A shimmering portal takes me out of that stuffy-ass boardroom and into an empty field. I share a look with Ursula, who looks over her shoulder and mouths ‘what gives’ to the people watching from the other side. Gisela shrugs. Dora looks down at the ground.
“Well… apparently this is the venue.” Ursula sighs in annoyance and waves the portal away. “Do you see anything suitable for hosting a huge party? Because I just see dusty grass and dirt that’s trying to run away in the wind.”
I chuckle and shake my head. “Hell no. Is it underground like where we just came from?”
“No idea. Let’s check.”
Uncertainty appears in Ursula’s hand, and she flicks open the latches as she drops it to the ground. Four things appear in it when it hits the ground: a tablet computer and three spheres with retractable spikes. She grabs the spheres and tosses me the tablet, which flickers on the moment it touches my hand to reveal a simple map of the area.
The only things on it are three pulsating blips–all on top of each other, and all exactly where Ursula’s standing. She raises an eyebrow, but before she can say anything, my brain puts together what she wants me to do and I point off to her left.
“Eighty feet that way. Is it safe to bring anyone else out, or are we being watched?”
Ursula shrugs as she sets off. “Honestly, I’ve got no idea. I’d say keep on the safe side and assume our every move is being monitored by whoever the actual host of this party is.”
I nod a little. After Ursula made the declaration that the Preservation and HuSt are terrified of Noland, we had a long chat with Gisela and Dora about everything they’re going to be talking about at the party. And the guest list. Almost all of it is censored, but Ursula was confident that Noland and March can decipher who everyone is before the actual party.
Everyone was pretty confident that no fights would break out, but that was only if things went like they were expected to. I’m damn confident they aren’t going to go how Gisela thinks they are, and considering a two-person job became a three-person job, Ursula’s thinking like I am. Either the Preservation makes a move, someone accuses someone of something heinous, or a group decides to announce that they’re pushing their boundaries with force to back it up.
Hell, it’ll be weirder if everything goes to plan. Then there’s the idiotic way that the Garza twins want to punctuate their speeches–which Ursula talked them out of before I could actually hear what it was, but I’m pretty sure it was an absolutely unnecessary show of wealth.
“Alright, where next?”
Ursula’s voice echoes through my head, and I automatically point towards the next highlighted location on the map. “Two hundred feet that way.”
“Gotcha!”
I watch her jog over to the next point, questions and possibilities swimming around in my mind like hungry blenderanhas. Most of them can’t be answered yet, but will be instantly answered at the party. The others… well, they’re either not important at all or way too important to keep all chained up in my brain.
“Ursula… isn’t it really bad that the only two coins that were left were the exact ones the twins wanted?”
She plants the sphere, then turns to me and tilts her head. I jab a thumb over my shoulder to direct her.
“Five hundred feet directly behind me.”
“Heard you loud and clear. And yeah, I thought that was dangerous too.” She jogs past me, then hucks the last sphere like a shot put. I watch it sail on the map, and it lands perfectly on the mark. “Way I see it, there’s four options, and only one of them is good. The rest range from kind of bad but expected all the way to ‘this was always a trap for us’.”
I raise an eyebrow and hand her the tablet. “I’ve got three scenarios in my head. What’s number four?”
Ursula accepts the tablet and rapidly taps on it. “There’s no way I can know what three you thought of to say which one is number four. So yap on about the three you know and then I’ll tell you the one you missed.”
“Yap on…” I frown at her choice of words, but she’s already half ignoring me. “Ah, fine, whatever. My first thought is one they already said; someone brainwashed them into thinking they want the last two coins that were left. It’s pretty terrifying to think about, since it could’ve happened months ago for all we know. And they said they can’t remember if they had a Worth coin or not.”
“True, true.” Ursula agrees. “Personally I doubt that that’s the truth, since they have so much magic around them all the time with their employees. Anyone powerful enough to get through all that wouldn’t just brainwash them into thinking they want specific coins–they’d brainwash ‘em into giving away the company or running it into the ground. So I’ll write that off as ‘unlikely, but so bad that we can’t outright count it out’.”
I step in close and watch over her shoulder as the map starts to shudder. Little by little, it goes from a simple 2d image to one of those 3d landscape things. It even shows all the things underground–pipes, buried electrical wires, and a few miscellaneous bones.
“How long’s this going to take?”
She shrugs. “Ten minutes, maybe?”
“Do we need to stand here for the entire time?”
“...Nope, we don’t.” She picks up Uncertainty and tucks it under her arm. “Let’s walk and see if we can see any obvious signs of magic. Keep throwing out ideas while we do.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Gotcha. So, second thought; they knew which coins were the ones left, since they’ve been working with the Preservation the entire time. They’re using us as cover, and we were supposed to die or get arrested on the krarig. Since that didn’t happen, they’re moving on to plan ‘B’ and we’re going to get ambushed at the party.”
Ursula clicks her tongue, but doesn’t outright deny me like last time.
“That’s a bit more likely, and at the start of the meeting, it’s what I assumed was going to happen. After actually talking to ‘em, though… I got a slightly different feeling. If they knew which coins were still there, I don’t think it's because they were working with the Preservation. I think it’s because they’ve had this planned for way longer than they’re letting on.”
I raise an eyebrow as I try and fail to shove my hands in my pockets for the second time today. Somehow, that’s the one part of wearing a dress for the first time in months that I’m struggling with.
“If that’s true, then you think they put better security on them than the other coins?” I ask, and as the words leave my mouth, they feel right. It’s what I’d do in their position. “Actually, yeah, that sounds perfectly reasonable. Plus, having the shadowy mastermind take the psychic coin and her more public twin have the defender makes a lot of sense. Especially since they’re going to the other world at the same time.”
