“Well. I suppose this was the wrong company to unveil ancient occult secrets in and expect to be impressive.” -Count Saint Germaine, Castlevania-

  _____

  North Smiths Utah was exactly as James had left it. Normal. Perfectly suburban. Sprawling housing developments separated from any vital services or even basic grocery stores by main roads that may as well be impassable rivers to residents that didn’t own cars. Boring.

  How strange that a place that held two dungeons, and dungeons existing in a unique phenomena at that, could be so dull. The city had seen multiple firefights last month, it was the source of a new species that seemed to be having an internal theological schism, and even with how spread out the people were it was still obvious that the streets were a little emptier than normal. And yet, life continued.

  It had to. James knew some of the people driving past, going to work or church or doctor’s appointments or whatever else, they would have lost someone. There would be family missing, or kids would have friends that had dropped off the map or gotten distant, or even just faces they were used to seeing wouldn’t be at work anymore. Some of them would be getting recruitment pitches. Some would be saying yes, and adding to the list of the missing. But everyone, eventually, had to get back up and get back to living.

  He’d been there. He understood. Maybe not exactly the same way, and maybe some of the people here would resent him making the comparison when in some cases he was the reason for the disruptions in their lives, but he knew in painful detail just how hard it was to get out of bed after a loss and keep moving. And James respected the collective strength it took a community to keep going through even small upheavals.

  He watched the road that separated his group from their destination, sitting outside a Starbucks at a wobbly metal table and sipping a drink that was way too sweet as he mused. He’d been quiet for a little while, mostly keeping a focus on the surrounding area through his eyes and drones, and letting the kids chat. The rogues reported that the main active group down here wasn’t tracking any of them, but, it didn’t hurt to be careful.

  So James waited and drank his mocha while the impulsive and possibly terrible decision he’d brought along hung out.

  Lincon and Emma were from here. Both born in Salt Lake City, but having moved to North Smiths as young kids and then grown up here. They were obviously very close friends, and while Liam, the third person that had been part of their delver team, had opted to stay far the fuck away from this state, the two of them had volunteered to show James to their own secret entrance to the merging dungeons. They weren’t quite awkward in James’ presence, but what they were was guarded. They held back information about spells he knew they had at some point, or possibly still had. Because they didn’t fully trust the Order yet.

  They also feigned politeness, which was hilarious. James knew through Morgan that they were, despite whatever magical oaths they’d been pressured into, they were still teenagers. And that meant they were often mean, sometimes completely by accident, sometimes less so. But not while James was here. Because he was the outsider, sort of. The unknown factor in the room.

  James had seen this before. He was cool with it. They could trust when it was earned, that was the only way their trust would ever matter. So he didn’t press them too hard. But he did keep in mind that they were both delvers with a lot more experience than most kids.

  Including the other two kids he’d brought along. One of whose was Morgan, who was currently talking openly with Lincon about how weird it was to watch cartoons that had been around before they were born. When James realized they were talking about the Simpsons, he decided he was going to throw himself into the dungeon and let it eat him.

  The other was Color-Of-Dawn, who, because the group was making an attempt at stealth, was currently folded up in a large duffel bag under the table and talking to Emma through a phone sitting on the table. James was pretty sure Color was only coming along because Morgan was, and he wasn’t quite sure that bringing Morgan at all was a good idea.

  But it was just a quick exploration. A test. And Morgan wasn’t stupid; he’d survived way worse than dipping in and out of a dungeon. So James had extended the offer since it could be a good opportunity.

  The conversation lapsed as James refocused on sweeping the area around them from overhead, his skulljack braid once again an improved model from the engineering team in the basement. It seemed like half the improvements were just ‘we found connector cables that work better’, but… well, that was an improvement. The other half was when they made or grew or a mix of both better programs to improve functionality. As James had run into repeatedly, the human brain just wasn’t very good at instinctively knowing how to do stuff when plugged into it, and intermediary programs designed to have giant glowing levers and switches to think about flipping helped a lot.

  All this was to say he was getting good at moving two drones at the same time without losing a lot of focus. And while there were people around them, he could easily sweep and see that there was no suspicious behavior. They weren’t being watched, or followed, or approached, or stalked.

  Which left him open to hearing Morgan ask the others “So, can you tell us about the place?”

  ”No.” Lincon and Emma said at the same time, before Lincon kept talking. “Both of them have stuff that stops you talking. The garage just keeps your words from getting to people. But the garden makes you forget if you try to say too much.”

  ”It’s really annoying.” Emma confirmed with a nod. “It doesn’t… doesn’t…” she blinked and looked down at where her hands were picking at the plastic lid of her drink. “Uh…”

  Lincon pointed at her with a slim finger. “Like that!” He said. The moment got a worried chuckle from Morgan and a quiet check from Color to see if Emma was okay, both of which felt just a little closer to normal and okay than Lincon had been feeling for the past week.

  He wasn’t adapting well to the Order. But he was trying. It probably helped that his time with them before had given him a head start over everyone else. The other people their age came to him and Emma and Liam now, for advice. Which was weird, and he hated being ‘the adult’, but at least he could help now.

  Emma sighed as she realized what had happened. “See, this is why you should give us infomorphs.” She told James, like she’d been having this debate with at least two other people and he was just the latest target.

  “Yeah, Zhu’s thing letting me tell people about the garage was really helpful.” Lincon nodded. “And he’s neat. I wouldn’t mind a friend like that.”

  ”You’d be okay with someone living in your head?” Morgan asked, not trying to make a statement with the question, just openly curious.

  Lincon shrugged. “Yeah? Oh, I bet they’d help with therapy when I have to do that. Hey James listens to you, you tell him!” He gave Morgan an intentionally rude grin.

  While Morgan started to glance James’ direction, and the adult at the table continued the motion he’d already started of shaking his head, Emma just sighed dramatically. “You should want the shaper stuff. I’m the one that could use an infomorph. Because I’m the brains of the operation. Also…” she trailed off.

  ”Also?” Color-Of-Dawn’s voice came through the phone on the table as it joined the conversation from its duffel bag.

  ”Nothing.” Emma said, before getting prodded by Lincon. “Alright, fine! Also it could make me happy!” She snapped at him, returning the poke in what seemed like a specific spot Lincon happened to be sensitive in.

  James found that incredibly uncomfortable. ”I find that incredibly uncomfortable.” He told her after considering the value of being bluntly honest. “Infomorphs aren’t a fix-all for your mental health. And not just for moral reasons, though those too. But if you’re not a happy person, then any infomorph that grows up in your thoughts won’t be either. Well, probably.” James wished they had more research on that. “Anyway. It looks like we’re in the clear, and everyone is done with their drinks. Is there anything you can tell us directly before we head in?”

  ”Woah, hol up.” Lincon gave Emma an anxious and wide eyed look. “You mean it’s just us? I thought we were waiting for the rest of you guys!”

  Emma folded her arms in agreement. ”Yeah, don’t you have a dragon? We should bring the dragon!”

  Blowing air out of his nose and narrowing his eyes, James folded his arms right back. “First off, you told me this door is a normal door, so I doubt even the smaller drakes could fit in, much less Pendragon. Who is, if you haven’t seen her, the size of a fucking bus.” The kids winced as he swore, and James internally made an awkward pledge to try to do that less around them. “Second… stealth? There’s a reason Color’s in a bag you know.”

