“How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.” -Doris L Sayers, Gaudy Night (1935)-

_____

The public library was a great institution.  James was, for reasons both personal and political, deeply invested in their health and success, and he always found the places to be comfortable to be in.  Even this library, sitting in the middle of a northern Texas city that James had embarrassingly forgotten the name of, with a dungeon inside and an extra floor of building outside that shouldn’t exist.  It was just great  to see places like this.

It was easy to forget with the power of Google in everyone’s pocket, but libraries were repositories of a lot of knowledge and detail and complexity.  Not to mention fun .  The number of really bad sci-fi novels James had consumed in his childhood was magnified by a factor of a hundred thanks to his local library.  And for that alone, he would fight to the death to preserve it, if needed.

None of this was enough to stop him from complaining about something though.

“It’s almost one AM.”  He stated flatly.  “It’s late February-“

“It is March my dude.”  Vad interrupted him.

James continued smoothly.  “It’s early March.”  He really hoped it was early  and he hadn’t lost a week or two somewhere.  “It’s, what, ten degrees outside?”

“It’s not that cold.  I mean, I know we had that ice storm a while back, and it’s not like Texas doesn’t have winters, but it isn’t… oh, you mean celcius.  Yeah, sure.”

“Right.  So why is the air conditioning on and making it even colder in here?”  James demanded.

Vad snorted.  “Get a sweater?”  He suggested.  James glanced over at him, and realized that the man was sorting a book return cart.  He wanted to make a comment, but honestly, it was one of the least silly things he’d seen someone to do calm their nerves before a delve.

There was a part of James mind that spoke out to him, and told him that maybe it wasn’t normal or healthy for him to not have any anxiety before going through the doors.  But he dismantled that worry rapidly, piece by piece.  He was skilled, bloodied, well equipped, and probably more dangerous than anything within a mile of the dungeon’s entrance.  This wasn’t him stumbling through a new and scary place, this was him going into a place he’d been before, looking for unfamiliar niches and odd secrets.  And he was doing it with others who were just as competent as him.

Though not as many others as normal.

James broke his worries down and tried to set them aside, and when he couldn’t fully do that, he turned to the other person who’d come with him to complain about Vad.  “Arrush, help, Vad’s bullying me!”

“You… did tell him… you would burn his building down.”  Arrush muttered out a point, trying to clear his throat from the thick corrosive fluid that built up when he was sitting idle.

“Yeah, actually!”  Vad pointed the spine of an illustrated book on plants at James like a baton.  “You could just blow up the air conditioning!  That’s how you solve problems, right?!”

“No yelling in the library!”  James stage whispered back.

Vad scowled at him.  One of the first things James had done when they’d arrived had been to talk to the man about the fallback plan for if the Old Gun breached the dungeon, and Vad had been displeased , to say the least.  Oh, he’d already known; being a member of the Order by this point, he had read the recap of the security meeting, and he and the other rotating members who rotated keeping an eye on the dungeon’s outer building were not happy.  

But not being happy didn’t mean they didn’t understand.  Well, the others did.  Among the people who were stationed here, several of them had survived the Akashic Sewer’s breach, and one of them was Frequency-Of-Sunlight, who’d fought the Old Gun directly and had lost a sibling to it.   The Library team were aware of what the pillar was capable of, both in a standup fight and also in terms of turning dungeons inside out and flooding the surrounding area with hostile life.

Vad shook his head at James, ignored the joke, and turned to the ratroach who was very carefully flipping through a slice of life manga that had been left on the table.  “Arrush, your boyfriend is being an idiot.”

Arrush considered his response, several of his eyes flicking up away from his reading to look at Vad cautiously.   He wasn’t cold.  He was wearing the armor that had been refitted with a series of blue orbs to fit him more comfortably than anything ever had, and it had padding on the inside, in addition to being incredibly heavy.  Heavier since the Order’s standard armor started including slotted ballistic plate.  But he could guess at how someone without fur, and with nerve endings that were used to being comfortable, might find the clean air to be cold.  Pushing the book away with one of his smaller paws so he didn’t drip on it by accident, he tilted his head toward Vad.  “We are… not dating.”  He tried to cough in his throat again to clear it.  “I am working on… myself.  And James is working on… being hit in the head less.”  Arrush nodded to himself as he saw Vad choke on an abrupt laugh.  His joke had worked.  “We can think about it when… when we have less trauma.  In both ways.”

