Once Jun and I had found as many little slyk as our time limit would allow, we chose a building that didn’t have a single easy way up to it and had a zipline that took us to the main building as our suggestion for a home base. Neither The End nor Mortician spoke up while we searched, but when I asked Mortician if they felt a little more ‘real’ now, they answered with a confusion that hurt me to see.

{We… we are already real. Or… we thought we were.}

No -Mortician at the end of the message hurt a lot more than I thought it would. I apologized for my assumption and made my way back to the main building where Okeria and Keratily were waiting for us.

Jun coughed to get my attention just before we entered. “Yeah?”

“I was thinking that I should be the one to fight most of these slyk this time. If they’ve all got cores, or even if only a fifth of them have cores, then I could get enough stat nodes to fill a good number of node stars.” Jun suggested. “I haven’t really had a chance to use the function you gave me from Nia’s core, not since you corrupted that extender for me, and I need a chance to use it in combat before we get to Rainbow Basin.”

That made sense to me. “Alright.”

“I know it’s a little selfish, because your core would give both of us progress instead of just me, but I… wait. Alright?” Jun asked in disbelief. “Did you just say alright? You’re fine with letting me fight?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve never stopped you from fighting before, and I’m not going to start now.” I shifted from one foot to the other outside of the entrance, trying to put together just how Jun had came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t gladly let her fight. Only one person’s name came to mind. “Is Keratily babying you while I’m not there?”

Jun snorted and turned away in embarrassment. “Babying. That’s a good word for what Keratily’s doing. Or what she’s trying to do so she can ‘preserve my innocence’. Such a drowned stupid thing; I’m not innocent. I’ve seen enough in these last few months that would’ve horrified people back home. Skies above, Keratily told me that Moricla isn’t just about being innocent. She’s about protecting innocence too, which Keratily thinks she’s doing, but she can’t even think that maybe I’m not praying to the children’s side of Morcila.”

She shook her head in frustration. “Our family sends people here to preserve innocence, but the Keratilys here do the exact opposite. Maybe it’s time I stop following Moricla and start reading the scriptures of the quiet god.”

A quiet gasp emerged from over my right shoulder. I imagined Okeria gasping into thin air while sitting next to Keratily, making up some bullshit story to cover his outburst when she questioned him about it. If I was a Staura like Jun, then maybe I’d have the same reaction as he did. But I was very much human, or at least mostly human. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure any more, which was a little worrying.

“Seems to me like both of them are hurting for followers right now. Or… she is? I don’t really remember what Keratily said exactly. Was Moricla an alter ego of the quiet god, or was she a twin sister?”

“Moricla is the god of the innocent, and she’s also the quiet god. At the same time.” Jun said, but it didn’t feel like her words were directed at me. “Mmh. I can’t forget that. Instead of a change of gods, it's more like a change of perspective. Yeah. I can work with that. Alright. Yeah.”

While Jun convinced herself that it was fine to betray the god she worshiped to worship that same god, I tried to put together how I was going to go about putting together Mortician’s pieces. From what I saw through the pod network, I would still be about eighty pieces short once I collected everything from this place. And I still had the locker key to eventually use, whether that ended up being here or in the nexus. How was I going to justify staying longer than a quick passthrough in whatever the nexus was to Keratily? And what if a trawler came by so soon that I didn’t have a chance to gather all the slyk pieces from this place?

I might have to rely on Okeria, which wasn’t a thought that I enjoyed entertaining. It was a last resort, albeit one that I had a sinking feeling would have a better chance of coming true than not. With that pleasant thought bouncing around my skull, I tapped Jun on the shoulder and nodded up at where Okeria and Keratily were waiting for us.

“Can’t keep them waiting too long.” I said with forced enthusiasm.

Jun’s helmet stared at me blankly. “Right. That’s what we’re here for, after all.”

Keratily looked up from something shiny she was tinkering with when we passed through the doorless doorway to the meetup spot. She didn’t say anything, simply nodding at Jun then gesturing at Okeria before going back to her work.

