I want to do something heroic. Put on a last stand, give the horizonguard the beating he deserves, and ride triumphant into the sunset. But that's not going to happen. The quest just gave us twenty minutes to stop whatever just got set in motion. It's nowhere near enough. We need so much more.

Jumble grabs my wrist and yanks me towards the exit. The horizonguard screams out orders as we run, panic and anger struggling for supremacy in his voice. If he's worried… then there's still something we can do to stop him. Even with just twenty minutes.

Mist, cold, and cloth encroach on us–but Jumble's faster. My fingers twitch in anticipation, andd I let go of what I'm holding. Jumble doesn't stop, though; she sprints past all the horrific connotations that come with the petrified paindne corpses being used as transmitters, ignores a mess of strange machinery that might be responsible for the strange weather here, and vaults off the edge of the hole in the sky.

Tombstones rematerialize under our feet as the miles scream by. Every step takes a little extra effort from the water in the air itself slowing us down, but the horizonguard doesn't have enough to stop us. Jumble finally lets go of my arm and nods down at the top of the walls, then pulls out her blank book and flips through the pages.

"Nothing left," she mumbles. "I was hoping there'd be at least something to help. Shelby… all we can do now is destroy the city again. Unless you have any ideas?"

I clench my teeth and wrack my brain for something–anything–that could give us a hint. All the trials, all the subquests, even the constructs themselves; none of it points towards a solution that works out for everyone who had their anchors destroyed. If we make another disaster, then they'd either be stuck here or dead. If we just kill the quest, then there's a good chance everyone will be stuck here for good.

…Unless… I can make something work. But to do that, I wouldn't just need access to all the city's communications equipment; I'd need time. Time to make sure I get everything right and wouldn't be sending people randomly to their deaths. Something screams behind me like boiling water, confirming that time isn't something we have.

A cloth-wrapped sphere of water soars over me on a gale-force wind. Jumble looks up at it when it's right over us and snarls, shoving me to the side before it bursts in midair. White cloth rockets to the ground in a spray of foam, wrapping around Jumble completely in a matter of moments. Before I can get a word out she looks like a mummy that traded their bandages for bedsheets.

"Goh!" she muffledly insists. "I'll slowh thmm dwn! Relocate mm whn yu hve Slice redy!"

Hesitation turns my neck. Missiles of water and cloth scream towards me with murderous intent. Far behind them are the horizonguard and his two cronies, one of which I instantly recognize… and the other… is obviously a construct. The first one is Clamber's dad. Either his construct or him in the flesh; I can't tell from here.

Can't tell who the other one is, except for the fact that they're construct grey and a paindne. My brain–or Pearl, it's getting hard to tell them apart–says that might be Well Maryden, the one who had information about this quest. I haven't thought of that guy in months.

I take a step back and scan my available relocations. One with Gil, one with Llaliu, and one with the Quest itself. All the others are in the process of disappearing like sparklers snuffed between two fingers. Most of them were just scattered around in semi-important places… but some of them weren't.

"Shhellby!" Jumble cries as her hand rips through the sheet. "GOH!"

With a great effort, I tear my eyes away from everything and focus on the coin in Gil's possession. There's barely enough time for exactly one attempt at something before we take the literal nuclear option. Thick, sticky fog falls all at once in a thick blanket, coating the walls and everything else around us. I flare the coin before anything can stop me, then relocate to the relative safety of–

A warzone.

"Get down!"

Gil slams his shoulder into mine, throwing me out of the way of something that whizzes by with a shriek. My awareness latches onto the strange sphere of bubbling black liquid as it flies down the packed hall and detonates into a foul-smelling cloud of rot. Some of ours are utterly doused. All the horizonguard's forces are miraculously untouched, even if I swear I saw some splatter the back of a robed painidne's head.

All our constructs hit barely even react, but our one non-construct–an ogean that must've joined us from stonestep solutions–falls to their knees and grasps their neck with both hands. Tar-like liquid slowly seeps out of every opening on their face–mouth, nose, tear ducts… and everywhere it touches instantly turns a sickly yellow-grey.

"Damn it, one down! Another sickening!" Gil screams with a violent gesture at the injured ogean. "Stasis! Put her in stasis!"

A pair of constructs run up to the ogean woman and grab her by the elbows. She gurgles around the liquid, but doesn't fight them as they pull her off into the distance and away from the battle. Another sphere of tar-sick soars into the crowd before they can pull her away. This one detonates into a greasy fireball that somehow drowns out the roar of battle.

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"The hell is that!?" I yell over the roar of battle.

Gil laughs bitterly. "It's killed two and incapacitated five others so far, so I'd call it a problem! What the hell happened with you?! Why's there a countdown that also ends with you dying?"

