Clutter whips around at the mention of Illumisia’s name. His eyes take a moment to focus, but once they do, the intensity is palpable.

  “Why is it here?” He demands.

  Pearl slowly shakes her head. “I have absolutely no clue. I didn’t even see the one Illumisia was trapped in, but from her description and the panel right over there, I’m confident this is the exact same thing.”

  “So why is it here?!” Clutter repeats, though this time, confusion tints his words. “This place apparently hasn’t existed for hundreds of years. How could a prototype for something that trapped Illumisia be here?”

  …Oh. That’s what he was getting at. I thought Illumisia already told him everything about herself; obviously that isn’t true. But is it my place to spill her secrets? He already knows about Pearl… so…

  “Illumisia isn’t named after anyone.”

  Clutter and I both stare at Pearl, whose voice cut clean through the tension like a hot knife. The confusion in Clutter’s expression shifts to bewilderment, then denial, and finally absolute disbelief. It’s honestly impressive how quickly he cycles through them.

  “She… no… I…” He swallows hard. “She said she was old. Like, really old. I thought she meant… maybe three hundred years old. Is she… really…”

  Pearl nods. “The megalodane.”

  A squeak reminiscent of a dying chew toy squeezes out of Clutter’s throat. I can’t tell if he’s utterly terrified, excited out of his mind, or thinking back on every single one of his encounters with Illumisia. Personally, I’d be a good mixture of the three.

  “The first ancestor.” Clutter whispers. “I thought that was just a story. Is it true?”

  “Well…” I trail off as he looks up at me, his eyes glittering with childlike wonder. “I… we… yeah. She’s the first of her kind, that’s for sure.”

  Pearl shoots me a glance as Clutter squeals. It isn’t a look of disappointment or approval; just one of someone who wouldn’t have done anything different if she were in my shoes. He just learned about Illumisia’s real identity. There’s no sense absolutely destroying him by telling him that the system made the paindne, not descending from Illumisia.

  “Oh, wow. Oh wow oh wow oh wow. Why’d she keep it a secret? No, no, don’t tell me.” He holds out a hand to stop us. “I bet she has some kind of secret mission against whoever lived here before it disappeared. Ooh, maybe she’s the one that destroyed this place in the first place! The megalodane is strong enough to do that! …At least in the comics she is.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Comics?”

  Clutter nods vigorously. “Comics, books, plays; she’s in a lot of them. It explains why Illumisia–the Illumisia, I can’t believe it–hated them so much. I wonder how much they got wrong. Probably a lot. Oh wow, I just thought she was a super powerful painted dane, like a descendant of the real thing, but… wow. Just wow.”

  He rubs his hands together, all the intensity from a moment ago completely forgotten. I don’t envy the me in the future that has to tell him the truth about paindne, but that’s a problem for her. Right now, we’ve got to deal with this–the fact that the plastic construct said there was a heretic down here, yet all we’ve found is a containment device. Was it actually made here, or did the quest repurpose it from when it made Illumisia? Clutter and Pearl seem to think it’s the former, and if it’s true…

  What the hell was this place before it was destroyed?

  I set my jaw and finally put my hand up against the prison. It feels just as fragile as my awareness said it was. Illumisia said she was only trapped because of her oath with Pearl, so… if this is a prototype of that, then is it made of shellraiser glass?

  “Pearl, is this shellraiser glass?”

  She snorts in disdain. “We wouldn’t make something so fragile. This is a… proof of concept. They must’ve made something like the bond Illumisia and I have, then used similar conditions to make the glass here.”

  “Mm. If that’s true, then where’s the thing inside?” I gently tap the prison with my knuckles, and the glass resonates with a shrill note. “I don’t see an entrance anywhere, so whatever they wanted to imprison should already be in here.”

  “I don’t know.” She says quietly.

  I give it a second for her to elaborate, but that’s it. No theorizing, no explanation–just ‘I don’t know’. All this grey down here… the darkness that skitters away like a swarm of bugs… it feels so wrong. Almost like the city of walls above us isn’t even part of the same quest. But the construct said the heretic was down here. The same heretic whose heart we found during the main quest, and which actually works up there. Even if the two places feel like they’re universes apart, they’re both part of this quest.

  We just have to figure out how they connect. And we have to do it before the horizonguard gathers too many people.

  “There has to be more, then. Or something around here that makes this make sense.” I nod at Clutter, then point into the distance. “How’d you know to walk in this direction?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Clutter blinks. “I what?”

  “You beelined for this place when I tried to go a different direction.”

  “Oh. That. I just kind of went where my instinct told me to go?” He shrugs helplessly. “Something told me there was something here, but I can’t give you any real reason.”

  “That’s fine with me. Do it again.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure? I could lead us to absolutely nowhere.”

  “Yeah, but you led us here.” I pat the glass for emphasis. “Anything else we do would be walking in a random direction hoping for something to show up anyway, so we might as well follow you while we do it.”

  Clutter slowly nods as he turns to Pearl for confirmation. She returns his nod absentmindedly, her focus somewhere else.

