A… signpost? Triggered by one random tile in the middle of the hallway? If that’s how people here normally got around, then that’s one inefficient system. Or I guess they all could’ve had awareness-like spells or skills. Or… okay, maybe there’s more options than I thought. I glance back at it for a second to see if it does anything else–like send a notification to my Class Card, but nothing happens.

  It’s just a sign.

  “Another district. Hm.” Pearl frowns and crosses her arms. “Does that mean there’s another tower here?”

  I… hadn’t even thought about that. “I guess there’s a good chance. But did we really run far enough to get into a new district?”

  “You saw the sign, too, not just me.” She shrugs. “Technically we don’t know if we’re… like… halfway through our district and still have a few hours to run since there aren’t any distances on it. Or we could’ve just walked into a brand new district–one that could have other people in it.”

  Clutter shudders. “We aren’t ready to fight more people. Heck, we still don’t know how to deal with all the gore!”

  “Probably something to do with phasing.” I flip a coin into my hand and raise an eyebrow at Pearl. “Unless you’ve seen something new?”

  She shakes her head. That’s what I figured. But without an opening to get over the mass of gore, the answer can’t just be the exact same as with the stain. The things disappeared from the tower at one point, so there has to be a way to get rid of them–and we were probably supposed to use that exact same way to get rid of this stuff. Except I have no idea what happened to them.

  I turn to Clutter and shrug. “I don’t have any ideas. Let’s try feeding the puddle a few times and see if anything changes.”

  His eyes widen and he turns to stare at the gore. Reluctantly, he nods and flexes his fingers. We run for a minute before the next pair of twisted paindne appear. Neither of them stand much of a chance, especially now that Clutter seems like he’s getting the hang of dealing with them. Honestly, aside from the heart-stopping noise that comes before they actually appear, these things aren’t much of a threat at all.

  Which definitely makes me think we’re missing something. Throwing a shit ton of twisted paindne at us would only work if people were–for some reason–against killing these obvious mockeries of life. You’d have to be one hell of a pacifist or extremely weak for that to happen. Then there’s the gore puddle; obviously sweeping up everything we run past so we can’t just take the pacifist route of avoiding them.

  Everything’s pointing towards a solution that involves us running away. Maybe now’s the time to switch floors.

  I clap my hands to get Clutter’s attention. “We’re going down a floor after the next pair. Assume the puddle’s going to follow us through somehow.”

  He gives me a thumbs-up of understanding. Pearl frowns for some reason–hopefully because she’s thinking of a plan–but she doesn’t say anything to stop me. With what little confidence that inspires I flick a coin into my palm and wait for the next two to come.

  A minute passes. Then two. Another three skim by eventlessly, and I turn to make sure my awareness isn’t gaslighting me into thinking the stain is still after us. It hasn’t grown all that much–maybe three feet in diameter–and it’s taller than it was before. The edges are perfectly sheer, standing like a rounded stone column that holds up some ancient building. Not a single paindne body part is visible any more. Just a singular mass the colour of sickly blood with shards that could be tooth or bone lazily churning inside.

  “The hell is the point of that?” I wonder aloud. “When did it stop getting wider?”

  “About eight minutes ago. Then it just got taller and taller.” Pearl slowly raises her hand for emphasis. “Can you tell how wide it is now?”

  I tilt my head in confusion. “Am I supposed to see something?”

  She nods. I press my lips into a straight line and feel at my awareness for whatever answer she’s looking for. We’ve dealt with a few dozen paindne so far, and if you crushed all of them up and put them in a cylinder, then I guess you’d have exactly what we’ve got. My awareness says it’s pretty damn wide–six feet ish in radius–which doesn’t really match with anything we’ve seen so far.

  “Twelve foot diameter, and about eight feet tall.” I relay the numbers my awareness approximates with confidence. “What’s important about those numbers?”

  I turn to Clutter–maybe they mean something important to him. But he just has the same, nearly blank look of uncertainty that I do.

  “Really? You can’t feel it?” She narrows her eyes. “...Oh, it must be too thick for you. My bad. Try opening up a door on the floor and you’ll see.”

  Well, since I was already going to do that…

  I flex my fingers and spring forward with all my might, landing hands first on the floor. An echoing shock lances up through my arms reminding me that I did not land right, but my body will heal it soon enough. The door spreads with my hand as the centerpiece, and I fall through it as the thing opens under my body. This time I land with my knees bent and break into a sprint the moment I feel Clutter aiming for the hole.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  He falls through a second later, and we keep running. The mass of gore reaches the door a few heartbeats later, but… the door didn’t even start to close. Normally it would instantly shut after it detected people were done going through. Does that mean…

  “Shit.” I hiss as the thing glorps through the hole. “The doors stay open for the damn thing. It must have life signs the city can interpret.”