Someone screams louder than everyone else. The top quarter of a human body lands at my feet, eyes still wide with terror. Gil looks down at it with disdain and kicks it towards a group of horizonguard-allied siege classes. Magic flickers to life before it can get within spitting distance and the corpse detonates against it in a flash of sickly yellow.

"The horizonguard won. The guest gave us a little more time to try and stop that, and now I need to find the last uplifting trial," I quickly explain as bits of flesh rain down around us. "That, or the room where they filled all the non-paindne constructs."

Gil raises an eyebrow. "You sure that's a good idea? I heard from our mutual liquid friend what'll happen if you get that last upgrade."

Of course he knows. I reach up to twiddle an earring as Pearl's opinion blasts my mind; she's very much in favor of the construct room, and very much not in favor of the last uplifting trial. But right now, the system isn't looking at the trials. And I have these earrings, which are doing… something. The heart and brain of a heretic are just rotting in my inventory. They have to do something, and that something has to have a connection with the uplifting trials.

"I'm about as sure as I can get. The mask buddies already marked the place, but we didn't go there before, so all I need is a guide. Liquid construct?"

Gil stares at me for a second, then sighs and summons a small vial of liquid. A singular milky grey eye floating inside of it instantly snaps to look at me as the screwed-on top starts to undo itself. With a nod goodbye Gil places it in my hand and turns to re-devote his attention to the battle.

"Good luck, Shelby," he says seriously. "We'll do our damndest to take out as many of these construct and horizonguard-loyal assholes as we can."

But that won't matter if I don't succeed. I nod at his back and turn to leave, but before I go, I drop a dozen purifications and infusions at Gil's feet. Then all there is left to do is find that uplifting trial and hope.

A wet pop sounds out a few seconds later and a lid pings off my forehead. "Sorry about that, my savior. That clerk tightened the lid a little too hard after I made a few very true comments about his business practices."

"Yeah, I bet he did," Pearl snorts. "Okay, Shelby, if you're serious about this, I can't stop you. But if you get incapacitated by this, we lose. I need you to acknowledge that."

"I know. So I won't," I assure her. "Alright, liquid construct, lead the way. We have about seventeen minutes before everything ends."

The construct shudders. "Yes, of course, my savior. As you know, there is only one uplifting trial for the final one, but it can be entered from many places–the closest of which is about five miles down the halls and two floors down. If the quest does its part, it should be so simple to complete that it won't take more than five minutes."

"Which would leave us twelve to do everything we need to," Pearl adds worriedly. "I know you think you know what you're doing, Shelby, but I don't share that confidence. And I can literally read your mind."

I grit my teeth and push my legs even harder. A dark, prismatic aura flares to life at the very edge of my vision like encroaching sleep. Two time limits threaten to collide at once, and if either one hits, everything's over. Can't let that happen. I latch onto the coin Slice is holding for me and briefly contemplate giving up on the best outcome. But… I can't let go of what the fake-shellraiser said in that void.

It called the Quest one of its own. Another shellraiser. If I let the Quest and the city die… then Pearl becomes the last of her kind again. I won't let that happen.

Pearl goes quiet and leans back. She stares me in the eyes as best as she can from inside my head and opens her mouth to speak… but thinks better of it and slowly lets it close soundlessly. I can tell she wants me to do the right thing. The easy thing. The thing that dooms a lot of people to death but saves so many more.

Yet she wants the hope those fake shellraisers bring. Because even if they're manufactured by the system, it has… no… oh. That's why the quest wasn't utterly loyal to the system. It doesn't have anything to do with whether it's naturally forming or not; it has to do with the fact that it's a goddamn shellraiser. It's why the Serenade of Shattered Shells triggered when I got here.

I have to save them.

I have to save them all.

My feet skid around a corner as the liquid construct screams. Two attackers appear out of nowhere, clad in armor that looks like it was freshly pulled out of a molten forge. I summon two projectiles and rip them to molten, bloodless pieces. Then my awareness feels it. Thousands of others exactly like them filling the halls to the gills. Someone powerful is here for me alone.

"Hold your breath"

A voice and a haze of purple pollen appear out of nowhere. It lazily drifts through the ranks of molten soldiers without a care, sticking to every piece of exposed metal like sugar on a cookie. The air absolutely reeks of familiar magic.

I lift my hands to my mouth and push hard. Someone makes a confirmatory noise.

Like a spark in a gas leak, the pollen goes up in flames. Instead of raw explosive force, however, the purple stuff simply expands and expands until it fills the hall with mossy sludge. I can feel it devouring the magic from the soldiers with an appetite so ravenous it can never be sated.

A simple flower lands on my shoulder. It shudders as the petals start to vibrate, carrying with them the voice I'd heard a second ago.

"We've got your back. Go on, save everything you can get your hands on–and then some."

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