Chapter 373: Life, Dissolved

The panic in Pearl’s voice spurs me to action. I dive off my shield and summon another to land on, then roll over my shoulder and come up in a crouch just in time to feel the water erupt where we were just standing. A massive ten-foot wide column of water slams into it, breaking against my spell with enough force to shear it clean away in heartbeats. Something like tendrils reform the instant my shield dies, crushing around the last particles of my spell with deadly power.

Not a single drop of liquid sprays from the impact. Like something’s keeping it all together.

“Shelby!” Quest yells from across the water.

I shake my head. “Not yet!”

Pearl balks at my response. “What are we waiting for?! RUN!”

Another whirl of water stirs up under my shield. I direct the platform to the side as another burst erupts from below, this time unhindered by my magic. It rises, and rises, and… rises… and… uh… keeps rising. I stare up at the plume of water absolutely dumbfounded as the now obvious hand placed atop it grasps for the sky itself.

“The water level…” Pearl trails off while staring at the ground. “Shelby, look at the water level.”

I don’t have to turn my neck; my awareness tells me everything I need to know. There’s at least a two foot difference in the water level from a few seconds ago, and it doesn’t look like it's stopping any time soon. With each passing second the base of the pillar of water grows ever wider to support the hand planted on top like the star on a christmas tree.

A panicked eye zips past. The rest of the fish it’s attached to follows immediately after, joined by another dozen fish that were in the same school as it. I shake my head and laugh in disbelief; this is just absurd. If this thing is trying to attack me, then it’s doing a piss-poor job of it. But that water’s going to come crashing back down eventually. I can’t let it damage the obelisk.

“Alright, gotta do something,” I say and flip a projectile into my hand. “Pearl, any idea what’ll happen if I break this thing off early?”

Pearl balks at my simple idea. “Do you have any idea how heavy water is?”

I shrug. “Less heavy than it’ll be a second from now.”

“...I guess you’re right. Too bad we don’t have the horizonguard’s abilities; that would’ve been really convenient,” Pearl glances over at Quest and nods. “What about it? Is the obelisk’s aura too dangerous for it to come close?”

Quest stretches out a hand, as if to answer Pearl’s question. A spark of salt snaps between its fingertips, leaving long gouges through Quest’s construct-flesh. It hisses and pulls its hand back with darkening eyes; not long until it decides to start throwing things at the obelisk. I’m not even sure what the extent of Quest’s power is, so that could be very dangerous.

How’d I hear the Quest make a noise? Isn’t the water… oh, no, of course it’s completely silent. Why would it make noise? It’s just rushing water. I shake my head and toss my coin into the waterspout, flare it, and watch as my projectile rips the torrent apart a dozen feet further up.

Droplets finally splatter out and rain down on me. The top part of the hand spasms as it begins to fall, losing coherence by the second until it’s just a massive wall of water threatening to slam down on me. I summon another shield and sharpen it to a point around myself to watch the contents of the lake refill around me.

…please…

My veins twitch at a sound that comes from nowhere. I look all around for the source, but I still can’t feel any magic at all. This place is a void to me. A void of falling water.

…stuck…

There it is again. I tap my knuckles against the side of my head as a fish slams against my shield, splattering into chunks of salted meat that careen into the rising lake levels below. The two words feel like they’re scratched directly into my brain-meat. Pearl must’ve heard them, too. But when I look to her, she’s just watching the water fall all around us.

…i did it…

I crane my neck skywards… then look back at the obelisk. It isn’t lighting up at all. But that’s the literal only explanation I can come up with.

…for you…

The word ‘you’ etches itself into my heart. There’s real intent–and direction–behind it. Something directed that word at me knowingly. That something is here right now, but for some reason, I can’t get a fix on it at all. Not my awareness, not my eyes, and not the salty skin-prickling sensation that I get around Fleur. If this is a halsia, they’re not anything like Fleur.

“Who are you?” I call into the void. “I can hear what you’re saying. Tell me how to help you!”

Pearl glances back at me, then pauses. She looks like she’s about to say something, then decides against it and focuses on our shared awareness. I feel it stretch out and intensify, alerting me to every little movement in the area around us. There’s still absolutely no magic–or movement–in the pillar. Or the water. Until everything finally falls around us, filling the lake back up to its original level.

Another whirl erupts directly underneath me. I look down with a grimace and summon a few shields to protect us.

“Um,” Pearl starts.

I silence her with a glance. “I know it’s stupid. But trust me a little.”

A relocation backed by a projectile screams out of my shield and rockets towards the shore. Quest jumps up to catch the coin before it can zip by and raises a hand in confirmation, its fingers morphing around my projectile to harmlessly hold it in its other hand. I blink at the impressive feat, then kill the projectile and refocus on the building eruption underneath.

There’s a reason the eruptions started after I touched the obelisk. Probably the same reason why they’re all happening directly under me. Let’s see what happens when it gets exactly what it wants.

