The chamber that they burst into that immediately looked far different from any chamber Arcen had ever been to. It had large, flat, cylindrical shapes stacked on top of each other. At a glance, it looked like a weird architecture project from an overly ambitious designer.

  Each flat cylinder ranged from about fifty to two hundred meters in diameter, adding up to the shapes that resembled a city. Looking at it closely, that illusion got shattered rather quickly.

  These formations were created by slate rock layers twisted around themselves like rolls of tape. While the cylinders themselves didn't create any constructions within them, the gaps and crevices sheltered by them had pockets of life.

  Water flowed from their rims, cascading down on other circles as large pairs of eyes glimmered in every dark pocket in between.

  Oddly, the only spots in the chamber where life of any kind lived were these pockets. There were no creatures—big or small—roaming the open space. Nothing grew on the exposed rock surfaces either.

  There was something strange looming above in the chamber ceiling, an array of red, glowing flower buds. They were dripping thin lines of a luminous white liquid that accumulated in pools on the rocky surface. Iridescent vapor trails twisted off these pools.

  “Oh shit! It’s this one! Follow me! Hurry, this place sucks!” Elena exclaimed, taking off towards the nearest shelter. Arcen followed closely behind, looking around for any sign of the mind hacker.

  He saw something he’d neither seen nor even thought about before. The chamber veil in the forward direction was blackened. There were three chamber veils in total that he could see from the current position. The one that they just came from and the two that went off in different directions.

  THEY ALL TURNED BLACK?

  Elena came to a stop after running deep into a cave-like formation between two cylindrical plates.

  “This chamber’s closed for a while, there’s an overflow event here.”

  Arcen shrugged, twisting his brows. He had no idea what she was talking about. He raised his hands, gesturing that he didn’t understand.

  “That means this chamber’s got something that can leak into other chambers. Sometimes, the tower doesn’t want that. So it closes the veils off until it’s resolved,” she explained with a reassuring smile. Sighing tiredly, she sat on a soft patch of wet grass, leaning back against the rock wall. “Sit down, it’ll take a while.”

  Jelly dashed from his shoulder straight into Elena’s lap, making herself cozy as she lay her head on her stomach like she was an oily sofa. Jelly couldn’t do that with Arcen’s Meronolith armor plates, which were likely the reason she only hung around his tentacles.

  Arcen sat next to them even though King didn’t need any rest. It was not in a Meronolith’s nature to calm down. He had a steady mental state at all times, only a fraction of a millisecond away from responding to any external stimuli.

  “You can talk, by the way, I don’t mind,” Elena said, gesturing at her lips.

  “You don’t?” Arcen spoke the shortest response that he could. Red void engulfed everything around them for a split second, flickering as he spelled the words.

  “I mean, you can’t really make me do things, so there's no risk. You can only freeze and paralyze me,” Elena said, touching the side of her head. Her pupils subdivided as the hum in his ears grew. “I don't mind if you do that while we're resting. Don't do it when I'm moving, though, I might crash into something and die,” she added with a sly smile.

  RED COURT DOES NOT WORK ON ANY MIND HACKERS?

  “Interesting,” Arcen said, freezing her for a few milliseconds right away.

  This was confirmed by the other mind hacker as well. They brushed aside his Red Court with apparent ease. Either way, this was a key piece of information—one of her critical weaknesses—that she had just revealed rather casually. Arcen expected her to be more secretive about her mind-hacking powers, but Elena didn't seem to hide things from him as she had been doing before.

  It was either a part of her ploy to be very friendly, or she was genuinely open now after being yelled at. He didn’t need to think too hard about which one it was. He still had King, the one thing she wanted most.

  Elena’s well being out of the list of concerns; Arcen worried about Jelly, who couldn't even verbally object to being frozen.

  Surprisingly, she didn't seem to even notice it happening to her. She was lying outstretched on Elena with a blissful expression on her small face as Elena's oily fingers danced gently on her squishy head.

  The air around them shifted, distracting him from Jelly’s shenanigans.

