“Chosen Ones are very used to that.  They’re used to people thinking what they can get from them .  To him, you’re just another person looking to take something.” -Estel, Chosen Ones D&D Podcast-

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James and Alanna walked past a few tables in the grill she’d led them to, looking for the big table their group was at waiting for them.  TQ was also with them, but the camraconda was currently on Alanna’s arm, having been carried here for reasons James wasn’t quite clear on and weren’t being explained to him.  For reasons that were probably that Alanna thought it was funny, TQ was still being lugged around while they entered the restaurant.

The restaurant was called the Charcoal Flame Bar And Grill, and while James suspected the name was aspirational, he liked the vibe inside.  Weird crystal sculptures hanging from the ceiling, ancient and weathered framed photographs covering the walls, and living plants in corners and alcoves and cubbies that had grown strong on the scent of barbeque in the air.  It felt comfy, and that was reinforced by the low and warm lights, and the delicious smells in the air.

The trio got a few weird looks, but James didn’t care.  He was feeling great, despite the ache in his back and leg from injuries that were only mostly healed, the withered feeling in his eyes from spending too long staring at pages today, and the fact that he was starving.  Al teast one of those could be fixed here though.

James pointed at where he spotted an Anesh through a small window into a sectioned off room, and they aimed themselves that way, Alanna carefully shifting TQ’s form so he didn’t nail another diner in the head with his tail.  They got there just in time to hear the server that was taking drink orders asking, “So you guys going to a gaming convention or something?”

“Oh man.”  James said brightly as he came around the corner.  “Is there a con going on right now?  I haven’t gotten to go to a con in forever.”

“Ah, is this everyone else?”  The bearded man who was sporting an apron, a pad of paper, and eight visible tattoos looked like exactly who James expected to work at or possibly secretly own a place like this.

“Yeah, this is all of us.”  James moved to let Alanna drop TQ, her and the camraconda sliding by to find seats.  “Ugh. Now I wish I was going to a con.”

“You are dressed for it.”  Alanna pointed out, then looked down at herself.  “I mean, I am too I guess.  I look like I’ve got half a cosplay on.”

“I am not.”  James protested.

Every Anesh rolled his eyes at once.  “You’re wearing a video game shirt, love.”  He said.

“I am?  No I’m not.”  James looked down at his chest.  “This is a goose shirt.  It’s… wait, no , you’re right!”  He looked at the server, shaking his head slightly.  “I forget everything I’m doing on a regular basis, sorry.  Anyway, no, not here for a convention.”

“Uh… but…” the server realized suddenly that TQ was in the process of slithering up onto the leather bench seat at the back of the room, completely unassisted.  “Okay, sure.”

James nodded at him.  “Best attitude to take, honestly.”  He appreciated the casual acceptance.  It gave him hope for the future.  Turning to the little room they’d been given and the trio of smaller tables pushed together, James looked at his friends and lovers.  Alanna had claimed the chair at the end of the table, so she could face everyone down, while still being next to Sarah.  On the padded bench that made up half the seats, TQ was getting Sarah to show him the menu, while next to the camraconda, a pair of Anesh sat on either side of Keeka, the ratroach looking timidly downward with all four of his hands folding and twisting in his lap.  Another Anesh sat in a chair near James, and he took the opportunity to ruffle his boyfriend’s hair to the mildly envious glances of the others.  Next to him was Arrush, who was clearly trying very hard to not draw the attention of the server.  And one more Anesh at the opposite end of their table from Alanna, looking at something on his phone; that Anesh looked a lot more exhausted and scraped up than the others.

James stole the seat next to Arrush, and considered reaching over to ruffle his head fur too, but stopped because he wouldn’t be sure he wasn’t damaging any of his antenna through the hood that Arrush had pulled up around his head.  “You doing okay?”  He quietly asked the ratroach as he settled in.

Arrush jolted as James touched him on one of his smaller arms through the back of his hoodie. “Y-yes.”  The ratroach cleared his throat roughly.  “I will be okay.  There were people.”  He said it like an explanation, which, really it was.  Arrush and Keeka were so much more vibrant and emotionally healthy compared to when they’d arrived, but they were still not fully comfortable around strangers.

“Okay.”  Their server said as everyone settled in.  “I’ve gotta ask.”

“About our drink orders?”  Sarah cheerfully intercepted.

“…Yeah, sure, I can ask about those.”

“Or about the other thing?”  She gave him a mischievous grin.

“This is a side of Sarah I’m not familiar with.”  James admitted, looking up at the server apologetically.   “She’s normally less of a gremlin than this.”

Alanna stage coughed into her fist.  “Really?”  She asked.  “Because…” she laughed as Sarah threw herself off the padded bench to try to tackle her out of her chair with a flustered yelp.

“Okay, but seriously.”  James told the server.  “Magic is real and we’ve got some friends who aren’t human.”  He pointed around the table, including Alanna who was starting to get a sleep coating of dusty orange feathers on her shoulders.  “Camraconda, ratroach, navigator, uh… Anesh.  Anesh is actually human.”

“There’s just a lot of me.”  Two Anesh said in unison.  “Because of the magic.”

“Can I  learn magic?”  The server cut to the question that James always felt like people should ask but avoided.  “Holy shit, I want to be a wizard.  Can I be a wizard?”

“Yes!  I mean, sort of.  I mean, probably.”  James wavered a hand in front of himself as he twisted in his seat to face the guy.  “We’ll talk later.  Right now, we’re actually here just to relax, if that’s…?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”  The man bobbed his head, looking like the world’s most eager puppy mixed with a late thirties IPA enthusiast.  “So drinks for everyone?”

“Thunderhead Stout.”  All four Anesh said at once.  And then one of them added, “To be clear, I would like four of those.  Total.  Not four each.  Four pints please.”

“You’re so fucking adorable.”  Alanna chuckled.  “I’ll have a peach tea and a White Russian.”

“Arnold Palmer please!”  Sarah said, since there was no particular order to how they were calling their drinks.

“Who is that?”  TQ asked her as the server paused in pointing his pen at the camraconda.

