Chapter Text
“A land with not a player in sight, eighteen appear in blinding light
And though escape is not mistake
The lore will give and lore will take
Old ones fall, new gods arise
As life escapes from watching eyes
Curses and blessings, wishes and prayer, lanjosas people need not despair
The gods are just a word away
Whether or not they want to stay.”
Traditional Naisri prayer to the eighteen god-wide pantheon - estimated to date to around 127 A-GH. Translated and updated by Anella Ilas (2481 A-GH).
For such a popular god as Scott, it was a surprise that he had taken such a liking to Notish. A narrow, costal region had been nowhere near as beautiful or glorious as the larger countries in the east of Lanjosa. But now, years after their arrival, his patronage had been strong enough to transform Nothish from rural to fascinating.
Once a small town, the capital had been transformed into a bustling, vibrant city. The stone was a brilliant, dusty white that faintly glittered in the light. The rooves were made of glossy blue tiles of varying shades and when one looked at the city from far away, they blended together and seamlessly slipped into the sky.
It was easy to walk through without disturbance, and Pearl chose to walk through the city instead of teleporting to wherever she thought Scott was most likely to be. She liked Notish, and she had the time to do so. She allowed herself to observe the beauty of the city around her. The twinkling glass starcatchers, hung from roof eaves and above doorways; the heavy curtains and drapes that shimmered in colours of midnight; the star charts that were hung alongside the maps of the city.
The star charts were still painfully unfamiliar. Even when the worlds had changed during the games, they had still been the same stars, and she remembered spending hours with Scott and Cleo, pouring over starcharts and memorising everyone’s locations until they could find their way around in the dark with ease. Pearl exhaled and pushed the memory away. She was looking for Scott, not trying to kill herself with homesickness.
At least for her, tracking Scott in a city as shiny and detailed as this was near impossible if she didn’t utilise every drop of her concentration. Which meant she had to guess. His temple wasn’t necessarily a bad place to search, but it was cold and heavy and too quiet to really enjoy. She knew the taverns he liked to frequent, but even with their skewed perception of time it was too early to eat or drink, and half the time he didn't even remember to…
He better not be in Jimmy's sewer, she thought grumpily to herself as she circled wide around a group of people, some with feathers, some with fins, all laughing. And that was where, dodging random stray people like her life depended on it, she saw it — a clean sheet of paper nailed to the wall. Printed in clean, steady words was the name of a performance. The exact translation was lost on her, but she'd seen enough of these posters in Notish before to know exactly where Scott was — the theatre.
It took her only a second to teleport there. Sure, she had the time, but she was impatient and now that she was confident that she knew where Scott was, she didn't feel like wasting time wandering around the streets. She opened her eyes to the theater, which in her honest opinion, was underwhelming. When she thought of theatres, she thought of the dark and gloomy theatres in Vrantis, of the spectacular huge things in the city of Satinnnesse, but Notish Central Theater had none of that atmosphere. To call it a theatre felt embarrassing. It wasn't even inside. It was a circular rock stage surrounded by room for standing. Ren despised it. Scott loved it.
“The Red Snow is coming!” One of the actors wailed on the “stage”. It had been traditional, before they’d arrived, for the people of Notish to put on performances under the stars, so the entire thing was outside with no seating. “We must fight!”
The actor was okay, but Pearl didn’t know who he was supposed to be playing. Or even what story he was supposed to be acting from; yes, she knew that this was from the first game, but to say that the story had changed over the years was a drastic, drastic understatement. She could barely even understand what was going on.
She cast her gaze around the crowd. Most of them were Tânnotîs, skin tinted with almost hidden shades of blue and silver. Most of the Notish wore blues and black. Nobody batted an eye at her red cloak. Multiple of her and Grian’s followers lived here anyway, drawn to the similarities in celestial religion, and there was always a surplus of traders from other nations and religions. But the amount of blue made it a little harder to find Scott. He refused to change his aesthetic, even if it made him blend in like a chameleon.
“Decay!” One of the actors shrieked. Pearl
didn't know whether to wince at the shrill voice, the terrible acting or the blatantly incorrect details of the story. No wonder Ren found these plays so painful. Being a theatre god meant that you were the god of all theatre, good or not so good. “Take my blade, and cut my throat!”
“No!” This one was supposed to be Cleo. Maybe. It could have very much been Joel. She tuned the actor out as she shifted her awareness across the crowd, searching…
…and heard Martyn laughing.
