The sky was clear and the air brisk as Bob exited the Adventurer's Guild with Kelli at his heels.

Bob blew out a long breath that misted in the air as they walked across the plaza towards the eastern road.

"So," he said, "are you ready for Thidwell to shepherd you tomorrow?"

Kelli nodded and smiled. He was wearing leather armor fairly similar to what Bob had purchased, and in stark contrast to his normal attire, all the buckles and straps had been properly fashioned. He looked much more put together and competent.

"I've been ready," Kelli said enthusiastically, "once I'm level ten, I'll be able to be of much more use, both on the wall and in my ability to contribute to a group in a Dungeon delve."

Bob could clearly remember Kelli's skills, and asked "What do you get at level ten?" He paused as remembered a conversation with Harv and continued, "If you don't mind me asking, Harv said that some people don't like to talk about their skills."

Kelli blushed and waved a hand dismissively. "You're right in that I wouldn't normally bandy it about, but you're... well, you're not local as you like to say, and you aren't the type to tell tales."

Kelli walked a bit closer to Bob, their shoulders nearly touching as he inclined his head and said quietly, "At level ten, I finally get Akashic Skills, which means I can select a single skill that I have knowledge of, and with an hour of meditation, use it at the same level as the Akashic Skills, skill."

He grinned and gestured excitedly as he expounded, "So while I can only have one skill, and it takes an hour to switch it out, I can have any skill! I'll be able to fill just about any role that a party needs."

Bob blinked. That was a pretty powerful skill. "Do you end up being able to have more than just one?" He asked.

Kelli nodded happily and responded, "I'll be able to do two at fifteen, three at twenty, and four at twenty-five."

Bob nodded. "You've chosen a damned versatile path, Kelli," he said.

Kelli nodded and moved a bit away, aware that Bob wasn't comfortable with people being that close to him. 'It was a shame,' he thought idly, that Bob was so... damaged. He was a handsome man, or he would be if his expression wasn't always one of suspicion and distrust. The information he'd gained from his brief telepathic link with the man had clearly illustrated his intellect, but one of the things Kelli had noticed was that Bob hadn't seemed to have any sort of romantic relationship. He'd thought that perhaps with his upbringing he'd been put off of women, and would delve for the other party, as the saying went, but it seemed that Bob had simply dispensed with romance entirely.

Bob was grateful that Kelli seemed to understand that he wasn't comfortable with people being that close to him. As they exited the gate, Bob was surprised that he actually recognized the man and woman on duty, as they'd been at the entrance to the Dungeon on his first day delving. He hadn't been introduced, and he didn't know them, but apparently, it was enough to prompt them to give him a nod of recognition.

A few hundred feet later, Bob was considering casting a portal, when another idea sprang into his mind.

He looked over at Kelli, who seemed to be enjoying the cool morning, and asked, "Kelli, have you ever ridden a horse?"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As it turned out, although Kelli had indeed ridden a horse, he was entirely unwilling to ride a UtahRaptor. Which was a shame, as Bob had done a bit of mental math and determined the trip would be about six percent faster on a UtahRaptor. Kelli was more than willing to step through a portal, however.

Four hours and five hundred and sixty-eight portals later, Bob and Kelli stood at the entrance to the Dungeon where Bob had arrived.

"Should I cast the ritual spell here, or should we go inside?" Bob asked Kelli.

"Oh, out here for certain," Kelli said, "if you go inside you'll find that the ambient mana is not only denser but also more active," he explained, "as you'd expect in a Dungeon. That's why we use a ritual chamber in Holmstead, it's designed to even out the ambient mana that naturally occurs near the Dungeon."

'He's quite right,' Trebor's voice quietly advised, 'this is likely the best place to cast the ritual,' he said before continuing, 'as there is no sense in delaying, I'll wish you luck, and advise you to hand your remaining healing potions to Kelli, just in case.'

Bob nodded and pulled his remaining three potions from his inventory before handing them over to Kelli.

"If something goes wrong, again," Bob grimaced, "give me those."

