Magical force washes over me like a sonic boom. My ears ring and my eyes blur as I try to take in the… mistake… I just made. A krarig. Empowered with magical salt. Enraged and malicious, lying in wait just a few miles from the resort proper.

I fall to my knees as Fleur’s agony pierces my mind. “No… I… I didn’t…”

This isn’t what was supposed to happen. It was just supposed to be the three hearts. I was… supposed to kill the krarig by yanking them out, and then Fleur could use them to live here, and recreate the conditions of the krarig…

But… it isn’t what happened. I put everyone in danger. I’m the reason we didn’t try anything else to save Fleur. There’s… also a chance… some Preservation people died when the krarig came over. Innocent people, even if the Preservation itself is corrupt to hell. Their blood is on my hands.

Noland gently rests a hand on my shoulder. “What’s the contingency plan?”

I look up at him with a shaky laugh. “Contingency plan?! What kind of moron would plan for… that?!”

With a sweeping gesture, I encompass the entire scene playing out in front of us. The krarig, tainting the waters around it with oily grease that radiates magic like radioactive waste. Salt slowly encompassing it like a suit of armor, but not like with the vendigators; this time, the krarig’s in control of the salt. It hasn’t even started to attack yet.

The mere act of it existing is enough to warp the world.

“Yeah. You always plan for the absolute worst outcome. But if you couldn’t even fathom something outlandish like this, then I guess I have to give you classes on being pessimistic.” Noland tries to smile, but his face is stuck in an expression of grim acceptance. “Did you have Ursula plant bombs in there? Or coins to relocate bombs in? How about coastal defenses from March?”

Ashamedly, I shake my head. All I’d planned for was the teleportation not working. I hadn’t even thought of it working too well.

He clicks his tongue and holds out a hand. “March, can you keep this from leaking into the outside world?”

As he speaks, a golden watch with a digital display appears in his palm. The lights are nearly the same gold as the rest of the watch, but underneath them, there’s a tiny glass tube with a mixture of blue, gold, and pink swirling around inside of it.

“No. But the Preservation will cover for us this time.” March says confidently. “After all, we have documents that prove they’re the reason this krarig appeared. That’s better blackmail than anything we’ve had so far.”

“Well, then I guess there’s no choice.” Noland straps the watch to his wrist. Veins of gold shoot out of it and embed themselves in his flesh, and everything about him takes on a shimmering luster. “Shelby, bring that elemental here. She’ll be happier to live out her final moments in your arms than in the krarig.”

The two-number display starts to tick up, up, and up. Air stops working. All the light nearby converges towards Noland, forcing my eyes to lock onto him as the watch forces more and more magic into his body. Somehow, I can feel all the Worth he’s using for this. Hundreds of thousands of the precious resource flow into him from the watch, yet it also feels like Worth is flowing into the watch from him.

“What are you waiting for? Call her here.”

I shake myself out of the terrified awe I’d been struck by, then focus on Fleur’s coin. It feels… weak. Weak and terrified and wracked with the sadness of looming mortality. If only I’d been less ambitious. Maybe one heart would’ve worked. Or just some metal and grease. I watch in fear and admiration as Noland faces down the krarig without flinching.

He’s trying to fix my mistake. Ursula’s the only reason I could work the plan in the first place. And March made this platform, costing herself however much Worth in the process. Hell, even Gil helped me out when he really had no reason to. But I’ve been keeping a secret from these people all this time. A secret that I need to talk to right now if I want a chance to save Fleur’s life.

Honestly… if I can’t trust them with it… then I can’t trust any other human with it. They’re bearing the same burden of Worth Classes as I am.

“Pearl…” I whisper, but I know everyone can hear me. “What can I do for her?”

Noland raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t shift his focus. March goes abnormally quiet on the line, and if I had to guess, she’s putting a few pieces together in her head that she already suspected.

Pearl straightens her back. “She needs an extremely high concentration of magic to live. The Krarig’s one possible source of it, but if you can somehow find another, it should work too.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

This time, Noland’s neck nearly snaps to stare at me in wide-eyed disbelief. And a quiet, revelatory gasp is all March can manage.

“It came… from…” Noland whispers as his eyes trail to Pearl’s shell. “Oh.”

“That’s what I detected back then…” March trails off excitedly. “A parasite that took over a shellraiser’s shell.”

I snort out a humourless laugh. Fleur’s coin feels… a little lighter in my hand. “Not quite. Pearl’s the real deal. She’s the reason I have awareness, she has authority over shellraiser-made devices, and a shell full of… magic…”

Pearl squeals excitedly before I finish my sentence. “Roommates! We can be roommates! I’ll have to rewrite her a little so she doesn’t have a core, but it should work!”