Pearl gently pushed through the hordes of Tânnotîs gaping at the stage, and walked up to the small huddle at the very edge of the theatre boundary. Martyn was laughing impossibly hard, hard enough that she could feel that Ren had put up some kind of sound barrier to stop someone from hearing it. It was surprising that she hadn't seen them earlier — Martyn was in his usual spring green, and Ren was, as always, in an enormous red cloak to riv
“Hi, Pearl.” Ren sighed next to him. He looked like he was in physical pain. An actor in purple fell to the ground, shrieking about swans, and Ren winced twice as hard as he had been earlier. “Oh joy. These get worse every year. Where’d the swans come from?”
“Swans are associated with winter in Vrantis.” Pearl shrugged.
“Why?”
“Couldn't tell you.” She looked around - where was Scott? - and found him half-present, leaning against the wall and staring at something else. “Hey, Scott.”
“Hi, Pearl.” He looked distracted., eyes pinning into the far distance. If she had to guess, he was probably using two forms at once. Whether that was for making out with Jimmy, breaking up with Jimmy or actually being a responsible deity and communing with his followers, it was hard to tell. It was an extremely difficult and turbulent decision, but she didn’t poke him. The things she did for this friendship…
One of the actors fell over mid-sentence with a shriek. Scott let out an abrupt snicker, not properly looking. Martyn laughed. Ren groaned. Pearl laughed with Martyn, for the sole
“So which theatre group is doing the play this year?” Pearl smirked at Ren’s distress.
Martyn continued laughing as he answered her. “The big one from Satinnnesse.” Despite it lying in the border between three different countries and half considered the centre of the world, Pearl barely went there. She had no idea. “The ones that really like doing Twilight of the Apprentice.”
“What on Earth is Twilight of the Apprentice?”
“My liege!” Actor-Martyn wailed at the top of his lungs. “My… my… liege… ”
Real-Martyn ignored him and instead groaned at her lack of knowledge on Lanjosan plays, as if she was somehow supposed to be able to know every play that ever existed. “I keep forgetting you live in the woods.”
“I don't live in the woods,” Pearl frowned. “I wander the world like Gem. I'm a hermit. That's different.”
“At least you don't live in the sewers.” Ren sighed. “Scott, why are you in love with men who live in sewers?”
“Jimmy doesn't live in a sewer.” Scott's voice was flat and his eyes were still distant. “He lives in a cave.”
“A wet cave.”
“It’s a nice cave, and we're not even -”
“Shh.” Pearl gestured. “He's concentrating. Save the talk about him and Jimmy's relationship when we can properly embarrass him.”
Scott, shockingly, didn't turn to shriek at her. What a surprise. Whether it was because she was such a good and lovely friend to him or because he was actually doing something else, she couldn't tell.
“I'd rather talk about their relationship than continue watching this play.” Ren shivered. Notish could be cold, but even in the harsh warmth of mid-afternoon, he tugged his cape closer. If she squinted, she could make out patterns of dogs sewn into them — red wolves running on red ground. “Martyn, why did we come here?”
“Because I enjoy watching plays.” He huffed. “And Ren, come on, you're the god of theatre. Surely you could at least try and appreciate the effort that goes into creating these.”
“I'm not sure I appreciate the mythologised butchering of the Games.” Pearl winced at that. She had seen enough retellings of the game she'd won to know to look at plot summaries before attempting to watch them. “I don't have pink hair.”
“You could have pink hair.”
“But I don't.” Ren had a point there — they did have to be somewhat careful when it came to things like this, but most of them hardly ever changed their usual appearance. Shapeshifting was one thing, but changing your appearance was difficult. It was annoying. And most importantly, it was painful. “Dye your own hair pink, dude.”
“Edekîn!” Actor-Martyn cried out. Impulse had told her that Edekîn was derived from Red King, but she hadn’t known if he was pulling her leg or not. She didn't exactly get a lot of practice in the Lanjosan language, Naisri, by wandering around the forests and avoiding people. “You can't leave me!”
“Yes I can,” Ren grumbled. Martyn seemed to be enjoying himself more and more. What a happy duo. “I will leave. I will leave right now.-”
“But you won't,” Pearl smirked at him. “Edekîn.”
“Not you too, Pearl.” He sighed almost pathetically and dipped his head. “But you’re right. I won't.”