Part of James wanted to countermand the statement about how often he took unprotected hits to his face - he had mostly been joking when he was using that as an excuse after his latest tribulation.  But the rest of him was just too busy finding Arrush’s wry wit to be hilarious.

And more than that, there was a feeling associated with it that he found as comfortable as being in a library.  The feeling that they had all the time they needed to work stuff out, and that there wasn’t any pressure.  That even though he was an idiot and Arrush was struggling with being new to the world and both of them were fucked up in a variety of ways, that they could take their time with it all, as emotional equals.

<| Corridor Filled : Bond Formed - Patience : Share - [ Breath ] : Vector - Recent Sight : One Corridor Established : Zero Corridors Empty |>

And apparently Arrush felt the same way.

James shared a content smile with the ratroach, before his brain caught something in the Clutter Ascent notification that had just sent itself through his thoughts.  “Wait, Breath ?!”  He muttered.  “Like… how?  Like from the Climb?  Because… Arrush, can we test this?”  Arrush gave an equally confused nod, and the two of them tried to move just normal breathing back and forth between each other while James filled Vad in on what had happened.

What didn’t happen was anything else.  It had nothing to do with normal breathing or blood oxygenation or lung capacity.  But when James tried to move some of his Mountain breath into Arrush, it worked almost instantly.  And without leaving him feeling exhausted and dizzy, either.   And  going over Arrush’s dungeon imposed cap on the mana pool.

“This is… useful?”  Arrush asked.  “I don’t know how.”

“Yeah, me neither.”  James admitted.  “But I apparently do have a lot of head trauma, so I’ll figure it out later.  If nothing else, it does let one of us work as a battery for the other?  Unless there’s some unintended consequence that we’ll learn about later.  Which… I mean, Mountain, probably, but Clutter Ascent doesn’t tend to do stuff like that.”

“It is the best space.”  Arrush quietly agreed, his claws flicking against themselves in idle thought.  

Vad, thoroughly derailed from being upset at James by this point, just let out a sigh.  “So, no Alanna or Momo tonight?  Or… uh… what was Thought’s name?  TQ?”

“Momo’s on a date with her girlfriend.”  James started counting off on his fingers while he leaned back in the coarse padded library chair he’d claimed.  “Alanna spent the day with her sisters, who I still haven’t gotten to meet, but she was tired.  TQ is camping.”

“…Camping where?”  Vad asked.  “In a dungeon?”

“No, in a forest.”  James deadpanned.  “Oregon has a bunch of public land that you can camp on, you know.  I… actually, joking aside, I assumed most states did.  Does Texas not?  It must .  Whatever, the point is, some people who needed a break went camping, and TQ went with them because camracondas are people too and they need breaks.”

“I mean, I knew that .”  Vad said.  “I know I ask stupid questions, but…”

“No, no, you don’t.  I’ve just been too defensive.”  James sighed as he stared up at the ceiling.  “I’m just kinda waiting for when we run into some real problems with people hating our nonhuman members, and I’m jumpy about it.  You’re fine.  Anyway, they’re all busy.  And then, like, Anesh went back to visit his parents for the first time in a while - all of him for some reason that I assume is funny - and a chunk of our delvers are on a long Climb run right now, and we’ve got everyone else scrambling to cover small things because some people are down with injuries or whatever.  We’re short on people is what I’m saying.”

Vad gave him a suspicious look as he pushed the book cart back against the end of a shelf to pretend that it had been that way the whole time.  “Should you actually be here?”

“Yes.”  James said with confidence.  “Because I heal really fast, especially with all the extra magic the Order has right now, and it’s important that I keep getting better at anything I can.  And I need the Order as a whole to be better, too.  Because the next crisis that comes up, I’m not going to fuck around with.”

Shaking his head, Vad refrained from telling James that he was kind of a scary dude sometimes.  Instead, he just checked his watch again.  “It’s almost time.”  He said, and James rocked forward to hop lightly to his feet, while Arrush gently closed what he was reading and stood with his joints popping as he did so.

Anxiety was gone  from James.  Despite his resolution after the meeting earlier, he’d done more than just rush straight here.  He’d spent a chunk of the day doing debriefings with survivors, both of the Underburbs and the coal plant that he and JP had swept through.  And it had been… hard.  Very hard.  Emotionally taxing, even if he knew it was important.

