Time… passes. I don’t know how long. My thoughts come in sporadic bursts, but only last as long as the pain doesn’t. Every time I come to I feel like less of a person. Anemic. Dizzy. Faraway. Horrific understanding and denial as my problems don’t even start to go away. Whatever happened to my eyes doesn’t leave with the cold. The dull, constant droning in my ears that isn’t even really a sound is the only thing I can hear.
Warm tears roll down my cheeks. Blood flows from the gashes on my lips. I try to raise my hand to touch my face, but I don’t even have the strength for that small motion. The pain finally overtakes the numbness, and my mind retreats to the safety of nothingness to protect itself.
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Something bites at my leg. I don’t have the energy to panic. My back starts to scrape against the glass below, but even that sensation dies away sooner rather than later. With the last bit of effort I can manage, I call the power core shell back into my inventory. A sensation tells me that it worked, and that somehow, the power core inside came with it. I sense warnings and multiple screens pop up, but I can’t read them for shit.
As if responding to my thoughts, the screens implant their information directly into my mind.
Warning; you do not have permission to have this.
Notice; these permissions have been overridden by a higher authority than the shellraiser who initially locked the power core.
If you lose the favor of Pearlescence for any reason, you will lose the ability to use this item.
Shellraiser Power Core: ???? grade.
Stores enough magical energy to power nearly any shellraiser-created device.
The higher your Soul stat, the more of this item’s magical energy you can withstand.
A higher authority. That has to be Pearl. So… if we have a falling-out, she gets the power core. Or if she dies, neither of us can use it. My mind wanders to the poor little frozen goo-fairy in my inventory, and a pang of guilt is met with equal parts frustration.
If she’d told me she was weak to cold, I could’ve kept her in my inventory for safekeeping. Or we could’ve left the hallway, read up on the power core, and gone back later. But for some reason she just powered through. At the risk of her own life. I… why? Why would she do that?
My head slams against something, and everything goes white.
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Flashes of pure white cut through the darkness. Blossoms of red follow like a dancer’s ribbons, flowing out into the nothingness and breaking apart into fractals that swirl like violent whirlpools of blood. Visions of teeth bite deep into my mind, into my arms, into my legs, into my very DNA; ripping everything apart in an uncontrolled feeding frenzy. Blood sprays out in a violent circle around me.
Pure white becomes tainted with red. Teeth tear through my weakness, shredding it to tiny little pieces and tossing it aside like the useless part of me it was. They bite deep into my heart, piercing through to what should kill me. I shudder as electricity flows into my mind. The teeth retract, and lips are licked as they savor the taste of me. Not just my flesh, but of everything that makes me me.
Countless jagged edges bite down onto the left side of my neck. The maw they belong to is so huge that it reaches down to my chest, completely taking my arm into a warm prison of violent comfort. Magic rages against my fingertips, knitting them together into something that doesn’t hurt like hell. I want to scream. To sigh in relief. To… do anything. But I can’t.
I’m dead, after all.
You have died.
Returning your corpse to Earth in: 0:11:22.
See? Dead as a doornail. I… wait, what the hell? Is… is this some kind of joke? Why can I still think? What’s with all these teeth? Piercing through my skin and muscle, but retracting moments later without ripping and tearing?
I try to move. One of my fingertips twitches. The prison around my arm flinches like it had just been shot, and a deluge of violent warmth flows into my body. Crimson tides flow through the teeth and into my shoulder, right around my heart, and forces its way into my body’s engine. But it’s not alone. Thin strands of cosmic black dotted with speckles of brilliant colours hold tight to the flow. It coils and spins in a helix like DNA, crashing into my own and… changing me.
A painful jerk sends my hand further into the warm prison. It vibrates around me as if humming, then the teeth around my shoulder bite deeper. The flow doubles. Triples. Surges through my body and leaves my veins feeling like balloons inflated to their absolute maximum. Everything inside is washed away, torn into nothing, and devoured by whatever this mixture of blood and cosmic darkness is.
This living hell continues for far too long. All the while I can only lie motionless in nothing and watch the timer count inexorably down. Just as it’s about to hit one single minute remaining my world fills with electricity. Long strands of the stuff, like neurons reaching out to touch each other in my brain, snapping and crackling as it crashes into itself. Every crash brings with it a sensation. Touch. Taste. Smell. They all come back, one at a time, until I can truly feel the pain my body is in.
