Flesh and blood pool around my feet as the magic bleeds out of them. The heart beats against my palm like a living thing, but it doesn’t… feel like flesh. It’s chilly, smoothed to a slick finish, and as hard as steel. I wrap my fingers around it and pull. It comes free in a burst of clear liquid, and what magic was left in the blood and flesh dies out instantly.

  The blood creeping up my shoes splashes down. All the stuff coating my clothes drips away. And the compressed pillar of flesh sloughs away in chunks. I take a step back, heart held in one hand, and watch as the thing just… dies. Shallow breaths force mana into my lungs from the concentrated air, but it does nothing to stave off the discomfort that the scene brings.

  I turn to Pearl, eyes wide. “Did you know this was going to happen?”

  She slowly shakes her head. “I thought something was going to happen but not… whatever that was. Do you think this was too easy? Because it feels too easy to me.”

  “That might be an understatement.” I mutter as the door closes above me. “So… all we had to do was run until it stopped spawning paindne, then make a door in the ground. That’s something literally anyone would’ve done eventually.”

  I grimace and turn away from the gore as blood soaks into my shoes. Neither of us have to say the obvious; the eventuality is the point. As long as someone can survive a few dozen twisted paindne, they’ll finish this. Because it’s the first damn step. Everything else with the stain and the plastic construct was just a bonus. This is the real way forward.

  Clutter gestures at the heart as I approach. “Um.”

  “It’s exactly what you think it is.” I say humorlessly and put the heart in his hands. “And a little more, actually. Did you get the notification?”

  He stares ahead at a random point in the distance. “Yes. Is this… the actual quest? What does ‘heart of a heretic’ mean?”

  “Well, a heart is a vital organ, and a heretic is someone that… hm. How do I explain it without using Earth terms…” I scratch my chin as we walk off. “When you do something that’s against the rules of your organization, you’re a heretic.”

  Pearl snorts in amusement. “That’s an understatement.”

  Clutter frowns and pulls the heart close to his chest. “I know what a heretic is. But why’s there a heart here? And what were they a heretic against? Was the plastic construct we saw part of the thing this person was a heretic against, or were they hidden because they were on the same side as they were?”

  I blink in surprise at the intensity of Clutter’s words. It feels like they’re coming from a fairly personal place, but his face just shows unbridled curiosity. Maybe he’s just really getting into the quest. I shake my head and let the thought drop; we have something else far more important to do now.

  “We know what we’re looking for now.” I pull out the wreath-sphere with one hand and motion off into the distance. “There’s a heart-shaped lock somewhere out there. Unless the quest wants us to wander endlessly looking for one random place, I bet there’s a bunch of ways to get there. And this heart has to give us some info on how to find it.”

  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  We walk for another few hours, scouring the tunnels for a whiff of anything that might be suspicious. This time we change tunnels every few minutes to let Pearl get a better look through her awareness, but even then, absolutely nothing shows up. If I was the one designing this quest, I’d make it so the random wandering part ended with finding the heart–and then I’d have people try to find out the secret the ‘key’ holds. And I’d make it so it’d be solvable with only the tools I’d given everyone so far, but easier if they’d finished a side-quest.

  I have no idea how I’d do it, but I guess that’s what we have to find out next. And trying to do it in the middle of a random hallway where we could be jumped at any time is not the right place to start. I toss Clutter a relocation coin and drop one of my own on the floor, then shoot him finger guns as Pearl crawls back into her shell. He nods, drops his own, and I trigger the pair I left back in the tower.

  Relatively nothing gives way to the slightly different nothing of the tower. I wipe nothing off the sphere-wreathe and stare down at it for a second, then click my tongue and move for the stairs. Clutter stares out the window for a few seconds before hurrying to follow me.

  “So why’d you take that out?” He nods at the sphere-wreath. “I didn’t see it do anything while we were walking.”

  I shrug. “Honestly, it was blind hope. The thing still hadn’t done anything yet, and I figured maybe it’d show us where the lock is. Or at least which… hexagon it’s in.”

  Clutter nods. “That makes sense. Did it do anything?”

  “Did it? Ha.” I smirk and raise the thing in the air. “If it did, we wouldn’t be in the tower right now. We’d be running towards wherever it wants us to go. Hopefully with some Worth to pad my dwindling supply.”

  We round the corner as Pearl wiggles out of her shell and situates her in her normal spot. She looks down at the sphere-wreath for a second with a raised eyebrow, though she looks away just as quickly and focuses on the door to the door-room right in front of us.

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  “If there’s a lock anywhere close to us, it’s going to be in this place.” I open the door with one hand and stride through. None of the doors have changed since we were last in here, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything here. “Try touching the heart to all the doors. See if they react at all.”

  Clutter raises the heart in confirmation and hurries to the doors. He slowly raises it to the closest one, almost reverently inching it closer and closer until the grey flesh-like-substance touches the door. A few seconds pass with contact. Nothing happens at all. With a pinched expression he just as carefully moves it away from the door and looks over at me.

  “Did anything happen?” He asks, just as much to Pearl as to me.

  We shake our heads in unison. He frowns down at the heart in disappointment, then moves on to the next door. There’s absolutely no hesitation as he carefully presses it against the thing, leaves it there for a few seconds, then turns to us for confirmation. Which we provide with another shake of our heads. Without exchanging a single word, he shifts to the next door, and lightly presses the heart against it.

