Sweat drips over my eyes as my muscles strain along to the cacophony of metal on glass. It turns out that the weight limit on my shields’ momentum is somewhere between three to four hundred pounds. When I stretch it out as wide as I did. Turning them into four-foot wide and two foot tall pushing sticks upped that to at least three times the previous limit.
When Illumisia and I add muscle power to the equation, we’re easily moving close to two thousand pounds of scrap per pusher. Not fast, of course, but it’s moving. I reach up to wipe the sweat from my eyes and lean down to stare at the glass as more sweat instantly takes its place. Spattering the ground with all my hard work.
Illumisia pushes her scrap-shield right up next to mine and nods down at me. “More of your body’s fluids seem to be on the glass rather than inside of you.”
I huff out a few ragged breaths before I can even answer. “Ha-ha. I’ll be sure to drink the rest of that water I finished an hour ago.”
“No, you will take a break. We’re only halfway through, and you collapsing on us will only lead to more delays.” She shakes herself and a blood red duplicate falls out of her. “I can handle more on my own. Gather your strength in case the teleporter does not wish to be accessed.”
“I’m… fine.” I mutter as my hands slip from the shield. Too much sweat. I blink it from my eyes and rest my hands on my knees, trying my damndest to catch my breath that keeps slipping away from me. All the while Illumisia just watches with unchanging eyes.
The duplicate gently pushes me out of the way and presses its head to my shield. “I am taking over.” She declares. “You can help once more when you are physically able to. Until then, rest and recuperate. You do not have the blessing of the pack as I do.”
I groan out something between acceptance and an argument, then flop over onto my side. The glass is warm. I wish it was cold. That’d be nice.
My eyes trail the patterns along the visible parts of the glass. The shellraisers don’t need visible seams in anything to open up a door, so that’s obviously not what these are. Concentric circles and bizarre jagged lines decorate the entire floor, from the center all the way out to the walls, and I can’t make out any real meaning to the patterns. Pearl didn’t recognize them, either, so it’s not just a shellraiser thing.
“You’re sure it’s not just vandalism?” I ask once my breathing settles down enough for comfortable speech. “Or some kind of… operating damage from the teleporter?”
Pearl climbs out onto the side of my face and sits up straight to watch Illumisia and her many duplicates work. “The teleporter came to you. It obviously teleported there somehow, or else all this scrap wouldn’t be here. It’d be in the storage space down below. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for operating damage to appear.”
I nod as best as I can. “I guess that makes sense. That reasoning kills the vandalism possibility, too, I guess.”
“Because they wouldn't have access to the glass below.” Pearl confirms. She rests her cheeks in her palms and sighs. “Shelby… why did you exhaust yourself? Illumisia could’ve done all this on her own.”
“Dunno. I guess I wanted to do my part.” I chuckle as Illumisia sends out another duplicate, for which I create another pushing shield. “Now that I’ve seen how easily she can do all this, it kind of makes me feel stupid for trying.”
And a little frustrated, if I’m being honest. Which I’m obviously not, since I’m thinking this instead of saying it out loud to Pearl.
She shifts a little with a melancholy smile. “Illumisia’s always been a one woman army. But even that wasn’t enough, apparently. Since she got captured and everything.”
Illumisia’s ears perk up at that. Pearl must’ve seen it, too, since her eyes are a whole lot better than mine. But she pretends that she doesn’t and keeps talking.
“I really wish I could tell you all the stories. But I don’t think there’s a single one of them that’d get through the censorship. You’ve probably guessed by now that I’m not just a run of the mill shellraiser, right?”
“What? No.” I roll my eyes and gesture at… everything, really. “The things that were powerful enough to do all this and capture Illumisia just happened to make you into a quest item instead of killing or… converting you? Is that the right term?”
“I’d call it indoctrinating, but converting is close enough.” Pearl chuckles wistfully. “There’s a reason for it, but that’s definitely getting censored. Not like Illumisia’s ‘too strong to be contained’, which is excused from the censorship stuff for some reason.”
“They can’t censor what they can’t contain!” Illumisia looks up from her barrier and quirks a smile. “Except when they contained me for centuries. But I’m going to pretend that didn’t happen for the rest of my very long life.”
Pearl sticks out her tongue at Illumisia, then giggles and lies down on the side of my head. “I really missed this; having friends to talk to, going out on adventures, even being in danger to a certain extent. Not like, the times we almost died, I mean–just up until those points. It’s been way, way too long since I… wasn’t trapped.”
There’s a weight and a history to Pearl’s words that feels like it goes back decades. Centuries, even. I want to ask for specifics, but my head starts to hurt as I form semblances of questions. So I just sigh and roll over onto my back, causing Pearl to squeal and scramble to hold onto my nose so she isn’t thrown off.