  ”It is not for my health! This is uncomfortable, and I believe someone used this bag to move food supplies because it has baking powder all over the inside!” Color-Of-Dawn piped up, the camraconda doing its best not to shift and writhe inside the duffel.

  “We’ll get you out soon.” Morgan promised softly, shifting to tap the edge of his shoe on the top of the bag with a measured amount of pressure. “And maybe turn you into waffles if you’ve been taken over by the baking powder.”

  “Anyway, look.” James explained as he collected cups and stacked them up to dispose of in a second. “A lot of our knights are tied up with other stuff. We have six regular dungeons we delve, two of which we rely on. We’re taking care of over fifty kids like you, most of them younger and a lot more afraid. And the crocamaws, too! And that’s on top of a constant influx of camracondas and ratroaches, responding to other disasters where we can, testing out magic, and just training. And also downtime. Being able to relax is critical to people, or else we burn out, and at least for humans, people don’t ever really recover from burnout.” He sighed, wondering how close he was putting himself to that redline. “But yeah, our supply of knights wasn’t high to begin with, and we basically just pulled a giant lever that said ‘more work’.”

  Morgan sat up in his chair, back straight as he nervously opened his mouth, glancing at the other two human teens before deciding to say what was on his mind anyway. “Am… am I only here because there wasn’t anyone else?” He asked.

  ”Kinda.” James said with brutal honesty. “I mean, I was planning to start bringing you on delves over time anyway eventually. But in this case? Yeah. I mean, this is a new dungeon for us, right? It’s not exactly safe. The plan is a quick scout of the area around the entrance, and acquiring any magics we can for study. It’s a good chance to get you some experience. And also, I know you specifically are harder to kill than most people. But I don’t think I’d be bringing you if, like, Arrush and Alanna had been around, you know?”

  Morgan’s eyes flicked down toward the floor, before he rapidly recovered and squared his shoulders. The kid nodded once, before giving James a lopsided smile. “Yeah, I’d pick them too.” He said. “Well thanks for bringing us this time anyway.”

  There was something about how sudden his acceptance was that made James almost suspicious. Morgan was a smart kid, and he was mature for his age in the way people meant when someone had been through a lot of abuse and trauma that they shouldn’t have had to. But he wasn’t that readily accepting, and James knew him well enough to recognize this as out of place.

  He didn’t say anything though. He’d ask later when they were in private. Besides, maybe Morgan was just doing the thing where he tried to act more adult in front of the new kids.

  ”Sure.” James said evenly as he stood and stretched, reaching down to grab the bag full of delver gear and not the one packed full of camraconda. “Alright. Well, I can’t say for sure if we’re being tracked some other way, but no one’s watching us within a few blocks. So shall we go?”

  ”Why not just use the spell for that?” Lincon asked as the other stood, Emma smoothing out her shirt and Morgan grunting as he hoisted Color-Of-Dawn up.

  James tried not to sigh at the obvious show of trust. ”The what.” He said, a little irritated.

  ”Uh… it’s… the one called filigree shine.” Lincon flinched slightly. “It blinds people looking at you. But if you… if you keep focus on it for long enough, eventually it starts getting really mean to cameras. Or the tracker spell.”

  ”Huh. Neat.” James didn’t have the Order’s database on hand, for security reasons, but he did recognize the name. “We don’t have any level three or four slots though. Also why weren’t you using that one?” He asked.

  Lincon’s face went blank. An emotional wall slammed down between himself and the conversation as the group started walking away from the Starbucks and through the strip mall’s expansive and treacherous parking lot. “Not enough time.” He said simply.

  James didn’t know what to say to that, so he just made a quiet hum of acknowledgement as Emma walked a little closer to Lincon and gave her friend a familiar hand on the back in comfort. Morgan looked like he was thinking of saying something, but kept quiet as he fell back to walk beside James, the two of them following after the local kids who were clearly on edge and keeping alert to their surroundings at they walked the four blocks it took to find a crosswalk, the noise of constant traffic drowning out casual conversation.

  It left James feeling tense even after they’d doubled back to the public park that he’d been sipping coffee across from ten minutes ago. He prepared for delves by bantering, making jokes and playing with his friends. Even if they were about to get hurt or even die, he drained out the anxiety and stress by sharing happy moments in the prelude to the danger. This was different. Morgan was a cool kid, but he wasn’t a peer in the same way, and James didn’t feel like humor would be appropriate. Same thing with Color-Of-Dawn.

  So he was actually feeling the cold ball of anxiety in his gut as he followed the younger humans into the public park. It was still early enough in the year that the trees had all their leaves, and the shade from their canopies made the space feel like it was wrapped up tight almost as soon as they set foot on the wide concrete jogging path. Despite the beginnings of the change of colors from green to fall oranges and reds, and the dry grass that hadn’t seen rain in a while lining the path, the park felt like a nice little island in the middle of the city. Didn’t help James’ delve anxiety any, but it was still pleasant.

  This part of Utah wasn’t really a naturally hilly place, but it wasn’t like it was flat, and it showed that whoever had marked off and developed this park had intentionally not leveled it out compared to the nearby roads and neighborhoods. Gentle slopes for the pathways gave the trees and mown grasses a kind of texture, and there was clearly an intentional placement of things. A colorful plastic and metal children’s playground was situated in a kind of bowl in the earth, while a white painted gazebo was sat on the top of the tallest hill. This wasn’t a wild space, by any means; there was no wildlife beyond some bugs, no plants that weren’t the ones planted and desired or too stubborn to be eradicated, no part of it that wasn’t made for humanity.

  It was a strange contrast to James, who was used to parks having areas like this, but those areas being inside of larger places where the city had just marked off a portion of nature and said “You can’t mess with this” to property developers.

  Emma and Lincon led them on to where a red brick building sat inside a loop in the concrete pathway. A bathroom, by the signs around it. “Please don’t tell me we have to go into one of the stalls.” James said on reflex, the joke slipping out. It diffused the tension a tiny bit though, and he was feeling more ready as their group went around to the rear of the structure where there were a pair of blue metal doors.

  Emma pointed at one as they walked by, talking softly until they’d passed a pair of joggers. “That one’s the janitor storage space. We don’t have a key for that. The other one, though, Liam had the idea to padlock it.” She said it with clear pride in her friend. “Cause no one ever should come here unless they’re going into random doors, and so a padlock will keep out accidental… uh… whatevers.”

  ”Good call.” James nodded, craning his neck to look around them. Midday on a weekday, a balmy atmosphere, a park like this back home would have at least a handful of people in it. But aside from the joggers who had already passed, there was nothing. Maybe it was just that school was still in session. His view from overhead could only see a few people who might be approaching, but they were moving at a languid pace, and blocked from view by a slope. “No one’s watching, let’s hurry. Anything we need to know?”

  ”Yeah, there’s…” Emma trailed off. “Wait, about what?”

  ”Stop asking that unless we’re inside? Please?” Lincon pleaded. “It’s really frustrating.” He passed Emma to stick a scratched key into the padlock, popping it open and wasting no time in hauling the door out on its worn hinges.