  “That would explain all the blood and flesh.” Clutter says with a little nod. “That must be how the city senses someone’s going to open a door. So now what? We just confirmed we can’t run from it.”

  …Just like we confirmed we couldn't run from the stain forever. Damn it, there’s too many parallels between the two things. And if this thing’s going to be a cylinder with a static shape forever, then there’s a way for us to get behind it. One that’s about as easy as slipping through the space the stain left for us. Can I really assume the exact same thing’s going to work this time, though? What if the twisted paindne are making use of the fact that we already cleared the stain, and are luring us into a trap?

  “Really wish there were more rules here. And less stains.” I mutter to myself. The thing slides through the door with a grinding pop, then slams against the ground. “Huh. Where’s the–”

  Blood rains down on the smaller cylinder like a localized rainstorm of hate. I can’t help but stare at the deluge of blood that just… keeps going. Soaking the ground around it in a sea of off-red that spills further and further out with every passing second. Except it isn’t… right. All the blood acts like a normal liquid would. And the cylinder at the center doesn’t seem like it’s moving at all. I run until the thing’s at the very edge of my awareness. It just won’t move.

  I put a hand out to stop Clutter. He freezes the second my fingers touch his shirt, spins around on his feel, and fixates on the inert cylinder with defences raised. His expression quickly shifts from steely focus to confusion. Slowly but surely, he raises a hand and points at the thing.

  “What happened to it?”

  I slowly shake my head. “I don’t know. Did going down a floor destabilize the magic in it?”

  No, that can’t be it–the thing feels no different than a second ago. And all the blood raining down on it still seems like it’s under the control of whatever is controlling it–but it’s slightly off. I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong about it, but there’s definitely something off. This could be our chance.

  “Pearl.” I state as I take a step forward.

  She nods. “The magic is still there, but it’s spread out. I think the blood draining down is messing with it somehow. Can you see what I see now?”

  I motion at the cylinder. “Is it that thing or the rain of blood?”

  “Technically both. All the blood and bone shards are in that liquid, but all the solid stuff turned into that cylinder. Which is exactly the size of a door.” She motions at the hole in the ceiling, which still hasn’t started to close. “The paindne stopped appearing, the solid pillar in the center of the blood is exactly the same size as the door… if that’s a coincidence, then this is a horribly designed quest.”

  “It still could be!” Clutter calls out from where he stands–the exact same spot as before. “Be really, really careful!”

  I shoot him a crooked smile. “Won’t be anything but.”

  For a few steps, my feet touch nothing but familiar stone-like material. Then comes the blood. Squelching, pulling, sticky blood that clings to the soles of my shoes with a desperation that only life should be able to manage. A shudder works its way down my back, stopping at each individual vertebrae like notes on an extremely long xylophone. I lift a foot, strands of blood refusing to let me leave the puddle, but I can feel the weakness in it.

  A… disunity within the blood. The stuff up above desperately raining down to join the rest. One massive puddle of the stuff trying to maintain its unity even though it can’t. And the mass of compressed flesh in the center that’s doing absolutely nothing at all. I can barely even feel any magic inside of it. Just a distant glimmer of something at the perfect center of it.

  My mind screams a warning in harmony with a gleeful, curious shriek. Each footstep towards the center takes more effort than the last. I raise my arms to block the bloody drizzle, but the stuff sticks to me like molten tar. It does nothing else. Just sticks and refuses to let go. I shake my head with a frown and close the last few feet to the cylinder itself.

  “You might need to teleport out.” Pearl whispers worriedly. “There’s not much blood left above, and I bet it’s going to go back to… moving when all the blood’s drained.”

  I nod. “Noted. The hell am I supposed to do here?”

  Pearl shrugs. “Rip it open to get at the prize?”

  A coin buzzes in my hand, filled to the brim with a deadly projectile. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, focusing intently on the sensation at the center of the cylinder, and give the projectile as complex of an order as I can manage. Then I reach out, press my palm to the cylinder, and ignite the spell.

  It tears through the flesh like a ravenous worm, scouring away swaths of it in the blink of an eye. Blood creeps up my feet as it works, trying helplessly to stop me from ripping away at its core. As the cylinder is shaved away, the connection to the blood puddle dies with it. And once my spell devours enough of the cylinder, the thing at the center finally shows itself.

  A misshapen lump of grey material like a tumor-riddled heart. It slowly beats, one quarter at a time at completely random intervals, pumping out a perfectly clear fluid that drains into the blood. I stare at the thing in confused disbelief; it definitely wasn’t in any of the twisted paindne. The quest must’ve teleported it in at some point. With the reluctance anyone would have if they were about to grab a heart with their bare hands, I reach for the mass of misshapen flesh.

  Quest Item Found: Heart of a Heretic.

  Deep in the city, someone died.

  You have found the first key.

  The first lock eludes you.