Two coins dance through my fingers as I watch Ursula fiddle about with military-looking armor that’s been completely defaced in the colours she likes. She pulls straps and laces a bunch of things up until she’s bundled up in something she looks blatantly uncomfortable in while also looking… really used to it. Natural, almost.

“What, no helmet?”

As if on cue, she summons a military helmet with a bunch of wave motifs. Complete with a deep blue visor and a rebreather that she connects to something on her back by a thick tube. It pulses with magic in tune to an unheard heartbeat the moment she snaps it into place.

“I take back my previous comment.”

Ursula chuckles and shifts to hold the helmet under her arm. “Not much point protecting the rest of your body if your enemy can splatter your greymatter all over the pavement. Or crystallized salt, in this specific case. Need me to whip up one of these bad boys for you?”

I tap my knuckles on my knife. “This plus my coins plus my awareness will give me all the protection I need.”

“Probably a good call. Getting used to a heavy suit like this isn’t something you do overnight, and definitely not in a dangerous situation.” Ursula catches the coin I flick to her, holds it for a second, then flicks it right back. “Dumpceratops still isn’t moving, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be insanely careful. If the pain from the thorns gets so bad you can’t function again you teleport right back up and let me do this alone, you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.” I confirm and let the two relocation coins fall onto the floor. “All good to go?”

She slides her helmet over her head, taps it a few times on the side until a small light shines through the visor and the tube puts off a magical mist, then nods. That’s all the confirmation I need, and so I reach for my coins. But… something’s a little wrong. I latch onto them without a problem, just like usual, but they’re… weird. Staticky.

No. They’re dissolving. I… didn’t even know that was possible.

“The coins are breaking up. Probably because of all the salt.”

“Are they still usable?” Ursula asks loud and clear, as if she wasn’t even speaking through a mask.

“Yeah, but not for much longer.” I furrow my brow as I concentrate even harder on the imperiled coins. “Guess that means we can’t take long breaks from being down there. Or that we’ve gotta take it in shifts again.”

Ursula puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes a little. “With the preservation on our heels we don’t have the luxury of time anyway. Once we’ve got trusting the waterfall elemental sorted, if it isn’t trying to kill us, we’ll have to work in shifts. One of us distracting the preservation and the other working towards our goals; one brand new and one almost a week old.”

March clears her throat before I can say anything. “You mean getting the coins and killing the krarig, right? Which would kill the elementals anyway? Why would the waterfall elemental want that?”

That… is a very good point. It also raises the question of if the waterfall elemental knows that killing the krarig will kill it too.

“Just another tick in the ‘don’t trust column’.” Ursula sighs. “No point worrying when we can just ask it. Take us down, Gambler.”

The spell doesn’t want to work. I put all my focus on the coins and will the spells inside to work, but it’s putting way more strain on my brain than before. Like when I controlled all those projectiles against the teleporter, but focused on two things instead of many. My awareness leaks out to help me bit by bit, until even it strains under the effort.

Suddenly, and without warning, it works. I gasp, which turns into a wince, and look around to make sure nothing else went wrong. We’re back in the tunnels, so that’s good. The… dumpceratops… isn’t moving yet. Also good. Innumerable glowing spots–each an elemental–shine at us through the salt. That’s not good.

“Note to self; the harder the teleport, the more strain it puts on my brain.” I mutter and raise a hand to cradle a thumping ache on my head. Two more coins fill with relocation, and I slot them into my holster to keep them safe. “Gotta keep that in mind. Could mean really long distances are out too.”

“Or it could mean you’re teleporting into a miasma of magic salt.” Ursula looks down and clicks her tongue. “Too many elementals here. Let’s get moving.”

We start walking down the tunnel. It takes a few minutes for the first thorn to embed itself in my mind, but this time, it’s muted. Definitely not gone, as the shudder that runs down my spine proves, but it’s… manageable. Probably won’t last the closer we get to the salt landscape, but hey, I’ll take a few minutes of not-horrible.

As we get closer and closer to the room the thorns get worse. Headaches and shakiness overtake most of me, but as the exit comes into view, I’m still standing. Walking. Pearl’s eyes constantly shift to the walls, locking onto all the elementals that’re watching us, but from her bored posture, she’s not worried. So I shouldn’t be worried.