Sarah blinked.  “Oh!  He’s a golfer, but there’s a drink named after him.  It’s iced tea and lemonade.”

“Oh.  Can I have one?  I will try it.  And a long straw please.”  Their server was nodding with a huge grin on his face as he took the camraconda’s order.

James tilted his head back.  “Mango juice for me.  No ice.  Arrush, Keeka, you guys can order whatever you want, it’s okay.”

“I will… I will try what he said.”  Arrush practically whispered as he pointed at James with his sleeve.

“Anything for you… uh… man?”  The server titled his pen at Keeka.

The ratroach, who had made the conscious and unbelievably brave decision to come outside with them wearing the breezy teeshirt and skirt he liked so much around the Lair, looked like he was about to melt into a puddle just from being observed by a strange human.  “D…do you have an apple juice?”  He asked in a high pitched squeak.

To the man’s credit, the server did exactly what James believed was the perfect answer.  He acted like this was perfectly normal.  “We’ve got three different ciders, yeah.  Are you looking for alcoholic, or not?”  Keeka gave him a silent shake of his head.  “Okay, I‘ve got you covered.  I’ll leave you guys with the menus for a while, and I’ll be back in a bit.”  He paused at the door, and then turned to look back at them, opening his mouth like he wanted to say something but couldn’t figure out what.  Then he just shook his head and vanished.

“Well that went well!”  Alanna laughed.

“I feel like I’m going to die.”  Arrush exhaled, one of the napkins on the table fluttering as he gasped.  “Why did I agree to this.”

“Cause you wanna smooch James and I’m very persuasive.”  Alanna announced.  “Also this place does ribs!”

James laughed as Arrush’s exposed skin turned bright green and he retreated farther into his hoodie.  “Also, hey, you drink?”  He asked Alanna.  “I’ve literally never seen you drink.   I drink more often than you and I don’t drink!”

She shrugged.  “I’m trying something different.”  She said.  “And then there’s tea when it turns out I hate it.  So hey!  I haven’t seen some of you in a week!”

“You haven’t seen most of me in a week either.”  Anesh pointed out as all three of him tilted the menus they were reading down to look at Alanna.  The fourth Anesh just kept reading about burger options.

Alanna made a huffing protest.  “That doesn’t count, that…” she stopped abruptly, her face reflecting the sinking feeling in her gut as she realized what she was about to say.  “I mean, uh… fuck. ”  She slid her chair back and dropped her head to the table, covering it with her arms like she was trying to hide and dislodging Sarah in the process.

James shared a glance with the two Anesh across the table from him.  “I think she thinks you’re gonna be mad about that.”  He said quietly.

“I kinda am.”  Anesh answered.  “Because we’ve absolutely talked before about how I’m discrete people most of the time.”

“To be fair though,” the Anesh that had gone into the dungeon added,  “that’s easy to forget when she’s been spending time with just one of me.”  Alanna made a pained wail, while Sarah tried to give her reassuring head pats.

The other three Anesh gave tiny nods, before realizing they’d just agreed with themself.  “Huh!”  James said with piqued interest.  “First time I’ve seen that happen.”  Next to him, Arrush kept looking between different Anesh and Alanna, clearly feeling uncomfortable with the situation.

“I’m really sorry.”  Alanna muttered, picking her head up.

“May I interject?”  TQ asked, and everyone paused to glance the camraconda’s way.  “For two months I did not realize Anesh was not several similar humans with the same name.  If we are evaluating fairness, I want to admit that I could not tell humans apart.”

“That’s… the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”  James stifled a laugh.

“I… get you confused with Daniel sometime.”  Arrush tried to whisper with a wet hiss to James, which everyone heard anyway.

“No, that’s  the funniest thing now.”  Two Anesh said at the same time, the other two cracking and chuckling.  “Alanna, it’s okay.  I… I dunno, I’m not angry at you, but it did kinda hurt.”  Anesh wasn’t super comfortable being perfectly open in front of a crowd, but it was different when it was a group of his friends.  He still tried to derail the topic rapidly.  “ Anyway , most of me hasn’t seen a lot of you for a week.  What was the Route like?”

“Exhausting.”  Anesh told himself.  “But you’ll get to feel that later.”  He actually hadn’t synced up for a reason; he was getting the unique perspective of both seeing something firsthand, and being told about it for the first time.  Anesh was testing to see if it gave him a better angle at finding interesting lines of thought about the situation.

TQ also spoke up, adding his digital voice as he shifted his coil to try to get comfortable on the leather seat.  “Also exhausting, but also exhilarating.  We were ambushed by so many different things.”

“Fucking hell, yeah.”  Alanna had an excited grin back in place.  “There was a high speed chase every hour or so.  The Route does not like it when you get deeper in.”  She paused briefly as someone in an apron walked by their table and did a double take before continuing on.

“I got to drive a truck.”  Arrush sounded like he’d been holding that tidbit in the whole time, waiting to tell someone.  When the table waited for him to continue, though, the big ratroach realized everyone was looking at him and withered slightly, slumping his shoulders.  “…it was fun…” he mumbled.

Keeka, slowly cracking out of his anxiety at being in public, came to his rescue.  “I wanna hear about the truck adventure!”  He chittered out, his excitement and worry colliding in a messy mix of English and Spanish as he dove in to support his boyfriend.

Prompted to actually talk, and slowly getting comfortable with the setting and the group, Arrush started explaining across the table about getting practice in driving on long stretches, and at one point actually having his fumbling new skills tested by yet another ambush.  James settled into his seat next to the ratroach, feeling a comfort in the proximity as Arrush spoke.  It was, he realized, something that had sort of snuck up on him; he knew Arrush and Keeka both liked him, and he liked them both back, but until right now, he hadn’t quite felt that click in his chest of being able to put a finger on the feeling.

Across the table, Alanna, Sarah, and TQ all winked at him in unison, and James rolled his eyes back at them, the dopey smile he’d had on his lips turning wry as the trio sent a tease his way.  TQ getting in on the joke was legitimately funny to him, as well as reassuring; James wasn’t stupid and he knew the camraconda was also interested in some kind of relationship. But the two of them weren’t that close yet.  And yet, TQ was here, hanging out, spending time together, and at no point had the serpent ever made James feel pressured.  So maybe that would develop one day.  If not, then that’d be fine.  But in the meantime, his presence felt playful, and happy, and James really was glad they were all here.

