NOTES book 3 monsters

MY MISTAKE OR AUTHOR IN SPELLING there is a half-crow / half wasp. i noted a few times as half cow vs half crow

131 high school dungeon-> cockroach

Every now and then, the group paused to listen to the rattling of something crawling through the pipes overhead, or the rush of some kind of liquid around them. More than a few times, a bug the size of a human fist would scuttle out from a crack and dart toward their ankles. None of them made it that far; not a single one of the people here had any interest in letting a magically spawned cockroach climb up their legs, and a heavy stomp was more than enough to deal with the things.

Every time they killed one, a small sputter of red sparks would light up the corpse for a half second before being drawn into whoever had killed it. James had checked when he came in, and after a familiar brief flash of pain, had gotten a number to appear around the back of his hand; the sparks counted kills, and now they knew that they didn’t reset, no matter how long you were out of the dungeon. So if nothing else, they’d have enough to leave through a gate if they needed to. The last time James had fought this place, he’d killed enough creatures to have quite a stockpile.

131 high school dungeon-> some kind of aggressively glowing blue liquid

After a half hour of walking in a mostly straight line, they came across an intersection in the tunnel. A simple T, with the wall in front of them having a rusted door set into it. It was also the first place they’d seen with its own light in the whole time they’d been walking; a puddle of some kind of aggressively glowing blue liquid forming a pool underneath a leaking pipe that it kept dripping from.

131 high school dungeon -> door -> 3 multiple elbow arms = ARM BULBS (name)

James stood in the middle of the intersection, one foot on the jagged step that led to the door, while Daniel braced himself against the wall, and fed enough red sparks into the handle to convince it to crack open. He had his makeshift staff held out in front of him, prepared to smack anything that charged out of the doorway once it was open.

He was in absolutely no way prepared for a trio of elongated human arms to burst out of the opened door. They were easily several meters long each, with gooey flesh that practically dripped off of them, shimmering translucently in the different lights that the delvers had brought. Multiple elbow joints on each one of them, that seemed to not be limited to a single direction, as the things jerked and thrashed across the floor, leaving behind a trail of their own melting skin.

Through the rushing noise in his ears, James heard Daniel and Sarah yelling something indistinct. His heart started hammering in panicked fear as hands with a grip far stronger than should have been possible started clawing their way up his armor, closing in on his neck and unprotected face. Then, one of them jerked sideways as Daniel brought the heel of his boot down on a joint so hard that it popped apart, splattering a yellow pus that smelled like year old eggs onto the floor and up James’ leg. The disconnected hand instantly went slack, and James brought his other hands up to grab the last one that was trying to get to his eyes.

It had too many fingers, he realized the information as his hands latched onto it. If that was the \*only\* thing going on, it would have been horrifying on its own. But as it stood, he had bigger things to worry about. So he grabbed at one of the thumbs and a couple of the fingers that were seeking his eyes, both his hands finding as solid a grip as he could through the gloves and the slippery flesh of the attacker, and James yanked his arms as hard as he could in opposite directions.

The arm tore in half like wet cardboard; a slurping sound accompanying the fountain of yellow pus down the front of his armor. Then the thing started \*crying\*, the noise almost exactly like that of a human baby as it screamed and wailed, whipping back and forth as it slithered away from James body.

Then there was a magnetic snapping noise in the air, the crunch of wood on bone, and everything went silent.

James stepped up beside her, keeping an eye out around them and trying not to gag himself. In the beam of his flashlight, he could see through the doorway that the wooden spikes she’d fired had found purchase in some kind of hanging bulb of flesh and slime. The arms had been growing out of it, and there were more attached to the thing that simply weren’t long enough to reach past the door. Now, it lay dripping that same pus, as well as a soft fountain of red sparks that flooded into Sarah’s still-raised hand.

They tackled a couple more rooms, neither of them with the arm bulbs. They ran down the tunnels at a reckless speed when one of those balls of skulls and screams made itself known behind them. They waited patiently as Daniel carved his way through a patch of wall that didn’t fit the rest of the place, hoping to find some kind of magic item buried there.

131 question monsters = green fire

The room itself was like the waiting room for a principal's office. Only without any windows, and the chairs were all turned to piles of sharp kindling, and also the carpet had rotten away to a black sludge. It just had that feeling, though. The walls had words scraped into them, and in the light from the single flickering bulb overhead, James and Daniel read through them.

There were a couple of math questions; word problems about how many people died in a burning building. One thing that seemed to be asking how many children perished in the book The Lord of the Flies. And a much larger diagram that seemed to show a person having their organs ritually torn out.

Daniel answered the math problems easily enough. James took a minute to run through the plot of the book he’d liked the least in high school before giving an answer to that as well. Then the two of them stood looking at the last diagram together.

“Is it… does it want us to identify the different organs?” James asked.

“Maybe it’s art. Are we supposed to know that it’s cubism?” Daniel wondered. They waited, hopeful, but no green sparks came to life at his words. “Alright, organs it is.” He conceded.

“Well, that’s the heart, obviously. Lungs. Li… no, kidney.” James pointed and labeled the pieces of the pictured person. “What else?”

“Eyes are organs.” Daniel offered.

James shrugged and tried it. “Okay. Heart, lungs, kidney, eye?” And that was enough for the biology portion of the quiz; a dozen radioactive green sparks burning to life and flowing into James’ hand as he named the pieces of a dismembered image. “Great.” He said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

131 high school dungeon -> hairless rat = ((((i think this one already noted down))))

So they kept at it. Picking off bugs, and at one point one of the weird hairless rat things that lunged down from the ceiling. Avoiding the dripping fluids and drifting spores. None of them talked much, because even though it would have been a distraction from the smell, no one wanted to spend the extra breath in this place.

137 slimes? = not yet but most likely made of printer ink

A hand flopped against his coat as Anesh halfheartedly tried to knock him over. “Yes. But no. We have the wallet now. But kind of? Think of all the things that you’d expect to find in a dungeon. How many do we actually have?”

“Well, we haven’t fought a slime, yet…” James started.

Anesh groaned. “Oh, bollocks. Can you imagine a slime made of printer ink?”

James matched the noise, thumping his head lightly on the wall. “Yes. Great. Cool. I’m sure that’s a thing we’ll see shortly. Anyway. Um… health potions? Treasure chests, I guess. Do the briefcases count?”

137 clutter ascent (fredrick home -> attic -> dungeon) -> dark shadow space (i made up name for area) = Fredrick Umbra Armillary the First = intelligent humanoid

137 may (sarah pet raincloud) -> created by clutter ascent for rain -> IQ of a cow?

138 high school dungeon = glowing blue or orange gel goop stuff = (((( are we getting closer to slimes yet? )))))

“Alright, alright.” James stepped forward, putting his hand on the door’s bar. “Okay, everyone stay close. We still don’t know if maps even work here, but we’re going to retrace our steps from last time. For our new guests, remember, don’t touch the glowing blue or orange gel goop stuff. We don’t know what it does, and we don’t want to find out.”

138 high school dungeon -> monster updates

**ball hands = hand-vine plants**

They’d fought through the Akashic Sewer to reach this point after a couple hours of travel. This time, their progress was slowed by near constant ambushes of the small rat things with the glowing blood, and from the hand-vine plants that had begun growing between the pipes, even outside the quiz rooms.

**sludge = melted sarah hood = ((sludge being new monster?))**

Sarah’s hood had actually worked, once, against some of the sludge this place disgorged from its dark pipes. One of those overhead pipes had cracked and split as they’d passed underneath, and Sarah’s reflexes were just fast enough to shove Alex out of the way before some of the substance had splattered her.

The hood had melted. Rapidly. She’d gotten it off in time, but had spent the next half mile cheerfully complaining that she was going to need to get hairstyle advice from Momo.

**door = more active with an attack and opening on its own**

Texture-Of-Barkdust was invaluable, providing classic camraconda overwatch and making any encounter with a single enemy almost too easy. And maybe the Sewer agreed, because toward the end, there was a door that slammed open like an overwound spring, and caught the camraconda with a jagged edge that seemed placed specifically to try to cut her throat. It hadn’t connected properly, but it had hurt her, and Alex had given the other two humans a crash course in camraconda first aid to stop the ‘blood’ loss.

139 dungeon -> tower = a strider

Getting down the ramps was significantly easier than getting up. Assisted by gravity, James made good time, and didn’t wear himself out too much as he looped through the strange structure. On the fifth or sixth floor, he paused for a second as a source of motion caught his eye, and waited motionless until the strider that had been poking its way along a desk edge made itself known.

“Hey.” James said to it, in a quiet, but firm voice. The strider instantly froze, pen legs locking in place as the two eyes on its front and top swiveled to look at James. “You’re fine.” He told it. “Just don’t be a jerk, and you can stick around here, okay?” It didn’t move, except to take a tentative step backward. “Seriously, it’s fine. Head upstairs if you want to say hi to Anesh. He’s nice.” James told it, before giving the strider a nod, and heading off on his way again.

Sometimes, the little stapler nightmares were instantly hostile. Or worse, deliberately violent, stringing lines of spiked staples or setting small traps before trying to harm or kill passing delvers. But sometimes, they were passive. Or, in this case, afraid. Skittish, maybe even shy. And with those, James couldn’t help but think about Rufus, the first friend he’d ever made in this place, still actively trying to turn James’ apartment into a cactus farm. There was a lot of value to showing a little compassion.

139 dungeon -> vending machine = ((((finally became a monster!!! well maybe)))) + purple orb effect from silver soda can?

Neither Daniel nor Dave bothered to correct him on the timing of the event. Thirteen minutes later, at an intersection in the hall that had one too many right angles, someone asked what was actually inside the vending machines in this place. Two minutes after that, while trying to pick the lock on a vending machine, James was struck in the leg by a projectile can of Maximum Grape, bowling him over and putting his head at exactly the right spot for the vending machine to spray him down with some kind of cola, dispensed like it was a fire hose and not a slot at the base of a vending machine.

“I!” James declared as he stood up, wiping carbonated sugar out of his eyes, “Am tired! Of being dunked in strange liquids!”

James glared after then, then glared at the vending machine. “Okay, I’m not mad at you.” He told it, calming down a little. “Sorry for trying to crack you open.”

There was a wet thunk from its dispenser slot, and James looked down to see, in a puddle of soda, a tall, thin silver can. He picked it up gingerly, letting the liquid drip off it. ‘No Worries’ read the label.

“Thanks.” He said. “I’m setting Daniel on fire.” He added, mostly to himself, as he set off after the rest of his group.

It was only when he cracked the drink open and took a swallow of it that he got his final surprise. A light pressure in his mouth, followed by a \*pop\*, and a mental notification that rang through his whole self.

[Shell Upgraded : Heart +18 Average BPM]

“I’m gonna be so much nicer to the vending machine in the Lair.” James muttered. “Wait, have these things been able to dispense purples this whole time?! Dave! Wait up!” The sticky fluid now hardening on his skin was forgotten as he jogged to rejoin the others.

140 dungeon -> vending machine

The revelation that the drinks from the vending machines could, under at least one condition, contain the most rare purple orbs, had been an important one. And the single vending machine that they’d hauled out of the dungeon and transplanted to this office space was an easy way to continue testing that, exploring the seemingly endless menu of options they had on offer.

Someone had suggested just cracking it open. James put a stop to that idea pretty quickly, though. He wasn’t the only one who had the \*feeling\*, when he looked at the drink dispenser, that the monolithic machine was somehow \*very dangerous\* if provoked. After his personal encounter with one last week, he hadn’t even really wanted to move this one again. Best not to risk it.

142 camercondas = color patterns on them to tell difference

“What, the snake?” Mark glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah. How do you keep track of their names, anyway?”

“They have color patterns, and I have a memory upgrade.” James said. “I meant that she grabbed our dishes.”

143 dungeon -> unknown beach errr ocean (ink) monster

Then, just as they were about to turn away, a hundred black lines exploded out of it like needles, spearing dozens of the pieces of paper that flew around it. Even from this far away, they could see its back open up to reveal some kind of fleshy interior, which the paper birds fell into by the score, before the creature sealed itself back up and dove again, this time not resurfacing.

“Well that was fucked up.” James stated.

“New plan. Let’s never go in the water.” Anesh added.

“It’s ink.”

143 decision tree -> deal = 100 yellows for 8 purple = getting worse and worse deal.

“Even more reason!” Anesh threw his free hand into the air, turning to continue, this time with a bit more of an angry stalk to his walk, toward the decision tree.

The rates had gotten worse. They traded a hundred yellow orbs for eight purples, resigned to the bad deal, and headed back. There was still plenty of time left tonight, and they planned to copy and test all of these for armory candidates before the delve was over.

143 stuff shirts

“Well, whatever.” Momo grumbled. “Anyway, stuffed shirts are weird.”

“Weird how?” Bill asked.

“Weird because they’re the only one that we’ve seen that drop \*either\* a green or yellow.” James answered. “Also, Momo didn’t say this, but we don’t know how the red life is different at all from yellow. Or how it relates to the dungeon, in terms of taking orders or not.”

143 paper pushers + orbs = orbs have names attached

The dungeon \*probably\* made orbs, somehow. Life in here, almost certainly, made more life. Striders often had that kind of look like they’d been put together a little haphazardly. It was entirely possible their nests were all started by one strider with a pile of orbs, a desire for family, and some determination. No one had ever witnessed it directly, but they all knew that yellow life could make more yellow life. After all, Rufus had made Ganesh, so long ago.

“Yeah, the paper pusher thing confuses the shit out of me.” James admitted. “Like, do the green ones make subservient yellow ones? Or are they both just made for different reasons? And what determines it?” He shrugged. “The green ones seem to be able to take over other dungeon life they come across; they always whip up strider swarms around them.”

“Maybe it’s a promotion?” Daniel asked.

“What?”

“Like, the yellow ones get promoted to managers. And then they become green orbs?” He sheepishly suggested. “I mean, a lot of stuff here doesn’t map perfectly to actually working in an office, but, like.. these things are shaped like employees?”

“Huh.” James made a motion somewhere between a nod and a shrug. “I mean, it’s the best theory so far!” He said. “It’s probably something way more sinister, though. Oh! Here’s a fucking weird thing! These guys all have names!”

Momo jerked back, dropping the orb she’d been doing basketball tricks with. “Wait, what?” She asked, letting it fall into their cart.

“Oh yeah! We’ve scanned a dozen or so of them with an iLipede. The paper pusher orbs always read as people’s names.” James let out a long breath of air. “Man, the first time that happened, I actually threw up? The names are apparently random though. They don’t map to anyone who’s actually gone missing or died, even though coincidence is gonna make at least one name line up sometimes.”

143 paper pushers

“So…” After a few more comments and questions chased the conversation in familiar circles, Bill asked something most new people eventually asked. “What do the paper pushers… do?”

“Lots of things.” James gave a small nod to a passing strider walking on the cubicle walls. “Sometimes they’re delivering mail or messing with the computers. The real ones, not the shellaxies. Sometimes, the green ones go out into the real world and try to kill people. No idea why they do that, but we’re getting good at stopping them. Sometimes they’re acting like fantasy novel bandits, blocking paths with walls of rolling chairs and ambushing us. Other times, they sit at desks and stare straight ahead, and don’t move.”

“So, they’re not people?” Bill seemed concerned.

“I think they’re like everything else here. They could be people, or they could be… I mean, ‘monsters’, even though I don’t like the word. They’re individuals.”

“Oh!” Momo chimed in. “Sometimes they wear faces! Like, the masks. They wear the masks like faces. And it doesn’t look any different until they tear them off and throw them at you.”

“Masks? The sticky note things?” Bill asked.

“Yup. We never came up with a clever name for them.” Momo lamented. “Got any suggestions?”

143 PAPER PUSHERS + HAVE PAPER MASKS ON = Masks of Amontillado

Daniel sheepishly added his voice to a lull in conversation. “In my head, I call them the Masks of Amontillado.”

143 dungeon -> tank cave -> a tank + something growing?!??!

On the way out, James stopped to take a few pictures on his phone. One of the tanks, the crystalline growths out of the ground and walls that seemed to slowly fill with pure water, wasn’t full of water. It was near the entrance, and he hadn’t spotted it on the way in, and now that he saw it as they passed by to leave, he had an instant spike of anxiety about the singing they’d been doing.

Because it wasn’t empty, it was full of something. Something red and black that twisted around itself in slow spirals, like the storms of Jupiter.

The tank was only half full, but as James paused to frown at it and make a record, just in case someone else had seen this before, he saw another drop of liquid fall from the ceiling and slide perfectly into the mouth of the tank, adding to the substance.

Was it something growing? Some kind of poison waiting to erupt? Was it alive, and watching them? It looked \*mean\*, was this the dungeon finally being done with their presence?

“What’s that?” Bill asked, nudging James out of his anxious speculation.

“Nothing good, I’m betting.” James sighed, pocketing his phone.

146 fredric home -> attic -> dungeon -> cupboard = treasure chest / mental game

He found himself, at one point, in one of those empty dark spaces of the mind. He’d tried to open a cupboard, more out of curiosity than anything else, and realized only after being transported here that it was one of the attic’s treasure chests. Half an hour later, he put the finishing touches on the mental image key he’d put together. Piece by piece, building the feeling of a cold coffee shop in early June, the hiss of the espresso machine and the chatter of the patrons overlapping in a pleasant background noise, just before the lock clicked open and he found himself back in reality.

James pocketed the little bond stick that the cupboard held, wishing that they could recreate that effect on purpose and for fun. Those mental puzzles were actually really satisfying to solve. Like a combination of a coloring book and a sudoku.

