I sat perched atop my hydra’s head as functions, gunshots, and other projectiles plinked against a sphere of petal-scales. We’d been moving for about five minutes, and the worst roadblock I’d dealt with was whatever had caused that huge bump in the road two minutes ago. Hopefully it was some of Scalovera’s hired muscle trying to stop my oily monstrosity, but if it was some civilians…

Well, I’d asked Okeria to take a look with his drones. And he’d assured me it wasn’t anyone to feel bad about, though he didn’t say it was an enemy. I’d have to go back and check after all of this, or force Okeria to hand over the footage. Either worked.

{How much further?}

{Three minutes. Get ready.} Okeria warned me. {Inopsy’s managed ta get Keratily ta the outskirts of the city, but I don’t know how long he can solo steal her attention. Get in and get out as quick as ya can.}

{Will do.} I confirmed and gripped my shield. I wasn’t used to having this much control over my petal-scales, and definitely not this easily. It did come at a cost, though–my maximums had increased, so I was going through oil and battery at a much faster pace than normal. Almost like I’d gotten the ability to overclock my oil-based functions, except I was literally paying for the boost with my blood and energy.

Of course I could just pull back and not overexert myself, but that’s what the healing stuff was for. I’d almost burnt through all the overflowed battery I’d stored up, and my health was starting to tick down now as well. Probably because my armor had to make more blood-oil for me. Once I was with Annette and I wasn’t racing against time, then I’d let myself slow down.

My communicator crackled to life with the sounds of battle. Two voices screamed incomprehensibly at each other for a few seconds, and then Inopsy cleared his throat.

{Sorry for that–Keratily just ripped my leg off. I got her hand from the wrist down, though, so that’s fun.} He screamed bloody murder, then coughed. {Sorry for the noise–gotta make this look as real as possible, even if I’m struggling my drowned mind out. I give it another twenty minutes before Keratily blows past me. Skies above, she really was weakened when I fought her before. This woman’s terrifying!}

{I’m on my way. It’ll be pretty obvious when I’m close. Hold–}

Molten something flooded my petal-scales. Warnings blared across my visor like a swarm of angry, digital wasps. I gave a mental shove and made my shield as huge as possible for a split second, then dismissed my scales and snapped to all the different marked signals to find a source.

It wasn’t hard to find them. Two armored Staura flanking either wide of some kind of cannon that dripped a molten liquid from its barrel. A third struggled with a glass ball filled with something that looked like table salt, and a fourth kept their hand on it while white lines bled from their armor and into the thing.

“Should’ve expected they’d bring out the heavy artillery.” I grumbled and shifted my weapon into a sling for the first time in a long while. Petal-scales condensed into a projectile that brimmed with deadly promise, and I activated wipe-away on the salty cannoneers. “Stay as steady as you can, girl, and warn me if you see something else like that cannon. We can’t afford to waste any more battery than we already are.”

My hydra bellowed in understanding, and her back shifted a little until it was perfectly flat. She did something else that made it perfectly steady, so much so that it felt like I was standing on solid ground. Apparently her control over her body also increased with my armor’s upgrade.

I spun my sling with one hand and aimed with my other thumb. “Thanks, girl. You’re getting dangerously close to being a mobile battle station.”

She made a happy little noise at that. I grinned and felt my weapon reaching the fastest it could spin without any more empowerments, which was actually a little lower than I’d expected, but it would be enough. One strap fell from my fingers and the sling stone rocketed out, trailing droplets of oil as it screamed toward the molten salt cannon. If I aimed right, it’d take the cannoneer right in the head and put them out of commission until we were out of their range.

My stone impacted their helmet. Clear blood, plant matter, and oil exploded out the back of it. A notification told me that I’d just gained a copy of their core, but I barely noticed it as I stared at the messy destruction I’d just brought. The other three panicked once the shock had worn off. One of them shoved the ball into the cannon, the other two swiveled it to face me, and then they all propped up their fourth’s corpse as if that would somehow activate the cannon.

“How did that kill them right away?” I muttered to myself as I watched the grisly display. “Their armor should’ve at least tried to keep them alive. It’s not like I completely destroyed their head–there’s just a big hole in it.”

Just like how I’d somehow killed Inopsy with a sword to the face. Even though he was functionally immortal. There was something fucky with the system and all its regenerative properties at play, but this wasn’t the time to wonder about it. Doubly so due to the fact that my hydra shifted her body and physically whirled me around to face another cannon. This time with a ball filled with something that looked like big, burning spiders.

