come to this place. “Unfair?” It asked in an ironically human voice.

  The issue of their disagreement was simple, really. Ink-And-Key had seen quite a lot of the world through the pseudo-magic of the internet, and thought it was a nice place. He wanted to live in that world, and with those people. Maybe not to actually interact with the people, but he could live alongside them at least.

  In contrast, Paper-And-Words had been increasingly upset and angry at the various failings humanity had to offer. And while Ink-And-Key couldn’t exactly say his brother was wrong, or even that his feelings were invalid, yes, he did think Paper-And-Words was being unfair.

  “Humans made nice things. And they helped us, when they didn’t have to. I appreciate them.” Ink-And-Key said, ducking his body almost flat against the table, looking out of their living room window toward the inside-outside courtyard in the Lair’s basement. He didn’t want to meet Paper-And-Words’ gaze. “They aren’t that bad.”

  ”You had been shot.” Paper-And-Words dropped a lot of its inflection, voice strangely warped as it spoke. “They shot you. You could have died. I do not want to have humans near us. They do that. They shoot things. Like us.”

  ”Those humans.” Ink-And-Key didn’t like being reminded of that. He’d been in too many fights, enough for his entire life really. “What about these humans? They… I was hurt because I was helping. Because we were helping. We has humans in it.”

  Paper-And-Words gave a rapid series of staccato hisses as it spoke. “These humans do not count. Our most normal human is an outlier.”

  ”Townton.” Ink-And-Key replied, still not looking at his brother. “What about Townton, and all the humans there?”

  Paper-And-Words’ voice started to stabilize. ”You are supposed to be the smart one. You know Townton is different.”

  ”Different how?”

  ”Different.”

  They stopped talking, one out of protest, one because he thought he’d made his point. Outside, in the underground and yet healthy garden, someone laughed loudly; one of their human neighbors in conversation with someone. It was never truly silent here. But there was nothing spoken in their home for a span of moments.

  Ink-And-Key pulled air into his body in a long breath. “Townton has humans, and they are nice. Even Camille is nice. But terrifying. But also nice, and I don’t think I will call her terrifying, because I do not want to make her sad.”

  His brother made a dismissive hissing. “Camille is not an human. Does not count.”

  ”I think that she identifies as a human.” Ink-And-Key said, stretching back to sit up on the couch and take another flicking sip of coffee. “Regardless of her origin.”

  ”That does not change her!” Paper-And-Words insisted with a volume to his words that Ink-And-Key almost flinched at.

  Almost, but not quite. Because now that he was talking, now that he had a conversation going, he found that his anxiety was secondary to intellectual joy. There was something fun about making points and sharing information, once you got past the initial barrier of being terrified to say anything at all. “Does it not matter? There is a mindset within the Order that puts ‘human’ as a meta-category of being, within which there are different species. An umbrella for those who wish to unify-“

  Paper-And-Words cut him off, which was doubly awkward for camracondas when their words had often been sent to the speaking program in a batch and could not be easily stopped without quick reflexes. ”That is stupid. They should pick a better word than human.” His brother angrily lapped at his coffee. “Stealing the idea of equality for themselves.” He added with clear anger.

  Ink-And-Key realized suddenly that he found Paper-And-Words reply to be almost adorable, in a petulant way. His not-exactly-younger brother truly acting the part of someone who needed just a little bit of help to avoid falling into a dark mentality. “I do not disagree. Instead I wish to tell you that we are outliers too. We are weapons that are learning to be free. I am sure that, should our species grow into the future, no amount of hope from our paladin will stop us from having an equal share of idiots.” He curved his body, twisting around in a satisfyingly aching stretch. “I worry. I worry about our future. I worry about my own today. I worry about everything and I am scared all the time. But I am not scared of humanity. Only of some humans. I will not be afraid of a category.”

  ”I…” Paper-And-Words trailed off, an effect that meant something very specific when a camraconda did it. “Paladins.” It said with a sudden sharp hiss and a focusing of his lens.

  ”Paladins?” Ink-And-Key drooped as he repeated the word, wondering if perhaps he had said too much, or failed to make his point.

  But then Paper-And-Words bobbed slowly at him. “Yes. Paladins. I was… I was going to say a thought. Say it is good that one of them is one of us. But I though it. And I recoil, because they are all of us, and I have… I have read human history.” He hissed as he spoke, the old original pattern of sounds for doubt and anger. “I can see that I am drawing lines. Terrible lines. The same ones that make humans disappoint me.”

  “For all that they are disappointing, humans have done well recording their own failures.” Ink-And-Key found himself replying almost instantly, fearing that letting the vulnerable statement his brother had made sit for too long might make both of them uncomfortable. “They have been horrible. But they are teaching us.”

  ”We do not need to give them credit for that.” Paper-And-Words was back to sounding casually bemused now.

  Ink-And-Key hissed a laugh, checking the time as he drank his coffee down to the bottom of the bowl. “No, no, you are correct. I agree. And now I must go. I have avatar practice.”

  ”I am sorry. I know you are hate that.”

  He rose to his full height, body extended as he slithered off the table’s couch carefully enough so as not to slam into the floor and bother their downstairs neighbors. “I hate…” he gave his own purposeful pause, displaying the moment of thought and consideration put into his next words. “I hate what I have needed to do with it. I hate that those other humans have made my weaponness something useful again. I hate that I know it will be needed again and that I will not say no when it is time.” He turned back and looked at Paper-And-Words, who was watching him with a focused stare. Ink-And-Key let his fangs show in a camraconda mimicry of a human smile. “But I do not mind it. I find the sensation of pure connection comforting. I trust myself to so many people, and they do not betray me, and it makes me better than I could be alone.”