“Once I have a billion Mind, I’m going to listen to every single one of your stories.” I say as the system’s buzzing white mulls in the background. “And if that’s still not enough, I’ll find some way to hear you. The system’s not going to keep me from knowing your truth.”
“The truth.” Illumisia says seriously. “Not your truth. There is only one truth, though it can be observed through many different perspectives.”
I watch Pearl crawl onto my face and sit cross-legged on my forehead. “Then I’ll see your perspective of the truth.” I look up slightly to actually see Illumisia, who has stopped pushing and is looking back at me. “Both of yours.”
She snorts out a quick laugh, then goes right back to pushing. “Not all the stories will be pleasant, I can tell you that much.”
“Most of them aren’t, actually.” Pearl agrees. “Well, past a certain point they aren’t. Before that they’re all pretty good. Some adversity and tragedies, sure, but most of them have happy endings until ___ ______ _______. …Oop!”
She bends down and looks into my eyes. “I think that triggered the censorship.”
“You’re right.” I say through clenched teeth. The headache isn’t that bad, but… it hurts all over for some reason. Almost like my entire body is more hard-wired into my brain than before. “Illumisia, can you handle the rest of this on your own?”
“I can.”
I close my eyes. “Thank you. I’m taking a nap.”
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Illumisia and Pearl’s voices rouse me from a dreamless sleep. I yawn as I sit up and scratch my face, looking around at the fairly clear clearing all around me. All the junk that once covered everything now covers the last ten percent of the room; around and up the walls. Except for the one place we marked off, which leaves us a good ten foot area to get back out.
“I don’t know what to tell you.” Pearl taps her fingers against the ground. “These markings aren’t anything at all. No language, no usefulness, and no vandalism for reasons I know you overheard. I can’t give a reason for something reasonless.”
“Make your best guess.” Illumisia says from over Pearl’s tiny shoulder. “We can’t afford to push ahead if it puts the system-born in undue danger.”
Pearl nods in agreement. “We want the same thing here, but I can’t find a meaning in something meaningless either. They’re here, and we don’t have any idea why they are. They could be system-related, a weird natural formation in the glass, or a message left in some coded language made after we got sealed away. Heck, they could have something to do with all the command crystals I took.”
“Or they could be absolutely nothing.” I yawn and walk up behind the pair. They’re studying a particular chunk of floor; one with a circle and an oval that looks a lot like saturn. “If we’re delaying for my own safety, then we need to pit that against my time limit. Not that I don’t trust Illumisia, but what if this place doesn’t actually have a teleporter? What if it was rigged by someone to attract all the beacons to right here instead of what they’re actually looking for?”
I kneel down next to the carving and frown. The saturn-like thing only looks like that because I have a reference point; it’s just two slightly differently sized circles put together. Completely random, just like all the other circles and lines littering the floor.
“It could be a distraction.” Illumisia readily agrees.
Pearl raises an eyebrow as she starts to climb my arm. “Wouldn’t that be kind of pointless? If we know how to get in here and we don’t get killed by the shoddy robots outside, then how could little carvings stop us?”
“Precisely for those reasons. We are competent enough to not be threatened by the robots, have the knowledge to traverse the false walls, and a beacon leading us directly where we need to go.” Illumisia licks her lips and nods confidently. “When all else fails, and you have no more countermeasures, all you can do is hope the invaders think themselves out of their prize. In this case, we are the invaders.”
“We got that.” I stand with a grunt and stretch my back. “Let’s break this puppy open. Illumisia can brutalize anything that’s a trap, and if the two of you are really worried about me, I can step outside until it opens. But we need to know as soon as possible.”
“A fair point. Pearlescence, whenever you are ready.”
Pearl salutes Illumisia, then waves her hand through the air. A trail of shimmering black-tinged green follows in her wake, and the colours grow increasingly intense as I feel magic rumble to life. Part of it is from the room; like a giant mechanism hidden under our feet making itself known in the most vigorous way possible.
A much bigger part comes from Pearl herself. It almost sings in my ear with its intensity, but also remains as quiet as a mouse. Compared to the power in the room Pearl’s is wielded with infinitely more competence and grace; like a professional dancer contrasted with a shelf shaking from an earthquake. Except, somehow, the dancer feels ten times deadlier than the earthquake.
Part of my mind resonates with Pearl’s power. Somehow, I understand it at a foundational level; she is commanding the ancient mechanisms to function. Overriding whatever else may have been in place with raw strength and influence alone. Her magic doesn’t take a singular shape, but rather takes an infinite number of shapes all at once–throwing everything possible at the lock until the right key manages to slip into place.
The sheer waste of mana appauls me. It also doesn’t seem to drain Pearl in the slightest. And it definitely raises so many questions about everything we’ve been through. Ones that will have to wait for more Mind, since the floor clicks loudly and starts to audibly move.