People didn’t like being told that their families didn’t remember them.  Even when he showed some of the coal plant employees, they didn’t believe it, and James had needed to intervene in a couple cases.  About half of those people had demanded memory wipes when they’d caught on that the Order might be able to do that, but James had held off on it; their growing population of therapists had an alternate idea that might work better, and he told everyone so.  But that still didn’t mean it was a magical fix to the whole situation, and that it wasn’t hard.

Sienna had been the hardest.  The poor fucking girl was still healing from her injury, and might have permanent nerve damage from it unless they could find some magic for her.  But more than that, she’d seen far more death than any early twenties college student deserved to.  Watching so many people, including one of her friends, die in front of her had left her despondent and unwilling to respond to most things.  James included.

He’d sat with her for a while.  Told her that they would try to help her however they could, and that she had a lot of options, when she was ready to talk about them.  But ultimately, she didn’t say anything to him, and he left the Order’s hospital in emotional turmoil.

Here, though? Now?  Standing in front of the doors to a dungeon?

This was easy by comparison.  This was what James was good at.  He could figure out how to bring back the dead and take away the deeper hurts later.  Right now, he just had to focus on staying alert, staying alive, and uncovering little treasures.

“Ready check.”  James said, and they started doing a quick once over of their own and each other’s gear.

Armor, recently upgraded.  A variety of tools from flashlights to lockpicks.  Several varieties of potions and one variety of magic coffee, though no new brews yet.  Shield bracers, stealth earrings, overly dramatic plated shin guards.  Hatchets and knives and sidearms.  Helmets secured on heads, Arrush’s with special space inside for his antenna.  Necklaces of blue orbs.

James helped Arrush tighten one of the straps on the back of his armor, in a tiny spot where none of his arms could reach and James had to assume itched constantly.  Vad zipped up the bag with their medical supplies and shouldered it.  Arrush partially unfolded the rolling cart they were bringing.

“Let’s go find some books. ”  James declared, pushing open the door and taking point.  Ignoring Vad reminding him in an exasperated tone that none of the magic in the Ceaseless Stacks had yet to come from a book.

_____

“Oh, this is easy, this is French for ‘life’!”  James said as he spotted a band of mobile ink making a clover loop on the information desk.  It didn’t take more than a few seconds for the ink to shoot up off the surface and onto his palm, moving to form something like a bracelet around his wrist.  “You know, at this rate, I’m gonna end up covered in decorations before I ever get a tattoo on purpose.”  He commented to Arrush.

The ratroach snapped his multitude of eyes up from where he had stabbed a pair of combat knives through something that looked like an encyclopedia before it could bite anyone’s hand off.  “What… would you mark your skin with?”  He asked.

“Camraconda.”  James sighed as he pulled two different pieces of armor back to check on the moving words written on his skin.  “I know , don’t look at me like that.  I tried to have this conversation with Alanna, and I literally cannot think of anything except different permutations of camracondas.  What would you get tattooed if… is that an option?  Can you tattoo chitin?”

“Keeka.”  Arrush said instantly.

James gave a nod, mouth moving without words before he found what he wanted to say.  “Okay, yeah, that’s a pretty good one.  I don’t think that’d work as well for Alanna or Anesh, on my end?  Like, there’s a finite amount of detail a tattoo can have.  I think.  Or maybe not?  I don’t know that much about tattoos.  Oh!  There’s something I can learn without magic!  Sarah will be happy with me.”

“Why doesn’t this person want you to learn things with magic?”  Vad asked as he crawled out from under the desk they were searching.  “Magic is great.  Does she not know that magic is great?”

It wasn’t an unfair assessment.  Though James had to admit, he was misrepresenting Sarah a little bit.  She’d just said that she thought he should have a hobby beyond dungeon delving.  And to be fair, he did .  It was just that all his hobbies enhanced, or used, his various dungeon magics.

But he didn’t feel like explaining a sort of nuanced personal social life to Vad right now, since the trio were on a delve, and while James enjoyed a good bout of banter, he didn’t want it to actually begin to seriously distract from staying alert.

They’d moved into the Stacks in a circuitous route, following the outer wall from the entrance door for quite a ways before trying one of the paths through the ceiling high metal shelves.  The idea had been to find one that had, if not no hostile books, at least fewer of the creatures of snapping venomous teeth and long bookmark tongues.  And it had sort of worked; they’d been accosted on the way, but not by nearly the numbers they faced when they just walked straight in.