146 akashic sewers = thought it was ratrouch leader and not actual monsters when stated ?!?! or are they new monsters?

“Because it’s a good habit.” James said. And he didn’t really need to say more; the kid was already moving to copy him without having to be told twice. But this was the Sewer, and screwing around here was a bad idea. “Also, there’s these maggot things here that can burrow into you and you don’t feel it. Or if there’s any rapid mushroom growths, that’s a problem we’ll need to burn off. Now turn around so I can check your back.”

146 ratroaches

James sighed. “Ratroaches are basically humanoid, almost always hostile, and smell awful. Their weak points are organs, because they aren’t very well put together. Literally. You can sometimes see vital points through their skin. Aim for those. Or go for disarms; the pseudo-shoulder joint on their extra arm is \*very\* brittle, and you can snap that off with a good kick. Don’t let them cut you with their knives; they’re almost always infected with something.” He glanced over at Ethan, the kid looking a little sick.

149 dungeon -> beach -> ink ocean = thorned whale creatures

The printer ink ocean was right out. There were a \*number\* of old notes from Alanna, and they all ignored the challenge of building a pipeline, factory, and shipping network. No. Karen actually bothered to give that idea a stern frown. It didn’t even account for the thorned whale creatures that lived in that particularly viscous sea.

150 EL road dungeon -> it wasn’t gravel, but thousands of dull metal burrs on the side of the road

The road stretched away from them, so far that it melded with the horizon. Gone were the trees and scrub brush. In its place, only flat dusty sand and gouts of red rock jutting out of the ground surrounded them. Ahead, El was slowing her car to a stop in the middle of the road, pointedly avoiding the gravel shoulder, and from his vantage point Anesh could see that it wasn’t gravel, but thousands of dull metal burrs on the side of the road.

150 EL road dungeon -> Plants of greens and yellows

Weeds grew up from that pile of metal. Plants of greens and yellows so bright against the dull sand that they almost hurt to look at. A few years ago, before having seen a little of how weird the real world could be, James would have thought them dungeon constructs. Now, though, he just recognized the mullein plants as the kind of things that grew in the natural world, and just looked bizarre if you ever stopped to take a closer peek at them.

150 EL road dungeon -> 2 suns racing for noon (1 red + 1 yellow)

Overhead, a pair of suns that looked far too close for anything to live under them cast down angry rays, baking the road and the sand around them. One red, one yellow, side by side in the sky like they were in a close race to see which one got past noon faster.

150 EL road dungeon -> speed bump (fish like)

“Something in the road!” His partner shouted at him, and James jerked his foot back, looking down to see a small bulge in the asphalt darting in swooping circles around his driver’s side door. It wasn’t the only one, either; there were maybe ten or twenty of the things, slowly circling their cars like mobile speed bumps.

El had cracked the door to her own car and was standing in the footwell of the driver’s seat, arms over the roof as she called back to them. “Oh yeah! Watch out for those!” She yelled. “They don’t jump or anything, just don’t let ‘em get your toes!”

Anesh by this point had put his seat back and crawled into the back seat, getting a good look around them at the small pavement creatures. “She must have a lot of good luck.” He muttered as he watched the school of speed bumps move. They didn’t look like much; just moving blisters of asphalt. Maybe the side of a particularly thick arm. But the way the moved really did remind him of fish, and so far, he hadn’t seen any of them try to break the surface.

“Long distances, eh?” He grumbled under his breath as he looked down the shimmering road. Behind him, there was a grinding noise, and he turned to see Anesh tossing chunks of a ham sandwich onto the street, the little bulges in the asphalt quickly swarming them and splitting open into rows of grinding gears that snapped shut around the morsels of food and pulverized them. “Making friends?”

“I wanted to see what they looked like inside.” Anesh shook his head with pursed lips. “I don’t like it.”

150 EL road dungeon -> side roads + gas station + secert roads

“Now we go find something.” She said. “It’s safer during the day, so we’re in luck! If we stick to the side roads, we should be able to explore without anything serious trying to jump us.”

“Sorry, side roads?” James looked down the two lane highway again. “What, exactly…”

“Can’t tell you exactly.” El shrugged, seeming to not even notice that she wasn’t kidding when she said ‘can’t’. “There’s usually a lot of space between stuff though. This is normal. Normal for this place.” She corrected. “We’ll need to raid a gas station at some point. But it’s fine. Time passes differently here, so there’s no real pressure.”

“Okay! Keep an eye out for secret roads!” El yelled back. She seemed to be in good spirits, which was suddenly infuriating to James, who felt like he’d almost been tricked into a dangerous situation. Partially by El, partially by the dungeon itself.

150 EL road dungeon = car no dust tracks + gas station + caltrops (spikes in road)

“Contact right.” Anesh’s voice was calm, but sharp, and it was almost with \*relief\* that James finally had something to focus his tension on.

To the right of the road they were driving, maybe two or three hundred feet away, there was the clear silhouette of another car, driving parallel to them in the sand. It wasn’t kicking up any dust, though, which was why James hadn’t spotted it. It also wasn’t getting closer; just keeping pace with them as they drove.

“We’re coming up on what looks like a gas station.” James said, eyes on a rapid rotation between the side windows, his mirrors and the road. “Radio El, ask her what the plan is.”

He heard his partner talking through the two-way in the backseat while he kept the car on the roadway, and a minute later, Anesh relayed back to him the conversation with El. “She says there’s a break in the caltrops around buildings. Pull around behind the garage, and kill the engine. The other car should pass us.”

James gave a quick “Aye”, and started to let the car drift down from its considerable speed so that he could make the turn off easily. El didn’t bother slowing as her own vehicle jerked in what seemed like a wild, heart stopping motion, through the gap in the metal spikes on the roadside, whipping around behind the simple brick structure of the gas station they’d come up on rather abruptly. James didn’t know why she was in such a hurry, but since nothing was trying to kill them, he decided to take it easy and not flip the car over.

150 EL road dungeon + memetic + (car monster?) + gas station stuff inside it?

“Damn, I was hoping.” James snapped his fingers. “Okay. So, you’re clearly worried about the other cars. And since we’re standing here, I’m guessing parking lots are safe. You can give us \*advice\*, since you told us to kill the engine, and I’m guessing that’s what they’re after? So. Do we check out the inside of the building now?”

“There’s some cool stuff in them sometimes.” El said. And then, realizing what she’d just said, she shivered, and added, “And I… can’t explain what. Holy shit, now that you point this out, it’s everywhere, isn’t it? I hate this!”

“Welcome to memetic warfare.” James blew out a long breath. “It’ll be fine. We’re working on some countermeasures. Also, you survived in here without our help. We’ll be okay tonight. Just do what you can, and we’ll pick up the slack.”

150 EL road dungeon -> mechanics (monster?) + vulture (birds) (monster)

She made a farting noise with her cheeks. “I never shoot anything anyway.” She admitted. “I mostly sneak around and outrun anything hostile. I had to shoot one of the mechanics once, and it just attracted a flock of these weird ass vulture things.”

Anesh cleared his throat. “Sorry, did you say ‘culture things’? What the hell…”

“No, \*vulture\*. They’re like big feathery birds.” El corrected him.

150 EL road dungeon -> gas station -> inside = maze of store shelves + wet floor signs + other cars that made noise, just sound effects + cash register + broken glass case + cork board + scrap of a travel brochure (map) + gas pumps outside (on/off button inside gas station)

Inside was a maze of store shelves and wet floor signs. Literally. Literally a maze. It took the experienced eyes of James and Anesh exactly two and a half seconds apiece to realize that the inside was larger than the outside; a fact they’d just grown to accept probably applied to more structures than it didn’t.

The sharp beige metal shelving units, all of them dotted with holes to slot signs or hooks into, rose up to the ceiling in most places. In the few spots where they didn’t, it was clearly because climbing through the raised holes was the only way to progress.

Similarly, when the signs said ‘wet floor’, they \*meant it\*. James was still dragging around a gallon of water in his soaked pant leg from where he’d tried to step over one and misjudged the distance.

Nothing ambushed them. There were no traps. Just a particularly unsafe jungle gym to roam through. Once, they heard a truck rumbling by outside, but El informed them that that just happened sometimes. There were never any other cars that made noise, just sound effects.

When they reached the front counter after about twenty minutes of light exercise, and basic maze solving abilities, all there was to be found was a dusty cash register, sitting open with nothing in it, a broken glass case that probably once held cigarette, and a cork board against the back wall with half a safety notice, and a scrap of a travel brochure.

“I am disappointed.” James said, crossing his arms and staring out the plate glass window at the pair of old gas pumps between them and the road.

“I figured you might be.” El said. “But hey! Scrap of a map!” She plucked the thumbtack off the board and held up the two inch square of travel advertisement.

“Does the petrol work?” Anesh asked, looking under the counter for the buttons that turned on the gas pumps. He found them, and it didn’t take long for him to click them into the active position. “I guess we can find out.”

“Holy shit. That’s why they only work sometimes.” El’s mouth hung open as she leaned an elbow on the solid part of the counter and half slapped herself on the forehead. “I’m a fucking moron!”

150 el road dungeon -> scrap map piece

“So, what’s the map do?” James asked, pointing to the scrap in El’s hand.

She looked at it, eyes narrowed like she was focusing.

Nothing happened.

“Nothing, in this one.” El shrugged. “You want it?”

James took the offered bit of map. “I’m confused. Do the maps sometimes do something? Are they magic? Is this where your spells come from? Am I asking too many questions you can’t answer? Is-“

“Yes.” El angrily burst out an answer to his last question. “Thanks, jackass! God, you know I can’t say anything, why are you reminding me?”

“I’m kind of an idiot.” James admitted, apologizing. “Sorry. I’ll try to be better.” He pocketed the piece of map - about ten square miles of the Yukon from the looks of it - and shrugged. “So, back the way we came? On to the next place?”

150 El road dungeon -> fill up gas first (can not say) = magic gas

“Oh, we can just go out the front door now.” El pointed, and sure enough, there was a painfully obvious route straight to the front door which absolutely had not been there when they’d come in. “Also we should gas up first.” She said, cleaning her throat, “For reasons I cannot say.”

James still wasn’t clear on exactly what the magic gas did, exactly. He hoped it was a health potion for his car, though. He and Anesh had spent a good five minutes coming up with the ways different classic D&D potions could interact with a car.

150 EL road dungeon -> speed trap + cones along side road

“Nothing.” Anesh sighed. “I appreciate El pointing it out to us, but… what the hell is it supposed to do? We know she’s got spells and a mana pool, she didn’t have any problem sharing \*that\* with us a year ago. So this has gotta be part of that, right?”

James eased his foot onto the brakes, matching El’s speed as they rolled past a speed trap that he had to assume was going to be literal in some way, before El shot away from them again. He shook his head; that girl was a little too into the acceleration her car could put out. Once they were back in the clear, he spoke again to Anesh, “I remember her saying something about finding an artifact in here that upped her mana pool, so the map probably isn’t that.”

150 EL road dungeon -> scrap map piece

Instead, the map Anesh was keeping of this place showed exactly five forks in the road, and even though they were weird and in non-languages, there \*were\* still signs every now and then to help them find their way out. Instead, the closest thing to a highway rising toward divinity was the road they were on now having four lanes instead of two. Instead, they’d pillaged a gas station, and the biggest danger was heatstroke from the duel suns overhead.

150 EL road dungeon -> parking garage obelisk + code words getting around memie

He grabbed the two-way out of the passenger seat and radioed ahead to El. “Hey!” He opened. “Are we stopping at the parking garage obelisk coming up? Or is that another thing we avoid?” James was a smidge bitter; El had made them skip a roadside coffee stand, for reasons she couldn’t explain but sounded serious.

“Alright, I’ve got this shit figured out!” El’s voice came back, and James had to push down a laugh that he felt might be a little mean given her current status as ‘cursed’. She’d been trying all day to find ways around her language barrier. “I’ve got a \*good feeling\* about the parking structure.” El pronounced the words with deliberate, snarky emphasis. “My mood board for parking structures includes environmental disasters in the Gulf of Mexico, pictures of birds, the police and, David Bowie’s crotch. Also more stuff I haven’t been able to figure out yet!” El sounded positively smug about that.

Anesh snatched the radio out of James’ hand and brought it to his mouth with an exasperated look. “Neither of us know what any of that means!” He complained.

“I know what some of that means.” James said.

Anesh hit the radio button again. “Nevermind! Apparently James speaks your weird code language! See you when we stop, I guess!”

James barked out a bout of laughter. “Okay, so, some kind of problem with oil, some kind of bird thing, and ‘the police’ could mean anything, but it’s probably not the band, so it probably means this dungeon’s version of puppet life.”

“And the last bit?”

“The David Bowie thing? It’s a reference to the movie Labyrinth. It means there’s another maze in there. Which I’m guessing is every building here.” James thought about it for a second as they approached the building that was looking taller and taller by the minute. The parking structure was easily twenty stories tall, all cold grey concrete and harsh lines. “Actually, I’m wondering if El could just say ‘labyrinth’, since that’s not an accurate description of the things.”

150 EL road dungeon -> parking garage = has secuirty

“Well, we’re gonna need to sneak in.” She said. In sharp contrast to the boys, El was mostly unarmed. She had a knife up her sleeve, and a can of spray paint overfilling her jacket pocket, and that was about it. “You know how banks have security on the front door?” She asked pointedly.

“Okay, I feel like you’re gonna get really good at metaphor by the time this is over.” James snorted a laughing breath at her words. “So, up the side, climb in the second floor gap?”

“Yup!” El cheerfully commented. “I brought a grappling hook!”

150 EL road dungeon -> parking garage = inside parking garage 2nd floor

It looked like a scene from a post apocalypse movie. Cars had been thrown against each other, covering the space like a mechanical barricade. Only it wasn’t just across the aisles; cars were parked in some of the spaces as well, only stacked two or three vehicles high. There were places, Anesh quickly spotted, where the obstacles weren’t even entire cars. Just a windshield, or a single door, unconnected to any frame. It was the perfect cluttered puzzle; offering just enough information to frustrate without any indication of where you were supposed to \*go\*.

150 EL road dungeon -> parking garage = inside parking garage 2nd floor = watch out for anything with the hood popped

“Not in this one.” El said. “They change a lot. Also, watch out for anything with the hood popped.” She added as she slipped forward into the gap between half a sedan and the sideways bed of a pickup truck.

150 EL road dungeon -> parking garage = inside parking garage 2nd floor = vulture

It had matted and filthy black feathers and a puffed out chest that was larger than you’d see on all but the largest natural birds. Claws of steel cable cut into the concrete below it, grinding away at the rock and leaving pockmarks around the top of the things perch. It looked like an overly large vulture, only with a few tweaks to its anatomy.

Like the fact that in place of a normal vulture’s face, it had the boxy metal and glass of an old model security camera.

“Well \*that’s\* something you see everyday.” James quipped.

The bird’s view rotated as it twisted its head back and forth. It hadn’t heard them, but it was still keeping an eye on the main path up the stairs. “We should circle back and climb the pipes.” Anesh suggested.

“It’s fine.” El waved him off. “They can hear, but only barely. If we blind it, it won’t react, and we can just slip past.” She’d pulled the can of spray paint out of her pocket and was shaking it with a rattling ‘clack clack’.

El darted forward, James following closely and Anesh moving behind them. She didn’t hesitate to rush the concrete pillar in the middle of the open space, and with an almost casual motion, reached around at an angle and blasted pink spray paint into the ‘eye’ of the vulture perched there.

James had been tensed for a fight. He’d preemptively set his bracer’s block target to ‘bird claws’, the closest he could get to just saying ‘birds’, and his hand was on the hilt of the sword on his belt. But El hadn’t been kidding about the lack of reaction. As she pulled back and the creature’s sweeping gaze passed back and forth over them, it’s vision completely blotted out, it didn’t even twitch except to rustle its wings a bit. He wanted to say something, either about how that was insane, or disappointingly easy, or something. But then he remembered they were still mere feet away from something that could easily cause some serious problems if it heard them, so he kept his mouth shut as they moved on.

150 EL road dungeon -> parking garage =

The third floor was more maze-like. The biggest threat was sharp edges, and that wasn’t meant to discount just how sharp some of the edges got.

150 EL road dungeon -> parking garage =

The fourth floor had the **first car that threatened to detonate on them**. James spotted it ahead of them, something about it giving him a bad feeling, and they took the path of climbing over the stacked cars rather than pass by it. Up close to the ceiling, pressed against the roof of a truck as they slithered toward the lines of piles that separated them from the ramp up, **James could see cobwebs and grimy oil stains, and he wondered how both of them had gotten there.**

On the fifth floor, the top of the ramp was blocked by an RV that could never have actually fit inside the structure, no matter how much bigger it was on the inside. They had options to get around it, **but the increasingly loud metallic scratching sound pushed them to duck inside the camper, waiting for whatever was patrolling around to pass**. While they were there, James took the opportunity to peek into the cupboards, turning up a bag of **open potato chips that looked like oil spills made solid**, and also **half a page out of an atlas, showing the top half of the city of Johannesburg.**

“More map stuff.” He said to El. “This one isn’t giving me magic either.” James joked.

**“Hang onto it. I’ve got some reference material at home.” She cryptically responded.** “Also I hate this mind magic bullshit. I dunno if I’ve said this a lot, but until you guys showed up, I never had to deal with this crap.”

“Wait, \*us\*?!” Anesh demanded. “What did we do?!”

