Notes Monsters (book 2)

NOTES

chapter number -> short detail if more than a second line. then longer copy paste of details. attempt to include just enough without going over to include details of what is needed. (story jumps to much, sometimes to many paragraphs, so min amount is attempted to copy/paste for details)

MONSTER NAMES \*UGHS\* to many names at time before something is eventually selected. so multiple counts of same monsters. until finally a name is given. Some copy/paste give description of what a given monster looks like. but some of the monsters description are how do i say it rather LONG. so skipped it. and just gave enough for trying to get name for monster.

85 = porclainfish / silverfish / bathroom mirror tile fish

Thirty feet away, the pellet tore through the intercepting form of a fist sized insect. The creature was made of white tile, with a multi-segmented body and four triangular legs that tapered to a needle point. Lines of grout traced along its back and face, and on that face sat a single recessed black motion sensor dot, occasionally flickering with a dim red light from within. A fluidly organic tail with a wide edge flicked back and forth behind it as it thrashed its death. Altogether, it gave off the impression of a silverfish, if someone had designed it from the ground up to be somehow worse.

Then, hot on Anesh’s heels, fumbling with shaking hands at the slingshot, Momo had stepped in and fired over their backs. Her first shot went wide, winging out into the open space that waited beyond the edge of the platform. Her second had come close to the mirror, but one of the bugs had lunged in front of it, taking the hit. After a few more tries, her aim getting better as her frustration increased, she’d slammed one of the pellets through the defending bug, into the scratched glass, and shattered it.

Every single one of the porcelain-fish dropped like puppets with their wires cut.

James frantically slapped at his arms and legs, shaking off the last stragglers and fragments still pinned into his armor. He winced as he hit one of the holes in his leg where the needle leg of the bug had gone straight through the softer cloth part of the armor.

“It’s fine. I think you get seven years bad luck for this anyway. And it’s kinda my own fault for not thinking to bring my gun in with me. I figured Alanna could cover that.” James stepped up to what remained of the mirror, still sitting in midair, and tapped at it. It was one of those untrusting bathroom mirrors that a lot of restaurants used; basically an unbreakable piece of shiny glass that still got worn down, scratched, and vandalized. One of the shards of it in the lower left had what looked like half a phone number on it, which James promptly pledged to never call.

In the middle of it, between all the broken glass, was a green orb. A very large one, too, with a smaller orange orbiting it in lazy loops. James reached a gloved hand in, still being careful to avoid getting sliced open by surprised, and plucked them out. The rest of the mirror dropped to the ground with a series of chimes as it hit the tile floor. He started to sigh, but coughed as the long breath he was sucking in brought the thick scent of decay with it.

85 = ?!?!? river monster !?!?! = bathroom

But through those occasional sources of blazing white light, James could see the air also held flowing rivers of water, some of them falling, or perhaps rising, in vertical columns. But others moved with serpentine casualness, wrapping in loops around or sometimes through islands. Sometimes moving alongside them, flocks of paper birds filled the air with flashes of white as their skins caught in the lights.

86 = paper frog (james makes)

“I think it’s young.” Anesh said, curious, as James held up the still twitching page. “They flutter around all day, they should have a lot more folds and wrinkles. This one is new.”

James had nodded, and tried smoothing out the paper. And as he did, he realized his hands moved with a more practiced motion than he’d ever really learned.

One of his first orbs. Origami.

It was such a small thought, but it made him smile. Without really thinking about it, he’d pressed the folds flat, started shaping something new out of the barely-resisting white sheet. A fold here, a bend there, a couple small turns of the page to cover up the rip. Press this, pull this, and then…

A frog. Just a little origami frog. Nothing worth writing home about. Except this one moved. Slowly at first, and then experimentally. It kicked the leg that hid the torn part of itself, and it turned paper eyes that held a tiny spark of life up to James.

“Oh, this seems like a horrible idea.” Alanna said cheerfully, as James lowered his palm to slide the frog onto the top of the pile of stuff in their cart. “But hey, good on you for making friends.”

86 = Ethercat

She had its number now. The thing wasn’t a cat at all; it was just the light on the end of an angler fish.

Alanna shifted her gaze upward, locking eyes with a random patch of air just over the cat. No, that didn’t feel right. She tilted her eyes up a bit, and more to the left. Yeah, that was right. Something stirred there, something that wasn’t used to being looked at.

The distraction almost cost her an arm as the cat thing lunged in, and she threw up a block to catch scything claws on her bracer. But then she flung it to the side, and it clearly wasn’t expecting prey as muscled as she was, because she could \*feel\* the space open up. Ducking through the opening, Alanna ignored the illusory cat as she stepped through it, and booked it for her partners.

In panted words during their sprint, Alanna had told James what she suspected about it; that the creature had a body tethered to the illusion of a cat, and that they could kill it if only they could pin it down. But that was a big if, right now. Still, it was nice to see their mornings of jogging together paying off. That would be a happy thought to hold onto while being mauled by an invisible monster.

The fake cat turned, just in time to see an angry, terrified human rip a sword off his belt. And then, with almost pinpoint accuracy, jam it straight into the cat’s eye.

The real one.

JP felt something gooey and sticky part under his two handed thrust, and he put all his weight being the strike before planting his feet and screaming wordlessly as he yanked the blade upward. He could feel the rough vibration as it ground against the bone of an eye socket, hear from close up the tearing of flesh and the sloshing of aqueous humor as he tore the invisible cat’s eye in half. And then he could see, as the illusion failed with a yowling scream, the ruined mess that he’d made of the beast’s face.

Then Alanna was there next to him, catching a paw in an open palm and uppercutting the cat that was slowly losing its invisibility. Her fist staggered it, for all that it was the size of a car, and she didn’t let up. When it tried to stand, James and Dave smashed its rear legs out from under it. And then Tyrone and a wobbling Momo piled on as well, using knife and crowbar to lay wounds down its back as they pinned it to the floor.

The thing died, screaming in pain and soaking the floor red.

86 = Shellaxies = hermit comps = shellaxy

“We clear the way.” Sarah said. “There’s a swarm waking up. If they’re running, we make sure they don’t get stopped here. Why are there so many hermit comps here?” She mused the last bit to herself, concerned.

