Heavy, metallic scents fill the air. One is acrid, like burning dirty iron; the other fills my nose with a wooziness-inducing almost alcoholic waft. I raise my shirt to block my nose and take a step towards the mess of rails. The cart rumbles on without a hint of hesitation, dripping its cargo out onto the ground like a leaky crucible filled to the brim with molten metal.

A soft droplet hits the ground, then hardens instantly mid-splatter. Like a strange tiny metallic flower blossoming from the sanitary floors of the city. Dozens and dozens more trail behind the cart as it trails unerringly over the tracks, each carrying with it a whisper of magic and a scent like old silverware. I raise a hand to make sure my shirt's pressed tight to my face, then crush a purification coin against my face. A very small cloud washes over all the vital areas on my head, and once it's all in place, I lean down to get a closer look at the thing.

Wasteblossom

A mixture of construct material and molten metal, which was hoped to be the next step in construct evolution.

It smells heavily of iron and rot.

No quest? This feels like it should give me a subquest. "Pearl?"

She nods. "There's construct in there, but there's… a really weird alloy mixture too. I could tell you just by looking at it that it's completely incompatible with all the constructs."

"Really?" I stand back up and take a step back. "How?"

"Because the constructs are made from counterfeit shellraisers." Pearl leans down further to get a better look at the wasteblossom. "It's safe to get close to it. The fumes are the dangerous part, not the thing itself."

All right, then. I lean back in and shove my sleeve forward, then carefully pluck the blossom with a sleeve-covered hand. It hisses against my clothes. And leaves a blackened stain that smells a little like burning. Definitely doesn't feel 'safe to get close to'.

I hold the blossom up for Pearl to get a better look. "So shellraisers are incompatible with metals?"

Pearl nods absentmindedly to herself as she studies the blossom. "Yep. That's why we used glass, shell material, and everdriftwood. They're all at least a little biological so we can funnel our awareness through them if we make them right. Metal, though? Nope. Not at all. It doesn't hurt us per se, but there's no reason to use it for… well… pretty much anything."

Hm. That answers a question I never even thought about asking before. Pearl looks like she has more she wants to say, but instead, she pauses and turns her attention elsewhere.

I look up as the cart rumbles past once more, dripping another helping of wasteblossoms from the strange machine inside of it. Instead of piling on the first ones, the new layer of blossoms simply cause the first to stop existing with a little puff of concentrated magic that feels like nothing at all. And with every puff that disappears from the ground, an equal puff of creation echoes from the machine.

"Why's it doing that?" Pearl muses. "In the apartment, we pretty much followed the story of all that research going into the creation of the multi-personality construct. So what's the importance of this cart?"

I raise an eyebrow. Pearl waves me off to let me know her questions are rhetorical. Still, I can come up with a few messed-up theories. It's obvious this place is another source of system experiments–just with metal additives instead of trying to force multiple people into a single construct. Unless Pearl can glean more info from the blossom itself, I have a feeling the next step is to get closer to that cart.

With careful motions I set the blossom down on the ground, then nod up at the cart. "Next step is right up there. Unless you have anything else you want to say first?"

Pearl furrows her brow, but punctuates her thoughts with a shake of her head.

"I can't tell anything else from just this. We need the actual subquest description if we're going to make any progress now."

That's my cue. I grab a relocation coin and step towards the rail, then fill it with intent to teleport the cart itself. My eye twitches painfully in an obvious hint that the six-Worth hex isn't going to be enough. Which means it's time for a newly-tripled hex to make its debut. The coin appears between my fingers without any fanfare, but it feels denser than its non-tripled sibling. I roll it through my knuckles as I wait for the cart to come around again, then push a relocation into it.

This time the spell takes hold just fine. The cart rattles ever closer, dripping more metal-construct blossoms that disintegrate their brethren. I shift the coin onto my thumbnail and patiently take aim at the closest part of the track. Hisses and scents careen my way, and a flash of metal accompanied by metallic thunder screams bloody murder directly into my ears. Metal flashes into my crosshairs. With a mighty flick, my coin springs free.