Yeah. Just… trust her.

Ursula holds up a hand for me to stop when she gets to the ledge. She shifts it into an upwards motion, her other hand going to one of her guns, and once she sees that I saw, she jumps. Straight up. Completely clearing the ledge, kicks the wall behind her, and rolls away. For someone with the Body stat of a Worth class that’s damn impressive.

I cross my arms and unclench my jaw as I wait for whatever signal she’s going to give. Pearl taps a chunk of her darkness to get my attention. I raise an eyebrow to show she’s got it. She starts miming the same thing she did before–not together, but separate. I summon my Class Card and swipe over to type something back to her.

“I know, the elementals and the apocalypse aren’t working together. That’s what you meant, right?”

She purses her lips, then waggles her hand in a ‘sort of’ motion.

“Part of what you meant, but not the whole thing?”

That gets a vigorous nod. She repeats the motion a few times, then crouches down and puts one hand on the floor. It looks like she wraps it around something and picks it up, gently motions at the thing, and deliberately moves to put it on whatever she’s usually leaning against. Then she spreads her hands towards it and smiles wide. As if that somehow completes her point.

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Picking something up and putting it somewhere else somehow makes her point. I frown and send my Class Card away as I listen to Ursula’s boots crunching away up there, trying to make sense of why she’s taking so long just as much as Pearl’s point. The dump truck obviously doesn’t belong here. And there’s no way anyone could’ve brought it here. So… did the apocalypse bring it here somehow? Is that what she’s trying to tell me–that the apocalypse didn’t just mess with the krarig, but somewhere else as well?

…Oh, shit. The salt. The extra space. I thought it was all from the ocean, but when the dump truck factors in… what if it isn’t? What if the apocalypse somehow pulled an entire salt mine into the krarig? But why? What does it get from somehow combining two places that aren’t even slightly similar to each other? Hell, how’s that even possible?

Nope, no. Don’t jump to conclusions. There’s a good chance I’m misrepresenting all this shit. Maybe it’s not an entire mine, just a… storage facility from somewhere that got abandoned when they didn’t want to retrofit the dump truck. And since it had a shit-ton of salt in it, the apocalypse magically reproduced it until there’s enough to fill the krarig.

“All good-ish up here.” Ursula calls down as she leans over the ledge. “Still a shit ton of apocalypse-touched stuff and magical salt, but that’s to be expected. And the thing’s still under the waterfall just waiting there for us.”

She leans to the side as a rope falls over the edge. I slide my foot into a loop at the bottom and hold on tight with both hands, then give it a good tug. She starts pulling me up with little effort.

“So how do you want to do this?” She asks as I clamber onto the ledge. “We can beeline for the waterfall, but that’s relying on the elemental not lying to us. Or we could go for another exit and explore some more before we lock ourselves into this path. Third option–we got to that fountain thing and get some samples while watching and waiting for something to happen.”

A thorn of agony cuts away the third option before I even start considering them. I’m not staying down here for a minute longer than I have to.

“We’ve got my coins. Dealing with the elemental lying to us is one thought away.” I decide for us and crack my neck. “How did we get up here in the first place again?”

Ursula stares way down at the ground, then breaks out laughing. I shoot her a look, but before I can say anything, she walks over the ledge. And… keeps walking over the open air. Right. Completely forgot about the buff that let us get down here in the first place. Well, can’t do anything but laugh right along and walk into the open air with her.

“Your jump is suddenly a lot less impressive than five minutes ago.”

She snorts and pats the coiled up rope on her leg. “Makes me feel stupid for bringing this along, that’s for sure. What the hell happened there for the collective brain fade?”

“It’s the salt.” March says matter-of-factly. “There’s something in it that makes you want to forget about the buff’s effects. Not sure why.”

“Probably some weird survival mechanism. Or just magical bullshit.” Ursula shrugs and starts to speed up. “Let’s drop in on this thing from above. That way we’ll have the height advantage if it decides to attack us.”

I’ve got a feeling it’s not going to attack us, but I’m not going to say no to a little deserved caution. We jog over the salt landscape until we walk headfirst into the first whiffs of an extremely unpleasant scent; like old grease mixed with burning oil. Nowhere close to as bad as the rotting ghost quarters and painted danes, but not pleasant in the slightest. And as we get closer and closer to the waterfall, it becomes obvious that it’s where the stench is coming from.

