5.14 – Persistent


    The realization was stunning, mostly because Zoey thought her shards were, well, <em>her own. </em>She hadn’t known that other wayfarers could enter them—or rather, she had thought the shard would reshape itself to be normal again. But maybe it didn’t work like that. Maybe Zoey’s presence permanently altered them. Maybe once Mel had gotten a taste of the ‘more fun’ way to fight, she would start integrating those challenges as a permanent feature. Zoey really needed to talk to that slimegirl as soon as possible.


    “So you <em>have </em>been to one,” Helena asked, leaning forward, somehow even more interested in this topic than the corrupted ones. For that matter, Helena probably thought the two shards were rted—corrupted in different ways, but from the same root cause. The so-called ‘punishment from the gods’. Zoey obviously knew better. “What was yours like? Did it include a clone?”


    For the second time, Zoey was sent reeling. A <em>clone</em>? Not-Zoey? That was the shard Helena was talking about?


    “It did!” Helena said, reading Zoey’s reaction. To be fair, Zoey was so caught off guard she’d had no hope of masking it. She was still stumbling to orient to the swerve in conversation. She’de here hoping to find someone who knew more about the corrupted shards, and while that goal seemed to have failed, she’d found someone who’d been to a lewd shard—which was its own stunning piece of information. “And did it take your own shape?”


    “I—I can’t believe you’ve also been. Sorry. Give me a second.” Zoey took a moment to organize her thoughts. Should she talk with Helena about this? There didn’t seem to be any major reason not to. Maybe Helena could shed some light on something—though Zoey couldn’t imagine what. But even if Zoey couldn’t get any practical information, she was curious what Helena’s trip through a lewd shard had been like. “Yes, it did,” Zoey finally settled on. “It mirrored my own body. The reflection.”


    “Yes! A reflection. That’s what she called herself. You really were there. And did she—”


    Helena paused, then blushed.


    “Well, you know.” She gestured down at her crotch. “Have that for you, too?”


    Zoey stared at her. She could pick up the implication. In Zoey’s situation, Not-Zoey had actually lost her bonus equipment. It seemed when she’d formed an encounter with Helena, she’d <em>gained </em>it instead.


    “Yes,” Zoey answered—skipping the technical correction. “This is crazy. I can’t believe you’ve been there.” It also provided some good news—it meant Helena was either second or third advancement, but probably not higher, since Not-Zoey’s shard had been second. It seemed unlikely a fourth-advancement would be delving something so low. Though, could shards reshape their difficulty? The exact mechanisms of shards were hardly a well-understood topic, much less to Zoey, a foreigner.


    “I can’t believe <em>you </em>have,” Helena said. She was the most excited she’d been since the start of this conversation—she had mostly seemed to be tolerating Zoey’s talk of the corrupted shard. Helena nced at Jacquelyn—Delta—as if remembering they hadpany, then paused. “Give us privacy, please, Jacquelyn.”


    Delta hesitated, sharing a look with Zoey. Delta had obviously also been shocked at the development, though standing behind Helena, hadn’t been seen. Zoey had needed to stalwartly avoid looking at her to avoid giving anything away. At Delta’s concerned look, Zoey imperceptibly nodded at her partner, and Delta said, “Of course. I’ll be right outside.”


    When the door closed, an animated Helena turned back to Zoey. “So. Did you?”


    “Did I …?”


    “Well, you know. Take up her offer.”


    “Her offer?”


    “Surely it was the same. An easier boss fight in return for—you know?”


    Zoey’s eyes widened. “Did <em>you</em>?”


    Helenaughed. The stoic woman’s walls were quickly breaking down. She’d been somewhat stiff during the previous talk, but this one had animated her.


    “I couldn’t talk about this with anyone, obviously,” Helena said. “Even the Church elders. I gave them my report, but—someone who’s actually been, it’s different. Liberating, I suppose?” She grinned at Zoey. “And you did take her up on the offer, I can tell by that reaction. Good for you. How was it?”


    “How was it? Um, fun?”


    “Fun? Having your own body-double pping her hips into you? Yes, ‘fun’ is one way to put it,” Helena said, eyes sparkling with amusement. “Definitely more of a final event than most shards. Bosses in the future simply won’t hold up.”


    Actually, it had been Zoey doing the hip-pping, but again, she didn’t correct Helena on the technicals. She was still adjusting to the rapid change in demeanor.


    “You were alone for it, then?” Zoey asked.


    Helena blinked. Her eyes widened. “Right. You weren’t. Wait, how did that work, then?”


    “My teammates swapped bodies. I received the clone. So there was four of us total, including the reflection.”


    Helenaughed. “Incredible.” She paused, then sobered slightly. “I mean, yes, I realize this is a product of our world breaking down, a punishment sent by the gods, but— but really, what an experience, wasn’t it?” She seemed slightly guilty, as if she knew she shouldn’t be excited—or have had fun—with the shard. “Have you tried finding it again?”


    “No. Have you?”


    Helena blushed. “I mean— no, of course not. I was just wondering.”


    She definitely had. But by the sounds of it, to little sess.


    “And the items?” Zoey asked. “Did you get anything?”


    “Anything?”


    “You know. Shard rted.”


    “Wait. You got something like that?” Helena practically leaned over the table in a tant, excited disy of interest. It gave Zoey a good view of her cleavage, her shirt drooping down. Zoey could even see all the way to her stomach; it was a loose piece of clothing. “What was it?”


