Reality pulls in on itself from the activation of the city's teleportation function. It hums and pulses like a heart side by side with an old refrigerator, both somehow harmonizing until the sounds are as one; machine and biological entwined at the furthest level. I glance back at all the paindne corpses-turned-amplifiers and say a silent apology, knowing that their deaths are the only reason this is happening right now.

One mental command. That's all I send; 'place the city in the ocean beyond the resort', though it's more an image and a string of feelings than a sentence. More magic surges from the city itself, drawing from a fathomless reserve of raw power that's just been sitting here for apparent thousands of years. Jumble grips my arm tighter and sets her jaw in a tight line.

"It's done," she whispers. "Twiddle, Scratch, Nosh… we actually did something good."

None of those names mean anything to me, but from how Jumble's voice creaks as she speaks, they're obviously important to her. Assumedly they're her allies back from when she first damaged the city, but that's just my own mind at work. Those could even be the 'real' names of the constructs she lost along the way.

I lower my hand and lace my fingers together with hers. She squeezes my hand without turning to look at me, her eyes transfixed on the long stretch of emptiness sprouting out from the entrance to the tombs. Colourful whirls of a signal snap out in the blink of an eye, then dull to a simple grey like the rest of the city. Shellraiser magic yet again.

Really makes me wonder… how the hell did the shellraisers lose against the system in the first place? Especially with Illumisia on their side. Nothing the system's shown me makes me believe that it could overcome those two allied and fighting together. But fall the shellraisers and old painted danes did. Maybe now that I have less system censorship, Pearl and Illumisia will actually be able to tell me.

Speaking of, Illumisia gently nudges me with a giant paw and raises her nose to the void beyond. "Hold on tight. My magics tell me that this trip is going to be very… strange… for those of you who can feel beyond normal senses."

"Strange?" I look up at her as a frown crosses my face. "Strange as in uncomfortable, or strange as in unexplainable?"

She chuckles and shakes her head. "You will have to tell me once your experience is over; I do not have an awareness. Not like you and those with shellraiser material in them."

I swallow hard at the insinuation; it's going to be me, Pearl, the Quest, and the heretic. Maybe some of the other constructs if we're lucky. But Illumisia doesn't sound worried, though, just… curious? Annoyed that she won't be able to experience whatever the hell we're about to be pulled into thanks to my awareness?"

"I'll take pictures," I chuckle flatly.

"No, you will not," Illumisia chuckles right back. "Ah, it comes. Best wishes, and for all of our sakes, I truly hope it does not have chronal altering properties as this space of phase does. Speaking from experience, the mind does not do well after years of isolation in a very small place."

A wave of colour and sensations washes over me the moment Illumisia stops speaking. It feels like I'm sitting in the front car of a roller coaster going through loop after loop after loop, vision dimming down to a small needle prick of light as my brain struggles to get the blood to function. Except that small pinprick never closes to total darkness. My brain struggles at this low level, queasiness and raw force pressing down on me from all the wrong directions to keep me conscious, yet never enough to bring me down below.

It should be. There's no relenting from anywhere; colour and force and unconsciousness barrage me mercilessly as the pinprick I can see through shifts from void to colour to void again as the city careens through… something. It's not quite reality. There's a soup here, a thick thing that's both nothing and everything at the exact same time. Eyes stare down at me questioningly, filled with the sleepy curiosity of a child waking up to the sound of their favorite morning cartoon.

Each and every one of them flies by in an instant. Each and every one of them completely ignores the city and looks directly at me. Into me. Into the mishmash of biology that is my body now, and at the shellraiser somehow taking residence inside of my skull. They all meet eyes with Pearl. Recognition shifts between them. An equal amount of confusion fills the tension, but before anything can resolve, the city slips away at speeds beyond comprehension.

"What are those?" Pearl whispers. "They almost feel like me, but… like… god versions of me. No… way beyond gods. I can't even tell if they actually exist, or if I'm just hallucinating that the endless void of wherever we are is filled with things."

The Quest struggles to step up next to me. The heretic joins it a moment later, its strange and gangly form taking on a much more paindne-like look than before. Still stretched and jointed in all the wrong ways, but in a way that's more mythical than painful. Like a jackalope compared to a normal rabbit, or that fat snake cryptid from Japan compared to an anaconda.

"Rude," Pearl giggles.

The heretic raises an eyebrow–a new addition to its face. "What's rude?"

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Its voice is so clear, so strong, and so… normal… that it takes me aback. From the way its own eyes widen to the size of saucers–literally, cracking its own orbital bones to do so–that's a surprise to it as well. It raises its hands to its face, gently covers its mouth, and smiles.

"My voice is back. I… I haven't spoken normally in millennia. Do I sound weird? Diphth–aurgh," it groans as it bites half its tongue off. "Outh, outh, outh. Muth sthronger than I remember."

