Magical gunshots pepper the air, and one by one, the encroaching things shatter to pieces. I mark them as Ursula systematically dismantles them, but as she goes to ‘reload’, something seems wrong. Seven of them are still flying towards us in a straight line, but the other six… they’re still moving too. Even though they’re in pieces.

Before the chunks can hit me, the explanation does. Just because Ursula broke them into pieces, it doesn’t mean they’re going to stop. Because these aren’t elementals–they’re projectiles.

I grab her wrist and pull her down the rickety stairs. She yelps in surprise and drops her gun, which reappears in her hand before it can hit the ground.

“What?!” She demands, but doesn’t resist. “Did I miss or something?!”

A spray of salt slams into the stairs where we just were, shearing away thick metal as if it were cool mud. Ursula blinks twice, then raises her gun and fires at the now visible chunks of salt. Each of them so saturated with magic that they thrum like the heartbeat of a massive machine.

“They’re not elementals.” I explain as she reloads a single shot to destroy the last one. We both duck under the spray, then hurry down a few more stairs in the temporary calm. “I’m not sure if I should call it a spell or an ability, but that’s what they are. And since they’re completely lifeless, breaking them into chunks turns them from cannonballs into scattershot.”

Ursula lowers her gun with a grunt. “Well, damn. Should I keep blasting them, or are we better off keeping them whole?”

The last broken salt cannonball sprays the stairs with its payload. More metal disappears in its wake with the rickety structure letting out a pained groan that resonates in my bones and causes my stomach to drop.

“I guess the question is if one massive hole or a bunch of little holes is worse.” I pant as my legs struggle to keep me from falling from the stairs while also keeping the pace. “Can you see what the load-bearing pole for this looks like?”

“Load bearing poles? What load bearing poles?” Ursula laughs and shakes her head. “Gambler, there isn’t a load bearing pole here. If one step gets obliterated, this entire structure collapses like a dropped slinky.”

I swallow hard and point off into the distance as more cannonballs appear out of nowhere. “Then I guess we better not let a cannonball through.”

“No, we definitely shouldn’t.” Ursula agrees and reloads the rest of her ‘bullets’. She raises her gun and takes aim without stopping, her arms as unmoving as ancient oaks, and puts a little pressure on the trigger. “Call it.”

My awareness latches onto the closest one. It feels no different than any of the others, which is probably a good thing. Means whatever’s shooting at us isn’t adapting.

“Pull.”

Ursula fires, and the cannonball shatters. I snap to the next one, the knowledge of the oncoming scattershot pushing me down the stairs with a desperate vigor.

“Pull.” I say. The word is immediately followed by a gunshot. “Pull. Pull. Pull. Pull. Reload.”

“Don’t gotta tell me to do that.” Ursula says calmly as she snaps her barrel back into place. “Just focus on calling ‘em out.”

Before I can call out the next one, the first spray of salt scythes through the stairs. My heart skips a beat in fear as the groaning intensifies, but it looks like it's holding. A quick glance down to the ground dries my mouth, and I swallow hard around that dryness as I focus on the problem at hand.

We aren’t even a tenth of the way down.

“Pull.”

----------------------------------------

Thick, humid sweat on my lips contrasts disgustingly with the desert that is my throat. A breath burns my lungs before forcing its way up and out of my mouth, carrying with it the last moment of silence before I force my voice to eke out another command.

“Pull.”

It’s quiet. More than a little pathetic. But it makes its way to Ursula’s ears, and my voice is suddenly and completely overridden by the hundred and somethingth gunshot of the… hour? Hours? The staircase groans and shudders like we’ve been trampling it for days, so it’s no help, and the ground is so tantalizingly close. But my estimate was so, so wrong. Because of me. And my lack of stamina.

Pearl and Illumisia’s enhancements are trying their absolute best to keep me going, but there’s only so much you can do with the base material that was my body. It proves more than anything that I need to work on myself since the system won’t do the work for me because of my Worth. Ursula’s been as patient as a saint, but I can see the stress and impatience in how she fidgets and moves when she’s stuck in place for more than a few seconds.

“Pull.”

Another gunshot. Another moment where I’m forced to move. Ursula reaches for my arm but stops herself short of grabbing my wrist, bites her lip in worry, and hurries down a few steps before I plod down to join her.