150 EL road dungeon -> parking garage =

The sixth floor had almost no obstacles at all. In fact, it looked like a normal human parking garage, with a handful of scattered cars taking up parking spaces, and nothing else. I**t also had a light on in a small security office, a sharp white glow coming through the windows.** They’d spotted it next to the doors to an elevator as they turned the corner from the ramp up. **No one brought up the elevator; every one of them so suspicious of any convenience in a dungeon that they already had a gut instinct to avoid it.**

150 EL road dungeon -> parking garage -> 6th floor -> security office = sentry = no clue what else monster to call it.

Instantly, the thing in the office moved, and as it scuttled out from the room, James’ heart leapt into his throat and he hoped Anesh had found a \*really\* good hiding spot.

It was four thick metal limbs, like girders with joints in them, jutting out from a body that was suspended a few feet over the ground and looked like a ball of black and silver gears, all turning and grinding against each other with every step. The legs went up from its form at forty five degrees, before sharply angling downward to where they met the ground with a trio of dull spikes. On the sides of its legs, exposed gears and belts connected to its main body held up thick wheels, which it could presumably use if it were to flatten itself to the ground. Wires trailing spark plugs dangled beneath it’s main body, rattling against each other with an electric hiss of cracked casings.

It was, James realized with an uncomfortable gulp, wearing a shredded blue jacket and hard billed cap, in a mockery of a uniform.

With jerky motions and the echoing noise of metal striking smooth concrete over and over, it darted around the corner, climbing \*over\* one of the parked cars with a grinding screech as it hunted after the car alarm still blaring.

The rope made a buzzing noise against his gloves as he held onto it. And then, suddenly, there was no more rope, and he fell the last story to slam into the hard pavement. El was there, yelling something and helping him and Anesh up, and with stumbling, painful steps, James found himself running for his car, his head reeling from the impact.

Behind them, the sentry slammed into the ground in a brutal mess of metal shrapnel. And as James fumbled to start his engine, he saw the broken thing on the pavement in the shade of the parking structure stand up anyway, and begin taking stumbling steps toward them.

150 EL road dungeon -> parking garage -> 6th floor -> security office = simple iron gear ((item)) + “Big World Travel Magazine”

It was a running joke with James at this point that he’d given up being surprised a long time ago. But he was still a little caught off guard when the monstrous thing’s office was just… normal? A desk, a coat rack, a monitor for watching security cameras. This could have been in a regular parking garage anywhere on Earth.

The only thing that stood out was the simple iron gear, hovering five feet off the ground and humming like a well tuned engine, just at the back of the room.

El grabbed it, while James swept the desk and snagged a copy of “Big World Travel Magazine” with most of its pages removed. And then, as the gear’s humming snapped to nothing, they turned and bolted back out of the room.

153 EL road dungeon = trains

“Sometimes, there’s trains, off in the distance. I’ve never seen any tracks, but there’s absolutely trains. I’ve been considering getting something that’s good for off road, and checking it out. But the place obviously doesn’t want anyone going off the highway, right? You know the caltrops disguised as gravel? There’s more of that out there. Just random strips of it in the desert. I tried walking as far as I could once, but didn’t find anything aside from that and some plants. The place is kind of stupidly obvious about how it pushes you into driving.”

153 EL road dungeon = ghost cars + on ramps ((teleporters / mazes))

“Those ghost cars can get on the road. \*Real\* pain in the ass. They’ll follow basically forever. And you might have noticed, but there aren’t a lot of places to hide or make turnoffs, so if one gets on your tail, you’re in it for the long haul until you get to an on-ramp. Oh! There’s highways, too! Or at least, big fucking snarls of road that the on ramps go up to. I think they’re some kind of long range teleporters, but I’ve never gone too far in one except to dodge a tail.”

153 EL road dungeon = magic gas = heals cars

Anesh had exactly one question, toward the end of their double checking, and El had an easy answer for it. “Oh yeah, the pet- the \*gas\* heals cars. And don’t infect me with your weird slang.”

153 EL road dungeon = sand goons

“Okay, so, can you tell us more about breaching the entrance now?” James asked her as he and Anesh walked up to her car.

El was propped on her elbows out her window, giving them a dangerous grin. “Weirdly, I already told you everything about it.” She shrugged, hitting her head lightly on the roof of her own car. “Oh! We’ve gotta watch out for sand goons when we come out. Sometimes they like to hang out by the entrance, when it’s night.”

“What the hell is…”

“It’s four legs of sand, and that’s it. They try to bury you, basically. Easy to outrun though. But they lurk around sometimes.” El clarified.

153 EL road dungeon = 2 suns = time issues

Twin suns hung overhead, having shifted only slightly from their previous positions, pulling apart from each other and drifting toward opposing horizons. **If yesterday, they’d been able to spend half a day here to only minutes outside, then the days and nights here in subjective time must last for years. A cycle stretched so far it would be more like seasons than days to anyone inside it.**

153 EL Road dungeon = ghost car / sedan = insect / bug car creature = dune buggy (james name) + monster truck (anesh name)

The incoming vehicle was a bulbous little sedan, cutting toward them at what looked like a thirty degree angle with the road, coming in from their left. James tossed the radio back to Anesh, who started signaling to El, while he focused on keeping the wheel under control as he pushed the car to accelerate.

He could see the incoming vehicle in the wing mirror now. And it was all of a sudden apparent that this thing wasn’t any human made car at all. There were strange seams down its outside that flexed organically in the whipping hundred mile an hour wind as it closed in. The headlights twitched back and forth, strangely living metal eyes tracking prey. And its front hood was studded with small rough bumps, nodes that had clearly grown in a pattern, but were grown nonetheless.

And then, in the maybe three seconds they had before the oncoming creature hit them, Anesh jammed the gun as hard as he could into the crook of his shoulder, pulled the trigger, and held it down.

Impact sites dotted the car-shaped thing that was rushing them, tiny craters beginning to pepper its outside. The windshield and a couple of its side windows cracked, spiderwebbed, and then shattered to jagged shards. Anesh tried to keep the full auto stream of bullets focused on the hood of their attacker, aiming to shred the engine that probably worked as its heart. He’d considered going for the tires, but he would have had to shift forward too far to avoid shooting their own interior, and also the thing had just plowed over the strip of spined metal on the side of the road like it was nothing, so that probably wouldn’t be super effective.

It was almost on them when James grabbed out at the world with his absorbed blue, and yanked a waist high wall of road up, inches in front of their enemy. He did it relying on instinct to time it right, and only got maybe thirty feet of distance. \*Something\* grabbed back at the road, ripping it from his command a split second later. But it was enough to fumble the vector of their attacker, and force it to jerk wildly back, wobbling across the highway as it steadied out parallel to them. He bought them four more seconds of contact time.

Anesh didn’t waste it. He lashed out with his own blue, [Separate Alloy] rending away chunks of the component parts of some of the metal pieces of the creature, its armor shedding away and clattering to the pavement in the rapidly fading distance. Then a trigger of [Munitions Dump] as the magazine ran dry, the gun bracelet restoring him to operational status as a backseat turret.

The bullets started finding their mark easier. A headlight eye shattered, and the impacts on the hood weren’t shedding sparks anymore but puffs of rapidly aerosolized liquid.

Then, as it whipped back toward them, the raised mounds on the hood and sides all puffed outward with some kind of steam, and the other car returned fire.

The noise was a screeching metallic rattle, like the world’s angriest rain, as impacts struck the side of their car. The rear view mirror, far to close to James’ head for comfort, jerked sideways with a cracking noise as a long organic needle barely missed his face and jammed into it. He kept his hands on the wheel, and \*begged\* the engine for more speed in his head, trying not to think about the fact that the plastic strut holding the mirror in place was \*rotting\* at the impact point.

And then it almost hit them. Except, mercifully, James’ shield bracer \*worked\*. A glowing dome of light, painfully bright even against the double suns overhead. And the monster deflected, physics defied. It didn’t seem even remotely shaken by the strike, though; bouncing off and then whipping back toward them, pulling up without attempting to ram again.

**James barely, \*barely\* had time for his brain to register that the thing was insectile, all the lines and shapes of it echoing the aesthetic of ‘bug’.**

Now, as their pursuer pulled along side them with a speed that still came too easily despite all the bullets in it, it opened its doors.

Which is to say, the passenger side doors irised out like hostile fanged apartures, revealing fully the inside of the car, and the lifeless human skeleton in the driver’s seat; seatbelts growing through it’s ribs like vines.

Those same seatbelts were alive and thrashing in the other seats. Pouring out toward them, pulled backward by the whipping wind but still reaching for their car, reaching for purchase.

Anesh fired into them, shutting down multiple attempts. But there were hundreds of them, all with tiny fanged grippers on the end. And one gun wasn’t enough to kill it.

So he changed tactics, reached out with his own asphalt manipulation, grabbed the road under his target, and yanked it upward in the sharpest spike he could manage. No finesse, no focus, just a desperate attack lobbed off.

The car dodged. It \*dodged\*. Jerking away at the last second, looping around the jutting spire of asphalt like it knew it was coming. Which, it honestly might have.

James noticed, out of the corner of his eye. James made the connection, mental enhancements on full burn, his perception pushed so far beyond human limits it was painful.

“Anesh!” He bellowed over the continuing gunfire. His partner shifted slightly; he’d heard. “Spike! Left side! Three! Two! One!”

And then, in place of saying ‘zero’, James used his own power to form a spike to the right of the car, driving up toward its hood and right side tires, while Anesh, catching on almost right away, did the same on the opposite side.

“Dodge this.” They declared in unison at their enemy.

It \*almost\* did. They weren’t perfectly in sync, and at speeds of over a hundred miles an hour, that meant that a split second was still fifty feet of distance. But the other car was going just as fast. And while it slid smoothly past the first spike, taking only a small scratch to its hull, the second one caught it inside the wheel well.

The asphalt, rapidly jerked out of their control, had already done its job. The tire shredded, the chunk of rocky matter punched deep into the inside of the car, digging a furrow in the metal of its chassis before it got caught, and yanked the vehicle downward at a strange point before the asphalt itself snapped.

The enemy car, from an outside perspective, exploded shrapnel outward from its side, pitched forward at high speed, and then, teetering forward, gave into physics and toppled onto its roof, rolling over and over, shedding shell and metal and shattered glass behind it across a mile long stretch of road.

Then he practically jumped out of his own shoes as gunfire rang out behind him. James spun to see Anesh, standing over the crashed car, having fired a burst directly into the engine.

“Sorry!” Anesh called back, as James placed a hand on his heart and tried to pretend he hadn’t stopped breathing for a second. “It twitched!”

“Yeah, so did I!” James yelled back, heading over to join Anesh and popping his earplugs out. “Fuck, this thing is creepy up close too.”

It really was, with bulging protrusions across parts of its chassis, and half the metal stripped away when Anesh had separated the steel in its frame. It was hard to tell if the organic looking spurs of material were from an attack or from its natural growth. The inside was dripping liquid, thickly humid even under the dry suns, and the oily blood from the crater Anesh had just carved into its hood, along with all the other wounds, coated the road around it.

“I wanna call it a Dune Buggy.” James said. “Any objections?”

“I was thinking Monster Truck, but that might be too limiting.” Anesh shrugged, slinging his gun back to his shoulder to kneel down and examine the buggy’s tires up close.

154 EL road dungeon -> dune buggy -> wheel orb (err tires from dune buggy forming an orb object)

Anesh held up a ball of something black and smooth, wiping a dirty hand on his pants as he did so. “Look at this.”

“An orb!” James grinned.

“No.”

“Well, I tried.” He poked the bowling ball sized lump, and jerked back slightly as it rippled out from around the contact point of his finger. “What is this?”

“What remains of one of the tires. It folded up into this when I cut it away. I’m gonna harvest the others, can you help?”

James jogged back to their car with a wordless grin, and then jogged back, carrying the shortsword that had been tucked under the driver’s seat. “Yes!” He enthusiastically exclaimed.

His arms shifted, his blade moved, and James felt the calm pearl of emotion that was “I have done this \*exactly\* right” as he hit the rubber of the tire at the one spot, the one angle, with the perfect amount of force, to slice neatly through it and carve it away from the rest of the wreck.

It promptly curled up into a semi-liquid ball, which Anesh rolled over with a foot and swept up. “That looked stellar, and also thanks. I’m gonna go stash these.” He said, heading back to their car and popping the back door to roll the rubber orb in.

154 EL road dungeon -> dune buggy (car) -> dune bug -> map over it -> another space -> james guided map of what james wanted from map

154 pathfinder = was just a map = EL dungeon road = pathfinder home = """james got another infomorph?!?!""""

“Nothing that I remember.” El shrugged, looking down at the front of the overturned car. “Huh. Uh, hang on.” She knelt down, setting her shotgun over to the side as she grabbed the frame of the car and shimmied herself across the road so she could look into the hood. “What’s this?” She asked James from her position under the wreck, looking up at the thinly glowing projection that had caught her attention as she had looked at the dead dune bug.

James dropped to his knees and bent down to look at what she was looking at. There, through a gap in the torn hood, was some kind of floating visual projection. James couldn’t exactly describe it, but it was two things. One was very familiar, for some reason, and the other was ‘a map’. He knew it was a map. It was shaped like a map, in a way that was inescapable.

“Weirrrrd.” He said, rolling his armored shoulders onto the asphalt to slide in next to El. “I’m gonna touch it.” He said. ‘If I go insane, shoot me and tell Anesh I died doing something stupid.”

James would have frowned, if he had a body here, in this elsewhere space.

James understood. It needed to show him somewhere to go.

Alright, he asked it, take me somewhere that has really good burgers. I feel like I want a good burger.

The map rustled contentment, and relief, and folded itself into James’ mind.

He opened his eyes.

###### -------------

James took a breath of hot air. “Ah. No, it’s… well, maybe.” He opened and closed his fingers a couple times. “I might need some time to think about this. And it \*might\* be a trap. I think… I think it’s one of those tricks the dungeons pull. I think it folded a trap into a reward.”

“What happened to you when you passed out?” Anesh asked quietly. “And do we need to telepad back so Planner and Path can clear it out?”

“No no.” James waved him off, rolling to a kneeling position. “We worked it out. It’s a map. It… fuck, I just realized something!” He looked around, throwing his arms wide. “\*This\* is where Pathfinder came from!” James announced. “Remember? She wasn’t an Office construct! She started as a \*map\*, that a different dungeon broadcast in! This is her home!” He looked at Anesh and met his boyfriend’s eyes. “And I just got something like that.”

154 EL road dungeon -> vulture = leaves map marker behind on death + EL = has time magic to slightly edit past things to mess with current time line.

“I getchya. But we \*should\* still figure out where three fourths of the town’s population went, yeah?” James wanted to either say the words with a laugh, or a lecture, and he couldn’t tell which, so he split the difference and went for dry amusement instead. “It just seems a smidge important.” James paused suddenly, quirking his head to the side. He’d felt… something. Something different.

He turned to look at Anesh, and as he did so, El suddenly lurched forward, grabbed onto Anesh’s shoulder and lashed out a leg at James, connecting with his stomach and sending him sprawling backward onto the pavement.

James had a moment of shock, that never really got the chance to manifest into a feeling of betrayal, because as soon as he hit the pavement, wind knocked out of him like he’d put up a no vacancy sign on his lungs, he saw the vulture. It had perched atop the lamp post, in plain sight; the thing must have flown in while they were inside. It had three heads, all of them grim boxy security cameras, all of them triangulating down on him. And it was diving toward him.

It opened its mouth, and a sound like a tornado siren started to wail as if from a mile away, slowly building.

Then El yanked Anesh’s gun up, and sprayed the thing with bullets. The bullpup’s 5.7 ammo, easily capable of punching holes in a car, was more than able to tear holes in the vulture. Black feathers and shards of plastic and bone sprayed into the air, along with splatters of blood that darkened the scorching pavement with a hiss of steam as it came down like rain.

A second later, El stopped firing as the vulture’s corpos slammed into the ground next to James’ head.

“Fuck \*me\* this thing is loud.” She yelled, working her jaw and rubbing at her ear as she handed the gun back to Anesh, who stepped back from the girl who’d just taken his weapon away and eyed her suspiciously, even as he acknowledged the dead monster on the pavement.

James groaned as he pulled himself up. “Ow.” He said. “Oooow. My lunch. Oh, ugh, that feels awful. Whyyyyyyy.” He moaned, clutching his stomach.

“Sorry dude, I had to go way back for one specific thing, and I didn’t have much leeway to get you out of the way.” El was still talking too loudly, gunfire having deafened her a bit. “You okay?”

“Please explain.” Anesh asked her in a too-polite voice, hands keeping a steady grip on his gun even if it wasn’t in a firing position.

“She’s a time wizard.” James told his partner.

“I’m a… dammit.” El looked dejected. “I… have a spell that lets me tweak stuff. In the past. So that there’s always a way forward for me. And it’s not super flexible, but uh, it works. You know?”

“What did you tweak this time?” James asked. “Kicking me?”

“Oh, no. I… ah…” El shook her head, spraying drops of blood from her nose that she didn’t seem to have noticed. “I had to change two things. I don’t think the spell liked one of them.”

“Kicking me was one of them.” James stated.

“Yeah, the other one was getting Anesh to forget to turn his safety back on.” El said. “I had to go all the way back to yesterday for that. But it’s the kick that messed me up. Turns out exploiting my personal ass-saving ability to keep other people from getting their guts ripped out isn’t easy. And I am now way more okay with us leaving today.”

James blinked. “Oh.” He said. “I died a second ago?”