  He turned and headed down their front hallway, using the hooks mounted on the wall to wrap himself in a soft and warm cloak, pinning it across his body with a deft maneuver that had become second nature to him. He had just begun to leverage the door open when his brother spoke behind him, staring down at the remnants of his own coffee.

  ”A significant metaphor.” Paper-And-Words said quietly, its warm voice deeply contemplative.

  Ink-And-Key started to nod, then stopped himself, trying very hard to not just agree with whatever was said. “Maybe.” He replied instead. “But it wasn’t for anything.”

  He felt like he’d really gotten a good last word in, and was feeling quite pleased with himself. Right up until he was all the way to the elevator and realized that the whole conversation should have pivoted at the point when he could have told Paper-And-Words that the person who’d shot him in Utah hadn’t actually been human.

  He’d remember later.

  _____

  It was while ‘studying’ the Charm River Transformation spellbook after an Akashic Sewer delve and a new labratoad rescue that James got a completely new piece of information shoved into his thoughts. Something that had never come up from either the Garden, or the Garage, but was clearly of both of them.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  [(Link Set | Breathing <> Charm River Transformation | -20% air required)]

  The number was large enough that verifying what it did was really easy. While he was working on that specific spellbook, he needed to breathe roughly one fifth less. Or… probably precisely one fifth less, if they studied him down to the microscopic level. Magic was like that sometimes.

  James didn’t care. He was too busy getting into excited conversations with as many people as he could about what it meant that the intertwined dungeons were blended not just on the physical level, but inside their boons as well. The implications were massive. Probably. Since they had no idea what it meant yet, the implications could actually be pretty trivial.

  But it felt like something huge.

  _____

  “Thank you for taking this shift.” Smoke-And-Ember’s eternally placid synthesized voice wasn’t the loudest conversation happening in the Response staging room, but it was perfectly pitched for Marlea to hear it.

  Because Marlea was cheating. One of her four bodies had excellent hearing, and that one was focusing exclusively on the camraconda. A neat trick she’d started working on before the addition of her newest… newest something. She had wanted to say ‘piece’, but while she meant it as a form of ‘every piece of a grand puzzle’, it sounded too mechanical and creepy. The people that made her weren’t components, they were the whole point. She’d written a lot about her experience as an actual hive mind, but she still hadn’t come up with a good word for what each element should be called.

  ”Yeah yeah, no problem.” The body that was presenting as her face waved a hand. “I figure, I know how it all works now, more or less, so why not help out? Also Ann asked.”

  ”Yes, she has been busy lately.” Smoke-And-Ember nodded. “And my normal partner is currently risking death. And I did not want a random assignment.”

  Marlea cracked a smile. ”What, afraid you won’t get a worryingly powerful chick as your sidekick?” She asked.

  The camraconda hissed in a way she didn’t know how to identify yet, but was pretty sure was amusing. “No. I am the sidekick. But otherwise correct.”

  ”…Aight, sure.” Marlea’s presenting body leaned back in the metal frame chair, scraping it against the linoleum floor in a terrible screech as she raised her arms back over her head. Two of her bodies sipped at the surprisingly good coffee down here, unaware that she was in the process of amping up her reflexes to superhuman levels. “Is it just me or is it kinda quiet down here today?” She asked.

  Smoke-And-Ember curled to the side in a shrug. “It is sporadic.” He told her. “Sometimes, there is no time to rest, and we are good protagonists. Sometimes, we have spare minutes for card games.”

  ”Ooh, poker?”

  ”No, better card games.”

  ”Damn, they got to you too.” Marlea shook her heads in quiet mourning. “I’m bringing a deck of cards next time and you get to learn Texas hold ‘em. We can bet orbs!”

  Smoke-And-Ember narrowed his lens at her, leaning forward slightly to peer up into the set of eyes she was currently being most coy with. “You plan to rob me.” He accused her.

  ”Nah, I’d feel guilty and give them back afterward. But maybe not all of them. It’s only fun if there’s real stakes.” Marlea wasn’t exactly sure why she felt that way, which was a fascinating novelty. None of her constituent lives had felt that way, but she did. The philosophical and epistemological implications were staggering. “So, not that I’m complaining about being bored, because my plans for tonight were shot to hell anyway, but how long do you think we’ll be sitting around doing nothing?”

  The camraconda looked back down at the slightly chewed book he had open on the table, resuming his reading. “I am guessing any moment-“ on the other side of the room, a three person Responder team got a notification they were needed, and rose to move at a jog through the clear path to the door. They already knew what their expected task was, and in under a minute, they’d have any extra equipment they’d need and be handed a filled out telepad to deploy to somewhere on Earth to help whoever had called. “-nevermind.” Smoke-And-Ember said, not looking up. “It will be longer.”

  ”Well why wasn’t that us!” Marlea asked rhetorically. She did know; one of her had Responder training, and another one had been in a shield team and had gotten something similar. She was aware that the group was probably picked because of some specific skillset, or just because they were next in line. She was griping, and it wasn’t really fair of her. But also she was bored.

  All her extra ability to think and process and it turned out Marlea could still get bored. It wasn’t even like she got bored faster either; it was the most perfectly crystallized human aspect of her new existence. Boredom. Normal, and pure. And also boring.

  Smoke-And-Ember didn’t humor her frustrations. “There is a small library of books you could read. They have Transmetropolitan. You might like it. It is strange.”

  ”Is it ever weird to you that you have a kind of idea of what’s strange and what’s not?” Marlea asked, the two of her that weren’t on their second cups of coffee staring up at the tiled ceiling.

