The strange… tendrils… pull the brain into my hand. Its sensations mirror to me, with a crawling insistence and a strange weight settling on the underside of my brain. Quite literally, it feels like I'm holding my own brain in my hands. Morbid curiosity drives me to gently lay my other hand down on top of it and press ever so slightly.

Everything flickers. The lights. The sensations. Me. As I vanish ever so slightly, a dark stain washes over where I am. Like the tide rushing in to fill a hole dug in damp sand. It fills… and fills… and fills… until I'm whole again. Me. Untouched. But where I was once empty… now something lingers.

I pull back, gallons of fresh sweat trickling down my back. For the shortest of moments… something else was there. Overlaid on top of me like a waking nightmare clinging to my back with hateful desperation. But that something else was me. A concentrated version of me, distilled down to my very essence and pressed into a liquid ten thousand times thicker than whatever I'm filled with right now.

My hand instinctively rises to my bite mark. Trembling fingers brush against the wound, filled with shellraiser stuff and Illumisia's blood so that I'll never fully be Shelby again. It hasn't ever bothered me before. But now… it feels like Shelby is further away than she's ever been.

Leaving only me behind. The dark waters that poured in to fill the hole Shelby left.

My heart thunders as the tendrils gently prod at my skin. Whatever they just did to me… I can't let anyone else experience this. Maybe it was supposed to kill me. Maybe it was supposed to show some soul-scouring truth about myself. All it did was remind me that I'm not even close to the same person who picked up that coin so many months ago. That water seeped into the sand long ago. And soon enough, even this version of me will just be a memory. Leading the way for whoever Shelby is a few months from now.

Somehow… the shaking in my hands dies down. It shouldn't be a soothing thought; that I'm barely the same person I was a while ago. Yet it is. The old Shelby wouldn't be able to handle this at all. So I have to work on becoming the Shelby of tomorrow that can handle the rest of what this quest is going to throw at me–not panic and get all defeatist just because the system's rigging the game in its favor.

I take a deep breath through my nose and send the brain to my inventory. The system's been against me since day one. This isn't new. Now that we know all the uplifting trials-turned-quests are going to be against us, we just have to be ready for everything to be blatantly broken and unfair. But unfair in a way that anyone could technically finish them.

"Shelby?" Pearl whispers quietly. "What did that brain do to you? It felt like… you… we… I can't explain it, but for a brief second, it almost felt like…"

She frowns and crosses her arms. "Like you could handle more than just an awareness."

More than an awareness? I… what's she talking about? My eyes trail up in a questioning glance, but Pearl's already busy muttering to herself about some kind of… rite? Ritual? She's using a dozen different words for it, but not actually saying any specifics out loud. Well, one way or another, she'll be telling me about it eventually. Right now, though I have to… have to…

I turn to face the others, but there's nothing there. No room. No people. Just the one locker I found the brain in inside what I can only describe as an endless expanse of absolutely nothing. I scratch my neck and wince as blood wells under my nails–I'm still alive. Still conscious, too.

"The brain." I mutter to myself. "I'm still under its effects."

Pearl snorts in amusement. "Of course you are. All its nerves got tangled up with your own. Now you're feeling what it feels–seeing what it sees. Oh, but you can still hear and see me because it can't touch the shellraiser part of you. In case you were wondering, which I know you were from that look you just shot me."

I grimace and carefully close my hands. "But I sent the brain to my inventory. How come it's still doing this to me? The… the others. Are they still right next to me? Clutter? Jumble? I… I can't feel anything, but if you're there, gently help me sit down!"

Silence greets me. Dryness fills my mouth. My knees ever so slightly buckle, but instead of falling instantly, I slowly lower to the ground as my body pushes itself into a cross-legged sit. I let out a shaky sigh of relief and smile at nothing in thanks.

"Sorry, everyone. Looks like the brain was more dangerous than I thought. Probably shouldn't have touched it, huh?" I chuckle humorlessly, then trail off into silence. "Clutter, if something doesn't happen here in two minutes, I'm going to try and purify the magic out of me. If that doesn't work, I'm going to relocate all of us back to the tower–then you're in charge of the trial quests."

I hold out my hand, all five fingers splayed wide. "If you understand, fold up just my middle finger."

Before my seemingly blinded eyes, my middle finger rolls up perfectly to my palm. It's… unsettling being able to see nothing but myself and this locker. If everything was pitch black, then I'd be able to say that I'm blind. But the fact that apparently I'm seeing what the brain can see… which means it can only see me and the locker. For some reason, everywhere else it extended those… nerves… over isn't visible to it.

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I wait for a moment in utter silence before pulling out my Class Card. Except there's nothing on it. Just a simple rectangle of material that looks exactly like Pearl accented by a border made of her shell's material. All the holographic displays are completely gone. I'm not sure why, but it definitely has to do with the system. The brain is part of a heretic. It isn't far-fetched to think that the system put some kind of… well… curse, for lack of a better word, on the thing.

