I stare numbly at the pile. Shreds of plastic float in the air like stilled confetti from a forgotten celebration–hanging limply as the hopes in my heart die out one by one. They can't all be destroyed. A few scythes through the pile should've left at least a few behind.

Strangled, pained noises burble out of Ebb's throat. She falls to her knees, clutching her stomach as shudders and twitches wrack her body. I swallow all my own sensations and rush to her side, placing a hand on her shoulder and kneeling down to try to see eye-to-eye. Her body is unbelievably warm.

"I'm dead. I-I'm dead," she mutters shakily, each word tumbling through the air like brittle leaves in a frigid autumnal wind. "It destroyed all the anchors. None of them are left. All… I'm dead… I'm dead…"

Her breaths and words trail off to quiet, clustered huffs that repeat 'I'm dead' over and over again until the words feel as if they've lost all impact… or become too commonplace. Too true. My own words, of sympathy or of assurance I can't tell, stick to my mouth like steely burrs. I want to tell her she's wrong. That we're definitely going to save her.

It would be too cruel a lie to give empty hope like that.

Jumble thunders in on static-filled steps, her magic flaring a prismatic rainbow of annihilation. Off in the distance, my awareness feels the monster screeching out its dying breaths as glints of static scour away the last of its resistance. She breathes heavily, though not from exertion, and locks eyes with me. Silently, I pass along the information with a directed nod and a heavy expression.

She turns to the pile. Her fears come true.

"No, no, no! They can't all be destroyed! It was just some scythes, not a dang blender!" Jumble echoes my initial thoughts almost exactly, but she makes for the pile to confirm what my awareness already told me. Junk moves inches in suspended animation as she digs through a tragedy counting down very quickly to zero.

Ebb grabs my ankle, her grip strength abandoned in the face of death. Then she wraps her other arm around my leg and stops making any noises altogether; her chest heaving with silent breaths as she panics. I set my jaw and glance over at Jumble and her spray of junked lifelines from digging deep into the pile with hopes ablaze. She'll be… fine. Alive.

I lean down even further and wrap my arms around Ebb's torso. My bloody clothes press against her back, forcing out a stuck breath that brings with it a flood of terrified sobs. She's not crying. That somehow makes it worse.

Pearl removes her hand from the beacon and slumps against my shoulder–half from exertion, half from despair. "Shelby. We… I don't know what we can do for any of these people now."

I gently pat Ebb on the back of the head. "I don't know either, Pearl. Can they ever leave this place without their anchors? I'm pretty damn sure the system would jump at the opportunity to turn them into constructs."

Ebb flinches. Shit, probably should've said that a billion times quieter.

"You're probably right. Which means we only really have one option," Pearl says while shifting her attention to Jumble–who just gave up looking. "We have to completely destroy the quest. If that's even possible."

Jumble pitches a handful of plastic scrap at the dying monster then stomps over to us. Any despair and fear Ebb is feeling right about now are pervertedly mirrored in Jumble's expression as raw, hateful disgust. At the system. At the quest. At the horizonguard. And as she takes a look down at Ebb… a little of that disgust gets pointed at all of us. For not being strong enough to stop the freakish worm-thing from consigning potential hundreds to death, replacement, and servitude.

She kneels down beside me and entwines her arms around my stomach to pull her face into my neck. With a good huff of… me, I guess… she seems to let go of the inwardly pointed disgust, refocusing it towards the task at hand. One that we can't tell anyone who might–even accidentally–let this info leak.

"Clutter, Gil, and that's it," she says seriously. "They're the only ones we can tell about this."

I nod in agreement. "The best outcome is us destroying the quest; then nobody has to ever know how close the reaper's scythe came to their necks."

"Mmhm. Yeah," Jumble nuzzles against me with a sigh. "This place was destroyed once before. But the system has to have safeguards so that never happens again. So how do we do it?"

All I can do is shrug. "Heretics. Maybe the room with the liquid magic, or the central server room, or maybe we can detonate Slice's radioactive sludge and blow half this place to smithereens. We have options."

Jumble squeezes me a little tighter. "None of which stop the horizonguard from clearing the quest before we can destroy it."

Yeah. That's the main issue. I let go of Ebb with one arm and wrap it around Jumble's shoulders as I stare off into the distance. There are, honestly, a lot of options. Most of 'em are probably dead ends, but they're dead ends that feel like they'd give us some kind of guidance for what we have to do next. Time really is our worst enemy here.

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So… we just need more time. If we can stall the horizonguard… then we stand a chance. The building bricks of a plan start to click together in my mind; force the horizonguard into a detour. Find the server room Click alluded to and try to shut down the quest from there. If that doesn't work, we find the liquid magic room and use it for… whatever it's going to be useful for. And if none of those things work…

We take Slice and detonate wherever the next step of the quest actually is, consequences be damned. The system wants this place too much, and too obviously, for us to ever let it phase into reality.