  ”No.”

  She waited for more to follow, but found that Smoke-And-Ember was actually reading his book. “You wanna… expand on that?”

  ”If I found it weird, it would be hypocritical.” He stated. “Because I should not know what is weird.”

  ”…Touche.” That was a word she’d been gleefully incorporating from her newest member. “Hey, I’m not annoying you, am I?”

  ”No. I enjoy your company.” Smoke-And-Ember looked up, long tongue flicking across his fangs as he looked between a few of her arrayed bodies. “Ah, I was going to ask. What plans did you have that you gave up to sit here and be bored?”

  The grimace was powerful enough that it moved across all four of Marlea’s faces. “Eh. Date.” She said, sweeping a hand out in the most dismissive motion she could make. “Or something. Turns out, exactly the thing I knew was going to be a problem, is a problem.”

  ”Scheduling.” Smoke-And-Ember bobbed in a knowing nod.

  ”Sch… no!” She laughed, caught off guard by the profound confidence the camraconda had used. “Dude, no. I can schedule. I could use a whole brain just as a calendar. I can schedule.” She sighed, and one of her other voices picked up the conversation. “Nah, the guy was… I mean, I figured I’d date outside the Order, you know? Try to not be weird about it. And he basically only said yes cause he thought it meant infinite free threesomes.”

  Smoke-And-Ember gave a long, shallow hiss. “I am sorry.” He said with such earnest sympathy that it caught her off guard. “I understand that must be frustrating.”

  ”Yeah, well. Whatever. Besides…” She kept switching and overlapping voices, which she had noticed herself doing when she got agitated. “Like… okay, look. I actually would love some sex, okay? I can say that here, right? Yeah, I can say that, this place is cool with weirder stuff. Anyway. But when he found out that I was actually serious about being the same person, his stupid banal fantasy suddenly took second place to being a coward.”

  ”Ah.” The camraconda said, maw cracking open to show half his fangs. “He broke off your plans.”

  ”Yeah.” Marlea wasn’t sure why it felt so easy to talk about this with someone she was only kind of a passing acquaintance with. Though at least it was something that kept all her brains spinning, and kept her from feeling nervous about working with Response today. The nerves had been a part of the process even when that was what one of her was doing normally, and just because there was more of her now didn’t mean they’d gone away.

  ”Foolish.” Smoke-And-Ember said.

  Marlea winced again. “Yeah, I know. But I-“

  ”No. Him.” Marlea’s shift partner cut her off, pivoting to look between the two of her presently speaking. “If someone gifts you everything you want, you should not run away. I would not run if someone gave me what I wanted.”

  ”They still won’t give you the fireball gun, will they?” She smiled at him, knowing enough from overheard complaints and past conversations to see where this was going.

  ”No! And I would be perfect for it!” He hissed out placid laughter, pushing himself up on his own tail to look her more directly in the eyes. “But that is not my point. I would not cancel plans with you.” He said.

  Marlea gave him a selection of coy grins in reply. “What, are you flirting with me now?” She asked, her presenting body leaning forward on an elbow.

  ”Correct.” Smoke-And-Ember’s blunt response took a second to hit, but when it did, her eyes widened and she nearly slipped forward off the limb bracing her. “I have,” he explained, “watched many humans here flirt. You are all bad at it. So I am trying other things until one works.”

  ”…wait seriously?” Marlea wasn’t sure what was happening anymore.

  Smoke-And-Ember’s tightly corded cable face pulled back to show his fangs again as he smiled at her in a way that didn’t seem quite natural on a camraconda. “Only if you want.” He replied. “If not, then we can pretend this was a joke. See? Honesty, but also an available escape! This is optimized flirting.”

  Marlea might have stared at him with at least one of her mouths open for longer than was socially polite. Around them, the other Response teams kept talking or eating or napping or trying to bribe the vending machine. The room didn’t get any quieter. But it did feel like she was in a bit of a spotlight, and more than she normally felt too.

  ”…You know what?” She eventually settled on. “You’re way more fun than anyone else I’ve tried dating so far. Fuck it. Yeah. Wanna get a drink after this? When do you get off, anyway?”

  ”I accept. And I believe the ideal time to get off is following you.” Smoke-And-Ember said with the kind of unholy timing that always happened in conversations in public spaces, where everyone around them got just quiet enough to hear that specific sentence.

  Marlea’s front facing body was, mercifully, the one that was least prone to blushing, but it still buried her face in her arms on the table, wheezing with laughter, while her other bodies tried to look anywhere else. “Oh my god.” She barked out without meaning to. “You can’t just say that!”

  ”Oh. Are you sure? It seems to be working excellently so far.” Smoke-And-Ember leaned forward to bump the end of his snout into the top of her head. “Do not forget to breathe. Most humans need that!” He added helpfully. And then, before he could say anything else, there was a ping through their skulljack connection. “Ah.” The camracond said, and though his tone didn’t change, his entire demeanor shifted. From playful and teasing to focused and serious. “We are needed. Are you ready?”

  ”Oh yeah.” Marlea was already moving. Or at least, the two bodies wired on reflex coffee were, having reacted to the message before the rest of her, in a weird sort of dissociative way. She would need to be careful about that. “Let’s go be useful.”

  Because teleporting into a crisis situation was a lot easier than whatever the hell was happening here at this table.

  “And after, some form of date.” Smoke-And-Ember somehow said it with pure confidence without being too smug. “We can discuss magic and other things.”