“How are we supposed to do that?” JP asked, sweaty hands wringing the haft of the hammer he held. He tried to remember one of the lessons Alanna had tried to drill into him. How did you kill a shellaxy? Don’t aim for the faceplate, he muttered under his breath, it doesn’t hurt them; go for the corners. He repeated it a couple times, like it was a mantra.

99 high school dungeon = worm = killed 1 by secret

99 high school dungeon = worms

“Mike Yager was here.” Anesh read the name that had been there the whole time. “I wonder who that was.” He softly asked, as one of him pulled out a pocket notebook and made a note of the persona. “Um…” He held the paper up a second later by two worried fingers, as the very name he’d written was concealed again. On the wall, similarly, the graffiti was once again partially hidden.

There was a deep growl from Secret, who's myriad eyes darted around the room, seeing things kept unknown from the others. “They cluster like grubs. So many of them here, waiting for a name to feed upon. This place is disgusting.”

No one had ever heard Secret call something disgusting before.

“Okay. No names. Super.” James spat onto the floor, clearing the taste of bile from his tongue. “Let’s get the hell out of this place.” He said. “Who’s on point?”

Alanna took point, followed by Anesh, then James and Anesh bringing up the rear. Secret didn’t stick to any singular one of them, instead looping his ghostly coils around their feet intermittently. Occasionally, he would lash out to snap with one of his many rows of teeth at something none of them could see, but was presumably one of the small buggish antimemes here.

99 high school dungeon = beetle

smashing into concrete and chitin with equal vigor. In the off-color light of Secret’s passing, they caught glimpses of Alanna pulverizing the fist-sized beetle that had made the fatal mistake of skittering across her foot, the creature’s death accompanied by a small spray of red sparks that lit up the darkness far more than the serpent form of Secret did. Briefly.

99 high school dungeon = door needs 10 red sparks = beetles death -> red spark

As his hand got close to making contact, there was a fiery shock to his skin, even through the glove. And in the space where he’d reached, light bloomed; a red slash of illumination, clearly shaped like the number “ten”. It sat there in midair for a brief second, before fading back again.

“Ten \*what\*?” Anesh asked. “Key number ten? Ten minutes of waiting? Ten…”

“It’s the same color.” Alanna said. “As the sparks.”

“Oh fuck no.” James looked around, meeting the other’s eyes under the glow of Secret. All of them pressed so close like this almost made him feel a false sense of safety. “It means ten kills.” He said, “Ten sparks. Are we supposed to be collecting them?” He looked down at his hand, where some of them had landed earlier when he’d smashed the small bugs crawling on the kid’s corpse. “Can we see how many we have?”

As soon as he said the words, there was a brief flare of light and heat; a red “three” scarred into the air above the back of his hand. He felt his blood cool, noticeably; as if all the energy it took to ask that was pulled out of him with a brisk force.

Five minutes of crushing the slimy shells and stinking insides of the beetles that crawled between the floor pipes later, Alanna had amassed ten of whatever this place ‘awarded’ them from their kills. After doing her best to wipe the worst of the rapidly solidifying goop off her boots, she stepped over to the door where James and an Anesh were standing to keep track of it, and pressed her hand toward the doorknob.

It was a feeling like something being yanked out of her. Like her veins or muscles being pulled out, through the palm of her hand; though it wasn’t physical. Instead, a string of red light lit up the surrounding space as it streamed forward, coalescing into darkness, and the form of a door handle.

Alanna grabbed it, impetuously, and yanked the door open on rusted hinges.

99 high school dungeon = answer questions on wall = green fire

“Alright, here’s a weird one.” James said. “Two trains are a hundred miles apart, traveling at fifty miles an hour. How long until everyone on board dies?” He shook his head. “Kinda grim. This one, too, actually. It’s asking what the original fourth horseman that killed people was. That’s a biblical question.”

Alanna suspiciously poked a finger against the ink on the tile wall where she stood. “This one says ‘two idiot children die to poison and impatience.’ What the hell does that mean?”

“Oh, that’s easy. Romeo and Juliet.” James answered. “It’s like a rough overview of the plot of the most annoying romance ever.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the words began to burn with a sickly green fire. Alanna yelped and shuffled backward, falling into a smooth combat posture in case this was something hostile. But it wasn't, and instead, a couple seconds later, the writing was scoured from the wall and replaced by a scorch mark. And a burst of green sparks, that fell from the scarred tile, and onto James’ arm. He jerked back, shaking his coat, but the small flare of light had already vanished; drawn in just like the red sparks.

99 high school dungeon = red/green fires

Anesh, watching from the door, added his own opinion to the mix. “It doesn’t help that the colors look poisonous. Did you guys notice that? The red ones look like an infection, and now this green looks like toxic waste.”

99 high school dungeon = rat

“How much green do I have?” James whispered aloud.

And in a flash, a number spiked into existence over the back of his right hand. He was surprised to see it was twenty, and not four like he’d expected, but he was more surprised to see the thing that had been stalking them perched in a gap in the pipes just overhead to their right.

It had a snout like a cone, tapered to a blunted point. Fur that was dull metal wire, eyes that were nothing more than hateful black beads. It had two mouths, one stacked on top of the other, two parallel rows of teeth that dripped with a grim liquid. James had never had a problem with the fact that Secret had more than one maw, but now, in this moment, he realized that was mostly because Secret had never screamed at him in a hissing voice and tried to eat him.

The thing was like a rat, if someone had taken a rat’s general shape, scaled it up as far as they could, and replaced every part of it with something painful and disgusting. Exposed muscles through patches where it had no fur or skin, places where the bones poked out through its hide, and a glossy sheen where it oozed some kind of substance as it moved; a trail that glimmered across the pipe it had been stalking them on.

The burst of light didn’t leave any of them with much time to adjust their eyes. But it startled the rat thing even more, and in a fight-or-flight moment, it decided to commit to an assault.

99 high school dungeon = door needs 100 red sparks

Time once again started to blur together as they walked. They found another door, but this one demanded a hundred red sparks

99 highschool dungeon -> room with light -> humans turned bug creaters?

The first thing Alanna noticed were the creatures here. To be fair, James and Anesh saw them too, just a half-second after her.

They were bipedal, four feet tall, five at the max, and many of them carried clubs or crude spears made out of the piping material. Maybe two dozen of them in total; they lined those jutting sets of seating around the walls, looking down on the floor of the rounded room. Every few seconds, they would clumsily bang the butts of their weapons into the floor, letting out a rattling din that echoed through across the pipes and down the halls.

