Before I had any time to worry about anyone else, I had to worry about myself. I pushed off the last foothold I’d created and swiped twice at the empty air under me. Two dagger slashes appeared below me, and I turned in mid-air so at least one of them would be under my feet. I hadn’t expected to be able to fly with them, and from the massive increase in battery drain the slashes took to try and stay afloat it didn’t look like I’d soar any time soon. But they made far better footholds than I’d hoped for, staying perfectly in place as I pushed off to land on the pebbly ‘beach’.

The world instantly shifted. All the chaos and clashing hazards disappeared in less than the blink of an eye, leaving me staring at what was undeniably a completely abandoned tropical paradise. A smattering of sand-coloured buildings were in various states of disarray, ranging from windows missing a few panes of glass to only one-and-a-half walls left. The sky was the colour of molten glass, gleaming down on me with the same intensity as the midday sun. Except everywhere was bright, not just one single ball of light and fire. I lifted my hand to block the overwhelming light to try and scan the horizon for any signs of life, but only saw sand and strange-looking plant life as far as the eye could see.

Plant life that I hadn’t seen a second ago when I hadn’t been covering my eyes. I removed my hand while staring at a long flowing plant that looked like a massive piece of seaweed, and it disappeared the second the light directly hit my visor. Something in that reflection was hiding the long jet-black strands from view. For a second I thought that they might be made of slyk oil, or they were some strange slyk themselves, but there was absolutely no glimmer nor spark within them. They were as dark as the inside of a sealed steel box.

“See if Seb–” Jun’s voice cut in from nothing, and she winced at how loud she’d been speaking. “Oh, nevermind, he’s right… where did you go? Where did I go? What happened to that slyk monstrosity?”

“I can’t answer any of those questions.” I said seriously, still shielding my eyes to try and see where we were supposed to go. Jun walked out in front of me without shielding her own eyes, and as she did, the jet-black kelp bent ever so slightly towards her. “Watch out, Jun. There’s something you can only see if you shield your eyes.”

Jun planted her feet and froze. She audibly gulped and raised one hand to shield her eyes, then let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank the gods. I thought I’d just doomed myself. Do you have any idea what these things are?”

“Feelers. Or something like that.” Okeria answered, appearing while already shielding his eyes from the light. “They’re completely harmless if ya let them touch ya, but they’ll slowly drain your battery while they do. Kinda like a much weaker version of signaleech oil, now that I’m thinking about it.”

Keratily appeared a few seconds later, and after a moment of trying to get an oilstain off her left shoulder, shielded her eyes and sighed. “Try to avoid the strange feelers if you can. They won’t do much harm, but they’ll siphon away small amounts of your battery and make it slightly more difficult to use your functions.”

“I just told ‘em that.” Okeria said, turning to look at Keratily. He paused when he saw the oilstain, backing away slowly from the woman and lowering his arms to make sure Jun and I did as well. “Keratily… how’d the oil come through with ya? It always disappeared in the transition before.”

Keratily reached up to brush her shoulder once more, only now realizing that it apparently wasn’t supposed to be covered in oil. “That is… alarming. I think it would be best if we continued inland before whatever breed of slyk it was that attacked us pulls itself together and breaches all the rules we thought were in place.”

“Seconded.” Okeria vigorously agreed. He held his hand out with his palm facing upwards, summoning long ribbons of silvery metal from his interface. With a few more precise motions he summoned and melted down some metal spheres, creating thin wiry circles that he attached pieces of ribbon to. He fashioned one to his own helmet with a few presses of his fingertips, then rushed at me and did the same before I had a chance to argue.

“Hey!” Jun argued weakly when he moved to her, fashioning a skylight-blocking visor to her as well. “Nevermind. Thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Okeria muttered, turning to Keratily and placing the final visor on her. But when he did, I noticed him place three small bluish-silver dots on her helmet just above it. I didn’t know what they were for, but they had to be how he was going to distract Keratily. “They won’t help if ya look directly at the sky, and they’ll hamper your peripheral vision, so fight with that in mind. And don’t touch any of the ruins; some of ‘em aren’t as abandoned as they try ta make ya think they are.”

I nodded and took exactly eight steps towards the center of the nexus before all hell broke loose again. The sand under my feet shuddered and shifted to look like jagged pieces of crushed bone, then long strands of glass, and finally pebbles with enough oil seeping through to make it look like a soup. The ruins flattened and elongated before bursting apart at the seams with pressurized geysers of oil, rock and meat and blood flying soaring high into the sky on the spurts of slyk oil.