“Well \*no\*, because I fixed it.” El said, spitting out the cigarette that she’d accidentally ground into a mushy lump with her teeth while she was shooting. “Anyway. You okay? I kicked you kinda hard.”

“I’m good.” James said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Anesh slid past him, laying a hand on James’ shoulder. “One second.” He said. “I want the map from this one, too, if it has one. It could be important. And if not, it’s good to know if they drop them.” He knelt next to the vulture corpse and turned it over. And there, glowing light that wasn’t on the visible spectrum, was a map marker. He picked it up, and carefully did \*not\* activate it as he slid it into one of the pouches on his armor. “Alright. \*Now\* let’s go.”

160 EL road dungeon -> asphalt (vines) + road itself attacking

Not from the Last Line Of Defense, either. All around them, the wreckage of every car that had been in motion littered the sides of the streets. Asphalt grew from the roads and climbed the buildings like black vines, sometimes jerking suddenly to stab toward motion with wicked thorns. It tried that repeatedly against their cars, but Anesh was using his last charges of manipulate asphalt to shield them, and El just didn’t fucking care, letting her car take hits in places that would have demolished a normal vehicle, but for her just healed over in seconds. The main cost was in momentum, but the assault stopped once whatever was in control realized it couldn’t hurt them.

El knew where they were going, and she led them toward one of the main roads that crossed the city. Aside from the wreckage around them, there was no sign of other people, alive or dead. Nothing attacked them but the road itself. They just moved as fast as possible, keeping James’ velocity topped off as he slowly shaped the mass of asphalt he’d ripped up from a wobbly ball into a real weapon.

160 EL road dungeon

The road out here, as they passed through one of those undeveloped spaces between chunks of houses and businesses, was still doing whatever it was doing closer to the city center. Maybe a little slower, but all the same, the black asphalt was spreading from the road out into the dirt and grass around it with a vile determination; the stone flowing like veins to climb trees and power poles, smothering plant life and generating more and more asphalt. It was obviously making more. There was no other explanation for where it all \*came from\*. There was just too much.

160 EL road dungeon = guardian

“Eleanor asks you return to assist us.” She said simply, in that scratchy, yet composed, voice of hers. “We have located the guardian.”

Then they crested one of those gentle hills, and Alanna lost any sense of composure she had. Her eyes went wide as in the distance, her enhanced sight picked up the frame of El’s car. And also the thing chasing it.

It was a tanker truck. One of those big fuel tankers, a doubled up trailer of massive silver cylindrical tanks. The kind that were perfectly safe, but everyone was always nervous driving around anyway.

This one was not perfectly safe.

It didn’t have wheels. Or if it did, Alanna couldn’t see them. Instead, it writhed itself forward, arches of its body rising and slamming into the ground as it pulled its bulk forward. It didn’t have two tanks, it had \*eight\*, all of them too flexible, too vaguely organic, to be a normal Earth-made cargo trailer. Jagged geometric scales of metal plating shone along its coils, catching the light of surviving street lamps and the overhead moon like they were amplifying the beams and not just reflecting them. Streamers of metal and rubber sprouted off it like coral growths, making what was already a massive, dangerous creation look even more ominous and unapproachable. Where there should have been a trucker’s cab, there was instead a streamlined visage. Ten headlights in a ring around the outside blinking in sequence like rippling eyes, a snout with smokestack nostrils and exposed engine pistons along the forehead.

It was fast. Alanna could tell that just by the fact that she could hear El’s engine from here, and El was only barely keeping ahead of the dragon. She’d decided, basically immediately, to think of it as a dragon.

“Jaaaaaames!” Alanna didn’t take her foot off the gas, rushing forward to meet their end. But she did have a \*little\* bit of trepidation. Especially as the massive armored serpent paused to belch a gout of yellow-orange flame onto the road, only missing El’s car by virtue of the girl accelerating so fast her car blurred in motion.

The eastern dragon reared back, thick cylindrical body arching coils, but carefully not overlapping itself too hard. It’s face, the facade of a trucker’s cab looking more like a mask it wore than its actual features, split apart as it opened a metallic maw. Six jagged mandibles extending outward to welcome the oncoming vehicle.

160 EL road dungeon - > 4 small gears 1 1 large gear + asphalt = humanoid monster

Instead, all it had were dozens of small plate-sized objects, pale white bordering on dull yellow, sitting in stacks all across the road’s length as it wrapped around the mechanic’s hideout. Alanna had mentally connected them to land mines, and so, brought the car to a halt before running through them. Behind them, El slid her car into a similar stop, hopping out with Camille following in that impossibly elegant armored way. Alanna was already out too, Anesh following, before she realized that James might not be up for this at the moment.

“They’re gears.” El said suddenly, voice too loud in the quiet night air. And it \*was\* quiet all of a sudden. No engine noise, no distant crashes or screams. Just them. And a soft organic humming coming from the building ahead. “The piles of things. They’re gears.”

“Not metal though.” James commented, metallurgy skill kicking in. “They look… off color?”

Anesh sighed. “Okay, they’re obviously traps. Form up, move slowly, let’s…”

He didn’t get a chance to finish that sentence before the first pile started moving. The gears rattled first, then began to rise into the air. There were five in the stack, and they quickly took up a formation of one central one, with two smaller gears to the left and right, and two other smaller ones below.

Then the asphalt below the formation began to flow. Streamers of dark stone pooling up, forming into claw shapes that linked themselves up to the movements of the gears. The outline, the \*suggestion\* of a humanoid form.

The instant the asphalt started to cover the central gear, Anesh shot it. Realizing that whatever weak point it might have was going to be covered shortly, he slung his P90 forward and pulled the trigger from his hip, spraying bullets into the still-assembling form. His aim was a little wide, and he shredded one of the side gears first, causing a partially formed claw to drop back to the street and be reabsorbed, before he walked his fire across the central assembly and the entire thing collapsed.

“Hit the piles!” James yelled, as the other forty stacks of gears within eyesight started to tremble and shift.

He didn’t hesitate, snapping off all the bullets in his revolver into a group that was just starting to rise up, killing the core and leaving the rest of the bone gears to drop to the pavement and shatter. As his allies opened up on everything in sight, James reloaded with shaking hands, popping the chamber, dumping the spent casings, and pushing bullets into the cylinders in the first manual reload he’d done in months. He got one shot off, before the first of the automatons finished forming and rushed him.

James should have trusted her though. Because a second later, more of the creations, these ones fully formed, rounded the corner. Then another pack, from the other direction. Then, stomping after the smaller, humanoid ones, came a creation that balanced on three spikes and held three hovering claws around its core, each the size of a small car.

The creations were relentless. They didn’t move like dungeon life, they moved like fucking terminators. No hesitation or predator tactics, no concern for their allies, just advancing and swinging those rough claws at high speeds.

160 EL home town = order clean up of town

They coordinated with Nate, who had gotten a bigger picture view from Anesh. Searching the area, and widening their net to begin scouring the city for survivors and holdouts. There were parts of Townton where the arbitrary ‘claim’ the dungeon was forced into hadn’t taken hold, where property was never sold and there wasn’t a foot in the door. Some of those had survived the night, others had been overrun by more of the bone and road automatons, or other creations of the Mechanic. And they were his creations; the knights found several sites in hidden garages through the city where hundreds, maybe thousands, of bodies had been taken. The dead processed into fused and carved bone, used to power the road warriors.

They found how he’d done it, too. Extensive notes, which were useless now without the anchor that bound the nearby dungeon. Those, along with large quantities of the Mechanic’s tools, were ferried out to a secluded location that Research would use to pour over them and try to find anything of constructive value.

“What will you do with the machine?” Camille asked, startling James out of his nap. It was several hours later, the two of them having been left to their own devices after being declared medically stable, with the sun just beginning to lighten the sky. “The one he planned to use to make himself a god?”

“Oh. Burn it down.” James said. “Or something like that. No point to keeping it, since we don’t… you know… use humans as raw materials.” He shrugged idly. “You can’t have it, by the way. I don’t care if your dad could beat me up. No one should have something like that.” He turned his head, frowning at the building behind him still glowing with that inviting orange light.

161 tanker truck dragon = guardian of EL road dungeon (see above)

“First of all!” James protested. “I’m not really a ‘boss’. I just kind of give people resources and nudges, and they do things without me. Also, I just fought a tanker truck dragon, a crazed necromancer, \*and\* saved hundreds of people from extermination by an indifferent demigod! I’ve earned my beanbag!” He crossed his arms, causing a protesting tap from Rufus as the idle petting stopped.

162 Australia -> mountain dungeon = monsters and like of dungeon + how to leave dungeon + breath = velocity / mana pool for leaving dungeon.

“We need to know more, first.” James decided. “Also, on that note, give us a picture of the inside. Or at least, what you saw.”

Momo nodded, took a steadying breath, and started to explain.

As soon as she’d been dropped into the dungeon, it had been a struggle to stay alive. The entrance, which appeared to be at least a little consistent, was a **waist deep bank of soft snow that almost instantly infiltrated every crack in Momo’s outfit**. Her outfit, which was neither armor, nor designed for weather worse than a mildly chilly afternoon. The closest thing she had to cold weather gear was a Status Quo glove.

She walked everyone through the process of locating the trails of the others, moving away from the entrance. **They’d headed up the slope, because, as Momo bitterly stated, there was no \*down\* the slope.** Behind her at the entrance point was a sheer cliff. A howling wall of white blocking any longer visibility past that line, though she occasionally caught glimpses of distant snowcaps and harsh peaks.

There were **a few trees in the area, which all had dozens of branches that were gnarled in ninety degree angles, and were completely bare of any greenery.** Momo had avoided those, partially because the trails of the people she was after had too, but also because it was insanely suspicious. There were also **a few rocky outcrops, one of which had a small area of snow cleared around one side where the group’s path led. Momo told the assembled group that the reason would become obvious to her later, when she got caught out in a blast of frozen wind that had nearly taken her arm off with a spinning chunk of razor sharp ice. The outcrops weren’t that secure, but they made great cover from spontaneous weather.**

The trail continued, and by this point, Momo had been able to see a flickering yellow-orange light a quarter mile up the slope. She’d had to pass through a copse of trees, and here encountered signs of a fight. Blood, and splintered wood, and one tree that was missing half its branches. She’d tried to hurry, but she’d been trying to hurry this whole time, and the cold was, Momo reminded everyone, both instantly painful and very difficult to move through.

When she made it up to where the other three had camped, she’d found them **in a fight with a patch of snow that looked like it had just lifted itself off the ground and made use of rocks and ice chunks for eyes and teeth.** Color-Of-Dawn was down for the count at that point, and the younger kids were hiding behind Chevoy who had been trying to scare the thing away from their cave and fire with a burning branch. The engineer was \*not\* doing okay, and was bleeding from both arms as **she tried to fend off the snow beast**.

**Momo had punched it in the stone eye with her Status Quo glove, shattering the rock and killing the creature nearly instantly.**

Then she’d joined the others around the burning corpse of some kind of sticking looking creature, applying what first aid she could, and desperately hoping her telepad dried out enough to actually write on before they all died of exposure. **Or the three or four other snow beasts** that were slowly circling their camp.

Before that could happen, the other four had been offered the option to leave. They hadn’t explained how at the time, but Momo urged them to take it. Later, she filled the conference room in, **they’d put together from the offered intrusive thought that it was a function of the dungeon. You just had to be at a fire or other camp when the timer ticked over, as near as they could tell. They had just gotten absurdly lucky.**

Momo had entered later than them, though, and her timer was separate. But she’d sent them off, promised she’d be fine, and then **got really really lucky with drying out the telepad and blipping out before the pack of snow beasts closed in**.

**As a reward for her unorthodox survival, she’d gotten a message that was similar to what the others had, though a little angrier.**

[Cowardice. Deception.

Ascension : 122 ft.

Bestowal : +3 Breath Storage]

**The others hadn’t gotten the “deception” editorializing,** though the rest of the statement was all the same. None of them had gotten anything to actually use Breath on, and Momo was quick to inform everyone that it \*wasn’t\* just the ability to need less air for a while. It was as she was describing the texture of the feeling of having it that James made a realization.

**“That sounds like Velocity.” He said suddenly, interrupting for the first time since she’d started her story. “Yeah. Yeah! You’re describing a mana pool.”**

162 Authorities are a form of infomorph like Planner here = order -> R&D = has breading ground for authorities

“-Okay, rude.” James recovered from being interrupted. “It’s a trick. Anyone can learn it. So. The Authorities are a form of infomorph like Planner here. Except instead of being based on a compulsive assignment, they’re based on structured organizational authority. \*As far as we know\*. Nikhail recently bonded to one, and they’re getting along fine.”

“I have a mild problem with them.” Momo chimed in. “Because aren’t we supposed to be an organization that doesn’t have the kind of power structures an Authority would want to feed on? This seems like using them too much would warp how we act?”

James nodded at her in acknowledgement. “I actually had a conversation… wait, weren’t you \*there\* for this conversation? Oh, whatever. The point is, we don’t know a lot, but we \*do\* know we can fight back if they try to take over. Though I don’t think they actually could? And I, for one, am interested in how they’d grow when planted in an organization like ours, where power is more fluid, and responsibility is more personal.”

“That kind of covers my main concern, too.” Davis shrugged. “We’ve been keeping an eye on their ‘hive’ in a safe containment spot. It looks like there’s six or seven new Authority… larva?... that might be ready to be taken up.”

“Members of my people, curious, wanting more active roles.” Priestess-Under-Stone tilted her head toward Davis. “Perhaps a chance, here?”

“It should work, yeah.” Davis agreed quickly. “There’s no real inherent conflict, since they don’t come from the dungeon that might subvert camracondas. I can make sure a couple of your people are on the list of volunteers.” Around him, Planner shifted as the informorph adjusted itself into an ethereal copy of that mentioned list.

“You like everyone.” James reminded her, to which she just stuck her tongue out at him. The epitome of a professional. “Alright. So. Authorities, go for it. Make sure there’s at least some form of trust verification first, and \*tell Reed not to do anything stupid with it\*, but go ahead. Actually, do that this weekend, and let’s move hiring to next week. Stabilize any problems that come out of this before we drop even more people into the chaos.” He sighed as a few people made notes and noises of acknowledgement. “Alright. So. One last thing then. Who wants to go first?”

162 EL road dungeon -> monsters that are made from bones of folks that were killed

“We killed all the ones around where the Mechanic was.” Nate corrected. “But he’d made more, and they were actively making \*more\* out of the bodies of the civilians he killed. By the way, Karen, whoever in Recovery is managing burial services, put them in touch with me or Harvey, so we can streamline escorts.” He jerked a thumb toward the man sitting next to him, that nodded.

“Wait wait wait!” James whipped his arms up in a gesture of denial. “You’re telling me they’re self replicating?! This is… this is literally a potential end of the world!”

“Did no one tell you this?” Momo asked. “It’s bad, but it’s mostly okay. They can only use bones that were from people killed on dungeon territory. It was in the Mechanic’s notes. The problem is just that they’re all active now, and roaming around. Technically, they’re dungeon life. But even the ones that got near the entrance to the Road didn’t leave. I don’t think it wants them?” She shrugged. “It’s kind of fuzzy. Either way, it’s a big problem for us.”

“As they aren’t leaving the city, we’re taking a break from operations to let our combat teams recover, before we start…” Harvey looked for the word he was trying to express. “I guess extermination efforts. We really can’t just let them all roam around trying to stab people.”

164 Akashic Sewer -> howling rat-shaped creature roughly the size of a small dog

“It’s getting better, I guess.” James muttered back. And then he paused as his voice echoed off the walls, and something scratched overhead in response. “Sst.” He hissed back at everyone, holding out an arm to Alanna.

The group waited, tensed up, as the scratching on the metal and ceramic pipes escalated and shifted, before suddenly a chunk of one of the pipes almost right overhead shattered outward. If James hadn’t insisted on masks and goggles for everyone, it might have been a problem. It might have been a \*serious\* problem, as a shard of ceramic stopped about a half inch from his eye, buried in the protective plastic.

The thing that dropped out of the gap was far less of a problem. A howling rat-shaped creature roughly the size of a small dog. It had wiry fur, and a gaping, sucking crater in its chest that glowed with a cherry red heat. It also silenced itself and froze midair as Frequency locked onto it.

164 Akashic Sewer -> bottomless pit + unknown liquid (not sampled)

They were, and they did. Making decent time considering the poor footing and number of roaches they had to keep smashing. It wasn’t long before they came across something out of the ordinary. The pipes in front of them splayed out, and if they hadn’t had lights on them, they might have not noticed until it was too late.

The pipes, both above and below, took sudden ninety degree angle turns. The ceiling was suddenly so high overhead they may as well have been outside, and the floor… well, the floor was gone. In front of them was a thirty foot wide pit, with pipes like organic vines making a thin rim of walkway around the edge, and just an empty hole in the center of the room.

Frequency-Of-Sunlgiht pivoted her flashlights down toward the empty space, and was rewarded with dots of light playing off the walls, but when she angled them deeper, there was just… nothing.

“Bottomless pit.” James commented, like this was something he saw every day. “Neat.” His voice was dryer than chalk dust.

“Snark is James’ role.” Frequency told him. “Look. Liquid.” She tilted a manipulator, and pointed a flashlight toward the middle of the pit. Sure enough, there was a thin streamer of some kind of fluid cascading down. The bottom, if there was one, so far away it wasn’t making a sound.

