Chapter 24: Buried Secrets (Patreon)

Jogging to the pile of frozen sand and back is a long and boring ordeal. Doubly so with nobody to talk to, but it’s one that has to be done. It only takes me about two hours to get there, another hour to find enough skeletal ghost quarters to fill up an inventory slot and the six on my holster, then two more to run back while I fester in the stench that clings to my body. Pearl starts to stir near the end of hour five, and she pops out of her shell thirty minutes later while I’m leaning against the door to the workshop and screwing around with my Class Card.

“Morning, Shelby.” She says with a tiny yawn. “How did it go?”

I grin and raise the holster up for emphasis. “Got this filled and an entire inventory slot full of skeletons. Probably could’ve gotten more, but the smell made me want to pull my own eyes out just to stuff them up my nose.”

She shudders at the memory of the stench, then full-blown convulses at the real stench that clings to me like a needy ex. “Uurgh. Get in the workshop. The magic in there will clean you up again.”

Again? Huh guess, that explains why I couldn’t smell myself when I woke up from a nearly three day nap. I step back to let the door rise into the ceiling, then duck under it when there’s just enough room for me to get in. Pearl does something to make it close again, and I beeline for the raised platform with supplies that’s just like I left it almost six hours ago.

I grab the edge of the control panel to let Pearl onto it, then gesture over at the mold maker on the other side of the shop. “I’m willing to risk the ceiling things now.”

“So am I.” She agrees with a few taps on the panel that convert to mechanical screeches as chains lower down on the other side of the room.

They seem to melt into the mold maker as they lower, simply disappearing into it like a pinch of salt in water. Pearl stops them with a press of her finger, then starts to raise them with a swipe. Instead of coming loose the chains act like they were permanently welded onto the mold maker, pulling it up into the air just high enough to clear the row of control panels before it shudders and starts to move towards Pearl and I.

“Is this what it’s supposed to do?” I ask as I watch the chains groan and sway under the strain of the mold maker. “Because it, uh, sounds like something’s going to snap and shatter at any second.”

Pearl’s too busy biting her lip and focusing on the mold maker to notice. I take that as a loud and clear ‘no’ to my question and swipe my water bottle away while taking more than a few huge steps back. Something tells me the mold maker will easily survive falling from that height–but whatever it falls onto won’t be anywhere near as lucky.

Creaks and clanks ring out louder and louder as the mold maker grows closer and closer. The tracks on the ceiling turn visibly whiter and hotter under all the heat and strain. Even the air around them shimmers like the road on a particularly hot summer afternoon. Pearl lets out a worried hum as the mold maker sways awkwardly in place a few feet away from our platform.

Glass shatters. The mold maker crashes to the ground with a titanic ‘boom’, sending shards of glass spraying everywhere like a bomb just went off. I yelp in surprise and raise my arms, barely recognising the little voice in the back of my mind that tells me to actually protect myself and Pearl. The sound of light clinking pepper everywhere around me, but no pain comes. Not even a little discomfort in taking a breath from all the dust that just got kicked up.

“Thank you so much Shelby.” Pearl says shakily. “Gosh, that definitely would have hurt a whole lot if not for your shields.”

…My shields? I don’t remember giving any commands for shields. I slowly lower my arms to see a shield protecting me from the front, wrapped around to my sides and over my head, leaving only my back exposed to the world. Pearl’s in a very similar situation, except she’s got a bubble completely encasing her and the control panel she’s standing on.

I look down at the coin holster, and sure enough, there are two missing. The empty spaces are filled in not a second later, but there’s a weird feeling in the back of my mind. I made those shields. But I didn’t physically push the spells into the coins. And I definitely didn’t think to trigger them.

It had to be the holster. Somehow, it took the smallest little bit of my intentions and acted on it. I… probably have to look into that. Since it could just as easily protect me–like it just did–or act on some errant thought that definitely wasn’t supposed to go out into reality.

“Yeah. I think the holster works.” I say slowly as I brush the shields away and walk back to Pearl’s side. “It’s like how I could react to things under your awareness. And it could have way too much of a hair trigger.”

Pearl crosses her arms and pouts for some reason. “But that’s about the only thing I’m useful for. Now how am I supposed to help you out?”

I roll my eyes and gently pat her on the head. “Just because it helps me with spells, doesn’t mean it does everything else your awareness does. Hell, putting the two of them together is probably a lot more powerful than using either of them on their own.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. Maybe we’ll have to actually fight something for me to really know. Get that mold thing running, and I’ll work on gathering the rest of the materials we need.”

