Twinges of magic nestle into my skin as I walk forward. As if the empty space was a forest filled with needle-trees and I’m walking through it with nothing but a tank top on. I reach up and press on my unoccupied shoulder as the sensation grows, and grows, and… prickles. Something’s not just off–it’s completely wrong.

  “What are we looking at?” I ask nervously. “If I can feel the sensation through wherever it’s phased in, then it’s gotta be unbelievably dangerous.”

  Pearl giggles. “Dangerous? Maybe. It’s about as dangerous as anyone who’d pick it up could be–and I intend to be extremely dangerous with it.”

  I grimace as I lower my arm. “But what if this is another system trap? It wouldn’t just leave some giant weapon here for anyone to take without some diabolic intent. Especially not so close to the damn starting point for the quest.”

  “But didn’t we need plastic to get here?” Clutter asks. “Shouldn’t that make it hard for anyone to get here?”

  “...Clutter, every single person in this quest found at least a little plastic.”

  He presses his mouth shut as his cheeks colour. “Oh. Um. Right, sorry, I forgot about that. So… what would’ve happened if I decided to go down right when we got here? Would I still be rummaging around in the darkness?”

  “Probably.” I say humorlessly. “My awareness is the only thing that shoved away the… dark-bugs, whatever they were. How the hell was anyone supposed to find anything down here?”

  I take a high step over something and turn to face… nothing. A glance back shows I stepped over nothing, too. Huh. Is the magic here so strong that it’s messing with my senses?

  “I think this is a much-later-thing.” Pearl muses as she drums her fingers against her bottom lip. “We were probably supposed to get an item–maybe, like the eyes of the heretic–and that’d lead us down here. Or maybe this was supposed to be a trap to get all the dumb, jumps-in-to-quickly people out of the running.”

  Clutter turns and looks at me. I scoff and motion upwards. “I’ve got relocation coins in the tower. We can get out of here at any time, but anyone else definitely wouldn’t be able to. Speaking of; Pearl, any sign of a ‘heretic’ you can see?”

  She shakes her head. I raise an eyebrow; that’s kind of where I thought this was going. That the heretic was imprisoned right here next to us, just phased differently.

  “Take another fifteen steps forward then turn to face the center of the walls.” Pearl says. I follow her command to perfection, and she nods to herself. “The phase point is about fifteen feet in the air. Can you get that high without wasting a coin?”

  Clutter raises his hand eagerly. “Ooh, I can help! With my arms stretched tall, we can almost reach fifteen feet. Then all she has to do is jump!”

  I take a second to consider it, then wave him over. He smiles and drops to his knees, his palms on the ground for me to step on. Without a second’s hesitation I carefully place my feet on his hands. A grunt of discomfort escapes through his clenched teeth, and with one swift motion, he stands up as straight as an arrow–nearly throwing me into the air in the process. Somehow I manage to keep my balance.

  As I get ready to jump, Pearl motions towards the center of the walls. “Move half a step closer, Clutter. We’re a little out of position.”

  “Okay.” He takes a very wobbly step forward. “Is this right?”

  Pearl nods. “Perfect. I’m going to put a little dot of me on your eye so you don’t look in the wrong place. Just stare at it the entire time and we’ll be good.”

  I nod as Pearl crawls up my shoulder and tenderly touches a finger to my eye. She leaves behind a tiny speck of shellraiser goo that shifts ever so slightly as I move my head around to see how it reacts.

  “Can’t you just look at it? What’s the need for this?”

  “Insurance.” She says simply. “Get ready to jump.”

  With the ominous implication that something could go horribly wrong, I nod down at Clutter. He grins up at me, his arms already shaking from the effort, and locks his elbows to give me a more sturdy launch pad. I give him a thumbs-up, lift my chin to stare straight at the black dot, and–

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  One Hour has passed.

  I wave away the system popup. Damn thing could’ve messed everything up if I wasn’t so slow at this. Aaaand now my rhythm’s all screwed up. Wonderful. I take a steadying breath, re-lock my eyes on the black dot, and bend my knees to put all my effort into a jump.

  Clutter yelps in surprise as I shove into the air, sailing a good ten feet off his hands. I blink in surprise; I didn’t think I could do that, either, but… I guess I can.

  “Shelby!”