  James stepped up behind them and looked at what the door was hiding. A simple stairwell, really, even if it was clearly one that wasn’t in use that often. Moss or mold growing on the cracked walls, and a thin haze of smoke or something in the air inside. Of course, the stairs going down just stopped at the floor of the building, like the concrete floor had swallowed up the next step and fused back into a perfectly normal surface. And the stairs going up…

  ”You know, I get to mess with people who come into the Lair a lot about how we’re a one floor building with an elevator.” James commented. “I should stop doing that. This feels weird, to be on this side of it.” He mulled over the thought as he looked up at where the stairs stretched at least three or four landings overhead before he couldn’t get an angle to see further. “I’m guessing that’s it?”

  Lincon stepped into the room before speaking with a relieved sigh. “Yeah, up goes to the garden, down goes to the garage. Which one you get is sort of random. Or… we could never figure it out. That door won’t stay open long, either, so we should…”

  ”Right. Going up.” James said, double checking his Breath, Velocity, weapons, leveler items, and orb pack. And then he took point, starting the long climb upward to something new, the others following behind.

  They got one landing up before Morgan gave up on carrying Color-Of-Dawn and made the camraconda get out of the duffel bag to slither up the steps itself. The camraconda seemed rather amused to have made it this far without being challenged.

  And then, another doorway at the seventh and final landing. This one with raised ridges across its surface that gave the impression of a wrought iron fence. And beyond it, somewhere exciting and new.

  _____

  The smell was the first thing James noticed. The sticky earthen scent of vegetation composting. A sweet note moving along with it like a breeze that seemed to speak of ripe fruit and mown grass. And beneath all of that, the tiniest hint of blood.

  Of course, when the smell was like being hit in the face by an odorous shovel, the tiniest hint was still absolutely enough to get the point across.

  ”Euagh!” Or some word close to it came from Morgan as he followed James through the door. By no means an expert delver, Morgan trailed behind and didn’t seem at all worried about an early ambush. He was also holding his shirt up like a mask, as if he could keep the scent out forever. “I liked the Climb better!” He decided.

  “I nearly died there.” Color-Of-Dawn hissed in annoyance.

  ”Only once! And it didn’t smell like this!” Morgan tried to defend himself, as the other two young humans watched the two of them with an awkward curiosity.

  James wasn’t listening. James was too busy getting caught up in what he was looking at as he set foot on soft grass underneath a sky that felt like it stopped before it really should.

  A thousand feet ahead of them, a white brick wall marked a boundary. There was a wrought iron gate set into it, as well as a small fence atop the chest high wall with blunted spikes sticking up toward the false sky. Stepping forward cautiously, James checked behind him, and found that they had just emerged from a stone and iron archway standing in the middle of a mown grass field. The wall continued, parallel to itself on both sides of them, before it turned and completed a box on the other side of the dungeon entrance, also close to a thousand feet off, though where the entrance was sat in the field was noticeably off center.

  James couldn’t see over the wall, but he got the impression it wasn’t just the end of the world. Most of that exterior wall, though, was occluded by an arc of curated topiary on one side, and a line of evenly spaced arborvitae that followed a smooth stone path on the other. That path seemed to connect the gates on different sides of the wall, but it took a meandering path to get there, through small circles of rich soil that seemed as if they’d landed like meteor impacts on the path and had spawned spirals of colored flowers instead of debris. All that, and one massive oak tree back behind the entrance, and the area looked…

  Familiar, in a strange dungeon way. Yes, it looked like the lawn of a manor estate or something, though James hadn’t been to enough of those to know or care. But more importantly, it felt open. A little exposed, but not enough to make someone nervous. A little quiet, though with experience - and a couple purple orb upgrades - he could sense movement even in the slim cover this space offered. This was a space designed to make someone feel safe enough to walk farther into it.

  The classic dungeon trap. Just one more step, come inside, we promise it will be safe and fascinating. And then… well, in James’ case, there was an ongoing ‘and then’ that had left him kind of tired and feeling a lot of abstract stress lately. But he still felt like that first dungeon ‘and then’ was the hardest one. All the ones that had come after had failed to leave too many scars on him.

  Morgan and Color-Of-Dawn were gawking at the pleasant scene, despite the fact that it didn’t look right in the strange half-light that came from the sunless blue sky. But Emma and Lincon moved like they’d done this before. Which… well, they had. They had been using both dungeons, both on their own and on the orders of their religious authority figures, to get stronger. For their own reasons in part, James knew, but also because they were told they had to, and they were very good at doing as they were instructed.

  Both of them dropped their bags by the door, stretching the zippers of the backpacks as they pulled metal banded wooden round shields out and affixed them to their arms. Emma held back with Lincon moving past her and onto James’ flank, both of them ready as the boy drew a sword out of nothing with a pale grey whisper of flames that faded as soon as the blade was out into reality and in his hand. They didn’t look like heroes, or particularly excited for this delve. Nor did they look professional; James could see the cracks in their movements and their moods. But they looked like they were ready to do this, and that meant a lot.

  ”Can I have a sword?” Morgan asked hopefully.

  James laughed, keeping his voice down but still expressing amusement as he opened his own bag. “No, you can have this.” He said, tossing Morgan a paintball gun loaded with pepper shots. “Help Color get armored up.” He added, pulling out the limited protective gear that he’d brought for them. Lighter than the full Order armor set, good for when you weren’t doing more than taking a quick look, but didn’t want to do it in cargo pants and a teeshirt.

  “Also give me a sword.” Color-Of-Dawn added as Morgan helped the camraconda into the lightest mechanical arm harness that the Order had made so far; just two limbs, more for manipulating than actual heavy work, and the exact reason that it couldn’t have a sword either. After being given its own paintball gun, Color-Of-Dawn asked the question that James had been waiting on everyone’s preparation for just a little early. “Now. What do we do? Can you say more in here?”

  James nodded slowly. “Yeah, typically, early delves are about going in from the entrance and starting to map out dangers and rewards. But since this one has the option, I kinda wanna go backward. What can you two share? How do you normally delve here?”

  ”Uh…” Lincon looked like he’d been suddenly put on the spot, and the prospect of being honestly asked a question terrified him. “I guess we normally just go forward? Some of the paths change so we can’t really map it.”

  ”We used to go looking for fights until we found a new spellbook.” Emma clarified. “Then we’d try it out. Time moves differently here so we have extra time for equipping.”

  ”Or whatever you call looking at the books.” Lincon clarified.

  James shrugged. “Equipping isn’t bad, though we should probably pick a term that’s different, because we do do equipping in the sense of going to the armory for a weapon and gear. Oh, speaking of, what do you call this place?”

  ”Just… just the garden, I guess?”

  ”Do you mind if we name it something weird? Momo really-“

  Emma giggled, and Lincon’s own similar laugh echoed alongside hers. “Yeah, Momo asked us. She can have it. We decided we don’t care.”

  “You guys have cool names for things anyway.” Lincon added, as Morgan finished the process of clipping his armor on and tightening it, letting James double check that he’d done it right. Lincon only briefly glanced at them before pointing with his sword to shapes in the shadows of the column-like green trees. “We sorta avoid the little ones, because they almost never drop anything. And… they’re not really that mean, you know?”

  Everyone else nodded. They all knew, for one reason or another. “Are there larger and or meaner things deeper in?” James inquired.

  Emma and Lincon shared a look. ”Oh, uh… not really? Or, I mean, there’s no difference. There’s some weirder stuff farther in, but the big demons can show up anywhere. I think there’s a pillboar behind the hedge right here.” Emma directed their attention toward the topiary. There was a moving shadow cast through the narrow gap, just enough to be visible as something moved around on the other side, but that she noticed that was impressive at this distance. “They’re dangerous.” The girl added, tension in her voice.

