A few dozen tests later proves that I'm not quite good enough to wager my entire reserves on one single toss. Tossing a coin is one-hundred percent replicable. This is closer to a ninety percent success rate. Still absolutely worth it, and it'll only get better once I get better at reading how the shells and pearl will fall. Plus, if I get an unknowing victim who deserves to lose a few Worth, I can just play the actual shell game to cheat them out of their Worth.

I scoop up the shells one last time, check them for cracks again, and find none. Once I have a little time to myself, I'll go through and triple as much of my stuff as I can. After practicing a hell of a lot to try and get that ninety percent up to a hundred.

"You're really sure this is the best way to do this?" Pearl asks. "I remember you saying something about how cards wouldn't work. Remind me?"

"If it's too obvious, or well known, then it probably won't work." I answer easily. "Marking cards, sneaking a peek at them while I set them down–those kinds of things would instantly make me lose. What I do with the coin is definitely not common knowledge, especially since I'm using the things the system made to do it."

Pearl hums in thought as she nods slowly. "So if we… say… got a deck of cards from the system and didn't modify them at all, would they work?"

I shrug. "Maybe? I'm not sure how I'd manage it without marking them in some way. If the system doesn't crack down on loaded shuffling, then maybe, yeah."

"And awareness is out? …No, wait, it wouldn't work at all." She sighs. "Most cards are just printed like that. Unless…"

She snaps her mouth shut and nods to herself. "Nevermind, I have a good idea. I don't think the system is… listening to us right now, so maybe it's safe to say it out loud?"

I motion for her to go ahead. The system definitely already knows how I cheat my coin trick. It's just that nobody else can witness me doing it for the thing to work. …Except Pearl. Obviously.

"Okay. So… we get you a deck of cards made, but instead of being printed like normal, we get them made with really thin metal. Then we engrave the pictures on them so we can sense those differences with our awareness."

Pearl spreads her hands and looks at me for my opinion. The hard truth is; she could be right. But we don't know if it was my awareness that screwed up the ball-and-cup game, or if it was the fact that Pearl had to be the one who shuffled the cups. Or… that because without cheating, there isn't technically a one in three chance to find the ball; with good enough eyesight I could do it one-hundred percent of the time.

I exhale through my nose and shake my head. "You could be on the right path. Or you could be wrong. We'll have to do more awareness testing before I'm confident enough to wager anything on it."

"So we're sticking with throwing shells for now?"

I nod. "So we are."

"Boo. That doesn't feel very 'gambler' at all." Pearl sighs, then scurries up to sit on my shoulder. "Based on those books I read back on Earth, you should have coins, dice, and cards. And a pair of sunglasses that don't let people see your eyes at all."

"Dice are unbelievably hard to cheat discreetly without using loaded dice. Same thing with cards. Sure, I could shuffle the right card to the top, or slide the dice down perfectly so they just land on the numbers that I want, but those are easy tricks. Anyone with half a brain would suspect that something's wrong."

Pearl huffs and leans against my neck. "I know, I know. But throwing shells on the ground doesn't feel very 'high roller'. It's more… old men gambling in the dirt with their rent payments."

I raise an eyebrow at how accurate that was. "So which book was that in?"

"I dunno. Not a very good one." Pearl giggles. "So all we really have to do is get the system to give you some cards, and find a way to get those to be marked without actually marking them. Then it'd have to work, right?"

"As far as I can tell." I confirm.

A soft crash reverberates through the ceiling of the room with doors. I instinctively take a step back as Pearl squirms into her shell and assumes her more hushed observer role that she's been taking on lately. My mind struggles to hear any follow up, but I'm damn sure something just hit us.

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Humming magic confirms my fears a moment later. I hold my breath and flip two freshly tripled purification coins through my fingers, waiting for the moment when one of two things happens; the room with doors gives out, or the magic of our complex becomes too much for whoever the hell just landed on us.

"The horizonguard?" Pearl murmurs.

After a few moments of scratching, I shake my head. "Not him. He'd already know if he could break through, and he'd either be gone or inside with us right now."