“Mmhm, that’s my thoughts too. I think it’s the most likely explanation we’ve got, but it still doesn’t line up perfectly with the information we’ve got.” Ursula motions for me to stop, then looks down at something marble white that’s half-buried in the ground. “So what’s your third option? And what the hell is this thing?”
As she leans down and brushes off the thing in the ground, I lean down with her and study the chunk of… yeah, that’s marble. It looks like the bottom half of a column you’d see in an ancient Greek building, or maybe the upper half depending on how it broke. She tentatively brushes her fingers over it, then clears her throat.
“Right, talking, sorry.” I apologize and stand back up. “The third option is that they’ve got a spy who told the Preservation not to touch the last two coins, or else they’d royally piss the twins off. Or… maybe not a spy, exactly, but somehow the information leaked that they were looking for exactly that.”
“Which means someone’s scared of them. And that means they’ve got something worth being scared of.” Ursula finishes for me. “I’d say that’s between the other two because I can’t imagine the Preservation being scared of Garza Incorporated. They’re all worth considering, though, so you need to keep your ears and eyes open at the party for any evidence that supports one of the theories.”
“Will do. So, what’s theory number four?”
Ursula shakes her head and laughs humorlessly. “It’s barely worth saying, but ever since I saw how the krarig turned out, I can’t get it out of my head. Something about it doesn’t fit with the rest, sure, but there could be other reasons working against it.”
How… the krarig turned out? What does she mean by that? And why did a chill just go down my spine?
“Hey… explain.”
With a small smile on her lips, Ursula gestures at me. “Last thing I can think of is that everything was pure luck. We don’t know how long your skill lasts, and I’m pretty sure you used it before you found that safe.”
My words catch in my throat. I want to say that she’s wrong, but… honestly… I can’t. The only argument I have against it is that we didn’t get the best possible outcome. Unless… was this somehow the best possible outcome? No. It can’t be. How would getting the two coins we were supposed to and losing the others be the best outcome?
“Of course, that doesn’t account for the long-ass time they were there before you even knew they existed.” Ursula continues as she grips the column. “If we’re thinking everything was just luck, it means the two coins didn’t get taken or experimented on for the entire time they were there. Not unbelievable, sure, but there’s always a chance.”
“I… shit, I kind of hope that’s not true.” I say quietly and stare down at the ground. “If all this is only happening because of luck, then it’d mean there’s a chance the party will go off without a hitch.”
Ursula smirks wickedly. “And that’s a bad thing?”
Heat fills my face and I try to stammer out an answer. “N-no, I mean, i-it’s obviously a good–”
She waves a hand to cut me off with a laugh. “Don’t bother explaining yourself; I’m in the same camp as you are. Things going perfectly is great if you’re planning a vacation or in some life or death stakes, but when you’re expecting things to go wrong, everything going perfectly feels like something’s just going to go horribly wrong moments later. Right?”
I nod vigorously in agreement. Even if the truth is… not as nice. If I have to escort someone to a bougie party, stay on my best behavior and on edge the entire time, and nobody has the decency to try and kill someone… well… it’d just be disappointing. Boring, even.
Pearl giggles at my discomfort. “I have a feeling Illumisia would violently agree with whatever you’re actually thinking. Not quite sure I would, since peace is really nice, but these people are all warmongers. If they don’t give you a reason to slit their throats, you’ll end up looking like the bad guy.”
That… there’s… I’m not planning on slitting any throats. Not… without a good reason, at least. Alright, so maybe it’d feel pretty damn good to kill someone from the Preservation that really deserves to die. But I’m not that kind of person. I haven’t actually killed another fully sentient being before.
So it’s all just fantasy. A fantasy that I’ve never really lived, so I can’t feel the actual consequences of it. I mean, in movies, normal people cry and barf and regret the kill after they’re forced to kill someone. There’s no way I’ll be any different. Even if I’m equal parts shellraiser, Illumisia-brand painted dane, and human.
…Right?
I shake my head and look up at the sky. Absolutely no clouds mar a perfect blue day. But… wait, no. There’s just a pretty huge circle above us with no clouds. Like, a perfect circle, with some clouds cut in half by an invisible barrier.
“Hey, uh, that’s not natural, right?”
Ursula looks up at me, then at the sky. A frown etches itself onto her face, and she glances down at her tablet. From what I can see, there isn’t anything notable below ground. Definitely no underground complex like we just came from.
“No, it isn’t.” She mutters. “Help me get this thing out.”
After I get back in position, we both take half of the buried column and pull with all our might. Ursula does most of the heavy lifting, and my muscles scream at the effort I have to put in just to keep up with her, but out of the corner of my eye I see it slowly unearthing. Little by little it exposes itself, and we have to make out own handholds every minute or so.
And after about fifteen minutes, the column pops free of the dirt. Perfectly intact, to boot. The part we’d initially gripped to pull it out was completely flat, but this part we just unearthed… well, it isn’t. It’s a bust of someone’s upper chest and face.
“Long beard, beady eyes, and a head of flowing hair.” I note as the thing slams to the ground. “No way none of this broke off in the ground. I mean, look at how thin the stone gets near the ends there.”
But Ursula isn’t listening. She’s got her hand over her mouth, eyebrows furrowed in thought, and a toothy sneer just barely showing through her fingers.
“Noland, check the news reports over the last few years for UFO sightings around here.” She says with almost toxic excitement. “I think we’re dealing with one of your old friends and a flying party platform.”