164 Akashic Sewer -> bottomless pit -> flying monster that talks ?

He was another five feet past when the scream came from overhead. Something, something \*his\* size, shot down past him, leaving a terrifyingly unstable trail of disturbed air behind it. James didn’t see what it was, but he heard Deb and Anesh yelling behind him, and more importantly, he heard the screeched word of whatever had just dive bombed him.

“Trespasser!” It squaked at him in a voice that sounded like it hurt just to use.

There was a muffled thump, and then everything was quiet again. “Missed it!” Alanna called out.

164 Akashic Sewer -> doors = not going into any that infrared glasses could not see through.

So they kept moving. Dealing with the occasional suicidal rat, ignoring any doors that Alanna couldn’t peek through with the infrared glasses she’d brought, and generally just trying to avoid touching anything.

164 Akashic Sewer -> collect samples -> blue goo + radioactive green sludge + substance ( sloppy joe meat)

A few times, Anesh stopped them to fill sample vials with the liquids from the pipes where there were breaches he could get to. The strange blue goo that was easy to spot by its glow, the alarmingly radioactive green sludge, and at one point, a substance leaking out of the end of a pipe hanging overhead that appeared to be a perfect facsimile of sloppy joe meat. All of them, \*especially\* the last one, went into sealable lead cases. Just in case.

164 Akashic Sewer -> mushroom cavern + blue goo pond + pedestal = purple sparks

And in that weird soil and mushroom cavern, just off to the side from the exit point where it turned back into a concrete floored tunnel, the group spotted a carved out space where the floor had been turned into a moat of that blue goo, and in the center of it, a thin platform with a pedestal on it sat.

“I honestly have no idea why you’d think that. But you know what? Go for it.” James adjusted his grip on his weapon, and turned to the others. “Frequency, eye on Alanna please. Deb, Anesh, take that side. Sarah and I will watch the exit. If anything comes out of the dirt, someone yell, if anything comes from past that weird trap, \*you\* yell Alanna.” James waited as they got into position, Sarah standing next to him with an eager bounce. “Curious about this too, eh?” He asked, and she just gave a happy nod. “Alright. Hit it, Alanna. Please don’t fall in.”

Before he’d finished the last sentence, Alanna had taken three large steps and leapt across the small moat, landing nearly perfectly on the dirt pillar in the middle of it. Stabilizing herself slightly, she pressed a gloved hand down into the misshapen depression on the pedestal.

James risked a glance over his shoulder at her, and caught the tail end of a light show. A small swarm of purple sparkles, dancing in the air, before vacuuming into Alanna’s hand.

And then, nothing happened.

“Nothing happened!” Alanna called out. “Just purple sparks. What are those even for?” She asked, turning, and shoving off in a standing leap to fling herself back over to solid ground.

164 Akashic Sewer -> arena + ratroaches 3 (1 leader 2 subordinates) = 2 subordinates join order (deb teleported them out)

As always, the space felt more like a basketball court than a bloody arena. Somehow. The wire fence around the edge, the ‘scoreboard’ overhead that was really just a collection of endlessly burning torches - James made a mental note to steal some of those - and as always, the ratroaches. A hundred or more in the stands, drawn from \*somewhere\*; they never seemed to appear in the dungeon itself. All of them mismatched, with jutting extra limbs, scabs and matted fur, and eyes that oozed infected pus. They screamed as the party entered, a single lusting cry for blood, for violence.

And in the court itself, on the rough gravel, three ratroaches stood waiting for them.

“You are baaaaak!” The one in the middle let out a screeching laugh. She towered over the other two now, changed again since the last time James had seen her. She was almost seven feet tall now, fur and chitin almost seamlessly blended together. The lines of the infection at the joining points were a pale pink, almost a color accent in spiral swirls, rather than a poison red. Her third arm was now more aligned, positioned under her primary right arm, and looking strong enough to support rather than just get in the way. The two ratroaches to her sides had similarly changed, but they eyed the approaching humans and camraconda with somewhat less violent relish; one of them was wider, with a fourth and fifth thick arm jutting from its back, while the other seemed to have narrowed in frame, grown thicker dark shell and an extra joint in its legs. “I have whaited!” She yelled. “Do yhu come to taaalk again?”

The ratroach in the center of the field hissed at her, a wet sound that flung droplets of blue spittle out from her cracked maw. Alanna ignored it, shaking out the muscles of her calves. “Here’s the thing.” She said again. “James wants to treat you like peers. And you aren’t. How old are you? A year? Two? No. He looked, and saw people his own size, with language dripped into their heads that they don’t fully understand, and he decided you were making poor choices. And what everyone missed? Is that you are \*children\*.” Alanna’s voice had no warmth in it anymore. It was iron, and it was simmering anger. Not toward the ratroaches, the back two of whom had paused, and were sharing glances with each other, but toward this \*place\*. This nightmare sewer that had created kids, and forced them into this non-life. “You’re just kids.” She whispered, mostly to herself. “Scared, trapped, \*abused\*, kids. And you don’t look at a victim of child abuse and \*ask them if they want to stop being abused\*.” Alanna snarled.

“I ahm not a \*victim\*!” The ratroach in the middle screamed back. “I, I, I… I fight! I kill! I worship happily! Hyu think hy I am too \*new\* to be who I am! But I khhham \*complete\*!” She shifted her feet, drawing furrows in the gravel floor, and hefted the spear in her right arms, a wicked looking spike of shaved rusted iron.

“Hey.” James said, interrupting. The ratroach pivoted her head, and fixed her multiple eyes on him. “You can be as much of a monster as you want. But she wasn’t talking to you.”

And then, the ratroach froze, as Frequency-Of-Sunlight \*also\* locked her gaze on the creature.

The other two tensed up instantly, as James stepped forward, the gravel crunching under his feet.

There was something \*wrong\* with the vast majority of the ratroaches here. With most of the life forms, really. In a way, they reminded James of the feral staplers in Officium Mundi; they weren’t really made to be people, and even if the potential was there, it was a long road between your average freshly minted strider, and someone like Rufus. With enough time, enough effort, a random monster could eventually become a person. But it did take time, and they didn’t stop trying to kill you between then and now. And here, in the Akashic Sewer, the issue was amplified a hundredfold. The ratroaches were made, \*designed\*, to be violent. To be angry. To be \*in pain\*, all the time, and to worship the dungeon that made them like a god.

“I’ve been ignoring you two.” He said to the vanguard ratroaches. “Even though you’ve both been growing. I can see it, in your eyes. And, you know, the rest of you.” James paused, as the two ratroaches moved around him, like they were planning to flank him. Behind him, his friends stayed back, but were ready to move if needed. “Alanna’s mostly right.” He said. “But I still think asking is important. So I’m going to ask.” He glanced to his side and met the eyes of the larger ratroach, the one with too many arms. “Would you like to leave? You don’t need to let her turn you into a weapon. You can go, right now. We have somewhere safe, and somewhere a hell of a lot more free than here.”

The ratroach stopped, like it was thinking about it. Then it did something James hadn’t actually been expecting. It walked around behind the white one, and settled two of its three-digit hands onto the shoulder of the other one. The two of them staring at each other for a second, before turning back toward James and the others.

The smaller one opened its mouth, and pointed at its throat, only soft wordless whines coming out.

“Can fix that.” Frequency-Of-Sunlight said. “They are good at fixing things.”

“I think we can also fix a lot of the pain you’re probably in.” Deb added, though she didn’t look at them, she was busy scanning the teeming crowd around the chain link fence. The other ratroaches starting to shift, their cheers having gone silent as they watched, slowly getting more agitated. “Guys, we might need to move soon.” She said quietly to the others near her, tightening her hands on her staff.

Perhaps also sensing the way the less upgraded ratroaches around them were turning hostile, the two still cautiously watching James linked two of their hands together. Their other hands dropping weapons to the floor with a scrape of metal on rock. And then, together, they nodded.

“On it!” Deb slipped past James, follows by Sarah, and the two offered their hands to the ratroaches, one a little nervously and one with a beaming grin. “Let’s go!” She said. The two of them gave the girls a curious look, but took the offered hands all the same. Possibly the first time any of their species had ever done so. Then Deb tore the page, and they were gone.

164 Akashic Sewer -> arena + ratroaches leader = Gretchen ((named by alanna))

Then they were back in the high school. The door clicked shut behind them, and the only noise left was hissing panting through the filter masks, and James giving a nervous laugh as the adrenaline wore off.

“Okay.” He said. “Yeah. Good call.”

“Still think we should have taken Gretchen too.” Alanna said. “But I get why that might be a bad idea.”

“...Mean Girls?” James asked.

“Yeah.”

165 EL road dungeon (route horizion) -> necroads = 5,000 of them left

JP nodded. “Alright. Progress.” He sighed. “With Dave and Pen doing flyovers, and with the totems Momo gave us, we’re basically positive there aren’t survivors left within city limits.” JP said. “So, we’re moving to containment, and cleanup. The main problem is the necroads, which are-“ James held up a hand, interrupting him. JP just sighed. “Necroad. The term for the bone and asphalt soldier creatures. I apparently don’t have clearance to read the fucking manual, but according to Reed, they shouldn’t be able to multiply. The old man made them using bones with something called the ‘benediction of the pavement’, and that needed dungeon power to do. So, what we’ve got is what we’ve got to deal with, and that’s a relief. But there’s still a ton of them out there, and holy shit are they fast.” He turned to go look out the window at the parking lot, and James noticed that he was limping.

“You alright?” James asked

“Hm?” JP looked back. “Oh. Fine.” He shrugged. “Anyway. They haven’t been actively hunting. But they do wander around sometimes at random, and they will try to kill anything living. Dave’s been saving raccoons, who are, let me tell you, not super grateful.”

“So, containment?”

“Oh, yeah. They need the road. Can’t be too far from it, as near as we can tell. Myles is actually useful, despite what he’ll tell you, for figuring shit like that out. We can move safely through the woods around here if we need to.” JP turned back to look at his map. “This city has one actual road out of it to the highway that runs nearby, which is fucking great, because the Last Line wrecked it, and in a way that seems to have severed it from maps too, so… you know.”

“\*So\*,” JP continued, “they can’t leave the city, and we mostly just try to pick them off when they’re dormant. There should only be about five thousand left. Which… uhhhh… James, there’s twelve of us.”

“Thirteen.” James reminded him. “El’s here, I’ve heard.”

170 winter climb (dungeon) -> tree creature

They hadn’t gotten one for cold. But James remembered Momo’s debrief, and the discussion of the tree creatures. So wood was on the menu.

170 winter climb (dungeon) -> obvious traps

The landscape wasn’t barren, though the vast majority of what they could see in their close proximity was a white blanket, dotted in places by the tops of rocks poking through, or just pockets of snow casting deep black shadows. Beyond that, there were larger boulders that showed off rough grey stone capped in white, potential breaks from the driving snow. Or singular trees, proud coniferous forms showing off green branches that waved in the winds.

They avoided all of them. They weren’t desperate for a break, they weren’t starting to freeze. It was better to keep pressing on, than risk one of the obvious early traps.

170 winter climb -> wind wall is moving 1 foot per minute

Just as James was starting to think the wind was going to be a permanent feature here, he saw Anesh and Alanna straighten up in front of him, and start to spread out. Pushing a little extra oomph into his footsteps, he urged Alex forward and a few seconds later, stepped through a curtain of calm.

Behind him, the wind blew and sleet fell. Here, as suddenly as stepping through a door, it was quiet and placid. Only a light drifting snowfall that gradually added to the powder around them.

The wind was getting closer.

Just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things, James grabbed a couple nearby bits of rock on top of the snow, walked back through the trail they’d forged, and set them one after the other on the ground in plain sight. Then he turned and walked back, the others following him to a distance from the wind wall to watch.

Sure enough, after about a minute, the wind had passed the first rock, the dark sheet beyond which there was a howling gale and falling ice either moving or growing to get closer to them. A minute later and it took the next one.

“That’s about a foot a minute.” James said into the quiet of their newly discovered area. “Anyone want to bet on if this just keeps going?”

170 winter climb -> trees (monsters +

The problem James was talking about was the next part of their climb. Ahead of them, suddenly spiking to a steep angle, the hill rose up and, while they could see where it started to level off again, it was well after the trees started to get thicker.

If they wanted to, they could circle around the base of this rise. But there was a visible drop over on the right, and to the left they’d need to navigate a pair of boulders so large they were miniature mountains of their own. Not impossible, but clearly designed to lead them up this one particular path.

“Alright. Keep an eye on the trees.” James said, turning away from the path they’d cut. “The ones the first team fought had things drop out of the upper branches, but I don’t want to trust that there aren’t a dozen different tree-based hazards.”

“I’ll go first. Draw anything out.” Alanna commented. “Just don’t let anything eat me, alright?”

James tried to think of a joke, but he was too focused on the task at hand, so he just offered a nod and smile instead. The group formed up into a wedge, following Alanna as she stepped up and past the first tree.

There was a \*twang\* that cut through the air like a musical note, and then a rush of motion and a slapping sound as something whipped around from behind one of the trees and nailed Alanna so hard it carried her off her feet and four trees deep into the small grove off to the right.

And then, the trap springing as their cue, a score of points of motion shifted overhead. Long brown multijointed limbs, centered around no particular body, just more limbs, unfolded from their camouflaged spots in the tops of the otherwise bare trees. They didn’t have faces, didn’t have anything except their limbs and hands with fingers like splinters. But all five of them fell into the snow with practiced ease, and kicked up plumes of white as they started rushing the delvers who were still standing.

The first one closed the gap, jetting ahead of the others. It looked almost like they were \*swimming\* through the snow. But when it put on its final burst of speed and lunged through the air, James timed the trajectory of it’s jump, pulled on his enhanced agility, and slammed the hatchet’s edge into one of the joints between two of the branches reaching for him.

It bled a thin green sap, painting the snow and turning the spot it landed into a slushy mess as it thrashed around blindly. James didn’t know if it was out of the fight, but it had lost a lot of forward momentum, and that counted when it came down to the seconds that mattered in a fight like this.

Behind him, off to the left, gunfire popped off as Alex took somewhat imprecise shots at the rest of the pack. At least one scored a hit, but there was no time to celebrate, because then the others were on them.

James ducked the one that came at him head on, but the second ignored Anesh hacking at it’s side and scoring a glancing blow, and instead hit the snow between them and pivoted to try to sink its claws into James’ leg. It didn’t penetrate, but it \*did\* get a good grip, and yanked with more strength than its mass should have allowed, sending him sprawling to his back with an oof as the air left his lungs and he breathlessly gasped.

More gunfire, and a splatter of green, but Alex wasn’t a marksman, and she was firing too high to try to avoid hitting James. Which, to be fair, he would \*appreciate\*, but when the last one of the things fell on him he didn’t much care if she took some risky shots.

He grabbed the branch thrust at his face, and twisted it around his arm in an attempt to break it, but the wood flexed and held, pulling like wet clay. With his off hand, he snagged a loose grip on his axe, and started hacking with as much force as he could muster, planting lines of bleeding green on the sides of whatever branch he could reach as the rest of the creature scrambled to cut through his coat and armor until the hatchet stuck and he lost his grasp on it. Then, James remembered what was \*on\* his left hand, and he mentally tapped the command to his glove to **[Break Wood]**, lashed out with a closed fist, and was satisfied when a fracture split the creature down the middle with a resounding \*crack\*.

Then Anesh sank his own axe into the back of the stick thing’s biggest central branch, the closest thing it had to a body, and it twitched just a few more times before falling onto James limply.

He shoved it off himself, finding it dramatically lighter than it had felt a second ago, and staggered to his feet. The stick figure on James was the last one to fall, and Nik was already helping Alanna to her feet from where the clothesline strike of the trap had utterly failed to kill or maim her.

170 winter climb -> tree (monsters) -> leave cuts turn you into wood?!?!

Then he raised a hand, gloved finger poking out to tap James’ cheek.

James winced and flinched back. “Ow!” He yelped. “Wait, ow. Shit, I think that thing cut me.”

“James.” Anesh said, stripping gloves back to tilt James’ face toward him. “This isn’t good.”

“I’ve been cut before, it’s fine. Known issue with this kind of job.” James said. “We’ve got a medkit, it’ll keep until we get…” He trailed off, raising a finger to tap at his face, initially enjoying the tactile sensation radiating through the glove and into his fingertip, but then flinching in pained concern. “What the fuck?” He muttered. “What’s… ow? What?”

There was confusion in his voice, because the feeling of the injury on his face wasn’t one of a wet cut, or dripping blood. But of rough wood, etched in a line down his cheek.

“Everyone back from the sticks!” Anesh called, ignoring his own call as the others moved back, shuffling divots in the piling snow as the moved. He crouched down, and gently shifted one of the dead creatures sideways, moving one of its appendages to hold up the end. Long stick-like claws that glistened in the dim grey light, slowly frosting over as the thick flakes dropped onto them. Anesh held it up to eye level, and carefully pulled some extra perception from Alanna.

There it was. A single drop of a thick green fluid, right on the end of the claw, channeled through a thin furrow of a tube. Venom.

“Alright, good news.” James reported. “It’s not spreading. Bad news, I may be part ent now.” He was itching at the mark on his face, where a line of bark had grown out of the line that had been cut down his face. “Okay. So. Anesh, are we good?”

“Yeah, they’re all down, and if it’s not spreading, I don’t think there’s anything else we can do for you right now.” He sighed, breath steaming in the air before being whipped away by the frozen breeze. “We’ll have you checked out when we get back. Fortunately, it doesn’t look like too much of your flesh is converted, so you should be able to get it… cut out… ugh.”