My eyes tear open to a cloud of white. It hangs in the air like a scream unripped from a throat, and I can make out silhouettes that definitely aren’t people. One of them stands low-ish to the ground, like a massive wolf, and the other is a tiny thing that sits on my chest, pounding tiny fists against my ribcage as rivers of black essence flow out of her and… into an open wound.
Teeth keep my skin peeled back. I can see my own organs and ribs. My bones vibrate like a malfunctioning carnival ride tinged with a cherry red that seems violently familiar. Blood flows into my heart through holes, but even those are starting to close up. I cough. Blood and spit bubble up from my throat, and air is forced painfully into my lungs as I start to breathe.
Pearl lets out a wail of relief. I try to slowly sit up, but a massive weight on my arm prevents me from moving. She tries to keep me looking at her, but my curiosity wins out easily. My eyes trail over my shoulder to both the biggest shark and wolf I’ve ever seen. Its black and sky blue eyes shine with intelligent amusement, and its teeth sink even deeper.
My eyes roll back in my head as I pass out.
You are alive.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
But you are also no longer fully you.
May your Fate guide you, Gambler.
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Soft, comforting light filters through sheer curtains and gently caresses my face. The warmth spreads through my body like a calming tea, and my eyes slowly flutter open to the comfortable sensations. I’m lying in a simple bed–with a knitted blanket over plain lilac sheets, and a… strange-looking stuffed animal under my right arm. It’s like a snail-jellyfish with a shell that’s soft and pleasant to squish.
I smack my lips and slowly sit up. A look around confirms that the room is as plain as the bed–lacy curtains, wooden floors, and cream-coloured wallpaper that’s peeling around the edges. There’s a single dresser off in the corner, and a side table right next to the bed, but otherwise… nothing. No door, no closet, nothing… normal at all.
“Where the hell am I?” I mutter to myself, reaching up with one hand to tap my cheek. And look down to see my lips. Three scars decorate them now, each of them glimmering with a glossy golden sheen. They’re almost like jewelry, not the injuries I know they are. “I guess I actually died. But some kind of massive painted dane saved me somehow. So… this has to be wherever Pearl managed to take me.”
I swing my legs out from the bed and look down at my body. The first thing I notice are the massive bite marks over my neck and left shoulder, filled in with gooey darkness flecked with gold. I can almost fool myself into thinking they’re tattoos, but I know the truth. And the other bites on my right hip, left calf, and right forearm confirm that truth.
Plus, there's the scar on my chest that’s almost completely healed. Unlike all the others, it’s disappearing before my very eyes. Almost like the rest of them serve a purpose, and this one was just a means to an end. Opening my chest so they could get at my… heart.
My hands clench into trembling fists as it really and truly hits me. I died. Not in the video game kind of way, or even the medical technicality way, but in the ‘you don’t get to come back’ way. But something brought me back. There… there was so much blood. My blood. Flowing out of my body and down into something around me. Some kind of ritual circle. One that Pearl and the monster used to bring me back.
Instead, it brought me here.
I carefully get to my feet and swallow hard. My mouth is minty fresh and properly hydrated–something it hasn’t been since I took that Class Coin. Something glints at me from underneath the empty bedside table, and I bend down to get a better look. It’s a simple silver ring, but there’s a note rolled up inside of it. I fish it out and pull the ring off, stuff it into my pocket, then unroll the note.
‘To whom it may concern; this place is not real. It is a sanctuary for people such as you–who were in the process of being removed from the system, but were pulled back prematurely. Think of it as a rest stop between the worlds of the living and the dead. When you finish reading this, I ask that you make the bed and set the ring you found on the pillow. That will trigger the transfer of your mind back to the world of the living. Of course, you are also free to spend as much time here as you like. Just know that time passes here at an equal rate as in the world of the living.’
–Someone who wishes to help.
“Someone who wishes to help, huh.” I shake my head and pull the ring out of my pocket. “Not much of an explanation, but anyone who brushes my teeth for me can’t be that bad of a person. Thanks for the hospitality, whoever you are.”
I set the ring down on the pillow. Everything blinks out of existence. The darkness of my own eyelids blocks my eyes, and a soft weight on my chest breaths rhythmically as I adjust to reality once again.