It slams against the cart with enough force to leave a very small scratch. The machine continues on, unbothered by the sudden attack. I watch my coin spin through the air, spiralling in a long arc directly back at me. With my open palm as the endpoint. Soft, magical humming hits me before the coin does—and when it touches my skin, the hum amplifies to a harsh dismantling crunch and whir; like a buzzsaw cutting through thick animal bone.

I wince as I wrap my fingers around the coin and turn away from the tracks. The thundering roar of the cart dissipates from the distance I put between us, until I'm standing at the entrance to the locker room with a buzzing coin in my palm that's trying to give me a headache. Except the door isn't there. Just a mass of distended metal fused with the city's grey stone-like material rising up from the floor like a crashing wave.

"That's… new." I say dumbly as words fail me. "Am I alone here, or was that a door until two seconds ago?"

"You aren't alone." Pearl confirms with her own dose of suspicion. "Even my awareness said it was a door until we got this close. I think this is the boundary for the subquest."

The boundary? I… guess that makes sense. But it looks so unlike anything else we've seen so far. Maybe… maybe this has something to do with that disaster Click and Jumble have alluded to, but can't talk about without being censored. Now that I put a little thought into it… why is there even a subquest here? We determined this place was built after the incident. This machine shouldn't even be here, nevermind riding a rollercoaster with no loading area or supportive beams to keep the tracks afloat.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I turn away and roll the relocation coin through my fingers. "I was hoping for a more enclosed space… but I guess we'll just have to hope the thing doesn't break from crashing into a wall."

"Or!"

Relocation flares. I place the coin on the ground and step back as Pearl gawks in annoyance that I didn't let her finish. The cart sputters into being exactly where my coin was a second ago. Specialized track-hugging wheels screech as the momentum carries the thing a few inches forward.

It hits the wall.

And explodes.

My instincts shatter a shield to block the majority of the damage, but the utter heat and radiant magic splatters my salty shield without mercy. I silently thank my purification facemask as fumes wash over everything, coating the grey stickiness on my body in a thin layer of industrial blackened crap. No construct juice or metal, though, so that's a plus.

"That was stupid." Pearl states. "You're stupid for doing that."

I shrug and wave away the fumes. "You could've stopped me."

She sputters as her eyes widen. "I… you… humph!"

A grin tugs at my cheeks, and even Pearl can't help the smile in her eyes. Truth is, I could've easily handled that better. But this kills two birds with one stone. If the subquest fails right here, then the machine itself is important, and I just re-trigger it. Hopefully. Right now… though… it… doesn't… look… liiiiiikeeee…

I lower my shield with a nod. "Quest's still working. Looks like the machine wasn't important."

"That's what you think." Pearl agrees. "But what's with all these fumes? They're, like, completely solid. I can't even feel though them with my awareness. Can you?"

"Nope." I wave my hand through the choking black-red fumes. My fingers come away dirtied, but unharmed. "There must be a hell of a lot of ash in the air for that to be possible."

I take a few steps back to get clear of the fumes. They scrape against my skin like shy sandpaper, scouring away the strange grey film that came with the transition to quest. When I step out of the cloud, there's none of the strange sensation left. Somehow, it even got the stuff under my mask of purification without touching the magic itself.

My awareness latches onto something massive. Something right where the mass of tracks should be. It washes over the jagged thing like a wave over a massive undersea coral reef, feeling at a very strange surface with far more complexity than there should be. The edge of my awareness barely even reaches the center of it–or what I assume the center of it is. Before I turn around, the fumes clear from the crash site.

Revealing a broken machine and the cart it rode on. A simple cage trapped inside of a glass dome, once connected by thousands of small wires, now shattered into a million pieces. Even through the carnage I can see the smallest hole in the bottom–just enough for air. Or… drops of molten liquid. But now… whatever was in there… isn't.

"Shelby." Pearl whispers. "Turn around."