She sighs, but I can tell she wasn’t really serious before. Not fully, at least. “Okay. So, for the portable shell, we need…”

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Another fairly long manufacturing process later, Pearl and I have the completed power core shell. It looks almost exactly like a conch shell, save for the fact that it’s as big as a soccer ball and made of glass, wood, and shell instead of… just shell. And… well… it’s actually only mostly completed. We can’t put in the rest of the magical extract until there’s a power core inside of it for reasons that are censored to me, and a few other strange things that are–wait for it–also censored. That frustrates Pearl just as much as me, as apparently they’re pretty critical to the sensitive process we’re about to go through.

Then there’s the one tiny problem of us not knowing where the power core actually is. We’ve searched the place high and low, scouring every nook and cranny for anything that looks even slightly out of place, but to no avail. We know it’s here–there wouldn’t be power to anything if it wasn’t. So we just have to find where they hid it.

I toss aside a plank of splintered lumber and shake my head. It clatters to the ground far below, and I swing my legs over the edge of the highest shelf in the entire workshop.

“Not here, either!” I call down to Pearl, who’s off in the desk room looking for hints. “Find anything useful yet?!”

“No!” She calls back. “I know we built these places to hide the power cores, since they’re so valuable and all, but why’d we have to be so darn good at hiding them?! It’s almost like whoever built this place didn’t trust anyone who was working here!”

I swivel around and start to climb down the high shelves. “So there aren’t even hints in the memories you saw?”

She steps out of the desk room just as my feet hit the ground. When she sees me, she shakes her head and hurries over to me far faster than I expect. She’s up my arm and in her shell before she even starts talking.

“Nothing for actually finding the core, no. She saw someone coming in once to make sure it was running right, but they made everyone else leave the workshop before the inspector came. So I know there’s some way to access it, but I just can’t figure it out.” She sighs in frustration and looks around the room. “Is there anything we’ve missed? Like… could we get under the platforms somehow? No, I saw them rise up to the ceiling, and there wasn't anything below… OH! I’ve got an idea! The sand dispenser!”

“The sand dispenser?” I repeat and turn to look at the indent on the wall. “You think the core’s stored in there somehow?”

“Well… maybe it's not actually stored there, but our cores run really cold. Like, really, really cold. Cold enough to freeze sand right away, and if all the protections have failed on it, then that might explain why the dispenser’s dispensing frozen blocks instead of just pouring sand out like I saw in the memories.”

“Wait. You saw that it wasn’t blocks of frozen sand in the memories and you didn’t think to bring it up until now?” I take a deep breath through my nose and shake my head. “Pearl, we’ve been running around for almost half an hour looking for a needle in a haystack. And you just revealed that the hay wasn’t supposed to be frozen all this time.”

“Not hay–sand.” Pearl chuckles sheepishly. “I guess it just made sense to me, since the cold reached all the way to that hole from before. But maybe that was all due to the power core, too.”

“And the reason we don’t feel the cold in here is because…?”

Pearl shrugs. “I don’t have any answers here, Shelby. Maybe the workshop has a really good heating system. Maybe the glass doesn’t conduct cold very well. We can make theories all we want, or we could try to get into the dispenser and find out what the truth really is.”

“Possibly freezing ourselves in the process.” I mutter under my breath, but make my way to the dispenser anyway. “Alright, you’re the one with the ideas. Go hit numbers until inspiration strikes.”

“How did you know exactly what I was planning?” Pearl giggles, then runs down my arm to rest on the panel. “Can you clear away all the extra sand I’m going to end up taking out, please?”

I nod and stand back a little while she starts to type away. “You think there were any hints on… the…”

The entire walls swings open with a loud screech, glass gliding effortlessly over glass as Pearl tumbles from the panel with a surprised little yelp. She scampers back to me and climbs up to my shoulder, then joins me in watching with unrestrained awe as a maze of pipes, cables, tubes, and cold steam comes into view. But nothing that looks like it could dispense sand–that’s stuck on the other side of the wall that just swung out of the way.

“How did you know what to put in?” I demand without looking away from the well-lit space that has to lead to the power core. “Was it on the blueprint for the shell?”

Pearl shakes her head. “I just typed in the numerical equivalent for ‘core access’, and that opened. It seems like… way too little security. Somebody had to have tried that way before we did.”

