Wood and construct material prods at my hand with intense reluctance. I let the… half and half thing feel at my skin until it seems like it's had its fill. It slowly removes its hand from my own and steps back ever so slightly to give me more space.

"I can't stay long. The facade must be maintained," the thing says. "If you want to speak more, it has to be done in a safer place."

Pearl grimaces. "Where's safer than this?"

"Central power," I state.

The construct-shellraiser nods. "It speaks to you in the only truly safe way, as contradictory as it sounds. Trust it. Though it has not known for long, it is one of us as well."

"What? Who?" Pearl looks down at me with a frown. "Someone's talking to you? Is it… wait, the messages in the system notifications?"

She turns to the construct-shellraiser in disbelief. "One of your–our–people has system access like that?"

"That it does," The thing confirms. "Now, for future reference; refer to me only as a 'heretic' if you see me again, and act as though that is our first meeting. The system cannot know we met like this."

I nod in agreement. "Obviously. Promise we'll get a real explanation for all this if we make it to central power?"

The heretic raises a hand to its chest and makes a claw against the exact center of it. "I swear on my synapses, though there aren't as many secrets as you might hope. The system experimented. I thought it failed. Instead, it succeeded–though, somehow, we exist differently in the awareness and the real."

That much is plain to see. I tap Pearl's shell to prod her if she has any more questions to ask, but either she's too overwhelmed to say anything or she hasn't come up with anything. After a few moments to let her think I signal to the heretic that we're going to leave now.

It flexes its long body and bows. "Until we meet again."

"Hopefully soon."

"Yes, hopefully."

The world shrieks as glass shatters around the heretic. Shards flutter to the ground like falling leaves, each of them capturing a little bit of the heretic's essence until the void is absolutely and utterly empty. And gone.

Where it was, a stretch of wall with scratch marks now stands. I set my jaw and shake my head as I pivot to Jumble, who isn't reacting all that much at the now-missing void and my sudden reappearance.

"Hey."

"Yeep!" She exclaims, nearly tossing her book up into the air. "Shelby! Is it over already?"

So not so much calm and collected as otherwise focused. I let myself grin and lean over the book to see what's happening. Paindne words fall over the page in a strange, almost musical language that incorporates a hell of a lot of shellraiser language forms. That's… different. My brain doesn't actually recognize any of the symbols, yet somehow, I know exactly what they say–and what the language has borrowed from others.

Actually, no. I don't just know what it means; I'm fully and utterly aware of it. And from the mangled mess of syntax that is three stories being written overtop each other, I can glean that things are going… fine. Not wonderful–Rina's being briefed to attack us instead of helping the horizonguard clear the quest, Ward's being extremely anxious about getting caught in the crossfire, and Dani?

He's almost doing exactly what we want him to. Though he's making a lot of stops along the way to rearm himself now that we have his book of power. Unfortunately, there's one glaringly massive issue I completely overlooked.

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A Class Coin. One that Dani's constantly considering using for himself now that he's been disarmed.

I gesture at one of his many introspections. "If he does that, how screwed are we?"

Jumble's eyes follow my finger, then she hums in thought. "I don't know. The system might not instantly take him over… but it'd definitely throw a few more unwanted twists into the mix. We'll just have to hope he can find enough weapons to make him confident enough of his power without the Class."

"Guess so," I sigh and cross my arms. "So, Gil time?"

"Gil time," Jumble echoes and snaps the book shut. "I'm ready whenever you are. When'd you learn Paindne, by the way?"

I chuckle to myself and focus on my coins. "Just picked it up a few minutes ago. Tell you the details when we're not being listened in on."

Before Jumbel can ask any other questions I flare my spells. Gil steps back to give us enough room as we appear once more in his store, except this time, there's something instantly different. The windows are dark, all the lights flicker like candles, and the shelves seem… frozen. Almost like nothing can be put on or taken off of them when they're like this.

Gil offers me a smile, a nod, and a gesture at a pair of chairs opposite one he sinks into. "Shelby. Jumble. Good to see one of you again, nice to meet the other for the first time. I'm Gil the Merchant. Now that pleasantries are out of the way, what's the plan of action? I can probably get us close to the horizonguard without us being noticed, but I don't know how we're stopping him from clearing the quest."

Straight to business, huh? I sink into my chair and move to lace my fingers together, but before I can move my hands, an entire paindne plops herself onto my lap. Jumble smiles knowingly, wraps her arms around my neck, and turns nothing but her head to face Gil. It's… pretty damn possessive of her. Did I warn her about Gil's tastes already? Can't remember.

He laughs and holds up his hands. "Message heard loud and clear."

"Message?" Jumble tilts her head to the side and runs her fingers through my hair. "I have no idea what you're talking about. And since I don't know what you're talking about, we'll take you up on your offer of getting right down to business."

I awkwardly nod in agreement. "Dani's on his way to meet forehead mask, I'm assuming?"

"Mmhm. As long as he told me the truth, that is. Here, you'll need this to understand things."

Gil leans forward and snaps his fingers. The flash of a coin in his palm flares a spell, and a thick sheet of slate appears in Jumble's lap. She stops prodding at me with one hand to pick up the slate and holds it up so we can both see it. Numbers, products, and names litter the thing in extremely orderly rows and columns–all dated with the exact time the transactions were made.

A detailed ledger. With a bunch of names I don't recognize. "So why do we need this?"

"Easy. Look down that list of names," Gil says and motions at the ledger. "One read-through and you'll start seeing a pattern. But since you probably don't have the time for that, I'll just cut to the chase; they've been buying a lot of map and compass related things. Meaning they're searching for the thing the quest's sent them after."

"Hm," Jumble hums as she scans the page. "It goes back weeks. How long have they known they'd be searching for something?"

"Same amount of time they've been buying maps. So about five or six weeks."

Hm. That's a lot of time to not already know what they're looking for. I scan the ledger a few times for any anomalies, but nothing jumps out at me as obvious. If they've been searching, and they haven't found it yet, but Gil's still worried about them finishing the quest soon…

I lock eyes with him. "You think they're dangerously close."

He snaps his fingers. "Exactamundo. If you check the ledger you'll see they stopped buying exploration stuff about two days ago–and shifted to things like pickaxes, explosives, and a load of potions. They've found the place they're looking for, but they can't quite get in at the treasures inside."

"Then we have a little advantage. Not much of one, but a little one nonetheless." Jumble sets the ledger down on a side table, then nods at Gil. "Once Clutter follows Dani to wherever he's going we'll move in and deal with him. If his destination isn't where the horizonguard is, then where do you think we should go from there?"

Gil raises an eyebrow. "Why're you asking me? I've been stuck in and around this district the entire time I've been here; you two're the ones with freedom. So I'll throw the question back at you–is there anywhere in this damn city that might be useful to us?"

I can think of two places. But I have no idea where either one of them is. I close my eyes to think of any of the hints we might've missed–ones that'd lead us to either the magical coloured liquid room or the place both Click and the heretic from a few minutes ago told me to find. Nothing comes to mind. That doesn't mean we can't find them… just that we don't have the time to fumble blindly while the horizonguard gets closer and closer to the prize.

"Can't think of anything right now. Unless you've got something that could point us to a specific place in the city?"

Gil slowly scratches his chin in thought. "I might have something that could help you. Let me check the back."

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