This is exactly why we have contingency plans.

“Pearl. How’s the best way to disable this thing without destroying it?”

“I… we…” Pearl gulps hard and forces her voice to stabilize. “The tail and the central control module. If you destroy both of those, the entire thing goes to scrap.”

So just like the one we found. I can work with that. My fingers trace a long path through the air, planning out the exact steps I’m going to have to take if I don’t want to lose everything here. And all that starts with preventing the teleporter from firing.

I take two fast steps back and let myself fall off the teleporter platform, pushing shields into two skeletal coins as I fall. The teleporter tries to shift itself to follow my movement, but the shields I’ve already got under it stop it dead in its tracks.

Pearl plants a hand on my cheek and sort of melts her feet into my shirt for stability. “Is there anything I can do to help? Anything at all?”

“Remember the schematic the best you can, and make sure I don’t damage anything that was missing from the other teleporter.” I say as the shields burst free from my coins, sandwiching the teleporter’s tail between two wedges. “How much of the tail can I destroy before it’s a problem?”

“Barely any. As long as most of the circuits and material isn’t damaged we could repair it, but if a single one of the motion sensors is broken, we don’t have those parts.” She replies with a frown. “Shelby, what are you trying to do? We can’t access this one. I failed you.”

I flick two projectile-filled ghost quarters at the ends of both of my new shields. They burst into motion, slamming the whirls of magical energy forwards as they eat away at the shields. Trapping the tail in between and popping it nearly clean off in one swift motion. Pearl gasps in surprise as I dismiss the projectiles and dive for the tail, rolling under the teleporter platform and knocking my knuckles against the very top of it before it can disappear into the sand.

“Deposit!”

The tail disappears without a moment’s hesitation. A grin of victory splits my face, and I wipe away the notification before it can distract me.

“How’d you do that?!” She demands giddily. “That shouldn’t have worked! How’d you know it would work?!”

Truth is I didn’t. If the teleporter was still under shellraiser control, I probably couldn’t have done what I just did. But if it was under shellraiser control, Pearl would’ve been able to overwrite it with her authority. Now, things under the system’s control? Things that are specifically part of a quest?

Those are things I can work with. Luckily.

“I’m going to have to destroy most of this thing.” I say without answering Pearl’s question. “The system needs to recognize that I destroy these things on my own, so most of it has to go. And the only way I can imagine getting the control stuff out of this one is by–”

“Completely destroying the rest of it.” Pearl finishes for me with a nod. “Then it won’t technically have control over anything, since you rightly earned it through the system’s own quest. At least that’s the thought, right?”

I glare through the glass and press projectile-filled ghost quarters to the parts that don’t look like they have important circuitry in them. The image of the destroyed teleporter is seared into my mind–which spires are missing, where the massive hole is, and every little scratch on the thing. There’s no way I studied it that hard, but somehow, it’s all there bright as day.

“Heads down!” I exclaim and roll out from under the platform as my projectiles spin up. “Don’t know how much damage this is going to do!”

My projectiles dig into the glass, but barely leave more than a few inch-deep dents. The body’s infinitely more resilient than the tail for some reason, but that just means I have to throw more firepower at it. I flex my fingers and ready a few more ghost quarters to make the attack, but a low hum and a flash of black stops me in my tracks.

Sand trickles down from above. Then it pours down in a cascading waterfall of soft but horrifically heavy stuff. I cry out in pain and raise my arms as grains pelt every inch of my exposed skin, then fall to my knees as a huge chunk forces itself into my field of view. Frost emanates from it like an open freezer, and blood drips down the sharp edge lodged just a few inches from my face.

Blood that drips from a hole in my arm. One that’s filled by the chunk of sand. One that’s getting more than a few friends as more and more frozen chunks rain against my body.

“Shit!” I hiss in pain and force a few shields above me. Sand cascades down onto them, blotting out the light from above. “What the hell happened?!”

Pearl spits out a mouthful of sand and pushes more grains out of her body with willpower alone. “I think the teleporter teleported the ceiling!”

“Is that even…” I start, but snap my mouth shut a second later. The teleporter making a tunnel was how all this got started, so why couldn’t it do that again? But… why sand? Why not water? We are underwater, right?