They had fur. Fur that looked mangy and unkempt, but real fur. It jutted from their skin in patchwork patterns, multiple colors adorning each of the creatures. Brown, black, some even a pale cream, though all of their colorations were tainted with mold growths and a red sticky substance that no one assumed was paint.

Where they did not have fur, they had chitin. Brown beetle shell like a cockroach that covered most of their bodies, especially their joints. It glistened in the light, dripping secretions running down it and matting their fur where the two met. They would frequently itch at the lines between their materials, as if they were sewn together and uncomfortable with the divides. They scratched themselves with three-fingered clawed hands, and every one of them had three arms. Though they always had at least one arm per side, where the third one sat seemed random for each of their monstrous shapes.

Their faces were wide triangles. Antenna jutted out of the back of their skulls, and sunken mammalian eyes betrayed insectile compounding. Five eyes per face, every time, though again not always in the same places.

Some of them wore scraps of clothing. Things recognizable as jeans, or blazers in the faded colors of the school above.

One of them stood in the center of what was now clearly an arena, and waited patiently for the five delvers to advance to its position.

99 highschool dungeon -> room with light -> humans turned bug creaters? -> leader

It answered anyway. Waving two of its three hands to silence the crowd around them that had begun jeering as James interrupted. “Weee were borrrrn here.” It spat out, droplets of liquid falling from its mouth as it spoke. “Weee serrrrve, withh deliiiight.” It grinned then, a horrifyingly happy look on the face of something so obviously built to be ugly. “And weee guard thhhe passssage to your hooom.” It told them.

“Neeeevar!” The creature protested. “Thhhe doooor requires sssparks.” It told them, grin still plastered to its face. “Hunnndereds of themm.” It spread the two arms that were in front of it in a placating gesture, as if to explain that this wasn’t its fault. The third arm, the one that jutted out of its back, swept into view then, and tossed something at their feet. “Dooo nhat worry, though.” Its grin growing even wider, showing off more and more teeth as its drool dripped down onto the floor. “Onnne of yoou sshhould be more than ennough to passs.”

99 highschool dungeon -> room with light -> humans turned bug creaters?

All died plus leader died

99 high school dungeon -> lockers require green fire

James didn’t have much left in his stomach to throw up. Which was good, because the smell of rot and blood and offal spilled across the floor in wild streaks and bubbling pools was more than enough to turn his stomach. Instead, he staggered over to the back wall, where that modern art display of lockers jutted from the ground. There were five, no, six of them. All different shapes and sizes. And while each one was damaged, they were all still locked. He reached for one of the padlocks, and found to no surprise that its dial did not turn, but instead, lit up with a bright green ‘twelve’.

The locker door swung open. There was a composition notebook inside, a little bit browned around the edges of the paper. James grabbed it, then did the same with his other choice of container, and pulled a battered copy of a paperback novel out of it. The beaten and half torn cover simply had it labeled as “INHERITORS” in all caps, with much of the art having been torn off, showing only the top half of a man with absurdly good abs.

99 high school dungeon -> large gate 300 green fires

“The door says three hundred!” Anesh called over to him as he approached. “Neither of me has that, and apparently you don’t share it within your own hive mind. Which seems unfair.” He griped, trying to insert what levity he could.

“I’ve got it.” Alanna said, stepping \*through\* a body with a wet splash, her boots really pulling their weight with the waterproofing. She strode up to the gate like she was ready to just start punching it apart if it didn’t comply, but when she laid her hand against it, a river of red light flowed out of her and into the jagged, rusty iron.

102 = laser pointer + silver fish

Going through pictures on the desk to look for pet names to use as passwords, Alanna quirked an eyebrow at how this desk had four photos of dogs, and all of them had the same name tag. As she tilted the last one to see if there was anything behind it, a small silver tube caught her eye, and she scooped it up and tossed it to James. “Yo. Here, laser pointer! See if it cuts through vinyl or slows down entropy or something.” She said, before turning back to trying different words on sticky notes as passwords.

It was after the fifth failed password that she finally got in, leaning back with a sigh as she felt the tension in her shoulders ease up. And in that moment of relaxation, the creature hiding just behind the monitor darted out and through her eye.

It was a fish, and Alanna had mistaken it for just part of the background until it moved. The glittering tube with one massive glowing eye on its front scything through the short span of air toward Alanna before she could really process that it had begun moving at all.

She yelped, and James echoed the sound as the glittering silver and gold fish burst out the back of her head. Alanna didn’t feel hurt, but there was a strange pulling as the creature left her.

It left trailing a thin piece of what looked like cloth behind it, a string of numbers written out on it.

James, for his part, reacted with the one thing he had at hand, and just leveled the laser pointer already in his hand at it. And the fish… froze. It twitched its eye around like it was suddenly unsure what it was doing, and in that moment, Alanna pulled a sharp turn in the office chair, kicking it back into the desk as she leapt up. Her arm shot out and clasped around the fish thing, and as her hand intercepted the beam of James’ fancy new laser pointer, she felt a brief moment of confused shock. Then, the fish shattered under her grip, and James clicked the laser off, pointing the device skyward.

A pair of orbs clattered to the ground among the electric confetti that used to be a creature, one red and one yellow, along with the fluttering piece of paper. James snagged the paper out of the air, and turned it over to look at it.

“This looks like a SSN.” He commented. “Hey, is this yours? Did it just attempt identity theft?” He asked Alanna.

“I don’t have one.” She replied instantly, before following up with, “What the hell’s up with the pointer, though? Did it freeze the fish? It felt weird when it went over me.”

James’ mouth hung open as he looked back in disbelief. “Bullshit you don’t have one. Also, I have no idea. Mind if I try it again? It didn’t hurt, did it?”

Alanna shook her head, and held out an arm at a safe distance for James to zap, just in case it caught fire or something. He pointed and flicked the beam on, and Alanna felt herself refusing to believe that it was doing anything. Incredulous, and also a little curious, she rolled her eyes at the laser. “Well, that’s… hang on.” She dropped her arm, and the feelings that had felt so \*real\* and innate to her just a second ago were gone. “James, what are you feeling right now?”