  James gave a tight smile. He wasn’t a big fan of ambushing random dungeon life, especially knowing what he did about how half of it was people, but there was enough information either given or stolen about this dungeon to come up with a few particular truths. Many of the things that lived here were sophonts. But the other half actually were overtly violent and hostile at all times. And while he didn’t recognize the term ‘pillboar’, he was pretty sure he knew what kind of creature Emma was pointing out. “Okay. First encounter. Morgan?”

  Morgan jerked upright. ”Me?” He squawked.

  ”You. How do you approach this?”

  ”…Uh… we can circle around opposite sides in groups, try to talk to it, and if it tries to hurt us, then Color-Of-Dawn can stop it and you can shoot it?” Morgan suggested.

  ”Good start. Emma, Lincon, go left please. We’ll take the right. Morgan’s mostly right, Color you should be ready to freeze it, then we’ll take it out. If something goes wrong,” James added, “then close on me and keep your heads down, okay? Alright. Let’s go.”

  They moved out toward their first planned encounter, James determined to make sure that at least this part of the dungeon was a clear fallback if they needed to run. And also just to get a feel for the others. Rounding the edge of the hedge, keeping his feet on the dungeon’s grass because he didn’t want to find out if the artificially spawned barkdust near the base of the plant would give him artificially enhanced splinters, their prey came into sight.

  It was like a smaller version of the demon that someone had thrown at him in a meetinghouse basement a couple weeks back. A flexing organic shell that looked like it was made of melted rust-red fur that had fused into one piece, twenty short legs that moved in a complex dance underneath the armored covering, and a face that was like a flattened and sawn off face that happened to have a quartet of tusks coming out of it. Part wild boar, part pillbug. Pillboar. That made sense, yeah. It was also at least five hundred pounds of creature, which was a big potential problem, even if it was smaller than the last one he’d fought on Earth.

  It saw him as soon as he stepped out, head snapping up with an outraged squeal. James hadn’t even gotten time to raise his hands and softly greet the wild dungeon beast before it was leaving shredded lines in the grass as it charged at him.

  Color-Of-Dawn stopped it dead in its tracks. “Ah. This is quickly tiring.” The camraconda’s voice was placid, but its body twitched with strain as it focused on the creature. “Please.”

  From behind it, Emma and Lincon saw the creature was paralyzed, and Emma tapped Lincon on the arm as she said something in a sharp voice. Lincon rushed forward, closing the hundred feet from the other side of the hedge’s edge in a fast dash, and then stabbed his sword into shell just behind the pillboar’s ‘neck’. He immediately got it stuck, and nearly fell over trying to yank it out. Eager to help, Morgan took aim with the paintball gun James had given him and put mostly accurate shots into the pillboar’s face, the capsaicin that reacted very badly with the local dungeon life rapidly melting through its flesh. And one shot hitting Lincon in the neck.

  A moment later, Color-Of-Dawn’s control slipped, the camraconda’s gaze letting the pillboar go. The creature squealed as it continued forward, but being unfrozen just caused the decay of the spicy paintball shots to accelerate, and before it could slam its tusks into James’ midsection, it perished and collapsed into a mound of red-grey sludge, quickly melting as it died.

  ”You shot me!” Lincon yelled indignantly, voice cracking.

  ”I was trying to help!” Morgan was breathing heavily, despite that having gone pretty well in James’ opinion. Adrenaline was always hard to deal with, especially for someone who was still new to it and young. “I’m sorry.” He added abruptly, in a much more controlled voice.

  The apology drew Lincon up short, and his shoulders relaxed while he wiped the stinging impact on his neck. “It’s… it’s fine. Oh hey, coins!” He knelt to pull a few glittering pieces of metal out of the dissolving body of the pillboar. “That was also easy. What’s in those?”

  ”Capsaicin.” James said. “Apparently a lot of stuff in here is allergic to it. But not everything, so don’t rely on it.” He took the silver coin with a tiny sapphire dot at the top that Lincon offered him, adding it to a secure pouch. “Thanks.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  ”You’re not gonna use it?”

  ”No, the Order makes copies of magic stuff so we can distribute it.” James explained. “You can add yours to the pool, if you want! No pressure though.” Lincon looked at the other two coins the creature had dropped, before sharing a look with Emma, the two kids silently making a decision that ended with him handing James the coins to pocket. “Alright. Thank you.” He softly acknowledge the gesture.

  Lincon shrugged. “It’s just spell slots.” He said. “Too bad this one didn’t drop a book.”

  ”The books drop from kills?” James was thirsty for more hard details, and in here, it seemed like he could get them just by asking.

  Emma nodded, before noticing Color-Of-Dawn slowly slithering up to them. “Are you alright?” She asked.

  ”That was tiring.” The camraconda said. “I cannot do that to heavy things as much.”

  ”Oh right, the thing.” Morgan looked concern as he knelt next to his partner. “Does your lens hurt? You don’t have any breaks.”

  ”I am fine, stop poking me.” Color-Of-Dawn twisted away with a friendly but embarrassed hiss. “Emma, continue.”

  ”Right, the books drop from anything. So do the coins. There’s all kinds of stuff. We can’t figure out most of the puzzles, but there’s a couple places where you just have to get up to a high point, and if you have the spell that makes your arms stretchy, It’s easy. But the drops are usually random, and sometimes nothing, so… you know.” Emma’s cheeks tinted red as she realized she’d gotten excited with her talking, and sharply looked away.

  James laughed. “Hey, I’m into dungeon exploration too. No need to feel bad about it. Also clearly I need to read the list of spells we have closer, cause I want the stretchy arms one.”

  ”That’s… one of ours.” Lincon said, almost defiantly.

  “Oh, okay. Well, shall go through one of those gates? Wait, Emma, Lincon, do the gates mess with you if you go through them? Should we go over the wall instead?” James suspiciously eyed the ends of the path, eager to see the rest of the dungeon, but on his guard against its particular bullshit.

  ”No? They’re just gates.” Lincon looked confused. “Can they hurt us?”

  James relaxed slightly. ”If they haven’t yet, they probably don’t. Alright. Let’s go. I want to see what’s next.”

  _____

  The gate led directly into another walled off box, this one with more dirt than grass as its ground, but with similar dimensions. Emma and Lincon started to ease up a little, talking mostly to Morgan about their past adventures here while James kept back and kept alert.

  As they moved through the curated row after row of identically patterned flower planters, it gave James a good chance to ask Color-Of-Dawn a question. “Hey, you okay?” He opened with.

  ”I am fine.” The camraconda replied plainly.

  ”You sure? Cause Morgan said…”

  ”Morgan is.” Color-Of-Dawn cut off very abruptly, synthetic voice just stopping mid sentence. “I am fine. I am not a good delver or a useful camraconda. But I will help here.”

  James’ face fell as he let them lag back another couple steps, putting some distance between where the human kids were showing Morgan some kind of weird bug that lived here. “Color, if you-“ he noticed the camraconda’s instant discomfort, and automatically corrected himself, internally slapping his brain for not picking up on this sooner. “Color-Of-Dawn, I want to make sure you’re not hurt. That’s literally it. We don’t need you freezing stuff for you to be useful, but also this isn’t a deep delve, so you don’t even need to be a good delver. This is a hike with your partner, okay?”