“She found something out there that got her enraptured for some reason.” Okeria explained preemptively. “We did manage ta find a good place ta hole up in, and compared ta the one I saw the two of ya choose, I’d say we should go with ours.”

Once again, before I could ask any questions, Okeria preempted me with a message. {I found a tiny slyk with one of them pods on it. I’ll give it ta ya when the Keratilys go and clear out the chaff. Oh, and don’t worry about what Keratily’s working on; it’s not one of Mortician’s pods. She found a chunk of shiny slyk rock that she’s convinced is a rare mutation.}

There was absolutely no way Okeria managed to type all of that in the half-second between when he finished talking and when I got the message. He must’ve prepared it in advance.

{Uh, thanks. I was just about to ask about that.}

Okeria chuckled quietly, then whipped his head around to see if Keratily reacted. She was still fiddling away with her rock, and he sighed in relief. Which caused him to panic again.

Jun coughed to get his attention. “Should we go to the place you and Keratily found? Before the slyk start swarming?”

“Well, yeah. Of course we should.” Okeria said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Come up ta the roof with me. I’ll show ya how ta use the zipline.”

Okeria hurried away, and we followed. The smoke seemed a little thicker than it had just minutes ago, and a crack like thunder from above drew my attention. I glanced upwards and saw a long drip of oil hanging from the smoky ceiling, positioned to fall somewhere off in the distance. If that was a slyk, it would have to find some rocks to be more than cannon fodder.

I rounded a twisting corner to find Jun and Okeria already looking out over the layover and the mass of wires connecting all the buildings to each other. Okeria looked back at me and waited until I fell in line with them to start talking.

“These ziplines don’t work like ones either of ya might’ve seen or used before. They don’t rely on gravity, and as ya can see by the way they’re anchored, they don’t move at all. What they do have is an activation requirement, and then it’ll send ya in the right direction no matter how steep the angle you’re about ta climb is.”

He stepped up to the bottom of the silver line and grabbed it with one hand. He kicked the pole it was connected to hard enough that it wobbled to and fro with a metallic warble, and then he was off. It was like the vibrations he started tried to propagate through the zipline but got caught against his hand, and that somehow propelled him at breakneck speeds towards one of the only towers taller than the building we stood on top of.

Jun shook the surprise a little sooner than I did. She laughed and shook her head, then mimicked everything Okeria had done and was sent careening through the air. She yelped in surprise and almost let go at the sudden acceleration, but managed to right herself before that happened.

It seemed like a really strange way for a hazard to make ziplines work, instead of just making a simple pulley system. Though I did have to admit that it was pretty neat. I walked up to the now completely still line when I saw Jun dismount, reaching up just above my head to grab onto the finger-width silver wire that connected my building to theirs. I briefly considered going back to tell Keratily that we were all gone, but decided against it. She was strong enough that I doubted any of the slyk here could give her a challenge. No matter how many of them swarmed her.

“Here goes.” I said to myself and kicked the pole. My foot pulsed with pain as it slammed against what felt like a steel beam, but wiggled like an aluminum dowel. I felt something pressing up against the crook of my thumb and index finger, and then all of my weight was on my right hand.

“OH FUCK!” I screamed as I rocketed through the air. The ground was further below me than it had been even when I was on the trawler, and although I knew I could survive the fall, my pride would be severely bruised when I had to go and do all this again. So I held tight as my fingers threatened to splay wide and another thunderclap split my eardrums.

I looked up just in time to see the massive droplet of oil fall from the ceiling. Close enough to me that I was briefly worried that it would hit me on the way down. And then the fucking thing shifted in midair a few feet to the left, which put it directly in my path.

“Aw, come the fuck on.” I muttered as I stared up at the slyk oil that I was too slow and stunned to avoid inevitably came for my face. And body. And, well, pretty much everything. I closed my eyes and forced all of my ribbons from //ENDLESS to activate to ensure neither of the impacts would kill me, then let go so I didn’t rip my arm off trying to weather the oily storm.

Splat.