The Quest smirks and pats the heretic on the back. "It'll take a little getting used to, but the shellraiser in you will have that fixed right up in a few shakes of your tail. Miraculous stuff, that goop. Hate to say it, but I understand why the system would go all those lengths to get at that raw, living creation that makes up your people."

Pearl rolls her eyes and slips out of my… head. It doesn't feel like anything. I decide not to question it.

"The system could've worked with us and made our home a true paradise. Instead, it destroyed everything and started over from scratch. Wiped the entire slate clean." Pearl swipes her hand through the air for emphasis, leaving a long trail of colour-streaked sparkling black in her wake. "It hasn't managed to get within a tenth of our magical or technological prowess in all that time. Heck, Earth has machines closer to our tech! And they're using ancient plants for fuel!"

The Quest blinks in surprise. "They are? That's kind of badass. How does that work?"

"It barely does thanks to the side-effects of the apocalypse," I cut in. "Magic brought back from your world is way better at powering things in a way that doesn't make them want to murder us. Plus, actually mining the stuff became nearly impossible after all the heavy machinery… wait. There's something out there."

I squint off into the distance at… something. My awareness caught it before my eyes did, and even at the speed we're going, the thing doesn't seem to be getting any closer. It's just a stain in existence, spreading like the roots of a fig tree in all directions. Each root dips into a coloured pocket of this strange place and coils around it, the tip breaking through with the insidiousness of a deadly virus laying dormant.

My neck tingles at the sight of it. Not from any remnants of the system, but from the blood pumping hard through the not-quite-perfectly healed flesh. Just looking at the wrongness sets my every sense of danger alight in a fight-or-flight that I can't choose either option of. Pearl hums in discomfort. Both the Quest and the heretic stare deeply into the wrongness, bodies squirming in anticipatory unsettlement.

I slowly raise my hand and point at the thing. A skill I haven't used in a long time pings into my vision, and I quietly consider if it's even worth using. Part of me doesn't want to know what the intruding stain in space actually is. Another part says that I have no choice but to know. The rooted stain doesn't react at all. It just… curls… creaks… and chokes the life out of the colours its endless roots dig deep into.

Involuntary shudders wrack my spine. I glance down at a stain of colour… one shifting in the spectrum of visible light like a glass marble caught in sunlight. The roots have barely crept around the mass of colour. Where they squeeze, tiny cracks form like the minuscule lines of frost at the edges of a window on the first cold day of the season. Something seeps through them.

Concepts. Truths. Laws. Changes to the coloured stain's reality forced upon it by the exposure to wherever the root exists beyond reality. I can't even begin to understand why I can make some of this out, but it feels like it's zipping up through my awareness from this far away. Unfathomably far away. Yet too close for comfort.

Far too close.

"See All."

See All activated: identifying…

Target identified.

Name unknown.

Origin unknown.

Colloquially referred to as 'the apocalypse' on Earth.

A being of unknown existence, with unknown power, and unknown motivations.

It slowly pierces the veil around universes normally kept separate, allowing for intrusions of concepts and possibilities once physically impossible within those worlds.

The first crack in _______'s reality carried with it the truth of living machines.

The apocalypse. That's… the apocalypse. And that little prismatic mess of colours is the universe where I live. Earth's universe. Does that mean… I need to see. I can't just make an assumption and let this go; we might never see this place again. My feet pound hard stone as my pinprick of vision falters, blacking out completely and leaving me nothing but my awareness to navigate by. I sprint to the edge of the tombs, scramble out into the open, and stare back at the way we came from.

At Pearl's home universe.

A long root trails through existence, slowly growing towards a shifting black mass speckled with colour. All the eyes shy away from it. The apocalypse hasn't touched Pearl's home just yet. But my awareness says… it's very, very close to getting there.

And there's a hole in the mass. A hole we made by leaving that invites the apocalypse into Pearl's universe. I swallow around a thickening throat as the word 'cataclysm' bounces around my brain like a superball. For a second, all I can think is that I fucked it. That this is the reason for the cataclysm alone. But… then I look a little closer, somehow, at the other side of a reality. Something that shouldn't be possible at all.

Another hole. A tiny, sickly white pinprick that something else used to get in. That has to be the system. There's no other explanation. It used the apocalypse to latch onto Earth, then stole humans away for some reason to fight its war for Pearl's planet. I just… can't find any reasoning for it. The system already won. Why bother with Earth after that?

"Shelby!" Pearl cries. "Look out!"

I blink in surprise, then turn to see the multicolour mass of my universe screaming up to meet my face. It grows, and grows, and grows, and grows, and grows, thousands of times in a single instant until I can't perceive it as anything but the entirety of everything. The city crashes through the strange protective layer keeping the root out. And the last thing I see as the resort's glittering waters superimpose themselves onto my vision is the tip of a root.

Slowly but apocalyptically encroaching towards the comparatively microscopic hole we just made. Just enough space for a cataclysm to slip through.

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