  The boxy camera head of his conversation partner swung his way on a black cabled body with a few offset green lines running through it. “I am not like the other ones. Very much not the newer ones.” Color-Of-Dawn said. “I do not know camraconda history, but the lens magic is always being improved. Experimented. I am an experiment that did not work.” It let out a long breath, not quite a hiss and more of a humanistic sigh. “I am weaker. And using it too much causes cracks.”

  ”Okay.” James said simply. “We’ll make sure to plan around that. How’s your aim?”

  ”Miserable. Unless I am trying not to hit Morgan, in which case, excellent at hitting Morgan.”

  James tried not to laugh and was at least partly successful in holding it back. “Let’s keep you two in the back line then.” He said. “Anyway, since they seem like they’re not afraid that the flowers are going to kill them, let’s catch up.”

  _____

  Two more gates passed without incident. The progression of the terrain was, James kicked himself for thinking, almost mundane. Each one of the contained sites was just… normal. The strange pale light that came from nowhere overhead was weird, yes, and the fact that each plot of land was fenced off with thick white brick was methodical in how it merged the familiar and the alien. But the actual contents were just what James would have expected in someone’s middle class backyard.

  When there wasn’t even any dungeon life to highlight where they were, and if he didn’t look up, it would have been almost easy to convince himself that he was just on Earth somewhere.

  Emma ruined that by pointing out that the plots they were passing did have life in them. She didn’t even call them demons, which everyone appreciated, though it was less appreciated that she was pointing out the presence of bugs.

  The pollen flies were normal enough, though it was instantly clear to James how someone with allergies might disagree. The spider-like things that had five stick legs covered in pine needles that camouflaged into the trees and would occasionally spear a passing fly to snack on were less normal, and while Morgan and Color-Of-Dawn seemed to have a fascination with maybe grabbing one as a pet, James wanted to double check the back of his armor every six seconds just in case one had touched him. The burrowers were the most alien; rarely seen unless you dug for one, their bodies were lengths of garden hose, and their heads were simple snapping mouths like metal trowels. Emma said they’d bite you if you got close, and James had no reason to disbelieve that. Most dungeon life he’d met would bite him if he got close.

  Still, it was an easy trip. The lines of sight were open, the space bright but not painfully so, and while everything felt like it was closer than it should be it was still a tamed space. Only the fragrant smell acting as a reminder that this was a place full of life. Which was perhaps apropos for a dungeon in a park.

  Until they came to a gate that led them through to a space that was far smaller than the others. No longer uniform, and no longer a neat square either. The wall they entered through was still brick - the dungeon seemed averse to actually warping space so far, it just messed with perspective - but the far wall was made of mortar filled irregular stones, with the walls shifting slowly to that form as they passed on each side.

  The space was greener than even the open lawn by the entrance. A trio of willow trees dominated the view, placed at points around a cobblestone circle in the middle of the ‘room’, with more tall grasses and ivies covering the exterior of the space. That stone ring on the ground itself was centered around a two tiered stone fountain that burbled with water, twenty feet across and misting its surroundings nicely.

  That was all fascinating, and a very cool vibe. It felt like the path leading to a witch’s cottage or something akin to that. But James was busy focusing on two different problems this next step brought. One was the smell of exhaust fumes. Close by, and definitely not something that belonged in this dungeon, as far as he knew. Which meant that in one of the nearby areas, there was likely a breach into the other dungeon.

  And the other thing was that, possibly in migration away from those fumes, a flock of creatures had taken a rest at the fountain.

  He’d never really had time to look at the things under the light of day. They were, if you didn’t look closely and focused on the torsos and legs, almost like satyrs really. Cloven hooves and furred limbs, even their wings had a kind of shaggy tan fur on them that made them seem like an expectable twist on the creation. Of course, their necks were curved and flexible tubes almost like a swan, ending with a beak that was a razor-sharp lance of… something. Metal? James almost called a time out just to check on that.

  The creatures - these ones he was almost comfortable calling demons - didn’t give him the chance. The instant one of them spotted the delvers entering, it flared its arm wings out and made a series of cries, rapidly peaking screeches that alerted the others who all joined in.

  ”What are the odds…” James started to ask.

  ”None! They’re always-“ Lincon yelled over the screeches in the moment before the five winged dungeon creatures launched themselves up out of the fountain and at the group. Water splashing out wildly as their spread wings cast shadows on the ground from the invisible light source, Lincon reacted by shoving Emma backward and interposing himself and his sword between her and the creatures.

  Morgan reacted by panic firing his paintball gun, while Color-Of-Dawn stuck close at his side and followed his lead. One of them hit something, but the other four demons kept coming, and fast.

  James didn’t hesitate; partly because he’d been training for almost exactly this, but mostly because he’d promised the younger delvers that this would be safe enough for them, and he intended to make sure that was true. Launching himself forward and away from their tight cluster where they’d come through the gate to buy space, he stopped carefully holding back his acceleration and reached the lead flyer in a second’s burst of motion. The mostly bovine creation was flying, yes, but not very far off the ground, and James grabbed it’s leg before it could react, leveraging all his body weight to slam it into the dungeon’s stone path with enough force that bits of red slime sprayed out from the impact.

  The others turned on him, and he had a slight moment where he wished Zhu was awake to tell him where to dodge. Then he was rapidly blocking a drilling beak with a flickering cast of mountain of the self, the monster’s natural weapon snapping painfully on his forearm as James kept up the momentum and dropped his knee on to the neck of the downed enemy, snapping something and hopefully killing it painlessly while he drew his pistol and downed one of the others that had faltered at his charge with ruthless precision and an application of a cluster shot charge.

  Even in the Office, where some of the life was very aggressive and ruthless, the last one would have turned to flee at the sudden tipping of the scales. But this one didn’t. It had tunnel visioned on James, and tried to swoop around to take another stab at him. Small red pellets pestered it as it did so, Morgan and Color-Of-Dawn both failing to hit their target but coming close to nailing James more than once. James just waited for the last flyer to get closer as he stayed crouched and finished off the one with a broken beak with a quick shot.

  It did, eventually, but it didn’t come in carefully like the others had. This wasn’t a probing attack, it was determined to rip James apart, and it hit him with its full body weight, which he hadn’t been expecting. James and the furred creature rolled across the stone and into the trunk of one of the willows as he dropped his gun and grabbed its beak with his gloved hands. Paving it in the face repeatedly, it kept wrenching its head around and struggling to pin him down, right up until Lincon started stabbing it.

  The kid’s attacks weren’t precise or lethal on their own, but it forced the altered satyr to twist around out of James’ grip and go for the younger delver. A single stab forward with its freed beak was blocked though, the simple shield Lincon was wearing snapping into position with a flutter of ethereal grey silk and safeguarding his vital organs. Lincon swept his sword back at it, but even James could tell it wasn’t something that hadn’t been worked on much as the goat used its beak to deflect the blow.

  It was about to stab again when James grabbed its wings by their joints, and rolled forward. Pinning the creature below him and slamming its head into the loam. When it twisted to try to retaliate, he had a strong pin on it, and it could do little more than try to flap ineffectively before Lincon frantically chopped downward to hack into its neck until it died and the body started dissolving.

  All over James.

