I reach over and turn off the tap. The notification disappears, and a little orange triangle with an exclamation mark inside of it that I hadn’t noticed goes with it.

  “We don’t have enough magic for this.” I explain when Clutter shoots me a look. “No idea how we’re supposed to get more, but apparently making the grey magic uses more than we have to spare.”

  Clutter frowns down at the drop of grey in the beaker. “I thought this was going to be how we got more magic for the tower.”

  “So did I.” Pearl agrees. “Maybe we just have to wait for the root-vine-wire things to draw more magic from the walls. Or it’s a reward for another part of the quest we haven’t gotten to yet.”

  I shrug and look up at the ceiling. “You still have the construct heads in your inventory, right?”

  “I do.” Clutter confirms. “Should we leave them in here now?”

  “That and all the bodies. I’ll go grab all of them while you find somewhere safe to put the heads.” I jump onto the table and press my hand against the ceiling. “Pearl, you want to stay here and help him?”

  She purses her lips and looks back at Clutter. He’s carefully taking the construct heads out of his inventory and placing them on one of the shelves with a little lip at the edge to stop them from rolling off. Until he stumbles over his own foot and almost throws a head directly into one of the walls. Luckily he manages to keep the glass from cracking, but the sound his ribs make when they slam against the floor combined with the wheeze of his breath leaving him gets a good wince of sympathy from me and Pearl.

  “One of us definitely should.” She runs down my arm, then uses my pants to slide down to the table. “I’ll convince him to go back to the tower and sleep while you’re gone, since it looks like the excitement with all this made him completely forget about how exhausted he really is.”

  I nod. “Sounds good. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Take your time.” Pearl walks to the edge of the table, then turns back to me as Clutter groans on the ground. “Make sure the room with doors isn’t leaking radiation into the tower. If it is, you’ll have to constantly purify or shield the entrance so it doesn’t hurt us.”

  My Worth reserves shy away at her words, but it’s gotta be done. I give her a thumbs up and twist my hand to open the door, completely expecting to appear outside of the tower. The inside of the room with doors greets me instead, and as I pull myself up, I can feel the magic in the room shifting ever so slightly. Almost like it’s moving on its own.

  “Weird.” I mutter to myself and open the door to the tower. Another little shift cuts through the magic, and the door opens effortlessly. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the teleportation room can teleport, but if the quest is going through this much trouble to make sure we don’t go outside…”

  I shake my head and close the door behind me as I trail off. Speculating on the radiation is pointless until I work up the courage to go outside and measure it. But there’s no radiation in the tower as far as I can feel, so that’s a good sign. I hurry up the stairs until I reach the top, then beeline for the stack of construct bodies. They disappear into my inventory as three separate batches, and before I go back down, I take a second to look out over the sprawling walls.

  Gusts of wind that look painted onto the world blow and shift through the city. Some of them collide with the walls and splatter into white-green stains, but they don’t actually look like they do anything to the structure. Maybe if I stepped outside I’d hear whistling winds and the screech of their strangely physical nature as they scrape against the walls, but from here, I feel perfectly safe. Which is honestly a testament to the quest; having somewhere to confidently rest and relax gives this entire ordeal a much more… feasible outlook.

  Definitely the polar opposite of my first quest, that’s for sure. I stand and watch the strange winds for a few minutes just enjoying the spectacle, but soon enough, I can’t justify waiting around any longer. Clutter and Pearl are waiting for me, and the sooner I get back, the sooner we can start really researching the constructs. I turn to leave, but as I do, a flash of motion far off in the distance catches my eye.

  I stop in place and narrow my eyes at the place I’m damn sure it happened. It was only for a fraction of a second, but I’m damn sure there was something else way further down the walls. Definitely wasn’t the painted-on wind, either, since my brain registered it as something out of place. Maybe it’s an instinct I got from Pearl or Illumisia, but the more I focus on that momentary flash of motion, the more a twisting feeling takes hold of my gut.

  We know there are other people out there. Was it one of them, one of their spells… or something else completely that the quest just released on the city? I clench my jaw as I stare out over the walls, uncertainty licking at the back of my mind like a rough tongue scraping away all the comfort the tower had managed to build up.

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  If there’s even the smallest possibility that that’s the other horizonguard… then we need to be insanely careful. All of us. No leaving the tower except to go to the workshop. We always have to have a shield and a purification on us at all times just in case the horizonguard’s spells are strong enough to pierce the tower’s seeming invulnerability. I… I’m getting paranoid from the smallest flash of nothing in the distance.