“If you’re struggling this much on the way down, it’s going to be a living hell going back up.” She notes tensely and raises her gun with hands as steady as over an hour ago. “Architect, how long have we been on this goddamn staircase?”

“Mmf.” March mumbles through a mouth of food, then leans away from the mic to swallow. “An hour and thirty eight minutes. If Gambler was drawing on a draining skill this entire time, she has a good reason to be tired.”

Ursula grimaces. “Shit, I completely forgot about that. How’s your brain doing, Gambler?”

I reach up and tap my temple. “Still in here.” I say, then point into the distance. “Pull.”

She fires, then spares a glance at the ground. Her eyes trail over to me, then to the ground, then back to me again. Something solidifies in her gaze, and she reaches out to grab my wrist.

“We’re jumping.”

“We are?”

“We are.” She confirms, then lets herself fall backwards off the step, pulling me down with her.

A thick shell of magic cradles me like a protective cocoon, obscuring my vision as my awareness tells me exactly how close we’re getting to the ground. There’s no need to scream, and even if I could, my throat would force it out as a scratchy gurgle. Doesn’t change the fact that we’re falling a good fifty feet to the ground, which is way further than anything on this damn oil rig should be, and it’s less than a tenth of the total distance we’ve descended.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Magic shatters into a million pieces around me as I slam shoulder-first into the salt-coated ground. Pain lances up my shoulder, but instead of staying in one place, it spreads out evenly through my entire body. What definitely should’ve been a horribly broken bone and a concussion instead feels like a full body bruise, which is still damn horrible, but at least I can move.

“Don’t you have better protective magic than this?” I groan as I force myself to my feet. “You protected the damn car from the preservation before I stepped in–where’s that shit now?”

Ursula rolls her shoulder with a grimace, then pops it back into place with an audible crunch. “Doesn’t work great when you’d just slam into the barrier instead of the floor. And I’m holding back more than a little so we don’t send out a massive beacon to the rest of the world. Too bad we don’t have–I don’t know–some kind of short-range teleportation on the cheap.”

“Point taken.” I groan as I press on my back to try and get the ache out. It doesn’t work. “I’ll be a little less miserly on the trips back here.”

“Please and thank you.” Ursula sighs. “I know it’s hard to spend Worth when you don’t have a lot, but in a few years, you’ll look back on this and see chump change.”

I don’t doubt it. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m almost at the point where I’m going to have to do clearance six from scratch. That’s going to suck. But you know what’s going to suck even more? Climbing that damn staircase to save one Worth per trip. Goddamn am I glad I left those two coins in the helicopter.

“More on the way.” I mutter and scour the flats for something to hide behind. Unfortunately, the answer to my question is in the description. Unless a four-inch crag can somehow shelter me. “They’re… dropping down a little more now. Not flying in a perfectly straight line. I’m pretty sure that means whatever’s creating them is further up than we thought.”

“Then how did all the others fly perfectly straight?” Ursula punctuates her question with gunfire, and only continues when I lower my arm. “Any theories?”

“No need for theories.” March interrupts. “There’s a dozen blips other than you two on the map, and they were getting brighter and brighter until you hit the ground. That means they’re either above or below you.”

I glance down at the crystalline floor as Ursula grunts in understanding. There’s an extremely low chance something would’ve been rising from the floor as we got further down. Which means whatever’s firing those cannonballs at us is lowering from the ceiling to do its dirty work. And it must’ve gone to the end of its rope.

“When you say a dozen, do you actually mean twelve?” I ask before Ursula can say anything.

“Mmhm.” March confirms. “Exactly twelve, and they’re spread out on the other side of the room.”

“Probably so we couldn’t react to the attacks on time.” Ursula muses and lowers her gun. She gestures for me to follow her, then twitches as vibrations shoot through the floor. “Damn. Is that another barrage?”

I shake my head and plod along after her. “Not yet. I can’t feel whatever made those vibrations. Architect, where are the exits in this place?”

“There are… exits.” March says slowly.

“I sure hope so.” Ursula chuckles. “But your tone says that isn’t the end of it. What’s the damage?”

“They aren’t on your level. And I’m pretty sure only one of them was up high. All the others are lower than you somehow.”