“Apparently not.” I say as the chill washes in from the room. “Before we go in there, we need to know exactly how we’re moving the core. I’m not turning into a human popsicle just because we don’t know what we’re doing.”

“There’s definitely going to be an operating manual or something like that when we get in. We wouldn’t let anyone rely purely on memory, especially if the core was regularly maintained.” Pearl says confidently and gestures into the maze of industry. “I bet they keep all the really important blueprints somewhere inside there, too. Like for that thing that almost killed you. Or for a __________ _________.”

The censorship cuts into my mind like a white-hot knife, digging away any traces of what Pearl just said and replacing them with searing pain. But it doesn’t go away after a second. It lingers as a warning to never get close to whatever that information is until my Mind is high enough. And even still, the burning sensation remains, searing the warning into my very being.

“Shelby? Did it censor again?”

I grunt in pain and start for the blissful cold. “That’s an understatement. Whatever you just said, you can’t say it again. Or mention anything related to it. Hell, if you find a blueprint for it, don’t even tell me. Just memorize it and throw it as far away as possible so I don’t catch a glimpse of it.”

She winces in sympathy. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it would be that bad. I’ll try to keep our military secrets a little more secret from now on.”

She better. Or else I’m going to be more headache than human very soon. I brush aside the pain as best as I can and soldier on into the brightness–past pipes with icicles that hang like rows of fangs, cables that pulse with magical light, and so many miscellaneous metal things that don’t look like they serve any purpose at all. Pearl oohs and aahs at the sights, but she’s not the one that has to carefully maneuver through the freezing cold wasteland of metal that’ll steal my skin from me if I so much as touch it.

Hollow ringing grows in intensity as I get deeper and deeper. The cold seeps into my skin and nudges at my bones, sending shivers through my entire body that are so intense that it feels like pulling a muscle every time. More pipes hang lower and lower, constraining the space to barely enough for one of me. The cables crisscross everywhere like a web woven by a schizophrenic spider, and the magic splits into multiple colours of light the further I go. What was once pure white turns into greens and blues and reds and yellows which darken and darken towards absolute blackness as the cold intensifies.

Pearl taps on my cheek to get my attention, then points off to my right. I blink slowly, frost coating my eyelashes and lips, and try to see what she’s pointing out. The frost in the air almost completely obscures the glass chest near my feet. A simple thing with a rounded lid and square bottom that’s completely opaque and so coated in frost that I can’t imagine it opening.

“I can’t touch that.” I say through chattering teeth. “And I can’t take it into my inventory. What do you want me to do?”

“Break it.” Pearl says with a shiver. “We don’t need the chest-just whatever’s inside.”

I look down at it, then nod slowly and flick two fingers out. A coin appears between them from the intent alone, and I push a projectile into them that I intend to fly for as long as possible. After a few steps to position myself so the projectile flies back out the way we came while making sure I don’t touch any of the walls or pipes, I let it fly.

It bursts into being, shearing the very top of the chest clean off and spiraling into the distance. I gesture down at it, but Pearl’s already on the move. Touching glass like it doesn’t even bother her, save for the slight tint of bluish white that creeps onto her feet and hands.

“Brr!” She exclaims as she jumps into the chest and starts to rummage around. “Ooh, we hit the motherlode here! Five military blueprints, one for the power core assembly itself, and the list of changes they’ve done to the power core over the years! This’ll be more than enough!”

She jumps out of the chest, bluish-white climbing her body like moss up a tree. “Pick me up, please!”

I reach out a hand to let her scurry back up, but she doesn’t move. That’s weird as hell, but it doesn’t really change anything. My fingers gently wrap around her cool form, careful not to squish her and make her drop the blueprints, and drop her on my shoulder. She shivers intensely, then sits down instead of going back into her shell.

“Are you okay?”

Pearl tilts her head to the side. “I’m freezing cold and it’s done damage to my body that I’ll have to heal. But other than that, I’m fine. Here–take a look at this!” She shoves one of the blueprints at my face. “I think you’ll like what you see!”

I lean back a little from Pearl’s insistent pushing. “I’ll take it, just don’t push so hard.”

I reach up and take the slate, but before I even start looking at it in earnest, I recognize the thing. A ring of shell spikes, all pointing straight up in a circle around a platform of glass. A long tail stretches behind it, but from the second image, it looks like it can curl around the platform to create a large circle. But it’s not a weapon.

It’s a teleporter.