The waiter interrupted Arrush briefly to bring their drinks in, along with straws for everyone.  Sarah started on sticking straws together for TQ, while Arrush got out the metal reusable straw James had gotten him as a practical gift, since he couldn’t melt it.  “You guys ready to order?”  The bearded man asked them, trying to look like he wasn’t staring at Keeka as the black furred ratroach sipped at his cider and tried not to vibrate with excitement through the bench seat he was perched on.

Ordering food went a little smoother.  James and Alanna got two different flavors of ribs that they planned to split between them.  Which expanded to include Arrush when he sheepishly asked if that was okay.   Each Anesh ordered a different pizza or fancy salad, presumably with the same intention.  Keeka had whispered out a question, back to being shy now that another unknown human was nearby, and the surprisingly chill waiter had given him a quick choice of vegetarian options that ended with him getting a veggie burger.  Sarah and TQ got different types of chicken, and then got into a friendly banter about the superiority of their choices, which James took to mean that they would probably not be sharing with each other.

“Should we get, like, some extra fries to share?”  Alanna asked.

“No!”  TQ and James broke off from their separate small chats in unison.  They shared a look, and James tilted his head toward his friend, letting TQ explain.  “Every dish comes with fries!  This is a trap!”

“…What if I get mine with tater tots or something?”  Alanna falsely pouted as she tried to come up with a defense.

“Then you will be full of potatoes in a different format.  Congratulations.”  TQ told her.

“He’s right.”  James shook his head.  “And I know, because this happens every time we get food from places like this.  No one can eat that many fries.”

Keeka’s quiet voice cut in.  “I could eat that many fries…” the shy ratroach curled his smaller arms together.  “I’m good at eating potatoes.”

The two Anesh on either side of him turned to look at the lithe ratroach together with puzzled expressions that were shared by every Anesh at the table.  “Really?”  He asked.  “Is this a special ability?  Because I don’t look at you and think ‘chip disposal unit’ that much.”

“I could… I could be that!”  Keeka flushed neon green around his eyes as he curled back in his seat.

The waiter, gnawing on his lip as he watched, cleared his throat.  “So… I’ll go get your orders in, without extra fries?”  He offered.  “Yell if you need anything.”  He backed out of the side room their table was in, stealing glances as he did so.

James tried to keep his own confident shell up, because there were other diners and staff walking by too, but he still took the time to set a hand on Arrush’s arm, and look over at Keeka and TQ.  “Hey, if you guys feel like you wanna leave anytime, just let us know, okay?”

“No, I want ribs now.”  It wasn’t clear if Arrush was sounding irate on purpose, but James thought it was fucking adorable that the way he chose to fold his arms was all five of them latticing together in a mesh of crossed limbs.  It was like he was capable of being grumpy at higher power than any living human.  And it made Keeka giggle too, along with Sarah, which was a plus.

TQ just looped his boxy head around.  “I don’t mind.  I understand they want to look at me.  I am very pretty.”

“You’re certainly on the emotional track most camracondas are of getting gradually sassier.”  James nodded.  “Okay, so!   Who wants to do storytime first?  Route, or real world crap?  I vote you guys.”  He pointed around at everyone else, noticing that Zhu was still sleepily waking up his manifestation on Alanna and not quite part of the conversation.

“I have… a million tiny stories.”  Alanna said with a sigh.  “Buddy, I love you, but I don’t know how the hell you can write reports and structure stuff like you do.  It’s all just a jumble.”

“I was a business major.”  James shrugged.

“Sure.  That’s not really… an answer.”  Alanna started toying with her set of silverware on the table.  “Anyway, I wanna tell you about going into the machine cave, or the time I dive tackled a camcondor, or something like that.  But if you want the actual outline…” she shrugged and motioned at the Anesh who had been on the delve.

Anesh took a deep breath.  “Okay, yes, I may have prepared some words.  But also, Alanna, they all want to hear about you dive tackling a bird now.”

TQ hissed at them.  “Also there was a debate about the name.  Camcondor sounds too similar.”

“Man, I want to side with you?”  James told the camraconda.  “But you need to know there’s something like a hundred species of bird that all have the same color word in the names, and that happens all the time out here.”

“Your world is stupid.”

“Your world now, too.”  James reminded TQ with a grin.

Anesh cleared his throats.  “Cute, but if I may?”  One of him handed himself back a notebook that he’d been reading.  “I can make it quick.”

He couldn’t, really , but he did hit the really important stuff in rapid order.  A lot of it was things that James could have learned tomorrow when the Order’s collective database got updated, but it was just more personal and fun to hear it from his boyfriend directly.

“The initial exploration started out smooth.  Just a normal delve, following some of El’s procedures for tracking where we were on the roads.  There’s some kind of big spatial magic in the off road parts, it takes way too long to get where you could have gotten in minutes if you’d just taken a fork in the road.  We did confirm that, though we don’t know if it’s something we can copy.”  Anesh paused, four bodies sipping his beer in unison and getting a delighted grin from Keeka at the motion.  “We weren’t thorough on the first day, instead going for distance.  There were two attacks while we were on the road, and they didn’t actually cause any damage, because our convoy was maybe a little overleveled.”

TQ whipped his head back and forth, still holding his straw in his mouth and spraying droplets of iced tea onto Sarah.  “Every dungeon is designed for humans!”  He declared.  “They are unfair!  And now it is time to be unfair in our favor!”

“Yeah, having camracondas along was a big part of it.”  Alanna noted as she tried her own drink and then grimaced and glared at the heavy glass.  “Ew.  Okay, no.”  She sat it down, swapping to the non-alcoholic option.  “Learning about myself today.”  She mumbled as Anesh continued.

