Four towers. I’m assuming that means four over the entire city, and not four that we have to anchor–or else that wording is very misleading. It also insinuates that there haven’t been four towers anchored yet, so we’re one of the first three to get it done. Wonder if that has anything to do with where we spawned in the city, or if we got an easier objective because we’re lower clearance.

  I scratch my face as the orb’s projection flickers off, leaving me standing there with less light than before. The cryptic half-warning about using our time wisely hangs in the air like dangling cobwebs; I have no doubt the anchor’s more than just something to connect the tower to the wall. But the way the message was worded… it makes it seem like there’s something we can do about it before four towers get connected.

  “Pearl, can you feel anything important?” I ask as I wrap my fingers around the sphere and try to pull it. The thing doesn’t budge. “Hrm. Guess we’re not taking this with us.”

  She breathes out a quiet laugh and shoves herself out of her shell to sit on my shoulder. “I can feel a lot of important things. The magic, here, how it’s infusing the walls with something, how it isn’t running out of magic somehow–but that’s not what you’re talking about. Yes, the sphere is strange. It feels like a control panel–almost like one of ours–but it’s not connected to anything.”

  I tilt my head to the side and tap the orb. “The quest gave updates through it.”

  “It gave updates through it because it isn’t connected to anything; that’s how the quest could speak through it.” Pearl clarifies. She slides down my arm and spins, then gracefully sits on the sphere. “There’s some kind of broadcasting signal here, and it isn’t created by the quest. The quest just hijacked the signal to deliver the news.”

  “So there’s a chance this will eventually connect to something?”

  Pearl nods. “I’d call it more of an eventuality than a chance, but yes. Now whether it’s more quest stuff or just something for the city, that I don’t know.”

  “Hrm. Then I’ll have to keep this spot marked.” I open up my map tab, ready to mark it with a stone spear, but a stain of detail worked through the grey stops me. “Anchoring the tower updated my map.”

  “Really? Turn it around; let me see.” Pearl leans forward as I turn the map to her. She strokes her chin thoughtfully while she observes the change. “Did your map save the changes you made as you ran here from where you spawned, or did it only display your current location?”

  “I’m pretty sure it constantly updated.”

  “Well, I guess that means the tower revealed a whole lot of the map. See?” She zooms out a little more, then turns the map back to me and traces the perimeter of the circle with her finger. “There’s not a little line trailing out to where you started.”

  I narrow my eyes to double-check, and I’ll be damned–she’s right. There’s not a single sign of the trek Clutter and I made to get here from where we spawned. And from this birds-eye view of the city, there’s not really any distinction between the walls at all–they’re of perfectly equal width, and only the tower stands out as an anomaly. I can’t even make out the ‘streets’ we spawned on.

  Which raises the question… were they streets at all, or were we just standing on top of another wall? I guess it’s fairly easy to answer, and I’ll definitely check that out sooner or later, but right now we need to focus on the tower. Just from anchoring it, we got a lot of map data. Who knows what else we can learn from it?

  “C’mon, Pearl.” I send my Class Card away and motion for her to climb my arm. “Clutter’s waiting with a bunch of construct parts we can experiment with. Maybe you’ll give him some of the inspiration he’s looking for.”

  She nods, and her squishy little feet patter up my arm like raindrops until she reaches my shoulder. “We should definitely come back here later.”

  “Yeah. Later.”

  I turn to leave the alcove, the soft shimmering of the sphere tickling at my awareness until I get far enough away for it to disappear. A short trek through all the tentacles, a shield-aided ascent to the ceiling, and a quick jog up the stairs take me right back to Clutter. Who sits in a puddle of yellow magic in the middle of a room stained green with slightly different magic.

  His eyes twitch to me the second my head’s visible. Silently, he mouths the words ‘help me’ as the rest of his body twitches uncontrollably with the adrenaline surge from the magic. I raise an eyebrow and toss a purification at his feet.

  As the magic spreads through his body, I take a few steps towards him. “Hit one of the spheres a little too hard?”

  With a titanic sigh of relief, Clutter collapses to the ground. “Promise you won’t laugh at me?”

  “Depends. Did you try to put on one of the heads?”

  “What? No. I’m not that stupid.” He laughs, then winces. “Laughing hurts. Don’t be funny.”

  I roll my eyes. “No promises on that one. So what happened?”

  “It’s… pretty simple, actually. I was working with the yellow one, carefully breaking the sphere to get at the magic inside, and it just… worked. I made a small circle, tried to identify the liquid, then set it at my feet and pulled out a green one to do the exact same thing.”

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Aw, Clutter. Did you not… I mean… there’s evidence of it right out there.” I motion at the window with a wince of sympathy. “All of them explode except for the yellow ones.”

  He looks away in embarrassment. “Now I know that. The green one… exploded, and as you can see, I got completely coated. If you want to know what it does, I can tell you that it practically gives you muscle spasms on all of your muscles and makes your brain think too hard. But it obviously doesn’t kill you–at least not quickly enough that you couldn’t save me.”

  “Obviously.” I sigh and look around the room. “Did you see the message from the quest before you got slimed?”

  The look on his face tells me he didn’t before his mouth can even open. “There’s a message?”

