All at once, mist fills the room. I summon three projectiles to protect us, but a few well-placed whispers from Jumble create small, crackling shields around each of us. The liquid snaps at me like a thousand striking cobras at once. Nothing survives contact with Jumble's staticky protection.

"Thanks," I say with a nod. "Can you bring us up there quickly, or are we going to have to run?"

Jumble smacks her lips as she surveys the long tombstone staircase. "It's… probably not going to happen. I can protect us fairly easily, but if I have to keep us from falling too, then we won't get up there fast enough."

Because the system must be helping the horizonguard finish the quest while we stand here gawking. I send away my purifications, and in their stead, summon two relocations. One of them is for me, and after a moment to think, I second-guess including Clutter in this last part. I don't want the horizonguard brutalizing him for no reason.

He holds out a hand for his coin. I hesitate just long enough that he notices something's up.

"Do you think it's too dangerous for me?" he asks seriously.

I grimace and try to say something to the contrary. His grim expression kills that train of thought before it leaves the station. He isn't asking this to be petty. Or out of a sense of bruised pride. He's being deadly serious, and from the look in his eyes, he won't hold anything I say against him. Because he knows.

He knows he isn't strong enough not to be a hindrance. Not against an enemy that can easily see through his best advantage.

"The horizonguard can use mist to know where you are at all times."

Now it's Clutter's turn to grimace. "I know. If I want to be useful–in all situations, I mean–then I need some way to cancel that out. For now, though… I'd just be a liability."

I nod solemnly and gently place a coin in his hand. He looks down at it sourly, but accepts the relocation spell inside anyways. Then he hands it back, takes a few symbolic steps towards the door, and lets out a breath that it sounds like he's been holding for months. I stick the coin in my pocket and signal for him to head out. Whatever he does from now until I can relocate his in when the horizonguard's dealt with is his own choice.

"Ready?" Jumble asks with an outstretched hand.

I place my coin in her palm. She grabs my hand for a moment, our eyes meeting for a few long seconds as we ready ourselves for whatever the system and the horizonguard have in store for us. Whatever's been keeping them from finishing the quest won't last forever. I gently pull away and take a calming breath.

"Let's do this."

Jumble wraps her fingers all the way around my coin and starts to vibrate. A cascade of whispers and static fall around her with the force of a waterfall, overtaking the person that I know as Jumble in a few short heartbeats. As it clears, something like a static-coated embodiment of violence stands in her place. She turns to me, eyes crackling with whispering static ink that promise swift and violent ends. By the expectation in her gaze, she thinks I'm going to be scared.

All I can do is smirk. "Go get 'em, tiger."

She frowns, but there's relief mixed in with the confusion. Mist condenses around her in a thick shell, almost enough to completely obscure her from view, and starts to mercilessly rip at her statically defences with high pressure jets of scalding water. Jumble shrugs them off effortlessly and makes for the stairs, shooting me one last glance as she goes.

I wave with a toothy smile. She returns it, her mouth a gaping cavern of shards and edges made for ripping flesh from bone–and truth from lies. Don't know how that last part fits in, but it must have something to do with the wordless whispers. Maybe they're implanting subliminal messages in my brain.

As I'm wondering how things work, Jumble pushes off. Her feet scratch the stairs in a perfect way to avoid damaging a single etched name, yet make an absolute mess of everything else that is unfortunately enough to stand in her path. The mist itself can't react quickly enough to her movements, striking out with shrieking bolts of water that slice clean through stone a hundred feet away from their initial spurt.

Death slices through the air behind her as Jumble ascends, each and every spray getting closer as she approaches the horizonguard. At the halfway point one burst almost grazes her tail. By the three-quarter mark, she's barely one step ahead of the hydraulic assault.

The first spray hits her when she crests into the hole. A wide splash zone of high-pressure water splatters into the sky, screaming away for hundreds of feet without losing an ounce of lethality. Jumble stumbles ever so slightly from the raw force of the impact, but her cloak of violent inky whispering static absorbs most–if not all–of the actual damage.

At least… I hope it does. She raises an arm, slams her palm against something that shimmers over the hole itself, and speaks a string of words that glaze my eyes over and make my arms go limp. The barrier collapses like a sheet falling from a clothesline, crumpling in a heap at Jumble's feet in a way that magical barriers very much shouldn't.

She winces as a quartet of jets slam into her from one side, intent on throwing her off the stairs. None of them accomplish their tasks. She steps into the hole, glances back my way, then disappears into the yawning abyss in the sky. I curl and uncurl my fingers, careful not to dig my claws into my palms for no reason. The moment she makes contact in any way, I'll be there for her. Even though she seems so much stronger than I am.