  “I’m actually cool with that.” Marlea said as all of her followed the camraconda in a vanguard. “Hey, there’s some new Climb spell that lets you make snow castles. Like sand castles, but-“

  Her new date twisted to gaze at her with his lens while their dispatcher finished writing their telepad. “I have been to a beach, I know what- ah, thank you Marcus. We will finish this chat later.”

  And off they went, to be useful.

  _____

  [+2 Material Ranks : Iron - Meteoric]

  ”That’s amazing.” James said with a happy laugh.

  ”Amazing good or amazing you’re dying to share trivia this reminded you of about something niche with me?” Anesh asked.

  ”That second one!” James added a tally to the number of kisses he wanted to give his boyfriend once they’d cleaned all the ichor off. “So, the thing about early human metallurgy…”

  _____

  He didn’t have a name. He’d never needed one. Never even considered that he would need one. Liberation had come with an overwhelming flood of the new, to the point that it had left many kith reeling and shocked into inaction. Himself included.

  Even the simple concept of ‘himself’ was something that he had struggled with. In the dark, in the cage, there was no purpose to it. Sometimes kith would be forced to mate, and it - he - had been selected for the process twice, but the idea of a gender being a component had been… a distant consideration.

  Consideration was new. It was painful and bright and it was glorious in all that it offered. He wasn’t foolish, he just didn’t know things yet, and there were so very very many things to know. Learning came slowly, because every singular thing that needed to be learned required the learning of two other fragments, and sometimes there was no end to the context. You just had to accept a truth on trust and struggle forward.

  Which led to the idea of names. Names were special. Names were mundane. Names were everything and nothing. To some people a name was the same as a herd brand, and to others it was a sigil of their agency. But to many of the humans, and even some of the others as well, names were simply a useful daily tool. They said them, in their clumsy-precise speaking words, and achieved a hundred purposes. Grabbing attention, drawing notice, offering respect or praise, communicating disappointment, or the ever present utility of simply telling two people apart in a conversation.

  This was very useful to him, because telling the different humans apart was a challenge. Some of them were different colors, either their bodies or their hair or their eyes. But then they covered or dyed half those things with yet different colors that they changed constantly, and while ‘clothing’ was a concept that he was now familiar with and understood better, it was still irritating.

  So names were useful. But he didn’t have one. None of his kind did yet, and that took more thinking. He walked the safe soft space as he thought about it, feeling the voice of the others and adding his own consideration to it. It was never the dominant sensation, but it was almost always a ribbon these days. The process of thinking, and of questioning, was becoming more and more familiar. More… not allowed. It was always allowed here. But now they knew that it was.

  It had been a moment of revelation to hear the voice of the others for the first time. Almost as much as being taken from the dark. But after that, revelations came fast and frequent. He spoke a language now, not just a voice, and the others could understand him. And in turn, he could understand them. They were… they were not alien. They were not monsters. None of them were. They were not like the first others; a different group with a different voice. That had been so very hard to believe.

  Understanding it had been simple, actually. But believing? Who could. Who could ever. Even the kith who had been touched by the mind of one of the others hadn’t really thought they would keep their promise. Mostly because promises seemed like such an abstract and impossible thing. Tomorrow was just as new as names - a dream that might never come true, and so, stopped being a dream out of fear of the pain that came from never having it.

  All those dreams had to be relearned. How to speak, how to learn, how to have names, how to think past right now. He lost himself in thought so deeply that he didn’t notice as he moved out of the soft space and into the rest of the person place. The road was a crisp texture under his unguarded tips, the people here were others and not kith, but no one stopped him as he walked. They never did, and, he was beginning to believe, they never would.

  There were new rules here, just as there had been rules in the dark. But the rules in the light were like the soft place. Easier, kinder, for no reason other than because they wanted to be it seemed. It was so easy to follow them, because they were about not doing things, and it was very simple to not hurt anyway. The others didn’t even stop them from using their voice, even when the voice was full of pain and sorrow that had been bottled up for lifetimes; instead they sheltered them. Gave them the soft place. Gave them new food, and new tools.

  And some of the others joined the voice. Only a few now, and only a little bit, but he knew now that they could hear it. They listened to the outpouring of pain and anger and despair, and then… they moved to try to make it go away. Not with a culling or a painful punishment, but with quiet speaking words and gentle touches. And when that wasn’t enough, they changed themselves to join the voice and add their confidence and hope to it.

  Things were changing. He knew, as he passed one of the others that was familiar if only because she was sharply watchful and also the only one with wings, that his kind were not going to remain themselves. Not going to remain as they were.

  And wasn’t that wonderful. Because what they were was, he decided, not very good.

  Good and bad were new thoughts too. New things that took a long time to figure out. Long nights of staring at the sky things, and long days of wondering why his assigned nest was so soft. Watching the others, moving in protective groups so as to never be taken while alone. So that when he was eventually taken away, someone would know.

  But no one was ever taken. Because that would be bad. And slowly, some of them started moving in smaller groups. Which was neither good nor bad. But they did it because they felt safer. And that was good.

  Indira had explained the two ideas repeatedly, and he had chosen to use her as one of the others that he trusted for starting points in learning new things. She had also added to the voice, and helped create the shared language that he knew how to speak a little now. And she had been one of the ones that he and the kith had chosen to bring to… to…

  There wasn’t a word for it. Not in the new language, not in the voice, not in his thoughts either. They had brought their eggs with them when they had been pulled out of the dark, because that was the only thing that made them valuable enough to keep alive. That was knowledge passed down, just like how they should never use their voice. They had to be valuable, because if there was no next group, then everyone died sooner.

  It was something he had, like everyone else, forced himself not to think about. But now things were different. But, they still didn’t really know how different. Trust wasn’t a word he had actually understood, until that day when the eggs had opened, and the small unshelled new ones had been pulled free. And as they had always done, because to not do it meant more death, he had helped in presenting them to the others.

