The air around the beacon splits open. My shield barely does anything to protect us against the onslaught of heat and… something that feels like decay. I wince and squint at the beacon in an attempt to make out the dead shellraiser it’s amplifying. A black stain covers the entire thing, bubbling and shifting like boiling tar under the beacon’s power.

How the hell am I supposed to get this thing free?

“Shelby?! Are you going to contain it again?!”

That might’ve been the plan a second ago, but now… it’s the backup plan. I want this thing. Shield fills my ghost quarter as a contingency, and I lean myself over the edge and into the path of the radiation.

Calling how the radiation feels up close ‘worse’ is way too much of an understatement. It was horrifically uncomfortable before, but now it’s like every single molecule of water in my being is trying to boil itself out. There’s no visible difference–which almost makes it worse–but the steam rising from my fingertips as I stretch them towards the dinner plate-sized beacon smells and feels like death.

Pearl is beside herself with worry. She half-starts a dozen sentences, abandons them for pained cries of worry, and laces her fingers over her eyes so she doesn’t have to watch. Except through all the gaps she leaves.

“Just… need… to…” I grind out through the putrid steam rising from my own body.

My skin tightens. Curling my fingers becomes an entire ordeal, and I can see my arm losing mass and darkening the closer I get. Every synapse screams at me to back away. I screw my eyes shut and force my hand down just under the beacon’s surface, then twist my near mummified form to barely tap the underside.

“Deposit.”

All at once, the heat dies. My fingers go from touching something I can’t feel to bubbling black muck raining over them, and with it comes a litany of sensations. Heat. Pain. Overwhelming remorse. A single moment of death stretched out far too long.

And, finally, blessed relief. Everything fades away to nothing as the dead shellraiser spills through my fingers, and before the last spurt of bubbling liquid leaves my hand, it is well and truly gone. But right before it slips into the depths below, it crystallizes into a shimmering mass of pure cosmic darkness that latches itself to my hand.

Quest item obtained: Perpetuum Oystershell Beacon

A beacon once powered by the death throes of a nameless shellraiser.

Without a suitable power source, it can output nothing but a pale imitation of its true abilities.

??? item obtained: Shellraiser ???

The ??? ??? of a shellraiser, given in gratitude as its final act.

Grants ??? ??? ??? when used by a ??? shellraiser.

Otherwise, grants +2 to two stats of your choice.

I… I did it. It actually worked? Holy crap, it actually worked!

“Pearl! We lived! …Pearl?”

More silence. But this time, I can feel Pearl’s awareness mixed in with it. She’s still right here with me, but for some reason, she’s refusing to say anything at all. While I wait for her to gather herself I hack up another health potion crystal and reach up to wipe the blood from my lips. My body still looks a little mummified, but it’s nothing a health potion and some serious hydration can’t fix.

“Can you spare two stat points for now?”

Pearl’s voice is as quiet as a whisper, but there’s a deep intensity residing under the surface. She looks up at me, all the colour drained from her except for cosmic black and shooting rivulets of metallic silver. Even on the edge of my mind, I can feel that something’s changed.

I slowly raise my hand with the crystallized shellraiser up to her. She gently places her hands against my fingers, then spreads out her body to touch the crystal. Silver spreads from her body all through the crystal, forking and twisting to create a haunting art piece that somehow reminds me of bleached coral.

It doesn’t stop until the entire crystal is shot through with silvery veins. Pearl huffs slightly, as if this act is exhausting her, and shifts her body’s colour to perfectly match the crystalline corpse. It disappears in a flash of silver. But in the split second between the flash and the disappearance, I swear that there’s a moment where the crystal moves like it’s alive.

Pearl retreats to her shell with a sigh of exhaustion. “Thanks, Shelby. I know you didn’t have to do this for me since I haven’t proven myself very reliable, but I’ll make it up to you. Somehow.”