“I’m… alive.” I murmur as my eyes creep open to reveal glass, glass, and more glass.
Pearl’s eyes snap open, and she stares at me for a second with wide eyes filled with emotion before the waterworks break free.
“Shelby!” She sobs, jumping up my body to hug my neck. “We did it! The power core is ours. But so much more importantly, you’re okay!”
“Okay might be a little too strong of a word.” I chuckle and brace myself for the pain as I go to sit up. Instead… I just sit up. Like a normal-ass person. “Oh. Um. Apparently ‘okay’ is actually the right word here. What the hell happened?”
“Do you mean before or after I got spat out of your inventory, thought you were dead, and saw you almost get devoured by my old friend; the scariest, but nicest, painted dane in existence?” Pearl laughs shakily and smushes her head even further into my neck. “I’m sorry again, Shelby. I… I should’ve made us turn back after we found the slates. We could’ve gotten some protective clothes, made an actual plan, and I could’ve studied the slate more to actually know what to do. Instead of… what I actually did.”
She sniffles–hard–and squeezes me tight. A smile tugs at my lips as I reach to pat her on the back. It only seems to get her to cry even harder, but it means a lot to me. Most people haven’t cried for me once–and now she’s done it twice. Well, more than twice, but two very serious times.
“I forgive you.” I say and gently stroke her hair. She shudders under my touch. “I could’ve done everything you just said, too, but I got tunnel vision. And it almost killed both of us. Speaking of; how’d you unfreeze?”
“You saved me by sending me into your inventory.” Pearl says, her voice muffled by my neck. “I completely shattered, but because I was contained by the system, none of me was lost. Then I just… warmed up as you…”
She swallows hard, and when she continues, her voice is even shakier than before.
“As you died, everything in your inventory burst free. When I came to I was nearly alone–except for Illumisia–and we… did things to you. She’s still around here, I’m pretty sure. Oh, she also took those three corpses you dug out of the sand pile as payment for all the blood she gave to you.”
Roaring crimson flashes in my memory. I scooch back with my lips pressed tight until my back’s up against a wall, and Pearl finally lets go. She scurries onto my shoulder and snuggles into the nook of my neck. I glance over at her, then down at the glistening scars on my chest.
“It wasn’t just the painted dane that gave me something.”
Pearl shakes her head. “I worked to help, too. All your electrical signals were barely sparking, and I kept them alive until she finished the ritual. Um… all that stuff in your wounds is probably a lingering side effect from that. Is that… okay?”
I chuckle and thump my left hand on my chest–right over my heart. “Pearl, I’m alive. I’d be thanking you if I was missing two limbs and was still blind and deaf. I–” I set my jaw, then frown as my teeth don’t come together the same way. “Do I have different teeth now?”
“Yes, you do! They’re like… a really cool combination of your teeth and the teeth of the corpsedragger you skeletonized. We had to, um, repurpose a lot of those bones to make you… alive again.”
Shit, I’ve got shark-wolf bones, shark-wolf blood, and I’ve got a feeling I’ve got some Shellraiser DNA mixed in there too. I can’t help myself from grinning, and it feels like the sides of my mouth rise a little further than usual.
“That’s so badass.”
The still air shifts, and suddenly, something stands before me. It’s the biggest painted dane I’ve ever seen; easily ten feet tall and twenty feet long, and that’s not counting the tail. Its body shimmers like light filtering down through the ocean, hints of every colour imaginable playing for a chance to take center stage on this magnificent creature’s form. If the other painted danes were big dogs mixed with sharks, then this is a mythical wolf mixed with some prehistoric sea monster.
Intelligent eyes look me over with clinical precision, sharp teeth bared in something reminiscent of a smile. It–no, Pearl called it ‘she’–licks her lips for no discernible reason, then lowers her head and gently presses her nose against my side.
“It seems freedom never comes free.” She says in a voice as deep as the ocean, but with an undertone of dark humour. “Be grateful the alliance still stands, and be thankful Pearlescence’s life is entwined with your own. If it were not, an effort would not have been made. You would not be here.”
She pushes a little, causing me to shift sideways with a yelp of surprise. A little blast of air leaves her nostrils in what I swear was a laugh, and she turns around with a nod off into the distance.
“I have kept everything safe. Follow, and I will lead you there.”