As time crawls on, Clutter and Llaliu take careful steps towards the edge of the pool above which now floats the tear in reality. Neither of them mentions anything about fingers, or frozen time, or shake like they just witnessed something wrong. Nor do they open their Class Cards to check the notification that should've pinged directly to them.

Pearl stares straight at the wound, her eyes narrowing and widening along to her thoughts. Suspicion and bewilderment fight for purchase in her body language, but eventually she settles on a middle ground that gets the gist of both through well enough.

"That wasn't… it… what was…"

She trails off as she raises a hand to cover her mouth in thought. Whatever she's struggling with… I'm in the same boat. Because up until thirty seconds ago I was convinced that the heretics were paindne. But that thing… with those fingers… and not a hint of construct material anywhere… if that was a paindne, then the system is more sick and twisted than I thought.

A soft hand nudges my shoulder. I turn to see Jumble with an utterly unconfused expression; pure, radiant hatred. She motions at the tear and slowly pulls her hands away from each other, then tilts her head slightly. I nod in confirmation, which seems to both relieve and worry her.

"It wasn't just me, then."

"No, it wasn't." I reply quietly. "Do you know anything about… uh… the heretics?"

Jumble clenches her teeth in a snarl directed at the wound. "I can't say. But… that version? That the system is claiming is a heretic? No. I know absolutely nothing about that thing and what it can do."

The system didn't censor her at all there. That's… worrying. Because if I'm understanding this right, then that means this is all still part of the quest's boundaries. So it planned for this–at least in some kind of contingency. Which lends credence to my worries about the system wanting exactly this to happen to the uplifting trials.

I raise my hand, pause right at my neck, then raise it some more to run my fingers through my hair. Can we even trust this? We don't have a choice, yeah, but… are we just walking to our deaths? Feels like I've asked myself this way too many times over the hours we've been stuck in here. If it's even been that long.

"Are you two coming?" Clutter asks, his tail wagging eagerly to splash against the overflowing water. "It's the exit! We're finally getting out of here! Shouldn't you be happier?"

Jumble and I share a knowing look, then we both plaster on happy, yet suspicious expressions. That seems to satisfy Clutter, but I know he's going to hold onto that moment of suspicion and play it over and over in his head until he comes up with some outlandish explanation. So we'll have to fill him in the second we get some time away from the others.

Harsh, resounding clicks reverberate up from the surface of the stilled waters as Llaliu takes a tentative step onto it. She sways and tips like a stack of crates on a fishing boat caught in a storm, but the water holds her weight as if it were covered in a thin layer of ice.

"Whoa… it's… yurk… not as solid as it looks!" She exclaims.

From where I'm standing, it looks like she's hamming it up for no reason. The water's perfectly still and flat under her feet. But I'm not about to faceplant because I doubted her. As Clutter and Jumble watch on I take a step onto the water as well, and–

My foot sinks half a foot into the water. I grunt in surprise and hold out my arms to try and stop myself from falling, but suddenly, my foot rebounds and stays perfectly flat on the surface of the water. Llaliu nods sympathetically. I swallow hard and carefully bring my other foot onto the water, putting as little weight as humanly possible into bringing it down, but it sinks through the surface nonetheless.

Before it, too, pops free and leaves me looking like I just tried to take one too many steps at the top of the stairs. All the disorientation from the movement's still stuck in my stomach, but there's absolutely no visual proof that it ever happened.

I make sure to watch my next step closely. My foot approaches the surface, then stops. Hard. Like I'm stepping on a marble floor with and trying to make as loud a footstep as possible. But the sensation in my mind keeps going–starts falling–and violently corrects itself just a moment later. It's one of the strangest sensations I've ever felt… and it has to be because of the heretic. I don't know how, but that's the only semi-logical explanation I can come up with.

Jumble squeaks in surprise as she takes her first step. Clutter follows almost immediately after, his eyes widening into saucers while he struggles to stay on two feet. If the heretic can make this a solid surface, then why did they do… whatever this is?

"Okay… slowly… slowly…" Llaliu mumbles as she gets closer and closer to the tear. "Just a little bit more… only a few more steps…"

She carefully reaches her hand out to touch the wound–and whatever lies beyond it. Magic swells and shimmers to block my view of the other side, but I can almost make something out. Nothing solid, yeah, but at least it looks like there's something on the other side. Her fingers gently brush the very edge. A shock of magic courses through the air, and in the next moment, Llaliu disappears.

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And a new coloured stain appears in the wound. It turns around quickly, makes itself larger, and extends something back towards it. Llaliu reappears in another flash, grunts at the sensation of stepping on solid water, then grins wide and motion for us to follow.

"It's safe. But it's not where we went in." She says confidently. "It's… you know what, it'll be faster if you just take a look."

With those parting words, she taps her fingers against the wound once more and disappears. Her stain reappears on the other side, and before I can reach the wound, another stain joins her. She looks over at it, but there's no urgency in either stains' body language. It must be one of the others. I nod to myself confidently and reach out to touch the wound.