“Um… curious, I guess?” He asked. “Also I still refuse to believe that you don’t have a social security number. You’ve had normal jobs before.”

“It projects your emotions.” Alanna intuited. “The fish froze up because you were startled, and I felt it too, even though I handled it differently. I can feel the curious, and the skepticism, though it’s directed at things \*I’m\* thinking about, so it doesn’t transmit actual information.” She glanced down at the paper James was still holding. “So… is that \*my\* social security number then? Did the computer fish literally steal my personal data?”

James gnawed at his upper lip. “Hm. How do we…” He reached over, and tried poking Alanna with the paper. “Get this…” He ran the paper over her armor, and then her head. “Back into…” He started rolling it up, like he was preparing to try something even more irritating, when Alanna snatched it out of his hand.

“Give me thaaaa…” The paper dissolved into nothing in her grip. “Oh. Okay. Welp. That was it then. Yeah, that was mine.” She nodded. “Thanks.”

102 thumbtacks = turn into fireflies?

They sat for a while, the two boys decoupling their minds and taking a mental breather, while El tried to will her legs and feet to stop aching. The magnetic dog thing looked more excited than ever, though, running circles around them as it got its playtime in, taking diving leaps off of sloped crystals in the floor to try to snap ethereal jaws at the pinpricks floating in the air.

With a laugh and some closer inspection, El realized that pinprick was exactly the right term; those things were buzzing, flying thumbtacks. How they were glowing, she didn’t know. Nor did she \*need\* to, either.

Overhead, a thousand pinpricks of light stirred violently. A swarm of pissed off fireflies, amassing and looping in increasingly large group patterns. Standing on one of the nearby crystal tanks, the dog thing howled crackling static up at them until a handful of them lanced down and stabbed into his snout, changing defiance into pained yips. And then, first in ones and twos, and then in larger and larger clusters, the pinpricks started coming for the humans.

102 tumblesquid

He was sitting, legs splayed in front of him, on a beach of plastic pebbles and ground cardboard. A few dozen meters away, an inky black sea lapped lazy, sticky waves against the shore. James watched it with a casual smile and a languid gaze. Off in the distance of the ocean of printer ink, some nightmare creature breached the surface for a few seconds before slamming back under with a spray of black liquid, but James paid it no mind. It was a variety of tumblefeed; they’d seen it a few times. Like a great squid - and James insisted it was a tumblesquid, because of the slang term for a power strip - it prowled the ink sea, occasionally popping up above the surface just to remind them that the depths were full of nightmares. But it never came to the beach.

107 Forget This Thing memeplexes

That last part was something of particular concern now. They had, at this point, multiple people who had actual knowledge about how to navigate in different ways. Members who were either prodigious hikers or campers, or perhaps had been active in the military and had to learn in training. But a lot of that information was a little bit useless at an indoor location, and for all that the dungeon stretched for possibly thousands of miles, it \*was\* still indoors. Star and solar navigation just kinda didn’t \*go\* that far here. And maps were tenuous when landmarks could, and sometimes \*did\* shift around, or get swallowed up by Forget This Thing memeplexes.

107 EL -> road dungeon

“Oh, piss off.” El snapped back in a tone that wasn’t quite hostile, but wasn’t friendly either, even though it was becoming increasingly familiar. “Everyone says that. But no one wants to fight schools of tire sprites or follow the road maps to the really dark parking garages to get it.”

107 electromagnetic \*thing\* (radio issues / radio static issues) = ***we need her art for the ceiling***

***“We need \*\*-ear\*\* \*art\*\*\*\_= for the --illing.”*** Came back Dave’s hissing static-filled reply.

“Sorry, what? Over.” James raised his eyebrows.

“I said we need a grid system for the maps.” Dave repeated. “Over.”

She pointed a two fingered gesture at his radio. “What the shit was that?!” She demanded.

“That was Dave. You’ve met him, I am \*certain\*.”

“No, the… thing! The thing with the radio when you talked!” She half-yelled.

James winced as her voice bounced off the silent walls around them; he could already hear something stirring a few cubicles away. “There’s a lot of static here. Radios take a few tries sometimes.” He clarified. “Which is \*weird\*, since static is a product of natural emissions that shouldn’t exist here, but that’s… aw, man, now that I say it out loud, it is weird.”

“J, I think there’s something living in your radio.” El told him, shifting her stance to put distance, and the cart, between the two of them.

107 thumbtacks = pinpricks (james name)

He and El were down in the cave, a pair of camp lanterns set up nearby to give them all the light they needed to do their work. In a couple of places on the floor around the undercube lake that formed down here, the incredibly powerful electromagnets they’d brought hummed merrily to a tune that James couldn’t actually hear or feel, but would have sworn he could \*taste\* on the air. Pinned to them were the vast majority of the absolutely furious swarms of pinpricks that were previously buzzing through the damp air; kept pinned down, and also watched over by Secret, while James and El dug chunks of motherbored out of the wall.

107 El -> water tank cave -> circuitboard that grows programming = Motherboard (james name)

The term motherbored was what James had been trying to explain. It was a \*pun\*, you see, and maybe if he explained it in slightly more excruciating detail, it would click for El and she’d get the joke. Instead, he’d gotten a flat look, his attempt at humor completely stonewalled, and they’d gone back to tapping along the wall looking for more deposits of the strange crystal microchips.

107 caught cat and set to office basement real world

“Oh.” Simon wheezed out, turning himself to a sitting position on the desk in the middle of the hall and clutching at his ribs. “We found you a green.”

“So for the next…” James checked his watch. “...four-ish hours, we don’t know if we’ve just sent something incredibly hostile and dangerous into our basement to murder the other people who were with you, and also anyone at the Lair tonight?”

“Yes.” Simon confirmed. “Oh. When you say it like that it sounds bad.”

108 caught cat and set to office basement real world (see above this just continues on)

James cleared his throat. “Um… there’s a cat in the basement of the Lair. Probably. If the telepad hit on target.” He met Anesh’s incredulous stare a bit sheepishly. “It might be angry? Or maybe unconscious.”

109 office real world -> vault (basement) -> cage -> Ethercat

“Okay. So. Sarah? Your show.” James stepped aside, and motioned to the cat. Behind it, in the containment pen, he knew, there was another cat. A bigger one, taking up roughly the same floor space a king sized bed would. But that one was invisible, and the one that wasn’t real, that was sitting out here on the floor, was perfectly observable.