    It seemed like the shard Helena had been to wasn’tpletely the same as Zoey’s. Or maybe the items were just rarer. Zoey suspected her ss might modify the rewards. Since she had a lust-based ss, items of that type were far moremon—or possible even unique to her.


    “It’s really inappropriate,” Zoey said. “Are you sure you want to know?”


    “Please.”


    Zoey considered whether she should, then, not seeing any major reason to not—and wanting to further gain Helena’s trust—she pulled out a reward from the first shard she hadn’t used in a while. She cracked open the wooden lid, revealing six matching pairs of growing-in-size buttplugs, made from a clean, polished silver.


    Helena gaped, her cheeks tinting pink as she stared at the sex toys—and especially at thergest pair, which were apletely unreasonable size. She didn’t seem put off in the slightest. Embarrassed, but still fascinated and even excited at everything she was discovering.


    This hadn’t been the direction Zoey had intended for this conversation to go, but at this point, she suspected there wasn’t anything more to learn from Helena. Unless she’d been purposefully hiding knowledge on the shardeaters, she’d simply been to one of the corrupted shards and survived to tell the tale. And in the case she <em>was </em>hiding deeper knowledge, then Zoey could do little to nothing to draw it out; they were strangers, and Zoey had no intention of joining her cult.


    And learning that the sex-shardscking a better term—were actually sticking around after Zoey adventured them was a valuable piece of information. Something that made this miniature cult invasion worth it. Lewd shard persistence meant her presence made permanent, possibly irreversible changes to her surroundings. That made some sense, seeing how Zoey was apparently imbued with the essence of a goddess.


    Which reminded her of another task she needed to handle in the near future. Ephy had told Zoey that she ought to mune the regr way’ if she wanted to speak again, and Zoey obviously did. Ephy was her best source of information, even enigmatic and limited in what she could or would say.


    “May I?” Helena asked.


    “Go ahead? But, uh. They’re clean now, but they’ve been, you know. Used.”


    Helena only smirked at the warning. “Can’t say I me you. I bet the effect is quite potent. That shard in general seemed generous.”


    “It’s definitely one of the better items we’ve found.” The sex items as a whole had non-stop astounded Rosalie, and Zoey knew Rosalie was a hard woman to impress in wayfaring topics.


    Helena took out one of therger buttplugs, then inspected it. She shook her head, equally incredulous and amused, turning it back and forth as she looked it over. Eventually, she set it back in.


    She gave Zoey an interested look. Considering Helena’s eagerness to talk about this—and excitement when mentioning what she’d been through—Zoey wasn’t surprised to see interest of that sort creeping in. She opened her mouth to say something, a teasing smirk starting to curl her lips, but before she could get out whatever she had nned to say, the door mmed open, and Delta rushed back in.


    As in, Delta.


    Orange-haired fox girl.


    Who should very much be tied up in the utility room.


    “Change of ns,” she said breathlessly. “We gotta get the hell out of here.”


    And she’d swapped back to her original body? So Jacquelyn was back in her own too?


    Zoey and Helena had both bolted to their feet on Delta’s sudden arrival. Helena waspletely caught off guard, and Delta didn’t waste the opportunity. Neither did Zoey—her wayfaring instincts were bing at least somewhat honed, and she snatched the butt plug collection off the table and deposited it into her inventory.


    “Follow me,” Delta said, before taking an inspired path out of the building. Which was to say, she leapt through the window. ss shattered, and the orange-haired foxgirl disappeared over the ledge. Zoey understood why in the next moment—several ck-masked Church members rushed through the door, only seconds behind Delta. One was Jacquelyn, looking furious.


    What the hell had happened?


    Zoey didn’t bother worrying about that; their masquerade was clearly up. She followed Delta through the broken window and out into the alleyway. She’d never jumped through a window before, and was worried about broken ss—but that was a mundane sort of worry, Zoey realized, not something a third-advancement wayfarer had to concern themselves with, even without a physically focused ss.


    She managed to stick thending, then followed a sprinting Delta down the alleyway, headed for the streets proper. They were lucky the meeting room had been situated as it was; if it’d been deeper in the building, not on the edge, then escape would have been moreplicated.


    Though there were stillplications; Helena, a wayfarer of some aplishment herself, was also out the window in the next moment. Zoey thought she was also a third-advancement, so out running her was going to be tricky. It might even turn into a fight.


    “Stop! Where are you going?”


    Zoey almost paused, and not because of the authority in Helena’s shout, but the confusion and even panicked disappointment. She’d found someone who knew about the lewd shards and had wanted to talk with Zoey more—and possibly do a few things other than talk, from how quickly the mood inside that room had been shifting.


    Either way, Zoey couldn’t exin. She didn’t think Helena would be understanding about Delta having borrowed Jacquelyn’s body to earn an easy audience with her. It hadn’t been some horrible crime—and Zoey hadn’t even learned anything important from Helena, besides the idental reveal of lewd shards working for other wayfarers—so she doubted there would be a massive Church grudge against them, though probably a small one. Still, best not to find out; she and Delta needed to disappear.


    Legs pumping as she sprinted wildly down the alleyway, Zoey fled The Church of the Shattered Sphere, a confused Helena pursuing.