  “Yeah. It says we anchored the tower, and some cryptic warnings about how the tower’s more than it seems. Oh, and there’s nearly a jungle of tentacle-roots down in the hall now.” I pull out a shield and frown at the stained room. “How the hell are we supposed to clean this up? I can’t even access a change of clothes to use as rags.”

  “Just wait it out.” Pearl says helpfully. “The magic will dissipate sooner or later, and then you’ll just have some slightly inconvenient inert slurry on the ground. Or you can purify this whole place to hurry the process along–your choice.”

  I snort and gesture at the ceiling. Which is also green. “Clutter, you owe me five Worth.”

  “Gladly.” He wheezes. “You… um… no, neither of us have health potions. Or rest potions. Dang it. I think I strained my everything.”

  One coin covers about a quarter of the room. I use five purification coins just in case, in addition to the one that brought Clutter out of his induced spasms, which brings the total to six. Not much in the greater scheme of things, but it does show me just how inefficient purification is at clearing even this small-ish room.

  “Okay, that should be it.” I dust off my hands on my clothes, then lean down and offer to help Clutter stand. He doesn’t accept, but he does groan in discomfort. “Looks worse than I thought. Want me to take you down into the walls?”

  He winces, then shakes his head. “I want to be here when you discover something. And… um… nice to actually meet you, Pearl. We never really introduced ourselves.”

  Pearl taps her chin in thought. “You’re right–we didn’t. Hi, Clutter.”

  “Hi, Pearl. So… you’re a shellraiser?”

  She nods. “Probably not what you were expecting, huh?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t really know what I was expecting, but a squishy little friend definitely wasn’t it. Do you want to eat my brain?”

  “Um… no?” Pearl glances over at me with a frown. “Do people think shellraisers eat brains?”

  I shrug. “I’m the wrong person to ask that.”

  “Oh, right. Clutter, do people think we eat brains?”

  “Sort of? The rumors mostly just say you’d kill all of us if any of you were still alive. Maybe the ‘eat brains’ thing was something I just made up on my own. Or… did I hear it somewhere?” He furrows his brow as it looks like he seriously tries to remember something. “Hm. I can’t remember, but I definitely remember thinking a shellraiser would eat my brains at some point. Did you eat Shelby’s brain and take her over?”

  Pearl recoils in disgust. “That’s… vile! The only reason I’d put myself in someone’s brain is to give them a gift, thank you very much!”

  Clutter visibly pales, and when his voice comes out, it’s barely a whisper. “Does that mean you are in her brain?”

  Okay, that’s enough brain talk for now. I clap my hands to draw the attention back to me, then gesture at the speckles of shimmering glass dust around Clutter.

  “We’re changing the subject. Clutter, can you bring out a sphere of each colour? I want Pearl to take a look at them.”

  He quickly glances at my ear. Pearl grins and rubs the top of it, which pulls a cartoonishly loud ‘gulp’ from Clutter’s throat. I sigh and roll my shoulder to get Pearl to stop, which she does with a maliciously innocent giggle.

  “Clutter. Focus. Spheres.”

  “Um… okay… but… well…” He stares at Pearl, then shakes his head. “You’re still you, Shelby? Promise?”

  I nod seriously. “I’m more ‘me’ than before I met Pearl. But if you really want something to be terrified about, Pearl and Illumisia literally remade my body when I died. Nerves, blood, bones–almost all of it. Worry about that before you worry about her controlling me.”

  His eyes go comically wide. “You died?”

  …That’s not the part I thought he was going to focus on. “Yeah. A few days after I got my Class Coin, I almost froze to death.”

  Pearl coughs. I roll my eyes.

  “Correction; I actually froze to death. Pearl and Illumisia saved me, and we’ve been working together ever since. Technically Pearl and I were working together before that, too, but it kind of feels like that was the point of no return.” I grin to myself and reach up to fondly run my fingers down Pearl’s ‘hair’. “You know, we’ve got some time to kill. I can multitask telling a story and messing with these spheres thanks to my awareness.”

  He nods vigorously, and when he looks at Pearl again, there’s no fear in his eyes. Only something like… admiration. Or thanks.

  “You can do it while you take those pills.”

  My spine stiffens. “Pills? What pills? Oh, you mean the pills I can’t access right now thanks to the quest–that’s too bad. Guess I can’t use them for a while.”

  As I speak, my Class Card appears in my hands. I grimace as it projects my inventory, displaying only the things that were visible before. And right before my eyes, one extra space becomes visible. The one with the damn pills Illumisia fetched from Ursula.

  “God damn it.” I mutter as Pearl climbs down my arm. “Is the quest being a dick now, too?”

  She shrugs as Clutter summons the four spheres for her. “Ursula probably made the packaging, too. Or maybe March. They’d make it so you can take them out whenever you want, wouldn’t they?”

  “Well… yeah, but… why didn’t it just show up at the start? This is too suspicious. I shouldn’t take them.” I hastily justify and go to put away my Class Card. Instead, the pills pop into my hand–and there’s a paper note attached to the container. I grimace and read it out loud. “‘To Shelby–Illumisia said you were happy these didn’t teleport over. So we made sure you’d have some. Love Ursula.’”

  That bitch.