Jumble hops up on my shoulders, careful not to let her tail smack me in the face, and looks around the room up above. “There’s another tube here. My turn to go first.”

  She grunts as her arms splat against the floor above, and she does her damndest to haul herself up without kicking me once. I grab one of her feet, which gets a little yelp from her, and shove her up with a little more strength than I’d intended. She disappears up and away out of view, my awareness tracking her as she tumbles head over heels before coming to a very graceful landing.

  “And the crowd goes wild.” She whispers to herself. “Raah, raah.”

  I shake my head with a smirk. “How’s the tank up there? Does it have a body in it, too?”

  “Eep! Um, I’m going to look right now!” Jumble hurries over to the tube. I stick a hand through the door to keep it open for her. “Right, thanks! I completely forgot to do that. There’s definitely another… something… in here. The notes say it’s a body, but… um… there’s not much ‘body’ in here. I’ll just bring it down so you can see for yourself.”

  With a huff, Jumble lifts the tank over her shoulder and makes her way back to the door. Once she sticks a foot through I back down and shove the couch out of the way to make room for her. An unbelievably heavy impact echoes out right behind me, followed by pained groans as Jumble falls to her knees and plants the tank in front of her.

  “My knees, my knees, ouch ouch ouch.” She winces and rubs her knees. “Stupid things don’t get the message that this doesn’t actually hurt at all.”

  I nod in sympathy and offer her a hand to help her up. “Pain doesn’t always equal damage, huh?”

  Jumble laughs and accepts my hand. “Nope, definitely not. But I’ll take pain and no damage over pain and damage any day.”

  A simple tug brings her back to her feet. She holds my hand for a few seconds longer than is necessary, but lets go on her own right before it gets too awkward. I turn to the tube as she blushes ever so slightly. Inside is a… skeleton. A paindne skeleton for sure, but there’s… things floating in the liquid around it like a bunch of rhythmic gymnastics ribbons. I squint to get a better look and instantly wish I hadn’t.

  On one side, close-cut fur. On the other, skin. The skeleton’s being orbited by strips of its own… pelt? Eurgh, that just feels wrong to say about anothing human-esque being.

  “So what the hell happened to this poor sap?” I rap my knuckles against the glass. “That’s closer to a skeleton dressed up with meat ribbons than any corpse I’ve seen.”

  “I know; it’s horrible. So much so that I wouldn't be able to believe someone did this to them on purpose.” She wipes her hand over the writing. “And if we can actually believe these notes, then that’s the truth. This ‘specimen’, which is an awful word to use for another paindne, apparently died from magical item backlash. It removed all of their organs except for bones and skin, then turned the skin into… well… that.”

  She points at the ribbon of fur-flesh drifting through the liquid. I swallow hard, my imagination threatening to run wild at the mere sight of the horrid thing. But… wait. That explanation leaves out one very important thing.

  “How did they make a simulacrum out of them if the brain was completely gone?”

  Jumble breaths out through her nose. “The brain was… there, but not there. You know about different levels of existence, right?”

  I raise an eyebrow. “You’re talking about phasing things in and out.”

  “That’s another way to describe it, yeah. The brain’s apparently still in the skull, but the only way to see it is to stick your head in their ribcage and… look up through the rest of them.” She shudders. “Ick, just imagining it makes my fur stand on end.”

  Definitely not my idea of a good time, either. Makes me question the sick bastard who found out the brain was still in there, too. Or maybe they had something that let them detect things that are out of phase. It’s a better mental image than someone randomly sticking their head up dead people’s rib cages for giggles, that’s for damn sure.

  “Let’s just… put that fun thought out of our minds. This one probably isn’t connected to the back wound, so we’ve got at least one more anomaly to find.”

  Jumble nods. “Definitely. If up has one, and down had one, then left, right, and back probably have bodies too.”

  She taps her fingers to the glass once more, and the tube disappears. I furrow my brow–it really feels like I’m missing something important here–but I just can’t think of it. Not in a magical mess-with-your-mind kind of way, but in a ‘my brain isn’t working right’ kind of way. And I mean that in a self-degrading way, not an actual mental injury way.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Shelby? Are you ready?” Jumble asks.

  I shake my head and offer her a confident grin. “All good to go.”

  The look she shoots me questions the truth of my statement, but a shrug and a hand on the back wall shows her decision. Light and magic rip a door out of the wall with absolutely no change from before, and another nearly empty room waits for us beyond it. Jumble steps through and beelines for the tube, leaving me to keep the door open for when she hauls the thing back into this room.