109 Ethercat

“Alright.” Sarah started, moving up to tap on the glass a couple times, ignoring the cat at her feet. She reached out and snagged a clipboard hanging off a hook on the wall nearby, and flipped through a few pages. Checking up on the notes of the other people who had come through to make observations over the last week. “So, here’s what we know. It’s gotten less instantly hostile - it \*can\* see us through the glass by the way - and also started responding better to having company at all. We’re pretty sure that this little guy…” She knelt down to pretend to pet the little cat on the floor, grinning as it swatted at her hands playfully, its own paws phasing right through her skin. “...is real, in a way. It’s a projection, but the big guy can see through it, and interacts with it.” She rose back up and looked through the window. Something in her face shifted, and suddenly, James was aware of the fact that Sarah was making eye contact with something.

109 camracondas tower -> thirty six of them (vs 100 noted before)

“There are thirty six camracondas, outside the dungeon’s control, trapped in a tower.” James spoke to the assembled crew. “Through testing, we know that someone ripping a telepad page can bring up to five ‘people’ with them. This includes dungeon Life, regardless of size, and we have no reason to believe it won’t include the camracondas. I bring this up because we are going to liberate them.” There were a few hard nods at that, and a few confused looks, too. Deb raised a hand cautiously, while Dave did the same motion in one swift snap of his arm, and James shook his head at the both of them. “Questions at the end.” He stopped them. “So. We need ten people to get them all out. We also only vaguely understand where the tower is, because of how it was shielded. But, as long as we go in with the intent to aid and not to harm, we’ll be able to spot it.” He explained the cloaking effect. “We also won’t be moving the totem, just in case.” James added. “The camracondas are aware of the fact that we’re arriving to help them. They are, in a word, refugees. I know there’s some concern that this is a trap, but if it is, it was one that was set in motion \*years\* ago. So we’re just discounting that it’s aimed at us, and acting in good faith. Now. The landing. Everyone participating in this operation needs to be aware that the arrival back in reality feels \*awful\*. The time distortion is what causes it, we think. But it won’t do any permanent damage. For a landing zone, we’ve marked specific spots in the back parking lot of the Lair; out of sight, but in the open, to prevent any teleport collisions. We don’t \*know\* if that can happen, but fuck if we’re gonna find out now, right?” He got a lot of affirmative noises to that one. “Once you arrive, you’ll be back on a normal timeline, so everyone still in here will still have time before leaving and meeting up with you. Just keep that in mind.” He took a breath. “Okay. Any questions now?”

The last ones out were himself, the eldest, and the high priestess. James took with him the body of the lady of the tower, and the assembled history of the first free camraconda colony.

And just like that, they freed a people.

109 striders (old wise versions) + momo totem (relative size?)

By the time the ambushers realized what was going on, it was too late. When the cupboards of the counter to their right burst open and dozens of those old-model vicious striders crawled out like steel trapdoor spiders, the Order was already thirty feet away and behind a pile of tangled chairs. When another set of cupboards right in front of them revealed the same force arrayed against them, before anyone could get a shot off, Momo slapped her hands together, popping a red orb into a complex ball that she’d build to house it. Everyone nearby her winced slightly, but then she flung it into the crowd, and the striders went \*nuts\*. The smaller ones started tearing at the bigger ones in fury, and the bigger ones didn’t even fight back, looking like they were just scrambling in panic to put distance between themselves and the column of humans moving through.

James had felt the totem for just a moment when Momo had activated it. Relative size. He knew exactly how he was compared to everything within about a hundred feet. Not a huge deal, on average. But for a strider? Especially one without any built up sentience, created in the last day or two just to be a weapon? That must be some heavy existential dread to cope with.

109 maimframe

There was a maimframe.

Hidden behind this last wall, with one more low wall keeping it out of sight of the tower. The bulky tank shell rose up on multi-jointed legs, a dozen firing ports swiveling online at once as they registered James and Alanna in their sights, glossy blue film flickering to life around it. It looked like someone had built a PC, been told they could scale it up indefinitely, and then just shrugged and kept adding stuff until it was the size of a minivan. Then they gave it patchwork armor plating and four claw-like legs that left holes in the linoleum as it stomped forward.

His skill orb fired up somewhere in the abstract space of his soul, knowledge and ability flooding into his blood and bones and muscles. The pistol in his hand was already up, and firing, as he kicked off the ground and exploded forward fast enough that he could feel painful pressure against his insides. Every shell enhancement he had was dialed up as far as possible, even his red orbs sparked in his mind, driving him to flow with the mood. And the blue he’d absorbed expended its last charge. Break Technology shattered one of the shield drives on the maimframe; though he was sad to see it had a backup. Either this one was smarter, or just older.

“Shit!” James yelped as a spike caught his thigh, slicing through the weaker armor on the side. But the thing wasn’t focusing on him anymore. He popped up, unloading another magazine into it before ducking back behind the table as the maimframe opened some kind of port on its side facing him, and let out a high pitched whine that started to \*melt the table he was using as cover\*.

110 stuffed shirts

Order Of Endless Rooms Operations Manual.

Section 3-1, Part 5 : Officium Mundi, Life Forms - Stuffed Shirts

Stuffed shirts, also called paper pushers or Dilberts, are not human. This is important. They will appear to be humans wearing business dress, and performing normal office duties, up until you see their faces. The face is always a giveaway - they either have one, and it is instantly recognizable as not being a person, or they do not have one, which has the same effect but in a less unsettling way.

Stuffed shirts drop variable sized yellow orbs, or mid sized green orbs. To date, they are the source of the largest yellows on record (size five). These orbs are unique - see Section 5-1 Part 1 (Yellow Orbs) for details.

The strength of this form of Life is proportional to its orb, and is not standard like much of the other Life in Officium Mundi. Lower threat versions are still capable of throwing armored delvers one-handed, while higher threat variants have been witnessed to snap bone in their grips.

They are known to shift their forms to become quadrupedal, achieving very high speeds and using ramming as a form of attack. Also, be aware that those with faces can remove those faces, deploying them as Masks - see Section 3-1, Part 3.

Composition is entirely cardstock and shredded paper/dust, including the clothing. Despite having high strength, they are still fully material, and either fire or liquid damage them rapidly. Parts separated from the main body lose rigidity and durability instantly.