Then I guess there’s nothing else to try. Relocation flashes in my coin, and after a tough pull, Fleur appears before me. Or… what’s left of her. Weak light emanates from her cores, her body is missing massive chunks, and she just feels… less than before. I reach down to rest a hand on her body, and nearly flinch away at the deathly chill that clings to her.

“Gam…bler?” She weakly asks a few moments later. “Where… am I?”

“Where everything went wrong.” I laugh bitterly. “Pearl… do your thing. Noland, if you can, try to leave one of the hearts intact. Maybe we’ll be able to build this place up for Fleur over time.”

“No promises. But I’ll see if I can control it.”

Fleur tries to move. Her body just shatters with every little effort. I gently insist she stops moving, but even when she’s still, I can feel the magic leaving her. Within moments, she’ll be nothing but an unthinking pile of once magical salt.

Pearl pops out of her shell and sprints down my arm. Fleur watches it happen, but I’m not sure if she actually registers what she’s seeing. Noland, however, is very much registering everything. He traces Pearl with his eyes, which are somehow both wide with fear and narrowed in confusion, but snaps back to the krarig as a strange noise echoes out.

It sounds like… sonar blips? And they’re definitely coming from the krarig. “What the hell is that?”

Noland clicks his tongue. “It’s locking on. Anything near it is definitely dead from just the sound, but since we only heard it, the follow-up attack is coming damn soon.”

I look from Noland to his watch, then back to Fleur and Pearl. The elemental and the shellraiser are both glowing strangely, and Fleur’s magic seems to be leaking out much slower now. But her cores are… dissolving into her body. If Pearl isn’t successful here, then Fleur is dead for sure.

“You can do it, Pearl.” I whisper as I shift all my focus to the krarig. “Noland… how can I help with that thing?”

He gestures at the ground in front of him. “Shields. Layer dozens of them on top of each other and put them around both of us. March will protect the resort, but we need to protect ourselves.”

I nod and start pushing shields into as many coins as I can spare. “Honestly, I don’t think it’ll do much, but if you think it’ll help…”

“It will.” He cuts me off confidently. “Activate them all as soon as you make them. I can’t shoulder the cost for these shields, but I’ll strengthen the hell out of them.”

Since I’m reminded of how he empowered my relocations enough to pull the krarig halfway across the world, I don’t have a single shred of doubt for his abilities. So I just keep pushing shields into my coins shaped like domes around the four of us, letting them fall to the ground, and watching as Noland takes them over one by one.

My clear magic shields are overwhelmed by glimmering gold. Swirling magical maelstroms that give off the sensation of being dozens of times stronger than my own. I don’t even want to imagine how much Worth he’s putting into each of my shields to get them this powerful. Or… maybe his skill just works like this.

I can’t help but gawk as Noland juggles dozens of activations of his skill without an awareness to help him. His Mind stat must be insane to keep up with all this, especially while he’s charging whatever the watch is going to do.

Horrible noise splits the air. My attention tears away from Noland and to the distant krarig, which isn’t quite as distant as moments ago. The giant metal squid, tainted and twisted by the apocalypse into a true monstrosity, thrashes tentacles out from beneath the surface of the water. Each one of them shudders and twitches like a dying animal as grease bleeds out of dozens and dozens of wounds.

Or… that’s what I initially thought. All the wounds instantly closed and the grease flow cut off, leaving each tentacle in perfect shape. Except now… more things bubble beneath the grease-polluted waves. Countless tiny ripples in the grease, like an entire gravel truck flung its contents onto the surface of a still lake.

Then they start to rise. Tentacles, each as large as one of the krarig’s own, made of seawater and grease and encased in a thin layer of Fleur’s salt. She groans in pain as the krarig commandeers her power. One tentacle alone is at least a mile long, and that’s only the part I can see above the surface.

In my awareness, they each feel like a monstrously powerful spell primed within a delicate container. Just the weight of crashing water would be enough to kill any normal person, but this… it’s like staring into hundreds of massive ticking bombs. I swallow around a dry mouth to try and get the sensations to leave. It does absolutely nothing.

Noland checks his watch, then over his shoulder at the resort. “Looks like it's time. Shelby, shellraiser, you might want to look away. It’s going to get insanely bright.”

I glance back at the resort, but all I see is a wall of completely opaque magical projections. Then Noland goes supernova. Completely ignoring his advice, I turn with anticipation at the display of magical annihilation that’s about to unfold before my very eyes.

It all starts with a pillar of golden light that shears clear through one of the krarig’s actual tentacles.