Martyn smirked. “Ha.”
She kept half an eye on Scott as the play continued. He’d break out of his trance every so often to look around, keep an eye on any particularly loud sounds, but he was otherwise clearly not in the right state for asking what she wanted to ask. Pearl opted to wait. At least she had entertainment whilst waiting.
She wasn't entirely sure how long this play was supposed to be, but by the time it had ended, she reckoned that she had sat through a solid third of it. Ren, for all his never-ending complaints, was paying uttermost attention. She caught him mouthing the script along to the performance more than once. Martyn didn't mouth the words, but he did seem completely unaffected by every loud noise and supposedly shocking plot twist.
On her hand, she had no idea what was going on. Scott had told her several times that she was dramatic enough for theatre, but actually watching it was… occasionally confusing. Coming in more than halfway through certainly didn't help, but she'd mostly relied on her own knowledge of what had happened for the plays at first. When time progressed, and the myths of what had happened in these games grew wilder and wilder, she'd begun to feel a bit clueless.
At the end of the play, both Ren and Marryn gave it a round of applause. They made a joke — something about Edekǐnle that she didn't fully get but smiled at anyway — and promptly declared that they would be leaving for Vrantis.
It was, of course, at this time when Scott finally decided to reenter his body at Notish. He blinked, looking around slowly and frowned as he saw the crowds dispersing and the actors packing away.
“So,” Scott turned to her at last. Finally. “What you wanted to talk to me about?”
“How’d you know I wanted to talk to you?”
“Pearl.”
She smirked, rocking on her feet. “Do you know what day it is?”
“Not really.”
“It’s the start of storm season.” She said carefully. Her smile turned toothy. “Do you know what that means?”
Scott paused. His look narrowed. “It means that Joel is busy pampering himself while thousands of people are worshipping him?”
“Yep.”
He laughed. “You came all this way just to see if I wanted to annoy Joel? You could have just asked me.”
“I couldn’t.” She smirked. “You were too busy talking to Jimmy.”
“Wasn't talking to Jimmy.” He said flippantly. Liar. She let it slide. “I was… communing with my priests.”
“Sure you were.” She nodded and patted him on the shoulder. “It must be very important for you to commune with them. I'll fetch Cleo whilst you finish communing with your priests.”
-
Cleo stood on the flat roof of their temple, watching the fire burning outside. These were the hottest regions of Lanjosa. Once a year, they would plant ash trees in the field in front of the temple, and wait to see if they would burn.
The trees were burning, this year. A sign of Cleo’s favour. She’d taken to their role as a god reluctantly, but their followers had been good this year and they knew that if they didn’t provide them with signals or omens, they would panic. The sparks flew, the wildfire roared, surging.
“Boo.”
Cleo had rarely been startled since her ascension, but she twisted around in such a hurry to see who had sneaked up on them that they almost fell over. Their shoulders slumped at the sight of the familiar person in a sweeping red cloak and a sly grin. “Don't scare me, Pearl.”
“Whoops.”
Now that she knew it was Pearl, she turned back around to watch the wildfire. Some of the priests were frowning at it. Cleo willed it to intensify. A tree exploded, and someone in the crowd cheered. She had no idea why the people of Amesho liked fire so much, but they would make excellent competitors in the games.
“I'm going to assume the exploding tree means it was a good year?”
Cleo sighed out, although they couldn't really pretend to be annoyed at her.“Yes. It was a good year, Pearl.”
They cast a glance back at her, but she was already walking over to the edge of the roof. She cast her arms along the ridge that made up an impromptu railing, dangling her wrists over the edge.
She gave her a look. They knew that look. They knew that look very well.
“Do you want to do something later?”
“I'm doing something right now.” They said absently, lips twitching.
“Not what I meant,” Pearl grumbled. “Do you want to — I don't know — hunt something? cause some chaos? Spook the-” Her expression momentarily faltered before she could say the word mortal. Cleo winced. They still weren’t ready to say that word themselves, but she was hurriedly correcting herself. “Spook the people?”
“I’m going to assume that you've already picked out some chaos to cause,” Cleo said dryly.
She grinned. “What gave it away?”
“It's the beginning of storm season, which means Joel is being lazy and easy to harass."