  ”God dammit.” He sighed as he stood and brushed himself off, trying to get as much of the red sludge off him as he could. “Ugh. These things smell awful when they die. It’s like one of those coconut flavored bleach wipes.”

  ”Are you alright?!” Lincon ignored the quip in favor of being panicked.

  James stooped to retrieve his gun, checking the safety and taking a second to reload it. “I’m fine. Anyone else hurt? Everyone okay?” He double checked the battlefield and the five slightly shimmering puddles that had been Garden life. The one on top of him had a small brass coin sinking in it, and he fished that out with gloved fingers.

  Everyone else was okay, though Color-Of-Dawn was clearly doing its best to not show any kind of post-fight panic. The camraconda was, James decided, not someone who should be delving extensively. Everyone who spent time in dungeons had their own motivations, and sometimes something like not wanting to fight could be overridden by enough of a need to explore, or help. But Color-Of-Dawn was clearly not happy to be doing any part of the delving process, and that was okay, but it was something that was important to account for. Delvers that didn’t want to be there at all were delvers who got their teams in trouble.

  Of the five things that had attacked them - James was still carefully not calling them demons, even internally - they got three small coins. A statistically high haul, though he got a disappointed shout of alarm from Morgan when he flicked one of them into the fountain. “For luck!” James said happily.

  He didn’t know exactly why he felt the need to treat the water feature like a wishing well. But he did, and it was satisfying to hear the plunk of the metal splashing cleanly into the water. Though James noted that when he and Lincon went to wash the sludge off themselves in the lower tier of the wide concrete construct, that the coin was nowhere to be seen.

  _____

  ”Is that hostile?” James asked with a small infusion of sarcasm.

  The five of them were crouched behind a low cobblestone wall that ran alongside the main footpath through this part of the Garden. Well, four of them were crouched, Color-Of-Dawn was easily concealed without much extra effort. Three gates away from the fountain, they’d tracked the source of the smog smell, and found exactly what James expected.

  Ahead of them, sliding back and forth across a stretch of mown lawn and a pair of intertwined oak trees, a vision of another world poured itself like oil. It was hard to see the exact dimensions of it this close, unlike when James had seen it from the other side and two hundred feet overhead. But it seemed… bigger. Up close, it was definitely more threatening than he’d expected.

  The distortion in space moved and the green ground was replaced by polished concrete. The external wall of this plot on the far side shifted to a poured white stone flecked with some kind of glittering substance. Beyond, the sky was visible as a mass of black clouds and towering rectangular structures. Trees became rows of parked cars, or car shaped machines, before the distortion slid back, and the plants came back into view.

  For a moment, almost everything was normal. Or normal for this particular dungeon. Before the air rippled and the hole to the other side started again, coming in from the opposite side as where it had ended, flowing across the terrain and leaving behind a trail of a rooftop parking garage before it was swallowed again by the Garden.

  And then there was the this that James was asking about.

  Standing on the grass, munching on some tall purple flowers with a face like a widened headlight and a mouth that seemed to be another stretched out copy of the same part but opened and with cog-like teeth, was a caribou. Emphasis, as always, on car. An engine for a body and exhaust pipes coming up off its back like upraised tails, long and skinny legs with wheels for hooves. It was something he’d seen a couple times before.

  In the other dungeon. In Pylon Motoric, where they were from, and lived. But here one was, sampling the local flora like a snack, four waving metal antenna rods coming out of its skull like antlers as it grazed. Not a care in two worlds.

  ”I’ve never seen one this close before.” Emma’s voice was a whisper as she ducked back down and pressed herself against the grass on this side of the wall. “What do we do?”

  ”Well, I wasn’t expecting this, but this is a great opportunity to test something I’ve been super curious about.” James said slowly.

  Color-Of-Dawn flexed its body to look up at him from the ground. “I cannot stop that. It is huge.” It stated.

  James nodded, taking another peek over the stone edge. The thing was probably ten feet tall at least. Those ‘skinny’ legs were as big as his thighs, and were probably pretty far from weak points. “Have you two ever seen a breach like this before? Can you talk about them more now that we’re in here?”

  ”We’ve seen them sometimes.” Lincon confirmed with a nod.

  Emma continued. “Scary stuff comes out of them, I guess? The things from farther into the other dungeon. But a lot of it isn’t as mean as on this side.”

  ”Yeah, the things that spawn here are… bullies.” Lincon added with an angry scowl. “But this one doesn’t look that friendly either?”

  ”It probably isn’t that fast here compared to in its home,” Morgan said as he thought through the situation, “cause of the wheels. Maybe if it is hostile, one of us could lead it away, while James tries to go through?”

  James looked at the kid with raised eyebrows. “That’s… an interesting idea.” He said. “Why do you think I want to go through?”

  ”Oh. Uh… I don’t really know. It seems like a thing you’d do, I guess? Sorry, I leveled up my Lesson yesterday and I’m getting used to being better at deciding things. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” Morgan rubbed the back of his neck as he looked away.

  ”Hey, you’re not interrupting. When we have the time to plan, we plan, okay? That means taking time to go through options.” James nodded. “Wait, what did you level up?”

  ”Judgement.”

  Color-Of-Dawn twisted minutely as James looked at it with a curious expression. “No.” The camraconda answered the unspoken question. “He is not more judgemental. I would notice. He is less indecisive however.”

  That was a cool one. James might pick up yet another Sewer book just to have a single stack of that. “Okay.” He said. “I feel like, as the fastest runner, I should lead it off just in case. Who wants to be our test subject for going through the gap?”

  ”What if it’s dangerous?” Emma asked. “I mean, the normal doors are safe, but what if this one isn’t? We’ve never tried one of the holes before.” The young woman was prepared to present a lot of reasons they shouldn’t try this, and should just turn around.

  ”Good point. I should do it.” James nodded with a small wince. It was, probably, not that bad. After all, this big metal boy had come through, so it couldn’t be instantly lethal. But he didn’t want to push one of the younger delvers into a bad situation just to test his own dumb idea.

  ”I’ll come with you.” Morgan said eagerly. “If it’s angry, we can split up, and whoever is nearest can go through and come back, right?” He watched James closely until he got a small nod of acceptance. “And it looks like it’s a vegetarian anyway, it’s… uh… it’s…” he peeked at the caribou again, and realized that it had moved on from eating flowers, to eating part of a tall decorative concrete pot that was sunk slightly into the dirt. “It’s eating rock…” he trailed off as the tall quadruped munched on a chunk of the material without making a sound aside from the low rumble of its engine body.

  James patted Morgan on the shoulder a couple times, and then slowly but steadily stood up. “Everyone else lurk here. Color-Of-Dawn, if you can slow it a little without hurting yourself, do it if you need to keep Morgan safe, okay? Emma, Lincon, stay low. If you have anything that can help at range, you can use it if it’s safe, but I’m pretty sure I can walk off being gored.” James paused, then mentally flicked one of his shield bracers to ‘vehicle impact’, just in case that would actually work. “Alright. Let’s go.”

  He stepped over the low wall, standing in the open for a second with his hands out to his sides. Patiently holding position while Morgan followed him a little less gracefully, and while the caribou spotted him. It was fascinating to see how its metal body with visible moving machine parts tensed and then relaxed in an organic way. Metal moving like skin as it shifted to keep them in its line of sight. But it didn’t charge or bellow at them, and so James started walking at a wide angle toward where the dungeons were overlapping.