Recommended tactics are to engage directly with at least two-to-one odds, and attempt to douse it with water to limit motion. Shooting it in the head also works.

118 high school -> setup -> monster doors

This school had a sort of airlock design to the front entrance. Two big sets of double doors, and then two single doors on the outside; all of them leading into a kind of central room that had a fancy floor emblem, and all the school’s trophy cases and stuff, before leading to the second set of doors that led into the building proper. There was also doors off the sides of that interior entryway that led to the office, on the left, or the library, on the right. It was cramped, and inefficient, and James disliked it immensely.

Right now, he disliked it because the doors were \*dripping\* with some kind of black sludge that ran through the cracks and pooled near their base, and he could see inside that the liquid rose up to about knee height. Also, the handles for the doors on both sides appeared to be organically separating into something that looked like barbed wire; plant-like strands with ferocious metal burrs on them.

118 high school -> dugen setup

The group burst through the space where the entrance used to be, and into a place that James didn’t quite recognize.

The floor was a bowl, indented in the front lobby. The stairs to the second floor had been copied, and placed half-jutting out of the wall of what once was the administration office. The stairs, both the original and the new set, were elongated to inhuman proportions. The area looked like what would happen if someone had fed the school into a machine learning algorithm, told it to generate another school, and then just taken the first distorted result that came out.

118 highschool dungeon -> lights ? monsters ?

“No.” Simon grimaced. “And look.” He pointed up. Some of the lights overhead had those strange black cracks through their luminosity. There were more of them growing on the lights farther away, though the ones overhead seemed still for now.

118 student or monster what is it name ?!?!

The thing let go before anyone got to it. All James saw of the thing was a flash of fluid brown fur and molding scales, as a creature the size of a small horse made curving bounds across the small open space and through the door of a dark classroom on the ground level.

118 ratroach = ((see notes previous time in this dungeon, seems a name has been chosen))

When the first ratroach dove out of the liquid darkness and tried to knife Sarah, Alanna was already moving. Her fist struck it like the wrath of a vengeful god, and it folded sideways as chitin and bones cracked under the blow. The shiv made from the leg of a desk chair went clattering sideways, and Simon rolled out from behind the door, snatched it up, and brought it down through the thing’s throat.

118 high school dungeon + ratroach spawner

“It’s spawning new monsters.” James said grimly. “Doesn’t work if we’re in here, or maybe if there’s light. I dunno.” He groaned. “Shit, if there’s more rooms like this… we can’t move forward if this is behind us pumping out these fucking things. Why is it even \*doing this\*?!” James shouted, waving an arm outward at the empty room.

118 james + high school = claiming room from dungeon

Something shifted, as James spoke. Something he felt rumbling in his ribs like an earthquake, only it was all around him and not under his feet.

Overhead, black flakes poured off the light fixtures like coiled vines, hissing smoke and dropping to the floor to burn away. On the walls, small holes that had been dripping black sludge sealed up behind ordered concrete and drywall. And all around, the feeling of \*wrongness\* snapped off like a switch had been thrown. The darkness banished in an instant as the overhead lights beamed perfectly mundane fluorescent rays through the classroom.

“Noooooo.” James held up a finger as he drawled out the word. “Naw. No.” He glanced at the shocked faces of Alanna and the others. “Can’t be that easy, right? No.”

118 rat-thing

They should have brought guns. Outside the windows, on the other side of the closed interior door, James could see the scrambling form of some kind of rat-thing. It had six clawed legs, and it scratched furiously at the floor in places before flinging itself forward in bursts of movement to a new spot. It sniffed at the bodies of the dead high schoolers. It took a bite of soft flesh with jagged, infected teeth. James wanted to shoot it. James wanted to shoot it out of a cannon, into the fucking sun. But it moved on, and he was left feeling relieved, rather than anxious or vengeful.

They struck down the ratroach that lunged for them rapidly. Something about these newly spawned ones made them weak, or maybe just disoriented. They were naked, unlike the ones from the Sewer itself that had been scrounging the scraps from slain students, carrying only their makeshift weapons. And they were so, so fragile, James thought as he jammed his knuckles through this ones’ eye, popping the aqueous humor before ushering the second team through the door.

118 claiming room from dungeon = again

They claimed it, just like he had, and the room snapped back to something resembling bright, ordered reality.

119 rat-king

The thing was a rat-king designed by someone who had \*heard\* of rats, in theory, but only ever seen close up pictures of their skulls. Two meters across, it was almost a ball of jutting muzzles and teeth. Near its center, fifty panicked, furious, unthinkingly hungry red rat eyes peered out at the world. Skin and muscle were pulled across it in taut and random sheets, sometimes it was exposed bone, sometimes it was almost a normal rat. Except that each of the ‘heads’ that made up its creation were three feet long, with snapping fangs and crushing jaws and \*far\* too much flexibility and motor control for what should have just been an unconnected mouth and neck.

They were hiding because so far that had proven effective. The things - there were three of them in the school so far - were near-blind, deafened themselves with their constant rodent screams of fear, and probably couldn’t smell anything over the choking scent of sewage any more than the group could.

The twisted fusions of rat faces were also pretty dumb. So, as soon as it passed by their little hiding spot, Cold-Wind-Friction froze it, briefly, and everyone slipped around the corners of the locker segments they were on. The squealing picked up at a higher volume a second later, but the team was already moving on, unspotted.

119 multiple monsters

They were \*all\* on guard. The team had to fight through hell to get here. Ratroaches were one thing, but when the skull-kings started showing up, and the carpets of beetles, and the animate sludge tendrils where the leaks had gone on too long, it turned every step into a potential ambush with something seemingly designed to make them gag. Every one of them was uncomfortably marked by ichor, blood, or sludge in some pattern, to the point that Cold-Wind-Friction had started asking about whether it would be more effective to put him in a shower, or a dishwasher, to get the scum off. And he wasn’t even waterproof, fully.

119 monster spawners and claiming terrortory

Their running duel with the dungeon’s forces through the halls had also led to them ‘claiming’ two more spawn rooms. Both of them had been empty of human presence, and they’d had to double back to reclaim one when a squad of ratroaches broke past them in a skirmish. It led to a working understanding of the dungeons that they’d never quite put together before, but that fit for both the Akashic Sewer, and Officium Mundi.