Pearl tipped her head back and barked out a laugh — sometimes it was uncanny how much she resembled the dogs her followers worshipped (they weren't too certain about why people worshipped dogs, but they digressed). “That's the plan.” She grinned. “Scott's just finishing up a very important message, and then he's going to join us.”
Cleo hesitated only for a second. Who could decline a chance to annoy Joel? Certainly not them. The wildfire could carry itself. She didn’t have to be responsible for every fire ever. “Sure.”
Pearl nodded, and leaned over the battlements of their temple. It had been constructed like a fort, heavy and solid stone intended to resist the decay that came with their power. It wasn't exactly comfortable, but temples weren't supposed to be lived in. Unless you were Jimmy, who spent all his time moping in his soggy caves.
Below, the townspeople cheered. Their priests were preparing their axes to cut and preserve the remnants when the fire gave out. After they collected the remnants, they would build the next year's altar out of it. Cleo tapped her fingers impatiently, waiting for them to finish-
“Cool fire.” Cleo jumped again. Scott stood directly behind them. These two were going to be the death of her. “Hey, Cleo.”
They wheezed out a gasp and glared at him “A little warning would be nice, Scott!" They pointed a look at Pearl too. "You too Pearl."
“We're bored,” Pearl said, picking at her nails. They didn’t get dirty if she didn’t want them to but she still picked at them anyway. Enrichment, or whatever. “And scaring you is funny.”
One of the townspeople pointed at the roof and shouted. People gasped. They hadn't exactly been subtle in watching the fire, and now, people were staring at the three gods that were assembled on the temple rooftop. The priests gaped. This was probably the best omen they had ever received. Oh dear, Cleo thought.
“I think that's our cue to leave,” Pearl announced, grabbing her arm and Scott's. “Lets-”
The world burned out from around them, then rightened.
“-go!”
Cleo blinked. It had been a thousand years now, and they still hated teleportation.
“Where are we?” Scott managed, swallowing down bile. None of them had thrown up as gods, but there had been times when some of them had come pretty close.
“Somewhere outside Joel's lair.”
Joel did not have a lair. Joel had a mountain crowned by an ever-present storm, scattered with shrines and temples. Each shrine was constructed out of solid, heavy quartz and gold. At the very top stood the small shrine, a ring of columns with a shimmering roof, a tiny statue of Joel himself in the middle.
The rain trickled down Cleo’s cheeks, and they blinked it away. It was unusually quiet — everyone was gathered at the peak, murmuring their prayers, specs of red contrasting heavily against the green and black stone that they had come to associate with the country of Besea.
“What kind of harassment are we doing?” Scott raised an eyebrow at the two of them.
“We could clear the storm,” Pearl said.
Cleo muffled a laugh. “You mean Joel's sacred storm?”
“Oh. I forgot it was sacred.” She winced. “It might be better to do something else then.”
“It would be better to do something else to annoy him.” Cleo snorted. “I tried to clear his storm once-”
“Wait, actually?” Scott blinked.
“Oh yeah.” They nodded. “It took him about two days to notice, and when he did notice, he set my woods on fire. He didn't realise that wildfires are considered blessings to the Lanjosans. It was such a big wildfire that pretty much everyone started throwing feasts and street parties basically everywhere."
"Oh," Pearl said. "That's what happened? I thought that there was a war or something."
"You didn't notice the enormous wildfire that destroyed half of the Tegaya and Amesho forests?"
"Nope." She kicked a nearby rock.
"Pearl, it lasted two months."
"I was exploring Jimmy's caves," she explained. "They're big. I didn't realise it took two months. Although it would explain why Gem was so mad."
Gem had been very mad. Not angry at them, but angry at Joel for destroying so much nature. In retaliation, she had switched out of all his gold with plants and trees and refused to replace any of it. Joel had set out thunderstorms, which caused more fires. It continued until Bdubs had gotten so annoyed that nobody was sleeping that he threatened to time-loop both of them if they didn't stop.
Bdubs couldn't timeloop anyone, but an annoyed Bdubs was scary enough that both of them had stopped immediately.
“Oh, that's evil.” Cleo grinned as an idea clicked into place." And it would take him months to figure out that it's been changed.”
“Huh?" Pearl blinked at her.
"You know how Gem replaced all of Joel's gold with plants?"
"Yeah," Scott said, intrigued.
"No," Pearl said flatly. She was probably in a cave for that too. "Explain."
