I pull out Illumisia's relocation coin and set it down on the floor of the room with doors. Click raises its eyebrow at me, but goes right back to humming to itself a moment later without me doing anything at all. Hopefully this'll be enough space for her, since I'm not confident enough to summon her outside. Not with the threat of the horizonguard.

"Alright. Message first, then let's do this." I mutter to myself and summon my Class Card.

With a few taps, I send a message to Miss S. Then I send off a series of messages to Ursula, March, and Noland to let them know what's going on. I have no idea if they can do anything, but if we fail here and the city appears somewhere in the world, they'll appreciate the heads-up. After a few minutes of empty waiting I send off one final message to Nib asking her to go check up on Clamber and Scooch for me.

I lower my Class Card and cross my arms. All that's left is to wait for the time dilation to pass for their answers. Soft creaking of some weather or another pelting the top of the room with doors seeps in from all directions. Click's humming perfectly matches the chaotic rhythm. I have to close my eyes and focus on something else to put the sounds out of my mind; they remind me too much of the taps.

My Class Card finally emits a strangled beep. I frown down at it and find myself staring at a series of messages that failed to deliver. Not a single one of them went through. I click my tongue and press on the notification, and sure enough, it's the most obvious answer; the quest is preventing any messages to people who aren't inside the quest.

"Of course it is." I sigh and send my Class Card away. "Which means I won't be getting any updates from them either. Hopefully the quest didn't factor in teleportation."

I latch onto Illumisia's coin just a few inches away from me. Then I take a few steps back just in case. Then I finally activate the spell. My mind tears between two points, like the entire world exists in two places at the exact same time, and for a brief second I'm back in Miss S' cloudtop home above the bathhouse. Illumisia's sitting there, staring out over the city below with lazy boredom. A flicker of awareness counts everyone else there–Vesa, Briony, and whatever the wannabe assassin's name was.

Then the image disappears. My coin bubbles with heat in the center of the room, but I can still feel Illumisia's connection through it. Pain finally hits my skull like a runaway freight train and I nearly double over from the nausea that comes with it. I retch and steady myself on the wall, my connection severed and a grim reminder of my inability to relocate extreme distances trying to burn a hole through the floor.

But… it is an extreme distance. Not the system putting a ban on teleportation spells. If only I had any goddamn idea how the system did it, then I could… wait. Click. It has so much information. Maybe the quest didn't delete the bit on how the city was removed from the world.

I shakily look up. Click looks down at me, hands gently hovering over my shoulders like it doesn't know what to do with them.

"How do I help?" It asks. "I don't know how to help. Is the quest hurting you?"

A weak chuckle escapes my lips. "This is all me, unfortunately. My punishment for daring to try and teleport something in here from the outside. You wouldn't happen to…"

Click nods, much to my surprise. "You need to make a tangible connection between here and wherever you're trying to relocate something here from. Then you'll need a massive amplifier to make sure the magic can actually travel all the way along that pathway."

An amplifier and a connection. Unfortunately for me, I have neither of those. …Wait. No. I do have a damn powerful amplifier that can also be used as a kind of compass. The shellraiser beacon. Except the power source for it is stuck behind a system block-out. And I'd need the beacon to lock onto Illumisia's signature, which might also be impossible over this much distance. Shit.

I woozily stand tall as the tower does its best to heal me. "How powerful an amplifier are we talking? Because I have a shelllraiser beacon made from a perpetuum oystershell."

"Oystershell?" Click hums to itself, though I'm not sure if it's intentional or not. "Ah, yes, a material that was lost with the shellraisers. My data on the creatures is surprisingly minimal, but I'm confident in saying both yes and no."

I furrow my brow when it pauses instead of just explaining what it means. "Do you want me to ask how it can be 'yes and no'?"

The corners of Click's lips twitch upwards. "How can it be both yes and no, you ask? Well, it's simple; the oysters have no innate power of their own. Yet they can accept nearly any level of magic into themselves and perpetuate it outwards. So the answer is 'yes' because the beacon theoretically could carry the relocation signal across untold distances, and 'no' because you would need a power source far larger than anything you have access to."

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"Then that means the answer is just no."

