Shrill, sizzling pops burst into detonations of molten plastic. I blink at the suddenness of it all; one second the leeches were above the stain, the next they were swallowed up by it, and finally they just… ballooned and detonated. Clutter covers his ears as the horrible sound reverberates off the walls, but from what I can see… the stain’s a little smaller.

  Not by much, though–it lost about half of what it gained from climbing the wall. So the leech strategy worked. Just not very well yet.

  “We’re doing this again!” I shout over my shoulder. “Take out your Class Card so the quest spawns more leeches!”

  Clutter pants and nods, then summons his own Class Card. His eyes lock onto the back of my head, waiting for my signal to jump out of the way. I focus the majority of my attention on my awareness, saving only a little bit of it to mush my fingers against the arrow-circles on my map.

  My awareness flares. I yell a command to Clutter, and he hops out of the way. This time he lands far more gracefully, and four leeches sail past us to get instantly popped by the stain. But not before they drain away a little of the magic that’s powering it. It shrinks, though… not quite as much as the first time. If the last one took six inches off its radius, this one only took about five and a half.

  “Shouldn’t it have taken more off?” I ask. “We had four leeches this time, and with the way circles work, there should’ve been more area taken away by the same amount of drain.”

  Pearl frowns. “Less magic left it this time. But it looks like it’s… proportional. The leeches took off about five percent before, and if I’m right, they took off about six percent this time. So there’s diminishing returns for more leeches, and they’re cutting off percentage chunks of the magic at a time.”

  I grimace. “What’s the chance we were supposed to learn that when the first leeches hit us?”

  “A hundred percent.” Pearl says tensely. “But we know that now; and hitting the stain with more leeches is still better than less. If we can get it to shrink to… one-tenth size… you two should be able to run away at a comfortable pace.”

  “And with how you think the leeches are siphoning from it, how many more volleys will that take?”

  Now it’s Pearl’s turn to grimace. “Forty or so. And that’s without factoring in any more trips up the wall.”

  Okay, so waiting on that is out of the equation. Clutter’s already barely twenty feet from the thing, and it’s still gaining on us. “What about a stalemate with how fast we’re running right now? How big does it have to be for–JUMP!”

  Clutter snaps to attention as I push myself out of the way, and he does the same. More leeches fly into the stain, and it shrinks again–but once more, not by as much as the second volley. If I went and actually calculated what my awareness is seeing, I bet Pearl’s assumptions would be right on the money.

  For a few seconds, the horrible gouging noises steal away my focus. I turn to watch the stain scour the once pristine hallway, leaving nothing but surface-level destruction in its wake. Even the magic that cut into my skin with blatant ease can’t gouge that deeply into this place’s material.

  Pearl claps her hands to get my attention. “What were you about to ask?”

  I blink. “Uh… right. How big does it have to be for us to have a stalemate with it?”

  She frowns. “Oh, that was the end of your question. Alright… um… about half as big as when you started. So about thirteen more volleys. Then we multiply that by about thirty seconds between volleys and you’ve got six and a half minutes until it won’t be gaining on you any more.”

  “Will that be enough for Clutter to stay safe?”

  “I… think so.” Pearl says with very little confidence. “If he doesn’t stumble again, yes. But it’ll be by inches–not by feet. Do you want to tell him?”

  I glance back at him–he’s got perfect running form, a heaving chest with every gasping breath, and eyes wide from fear. Nothing good will come from putting extra stress on him, and since it seems like he’s got the dodging down, I’ll just have to trust that he can keep it up.

  “No. He’s doing fine without the pressure.” I say and turn back to the hall as I hold my Class Card up to Pearl’s shell. “Climb out here and see if those arrows on my card do anything. And make sure you’re anchored on so I don’t fling you off.”

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  She nods and stands without hesitation. Moments later she pops out of her shell, sticks herself to my shoulder, and presses her back against my neck to fully anchor herself. Tiny hands grab my Class Card, leaving me to focus completely on the leeches and on running. Except for a little bit that watches her fiddle with the plastic-y topography of my map.

  “Hmm…” She trails off as she presses one of the arrow-circles. My map doesn’t shift in my awareness, but a tiny wisp of magic whispers through the hallway. “Shelby, can you see this? Or is the change I’m seeing right now not showing up on your awareness?”

