Scrap litters the ground in my wake. Projectiles swallow up bot after bot in massive bolts of magical power, leaving behind arcs of electricity that were–hilariously–meant to stop me. Pearl sneers at each and every one of the bots, smirking as they get destroyed, but never actually showing joy in the act.
Dozens and dozens of the useless robots fall. Liquid pink splatters against the walls as the last shielder dies brutally, leaving the last shooter and signaler without a single line of defence. I bend down and grab the signaler in two open holes, stuff a skeletal quarter into it, and shove it at the shooter. Projectile erupts from within, demolishing the last two bots with brutal efficiency.
Illumisia turns up her nose as she steps over the scrap. “That was quite brutal. Well done.”
I dust off my bloody hands with a smile. “I’ll do anything to survive. Hope this proves it to you.”
“That is the bare minimum for all living things. With that said…” Illumisia looks over her shoulder and laughs darkly. “Your desire to survive looks very much like an atrocity in the waiting.”
I frown and follow her gaze. What I see gives me pause; nearly a mile of completely scrapped robots and multicoloured fluids. Electricity zips and zaps here and there, reminding me that I didn’t completely destroy a few of them, but the picture the scene paints doesn’t feel like something I did. Sure, I’m down to twenty of each ghost quarter, but… I couldn’t have done all of this, right?
“They were too easy to destroy. Nothing like something we’d make.” Pearl huffs with a small, satisfied grin. It disappears almost instantly. “After we get out of here, we need to find whoever is appropriating our technology and kill them.”
I raise an eyebrow and finally look down at my hands. None of the machines had blood, so all this has to be mine. It leaks from deep gouges that must’ve been cut when I grabbed some of the robots, smaller cuts that are way too clean, and a massive rip right through the middle of my left palm.
I clench my fists closed and take a deep breath. “Maybe killing someone for misusing your tech is going a little too far. How about we serve them a cease and desist instead?”
“Right. Because that’ll get the message across.” Pearl rolls her eyes, then lightly smacks my temple. “I don’t know how things work back on Earth, but if someone does something horrible to you here, you can’t let them off with a warning. Because they’ll come back with magic and kill you in your sleep.”
Well that sounds a little steep, too. I look to Illumisia for confirmation, then roll my eyes and look away as she nods vigorously in agreement. No idea why I thought she’d be on the side of reason.
“We’ll see what they deserve when we find them, okay? I–”
Quest Recieved: Forgeries Made In Shell
Machines loosely–and horribly–based off of shellraiser magitech have been found deep underneath the ocean.
Find the source of these machines and stop their creation, or aid them in making creations worthy of a shellraiser.
Rewards: shellraiser schematics, illusive materials, a proper facility.
I sigh and cover my eyes with my hand. Pearl laughs out loud, and Illumisia jumps onto my shoulder to see what the system just sent me. Then laughs right along with Pearl.
“Look; you don’t even get to deny it.” Pearl says between giggles. “Even the system knows how shoddy these things are. Ooh, I can’t wait to see the looks on whoever’s making these things’ faces when we show up with real shellraiser tech.”
“They’re going to be very intimidated.” Illumisia agrees. “And then very dead.”
Of course the both of them are ignoring the part where I could help the people make better machines. I don’t know why I expected anything else. With a shrug of my shoulder to get Illumisia off of me and a little flick against Pearl’s shell to get her out of murder mode, I swipe over to my Worth to see just how much of a dent I’ve made in the debt.
Liquid Assets: 164 Worth.
Remaining Debt: 88 Worth.
…Does that mean I killed over fifty of those things? It really didn’t feel like that many. High twenties, sure, but over fifty? That’s not including the ones that didn’t get destroyed enough for the destruction-to-Worth trigger to happen, either. Which is… pretty damn scary. I didn’t think I had it in me.
“That’s pretty dang good.” Pearl notes with only a little of the bitterness in her voice. “Now you’re guaranteed to get over a threshold when we disable the teleporter. That’s great news!”
I nod and close my Class Card, then take out a single glass coin. Sure, the debt says I can’t spend Worth in any way, but I still need to check. I flick it up into the air and let it fall into my palm, then smack it against the back of my other hand.
“Tails.”
Absolutely nothing happens for a second. Until the giant notification flashes over my eyes.
Indebted–Worth cannot be spent or used in any way.
Guess that’s still not happening. I deposit the coin back into my inventory, then gesture for Illumisia to take the lead. She saunters ahead of me without looking back to make sure I’m following, then bursts into an all-out sprint. As usual. I pull out the beacon from my inventory and shift it back under my arm, then sprint after Illumisia as Pearl resets the guiding protocol.
