Silence fills the room as we all stare down at the slab. Clamber’s and Scooch’s seem to be confused, almost like they don’t understand what’s going on, but mine is a little different. It stems from the deep, shameful fact that I’m a goddamn idiot for not thinking of this sooner.

  Of course the plastic would do something. It already did something both other times I saw it touch the stone–I just didn’t register it. I reach down and push Clamber’s work in progress around the slab, watching as the words on it slide around with the piece of jewelry.

  “It’s like a… location marker.” I mutter to myself. “I move it around, and the words stay the same distance away from it no matter where I put it. So now what happens if I actually connect the sphere to this?”

  I summon a small glob of plastic from my inventory, stick it to the bottom of the sphere, and plant it on the slab. A small puff of magic connects the two, like a spark between an outlet and a plug. The wreath around the sphere shudders, twitches, and starts to turn to face in a direction that almost lines up the two pairs of words. But not quite perfectly.

  “It’s like a very simple map.” Scooch notes with obvious interest. “If we assume that touching the plastic to the slab marks our current location, then we should be able to infer exactly where those words are leading you to.”

  “That’s if it’s actually working like that. There’s always the chance the plastic is marking something else.” I lean over and gesture at the door. “Clamber, can you go get one of the rings? I want to test something.”

  She nods eagerly, jumps up without a word, and almost sprints out of the room. As the door swings shut behind her, Scooch leans in close and gently prods at the plastic connecting the wreathe to the slab.

  “Is this marking another location, or does it serve a different purpose because it connects the sphere to the slab?”

  I shrug. “No idea; I found out about this at the exact same time you did. But there was a little spark of magic when the two touched, so… I’m betting it did something different.”

  He strokes his chin as he nods. “What about the different states of the squirmstone? Does the fresh, unfired material have different effects from the hardened stone?”

  “Let’s see.”

  I pull out some more plastic and slap it down on the slab. There’s no spark, or shift, but… the colours seem to change a little. The bit I threw down as mostly green, with a little bit of red at the edge. Before my eyes, blues and purples join them, spreading over the plastic like a rising tide. And as the colour flows, so does the plastic, thinning and spreading out to less than an eighth of an inch thick to cover more ground.

  There’s a certain… hypnotic effect to watching the plastic spread and change. I hover my hand over the stuff until there’s a good four-inch wide stain of the stuff pressed close to the slab and the colours finally seem to settle. Mostly, it just looks like a mess of a different colour. But if I lean in closer, and squint really hard, I can almost see something else.

  “Hrm. Maybe we just don’t have enough?” I wonder aloud and summon more plastic. “This should be enough.”

  I plop a much larger chunk down on the slab. The colours shift and whirl in a maelstrom of movement as the plastic thins out, covering all of the slab in a thin layer of the stuff. Though it looks like I put more than a little too much on, since it starts to climb up the sphere and cover that, too. Not the wreath around it for some reason; just the sphere.

  Less than thirty seconds pass. Before my very eyes, the plastic transforms into a coloured map; one of a landscape that’s mostly alien to me. A landscape that, if it’s actually real, is infinitely larger than I thought. Because the tiny stone-coloured blip under Clamber’s work in progress, which I assume is Palastia, is barely even the size of a pea.

  “It’s a map of this part of the continent.” Scooch says, confirming my suspicion. “And look–the writing has taken on a new form.”

  He’s right–the writing carved into the slab, even though it’s been filled in with plastic, is one pure colour–brilliant ocean blue. It covers a part of the map that looks unbelievably dry, with a bunch of browns and yellows, and no blips large enough to look like a Palastia-sized town. Maybe it’s not even inside of the ‘tutorial’ area.

  The door clicks, then slams open. “I have the ring!” Clamber announces as she sprints over, then gasps at the sight of the map. “Aw, you did a cool thing without me. Did you even need the ring at all?”

  I accept it from her with a laugh. “We won’t know until we put it down.”

  Carefully, I pull off her work in progress and hand it back to her. She accepts it much less carefully, her focus entirely on whatever the ring’s going to do to the plastic-coated map. Not wanting to keep anyone waiting–myself included–I flip the ring so the plastic-gem is facing downward and press it into the plastic.

  A soft hiss and a plume of mist rise from the slab. I raise an eyebrow and push the ring through the plastic, but it just leaves a long smear through it that distorts the colours to a muddy brown. Clamber and Scooch both lean further in, but a pang in my gut tells me that something’s off.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I pull the ring away, and Clamber groans. “Aw, why’re you doing that? Something was happening!”

  One glance down at the ring proves her half right. As the plastic below squirms and regains its colour, the plastic on the ring shifts to show something else; a set of wriggly tendrils wrapped around a many-faceted centerpiece. I can’t count them all, since it’s a two-dimensional… image…

  As I twist the ring a little, as if it’d show me more of the shape, it actually does. The polyhedron turns and shifts as I move the ring, creating the illusion of a 3D object hidden in a 2D space. One side, two, three… five… ten… fifteen… eighteen sides. A shape made of eighteen hexagonal sides. Exactly like the one Clutter found.

