The water flowed upward. Swirls of colour and power melded together into a maelstrom of sensations, screaming at the opportunity to be released into the outside world. Love, fear, hatred, and everything in between was inside of that reservoir. It was life itself.

//Start of the Rainbow. (Extinct, Entity).

//The life-giving waters of Rainbow Basin from a time before memory. Tainted with the power of Acasiana and all those who have called the city home over millennia, it has become something far beyond what it once was.

//If it does not deem you worthy, this consumable will be changed to give a completely different effect. In addition, its rarity will change to (Rare, Masterwork).

//When consumed, grants the consumer one additional trinket slot and transforms into a trinket that cannot be removed from that slot. If they have already consumed this, instead restores integrity, battery, and health equal to 50% of their respective maximums.

I whistled and gently rubbed the glassy surface of the reservoir. That was some aged water, and it had been seeped in the lives of so many powerful Staura. Not literally, of course, but I didn’t feel like there was a better way of articulating the point. This stuff was living history.

“Okeria, did you check out the reservoirs yet?” I asked out loud as I stepped away and looked around for any way to get into the water. One that didn’t involve shatter glass and a miniature flood. “There’s a really powerful restoration consumable inside of them.”

A light laugh crackled through the communicator. “Ya know, Sebastian, I’m not exactly lookin’ for refreshments at the moment. We’re on some sort of mission, remember? One that’s pretty important, all things considered?”

“A mission to get stronger. Which a seventy-five percent full recovery would help a hell of a lot with.” I countered. “Just keep an eye out for anything that looks like it’d let us get into those reservoirs. If we’re severely under-staffed in our fight with Scalovera, this could easily turn the tides.”

“Alright, ya got a point. Good one, at that.” Okeria said. I heard the sound of something scratching on his end, then a grunt of effort. “I’m still gonna put priority one as turnin’ the power on for this place, but I’ll keep an eye out. Juniper, ya hear that?”

“Heard and working on it.” Jun confirmed through heavy breaths. “I found a pretty steep drop-off that I can’t see the bottom of, but it looks like it was built into this place. Can’t really talk right now, though it looks like there’s some kind of roots in the wall that’re carrying the water through them. I bet this will lead me to the source.”

So neither of them had actually scanned the reservoirs. Well, they were in for a surprise when they eventually got around to it. And that would be mythic or greater consumable number three for me, leaving only one more until I got to see what endless’ final upgrade would be. I tapped on my map to mark the location of the reservoir, just in case it was the only one whose water was different, then continued to explore the strangely dark room.

Darkness coiled around me like a rolling fog. Every step that parted the wall was met by the same wall closing in at my back, and before long, I started to hear things. Quiet knocking. The hiss of steam, and the silence left behind when it was gone. Okeria and Jun talked plenty in my ear, reporting their progress, but I somehow felt extremely isolated. Even when I responded with my own findings, it was like I was talking to two recordings. Their own voices grew stiff and rushed over time, until eventually we all spoke in extremely short sentences that just got the point and or findings across. And nothing more.

My mind wandered to Mortician, sitting alone in the dark with nothing but my hydra for company. I double-checked for the battery drain that told me the creature-function was still active, just to be sure, and it was. Yet they hadn’t asked for Okeria’s help. I rubbed my shoulder and snapped to a shadow on the ceiling that crawled out of the way as my gaze fell upon it. Something was there. Yet I couldn’t find any evidence of there being anything alive but us.

I had to be seeing things. The dark had to be playing tricks on my mind. This wasn’t a hazard, and it had been sealed for thousands of years. Nothing could survive that long, and I highly doubted Acasiana would’ve allowed anything to be trapped inside when she shut it tight in the first place.

{If you can hear me, and you didn’t go somewhere I can’t reach, can you reveal any hidden debuffs I’m under right now?} I asked The End in desperation. I hadn’t heard from it in so long, but it had to still be there. {Hello? Please?}

Absolutely nothing. I was alone in the presence of Jun and Okeria. With only the light of a drone and the strange colours of the reservoirs to guide me. There had to be something debuffing me, since I’d never really had a problem with the darkness, but it could also be the emotions leaking out from the reservoirs. Just like how I felt when I called on my clearance.

“Damn it all.” I sighed and reached up for Okeria’s drone. “Okeria, kill my light for a minute. I want to see something.”

The drone’s light winked out. “Done and done.” Okeria confirmed. “Just scream real loud if you need it back on.”

