Click walks towards the opening without an ounce of hesitation. Which is good, because I have more than enough hesitation for the two of us. …No, three of us, since Jumble's already starting to walk towards the door as well. There's a very short list of places those four would be taking us. The server room, colourful magic cauldron room, or the last uplifting trial.

I reach up to scratch my neck. My earrings sting in warning before I can get my fingers close enough to rip at the fragile skin.

"Damn it," I mutter under my breath. "Thought we'd have a few more minutes."

Pearl's giggles echo in my head while I quickly join Jumble and Click in the procession towards the light. All the shapes behind it shift in anticipation, as if they're even more anxious about this than I am. Maybe they are. It's their home and existence the horizonguard is directly threatening.

Jumble smiles at me as I fall in stride with her. Click doesn't even look over, its face an unreadable stoic mask of concentration. Though the way it taps its fingers together betrays at least a few anticipatory jitters. Given the size of the room, it doesn't have to anticipate for long; moments of long strides puts us right in front of the door. Slight warmth oozes out from the opening like steam from a sauna, spreading over my feet and soaking into my newly-repaired clothes.

There's no wetness or dryness to it. Just heat. I tug at my collar as Click leans forward and opens the door the rest of the way, unleashing the heat and light in full. It steps into the strangeness, then finally looks back to make sure we're following. Just like the other three, all I can make out of Click now is a shadowy outline.

I share a look with Jumble. She shrugs and takes the initiative. Heat and light overtake her, turning her colours and shapes into a simple shadow under the intensity. She pats her book with a hum of interest.

"I've never felt this before. It's like only simple shapes and shades can exist here; light, shadow, and nothing else," she notes as she fans her face. "Ooh, and it's hot. Hurry up, Shelby; we don't want to die of dehydration before the constructs take us wherever we're supposed to be going."

"That'd be damn bad," I chuckle and reach a hand for the light. Shadow devours my definition wherever the light hits, sculpting my body into something like an afterthought. "Thaaat's weird."

Jumble grabs my hand and yanks me in. The door slides shut behind me the moment I'm fully in, and inside of the light, only people-shaped shadows reside. I can't tell how far away anyone is, or exactly pinpoint which way they're facing, since everything basically looks two-dimensional.

I stare at Jumble, then at Click on my other side. They're both exactly the same amount of enshadowed, which shouldn't work with pure light. So this has to be an anonymity spell. Why? Hell if I know; everyone here is allied against the system and the… quest.

Ah. That's why. "So the light keeps the quest and system from noticing us somehow?"

The liquid construct nods, a motion that sloshes through its rickety frame in one constant unsettling wave. "I couldn't explain it to you, savior, but it does. At least that's what the walking disaster at my side assures me."

Slice sighs and shakes her head. "Do you really want an explanation, sloshy? Or are you just happy being prickly?"

A laugh ripples through the construct. "Oh, you know me too well… Slice."

"Rngh," Slice grumbles and crosses her arms. But she doesn't retort; seems like the liquid construct hit a nerve somehow. Probably to do with her old name, if I had to guess.

Click clears its throat. "Yes, it works wonders, thank you. Now… please lead the way."

The heretic taps its fingertips together, then turns and walks confidently into the blinding light. Well, not quite blinding, since I can still see, and my eyes aren't cooking in their sockets. Slice is the first to turn and follow the heretic, followed by Click, and then the liquid construct. Jumble and I take rear guard, though I doubt there's anything to guard from in here.

"So where are we?" I ask. "My awareness can't feel much of anything in here."

"That'd be me, sorry." Slice apologizes. "It takes a lot of magic to concentrate the air so much that the quest can't barge in. For where we are; well, there's only one place in this entire city that has enough shielding to stand up to my magic."

Our footsteps echo against the same-y stone as everyone goes silent. There's no reason for it at all, yet it feels necessary. Like holding your breath after a huge lightning strike as you wait for the thunderclap. Light and heat roll off my body without so much as a drop of sweat trickling down my forehead, serving only to cement the weirdness of Slice's utterly destructive magic.

Rummmble.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Deep, tooth-rattling noise appears out of nowhere. A thrumming rumble that rises from the ground, into my feet, jostles my stomach, and comes to rest squarely in my skull. All I can imagine is heavy machinery lining the walls–wherever the walls are–for an as of yet unknown purpose. Maybe it's the server room slash generator room. It'd make sense for that to be shielded against magic.

I open my mouth to ask, but the wrong sound comes out. My vocal chords vibrate perfectly in tune with the machine-like thrumming, harmonizing my voice to a noise I didn't even know I could make. Now that I know to look for it… I can hear the others. Jumble's voice, slightly higher pitched and bright. Slice's, sultry and smooth. Click's, mechanical and precise.

But not the other two. The liquid construct just vibrates with the thrumming without making a single sound, and the heretic is… just… not affected by it. I don't know how I know that, but at this very moment, it doesn't feel like the heretic is here with us. Maybe it isn't.