It did seem like it wasn’t possible to go far enough that you could skip the outer shell of the Library’s defenses.  The main reason they’d decided to try one of the aisles was because they’d reached a barrier of white drywall and a low curved ceiling that blocked off any further progression.  The group could have simply turned back and tried the other direction, but they were mostly exploring and were prepared for a fight.  It was a calculated risk to try here.

As with a lot of smaller dungeon life forms, the books folded easily against targets that were both ready to fight back, and also armored.  And James, Vad, and Arrush had made their way into the Library pulling a cart that already had twenty small yellow orbs in it.

Now, they keeping their voices down, and their ears open, as they looked through the stacks of books and papers, along with odd framed photos and old library cards, sitting out on the information desk that held a position of authority in this open space.  There were stairs behind it going up, and another set of curved steps leading down to another landing with a ring shaped desk covered in computers that lit up the dim area with their flickering screens.  It wasn’t quite the same as the spot they’d explored the first few times in, being maybe a half a kilometer of walking away, but it was familiar.

“I cannot, to save my life, find a password here.”  Vad admitted as he tapped a stack of library cards on the desk.  James was also prepared to give up; he’d been trying to figure out if there was some kind of secret code on the picture frames or something.  They really should have brought TQ for this; the camraconda was better at codebreaking puzzles than anyone here.  Arrush wasn’t even pretending to try, he was just sniffing the air and looking for another hostile text to stab.  “Do we just go downstairs and try there?”  Vad asked.

The beige computers, composed of smooth rectangular boxes, were… weird.  Technically, their components followed normal physics.  Except for one exception, which no one in the Order could explain yet; they fundamentally did not give a shit about being plugged into things.  Either their own components like monitors or keyboards, or power sources.  If any of them had network cards, they probably wouldn’t need to be plugged into the internet either, but they didn’t, and installing new parts in them didn’t work.  Yet.

Research wanted more samples.  But, critically, they needed samples they could actually work with, which meant they needed samples that weren’t locked with puzzle passwords.

There was just one problem, James figured as he looked down over the dark wooden railing to see the strange light where the flickering wrought iron lamps mingled with the white glow of the screens.  It was a problem that came in the form of a melody, and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end with an anxious chill.  “I hear singing.”  He muttered.

“Mmh.  Bard.”  Vad said, stepping up to join him, and peeking over.  Neither man stuck their head or arms over the edge, Vad from experience in this dungeon, and James because he just kind of assumed that when someone said ‘tomehawks’ that he should follow their lead on where he put his limbs.  “Do you… want to try fighting it?”

“Only three of us?”  Arrush mused.  “No.”  James glanced back at him, watching as Arrush’s ancillary arms slid his knives back into the spots on his armor.  He was getting better at that.  Better at a lot of things, really.  Even the way he talked was becoming steadier.  Though he still felt the skin around his eyes heating up and flushing green as he felt like James was looking for an explanation.  “Too… fair.”  He explained as he wiped the back of a gloved paw on the corner of his muzzle.

James nodded.  “Yeah, I don’t feel like getting in a fair fight with one of those.  Actually, Vad, what’s the worst that can happen in here for loud noises?  Because if it comes into view, I can just shoot it.”

The other delver snapped an unhappy gaze around on James in an instant.  “ No .”  He bit off the word.  “No gunshots unless it’s a last resort.  Anything too loud, and it attracts everything .  Simon had to teleport us out last time, and did you know that teleporting out of dungeons causes week long migraines?”

“…no?  Does it?”  James asked.  “I mean, it makes me throw up, usually, but… I mean, it kinda gives me a headache.”

“I hate you.  Don’t shoot anything.”  Vad pushed back from the railing.  “We can go upstairs, and circle back toward the door.  Keeps us close to the exit, and we might find another information desk or something.”

“Good plan.”  James agreed as he idly tapped various pieces of gear he was wearing to double check that they were still there.  “Arrush?”  The ratroach nodded in agreement, eyes flicking up to scan the balcony above them and the wrought iron chandelier overhead that twisted in a warped circle.  “Alright.  Let’s move.  We’ll secure the top first, then bring the cart up.”

The three of them split up, James taking one side of the curving staircase while Vad followed Arrush up the other.  When they were three quarters of the way up, they shared a glance across the open air between them, and nodded, before taking the last set of steps at the same time and cleared into the next landing ready to fight.

