The final portrait hit the table underneath it with a satisfying thunk. I stared at our list of potential coordinates, culled down to a mere eight after a few minutes of vigorous checking. Leaving us with twenty-four spheres to spin–some of which were listed more than once. I nodded over at Jun, then signaled for Mortician to take cover somewhere safe where they could keep looking over the manual.

They nodded at me, grabbed a few of the movable tables, and quickly built themself a little fort in the room’s upper right-hand corner. I waited for them to give me a signal that we were good to go, and it came in the form of a single thumbs-up rising from a crack between tables that was filled the instant Mortician’s hand disappeared once again.

“This is the moment of truth.” Jun said excitedly. She tapped the first portrait, double-checked that she’d written down the right coordinates in her interface, and ran straight to the first sphere listed. “Ready?”

I closed my inventory and drew my weapon. Mortician’s golden shield wrapped around both of us not a second later, and I summoned the cruel world’s partition as far away from me as possible. A few uses of oil and consumables later, I was as ready as I could ever be.

“Do it.” I ordered as I shifted my weapon into a shield.

Jun nodded and set her hand on the sphere, which probably should’ve been my job in hindsight, and spun it as hard as she could. The things inside hovered to the perfect center of the sphere, began to glow ever so slightly… and stopped. The sphere ground to a halt with a hollow thud, then began to emit a low, droning sound. A sound that almost instantly began to weaken.

“What’s…” Jun began, then snapped open her interface and ran towards another sphere.

The damned puzzle was on a timer. And from the sound that had almost died out already, it was not a very long one. Jun dove for the next sphere and slammed her hand onto it as she disappeared beneath the tables. The sound reset to exactly where it had started the first time, stayed at that intensity for the pair of seconds it took for the things inside of the sphere to glow and stop, then let out another hollow thud.

“At least it looks like we figured it out.” I chuckled as I ran for what I’d recorded as the third coordinate. The sound was halfway dead by the time my fingers brushed against the plastic sphere, and without waiting for confirmation that I was right, I moved towards the fifth coordinate. Jun was closer to the fourth, so that was all her.

We continued that frenetic dance of starts and stops for what was less than three minutes, but felt like dozens. By the time my hand fell on the last sphere I was panting heavily, not out of exertion or exhaustion, but out of a mental strain of checking and double-checking in the span of the few seconds I had between touches.

The final sphere spun for a moment, glowed bright, and stopped. Low hollow sounds reverberated from the sphere, echoing lightly and quickly through all of the sounds the spheres had made until now. I breathed a sigh of relief and stepped back to let whatever was going to happen happen.

A hollow thud emerged from the first sphere along with a single mote of brilliant light. A second later, the second sphere Jun had touched played a slightly different sound and summoned a slightly darker mote of light. Then the third, with a red-tinged mote. And the fourth, and the fifth, and so on. I listened with rapt interest as a strange song played out before me, hollow and dull yet somehow full of purpose.

It continued and continued, far beyond the number of spheres we’d hit, growing the glowing mass of light that hovered over the center of the room with every beat. I stepped back when it began to descend, found that Jun had moved to my side at some point, and threw my arm around her shoulder as the thudding rhythm beat on.

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Eventually, the rhythm reached its end. The final sphere I’d spun lit up for the first time with a dull reverberation, let loose a shining star of sparkling pink light that erratically fluttered towards the mass, and went instantly silent. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding as the pink light touched the mass.

The transformation was not immediate. The light shifted and shimmered as it tried to take on a new form, but all the different colours and intensities seemed to fight to be the dominant. Pink gave way to black gave way to red, and the intensity of the light shifted so quickly that I had to squint at the mass to keep track of it. But nothing won out. The mass continued to war with itself even as it gently touched down on the ground, the frenetic shifting only slowing for moments at a time before it resumed in earnest.

“This is weird.” Jun whispered reverently. She leaned into my half-hug and pointed her gun at the mass at the same time. “Should we attack it? Or maybe we should try moving it out of this room?”

I didn’t have a good answer for her. The mass was such a strange mixture of colours and intensities that I couldn’t find anything solid in it, and after a few moments of silence, I decided it was best to try and get more information before we did anything hasty. I opened my interface and tried to identify the mass.

//MASS OF INCOMPLETE SUMMONS.

And that was it. I could’ve told the system that much. “The system says the summons are incomplete. So how do we complete them?”

Rattling from Mortician’s table-fort across the room preceded their head poking out from atop it. “We have managed to decipher something pertaining to the rooms. This room, which we have labeled the ‘summon control room’, has safety protocols put in place that prevent any summons which are too powerful from existing inside of it. The hall, however, has no such protections in place.”

“So we do need to move it somewhere else.” Jun nodded to herself, then to me. She broke my hug and went straight for the mass, then paused right before she touched it. “Actually, maybe I shouldn’t be the one to touch it. Just in case it does something to my armor.”

I slammed my shield down on the ground to create a floodpetal impact at Jun’s insinuation. She stepped to the side to let me at the mass. A quick check told me that I’d need to move it down one row and then to the opening that led to the hall, which wasn’t so much a challenge as it was a possible annoyance. I gently commanded my petal-impact to press into the mass, and a warning instantly popped up in the corner of my vision.

//WARNING: HEAVY DEGRADATION OF PETAL-SCALES IN PROGRESS.

//IF REMAINING IN CONTACT FOR AN ADDITIONAL (10) SECONDS, THE PETAL-SCALES WILL BE DESTROYED.

“You were right.” I said to Jun as I carefully pushed the mushy mass between the rows of tables. It rolled like wet foam, but nothing fell away. “This thing is super dangerous to touch. Like that little thing’s breath from a few hours ago.”

She followed along behind me with a hum of agreement. Mortician pushed aside their tables with a clatter and jogged to join us with the manual bobbing along to their movements. The mass jiggled and shifted as I got it to the edge of the room, but before I pushed it down, I turned to my friends and gestured for them to wait.

“If I was a betting man, I'd say we’re going to have to fight whatever this thing summons. We need to be ready for it to be the strongest thing we’ve seen so far in this hazard.” I said seriously. “When things go wrong, we either need an escape plan or to be ready to appear in the middle of Scalovera and Endra’s people.”

Jun summoned her interface for a split second, then dismissed it with conviction. “I’m all full up on battery. If we need to fight, I’m ready.”

Mortician echoed her sentiment without saying anything. They sent the manual into their inventory with a thought, then summoned their book instead. I hadn’t noticed that they’d summoned the golden aura without actually having the book in their hands.

“How’d you give us your shield without having the book out?” I asked.

“Oh, that? We summoned our book for a split second inside of the fort, then sent it away once again. As long as we do not lose concentration or run out of battery, our auras will persist. Though we cannot change or refresh them without calling our book.” Mortician explained.

A perfectly good explanation. Almost disappointingly so. I nodded and turned, took a deep breath, and readied myself to push the mass into the throne hall.