119 monster spawners and claiming terrortory

The dungeons were perfectly capable of changing things in their territory. And, it was becoming increasingly clear, ‘their territory’ was not specifically the compressed outside-real-world bubbles that they tended to find them in. There seemed to be an almost physical restriction on them, though; if they wanted something to be territory, they had to \*take\* it, and hold it. And so far, there hadn’t been a single change made while anyone was capable of seeing it happen.

Observation, and occupation, were the limiting factors. And it had clicked in James head fairly quickly that this matched the Office as well; they had claimed the tower by the door, and for whatever reason, the Office never claimed it back. It never reset, because it was their territory, not the dungeon’s.

119 dead body + maggots + cocoons = swarms of maggots

James approached first, kneeling down to check for a pulse that he knew he wouldn’t find. He couldn’t see a face, but the person was clearly in a police uniform, and maybe he had a gun on him.

Not knowing how to explain, James just pointed, trying to distance himself from the body. Or what used to be a body. And he didn’t have to explain. Because out from under where there should have a been a human face, tragically twisted in death, there was instead a wave of glistening white maggot-things, inching their way across the rug, disturbed by James shaking their home.

They spread out from the officer’s body, the hunched uniform deflating as more and more of the maggots flowed out, following their brethren. Where once there had been a corpse, now there was only a writhing mass of insects, slowly finding a collective direction, climbing the wall.

Climbing the wall. James made a mistake, and looked up.

Overhead, the ceiling was covered in cocoons. Dangling white protrusions, finger length, hanging from the ceiling like a layer of grass. The maggots climbing the wall seemed intent, now, on joining the others, as the whole swarm shifted directions; slowly inching their way upward.

119 door = 16 red sparks to open it = door telegraphs ?

“Sixteen.” Read the number in red neon, projected just past the handle and sitting as a clear marker that the door was not just locked, but \*sealed\*.

“That’s bad.” James said, tilting his head to catch the attention of the three others who were circled around him, watching the halls. “Check it. The dungeon locked the door.”

Sarah clicked her tongue. “Maybe it’s just harder for it? Or maybe the door’s only locked on this side. Or… they’re…”

“Yeah, enough of that.” James reached out again to pay the sparks out of his growing pool of death points. But again, held off at the last second. “Seventeen. \*Eighteen\*. It’s ticking up.” He grimly concluded. “And fast, too.”

It was Cold-Wind-Friction that replied to James’ confusion, digital voice the same calm tone it always was. “It telegraphs. We are moving. It is watching. Does not want the outcome; obstacles.”

“Yeah, what he said.” Alanna agreed. “It locked the door \*now\*, because it saw us moving for it. It’s upgrading it as fast as it can, but it must be hard because we’re watching. Open the damn door before it gets out of range.”

119 pipers?

“Lua, where’s Secret? He was with you.” Sarah gently asked.

“He led off one of the pipers.” Lua said, composing herself to look up at James. “He said he’d find us, but he hasn’t come back. He couldn’t hurt them; said they weren’t in his domain?” She sniffed, wiping at the corners of her eyes. “I’m so glad you came. Sorry to complicate your day off.”

119 skull-ball-thing + skullaton = new monsters?

James went first, boots scattering broken glass and slipping a little on the uneven surface. Dave had a lot of magic, but he was still working on fine control, and it showed. But it got the job done, as the group made the drop ahead of the skull-ball-thing rapidly closing in on their rear. Sarah was the last one down, covering their retreat and the slower camracondas with a magnetic snap an a launched spear. No red sparks indicated that she hadn’t killed the thing she’d already decided to call a skullaton, but it shattered a couple of the leering visages and elicited a pained scream that bought them time.

119 door = 220 fire sparks to open

They hit the ground, and formed a loose line as they started moving to the fenced gate to the field. The revolving metal bars were kept shut for high school sporting events, but otherwise should have been open. Now, though, a glittering red “two hundred and twenty” shown on it. James paid the cost without thinking; he’d killed enough ratroaches today that he’d need a dozen doors to even start to dent his pool of deaths.

119 some kind of spiked pipe trap, or a cloaked football monster or something = new monsters / traps

It was a straight run across the field, and they took it at a reasonable pace. Nothing was chasing them, so they jogged, or slithered, enough so that they were moving quickly but not enough to exhaust themselves before more fighting. Overhead, two helicopters did lazy circles; news or police, it didn’t matter really. James spent the whole time waiting with his nerves on edge for part of the field to unfold into some kind of spiked pipe trap, or a cloaked football monster or something. But it didn’t. And they made it to the sheet metal shed on the other side without incident.

119 graffiti (not monsters but for green fire points?) + No name eaters (monsters)

The walls. There was something weird about them. His instincts knew it, but he hadn’t quite figured it out yet in a way he could put into words. They were that same grey concrete as ever. Jagged rocks and pipes, splatters of some dark goop, random graffiti, flickering red emergency lights, jutting faucets and spikes…

There was graffiti here.

It was written in pens, in highlighter, and in a couple cases, in blood. But there was a \*lot\* of it. And it had \*names\*.

“Guys.” James nudged Anesh, who was trying to get some chunk of debris out of his shoe without letting his foot touch the floor. “Look. No name eaters.” He pointed around the room, and everyone’s eyes followed.

“You think Secret was here?” Sarah immediately asked.

“Doesn’t feel like meme corpses.” Alanna mentioned, like that was a sentence people were allowed to say casually. “But the last time we were here, we could barely make out the words, and especially not the names. So what changed?”

120 high school dungeon -> arena = empty, then another arena that is empty

They stepped out into an empty arena.

No jeering, snapping crowds of ratroaches in the ‘stands’. No single monster to greet them with a knife and an offer of an easy exit. Just an empty floor, freshly carpeted in crushed asphalt from their last visit, an unguarded rusty iron portcullis, and those standing tilted lockers over by the exit.

“Anyone got any green sparks?” James asked grimly into the silence, motioning to the lockers as his voice echoed flatly like he was all by himself in a gym.

Half an hour later, when they found another empty arena, James was starting to get annoyed.

They were standing in the middle of another one of the exit arenas, though this one had polished wood for its floor. It could have been elegant, or at least a usable basketball court, if it didn’t also have intentionally jagged splinters and rusted nails pointing upward every few feet. The gate here was a single slab of granite, also eager to charge them a few hundred red sparks to, presumably, head back to reality.