Kelli took the potions as he said, "I have a few potions as well - I remember what happened when you tried to take your path."

Bob sat cross-legged on the rough stone in front of the Dungeon as he removed his collection of mana crystals from his inventory.

He closed his eyes and took several slow deep breaths. Bob mentally projected the image of an Einstein-Rosen bridge, with himself at one end, and Monroe at the other. Anchoring that image firmly, he visualized a spiral of dimensional energy, reinforcing the bridge and encouraging travel from Monroe, to him. He then mentally projected his Summon Monroe Spell at the image of Monroe on the far side. Finally, he mentally projected the idea of ritual magic, of enduring permanence, which seemed to solidify all the facets of his mental projection.

With a deep breath and both of his hands cupped together to hold the mana crystals, he pushed his mana into the mental projection, willing it to form a link between the projection and the crystals.

Bob felt the mana being to flow through him and knew with a terrible certainty that ritual magic was, as he had feared, a whole-body sort of magic. As the veins and arteries on his right side began to burn, he ground his teeth, and mentally pushed the magic, forcing it to flow.

Ignoring the pain, Bob thought about Monroe. His buddy. His only real friend. Monroe's life was on the line. If he failed, not only would he never see him again, Monroe would die. Horribly, alone and scared and confused.

Bob couldn't see the snarl on his face as he nearly bit through his cheek as the right half of his body spasmed. The rending pain didn't matter. The blood running down his chin and throat weren't important.

From between clenched teeth and in a fine spray of blood, Bob gasped out "Monroe!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Monroe was bored. He'd been napping in a sunbeam but the sun had moved, and now he was idly wandering around the apartment. There weren't any mice, and he'd already eaten, and had a drink. The shower-fall had reached the point where it was no longer suitable, so he'd been forced to do his business in the sink.

That hadn't pleased him.

Monroe was becoming concerned. His servant had been gone for too long.

As he paced out of the kitchen, his ears pricked forward.

"Monroe!"

His human-servant! He knew that voice!

He dashed into the dining/living area and cast about, but couldn't smell or hear or see him.

Monroe let out a plaintive meow. He knew he heard him.

"Monroe!"

His human sounded distressed! He cast about again, more frantically. This time, he had a better position, and it sounded like the voice had come from beside the couch.

Monroe dashed around the couch and skidded to a halt, crouching with his ears back and his tail low.

There was some sort of blue-blackish puddle, hanging in mid-air!

It certainly hadn't ever been there before.

He hissed and backed up slightly, before once again hearing his human's voice, coming from inside the puddle!

Monroe carefully paced around the puddle, sniffing. It didn't smell like his human. It smelled like the sharp-air that sometimes happened when his human servant stuck one of those squares into the wall.

He heard the voice again, and it sounded weaker, fainter.

His tail swished back and forth as he considered the puddle.

Another call, this one barely audible, decided the matter. His human-servant needed him.

Staying low, ears perked forward cautiously and tail low, Monroe dashed into the puddle, missing the door of the apartment opening by a millisecond.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob was burning from the inside out. The right-hand side of his body felt as though lava were burning its way out his veins and into his muscles. He knew that his brain tissue couldn't feel pain, but that didn't prevent the pain from doing its best to overwhelm him.

Unable to unclench his teeth, he gasped out again, "Monroe!"

He could feel that the ritual had been cast, and the summoning had started.

The only thing he could do was fight to stay conscious and keep calling for his buddy.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Monroe felt something flow through him, like the warm water his human sometimes used to keep his coat clean.

System Scanning. Life form recognized. Feline variant. Scanning.

Monroe ignored it as he raced down the blue-black tube towards his human's voice.

Life form sentient. Scanning Memories.

Monroe could hear his human-servant more clearly now, and he didn't sound good. He had sounded like this once before, and had needed Monroe to nap on his chest for several days before he was better!

Familiar bond determined. Please proceed through the Dimensional Membrane to transition to the status of Familiar to Robert Whitman.

Monroe could see his human! There was another puddle between Monroe and his servant, and it seemed to almost stretch as Monroe pushed his way through as he lept towards Bob.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob gasped as Monroe appeared in the midst of a flying leap, landing on Bob's chest and bowling him over.