"We should replace all of Joel's gold with- what's something that looks golden?" Cleo paused for a moment, then settled on it. "Sun copper. Let's replace all of his gold with sun copper."
"Technically sun copper isn't copper, it's a type of fool's gold. But they don't call it fools gold." Pearl sighed. "Scar gets so annoyed at that."
Scott elbowed her in the side. "Scar isn't here. And it's not like any of us are going to see actual fools gold again-"
Cleo winced heavily. Pearl shot him a dirty look.
"Uh." Scott grimaced. "...it's not like we're going to see actual fools gold anytime soon, so, might as well call it sun copper. I guess."
"Nice save," Cleo said.
"That was a terrible save. Don't compliment him, Cleo." Pearl shuddered.
"Hey-"
Cleo elected to ignore their squabbling as they walked their way up the mountain. They didn't use the path — too many people, and if Joel did decide to come back early to suck up some more worship he would notice them right away and either try and smite them on the spot or start babbling to them about something ridiculous. Besides, the mountain was pretty, even if she would never call it such out loud. The storm cast dramatic shadows over the low, crawling bushes that she'd come to associate with the country of Besea. Green and rocky and mild and, all things considered, relatively normal if you discounted Joel's storms.
They exhaled calmly as they made their way up, crisscrossing around the flashes of whisper trees and high mountain grasses, and less easily around the large patches of Gem's nature that Joel hadn't dared touch in fear of angering her. She half expected a wild animal to prance out, then remembered that she already had two wild animals scrambling after her whilst arguing loud enough that even Jimmy could probably hear them in his sewer-caves.
"Cleo!" Pearl huffed. "Slow down!"
"Hurry up or Joel is going to be back soon and then we can't prank him," Cleo snipped, although she did offer a hand out to them. They could, of course, teleport to the top, but Cleo didn't like teleporting.
"I'm gonna get plant juice on my shoes," Scott grumbled under his breath.
"Aren't you a god?" Pearl asked incredulously. "Just wish them clean. It's not like it's hard."
"It's the principle."
"I am once again reminding you that Jimmy lives in a sewer-"
"Jimmy lives in a cave-"
"Cold, wet, damp caves with sewer water and curses all over them-"
Cleo shushed them both. They'd reached the main temple — not the small shrine at the peak, where most of Joel's followers were probably gathered and offering up sacrifices to him and Jerermy, but the one where people normally went.
This temple was blinding marble and gold that completely disrupted the black rock and greenery. An eyesore, Bdubs had put it, but an aesthetic eyesore. It looked every bit like one of the Grecian temples they'd seen illustrated... somewhere. Cleo frowned. How did she know what a Grecian temple looked like?
"-eo? Cleo?" Scott nudged her shoulder. "Hello? Earth to Cleo?"
They jolted, knocked out of their thoughts. "Sorry." They blinked. "Was just thinking."
“Well,” Scott announced. “I'm going to get the gold fittings outside replaced. You guys focus on the inside. How long do we have?”
“Well, he's currently at Lizzie's,” Cleo said.
“How do you know that?”
“I asked Lizzie.” They said flippantly. “We should have a longish time — thirty minutes?”
“That's not a long time,” Pearl pointed out.
“It is for you, Pearl.”
Pearl ignored that (the corner of her mouth twitched, regardless) and tugged at their sleeve. “Come on then. Let's go and ruin Joel's temple.”
The colonnades were lovely, perfectly carved and maintained even after six hundred years of use. Cleo could feel how much Joel liked this temple from the moment they stepped up onto the walkway. The floors were mosaiced, depicting the Beseale creation myths — the Great Darkness, where the Darkness had roamed the world in pitch black, accompanied by nothing but the raging Storm that she fell in love with. She had no idea if that story was actually about Lizzie and Joel or if it had existed before their arrival, but it was romantic. She guessed.
Golden statues of Joel (and Lizzie, because he was obsessed with her, and sometimes Etho too because... well, she had no idea what was going on between those two) lined the walls. Almost every fixture they passed was gilded, and where it wasn't, it was covered with silver. They felt like they'd been shrunken down and placed in a jewellery box.
They felt Scott fly up to the roof of the temple, a small shriek echoing downwards. He must have slipped on the tiles. The two of them simultaneously burst out laughing.