Pearl exhales worriedly. "Shelby, are we a hindrance for this?"

"Yeah," I say quietly. "Probably. You felt Jumble just then, too, obviously. Do you think someone with that much power needs to rely on anyone?"

There's a long, thoughtful pause between my question and Pearl's answer. I can feel her thinking–understanding–as the moments tick by.

"Honestly?" she nods. "Yes. I definitely think someone with that much power needs to rely on people. Otherwise, what happened to us–to me and Illumisia–will happen again. Heck, it might've already happened to Jumble, depending on what the disaster really was."

I hum in partial agreement, but until I get that signal, I can't fully agree. Because Jumble reminded me so much of Illumisia when she used whatever spell that was; power so far beyond what I can understand that it wraps back around to being simple just because my brain can't process the complexity. Like looking at a star in the sky without registering just how far away it is and how hot it must burn to be that bright.

Jumble's magic gently nudges my face. I blink in surprise and look to Pearl for confirmation. She steels herself and nods. "Not a lot of time left, Shelby. Maybe fifteen minutes if we give it literally everything we have. Make it count."

I grind my teeth and look up at the staircase. Not a single watery attack has crashed against my barrier since Jumble started climbing. The second I relocate, that changes. If I don't want to die instantly I have to be ready for everything and anything. Shields, projectiles, purifications, relocations, and infusions dance at the ready in my awareness. I breathe in through my nose, focus on the coin in Jumble's hand, and flare my relocation.

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Water. Dark, cold, endless water that stretches in every direction and seeps in against Jumble's protection with enough pressure to condense a ship into a tin can. I breathe in through my nose thanks to the thin layer of air between my skin and Jumble's magic, then summon a purification to push some of the cold away before it can lull me to an endless sleep.

Sharp, stinging pain lances in to scrape away my magic. I grimace against it and try to orient myself in the darkness, my awareness completely stifled by the horizonguard's magic. All I can hear are the muffled, reverberating sounds of a struggle. Whatever's in here–whatever's supposed to end the quest–is completely obscured by the horizonguard's magic.

Shapes float through the darkness. Human-sized, but with long tails that help them through the water. Not… quite paindne, though; something's off with them. Their upper bodies are a straight shot from the torso all the way to the head–sort of like how it'd look if the upper half of a shark was fixed onto a human lower half. I try to orient myself in the water to defend against the shapes, but I can't make sense of which way is up or down.

"Pearl?" I whisper into the thin layer of air. "Where's Jumble?"

Flashes of staticky magic answer my question before she can. Inky colours bleed into the water with every little flash, growing longer and farther reaching by the second. Both of the strange shapes pause and shy away from Jumble's magic before turning and refocusing on me.

I grunt as a bitter chill lances through the water. It blossoms against Jumble's protection in a fractal spray of replicating shapes, each of which keens with the dangerous sound of a fresh edge. One shape rockets at me with another burst of cold, grabs onto the lattice with one hand, and rips it away in a single huge chunk.

The magic stutters and warps, coating their hand in a dainty glove of frilly lace-like magic. All the cold leaves it in an instant as the dark shape rears back with their new accessory, then snaps forward with a burst of bubbles. A fist batters Jumble's magic over and over from one single punch, repeating its impact over and over at perfect sixteenth-of-a-second intervals. I shove a projectile at the attacker's side, break it into pieces, and launch them into the too-close body.

Liquid and nothing else bursts from the dark shape as my projectiles ravage it. I push away from whatever it is and get my bearings as best as I can, then turn and launch the rest of my shattered projectiles at the other shape. It kicks off hard in another spray of freezing bubbles, but it isn't nimble enough to outrun my spell. Magic tears the thing into pieces just as easily as the other one. Just like the other one, though, it doesn't die like any living thing I've ever seen.

It just floats there. Billowing outwards like a simple bedsheet with holes punctured in it as thousands of tiny bubbles rush out from the entry and exit wounds. I blink as the things seem to frost over just a little, filling with magic that feels exactly like the two shapes themselves. Air magic? Or is this another new arm of the horizonguard's liquid manipulation?

I shake my head and crack a purification coin; no time to theorize. Jumble's in here somewhere fighting the horizonguard. Need to find her and help.

With a few kicks I try to move through the vast, dark sea of water. A chill seeps in with every little motion to sap away at my dwindling supply of energy. It's beyond obvious that they're just trying to slow me down; if the horizonguard wanted to kill me right now, he'd just crush me with the water pressure. Which means he either can't spare the split focus right now… or he doesn't think anything I do matters anymore.