“Right.  Well.”  Every Anesh gave Alanna a loving little smile while one of him kept talking about the Route delve.  “Stopping for the night was a problem .  It does actually get to be night in there, by the way, but it’s on a seventy hour cycle.  Just stopping is a huge issue though.  Everything in the Route, including stuff that shows up inside buildings, uses speed as its main advantage.”

James raised a hand.  “Not being mechanical?”

“That too.”  Anesh answered with a pointed finger of acknowledgment.  “But mostly it’s that things can close the gap right fast.  And when they do, if we’re not ready, that speed can be lethal.”

“…no one died, right?”  Sarah asked, a tremor in her voice.  “I don’t…” she took a deep steadying breath while Alanna wrapped an arm around her girlfriend.

“No.”  Arrush said quickly.

“Yeah, no fatalities.  Some people got hurt though.  Especially at the first camp.  There’s… a… thumb… man.  Wow, okay, that curse is harsh .”  Anesh frowned.  “You’ll learn about that one later I guess, after Mercy or Planner disinfects us.  Can I tell you about the car sized sandstone hands?  Okay, good.”

“What.”  James and Keeka asked, one of them more curious, the other more irate at the dungeon.

Arrush explained, holding up a paw in a curled claw.  “Big hands, made out of rock.  They blend in with the sand, and they were fast.”  He wiped at the corner of his mouth where a line of blue saliva was dripping as he unconsciously bared his teeth.  “Third least favorite thing.”  He decided.

Anesh nodded.  “So whenever we tried to settle down to rest, something would rush us.  Something that wouldn’t have even been a problem if we were moving, but if we’re out of our cars and basically at a standstill…” He sighed.  “So.  We adapted, and started working in shifts.  Slept in the box truck, didn’t stop moving for more than an hour at a time, basically the rawest road trip.”  It sounded miserable to James, and seeing how the words made his friends look exhausted, it was probably worse than he was imagining.  “After that, it was a pattern.  Get a little deeper in, if we found a large enough structure we would stop for a while to eat and use the loo, look for points of interest, and explore.”

“Tell them about the train.”  Arrush was clearly trying to not sound too eager; that sort of restrained excitement that James not-so-fondly remembered where he really wanted to share something but didn’t want to seem weird.

Anesh just laughed, a friendly and familiar laugh, that reminded James that his human boyfriend and potential future ratroach boyfriend had just spent a week together and had clearly come out the other side a little closer.  “I’m getting to… oh, hell with it.  We found the train.  The one you and El flagged a long time ago.  But not on the rails.  Or… okay… how do I even start with this?  Alanna, you tell this part.  This is your zone.”

Grinning widely, Alanna shifted her shoulders and straighted up, suddenly commanding the table.  “It made its own rails.”  She started with the cadence of someone telling a story and not just making a report.  “We followed it for a few days, though not all at once.  We kept stopping for gas or fights or whatever.  But we were following the tracks in a sort of sideways way.  And then, one night, we saw it out in the middle of the desert, and we went for it.  Actually, James, you’ll be super mad about this; we split the party.”

“I am super mad about this.”  James confirmed with a nod and a tiny sip of his juice.

“It was going slow when we approached, and scopes let us see what it was up to.  The thing didn’t have tracks; it was sucking up sand and rock and whatever, and converting it into steel and wood.”  Alanna’s eyes were distant, like she was remembering a once in a lifetime sight.  And really, she might have been.  “Fifty cars long.  There were a hundred navigator lines around it.  Like it was a meteor, from far away.  And when we got closer, they went wild .  Orange and red lights flying around like the world’s most terrifying swarm of bees.”

Arrush met James’ eyes with his own mismatched set, and slowly shook his head.  Arrush had opinions on bees.

Not noticing the byplay, Alanna continued.  “They didn’t hurt us directly, but they did keep trying to run us into rocks or cacti.  And we didn’t really keep up that well, especially when the train started throwing out defenders.  It makes the dune bugs, guys.  Like the big thing from the Climb, only… almost industrial.  Half the cars we got looks into seemed like they were growing dune bugs or the spider wheels or something else we hadn’t seen before.  Other cars were like oil tanks, or sealed cargo.  And when we pissed the train off, it moved .  Threw a dozen monsters at us, and started vomiting out rails and just took off.”

“Please tell me you didn’t chase it.”  Sarah’s voice was resigned, because she could see the gleam in Alanna’s eyes.

“I will… not tell you that.  Sorry!  I’m really sorry!”  Alanna held her hands up, palms out.  “But we didn’t try to board it, we’re not idiots.  Instead we just held everything off, trusted the repair gas, and got close enough to the rear car to [Liquify Metal] on the coupling.  It took so many tries, that thing was secure .  Kirk actually passed out trying, and I bled my brains out through my nose.”

“Oh is that what happened.”  Anesh remarked in a way that was so utterly neutral it took a second for Alanna to gasp out in offense and rap him on the arm with her knuckles.  “Ow!  Hey!  Don’t punish me, it was me that said that!”  Anesh threw himself under the bus.

“You were discretely thinking it!”  Alanna accused them.  “Anyway.  After that, we… well, we let it go.  And then we looted the caboose.”  She took a deep breath.  “You know how every time we find money in dungeons these days, it’s really kinda frustrating, because we don’t need cash anymore?  Well, allow me to offer an alternative to frustrate you in a novel way; seeds.”

“Seeds?”  Sarah asked.  “Like… plant seeds?  Not weird hecky magic seeds for things that kill people?  Not bullets?  We know one dumb dumb that calls their bullets seeds.”

TQ hissed a laugh.  “We haven’t grown them, we don’t know yet.”  He said.  “But we have a lot to try with.”

“Yeah, Research is on it.”  Anesh said.  “It shouldn’t be too hard to match them to actual real world plants if that’s what’s going on.  And maybe they are magic or something, but whatever they are, we have a lot of them.  We’re talking tonnes, here.  We couldn’t even fit them into any of the trucks, we just strategically destroyed the train car and then hooked it up to the APC to pull it out of there.”

“I’m so goddamn mad I had the flu.”  James grumbled good naturedly.  “Everyone got to do fun stuff while I was sick.”