Plus another three off in the not-so-far distance that were still getting set up. If it was this bad in a place we didn’t think was going to be high priority, I couldn’t imagine what it looked like where Jun and Mortician were.

“Guess we’re in the thick of it now, huh girl?” I chuckled and patted the base of my hydra’s neck.

She bellowed a war cry in response and crushed something under her. I barely even noticed a bump, and a cannon crew emerged from under her a second later.

Definitely in the thick of it.

I grit my teeth and activated endless’ recovery ribbon as I dismissed my hydra, dropped to the ground, and shifted my weapon into a dagger. There wasn’t a single person alive anywhere close to me. But there were plenty of corpses.

Some had been burned. More than a few had been crystallized in pieces. And a terrifyingly large number of them looked like they’d just… disappeared. Pieces of empty armor with just a few smatterings of ash to confirm that it had been a person at some point. If that was Inopsy, then I was really, really glad that he was on our side. And if that was Keratily…

Well, I didn’t want to think about that.

{Annette, I’m nearby. Can you give me directions to your location?}

A dim light emerged from a chunk of armor. I carefully turned and watched a trail of light pulse on and off, illuminating a trail that led… somewhere off into the distance. Only then did I realize how quiet it was. If there was really a huge fight going on, then shouldn’t it be a little louder?

Annette’s voice broke the strange silence a moment later. {Do you see the trail?}

{I do. It leads right to you?}

{As long as nobody else touched the empty armor, then yes.} She confirmed. {I can hear something down here with me, but my light hasn’t exposed anything. Be really careful when you come down, please.}

Now that was worrying. Silence where there should be none, and sound where there should be silence? That seemed like a ‘Keratily’s controlling us’ sort of thing.

{Alright. Stay put and stay on your toes. I’ll send a small version of my hydra in ahead of me. If I don’t come in behind it, attack whatever me that is.} I ordered as I started to follow the trail. {Can your core wipe away illusions, or just make them?}

{I don’t know, sorry. I haven’t really experimented since I got my mind back.} Annette quietly apologized. {Maybe I can? If it comes to that I can try.}

I rounded a corner as the trail continued out the gate and a little further out of Rainbow Basin. {Don’t worry about it. I can see the trail leading out of the city. Is that right?}

{Yeah. It’ll lead to a tree that’s hollow, and you’ll have to jump into it to get down here. How’s Inopsy doing? I can’t hear him fighting any more.}

{I can’t see him fighting either.} I jogged to reach the tree Annette referred to, then summoned my hydra in a ball of scales. Scorch marks, glassy stones, and pink crystals dotted the landscape like some twisted hailstorm had just run through. {I’m at the tree. Sending my hydra down now.}

My hydra formed before I let go of her lump of scales and pushed against my thumb. She nodded and stared down the hole, then jumped on her own and started to grow a little while drawing from my battery on her own. That was a little concerning, but as long as she didn’t start abusing that newfound ability, it could also be very convenient.

{Gah! What’s… oh, right, your hydra.} Annette laughed nervously. {The other sound still hasn’t gone away. Do you hear anything up there?}

I shook my head, even though Annette couldn’t see me. {Absolutely nothing at all. I’m honestly starting to get a little… freaked out. Did Inopsy say where he was leading Keratily?}

The tree called to me. I hopped down the trunk and let my fingers dig into the wood, scraping loudly as I worked to slow my descent a little. Except it wasn’t that loud. At all. More like the soft creaking of the forest on a cool night. Splinters and shards of wood rained down around me, and they were joined by tiny pink crystals that plinked harmlessly against my armor.

{Oh, that is not a good sign.} I whispered and let go. The rest of the fall only took a few seconds, and I landed with a dry puff that rattled my bones something fierce. {All the sound is messed up around here. Probably something to do with Keratily’s crystal. Fuck, Inopsy and Keratily could’ve been fighting outside and I just didn’t notice their presence. That’s terrifying.}

Annette laughed weakly. {Thanks for giving me something else to be scared of.}

Pink light filtered down from everywhere. Annette stood at the other end of the room, gently cradling a head-sized pink crystal in her arms like a baby. Something loomed over her like a living shadow, black-tinged pink warring with brilliant light for purchase.

Her visor was completely covered in a pink crystal. She turned to look at me.

“Why’s your armor so pink?”