Way, way more running follows. It feels like we go for hours without seeing heads or tails of another living thing–or unliving shoddy robot. I fall into a calm rhythm as my blood rushes through my veins, exertion and sweat working in tandem to make sure I feel this in the morning. Illumisia slows down ever so slightly at some point, allowing me to catch up to and run beside her, but we don’t talk. None of us do.
Honestly, it’s pretty damn comfortable. The sound of my own breathing is accentuated by Illumisia’s panting and Pearl’s quiet hums. They echo off the walls along to the sound of our footsteps and the rush of wind in my ears, creating a sort of existence that’s only populated by the three of us. The megalodane, the shellraiser, and the Gambler.
It almost sounds like the start to a really weird joke. One that I’m not funny enough to come up with, so I won’t even try. A small grin crests my lips; just barely big enough to quirk a corner, but it might be one of the most satisfied expressions I’ve ever made. And we just keep running like this for hours. Not stopping for water, food, or to rest. We’re in some kind of weird rhythm, and I’m not going to be the one to break it.
Pearl is. She hums excitedly and taps my cheek repeatedly until she gets my attention. Then she keeps going until she has my complete attention.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“The line’s straight left.”
Okay, maybe it wasn’t my complete attention, since it feels like that one short sentence snaps me back into reality. I blink a few times to try and moisten my eyes, since it feels like they should be dry, but there’s nothing wrong with them. I swallow a little around a throat that should be as dry as a desert, but it definitely doesn’t feel like I just went half a day without drinking. Or eating, for that matter–I’m a little hungry, sure, but the kind of hunger that could be sated with a snack. Not the ravenous appetite that I should have.
I blink a few times and look down at my hands, fully expecting the sensation of time passing to be a weird hallucination from blood loss. Except my wounds are already scarring over. Even the big gash in my palm looks like it’s on the road to recovery, which shouldn’t be possible without at least a few dozen stitches. Or a healing potion, of which we have none.
Pearl taps my cheek again. “Shelby? Did you hear me?”
“Of course she did, Pearlescence. She stopped, did she not?” Illumisia states. She shakes herself before lowering herself into a very dog-like resting posture, her eyes locked on my own. “It looks as if she has not experienced a runner’s high on this level before. Give the system-born some time to register what physical activity can feel like.”
“Okay, screw you.” I point at Illumisia, who only snorts with amusement. “I was not a couch potato back on Earth. Running just… sucked. And now I’m doing it in shoes that should be killing my feet with barely any food in me. Don’t pretend this isn’t one-hundred percent because of your and Pearl’s remodeling.”
“That’s kind of sad.” Pearl says.
I shoot Pearl a betrayed glance. “Not you, too.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.” She backtracks. “I just meant it stinks that you couldn’t feel good like this. If physical activity doesn’t feel good to do, then how do your people stay healthy?”
Very good question, Pearl. One that I’m not going to answer, or even acknowledge you asked, but it was a good question. I motion for her to hand me the beacon, which she does once it becomes obvious I’m not giving her an answer. It points directly to the wall, just like she said it did, but there’s one massive problem with that. We’re in a one-way tunnel and haven’t passed any forks in hours.
“Well, shit.” I sigh as I cross my arms and deposit the beacon. “What do we do now? Run twelve hours back the way we came or keep going and hope for another tunnel?”
Illumisia stares at me for a second. Her expression says ‘are you stupid’.
“Have you forgotten everything?”
Her mouth says it in a slightly different way. I roll my eyes and cross my arms while I look down on the shark-wolf.
“Jog my memory.”
“Go through the wall.” She says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Okay, so yeah, I might’ve forgotten that that was a thing. The walls don’t look any different around here–just like the one that Illumisia walked through before–so it’s not too far-fetched to expect an opening here. Or–and hear me out here–I’m going to run face first into a glass wall.
“You seem to know where it is, so why don’t you do the honors?” I gesture at and along the curved glass wall. “Prove yourself the brave leader to us.”
Illumisia daintily raises a paw and presses it against her chest. “Me? A brave leader? How could you ever think so highly of me?” She smiles with a predatory edge. “All I lead are death numbers.”
“And I don’t want to walk face first into one of your traps. Or any trap in general.” I reach up and grab my bicep. “Do you really want to put a weak little thing like me in the frontlines?”
“The same weak little thing that just tore through nearly seventy robots? No, of course not–I wouldn’t want to endanger you.” Illumisia drawls sarcastically. “Why don’t you coat yourself in shields to protect your ever-so-brittle hands? We wouldn’t want you opening up those fresh scars again, now would we?”