This time, Arrush patted him  on the arm.  “There… there…?”  The ratroach took a fumbling attempt at being comforting, warmth radiating from where his two paws landed on James.  “You can get in a colorful and scary fight with a monster next… week?”

James’ smile cracked, and he met Sarah’s eyes.  The others at the table noticed, and the mood dropped a little.  “What…” one Anesh in particular started to ask.

“Your story first.”  Keeka demanded, his half empty cider clutched in all four of his paws.  He tilted his head and took a single sip from the straw, his smooth antenna bobbing over him.

“Well, who am I to say no to that.”  Anesh sighed as his duplicates gave him an unspoken signal that things were okay and he’d be filled in shortly.  “So we went through a lot of really wild places.  There was a part where the road went through a tar pit, and we had to dial it way back to be able to see where we were driving through the mess.  There was a forest of street signs three meters tall.  We found a different kind of magic gas.  Oh, the Route is an excellent example of how deeper in, the loot gets better.  Because we ended up finding maybe ten relic gears in every place we explored. What am I missing?”  He looked over at Alanna.

Arrush shifted in his seat, his tails eagerly twitching behind him.  “The cave.”  He reminded Anesh.  “We found the cave.”

“You wanna tell them about the cave?”  Alanna asked, and then started digging in a pocket for her phone.  “Actually, you talk, I’ve got pictures .”

“It was a nest.”  Arrush said, his eyes looking across at Keeka who smiled as his boyfriend talked.  “We were looking for a car.  Because it had a skeleton in it.”

Anesh let out a small sigh.  “Right.  We’re pretty sure human remains we find in dungeons are ‘real’, and not created.  So we wanted to see if we could find a wallet or something on the corpse.  Tell their family.”

“It didn’t.”  Arrush slowly shook his head, mindful of splattering anything corrosive on the restaurant’s table.  “Just scraps.  But the cave it hid in… it kept going.  Like a… like… like what?”  He curiously turned to Alanna for the word.

“Pit.”  She supplied.  “Like, a mechanic’s pit.”

“Yes!”  Arrush’s claws played across his limbs and the tabletop.  “It went down, and down, and… and it had a hole in the world.  And some kind of machine in the center, and it floated.  And there were rings around it like the big cake Marjorie made for us but upside down, and tunnels made of metal.  And the machine was singing.”  He dipped into Spanish every few words as he breathlessly tried to express what he’d seen down under the sands of Route Horizon.  It was hard, because while Arrush wasn’t stupid, he didn’t have all the words .  Not yet, not exactly.  But he wanted to share so desperately.

Alanna held her phone out, flipping it around in her hand to show the table the screen.  “Yeah, Arrush got it pretty much on the money.”  She said.  “Massive hovering engine, ant’s nest of tunnels and creepy stuff.  Uh… when he says it was singing, he means it was implanting in us a physical addiction to driving? I feel like I should be clear on that.”

“…are you okay?”  James asked her.

“Please.”  TQ said over an amused burst of hissing.  “We have magic for that.”  The camraconda paused, looked down, then looked back up a second later and added “Also we will need more water.  For the magic.  Because I thirst.”

“Thirst for the open road.”  Alanna nodded.  “And also for actual water, because that Route spell is weird.”

Arrush ducked his head.  “I thought the song was beautiful.”  He shyly murmured.

“Oh, I believe you!”  James said as he took Alanna’s phone that was being passed around and looked at the spectacle of a thirty foot tall mechanical abomination floating in the air, dripping something black and viscous.  “But beautiful things can still hurt us.  And I’d prefer if you didn’t have a forced need to rack up speeding tickets.”

“Oh.”  Arrush relaxed.  “How am I supposed to win them?”

“Win what?”

“The tickets?”

“…I’ll… explain that one later.”  James said, and Arrush just trustingly gave him a tiny nod.  “This thing looks rad though.”

“Go to the next picture!”  Alanna said.  Which caused a spike of anxiety in James, who was conditioned by his generation’s etiquette to never swipe to the next image when someone was showing you something, in case it ended up being way too personal.  The fact that he regularly saw Alanna without her pants on didn’t change the fact that he was gritting his teeth in apprehension as he flicked to the next image.  Which was, it turned out, not even close to what he expected.  “Look!  Look James!  I rode a moose!”

“What the…?”  James held the screen up to eye level, looking in amazement at Alanna with her legs clamped around the folded metal frame of what looked like a half-elk half-motorcycle half-problem.  It had a face like a headlight sharpened to a rounded rectangular muzzle, and antlers that splayed off its head in a dozen directions; an equine afro of steel rods and hanging wires.  He passed the phone over to the Anesh opposite Arrush, leaning against his ratroach friend as he did.  “I am gonna make a guess.”  James ventured.  “That the moose wasn’t exactly happy about that.”

“Oh, god no.”  Alanna answered with a laugh.

“She was trampled.”  TQ ratted out the human woman.

Sarah gave TQ a wide eyed look of horror that she pivoted to Alanna with a jolt of her head.  “You were trampled?!”

“Only a little bit!”  Alanna tried, and failed, to defend herself.  “I mean, I’m tough!  I can take it!”

“We hit the moose with one of the… the small cars.”  Arrush tried to bring his paws together to manually explain the concept of a quad bike.  “And then you said you were dying.”  He threw Alanna under the moose.

“Alanna!”  Sarah gave her girlfriend a pained look.  “No!”

“I’m fine!”  Alanna repeated.  “Look!  I’m not dead at all!  Arrush is exaggerating, somehow, while saying exactly what happened!”  She pressed the knuckles of her fist into her own mouth.  “Okay, that sounds worse.  Look, the moose seemed like it might have been friendly, I wanted to give it a chance, and it didn’t work out, but also  no one died.  And if I hadn’t done it, someone might have died.”

TQ finally decided to help out the woman he’d been on a delve team with for the last week.  “This is true.  I would have died.  But I do not have sufficient thighs for moose riding.”

“That is both technically correct and also a weird mental image.”  Anesh gave a single unified chuckle from four throats.

“I’m thinking about it now.”  James leaned back and looked up at the dimly lit restaurant ceiling, not actually thinking about it but just taking a moment to smell the cooking food in the distance, and enjoy being somewhere new.

