A shiver the size of mount everest rockets down my spine as Pearl looks wistfully at the massive mech crawling free of the dripping wormhole. I swallow around a suddenly dry mouth and try to look away, but it’s impossible. The chunky grey and mint green thing is the furthest away from the shellraiser aesthetic I know, but if Pearl says it’s one of hers, then I’m not going to argue.
“We need to get the hell out of here.” All three of us say at once.
“No, we need to kill it.” Pearl argues with only me. “They don’t deserve to have a piece of our history, even if it’s a replica. But if it’s one of the originals they modified… they can’t keep it, Shelby. We need to take it back.”
Yeah, that ain’t happening. The thing pulls itself fully free of the hole in the sky, ignites something on its back that sprays gray flames to keep it hovering in the air, and opens up its chest to reveal a pulsing mass of mint green magic. Magic that I can feel from here without my awareness. With my awareness, it feels like staring directly into the sun from just a few feet away.
“How much further?!” Noland asks in a panic. “Can we make it?!”
Ursula shakes her head in despair. “See those two little stains still in the wormhole? They brought reinforcements for the reinforcements. Probably Whisper and Shout, and if not them, then two members of the Speakers.”
My eyes widen at the mention of the Speakers. I’d always thought they were people the Preservation made up as propaganda and a way to sell comic books and video games. If they’re real people… holy hell, we can’t fight even one of them.
“We’re running?” Pearl asks quietly. “Shelby… please. I know they’re powerful, but we can’t just leave my people’s graves behind. Someone could be stuck in constant death in that mech. We need to give them rest.”
“Not right now. But I promise you; we will come back for them. And we will take what they stole from your people back.” I say as quietly as possible, and luckily enough, it seems like both Ursula and Noland are too preoccupied with impending death to notice me talking to myself. “I’m too weak now. I’m sorry.”
Pearl is silent for a few long seconds. “...I’m weak too. When we’re both strong enough, we’ll do this together. And we’ll rely on each other, instead of me completely relying on you. I promise.”
It’s a nice sentiment, but the mass of crackling death in the mech’s chest cavity seems to be getting bigger, brighter, and louder. Promises don’t mean anything to the dead, and if neither Noland nor Ursula do something about it soon, we’re about to be promiseless.
“Do something, damn it!” I yell at them. “Break a damn rule or something! Just get us out of here!”
Noland flails wildly in the back seat, eyes wide and mouth pinched shut with concentration. “What do you think I’m doing? Summonings like this take time, and it’s infinitely harder since we’re constantly moving! Just… give me ten seconds! That’s all I need!”
“I don’t think we’re in any place to give you anything.” Ursula chuckles, leans back, and buckles her seat belt. “If they hit the car, Shelby’s gone. And they’ll take both of us prisoner after some very long fights. Which you know is pretty much the same as being gone. Maybe we could’ve won if it was just the mech, but with two Speakers, we’d just be fighting for mutually assured destruction.”
“I know, I know, I know! Done!” Noland thrusts his hands forward with his palms pressing together, then slowly pulls them apart. Two pillars slam into the ditch a few hundred feet away, and a curtain of liquid gold begins to pour horizontally from one to the other. “Go through! Through!”
“No shit!” I grunt and adjust the wheels as a blinding flash of green light eclipses the sun. “We’re dead. We’re D. E. A. D. Dead. Stupid ass humans doing what the system couldn’t.”
“Quit your bitching and gun it!” Ursula grabs the gearshift from me and slams it through the console. I feel the car shift into an even higher gear, and a roar escapes the engine along with enough magic smoke to choke a bear. Disbelief and frustration wash over me as my foot presses the pedal into the floor, which triggers another burst of magic and even more white and gold tinged smoke.
“We could’ve done this the entire time, and you pull it out now?! What the hell is wrong with you?!” I demand angrily. “We could’ve been home free!”
“Rule number seventeen: no magical vehicle enhancements that may encourage the apocalypse to taint said vehicle.” The androgenous voice from before announces straight into my brain. Pearl grunts in annoyance at the intrusion, and somehow lowers the volume to acceptable levels. “Shelby Thestalos. Ursula L. Caius. Noland Granmarg. Two of you are already known to us. From this day forward, all of you are wanted by every member of the Preservation. There is nowhere safe. You cannot run. Give up or be annihilated.”