  And the children had been treated with reverence and love, flavors almost audible in the voice even from the others who didn’t speak that way. They’d been handed back, entrusted back to the kith, though there had been a lot of visits from the others that liked to poke and prod.

  He stopped, then moved out of the way of the group of kith that were waiting to be given food from one of the places where the others made the good smelling food, then stopped again. They had children now. Would the children have names? Would they be different, spending their days growing up without having to wait for death? Would they be smarter, if they could think and learn their whole lives instead of just for the most recent cluster of days?

  What would their names be? Would they be in the voice, or in the speaking words? Or something else? Which one was good? That question would require so much thought and consideration that he wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to make it to the answer before his own death, no matter how far away it was now.

  And besides that. How could he say what a good name was, when he didn’t have one himself? It was confusing and strange to worry about the future of someone else who wasn’t even really in the voice yet, so much so that he stopped walking along the solid dark line that the others used to travel, and lowered his shell down toward the crispy ground to let himself focus on the thought.

  The thought was a challenge. The circular nature of it spun in his mind over and over. They needed something, because there was a tool that everyone else among the others used. But how could it be given if neither he nor any of the kith had that tool? It seemed like it should be easy, in the way that others like Indira were fond of saying that things were ‘easy’ when they really were not. There were certain things that were simply too unfamiliar, thoughts that led in circles or into a fog of confusion, that there was simply no way to resolve without help.

  He was still going to try, because asking for help was one of those concepts that was still too unfamiliar to feel real, and it just didn’t occur. But then there was a sound next to him and motion seen through the wide arc of peripheral vision as one of the others sat down next to him on the cracked grey part of the ground that had little bits of soft green in it.

  ”You doing alright there?” He recognized this other. Its name was Prince, and it looked different from all the others that used the shape. Prince was actually a different color or shape very often, but was always recognizable to the kith despite that. It was good. Being recognizable was helpful.

  The speaking words would have been impossible to understand in the early days, but now, practicing the in-between language, he could make out the meaning in them. Prince was asking a question, but it wasn’t really a question. It was a request for how to help. He could almost hear the real voice in it - the others had the voice, they just didn’t use it the same. You had to see it in the way their bodies moved, in the key of their speaking voices, and in other hidden clues. It was hard. But they were all trying here.

  He thought about how to reply, using his sharp legs to turn himself before settling back down, looking at the different other. Prince might not be in the voice, but the way that the other moved and the look on his face communicated quite a lot. Apprehension, discomfort, small nuanced notes that the language was still working on adding, but that both kith and other felt even if they had a hard time sharing.

  A decision was made. The voice was shaped and formed into a blunt instrument, while he opened his mouth and applied a similarly clumsy use of the speaking words. Two sides of communication, just to say, with a flat tone of curiosity, “I need a name.”

  Prince did the blinking thing that the others did when they had their own unexpected moments. He found it useful, even if blinking wasn’t something he could do with his own perpetually open eyes. The other took a moment to themself, adding the long exhale that meant they were feeling regret or memory or exasperation or just that they needed to breathe.

  The others were so confusing without the voice. But they were trying.

  ”I’ve never been good with names.” Prince said with clumsy-precise speaking. There was so much there, so much hidden feeling that couldn’t be easily cracked out of the words. “Neither was Ruby. Our… I guess you’d call it a sister… named us. She was good with names.”

  ”Names important?” He asked, filling the local air with a hammer of curiosity and sympathy. He understood the cadence of the speaking. Prince’s sister was dead. Or otherwise gone. That was common enough that the kith had come to learn the signs of it in the others.

  ”It’s a nice reminder of her, I suppose.” Prince said, not noticing that his conversation partner was struggling to follow along. “She liked to use names as aspirational ideas for people. Said mine would make me ‘more noble’, which was dumb enough that I’ve lived my whole life proving her wrong.” The other laughed. He knew what laughing was! That meant amusement, happiness, glee! But… not. Not right now. Somehow, it was different and hurting. He moved closer, wondering if it was the right thing to do, as Prince kept talking. “Anyway, I think names are different for different people. She’d probably be pissed if she knew her name ended up being ironic.”

  He didn’t know what that meant. It sounded like something with a story behind it. Following speaking language was hard, but he felt like he was having a conversation, which was… scary. Like falling. It felt like falling and hoping someone would catch you. “I need a name.” He said with potent and direct determination. “Needed. For the new ones.”

  ”The kids? Ah. Yeah, I hear you.” Prince lied. The other didn’t hear him properly. But he was still trying. “What do names mean to you?”

  He considered. Long enough that Prince started shifting like he was tired of sitting still. Long enough that a few new other people came by to ask questions of Prince, about things that he didn’t follow along with. Long enough that he saw a group of his kith move by and add to the voice curiosity and concern and anticipation and anxiety about his state on his own. He mollified the last group with the sensation of pondering, and then continued doing exactly that.

  If he knew how time worked, he would be able to say that it was forty minutes later when he shifted to rise on his spear-like legs and tell Prince his answer. “Nothing.” He said with confidence. “Names mean nothing. Yet.”

  “Mmh.” Prince made a noise that he recognized as a different kind of pondering. He was learning the small noises well. “That I get. You need a name and you need to not overthink it.” The other somehow, in blunt words outside of the voice entirely, expressed the truth that he had been struggling with for days. “Tell you what. I know a name that’s not in use. Want it?”