While he did that, at the same time Alanna was making a snarky “ Yeah  you are” comment and TQ was telling him to “Please stop thinking about it now.”  And then the table of friends softly devolved into a few different conversations.  Anesh talking to himself about mapping the Route’s spatial twists, James listening to Arrush tell him and Keeka more about how much he’d enjoyed being taught how to drive on his own, and TQ asking Sarah about if he could be on her podcast to discuss coming up with car seats for camracondas.

At one point, Arrush seemed to realize he’d been speaking more than he normally ever did when his ratroach physiology betrayed him and he broke down wheezing.  But his expanded lungs let him keep it under control, and he cut off his own sentence to instead ask Keeka an important question.  “What… what was your week like?”

“Mine?”  Keeka shifted and looked down forlornly at his empty glass that now lacked any trace of cider.  “ I  had some quiet days.  Oh!  I made a ceramic bowl!  And… and I talked to another new ratroach, and wasn’t afraid!”  He swelled with pride at his own small adventure.  “And I slept through everything horrible.”

“Yeah, hey.  Question!”  Alanna raised her hand and drew everyone’s attention, having no intention of actually waiting to be called on before speaking.  “Keeka just said ‘I’ in the most ominous fucking way possible while also being cute as heck.  What the hell happened while we were gone?  I love the rest of you, but you’re all being cagey too, what’s going on?  Did you wait until I took you out for ribs to decide to break up with me?”  Sarah cracked a cocky grin.  “James, are you and Sarah pairing off and abandoning the rest of us?  Does Anesh know?”

Affecting a magnanimous tone and placing his hand over his heart in the most noble of gestures, Anesh cleared his throat and spoke.  “If my relationship status changes, I will support my friends and their right to self determination.”  He intoned, and then one of him leaned over toward James.  “Did I say that right?”  He asked almost conspiratorially.  “That’s the poly motto, right?”

“I mean, it’s ours  at least.”  James scratched at Anesh’s scalp, getting a small murmur of pleasure from his boyfriend and only slightly jealous looks from the rest of his boyfriend.  “Uh… hey, let’s just be blunt here.  Status Quo set a small town on fire, and we killed them.”

“What.”  Alanna’s voice hardened into a single word.

“They were trying to find the chanters.”  Sarah’s tone was devoid of levity.  She’d been partly joking even when she was ribbing Alanna for risking herself on moose-based escapades. But now, there was none of that left.  “So they started setting things on fire.  We think they used a cooking spell they had, but we don’t know how they made it so huge.  And they were spreading out to do it to parts of the forest around the city.”

James’ own words were heavy.  “So I made a call.”  He didn’t feel good about it, but it was, at the end of the day, his call.  He’d said the word, and the Order had moved to fight.  “As of right now, Status Quo is reduced to one guy currently sedated in our medical wing who might not even have wanted to be part of them, since he was trying to run when we caught up to the third group.”

“Are you okay?”  Anesh asked, and then looked between Sarah and Keeka.  “Are you two okay?”

Sarah took a deep breath.  “Not really.”  She said.  “Keeka wasn’t involved, which is good.  Anesh was around at the end for benefactor support, but also didn’t go into the field.”

“I would have helped.”  The ratroach squirmed, not sure why he felt guilty in the first place, as the two Anesh next to him wrapped comforting arms around his shoulders.

“Yeah, it was pretty one sided.  We’re all physically okay, but kinda messed up.”  James said.  “But you know what?  I’ll take it.”  The others looked at him with varying levels of concern and confusion.  “It was one sided.  It was… I mean, not a clean win.  They killed civilians, no matter how fast Response was.  But we didn’t just break their organization’s ability, we wiped them out.  They don’t bounce back from this, they don’t slink off and rebuild and then take another shot at us later.  They doubled down on being genocidal assholes, and now they’re gone, and we have their magic pills that stop death.  And I don’t feel great about it, but I legitimately feel worse for the poor metal moose Arrush ran over than any of the people who were so bad we had to run a defensive action against them that involved fireballing their agents.”  James paused to suck air through his nose, and noticed Anesh awkwardly tilting his head past him.  “What?”  He asked, and turned.

Their server stood with a heavy tray balanced on one hand and a plate of ribs in his other.  “So… uh… sesame ribs?”

“Oh.  That was me.”  James felt his cheeks turning bright red.  “...uh…so…”

“He has been standing there since you said ‘genocidal assholes’ and have you considered adding situational awareness to your training program?”  TQ asked James with a friendly tone to his digital voice.  “I could teach you.  I am very good at noticing things.”

James pressed his eyes closed.  “Yup!  Great!  Thanks!”

“Hey man, I’m just gonna pretend this is normal, and then ask about learning magic later.”  The server said.  “Habanero barbeque?”

“Me!”  Alanna rubbed her hands together.  “Someone give me my phone back before I lose the ability to touch things!”

“Thanks.”  James muttered to the bearded server after everyone had their food and half the table had started digging into their dinners, handing the man a business card from his wallet.  “And to be clear, this is not me just giving in to embarrassment.”  He got a nod in reply that was probably insincere, but no one made fun of his worst-possible-timing, so James felt like he’d gotten off easy.

The group, all varying levels of hungry that ranged from James not having eaten much today to Alanna apparently not having ever eaten enough in her life, tore into their food.  They were all pretty used to good meals, half of them living in the Lair and the other half being there all the time anyway.  But while Nate and Marjorie and the other staff of their kitchen were all good at their jobs and enhanced by a green orb that made things just a little nice, there was a level of quality that a good dedicated restaurant could reach that they didn’t normally get.

James’ ribs, slathered in a tangy sesame sauce, were some of the best food he’d had.  He just didn’t go to nice places that often, even now that he could afford it.  And following an instinct that he was pretty sure had been installed in him by his parents when he was a kid, he instantly started trying to give away part of his food.  “Eat this!”  He said, handing a torn off rib across the table to Alanna, who traded him back one of hers, which James devoured in short order.  He made a similar trade to Arrush, who was using one of his smaller limbs to hold the rack of ribs in place while he gently sliced through the meat with a steak knife, and then undoing the image of an overly cautious diner by crunching through  the bone of the first rib he tried.