What they weren’t ready for was to find a globe.  It was massive, and James’ eyes widened to an almost equal size as he realized that they’d been fucking tricked.  Some kind of illusion, either a trick of the eye with the surrounding shelves and the curved iron bars overhead that led to no skylights but still let cold light in, or a more literal illusion that just screened for the thing.

The globe was made of granite and turquoise, though the continents and oceans weren’t Earth, and it sat in the middle of the landing, suspended in midair over a small tile pool.  Towers of books stacked five feet tall were dotted around the area, though the small pool of water under the globe had a trio of verticals fountains in it, and it was clear that the spray from them had eroded the closer stacks over time, as they were closer to paper sludge than books.

The whole globe setup was beautiful.  It even had its own cloud system.

It came in the form of a black swirling mass, a multi limbed creature of flowing ink, with a disc of a head like a massive coin.  Unblinking orbs of grey smoke sat embedded in the black substance of that head, rippling as they watched James and his fellow delvers surmount the stairs.

James held an arm out to the others as the thing watched him, and slowly, achingly slowly, took a step backward down the stairs.

His foot didn’t drop like it should have.  Instead, his back thumped against something solid, and our of the corners of his eyes he saw that he was backing up against a row of shelves, and not the staircase he had just been standing on .  His perspective had shifted without notice, and he could see Arrush and Vad stumbling against a pile of books on the other side of the orb, also far out of position.

The creature crawling across the surface of the giant floating globe slowed as it turned its attention to James.  Eyes undoubtedly focusing on him.  That huge head rising slightly like a radar dish to look ‘up’ from the surface toward where he was standing.

“Hi.”  James said unsteadily, licking his lips as he fell back on his most used talent; running his mouth.  “We’re just passing through, if that’s okay.  Love the globe.  I don’t suppose we can be frien-“

The thing started screaming, smoke streaming from its eye sockets in explosive trails as it howled at James.  He heard Vad swearing from the other side of the globe, but it was almost drowned out by the overlapping voices of the creature.

“ Step left!”   Zhu’s voice, clear and easy, cut across his thoughts, and James obeyed.  Just before a black spike put itself through the end of the bookshelf he’d backed into.  “ Move!”   The navigator directed him, and James obeyed, picking up into a jog as he circled the creature.

It was still screaming, holding position up on its globe.  Or maybe it wasn’t screaming at all, but there were four small balls of black ink that were hovering around it’s back that were screaming.  James could make out individual words, but it was too loud to hear whole sentences.  The voices all sounded human, but like four radio broadcasts all turned up to full volume and overlapping each other.

One of the voices went quiet, then another spike tried to hit him, but he was already past where it was aimed.  James kept running, trusting Zhu to nudge him when he needed to course correct, and it didn’t take him long to make a wide circle around the globe and over to where Vad and Arrush were ducked behind and overturned library cart.

“So, this isn’t great.”  James tried to say, and found he had to repeat himself at a shout to be heard over the screaming.  “That’s gonna get noticed!”

A dip in the screams preceded a spike thunking off their defense, and another one punching into the wood of the floor a few feet to their left.  “Back downstairs?”  Vad asked, gesturing to punctuate his words.  “I don’t even know what it’s yelling.”

“Questions.”  Arrush couldn’t actually yell.  He had to lean in close to James and rasp out the word in his ear, in a motion that might have felt intimate if they weren’t armored and being shot at.  “It is asking things.”

“Can you make out the questions?”  James asked curiously, but Arrush shook his head.  He could hear it, sort of, but it was all a mess and unclear.  “Okay.  Downstairs.  Wait for the next volley, then Vad, go first.”  He peeked over the cart while Vad tried to get into a crouch without exposing his back.  The creature had circled around to their side of the globe, and James watched as one of the rippling basketball sized orbs hovering over its back stilled, along with one of the shouting voices, and then launched a spike their way as he ducked back down.

The shot might have taken his head off if he’d been slower.  The thing was getting either more accurate, or faster.  “Vad, go!”  He slapped the man as two other spikes hit the cart, one punching a finger length through the metal with a squeal of sound.

Vad didn’t hesitate, bolting for the stairs, a hand grabbing the railing and hauling himself downward as another shot tried to take his arm off.  But he was down over the edge in a flash, and out of the creature’s range.  “Alright, Arrush, you nexxxxt…” James lost control of the word as he watched, thirty feet away, Vad come running out from behind a bookshelf on a completely different side of the room than the stairs he’d just gone down .  “Fuck!”  He barked out as the creature, which seemed to have been waiting for it, opened up with a trio of inky spikes.