  ”No worries.” He said in a low but audible voice. “Just passing by. Keep doing your thing.” He was pretty sure this dungeon creature couldn’t understand him, but if it was just an animal intelligence, then a soft voice and passive body language might be enough for it.

  And as they circled around in the open, it showed no desire to get near them. Acting more like a skittish deer than its namesake, eventually moving in awkward hops that showed off exactly how bad it was at moving on grass to put the dungeon overlay between itself and James and Morgan. “I think it’s scared of us.” Morgan commented.

  James gave the kid a nod. “Doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.” He reminded him. “It’s still huge, and made of metal. So we don’t provoke it, okay?”

  ”I know, I’m not dumb.” Morgan’s put out reply came with an associated huff, which James smiled at.

  ”Alright. I’m gonna go through. Do you want to come along? You’ll probably just level up breathing if there’s a reward. This is kind of just a test, and we aren’t really prepared to make use of this.”

  ”Don’t you have to have a few breathing levels to get anything else?” Morgan asked. “I might as well, right? Especially… you know.”

  James nodded. “Alright. Into the breach. And then immediately out of the breach!” He instructed, taking long steps forward as the oily sheen of warped space passed in front of them and the ground changed to something that looked more artificial and grey.

  His feet landed on the other dungeon’s parking lot rooftop without even the sensation of pressure. One minute he was in one of them, the next, the other. If he’d been blindfolded he wouldn’t have even known. As Morgan stepped in next to him, the green of the garden sliding away as the breach passed by, a herd of seven or eight caribou on the other end of the long row of parking spaces looked up at them. Headlights glinting in the smoggy gloom as they stared at the two humans. “Ah.” Morgan coughed. “We should-!”

  James grabbed him and shoved Morgan sideways, pushing him to run toward the slowly moving window between the two worlds. Aberrant sunlight and green grass sliding away from them until they started moving and caught up to it, rushing through as they heard wheels squeaking on smoothed floor start to echo off the concrete and rebar behind them.

  Morgan’s eyes were still trying to adjust between the rapid light level changes as James hauled him to the side. He stumbled, not sure if he should resist or not, as the distortion moved on and they were back in the garden dungeon and hopefully out of the charging path of the other caribou from the other side.

  (Milestone - Initiation Crossing : +1 AP)

  Morgan felt the words splash into his thoughts, impossible to ignore and cleanly formatted. His hammering heart spiking in pace again as he got surprised by the new form of dungeon magic weaving itself into him with nothing more than neatly presented words.

  He sucked in a breath, and then got another alert.

  (Breathing : +1 Level, 1 level total)

  (1 AP spent, 0 AP remains)

  “Morgan, you good?” James’ voice made him whip his head around, the world feeling like it was spinning a little. “Whoof.” The paladin added with a gasp. “This one’s a little uncomfortable to go through. At least we know it works though, right?” He asked.

  “I… uh… I’m okay. But uh…” James was focused on his own set of notifications, only half listening to Morgan. Different from Morgan’s, though they wouldn’t know that until later when they compared notes. But when they did, they’d certainly find something interesting to talk about with this kind of hole between the dungeons.

  (Milestone - Initiation Sisterhood Crossing : +4 AP)

  James struggled to suppress a gasp at the number. Four, just for that. And he didn’t want to spend one of his precious points on breathing. Not now.

  Of course, he realized as soon as he started doing that, what he was actually doing was exercising mastery over his breathing in an attempt to accomplish a specific goal. And if anything was going to level up a skill-

  (Breathing : +2 Levels, 5 levels total, 1 link empty)

  (2 AP spent, 2 AP remains)

  It was that.

  The new words were for later. Right now, he just needed to try something different. He had expected a point or maybe two. Not four. And so he hadn’t been thinking about the outline of a plan that they’d started making for training different skills. But the basics were simple enough.

  James shifted his feet into a simple boxer’s stance, pulling his hands up in a guard before lashing out with a jab at the air over the tall grasses in front of him. Then another jab, and a cross, shadow boxing with the actual shadow of a slightly chewed on concrete vase on a plinth. A short shuffle forward and another punch at an invisible foe, and James heard two more sets of words in varying levels of inconvenience.

  (Walking : +1 Level, 1 level total)

  (Boxing : +1 Level, 1 level total)

  (2 AP spent, 0 AP remains)

  And then he let himself breathe properly. Air filling his lungs in more than just shallow and intentionally bad pants as he relaxed, AP spent on something that was, hopefully, a little more useful to him. “Well, actually, why would I complain?” He laughed, bending forward and pressing a hand to his chest as he caught his breath. “I walk every day! Whoooo. Alright. Sorry Morgan, you were saying something and I was punching the air. What’s up?”

  ”M-m-moose.” Morgan shuffled back a step past James, who turned just in time to see the stretched headlight face of the caribou lean down to stare at him.

  ”Oh. Hello.” James forced himself into stillness, not flinching, not raising his voice. The creature’s antenna antlers were splayed out behind its head like a wire frame halo, a static buzzing coming from between them, while it made a much more natural snuffling noise as it pushed its face forward toward James. “You’re a curious guy, huh?” He ever so slowly raised his hands to his sides, trying to not sweat too loudly. “Um… Morgan, walk backward slowly. Don’t hit the wall. Watch the wall. Okay. Get back to the others, get a telepad ready, okay?” James spoke slowly, but there was an edge to his instructions.

  “Kay.” The kid said with a tight breath of a whisper, shaking as he moved back from the creature that, up close, absolutely dwarfed him. “Are you…”

  ”I’m fine.” James said in the same forced soft tone as Morgan retreated, the caribou not looking away from him as the younger delver left. He just stood there, waiting to see if it was going to try to eat him, mental finger on the trigger of three different spells just in case.

  And then he heard the radio static between its antenna again. The antlers splaying out fully, the sound changing suddenly like it was someone scanning channels on an old car radio. Distant hints of voices and music fading in and out as an invisible knob turned. And in tune with the static, James felt something pulling on him. Not physically, but on something that was part of him, but that he didn’t have a very strong sense of.

  His magic. A specific part of it, even. The mechanical cervid stepped forward, headlight face pushing past James’ head and down the back of his armor, the heavy form thumping into his body and forcing a staggering step back, but still no hostility emerged. Instead, it kept tuning closer and closer to something that resonated inside James’ mind.

  A flicker of grey was the only sign he actually got as the caribou pulled its head back, something glinting in its mouth before it bit down, bending and then crunching through the knife it had summoned. Or that James had summoned, on command? There was no sensation to using the Utah spells, so he couldn’t actually tell the difference, but either way, even if it hadn’t just stolen his knife making spell, it had sure as hell stolen the knife.

  ”Now hang on!” James started to protest, causing the creature to stop chewing on the metal and nudge him back with its long glass face. The force was clearly not the most it could do, but it still sent him back several steps. And in an instant, James realized both how absurd the situation was, and how stupid it would be to get mad about not being trampled to death. “You know what, enjoy the snack.” He said, sketching out a shallow bow before backing away.

  He stopped as there was a small flicker of light, and a light ting as a something metal appeared under the tall quadruped and landed on a hewn stone buried in the dirt. Both James and the creature looked down, the caribou stepping to the side to bring its full mouth down to the ground to huff out a mechanical breath, as the two of them looked at the simple oval brass coin the length of a finger laying there. “Huh.” James’ mind started racing. “I don’t suppose-“ the caribou’s mouth opened and it scooped up the metal object, crunching down on that too. “-okay nevermind.”