  “It’s happening! watch, this one’s crazy,” Elena said, turning on her side while hugging Jelly like a plushie. Planting her elbow on the soft grass and resting her head lazily on her palm, Elena gestured at the cave entrance with her eyes.

  Iridescent vapor clouds had filled the chamber outside, turning everything beyond the threshold of their cave to a bright void with no features. It only got stranger as he kept staring. If these were vapor clouds, there was no reason why they shouldn’t be suffocating in them already.

  There was no magic shield at the entrance of the cave to insulate it from anything coming from the outside.

  “Why isn’t the smoke coming in?” He asked, squinting his eyes. It took Elena a second to answer after getting frozen for a longer sentence.

  “Because it’s not smoke. It’s a bubble. Like a balloon. You can go right up to the edge if you want to see for yourself,” she said, waving her hand that way.

  Arcen frowned. He did want to see, because he couldn’t understand what she meant by a bubble or a balloon. To his eyes, the twisting smoke clouds in the distance were just what they looked like—Smoke clouds.

  He stood and walked up to the edge of the cave entrance, making sure to keep a healthy gap. The ‘smoke’ that he was seeing from far away were smoky patterns swirling on a membrane that looked like a translucent soap bubble. The chamber had filled up with these gigantic bubbles blown by those red flower buds in the ceiling. They had filled all the open space that was available, plugging all the holes.

  WHAT A WEIRD PLACE.

  Coming back to Elena, he had a crucial question he should’ve asked before walking near it.

  “What happens if we go out there now?” He asked because he had Meronolith regeneration. If he could still move, he could search the other caves until he found the pesky mind hacker.

  “You poke one of those, it’ll explode every other bubble in a huge chain explosion. That smoke is like cyanide.”

  “Well, shit.”

  Arcen sat back down again. He didn’t want to find out what it would be like to keep regenerating while dying. This explained the lack of large creatures in the chamber. It must mean this event had happened before, wiping all life and forcing creatures to start from the beginning.

  “I’ll tell you about Helene,” Elena said, breaking a brief moment of silence between them.

  Arcen jolted when he heard the name. He didn’t think she would ever tell him about what that was about. She kept pushing it back each time it came up. Looking at her now, she looked more eager to talk and get it out of the way.

  “I’ll start from the beginning, I guess,” Elena adjusted her posture on the soft grass, sniffed, and looked up. “I don’t remember much of that to tell you. I was in a charity run orphanage in Finland when I was five.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “How did you end up in Finland?”

  “Good question,” she said after waiting for the Red Court to fade. “I only ever found one document about it. It said I was rescued by a—ready for this?—a Finnish naval expedition. It didn’t say where, but I guess it was maybe in Russia.”

  Arcen looked at her like she just turned into a different animal. If everything was to be believed, his second cousin had been rescued like an endangered penguin while he was living his middle-class Seattle life.

  “I wasn’t in the orphanage for long. I got adopted in about one month. My Dad’s an old man, Mom’s a very young lady. Everything was great for like three years. They loved me very much. Put me in the best school, paid for everything I ever wanted.”

  Elena was speaking in her normal, steady tone that someone reminiscing about their last good days couldn’t really do. She didn’t seem to feel either way about it. It was strange for Arcen to hear a child speak this way; she was always slightly off, but this confirmed it in the smallest amount of words out of her mouth. There was something with her—maybe not something wrong, but there was something here that he wasn’t seeing yet.

  “When I was about eight. Mom and Dad separated. That was around the time I was getting seriously into singing. Competitions. Talent shows, you already know about that. So, Helene…”

  She paused, looking up at Arcen.

  “My mom was young, as I said. She was twenty-six around the time she filed for divorce from Dad. I don’t hate her, not at all. She was really fun, but she wasn’t a very motherly mom, you get what I mean?”

  Arcen nodded. He imagined Kysa as this mother figure, and it sort of clicked into place. At twenty-six, his sister would’ve been the nightmare scenario as a mother.