170 winter climb -> tree (monsters -> no dropped loot or like

“Well, they didn’t drop anything.” James said. “Which we kinda new. Any kill notifications or something?” Head shakes all around. James took a second to take a close look at the two who were least experienced with surviving dungeon fights, noting the slight shaking from adrenaline wearing off. Internally, he suppressed a wince; this wasn’t the place to stand still, but they’d need to take a break soon. So he did what he could, and motivated them to press on. “Then I’m afraid it’s time for \*more walking\*. Everyone say thank you to your boots.” He grinned, turning to incline his head and look toward the ridge past the grove of trees where the ground leveled out a bit more. “Further up.”

170 Winter climb -> paths (up/down/other)

To their left, where the step-like ridges had long ago dropped away to form a small valley that hemmed in their options if they needed to run, there was another path. Or, not exactly a path, but a point that James’ brain locked onto and hurt to look at.

“Yo.” He elbowed Alanna, who was performing a similar sweep on the other side. “What’s that look like to you?” James asked as he pointed.

Alanna turned and stared, the motions noticed by the four others approaching, who also glanced that direction. When she spoke, even muffled by the face covering, it sounded annoyed. “Like two places at once.” She gave an irritated huff. “Part of it goes off a cliff, part of it’s a path down.”

170 winter climb -> lake + **crystal** + cattails + thorny vines

Then he took that last step up over the lip of the slope, onto relatively flat ground next to where Anesh and Alex had stopped dead, and changed his mind.

In front of them, stretching for hundreds of feet, was a lake.

Sort of.

It looked like what would happen if you dropped a rock into a pond. Cracked waves like a wall around the outside, a spire rising up in the middle, a single teardrop of liquid flying up into the air. Except, it wasn’t water; it was ice. The entire lake, or at least, the parts that were in the process of splashing up into midair, were all frozen solid.

The lake itself \*was\* mostly liquid, though it had heavy chunks of ice floating in it. Wetsuit or not, James had no intention of going anywhere near that.

There were cattails around the edge. A few frosted over thorny vines. It looked beautiful, even if the drop of ice hovering in midair was defying physics and flashing at them in a strange and persistent pattern of refracted light.

Beyond the lake, a three story tall edifice of grey rock sat, cutting off any further easy progress upward. It stretched right into a scattering of trees that rapidly became something James would call a forest, and right a half mile or so before it disappeared into another blackened curtain of moving storm. Above that cliff, James could just make out another rising wall of stone, waiting just beyond a platteau.

“Is that crystal thing trying to hypnotize us?” Alex asked, confused, pointing up at the center of the lake’s frozen impact site.

“Oh, probably.” James said, craning his neck and staring up at the glittering ice crystal. Something told him he should go touch it. But the thought was instantly noticeable as alien and intrusive. “Yeah, I think so. I can sort of feel it. Either it’s not very good at it, or we should keep our goggles on and not look too closely at it.”

“Cliff looks like a good place to set up camp.” Alanna said. “There’s an overhang, almost a cave over there.”

James nodded. “Okay.” He said. “Let’s get moving. Not too fast though; skirt the lake, keep an eye out. We still haven’t seen any of those snow things.”

Nothing lunged at them out of the muddy bank of the frozen lake, nor did any parts of the ice try to kill them beyond the ongoing mild hypnosis effect, which did actually stop as soon as they turned away from it. Which was still a \*problem\*, because they did need someone watching the lake, and then someone watching that person, just in case.

But it wasn’t more than another half hour of careful movement that they had made it to a spot that was dry, and sheltered from the worst of the wind whistling across the ice and exposed rock. A fire, composed out of wood transported in a duplicate wallet of holding, crackling in the center of the little rocky overhang.

171 winter climb -> snowbank = monster ?!?

James cautiously tested the mound of snow in front of them with a pole, eyeing the pile with suspicious thoughts. So far, this area around the lake had been empty of anything hostile, or even moving aside from them. But there was always time for a mobile snow bank to take a shot at him, and so, he poked first and investigated second.

170 winter climb -> blackberry (vine) -> sap (makes snow) -> berries (absorb heat)

“Good! Now, let’s get back an- \*AWK\*” James’ words turned into a yelp as his foot snagged on something under the snow and he tumbled forward to slam into the ground. The impact was lessened by the snow, but his knees still stung.

Unsure of what was going on, he thrashed his feet, trying to kick off whatever was on him. A second later, Arrush was at his side, grabbing him and hauling upward, shocking James with the casual strength the ratroach displayed. Most of his species, in James' experience, were… not ‘weak’, really, but somewhat fragile. Either way, he was pulled out of the snow with a wet snap as his boot tugged through something.

Arrush set him off to the side, while James brushed snow out of his coat, the two of them shuffling away from the spot that was now a human-sized crater in the snow. “Ow.” He wheezed. “And thanks.”

“We lift each other up.” Arrush said simply.

James snorted a laugh as the tension left him. “Okay, that was stupid. What got me?” He asked.

Nothing moved as they watched the spot. Eventually, James caught Arrush’s eye, and gave a small nod, moving forward in a low crouch while his scavenging partner watched his back. When he got to where the snow had been packed down from his impact and all the stepping around he and Arrush had done, the culprit was a bit obvious.

“It’s a vine!” James called back. “Looks like a blackberry, actually.” He told Arrush, who had no context for what that meant, as he approached.

The two ends of the plant poked out of the ground from where the natural snare had grabbed around James’ boot. It looked \*a little\* like a blackberry, but James couldn’t ignore the skill orb knowledge in the back of his head that was shaming him for not recognizing that the thorns were too long, and there was what looked like some kind of pale blue veins of liquid running through the middle. That sap, whatever it was, was now dripping out onto the ground.

James knelt down, looking for a closer peek. He watched a drop of the blue fluid touch the ground, and instantly puff out into a small pile of… fresh snow?

“Is this some kind of… coolant?” He looked up, perplexed. “It’s making more snow.” He told Arrush.

“Something had... to make the snow.” The ratroach rasped back.

“...Okay, I’m not…” James pinched the bridge of his nose with gloved fingers. “I don’t know if I need to explain snow to you, or if you’re making a joke. But also I guess this is a dungeon, so something \*did\* have to make the snow.” He sighed, and stood, dusting more snow off his knees. “Do you see.. hmm… there.” He turned and followed the rough direction the vine stretched with his eyes, pointing out a patch of raised snow to Arrush. “Want to see if there’s fruit on that?” He asked.

The ratroach shook his head, but James just questioned his spirit of adventure, and shortly they found themselves having cleared some of the covering white powder off of what turned out to be a several meter diameter patch of thorny vines and cool blue leaves. It was actually colder here, near this plant, than anywhere they’d been so far, and it was as James was picking a handful of translucent blue berries off a vine that he realized they were sapping the heat out of his hand right through the glove.

They didn’t linger long, but did grab a small bag full of the fruit before James admitted they probably weren’t going to uncover any magical powers aside from the ingredients to the easiest smoothie ever.

171 winter climb -> Exit winter climb + fire + 1 hour time (beside fire) + Five hours eighteen minutes (in dungeon)

Anesh sighed. “I don’t think they have the best outlook on self preservation.” He admitted. “Also, they’re heading back. You wanna gather up the-“ He stopped, interrupted by a small tug in the back of his mind.

He could leave if he wanted to.

The fire called to him. Sung a song of freedom, escape. All he had to do was take it, and he could leave. Next to him, Alanna whipped her head around to stare at their camp fire, and he saw Nik and Alex perking up too, Nik looking up from the journal he was writing in, Alex’s eyes snapping open from where she was trying to pretend she was cool by napping in a dungeon.

Anesh shook his head, and pushed it away.

“Okay.” He said. “Mark time.” Anesh checked the timer on the copied smartphone he’d brought. “Five hours eighteen minutes in the dungeon. Alanna?”

“Exactly one hour at camp. Wait, but Alex and I left for a bit. So…?”

James and Arrush took that moment to step back into the covered space, the shelter from the light wind welcome. “Hey. What’re you all up to?” He asked.

“Did you get the exit prompt?” Anesh asked him.

“Nope. Did you?”

Anesh nodded. “Okay. We all did, but not you. So. The one constant is the fire itself. That means if we do want to escape, we need to build a fire, keep it going, and be at it when the one hour mark ticks over. Nothing else matters?”

171 winter climb -> rock wall climbing + steps made but then destroyed partially

The others hadn’t gone too far ahead. Alanna was just setting pitons into the stone, using a well balanced hammer and an inhuman amount of strength to drive the metal spikes into cracks in the rock. She was maybe three or four ‘steps’ up already, though the term step was kind of a misnomer.

They were roughly triangular shapes with a surface that was just barely flat enough for someone to feel like they could set their for on it. Like someone had reached into the rock, and pulled chunks out on hidden hinges. And then ruined them for anyone who might want to try climbing up.

And yet, it was still probably easier than scaling the cliff without the help.

Cliff wasn’t even the right term, really. It wasn’t like the wall in front of them was forming a perfect ninety degree angle with the ground. It sloped back, if only barely. Enough that James figured he could have gotten up with a little determination and a lot of upper body strength.

It wasn’t even their only option to keep moving, really. They could have tried doubling back, or circling around - though the ridge did extend for at least a couple miles - or simply going a different direction.

But those options didn’t actually accomplish what they were here for.

171 winter climb -> rock wall climbing -> indention had some small wood monster in it? ((shadow monster = that eat gloves? + flare = flare scared shadow gear eaters away))

Cold wind whipped around his head, small specks of flying ice briefly flicking against his goggles as the occasional plume of the frozen crystals was kicked off the ledge above them by the wind. The wind was getting faster, and the temperature was getting lower.

His heart nearly exploded in his chest when he grabbed a handhold, a small indentation in the rock, and the shadow inside \*moved\*. James assumed for a second he was seeing things, but then he felt the teeth clamp down on his fingers.

And deflect, like his skin was made of iron.

But he could \*feel\* how bad it was. Razor sharp fangs, like some kind of organic wood chipper, frantically gnawing his hand. On reflex, James jerked backward, swinging out and losing half his footing, barely hanging on with his other hand in a death grip. Flinging his right arm wide, he flicked his hand, and sent the small ball of shadows and teeth flying out into the open air.

He didn’t see where it landed, and he hoped the wind covered up the squeal he made when it surprised him.

Below him, Alanna yelled a question over the wind. James, frantically trying not to fall, triggered the Status Quo glove on his left hand and dug his fingers into the rock he was tightly gripping, burning one of the charges to make a new, much easier handhold. The glove was still new, so that charge wouldn’t come back for a couple days, but it felt worth it to pull himself back up.

When he reached for the next handhold, he realized the glove on his right hand was just \*gone\* as bare fingers tried to close on frozen rock. He winced as the pain of the cold invaded his body down to the bone almost instantly, but he didn’t let go. They had a backup glove, and twenty feet over the ground was no place to stop.

James grinned as he took it from her, the tactile sensation transmitted through the circles he’d drawn on all of these things with the weird Officium Mundi pen letting it feel like they’d just brushed their hands together in truth. “Oh, shadow thing ate it. Uh… not me, though?” He held up his bare hand, turning it back and forth to check for marks as he stripped off the destroyed remains of the original glove. No damage, even though he \*knew\* he’d felt deadly sharp teeth on his skin like knives. But it had left not so much as a nick.

“Maybe it just eats gloves?” Alanna asked.

The next cliff passed without incident. The light of the flare scared the gear eaters away, their shadows flowing like liquid out of their holes as the team passed.

171 winter climb -> snow monster (water?)

James was entirely unsurprised when he pulled himself over the edge, and had to roll through the frozen shell of iced over snow to dodge a slamming strike from a pile of snow that was both not frozen, and \*very mobile\*. He was shocked, sure. Startled. But not actually \*surprised\*.

Two beady onyx eyes of stone stared down at him from a rounded ‘face’. The whole creature, a different shade of white than the snow around it, was curves and sloped lines. Momo hadn’t been kidding, it really was just a pile of snow that sometimes grew pillar-like arms and tried to punch you.

Then the thing opened its mouth, like a seam splitting apart, and revealed a maw full of jagged obsidian chunks.

James rolled sideways over his own backpack, kicked himself to his feet on the edge of the cliff, and awkwardly slammed his left hand into one of its eyes, firing off another glove charge and detonating the chunk of stone like a grenade.

By the time Alanna pulled herself up after him, the snow monster’s body had started to melt into liquid that James suspected was just water. And then started to freeze again, forming a lump of ice that he had to awkwardly circumvent with the rope for the followup group. Alanna kicked at it as she stood, shattering a chunk off and nearly slipping as it crumbled easily. “You okay?” She asked him loudly. “I heard you scream. Twice.”

171 winter climb -> hubcap

“Hey, check this out!” Alex called as they began to prepare for the last cliff. She was holding up something that she’d found wedged up against the rock. “Guys!”

James checked behind them. There was no grey mass bearing down on them like he’d worried, no wall of clouds and wind. Instead there was just more snow falling, thicker and thicker black specks dotting the sky. The clear hours were fading, fast. But he had time to see what Alex had found. “Whatcha got?” He yelled back.

When Alex did make it back to where Alanna had started hammering a couple pitons into the rock, she held up something James absolutely wasn’t expecting. “I found this in that little nook over there!” She called over the wind.

And handed James a hubcap.

It was still covered in ice, though a large chunk had broken off when Alex had picked it up. James tapped it a few times, then applied pressure and broke away the frozen covering. The ice glittered as it fell to the ground in the fading grey light, but the hubcap didn’t break. He turned it over a couple times. Metal, kinda heavy, with a little warping and a bunch of scratches. Like it had been in a crash, maybe? But… why?

“What?” Anesh said incredulously as he alighted his drone on his outstretched hand and unplugged from it. “Where the bloody hell did that come from?”

“I just found it.” Alex said. “Do we… what do we do?”

“I don’t think we wanna be carrying this. Kinda heavy.” James looked around, at the last thirty feet of rock to climb, at the plumes of snow being kicked around their legs. “Nah. This is weird, and I don’t wanna realize two days from now that this would have been important. In my pack.” He turned, giving Alex access to his bag, pressing up against the cliff where the wind would be at least a little less horrible. A few seconds of fumbling with a zipper later, a weight was added to his burden, and James stood and readjusted. “Okay. We ready to keep going?”

171 winter climb -> heavy snow storm -> loosing visabilty

The snow up here rose up in a great sweeping slope ahead of the cliff. Quickly getting so tall Alanna couldn’t see past it; though the lack of a visible mountain behind it through the storm probably meant there was something at least approaching flat ground on the other side. The storm was picking up in earnest now, visibility dropping as the whirling snow and ice in the air made it feel more like being inside a snow globe than being outside.

James nodded. It was getting harder and harder to hear everyone else, and there was a sharp tapping sound that it took him a minute to realize was the increasingly icy snowfall rapping off the exposed plastic parts of their armor. “Let’s cover that hill!” He yelled, pointing. “If we need to, we can burrow into it, but let’s see if there’s an easier option!”

He should have known better than to think that. In reality, it had been five minutes of pushing themselves forward, but in James’ head, it felt like only a blink of a chilled eye between thinking ‘this isn’t too bad’ and the snowy crunch of something heavy hitting the ground nearby.

Then another crunch. The noise of wet snow smashed down to a hard packed form, the kind of sound you got when the first car took the risk and pulled out of a driveway on a snow day. Except sudden, and violent.

The snow changed. James felt it as, mixed in with the thick flakes and icy rivets, heavy finger-thick shards of ice started falling too. They mostly bounced off his coat, but when one cracked into his goggles hard enough that he felt his skull rattle, he knew it was starting to get serious. Then, another crunch, but this one \*close\*. Right next to him, in fact, where an armchair sized spiked urchin of glittering blue ice had slammed down into the ground, leaving its upper half to rapidly start being swallowed by the snow, while the grim threat remained obvious.

Alanna and Arrush were out of his sight now, swallowed by the driving snow that came in great plumes and threatened to overwhelm anyone that stood still for more than a minute or two. But the line was still pulling, and James had faith in them. He was entirely unsurprised when he passed by the rapidly freezing corpse of one of the snow beasts, shards of shattered eye scattered across the path.

171 winter climb -> traffic light -> stuck on yellow and shining yellow light

He was more surprised when the line started to get some slack, and he caught up to everyone else. Anesh catching his eye and waving him and Nik over as they approached. He yelled something over the wind, and pointed at the thing they had stopped by. An out of place pylon, sticking up through the middle of the snowy hill, defiantly casting a strange yellow werlight onto the surrounding canvas of white.

“What the fuck is this?!” James yelled, voice consumed by the wind.

No one answered him, partially because no one heard him clearly, but also because it was hard to explain why a working traffic light was sitting here on the hill, stuck on yellow.

171 171 winter climb -> traffic light -> flicking a green left turn singal

They passed a few trees, which they steered clear of, unsure if the bare branches hid more stick monsters. They passed another street light, too, this one flickering a green left turn signal. Moving with cautious steps, they started skirting the outside wall, looking for a good place to set down and make camp - a cave or alcove or \*something\* they could hide from the storm in. It was better here, yes, but it was still getting worse by the minute.

171 winter climb -> apartment building (dorm)

Then Alanna, alternating sharing perception with Anesh as they swept different sides of the party, spotted it, and with a muffled shout and a pointed finger, directed their attention forward and left, to the cliff at the end of the valley.

The cliff that had a lot of strange dark rectangular holes in it. And columns near the base that looked strangely artificial. And…

“Is that a goddamn apartment building?” James yelled, voice finally carrying over a lull in the wind.