Not that he was actually capable of just eating them like they were candy bars.  Everyone had almost choked on their food and refilled drinks as they’d seen Arrush do that, and the mild whimper he’d made had betrayed that it was a terrible idea.  But he got the hang of it soon enough.

“So!”  Alanna said around a mouthful of barbeque sauce.  “I missed something huge, and James nearly died.”

“Yes.”  Sarah cut James off before he could say anything.  “But he didn’t, because of the power of friendship.”

“…so we’re just saying that out loud now?”  James asked as he tried and failed to wipe all the sauce off his fingers before grabbing his water glass.  “I agree , but…”

Arrush nodded as he pulled a rib through the side of his triangular muzzle, curved teeth stripping the meat off with vicious efficiency and leaving lightly smoking lines of corrosion on the bone.  “It is… why I am here.  Your power lets us eat ribs.”  He looked across the table at Keeka, and tried to force his mismatched quintet of eyes to not tear up as he watched his boyfriend.  “And be safe.  It is a good power.  I’m happy I am part of it.”

“You, specifically, are part of that power in a completely unique way, by the by.”  James reminded Arrush, the two of them connected through Clutter Ascent’s style of magic to share their Breath.  “But also yes, Alanna, I have once again failed to die.  Why, what’s up?”

“Well, if we don’t have any enemies out there…”

“That’s not even close to true.”  Anesh tried to say as all four of him exchanged plates.

Alanna pressed on, undeterred.  “And there isn’t any big project going on…”

“Even I  know there is work to be done and I was with you the whole week.”  TQ tried to say as he awkwardly chewed a piece of chicken.

Ignoring him, too, Alanna continued striving for her point.  “ And  you don’t have any personal plans…”

“Are you…” Arrush tilted his head at James, antenna bobbing freely where he’d had to pull his hood down to eat.  “Are you not doing different training plans?  We are on the list together for tomorrow.”

Fully conscious of how undermined her attempt was, Alanna barreled forward anyway.  “ Considering all of that ,” she made a futile attempt to impose a false reality onto the conversation, “when are you planning to take a vacation?”

“Oh!”  James, surprisingly, had a real answer for her.  “Next week.”

Sarah set her fork down with a dramatic tink .  “Really?”  His friend asked him.

“Yeah.  I mean, not exactly a week from now, but around then.”  James said with a nod, casually tearing off another rib and savoring the flavor even as he got sesame seeds stuck in his teeth.

“Oh.”  Anesh was partway between relieved and slightly disappointed, since he hadn’t been invited on any vacation.  But then, James probably just wasn’t planning to go anywhere special.   Then a thought struck all four of him at once.  “No, wait, hang on.”

Alanna swallowed her bit and tossed a gnawed bone onto her plate.  “I also  just had a grim thought!”  She announced.  “James! No!”

“What?”  He asked.  “Do you want another one of my ribs?  I don’t think I should eat all of this.”

“No!  I got hit by a moose earlier today, I don’t need to eat that much.”  Alanna’s statement cause enough confusion to some of them that it might actually count as an assault.  “But you’re not planning a vacation at all, you snarky fucker!”

“I… I am confused!”  Keeka’s chittered squeak announced.  “Why are we upset with James?”

“I’m not upset with James.”  Arrush offered with an almost smug calm, his eyes closed and a small smile on his face.

Alanna let out a long groan, in time with Zhu’s sleepy manifestation starting to solidify around her shoulders and back as the navigator actually woke up at the end of their dinner.  “James is saying vacation  and what he means is Officium Mundi delve .”  Alanna informed everyone who hadn’t caught on.

“Oh!”  Zhu’s voice spoke up for the first time as he came to himself in the middle of the conversation.  “We’re back!  Hello everyone.  Are we planning an Office delve? I would love to go on an Office delve.”

“Right?”  James grinned at his friend as Zhu’s large eye formed on Alanna’s bicep and pivoted around the table to lock onto him.  “Also welcome back!  You look exhausted, which is impressive for a ghost.”

Zhu ruffled his feathers indignantly, getting a sputter out of TQ as he accidentally flicked the camraconda’s face, and an involuntary giggle out of Alanna as he tickled along her back.  “I am not a ghost.  We’ve talked about this!”

“We’ve also talked about you doing that !”  Alanna twisted to reach around and scratch at her back.  “Come on!  Also help me convince James to take a break!”

“No?”  Zhu sounded confused.  “Absolutely not.  That sounds like a losing fight.  And I want to see Officium Mundi again.”

“You could come with me!”  Alanna said.

“No, because you actually are taking a break.”  Sarah told her with a kind of confident authority that James was prepared to believe that was going to work.  And before Alanna could protest, added, “You got trampled by a moose, you goober!   Also , I’m not going into the Office, and I wanna spend time with you!”  Which were magic words that seemed to get Alanna resigned to sitting the next delve out.

She still looked at James with worried eyes.  “Okay, okay.  But man… you’re not pushing too hard, are you?”  Alanna asked him.

“I might be.”  James said.  “But… I think I can push a little harder now than I could before.  And I think it’s important.  We need to go faster.  We weren’t there in time this time, for a lot of people.  But…  well, there’s more Status Quos out there.  There’s more problems we want to solve.  And I don’t think sitting in a basement learning how to summon bath towels is gonna get us there.”  He sighed deeply, annoyed that that wasn’t the solution, no matter how boring it was.  “We’re not gonna fight the whole world, not, like, in a battle.  But we are going to have to prove the strength of our ideas.  And that gets a lot easier if we’ve got more weird dungeontech, and more skill ranks, and more friends.”

“Wait, we’re not going to fight the world?”  TQ asked.  “I was practicing though.”

James shook with silent laughter as the others slowly stared at the camraconda. “I kinda want to know what that means.  But yeah, no.  Some people might hate us, but a lot of people are gonna love what we start building in the near future.  And you know what?  I was wrong .”