  “Helene is the lady who took care of me. She’s the live-in nanny. She’s about twice as old as my mom. She was a distant relative of Dad’s family. He’d been paying her to stay with him because she had no one left after Mayday, and she was sick.” Elena rubbed her cheek. Arcen thought she was wiping tears, but she was only just scratching there. This tonal mismatch of hers was getting under his nerves.

  “Helene was there from the beginning, almost as much as Mom in the early days. She was like the actual mom for me. She did all the boring things Mom wouldn’t do, like wash my clothes, cook food I don’t really want to eat, and comb my hair every day.”

  Her tone still didn’t shift. Something had clearly gone wrong with Helene, but Elena seemed as rigid as steel when she was talking about this person who was really important to her. Arcen couldn’t imagine talking about his own mother this way without feeling daggers sinking into his heart. He’d buried her memories in a deep corner of his brain for a reason.

  “After mom left, Dad kind of went away, doing other things in other places. Other ladies, business trips. He was there for the talent show stuff, though, because that was something he wanted to do with all three of us. He still spent a lot of money on it even after Mom left and wanted to see it through. Around the time it ended, he had a baby with another lady, and he sort of forgot about me for a year.”

  “You’re not sad about any of this?” Arcen asked, interrupting after getting irritated with her flat tone. This was like hearing an alien speak about a human story.

  “Didn’t tell you the sad part yet,” she said with a grin.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Two things. Dad had tree sickness from the very beginning, even as he adopted me. His left arm was kinda gray and barky. Helene had some mutation that wasn’t fully diagnosed.” Elena sighed and took in a breath to get it out in one go. “Dad turned into a tree eight months ago. Helene got really sick two months later. She’s hooked up to a machine right now.”

  “Oh, what the hell? I’m really sorry,” Arcen said more softly than usual. He felt a creeping sense of regret about yelling at her, even though it was justified.

  “It’s alright,” Elena said, somehow smiling after going through a list of things that would’ve made him gag if any of them ever happened to him. “I just need the egg to see if that can help her.”

  Arcen tried to hide his shock, but it was impossible. She had just given him the key piece of information that he always wanted to know—the reason behind her climbing this tower. She wanted the egg to do something about Helene’s condition. As the initial shock faded, he thought about it further.

  She could’ve gotten out of the tower with the egg way earlier. She didn’t need to climb the tower at all. She could’ve just gone home with the egg right away after taking it from him at the ground floor.

  IS SHE LYING ABOUT SOMETHING AGAIN?

  It was more likely that she was not telling the whole truth. Although she said everything in such a flat and emotionless way, the things she spoke about didn’t come across as completely made up. There were still pieces missing from her puzzle.

  He lost track of time as he pondered the implications of what he just learned about this girl.

  “Oh look, the bubbles are shrinking,” Elena said, breaking the silence. She raised herself off the grass. “Time to go!”

  Jelly opened her eyes, having almost fallen asleep from Elena’s absent-minded head scratches.

  “Which way, Jelly?” Elena asked, standing up.

  Jelly blinked once and pointed to her right.

  Once they were safely out of the bubble chamber, the chase continued the same way it did before for another two chambers. Their features blended in Arcen’s mind as he kept his eyes trained on the mind hacker and them alone. In one chamber, he slammed a giant creature with a kick just to get it out of the way. King had fine-tuned his attention to home in on the target, and his body was doing everything to keep the target in his vision.

  In this hyper-focused state, he almost didn’t notice it when he leapt directly into a floor veil on the ground to the floor below.

  “Fucker’s going down!” Elena yelled right next to him as her voice got muffled by the veil.

  From there, Arcen lost count of how many chambers or floors it was. It could’ve been twenty or thirty. It could’ve been ten floors down. The world around him faded to a blur, isolating the mind hacker. Each step he took, the target grew larger, and after what subjectively felt like hours, it only kept getting bigger.

  CHASING THINGS IS FUN.