“Got it!” Pearl says triumphantly. “It’s an old–”
Illumisia cuts her off with a shake of her head. “Censorship, Pearlescence. You can explain it to me later if you really want to.”
Pearl nods sadly. “Aw, okay. But it’s a cool piece of history. We used this kind of thing to turn our waste materials into usable parts, not for… storage…”
My heart sinks as everything comes into view. Shells broken into countless pieces. Glass fractured and split into useless chunks. Splintered and rotted wood that seeps magical destruction unlike anything I’ve felt so far. And among all the trash is the king of trash itself–the disk atop a teleporter. Complete with about half the shells, none of which are undamaged, and with a massive chunk taken out of the center.
“It’s scrapped.” I grit my teeth and ball my fists. “It’s not even the same teleporter. The damned shovel managed to find its way into these stupid tunnels, but the actual objective of my quest ISN’T EVEN HERE?!”
I turn to Illumisia, fully expecting her to sigh at me and chastise me for raising my voice. Instead, I see actual regret and worry painted unbelievably thick on her face that it dulls my own frustration.
“You actually thought this was going to get us out of here.” I say slowly so I don’t raise my voice.
She blinks slowly, then nods. “I did.”
“That’s it? No explanation? Just ‘I did’, and now we’re screwed?” I laugh shakily and cross my arms, digging my fingers into my sides to stop myself from trembling. “Even if I somehow get enough Worth now, I’ll never get to the right place in time. The system’s going to kill me.”
I start to pace back and forth and start to gnaw on my ring finger’s first knuckle. Illumisia goes completely silent. Pearl offers a bunch of solutions into my ear that she doesn’t even sound confident in. I take all of them in, trying my hardest to give each of them the time they need to rumble around in my head. A few of them are alright. None of them actually solve the problem of the system disposing of me.
“Um… there’s… I can… w-we…” Pearl stammers, then sets her mouth into a thin line. “All I have left is the hope that we could somehow repair it. We have the schematic, even though Shelby can’t read it, so maybe Illumisia and I can make it work again?”
Illumisia’s eyes widen, and she looks down into the hole with reluctance. “I do not know; it looks to be missing many key parts. Many, many key parts that we do not possess. Do not forget that I know the contents of your Shelby’s inventory.”
“Well, then we’ll just have to look for them. We can’t sit back and do nothing until Shelby gets… vaporized, or whatever the system does to people that don’t meet its requirements.” Pearl says with desperation. “She’s the only reason I’m here. She’s the only reason you’re here. I am not going to repay that with failing her. …Again.”
Pearl whispers that last word with such sincerity and regret that it hits me right in the heart. Illumisia sighs and nods, but doesn’t outright say she’ll help repair the teleporter. Because she’s probably right. Even if we can get back to the workshop, we can’t use any of those materials. And it’ll be the exact same if we manage to find another.
The mounting dread doesn’t get any better. I crouch down and hug my knees as my stomach ties itself in knots, staring at the broken teleporter in the hope that any good idea will spring to mind. Because there has to be a way forward here. It can’t just… end like this. With an escape before my very eyes that I can’t use.
It has to be in the specifics. Like… the shellraisers seem to be super protective of their stuff. So much so that we can’t even take materials out of the workshop. But I still got scrap and some lumber from the market where I found Pearl. There’s no way they wouldn’t have put the same protection on that place as the workshop to keep people from putting their walls into their inventories.
I look over my shoulder and frown at the entrance. It’s still mostly clear, but it looks like something got pushed out of the wall somehow. Removed from the glass entirely. Does that mean this place doesn’t have the same removal restriction as the workshop, or does the restriction stop working when the thing it’s restricting gets scrapped?
A plan slowly starts to form in my mind. “We can take the teleporter to the workshop. This is pretty much a garbage dump; there’s no way it’ll have the same restrictions as the workshop. Once we repair it there, all we have to do is use it. It won’t even matter if we can’t take it outside after that.”
Some small semblance of hope beats back the dread. I flick a coin through my fingers, then use it to create a shield bridge leading down to the teleporter. Illumisia watches me with obvious skepticism, but she doesn’t stop me.
“It could work, but the entrance to this place is far too small to fit the… teleporter…” She trails off and audibly licks her lips. “Pearlescence, this appears to be a bay for disposal and repurposing of small machines. Yet there is one giant teleporter inside of it. Is there any way other than a system being used to achieve this?”
Pearl shimmies to face Illumisia and scratches her chin. “I guess someone could’ve teleported the teleporter in. Or they could’ve built it here to start with. But yeah, I guess someone using a system–or something that works like it–is the most likely explanation. Why?”
“Because if it can be taken in with a system, it can be taken out with a system.”