“Uh oh.”  Anesh all said at once before one of him kept going.  “That’s a problem, because I put utter uncompromising trust in everything you said, and I’m a bit mucked if you got it wrong.”  All four of him drained the last of their beers, like they’d practiced the movement a million times.

Keeka asked the question everyone else was curious about.  “What did you get wrong?”  He said.  “It’s not… it’s not us, is it?”

“Oh, fuck no.”  James said, reassuring the lithe ratroach with a single short sentence.  “We’ve always wanted to save people.  And you were people who needed saving, and I have never regretted anything less than bringing people out of the dungeon and giving them real homes.  That goes for you, too, TQ.  And Zhu.  And anyone else.”  He shook his head.  “A long time ago… before most of us met, I guess… I said that I wanted to pull in enough magic to make a new place.  To start fresh, with our own ideas in charge.  And you know what?  That was stupid.”  James shrugged as he cast off something that had been a guiding star for his Big Plans for a while now.  “The world exists.  Not just our world, but the worlds of the dungeons, too.  There are people in all of them, and ideas in action, and yeah , some of it’s shit.  But we can’t just hit the reset button and pretend that’ll fix everything.  And I think I was a fucking idiot for ever believing that.”

“…you’re not giving up, are you?”  Alanna sounded so small in that moment.  Just completely disappointed, like she’d just been failed by the most important thing in her world.

“Psh.”  James chopped a hand through the air.  “Absolutely not.”  He briefly widened his eyes as he realized how Alanna was looking at him, before shaking his head vigorously.  “No, no, I’m not giving up.  I still think we should build stuff and change things.  I just think that we should stop thinking of it as a big do-over for all eight billion people on the planet.”

“Hi, sorry, I just got here.”  Zhu’s deep orange light dripped like water as he pulled a feathered arm out from Alanna’s side and waved it.  “What does this have to do with the delve that we are absolutely going on?”

“Oh.  Right.  I mean, I want more magic so we can change more things for the better.”  James chuckled and dipped his head.  “Sorry!  I kinda made that melodramatic for no reason!”

“I am into it.”  TQ reassured him.

“Yes.”  Arrush added with a coughing laugh, covering his muzzle with several hands to make sure he didn’t accidentally drip on anyone.

Alanna sighed and leaned back, putting her hands behind her head as she stared at James.  “You’re fucking impossible, buddy.”  She told him.  “But also I love ya.  And I’ll keep an eye on stuff while you’re off exploring.”

“I’m not gone yet .”  James reminded her.  “Now.  Do we wanna pay for our food and go on a walk or something?  We’re actually not too far from our real life apartment, if we wanna head back there.  We have ice cream in the freezer!”

“I cannot fit ice cream in me!”  Keeka’s voice was an exaggerated gasp.

James nodded in understanding.  “Imagine if we’d gotten fries.”  He said quietly, getting a flush of neon green from Keeka.

Their group readied themselves to leave, chatting about nothing in particular as they went through the process of flagging down their server, getting the bill, and figuring out how many orbs was an appropriate tip.  Anesh, eternally feeling guilty about making work for waitstaff, tried to straighten up their table and neatly stack all the plates, while Alanna and Arrush went about draining every water glass that had a drop left in it, and TQ made the mistake of trying some of Alanna’s abandoned alcohol, his camera eye lensing closed as he tasted it with a snap so abrupt James worried he’d hurt himself.

On the way out, as they filed between tables and booths in single file, getting a few odd looks among the casual conversation of the mundane humans that filled the restaurant, only a single person thought to voice a shitty opinion when Keeka passed his table.  He got as far as “what a fuc-“ before he stopped abruptly, and it looked like no one noticed who he was glaring at or that he’d started raising his voice at all.

Outside, as TQ turned his head back toward the rest of the group, James leaned down to the camraconda.  “That was probably wrong.”  He muttered.  “But thanks.”

“It was that or bite him.”  TQ spoke back softly.  “And I am full.  Also I don’t know what asshole tastes like but I do not want to find out like that.”

“…I…am going to exercise restraint… and not say anything about that.”  James nodded as he straightened back up.  “So!  Ice cream!  And all we have to do is walk two and a half miles that way!”

“You said you lived nearby!”  Keeka chittered.  “That’s so far!  That’s the farthest!”

“Sorry buddy,” Alanna ruffled his antenna and head fur, “you’re spoiled by living in a building that has everything you need and also pottery classes I guess .  Out here, us plebs have to hike.”

Anesh gave a quick shrug.  “I could carry you?”  He offered Keeka.  And then thought about what he’d just said.  “Not… not comfortably.  I think if each of me takes a limb…”  Keeka dodged behind Arrush with an inhuman spring of dexterity from his digitigrade legs, skirt whooshing behind him.  “…or we can just walk normally!”

The conversation fell into laughter and levity and talk of magic as they started heading home.  Ideas for the future, and moments of past adventures they’d been wanting to share with each other.   James showed off that he could summon a snow cat while they were waiting for a crosswalk, and the cat promptly sprinted into the bushes and vanished, which was a little awkward.  He let it have its own little adventure for the night.  Alanna and James clasped hands at one point, letting Zhu bridge back to the person he was most comfortable in.  And Anesh got in a quiet talk with himself about describing scenery and then showing images of it, to see if his own words were effective.

When they arrived at their apartment, everyone took turns petting the drooling midnight-black pit bull that was waiting on the doorstep before going inside and taking turns petting the waiting Auberdeen.  And then night ended slowly, trailing off to nothing in particular, and being exactly what James hadn’t known he’d needed.  Something loving and warm and not entirely effortless, but with no judgment for the small mistakes.

Also he and Arrush ended up standing next to each other in the kitchen when Keeka took a chance and kissed an Anesh, and both James and his ratroach friend ended up practically vibrating through the floor as they restrained themselves from commenting, instead just sharing silly smiles and slinking back out of sight.

It was an excellent night.  And it was the perfect refreshing time to have before he struck back out to find new places, new creatures, and new magic.

Because no matter how much his life got better and better, no matter what changes James made to the world, no matter how good things got…

Officium Mundi was always waiting for him.