  I shake my head. Pearl hums to herself in thought, then presses the other circle. Yet another wisp of magic quietly breezes through the hall, carrying with it something so subtle that I can’t even begin to feel it. What I can feel, though, is another volley of leeches. I call it out, and we both jump to safety with barely an interruption in our stride.

  “Okay, I think I have it. Not that there’s much to have.” Pearl giggles, then turns and points down the hallway. “Each of these hallways have a magic line in it–the same one that we followed from one hexagon to another. Right now, we’re repeating the same mile-long stretch of hallway–but the magic is so strong that you can't even tell when we’re getting sent back to the beginning. It’s even fixing the scratches, so you know it doesn’t want us to find that out. Not that way, at least.”

  I swallow around a drying tongue. “How, then?”

  She smiles and taps my Class Card. “Based on your map, we’ve gone three-quarters of a mile since you started running. That's wayyyy too low for how fast you two are going. So I watched it for a few seconds, and when you should’ve gone into a new grid square, your marker blinked right back to the start instead. But you’d have to be watching your card like a hawk, which the stain makes kind of difficult.”

  “That it does.” I agree with a dry chuckle. “So what? If we’re not actually getting anywhere by running, what’re we supposed to do? Keep this up until the stain dies down enough that we can think and jog at the same time?”

  “Nope. With these arrows, and the assumption that the pattern we looked at is right…”

  Pearl looks up as another wisp of magic tears through the air. But this one… something’s different with it. It bursts in midair, and gives off the sensation of… turning left? Nothing actually shifts, but my brain insists that we just made a left turn.

  “Whargh?!” Clutter exclaims in surprise. “Did we just turn left?”

  I raise an eyebrow at Pearl in question. “Sure feels like we did.”

  She beams with excitement and turns my card so I can barely see it. But even with only my peripheral vision, I can easily make out what’s different; according to my card, we’re now going left along one of the squares instead of up. Even though absolutely nothing changed with the hallway.

  “The pattern.” Pearl says. “We have to use these arrows to change our path on the map, even though in the real world, we’re not changing directions at all. This must be another weird phase thing, but the trigger is the card, not looking at something. Or… maybe looking at the card is the trigger?”

  She shrugs and moves my card away. “I guess we’ll find out when we’re done based on where we end up.”

  “Where we end up? Jump.” I frown as leeches whiz by my head. “You think we’re going to finish that pattern and end up in some other random part of the city?”

  Pearl raises an eyebrow. “Why not? There’s magic here that’s forcing us back to the exact same spot over and over. Who’s to say we won’t end up in another part of the city?”

  “Okay, then how the hell is that a reward?” I motion at the stain. “We’re supposed to be proving ourselves. How the hell is anyone supposed to do this if they–A–don’t have my map, B, didn’t pay attention to the lines through the tiles, and C, don’t have the stamina Clutter and I do? Would the quest just kill them outright?”

  “Probably.”

  I tense up as the possibility shrieks through my mind. It’s not… impossible to think that the quest would kill some people taking it. And the thing did give us all the information we needed to solve it beforehand… actually, wait, no it didn’t. My map being visible is the only reason we’re still okay. Unless…

  “Clutter! Can you switch over to your map?”

  He vigorously shakes his head. Damn. The quest said everyone got a reward for finding the plastic paindne, but we got this ‘special one’ for being first. But what if that reward was to reactivate everyone’s maps–or if they didn’t have one–give one to them? If that’s the case, then the quest really did give us everything to solve this.

  “We’ll check when you’re done, okay?”

  He nods, but still doesn’t say anything. I don’t blame him; my lungs burn from all the exertion, but somehow, my voice still works like normal. Must be some side effect of whatever gains I made from using the pills.

  An off-putting sensation rolls through my awareness as more leeches appear out of nowhere. Clutter and I dodge them, and about five seconds later, a sensation of turning right overtakes me. It’s no less disorienting than the first time, and from what I can remember of the pattern, it’s only the second direction change out of… like… thirty. And we’re still about ten leech volleys away from a stalemate with the stain.

  Scratching and shudders work through my awareness as the stain, once again, climbs a wall. I grimace and raise my chin skyward as a titanic sigh flows out my nose, and the damn thing grows back half of the mass that the leeches took away.

  God damn it, why can’t this be easy. We gotta be more careful of side quests after this. Because compared to the quest itself so far, they’re the things that’re going to kill us.