  Again, nothing. We silently relay the results, and he moves on to the next door in sequence. Over and over again until he’s pressed it against every door in the room. His expression shifts from disappointment to confusion over the course of it, and to be honest, I pretty much completely agree with him. We’ve got a room with locked doors. The quest gives us a heart that it specifically calls a ‘key’.

  It’s the kind of hint that annoys you when it turns out to be false. Which it is. Meaning we’ve got no info on how to find this ‘lock’. Clutter offers me the heart after he gives it one last glance, and I accept it before sending the thing to my inventory.

  “I feel robbed.” He grumbles.

  “Same here.” I agree with a sigh. “But I’m ninety percent sure we’re on the right path here; maybe there’s just a step we haven’t done yet. The heart keeps pumping out this clear liquid, so maybe we’ve got to use that.”

  Pearl hums deep in her throat. “I can barely feel any magic in the heart, and the liquid’s no different. It definitely isn’t the grey magic we’re looking for if that’s what you were getting at.”

  I shake my head. “I was thinking the stuff might have an effect if we drink it or pour it on something. Or… maybe we should bring it to the plastic construct. It’s the only thing we’ve seen that seems to know much of anything about this place.”

  “It’s worth a shot.” Pearl agrees. “Clutter, you can stay behind if you want. You must be getting pretty hungry by now.”

  “No, I mean… I’ll stay behind. But…” He frowns and gently pats his stomach. “I’m not hungry at all. Or thirsty.”

  I raise an eyebrow, which quickly shifts into a full-blown scowl. Hungry, thirsty… I haven’t even been a little of either since we got here. Tired and exerted, sure, but nothing related to sustaining myself. I raise a hand, fully expecting to see at least some dirt or grime under my nails, but there’s nothing. It looks like I just stepped out of the shower. Even my face doesn’t feel grimy. A glance at Clutter seems to confirm my observations. His fur is shiny, he doesn’t smell at all, but his clothes are caked in sweat and gore. The quest is keeping us clean and sated.

  “It must be the mana in the air.” I note with a deep inhale. “The stuff is feeding and hydrating us, or… maybe just giving our bodies the perfect amount of everything to be comfortable.”

  Clutter nods vigorously. “I haven’t had to use the bathroom since we got here.”

  I shake my head and chuckle at Clutter’s bluntness. “That’s what I was getting at, yeah. It’s probably why the kitchen was the worse choice, now that I think about it. Good thing the quest didn’t just flip a coin.”

  The moment I walk towards the door, Clutter zips back into the tower. He waves goodbye, then sprints up the stairs with a hurried ‘thump, thump, ow’ of his tail smacking the wall as he turns. I smirk at the image my awareness sends me until he’s out of range, then turn and press my hand to the door. It opens instantly, and the plastic construct turns to face me.

  “He-he-hello again. What can–”

  I wave my hand to stop it. “Just a quick question. We found a heart buried in a bunch of twisted paindne flesh, and we were wondering if you recognized it from anywhere. Or had any idea where it could fit, since the quest calls it a ‘key’.”

  It nods jerkily. “Please present the organ in qu-question for analysis.”

  “Alright. Here.” I summon the heart, step out of the door, and put it in the construct’s waiting hands. “Says it’s the heart of a heretic, whatever that means. Do you have any idea what its owner committed heresy against?”

  The construct takes the heart with mechanical detachment and stares down at it. I wait patiently for the thing to say something, but as the seconds tick by, it slowly dawns on me that I might’ve just broken it. It wasn’t exactly in the best shape when we first found it. This much new stimulation could’ve been the nail in the coffin.

  “Hey. Are you still there?” I lean in and wave my hand over the construct’s eyes. “If you don’t know anything, just give me the heart back. …Hey. …Ah, shit, we broke it.”

  I sigh and wrench the heart out of the construct’s hands. It creaks like dry wood when I pry its fingers apart, but it doesn’t resist at all; it just stays in that position like a statue. Once I finally get it out of the thing’s hands it shudders to life, snaps its eyes up to meet mine, and twitches. The plastic in it whirs and spins like spools of wire lapping over its fake skin, and its eyes glimmer with sad intelligence that wasn’t there before.

  “What you seek is deeper. Deeper. Deeper. Deeperdeeperdeeperdeeperdeeper. Deeper even than that.” It says in a crystal clear voice. “Heresy is punished. He/she/they/it/nobody has survived the punishment.”

  Its head cracks to the side. A jagged split rips through the base of its neck, and rolling waves of thin plastic wiring grasps from each side of the cut to try and pull itself back together. One arm wrenches itself free from its socket and crushes a finger against the ground, splitting it like a banana pressed against a countertop. It should look disgusting, but it just feels… melancholic.

  My class card chimes with a notification. One of the hexagons on my wreath-sphere turns perfectly clear, giving a view into the hollow center.

  “Go there. Go down. Go to the lock. Go nowhere. Go to the heresy.” The construct states in rapid-fire succession. “You will find answers. Some of them for your questions. Some of them for questions that haven’t been asked. Some of them for questions that can no longer be asked. Please ask the questions.”

  Its head splits down the middle. One eye stares at me, and the other locks onto Pearl. I instinctively take a step back, but Pearl stops me with a hand on my cheek.

  “When you see it. When you hear it. When you feel/sense/become aware of it. Do not forget it, shellraisers.”