Chapter 372: A Purifying Splinter

The empty obelisk shines in the sun like a gemstone splinter in the Earth. I instinctively reach for Fleur’s brooch, but she seems to… shy away from my touch. As if she doesn’t want to admit that this place exists. I respect her desire for exclusion and shift my attention back to Quest.

“How’d Fleur find this place?” I ask as Pearl squishes out onto my shoulder. “And, correct me if I’m wrong, but this insinuates that the krarig salt wasn’t a one-time thing.”

Quest nods ever so slightly and shifts something through its hands. “Apparently she’s been looking into the salt as a whole–where it came from, who knows of it, and how she actually… well… came to life from it. She didn’t tell me any of her findings, but they led her here.”

It gestures at the obelisk, then shudders. I get it; something about the dead, shining thing feels like staring at an open grave. Worse, even, is that I can’t see a single sign of a struggle anywhere around here. The overpass is pristine, the shore is exactly where it should be, and all the surrounding greenery doesn’t look so much as disturbed. Hell, the obelisk itself doesn’t have a single scratch on it.

I fiddle with an earring in thought. Quest reaches over and taps my hand away.

“It’s better than the scratching,” I remind it with a dour look. “Let me have some kind of nervous habit.”

Quest shakes its head. “If you’re going to be a leader, you can’t have any obvious tells. You can manufacture fake ones, but you have to have power over them–not the inverse. Right, Pearl?”

“Don’t rope me into this. But yes,” Pearl turns and locks eyes with me. “If you’re going to be representing the resort in any important way, you can’t do anything that isn’t on purpose. And since the other Worth classes aren’t here right now, you’re the only one who can represent us.”

“You’re leaving out Gil.”

“I am,” Pearl confirms. “He’s leaving himself out, too, because he’s unreliable. If you think giving away that you’re anxious is bad, then the system pulling him away in the middle of peace negotiations is apocalyptically bad.”

Pearl’s choice of words strike a particularly harmonic note. I sigh through my nose and reach up to touch my earring, but catch myself halfway up before Quest and Pearl can stare accusingly at me. How many times have I done that without realizing I was doing it? Has to be enough that both of them noticed it was a habit.

I take a centering breath and mentally end the topic, switching my focus back to the thing that I really don’t want to talk about. Because, technically, I’m the halsia’s god. If there really was one here, and this isn’t just a… freak salt growth… then did they believe in me? Did they think I was going to come and help them before they just disappeared?

If they did, then they died wondering where I was. It makes me sick to my stomach imagining that.

“You think this is a sign of the ‘catacylsm’ that Shelby’s skill said was coming,” Pearl asks, interrupting my train of thought. “That’s what you mean, right?”

Quest frowns and shifts the thing in its hands around some more. “That’s right; this is a freshwater lake according to all of the information Fleur showed me. But I ran some tests before I called you here, and there’s so much salt in here that nothing living in it should be alive.”

A few bubbles pop at the surface, followed by a massive fish cresting the water in a brilliant arc. Its scales shine with greens and blues in earthy tones, and it hangs in the air for a good dozen seconds before it snaps to pointing straight downward and falls like a guillotine. Quest motions at the ripples in the water with an expression that says ‘see what I’m talking about’.

“It turned all the freshwater animals into saltwater animals? Or did it move a lot of saltwater animals into the lake? No… what if… hm,” Pearl puts a hand to her chin and drums her fingers against her face. “Shelby, correct me if I’m wrong, but the apocalypse only did bad things to machines, right?”

I nod in confirmation. The scent of the sea finally hits me in all its out-of-place glory. The understanding of the lack of magic whatsoever finally clicks.

“The obelisk is purifying everything around here,” I mutter to myself. “If this was supposed to be an advent of the cataclysm… did it send the salt here, or did the salt die defending us from whatever was actually here?”

Both Quest and Pearl look at me with deepening expressions. Pearl turns away first to stare at the salt obelisk, regret and duty filling her little body with emotion and power that tugs directly at my heartstrings. The expression on Quest’s face is one of painful understanding. Most likely because it, too, was something that was willing to die to protect us from a deadly outside force. 

“We need to confirm Fleur’s suspicions,” Quest says with quiet determination. “I might have made a very dangerous assumption here. If the obelisk isn’t here to herald the cataclysm, and the halsia who died causes it to eventually decay, whatever it’s holding back could burst free at any time.”

It very well could. And I can’t even imagine what that would do, since nobody would’ve imagined the apocalypse coming with magical coins and machines being twisted into mechanical versions of real and mythical animals.

…Wait. Animals. The mechs from the Preservation–both of them–weren’t turning into animals when they got taken. They were just… changing. Turning into nightmare-like versions of themselves. Unless they count humans specifically as an animal the apocalypse can turn things into… but if not…

Maybe it wasn’t the apocalypse that took those mechs. Hell, maybe it was someone trying to make it look like it.

Quest’s expression turns grim. “You look like you figured something horrible out.”

“Me?” I laugh darkly and shake my head. “Something just clicked, is all. Could even explain why the Preservation suddenly went from everyday disaster control to full-blown panic. Quest, is there a Class that can do something that replicates the effects of the apocalypse?”