  “Okay. Here we go.” Clutter flexes his fingers and looks around, then stiffens. His pupils shrink to tiny pinpoints as he stares off into the distance. “There’s something else there. At least… I think there is. Maybe I’m wrong. Oh, I hope I’m not wrong.”

  He starts walking as he mumbles to himself, picking up speed with each footstep until he’s sprinting full-tilt towards the edge of my awareness. I stumble with my first step out of utter surprise, then sprint right after him. His chest heaves with exertion, tongue lolling limply out of the side of his mouth as his ‘instincts’ drive him towards something neither Pearl nor I can sense.

  Pearl gently taps my cheek. “It’s all a lie, isn’t it?”

  I tilt my head. “Elaborate.”

  “Um… okay, maybe ‘lie’ isn’t the right word, but it’s not what Clutter thinks it is.” She points at his back, where the start of a shadow dances over his clothes. “Whatever Illumisia did to him is giving him these sensations. But they shouldn’t be stronger than either of our awarenesses… so…”

  “Whatever’s here is specifically calling out to him. To a paindne.”

  She nods. “If it was calling to painted danes, you’d be the one feeling it, not him. Heck, maybe Illumisia’s shadow thing isn’t doing anything at all, and it’s just the fact that he’s a paindne. It still doesn’t explain anything though.”

  “No, it does not.” I agree with a sigh. “If the paindne lived here before, then why the hell would they have something like this under their city?”

  Neither of us have an answer. As Clutter’s breathing grows louder with exertion, the grey shifts ever so slightly. A single line appears out of nowhere, tracing through the grey like a stray hair on a computer monitor. It trails off into the distance, very slightly elevated from the floor itself, but doesn’t feel any different from the rest of the grey. Just a slight anomaly.

  Then another joins. And another. Soon enough, dozens of raised lines in the ground trace through the grey like a labyrinth of tree roots. The ground, once purely flat, is now uneven and shifty like a dry forest floor. Clutter runs on undeterred, as if enticed by some prize that’s invisible to everyone but him. I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth as a… scent hits me from somewhere close.

  It doesn’t smell like anything. But my nose wrinkles and my eyes water all the same.

  “Clutter!” I call out, then stifle a cough. “How much further is it?”

  He turns, eyes wide, and spreads his arms. “Can’t you feel it?! We’re already here!”

  Slowly but surely, he takes down the pace until he’s barely sauntering towards the darkness. I raise my shirt over my mouth as I walk beside him and try to see… well… anything through the darkness. All I can make out is the ground underneath our feet that’s like someone lacquered a yarn factory’s floor after a failure with the balling machine. Clutter, though, whips his head around and makes small noises from his throat as if he’s walking through some kind of museum.

  “Wow. Amazing. How’d they manage to do that?” He coos in wonder as he trails a pointed finger through empty air. “Ooh, there’s a button here! I’m going to push it.”

  I blink, then snap to him. “Wait, don’t just–”

  ERNGH!

  …Excuse me, what? The sound of… something… echoes through the darkness like a foghorn. Clutter flinches away and covers his ears, even though it was only about as loud as a car horn. I put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, and before my very eyes, the rest of the darkness skitters away. Revealing a bright blue button on a foot-wide pillar jutting out of the ground right next to Clutter.

  Except that part wasn’t covered by the darkness. And the massive structure that’s less than five feet away from the button wasn’t either. I stare, dumbfounded, as what looks like two lighthouses separated by a few hundred feet of glistening grey wall appears out of nowhere. My awareness flickers, and I turn around… to see… the glass prison. Fifty feet from where we stand. With my handprint marking it as definitively the same one as we just ran away from… five minutes ago. At full-tilt.

  “How…” I trail off as I remember the sensation of falling. The one that, even now, unsettles my stomach. “This place is messing with us.”

  Pearl laughs humorlessly. “That might be an understatement. I can see all the walls now, and this place can’t be any bigger than a few miles across. But it felt so huge. What if we… went underground at a different spot? Is this weird place only directly underneath our tower?”

  “I wish I had an answer for you.” I mutter as Clutter walks up to the glistening wall and fearlessly puts his hand on it. “Have a little sense of worry, why don’t you?”

  “This place won’t hurt me.” Clutter says confidently as a hexagonal door slashes itself into the wall. “It feels like it was… made for me. Not, um, me specifically, but… it’s hard to explain. Come on. I know there’s something important in here.”

  I glance back at the glass prison, still completely confused as to why it’s here in the first place. With a shake of my head I walk through the doorway, then wait a second for Clutter to come through as well. He confidently walks right past me and beelines for the direct center of the thing, which has six lighthouse-like towers each at a point to create one big hexagon enclosed by walls.

  Pearl recoils with a gasp. Clutter turns with concern written on his face, and I bring my hand up in case Pearl collapses. She shakes her head and pushes my thumb away, then gestures vigorously at the center of the hexagon.

  “It’s here. So much magic.” She says with unrestrained awe. “But it’s out of phase, and even still, there’s so much magic.”

  I mentally reach for my relocation coins. “Do we run?”

  “No. No, no, no.” A grin spreads across her face as she leans into my neck. “We need to find the right place to stand. The quest–it made a mistake letting us see this. I’m going to make sure of that.”