I press the shields together and force them further and further up as sand flows on and around them. With a horrendous effort I lower my skewered arm and bite back a scream of pain as the frozen chunk of sand slams into the sand below. It hurts so goddamn much that my vision wobbles for a second, but I bite my tongue to keep focused and summon a shield beneath my feet.

It levitates slowly, pushing me upwards as the shields above me force the sand away. My mind screams at me to get out alive, but something else screams at me to get the teleporter. Their screams are the same level of loud at first, but the desire to get the teleporter rips into my chest with a sole, deadly reminder; if I don’t get it, I don’t get out alive. Even if I survive this somehow.

“Illumisia!” I scream at the top of my lungs as I summon and slam the shovel into the sand. The coins have to reach the teleporter somehow. “Block the damn hole!”

I have no way of knowing if she heard me, but I have to hope that she did. I try to close the fingers on my right hand, but only my thumb and forefinger move. All the others don’t even respond. Ignoring how horrible a sign that is with no healing potion to save me, I blink away the white seeping in from the edges of my vision and summon as many ghost quarters from my inventory as I can manage.

Projectiles seep into each and every one. My intent flows in a moment later–obliterate the teleporter and leave only the parts I need to repair the broken one. Not a second goes by before the first one pings off through the cascade of sand and disappears. Then a second follows it. More and more activate as something in the back of my mind stretches thinner and thinner, like a rope quickly fraying down to a few paltry strands. Another awareness seeps in to hold me together. I grit my teeth as Pearl reaches up and gently pats my temple.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“This is going to hurt a lot.” She whispers into my ear as the rest of my coins are grasped by dark awareness. “But you need to stay awake. And you can’t sleep for a few days again. Can you do this?”

I grind out a hollow, bitter laugh. “I don’t think I get the luxury of not doing it; whether I can or can’t isn’t even in the equation.”

Pearl nods and takes a deep breath. “Okay. I’m technically your quest item, so this shouldn’t count against the quest’s completion. But if it does, I’m sorry.”

My brain explodes. Darkness and vibrant colours vie for equal footing, sparing absolutely none of me as they war for purchase. Through the clash of sensations I feel the scattered thing that is me latching onto something through the dark–a lot of somethings, most of which lie uselessly in the sand. My coins. And deep below, the teleporter. Sinking deeper and deeper into the sand, carrying with it all my hopes of life.

Desperate fire burns in my stomach. I won’t let it. A prick of awareness sends my coins shooting through the sand as easily as water, aided by the shovel’s manipulation, spinning and whirling into small pockets of magic that rip and tear at everything around them. My mind divides and divides until a small piece of me inhabits every single coin, watching and breathing and anticipating the eventual clash with the teleporter.

The first one clatters against the glass. It explodes into magic and motion, and pain blossoms in my chest. My real chest. I feel a bloody scream rip free from my throat, but it’s nothing compared to the searing agony that claws at my awareness with rusty blades. Then comes the second. It carries an equal, yet no less horrific pain. And the coin is snuffed out. Like an individual life that also happens to be me–completely alien from Shelby, yet also completely indistinguishable.

Coins rain on the teleporter like living hailstones. I direct each and every one to avoid the parts we need intact, tears spilling down my face as whimpers of pain wrack my body. My knees hit something as the last coin sputters out. It feels like pieces of me are completely gone as my vision slowly goes back to normal, leaving me empty and hollow of awareness.

For torturous seconds I just… am. Grief overwhelms me, as if I’d just lived my own funeral a hundred times over, both as the person in the casket and a weeping family member in the seats. I don’t know what parts of me just died. I don’t even know if anything died. But I don’t feel like the same person any more. My awareness slowly crawls back to the fraying rope, but there’s nothing any more.

Just a few hanging threads that once connected something greater.

I turn to Pearl. She looks away. I swallow around a dry mouth as I come to rest atop a pile of sand, disturbed only by a ripple as Illumisia dives into it as easily as water.

“What just happened to me?”

She still can’t look at me. “I… tweaked the shellraiser in you. To give you the same kind of awareness that we feel, not the… modified version you normally have. It splits your mind into strands, and each of those strands can act independently. But they can also… get hurt independently.”