Meat that was swiftly enclosed in deep black tendrils, now ran through with muddled rainbow-coloured veins of electricity that buzzed like neon signs and popped like bubbles on the wind. “Is this… normal?” I asked, but I really didn’t need to hear an answer to know it was ‘no’.

“No.” Okeria said anyway, his voice wavering as he looked around in horror. The sky bled away from the extreme light to an oily white, glinting with the slight touch of every colour of the rainbow when droplets of slyk oil fell from the sky and splattered down around us. “Whatever just attacked us… I think it broke the nexus. But that shouldn’t be possible.”

“Everything is possible in a hazard.” I muttered, stepping gingerly to the side as the pebbles shifted under my feet to reveal a perfect circle of absolutely black oil with countless swirling rainbow spots. “This has to be the creator of the slyk attacking us.”

Keratily stomped down with a wet scraping squelch, summoning a field of crystal spikes around her that each came up with a speared round thing on them. They looked nothing like slyk. They were perfectly spherical, the colour of rusty sand, and leaked a light pink fluid from them as they deflated like punctured beach balls. No eyes, no orifices, no limbs; nothing.

“The old nexus is still here; the dredged switchport is simply exerting its influence over it.” Keratily said with a gesture at the dead beach balls. As if that proved her point somehow. “We simply need to get to the gate before this monstrous slyk fully breaches the hazard. Follow me, please, and do not dally. It is still an hour or so before we can reach safety.”

Okeria nodded and took off without saying anything, which was strange of him. I was about to say something when a message popped up on my interface from the party in question.

{Run with us for about two minutes, then fall away. I’ll make believable holograms ta fool Keratily, then teleport the two of ya ta us when we’re about ta leave. Keratily won’t say anything as long as she don’t have ta, so she won’t even notice you’re gone. Message me if ya need an instant teleport, and please stay safe. I’ll signal to ya with another message when ya can slow down.}

{Are you sure that’s a good idea?} Jun chimed in, sneaking a glance at me before taking off to follow Okeria. {If that thing is actually the slyk creator, we won’t stand a chance against it.}

I nodded to nobody and joined the sprint. {There’s no way that thing’s weaker than the signaleech, and we barely killed it after supremely wearing it down. You’ve got something else to protect us, right?}

Okeria didn’t react, but he did send another message. {Ya do know me, Sebastian. And that's a little worrying, if I’m being honest. Those cubes I gave ya have a few other features that I can activate in place of communication, and one of ‘em is camouflage. Ya won’t be completely invulnerable, but if ya avoid the tendrils and eyeball-filled holes, ya should be able ta avoid the creator. One minute. Get ready.}

Jun nodded ever so slightly, but didn’t say a thing. I followed her lead and brought all of my oil-based functions to the tip of my mind, ready to break off and fight for my life in a worst-case scenario. The world didn’t exactly seem to be ending around us, but it was on track to end in a good handful of minutes. Unless we took down this ‘creator’ or escaped, we would end with it.

A very slight blur overtook my vision, and I slowed down ever so slightly to make sure I didn’t stumble and alert Keratily. That slight slow-down was enough to show me a completely solid-looking duplicate of myself running at the exact same speed as Keratily and Okeria, along with two exactly equal Juns off to my right. I shared a look with the slower Jun, but didn’t fully break away yet.

{Alright, you’re good ta slow down. Don’t do anything that’ll get Keratily ta look back.} Okeria informed us without breaking stride or opening his interface. {I’ll keep eyes on ya the whole time, but I won’t bring ya in unless it looks like you’re about ta die or ya send me a message. The camouflage will kick in in thirty seconds. Good luck, and please stay safe.}

{We will.} Jun replied, slowing down and gesturing at an oily building off to the left that was mostly intact. {We’ll hide out behind that building until you’re far enough away. Good luck to you, too, Okeria.}

I nodded and started moving with Jun, letting Okeria and Keratily get ever so slightly further and further away as we moved further and further to the left. I ducked under a tendril that was lazily lashing about like one-eighth of a bored octopus, or a butterfly’s antenna, holding my breath as I did with the hope that it wouldn’t notice me. It didn’t seem to, and I stepped behind the oily stone wall just before Jun did the same.

She pushed me a little further down with a quiet hiss as the tendril drifted where she’d been standing a second ago. {When Okeria’s camouflage turns on, we have to find something that’ll connect you to the slyk network. Otherwise we’ll never find anything here.}

{Mmhm.} I sent with a nod, looking around for anything that looked like it might be slyk-pod-like. There was nothing in the immediate vicinity, but this place seemed to be beyond massive. We’d find something eventually. We had to.

Mortician’s existence was on the line.