"We're here."

Jumble's declaration echoes through the observatory with all the confidence she put into them. She plants her hands on her hips and scans the room with a scowl, sending glances Dani's way every now and again for when he tries to make his escape.

"We're here," I repeat flatly. "It doesn't look like the tombs, but this is where the horizonguard was bringing Dani. So where do we go from here?"

"Mm… I don't know…" Jumble trails off as her scowl deepens. "Everything's telling me to take a look into that telescope, but it's pointed at a solid ceiling. Can your awareness feel anything like a shutter switch anywhere?"

I shrug. "What about your skill? Shouldn't that lead us right there?"

Jumble nods without hesitation. "It would, and I'll get it started right now. But it might take a little while to unravel whatever cryptic hints it throws at us, so maybe you can give it a shot too?"

"Sure; can't hurt. And while we're standing here being motionlessly productive–Clutter?"

He flickers out of the shadows and tilts his head to the side. "Yep?"

"Can you take a look around? See if there's anything obvious we're blatantly missing?"

"Yep!" he confirms with a salute, then goes about doing exactly that. Dani screeches in an attempt to lunge for Clutter when he gets close, but Clutter just headbutts him in the nose and keeps walking.

We all ignore Dani crumpling to the ground with a groan of pain and blood flowing freely from his nose. Jumble murmurs quietly to herself with a growing frown as her magic works, and I extend my awareness to cover the entire room as best as I can. Still can't see through anything that's airtight, but glass isn't a flat black pane anymore. So I can confirm that, through the telescope viewpiece, there's nothing visible but a little circle of ceiling.

So it isn't a magical x-ray telescope. Too bad; that would've made things a whole lot easier. I shift away from it and scan the rest of the room, giving each and every inch of it an ocular patdown that couldn't be more complete. Stairs, a telescope, and a platform underneath the far end of the telescope for people to stand on.

There's no maintenance equipment, though. Or controls, or star charts. Seems like that'd be the kind of thing you'd find in an observatory. At least that's what I'd assume; I've never been in one of these before.

"Pearl?" I ask. "Can you see anything I can't?"

She shakes her head before I can get the whole question out. No need for words, then; whatever's in here isn't visible in our awarenesses. And time's ticking down every second we're not getting closer to the horizonguard. I reach up and pinch one of my earrings, feeling the strange shape of it gently push back against Jumble's magic coating. If this is really where we're supposed to be, then the horizonguard did something in here that led to him getting wherever he is now.

We just have to figure out what that is.

I raise my eyebrows at Clutter as he turns to look somewhere else. He's too engrossed in his search to notice, which is basically the same as a 'no'. I shift to look at Jumble, but it doesn't look like she's making any progress either. This place is pretty damn small. There can't be much else in here that we're missing.

My awareness twitches as the door slides shut behind us. Nothing visibly changes… but there's a hint of magic in the air that wasn't there a second ago. Like a draft blowing through an old house, carrying with it the scent of the outdoors. I instinctively sniff at the scent in the air. Which there is–something in the air actively smells like ozone and metallic water.

A simple memory comes back to me from way back when. Me, my mom, and some kids from school standing under an old overpass to take shelter from the rain, with rusted old cars that the apocalypse twisted into monsters rotting in a half-foot of water. Creaks and groans from the things filled the air with a palpable fear, but they were all confirmed dead. It was just the rain and wind stirring things up.

I shake my head to clear the thought and try to focus on the source of the magical smell. It isn't hard to find; a crack in the ceiling that wasn't there before. Not big enough to actually let anything but the wind in, and even then, just a few whispers of it. I crane my neck to stare at the crack and walk directly underneath it. Moisture in the air slowly follows the wind.

"Him," I mutter under my breath. "Of course it's him. How far of a range does this guy have?"

"Extremely far," Jumble sighs and steps up next to me. "Everything in my skill boiled down to 'look for what isn't here'. I'm thinking that means the controls and a sky to look through the telescope at. How about you?"

"I'd add an exit, books, and maintenance stuff to that list. What do we do with that information?"

She shrugs. "I couldn't tell you, sorry. Even if I had all my power back, there's some kind of anti-spoiler protection in place that stops me from outright knowing everything."

"It'd be a little too powerful if that were the way it worked. Uninhibited, I mean," I clarify. "Even if we know what's missing, what do we do with that information? We're no closer to opening up the ceiling than we were a second ago."

Jumble looks up at the stone and taps her lip in thought. "Are we really not? There's a draft up there that wasn't there before. It has to be the horizonguard trying to get eyes on us again, right?"

"That's my theory, yeah," I agree. "So if we blast through the ceiling, we let all the rain outside in and get cleaned up by the horizonguard. If we don't do that, the time limit Pearl said we're on runs out and I become pretty much useless for the rest of this quest. Let's put it to a vote; worth the risk–yay or nay?"

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Jumble purses her lips in thought. "...Yay."

"Yay, too!" Clutter calls from the other side of the room. "I haven't found anything useful here yet, and I don't think I'm going to."

"I'm for it too, if you want my opinion," Pearl says. "We have to fight the horoizonguard anyway. Might as well do it while we have double-digit minutes left."

Good point. I sigh through my nose, then give a shallow nod and summon a coin. Jumble steps to the side and joins Clutter on the opposite side of the room as I push my awareness into the coin, filling it with as much raw destructive power as I can manage with my stronger awareness.