It was. Frozen over, with snow packed up to the second floor, but it was. In fact, it looked like the entire cliff face might be a buried structure. Dark and cold, but also… not outside.

171 winter climb -> ice spike projectiles coming down

James was about to get them moving, when something twinged in his awareness. The confluence of a half dozen different powers and skills came together in an instant, as his brain warned him about something with barely enough time to do anything about it. Without thinking, he ripped as much speed from Anesh as he could, feeding it into his Agility-enhanced legs, threw himself sideways, and crashed into Nik. Nik went sprawling, crashing into a new divot in the unblemished snow. Unharmed, though, armor taking most of the impact.

James did \*not\* hit the snow. Instead, the snow hit him. A spike of ice, screaming out of the sky at high velocity, cut through where Nik’s head had been a split second ago. Fortunately, James was still moving, following Nik down to the ground, so his head wasn’t there instead. But the razor-sharp spine of ice caught him on the arm, and went straight through his coat. And armor. And arm.

And out the other side, painting the snow with a splatter of red.

James and Nik both screamed, for different reasons, James collapsing to the snow face-first as his arm gave out when he tried to prop himself up without thinking. Nik was already moving, rolling him over and holding up a hand, the vibrant green of his Authority unfolding as he gave it orders. Repair the internal damage, set the bone, seal the wound, hold in place. None of which did much for the pain, and James was suddenly struggling to keep his focus long enough to turn \*down\* the purple orb that dialed up his sensory input. The pain overwhelmed him, and he caught the next part in flashes.

People freaking out, Anesh staying calm as he reclaimed his speed. More ice coming down, some near misses. A set of simple objectives; get into cover. Alanna slung him over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and \*ran\* through the snow, with Nik keeping close to maintain Aidamy’s hold on his injury. They reached the apartment structure just as the ice storm was intensifying to almost certain lethality.

171 winter climb -> apartment building (dorm) -> 2nd floor -> bed room -> exploring the dorm

“Bedroom, looks like.” Alanna said, slinging her pack off to make sure nothing was going to spill out. “Okay, the window makes this a bad place to stay. Let’s get farther in. Everyone get ready; this place seems great for an ambush.”

James nodded. “Let’s go down. Check the lobby. Should be insulated, sealed by the snow.” He started to try to draw his sidearm, but Anesh stopped him, a pressed hand holding James’ arm to his side. “What?”

Alex nodded at him nervously, and Anesh leaned forward to rattle the handle, shoving the door open with a frozen crack as the old ice split away and took some of the wood with it.

The inside of the apartment structure was bizarre. Concrete halls, rotted hard carpet, ice dripping from every surface. Small piles of snow here and there. No signs of any life; there was old furniture, sure, but no skeletons, no footprints, nothing. Scraps of what were once coats, small clumps of crumpled paper or takeout containers frozen into abstract sculptures, but nothing that made this place look like anyone had been here for a very \*very\* long time.

It didn’t take James long to realize something. “This is a dorm.” He said suddenly, and a little too loudly. Anesh glanced back at him, and James elaborated, keeping his voice down now that he didn’t have to fight with the wind to be heard. “Look. The rooms are just bedrooms, or sometimes two-room apartments. This isn’t an apartment, this is a college dorm.”

“So the lobby…”

“Might have vending machines.” James finished for Alanna.

“Not what I was thinking, but okay.” His girlfriend rolled her eyes at him.

Ahead of them, Anesh and Alex checked another door, making sure nothing was going to jump out at them. But then, beyond that, the hallway opened up into an open space. They were on the second floor, and the rough concrete hall floor turned into a balcony that wrapped around open air over the common area. There were five other hallways leading into the dorms, and two stairways on either side of the lobby that made this upper walkway into a kind of horseshoe shape.

Down below, there was cold brick and concrete. A trio of old couches tried to pretend the place was homey or comfortable, and failed. A dead fireplace sat embedded in a central brick pillar. James could see more hallways leading to more dorm rooms, as well as a small door with a frosted glass window that was probably the main office.

Nothing moved.

171 winter climb -> apartment building (dorm) -> common area -> ben ((who is ben?!?))

“Pff! No!” She lied as she blew a strand of hair out of her face. “But look! Poor Ben and Nik are just \*so exhausted\*! Can we really make them go on?”

When the pull came from the fire, none of them left.

The seven of them were eager to see what was next.

172 winter climb -> apartment building (dorm) -> common area -> alex -> alex sewer power = Timing = who is Timing?!?!? + james

“It’s supposed to be your shift.” Alex muttered. “But that’s not what we planned. And I don’t know why.”

“Okay, explain.” James was rolling to his feet now, muscles stiff from the persistent cold even though he’d slept in a pretty good sleeping bag. He started pulling on armor pieces that he’d arranged nearby, grateful that the exercise recover potion seemed to have kept the worst of the soreness away.

“It’s my Sewer power.” Alex muttered, still looking like she wasn’t sure if she should have woken James up at all. “It’s timing, right? Well, if we had even split watch shifts, \*now\* is when I should be waking you up. But… uh… it’s not? So I woke you up.”

“I do not wake up coherent enough for this.” James grumbled. “So, you should have woken me earlier? We messed up the math or something?”

“No, no. We should have woken you up \*later\*. I’m waking you up early, because Timing says it’s your shift. But, uh… I don’t know why.”

James thought about it for a second. His brain turned up nothing. “Powers usually don’t screw up. Something’s probably going on. Where’s Arrush?” Alex just pointed over to a spot near the crumbled metal of a pair of drinking fountains where the ratroach had claimed a perch to silently watch as many of the hallways into this room as possible. “Okay. Anesh?”

“He’s off with Ben, watching upstairs.” Alex’s voice was concerned, but also apologetic. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t think waking Alanna…”

“Oh, yeah, Alanna wakes up all flaily.” James nodded at Alex’s wisdom. “Here, pull this strap for me.” He shifted and let the girl tug at his armor. “I’m gonna go check on the others. Watch these two. You slept, right?”

Alex winced. “Yeah, sorta. Kinda hard to, you know?”

172 winter climb = in general

They paused a little bit away from the camp so they could talk without waking Alanna and Nik just yet. “Well, like I said, it’s kind of empty. And I suppose I’m just thinking that, compared to Officium Mundi or even Route Horizon, there’s \*nothing here\*. No trinkets, no resources, nothing. The furniture is falling apart, there’s only some scraps of torn clothing or waterlogged paper. The vending machines are shattered and empty. So’s the fountains.” He gestured over to near where Arrush was trying to stifle a yawn. “The most we’ve found by way of… I guess the best way I can think to say for now it would be ‘natural rewards’... would be the weird berries you and Arrush found. But that’s kind of it.”

I’ve noticed that, yeah.” James sighed out. “I’m actually worried that this is gonna be something like the map scraps from El’s home turf, you know? Where if we don’t actually solve the puzzle, we’re not gonna get anything out of it.”

172 winter climb -> apartment building (dorm) -> has bathroom

They’d had breakfast, double checked every piece of gear they had, gotten dressed, and found a derelict bathroom that was still ‘usable enough’ to relieve themselves. They’d patched some small holes in armor and one big hole in Alanna’s backpack. They replaced missing protective equipment, and took stock of their abilities.

172 winter climb -> air not thinning (higher elevation)

“Oh, that.” Alex cut in. “I brought a couple things to check with; the air isn’t getting thinner or anything. Pressure’s the same up here as it was at the start.”

“Well that’s kind of insulting. We haven’t got up enough to matter?” Alanna asked, sullenly.

“Uh, no. It’s just not something that’s happening.” Alex shrugged. “We’ve absolutely gone high enough that it should matter.”

172 winter climb -> apartment building (dorm) -> 3rd floor

By the time they made it to the third floor, most of the windows were unblocked. At least, on the side facing where they’d come from. The windows on the ‘rear’ of the building were all blocked off by the solid rock of the cliff it was embedded in.

It was like the whole structure had been slapped into place, the stone flowing around it to create a cradle for the piece of misplaced architecture.

None of the dorm rooms on the third floor had anything in them of note. More splintered wood and cracked plastic of old furniture. One of them had its bare concrete covered in shards of a broken mirror, the frame of which instantly put James on edge as they searched the rest of the room. But nothing jumped out, either of the frame or the broken pieces.

172 winter climb -> apartment building (dorm) -> 4th floor -> rec room = reverse gravity trap? = ceiling crashing upward

On the fourth floor, there was a rec room. The group paused at the door, James and Nik glancing at each other from either side of the portal. The door itself was missing, the frame cracked and crumbling, but the building didn’t appear unstable. Both of them had their sidearms out; just because the building \*looked\* empty didn’t mean anyone in the group wanted to get ambushed.

The rec room had windows of its own that faced the right side of the building. The space was easily five or six times the size of any individual dorm they’d searched so far, and James counted them lucky that the windows faced \*away\* from the direction of the storm.

There was a shattered big screen TV against one wall, the communal electronic cleaved through the middle with a gash that went halfway down its face. What looked like a demolished IKEA shelf had toppled over next to it, spilling board games and books into a pile of rotting cardboard and soaked ink.

There was a pile of snow along the wall under the windows, where previous storms had stacked up the frozen substance, and the ambient temperature of “cold” had not seen fit to melt it away.

And off to the side, a billiard table. Broken, of course, two of its legs snapped and the body cracked down the middle. Pool cues scattered where their rank had been similarly broken, the balls having rolled to carpet the room. The ones that weren’t crushed to fragments, that is.

Alex, though, went over to try to take a look out the windows. And as soon as her path across the middle of the room took her under the cracks on the ceiling, there was a snapping sound.

Everyone froze. Even Alex, whose eyes went wide as she heard the sound from above her. For a second, the whole room went still, the people nearest to the sound tensing up more than the others as they prepared to move. Alex shifted \*slightly\*, and the noise intensified; the cracking and grinding of stone and wood coming apart filling the air.

Then, the girl took a deep breath, nodded to herself on a beat like a metronome, and then flung herself backward just as the ceiling overhead came apart.

The others also flung themselves away from where the rubble would be coming down. But it \*didn’t\*. Instead, it ‘fell’ upward, the shattered remains of the ceiling and the floor of the floor overhead tumbling in defiance of gravity to smash into the ceiling one floor up, breaking through that too, before coming to a cacophonous stop after ‘falling’ twenty feet or so.

Alex had almost completely gotten out of the way, but not \*entirely\*. And the girl had, when the reverse pit trap on the ceiling had begun breaking, been sucked upward along with several pieces of broken couch and shelf under the hole. Her leg had slammed into the ceiling, and she’d started sliding upward across the intact ceiling of the rec room toward the hole, before Alanna had reacted and jumped to grab Alex’s outstretched arm, dragging her back to the floor. An act that required a shocking amount of force, as the reversed gravity didn’t seem to fade until she was planted firmly back on the floor away from the break.

172 winter climb -> apartment building (dorm) -> 4th floor -> rec room = pool cue

“This smells… familiar.” Arrush said a minute or two, stalking back around the hole in the ceiling with his uneven gait to hand James a pool cue. It was old and worn, but still intact, unlike most of everything else here. “Not like home… but… I cannot explain.” The ratroach looked concerned, even now, that his words were unwelcome.

“Hm.” James said, eying the piece of wood in his hands. He tried to pull on that extra bit of sensory information he’d sometimes have in Officium Mundi that could \*maybe\* point out dungeontech to him, but nothing came to life. “Well, I’m not gonna hit anything with it, just in case.” He said. “We’ll take it with us, though.” He looked up and met Arrush’s eyes. “If it’s nothing, no worries. If it’s something, good nose. What \*does\* it smell like, actually? Office stuff sometimes smells like hot salt to me.”

James shook his head, and slung his backpack off to break down the pool cue and zip-tie the pieces together. Fortunately, even with its worn age, the screws weren’t rusted, and shortly he had a much more portable potential magic item. That done, he went over to bother the last two people still searching the room.

172 winter climb -> apartment building (dorm) -> 4th floor -> rec room = text books

Nik and Anesh were trying to read books. Which was alternating between the two of them tossing books - mostly textbooks from the looks of it - to the side if they were too damaged to read, or stacking them in a pile between where they were crouched if they met some strange criteria. The two boys talked in excited tones, perking up as James got closer.

“James!” Anesh exclaimed. “There’s something wrong with these!”

“Oh good. I was worried this was going to be an easy day.” James deadpanned.

Anesh rolled his eyes. “Wanker. No, it’s that they won’t… book.”

“You can’t just say that.” Nik cut in. “It’s more that they don’t… uh…book. Fuck dammit, okay. Fine.” He sighed. “You can’t read them, but they’re intact and functional. Here, look at this one.” He took the top book off their ‘intact’ pile and handed it to James.

James opened it, looked at the words inside, figured out what subject it was, and then realized that he hadn’t opened the textbook at all and had, in fact, read no words. “Trippy.” He commented. “What use are these?”

“Well, they’re weird for one thing.” Anesh said. “Some of them are more damaged than others, and you can tell. But… I dunno, this feels important.”

“Okay. Pack ‘em up.” James said.

“What, really? All of those?” Alanna asked as she joined them. “That’s gonna weigh so much. You’ve been to college, you \*know\* how heavy textbooks get!” She chided James.

It amused James that at this point, his pack included a pool cue, a hubcap, and a couple textbooks. If he was on his way to college, it was a hell of a weird one.

172 winter climb -> apartment building (dorm) -> 5th floor -> communal bathroom

The next floor was dorm rooms. The most interesting thing they found was the communal bathroom, where it looked like every pipe and faucet had exploded, the water freezing after a second or two of flowing. The whole place was frozen, literally, in a moment of chaos.

172 winter climb -> apartment building (dorm) -> 6th floor (last floor) -> poster of band called -> Tyrannosaurus Wrecks

The next floor was the last one in the dorm. It was also just empty rooms, dust, and broken fragments of lives that were never lived here.

James found half a poster taped to the rough brick wall of one of the rooms, that appeared to be a tour poster for a band called Tyrannosaurus Wrecks. At least, if he was guessing the name properly, from where it was torn down the middle.

He added it to his pack, already mentally ranking it as the coolest thing they’d found so far.

172 winter climb -> apartment building (dorm) -> 6th floor (last floor) -> balcony / patio

“Is it just me, or was this place \*really\* empty?” Alex asked as they collected themselves and took a five minute break by the door to the top floor’s balcony. The balcony - or was it a patio? James could never keep those straight - stretched out the back of the building, and merged seamlessly with the frozen snowy hills that continued up and up and up. They were so high up now, they scraped the cloudline, even if there was still a lot of climbing before they really got past it.

172 Winter climb -> **apartment building (dorm) -> ben was left just like that like never existed**

And then, pulling goggles down and masks up, the team moved on. The six of them climbing the railing and taking their first steps of the day out of their shelter.

172 winter climb -> snow pile (monster) + disc of ice + shadow gear eaters

Twenty minutes later, when they were ‘ambushed’ by a snow pile that must have thought it was being sneaky, Alanna slammed into its back with an overeager tackle, hauling herself up to its head with a cackling laugh to shatter one of the creature’s black stone eyes using one of her glove’s charges. The others were ready to help, but let her have her fun.

They kept climbing. Pausing briefly to take shelter behind a boulder when the wind did pick up again. It didn’t last for long, though a few razor sharp discs of ice got flung down the mountain. Their resting spot kept them from injury though, and it was more than big enough for all of them.

James did get another glove eaten when he leaned on one of the rock’s shadows though, without thinking about it.

172 winter climbing -> apartment building (dorm) -> ben (college student) = ate and took there stuff the bounced

“God dammit.” He muttered, letting Anesh pull their last spare out of his pack and fumbling a rapidly numbing hand into it. The cold was \*not\* something they could screw around with anymore, their little thermostat reading it at negative twenty out here. “Where are the flares? There’s another boulder coming up, we should have a flare ready.” He called over the wind

“They’re in Ben’s pack!” Alex shouted back.

James paused. Everyone paused, actually. All of them feeling something unhook in their memories.

Looking around, James counted heads. There were six of them. Obviously. Because that was how many people a telepad could move.

He rattled off names, and was pretty sure the others were doing something similar.

“Oh bloody hell!” Anesh yelled. “How did no one notice that! He took one of our bedrolls!”

“And all the flares, and a bunch of rope, and the spare drysuit…” Nik did a quick inventory. “Aw, a whole thermos of coffee!”

Arrush mimed eating, voice not able to carry over the wind but wanting to remind them of the food Ben had consumed, too.

“Shit.” James uttered. “Okay. Gonna have to be on the lookout for that in the future. Typical college student; ate all our food then bounced.” He tried to make it into a joke. “Are we still good to keep going?”

172 winter climb -> traffic lights / street lights -> form a circle

It wasn’t long before James, leading their procession, noticed something of interest. To the left of the hill they were climbing, if they were to dip back down fifty feet or so, in among a small copse of trees, there was the familiar green glow of a traffic light reflecting off of the flat plane of white snow.

On its own, that wasn’t too strange. Or rather, relative to the dungeon so far, it wasn’t too strange. They’d seen a traffic light standing in the middle of nowhere before. But from their vantage point, James could see, slightly farther away, another one. And then a distant third, little more than a point of dim light shining through the snow.

He paused, and pointed, making sure everyone else saw what he saw.

Their line shifted. Together, they agreed. They should check that out.

Descending a snowy slope was actually way harder than going up one. Unable to see where they were stepping, each movement had to be carefully probed out, lest it turn into a fall. They moved slowly, in pairs side by side. More than once, one of them had to steady or catch another.