  James decided that was a great time to leave, before it decided that it wanted to take a bite out of something else he happened to be carrying. Carefully shifting around the concrete pots and planted flowers, he eventually joined back up with Morgan and the others.

  ”That was insane!” Was the first thing Lincon said when they got back to the group. “It could have killed you!”

  ”Probably not.” James said confidently. “Though I don’t think it was going to. This one seems… kinda chill, compared to the ones on the other side. Maybe it’s the diet. Still, glad not to fight it! I didn’t want you guys to get hurt. Also it can steal magic a little bit, and I don’t have a lot of ways to shrug off a camraconda gaze if it noticed Color-Of-Dawn. Anyway. I think this is a good place to turn back; this was always meant to be a quick in and out, and we’ve already blown way past that line. We can come back and mess with this breach later with a real delve team.”

  Emma gave him a confused stare, her hands balling nervously at her sides. “But… it rearranges itself. It might not be here?”

  “That’s fine. We’ll figure that out too. Our goal is to maximize our own growth, while still being safe, and healthy. Okay? All of you remember that.” James looked at Morgan especially as he said that, trying to make the specific instruction stick. “You’re not fighting for your lives or hiding in the shadows. There will be a tomorrow for you. We have the luxury of taking our time to study and refine our methods, and get the most we can out of this so that our lives get better, and so we can help everyone else that follows us.”

  ”Won’t that… make you less special?” Lincon asked.

  Morgan laughed. “He doesn’t want to be special.” He answered for James, the different things he’d been told and seen and learned at the Order suddenly coming into focus. “Do you? You want to be normal, right?” He set a hand on Color-Of-Dawn’s armored back, looking away embarrassed to stare at the distant form of the grazing caribou.

  ”Right.” James smiled. “Imagine a future where everyone has the cool magic, and no one needs to conjure blades.” He paused, then amended that with “Unless you’re feeding one of those guys I guess. Or if the free metal is convenient. Or… look I didn’t think this statement through. Let’s get out of here.”

  Backtracking was a quiet affair, though Emma and Lincon kept asking Morgan and Color-Of-Dawn questions while James led the group back through the pattern of wrought iron gates, brick walls, and unnaturally cultivated green spaces.

  When they were walking through one of the longer spaces that was just mown grass and an empty sky, James asked about the rest of the dungeon. Talking about it was easier in here, though Emma and Lincon still had trouble giving details, and James made sure to set a skulljack reminder to have Planner take a look at them just to help them out. But they still told him in vague terms about deeper areas that sounded like curated wetlands and manor gardens and other weirder more warped spaces.

  They’d seen no crocamaws here this time, and James had really hoped they would have been able to make contact with a dungeon people. But maybe the wetlands were where they lived, and he could run into them in the future. They also hadn’t seen any of the puzzles or secret treasures that the Utah natives alluded to, but those were likely also deeper in, and that was fine. They’d only scratched the surface, and it had still been a potentially lucrative delve both for having a new spell coin to copy, and in accruing knowledge about the dungeon’s partner.

  James did wish that he’d considered this and that they’d thought to plan out better how to maximize the Pylon Motoric points. He had no idea what the new ‘link open’ on his breathing did, but at five levels, he could actually feel a noticeable difference in how easily his lungs worked. Everything was just easier, and enough so that he felt it. So if nothing else, making this a priority for new ratroaches would alleviate a lot of problems with a minimal resource cost.

  He made sure to not get lost in his own thoughts as he walked, enjoying the way the open and bright dungeon space let him see threats coming even without his drones overhead. He was still keeping alert just in case, and also, he was listening to the others as they talked. James would need to sit down with Morgan and Color-Of-Dawn after this, and actually make sure they understood that there wasn’t some kind of obligation to do this together. He knew, in his core, that Color-Of-Dawn would pretend to enjoy delving if it thought it would make Morgan happy, and that was just a terrible idea. A lot of camracondas did that, he’d noticed, and even in the Order where mental health and communication were prioritized among members, humans often missed what was happening until it had been going on for far too long.

  Still. It had been a good, mostly easy day. Which almost made him laugh again when he got a flash of perspective, and not from the overhead view. Just a few years ago, it was a struggle to not get maimed by a pack of stapler crabs, and a broken arm had set back delving by a month. Now… well, he’d just gotten a new eyeball a few days ago, and he was exercising that elevated organ by carving a path through a brand new dungeon.

  James’ life was weird. He loved it.

  And he also loved how the garden, or the garage, or maybe both, had one last surprise for him as they executed their plan to leave through the door and immediately telepad back to the lair.

  (Milestone - Wilding Watcher : +1 AP)

  The words, only for James and no one else, caused him to almost trip on the long flight of concrete stairs that led back to the ground floor of reality. Almost, because he actually did catch himself and kept moving so as not to trip up the others as well. Which, before he could even start vocalizing how incredibly bizarre and out of place this whole dungeon’s reward scheme was, got him the second notification he was already expecting.

  (Walking : +1 level, 2 levels total)

  (1 AP spent, 0 AP remains)

  “This place is so cool, and so bizarre, and I cannot wait to find out what I’m missing and learn that I’ve taken the least optimal build path in about three months.” James sighed out a long exhale that turned into a huff of laughter at the end.

  “What if there isn’t a limit to how much AP you get?” Morgan asked when James explained what the hell he was talking about. “Maybe it’ll be fine?”

  James patted Morgan on the head, the teenager twisting away at the seemingly patronizing gesture. “That’s a very kind thought, thank you.” He said. “But if history is any indication, the best I can hope for is having stuff that’s mildly useful and not, like, my orange job that lets me summon saffron.”

  Morgan gave James a pitying look, his mouth twisting as he looked at the older human with sad eyes. “Oh, yeah, that… that sucks. I still haven’t gotten an orange cause Research keeps using them but I’ll probably just get the diamond cube one? Cause I still help with the gardens anyway, you know?”

  ”Sometime you guys say this stuff,” Lincon said as he took Morgan’s hand, all of them linking together while James pulled a telepad out, “and I feel like I’m going crazy. What are you even talking about?”

  ”Orbs.” Morgan and Color-Of-Dawn said in unison. “We’ll fill you in later.” Morgan added right before they teleported out. “Oh, hey, after we clean up and stuff, you guys wanna play some Street Fighter? I got a new controller and Color-Of-Dawn can’t beat me so easily anymore.” The camraconda jutted its snout up into the air right before they all vanished and reappeared in the Lair that clearly said that Morgan was exaggerating his newfound ability.

  James smiled as he sent them off in the aftermath of the delve. They’d do a debriefing later, to get Morgan specifically into the pattern of it. But right now, he just let life resume for them. The dungeon just a small rock in the river of what had become their normal.

  His own build might be kinda messed up, but that was okay, he decided with a smile so wide that it hurt, and the hint of tears in the corners of his eyes. Because Morgan, and anyone else who followed after them, would know better. There was going to be a future for them.

  Though it might take James a little time, and a lot of luck, to secure it for them.

  Also more knights. Because no matter what he told people, he was starting to realize how much he needed weekends.

  There is a discord! Come hang out with us.

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