I hear what Pearl says, but I don’t really take it in. I blink one eye, then the other, then stare up at the hole in the ceiling covered by Illumisia’s barrier. It holds back some sand, but most of it is water as black as black can be. It feels like I’ve lost something. Or… no. That’s not right. I’ve been made aware of something I was once contently ignorant of.

“Is this how you feel when you use your magic?” I whisper, then force Pearl to lock eyes with me. “Or is this how you felt when you melded with the shellraiser from the beacon?”

This time, she doesn’t look away. She doesn’t say anything, either; she just swallows hard and gets teary eyed with a little nod. It’s more than enough to confirm my suspicions. This isn’t normal. It isn’t what Pearl feels when she uses magic; it's what the last elongated moments of the beacon shellraiser felt like. Dying one strand at a time, but from a rope so thick that those moments could last forever.

In comparison, I had maybe a hundred strands in total. And even severing one of them felt like the worst emotional turmoil I’d ever been through. I can’t imagine what Pearl went through when she felt what that shellraiser felt–or what it was like for that shellraiser to live in agony for however many years she suffered.

“What was her name?”

Pearl reaches up to wipe her cheek. “Mira. Mira of the glass furnace.”

Mira. I swallow hard, barely registering the explosion of sand that accompanies Illumisia dragging what’s left of the teleporter out of the sand pit. Mira had a name. Maybe family and friends. Something–for some reason–ripped her away from all that and forced her into a living hell to protect her people. People that we aren’t even sure survived.

It’s… a lot to take in. My awareness bubbles onto the frayed ends of the rope in my mind and slowly starts to work itself back into shape, but it’s glacially paced. It could be days, even weeks before it’s strong enough to rely on again. And, somehow, I know it won’t be coming back stronger than it was. To get back to where I was a few minutes ago will definitely take months of hard work.

Illumisia nudges my shoulder with her nose. “System-born. The teleporter still… functions. And while it does, I cannot do anything.”

Because it’d screw up the quest. Right. I blink slowly and nod at her, forcing my mind-numbed body to stand and trek over the mostly hardened sand. The shovel splits through the pit effortlessly, and I nudge it with my foot to deposit it once again. Damn thing saved my life. For a second time. I’ll… have to look a little deeper into the quest it’s bundled with.

“You did… very well.” Illumisia says slowly as she walks alongside me. “Though I must know; did you predict this? Did you have me remove the teleporter for this reason alone?”

I don’t even have the strength to offer her a smile. Walking’s taking way more out of me than I expected. All I can do is kneel next to the remains of the teleporter, watching the magical technology inside pulsate in an attempt to trigger things that are no longer attached to it. My eyes don’t focus quite right on the entire thing, and as I press my left hand to the glass, it gets a whole lot worse.

“Deposit.” The thing disappears. I close my eyes and sigh in relief, then summon both pieces around me. “Pearl. Illumisia. I… don’t have the strength to do this.”

Pearl hugs my neck tightly. “We’ll make sure everything’s ready. You just… um… oh! Get the reward from the quest and pass another threshold! That’ll open a shop you can buy a health potion from.”

“Yes. Do that.” Illumisia agrees as Pearl runs down my arm towards the shark-wolf. I don’t actually see it happen, but I can feel Pearl to a frightening degree. “Pearlescence and I will repair this device to the absolute best shape it can be. Though we may not have enough shell pieces to repair the prongs.”

“No, we have enough. I mean, I’ve got more than enough.” Pearl assures the both of us. “Don’t you worry about materials, or competence, or anything. We’ve got your backpack for the schematic, my materials and know-how, and Illumisia’s raw power. We’ve got this.”

“Yeah. Alright.”

I swipe open the quest clear notification. It doesn’t help the pain or exhaustion, but nevertheless, it brings relief.

Quest complete: What Lies Below.

Having identified and destroyed the shellraiser teleporter, you have removed the daily threat of teleportation. Whether that is a blessing or a curse, only time will tell.

Rewards: 300 Worth, two Stat coins, and a Faultless Inventory coin.

Current Worth (376) clears the (200) Worth threshold for clearance increase.

Next threshold: (500) Worth.

(1) Clearance ticket issued.

Opening Clearance Shop at your location.