The doors were, as they remembered, gold. Solid gold. Heavy and unbearable for most to open, so they're normally left open. Cleo stepped inwards, feet echoing to an almost unsettling degree against the tiles-
“...ah.” Cleo winced. They remembered just how much there was in this temple, how many rooms and chambers — it was silly, really, because they had seen this temple before. Had seen it from the outside only a few moments ago. But they couldn't quite remember the last time that they had actually been inside this temple specifically. “We're not getting all of this done.”
“Why?” Pearl asked absently, already drifting towards the gold doors. A hand placed on them, and with a sucking but quiet crack of a sound, it's changed. It doesn't look too bad. They can only tell the difference because they'd been staring at it a moment before. They doubted that Joel would be able to tell unless he actually went digging for what the materials in here were.
"Pearl. Can you look at this place and tell me that we're going to get all off this gold changed in-" She grasped for how long they had left, what, with Pearl and Scott's endless bickering earlier- "-fifteen minutes?"
"Yeah. But I'd probably pass out for the next day or so."
"That's what I thought."
Pearl winced. "You know, maybe we should have done a prank that didn't involve material changes. We all suck at that stuff." They sighed at that, but it was too late to really go back (it wasn't, but they were committed) and Pearl was already talking again. "Besides! It'll be good to get some practice in, y'know?"
"Yep," Cleo responded, already preoccupied by the large golden vase by the side of the door. It was both easy and annoyingly difficult to change it, but they couldn't deny that as irritating as it was, Joel's reaction would absolutely be worth it.
“Pearl,” they said, somewhat hesitant. “What's the actual reason for mischief today?”
She blinked, caught off guard. “What do you mean?” She laughed abruptly.
A sinking feeling took hold of their stomach. They'd had this sensation on the edge of their senses all day, all week even. “Is it the anniversary of us coming here?”
She winced.
“I see.” Cleo wasn't one to really keep track of these things — it wasn't that she didn't care, but she didn't make an effort to know exactly when it happened. Somehow, she was always reminded anyway. It's been one thousand and thirty-four years since we got stuck here?”
Pearl bit her lip, shaking her head. “One thousand and eighty-three years.”
They scowled. Of course, they'd gotten it wrong. What did she expect? She'd been busy causing her wildfires and overseeing families and funerals, not keeping track of time. Cleo sighed and rubbed her forehead
“Well,” Pearl sighed. “This gold isn't going to replace itself.”
“Are you seriously choosing a prank over talking about your feelings?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, consider this multitasking.” Cleo patted down the wall in search of more gold fragments — yes they could sense the large pieces of gold and turn them into sun copper by themself, but there was so much gold here that they couldn't possibly sense it all. She could see Pearl doing the same. “Let's talk about your feelings.”
“I'd rather not.”
“It will be fun. Girls night. Well, not girls' night. God night, maybe.”
She huffed. “God night?”
“For gods.”
“I'm not really a god, Cleo. I just wander around and occasionally scare people.” Pearl's fingers curled around a small piece of gold buttoned into the marble walls and turned it to copper. “I don't exactly have big temples like you guys.”
“I'm pretty sure you could just ask the Lanjosans for a temple.”
She snorted. “What? I just roll up to them, hood up, sickles out, and tell them to build a temple or else?”
“Oh, no,” they focused. They knew that Joel had a set of enormous golden wind goblets in here, but where he kept them was a whole other question. They distracted themself momentarily by reaching out and searching for the“You have to be more subtle than that. You have to send rich people dreams.”
She sighed, and stopped.
They frowned. The gold wasn't that important now. “Pearl? Are you okay?”
“Being a god sucks.”
“...Yeah.” They exhaled.
“We have to do literally everything in secrecy.” She continued. “I wish we could just go back to being actual people, y'know?”
Cleo hesitated. “And go back to killing each other?”
Pearl sucked out a slow, unsteady breath. “I don't know,” she admitted.
“Cleo? Pearl?” Scott's voice rang out from the hallway. “Did you get all the gold done?”
It was like magic — in a heartbeat, all of Pearl’s face had rightened itself. Her tone seeped with infectious humour. “We got enough to annoy him!” She yelled.
The chamber didn't look entirely different from how it usually did, but knowing that all of that gold had been replaced was enough to make her almost burst out laughing.
“He's going to hate us,” Cleo commented, as if they weren't grinning wider than they had all week.
“Oh yeah.” Pearl's shoulders shook with mirth. “Joel's going to absolutely despise us.”