But that means the brain is still alive. And, most likely, so is the heart. Which means the system's either keeping them alive for its own nefarious purposes… or it can't kill them.

"Shit." I lean back to rest my head against the locker. "I should've been more careful when the quest didn't complete. This is just the last part of it, isn't it? Something we have to do with the brain in this locker room to actually get the 'all clear', even though Jumble's skill said we were already finished an hour ago."

Just another stipulation added by the quest slash system at the last second, if I had to guess. This was probably supposed to be our reward for finishing–another part of the cryptic heretic. Hell, the horizonguard's probably halfway to having a full corpse of his own by now. But the system… it made one last roadblock here for us. One that's solvable, but definitely not obvious. Or pleasant to actually do.

And the most unpleasant thing I can think of… is this brain. My prodding connected me to it somehow. So I must have to use it to get us out of this locker room and back into the city proper–with our rewards intact. I breathe through my nose and summon the brain again, carefully holding it in both palms so I don't accidentally squeeze it and trigger another sensation like before.

I managed to squeeze a good meaning out of the first one, but I'm not so confident about any follow-ups.

Tendril-like nerves appear from the brain. They trail down my arms, over my chest, and gently reach out to try and touch things that are a little too far away from me. I can imagine Jumble and Clutter recoiling from them in disgust, leaving me to sit here… alone…

Another arm slowly shows itself–laced through mine with a possessive insistence. An elbow with smooth fur the colour of autumn leaves, attached to a woman that slowly reveals herself to be Jumble. She stares at me with worried eyes, wide with emotion and personality, and I… feel like I'm looking at her for the first time. Brilliant yellow irises with flecks of silver. A soft face–well, as soft as a shark-wolf-person can be–but not in a weak way.

In a kind way. A face that's at home with happiness, and when any other emotion crosses it, it carries so much more weight. The rest of her body follows–a frame built with a surprising amount of muscle, but not in a way that's obvious. A long tail that's a little less emotive than Clutter's.

But her fur–her eyes–her tail–her teeth–her claws–everything has the slightest hint of silver in it. Maybe that's a hint at just how old she actually is, even if her body is similar to the other young paindne I've seen. Now that I've noticed it, I can't look away. Because each and every little bit of silver looks like a scar.

It must be because she's a first generation paindne. And… the sides of her mouth go up a little further than the other paindne I've met. Almost three quarters of the way up her head, though she keeps it halfway shut at all times. That must be the 'howler' part of 'sundrenched howler', the species of painted dane she said she was.

But… why am I only seeing this now? With the brain's nerves instead of my eyes? Have I… wait. Am I under the effects of the anonymity thing the system can do? Have I been under its effects this entire time, just not as obviously as Clutter because I didn't have any idea who Jumble and her party were before this?

I blink, then shake my head. There's no other explanation for it. This is still Jumble–I recognize her just as well as before. Except now my brain's filling in details that it was skimming over before—and in their place, leaving generic 'paindne' descriptions that I never questioned. But… just in case I'm wrong… I turn to my other shoulder and the hand that lies on it.

Clutter's hand. Connected to the rest of Clutter, who looks exactly the same as I remember him. And right next to him is Llaliu. Further down from her are Sawyer and Gnash. The only ones I can't make out are Jumble's party–but I don't blame them for not wanting to get close to me. Since they're constructs, the heretic brain might do something horrible to them. Whether they can feel that and backed off, or if they just don't want to get close to me, is another question altogether.

My arm squishies as Jumble squeezes it. She opens her mouth and says something, but I can't hear anything. I smile nonetheless, which seems to frustrate her. The furrow on her brow, and the way she wrinkles her nose… it's kind of adorable. Even more so now that I can see the real her making that expression. I wonder if I'll still be able to see that when I get out of this brain-space.

Before I can wonder any more, a deep thrumming noise catches my attention. It pulses through the nerves like the drum line of a distant song. I carefully rise to my feet, ensuring that I don't squish the brain or Jumble's tail, and make my way to the source of the noise. Part of me recognizes that I'm walking through lockers to beeline for it. My body doesn't so much as stop as I step right through the seemingly solid objects, loosening Jumble's grip in the process.

With a direct path, I find myself standing in front of the sound in less than a minute. All the nerves are clustered around it and attempting to pry open the locker it must be stuck in. I simply reach right through it and close my hand around… something. A small, pyramidal something with four equal triangular sides. Two of them feel real. Pain lances up my arm, and I recoil as reality forces itself over me, overwriting the strange brain-space and sending me sprawling against the row of lockers behind me.

Two messages insert themselves over my vision.

Journey Continued.

Trial of connection completed.

Existing without connections is pointless. You know this now.

You feel this now.

You are this now.

And you are one step closer to the real.

Reward: on the hour, for fifteen hours.

You are two from the real.

Go forth, young SHELBY, and make it so.

***

Subquest complete.

Before I can read the second, an intense wave of exhaustion overtakes me. And my mind drifts off to a deep, dreamless sleep.

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