“Replicate? As in turn machines into living murder monsters? I don’t have complete knowledge over everything Classes can do, but as far as I’m aware, no. Not at all.”

“But what about evolved Classes?” Pearl chimes in. “Did those exist in your database?”

Quest’s eyes go wide. “Evolved Classes? I… no. I’ve never heard of those. But if I extrapolate Class abilities into an evolution of some kind… a natural or unnatural progression of their abilities…”

A small, unwilling nod answers Pearl’s question. And adds a horrible question mark right into the middle of my already incomplete assessment of the Preservation’s actions. If an evolved Class could’ve done this, then someone has to have an evolved Class. That’s a variable that literally nobody can factor in, since those coins didn’t exist until I made them a reality.

“Shit. We need to get Clutter ready as soon as physically possible.”

“Yes, we do,” Pearl says. “Let’s deal with this first, though. Ready to get close?”

I flip a relocation coin into my palm. “Back in my head.”

Pearl nods and does exactly that. Quest crosses its arms and stares vacantly off into the distance in the direction of the obelisk. I’m not sure if it’s worried about us, or the cataclysm, or even Fleur. I still don’t quite get how Fleur managed to get all the way out here considering she’s stuck near her platform, but that’s a question I can ask her when we’re done here. I glance in Quest’s general direction and nod towards the obelisk.

“Are you coming?”

It barely shakes its head. “I’ll watch from here. Something tells me I’m not safe to get close to it.”

“Close to the dead salt spire?”

“Yes.”

…Alright, then. I salute goodbye and summon a projectile under my relocation, then fire the both of them towards the obelisk. Once it’s in range I kill the projectile and flare the relocation, swapping places with the coin and summoning a shield underneath my feet to keep from falling into the waters below. I trail my eyes upwards, taking in the salt thing now that I’m a little closer.

It’s barely any different. The salt is so uniform that I can’t make out any patterns, all the colours are perfectly monotone, and there isn’t anything hidden inside at all. Just a massive spear of salt stuck through the lake. I shift my shield a little closer to it and lean down to try and get a look at the animals through the unbelievably clear water.

A few small fish dart by, barely not brushing up against the side of the obelisk. Some sort of rodent floats lazily just far enough underneath the surface so as not to leave a disturbance. Dozens of triangular shells on the floor so far down open and close rhythmically, exposing dozens of triangular pearls inside of each that glisten like cooking oil in the sun.

And literally every single one of them is green with blue accents. From the beaver-like rodent to the pearls in the definitely-not-oysters. Yet I still can’t feel a lick of magic from anything at all. My own is absolutely fine and my shield isn’t falling apart, so it can’t be that the obelisk is just purifying everything. What the hell happened here to turn all these creatures into… whatever they are now? How did the salt to make a halsia get here in the first place, and how did a simple salt elemental turn into a halsia without someone’s interference?

Actually… the only reason Fleur exists in the first place was thanks to the krarig’s insane magical biology. Without that unearthly magical presence, the salt shouldn’t be able to form elementals, nevermind a halsia. Yet here one is. With absolutely no magic around here to justify its existence.

I put my hands on my hips and sigh through my nose as my shield finally clinks against salt. Without a hint of reluctance I place my palm against the salt to try and feel for… anything at all. Some hint that the halsia who must’ve created this thing existed in the first place. There were so many insane salt formations in the krarig. A literal landscape, complete with so many salt-plants that it sometimes looked like someone coated a jungle in crystal.

But this… this is boring. Utilitarian. Like someone drove this spike of salt into the lake for a very specific purpose. I can imagine Fleur doing this to stop the spread of whatever’s going to be the cause of the cataclysm. What I can’t imagine is the salt being so obviously magical in nature, yet completely inert to the touch. It’s unbelievable, really.

So unbelievable that I have to be missing something.

“Pearl, thoughts?” I ask and move my hand around to try and feel anything. “Maybe Fleur was wrong, and there never was a halsia here, but there was the chance of one being born. Then the salt just happened to stop whatever the cataclysm is, and that absorbed all of the magic from the halsia to stop it. But that still doesn’t explain why this feels completely inert. Hm. Pearl?”

When she doesn’t answer, I tap my free knuckles against the side of my head. That snaps her out of whatever she was in with a squeak of surprise. She clears her throat as she smooths out her gooey dress and refocuses on the moment at hand.

“I completely missed everything you just said.”

I laugh to myself and reiterate everything. Pearl hums all the while, making extra noises every now and again to assure me that she’s listening. When I repeat the part about the obelisk feeling completely inert her expression pinches into something that I can’t quite make out.

“It isn’t inert, Shelby,” she says slowly. “It’s constantly purifying the lake underneath us. Oh…I understand! You can’t feel it because you’re completely immune to the halsia stuff!”

“...I am?”

A burble in the water almost catches my attention, and I throw half a glance towards it before Pearl replies. Doesn’t look like there’s anything to cause it. Weird.

Pearl nods vigorously. “The purification, at least; I don’t think you’d be immune to a salt spear through the chest. Make a shield around us to go underwater and I’ll… wait. What’s happening to the wa–MOVE!”