120 doors + floor hatch

More tunnels. More pipes. They skipped over doors in the walls and a hatch in the floor. They passed by a question about bats written in blood on one of the small patches of exposed concrete around them, which Dave answered without thinking, earning him a flaring addition of a few green sparks. They still failed to find anything trying to fight them.

120 massive cave/room + massive large size door

“There’s something over there.” Alanna pointed off in a random direction. James followed the line of her finger, and sure enough, there was… well, it was just a spot. It could have been miles away, but it was there. Somewhere out there. He glanced back again at their entry point, and jerked in surprise to see that the room extended around the massive vault door. The door itself was just perched in the middle of the flat plane, like everything else. A portal back to a realm that itself had only one open portal back to reality.

“Virgil.” James commanded. “Keep that fucking mapping program going.”

“I’m doing it manually using…”

“Just… dude, just don’t let us get lost in here. If we lose track of the door and can’t telepad out, we’re dead. Slowly.”

120 crystalized piece of everything and nothing = dungeon core?!?!?

Up on the pyramid, Sarah crawled around to Graham’s front to face the kid. He was still standing there, arms raised, face looking upward. He didn’t acknowledge her approach at all, so she glanced up to look at what he saw, and instantly regretted it.

He was reaching for something wrong. A point where the universe had lost its grip. A crystalized piece of everything and nothing. It was raw, unmitigated, potential. Bound only by the imagination.

120 unknown creature

“Oh dear.” The voice from behind Sarah made her eyes go wide, but she didn’t turn around.

“Graham.” She said as calmly as she could. “I know you can let go. No one’s mad at you. But we need you…” Her eyes flicked up to that point of nothing and everything, that \*thing\* that was, blatantly, the point from which this whole dungeon had grown. “We need you to put it back. To let it back in. And then I need you to \*run\*!”

The last word came out as a strangled noise as the creature picked Sarah up by the throat, stared at her for a second, and then turned and flung her down at the ground.

120 skullball = (((((i think it is noted before hand for a monster, double checking)))))

“Oh shit! Secret!” James exclaimed. “What happened to him?”

“Oh. He, and you’ll love this, he got \*lost\*.” Alanna cracked a grin, dispelling the dark mood for a minute while she looked at James' disbelieving face. “Yeah! Turns out, when all the maps are public and everyone knows how to get places, Secret can’t take directions for shit! He ended up in the gym, cloaked a whole bunch of kids from a skullball, and then hid until Nate found him.”

123 pencupines (nope) = quill dogs (correct name) = quillbeasts (seems quill seems name with dogs/beast afterwards)

There was one other larger creation they’d seen. It looked like someone had taken a full bushel of pens and pencils, and turned them into a porcupine. Dozens of layers of \*very\* sharp implements fanning over its back like a series of coats, rattling and rustling as it waddled across the carpetgrass. They’d not tried to engage the things - which James wanted to call pencupines and which Anesh said lacked originality - mostly because at one point they’d seen one of them rear up and lunge forward to snap a strider out of a burrow with alarming speed. The motion had revealed a sinuous body, a bare skeletal structure made up of flexible desk lamps, with the coats of quills looking more like manes as it rose up. One big plastic cone and the light bulb inside served as the face. But it didn’t emit much light; instead the bulb just cracked open along a zig-zag line, and glowing teeth had scythed through the shell of the unaware stapler.

“You know how the pencils in here are always, like, unfairly sharp?” James had asked his partners as they stood on a ridge fifty feet away, watching the thing compress itself back down to a dome shape and waddle back into the taller carpet.

“Because it just sheared through the back half of one of those quill dogs!” Anesh hissed. “Get on the damn desk and hope they can’t climb!”

“Quills. Of course.” James patted Anesh on the shoulder. “That’s perfect. Cause they’re porcupine quills, and writing quills. Genius.” Anesh didn’t bother to correct his boyfriend on the unintentional nature of the pun. He just took the compliment, and focused on their new mortal peril.

123 dungeon -> unknown creature (mole like) (carpet cleaner ?!? )

James noted where she was pointing. There was something bowing the grass as it moved, a tunnel being carved through the thick carpet. But whatever it was, the thing was low enough to the ground that it was practically invisible to them. It was making a wavy line as it plowed ahead, but weirdly, the carpet wasn’t staying trampled behind it. Instead the material was springing back to full height, almost as soon as the thing was past.

“You’ll hate this.” Anesh told him. “It’s a carpet cleaner. Like a roomba.”

When it came near them, it didn’t breach through the tall wall of carpet strands and into their little clearing. Instead, it skirted the outside. James caught a glimpse of a glittering silver body, like a beetle’s shell. Thin gossamer wings, just barely cocked up over its back, caught the hot light from above. It was flat, keeping itself \*very\* low to the ground, but even from here they could see the way the grinding roller of teeth and bristles on its front brought down the carpet strands in front of it as it passed by. And it was \*big\*. James placed it at maybe three, four feet across. It might have been flat, but it had a lot of mass, and it had this feeling of something heavy. Tough. The whirring from it sounded far less mechanical when it was this close; more like the singing of crickets than the engine of a vacuum; but as it passed by, and got farther into the distance, the noise went back to sounding more and more like the distant attentions of janitorial staff.

“Well dang. That was weird.” James offered. He took in the rolled eyes and derisive snorts the others gave him, and brushed them off. “I mean, yeah, even compared to what we normally see here. Look, even the little guys around here all curled up under the desk again.” He motioned to the cluster of striders, now huddled in their burrow. They’d been getting more familiar with the delvers, and as they hadn’t tried to staple anyone, the group had let them be. Now, though, they cowered in a terrified cluster. “Do you think those things just roam around here?” He asked, deciding not to try to poke at the scared staplers.

“They must.” Anesh mused, speaking as he thought through it. “They clearly do something to the carpet. Maybe it’s a kind of hunting ground maintenance thing.”

“They keep the carpet tall and clean so things live in it so they can eat those things?”

“More quillbeasts?” James asked. “For real, though. We’ve been in three fights so far, I don’t wanna deal with a carpet cleaner, this armor is \*stiflingly\* hot, and also it turns out broken bones stay sore for a long time? Did no one want to tell me that?”

END BOOK 2