  Right. I refocus on the black dot and stare directly at the center of the wall. Nothing happens as I reach my apex–probably because I got distracted–and then I start to fall. It’s a strange sensation, falling when you already feel like you’re falling. My stomach turns in knots, and my fingers instinctively splay out as if they’re ready to scrabble for any upcoming ledge. All my muscles tense at the same time, sending a jolt of discomfort up my spine and into my brain as something so overwhelming, so splendid, so horrible–so grey and malleable–lances itself into my eyes and uses me as a stepping stone to anchor itself to reality.

  Clutter screams as thick cables of plasticy wire coat the ground. I feel him get crushed by most of them, and in the moment before he would actually die, I relocate him to the tower. At least, I try to. The spell doesn’t fire. I snap to scream his name, but… there he stands. Arms covering his face, shuddering with fear, standing atop a thick pile of cables as I come careening down on top of him.

  “Shit!” I mutter as I scramble off him. “Are you okay?”

  He blinks twice as he looks at his hands. “I don’t know. Is this what happens after I die?”

  I shake my head. “It isn’t a shitty-ish hotel room, so we’re fine.”

  The confused look he shoots me is only contested by his absolute confusion at… well… everything that just happened. All the walls, all the open space, the lighthouses… I can’t see any of them through a veritable jungle of wires, pipes, and cables–all made to look like different materials, but all obviously made of the squirming plastic. It shifts, twitches, and pulses like a living thing as I get my feet under me and struggle to stand on the newly squishy ground.

  “Is all this plastic?” Clutter asks in disbelief as he also struggles to his feet. “Where the heck did all of it come from?”

  Pearl silently points towards the center of the walls. I can’t see anything through the tangle of plastic, but I can… just… feel the magic further in. It feels like everything–like life and existence itself–except with all the important bits stripped away. Almost like someone took a thick, chunky stew and drained all the chunks with the finest strainer known to man.

  “Is that the source of all the plastic?” I murmur in awe.

  Pearl… shakes her head. It’s slow, stunned, but certain. All her bravado from a second ago is completely gone, and in its place is… dreadful certainty. She knows exactly what it is. And that scares her.

  “We’re in a lab.” She says quietly. “A testing lab. Somewhere for the system to fiddle with the things it found in this world. I… should’ve known. All the plastic, the containment sphere, even the walled city… it's all to create things. Things our world wouldn’t accept.”

  I slowly turn to look at her. “What is it, Pearl?”

  A sardonic grin with utter disgust splits her face. “I thought it was everything I’ve hoped for since I met you. But it’s actually my absolute worst fear turned real. Shelby, before we get out of here… we need to find the source of the plastic and put it out of its misery.”

  “...It?”

  She nods. “I don’t know if it’s the same as the heretic, or if the heretic is something else completely, but… I…” She swallows hard, eyes glossing over with tears. “Just go look. You’ll understand when you see it.”

  Fresh dread needles my spine. Clutter turns to see what I’m going to do, and a good chunk of me wants to teleport us the hell out of here. I reach for my relocations in the tower, and whatever stopped me from teleporting Clutter out of here a second ago is no longer active. It would be so easy to run away. But I’m not going to. I clench my jaw, push a slightly squishy hanging wire to the side, and make my way towards the center.

  My awareness feels it before I see it. Misery–utter misery–shakes me to my very core as the mass weighs on my mind. Suffering like no other; constant and eternal and not even aware of why it exists radiates from the mass in a single, mindless pain-wracked emotion. It isn’t complex. There’s no thought behind it. Because it’s a thing. Not a who, but an ‘it’. An object left behind after the thing inhabiting it goes somewhere else.

  Or the system’s attempt at recreating it. I bite my tongue to remind myself that I, too, feel pain, as I stare at the wall of vine-like wires separating me from the mass. Clutter stares at my back, unable to comprehend what I’m feeling. But how could he? There’s no shellraiser in him. Not even a little.

  Pearl openly sobs. I raise a hand to gently cover her back, and she grabs my fingers with such despair that I feel my own eyes start to water. One last push opens the way. A pulsing mass of hexagonal plates of plastic stands at the perfect center of the compound–a laboratory as much as a prison as much as a graveyard–and finally, I can’t look away. The notification spreads over my eyes, even though I didn’t try to identify it, and offers a simple explanation that thickens my throat and sends a pulse of white-hot rage into my heart.

  Artificial shellraiser project.

  Status: Failure.