Kelli hastened to his side and was pouring potions down his throat while Bob blinked and tried hard to stay conscious, his hands instinctively reaching up to pet Monroe.

His blue and green bars were empty and his red bar held only a sliver, and there were a lot of blue boxes as everything went black.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob opened his eyes slowly, the gentle rumble of Monroe purring on his chest soothing his shattered nerves.

"That went a touch differently than I'd expected," Trebors voice sounded from the right.

Bob glanced over and was surprised to see Trebor sitting on a wooden chair, apparently in the ritual room under the Adventurer's guild.

"I'll ask you to not move," Trebor warned, "as you've once again managed to deal quite a bit of damage to yourself, and yes, we are in an artificially constructed mental space to facilitate conversation."

"Well," Bob murmured quietly, "I'm still alive, and I've got Monroe."

"Indeed," Trebor replied, "and in an unexpected fashion. I'd not thought this likely enough to express as a percentile out to a dozen places, but apparently, Monroe is rather special."

Trebor waved a hand negligently and a blue box appeared in Bob's vision.

Familiar bond has been accepted by Sentient Life Form 'Monroe'.

System Skill 'Summon Monroe' has been altered through Dimensional and Ritual Magic skills.

Sentient Life Form 'Monroe' has accepted Dimensional transference.

System Skill 'Summon Monroe' has been changed to System Skill 'Ritual Magic - Summon Dimensional Familiar Monroe'.

Bob blinked.

Another box appeared.

System Skill, 'Ritual Magic - Summon Dimensional Familiar Monroe' created. This skill allows the User Robert Whitman to Ritually Summon his Dimensional Familiar, Monroe. Monroe exists as a part of User Robert Whitman's matrix, and his soul, residing in his inventory space when not summoned or if Monroe's physical form is destroyed. Monroe may choose to return to Robert's inventory at any time, regardless of the distance between the two.

"Yes," Trebor said, "that means you and Monroe are now truly inseparable. Congratulations."

"Kelli is about to bring you around," Trebor warned, "and I can assure you that the pain will be qui-"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Fuck," Bob coughed as he opened his eyes to find a concerned-looking Kelli holding another red potion vial in his hands as he worked the stopper out.

He could still feel Monroe's comforting weight on his chest, and he found himself scratching his ruff as the large Maine-coon's purr started to ramp up.

"Drink this," Kelli urged as he tipped the now open vial into Bob's mouth.

"I didn't think you were going to make it," Kelli said candidly as he sat back on his heels.

"Honestly," Bob mumbled as he winced, "I didn't know if I would or not. I just knew the pain didn't matter. All that mattered was this guy," he said softly as he scritched behind Monroe's ears.

Kelli shook his head.

Bob tried to relax as the aching pain slowly seeped away. His eyes fluttered shut, and he was almost asleep when his eyes flew open.

In a manner similar to Kelli's telepathy, but at the same time, not, Bob had distinctly felt an emotion/thought slide into his mind. 'Hungry.'

Bob looked down at his chest where Monroe was curled up and saw the mostly closed eyes open slightly, and with a plaintive meow, he felt again 'Hungry.'

As he gathered Monroe into his arms and stood up, he thought to himself, 'Well, that's new.'

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Amber grimaced as she walked up the stairs of the apartment building.

It had been a bit over two weeks since the accident at Fermilab.

Robert was missing, presumed dead.

Her position in the program was under review, although due to the groundwork laid by the head of HR, she was unlikely to shoulder the blame.

No, the blame would land squarely on Robert's dead shoulders.

Amber's grimace deepened.

She'd been talking to one of her professors a few years ago, lamenting the fact that she needed to have her masters if she wanted any hope of gaining tenure in a teaching position.

She loved physics, and she'd loved being a TA, but that final step required something she just didn't know if she had. It seemed grossly unfair that she needed to submit original research when all she wanted to do was relay established knowledge. But that was academia.