Ursula and I share a worried look. That screams ‘apocalyptic weirdness’ to me.

“So… what’re we supposed to look for?”

March’s chair squeaks as she does something. I’m betting it’s a shrug. “The one above you is connected by a catwalk that’s about as safe as the staircase was. I can’t see any way to get to the ones below you.”

“So we go for the one up high.” Ursula nods towards the darkness. “How far are we?”

“It’s on the complete other side of the room.”

She sighs and shakes her head. “Of course it is. Gambler, you got another few hours in you? Or should we call it a night?”

“Well, considering we spent most of our time in here climbing down rickety stairs, I’m just happy to be on solid ground.” More cannonballs enter my awareness, and I raise my arm with a wary sigh. “I’m starting to feel like one of those hunting dogs.”

Ursula raises an eyebrow along with her gun. “You mean a pointer?”

“Yeah. That.” I laugh and shake my head. “A little too on the nose, I guess. Oh, and you’re probably going to need something bigger than that revolver. There’s another volley already on its way.”

Her revolver clatters to the salty ground, then disappears completely. Her briefcase takes its place for a split second as she reaches into it and pulls out what looks like a military assault rifle if it had been carved out of stone. And etched with enough tally marks to make it look like it was attacked by a very purposeful lion. She presses her finger to the release and smacks the side of the gun with her fist, dislodging the magazine, which disappears before it can hit the ground.

Instead of pulling another out of her briefcase, Ursula places her palm against the opening where the magazine should go. Magic wells up in her hand, and as she slowly pulls it away from the gun, a brand new magazine knits itself out of nothing. It kind of looks like it takes longer than putting normal bullets into it. Or… magicing up something easier to use.

“I know that look; it’s the same one Architect and Merchant gave me when they saw how I do things. It’s the ‘why aren’t you doing it in a much easier way’ look.”

I shrug and keep pointing out the cannonballs. “So? Why not?”

“Because skills are dumb and magic is bullshit.” She laughs and pulls back on the slide to chamber a round. “I’d love to show you the exact description of this stupid-ass skill, but I had to be clearance thirty-six to actually use it. No way in hell the system lets you see that.”

“Cool. Hope it works better than the revolver.”

She taps the side of the gun with one hand, then presses the butt into her shoulder to steady it. From a single pull of the trigger a magical distortion bellows forth, rippling through the air and creating aftershocks that chase the bullet like a pulsating jetstream. March squeals in discomfort, mumbles something about how she hates anything bigger than the revolver, and then her voice cuts out.

“Architect? Architect, are you alright?” I ask while Ursula continues to mow down everything I point at. “Your mic just cut out.”

Silence. I wait until Ursula takes out all the cannonballs, then we make a wild sprint to get out of the spray of destruction. She raises an eyebrow at me and taps her earpiece, then holds up a single finger for me to wait. All the salt chunks clear away thin lines on the floor like blades through soft mud, and when everything goes calm, Ursula flicks her earpiece three short times.

Clattering and motion return on March’s side. “Are you done?”

“For now. Gambler will warn you before we go loud.” Ursula says, then mimes flicking her earpiece three times. “Same signal as usual. She’ll also take over calling you back to the fray. Sorry for the surprise.”

“I guess it’s fine. But why are you two even bothering with this any more?” She sighs, and the clacking of her keyboard resumes. “There’s no staircase to get destroyed. Just run instead.”

…Good point. I chuckle sheepishly as Ursula presses her face into her palm, then summons a strap for her rifle and lets it dangle around her neck.

“Guess we could try letting a few of ‘em hit the ground.” She pats me on the shoulder without looking at me. “You’re looking a little less screwed up. You good to move?”

I shake my head. But she’s a little right–my body feels a little better now that the time between barrages is a little longer. Probably have Pearl and Illumisia to thank for that. My brain, though? It feels like I’ve been mentally lifting weight for almost an hour straight. And I’m staring down an unknown number of sets to go.

“I can move.” I say truthfully. “But if we’re not shooting the cannonballs any more, I’m not tracking them anywhere near as closely. You’ll have to rely on your eyes and ears.”

“Hey, I’ve done that for years before you came along.” Ursula shrugs one shoulder and continues forward. “Architect, aim us towards one of the dozen things. We’re gonna take it down for science.”