“Oh my… oh my…” Pearl takes a deep breath as water slams against my lowermost shield. “Okay. I trust you.”

I smile confidently at her and don’t mention how I don’t know what’s about to happen. From the cracks that instantly appear in her facade, she’s reading my thoughts right now. Poor thing. Not the best time to realize that I’m winging it.

Pearl’s eyes go wide as water crashes around us–but from the other direction this time. Fingers of the stuff close around my outermost shield, crushing it to dust in an instant. I feel something like a… wince reverberate through my body. It’s not me or Pearl. The second shield shatters, then the third, leaving only two more shields to protect us. I mentally latch onto my relocation, ready for the last shield to shatter at any moment.

Cracks shoot through the second-to-last shield. Water seeps in and drips through, filling the space between shields with high-pressure jets. I raise a hand and motion towards the shore. This isn’t going to–

My knees buckle as my stomach falls. Darkness encroaches at the edge of my vision for the briefest moments before something in me fights it back, but the forces acting on my body don’t make it any easier to stand. I fall to one knee with a grunt and struggle to crane my neck skywards, all the muscles in my neck screaming and fighting to keep my eyes from falling to the floor.

The sky approaches like a speeding bullet. All the trees, all the distractions, and even the lake below disappear from my awareness one by one until there' s nothing left but the open sky. Pearl screams in equal parts surprise and adrenaline, which turns into a manic thrill-filled laugh when she realizes at the same time I do that we’re not in any danger.

…i’m so sorry…

I grunt, and this time, Pearl twitches at the words. She locks eyes with me from inside my own mind, and suddenly, there’s no room for anything but deadly professionalism. I struggle to my feet with her help and plant a hand on each side of my shield, feeling the water guide the me-containing prism ever upwards.

…my sister told me all about you…

As the words come, so too does a vision. A single chunk of brilliant orange salt, glowing with pride and joy as it pulses and dims in a speaking rhythm. I don’t need to see more to know that the nonexistent voice is referring to Fleur.

“How?” I ask, turning my neck to and fro to pinpoint the voice. “Where are you? I promise, if you show yourself, we can help.”

…show myself… no… there’s nothing left to show…

A flash of mossy green shimmers across my shield. Words and sensations accompany it, but they’re dangerously scattered. Like all the beads from a beautiful necklace spilled over an old dusty table. But more than one of the beads has already clattered to the floor… and the rest will join those eventually.

…i really tried to hold on…

…nobody wants to die…

…but thank you for finding me before i did…

My outermost shield shatters as the water around me starts to fall. It rips the shield away, leaving me standing far above the lake as the waters crash back down to a now completely empty basin. I’m miles above the ground now. Looking down at a single salt spear in the middle of a refilling lake. If there’s something I’m supposed to see from up here, then I’m completely blind to it.

“Who… was that?” Pearl asks quietly. “It almost felt like Fleur, but really weak and far away. Almost like they’re dying, and was just holding on… to…”

I nod in agreement as Pearl bites back a sob. “They were holding on for us, for some goddamn reason. And they don’t seem to think we can save them, but that doesn’t matter, because they aren’t after that for some reason. So why the hell did it hold on?”

A crash of water punctuates my question, sending a fine spray of salty mist high into the sky. Ripples sear through the surface as said spray rains back down, mercilessly pelting the lake as the words etched into my brain slowly disappear. I hold out a hand and cover the entire lake to my eyes, then clench my fist.

The pillar of salt shatters into massive chunks. They all tumble into the lake below, pushing the shore ever so slightly further out. I watch the lake level rise, silently wishing that I’d been able to ask the nameless halsia so many different questions. Because we apparently owe it for pushing back the first incision of the cataclysm. Yet we don’t even know what that incision is.

As the salt dissolves in the water, I finally realize what happened. Why the water kept its shape so perfectly, why a freshwater lake is suddenly so salty, and why all the creatures inside are strangely affected instead of just dying out. Whatever happened here ended with the Halsia dissolving itself for some reason–maybe to stop the spread of the cataclysm, maybe because it fought the cataclysm back and didn’t have the strength to resist–and that dissolution almost killed it.

But it held on just to talk to us. All that effort for a few little words. I lower my hand and fully take in the lake, now just a little wider than before, and try to put aside the feeling that we should've been able to do more.

“Quest, organize a group to try and locate any other Halsia that might be alive,” I say to the empty air. “If this isn’t an isolated incident, we could have people fighting off the cataclysm as we stand around doing jack shit. I won’t let them fight for themselves.”

“Yes, Shelby,” Quest says through a strange mix of system interface and voice. “Do you have any idea what actually happened here, though? So we can have something to start looking for?”

“Honestly… no. I don’t,” I say and flare my relocation, appearing next to Quest as I look over my shoulder at the plain saltwater lake. “And that bothers the hell out of me.”