Without even giving us a second to give up, the mech launches its chest-blast with an ear-shattering boom. It shears through the air at breakneck speeds, and I try to slam my foot even further into the floor. We’re just feet from the pillars–I can feel freedom. But we’re not going fast enough. We aren’t going to make it.
The entire world goes green. My skin crackles like it’s loaded with static, and I can feel my blood shivering in my veins. Noland’s shield holds for the briefest of seconds, then… holds. And holds. And holds yet again. I rip my eyes open and force the wheel into the right position as the horrible sound of the mech’s attack pounds at my eardrums. The pillars are right there.
My arms go numb. Noland screams in pain, and Ursula gurgles out something while she presses her hand against her chest. Awareness surges into me with a warcry from Pearl, and my brain starts to throb with all the horrific strain it’s putting me under just to stay awake. Gold washes over the hood. The engine. And finally, everything else.
Like a light being switched off, the pain stops. Noland and Ursula cough and startle in their seats, eyes searching frantically for something that isn’t there. I let out a shuddering sigh and melt into my chair as the pillars behind me collapse into dust, but there isn’t an energy blast here. Wherever ‘here’ is, it is absolutely dark, more than a little humid, and teeming with non-deadly magic.
“Holy shit, I didn’t think mindsplitters were legal.” Ursula whispers into the darkness as she, too, melts into her seat. “If Shelby wasn’t here, they would’ve got us. How’d you resist it, sister?”
“Pure grit.” I respond flatly, then another explanation comes to me. “Actually, more like dumb luck. My leg fell asleep on the pedal and I collapsed in a way that kept it floored.”
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Noland laughs shakily and laces his fingers together. “We got out of there because of dumb luck. Now that’s a blow to the ego.”
“We couldn’t have known they’d use shit like mindsplitters. Now we do know, and they’ll never work on us again.” Ursula says with finality as she opens her door. “But we can’t go out for a good long while. Not while the Preservation’s got fresh bounties on our heads.”
“Yeah, we’ll have to wait until the Speakers get wind of some other criminals.” Noland agrees and steps out of the car. I do the same, stretching my back as my feet touch solid ground. “I’d give it six months before someone dangerous enough to draw the Preservation’s attention away from us comes along. So we’ll have to hole up here until then.”
I stretch my arms over my head with a groan and walk over to the trunk. It clicks open before I can even touch it, revealing that neither of my bags have moved so much as an inch. Even the straps are still in the weird pile I left them in; almost like they’ve been frozen in time since the moment I pressed the trunk shut. I blow out a breath and grab both of my bags, heft them out, and slam the trunk shut as hard as I can.
Ursula winces at the noise, but I don’t really give a shit. “If the car can survive what it just survived, it can survive me slamming the trunk. Where the hell are we, and how is it safe?”
“Yeah, but you don’t have to slam it.” She sighs. With a gesture forward into the darkness, she starts walking. “We’re at the resort. Specifically the airlock into it, which we’ve filled with so much magic and bullshit that the Preservation can’t follow us.”
Noland groans in agreement and offers nothing more. He stumbles to follow Ursula while holding his head and muttering something about ‘the cost of staying alive’. I choose to ignore him, just like Ursula does, and join them in their march into the darkness.
Magic nips against my skin, flowing around me like a soft breeze carrying countless grains of sand. It brushes through my hair and catches on my clothes, taking tiny chunks of magic with them that fizzle and dissipate like dying sparklers. I follow one with my eyes, which takes a chunk as big as a strawberry and struggles to keep airborne until it shrinks down to the size of a pea.
“You feeling alright? The magic isn’t screwing with you?” I ask Noland, who is obviously having a hard time, but it’s really directed at Pearl. “Is this place cutting off all the magic, or just foreign stuff?”
Pearl answers first. “I feel fine. I think it would be different if I was outside my shell, but it isn’t hurting me. Um, it did sever the connection that I use to enhance your awareness, though. So it looks like it’s destroying all the magic except for stuff that matches your Class somehow. That’s pretty impressive stuff.”
I exhale through my teeth and cross my arms. ‘Impressive’ doesn’t even start to describe it; a spell that can not only undo all other spells, but that can do it for specifically spells that didn’t come from the person being cleaned? And doing it to multiple people at the same time? That’s not just a waste of time, it’s completely unnecessary complexity. There’s no way anyone would do this without a good reason.