I lace my arm through Ebb's and haul her up. She doesn't make a sound, but looks at me with eyes that want to hope, but just can't bring themselves to believe. I don't patronize her by giving some grandiose speech, or promising her that everything'll be alright. Instead, I pat her on the shoulder, put on the most sincere expression I can manage, and fill my chest with determination.

"We're going to do everything we physically can. Can we trust you to do the same?"

Ebb's expression pinches for a moment–obviously that wasn't what she was expecting me to say. But as tension fills her bones, turning the fearful mass of despair in her heart into resolution to move forward, Ebb cracks a very forced smile.

She thumps her fist against her chest. "I'll give it everything I have, boss. Even if it kills me."

I almost wince as she stares at me, the fear of death buried just below the utter, unyielding desire to live. Her last five words are far too ominous for my liking, but it would sound so wrong for me to point that out now. It isn't my life that could end at literally any moment.

"Good to have you, then," I force myself to say through an equally forced smile. "I need you, and anyone you trust enough to stand up to the horizonguard and live, to go and make as much trouble for him as you can. I'll relocate my own forces here to join you once you've gathered your people."

Ebb pounds off another salute. "Yes, boss, sweetheart. There aren't many of us I'd willingly put up against the traitor boss, but we'll do everything we can to slow him down. Should we wait for the masked trio to back us up?"

Those guys? I'm not sure I can count on them for anything… but the one who pretty much died has to hold at least a little grudge. Know what? I'll put Gil in charge of them; they seem to trust him. Yeah. That'll do.

I nod in confirmation. "Go meet up with Belay at Gil's shop. Those three will probably head back there when they revive their friend… somehow. I'll be in constant contact with Gil, so if you need to get a message to me, just send it through him."

"I can't just have your contact information?" Ebb asks.

…Yeah, guess that'd be easier. I pull out my Class Card, to which Ebb does the same. We tap them together to exchange info, then she sends hers away and snaps off another salute before hurrying over to the beam of light descending from above.

"See you soon, boss," she says confidently. "Hope we can save my life and everyone else's."

I give a wave as she crouches down, then jumps all the way up, soaring through the hole and disappearing from view. My awareness feels her walking… walking… walking… until she hits the edge of it and disappears into nothingness. I finally let my hopeful expression fall and turn to Jumble with deadly seriousness.

"There was a locket in the pile. My awareness latched onto it for some reason. It didn't… survive, did it?"

She shakes her head. "You already know the answer to that."

Yeah, I did. Damn it all. I quest out with my awareness again to the pile of scrap, feeling through the wreckage of lives for a thread of the sensation from minutes ago. It's so much weaker than before… but that's because it's coming from multiple places. A dozen chunks scattered across the room ranging in size from a cherry to a pea. I walk over to the closest one–a chunk of the lid–and snatch it out of the air.

I turn it around. Squirming confirmation wriggles around in my brain as my eyes struggle to take in a picture within the dim light. From this shard, all I can make out is the familiar face of a young paindne girl. One who gave me a simple quest so many months ago; find any traces of her dad, who the horizonguard took away.

Nothing updates in my Class Card. Because it was just a promise to a worried little girl. I clench the fragment in my palm as it digs into my skin, cutting just deep enough to draw the thinnest drop of blood. All the other fragments call to my awareness like dim fireflies in the night. One by one, I follow their signals to collect the entire story.

Not two minutes later I have the whole locket in my hand. It sticks together like soft sand, reconstructing the locket in a way that can't ever be whole again. I can't quite explain why I know that, but there's something missing from it that was there before. A whisper of foreign magic. Most likely the spell that made it an anchor and not just another piece of jewelry.

A complete picture stares up at me from the hinged side of the locket–and a ring held in with black iron snaps stares from the other. Nothing about the ring has any obvious significance; no etching, no jewels, no filigree; just a simple iridescent band of some kind of gemstone. The picture, however, gives far more information.

In it are two figures; Clamber, the little girl who gave me the quest, leans against the leg of a young-ish man who looks down at her with obvious parental love. A paindne man with very fine fur, piercings in his lip, eyebrow, and nose, and both ears so mangled with holes that I can't even start to imagine how it happened. He has a similar facial structure to Clamber, and from the way she tries to mimic his casual stance, it's obvious he's the man we're looking for.

Though… something about the man bothers me. For one, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy to run a high-end jewelry store–though that could just be my bias talking. The other reason is more… ethereal. My brain almost wants to say it recognizes this guy. Maybe in passing, maybe from when we freed the prisoners; hell, maybe from the people who attacked our tower. As the seconds tick by, I only grow more confident that I've met this guy somewhere before.

I snap the thing shut and shove it in my pocket before the sensation can overwhelm me and feel around for Jumble with my awareness. I find her over by the unnamed monster as it thrashes out its final moments. Junk and treasure alike crunch under my feet as I make my way over to her, put a hand on her waist, and watch the thing die with her.

Yet right before it bites the dust… a word subconsciously rises to the tip of my tongue and bubbles over before I can think.

"Repurpose."

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