Instead of becoming a massive sphere of destruction, my spell creates an air pocket inside of itself. A thick shell of magic hardens around that air pocket, making a sort of soccer ball style projectile that rotates at an insanely fast pace around the empty core. I definitely didn't tell it to do that, so it has to be drawing from Pearl's experiences to create something truly destructive.

Then I blink. I'm still holding my coin. All of the prep was just in my head, and from the sound of Jumble's last footstep, less than a second has passed since I started focusing. None of this feels natural to me. But because it feels natural to Pearl, I get some kind of second-hand muscle memory for it. The sensation is beyond uncanny.

I shake it off and press my coin to my thumbnail. Moisture licks at my face, carrying magic with it that feels like a thousand eyes glaring holes through my very being. Something slightly solid flickers through the moisture. It's about the size of a coin. I gnash my teeth and flick my projectile at the ceiling, then spin to focus on the coin-sized mass of magic that's falling straight at Dani.

Both my projectile and the unknown coin rip through the air. A horrible air-sucking screech consumes all sound in a detonation of raw magical fury, demolishing a ten-foot wide circle straight through the ceiling. Clutter whistles in admiration while Jumble shouts out a cheer that just barely hits my ears through the ringing. Not from the explosion, though; that's just a background hum compared to the rush of blood and anger that's surging from what I see in Dani's hands.

A coin that's anything but simple. With a strange, two-beaked bird on one side and a six-taloned foot on the other. It absolutely reeks of magic. But not just any magic; everything about that coin triggers a mixture of nostalgia, camaraderie, and understanding from the deepest part of me. Jumble gasps in disbelief, then snarls loud enough to startle the gods.

Because that coin… that Class Coin… feels like my coin.

It feels like Worth.

Dani greedily grabs the coin. Jumble screams and lunges for him from across the room. A pillar appears from out of the ground, sculpted with feathers that twist the wrong ways and gnarled stone that pulses and writhes like living flesh. She slams into an invisible barrier with a wave of magic crashing behind her.

Words. So many hateful whispered words spill from Jumble's magic as it breaks uselessly on the protective barrier created by the small pillar. Dani's expression shifts from fear to gloating, and he holds the coin up like the greatest prize the world had ever given him. Jumble screams bloody murder, raking her claws down the barrier with staticky words of hate and plea.

"WHY?! WHY HIM?!?!?!" she wails painfully. "I KNEW YOU HAD IT! I KNEW IT WAS HERE! GIVE IT BACK! I'LL KILL YOU!"

She slams her fist into the barrier. It doesn't so much as flicker, but Dani flinches at it anyway. With every slam his flinches grow smaller, until finally he smirks, confident that Jumble can't touch him.

He waves the coin at her mockingly. "What, this? You want this, dear creator? Ooh, but you can't have it; the system chose me for it. Whatever you did to me… it doesn't matter anymore. I'm my own person now."

"You were always your own person!" Jumble screams, punctuated with another heavy slam. "I didn't put any control measures in any of you! Once you were made, you were your own people! All of you! AND YOU KILLED EURO OUT OF YOUR OWN FUCKING FREE WILL!"

I wince at Jumble's use of a word she's probably only heard me use. Dani just looks at her like she has two heads. There's… real confusion in his eyes.

"You… you're lying…" he says, his voice barely a whisper. "You've been controlling us this entire time. That's… that's why… when Shelby came along, things changed. You ordered us to be less important to you. I… you told us… we…"

He looks down at the coin and blanches. "Wait. Rina. She was… the system… oh… oh no…"

As if the weight of the world had just knocked the wind out of him, Dani stumbles back. The barrier presses against his back, locking him into the pillar's area of effectiveness. In a single moment, his protection becomes his prison.

"If I use this… the system's going to take control of me," Dani swallows hard. "If I don't, you're going to kill me. I… you… J-jumble. Look back in the book. The eighth day we were here. Please read out what it says on me."

Jumble grits her teeth. "How do you know about that?"

"I don't know!" Dani screams desperately. "Just like I… I… read it!"

His demand sounds like pathetic blubbering. Jumble glares at him with utter hate, yet she pulls out her book and flips to the right page. Her eyes scan the contents. She pauses. Then she scans the contents again. And again. And again. Each and every time, a growl grows louder and louder in her throat.

Dani swallows hard. "What does it say?"

"It says," Jumble slams the book shut for emphasis, "that you made the choice all on your own. That everything I did to make you individuals made you immune to the system's attempts at controlling you. You pathetic, sniveling coward."

A rictus laugh pulls at Dani's chest. "That's what I was afraid of. Goodbye, Jumble."

He leans forward to put the coin in the machine. A harsh crack shatters one of Jumble's teeth from clenching so hard. Whispers gather in her throat like a torrent of screaming souls. Dani freezes, eyes locked on hers with existential terror.

"You'll kill Ward," he whispers.

Jumble spits the shard of tooth at Dani's shield. "Him and you, or just you. Make your pick. Do the right thing for once."

Dani stares blankly at her, then breaks into a laugh. "You won't do it."

He pushes the coin into the pillar. Magic swells from it, then lurches at him and grabs hold like a thousand eagles sinking their talons into fresh prey. Jumble clenches her hands, claws digging into her palms hard enough to draw rivers of blood that trickle down onto the floor along with her tears. She lets out one loud sob, then raises her eyes to meet Dani's.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

Confusion paints Dani's face. Confusion that shifts to bleak realization when he understands that she isn't talking to him. "WAIT! NO! PLEASE!!!! I–"

Through tears and static, a single word leaves Jumble's mouth.

"Goodbye."

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