Suddenly, I'm standing next to Llaliu. No fanfare, no pizzazz, just a flicker of magic and I'm here. Sawyer salutes with both hands, his eyes filled with relief and more than a little exhaustion, and his entire body absolutely sopping wet. I frown, a question forming on my lips, but before I can ask it Gnash appears next to Sawyer in a subdued flash of magic.

He takes one look at me before hiding half of himself behind his friend. "Why aren't you two soaking wet?"

"I could ask you the opposite." Llaliu says. "Where'd your portal open?"

Gnash shakes the water off his fur, then tries to wring out the sleeves of his shirt without taking it off. "About a quarter mile underwater. All the pressure backed up from the pipes and blew something down there; it was so obvious you'd have to be blind, deaf, asleep, and numb to not at least feel it."

"It was scary, ma'am!" Sawyer adds. "I thought we were going to have to fight something, but luckily, nothing showed up!"

"Marking this as the weirdest subquest we've finished so far." Gnash mutters as Clutter and Jumble appear at the same time. "So… do we get the rewards now, or what?"

Jumble tilts her head to the side. "Why're you two soaking wet?"

With more flashes of magic, Dani and the rest of Jumble's party appear. All soaking wet, and all with dour expressions not quite mirrored on Sawyer and Gnash. Dani's is the most vitriolic, and it's aimed squarely at me. It looks like he wants to start a fight, but one look at Jumble stuns him in his tracks. By the time I turn to her whatever was on her face has gone right back to the same person I'm used to, but the stunned shift in her party's body language proves something was there.

"It's done." Dani states. "That's enough. So where are we? This doesn't look like where we were kidnapped from."

I slowly nod in agreement. We're standing in what looks like a… pool locker room. Hundreds upon hundreds of lockers line the walls or lie neatly in rows through the entire large room, each closed tight and wrapped in thin strands of tape-like magic. All of it's made of the same material as the rest of the city, but each locker has a small black nameplate on it–most of which still have names written on them in varying colours.

At least I think they're names. All of them are written in paindne script, and all of them are handwritten. With extremely varying levels of skill. More than a few of them are only written on the bottom half of the plaque, and with such big, shaky letters that my brain instantly jumps to the most unsettling option. The very idea of literal children going through uplifting trials does not sit well with me.

Jumble steps up to a locker with a nameplate written in pink chalk and runs her fingers over it. The words smudge ever so slightly. She reaches down and tries the handle, but it doesn't so much as rattle from her efforts.

She sighs and steps back with a shake of her head. "This has to be where they got ready for the trial. I wonder how many personal belongings are locked up in here. And for how long."

"Years, at the very least." Clutter says. "But, um, Gnash is right. Shouldn't we have our rewards by now? We are finished with the subquest, right?"

I shake my head. "Until the notification appears, don't let your guard down. It could be as simple as walking out of here, or we might have to find a specific locker that has somewhere for us to put a tower anchor in. Fan out, everyone. Same emergency messaging measures, and try not to scream unless you're actually in danger. Got it, Gnash?"

Gnash nods seriously. "I'll try my damndest, boss lady."

"All I can ask. Let's move." I turn to start searching, but a soft thump from off in the distance stops me in my tracks. "Wait. Did anyone else hear that?"

Jumble, Clutter, and Gnash all nod. Everyone else looks at me like I've got two heads, but once they see the nods, their suspicion turns to preparedness. Clutter pulls at his bandages and disappears, making his way towards the noise without me having to say anything. Gnash sprints right after him, and I follow right after Gnash while Jumble watches our backs.

"Please don't be another apartment situation." Jumble whispers. "No more system-caused tragedies, please."

I can't help but agree wholeheartedly. Lockers fly by as the soft thumping grows ever so slightly louder, until we find ourselves unceremoniously standing right in front of the source of the noise. A locker that looks no different from any of the others, save for the easily missable fact that the magic tape wrapping it up is split right down the side–like someone dragged a box cutter down it.

Clutter turns to me, fully invisible, and tilts his head in question. I nod in confirmation and ready a pair of shields and projectiles, along with a purification and an infusion just in case we need more firepower. He takes a deep breath, places his hands on the handle, and rips the locker open with the quiet swish of hinges in perfect condition.

Dull magic oozes free, spilling out in thin lines that fork and fork like bolts of lightning as they spread down the locker walls and creep out in every direction. Each of them feels like a little living worm, filled with strange sensations and thoughts that creep at the edge of my mind and carefully prod at my every thought.

I reach for it when nobody else will. The lines wrap around my arm, gently touching and feeling me like a curious animal. I brush them all away, breaking something in the locker free. Something the size of both my fists. With ridges.

Quest Item Found: Brain of a Heretic.

In murky waters, someone died.

You have found the second key.

The first lock continues to elude you.

Yet the second may be closer than you realize.

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