  I shake my head and laugh. It comes out tense and pinched. That run-in with the plastic paindne must’ve worn me out more than I thought; jumping straight to the worst-case scenario doesn’t help us at all. Preparing for said worst case is a damn great idea, but assuming that it’s the truth is dumb as hell and will only stifle our progress. I’ll make some coin packages for us, and we’ll have to keep an eye out, but that’s it. Any more than that and we’re just holing up in here waiting for the horizonguard to get whatever he came here for.

  Tap. Tap.

  Rhythmic noise pierces the window as clear and loud as if there were nothing magical about it. Unease worms its way into my heart as I turn back to the window, and my stomach drops at the sight of the… thing that clings to it. A bloody stain, with cloth and flesh twisted together into a form that just shouldn’t work. Arms made completely of interlocking fingers end in bony masses that cling to the window with divots of magic, and legs made of tattered clothes and ambiguous ‘flesh’ hang limply to blow in the physical breeze.

  I swallow hard as the thing brings its head back and violently slams it against the glass. Its elongated face crushes under the force of its own insistence, blood and teeth and spittle bursting free like chunks of porridge pushing through an old woolen sock someone slammed against a wall.

  Tap.

  That horrible impact makes the smallest, clearest noise. The thing rears its head back, the crushed flesh regenerating in the momentary lapse of action. Just looking at the thing sends shivers down my spine, but the fact that I can’t tell if it used to be alive or if this is the quest using plastic for an absolutely disgusting facade… I shake my head and force myself to look away. The uncertainty makes it infinitely worse.

  As sharp taps ring out, a question I really didn’t want to consider pushes its way to the front of my mind. Two questions, actually, and neither of them paint kind pictures of the situation. The first; what if that thing is a result of the outside radiation? That’d mean it was once a person, and now they’re… that. If there's still a thinking brain in there, I can’t imagine how much they must be suffering.

  Or… what if that’s what happens to us if our plastic jewelry is destroyed? I wouldn’t put it past the system to do something so cruel.

  Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  I grit my teeth and make for the stairs. Wondering about it won’t do me any good. Hell, just being close enough to hear it is making me nauseous.

  Tap.

  The noise scrapes through the tower and down the stairs. My legs carry me down two at a time to try and get away faster.

  Tap. Taptap. Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptapptttatptpspaptp.

  Blurs of sound and discomfort split into a searing headache as my feet touch solid ground. I nearly pounce for the hexagonal door and rip it open, dive inside, and plant my hand on the ground. A circle splits the ground, and I jump in as my awareness warns me of the ‘in-use’ status of the table below.

  Pearl and Clutter’s necks snap upwards the moment I fall through. Neither of them watch me fall, instead standing nearly transfixed as the sound of tapping flows into the workshop as clear as day.

  “What is that?” Clutter whispers shakily. “Is something watching us?”

  “I don’t know.” Pearl whispers back. “What happened, Shelby? Is the tower safe?”

  I shake my head and slowly swing my legs over the edge of the table, only now taking in the instruments and samples the two of them have set up just inches from me. If my awareness hadn't helped me land, I would’ve destroyed at least something. The door flickers, and then the ceiling slides in place to seal us off.

  With bated breath, I wait. Pearl and Clutter, though they barely even heard the taps, stay silent right along with me. Five heartbeats. Ten. Thirty. Sixty. All silent. Absolutely no taps and no discomfort. Just a cold sweat, adrenaline racing through my veins, and a sensation like I just escaped something that was going to kill me.

  It was… somehow… worse than it was with the stain. We all stand here in silence, nobody quite understanding what to say, until my heart’s finally beating quietly enough that I can hear myself think.

  “That had to be magic. Some kind of a… psychic’s spell, or the quest making us wary of spending time in the tower.” I clench and unclench my hands so I’m not just sitting still, then gesture for Pearl to run up my arm. “Illumisia controlled us with that psychic without us even realizing. The stain had some weak influence related to our Class Cards. That has to be what this is, right? Just the quest testing us, or someone else here screwing with us, right?”

  I must sound desperate, because Pearl tenderly pats my palm before she slowly crawls up my arm. When she reaches my head, she gently strokes the side of my ear with a genuine, worried smile.

  “We’ll find out together.” She assures me, then turns to Clutter, who looks shaken but not terrified. “The tower is off limits for the next few hours. When everyone’s rested and rejuvenated, we’ll go see what terrified Shelby. Can you… I don’t know… divert the tower’s rejuvenating powers to this place?”

  He slowly shakes his head. “That’s her, not me. Are you… are you okay? Can I do anything to help?”

  “I must look way worse than I feel if the two of you are this concerned.” I chuckle halfheartedly. “But… I think so. Thanks.”

  Pearl nods. “Anything that gets you this shaken is a real threat. Do you think you can describe it, then maybe we can help a little?”

  “Yeah, but I sure as hell can’t do it justice.”