  “Damn it, I wanted an answer, not another mystery.” I mutter to myself as I hand the ring to a very curious looking Clamber. “If that’s supposed to be the solution to this lead, then what am I supposed to get from it? That rocks exactly like that one are always going to be filled with plastic?”

  Clamber frowns as she studies the ring. “How do you know this is a rock?”

  “Because I found all this stuff in a rock that looks exactly like that.”

  “Even with the tendrils?”

  “Even the…” I pause as a thought starts to form. “Actually, no, not with the tendrils. Is that telling me to find one specific rock, or to make tendrils out of the plastic and wrap them around any rock that looks like that?”

  I press my hand to the bottom half of my mask, then freeze. Because I’m still wearing my mask. Yet, somehow, I could perfectly see the shape inside of the ring, and I can tell exactly what colour the plastic is through my awareness alone. That has to be a sign that we’re on the right track.

  “Can you see the colours too?” I ask with a glance in the direction of Pearl’s shell. “Because they’re really vibrant for me.”

  “I can, yes.”

  “So can I!”

  Pearl nods slowly. “Yes. Through awareness alone, these things are coloured and multi-dimensional. I need to study this. Don’t throw away these things when you’re done with them.”

  “Good to know.” I say, making a mental note to save these things if at all possible. “So we’ve got a map that has one specific location marked on it, a compass pointing in one specific direction, and a ring telling us to look for one specific kind of rock. If there’s only one way to gain access to this quest, then all three of these things have to lead to the same end goal.”

  “Makes sense to me.” Clamber agrees.

  Scooch hums and frowns. “I agree with everything, but do not assume there’s only one way to gain access to this quest. If there are this many avenues to it, then the system must want as many participants as physically possible. For all we know, this quest could even pull others in from across the world depending on how the system set it up.”

  “If that’s true, then it’s good for me.” I summon a shield, wrap it around the slab, and send it to my inventory. “Thanks for answering my questions, but I’ve got to get moving. I’ll do everything I can to help find Clamber’s dad while I’m out there.”

  “Aww, you’re leaving already? But… we have to have more things you need to know about.” Clamber pouts and looks down at the ring in her hands. “Scooch, is there anything else about Well that we didn’t say yet?”

  He shakes his head. “Nothing I can think of, young lady.”

  “Neither can I.” She sighs. “Dang it. Um… can you stay for a little longer so I can get your measurements for this piece? If I work really hard, I should have it done by tomorrow morning. Is that still soon enough, or is it too late for you?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be here, maybe I won’t.” I say with a shrug, then snap my fingers. A relocation coin appears between them. “But if you can promise me that you’ll be done by tomorrow morning, I can use this coin to teleport whatever you’re making to me.”

  She stares at the coin. It isn’t a happy look. “I… um… sorry. We don’t really do teleporting any more.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Do you have something that blocks teleportation in here?”

  “No… I… um… I don’t really want to talk about it.” She says timidly. “Is that okay?”

  Okay, looks like I accidentally hit a soft spot. I hold the coin up, then make a show of sending it away with a nod. “No teleportation it is, then. I’ll try to find my way back tomorrow morning, but if I can’t be here myself, I’ll send someone else to come get it for me.”

  Scooch walks over to Clamber and gently pulls her into a hug. “That works just fine for us. Tell them to say ‘I’m here for the map stone’ when they arrive, so we know they are the one you sent.”

  “Map stone. Okay.” I stand and offer Clamber an apologetic smile that my mask hides. “Sorry that whatever I said brought up some bad memories. And thanks again for all the help.”

  She sniffles, then looks at me with her face half buried in Scooch’s arm. “Please find daddy.”

  My smile curdles. “I promise you we’ll do everything we can to bring him back here.”

  With the promise clinging to my lips like strands of vomit, I turn away and make for the door. Clamber’s quiet breaths hitch as I open it, and Scooch pulls her a little closer before she can start to cry. Knowing that her dad might not even be alive gnaws at me, and the thought that he might not be… the same… bothers me even more. If a Psychic got their hands on him…

  I shake my head; thinking about that won’t do me any good. I need to regroup with Clutter and Illumisia, see if Dizzy has anything to say about anything we’ve found, and make plans for what little time we have left. Throwing the quest for Clamber’s father on top of the pile makes it wobble a little, but until it really topples over, I won’t know how much shit I’m in.

  The short walk through the hallway and the store barely leaves me time to think. I glance around at the cases, now all airtight and locked up, as I make my way to the door that leads outside. A lock clicks open when I get close, and I raise my hand to push on a section that I’m pretty sure is metal.

  Before I can push, I’m stopped by the sight of something on my finger. The ring. Clamber must’ve slipped it on my hand when I wasn’t looking. And goddamn it, if that doesn’t make me feel worse.

  “I need to stop getting attached to people so quickly.” I mutter to myself as I step into the street. With a flick, I summon my Class Card. “Clutter, I’m done. We’ve got new leads to discuss.”