“I’m fine, thank you.” Nolan finally responds. “And no, this place isn’t cleaning all magic; it’s specifically targeting everything that doesn’t belong to you.”
“Why?”
Noland shrugs weakly. “I don’t know. Ask the Architect; she’s the one that designed this place. She’ll have an answer, but I’m warning you–it probably won’t make sense. Everything she does she does for a reason, but those reasons aren’t always… logical.”
“Like making this place completely dark instead of installing lights.” Ursula pounds her fist against something that rings hollow for emphasis. “A few fluorescents in here won’t mess with the magic, and it’d make a much friendlier first impression. Hell, I could install them in an afternoon. Maybe paint the interior and install some signs explaining what the hell is happening too.”
“Yeah, like she’d approve that.” Noland chuckles. “Remember how hard it was to convince her to make the airlock bigger than a closet?”
“Ugh, don’t remind me.” Ursula groans. “She was so convinced we’d be able to wait patiently for everyone to take their turn. Ever the optimist she was.”
Noland’s smile turns somber. “She was. We all were, I guess. Well, maybe not Shelby here, since she seems a little too used to this for being brand new.”
I roll my eyes and step into line with the two of them. “Well, excuse me for getting recruited by two crazy people.”
“Are you talking about them or me and Illumisia?” Pearl asks.
Both. I’m talking about both.
Soft metallic music chimes through the air. All the magic around us falls to the ground, where it seemingly gets absorbed into whatever material the floor is made of. I raise an eyebrow at Ursula for an explanation. She holds up a finger for me to wait until the music stops, then nods and presses her hand against the wall.
Lines of golden magic creep out of the material and slither towards her hand, creating a glittering handprint that pushes back against her. It sticks out a good few inches before solidifying with a loud ‘thunk’, and Ursula takes a step to the side while gesturing at it with both hands.
“Do the honours, sister.”
I step forward and look down at the ‘button’ that wove itself out of light. It feels overwhelmingly magical–like a condensed version of a spell grafted onto a much larger spell. Something about it doesn’t sit quite right with me for some reason, but after a few seconds of being completely unable to place my discomfort, I give in and press my hand against it.
The handprint sinks back into the wall with a ‘click’. Gold strands slither away from the handprint to make long lines in the wall like the folds on a garage door, with vertical lines separating the folds into two. With a deep groan everything starts to push backwards. The folds disconnect at the middle as they do, breaking apart as they get further and further away.
Light floods the dark room through thin cracks in the folds, revealing strange colours and circuitry running all through the bunker-like place. All the folds stop moving backwards with a heavy ‘clunk’, and instead start moving to the left or the right, moving out of the way to give me a good look at the resort.
Colourful buildings stretch as far as the eye can see, each about as big as a single family house and made of some kind of wood-metal fusion. Every one of them either connects directly to a shimmering white sandy beach or the boardwalk nearby, spread out like a giant ring around a much more… vibrant centerpiece.
A skyscraper that stretches at least a hundred floors upwards. Shops and other things litter a massive clearing around it, where people seem to be listening to live music and living out their best lives. There’s a lot more off in the distance that I can’t make out, but I bet it’s a lot like everything else. And… there’s a good amount of people. It’s not super crowded, but I kind of expected a few dozen stray people like me. Not hundreds spread out over such a huge stretch of land. Especially not all the kids.
“It’s… actually a resort.” I say with mild surprise. “Somehow, I didn't expect that.”
“Yeah, most people don’t. Especially not after they walk out of the big ‘ol bunker here.” Ursula taps on the airlock bunker with her knuckles, which starts to hiss shut at her touch. “There’s actually a good amount more than this to the resort, but most people stay here for the first little while. Since it’s the safest.”
Noland chuckles and elbows Ursula in the arm. “You can just tell him people here are lazy. Why would you ever leave the beach if you’re allowed to sit there sipping pina coladas all day every day?”
“I can think of more than one reason.” I say as I look out over the beach. Even though I know there aren’t any, I can’t help but imagine a red stain spreading through the pristine waters. “So what’s with all the kids?”
“People have families. And for some reason, they don’t want to leave them behind. Selfish bastards.” Noland says with a sarcastic sigh. “Our destination for now is that obvious skyscraper. Once we get you set up with access to everything, we’ll give you a room and let you get settled in for the night. Everything else can wait until tomorrow.”