  A name that he could just have. That was so much easier than struggling with the concept of names in the abstract. So much easier than having to make a choice, when choosing hadn’t been part of existing for as long as he’d been alive. “Yes.” The in between language was supposed to use simple voice, but since Prince wasn’t using that language, he let the word be buoyed with painful pleading desperation to make the confusion stop.

  ”Alright. My sister’s name was Rise.” Prince said, standing up and dusting off the back of his legs with economical smacks of his strangely distinct hands. There was something wrong with how he pronounced the words as he turned to leave. “And now it’s yours. Take care of it for her, okay?”

  “Okay.” He said. Rise said. That would take getting used to.

  But so would everything else in life. And now there was one step that had been completed. One new concept that had a starting point to build off of, which made everything so much easier.

  Rise - said with an undercurrent of bitter loving melancholy - flexed his legs and began to return to the soft space. He had a name. One that would require him to live up to who it came from. But one that was a gift, given from one of the others that every day continued to help the kith acclimate to no longer being in the cage.

  His name was Rise. And he did not yet understand just how important that was.

  _____

  “Oh hey, neat.” James said, looking down at his forearm and wondering if he’d guessed correctly which shield bracer had just leveled up.

  He had a second, so he did a quick mental check on each of the ones he was wearing, looking for the culprit until he found the right one. It wasn’t hard, the clean numbers were easy to understand once you knew the pattern from looking at it fifty times a day for the last year.

  [Battlefield Alteration, 3, 0/600, 3:39:40, 6, A-]

  There it was. After almost exactly two hundred and seventy five days of constant deliberate use, this Order-copied non-blood-magic certified clean shield bracer had tipped over to level three. And now, at long last, it could be set to automatically change what the shield blocked. And James left that option firmly set to no, because relying on that was how people fucking died to unexpected combined arms.

  ”James!” The shout caused him to jerk to attention, blinking away the line of blood running over his brand new eye. “Right side! Right side!”

  ”On it!” James swung around to face his rifle out the window of the speeding vehicle, zeroing in on one of the tanker spiders hot on their tail. They could celebrate the new milestone as a community later. He had delving to do.

  _____

  Marcus didn’t have a lot of actual training training, when it came to the majority of the proper noun Weird Stuff the Order of Endless Rooms dealt with.

  Oh, he was good at his job, working as one of the people that manned the phones for Response. He sometimes hated his job, when he had to listen to people who were hurt or scared, but he also loved that Response was currently on the positive side of having more people than problems, so it was always within his power to send someone out immediately.

  And he was good at being part of the community. He’d moved into the Lair as soon as that was an option, because it was just too cool not to. And also free rent, but mostly the coolness part. His neighbors were magical life forms, fantastically queer, or both, and that was exactly where he wanted to live. He was still trying to get more of his normal world friends to sign on, but… well, his closest friend in the world was kind of an idiot, and the guy would rather live with terrible conditions that were familiar than take a chance on something new. It sucked. Marcus was exhausted with it. He preferred the common camraconda way of doing things, which was to be blunt but enthusiastic, and just go from there.

  He also was good at being someone who cared about the Order’s activities. He didn’t actually go on delves - he might, someday, but that was scary when you weren’t used to the fighting - but he loved seeing recordings from in the dungeons, or reading lists of acquired magics, or trying out weird new potions. Marcus was part of a support group for nonhuman members, as the guy who was there to help them with determining how their unique situations created unique needs. He loved the weird.

  But he also didn’t do the hyper-accelerated exercise potion training, or the Response courses for emergency situations, or any combat classes, or anything like that. He wasn’t ready to be an adventurer. He needed anxiety meds just to answer the dispatch calls. Which wasn’t bad, exactly, cause he had health insurance now and so he could get his medication without a problem. Even if he didn’t, he was pretty sure he could tell Momo about it and she’d go rob a pharmacy for him. But that would probably cause more anxiety than it would solve.

  Marcus didn’t have Climb spells, because he’d never been into the sub-zero deathtrap. He didn’t use his stipend on orbs for martial arts or self defense, instead choosing to roll the dice on untested purples or getting more relationsticks or something. So far, the closest any potion trial had brought him to an offensive superpower was the one that made his skin secrete a thin goo that caused itching on anyone he touched.

  The most he’d trained for something dangerous was… well, probably the mandatory antimemetics training. Daniel was a nice guy, with a lot more history with the Order than Marcus really knew the details of. And he also shared his brain space with an informorph, who he was apparently dating too? Marcus thought that was weird when he’d figured that out. He’d thought it was weird the next time he’d figured that out too. And the time after that. And the next time. And the next…

  Marcus was the last person in his training group to start to actively realize, without prompting, that his memories were being tampered with. The infomorph, Pathfinder, was a navigator type, so the nature of the memory alteration was heavily rooted in not knowing where he was or why he’d gone there, and a disrupting of his attempts to leave. After the initial barrage, they’d moved on to repeated targeted types of mental attack, and the tactics for recognizing them and working around the disruption.

  And at that, Marcus was hot garbage. His attempts might have actually actively made things worse, in a real world situation. In training, Pathfinder seemed confused at just how vulnerable he was to her attacks, and how easy it was to confound him, and she used some of her rare words to actively ask him if he was maybe some kind of nonhuman himself.

  He wasn’t, but it was sort of cool in it’s own dumb way that he was almost an anti chosen one. Everyone on dispatch had Planner working with them at least a little bit, because it would be unacceptable to miss a call due to that kind of interference, and Marcus was cool letting Planner take a deeper root in his brain just to make sure.

  He wasn’t dating Planner though. That wasn’t his thing. Or Planner’s either, which was convenient.