James flicked his hand out, and made a grabbing motion; a kinetic assistance to his use of [Move Person], as he rapidly repositioned Vad five feet to the left.

“Can’t run.”  Arrush’s voice shook, the idea of being caged anywhere  sending the ratroach into an abrupt panic.

“Yeah.  Okay, new plan.”  James drew his pistol, the Walther fitting comfortably in his palm.  He glanced at Arrush and gave a grin.  “I’m sure we can leave once it’s dead.”  He offered comfortingly.

Then he popped his eyes over the edge of their cover just long enough to spot where the floating orbs were, and what direction the creature was moving.  Just as fast, James ducked back down, then poked his hand around the left side of their overturned cart, tilted the gun exactly where his Aim told him to, and opened fire.

It was an odd paradox that gunshots made everything quieter .  James only hit three of the four orbs, but as soon as he did so, there was only one screaming voice left.  He and Arrush rolled out from behind the cart as the others died, and started rushing the globe.

“ -the population of Kuala Lumpur?!” The last orb was screaming.  The others were looking like they were torn open bags, dripping black liquid pouring down from them at a weird angle compared to where the creature was perched.  Ink dripping to the floor, the rippling stopped.  James had a suspicion they’d be reforming soon enough, though.

He also had a perverse impulse to yell back at the orb asking the question.  “Like, one and a half million, probably!”  His voice came just at the pause, when he could see the thing preparing to fire another spike their way. Zhu was even giving him a dodge arrow for it.

And then it stopped.  Just went still, the last few ripples seeming to fold it back from being and orb and into a cube as it turned into a static silent object.

There was no time to consider what that meant.  Instead, James let Arrush get some distance ahead of him, until the ratroach bent his digitigrade legs down into a sliding crouch just as the creature overhead was raising a leg like an elephant’s foot off the globe to lash out at them.

Then he triggered  [Move Person], twice in succession.  Once to boost Arrush’s jump, another time to send himself up onto the top of the globe.  Arrush landed on the creature’s back, and started stabbing instantly, while James got to feel vindicated as he watched two of the orbs reform, pulling their splattered guts back together over the monster’s back and starting to scream again.

He shot one of them, and felt a rustle of feathers inside his armor as Zhu manifested and shouted back an answer to the other question that James hadn’t actually caught.  Then he turned his pistol on the creature itself that Arrush was dug into the back of.  It was thrashing wildly, though not letting go of the globe.  Inky blood poured down from the wounds the ratroach was putting in it, and as it started to slide down, James saw Vad charge forward and leap up to grab one of its legs and yank it downward with his body weight.

He held his fire, breathing heavily from the ache in his head, a pressure behind his eyes from using a blue orb power too much too fast.  Then he made it worse by doing it again to catch Vad as the thrashing of the creature flung the younger man through the air, with James plucking him back to the ground and zeroing his momentum before he crashed into something heavy and sharp.

Then Arrush finished landing enough stabs that the monster seized up, the orbs it had created popping with wet splats, and its grip on the globe failed as it slid off the surface and smashed into the side of the tile below.  A wave of water from where its back half landed in the pool washing out over the wood floor and sodden books.

Things got quiet again, and James, suddenly aware of how high up he was and how unstable his footing felt, crouched down, holstering his gun with slow movements as he spread his hands out to try to steady himself on the round granite surface he had thought it was a good idea to put himself on.  He tried to gently look over the edge, and saw Arrush shaking himself as he waded out of the pool of muddled water.

“Uh… help?”  He called down.

“How the fuck did you even get up there?”  Vad asked, the adrenaline he must be reeling from making his voice shaky, even as he tried to quip.  “Also that was easier than I though it-“

“Don’t.”  Arrush cut him off, as he tried to shake water out of his fur unsuccessfully.

He turned out to be right on the tempting fate.  Within the three minutes it took James to recover from his headache and vertigo, an uncoordinated swarm of a couple dozen living toothy books came flooding into the open space, crawling along shelves and hanging light fixtures to try to assault the delvers.  Arrush and Vad made short work of them, before James could even work up the courage to drop down off the globe.

When he was back on the ground, and helping to collect the dropped dungeon rewards, he tried to talk about it.  “I don’t know why I can get into high stakes fights, banter with the FBI, and live in a world with teleporting assassins, but I can’t handle a ten foot drop without freaking out.”