"So one of his employees."

I slowly nod as the noise intensifies. Not in volume, but in sheer amount. "I don't know what the hell they're trying to do, but I'm damn sure it's not safe to leave the tower and the connected hallways any more."

"Which probably means Click's old alcove isn't safe any more, either." Pearl says grimly. "The horizonguard already knew we were there."

The scratching pauses. I let out a breath and pull out my Class Card to send everyone a warning; do not leave the tower unless it's through the amusement park door. A quick explanatory follow-up fills them in before they can send the obvious questions, and just as I finish up, the scratching resumes–except now it's coming from below us.

"Now they're trying to use the walls to get in. Shit. If they ever figure out about the amusement park district, we'll be trapped like rats."

Pearl sets her jaw and balls her fists. "Dani."

…Shit. We need more access points that the bastard doesn't know about, and we need them as quickly as humanly possible. Hopefully it'll take him… a few days, maybe even a week or two, to find the district. That's all the time we'll have to build up an army.

I can't wait around any more. But we also can't find the trials-turned-subquests without a lot of luck and time. My awareness flares at a burst of magic no louder than a handful of pudding dropped from waist height. It feels completely different from the scratching. So there's more than one of them. Maybe even dozens, just waiting outside for one of us to stupidly flee. I could check from the top of the tower. But I know I won't like what I see.

Just as I'm about to make a decision, the door swings open. Click zips into the room holding the wreath-sphere, raises it towards me, then freezes. It frowns and looks around at the sounds with a deepening expression of worry.

"What happened while I was gone?"

"I have no idea."

"Hrm. Unpleasant. I shall try to ignore it; the walls will hold. Here you are." It hands me the sphere, then backs away. "I checked, and it seems that the districts I marked earlier are indeed for a different reason. In addition, I helped the others who are searching for the subquest trials to the best of my abilities."

"Really? How?"

Click smiles pleasantly and returns to its corner. "With pure map data and personal assumptions. Hopefully it will help accelerate their search. For you, though, I have compiled a series of… important locations from before the city was reduced to this. The apartment you already cleared was one of them."

I look down at the wreath-sphere, which now has a single smaller hexagon within the district display. That's exactly where the apartment was. I swipe over to the next closest outlined district, then frown and swipe over to the amusement park instead. There's a little hexagon perfectly in the middle of it. Exactly where the rollercoaster tracks are.

"There's a quest in the rollercoaster tracks?" I look up from the sphere and raise an eyebrow at Click. "Is that from before the incident, or after?"

"Both." Click answers simply. "The sound without form is your entrance. Are you leaving immediately?"

I nod and send the sphere away. "If anyone else comes back, tell them not to go outside or use your old alcove. They can't be safe any more."

Click hums in confirmation. "Understood. Good luck."

Hopefully I won't need it. I give Click a wave goodbye and open the door again, stepping through to the sound of clacking as the door shuts behind me. Now it holds a slightly different tone; one that gets into my bones and seems to rattle me down to the soul. I shudder and walk through the locker room until the strange twisting tracks come into view. The sound seeps into my body the closer I get to the tracks, but nothing screams 'quest' to me.

I absentmindedly summon a purification coin and flick it towards the 'sound without form'. It detonates into a salty mist, and the sound just… runs through it without a moment's hesitation. But it shifts a little. From a rhythmic clacking exactly like a rollercoaster to something more… industrial. Like an old machine struggling to do its work. I toss a few more purifications at it, and the noise changes every time.

Until it sounds like nothing I can describe. Just metal doing… something it isn't supposed to. Then it doesn't change any more. I hum in thought, then flick an infusion at it to see what that does.

My eyes glaze over. Grey becomes the only colour that exists. My coin greedily devours all the magic inside of the sound, and when it's done, a strange machine exists partially within the noise. Rolling over the tracks at a constant pace while… something drips from its underside.

I raise my hand and flex my fingers. The grey is gone. But it feels like it's still there; a film covering me that's sticky and humid and slightly restrains my every move. If this isn't the subquest, then I don't know what the hell it is.

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