It stops on a dime, then turns and stares straight at me. "Your input is needed."

Words cut through the noise like polished blades. I try to speak again, but whatever's hijacked my vocal chords hasn't let go yet. With the clack of my teeth snapping shut I nod in confirmation.

"Here. You can't see it, but there is an access panel here," the heretic says in a voice that… doesn't sound like the one I saw in the darkness. This one doesn't tap. "We are here. In central power. A safer place for us to speak on things where the system can't listen in. Where I can… no, no, no, I can't talk like this. It feels insulting to the poor bastard whose shape I'm borrowing."

All the personality in the voice shears away, leaving only what I can describe as the most voice voice I've ever heard. It's like a combination of every single person who has ever talked mixed together, and then the perfect average was taken from that. A mishmash of accents, intonations, emotion, and everything else–all to make a voice so mundane that it's impressive.

The liquid construct shifts to stare at the newcomer who was wearing the heretic's shape. "Who, or what, are you? If I may ask, of course."

The newcomer cocks its head to the side. Its shape distills down as well, forming what I assume is a perfectly average inhabitant of this world. Painidne tail, Y'tocwa heel spikes and horns, ogean bulk, gris smokiness, and a whole lot more I can't even start to identify. It should clash horribly, but just like its voice, it somehow comes out perfectly average–in a way that nothing can ever actually be. Yet here it is.

It laughs averagely. "You haven't figured it out yet? Well, I can't blame you; you were never supposed to be a part of this. Shelby and Click here are the reason you're alive and thinking; otherwise you'd be in storage down in the tombs like the rest of them. I wonder how close the horizonguard's gotten by now?"

The newcomer… who I have a horrible feeling I know… turns to me and grins. Even through the shadow, I can see its teeth. As it speaks, they shift. Into human teeth. Normal human teeth, with incisors and canines and molars–not like mine.

"I've been doing my damndest to slow him down, but you know–system's favorite and all that," it says, voice and body shifting into a woman that I very much recognize. "Hell, if I wasn't playing for your side, there'd be a city-sized smear somewhere on the planet surface and the system would have its uplifting facility operational again. Wonder who it'd go after next."

Slice swallows audibly. "Next. You're sure?"

The newcomer, now perfectly inhabiting Ursula's silhouette, snorts in amusement. "'Am I sure', she asks. Sister, what do you think made the system stop at uplifting one new species? Before you answer; no, it wasn't because the paindne are special. Y'know, I think you in particular might have a little something to do with it."

"The disaster," Jumble cuts in. "That's the only reason?"

"Mmhm," not-Ursula hums in confirmation. "Given enough time, the system would've gone after something else next. Then another thing. And another. Until its uplifted species outnumbered the natives and it could have full control. 'Course, the only real reason it took so long was because it made a huge mistake using the megalodane as a base. That monster's about the closest thing to a god this world has, and boy, did it's DNA not want to be subjugated."

Pearl beams with pride at the praise directed at Illumisia. I silently thank her for unknowingly stymieing the system's world-conquering efforts. Not-Ursula turns and looks at me expectantly. It obviously wants me to say what it is. Yet a huge part of me still refuses to believe that it's actually on our side. Naturally occurring or not.

Yet… here we are. Standing right in front of it, in the place the heretic told us was safe. That same heretic that ripped us out of the uplifting trial, who was actually a very successful shellraiser experiment that the system supposedly still doesn't know anything about. If it doesn't know right now… and the thing standing here in a proxy of Ursula's body seems like it does… then the only logical conclusion is that it hasn't told the system yet.

I lick my lips. Not-Ursula raises her chin expectantly, eyes locked on my earrings as she does.

"How do you like my gift?" it asks with a grin. "Helps with the system-commands, doesn't it?"

A chill races down my spine. "System commands?"

Not-Ursula nods. "You took three uplifting trials. Got the rewards from them, too. Did you really think there wouldn't be any side effects at all? Hell, I had to screw with a lot of entryways to make sure you never finished the fourth one–and then squelch here offers to lead you directly to the last one!"

The liquid construct gasps and falls to its knees. "I… I almost killed my savior?"

"Kill? I wouldn't go that far. Probably closer to… hmm…" not-Ursula taps her lip in thought. "More self-mutilation as her megalodane parts do everything they can to rip out the system-made parts. Hard to control those instincts, yeah?"

I can't bring myself to say anything. Pearl, on the exact same hand, is utterly petrified. She'd assured me it was fine. I hadn't pushed back hard enough. We came damn close to doing something insanely stupid.

"But see, the system made a fatal mistake; it gave me too much control," not-Ursula pauses, then coughs. "Unwittingly, of course, but we'll ignore that for now so I look better. Now hurry up and access the panel. You can't work on killing me while I'm still absolutely immortal."

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