I glanced around at the light and sensations of the reservoirs and didn’t answer Okeria. Not because I wanted to ignore him, but because something had caught my attention. And, for some reason, it stole away one-hundred percent of it. The light seemed to wash out any away from the reservoirs, trailing through the darkness like silken ribbons on an unfelt breeze. Colours wrapped together to form more concrete emotions, not just the simple primal notions of fear or love I’d felt before.

My fingers trailed through a combination of red, green, and a vibrant blue that would’ve been at home in a candy shop. Excited reluctance bled into my fingertips, coating me in a sensation that told me to look forward to whatever was ahead while also retaining a level of disappointment to hide behind in case things went wrong. It was an emotion I’d felt many times before, but this one… this one didn’t feel like mine. This one was someone else’s, transmitted into whatever the colourful light was and sent out through the mire of darkness.

And the thick entwined ribbon trailed off into the distance. As if it was leading me somewhere. I was ninety-nine percent sure the ribbon hadn’t existed just a few seconds ago, and if it had, it hadn’t been anywhere near as powerful as it was now. The sensation almost dragged me along its path, and my feet moved before I gave them a command to.

A single image burned in my mind, as bright and hot as a blacksmith’s forge. Acasiana’s symbol glowed with molten heat, searing itself even deeper than ever before as I let myself follow the sensations through the darkness. If this had been a hazard, I would have been confident to say that I’d found a solution to the puzzle. But this wasn’t a hazard–it was a rest area. So wherever the sensations were leading me wasn’t necessarily where I needed to go.

But it was where I wanted to go.

I found myself before something that definitely looked out of place in the darkness. A singular jagged stone, no larger than my fist, with swirling colours that made the darkness explode in colour and motion. It sat upon a pedestal that looked far too small for it, amidst a whole lot of broken glass and a few chunks of… not glass. I couldn’t make out what it was, but it almost looked like those dead branches people cut off of plants.

The sensations that rolled off it were terrifying. The most vivid emotions I’d ever felt, from rage so incandescent that it would leave an entire country dead and burning in its wake to a love so grand that it would shape history for centuries to come. But the more I felt them, the more I realized what they were. Fake. The conglomeration of every emotion ever felt in Rainbow Basin, concentrated into some sort of gemstone of unimaginable worth and power.

From where I stood, I could feel all of the reservoirs. Not just in the rest area; in the entire greater facility. And I could tell that they weren’t meant to be opened. Roots connected them through the ceiling or the floor to a network that spanned the entire facility–a combination of plumbing and electrical wires that somehow transmitted emotions just as well as it transmitted water. Water that was supposed to be flowing through the facilities and powering them.

I stared down at the stone and frowned. It was at the center of everything. Calm trailed into it, then away from it and into one of the other facilities. Rage mixed with the calm in some places, and twisted away at others. They were being funneled into specific places. To harbor those sensations in those sub facilities if I had to hazard a guess. But years of stagnation had caused the waters to build up their stockpiles, leading to the emotions gathering and amplifying themselves to a degree that was previously impossible.

“This is the control room.” I said without taking my eyes off the stone. A quick analysis gave me no hints, as was the usual, but there was really only one thing to work with. I stared at my hand for a moment, then nodded with conviction and pressed my hand onto the stone. “Hope this doesn’t kill me.”

Emotions warred for purchase in my body. Yet I wasn’t the one feeling them. Instead, it felt like I was in the middle of a very tense room where so many people were arguing, fighting, and openly expressing their love. Vigorously. The sensations swirled around me, as if using me as a medium to get where they needed to go, and then came the colours.

Vibrancy beyond vibrancy. A painted world of evocative images spread thick over centuries and centuries of experience. Lives lived, ruined, and born anew in a never ending cycle that had yet to finish even one rotation. They all blended together in a mess that should’ve muddled the individuals, yet somehow came together in a brilliant masterpiece that accentuated each and every one.

I held my breath as the experience faded away. My fingertips tingled with longing for the sensations I’d known for all of twenty seconds, and once I regained enough of myself to look down, the change was beyond obvious. For one, I could see more than the vibrant colours. The darkness was completely gone, and in its place, thin wisps of colour floated through the room like lingering smoke.

Secondly, the stone was now the size of a rubber bouncy ball. All of the extra material had just up and vanished somehow, leaving behind only one single chunk that hummed with a mess of sensations and power that felt stronger than the larger lump it had previously been. And when I raised my hand to stare at my palm, five drops of shimmering water fell from nowhere and pooled perfectly between my fingers.