  They passed through a particularly empty set of chambers, dark and desolate. Chambers towards the outer rim. It seemed as they made their way down, the mind hacker had veered away from the stalk, their destination some point towards the edges of the tower.

  He was separated from Elena at some point, but he knew she was nearby, making her way through a different path.

  They met in a chamber that was engulfed in complete darkness, although Arcen knew right away where he was when he slowed down for a second.

  I KNOW THIS PLACE.

  He knew Elena knew this place very well.

  The mind hacker was heading into the capillary shaft shortcut. It was exactly as Arcen left it, solidified capillary gel accumulated like candle wax under a hole in the rock wall. The mind hacker used some sort of contract to blast the solidified gel to smithereens.

  STOP.

  Arcen yelled, activating Red Court right away. The domain engulfed both the mind hacker and Elena, freezing them right away. Elena fell off the slide and landed on the ground, but he couldn’t have given her a better warning without freezing her anyway.

  The mind hacker flickered where he stood, breaking free from the Red Court almost immediately.

  INTERESTING.

  Arcen collapsed the domain, letting Elena back on her feet. He shook his head sideways when she glared at him as she got off the ground. She nodded, understanding what just happened.

  As the last step, he only had one contract that could deal with this situation.

  ╭────────────────────╮

  ︶╯ CONTRACT ╰︶

  ????

  Ball Lightning

  ╰─────────╮╭────────╯

  ╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯

  The first bolt of lightning illuminated the entire chamber, long electric arcs reaching the hole in the wall as the mind hacker jumped into it. Elena used some sort of contract as well—likely the restraining one—but the mind hacker evaded it right away.

  “Damn it! I’m going in!” Elena yelled, activating another contract on herself, the one that allowed her to breathe in the gel. Arcen didn’t have anything like that; he was trying to find a way to tell Elena to use the same contract on him when a loud squeaky voice interrupted them both.

  “No!” Jelly yelled out of nowhere.

  Arcen jolted where he stood, his left ear ringing. Jelly had just yelled louder than she ever yelled at anything. He didn’t think she could even make a sound that big.

  Before he could even react, Jelly took off towards the hole in a blue flash. She stopped Elena moments before she could jump in.

  “Why not Jelly?” Elena asked in a stern voice.

  “No!” Jelly shook her head with a deep frown on her face. She opened her arms and legs like a starfish, denying entry to the capillary shaft.

  Elena readied herself to push her away and jump in. Arcen intervened, lifting her off the floor like a stray kitten.

  “She’s too serious about it,” he said, flashing red and freezing Elena mid-air for a moment.

  “Jelly, tell me why!” Elena howled, trying to break free from Arcen. She was halfway successful, given how oily she was.

  “No!” Jelly said yet again, closing her eyes indignantly as if the question itself was preposterous.

  Making sure they stayed where they were, Jelly turned around and touched the fresh capillary gel that was flowing out of the hole after the mind hacker burst through it. She shoved a gel-covered finger in her mouth.

  “EEK!” She squeaked, her small shoulders jolting as if she had been electrocuted.

  Relaxing herself by patting her sides, she turned back around and crossed her arms. She stood firmly before the hole in the wall with a stern expression on her tiny face.

  “Is something wrong with the gel?” Elena asked Jelly as Arcen placed her back on the floor.

  Jelly nodded up and down.

  “What is it, Jelly? Show me?” Elena asked with a sigh.

  “Auwa,” Jelly said, raising her hands above her head. “Big!”

  “Big Aura?” Elena asked, her brows twisting into worry. “That doesn’t make sense, she wasn’t worried about that fucker’s Aura,” she said at Arcen with a sideways glance. “Who is it, Jelly?”

  Jelly opened her mouth, bared her tiny teeth, and clattered them together. “Nom Nom Nom!” She said, gesturing yet again with her hands for them to stay away from the hole.

  “What is she talking about?” Arcen asked, utterly confused.

  “Someone down there in the shaft has big Aura, and they…eat?” Elena said, rubbing her chin. “Now who could that be…?”

  Next chapter on Friday.

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