That's as chilling a thought as the water that's holding me prison. My purification doesn't seem to be doing anything at all, either, so this darkness isn't purely magic. They probably put something in the water itself to obstruct my vision and awareness, yet somehow, I can see Jumble's magic through it. All the lines of dissipating colour that lead directly back to exactly one place. That's where she is. Just have to get there.

I pause for a moment to think as I summon a relocation coin. Then I summon a projectile and put it on my thumbnail, on top of which I place the relocation. With my enhanced awareness, I should be able to control the projectile enough that it won't damage the relocation. Pearl murmurs agreement as I aim the coin at the center of all Jumble's colourful magic, push the right commands for a fast yet harmless projectile into the coin, and take aim.

Awareness crackles to life, connecting me to the coin. It erupts with motion, slicing away the chilling waters with unbelievable ease to ferry my relocation through the darkness. I close my eyes to focus on the coin, feeling the water around it for any hint of Jumble… and then it's gone. All the water, replaced with very see-through air. Air that I'm seeing through my coin and nothing else.

Jumble startles and looks over at it, then frowns and opens her hand. In it, a small disk of water ripples against her skin. She turns to the horizonguard–who's dripping wet and utterly unharmed–and drops the water with a snarl. It hits the ground with a splash, a sizzle, and ultimately disappears.

But the magic that did it doesn't feel like the horizonguard's. It feels like the shapes in the water. I summon two shields for good measure between Jumble's protection and my skin, then flare the relocation as it screams through the air.

The horizonguard appears right in front of me. Or, more accurately, I appear in front of him. He tilts his head ever so slightly in greeting. I return the motion with an infusion set to absorb right at his chest. He coughs exactly once, then waves a hand as mist sweeps into me and bulldozes me right back to Jumble side.

"Hey," I mutter. "Any luck?"

She shakes her head. "I'm still not really sure if this is the real one or just a water clone. Whatever he is, though, he's hiding everything in here from being seen."

I take a quick glance around with my awareness to confirm. Sure enough, black waters seal us off in every direction. All I can make out is the quarter-inch of still water at my feet and the old stone beneath it.

"So what do we do? If we don't get him out of here, he wins. And if he wins–"

"The system wins," the horizonguard finally speaks. "But isn't that what everyone wants? The system wants what's best for all of us. So why shouldn't we give it exactly what it wants? Especially if, on the way there, we get treasures untold for helping it along."

Jumble sneers. "Brainwashed bastard."

"Tsk, tsk," The horizonguard waggles a finger mockingly. "Just because we have different opinions, it doesn't mean I'm wrong. Have you stopped to consider you may be in the wrong? You should, because you are. And now that you're here, I finally have permission to bring the ending."

I knit my eyebrows together in confusion. "You need permission?"

The horizonguard shrugs. "Permission, prerequisites; the quest would not continue without at least five people here. The system was outraged by that fact, but here you are! Thank you very much, and goodbye."

A deep watery ringing pulses out from far in the distance. It washes over me in one continuous wave, filling my every pore with despair and grim understanding. Something just started. Meaning we're too late. I ball my hands into fists and bite my lip to try and stifle the scarlet rage that's burning in my gut. Everyone… everything… all too late.

My Class Card chimes. So does Jumble's. Off in the distance, three more chimes ring out. Jovial hoots of glorious victory filter through the water as it crashes down, revealing the tombs to us for the first time. A latticework of complex machines. Thousands of little antennas and transmitters sticking out from everywhere. Paindne corpses turned to stone used as architecture and as part of the machine at the same time.

It's all one giant signal amplifier. That's broadcasting a signal that'll bring this place crashing into reality, bringing the deaths of so many with it. I squeeze my eyes shut and silently apologize too everyone I couldn't save. To Jumble, who now has to deal with this place. To the quest itself, who put its trust in us… and…

Magic scythes through Jumble's protection and crashes against my shield. Both Jumble and I back up in surprise as a torrent of water gushes out of the darkness. Screams and rage blossoms from the horizonguard and the other two, but there's another mind mixed in with them. One that's unbelievably angry–and unbelievably betrayed.

I let myself breathe in hope as Jumble touches my shoulder to re-up the protection. My Class Card appears in my hand with a thought. As I read the message… hope and fear wash over me as one.

Quest complete.

Or so you think I'd say.

However, due to system interference, one party received a huge advantage.

So here it is; the last little bit of help I can give.

If this timer reaches zero or Shelby Thestalos dies, the quest is complete.

Make the best of this, Shelby.

I'm counting on you.

…

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