  Marcus’ thoughts had drifted, apparently. He looked up from the empty fractal patterned teacup on the table. He did appear to be on a date. He blinked at the person across from him, who was staring with a curious frown on her face, eyes narrowed.

  While he wasn’t a relationship person, Marcus could understand that she was probably cute. Dusty blonde hair cut back to almost nothing over a slim face and body that looked more sharp than small. Actually she looked like she’d just walked off the set of a Terminator film, and once his brain made the connection he couldn’t shake the vibe, especially since she had some kind of circuit tattoo splashed out behind her left ear. And she was dressed like she was a slightly more armored Steve Irwin; tan clothing with a lot of pockets but also clear spots where armor plate or padding was incorporated.

  Though when Marcus looked down at himself, he realized he couldn’t quite tell what he was wearing, except that he was wearing some kind of heavy protective gear with Response’s blue orb sigil on it. His shield was leaning up against the chair he was sitting in.

  Blinking didn’t work, but he tried anyway as he looked around. They were outside somewhere. It felt like it was a city, and their table could have been on some sort of patio or sidewalk cafe. But whatever they’d been drinking and eating was long gone, only crumbs left on the shared plate in the middle of the table. It felt like there should be tall buildings, but instead there was nothing past the doorway and plate glass window behind them. Not just nothing, but nothing. A dark emptiness instead of a sky, and the street stopped twenty feet away, falling into… well it didn’t really fall, it was just gone.

  They were having tea in a circular space fifty feet across, hanging in a void.

  “Ah.” Marcus said. “I’m dreaming.” That was weird too, because you weren’t supposed to be able to say that when you were dreaming.

  ”Well kind of.” The girl replied with a focused frown. “Also hi. Again.”

  ”Hi.” Marcus cleared his throat, finding it almost possible. “Where am I? Also who are you. Also… no, that’s as far as I can think right now. Sorry? Sorry.”

  She was answering him before he’d finished talking, and definitely talking louder to flatten his attempt at an apology. “You’re in my Territory, you’re dreaming, I don’t know how you fucking keep getting here, you can call me Joy, and… you had fewer questions this time.” She sighed.

  Marcus nodded. “Yeah, I think I remember some of the other stuff.” He said slowly, a trickle of recognition coming back to him as he looked across the street to where there was a single tree that looked like it was made of gleaming silver metal, and then nothing past it. “…Were we having coffee?”

  ”Yes.” She exclaimed, clearly exasperated. “Finally. Now can you tell me why you are here?!”

  ”Nnnnnno. No I can’t.” Marcus slumped his shoulders, which felt halfway between real and not. “Sorry?”

  ”I am going to go insane.” Joy stated with a happy laugh alongside the words. “This is so stupid. That stupid fucking tree did this, I think it’s trying to kill me, and I’m gonna scream. Cause I don’t want it to do that!”

  Something about her words made Marcus feel like he should be remembering something else. Something from outside the dream, from a while back in his actual daily life and thoughts unmuddled by the fog of being mostly subconscious. “…You sound familiar.” He said slowly. “Have we met?”

  ”I! Don’t! Know!” Joy punctuated each word with an assault on the table with the blade of her hand. “Are you a wizard?! Some kind of government experiment gone wrong?! A ghost?! Give me something to work with here!”

  Marcus felt compelled to answer. Not magically, just because he didn’t like disappointing people. “I answer dispatch calls and do emergency response work?” He said. “Also I’m still at the suicide prevention line, so if you ever called that…”

  ”…you’re the guy.” His unexpected coffee date’s voice went flat, her eyes widening as she sat upright. “When I got shot. You answered.” She reached out and grabbed at Marcus’ hand, but he was operating partly on dream logic, and the gesture didn’t connect. “You’re real?!”

  ”Did you think I was a hallucination?” He asked. “Wait, no, I remember. You were… you were being chased. You asked me if… you asked… if I… wanted to get coffee…” Marcus looked down at the fractal patterned cup again. “Am I on a date? Why am I on a date?”

  Joy took a deep breath that Marcus couldn’t copy, which meant that she was actually here, but he was dreaming. So was this place real or not? “Wow Marcus! What a great question!” Her voice crawled with false enthusiasm. “Why are we on a coffee date inside my personal fortified wizard bunker? Why don’t you fucking tell me how you got here?!”

  She seemed annoyed. And Marcus knew he was dreaming, because the acidic bite of anxiety and the fear of fucking up a social situation wasn’t present. He would probably still apologize for intruding later, but he actually took the time to consider her question for real.

  Their only connection was that they’d spoken. But one thing Marcus knew from reading the infomorph entries in the Order’s playbook was that connections like that were kind of like doorways. And this one had clearly been opened. If this was a real place, a physical place, then something must have changed to let him be here as a dream. Probably the tree, since Joy seemed to think it was its fault. But surely she would have someone aside from him showing up if that was the case. He’d heard her for under a minute, months ago. Joy didn’t strike him as the sort of person who would avoid asking people out on dates for that long.

  Which meant there was a factor on his end. If their connection was a door, and the tree had unlocked it, something had opened it and shoved him through. And the likely culprit was either an infomorph, or some rogue spell effect at the Lair. Probably an infomorph. Probably one that would interpret this as a situation to do something about.

  A single brief comment in a fragmented conversation, that had invited Marcus out on a date. The kind of thing you very lightly penciled in on your calendar, and expected the exact time to shift around a lot for. But still, it was something that you might prepare for. And suddenly, his lucid dreaming mind felt a rush of satisfaction as he assembled a hypothesis, even through the fog of the dream and his own wretched ability with antimemetics. Because there was someone in the Order who definitely would fuck around with someone in this way, and who was, compulsively, a…

  ”…Planner.” Marcus said out loud, a tight annoyance building in him.