I shrug and flick my coin against the wall. “You cost me probably a hundred Worth in the long run. I’m more than willing to pay that so you can get closure. Which is what I’m assuming you just did.”

“Closure.” Pearl muses. “I guess that’s a good enough way to describe it.”

The shield manifests, and I scoop up my quarter-full health potion before I jump down at it. A question knocks about in my head, but I’m not really sure if it’s… polite to ask it right now. Unfortunately for Pearl, there’s a little part of me that’s a little frustrated with her. Not much, though.

Just enough to not be polite.

“Did you know them? Any of them? Because you barely reacted to all the other dead shellraisers, but this one seemed to bother you.”

Silence. Heartbeats go on as I struggle with my shield-descending, and eventually, Pearl starts to mutter to herself in a language I don’t understand. After a minute she nods to herself and… ‘locks eyes’ with me. From within her shell.

“Not… personally. But this way of dying is… something horrible.” She forces out a sad laugh without breaking eye contact. “Let’s get to safety first. Then I’ll tell you as much as the system lets me.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

It takes fifteen minutes and the rest of my ghost quarters before my feet finally touch solid ground again. I wince and roll my shoulder as I look around for anything safe-looking, but all I can make out are more tunnels. No debris, either, so it’s… weird, to say the least.

I tap Pearl’s shell to get her attention. “Do you know where to go?”

“Any way is just as safe as the others. We’ll eventually come to a room with water seeping in from above into a pool–that’s where it’s safest to rest.” She looks around, then shakes her head. “Um, nevermind. The east, south, and northwest tunnels don’t have any airflow.”

“They’re blocked?”

“Probably. Either the north tunnel or the southeast tunnel are good.” Tendrils of black awareness snake out towards both of the tunnels Pearl alludes to. “Can you please take that health potion out of your inventory again? I want to be able to help you if you break down again.”

I cross my arms and look between the two tunnels. There’s absolutely no distinguishable difference between them, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be dangerous shit down the line.

“Shelby?”

I summon the health potion and stick it into my backpack’s side pocket. “Just so you know, the health potion’s the reason I got hurt. So it’s like treating a hangover with more booze.”

“That’s how magical healing usually works. You’ll have to face the pain eventually, but because it gets triggered by stress and effort, it kind of snowballs into terribleness.”

“So like treating a hangover with booze.” I repeat with a chuckle. “Just don’t give it to me unless there’s a real danger to our lives. There’s not a whole lot left anyway.”

“Will do!”

Glancing between the tunnels, I pull a single glass lone from my Worth and press it against my thumb. Heads I go north, tails I go southeast. I flick my thumb up, catch it on the edge of the coin, and send it spinning high into the air.

Everything goes monochrome. Colours and shades flip into exactly two tones of black and white, painting the world in an extremely simplistic and off-putting way. The coin slows to a crawl in the air. Pure white sparks fly from heads, and a deep black aura emanates from tails.

Twist Fate.

Heads or Tails.

Best or Worst.

It’s never as clean as black or white.

Call it.

The coin flickers, and the sides trade colours. Now the black lets sparks fly, and a white aura nearly blinds me. Words stick in my throat like tar-coated molasses. Somehow, I know time is running out. There’s a decision to be made–but there’s really only one option.

“Best for me.”

All the monochrome flickers, then starts to move. It peels away from the reality underneath, drawn inexorably towards my coin as it starts to spin uncontrollably. Like the eye of a whirlpool it devours everything around it until normal returns, hovers in place like magic, then crashes to the ground like a meteor.

“Eep!” Pearl yelps, then gasps as she stares at the ground. “Did that just break the glass?!”

Chunky cracks scatter away from my coin. Which embedded itself deep in the glass. I stare down at it in disbelief, fully aware of how strong the glass actually is. Tails stares up at me. Flecks of deep black flake off of it and flutter down towards the southeast tunnel, blatantly reminding me of what tails signifies.