“That’s more than ten feet.”  Vad said, looking up at the top of the globe as he tried to help James roll the big creature’s body over so they could pull the orb that had dropped out from under it.  “But I get what you mean.  I’m afraid of the ocean.”

“Like, in the abstract?”  James asked.  “Or deep water specifically?   Because if so, I’m not gonna ask you to check the fountain.”

“Why would…” Vad glanced at James with worry.  “Is this a dungeon thing?  Is that going to be super deep?”

“No.”  Arrush said, wading through it as he came to rejoin them.  “He is… joking.”  Then he held out one of his claws, most of the black ink blood washed off of it, and handed James an orb he’d pulled out of the center of the little pool.

The big beast, for all that it was weird, had just dropped a larger yellow.  But, just like James had been told a month ago by a strange guide creature in this dungeon, there was something in the water.  And now they had their first example of a green orb from the Ceaseless Stacks.

“Alright.”  James said.  “I hurt.  Arrush is wet.  Vad is… Vad are you okay?”

“No, but I’m not hurt.”

“Vad’s fine.  Zhu is… Zhu’s actually  fine.  But still.  Do we want to stick to the original plan, and just cut back across this level back toward the door?  Maybe not walk into another one of these illusion traps?”  James asked.

They discussion about it was pretty quick.  The fight had been brutal, but fast, and hadn’t worn them down.  They still had stockpiles of all their emergency items, and their Status Quo gear was mostly sitting at full charge.  The most they’d expended was a few of James’ bullets.

So they kept moving.

_____

The return trip was a lot more placid.

There were still fang filled books that would jump them sometimes, but they were alert, and nothing actually got through.

They picked up a few more word tattoos, though they hadn’t brought the computer with a map on it that they’d salvaged a few delves ago, so they didn’t know where to go to turn them into magic items.  James and Vad had a long what-if conversation about if breaking the little magic figures that the words could be turned into would produce a new type of orb.  They agreed, eventually, that it probably would, but spent too long workshopping color and effect with basically no evidence.  Arrush stayed out of it, wisely.

When they crossed by another landing, Arrush and Vad had darted in while James covered them, searching the semicircle of a librarian’s desk as quietly as they could, and quickly coming up with a password for the cubic beige computer sitting there.  They didn’t check what was on it, just loaded it and all the accessories into the cart.  James figured someone would especially be interested in the speakers that were just three inch square cubes with no actual apparent way to emit sound.

They collected a dozen more small yellow orbs, with Arrush getting a rank in golden retrievers, and Vad picking up one in a very specific regional variety of sparrow.  They also added a book to their cart that was titled “Trees and Their Known Conspiracies”, which James just thought was funny and planned to show someone.  It wasn’t actually full of anything useful, he just liked the cover.

The Ceaseless Stacks seemed content to let them pass with minimal resistance, overall.  Just the smell of dusty paper and the constant visual texture of beige metal mixed with old oak for the shelves.  Dim light that was somehow always enough to read by, and strange titles that meant nothing.

At one point moving through a cramped set of bookshelves, they had to pause when a footstool blocked their way forward.  Vad had started to turn them around, but Arrush stopped him with a cracked grin on his muzzle as James had knelt down and started talking to the footstool in a calm, soothing tone.  Eventually, he stood back up, and patted it on the ‘shell’, as the footstool popped up on cardboard legs and waddled itself down the aisle ahead of them to get out of the way.

Then it kept following them.

“You sure you wanna come with us, buddy?”  James asked it when they were back at the door to the dungeon.

The crab like entity looked past him, cardboard eye stalks peering out into a different library, that looked… different.

It had been trailing after them for a while as they collected orbs and moving words, listening as James talked softly with Arrush and Zhu tried to explain why he didn’t have any of his own blue powers to Vad.  James wasn’t sure if the stepstool thought it was being kidnapped, but he didn’t want to accidentally drag it out of its home if it didn’t want to go.

Then it cheerfully perked up, and scuttled past them all, leading the way back to mundane Earth.

“Okay, that’s adorable, but he cannot  stay with me.”  Vad said, following.

James shook his head and smiled as he and Arrush trailed after the librarian.  Weirdly enough, this had been a pretty relaxing evening.  Maybe the little crab thing could make friends with some shellaxies back at the Lair.