  Joy glowered. ”What the hell is a-“ she started, before freezing in a moment of shocked terror.

  ”Yes Marcus?” Planner interrupted her, voice like a scratching quill, the ethereal green and blue glow of their patterned tentacles forming behind Marcus and stretching around and out from him as Planner easily manifested through the dream state the young man was in.

  While Joy threw herself backward, chair scattering across the cobblestone and hands coming up like she planned to kick the shit out of Planner personally, Marcus turned and glared at the nearest eyeball he could find. Or at least, glared as much as he could like this. “You can’t enforce schedules for things that weren’t even planned.”

  ”You had a date Marcus.” Planner insisted. “It is important not to miss your obligations.”

  ”You broke into someone’s pocket dimension!” He actually managed something close to a yell. “That’s not okay!”

  ”Hey, yeah, I agree with him on this one!” Joy chimed in. “Also haha what the fuck!”

  Marcus couldn’t sigh, and even changing his perspective was a struggle, but he brought himself back to face Joy. “Sorry. That’s Planner. They decided a date was scheduled or something.”

  ”It was scheduled, you simply did so badly. I am removing chaos.” Planner stated with too much confidence.

  “What the fuck is a planner?!”

  ”Them.” Marcus said as an explanation, wondering if the facade of the building they were sitting in front of actually had a building behind it, or if it was just the front wall and the empty window. Where had the coffee come from? Did it get dreamed into existence? “Oh. Planner’s not gonna hurt anyone. Sorry again.”

  Planner scoffed like a page ripping. “I am a pacifist.” They declared haughtily.

  ”You’re in my house!” Joy remained indignant

  ”Is this a house?” Marcus asked, managing a little inflection. “Actually I guess it’s not important. We can leave. Sorry about bothering you.”

  He managed to move to standing, and was in the process of trying to figure out if there was a door or something, or if he needed to wake up to leave. Normally by now, he’d be wide awake, the dream a fading set of fragments in his memory. But maybe this one would stick a little better. Especially if Planner helped him out with it. Marcus was getting that hands-on practice that apparently helped with this kind of thing a lot more than just rote training.

  Joy interrupted his attempt to exit. “Wait, hang on!” She slid in front of him, hand held out, armor sliding out of place in a way that meant it wasn’t properly secured. “That’s it? You’re not even curious who I am?”

  ”I’m dreaming.” Marcus said. “Curiosity doesn’t work. You can call back if you want, we’re still around.” He looked back at Planner’s manifestation. “Can you pull me out please? I appreciate that you were trying to help but I need to wake up.”

  ”Yes, of course.” Planner said with an organized twist of several of their inner tentacles. “Should I remove future dates from the calendar?”

  Marcus stared. “Yeah Planner. Thanks.” He said eventually.

  ”Well hang on, you were still the least bad date I’ve had in months.” Joy said. “And I was right, you are cute, so… I mean… if you aren’t trying to invade my home base or anything, and the tentacle monster is cool, then…”

  ”Oh, thanks.” Marcus said again, the dull sensation of deep sleep closing in around him again. “I don’t really date though. Thanks for the dream coffee though.”

  ”…wait that coffee wasn’t…”

  Marcus woke up before he could hear the end of the fading words. Or maybe he woke up hours later, the dream a distant memory that he didn’t quite have access to. He felt pretty good though; like he’d had a really refreshing night’s rest, but also like he was energized in that way he could never replicate on purpose no matter how he managed his diet or whatever.

  That feeling lasted right up until he saw Planner again, and the memories snapped back into focus.

  Fifteen minutes later, Response got a call from a really annoyed delver.

  _____

  [+2 Species Ranks : Neuroptera - Antlion]

  ”What the hell…” James and Zhu moved in increasingly expert unison. Even as tired as Zhu was a lot of the time, they were getting better and better at working together, and in the aftermath of the fight, both of them flicked their limbs in different directions to send ink splattering to the hardwood floor.

  ”What’s up?” Zhu asked. “Is it as weird as getting a rank in dragons?”

  ”I… okay, no. Dragons?”

  ”Well, komodo dragons. What’re those?”

  ”Oh. Real. Also very cool. There’s one at the local zoo, we should go sometime.” James had let his hopes soar for a second. “No I got one in antlions.”

  Zhu’s talons carefully but quickly ran down James’ cheek, scraping away enough black ichor to make a splat when he flicked it onto the wreck of the interdictionary. “What, like the chanters? That’s weird.”

  ”Right? But it looks like a mundane species.”

  ”Wait.” Alanna held up her uninjured hand. “Hold up. James, when you say antlion, what do you mean?”

  James cocked an eyebrow, reveling in the ease of the motion even after so long of his face being free of heavier bandages. “The things from Half-Life 2? Isn’t that why someone said the term for the chanters at first? They’ve got the same legs, and a bit of the same shell structure, right? I mean, everything else is different, but…”

  ”Buddy I fucking love you enough to put up with this,” Alanna craned her neck to the side to wring out the ink from her hair in a liquid example, “but antlions are real bugs.”

  ”No kidding!” James raised both eyebrows for that one. “Well cool! I’m gonna learn a bunch of neat bug facts when we get home I bet.”

  ”And you’ll learn it sixty percent faster.” Zhu added happily. “Now get back to walking! I want to see if this map computer works on the water pipes!”

  _____

  And like all good routines, it lasted just long enough to get comfortable, before something messed it all up.

  There is a discord! Come hang out with us.

  There is a wiki! It's starting to be come helpful.