I kneel down and press my fingertip to the coin. “Why now? Why wouldn’t it work before, but now it does?”

Pearl leans in too, but she’s a whole lot more curious than I am. “What did you do? Ooh, is that another one of your class skills? Does it work like a magic compass?”

“Honestly, Pearl, I’ve got no idea.” I withdraw the coin, then dust off my hands and turn to the southeast tunnel. “Apparently that’s the best way for us to go.”

“Cool.” She whispers as I start towards our destination. “Oh! I promised you an explanation about the crystal. And I used the time we were descending to try and make it as free of important information as possible so the system doesn’t try to make your head explode.”

Aw, how thoughtful of her. I wait for her to start, then wave for her to go ahead when I notice she’s also waiting for me.

She nods, clears her throat, and begins.

“Our minds are all that’s keeping our bodies from dissolving into piles of goo. Um, ‘our’ and ‘us’ here means me–the shellraisers–just so you’re not confused. When we die, sometimes those of us with really strong minds can keep our bodies from completely goo-ifying for a while. Like if someone wanted to sacrifice themselves to plug up the singular entrance to a really important network of tunnels. They’d still be alive–but… barely. It would be like living in the moment between being fatally wounded and actually dying.”

Pearl pauses and wipes at her eyes. She takes a few long breaths to center herself, then continues.

“There’s also something we can do in death to… help our own people. Telling you the details would definitely give you a headache, but it’s like taking parts from a corpse to make sure other people live.”

Like an organ donor dying in a car crash. …No. This is a conscious choice at the very end–like an organ donor in the ambulance, fully aware they’re going to die, and they choose to pass away instead of being pumped full of drugs that might give them a one percent chance of living but that would ruin their organs for transplant.

Truly selfless. As I run my fingers along the warm glass wall, I know I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’d take that one percent chance.

“The–th-the…” Pearl’s voice breaks. She quietly sobs for a second, but soldiers through and swallows around all the grief she must be feeling. “The pain we feel in that last moment is absolutely horrific. It uses our thoughts to crystallize our body, putting our minds in a living nightmare to keep our body from withering to uselessness. And I __________________ _____ ___________________ ___ ______________.”

Instead of pain, a profound sadness falls upon me with this censorship. Like a soaking wet weighted blanket of misery and regrets. Pearl breaks out into heaving sobs, her entire body shaking like a leaf at whatever she just admitted to. I wish I could be there for her. Even though I’ve only known her for less than a day, seeing anyone in this kind of despair is… unnerving.

Damn the system for not letting me know.

Honesty, I don’t know what to do with the blubbering shell over my ear. So… I don’t do anything. I just walk. Continuing towards our destination while Pearl comes to terms with whatever she had to do.

I stick my hands in my pockets and stare up at the ceiling. There’s not much I can even relate to her on this level. I’ve still got both my grandparents who didn’t die before I was born, all my close family is alive and healthy, and I never had any pets to lose while I was growing up. Hell, I never even lost a precious stuffed animal as a kid. All my failures have been… well, personal. None of them were tragic, either; just mundane or disappointing.

All that’s said and done now, though. I’m here. I don’t have to go back. I know there’s some way back to earth, since those two who pushed me towards the coin definitely had classes of their own. Plus everyone else the news has talked about. Not sure I want to go back at all, but that could also be the bitter unpaid employee in me talking.

At least… not for a long time. Months, preferably, but if all this ends up being a two week vacation from the real world then I’ll take it. Even if it comes with getting fired and Jazz chewing me out for disappearing. …And maybe losing my place in my program.

I sigh quietly and stare down the dark yet warmly lit tunnel. No matter what reality turns out to be, there’s going to be consequences. Hell, I could end up like that burnt corpse in the tunnel at the end of this. Really, there’s only one thing I can do; enjoy my time here to the fullest. And accept that whatever happens at the end of two weeks is going to happen no matter what I do.