“Eurgh, smells like a skunk crawled up into someone’s engine, got set on fire, then died. Not necessarily in that order.” Ursula gags and crosses her arms. “Can’t imagine what it’d smell like in that huge chunk of metal.”

“Probably this, but worse. And… less salty.” I wrinkle my nose and focus on said ‘huge chunk of metal’. It’s not much more obvious what it is up close, but it’s just as freaky. “Looks like we might be able to crawl in there through the waterfall.”

Ursula lets out the most disgusted noise I’ve ever heard.

“I mean, we’re not going to, but it looks possible.” I quickly clarify. “Really hope our vault isn’t in there.”

“Nope, nope, I didn’t hear that.” Ursula shakes her head and speeds up. “If I didn’t hear it, I don’t have to entertain that possibility. Hey… is the elemental looking up at us, or is that just my imagination?”

I jog up and pat her on the shoulder. “Hey, I told you it was sentient. Intelligent. Whatever, you get what I mean. Of course it’d be looking for the people it asked to help kill the krarig.”

“Along with all its not–intelligent friends in the wall.”

“Yeah, those too.”

The taste and smell of salt completely overtakes everything else. The horrid smell disappears in the blink of an eye, and in another blink, the elemental stands before us. Well… hovers, just like we are. Its upper body looks like a nearly featureless human torso, complete with two burning molten salt spheres inside of its head for eyes. I was fully expecting its lower body to look like a typical mermaid’s for some reason, but it trails for a good dozen feet behind the elemental. Like a sea serpent.

“You are here.” It states in its emotionless, perfectly monotone voice. Then it looks directly at me. “Are you hurting?”

I want to imagine concern there, but there’s none. Like a computer program asking if it has satisfied its customer’s needs. Hey, at least it can pretend to care.

“Yeah, but whatever you did made it hurt a little less. I can stand it now.”

The elemental doesn’t move at all. “That is not ideal.”

Ursula snorts in amusement. “No, it ain’t, but it’s the best we’re going to get. You promised her a way to kill this thing. We’re both listening now.”

“The fluid leaks from one of the krarig’s hearts. Destroy all of them and it cannot wake.”

“Yeah, that’s not how it works. It might delay it for a few weeks, but the apocalypse will make more.” Ursula says before I can get a word in. “They tried this shit with something in Germany a few years back and it didn’t work. Still had to kill the monster after the apocalypse patched it back up.”

“This is different.”

The elemental turns, and suddenly, it’s in the waterfall pool again. Ursula and I share a look before reluctantly following it down. I carefully stop hovering just above the slurry, noting all the salt crystals that shimmer on its surface. The soles of Ursula’s boots dip into the stuff, and she hisses in frustration as she pushes herself up a little.

“How is this different?” I raise my voice over the sloppy roar of the waterfall. “Actually, how would you know it was different anyway? You shouldn’t have any contact with the outside world.”

“It is different because I am here.” The elemental says as it simply walks through the waterfall, oily grease cascading over it with seemingly no effect. The roar doesn’t dull its words in the slightest. “I will claim a heart. No matter how it tries to wake, it cannot while its hearts beat for me.”

“Like you claimed the other apocalypse-touched things?” Ursula asks in a slightly accusatory tone. But it’s not quite an accusation–not that the elemental seems to notice at all. “Were you commanding all of them? Hell, are you commanding all of them right now? Do you have complete control over all the salt in this place?”

Ursula and I both stop right before the curtain of filth. The elemental’s tail continues to disappear beyond it, counting down the time we have until we’ve got to go under. I grimace and push two umbrella-shaped shields into coins, which burst into reality a second later. It’s not much protection, and sure, I could’ve done more, but the thorns are making it hard to focus. So this is what we’ve got to work with.

“Thanks.” Ursula bumps my forearm with her knuckles. “Didn’t want to get the suit dirty.”

“And I didn’t want to smell us for the rest of time.” I grimace in discomfort as another thorn falls. “Let’s just follow this thing and see why it hasn’t taken over the heart yet.”