Click shakes a finger at me. "No, no no! Far from it! I know there is a power source large enough here to bridge that distance–I was once directly connected to it, after all. The central magical generator for the city. Luckily for us the quest doesn't involve it whatsoever–so I have near unrestricted access to the data on it."

It pauses and hums again. I can feel a 'but' coming. "What question do you want me to ask this time?"

"No question this time. I'm simply trying to pinpoint any possible way for you to reach the generator." Click says while it hums. "Hmm… unfortunately I can't pinpoint any possible way to reach the generator. When I was created it was already built and there are no records of where it is in the city."

"But you're sure it exists?" I ask.

Click nods confidently. "Absolutely certain."

I push off the wall with a nod of my own. "Then I'll need you to help Pearl put its location into the beacon once I get my inventory un-greyed. But if you find something before that, send me a message. Our nuclear option is stuck outside and we're going to need her in here."

"Yes, of course. You were trying to send messages earlier, yes? I can help push one or two through for you."

That'd be convenient. "How?"

"Remote access to the quest's Class Card alert commands; it didn't bother locking me out for some reason. I should be able to send one or two messages before it catches on and locks me out, but you won't be able to get any replies." Click explains as I walk over and pocket Illumisia's warm and slightly deformed coin. "But I have to warn you that this could also be a trap set by the quest, so don't put anything too important in the message."

"No classified info. Gotcha." I confirm. "How long of a message can you send?"

Click hums for a moment. "Any length below one thousand words, and if you prepare more than one for me, I think I can send out two messages before I'm locked out."

Two messages. One for Illumisia through Miss S. obviously, and the other… it has to be to someone from the resort. Not March, since she might not forward the message to the other two, but Ursula or Noland should be fine. Might as well just send it to Ursula since I've spent more time with her. I breathe in through my nose and summon my Class Card to type out two fairly long messages while Click hums patiently from outside of my personal space.

It's a little weird having someone that looks like a paindne not always trying to touch me.

All in all, it takes about an hour to write out the two messages. Even with most of them being a copy paste of each other it feels like too little information to go on. I double then triple check the finished products before handing my Class Card to Click and waiting for it to do its thing. The humming stops for less than two minutes. When it starts back up again it hands my Class Card to me.

"The messages were sent." It says with relief. "And I am officially locked out. Until you find your way to the generator, there won't be any messages leaving this city."

I accept my Class Card with a solemn nod. "Thanks for this. Anything I can do for you to make this more comfortable?"

Click shakes its head. "My body is malleable. I do not eat, and I spend all of my time parsing the information in my head. Maybe when I finish with it I'll ask to join the group in the tower, but for now, I'm content. Goodbye for now, Shelby."

"Click." I say and turn to leave. Click sits back down in the exact same spot it was in when I came in here, closes its eyes, and hums even louder than before.

I watch it for a few long moments before I open the door and make my way out. No messages from Jumble or Clutter yet, so that's probably a good sign, but neither of them came looking for me either. So they're not done with their tasks yet. I glance up at the stairs and briefly consider climbing to the top for no real reason, but there has to be something else I can do. Since I did technically fail to complete what I said I was going to do.

What can I do right now, though? I need to be here when Jumble brings in everyone else, and there's pretty much nothing else for me to do within the tower grounds. Maybe I can… I don't know… make sure Click wasn't screwing with me. Try sending out messages to literally everyone again for no real reason.

I know it's a fool's errand, but it'll make me feel better. So I type one word into the messenger, add literally everyone I can send it to into the recipients window, and hit send. Just one little word. 'Test'. Clutter and Jumble respond immediately, which isn't surprising, but it looks like all of the others are just as unreachable as I expected. Might as well go see how Clutter and Pearl are coming along.

My Class Card chirps, alerting me to a new message. It's probably just Jumble again, but my hope soars anyway. I summon it with a little too much vigor and swipe over to impending disappointment.

'Heyyy, Shelby! Long time no see! Can't say I expected to see you here, that's for sure, but maybe it wouldn't be a surprise if I was more in the loop. How'd you manage to get here, anyway? Just got pulled in myself–thanks, skill–and I'm literally swamped now. Didn't even want to be in this quest, but now I'm stuck here. We should meet up, talk strategy. Hopefully we're not on opposite sides of the city!'

-Your buddy Gil

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