Professor Elkins had obliquely directed her to contact the head of HR at the newly reopened Fermilab.

A few dozen emails and four face to face meetings later found Amber at Fermilab, with a quiet understanding that when the time came to submit a thesis, she would join a select group of individuals who would be tweaking and revising the work of an antisocial asshole that no one at the upper echelons of the program wanted to see advance.

'It was a terribly dishonest and unethical move,' she admitted to herself for the thousandth time. She'd never cheated in her entire academic career. She probably couldn't have brought herself to do it, but Robert was just so fucking creepy.

When she'd first joined the lab, she'd honestly thought he was a creeper. Whenever she moved, he watched her. If the door opened, he was looking.

It took an entire semester for her to realize that he wasn't a creeper, just creepy. He watched everyone like that.

He didn't speak unless you asked him a direct question, and even then he kept his answers short. He never asked questions either, preferring to send any queries he had via email.

He came in early, left late, ate his bagged lunch at his desk, and never socialized.

All those factors combined did a lot to ease her guilty conscience. That and the knowledge that two others had already taken his proposals, modified them slightly and had them accepted. If it wasn't her, it would be someone else.

And it wasn't like she was planning to stand on his research, she just needed her masters to teach.

She sighed. It was a lot easier to dislike Robert when he was alive.

Before she'd taken his work.

Before she'd inserted a few comments, and a few parameter tests at the beginning to align the project to her well-documented methodology.

Before she'd made that one mistake in commenting on his code.

Amber had checked, afterward.

Robert's code, as written, was correct. She'd mistyped her comment somehow. It should have just been a comment. But, she'd made a mistake, and changed the impulse parameters.

A relay had overloaded, fortunately before the error could propagate and cause extensive damage to the entire accelerator. Unfortunately, the security video had shown that Robert was walking down a hallway right next to the relay in question.

Emergency services had excavated the area, but they hadn't found his body. What they had found, was enough Robert's blood to convince them to stop looking. He couldn't have survived, and his remains would be found as the repairs moved forward.

Amber grimly wiped her eyes. She knew it was her fault. She hadn't meant to, and it was absolutely accidental, but she'd caused his death.

That was why she was climbing the poorly lit stairwell of a truly shitty apartment building.

She felt guilty.

Everyone in the lab had been sent to therapy, and over the past two weeks, she'd come to realize that she didn't know anything about Robert.

Her therapist had taken her observations of him and suggested that Robert might not have been creepy, so much as cautious. He sounded, her therapist said, like an emotionally damaged or stunted individual. Trauma, or perhaps childhood abuse might be the cause, although they were unlikely to ever know.

At one point, her therapist had asked if Robert had any close friends or family that he might have mentioned. Amber had been sharing office space with the man for three years, but the only thing she could recall was that he kept a picture of his cat on his desk.

They'd moved on, but Amber couldn't stop thinking about that picture.

She'd gotten Robert's information from the head of HR, who had assured her that it was Robert's code that was to blame for his death, and while it was tragic and not the way she'd wanted to see him leave, it was best to put it behind her and keep moving forward.

Amber realized at the point that she not only disliked Tamika, but she might actually hate her. Amber was an ally of the LBTGQ+ movement, but Tamika as the head of HR for the lab had stacked the place with diversity to the point that the only two cis-gender men had been Bob and a nighttime janitor.

She looked down at the address she'd printed from Robert's HR file.

The building's super had been more than willing to give her the key to Robert's apartment when she'd shown him the news articles and her ID from the lab.

She squared her shoulders and headed down the hall. She'd check on his cat, and see if she could find any contact information for his family. His HR file hadn't included any emergency contact information, which was a little odd, but then again the file indicated that he'd come to Fermi as soon as the project had been proposed. He probably hadn't known anyone in Illinois.

6c. This was it. The door was painted a dreary beige that had probably begun life as an eggshell white, in contrast to the light red walls that had faded to pink.

She fumbled with the key, before turning it in the lock, and shouldering the door open.

Her eyes caught a brilliant flash of blue from beside the couch before she blinked her eyes against the stench of cat urine.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~