But they made it. And as they reached the foot of the hill they’d just spent so long getting up, the wind even died down a little to congratulate them. The snowfall turning into just a thin dusting of flakes.

“There’s another one over there.” Nik pointed in the opposite direction of where James had seen the other two traffic lights, as they stood near the base of the first one. It was still surreal, the metal pole jutting out of the snow at a slight angle, the light stuck on green, an unblinking and solid glow. “And I think another farther back?”

“Oh yeah, I see it.” Alanna said, squinting into the distance. “Looks like they kinda curve around. Wait, hang on…”

“This is a circle!” Anesh declared. “The angles all match up! I mean, or it’s just a line. But I think it’s probably a circle!”

James frowned at that. “Okay, worrying.”

172 winter climb -> tree (monsters) = now?!? "stick creatures / monsters)

They got three steps into the trees before there was a \*twang\*, and something whipped toward them. But \*this time\*, Alanna was ready for it. Planting her feet and getting her arms up, she took the hit from the fast moving branch head on, and the wood exploded into splinters as it hit her and failed to swat her aside.

The stick creatures overhead hadn’t waited to make sure their tripline trap actually worked, and were already dropping into a charge against the party. But this time, the delvers were ready, energized, and had spotted at least a few of the hiding places ahead of time.

James and Alanna hunkered down while the others opened fire on the group of ambushers. By the time the stick things reached them, the two that lunged for them had far less backup than they probably expected, and James jolted forward to hack into the one coming for him with his axe with a vigor. And then, after a brief burst of violence, it was quiet again.

Without the tactics of their traps and surprise on their side, the stick things weren’t much of a threat to an armed team. Even their lack of vital points didn’t stop a well placed bullet from taking one out entirely.

172 winter climb -> traffic lights / street lights -> form a circle -> center is book case -> single book on it

The snow here was thinner on the ground. And they all walked a little easier as they realized that there was some kind of pavement underneath their feet. The ground much, \*much\* more stable to walk on than dirt and rocks.

Around them, the landscape began to change. Plants that were obviously trimmed hedges, covered in snow but still showing some green, lined the edges of the brick walking paths. A few metal poles stuck out of the snow, not traffic lights but just normal lamps. In a large expanse pressed up against a boulder, what looked like a half buried riding lawnmower languished in disrepair.

And at the center of the formation, what was almost comically the center of the traffic light ring, there was a bookshelf.

A nice brown oak, the worn look of a loved antique. Also, encased in a clear block of ice that didn’t seem to have done any damage to the object itself, or the single book sitting on its center shelf.

172 winter climb -> traffic lights / street lights -> form a circle -> lawn mower dragon + laughing and/or crying attack = arrush + throwing up on lawn mower dragon and killing it. GO ARRUSH!

She didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence before the thing that James had assumed was a lawnmower stood up in an explosion of motion. Snow shook off in clumps as the creature rose, unfurling like a mechanical flower. It was made of gray stone and steel gears, liquid water dripping off it to freeze instantly as it touched the ground.

It had a long neck, ending in a face with an extended maw that split open four ways to show off multiple rows of teeth. It stood on four legs like an unnatural cat, a sinuous tail of flexing stone whipping behind it with a long stinger on the end. Off its back, two sheet metal wings whirred as they flexed mechanical gears. Woven throughout its body, wooden branches and spurts of green leaves revealed themselves, the topiary either part of it, or so symbiotic it didn’t matter.

“Dragon!” James howled.

Before he was even done with the word, the creature - and it \*was\* a dragon - roared a challenge in return. Neck rearing back as it sucked in a deep breath, it whipped its head forward as the group just started to get their guns up, and screamed a burst of light at them.

The beam swept over the delvers, James’ vision going white as it hit him. He saw Alanna try to twist away, and Alex got a few shots off, but he was still fumbling for his own gun, and the goggles did absolutely nothing to stop the onslaught against his eyes.

And then, it was gone, and he was fine. Actually, he was better than fine. He was somewhere incredible. Around him, the snow fell in crystalline fractal patterns. The wind brought perfectly chilled fresh air across his lips. Everything felt so perfect. He could barely contain his laugh as he sunk to his knees, marveling at the sound that snow made when you crunched it flat. The whole world felt like it was moving in slow motion, a sense of perfect awe filling him entirely.

There was a car-sized dragon made of stone and wood and metal charging at him. The pale gray light seemed to glitter off the ice droplets it left behind as it loped forward. Its violence was majestic in its purity. James smiled up at it as it slid forward on its hind legs, raising a claw like a work of art into the air.

Arrush took the claw on his flank, lunging forward to intercept it with his body.

The humans had seen something, been affected by something, that he didn’t understand. They were all laughing, or crying, dropped to their knees and staring blankly forward. The dragon hadn’t paused, though, and had moved in for a kill without reservation.

And so had Arrush.

The dragon’s claw slammed into Arrush’s flank, metal tipped stone talons shredding through his climbing harness and drysuit, splattering dark green ichor across the snow and sending Arrush flying sideways. He slid across the ground, his fourth arm freed from its secure confines frantically snagging Alex’s pistol as he rolled past her. Arrush had no firearms training, but he had seen enough. And like James had said; he was \*very\* adaptable.

Noticing the figure that was still moving, the Dragon turned its attention on him, another howl like the wind of a storm blowing a curtain of light over his eyes. He charged through it, straight into the monster’s maw that snapped closed when he was still ten feet away. The dragon looked almost surprised, leafy eyes regarding him oddly as it swept another claw his way.

Arrush took it on a raised arm, the talons digging into his flesh with a spurt of pain and blood. Then, with his other two good arms, he grabbed on, and swung his feet off the ground. Wrapping his injured arm as tightly as he could around the dragon’s own limb, Arrush experimentally hammered a series of strikes down at the first joint he found. Nothing gave, so he pulled himself further up, aiming to grab onto the creature’s flank, as it realized what he was doing and started thrashing.

The ratroach grabbed onto the base of the dragon’s neck with both his weaker hands. Then two of his stronger arms pulled him up. Hand over hand, keeping a grip even as his limbs threatened to betray him to the cold, he hauled himself up to where a row of leaf covered acorn eyes stared at him, the animal instinct of the dragon sending it into a feral panic as he closed in.

The dragon contorted, and Arrush felt something stab into his leg. But it was too late. Using his last free hand, he ripped what was left of his scarf away, the burned cloth fluttering away in the wind. He flexed his stomach, and a new feeling joined the protective urge in his chest. A much less pleasant feeling.

Then he vomited directly into the dragon’s face.

It \*screamed\*, a wail like a dying machine, as Arrush followed up the corrosive bile with strike after strike from his balled fists. The stone melted under his assault, the creature’s eyes popped like blown fuses. It thrashed, slamming its head into the ground to try to throw him. But all it did was let him use the momentum to hit it harder, one last punch crushing through a rusting metal skull and into something fluid and important.

Arrush ripped out what he could. The dragon twitched, and then pitched sideways, its whole body crushing a swath of snow as it died instantly.

He rolled off before it hit the ground. Took two steps. Then collapsed to his knees as one of his legs gave out.

172 winter climb -> traffic lights / street lights -> form a circle -> arrush passed out / going into shock

Alanna caught him before he fell, Nik’s Authority coiling around the deepest of his wounds. Arrush heard shouting as the humans rose and surrounded him, but all he could hear was his own heartbeats. But at least he felt warm now. Then he closed his eyes, and let the darkness take over.

“Shit, he’s going into shock.” Nik barked. “We need to get him out of here. Now.”

Anesh took over as half their party had some reasonable panic. “James! Get the book! Alex, go with him, watch for traps! Alanna! Telepad out, now! Nik, keep him stable for a minute longer!”

172 winter climb -> traffic lights / street lights -> form a circle -> bookshelf -> book -> james choose endurance 2

James and Alex sprinted for the bookshelf, where the ice was already cracking away with the death of its guardian. Alex watched his back while James broke off the rest of the ice. “The book is blank.” He exhaled a curse as he reached for the text anyway.

“What?”

“Like, no title, no cover. It’s just…” James hand made contact with the textbook, and suddenly, he wasn’t there anymore. He wasn’t anywhere, really. He was where choices were made.

[What has brought you to this point?]

It echoed in his head, and all around him. A simple question. What brought you here? He didn’t even have to decide himself; it was multiple choice.

Three answers surfaced through the swirling everything of thought. Was it his hiking ability? His skill at climbing? Or perhaps his prowess with the axe? Any of these were valid, all of these were choices. He should choose what this book would become, what this text would hold. From these thr-

There was another choice. Unbidden, outside the pattern of this non-place, it hovered just within James’ reach. On reflex, his mind quested for it, just to see what it was. And another thought entered his head.

[Templating - Phone Book - New York]

His first Skill. It was here, too. And there, nearby, [Origami]. [Recipe - Pancakes]. One by one, coming into view like a constellation of sparks. They flooded the field of options, laid out for him not by the guiding hand of the mysterious magical self-writing textbook, but by his own magic. From the very beginning to his latest Skill acquisition, all of his shell upgrades, all of his emotional resonances. And then, larger blots of choice above them; Aim, Agility, Endurance. The Lessons from the Sewer. And drifting away from here, spiraling out in streamers of concept, the two links he had to Anesh and Sarah. And his one Route Horizon spell. All of it.

James wasn’t really here. He couldn’t grin, exactly. But he felt a deep satisfaction as he reached out and nudged at his second tier of Endurance.

It had taken him so far. So many other potential fun options, sure. But who could say no to the ability to just… keep going?

He was back, holding the book on [Endurance II]. The title was twisted and written in a language he couldn’t understand but was instantly recognizable. James had a moment of worry that \*maybe\* he shouldn’t have done that. But they weren’t here to waste time dawdling around.

172 winter climb -> just as 6 people left -> winter climb reward

And as the occupants of the Lair scrambled to mobilize medical aid for the bleeding delvers, all six of them observe the same message freeze itself through their minds.

[Cowardice. Deception. Murderers.

Ascension : 1,982 ft.

Bestowal : +11 Breath Storage, +1 Available Learning]

178 high school dungeon = wasp **(((((previous there was something flying mentioned but i do not think wasp at the time was mentioned, also the inhuman (half cow / half wasp i think was placed in character section vs monster section)))))**

She barely noticed when Simon’s bat whirled through the air from a judicious fling just over her head and ricocheted off a diving wasp thing just before it hit her, sending both bat and wasp spiraling downward. Or Simon kicking away the ratroach that had managed to get all three of its hands wrapped around her leg to try to drag her off balance and over the edge. She didn’t notice much of anything, really, until there weren’t any more things trying to kill them.

**178 crow-wasp things ((((((now a crow vs a cow ok i am lost))))) + dog and frog mixed into ratroaches**

The rest of the dungeon had gotten improvements, but this place looked as dramatic as ever. A gravel basketball court, with stone bleachers and rusted chain link fence surrounding it. The ratroaches were waiting for them, as always, a jeering crowd hissing and spitting for violence and death. This time, though, more of those crow-wasp things were mixed into the crowed, and Simon swore he saw something that looked like a blend of a dog and a frog mixed into the press of matted fur and chipped chitin.

179 Cartomorphs = map infomorphs = came from route horizon **(((((few chapters back i seem not to take hint of clear destinction of author and trying to separate Officium Mundi infomorph and route horizon Cartomorph)))))**

What was supposed to be a straight line to the destination the cartomorph in his head was signaling him toward had instead turned into a week and a half of short hops from gas station to gas station and hotel to hotel, with interesting little diversions mixed in liberally.

Cartomorphs. Those ethereal life forms spawned from the Route Horizon monster kills. No one was sure if they ran on mental hardware the same way other infomorphs did, but they sure seemed to bond with a single person a lot more directly than an Officium Mundi assignment did. They were living maps, the voice guide and position tracking of a GPS all rolled into one magical ball and living in your mind.

190 dungeon -> rubber band ball / rubber band 4 legged creature

Instead, he came face to face with a puddle of matter that dropped down from the ceiling in front of him. It oozed against the floor like liquid, before snapping back to its own center, and rising up in front of James. Caught in the beam of his flashlight, it looked like a thousand rubber bands, squirming like worms, wrapped around some kind of dark dripping fluid that left a splotch on the floor where it had landed. It composed itself into something with four limbs and no body, each leg affixed the a point on the floor or a nearby wall.

And then it seemed to notice that James was staring at it. And there was a metallic ratcheting \*click\*.

And his flashlight went out.

“Alanna!” James yelled, at the same time he blindly swiped forward with his hatchet. A shudder ran up his arm as he felt the blade bite into something, and he yanked back, shifting his feet to deliver a kick to where he \*suspected\* the thing’s center mass ones, just guessing from where the hit had landed. But he didn’t connect, and his light swept back in to the space in front of him as whatever it was bounded away.

Not just away. *Up*. It hadn’t turned off his light, it had *eaten* it, and James instantly caught on and tracked it by where the light retreated slowest. It had climbed up into the ceiling, up onto one of those cable roots that punched through from the layer above.

“Where?” Alanna demanded.

“Up. Gone.” James pivoted around his partner as she swept the area he’d just been standing in, pressing his back against hers. “Go, let’s go.” He found his teeth rattling; this was the first time in a while the dungeon had actually *gotten* to him like this.

Alanna moved in short steps, and James followed, walking backward, doing his best to not trip her up with his own footsteps. And then, ten feet from the rope they’d tied off, his light went out again. And James made a snap choice.

“Run!” He snapped at Alanna. And without hesitation, she listened, shooting forward in three increasingly long bounds, slamming through the small entrance they’d come through and sending a chunk of cubicle wall tumbling over the edge into the chasm, and grabbing the rope on the way. She yelled something upward as she started climbing.

James didn’t hesitate, turning to follow and seeing his flashlight slide off the bubble of darkness as he turned, pushing his acceleration to the limit as he sprinted after her. Alanna was already climbing, but James realized he wouldn’t have enough room if he jumped after her. They should have used \*two\* ropes, he thought, cursing their own shortsightedness.

He made another snap decision, and dropped to a slide, letting his momentum carry him over the edge, and just past the very bottom end of the rope.

He caught it in what he’d likely pretend later was a casual move and not a terrified scramble to not fall to his death, pulling them out in a swing away from the cliff face just as the thing that had been chasing James leapt after them.

The rubber band construct seemed confused as it lost contact with any nearby points, its limbs twitching and dripping whatever black goo it was holding inside itself, before rapidly snapping back and contracting it into a rough ball. It sailed under James feet, \*way\* too close for comfort, before crashing against the far wall of the chasm somewhere a hundred feet below them.

“Alright fuck this place!” James called, feeling the rope start to pull upward as El and Arrush hauled them up. His hands were shaking, and he didn’t trust himself to climb after Alanna, who had already pulled herself over the edge. “Let’s come back with a flamethrower!”

190 dungeon -> computer mice (electric fuzz tail) = volets (someone named as race)

James didn’t untense though when the girls did. They’d seen striders and the electrically charged computer mice that someone had started calling ‘volets’ around all day, but none of them had engaged the team. This one, though, was different somehow.

190 dungeon (office) -> automated carpet cleaner (roomba) (Zoomer)((((think it has a name already?))))) + quill dogs -> description of them

Below them, something shaped like an automated carpet cleaner left furrows in the material as it circled their position. The chrome shelled beetle-like creature having almost taken El’s leg off when it had surprised them, but unable to fly or climb, was left to simply bump into their perches until it tired of the hunt. James didn’t like these things, and not just because they seemed to primarily feed on the porcupine like lamp dogs that roamed these plains in packs.

The lamp dogs, with their quilled coats, seemed cool. He wanted to see if he could feed one of them and make friends, but these damn cleaners kept chewing through them with their low to the ground industrial grinder of a mouth.

The oversized roomba hummed by James’ desk, and he tightened his grip on the forty five degree angle. Not worried, just… now would be a bad time to slip. “It gives you so much time to think about things!” He said with a smile in his voice. “All this extra time to relax, and process stuff! It’s nice. I like this.”

El checked her watch. “Hour ten. We gotta go, we can’t just sit here for a week while Zoomer down there waits to eat our feet.”

They glanced over, and saw James pulling himself up on his desk so he could wave frantically with his free arm, bracing himself so he could flail around. Following what he was looking at, it became clear quickly. There was a small pack of those lamp dog things, the ones with coats of razor pointed pencils, digging their own low furrows through the tall carpet maybe a hundred feet away.

“Don’t get their attention!” El hissed at James, just barely heard over the rustling in the breeze and James’ own yelling.

“No, he’s trying to warn them off.” Alanna said suddenly. “Because… yup!” She hopped off the desk, drawing a flinch from El. “Roomba’s gone! Let’s go!”

“Run, dogs!” James yelled. Because running was about their only good option right now, just like it was for the delvers. He let go of his desk and let gravity slide him down to the floor, landing in the soft packed down carpet at the same time as Arrush. “Let’s get out of here!” He pointed back the way they came, and everyone started moving in one of the few ways that you didn’t normally get to, in \*any\* dungeon.

190 dungeon (office) -> carpet plains + (pit traps, lined with jagged scissor blades)

The carpet plains were riddled with small pitfalls, sometimes used as burrows and dens of small creatures, sometimes more like actual **pit traps, lined with jagged scissor blades**. Or smaller desk or table surfaces that just barely jutted out of the floor, solid tripping hazards at any speed above a careful walk. And while they could look peaceful, the tall carpet hid a lot of dangerous life that didn’t have much interest in making friends. **Maul carts cut game trails through the area**, and **paper pushers in more animalistic form lay in wait at weird places.**

End book three