  Then we do it again. Twice. Once for the bedroom wall and the other for the last remaining untouched wall. Each of them has a corpse in a tube waiting for us behind them, and each of them has a different colourful method of demise. All of them mention being preserved for studies based on their individual methods of demise on simulacra made from them. But not a single one actually gives us a hint as to how we’re supposed to find the anomalies to clear the subquest.

  Jumble lines up all the corpses, each of which is no longer connected to the plastic wires that… kept them cold, I guess. In their place word-static plugs up the ports, woven by Jumble’s quiet murmurings that don’t even register as words to me. When she’s done she takes a step back to survey her work and crosses her arms with a frown.

  “I kind of thought this would do something.” She begrudgingly admits.

  “So did I. But apparently we just spent fifteen minutes scouring the place for optional lore.” I chuckle to myself, which gets a smile out of Jumble. “At least we can confirm that the anomalies are making the construct replicate the ways these people died. Not that we can do much of anything with that info.”

  “Except assume we’re dealing with a construct that’s made from a bunch of people’s brains mashed into one.”

  I nod. “That, too. So–any flashes of inspiration for the other three anomalies we’re supposed to be looking for?”

  Jumble giggles. “I’ve been all tied up with you for as long as you’ve been tied up with me. If anyone found anything, Euro’s our only bet. Probably about time to check in on them, too–my skill either helped them find something in the room by now, or there isn’t anything to find in there at all.”

  I sweep an arm out to urge her to move. “Lead the way.”

  “Thank you very much.” She giggles again, this time a little bashfully. “It’s nice having another woman be this kind of nice to me for once.”

  “What, other girls don’t like you very much?” I click my tongue and shake my head. “What a shame. You seem like a very nice young lady now that I’ve gotten to know you better. One with a few too many secrets, but very nice nonetheless.”

  “I-I-I… that’s not what I meant!” Jumble turns beet red and looks away. “U-um, I promised I’d tell you everything before we left this place, and that’s not going to change. I just… I j-just don’t want you to hate me for things that sound bad out of context.”

  That’s… not the reaction I was expecting. But it was strangely cute. “Then tell me the context first. I’m a pretty good listener when push comes to lore dump.”

  “That’s not what I meant either!” Jumble whines as she covers her face with her hands. “Geez! Some storyteller I am–I can’t even get the right words out for something as simple as this. It’s… not that I don’t want to tell you.”

  All at once, it clicks. “You don’t think the system will let you tell me.”

  She nods quietly.

  “But for some reason, you think something’s going to happen in this quest that’ll change that.” I stick my hands in my pockets as my mind races. “Does it have something to do with the body parts of the heretic?”

  Much to my surprise, Jumble nods a very small nod. In which case, it makes perfect sense. The quest wouldn’t let her say anything about what’s going to happen in the quest–just like it deleted all the info from the construct in our tower. I nod to myself as I piece together a narrative, but as I get further and further back, things just… don’t make sense.

  How does she know what’s going to happen in the quest? Even if she used her skill, it would just be her interpretation of the events–not the actual truth. But then even that doesn’t make sense, since apparently her secrets are bound to the events of the quest. Again, the alarms in my brain sound dully in the smallest urgency possible. There’s definitely something wrong about all this.

  But every fiber of my being is telling me to trust Jumble. Not her entire party, though–just her.

  “I guess I’ll just have to wait, then.” I sigh. “Come up with a damn good story for when you’re ready to tell it, yeah?”

  Jumble blinks at me, then smiles shyly. “I can’t promise that. Even if I embellish it around the corner and back, it’s still just my life. And… um… you’ve kind of seen both sides of me. So I can’t really wow you with flowery descriptions and exaggerated romance.”

  “Who knows? Maybe I’m in the mood to be wowed.” I grin and wink at her. “All you have to do is catch me in a listening mood.”

  “I-I… u-uh…” Jumble nearly trips over her own feet as she crosses into the bedroom. “L-look forward to it, then! I-I’ll make it the best version of my life anyone’s ever heard–b-but without all the really embarrassing internal monologue stuff. I’d rather jump off a cliff than tell anyone that. Oh, look! Euro!”

  She hurries ahead, patting Euro on the back and dispelling her skill. The rogue looks up at Jumble and grins as they hold up something fist-sized, deep green, and with a perfectly pyramidal chunk taken out of it. Inside of which a miniature blizzard rages.

  “I finally found one.” They say. “It was face-down in a bowl under all the other fruit, and the opening was barely visible when I did pick it up. You can… uhm…”

  Euro leans around Jumble to stare at the tanks in the other room. “What did I miss?”