“Like you’re not a monster in disguise. Did you forget that I saw how huge you were? These,” I slap the teeth marks on my neck for emphasis, “Are from your teeth. And if Pearl’s right, you can be even bigger than that. What kind of giant monster is scared to poke her nose into a little alcove?”
“Both of you! Geez!”
Illumisia and I turn towards Pearl’s voice. Who is currently halfway through a section of wall about fifteen feet down the tunnel.
“I found it already.” She says with a barely restrained smile. “Do I get the title of super dangerous monster for it?”
Illumisia shoots me one last mocking look before standing up and striding over to Pearl. “Oh, Pearlescence, you know you’ve held that title for centuries. Come, system-born. The tiny goo has shown greater courage than the both of us.”
“Right. Courage.” I huff and follow the pair. “Excuse me for not wanting to stick my face into a potentially dangerous place.”
“You’re excused!” Pearl says as she scampers up my leg. “You’re right to be a little scared, you know. We’re really good at making weapons; not that you’d know it from those shoddy robots, but you could’ve come face-to-gun with a really deadly trap. Like a… shotgun that shoots pellets connected by strands of metal wire. Or a machine gun that’s magically connected to blackshear bedrock so it never runs out of ammunition or magic.”
I point at Pearl and shoot Illumisia a smug expression. “See? Perfectly fine to be cautious.”
The shark-wolf just snorts and disappears through the glass. I choose to take it as a personal victory, no matter how small it is, as I walk through the glass with a shield primed at the edge of my awareness. Just in case Pearl wasn’t tall enough to catch some barrel behind a curtain.
The glass bleeds away to a… really strange scene. Scrap metal litters the ground in such a thick layer of nearly black steel that I can’t even make out the glass underneath, with chunks of brightly coloured gemstone emerging from the ground like stalactites that fell from the ceiling. I look up as I kick away a particularly sharp chunk of torn metal, half expecting to see the other half of a bunch of crystalline deposits, but no. It’s just a normal glass ceiling.
“This isn’t at all what I was expecting.” Illumisia notes as she steps over the scrap minefield without even flinching. The metal crunches under her feet, leaving clawed paw prints in her wake. “No shellraiser would leave their storage space in such an unsightly manner. Especially not one with such a valuable and strategically important piece of machinery inside.”
Pearl nods with vigorous agreement. “It looks like this place got repurposed into a junkyard. Somehow the stuff’s even worse than the machines outside. Maybe they managed to crawl outside on their own just to fight us.”
“Stranger things have happened.” Illumisia agrees seriously. “We’ll have to clear out this mess before we can get to the storage bay for the teleporter. System-born, how much weight can your shields push?”
“No idea.” I say with a shrug and put three skeletal coins between my fingers. “Didn’t bother testing that before. Fair warning; I’m not going into debt again so we can make this place perfectly clean.”
“You are still indebted, so it would be increasing your debt; not going into debt again.” Illumisia eagerly corrects me. “Though I don’t expect you to. Come; we start from the middle and push everything to the edges. That should give us access to the storage.”
Even though I want to argue for argument’s sake, that was pretty much my plan as well. “Pearl, can you mark where we came in so we don’t block it off?”
“Already done!” She confirms chipperly as a black stain works its way into existence on top of me. I step out of it, and it stays hovering in the air right where the exit is. “It shouldn’t put too much of a strain on your mind, but be ready to have a long nap after this. Not as long as back in the workshop, though; like a normal long nap. Two or three hours. Maybe five. I’m… not doing a great job of reassuring you, am I?”
“Just don’t list any numbers next time. That’s more assuring than slowly increasing guesses.”
I walk towards Illumisia while carefully stepping in her paw prints for the safest path possible. Sandals aren’t exactly going to protect me from tetanus. She turns and waits for me when she reaches the center of everything, then bends down and rips away a chunk of metal the size of a smart car with her teeth and tosses it away. It slams hard into a wall and shatters into pieces, raining glass and metal in equal parts to the scrap below.
She repeats this until there’s a clear path to the glassy ground below. Parts of markings show through the hole, but there’s nowhere near enough to make anything out. I flip a coin through my knuckles and picture a ‘V’ shaped shield pushing through the trash, taking as much scrap as possible and forcing it to one of the walls.
The coin vibrates as the spell enters it, then detonates into a spell that slowly pushes against the scrap. Moving at a snail’s pace towards the outer wall. Illumisia sighs dramatically and hops down to help the shield along.
“It seems we will be here for a while. Get comfortable, Pearlescence.”