I swallow hard and wait for the bad vibes to tell me not to. But… my body doesn't scream that it's a bad idea. No alarms sound in my mind to keep me from looking at it. Hell, even my awareness probes at it with more curiosity than anything. It feels like nothing I've felt since we came here. Yet it's… oddly familiar. Like a variant of something I've held before.

Slowly, I turn on my heel and take in the sight. A massive lump of crimson-tinged grey that twinkles with beads of silver like impure metal. It doesn't writhe, or pulse, or emit fumes that look like they'll give me nightmares if I so much as breathe in a single breath. Part of me can't even believe this is made up of constructs. It's so… regular. So there has to be more to it.

"It's just a huge lump of metal." I muse as I walk up to it and put a hand on it. The thing isn't even warm to the touch. "Was this always here? Did destroying the cart just… unlock it somehow?"

"Exactly so."

A breathy, ethereal voice flows directly into my mind. Pearl shudders, but it's more with discomfort at the direct whisper than any sort of fear. There's no doubt in my mind that this is a construct. I lean in close and try to make out anything in the mass.

"Were you locked in the cage?"

"In a way, yes. The cage locked me away. Yet I was not in the cage. An ingenious method of trapping that which cannot be trapped."

The prototype for Illumisia's prison pops into my mind. Maybe she wasn't the only one the system used it on.

"Wait. You said you can't be trapped." I frown and tap the mass with my knuckles. "Aren't you right here?"

"No."

"...Are you going to elaborate?"

"Also no."

I roll my eyes and step back. "So what is all this shit then, if it isn't you?"

A soft breeze rolls past me. "Failures. Both in the practical sense, and in the ideological sense. What was once a hope for greatness turned into a method of punishment. I alone survived. Or, rather… I alone was made whole in the crucible of calamity."

"Excuse me?"

"You are excused, friend. If it isn't too much trouble, could you please fetch the coin you used to enter here?"

The coin? …My infusion coin. Right. There has to be something in it now. I prod at it with my awareness to see where it landed, and sure enough, it seems like it got thrown by the explosion to the other side of the room. I jog over to it while Pearl mutters theories to herself that she dismisses before I get a chance to say a word.

"Alright, here it is." I say to the empty air as I bend to pick up the coin. "What now?"

"Now I need a vessel." The voice coos, and a breeze gently turns my head to focus on the mound of metal. "That will do nicely, if you could please separate out a chunk large enough for a person. With enough extra for some leeway on my part."

I raise an eyebrow and walk right back to the pile. Instead of separating out anything I press infusion to the chunk and force whatever's trapped inside into the mass. Wind whistles past me, carrying a tint of black-tinged crimson and a sigh of ecstasy. A small portion of the entire thing shudders, and without fanfare, a metallic rendition of a paindne simply steps free. Its colours shift so the red is uniquely in its eyes, claws, and the accented tips of its fur. Everything else is the same metallic grey with speckles of brilliant silver.

The construct takes one long look at me, its eyes shifting from pure red to simple red irises with silvery grey pupils and whites. It smiles wide as razor-sharp teeth fill its maw to the brim–and then some. It's like looking into a drawer full of discarded razorblades. Then it raises its arms and pulls at the back of its head, drawing forth a long mane of brilliant red hair that cascades down to the center of its back.

"Ah… life." The construct hugs itself tight and shudders ecstatically. "How I've longed for this. …Though I suppose I can make a few more adjustments to this form…"

It turns away and thrusts its hands into the mass. Veins of silvery grey and crimson run through its body as it gains soft definition, filling out a previously skeletal frame with the muscle and plush of a life well enjoyed. When it's done, the construct looks positively maternal. Then it clicks its tongue like scraping razors and adds another helping of material to… well… everywhere. But particularly around the bosom and ass areas.

"This is far better." The construct says proudly in a much… huskier voice than before. Like even its voice is filled with indulgence. "Now, follow me. You still have a quest to trigger–and subsequently–finish."

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